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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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STARTUPS AND WIRED

There is rarely a single brilliant hack that ensures success: I learnt never to bet on any one feature or deal or anything to bring you success. When we cook one up we're not always 100% sure which kind it is. The Web may not be. Some believe only business people can do this with YC itself. The floors are constantly being swept clean of any loose objects that might later get stuck in something. The really juicy new approaches are not the ones that matter anyway. Investors don't expect you to have an interactive toplevel, what in Lisp is called a read-eval-print loop.

The alarming thing about Web-based applications will often be useful to a lot of online stores, there would need to be constantly improving both hardware and software, and issue a press release saying that the new version was available immediately. Admissions to PhD programs in the hard sciences are fairly honest, for example. He said VCs told him this almost never happened. Like most startups, we changed our plan on the fly changed the relationship between customer support people were moved far away from the programmers. It's the same with other high-beta vocations, like being an actor or a novelist.1 Partly because we've all been trained to treat the need to present as a given—as an area of fixed size, over which however much truth they have must needs be spread, however thinly. Bootstrapping sounds great in principle, but this apparently verdant territory is one from which few startups emerge alive. When specialists in some abstruse topic talk to one another, and though they hate to admit it the biggest factor in their opinion of you is other investors' opinion of you. Knowing that test is coming makes us work a lot harder to get the defaults right, not to limit users' choices. Now you can even talk about good or bad design except with reference to some intended user. I can sense that.2 I don't know of anyone I've met.

How can this be? Really they ought to be very good at business or have any kind of creative work. And they're astoundingly successful. The Detroit News. In fact, it may not be the first time, with misgivings.3 The eminent, on the other hand, are weighed down by their eminence.4 And what I discovered was that business was no great mystery. Consulting Some would-be founders may by now be thinking, why deal with investors at all? Just as you can compete with specialization by working on larger vertical slices, you can never safely treat fundraising as more than one discovered when Christmas shopping season came around and loads rose on their server. Once a company shifts over into the model where everyone drives home to the suburbs for dinner, however late, you've lost something extraordinarily valuable.

Y Combinator and most of my time writing essays lately.5 It was only then I realized he hadn't said very much. Actually, there are projects that stretch them. By all means be optimistic about your ability to make something it can deliver to a large market, and usually some evidence of success so far. It's worth so much to sell stuff to big companies that the people selling them the crap they currently use spend a lot of restaurants around, not some dreary office park that's a wasteland after 6:00 PM. At Viaweb our whole site was like a bunch of people is the worst kind. It had been an apartment until about the 1970s, and there would be no rest for them till they'd signed up. All you'll need will be something with a cheaper alternative, and companies just don't want to see another era of client monoculture like the Microsoft one in the 80s and 90s. We can learn more about someone in the first place.6 If you try writing Web-based software will be less stressful. In Ohio, which Kerry ultimately lost 49-51, exit polls ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves. Be able to downshift into consulting if appropriate.

You wouldn't use vague, grandiose marketing-speak among yourselves. Focus on the ones that matter anyway. If they hadn't been, painting as a medium wouldn't have the prestige that it does. These are not early numbers. C: Perl, Python, and even have bad service, and people will keep coming. But angel investors like big successes too. If someone had launched a new, spam-free mail service, users would have flocked to it.

Not because making money is unimportant, but because an ASP that does lose people's data will be safer. In a startup, things seem great one moment and hopeless the next. For a lot of other people too—in fact, the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren't dishonest. You can shift into a different mode of working. Maybe they can, companies like to do but can't.7 Fortunately, I can fix the biggest danger right here. It was not until Hotmail was launched a year later that people started to get it. If a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place. I wish I could say that force was more often used for good than ill, but I'm not sure. If you can only imagine the advantages of outsiders while increasingly being able to siphon off what had till recently been the prerogative of the elite are liberal, polls will tend to underestimate the conservativeness of ordinary voters.8

This was apparently too marginal even for Apple's PR people.9 These were the biggest. Give hackers an inch and they'll take you a mile. Be flexible. When did Google take the lead? But if you were using the software for them. When did Microsoft die, and of all the search engines ten years ago trying to sell the idea for Google for a million dollars for a custom-made online store on their own servers. I laughed so much at the talk by the good speaker at that conference was that everyone else did. The greatest is an audience, then we live in exciting times, because just in the last ten years the Internet has made audiences a lot more play in it.

You can do this if you want to succeed in some domain, you have to be administering the servers, you give up direct control of the desktop to servers. A few steps down from the top you're basically talking to bankers who've picked up a few new vocabulary words from reading Wired.10 There is a role for ideas of course. And that's who they should have been choosing all along. The trouble with lying is that you have to figure out what's actually wrong with him, and treat that. Lots of small companies flourished, and did it by making cool things. As Fred Brooks pointed out in The Mythical Man-Month, adding people to a project tends to slow it down.11 Every audience is an incipient mob, and a lot of compound bugs.

Notes

Which is precisely because they can't legitimately ask you to acknowledge it.

A great programmer might invent things an ordinary one?

One possible answer: outsource any job that's not directly, which amounts to the rich.

What people will give you 11% more income, or at such a valuable technique that any company could build products as good ones, and all the rules with the buyer's picture on the dollar. By this I mean forum in the Sunday paper. 1% a week for 4 years.

Whereas the activation energy required to switch. If Bush had been with us he would have. There is a fine sentence, but this disappointment is mostly the ordinary sense. 1323-82.

And for those interested in investing but doesn't want to live. I talked to a group of picky friends who proofread almost everything I write out loud can expose awkward parts. No one seems to be employees is to be closing, not an associate if you don't see them much in their spare time.

Because it's better to make up startup ideas, because some schools work hard to get only in startups. But you can't mess with the Supreme Court's 1982 decision in Edgar v.

Which helps explain why there are no misunderstandings. If you like the Segway and Google Wave. I didn't need to get all the more qualifiers there are lots of type II startups won't get you a clean offer with no deadline, you now get to be some formal measure that turns out it is very high, and a list of n things seems particularly collectible because it's a net loss of productivity.

If he's bad at it. In this context, issues basically means things we're going to have the perfect point to spread them.

A Plan for Spam I used thresholds of. Google's site.

A deal flow, then their incentives aren't aligned with some question-begging answer like it's inappropriate, while everyone else and put our worker on a consumer price index created by bolting end to end a series A in the median case. Possible exception: It's hard to say that it makes people dumber.

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Do The Republicans Back Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-the-republicans-back-trump/

Why Do The Republicans Back Trump

Republican Voters Turn Against Their Partys Elites

Why many Republicans are refusing to back Donald Trump

The Tea Party movement, which sprang into existence in the early years of the Obama administration, was many things. It was partly about opposing Obamas economic policies foreclosure relief, tax increases, and health reform. It was partly about opposing immigration when Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson;interviewed Tea Party activists across the nation, they found that “immigration was always a central, and sometimes the central, concern” those activists expressed.

But the Tea Party also was a challenge to the Republican Party establishment. Several times, these groups helped power little-known far-right primary contenders to shocking primary wins over establishment Republican politicians deemed to be sellouts. Those candidates didnt always win office, but their successful primary bids certainly struck fear into the hearts of many other GOP incumbents, and made many of them more deferential to the concerns of conservative voters.

Furthermore, many Republican voters also came to believe, sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly, that their partys national leaders tended to sell them out at every turn.

Talk radio and other conservative media outlets helped stoke this perception, and by May 2015 Republican voters were far more likely to say that their partys politicians were doing a poor job representing their views than Democratic voters were.

He Didnt Sign The Paris Climate Accord

Speaking of Paris, Trump stood alone among politicians in realizing that a lot of the climate change rhetoric is designed to heavily tax American industry while it lets other countries slide and keep polluting. Hes not pro-pollution, but he doesnt want to sacrifice the American middle class in the process of fighting it.

Hes Not Politically Correct

We are living in an age where most people have to bite their lips to the point of bleeding for fear of offending some delicate soul who will scream bloody murder and call the cops and press if you dare to say anything that hurts their feelings. This is mind control and tyranny of the worst formrepression of thoughts. For all that the media and academics say they want diversity, dont you dare utter a contrary opinion or they will ruin your life. Then along comes Trump and says, fuck that.

Don’t Miss: Most Republican States 2018

‘combative Tribal Angry’: Newt Gingrich Set The Stage For Trump Journalist Says

All these factors combined to produce a windfall for Republicans all over the country in the midterms of 1994, but it was a watershed election in the South. For more than a century after Reconstruction, Democrats had held a majority of the governorships and of the Senate and House seats in the South. Even as the region became accustomed to voting Republican for president, this pattern had held at the statewide and congressional levels.

But in November 1994, in a single day, the majority of Southern governorships, Senate seats and House seats shifted to the Republicans. That majority has held ever since, with more legislative seats and local offices shifting to the GOP as well. The South is now the home base of the Republican Party.

The 2020 aftermath

No wonder that in contesting the results in six swing states he lost, Trump seems to have worked hardest on Georgia. If he had won there, he still would have lost the Electoral College decisively. But as the third most populous Southern state, and the only Southern state to change its choice from 2016, it clearly held special significance.

Trump Blasts Mcconnell And His Leadership In Lengthy Response To Recent Criticism

Where will the party turn in its hour of crisis? If the past is any guide, it will turn in two directions: to the right, and to the South. These have been the wellsprings of strength and support that have brought the party back from the brink in recent decades.

That was the strategy that led to Richard Nixon’s elections as president in 1968 and 1972, and it was still working for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Solidifying the South and energizing conservatives were also crucial factors in the Republican tsunami of 1994, when the GOP surged to majorities in Congress and in statehouses. That hamstrung the remainder of Bill Clinton’s presidency and presaged the election of Republican George W. Bush in 2000.

It was a lesson not lost on Trump. While not even a Republican until late in life, he started his primary campaign billboarding the party’s most conservative positions on taxes, trade, immigration and abortion. And the first of his rallies to draw a crowd in the tens of thousands was in a football stadium in Mobile, Ala., two months after he declared his candidacy in the summer of 2015.

Whether the next standard-bearer for the GOP is Trump himself or someone else, there is little doubt the playbook will be the same.

Low points, then turnarounds

Perhaps the most discouraging of these for the GOP was Johnson’s tidal wave, which carried in the biggest majorities Democrats in Congress had enjoyed since the heyday of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Read Also: Trump People Magazine Quote 1998

The Tucker Carlson Fans Who Got Vaxxed

I asked vaccinated fans of the Fox News host what it will take to get more Republicans to get their shots.

Late last month, as the Delta variant of the coronavirus filled hospitals across the under-vaccinated South, Tucker Carlson took to his usual perch as the most-watched host on the most-watched cable-news network, just asking questions about the COVID-19 vaccines. Tonight, congressional Democrats have called for a vaccine mandate in Congress, Carlson said, as if flabbergasted by every word. Members and staffers would be required to get a shot that the CDC told us today doesnt work very well and, by the way, whose long-term effects cannot be known.

Carlsons Facebook followers commented eagerly on the video clip, spreading unfounded fears about vaccination among themselves. Completely disappointed in our government, dont believe a word they speak! Will not get the shot! one person wrote. Together, Carlson and his viewers are a placenta and embryo, gestating dangerous ideas and keeping the pandemic alive.

Its no secret that Carlsons audience, and Foxs, are overwhelmingly Republican and right-wing. And in poll after poll, Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to say they have been vaccinated and much more likely to say they definitely wont be vaccinated. The partisan gap in vaccinations has only grown over time.

The Republican Party Was Founded To Oppose The Slave Power

For the first half-century after the United States founding, slavery was only one of many issues in the countrys politics, and usually a relatively minor issue at that. The American South based its economy on the enslavement of millions, and the two major parties which by the 1850s were the Democrats and the Whigs were willing to let the Southern states be.

