Malcolm X : Media Manipulation

Pittsburgh Protester To Trump: ‘You're The One Who Can Stop’ These Trage...

Republican House Majority Leader Confirmed That Trump's Threat To End Birthright Citizenship By An Executive Order Was An Obvious Lie.

Mike Pence and “Christian Rabbi” Loren Jacobs spark outrage after synagogue shooting - Vox - Pence is a truly evil man.

Mike Pence and “Christian Rabbi” Loren Jacobs spark outrage after synagogue shooting - Vox

Federal court rules against Kemp in absentee ballot battle | This is what that means | 11alive.com

Author: Lauren Padgett

Published: 11:46 AM EDT October 31, 2018

Updated: 1:47 PM EDT October 31, 2018

ATLANTA – An order that requires voters to be notified if their absentee ballots were rejected because of mismatched signatures will stand after a ruling in federal court. The order also gives those voters a chance to fix the discrepancy so that their ballots count.

Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also running for Governor, filed an emergency motion to prevent that from happening. That motion was denied."

Federal court rules against Kemp in absentee ballot battle | This is what that means | 11alive.com

Jon Stewart says the President is attacking journalists' ego

AP Interview: Okinawa leader wants Americans to stop US base

"TOKYO (AP) — The bicultural, newly elected governor of the southern Japanese island of Okinawa plans to visit the United States with a message to the American people: Stop building a disputed military base and build peace instead.

Tamaki took office Oct. 4 after campaigning for a disputed U.S. Marine air base to be moved off the island and for the American military presence on Okinawa to be reduced. The small island hosts about half of the 54,000 American troops stationed in Japan and accounts for 64 percent of the land used for U.S. military bases.

Tamaki plans to visit New York and other U.S. cities in November, although dates and other details are not yet decided, according to the governor’s office.

“I want the American people to understand what has been, what is and what will be, to solve this problem,” Denny Tamaki told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday at the Tokyo office for Okinawa prefecture."

AP Interview: Okinawa leader wants Americans to stop US base:

Pittsburgh Unites in Grief, Even as It Splits Over Trump’s Visit - The New York Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But if Mr. Trump’s visit was intended to bring healing, it instead laid bare the nation’s deep divisions. Many protesters in Pittsburgh had no doubt of what one called “the dotted line” between presidential rhetoric and violence, though some people in the city have pushed back on the idea that Mr. Trump had fomented the atmosphere of anger. As the president moved around Pittsburgh, a largely Democratic city, the signs of discord were apparent.

The protesters, some praying in Hebrew, others singing and chanting, moved around Squirrel Hill. Hoodie-wearing college students and Orthodox Jews with black hats and long beards walked alongside demonstrators carrying militant signs and middle-aged parents pushing strollers. Signs read “Words matter” and “President Hate is not welcome in our state.” As if to hold up a beloved local figure in contrast to the president, the largest march began on Beechwood Boulevard, where Mr. Rogers, the children’s television figure, used to live, and it ended at the Presbyterian church where he used to pray.

Pittsburgh Unites in Grief, Even as It Splits Over Trump’s Visit - The New York Times:

Honoring Pittsburgh synagogue victims, Mike Pence appears with ‘rabbi’ who preaches, ‘Jesus is the Messiah’ - The Washington Post This was ignorant and cruel. OMG.

Honoring Pittsburgh synagogue victims, Mike Pence appears with ‘rabbi’ who preaches, ‘Jesus is the Messiah’ - The Washington Post

Bombs, Bullets & Bombast Trump's Violent Rhetoric has Lead To 13 Deaths

Jimmy Carter Urges Brian Kemp to Step Down as Georgia’s Secretary of State - The Daily Beast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Former President Jimmy Carter called on gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp to resign from his current role as Georgia’s secretary of state to maintain public trust in the voting process, according to an Oct. 22 letter cited Monday by the Associated Press. “I have officially observed scores of doubtful elections in many countries, and one of the key requirements for a fair and trusted process is that there be nonbiased supervision of the electoral process,” Carter wrote. “In Georgia’s upcoming gubernatorial election, popular confidence is threatened not only by the undeniable racial discrimination of the past and the serious questions that the federal courts have raised about the security of Georgia’s voting machines, but also because you are now overseeing the election in which you are a candidate.” Carter added that “This runs counter to the most fundamental principle of democratic elections—that the electoral process be managed by an independent and impartial election authority.”

Carter avoided discussing the other reason advocates have called for Kemp’s resignation: allegations that Kemp is working to rig the election by stymying the voting rights of minority populations. He did, however, implore Kemp “to step aside and hand over to a neutral authority the responsibility of overseeing the governor’s election.” Kemp will face off against Democrat Stacey Abrams on Nov. 6.

Jimmy Carter Urges Brian Kemp to Step Down as Georgia’s Secretary of State - The Daily Beast

Connecting Trump’s Rhetoric to Domestic Terrorism - Between the Scenes ...

Dear young people, "Don't Vote"

The American Economy Is Rigged - Scientific American

Americans are used to thinking that their nation is special. In many ways, it is: the U.S. has by far the most Nobel Prize winners, the largest defense expenditures (almost equal to the next 10 or so countries put together) and the most billionaires (twice as many as China, the closest competitor). But some examples of American Exceptionalism should not make us proud. By most accounts, the U.S. has the highest level of economic inequality among developed countries. It has the world's greatest per capita health expenditures yet the lowest life expectancy among comparable countries. It is also one of a few developed countries jostling for the dubious distinction of having the lowest measures of equality of opportunity.

The notion of the American Dream—that, unlike old Europe, we are a land of opportunity—is part of our essence. Yet the numbers say otherwise. The life prospects of a young American depend more on the income and education of his or her parents than in almost any other advanced country. When poor-boy-makes-good anecdotes get passed around in the media, that is precisely because such stories are so rare.

Things appear to be getting worse, partly as a result of forces, such as technology and globalization, that seem beyond our control, but most disturbingly because of those within our command. It is not the laws of nature that have led to this dire situation: it is the laws of humankind. Markets do not exist in a vacuum: they are shaped by rules and regulations, which can be designed to favor one group over another. President Donald Trump was right in saying that the system is rigged—by those in the inherited plutocracy of which he himself is a member. And he is making it much, much worse.

America has long outdone others in its level of inequality, but in the past 40 years it has reached new heights. Whereas the income share of the top 0.1 percent has more than quadrupled and that of the top 1 percent has almost doubled, that of the bottom 90 percent has declined. Wages at the bottom, adjusted for inflation, are about the same as they were some 60 years ago! In fact, for those with a high school education or less, incomes have fallen over recent decades. Males have been particularly hard hit, as the U.S. has moved away from manufacturing industries into an economy based on services.

Deaths of Despair

Wealth is even less equally distributed, with just three Americans having as much as the bottom 50 percent—testimony to how much money there is at the top and how little there is at the bottom. Families in the bottom 50 percent hardly have the cash reserves to meet an emergency. Newspapers are replete with stories of those for whom the breakdown of a car or an illness starts a downward spiral from which they never recover.

In significant part because of high inequality [see “The Health-Wealth Gap,” by Robert M. Sapolsky], U.S. life expectancy, exceptionally low to begin with, is experiencing sustained declines. This in spite of the marvels of medical science, many advances of which occur right here in America and which are made readily available to the rich. Economist Ann Case and 2015 Nobel laureate in economics Angus Deaton describe one of the main causes of rising morbidity—the increase in alcoholism, drug overdoses and suicides—as “deaths of despair” by those who have given up hope.

Credit: Jen Christiansen; Sources: “The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940,” by Raj Chetty et al., in Science, Vol. 356; April 28, 2017 (child-parent wealth comparison); World Inequality database (90% versus 1% wealth trend data)

Defenders of America's inequality have a pat explanation. They refer to the workings of a competitive market, where the laws of supply and demand determine wages, prices and even interest rates—a mechanical system, much like that describing the physical universe. Those with scarce assets or skills are amply rewarded, they argue, because of the larger contributions they make to the economy. What they get merely represents what they have contributed. Often they take out less than they contributed, so what is left over for the rest is that much more.

This fictional narrative may at one time have assuaged the guilt of those at the top and persuaded everyone else to accept this sorry state of affairs. Perhaps the defining moment exposing the lie was the 2008 financial crisis, when the bankers who brought the global economy to the brink of ruin with predatory lending, market manipulation and various other antisocial practices walked away with millions of dollars in bonuses just as millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes and tens of millions more worldwide suffered on their account. Virtually none of these bankers were ever held to account for their misdeeds.

I became aware of the fantastical nature of this narrative as a schoolboy, when I thought of the wealth of the plantation owners, built on the backs of slaves. At the time of the Civil War, the market value of the slaves in the South was approximately half of the region's total wealth, including the value of the land and the physical capital—the factories and equipment. The wealth of at least this part of this nation was not based on industry, innovation and commerce but rather on exploitation. Today we have replaced this open exploitation with more insidious forms, which have intensified since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution of the 1980s. This exploitation, I will argue, is largely to blame for the escalating inequality in the U.S.

After the New Deal of the 1930s, American inequality went into decline. By the 1950s inequality had receded to such an extent that another Nobel laureate in economics, Simon Kuznets, formulated what came to be called Kuznets's law. In the early stages of development, as some parts of a country seize new opportunities, inequalities grow, he postulated; in the later stages, they shrink. The theory long fit the data—but then, around the early 1980s, the trend abruptly reversed.

Explaining Inequality

Economists have put forward a range of explanations for why inequality has in fact been increasing in many developed countries. Some argue that advances in technology have spurred the demand for skilled labor relative to unskilled labor, thereby depressing the wages of the latter. Yet that alone cannot explain why even skilled labor has done so poorly over the past two decades, why average wages have done so badly and why matters are so much worse in the U.S. than in other developed nations. Changes in technology are global and should affect all advanced economies in the same way. Other economists blame globalization itself, which has weakened the power of workers. Firms can and do move abroad unless demands for higher wages are curtailed. But again, globalization has been integral to all advanced economies. Why is its impact so much worse in the U.S.?

The shift from a manufacturing to a service-based economy is partly to blame. At its extreme—a firm of one person—the service economy is a winner-takes-all system. A movie star makes millions, for example, whereas most actors make a pittance. Overall, wages are likely to be far more widely dispersed in a service economy than in one based on manufacturing, so the transition contributes to greater inequality. This fact does not explain, however, why the average wage has not improved for decades. Moreover, the shift to the service sector is happening in most other advanced countries: Why are matters so much worse in the U.S.?

Again, because services are often provided locally, firms have more market power: the ability to raise prices above what would prevail in a competitive market. A small town in rural America may have only one authorized Toyota repair shop, which virtually every Toyota owner is forced to patronize. The providers of these local services can raise prices over costs, increasing their profits and the share of income going to owners and managers. This, too, increases inequality. But again, why is U.S. inequality practically unique?

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In his celebrated 2013 treatise Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty shifts the gaze to capitalists. He suggests that the few who own much of a country's capital save so much that, given the stable and high return to capital (relative to the growth rate of the economy), their share of the national income has been increasing. His theory has, however, been questioned on many grounds. For instance, the savings rate of even the rich in the U.S. is so low, compared with the rich in other countries, that the increase in inequality should be lower here, not greater.

An alternative theory is far more consonant with the facts. Since the mid-1970s the rules of the economic game have been rewritten, both globally and nationally, in ways that advantage the rich and disadvantage the rest. And they have been rewritten further in this perverse direction in the U.S. than in other developed countries—even though the rules in the U.S. were already less favorable to workers. From this perspective, increasing inequality is a matter of choice: a consequence of our policies, laws and regulations.

In the U.S., the market power of large corporations, which was greater than in most other advanced countries to begin with, has increased even more than elsewhere. On the other hand, the market power of workers, which started out less than in most other advanced countries, has fallen further than elsewhere. This is not only because of the shift to a service-sector economy—it is because of the rigged rules of the game, rules set in a political system that is itself rigged through gerrymandering, voter suppression and the influence of money. A vicious spiral has formed: economic inequality translates into political inequality, which leads to rules that favor the wealthy, which in turn reinforces economic inequality.

Feedback Loop

Political scientists have documented the ways in which money influences politics in certain political systems, converting higher economic inequality into greater political inequality. Political inequality, in its turn, gives rise to more economic inequality as the rich use their political power to shape the rules of the game in ways that favor them—for instance, by softening antitrust laws and weakening unions. Using mathematical models, economists such as myself have shown that this two-way feedback loop between money and regulations leads to at least two stable points. If an economy starts out with lower inequality, the political system generates rules that sustain it, leading to one equilibrium situation. The American system is the other equilibrium—and will continue to be unless there is a democratic political awakening.

An account of how the rules have been shaped must begin with antitrust laws, first enacted 128 years ago in the U.S. to prevent the agglomeration of market power. Their enforcement has weakened—at a time when, if anything, the laws themselves should have been strengthened. Technological changes have concentrated market power in the hands of a few global players, in part because of so-called network effects: you are far more likely to join a particular social network or use a certain word processor if everyone you know is already using it. Once established, a firm such as Facebook or Microsoft is hard to dislodge. Moreover, fixed costs, such as that of developing a piece of software, have increased as compared with marginal costs—that of duplicating the software. A new entrant has to bear all these fixed costs up front, and if it does enter, the rich incumbent can respond by lowering prices drastically. The cost of making an additional e-book or photo-editing program is essentially zero.

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In short, entry is hard and risky, which gives established firms with deep war chests enormous power to crush competitors and ultimately raise prices. Making matters worse, U.S. firms have been innovative not only in the products they make but in thinking of ways to extend and amplify their market power. The European Commission has imposed fines of billions of dollars on Microsoft and Google and ordered them to stop their anticompetitive practices (such as Google privileging its own comparison shopping service). In the U.S., we have done too little to control concentrations of market power, so it is not a surprise that it has increased in many sectors.

Credit: Jen Christiansen; Sources: Economic Report of the President. January 2017; World Inequality database

Rigged rules also explain why the impact of globalization may have been worse in the U.S. A concerted attack on unions has almost halved the fraction of unionized workers in the nation, to about 11 percent. (In Scandinavia, it is roughly 70 percent.) Weaker unions provide workers less protection against the efforts of firms to drive down wages or worsen working conditions. Moreover, U.S. investment treaties such as the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement—treaties that were sold as a way of preventing foreign countries from discriminating against American firms—also protect investors against a tightening of environmental and health regulations abroad. For instance, they enable corporations to sue nations in private international arbitration panels for passing laws that protect citizens and the environment but threaten the multinational company's bottom line. Firms like these provisions, which enhance the credibility of a company's threat to move abroad if workers do not temper their demands. In short, these investment agreements weaken U.S. workers' bargaining power even further.

Liberated Finance

Many other changes to our norms, laws, rules and regulations have contributed to inequality. Weak corporate governance laws have allowed chief executives in the U.S. to compensate themselves 361 times more than the average worker, far more than in other developed countries. Financial liberalization—the stripping away of regulations designed to prevent the financial sector from imposing harms, such as the 2008 economic crisis, on the rest of society—has enabled the finance industry to grow in size and profitability and has increased its opportunities to exploit everyone else. Banks routinely indulge in practices that are legal but should not be, such as imposing usurious interest rates on borrowers or exorbitant fees on merchants for credit and debit cards and creating securities that are designed to fail. They also frequently do things that are illegal, including market manipulation and insider trading. In all of this, the financial sector has moved money away from ordinary Americans to rich bankers and the banks' shareholders. This redistribution of wealth is an important contributor to American inequality.

Other means of so-called rent extraction—the withdrawal of income from the national pie that is incommensurate with societal contribution—abound. For example, a legal provision enacted in 2003 prohibited the government from negotiating drug prices for Medicare—a gift of some $50 billion a year or more to the pharmaceutical industry. Special favors, such as extractive industries' obtaining public resources such as oil at below fair-market value or banks' getting funds from the Federal Reserve at near-zero interest rates (which they relend at high interest rates), also amount to rent extraction. Further exacerbating inequality is favorable tax treatment for the rich. In the U.S., those at the top pay a smaller fraction of their income in taxes than those who are much poorer—a form of largesse that the Trump administration has just worsened with the 2017 tax bill.