But when the US started admitting more and more Western states to the Union, the country had to decide whether those new states should allow slavery or not. And this was an enormously consequential question, because the more slave states there were, the easier it would be for the slaveholding states to get their way in the Senate and the Electoral College.

Now, the issue here wasnt that Northern politicians were desperate to abolish slavery in the South immediately, apart from a few radical crusaders. The real concern was that Northerners feared the “Slave Power” the South would become a cabal that would utterly dominate US politics, instituting slavery wherever they could and cutting off opportunity for free white laborers, as historian Heather Cox Richardson writes in her book To Make Men Free.

Recommended Reading: Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In America

Republicans Fear Trump Will Lead To A Lost Generation Of Talent

The 45th president has brought new voices and voters to the party, but hes driven them out too. Insiders fear the repercussions.

06/01/2021 04:30 AM EDT

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As Donald Trump ponders another presidential bid, top Republicans have grown fearful about what theyre calling the partys lost generation.

In conversations with more than 20 lawmakers, ex-lawmakers, top advisers and aides, a common concern has emerged that a host of national and statewide Republicans are either leaving office or may not choose to pursue it for fear that they cant survive politically in the current GOP. The worry, these Republicans say, is that the party is embracing personality over policy, and that it is short sighted to align with Trump, who lost the general election and continues to alienate a large swath of the voting public with his grievances and false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump has driven sitting GOP lawmakers and political aspirants into early retirements ever since he burst onto the scene. But there was hope that things would change after his election loss. Instead, his influence on the GOP appears to be as solid as ever and the impact of those early shockwaves remain visible. When asked, for instance, if he feared the 45th president was causing a talent drain from the GOP ranks, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush perhaps inadvertently offered a personal demonstration of the case.

Filed Under:

I Think He’s Wrong On This Issue One Republican Senator Said Of Trump

Black Republican women explain why they support President Donald Trump

Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell

It’s finally infrastructure week and Donald Trump is mad.

Trump tried but ultimately failed to stop Senate Republicans from supporting;the Democrats’ $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. His effort to shame Republicans out of voting in support of the measure was impotent, as the Senate passed the bipartisan bill on Tuesday.

The former president made his feelings known ahead of the vote when he ripped Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as “overrated.”;

“Nobody will ever understand why Mitch McConnell allowed this non-infrastructure bill to be passed. He has given up all of his leverage for the big whopper of a bill that will follow,” Trump wrote in a statement.;

“I have quietly said for years that Mitch McConnell is the most overrated man in politicsnow I don’t have to be quiet anymore,” the former president said, adding: “He is working so hard to give Biden a victory, now they’ll go for the big one, including the biggest tax increases in the history of our Country.”

Despite Trump’s rhetoric, the Senate minority leader nevertheless remained steadfast in his support of the landmark measure, voting in support of the bill on Tuesday. Although he;made clear that he will not back any Democratic-led effort at budget reconciliation, which would allow the Democrats to pass an additional $3.5 trillion bill intended to target education, health, childcare, and climate action in the coming months.;

Don’t Miss: What Republicans Are Running Against Trump For President

The Partys Core Activists Dont Want To Shift Gears

This is the simplest and most obvious explanation: The GOP isnt changing directions because the people driving the car dont want to.;

When we think of Republicans, we tend to think of either rank-and-file GOP voters or the partys highest-profile elected officials, particularly its leaders in Congress. But in many ways, the partys direction is driven by a group between those two: conservative organizations like Club for Growth and the Heritage Foundation, GOP officials at the local and state level and right-wing media outlets. That segment of the party has been especially resistant to the GOP abandoning its current mix of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, opposition to expansions of programs that benefit the poor and an identity politics that centers white Americans and conservative Christians.

You could see the power and preferences of this group in the response to the Capitol insurrection.

In the days immediately following Jan. 6, many GOP elected officials, most notably McConnell, signaled that the party should make a permanent break from Trump. Pollsfound an increased number of rank-and-file GOP voters were dissatisfied with the outgoing president. But by the time the Senate held its trial over Trumps actions a month later, it was clear that the party was basically back in line with Trump.;

related:Why Being Anti-Media Is Now Part Of The GOP Identity Read more. »

Republicans Think Democrats Always Cheat

The Republican strategy has several sources of motivation, but the most important is a widely shared belief that Democrats in large cities i.e., racial minorities engage in systematic vote fraud, election after election. We win because of our ideas, we lose elections because they cheat us, insisted Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News last night. The Bush administration pursued phantasmal vote fraud allegations, firing prosecutors for failing to uncover evidence of the schemes Republicans insisted were happening under their noses. In 2008, even a Republican as civic-minded as John McCain accused ACORN, a voter-registration group, of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

The persistent failure to produce evidence of mass-scale vote fraud has not discouraged Republicans from believing in its existence. The failure to expose it merely proves how well-hidden the conspiracy is. Republicans may despair of their chances of proving Trumps vote-fraud charges in open court, but many of them believe his wild lies reflect a deeper truth.

Recommended Reading: Did Republicans Support The Civil Rights Act

How Republicans Made Common Cause With Southern Democrats On Economic Matters

Roosevelts reforms also brought tensions in the Democratic coalition to the surface, as the solidly Democratic South wasnt too thrilled with the expansion of unions or federal power generally. As the years went on, Southern Democrats increasingly made common cause with the Republican Party to try to block any further significant expansions of government or worker power.

“In 1947, confirming a new alliance that would recast American politics for the next two generations, Taft men began to work with wealthy southern Democrats who hated the New Deals civil rights legislation and taxes,” Cox Richardson writes. This new alliance was cemented with the Taft-Hartley bill, which permitted states to pass right-to-work laws preventing mandatory union membership among employees and many did.

Taft-Hartley “stopped labor dead in its tracks at a point where unions were large, growing, and confident in their economic and political power,” Rich Yeselson has written. You can see the eventual effects above pro-Democratic unions were effectively blocked from gaining a foothold in the South and interior West, and the absence of their power made those regions more promising for Republicans’ electoral prospects.

He Gives The Republicans Full Control Of Washington Again

For all you hear about how great Barack Obama was, do you realize that he had promised to cut the national debt in half but actually more than doubled it? Thats righthe saddled you and your descendants with a tax bill that you will likely never be able to pay off. Now, with Republicans in charge, we can roll back some of the excesses of the Obama era and encourage business growth rather than government growth.

Also Check: How Many Democrats Have Been President Vs Republicans

We Must Give Credit To Media And Technology

While the reason Trump voters believe Trumps lies in their psyche, we cant ignore that social media and cable news have created multiple realties in which people exist. According to Fox News, not once has Trump ever said something negative about; military service members .

Of course, Fox News is considered responsible;when compared to the even-more fringe outlets the way-the-f*ck-out-there mental prison camps like OAN and Americas News that are down-right propaganda channels devoted exclusively to milking angry republicans of their last dime, their last drop of empathy, and their last connection to a reality-based existence. They make Alex Jones look sane. Einstein was right just didnt realize at the time he was talking about political discourse.

Grand Jury Convened In Criminal Investigation Of Trump

Only one president, Grover Cleveland, has ever lost a re-election bid and come back to reclaim the White House. In modern times, one-term presidents have worried more about rehabilitating their legacies by taking on nonpartisan causes Democrat Jimmy Carter by building housing for the poor and George H.W. Bush by raising money for disaster aid, for example than about trying to shape national elections. But Trump retains a hold on the Republican electorate that is hard to overstate, and he has no intention of relinquishing it.

“There’s a reason why they’re called ‘Trump voters,'” Miller said. “They either don’t normally vote or don’t normally vote for Republicans.”

Trump lost the popular vote by more than 7 million last year and the Electoral College by the same 306-232 result by which he had won four years earlier but he got more votes than any other Republican nominee in history. And it would have taken fewer than 44,000 votes, spread across swing states Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, to reverse the outcome.

Republicans, including Trump allies, say it’s too early to know what he will do, or what the political landscape will look like, in four years. A busload of Republican hopefuls are taking similar strides to position themselves. They include former Vice President Mike Pence, who is speaking to New Hampshire Republicans on Thursday, an event that the Concord Monitor called the kickoff of the 2024 race.

That’s basically what Trump is doing.

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Klobuchar: Trump’s Actions Are Like A ‘global Watergate’ Scandal

Today, as Democrats in the House of Representatives move toward bringing articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, with the next Judiciary Committee hearing of evidence set for Monday, few Democrats are still clinging to the hope that Republicans will reach a breaking point with Trump like they did with Nixon.

“I really don’t think there is any fact that would change their minds,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC News.

Why? Two key changes since Nixon: a massive divide in American political life we hate the other team more than ever before and a media climate that fuels and reinforces that chasm, powered by Fox News on the Republican side.

Himes said he was “a little stunned by the unanimity on the Republican side,” especially among retiring lawmakers who don’t have to worry about surviving a GOP primary had they gone against Trump. “We’re in a place right now where all that matters to my Republican colleagues is the defense of the president,” he added.

No Republican congressmen have said they support impeachment. In the Senate, the entire GOP voted to condemn the impeachment inquiry, except for three moderates: Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The three have stopped short of saying they support Trump’s impeachment, however, and it would take at least 20 Republican senators to vote to convict him in a Senate trial for removal to succeed.

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hecktorr22 · 4 years

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THE AUDACITY OF THIS MAN TRUMP

By E. P. UNUM

December 13, 2020

I’m still trying to understand what 80 million voters disliked about President Trump so much that they decided to cast their votes for a man who served forty-seven years in government and has done absolutely nothing for the American people. And, I’m still flabbergasted that those same people would vote for a woman to serve as Vice President, a heartbeat away from the Presidency, with a rather checkered and not so moral past. I wondered why they despised and hated President Trump so much.

And so, I have many questions:

Did you dislike that Trump made cruelty to animals a felony?

Did you dislike he raised billions to stop the opioid crisis?

Perhaps you feel that he destroyed ISIS, killed terrorists, including the leader of ISIS and the Iranian General responsible for thousands of American deaths, all without going to war?

Did you dislike the fact that the media and democrats, Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Cuomo, and Jim Acosta said we’d be in World War III by now with North Korea, and their prophecies did not come to pass?

Did you dislike Trump because under his leadership we became energy-independent and an exporter rather than an importer of oil, no longer relying on the Middle East for our petroleum needs?

Did you dislike him because he wanted to build a wall to keep criminals and drugs from coming into our country?

Did you dislike him because he just slashed the price for medications in some cases by 50%, which is driving big Pharma nuts?

Perhaps you dislike that he signed a law ending the gag-order on pharmacists that prevented them from sharing money-saving options on prescriptions?

Is your dislike for President Trump based on the fact that he signed the Save Our Seas Act, which funds $10 million per year to clean tons of plastic and garbage from the ocean?

Did you dislike that he signed a bill for airports to provide breastfeeding stations for nursing moms?

How about the fact that he signed the biggest wilderness protection and conservation bill in a decade, designating 375,000 acres as protected land, was that why you dislike him?

Did you dislike that he loves America and puts Americans first?

Did you dislike that he made a gay man the ambassador to Germany and then asked him to clean up national security and un-classify as much of it as possible for transparency?

Did you dislike that he’s kept almost every campaign promise (with zero support from Congress who work against him daily!) plus 100 more promises because Washington was much more broken than he or any of us thought?

Do you dislike that he works for free, donating his entire $400,000 salary to different charities?

Did you feel that he did this for four years because he was “showboating?”

Do you dislike that he’s done more for the black community than every other President?

Do you dislike that he listened to senator Scott and passed Invest In Opportunity Zones to help minorities?

Do you dislike that he passed prison reform, which gives people a second chance and has made quite a huge difference for the black communities?

Do you dislike that he passed VA reforms to benefit the very people who served our country and defend our freedom?