Some economists have argued that we can lessen inequality only by giving up on growth and efficiency. But recent research, such as work done by Jonathan Ostry and others at the International Monetary Fund, suggests that economies with greater equality perform better, with higher growth, better average standards of living and greater stability. Inequality in the extremes observed in the U.S. and in the manner generated there actually damages the economy. The exploitation of market power and the variety of other distortions I have described, for instance, makes markets less efficient, leading to underproduction of valuable goods such as basic research and overproduction of others, such as exploitative financial products.

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Credit: Jen Christiansen; Sources: World Inequality Report 2018. World Inequality Lab, 2017; Branko Milanovic

Moreover, because the rich typically spend a smaller fraction of their income on consumption than the poor, total or “aggregate” demand in countries with higher inequality is weaker. Societies could make up for this gap by increasing government spending—on infrastructure, education and health, for instance, all of which are investments necessary for long-term growth. But the politics of unequal societies typically puts the burden on monetary policy: interest rates are lowered to stimulate spending. Artificially low interest rates, especially if coupled with inadequate financial market regulation, often give rise to bubbles, which is what happened with the 2008 housing crisis.

It is no surprise that, on average, people living in unequal societies have less equality of opportunity: those at the bottom never get the education that would enable them to live up to their potential. This fact, in turn, exacerbates inequality while wasting the country's most valuable resource: Americans themselves.

Restoring Justice

Morale is lower in unequal societies, especially when inequality is seen as unjust, and the feeling of being used or cheated leads to lower productivity. When those who run gambling casinos or bankers suffering from moral turpitude make a zillion times more than the scientists and inventors who brought us lasers, transistors and an understanding of DNA, it is clear that something is wrong. Then again, the children of the rich come to think of themselves as a class apart, entitled to their good fortune, and accordingly more likely to break the rules necessary for making society function. All of this contributes to a breakdown of trust, with its attendant impact on social cohesion and economic performance.

There is no magic bullet to remedy a problem as deep-rooted as America's inequality. Its origins are largely political, so it is hard to imagine meaningful change without a concerted effort to take money out of politics—through, for instance, campaign finance reform. Blocking the revolving doors by which regulators and other government officials come from and return to the same industries they regulate and work with is also essential.

Credit: Jen Christiansen; Sources: Raising America’s Pay: Why It’s Our Central Economic Policy Challenge, by Josh Bivens et al. Economic Policy Institute, June 4, 2014; The State of Working America, by Lawrence Mishel, Josh Bivens, Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz. 12th Edition. ILR Press, 2012

Beyond that, we need more progressive taxation and high-quality federally funded public education, including affordable access to universities for all, no ruinous loans required. We need modern competition laws to deal with the problems posed by 21st-century market power and stronger enforcement of the laws we do have. We need labor laws that protect workers and their rights to unionize. We need corporate governance laws that curb exorbitant salaries bestowed on chief executives, and we need stronger financial regulations that will prevent banks from engaging in the exploitative practices that have become their hallmark. We need better enforcement of antidiscrimination laws: it is unconscionable that women and minorities get paid a mere fraction of what their white male counterparts receive. We also need more sensible inheritance laws that will reduce the intergenerational transmission of advantage and disadvantage.

The basic perquisites of a middle-class life, including a secure old age, are no longer attainable for most Americans. We need to guarantee access to health care. We need to strengthen and reform retirement programs, which have put an increasing burden of risk management on workers (who are expected to manage their portfolios to guard simultaneously against the risks of inflation and market collapse) and opened them up to exploitation by our financial sector (which sells them products designed to maximize bank fees rather than retirement security). Our mortgage system was our Achilles' heel, and we have not really fixed it. With such a large fraction of Americans living in cities, we have to have urban housing policies that ensure affordable housing for all.

It is a long agenda—but a doable one. When skeptics say it is nice but not affordable, I reply: We cannot afford to not do these things. We are already paying a high price for inequality, but it is just a down payment on what we will have to pay if we do not do something—and quickly. It is not just our economy that is at stake; we are risking our democracy.

As more of our citizens come to understand why the fruits of economic progress have been so unequally shared, there is a real danger that they will become open to a demagogue blaming the country's problems on others and making false promises of rectifying “a rigged system.” We are already experiencing a foretaste of what might happen. It could get much worse."

The American Economy Is Rigged - Scientific American

Opinion | Trump’s Potent Toxicity - The New York Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Trump has flirted with the deepest racists and Nazis and it has not gone unnoticed, least of all by them.

Oct. 28, 2018

President Trump speaks during a rally at Southern Illinois Airport on Saturday.Jeff Roberson/Associated Press
Our national dialogue about diversity and inclusion, about acceptance and egalitarianism, is poisoned, and Donald Trump is holding a rather large pouch of poison.

Last week, we saw the arrest of a Trump supporter who sent pipe bombs through the mail to people who were frequent rhetorical targets of the president, many of them prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama.

Then on Saturday came a mass shooting at a Jewish synagogue by a rabid anti-Semite. As NBC reported:

“The shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh — in which the death toll now stands at 11 — is believed to be the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League said.”

According to CNN, the shooter, Robert Bowers, was a man who claimed on the social media app Gab, a nest of white nationalists and the ‘alt-right,’ that Jews were behind the migrant caravans. NBC News put it this way:

“Bowers frequently posted about the ‘migrant caravan,’ a group of several thousand refugees walking to the U.S.-Mexico border from Honduras to seek asylum. Preventing refugees in the caravan from entering the U.S. has been a major talking point among both right-wing commentators and President Donald Trump, who has spoken about it in recent pre-midterm election stump speeches.”

There is no way to separate Trump from the fulminating against the caravans.

And yet, even Trump appears to have been too mild a racist and “nationalist” for the synagogue shooter. As CNN notes, “roughly four hours before the shooting, Bowers commented in a post that he did not vote for Trump.” He once posted “Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist,” and he has posted that Trump is surrounded by too many Jewish people.

Therein lies the uneasy alliance: The white nationalists, neo-Nazis and alt-right are energized by Trump’s election, and yet many find his white power positioning falls short of their own.

That doesn’t mean that Trump doesn’t court their support and defend their actions.

After the alt-right staged its deadly march in Charlottesville, in which throngs of marchers with torches chanted “Jews will not replace us,” Trump insisted that there had been “very fine people on both sides” of the protest.

When Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who helped organize the Charlottesville rally, spoke to reporters last year, Business Insider reported:

“Asked whether he considers Trump an ally, Spencer replied that while he didn’t think of Trump as ‘alt-right,’ he considers the president to be ‘the first true authentic nationalist in my lifetime.’ ”

As The Atlantic has reported, Spencer “gained international notoriety just after the 2016 election for giving a speech in Washington, D.C., in which he declared ‘Hail Trump!,’ prompting Nazi salutes from his audience.”

In an interview with Vice, Christopher Cantwell, who was also involved in the Charlottesville march, had this exchange with the interviewer over the issue of white violence:

Cantwell: “I’m here to spread ideas, talk in the hopes that somebody more capable will come along and do that, somebody like Donald Trump who does not give his daughter to a Jew.”

Interviewer: “So Donald Trump, but like, more racist?"

Cantwell: “A lot more racist than Donald Trump. I don’t think that you could feel about race the way I do and watch that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl.”

That of course was a reference to Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner.

So these folks are emboldened by Trump, but now that they have an inch, they want a mile. Still there is clearly something happening on the ground that is undeniable. As The New York Times reported on Saturday:

“According to an annual report by the Anti-Defamation League issued earlier this year, the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents in the United States surged 57 percent in 2017, the largest rise in a single year since the A.D.L. began tracking such crimes in 1979.”

2017, of course, was the first year of the Trump administration.

As always, this cautionary note must be included: Homicidal maniacs are responsible for their own actions. It is almost impossible in most cases to attach the words of one person to the deeds of another.

However, it must also be said that Trump has produced a toxic environment of intolerance in this country that is deep and wide. He has flirted with the deepest racists and Nazis and it has not gone unnoticed, least of all by them.

Last week at a debate, Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Gillum said of his Republican opponent, Ron DeSantis: “I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”

I believe that the same could be said of Trump, although he engages in his own strain of racism."