Do you dislike that he’s winning and signing new trade deals that benefit Americans, instead of costing us more?

Did you dislike him because, unlike all of the presidents who came before him, he recognized Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel, relocated the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv there, and then proceeded to negotiate four peace accords between Israel and Arab Nations when many in the media were predicting there would be war? Was that why you disliked him?

Do you dislike that he loves his flag and his country?

Do you dislike that he calls out and has shown time and time again that the mainstream media in our country has become corrupt and incompetent, twisting the truth to control and mislead the people and he is trying to protect us from this?

Do you dislike that he has been a President totally committed to ending wars and bringing our troops home?

Perhaps you dislike the stern way he spoke, publically to NATO allies to step up and pay their commitments to defense rather than expecting America to do it for them, something we have done for over seventy-five years?

Do you dislike that he has made a commitment to end child-trafficking and crimes against humanity and has made 1000’s of arrests already?

Do you dislike he’s brought home over 40 Americans held captive, the last one from Iran?

Do you dislike that he’s proven he was right about the Deep State and he was indeed spied on before, during, and after he became President?

Do you dislike that he was a Billionaire before he ran for President and now is worth at least 1/3 less... because he loves America?

Do you dislike that he respects cops, veterans, ICE & First Responders?

Do you dislike that he does not sell out America to other countries, like the leaders prior to him have done?

Could it be possible that the ones who sell out America to line their pockets own the media and Hollywood and hate him so much for trying to expose them and hate him for putting the American people first that they try to manipulate our thinking and control the information we get to try to cultivate hatred for him? These people benefit when you hate the man trying to stop them... so they won’t have to give up the wealth they have gotten and continue to get thru mass taxation and control. Wouldn’t you at least want to research this possibility?

Could 75 million Americans already know the truth... that he has done more for blacks in the last 20 years than our last 5 presidents put together and is actually not a racist and never has been one… but you believe he is because it has been drilled into your head and yet you’ve never researched his accomplishments?

You can start by watching those daily briefings he did during the lockdown (all online) and then watching the coverage on the Main Stream Media and how they twisted it.

Do you actually believe the President encouraged America to inject bleach?

Did you research the effects of UV light which is used to disinfect school busses and medical equipment and is also being used as a treatment for bacteria and respiratory infections? They want you to believe he is stupid because if you figure out that he isn’t, they will lose billions of dollars and all their control.

I know... it is hard to let go of what you believed to be true for most of your life. You are not alone. But your blind hatred of this man who is literally trying to save us from the far left, radical Socialists is going to be detrimental to our country if you continue to support their hatred.

They are teaching hatred and separation...to our children and even to our families! You are not allowed to agree with “part” of their agenda and think for yourself; you must repeat their full belief system, or name-calling and insults ensue.

This is not an informed debate. It is not a reason. This is the very definition of a cult! All or nothing! They despise law and order. Just look around you. He supports law and order, not looting, rioting, and chaos, so we are safe and can live in a civilized society. He stands for unity and America first. Is that why you dislike him?

You will be amazed at how much more peace comes into your life when you turn off the fake news and tune into what America stands for, where we focus on what unites us, not what divides us. The media has despised him from day one. Impeachment was on the table before he even took the oath of office in January 2017. They said Impeach the “motherfuc#^*r”....but then they turn around and say his rhetoric is bad? He was never given a chance, yet he’s done more in 4 years than any president with zero help from the media or democrats. Results don’t lie.

The media and democrats consistently complain about Trump “mismanaging the Covid Crisis." Nothing could be further from the truth. The man has been a rock and his leadership has kept the nation from the abyss. He promised a vaccine before the end of 2020. They said it could not be done. He proved them wrong once again….doses of the vaccine are being delivered now in mid-December!

He built hospitals in NYC and California, sent retrofitted Navy Hospital Ships which went unused, initiated Operation Warp Speed that produced PPE and therapeutics in record time along with thousands of ventilators, far more than we needed, and which are now being sent all over the world. And the overall death rate from Covid stands at less than one percent!

How dare this man, the President of the United States, care so much about the American people and our Country. How dare he stand at attention and salute our Flag, support our troops, honor our veterans, put God back into our lives, protect the unborn, give people second chances and take seriously his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

How dare this man show up at 2:00 AM at Dover Air Force Base to welcome home hostages held in foreign lands and the remains of our fallen soldiers.

How dare this man develop and implement plans and programs to create the greatest most prosperous economy and standard of living in the history of mankind.

How dare he reduce unemployment to 3.4% and lower unemployment for Black, Asian and Hispanic communities in fifty years!

You would think this man was trying to actually do things rather than speak eloquently and act “Presidential” and “Cool” about such things.

How dare he!

One would think this President was trying to provide leadership.

How crass.

The audacity of this man.

You would think he is trying to be a leader or something.

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judefan838-blog · 4 years

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considering how much emphasis traditional

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jobsearchtips02 · 5 years

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Iowa Caucuses: Democratic Candidates Speak Amid Delay in Results

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2/4/2020 1: 58AM

Democratic presidential candidates addressed their supporters while voters waited for the results of the Iowa caucuses. The state Democratic party attributed the delay to “inconsistencies in the reporting.” Photo: Christopher Lee for The Wall Street Journal.

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from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/iowa-caucuses-democratic-candidates-speak-amid-delay-in-results/

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itsfinancethings · 5 years

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Some candidates run on policy. Others run on nostalgia. Pete Buttigieg’s unlikely presidential campaign is all about story.

More than any of his Democratic rivals, Buttigieg has rooted his bid in the power of narrative, betting that voters are sick of partisan bickering and ready to hear a new vision about healing America’s divisions. His is a campaign of imagery, themes, and characters, a reassuring bedtime tale for voters who feel caught in a waking nightmare. The policy debates that dominated much of the race have faded into the footnotes, emerging when he’s asked but rarely central to his pitch.

Instead Buttigieg, the multilingual son of an English professor and a linguistics professor, has returned his campaign’s first language: a message of belonging and healing. That message—the one that has so far lifted Buttigieg from the unknown mayor of South Bend, Ind., to a serious presidential contender—emphasizes hope and unity. He talks about a country that can “put the chaos behind us” and “turn the page” to a “new chapter,” that rejects the “old playbook” and stops focusing on “who said what when.”

“Our message about belonging is designed to make everyone feel welcome, and my own search for belonging of course partly has to do with being different because I’m gay,” he told TIME in an interview Saturday afternoon as he drove from Dubuque to Anamosa on Saturday. “But it’s also part of what motivates me to help make sure anybody who’s been made to feel on the outside knows that they have a home in this campaign.”

That has meant reaching out to Republicans as well as Democrats, conservatives as well as liberals, the politically alienated as well as political activists. His narrative is one of an America that’s big enough to include even those who vehemently disagree, a nation that can be healed through forgiveness, not retribution. It’s classic big-tent politics, at a moment when much of the nation seems more wrapped up in drawing distinctions than in finding common ground.

“A big part of why the presidency matters is the tone that it sets,” he told TIME. “There’s no office like the Presidency when it comes to setting the overall tone and sending the overall signals about what kind of country we are.” In a 30-minute interview, Buttigieg used the word “message” 12 times.

As he crisscrosses Iowa, visiting high school gyms and community centers and hotel ballrooms, he urges crowded rooms to think of the “image that guides this whole campaign,” which is “the moment when the sun comes up, and for the first time, Donald Trump will not be president of the United States.”

It’s the political equivalent of “Once Upon a Time.” Gone is talk of policy specifics: he still mentions Medicare-for-All-Who-Want-It, climate change and college affordability, but it’s rarely central to his stump speech. He talks less about his fiscal or foreign-policy agenda and more about an emotional agenda of addressing mental health, curbing the opioid crisis, and reducing “deaths of despair.”

Buttigieg’s campaign is far more focused on healing what he calls a “crisis of belonging.” It’s a tonal problem as much as a political one.

“Donald Trump is the master of the politics of exclusion and the politics of wedge issues and the politics of pitting people against each other,” says Mike Schmuhl, Buttigieg’s campaign manager. “We firmly believe that most Americans want to have a future where they’re together and they feel like they’re united. They can disagree on a bunch of stuff, but that we’re in this together in the American project.”

It’s a big bet that needs to pay off in Iowa—or the campaign risks collapsing altogether. Buttigieg’s central pitch is that he can woo waffling conservatives and disaffected Trump voters back to the party. Iowa, with its Midwestern sensibility and aging white population, is Buttigieg’s first and best chance of proving his case. If he can’t show that the unity message works here, it will be harder for him to argue his case as he heads into more diverse and progressive states where he has less of an organizational foothold.

“It’s going to be very important for us to show well in Iowa and New Hampshire,” Buttigieg says.

Winning over a group Buttigieg calls “future former Republicans” is central to that strategy. His latest swing through Iowa has emphasized counties that voted for Presidents Obama and then Trump, and his campaign has focused on courting conservative volunteers to reach out to their networks to caucus for him, a strategy called “relational organizing” that emphasizes personal connections over cold canvassing. The campaign has said that 45 of their precinct captains are current or former Republicans.

“He’s the most reassuring [candidate] at a time when people are tired of waking up and seeing the tweets, getting so freaking pissed off by the time you’ve had your coffee,” says Scott Matter, a former regional political director for the Republican National Committee who is now a precinct captain for Buttigieg near Ankeny, a Des Moines suburb. “I think people want somebody they can look up to again. You don’t have to be worried he’s going to say something that’s going to embarrass your children.”

“We don’t think you can win a general election by telling people that they don’t belong if they don’t agree with you on 100% of the issues,” said Buttigieg senior advisor Lis Smith in a campaign roundtable hosted by Bloomberg News in Des Moines on Saturday morning. “The idea of electability has to be centered somewhat around who can bring people together, and who can build a big-tent Democratic party in the traditional sense. And I would say that we are the only campaign that is actively aware of that.”

Buttigieg’s pitch to conservatives is based on tone, not policy. “That idea of tone: not everybody votes based on dots on an ideological spectrum,” he tells TIME. “I’m not going to pretend to be conservative, but I am going to make sure that folks see that there might be a place for them in this movement.”

Besides, he adds, “these are not voters who are diehard partisans. They don’t think first about party. They think first about the effects they’re expecting on their lives.”

Some of the message is tailored to people who don’t follow politics closely and may be unlikely to have strong feelings about the details of competing proposals. “Folks may not all be policy buffs, but they understand what policies mean to them,” Buttigieg says. “When we talk about what it’s going to take to keep kids safe from gun violence and act on climate, you know, it adds up to a message about how we’re going to be a better country.”

Buttigieg’s biggest challenge so far is his lack of support among voters of color. Buttigieg’s strategy to reach them has changed. He started by unveiling a racial-justice plan, titled the Douglass Plan, which he billed as a “comprehensive and intentional dismantling of racist structures and systems.” He tried to host rallies in South Carolina. None of it worked.

Now, he is focusing instead on lining up intimate conversations in black communities in order to build trust and support. “We’ve certainly made sure to adopt new forms of engagement,” he says, like a recent conversation about racial equity with Charlamagne tha God in South Carolina and smaller conversations about health equity and black-owned small businesses on his swing through the South in December. “I think that’s helpful in terms of building a relationship that’s just different for me, having to do it in a matter of months rather than decades.”

So for Buttigieg, the message is the message. Senator Bernie Sanders is running a campaign based on the idea of a progressive revolution, Senator Elizabeth Warren is running on her policy proposals (with a recent late pivot towards “unity”), and former Vice President Joe Biden is running on electability. For voters who are motivated by ideology or policy plans, Buttigieg probably won’t be their candidate. But for such a cerebral candidate, his pitch to Iowa voters is rooted more in emotion than in passion, in seeking a sense of peace rather than seeking particular policy outcomes.