 

Opinion | Trump’s Potent Toxicity - The New York Times:

Kroger shooting: Man who killed 2 tried to enter a predominantly black church minutes earlier - CNN

"A white man who allegedly killed two people at a Kroger grocery store in Kentucky tried to enter a predominantly black church nearby minutes before the fatal shooting, police said.



The two people killed Wednesday -- Maurice Stallard and Vickie Jones -- were shot in the grocery store and the parking lot, respectively. CNN affiliate WDRB described both victims as black.



Police arrested suspect Gregory A. Bush, 51, shortly after the shooting, which happened in the Louisville suburb of Jeffersontown."



Kroger shooting: Man who killed 2 tried to enter a predominantly black church minutes earlier - CNN

State Attorneys General: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Brian Kemp Leaked Audio About Georgia Voting Concerns Raises Questions. – Rolling Stone - #ResistanceIsNotFutile This is another evil neo-fascist.

Brian Kemp Leaked Audio About Georgia Voting Concerns Raises Questions – Rolling Stone

Hate crimes rose the day after Trump was elected, FBI data show - The Washington Post

"Reported hate crimes with racial or ethnic bias jumped the day after President Trump won the 2016 election, from 10 to 27, according to an analysis of FBI hate crime statistics by The Washington Post. Nov. 9 had more reported hate crimes than any other day in 2016, and the daily number of such incidents exceeded the level on Election Day for the next 10 days.





FBI data collected since the early 1990s show that reports of hate crimes typically spike during election years, according to a study by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino. There was a 21 percent increase in reported hate crimes the day after Barack Obama won his first election in 2008, though hate crime reports remained relatively flat for the rest of the year.



It’s unclear why election years bring an increase in reported hate crimes, particularly in the days following the election of our last two presidents. It could be that people frustrated or energized by the election results take out those emotions on people who are different than them. Or, given that hate crimes are notoriously underreported, the election could embolden victims to report the crimes against them.





New York City police have one of the largest hate crime units in the county, but incident reports from the department offer few clues about what drives the election-year trend. On Nov. 1, 2016, police filed a report about a 63-year-old African American woman in Queens who found anti-black statements written on her door as she was coming home. And on Nov. 18 of that year, a report was filed alleging two African American men approached a white woman and man in Manhattan and yelled anti-white statements, before striking the 61-year-old man with a skateboard. It’s unclear whether these incidents were influenced by the election.



But a conspiracy case in Kansas shows how elections could potentially influence people to turn their political views into criminal acts. A trial began Thursday for three white men accused of plotting to bomb a mosque and a building where many Somali Muslim refugees live in southwest Kansas. Prosecutors say the men planned to detonate the bombs the day after the 2016 election."



Hate crimes rose the day after Trump was elected, FBI data show - The Washington Post

Trump Made 2 Big Moves This Past Week To Reshape The Affordable Care Act : Shots - Health News : NPR

 

"In a span of less than 24 hours this past week, the Trump administration took two seemingly contradictory actions that could have profound effects on the insurance marketplaces set up by the Affordable Care Act.

Health analysts say that at least one of the efforts, coupled with previous changes initiated by the administration, could help transform the insurance market to be much more like it was before the 2010 federal health law took effect — when regulation, coverage and consumer protections varied widely across the United States.

The week's first move came on Monday morning, when Trump's health officials issued guidance that could undercut the exchanges set up for people who buy their own health insurance. The administration's guidance makes it easier for states to get around some ACA requirements, Trump's guidance would allow the use of federal subsidies for skimpier plans that can reject people who have pre-existing medical conditions.

By the next day, the administration had made a second move with a proposed rule that could bolster the health of the ACA marketplaces by sending millions of people who now have job-based coverage into the exchanges, armed with tax-free money from their employers to buy individual plans.

Both efforts play into the parallel narratives — one from Republicans and the other from Democrats — that are dominating the parties' bitter political debate over the ACA, also known as Obamacare.

Frustrated that a Republican-controlled Congress has been unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act outright, the Trump administration has continued to work to undermine that law by weakening the marketplaces and the law's consumer protections, some critics and health policy specialists say.

Trump's efforts make it easier for insurers to offer skimpier policies that bypass the law's rules, such as protections for people with pre-existing conditions or a ban on annual or lifetime limits on what insurers will pay.

Congress also zeroed out the tax penalty on Americans who don't sign up for health insurance, effective next year. Combined, these moves could reduce enrollment in ACA health plans — potentially driving up premiums for those who remain.

The administration and Republicans in Congress say they are looking to assist those left behind by the ACA — people who don't get subsidies to help them buy health insurance and who are desperate for less expensive options — even if that means allowing these people to purchase less robust coverage

Even without repealing the ACA, the Republican efforts are shifting control of health insurance policy decisions back to the states, say policy analysts.

"Some states will do everything they can to keep individual markets strong and stable. Others won't," says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.

So what expectations should consumers have? Analysts say there are three key takeaways:

Protections for pre-existing health problems are uncertain

Polls show that keeping the ACA's guarantees of coverage for people with medical problems is a top concern for Americans, and Democrats have made their defense of the health law a key part of their midterm election campaigns.

Republicans have gotten that message; even those who voted to repeal the ACA or joined a lawsuit by 20 red states to overturn the federal law now say they want to protect people with pre-existing conditions. Still, GOP lawmakers have not introduced any plan that would be as protective as the current law.

In August, the administration released a rule allowing expanded use of short-term health plans, which are less expensive than ACA policies. To get those lower prices, most of these plans do not include insurance coverage for prescription drugs, maternity care or mental health or substance abuse treatments.

The move is unlikely to benefit people who have chronic health problems, because short-term plans are allowed to reject people with pre-existing conditions or decline to cover care for those medical problems.

Under the rule, insurers can sell these short-term policies (which may be sold as soon as next month) to last for up to a year's duration, with an option to renew for up to three years. That reverses an Obama-era directive that limited the length of such policies to a maximum of 90 days.

Administration officials estimate such plans could draw 600,000 new enrollees next year, and others have estimated the numbers could be far higher. The concern is if many healthy people in 2019 switch out of the ACA market — now estimated to have about 17 million enrollees — and choose short-term plans instead, premiums will rise for those who remain in the ACA market. That would hike premiums for people with pre-existing conditions. It would also make the ACA market less attractive for insurers and could lead them to stop offering plans on the exchange.

Which state you live in matters

One of the biggest changes ushered in with the ACA was a standard set of rules across all states.

Before the law took effect, consumers buying their own coverage saw tremendous variation in what was offered and what protections they had depending on the state where they lived.

Most states, for example, allowed insurers to reject applicants who have medical conditions — such as diabetes, cancer, depression, Down syndrome or asthma.

A few states required insurers to charge similar premiums across the board, but most allowed wide variation in the size of the premium a customer might be charged, based on age, gender or health. Some skimpy plans didn't cover prescription drugs, chemotherapy or other medical services.

By standardizing the rules and benefits, the ACA barred insurers from rejecting applicants who have medical conditions and from charging these applicants higher premiums. The ACA guarantees that women cannot be charged more than men for the same health policy, and insurers are permitted to charge older people no more than three times what they charge younger applicants.

But under the new guidance issued this week that gives states more flexibility on what is offered, consumers could again see a wide variation in coverage, premium rules and even subsidy eligibility.

"It shifts pressure to state politicians," says Caroline Pearson, a senior fellow at NORC, a nonpartisan research institution at the University of Chicago. "You risk making some [constituents] worse-off by threatening those markets," says Pearson. "That is always going to be hard."

Millions more are likely to join the 'buy-your-own' ranks

The proposed rule released Tuesday allows employers to fund tax-free accounts — called health reimbursement arrangements, or HRAs — that workers can use to buy their own coverage on the ACA marketplaces.

The administration estimates about 10 million people will do so by 2028 — a substantial boost for federal and state ACA exchanges, which policymakers say never hit the enrollment numbers needed to attract enough insurers and hold prices down.

John Barkett, senior director of policy affairs at Willis Towers Watson, a benefits consulting firm, says he expects some employers to now "seriously consider" relying on a state or federal health insurance exchange to furnish health insurance to their workers. And if they do, the infusion of workers will improve options within those insurance exchanges by attracting more insurers, Barkett says.