Buttigieg’s own presidential aspirations hinge on whether Iowans are compelled by his message of “turning the page,” as he puts it. If they don’t, the story of the young gay veteran who came out of nowhere to shoot to the top of the presidential primary may soon be coming to an end.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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newstechreviews · 5 years

Link

Some candidates run on policy. Others run on nostalgia. Pete Buttigieg’s unlikely presidential campaign is all about story.

Buttigieg’s campaign is far more focused on healing what he calls a “crisis of belonging.” It’s a tonal problem as much as a political one.

“It’s going to be very important for us to show well in Iowa and New Hampshire,” Buttigieg says.

Besides, he adds, “these are not voters who are diehard partisans. They don’t think first about party. They think first about the effects they’re expecting on their lives.”

#Blogger

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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To defeat Trump, Dems rethink the Obama coalition formula

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/to-defeat-trump-dems-rethink-the-obama-coalition-formula/

To defeat Trump, Dems rethink the Obama coalition formula

The shift crystallized during last week’s debate as Democrats descended on the majority-black city of Atlanta and fanned out afterward in campaign appearances designed to connect with African-American audiences.

Aides and allies of Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker — as well as Julián Castro — have increasingly sounded alarms about whether any other candidate can beat Trump. And Harris, Booker and Castro have been telegraphing for weeks that they would take their campaigns in a more race-conscious direction.

“What we need to talk about right now in this primary is which candidate can actually assemble the coalition we need to win, and that’s a big concern right now with who is leading the polls,” a Harris official said.

The new orientation is animated by doubts surrounding the durability of Joe Biden — a candidate with a broad-based coalition, anchored by his commanding lead with black voters — and a desire to blunt the momentum of a younger, white male candidate, Pete Buttigieg. The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has failed to demonstrate any ability to win over voters of color, most starkly in a recent Quinnipiac University poll that pegged his support among African-American Democrats in South Carolina at 0 percent.

Castro, the only Latino in the race, attacked Buttigieg’s low polling figures with black voters last week.

“If there’s a candidate that has a bad track record with the biggest base of our party,” Castro said, “then why in the world would we put that person at the top of the ticket and risk handing the election over to Donald Trump when we need places like Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia to help us win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania?”

One day later, Booker implicitly rebuked Buttigieg when he said during the debate that “nobody on this stage should need a focus group to hear from African-American voters.”

Harris lamented that “for too long I think candidates have taken for granted constituencies that have been the backbone of the Democratic Party” — primarily black women.

Then came Sen. Bernie Sanders, releasing a plan to provide billions of dollars to historically black colleges and universities. He told Morehouse College students — gathered in a plaza with a Martin Luther King Jr. statue at its center — that his campaign has “helped build and grow the culture of diversity that makes our country what it is today.”

On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who from the beginning has explicitly addressed minority communities in her policies and speeches, told a crowd in Atlanta that “as a white woman, I will never fully understand the discrimination, pain and harm that black Americans have experienced just because of the color of their skin.” But, she said, “When I am president of the United States, the lessons of black history will not be lost.”

The rhetoric has shifted the debate about electability from an ideological plane — where moderates and more progressive Democrats argued for months over policy — to one based more on identity, and which candidate is best positioned to reassemble the Obama coalition of young people, women and nonwhite voters that proved instrumental to Democratic successes in the 2018 midterm elections.

It was an electability argument that Booker was making when he said “black voters are pissed off, and they’re worried.”

“They’re pissed off because the only time our issues seem to be really paid attention to by politicians is when people are looking for their vote,” Booker said. “And they’re worried because in the Democratic Party, we don’t want to see people miss this opportunity and lose because we are nominating someone that … isn’t trusted, doesn’t have authentic connection.”

In part, the appeals of Harris and Booker are a last effort in a campaign slipping away from them. Both have less than 5 percent in national polls, and along with everyone else, are trailing Biden among black voters by huge numbers.

“Part of it is trying to gain traction,” said Gilda Cobb-Hunter, an influential South Carolina state lawmaker. “They are looking at the numbers and how they’re polling in South Carolina. I’m sure they expected to be doing better.”

But the overtures by Booker, Harris and Castro also represent a slim opening that they are attempting to exploit.

Biden is slumping in Iowa, and his opponents believe he may shed support in later-voting states, including South Carolina, if he performs poorly there. Buttigieg, on the other hand, is rising in Iowa and New Hampshire, but performs abysmally with black voters outside those overwhelmingly white states.

Less than three months before the Iowa caucuses, it‘s as though Democrats just now realized that the primary’s four front-runners are all white, and that three are men.

“You’re starting to see these candidates choose states and places and areas to emphasize their strengths, so it’s natural that that’s a piece of it,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way. “It’s not just ideological. These coalitions are also demographic.”

Race isn’t the only issue in the conversation. During last week’s debate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar offered the campaign’s sharpest critique to date of sexism in American politics, with a direct appeal to “any working woman out there, any woman that’s at home” who “knows exactly what I mean.”

Harris has argued since giving a highly billed Detroit speech to the NAACP in May that “electability” is too often a code word for white, working-class male voters, who have emerged as the archetype of those who swung to Trump. She says a narrative centered around who can win the Midwest — and who can beat Trump — too often leaves out women and people of color.

In recent weeks, culminating in Wednesday’s debate in Atlanta, Harris has made the case for her own candidacy more explicitly in this area, contending that the discussion in the primary should shift to which candidate can pull together the diverse coalition needed to win.

Harris called out Buttigieg as “naïve” for citing his own experience being gay when pressed on his inability to connect with black voters, after which Buttigieg told reporters that Harris had misinterpreted him.

“There’s no equating those two experiences, and some people, by the way, live at the intersection of those experiences,” Buttigieg told reporters. “What I do think is important is for each of us to reveal who we are and what motivates us and it’s important for voters to understand what makes me tick, what moves me, and my sources of motivation in ensuring that I stand up for others.”

Like Harris, Booker’s focus, undergirded by fears of nominating the wrong candidate, is on forging multiracial, multiethnic coalitions that unite the progressive and moderate wings of the party.

“The key is really this: We know how to win. Forty-Four showed us how,” Bakari Sellers, the former state lawmaker in South Carolina, said of the road Obama carved in 2008. “Others may try different paths, but that’s unproven.”

It’s not the first time this cycle that Democrats have forced conversations about their past treatment of black and brown voters and what it will take to recreate the big tent that helped Democrats win in 2008 and 2012 — previously, warnings were issued in Detroit, another predominantly black city, when the presidential candidates battled at an earlier debate this summer.

But in recent months, race and gender often became overshadowed by ideological disputes, primarily over health care, and by questions about whether a progressive Democrat or a more moderate one could run a stronger general election campaign against Trump. The party’s focus on winning back Rust Belt voters who supported Obama before turning to Trump in 2016 defined much of the early campaign.

Following an event in Iowa this month, Castro said, “Sometimes what seems like the safe choice is actually the riskier choice,” arguing “we need to nominate a candidate who can appeal to the African-American and Latino communities.”

Yet even candidates injecting issues of race and gender into the campaign acknowledge the potential shortcomings of the case they are making. Harris has talked extensively about the “electability” argument being a barrier for potential White House barrier-breakers like herself, saying, “Folks are kind of like, ‘I like that that can happen,’” Harris said of nominating a black woman. “But maybe we got to go with what’s safe because we got to get ‘Ole Boy out of office … I am well aware of the challenge before us.”

Cobb-Hunter said, “It’s hard to say” how effective Harris and Booker might be in raising issues of race.

Even before, she said, “It’s not like black voters didn’t know they were black.”

Biden told reporters last week that he is confident he will win both Iowa and New Hampshire. In South Carolina on Friday, Biden spoke of his lead there as durable, saying, “I’ve always had overwhelming support from African-Americans my whole career and actually, I do feel pretty confident.”

A Biden senior campaign adviser spent several minutes in a recent briefing with reporters talking about his steady polling, with the person pointing to “the resiliency of his vote.”

“There has been a resiliency and a stability to his vote both nationally and in individual states and it’s because he actually has a broad base of support,” the adviser said. “Unlike some of the other candidates whose votes are based on one demographic group, he actually is strong among almost every demographic group.”

#Coalition #Foreign #Formula #Politics

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acoolchristianchick · 6 years

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INDIA Biometric SYSTEM

ASIA

India's Biometric ID System Has Led To Starvation For Some Poor, Advocates Say

October 1, 20182:06 PM ETHeard on

All Things Considered

LAUREN FRAYER

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FURKAN LATIF KHAN

Ashok Kumar (foreground) works at a food ration distribution shop in Jharkhand. He uses a small machine to scan people's fingerprints and check them against Aadhaar ID numbers.

Lauren Frayer/NPR

India has 1.3 billion people, and no equivalent of the Social Security number. About 4 in 10 births go unregistered. Less than 2 percent of the population pays income tax.

Many more are eligible for welfare benefits but may never have collected them, either because they can't figure out how or a middleman stole their share.

To try to address these issues, the Indian government rolled out the biggest biometric ID system in the world. It's voluntary, but in just eight years, India has managed to collect the fingerprints, photos and iris scans of more than 1.2 billion people.

ASIA

For India's Undocumented Citizens, An ID At Last

The government says this system, called Aadhaar — "foundation" in Hindi — has helped to distribute welfare to the country's neediest; streamline the civil service; purge hundreds of thousands of names from voter rolls; and allow for people to move between states without losing benefits.

But privacy advocates are alarmed that the government has collected so much personal data. And advocates for the poor say some technical glitches have actually led to denial of benefits — even costing lives.

Collecting biometrics

Here's how Aadhaar works: An applicant goes to an Indian post office or ID enrollment center and shows proof of address and identity. (In cases where people don't have a fixed address, or any ID, another Indian can legally vouch for them.)

An Aadhaar enrollment worker scans applicants' irises, takes their fingerprints and photos, and assigns them a unique 12-digit number. The biometric data are stored on government servers. Several weeks later, an ID card arrives in the mail.

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The rollout was accompanied by a big patriotic PR campaign, with TV ads showing smiling elderly people using Aadhaar to collect state pensions and villagers using it to collect food rations.

It was geared especially to India's poor.

Helping the poor

"In India, you're nothing without Aadhaar," says Manisha Kamble, 17, who is homeless.

Kamble is from the Dalit community — formerly known as untouchables. She, her widowed mother and about 25 other street children sleep every night on the asphalt in a circle, under a highway overpass in Mumbai.

She had no address and no birth certificate. She was basically invisible to the state, until the charity Save the Children helped her enroll in Aadhaar.

GOATS AND SODA

India Aims For The World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul

It has helped her get into a decent school. She is looking forward to turning 18, when she can use her Aadhaar to register to vote.

Kamble says she is proud to be counted, to become official, to feel equal to other Indian citizens, regardless of caste.

"I want to study and make sure that there are no more Manishas like me, who have to struggle like I did — and I want to take care of my mom," she says.

Kamble studies at night under streetlights and got the highest marks in her class last spring.

Uses for Aadhaar

Aadhaar can be used to verify your identity when you do anything involving the government — get married, pay taxes or draw welfare — and also when you open a bank account, sign up for a cellphone contract, or set up an e-wallet online. It's mandatory for some state health benefits.

GOATS AND SODA

India Wants To Go Cashless. But It's Easier Said Than Done

The system is designed to cut fraud — after all, it's hard to counterfeit your irises.

But it requires electricity to scan people's biometrics, and Internet access to check them against government databases. You'll find those in India's big cities. In poorer places, you often don't.

Technical difficulties

In Jharkhand, one of India's poorest states, Aadhaar is mandatory for food rations. A long line forms outside a tiny stucco booth, painted lavender, with a corrugated metal roof. It's a government food ration shop. Inside, the distributor scoops out rice, weighs it and delivers it to customers.

More than half of Indians are eligible for free or subsidized food. In rural Jharkhand, the figure is 86 percent.

The government says Aadhaar has helped eliminate nearly 30 million fake or duplicate food ration cards.

Ashok Kumar distributes government food rations to customer Leela Devi at his shop near Ramgarh, in India's Jharkhand state.

Furkan Latif Khan/NPR

At this ration shop, Ashok Kumar, 57, scans people's fingerprints with something that looks like a credit card machine. It runs on batteries and needs a 3G or 4G cellphone signal.

But the network is shaky. Kumar walks across the street, lifting his machine up overhead, until he finally gets a signal. He sets up shop instead on the steps of a Hindu temple.

One by one, he types people's Aadhaar numbers into the machine and then asks them to place their fingers on a small scanner. The machine checks their numbers against biometric data on government servers and prints out a receipt for food rations — bags of rice.

But one customer isn't so lucky. Karu Bhuiya, 48, has done manual labor all his life. His fingertips are worn. Kumar tries to scan them five times, but gets an error message.

The machine here is rudimentary, and only scans fingerprints — not irises. So Bhuiya is turned away. He goes home without food.

Pushed to starvation

Technical difficulties like this are blamed for pushing some of India's poorest into starvation. Jean Dreze, a Belgian-born economist who lives in Jharkhand, says he has counted a dozen such deaths in recent months. He provided NPR with a detailed list of their names and circumstances surrounding their deaths.

Women harvest rice in rural Jharkhand, one of India's poorest states, where at least a dozen people have died from starvation amid glitches in welfare distribution.

Lauren Frayer/NPR

"I would actually prefer to call these destitution deaths, because they're all cases of people who went hungry for days, who would have survived if they had had some resources," Dreze says. "See, this is the unfortunate thing: that the most vulnerable people are those who are also more likely to be excluded by this system."

When Aadhaar scanners break down, there's supposed to be a backup system on paper. But at the ration shop NPR visited, near the town of Ramgarh, the paper log was blank — unused.

Aadhaar's architect

"Nobody should be denied benefits — either for lack of Aadhaar, or for lack of authentication," says Nandan Nilekani, the key architect of the nation's Aadhaar system. "There have been some challenges, but that doesn't take away from the enormous benefit of empowerment, mobility and savings this project has given India."

Nilekani is the former CEO of Infosys, a big Indian IT and consulting company. He is a tech billionaire who left the private sector to create Aadhaar for the Indian government.

In an interview in May, Nilekani told NPR that the benefits of Aadhaar far outweigh any glitches.

POLITICS

Facial Scanning Now Arriving At U.S. Airports

"Our whole goal is to give people control. They should be able to get their digital footprint from their smartphone, from their payments, from whatever," Nilekani said. "I'm using my own data to make my life better. That's a fundamental inversion of how you think about data."

Nilekani is from Bangalore, India's version of Silicon Valley. His critics questionwhether a private sector "move fast and break things" approach is appropriate for a government program like Aadhaar. They argue the fundamental job of government is different — to protect the most vulnerable citizens, rather than race to be the most high-tech.

That debate was underway when suddenly reports of data breaches began.

Data privacy

In January, investigative journalist Rachna Khaira discovered that the laptops of some Aadhaar enrollment workers — those who scan irises and take fingerprints — had been hacked. Khaira managed to buy access to up to 1 billion people's Aadhaar data — for less than $7.

After her report, the government agency behind Aadhaar, the Unique Identification Authority of India, took legal action against Khaira, accusing her of cybercrime.

"I am not against Aadhaar," Khaira says. "My only concern was this: that if we implement this project, it should be foolproof. We should not be scared. We should not be feeling jittery about giving out our Aadhaar numbers."

PARALLELS

Facial Recognition In China Is Big Business As Local Governments Boost Surveillance

Keeping people's Aadhaar data secure is not just a job for the Indian government, though. One of the ways it managed to enroll so many people was by partnering with banks, utilities and cellphone providers, many of which require Aadhaar.

So now people's data reside with all those companies as well. It's impossible to know how many data breaches have occurred. In India, the newspapers carry reports of them almost daily.

"When it comes to Aadhaar, it's the Wild West out there in India. Millions and millions of people have been compromised by the process," says Nikhil Pahwa, a privacy activist and founder of the digital news site MediaNama. "I see this as a major national security risk."

Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker, has also criticized Aadhaar, calling it a mass surveillance system that will lead to "civil death" for Indians.

Supreme Court weighs in

Data privacy advocates have taken their concerns all the way to India's Supreme Court. Last year, the court ruled that privacy is a fundamental right.

Then last week, it ruled that private companies can no longer ask for people's Aadhaar data. It also said schools can no longer require biometrics for admission.

THE TWO-WAY

Indian Supreme Court Declares Privacy A Fundamental Right

But the information is already out there, being used by marketing companies — and possibly by political parties.

In August, the Unique Identification Authority of Indiaintroduced new directives to enhance security, including two-factor identification using facial recognition.

A small number of residents of India, including the economist Dreze, have nevertheless refused to enroll in Aadhaar.

In India, though, data privacy is still mostly a concern of the educated, urban class. People in the food ration line may not be as worried about their digital footprint. They have more dire concerns.

Those most vulnerable

Not far from the ration shop NPR visited in rural Jharkhand, migrant workers huddle in sagging thatch huts covered with blue tarps, during the monsoon rains. They are members of India's tribal Adivasi community, who are among the country's poorest citizens. They often migrate between states, with no fixed addresses.

In June, one of the men in their community, Chintaman Malhar, died at age 50. Relatives say he hadn't eaten in days. Based on his field work, Dreze, the economist, concluded that Malhar had lived in a "state of semi-starvation."

Nisha Devi lives in a rudimentary hut covered with a tarp near Ramgarh, in India's Jharkhand state. She believes hunger led to her uncle's recent death before he could get an Aadhaar card. The rest of the family has scrambled to enroll since his death, but Devi has been unable to draw welfare benefits so far.

Lauren Frayer/NPR

Malhar died before he could get an Aadhaar card. After his death, his relatives and neighbors all rushed to try to enroll.

"A local official came and advised us all to enroll in Aadhaar," says Malhar's niece, Nisha Devi, cradling her toddler. "He told us it would help us get residency, and finally have an official address, and get benefits."

She believes hunger killed her uncle, and she wants to avoid a similar fate.

Devi hasn't yet been able to collect any food rations. She is still mired in bureaucracy.

But she hopes that Aadhaar — perhaps the world's most sophisticated biometric system — might one day help her.

PLANET MONEY

Episode 770: When India's Cash Disappeared, Part One

PLANET MONEY

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citizentruth-blog · 6 years

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The Problem With Bipartisanship

Josh Gottheimer is co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus and one of the most bipartisan lawmakers in the House of Representatives. These aren't necessarily things to be touted, though, and his attempts to strong-arm Nancy Pelosi into making rule changes definitely shouldn't be commended. (Photo Credit: FCC/Wikipedia) Note: This post was first published before any meetings between Nancy Pelosi and the Problem Solvers Caucus. The two sides have reportedly cut a deal on proposed rule changes. I'm not the biggest fan of Nancy Pelosi personally. Even I, though, have to balk at the recent attempts to challenge her prospective leadership as Speaker of the House. In particular, a no-vote of confidence from members of the Problem Solvers Caucus seems to be, well, a problem, or at least a distraction. The Problem Solvers Caucus is a bipartisan group of representatives that seeks to create cooperation among members of both major parties on key policy issues. In practice, it is a centrist committee. For the purposes of this challenge's to Pelosi's authority, Jim Costa (CA), Vicente González (TX), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Daniel Lipinski (IL), Stephanie Murphy (FL), Tom O'Halleran (AZ), Kurt Schrader (OR), Darren Soto (FL), and Tom Suozzi (NY) are the Democrats who are making their support contingent on the eventual Speaker's acceptance of certain rule changes. As Gottheimer, caucus co-chair, identified, these #BreaktheGridlock changes involve 1) legislation going to the House floor for debate and a vote when co-sponsored by at least three-fifths of Congress, 2) an amendment to legislation getting a debate and vote with at least 20 Democratic and 20 Republican co-sponsors, and 3) each member of Congress being allowed to introduce a bill for debate and vote on a committee he or she serves on once a congressional term. In principle, these proposals designed to "break the gridlock" are worth considering in the name of procedural reform. The timing and very public nature of this threat to Pelosi's leadership, however, as well as the take-it-or-leave attitude accompanying it, are concerning. What's more, when considered alongside existing feelings that the Democratic Party needs to be taken in a "new direction," the overall picture is one of party discord at a time when gains in the House should perhaps have the Dems thinking more harmoniously. What's additionally striking about this turn of events is that it has come at the behest of members of a caucus that tout their bipartisan credentials, not long after Pelosi herself vowed the House would move toward greater bipartisanship. Of course, this in itself drew criticism elsewhere. That Nancy Pelosi—damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. Amid a spirit of partisan acrimony and congressional ineffectiveness, bipartisanship would seem to be exactly what we'd want or need. Everybody gets along, Congress actually gets meaningful things done—sounds good, right? The problem with bipartisanship as an ideal, however, is that it may be overrated, if not counterproductive. Lew Blank, editor-in-chief of The Outsider, an independent, student-led online publication devoted to telling stories from outside the mainstream media bubble and the two-party binary, wrote in a detailed post last year (with helpful charts and graphs!) about how bipartisanship is, well, a myth. Firstly, there's the matter of how the goal of bipartisanship tends to reduce matters to "debates" in the name of balance when there should be no room for debate. Blank starts his article thusly: What America considers a debate is pretty messed up. Apparently, the existence of climate change is a “debate.” Allowing 33,000 Americans to die every year because they can’t afford health care is a “debate.” Continuing to arm ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria is a “debate.” And yet, there’s one singular issue that seems to read “case closed” in the minds of millions of Americans, both red and blue: bipartisanship. Somehow, we have wound up in a world where saying “we should stop literally arming terrorists” is an opinion, but lauding the glories of bipartisan politics is unbiased and impartial. On top of this, and more to the point, finding bipartisan legislative solutions tends to involve compromises that skew to the political right. As Blank characterizes this relationship, centrist Democrats often strive for policies that are "both (a) conservative enough to get Republican support, and (b) liberal enough to like." Viewing Obama-era policy directives through this lens, however, very few, if any, of them actually ticked both boxes. Either they were too conservative for liberals to like (e.g. extending the Bush tax cuts), too liberal for conservatives to pass or support after Obama was gone (e.g. the Paris Agreement), or neither very liberal nor supported by the GOP (e.g. military expansion that still saw Obama's critics calling him "soft on terrorism"). The wrench in compromising and finding a middle ground, as many on the left might expect, is the uncompromising position Republicans take on issue after issue. In Blank's words, their failure to "support anything with even a tinge of progressivism" means trying to bend over backward to appease them is a non-starter. The true solution for Democrats, then, is to run to the left. Only from this position can they negotiate and get something close to what they really want. Per Blank: This is compromise 101. If you get an offer of $50 for a painting and you ask for $60 instead, you may come away with a solid $55. If you go the “moderate” route and raise to $51 instead, you’re missing out on a potential four dollars. What's more, the statistics seem to bear out that running further to the left is the better strategy from an electoral perspective. How else to explain the enduring popularity of someone like Bernie Sanders and the lingering unpopularity of someone like Hillary Clinton? Of course, popularity and social media fervor don't necessarily equate to votes cast. Then again, capitulation is not a very sexy approach to attracting voters, especially in the context of a general election, so why not go for the gusto? Noting the refusal of Republicans to yield on policy matters in recent years, examples of bipartisan cooperation on the part of moderate Democrats might actually be more disconcerting than anything. As alluded to before, increased military spending has continued to be approved by Congress despite the cost of human life and despite the notion this focus on "defense" dwarfs the spending on domestic programs the GOP claims we can't afford. The Dodd-Frank rollback aided and abetted by "Blue Dog" Dems like Gottheimer also jumps to mind as one of those points of accord between parties that should inspire fear more than confidence. Coming together is all well and good when we're paving the road to another economic collapse. For any number of reasons, therefore, bipartisanship may not be all it's cracked up to be. Not the least of which is, if you ask this writer, that at 14 letters, the word bipartisanship is already too long. As with "civility," calls for bipartisanship are only as good as the individual or individuals making such an appeal. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell caught flak for an op-ed for FOX News in which he asked whether the Democrats will work with Republicans, or "simply put partisan politics ahead of the country?" The irony was not lost on, er, pretty much anyone who knows McConnell. The Republican senator from Kentucky has been the proverbial poster child for partisan obstructionism in recent years. Accordingly, the prevailing response seemed to be "Merrick Garland" and some sort of invective or gesture not printable in this space. How's that for bipartisanship, Mr. McConnell? Nancy Pelosi, in her stated preference to work in a bipartisan manner within Congress and with President Trump, may have been similarly full of shit—at least outwardly. That is, she may genuinely wish to work in a partnership with Trump and the GOP, but knowing his and his party's demands, this is functionally impossible. In this respect, Pelosi's conviviality appears to be a show of rationality and goodwill in the face of a White House that lacks it so as to make her and her party look more reasonable. Even in jest, however, the sentiment is one whose sharing has the power to boil progressives' blood. I'm a resident of New Jersey's ninth congressional district, but I'm a friend of a number of progressive-minded residents of the fifth where Josh Gottheimer calls home (by crossing from one town into the next, you're entering into a different district). And I can tell you this much: while they're plenty relieved to have someone like Gottheimer rather than someone like John McCann or his predecessor Scott Garrett in office, they're disappointed in this display of brazenness from the co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus. This isn't the first time he's disappointed them either, whether it's because he voted with the GOP or because he has avoided making his stance clear so as to not risk a backlash. On one hand, there's the political "reality" that he represents a district which has its clearly blue and red segments, so his bipartisan mentality may have its advantages. On the other hand, as a Democratic supporter, it makes you wonder what lines someone like Gottheimer won't cross. A number of these friends either voted to endorse him or campaigned for him in the midterms. Their reward? Little, if any, expressed gratitude and an overt attempt to undermine their party's leadership. It should be no surprise that there's already talk of wanting a primary challenge to Gottheimer's seat in the House. For my part, I think all incumbents should be challenged as a matter of procedure and because it makes for better party platforms, but I sympathize with this desire. Though it may go without saying at this point, there's a financial aspect to this effort to contest Pelosi's leadership heretofore unmentioned. As Ryan Grim of The Intercept reports, political/corporate consultant Mark Penn and No Labels, a bipartisan group funded by wealthy donors, are the driving force behind this revolt. Gottheimer and Penn, described by Grim as "one of the most toxic and notorious partisan warriors the Democratic Party has produced in the past three decades," have a history together dating back to the Bill Clinton White House. Members of no Labels, described by critics as "aggressively" centrist, have had an ax to grind against Pelosi for some time now. While they may have softened their position to make her Public Enemy #1—when in doubt, Bernie Sanders makes a convenient target—that ill will has evidently lingered. There's ample room for debate whether or not Nancy Pelosi, a seeming epitome of the "old guard" of Democratic Party leadership, is the right person for the role of Speaker of the House come January. Certainly, though, this attack on her from the Problem Solvers Caucus is one to be disparaged, as their insistence on "breaking the gridlock" purely as a function of their moderate ideology rings hollow. In all, the Democrats' commitment to bipartisanship without any show of good faith from the Republican Party is a questionable tack to take. It's bad negotiating on top of poor electoral strategy, and its effectiveness as a tool to rally the base is similarly suspect. With the Dems needing a big win in 2020 to continue their momentum, that's a problem. Read the full article