"These people coming in will be employer-sponsored, they'll have steady jobs," Barkett notes, and will likely stick with coverage longer than those typically in the individual market.

Currently, about 17 million people buy their own health insurance, with about 10 million of those using federal or state ACA marketplaces to do so. The others buy private plans through brokers.

Trump's proposed rule won't be finalized for months, but it could result in new options by 2020.

If these workers seeking coverage are generally healthy, the infusion could slow premium increases in the overall ACA marketplace because it would improve the risk pool for insurers.

However, if employers with mainly higher-cost or older workers opt to move to the marketplaces, it could help drive up premiums.

Curiously, the administration notes in its proposed rule that the ACA has provisions that could protect the marketplace from that type of adverse selection, which can drive up prices. But most of the protective factors cited by the rule have expired or been weakened or removed by Trump or the Republican-controlled Congress — such as the tax penalty for being uninsured and the federal subsidies to insurers to cover lower deductibles for certain low-income consumers.

Benefits consultants and health policy specialists are skeptical about how many companies will move to an HRA plan, given the tight labor market. Continued uncertainty about the fate of the ACA marketplace may keep them reluctant to send workers out on their own to find health insurance, these analysts say.

The health benefits package a company offers its employees is now a big factor in its ability to attract and retain workers, says Chris Condeluci, a Washington attorney. He previously worked for Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and served as counsel to the Senate Finance Committee during the drafting of the ACA.

"Most employers believe their group health plan will provide better health coverage than an individual market plan," Condeluci says."

Trump Made 2 Big Moves This Past Week To Reshape The Affordable Care Act : Shots - Health News : NPR:

Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting Suspect Robert Bowers Has Long Trail Of Anti-Semitism | Bowers, an avowed anti-Semite, allegedly shouted “All Jews must die!” before killing at least eight people at the Tree of Life Congregation. HuffPost

Pgh Public Safety
✔@PghPublicSafety

City of Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich has just addressed the media on this terrible tragedy at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill. This shooting will be prosecuted as a Hate Crime and the FBI will be leading the investigation.

1:52 PM - Oct 27, 2018

Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting Suspect Robert Bowers Has Long Trail Of Anti-Semitism | 

Amandla Stenberg - Portraying Code-Switching in “The Hate U Give” | This is a narrative that so many of us have lived.

Amber Ruffin Addresses Megyn Kelly Asking if Blackface Is Racist

Opinion | ‘It’s an Exodus’ - The New York Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — The long line of men and women waded into the muddy waters of the Suchiate River. Holding onto a rope, they pulled themselves over the invisible line dividing Guatemala and Mexico. Others crossed with their babies and young children on crowded rafts built with tires.

I watched this flood of humanity on Oct. 20, and by the time the sun set, thousands had made it over the border to continue the march northward. Even more crossed in the following days, reinforcing the caravan of the desperate and determined that is shaking governments from Honduras to Washington.

Donald Trump has used the caravan — a group of thousands of Central Americans who’ve joined together to make their way toward Mexico and the United States and escape violence and desperate poverty — as a political tool. “I think the Democrats had something to do with it,” he said Monday, calling it “an assault on our country” that includes “some very bad people.”

He’s claimed “Middle Easterners” are in the group, while admitting there is no proof of this. Jim Mattis, the defense secretary, announced Thursday that he would send at least 800 troops to the southern border to block the migrants, which would prevent them from seeking asylum.
The migrant caravan is more than fodder for misleading claims and overreactions, and more than a tool to stoke voters’ fears just before midterm elections. It’s a blaring reminder that Latin America is suffering a prolonged refugee crisis that demands solutions.

The vast majority are from Honduras, although some Salvadorans, Nicaraguans and Guatemalans have joined them. Since the caravan first formed in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Oct. 13, it has grown from hundreds to thousands. Its scale reflects how much Hondurans are suffering from incessant violence, political turmoil and brutal poverty.

“This is not a normal action,” declared a migrant activist, Rubén Figueroa, in the Mexican city of Tapachula. “It’s an exodus.”

The way so many have banded together — using strength in numbers as a way to defend themselves from criminals, who could kidnap them, and policemen, who could detain and deport them — is remarkable. But Mexico is the site of only one of the several swelling corridors of people fleeing their homes in the hemisphere. Costa Rica is handling thousands running from Nicaragua, where hundreds have been killed in a government crackdown on protests. Colombia, Brazil and Peru are all dealing with a huge influx of Venezuelans.

There are three distinct phenomena forcing people to move. The first is criminal violence, with murder rates at catastrophic levels, and gangs committing extortion and kidnapping. The second is a return to authoritarianism, accompanied by the use of deadly violence by security forces against those protesting autocratic rulers. The third is economic failure that has pushed people into extreme poverty. Some countries are facing all three of these at the same time.
When I interviewed members of the caravan here, many, including an 18-year-old student named Daniel Martínez, said they were running from criminals; in his case, gang members in San Pedro Sula demanded that he work for them. He knew that refusal would earn him a death sentence.

Back in June, in the Mexican city of Tenosique, I met Francis Gusmán, 32, who was disabled after being shot in the spine in the Honduran city of Yoro. Her husband and a friend had taken turns carrying her over 36 miles from the Guatemalan border to a shelter. She was in Tenosique with her 12-year-old son and 13-year-old niece, left orphaned when Ms. Gusmán’s sister was shot dead in February.

These many individual tragedies are reflected in the surging numbers looking for refugee status in Mexico. Last year, there were more than 14,000 applications — a sevenfold increase from the 2,000 in 2014. Some in the caravan say they want to stay in Mexico and seek refuge, while others say they want to go to the United States.

People who flee poverty are considered economic migrants rather than refugees. However, in some parts of Latin America the economic pressures motivating people move are extreme. In Honduras, about two-thirds of people live in poverty, which has been made worse by drought and political turmoil. In Venezuela, people have been forced to search in garbage for food.

The desperation can be seen in the caravan among the families with small children sleeping in crowded plazas. People described to me how they simply saw news of the caravan on television and, within hours, decided to join it. Many are traveling with no possessions or money. Many are wearing clothes handed out on the way. Many don’t know for sure where they’ll end up, but are simply hoping for anywhere that can offer a better life.

When it comes to the forces contributing to the refugee crisis, there are no easy solutions. Governments of the region should be meeting to discuss the refugee crisis — with, or without, the United States. Aid needs to be channeled more effectively to actually reach the poor. There must be real efforts to stop the flow of guns to the gangs terrorizing communities.

Mr. Trump’s call to turn away from internationalism hasn’t helped. But this is an issue that will go beyond his presidency. Unless the core problems are dealt with, the lines of people wading through border rivers could grow even longer."

Opinion | ‘It’s an Exodus’ - The New York Times:

All the Times Trump Has Called for Violence at His Rallies

Korean Girl Raised by Black Family | 한국여자의 흑인계 가족에 대해 [한글자막]

Why Andrew Gillum’s Viral Debate Moment Is Resonating | Deadline | MSNBC

How Trump targeted his biggest critics before they were sent pipe bombs | US news | The Guardian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The president has blamed the media for the ‘bad and hateful’ atmosphere – but has failed to acknowledge his own rhetoric
Amanda HolpuchLast modified on Thu 25 Oct 2018 16.55 EDT
Donald Trump said political figures “must stop treating political opponents as morally defective” as he condemned the attempted bombings of prominent liberals this week. But his own language towards the targets of the bombs has been unusually coarse for a modern US president.

“Any acts or threats of political violence are an attack on our democracy itself,” Trump told a rally on Wednesday, encouraging unity. He continued: “Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as morally defective.”

He went on to blame the media for incivility – but he failed to acknowledge his own rhetoric. On Thursday morning, he stood by those comments. Trump tweeted: “It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!”

So far, the named targets of the attempted bombings by mail are people Trump has publicly attacked.

Robert De Niro
De Niro has long been critical of Trump, and said on stage at the Tony awards in June: “I’m gonna say one thing. Fuck Trump.”

He continued: “It’s no longer down with Trump. It’s fuck Trump.”

Trump responded, calling De Niro “a very Low IQ individual”.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)Robert De Niro, a very Low IQ individual, has received too many shots to the head by real boxers in movies. I watched him last night and truly believe he may be “punch-drunk.” I guess he doesn’t...