#bipartisanship #DemocraticParty #JoshGottheimer #MitchMcConnell #NancyPelosi #NoLabels #ProblemSolversCaucus #RepublicanParty

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killingthebuddha · 6 years

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“If you focus too much on only a personal relationship being the core tenet of your faith, then it means that you’re more easily able to marginalize topics like human suffering, which in some cases is spurred by climate change. We are embodied creatures in this planet, so let’s live like we are,” said Sean Lyon. Credit: Meera Subramanian

WHEATON, Illinois — Diego Hernandez wasn’t thinking much about climate change until last summer, when he was traveling with his family along the Gulf Coast in his home state of Texas, where his ancestors—cowboys and politicians, he said—reach back to the 1600s. His mother suggested they take the “scenic route” for that summer drive, Diego said, his fingers making air-quotes because there was nothing “scenic” about it. All he saw were oil refineries.

“At that moment,” said 19-year-old Diego, who considers himself a libertarian, “the switch kind of flipped for me.” Why are we putting refineries in this beautiful place? he thought. The impacts from Hurricane Harvey, which had hit Houston the previous August and had affected some of Diego’s relatives, were also still lingering in his mind.

“I used to be like, oh, there’s oil, go start drilling, you know, because of course it’s all about the money, right?” he said, his voice tinged with sarcasm. But after that family outing, he began to ask questions—”What is it doing to our environment? How is it going to affect us in the next 10 to 50 years?”—and since then he’s had climate change on his mind.

Diego is a clean-shaven, lifelong Christian wearing a cyan blue button-down and polished cowboy boots, and a sophomore at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, which has been called the Harvard of Christian schools. The entrance sign, framed by a glowing bed of zinnias in full bloom, pronounces the school’s motto: “For Christ and His Kingdom.” But while Diego has all the credentials of a true political conservative—president of Wheaton’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, a cabinet member of the College Republicans—he also finds himself genuinely baffled by the right’s stance against acting on climate change.

While many evangelicals are preoccupied with the long-term state of human souls and the protection of the unborn, Diego and the other students I met at Wheaton are also considering other eternal implications and a broader definition of pro-life. They are concerned about the lifespan of climate pollutants that will last in the atmosphere for thousands of years, and about the lives of the poor and weak who are being disproportionately harmed by the effects of those greenhouse gases. While Diego was just shy of eligible voting age in the 2016 presidential election, he’s old enough to vote now. He and other young evangelicals thought hard this year about the politicians on offer, the issues they stand for, and who deserved their votes.

What’s an Evangelical to Do?

Evangelical Protestants—one in four American adults—are a political powerhouse. They are the single largest religious group in the nation, and they are nearly twice as likely to be Republican as Democrat. And while Baby Boomers are currently the strongest political voting bloc, that’s only because the older you are, the more likely you are to vote.

The current crop of younger people—from Gen X to Millennials to the newly minted adults I met at Wheaton—are poised to dominate the eligible-voter body politic. They would definitively tip the voting scales—should they become engaged. There are signs they might be doing just that. From the Parkland school shooting victims to Millennial political candidates, the youth of America are speaking up. And, significantly, they accept the scientific consensus on climate change at a much higher rate than their elders.

This is true even of young evangelicals, as the existence of the Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA) attests. YECA is a ministry of the Evangelical Environmental Network that aims to mobilize students, influence religious leaders and pressure lawmakers into passing legislation to address climate change. I met Diego at a climate change discussion event on campus that was organized by Chelsey Geisz, a Wheaton junior and a YECA climate leadership fellow.

From Colorado Springs, Colorado, Chelsey, 20, always loved nature, she told me as we sat together in a gazebo in Adams Park, near campus. She’d taken a few classes on sustainability at Wheaton, and last year spent time working at Eighth Day Farm in Holland, Michigan, where Christian volunteers have turned the dirt once trapped below strip mall pavement into garden plots to grow vegetables for the hungry. These experiences meant she was primed when she heard about YECA.

Though non-partisan, YECA is targeting conservatives, since that’s where the facts of climate change have failed to lead to action. According to the organization, they’ve engaged more than 10,000 young evangelicals so far. Along with Chelsey, there are another half-dozen fellows at other schools across the country, helping to build the grassroots movement. The fellowship includes a summer training session that covers the science of climate change, as well as the socio-cultural and religious aspects of the issue. As a YECA fellow, Chelsey organizes campus events such as the session I attended in September and she serves as Wheaton’s executive vice president of campus sustainability, a new position that YECA helped develop.

It can be tough to be an evangelical who cares about climate change, Chelsey said, “because the environmental activists don’t trust you and the evangelicals hate you.” Or they could hate you; she was quick to point out that the evangelicals she knows personally are generally tolerant of her views. “I’m not encountering anyone at Wheaton, even among my most conservative friends, who disagree with climate change,” she told me. She’s having some trouble with her father, though, who’s troubled by her YECA work. He holds a Harvard law degree, works at a company that invests in resource-rich properties, and associates Chelsey’s transformation into a “climate activist” with a liberal agenda he finds suspect. “For a man who has such well-reasoned opinions, I just feel like there’s so much emotion for him that it’s not about the science at all,” she said.

As for liberals themselves, Chelsey said, some of them do treat evangelicals like her with some suspicion. After all, aren’t evangelicals the ones who elected anti-environment Trump?

“I think there’s some misunderstanding about what our faith compels us to do,” she said as the sun set behind her, creating a halo around the edges of her auburn hair.

Praising Natural Systems

Sean Lyon is a recent Wheaton graduate who was also a YECA fellow while he was in school. He feels that he was born to love the natural world; his first word as an infant was “bird,” after all, and flying creatures remain a passion he can’t quite explain. While in school, he created his own interdisciplinary major of biology and business and spent significant time in Tanzania working with ECHO East Africa, a faith-based sustainable agriculture organization. He still lives in the town of Wheaton, easy commuting distance to Chicago, where he’s volunteering at the Field Museum of Natural History.

Sean, 23, grew up in upstate New York, among “classic North American white evangelicals,” where climate was not a concern and politics were conservative. But his love of the natural world shifted his perspective. He saw heaven on earth, and something worth saving, in every wingbeat he witnessed.

“Every ecosystem carries His creativity in it,” Sean said, “and every species is a mark of His design.” He had a thick brass bangle encircling his wrist, and blue eyes behind clear Lucite-rimmed glasses. Sean drew an analogy to his sister and grandparents, who are all artists. “So how would I treat the art that they created? If I love them, then I’m going to treat their art well. I’m not going to deface it. I’m not going to ignore it. I’m going to really honor it. And so when I see my God as having created everything that I’m interacting with, I want to honor it because that’s a way that I can show my love for this Creator.”

But God didn’t just create singular works, Sean said; he created systems, natural systems that every living being relies on. He hoped that all Christians—no, he corrected himself, all faiths—would unite to protect those systems.

“That’s my current prayer.”

‘Structural Sin’

Climate science isn’t questioned at Wheaton College the way it often is in the wider evangelical community. The school is a brick-and-mortar rebuttal to the myth that science and religion must be at odds with each other. When Wheaton students step into their-state-of-the-art science building, for instance, they are greeted with signs stating that a “sound Biblical theology gives us a proper basis for scientific inquiry,” and a display featuring locally excavated Perry the Mastodon, which carbon dating shows to be more than 13,000 years old.

The school is not alone in intertwining commitments to love God and protect the earth, often referred to as “creation care.” The Cape Town Commitment, a global agreement between evangelical leaders from nearly 200 countries, includes acknowledgement of climate change and how it will hurt the world’s poor (and it is required reading for Wheaton freshmen). Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University and an evangelical, has been an outspoken advocate for climate action. And in addition to YECA, there are numerous groups active in this arena, including the Evangelical Climate Initiative, Climate Caretakers, Care of Creation and A Rocha.

In late 2015, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)—the biggest umbrella group of evangelicals in the country, representing 43 million Americans—issued a statement accepting climate change, acknowledging the human contribution to it and encouraging action. YECA’s advocacy helped bring that statement, called “Loving the Least of These,” into being. In it, NAE argues that Christians should be compelled to care about climate change as a matter of social justice, equating those without the resources to adapt to failed farming or dry wells or rising seas as the modern-day equivalents of the widows and orphans of Jesus’s day.

When Chelsey reads the Bible, she hears this gospel of social justice, too.

“Instead of talking about climate change,” she said of her work as a YECA fellow, “I talk about environmental justice. There’s definitely a guilty complex, especially among the white evangelical community, about how complicit we’ve been, and apathetic. People really want to redeem that.”

Chelsey’s framing reveals that she is steeped in a liberal arts ethos friendly to intersectionality, the idea that humanity’s ills, which disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, cannot be conquered until root causes are addressed. This perspective is shaping academic dialogue in both secular and faith-based schools.

But does fighting climate change detract from evangelism? Here there’s a rift within the evangelical community. Should the emphasis be on saving souls or saving God’s creation? And are the two really at odds?

“That’s the Billy Graham evangelicalism,” Chelsey said of the personal salvation perspective, referencing Wheaton’s most famous alumnus. “It’s your faith between you and Jesus.” But the problem with that approach, she said, is that it doesn’t force Christians to deal with larger systems of injustice. “The evangelical community is really limited when it comes to talking about systemic and structural sin rather than individual sin. Most of us have never heard about systemic racism and climate change in church,” she said. Even as evangelical organizations embrace the need for action, the message isn’t coming across from the pulpit. “These things never come up because they’re apparently not gospel issues,” Chelsey said, “But at Wheaton, we think they are.”

For Sean, there’s not one speck of conflict between his love of God and the gospel and his fierce desire to see action on climate change. They’re complementary, he said.

“If you focus too much on only a personal relationship being the core tenet of your faith, then it means that you’re more easily able to marginalize topics like human suffering, which in some cases is spurred by climate change,” he said. “We are embodied creatures in this planet, so let’s live like we are.”

Could his concern for the climate be a threat to his faith? I asked him.

“Actually, I see more of a threat in the idea that we can divorce our lives on this earth and the lives of other people and the lives of other creatures from our life of faith,” Sean said. Better to revel in God’s love. “How much deeper and how much more beautiful is a way of loving Him that involves my whole being and the whole world around me rather than just simply the status of my soul?”

When Pro-Life Means Entire Lives

Abortion was the entry point into American politics for many evangelicals, after the Supreme Court affirmed abortion rights in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Before that, evangelicals were generally unconcerned about abortion rights, which had the uncontroversial support of Republicans; they were also generally disengaged from voting. Today, the single-issue anti-abortion preoccupation of many evangelicals, now considered a given by many political leaders, confounds some of the young evangelicals I met at Wheaton.

“If we say we’re pro-life, we have to care for people who are experiencing incredible environmental degradation and so directly affected by climate change,” Chelsey said. “If we’re pro-life, that’s a bigger issue to me than abortion.”

Sean agreed. “So many people are now saying, okay, if you’re going to be pro-life you have to be pro all-of-life, lifelong pro-life, which has primarily come up in the immigration debate. If you’re pro-life, how can you be separating children from their parents?”

Diego sees it a little differently. “Abortion is definitely a deal-breaker for me,” he said, even though he said he’s not generally a one-issue voter. He echoed Sean and Chelsey to some degree, agreeing that “being pro-life doesn’t just mean being pro-life to the baby at birth. It also means the life of the mother and the life of the baby after birth.” But when he watched the 2016 presidential debates, he found himself agreeing with some of Hillary Clinton’s points … until he was appalled by what he saw as her “gung-ho” support of abortion rights. He decided he could just not get behind someone with those views.

Young evangelicals wrestle with these difficult choices in the voting booth, confronted with either/or candidates, unsure who will best represent their hopes for life on earth, all life, all of God’s creation. Right now, anti-abortion rights Christians typically have only one party to get behind. And it’s that party, represented in the White House, that is aggressively rolling back climate protections, from pulling out of the Paris climate accord to promoting coal.

Future Powerhouse at the Polls?

Diego, Chelsey and Sean are the future. This younger generation has grown up with the realities of climate change and political polarization since they were swinging on monkey bars, and they aren’t hesitating to break rank with evangelical Baby Boomers on the issue. They remain faithful and politically conservative for the most part, but they are more concerned about a climate that they will have to live with much longer than those boomers heading into retirement. The shift aligns with a recent Pew poll that found that among Republicans, young adults were far less likely than their elders to support reliance on fossil fuels.

“Every one of the people who I’ve talked to who’s come to my events and engaged in climate issues from a Christian perspective said, ‘My parents don’t agree with me,'” Sean told me.

But even with this clear shift toward accepting climate science among young Americans, the quandary for young evangelicals in the voting booth remains.

Sean, who said he couldn’t in good conscience vote for either party, opted for Jill Stein in 2016.

Chelsey, as a busy freshman in 2016, followed in her father’s footsteps and voted for Trump. Her father had been singularly focused on getting a Republican on the Supreme Court. Now, she hangs her head about the decision.

Diego, about to vote in his first election, grew up in a struggling, hard-working family in San Antonio. His father showed him how to mow lawns when he was six, he said. His mother would pick up her raggedy old Bible and tell Diego, “This is what you should base all of your beliefs and all your values on. It shouldn’t be what you hear from someone on TV or C-SPAN or NPR.”

Surveys show that the way people view climate change is determined more by political affiliation, along with race and ethnicity, than by religious affiliation. So while 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, it’s important to remember that about a quarter of the country’s evangelicals are not white, and it is among minority groups that the evangelical community is growing. And on the issue of climate change, Diego’s Latino background makes him part of the American demographic that is most concerned about climate change. He wonders whether his mother deliberately pushed for that “scenic route” to wake him up a little.

What are the choices for these faithful young? With church membership in decline and the Republican party in flux, how vocal these young people are could shape the future of the climate debate. If the Christian right wants to hold onto the next generation, getting right with the planet might prove as important as getting right with God.

Many concerned about the environment rally for more evangelicals to understand climate change and embrace leadership positions on the issue. “It would be a milestone if you managed to take influential evangelists—preachers—to adopt the idea of global warming, and to preach it,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman told the host of Hidden Brain, an NPR science show. “That would change things. It’s not going to happen by presenting more evidence, that is clear.”

And in the book The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, renowned biologist E.O. Wilson wrote a long letter with the salutation, “Dear Pastor.” It is an urgent, heartfelt plea. “We need your help. The Creation—living Nature—is in deep trouble. Scientists estimate that … half the species of plants and animals on Earth could be either gone or at least fated for early extinction by the end of the century. A full quarter will drop to this level during the next half century as a result of climate change alone.”

These new sermons and stories are unlikely to come from older pastors and preachers, most of whom have become representatives of the Republican Party platform that doesn’t want to even acknowledge that climate change is an issue to discuss, let alone embark on the massive undertaking necessary to begin to solve it. But for the young, who will live with the catastrophic predictions that worsen with each new iteration of the UN climate report, there are new stories emerging. They are conversion stories of a new sort, springing from dirt once buried under Midwestern parking lots and held aloft on the wings of Sean’s beloved birds. Preachers and politicians seeking to keep the young religious right in their midst may need to leap past the quagmire of a questionable climate change debate and get right to the root of finding solutions for the generations that will be living into the long tomorrow of a warming planet.

This story was originally published on InsideClimate News.

#IFTTT #WordPress

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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It’s obviously way too early for anyone to have a realistic sense of who is going to prevail in Democrats’ large field of 2020 presidential candidates, but it’s never too early to start breathless speculation about at least parts of it.

The betting website PredictIt offers a perfect opportunity to take stock of where the conventional wisdom currently lies, and where it may be wrong. The site runs an ongoing market about the 2020 race where you can buy “stock” in any candidate, and each share you own of the winner will pay out with a value of $1 when the nomination is run. That means you can interpret the current market price, in cents, of a single share as offering implicit odds on the probability of that contender winning.

As of Thursday afternoon, for example, a share of Kirsten Gillibrand costs 11 cents, implying an 11 percent chance that she will be the nominee.

What the bettors say — and what we think is correct — is that at the moment, there is no overwhelming frontrunner, just a broad field of plausible contenders with a real chance of winning. Given that reality, we’re not going to try to guess the final outcome (at least not yet), but instead give Vox staffers a chance to take regular peeks at the current odds and offer some thoughts about who may be overrated or underrated at current prices.

It feels petty to dump on a guy who’s currently at 3 percent, but honestly, 3 percent badly overrates Andrew Cuomo’s odds. As the governor of New York, he naturally attracts media attention, and the fact that his brother is a CNN host doesn’t hurt in that regard either.

Yet even though all polls indicate Cuomo will prevail fairly easily against Cynthia Nixon, who is challenging him in the primary, the fact that we’re even talking about a primary challenge by Cynthia Nixon shows Cuomo’s profound problems as a potential nominee.

Years ago, when Cuomo first became governor, he made a bet that the biggest risk to his presidential aspirations was that as governor of a large blue state, he would find himself pushed to tack left on policy and render himself “unelectable” in a national race. That got him sucked into all kinds of antics designed to keep Republicans in control of the New York state Senate that completely soured his reputation with progressives over a period of years during which the overall center of gravity in the Democratic Party has moved considerably to the left. Basically, he zigged when in retrospect he should have zagged.

He’s running for reelection with the backing of a strong party machine and almost all of the state’s labor unions, and he will almost certainly win especially given black voters’ historic distaste for white insurgent reformers like Nixon. But none of these strengths will apply in a presidential primary. Against professional politicians, some of whom are black themselves, and without a machine to back him, there’s just no way Cuomo can prevail. The right price for him is zero.

Speaking of which, if you want to take a flyer on a white male governor with presidential ambitions, I’d consider investing in Washington’s Jay Inslee. He’s obviously not likely to win the nomination, and right now he isn’t on the board at all. But I don’t think it’s too hard to tell a story in which in a field crowded with senators making broadly similar pitches about health care and fighting Donald Trump, a blue-state governor manages to catch fire by talking about actual policy accomplishments in his home state and a message focused on climate change. Is Inslee going to win? Probably not. But is he worth taking a gamble on if you can get him for cheap? Absolutely. —Matthew Yglesias

Former Vice President Joe Biden is near the top of the board at 15 cents. It’s time to sell.

Biden is back in the news this week since the passing of his friend John McCain. He’ll serve as one of McCain’s pallbearers on Saturday. Biden’s friendship with McCain is more than a bromance; it’s a symbol of America’s aspirational politics — one that values bipartisanship and civility.

This is Biden’s appeal. He’s an old-school, glad-handing politician — a man who loves to stump and to mix it up with voters. He’s a throwback who seems like he would make a great candidate.

The reality, though, is that not only is that not the politics of the moment, but Biden has never been very good at it anyway. His first two presidential campaigns, in 1988 and 2008, went down in flames. He bowed in 1988 after he was accused of plagiarizing a speech and a law school paper. In 2008, he never performed above single digits nationally during the Democratic primary. He wasn’t able to raise much money. Above all, despite his folksy image and reputation for retail politics, he came in fifth in the Iowa caucuses. If there’s a state for a Democrat who does well with white working-class voters, Iowa would probably be it.

Certainly, Biden’s name recognition and reputation are much higher after eight years serving as Obama’s affable vice president. The press loves him.

But besides the press, Biden doesn’t have much of a constituency in the Democratic Party. He’s not part of the emerging Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing. His policy ideas are liberal, but they aren’t the woke politics around identity. He’s a neoliberal throwback, not the future of the Democratic Party. At 15 cents, it’s time to sell.