June 13, 2018
Maxine Waters
Trump also called representative Waters, a Democrat from California, “an extraordinarily low IQ person” in a tweet that ended: “Be careful what you wish for Max!”

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!

June 25, 2018
Waters has said people have threatened to assassinate, hang and lynch her because of her criticism of Trump.

George Soros
In a tweet earlier this month, Trump baselessly accused Soros of paying protesters. He failed to provide evidence.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love! #Troublemakers

October 5, 2018
Soros backs progressive causes, which puts him squarely against Trump’s agenda. Soros has also criticized the president in the past.

Eric Holder
Trump threatened the former attorney general after Holder said Democrats need to be more confrontational at a campaign event for Georgia candidates in the midterms.

“Michelle [Obama] always says, ‘When they go low, we go high,’” Holder said. “No. When they go low, we kick ’em.”

Holder was criticized for advocating violence, which he later said was not his intention. In response to Holder’s remarks, Trump told Fox & Friends: “He better be careful what he’s wishing for.”

John Brennan
Trump frequently criticizes the former CIA director on Twitter.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)Has anyone looked at the mistakes that John Brennan made while serving as CIA Director? He will go down as easily the WORST in history & since getting out, he has become nothing less than a loudmouth, partisan, political hack who cannot be trusted with the secrets to our country!

August 18, 2018
Brennan suggested he may have been targeted because of his past criticisms of Trump. “His rhetoric, I think, too frequently fuels these feelings and sentiments that now are bleeding over into, potentially, acts of violence,” Brennan said at an event in Austin, Texas.

Joe Biden
This weekend, the former vice president mocked Trump as an egotist destroying time-honored and American values. Trump, meanwhile, mocked Biden as “1% Joe.”

In March, Biden threatened to fight Trump if they were still in high school. Trump responded:

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don’t threaten people Joe!

March 22, 2018
Shortly after, Biden said: “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

Trump has been tweeting criticism of Biden since 2011.

Hillary Clinton
Two years after defeating Clinton in the presidential election, Trump still attacks Clinton at rallies while supporters chant “lock her up” and regularly complains about her on Twitter and in interviews.

As of January, he had mentioned her at least 229 times since taking office, according to an analysis by the Daily Beast.

Clinton has been critical of Trump in interviews, speeches and her book What Happened.

Speaking at an event in Florida on Wednesday, Clinton said the US was in a “troubling time” and condemned divisive rhetoric by politicians. “We have to do everything we can to bring our country together,” said Clinton. “We also have to elect candidates who will try to do the same.”

Barack Obama
Trump criticizes his predecessor frequently, as he did when Obama was in office.

Obama has been critical of Trump’s actions and rhetoric, but rarely mentions his name. He has not tweeted directly about Trump.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz
So far, no packages are known to have been addressed to the Democratic congresswoman from Florida, but her office is the return address on some of the packages.

Her office was evacuated on Wednesday after one of the packages was redirected there because of the return address.

Wasserman Schultz has repeatedly criticized Trump’s policies.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Wasserman Schultz and first tweeted about her in 2012, when she was chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)Debbie Wasserman Schultz is hard to watch or listen to--no wonder our country is going to hell!

February 24, 2012

How Trump targeted his biggest critics before they were sent pipe bombs | US news | The Guardian:

Voter Suppression & The GOP’s Indirect Racism - Between the Scenes | The...

Megyn Kelly Out At NBC's 'Today' Show, Source Says : NPR. Megyn Kelly Out At NBC's 'Today' Show, Source Says : NPR. MSNBC should have not hired this ignorant racist in the first place. "Over the past two days, Kelly has unsuccessfully sought to contain the damage from several statements she made on her hour on Today defending the desire of white people to dress up in blackface costume for Halloween."

New Farm Bill may undercut chemical safety measures inspired by West explosion - HoustonChronicle.com

"WASHINGTON — A little-known provision tucked into the Farm Bill could exempt the entire chemical manufacturing industry from key workplace safety rules and jeopardize workers’ health, according to one of the government agencies charged with overseeing safety in the chemical industry.

Officials from the Department of Labor say the provision would create a broad exemption from Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards for managing highly hazardous chemicals, and could have “the unintended consequence” of allowing a large chemical facility to skirt the rules by claiming to be a retail store.

“This could effectively eliminate the entire chemical manufacturing sector from coverage of the (OSHA) standard, jeopardizing the safety and health of chemical facility workers,” Labor Department officials wrote, in documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News."

New Farm Bill may undercut chemical safety measures inspired by West explosion - HoustonChronicle.com

Greg Palast Sues Georgia’s Brian Kemp for Purging 340,000 from Voter Rol...

Similar Package Sent to Top Democrats Sent to Robert De Niro's NYC Office: Sources - NBC New York

"The NYPD said there is no need for an evacuation as the building was unoccupied at the time



By Jonathan Dienst, Marc Santia, Jennifer Millman and Benjamin Carroll

Published 4 hours ago | Updated 6 minutes ago

Similar Package Sent to Top Democrats Sent to Robert De Niro's NYC Office: Sources - NBC New York

Vote, Vote, Vote, The Midterms Are Coming!

Alexa, be afraid - CNET

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Commentary: Think Alexa is the voice assistant to beat? Think again.

Ry Crist October 23, 2018 

"What was your favorite thing today?"

I heard the question from at least five different Amazon executives last month in Seattle, when the online megaretailer introduced us to about a dozen new Alexa gadgets. "What jumped out at you?"

All of it? None of it? I really wasn't sure. I didn't see a new, breakout hit like I saw when Amazon first compressed Alexa down into a Dot-sized speaker that cost just $50. Instead, I saw a mess of tangents, an Echo for everything. Alexa, throw the spaghetti at the wall. Alexa, tell us what stuck.

Watch this: 5 interesting Alexa updates (and 5 that don't matter)

To be clear, there's already tomato sauce all over the living room. By my count, Amazon's unveiled 21 -- yes, 21! -- different Alexa speakers, gadgets and accessories to date, and that isn't even counting all of the Alexa-equipped Fire tablets and Fire TV streamers, nor does it take into account the glut of third-party Alexa devices not made by Amazon. 

Alexa is everywhere, and as of this past summer, she's hoarding about 70 percent of the smart speaker market to herself. With just four speakers in its catalog, Google's 24 percent remains in a distant second place.

But numbers can be misleading. That 24 percent figure represents a swift uptick for Google, which is still relatively new to the smart speaker game having only released its own $50 smart speaker, the Home Mini, one year ago. And, unlike the fuzzy-at-best focus of Alexa's all-over-the-place strategy, Google's lineup of devices -- which now features an attractive, camera-free smart display called the Home Hub -- seems to be zeroing in on what consumers actually want.

So what jumped out at me last month? More than anything, it's this: I think Amazon might be getting anxious.

The new, third-gen Echo Dot (right) was almost certainly designed to defend against the insurgent Google Home Mini (left).There's good reason for Amazon to fear Google, and it isn't just because the Home Mini looks cute. Still, the Mini does look cute, and that, coupled with stronger sound quality than the last-gen Echo Dot is likely why a growing number of shoppers started choosing Google over Amazon for that critical first smart speaker purchase. As a result, Google quickly began to gain in Amazon's rear-view mirror.

I could just imagine an anxious Amazon muttering "must go faster," as it breathlessly dropped its new Alexa devices on us at that whirlwind event in Seattle last month. Much of the new stuff simply provides fresh fodder for Amazon's ubiquity offensive (looking at you, Echo Clock and Alexa Microwave), but the updated Echo speakers -- particularly the new, better-looking, louder-sounding Echo Dot -- seem like pure plays at defending Alexa's turf from the insurgent Google Assistant.

The Echo Show's user interface (right) still lags behind the competition -- particularly the smaller-sized Google Home Hub.

The same can be said of the new, second-gen Echo Show. Like the previous-gen Echo Dot, the first Echo Show was too utilitarian in design, especially compared to great-looking Google Assistant-powered smart displays from Lenovo, JBL and now Google itself with the Home Hub. With a bigger screen and a much better design, the new Echo Show corrected those vulnerabilities -- but the user interface still lags behind the slick, smart design of its Google-powered competitors.

I wondered what these smart displays would show us back when the rumors first emerged that they were in the works -- now, I look at them and I see Google's software edge, clear as day. Here's just one example: Ask a Google display for something, and you'll see your own words appear on the screen as you speak -- a visual verification that it heard you correctly, and something people have long grown accustomed to after years of using voice assistants on their mobile devices. With the Echo Show, you see nothing but Alexa's blinking blue light as you speak. And never mind that the Echo Show can't search YouTube using voice commands, or that it can't pull up a map at all.

Software can always be improved, but it's never a good sign when your newly redesigned operating system lags behind the curve at launch. And, in spite of the avalanche of announcements last month, Amazon didn't mention the mini Echo Spot smart display once, suddenly causing one of its most creative designs to feel downright dated.

The timing is terrible, too. The just-released Google Home Hub is smaller, cheaper -- and yes, cuter than the Echo Show, all of which are easy distinctions for casual comparison shoppers to grasp, and it does an excellent job of showcasing everything the Google Assistant is capable of. It could very well be the Dot of smart displays, and a hot seller this holiday buying season.

On top of all of that, Google has a foothold in mobile thanks to the Pixel line of smartphones and the fact that the Google Assistant comes standard on several other popular Android devices. That's an entire avenue of access to the Assistant that Amazon can't match.

Make it so

The Echo drew much of its initial inspiration from science fiction. Internally, Amazon pitched the product as "a Star Trek computer for your home," and the ambition to transform people's living rooms into something closer to a talking spaceship still persists today.

"We think we're on the cusp of the next major disruption in computing," said Amazon's former smart home director Charlie Kindel, speaking at the CEDIA trade show in 2016. "We think that disruption is around voice."

Sure enough, there's a mini singularity at stake here. Dedicated, always-listening voice assistants offer quick access to a huge number of services that used to require a screen -- or, at the very least, our time and attention. From checking the news and weather to ordering an Uber or a pizza, full-featured voice assistants like Alexa deliver our immediate wants and needs without requiring us to move, look at anything or talk to another human. You barely need to think. Just ask and receive -- a friction-free gateway to just about anything. Alexa, make it so.

The 15 coolest things you can do with your Amazon Echo32 Photos
Call it a convergence if you like, but it's really just a natural evolution of our relationship with the web. In the beginning, we accessed it using computers equipped with noisy dial-up modems. Smartphones ushered in the age of the mobile internet, where we could take a connection to the cloud with us in our pockets. Now, for those that want it, the internet is an invisible presence that fills our homes Dot by Dot, Home Mini by Home Mini, always listening for our next question or command.

Amazon and Google both seek to dominate this budding age of the ambient internet. Google's done it before, exploding to prominence more than 25 years ago by cementing its place as the front door for finding anything online. Apple became the Apple we know today by translating that online experience into irresistible mobile devices with an app for everything. To the gatekeepers go the spoils, and Alexa and the Google Assistant are locked in fierce competition for the latest job opening. 

Improvements in artificial intelligence will help refine the experience and make these assistants better at anticipating our needs and giving us what we ask for -- and this is where Google has another key advantage moving forward. The search giant has decades of experience reading search queries and routing people to what they want from the web, and it's an industry leader in developing consumer-level AI. Just look at Google Duplex, which lets Assistant talk to other humans on your behalf to book a table for dinner or to help shoo telemarketers away. Alexa can't do anything like that.

Echo devices are everywhere, but the lineup is muddled compared to Google.

Amazon launched the Echo four years ago, and there wouldn't be anything else on the market like it until two years later, when the Google Home smart speaker arrived. The Echo Dot enjoyed a full year and a half on the market before the Google Home Mini made its debut -- the Echo Show had roughly the same head start on the Google Home Hub.

And yet things feel much, much closer than the market share numbers suggest. Both Amazon and Google have a respectable percentage of customers to themselves. Both have the money and the momentum to keep moving their respective assistants into the mainstream. Both have appealing, entry-level smart speakers that cost $50. Both offer attractive touchscreen smart displays. I give Amazon the edge in smart home control thanks to the variety of third-party Alexa gadgets and the fact that the Echo Plus comes with its own built-in Zigbee radio and temperature sensor. But Google has an edge of its own with the Google Home Max, which offers premium-sounding single-speaker audio that none of Amazon's Echo speakers can yet match. 

And, at the end of the day, it's Google that keeps nibbling into Amazon's market share -- and, thanks to the Home Hub, the search juggernaut has a chance to take its biggest bite yet as 2018 comes to a close.

All of that should make these next six months something of a pivotal period in the voice wars between these two titans. Amazon is largely on the defensive, and likely hoping that new devices like the Echo Sub or Echo Auto can become Alexa's next hit. Meanwhile, Google's vision for the emerging, ambient internet is coming into focus at just the right time. That, more than anything, should have Amazon very nervous.

Alexa, be afraid - CNET:

670 ballots in a precinct with 276 voters, and other tales from Georgia's primary

670 ballots in a precinct with 276 voters, and other tales from Georgia's primary:

Jamal Khashoggi: Saudi journalist's body parts found, say Sky sources

The writer had been "cut up" and "disfigured" and his remains were found in the garden of the Saudi consul's house, say sources.



Jamal Khashoggi: Saudi journalist's body parts found, say Sky sources

Rula Jebreal: My “Secret Interview” with Jamal Khashoggi Before His Brut...

Some white Northerners want to redefine a flag rooted in racism as a symbol of patriotism - The Washington Post

This is pure evil.   #ResistanceIsNotFutile



"A short walk from where President-elect Abraham Lincoln made the last train stop in his home state before leaving for Washington on the verge of the Civil War, a Confederate battle flag flies from a home garage.



The property belongs to former mayor Greg Cler, who runs a car repair shop in this central Illinois village of 3,500 people. Cler isn’t from the South. He grew up about five miles away, in Pesotum, where his father, like most others in the region, farmed corn and soy. But Cler has long felt an attachment to the flag.



“Part of it is an act of rebellion,” he said.



The other part is tied to the national turmoil surrounding race and identity. Cler sees the flag as a fitting symbol of white people’s shared grievances, which, he says, have new resonance today.



“I proudly fly it like I do the American flag,” he said, nodding to the two red, white and blue banners — representing opposing sides of the country’s bloodiest conflict — waving in synchrony above his head.



Perhaps the most contentious of American emblems, the Confederate flag is grounded in a history of slavery and segregation in the South. But despite recent moves to eradicate it from statehouses, vehicle license plates and store shelves, the banner has been embraced far from its founding region, still flying from spacious Victorian houses in New Jersey, above barns in Ohio and over music festivals in Oregon.



The Confederate flag’s appearance at Trump rallies in 2016, sometimes emblazoned with his name, cemented its link to his “Make America Great Again” brand of patriotism, which appealed to many disaffected white people. Some supporters say the country under President Barack Obama put the needs of minorities before theirs.



“It seemed like I wasn’t represented,” Cler said, while others “took advantage of the system.”



For people like him, the Confederate flag reflects 21st-century pride in a form of American identity that harks back to the scrappy self-sufficiency of the white settlers of Appalachia. To others, flying the flag for “white grievance” is simply racism by a different name, an effort to redefine patriotism as the interests of white Americans.



Many retailers say sales of the Confederate flag are strong, even increasing. Dewey Barber, who owns Georgia-based Dixie Outfitters, said the biggest change he has seen since launching the business — which sells flags and other goods bearing Confederate iconography — in 1997 is an increase in sales to the North and the West, from about 5 percent to 20 percent of his business.



The flag is sometimes merged with patriotic icons, including in hybrid flags that bind it physically to the Stars and Stripes.



“I think the patriotic mood of the country has kind of taken over,” said Barber, who is white, drawing little distinction between pride in symbols of the United States and the Confederacy. “We sell a lot more American things than we used to.”



But many Americans say a flag born of a proslavery cause cannot be divorced from its racist roots.



When a handful of students marked the end of the 2018 school year at a high school in Paxton, 35 miles north of Tolono, by driving into the parking lot in pickup trucks festooned with Trump imagery and Confederate flags, the backlash was immediate. For Angela Gerdes-Bigham, mother of one of the few biracial students at the school, the act reflected racial tensions that appeared to have heightened in the four years since her older child graduated from the same school.



“I think the political climate has changed,” Gerdes-Bigham said, worrying about a resurgence of segregationist sentiment. “It has a lot to do with our president, in my opinion,” she said.



Paige Stewart, who is black and lives in the nearby city of Champaign, described falling out with a white college friend who, during a conversation about the Confederate flag, refused to acknowledge how hurtful it could be.



Stewart, 29, said she doesn’t pay much attention to the flag when she sees it in majority-white small towns where she views it as representing a rural sensibility. But, she said, it is far more “aggressive” to fly the flag in an urban setting such as Champaign, which is 15 percent black. Worse still in Chicago. And she bridles at the reasons some people give for flying it.



“They see it as pride, as patriotism, and that’s where it becomes offensive,” Stewart said.



Greg Cler, a former mayor of Tolono, Ill., who was born in the North, flies the Confederate battle flag at his garage. He is among those who think that for years, whites were left out. He does not recall the Obama presidency with fondness.



A white supremacist history



Historians wrestle with how a flag that stood for treason can be seen as patriotic. In the more than 150 years since it was adopted by the Confederacy, the battle flag has been redefined numerous times by the people who display it — at times worn as a symbol of youthful rebellion and at others wielded as a show of racial hatred.



The effort to pair it with displays of patriotism is met with resistance from those who note that Dixiecrats brandished the Confederate battle flag in opposition to the civil rights movement, and that neo-Nazis paraded it through Charlottesville last year.



“The flag can mean anything you want it to mean,” said Jarret Ruminski, author of “The Limits of Loyalty: Ordinary People in Civil War Mississippi” — often a poke in the eye of political correctness.



“But the history of the flag is very clear and unambiguously connected to white supremacy. That history is undeniable, whether people want to acknowledge it or not.”



In 2015, after Dylann Roof, a self-declared white supremacist who brandished a Confederate flag, slaughtered nine black members of a Charleston church, major retailers such as Walmart, Target and Amazon took Confederate goods off their shelves and websites. South Carolina’s then-governor, Nikki Haley (R), called for the flag’s removal from the statehouse grounds. Donald Trump, who had just declared his candidacy, concurred, saying: “I think they should put it in the museum. Let it go.”



Two years later, after deadly rioting in Charlottesville led to further calls for the removal of Confederate symbols from public spaces, President Trump appeared to change his tune, tweeting, “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.”



The cognitive dissonance created by using Confederate symbols as patriotic emblems is familiar to John Coski, author of “The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem.” He has documented a “dual loyalty” among some Southerners who believe the “Confederacy had a positive effect — making the nation stronger” and thus view its flag in a benign light.



The language and logic of the Lost Cause, which sought to sanitize Southern culture after the Civil War and emphasize the hardships faced by whites, has returned, according to W. Fitzhugh Brundage, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.



“Most of it can be cut and pasted to the 21st century,” Brundage said, noting that Southern soldiers saw themselves as victims whose Protestant values were under attack in a way that is often echoed by evangelicals today.



Confederate imagery hasn’t always been vested with intense political feeling. The flag appeared on a car roof in the TV comedy series “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which ran from 1979 to 1985. Lynyrd Skynyrd, one of the progenitors of Southern rock, used the flag on album covers.



But it has often carried a racially charged message, said Barbara J. Fields, a professor of American history at Columbia University. “It was weaponized in the era of Jim Crow, the civil rights era and again recently” by far-right activists who rampaged through Charlottesville.



When it showed up at Trump rallies — in Kissimmee, Fla., in Pittsburgh, in West Bend, Wis. — it often mingled with the star-spangled banner and chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”



“Given this political moment in which whiteness is central to political discourse, I don’t think it’s surprising that people would seize on the [Confederate] flag as a symbol,” said Edda Fields-Black, a historian at Carnegie Mellon University who has written widely about enslavement.





In addition to flying a Confederate battle flag outside their home in Tolono, Amy and Brent Lowe also have several representations of the flag inside the home. They say that for them the flag represents heritage, not hate.



In addition to flying a Confederate battle flag outside their home in Tolono, Amy and Brent Lowe also have several representations of the flag inside the home. They say that for them the flag represents heritage, not hate.



In addition to flying a Confederate battle flag outside their home in Tolono, Amy and Brent Lowe also have several representations of the flag inside the home. They say that for them the flag represents heritage, not hate.

Finding a voice, flying a flag

The proprietor of Country Boys, a variety store in Clinton, Ill., said sales of flags as well as Confederate comforters and sheets with a Confederate theme have been strong in recent years, particularly around patriotic holidays such as July 4.



Each time public opinion has come out against the flag, sales have soared, according to Belinda Kennedy of Alabama Flag and Banner, who said two of her great-grandfathers fought for the South in the Civil War. After the Charleston church massacre in 2015, several of her suppliers stopped making Confederate flags, and her company started making its own to keep pace with demand. She thinks hers is now the only U.S.-based company that still sews Confederate flags.



“That particular year was insane,” Kennedy said. “We sold thousands and thousands of flags.” She said she also saw small upticks after Charlottesville and when Confederate monuments were taken down in cities such as Baltimore.



“People for some reason got the idea you weren’t going to be able to find one,” said Kerry McCoy, who runs the Arkansas-based Flag and Banner. “Sales to the North went up.”



I don’t see everybody as a horrible person because they fly the flag ... I don’t view it as a racist symbol.

Brandon Carter

McCoy said she had customers from all walks of life, including a grandfather from Rhode Island who said he wanted several Confederate flags to keep for his grandchildren.



Not only did sales rise for those companies, so did rallies in support of the Confederate flag, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which compiled a map of more than 300 such rallies in the months after the Charleston attack, from Florida to Michigan and Oregon.



“A very surprising proportion were in the North,” said Mark Potok, a former senior fellow with the legal advocacy nonprofit group, reflecting on the flag’s broad appeal.



Here in the Land of Lincoln, LaShawn K. Ford, a Democratic member of the Illinois House from Chicago, introduced legislation that would ban the display of Confederate symbols on public property.



Ford said he hoped his bill would pass this year and that he expected little pushback, except perhaps from people who tend city cemeteries where a few Confederate graves are marked with flags.



It is a different matter on private land.



Ray Cook, a Tolono resident, drove his Harley-Davidson motorcycle with a flag on the back to his job at the Tate & Lyle corn processing plant in Decatur, where he said he was asked to remove it or park off the property. Cook complied, later saying he would not deliberately offend anyone. But his feelings were mixed.



“Guess what? This is a free country,” Cook said. “You ought to be able to fly whatever flag you believe in.”



“Not everybody flies it in a racist manner,” said Brandon Carter, 24, one of the few black residents in his mobile home community, where a neighbor, Brent Lowe, celebrates the distinctive iconography with a Confederate flag billowing from the side of his trailer, a Confederate Smurf tattooed on his lower leg and “Hillbilly” inked into his back.



Carter says older generations of his family see the flag as inextricably tied to the legacy of slavery, but he has come to accept it as “a country thing.”



“I don’t see everybody as a horrible person because they fly the flag,” Carter said. “If we are friends, if I’m invited to your property, I don’t view it as a racist symbol.”



Lowe decried those who use the flag as a symbol of hate. “It doesn’t represent none of that for me,” he said.



Still, the nation’s heightened political tensions over race and identity play out here.



At the Traxside sports bar in Tolono, questions about the flag quickly turned to a discussion of the state’s demography, and how the large population center of liberal and diverse Chicago has long left many right-leaning rural whites feeling as if their votes didn’t count — as if they had no voice.



Until Trump came along, thundering their cause.



Not everyone airs those views in public by unfurling a Confederate banner.



Doug Dillavou runs an automotive repair shop across the road from Traxside, next door to Tolono’s tiny historical museum, where an almost life-size cutout of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Liberator, greets visitors.



You rarely see Confederate flags in town, Dillavou said. Which is not to say they don’t exist.



“There are those that have them in garages,” he said. “They put ’em away. They don’t want to be marked as racists, whether they are or not.”


Some white Northerners want to redefine a flag rooted in racism as a symbol of patriotism - The Washington Post