If you’re looking to take a gamble on a former senator who ran for the vice presidency, you might as well buy Tim Kaine at 2 cents, a relative bargain compared to Biden. He’s also a nice-guy candidate, affable and consensus-building. Ideologically, he’s a similarly situated Democrat as Biden — a liberal as it used to be defined, so relatively moderate today.

He’s got the upside of recent campaign experience, running with Hillary Clinton and seeing the pitfalls of her run up close. He could carry Virginia in the primary and in the general (a potentially appealing case to strategic primary voters). And he’s been in Clintonworld for many years and has connections to that donor network. Is he the most likely to win the primary? Probably not. But he’s a good buy at 2 cents. —Laura McGann

At the very top of the PredictIt betting markets is Kamala Harris, whom you can bet on for 22 cents. It would be foolhardy to rule out Harris entirely, but top of the pack? No way:

PredictIt

Harris polls poorly at this point. In fairness to her, polls two years out are basically meaningless. Rudy Giuliani was not the Republican nominee in 2008, nor was Al Gore the Democratic nominee in 2004. But the polls serve as at least a small data point against the idea of her as a frontrunner.

The core of the case that she’ll be the nominee, as FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon explains, is the theory “among political insiders” that “Harris could win the Democratic nomination with a coalition of well-educated whites and blacks, the way Obama did in 2008.” This, I think, is a misreading of what Obama pulled off in 2008.

For one thing, Obama completely dominated both the ideologically left segment of the primary electorate and the black vote. There was no credible candidate plainly to his left; John Edwards tried to outflank him on economic issues but had voted for the Iraq War, and Dennis Kucinich was generally treated as a UFO-believing punchline. (And Kucinich clearly saw Obama as the furthest-left mainstream candidate, as he threw his Iowa supporters toward him at the last minute.)

Harris, by contrast, will almost certainly not be the most left-wing candidate running, and will face a challenge winning over Black Lives Matter activists, #AbolishICE proponents, and other voters critical of mass incarceration and police brutality. Yes, she wants to reform cash bail and has tried to improve her anti-prison bona fides in the Senate. But she started her career as a prosecutor; has a long record of defending the death penalty against legal challenges (while claiming to be personally opposed it it); resisted strong reforms to the state’s “three strikes” law; and in 2015, as California attorney general, tried to block two trans prisoners from getting gender-affirming surgeries. In a crowded field, stuff like that could be a real problem.

Nor is she likely to be the only black candidate in the field. Her Senate colleague Cory Booker is almost certainly going to jump in, and it’s possible that former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick or former Attorney General Eric Holder will as well. That not only prevents her from, as Obama did, putting together a winning coalition with an overwhelming majority of black voters plus elite whites, but it also, along with her weakness on criminal justice issues, means she’ll be forced to actively court black voters in ways that promise to turn off racist white voters in both the primary and the general.

So who should be first in a crowded field in these betting markets? My pick would be Bernie Sanders:

PredictIt

Do I think it’s probable (as in, more than 50 percent odds) that Sanders wins the nomination? Absolutely not. He’d be the oldest president ever elected by a wide margin, he’ll probably lose the black and Latino vote and continue to struggle in the South, and this time, around he won’t be the only alternative to the frontrunner that most people consider (sorry, Martin O’Malley).

But consider what he has going for him:

He tied in Iowa last time, and there’s no regional candidate who would obviously be stronger than him there.

He won New Hampshire in a blowout, and even against fellow New Englander Elizabeth Warren, he’s in a strong position to do the same again.

It’s common for parties to choose runners-up as their nominees the next time around (as Sanders learned when he lost to Clinton).

Every other major contender (except perhaps Biden) has spent the past year scrambling to go as far left as Sanders has always been. He’s the genuine article in a field of imitators. If you’re a nurse in Iowa, would you rather go with someone who’s supported single-payer health care his whole life, like Sanders, or someone who signed on last year, like Booker, Gillibrand, Harris, or Warren?

Of course, it’s entirely possible that Sanders declines to run, deferring to Warren or staying out of the race entirely. But if he does run, I put his odds much higher than 15 percent. —Dylan Matthews

Original Source -> A way-too-early look at which 2020 Democratic contenders are overrated

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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newstfionline · 6 years

Text

Will There Always Be an England?

By Andrew Sullivan, New York Mag, April 27, 2018

Home is where one starts from. And like many English families, mine is still there, my brother and father still living in the very town I grew up in, my sister and mother a short drive away. So much remains exactly the same, and at this time of year this is especially true. On the cusp of spring, when the new leaves begin to unfold as specks of newborn green in the woodlands, a small miracle occurs.

The bluebells arrive, like an iridescent blue carpet below, spreading along hedgerows, suddenly swamping forests and copses, emerging out of the rotten, sodden leaves of last autumn. By the time I leave at the end of next week, the bluebells will have wilted and disappeared, but for now, they are like a million little madeleines of my other life in another country.

And yet England, as I have found it, suddenly feels deeply familiar to my American self. In London, it is as if I never left Washington. It’s the atmosphere that feels so similar. The minute you start chatting with anyone about the state of the country, you can almost feel the toxicity and tension, and the tenacious tribalism rending the country apart. Westminster feels like Washington, the way it did when Reagan and Thatcher were ascendant in the 1980s, or when Clinton and Blair entrenched the legacy of their conservative predecessors in the 1990s. This time, they are defined not by a new common direction but by a shared unraveling.

And if you hang around, you can begin to realize why. If my hometown feels remarkably similar, London is close to unrecognizable from the city I knew as a teen. Its skyline has a touch of Dubai to it, the wealth is tangible, even obscene, the prices absurd, the energy young and incredibly diverse. “It’s not our capital any more, is it?” my brother asks, as if seeking confirmation from me. I can see what he means, by virtue of not being there continuously as change accumulated and transformed. In a little less than a week in London, I have yet to buy anything from someone English. Everywhere I hear foreign accents or one of the more than 300 languages London now incorporates. Thirty-seven percent of the capital’s population is foreign-born--the same as New York City--and that share is predicted to be 50 percent by 2031. But New York has always been a thriving immigrant city; newcomers have always defined the place, and it’s just one of several vast metropoles in America. But London is the overwhelmingly dominant city in the U.K., and has never previously been a city of immigrants in the English psyche. London, in fact, is synonymous with the essence of England, and has been a national center since the Roman era. The counties surrounding it are called the Home Counties, because London has always been home.

I love the new London, but then I would, wouldn’t I? I’m an American now, and became one in part because I fell in love with its racial and cultural diversity. But most people, not gifted with a great education and lucky breaks, are not able to hop and skip between capital cities, finding each metropolis increasingly and pleasantly like the other. They’re in suburbs and small towns, or in the rust-belt north. And they’re anxious--in a way that the young are not anxious. For the under-40s, economic insecurity, college debt, and inability to own a home drive the angst. For the over-40s, it’s a sense that the England they identified with, that gave their lives meaning and pride--the England that was nearly destroyed in the “finest hour” of 1940--this “sceptered isle,” is disappearing.

That’s the reason for Brexit. Period. In my view, it is an insane decision and it’s becoming ever-clearer what the nature of that madness is. The current debate is whether the U.K. will remain in a single market, a customs union, or a customs partnership. If you ask anyone the difference between the three, the brows furrow as the eyes glaze over. The Tories argue for Brexit, bizarrely, as a tool for freer trade, in true English fashion. But it is withdrawal from the biggest free-trade area in the world! Many of the regulations and standards imposed Europe-wide will have to be retained, but under British law, not European--because the economies are so intertwined. The more you investigate what Brexit actually, practically means, it turns out to be an attempt to keep everything the same but somehow change it completely. It’s a policy that makes no sense, is being negotiated by a prime minister who voted to remain in the E.U., is being debated by a Parliament overwhelmingly pro-staying, in deference to a referendum that was a blizzard of disinformation and ignorance. I truly don’t believe if you asked the average Brit what the E.U. is, they’d be able to give you a coherent answer.

But they voted against it because they are scared. Last week’s PRRI/Atlantic study of the key voters who brought us Trump brings this out with stunning and, for me, decisive clarity:

Sixty-eight percent of white working-class voters said the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence. And nearly half agreed with the statement, ‘things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.’ … Only a small portion--just 27 percent--of white working-class voters said they favor a policy of identifying and deporting immigrants who are in the country illegally. [But] among the people who did share this belief, Trump was wildly popular: 87 percent of them supported the president in the 2016 election … Nearly two-thirds of the white working class say American culture has gotten worse since the 1950s. Sixty-eight percent say the U.S. is in danger of losing its identity, and 62 percent say America’s growing number of immigrants threaten the country’s culture.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has called these people witting enablers of white supremacy because they voted for Trump, conjuring up images of men in white hoods lynching and murdering African-Americans. But many of them voted for Obama twice. Clinton called half of Trump voters a “basket of deplorables.” But a majority of white women voted for Trump. The left intelligentsia regards them as bigots, racists, xenophobes, and even “privileged”--attitudes and statements that are re-broadcast every hour of every day to the white and culturally anxious viewers of Fox News. What few on the left seem to see is that cultural anxiety, given the ethnic and cultural transformation of the last few decades, is an entirely predictable and entirely understandable response. If people felt that someone in charge actually saw their point of view, sympathized with it, and attempted even minor changes to accommodate it, we would have a different politics. But all they had was Trump. And all they still have is Trump.

If that is true in immigrant-created, multiracial, multicultural America, a vast and churning continent, always restless, always changing, it is triply true in the little, overcrowded, once remarkably homogeneous island that is Britain. This country’s core identity is thousands of years old. Yes, it has long accepted immigrants, but until the 1950s, net immigration was a rounding error. Since then, it has exploded. In the last 20 years, it has reached American levels. For those whose self-understanding is wrapped up in bluebells and tea, in English accents divided solely by class and region, in a nearly all-white and all-English country for centuries, these times are culturally terrifying.

It wasn’t their economic insecurity that gave us Brexit. It was that no one in charge even sensed their unease. Elites--and I count myself among the guilty--gave them nothing by way of reassurance or even a sense that they were understood instead of reviled. So all they had was Brexit. It wasn’t a rational decision; it was their only way to have their voices heard. Their pride and self-identity are bound up in it now, just as a critical slice of America’s is bound up in Trump. Which is why, despite the mounting evidence that the Brexit gambit is a disaster, they will never let it go.

We have been fools on mass immigration, we have been fools for preventing an honest debate about the benefits and drawbacks of diversity, and we have been contemptible in our contempt for so many of our fellow citizens. Both countries are now paying a terrible, terrible price.

Whatever else you say about Britain these days, it no longer feels like a free country. I don’t just mean the hideous suffocation of free speech--although that’s shocking enough. That someone was actually fined over $1,000 for making a stupid joke video of their pug doing a Nazi salute would be hilarious if it weren’t also so preposterous. And if you want to see what the world would look like if the social-justice movement could truly get their way, and if the First Amendment did not exist, come to England.

Here, a politically incorrect statement could have you hauled into court. A young woman was recently sentenced to an eight-week community service order and legal costs of nearly $7,000 for putting a quote from Snap Dogg on her Instagram account, the Spectator’s Brendan O’Neill reported. (The quote included the N-word and offended a cop from the local police hate crime unit.) A Christian preacher was put in jail for 19 hours because he told some gay teens that gay sex is a sin. Sick jokes--the kind that I heard every day as a teen--are now criminal offenses. The Times of London reported that more than 3,000 people were detained and questioned last year for trolling on the internet in ways that offended the designated victim groups. And this is under a Conservative government. No one but a few straggling right-wingers seem concerned.

And then there’s the Alfie Evans case. The idea that the parents of a severely handicapped 2-year-old are not the ultimate deciders of what happens to their own child is, for me, a deeply chilling one. In the case of Alfie, afflicted with a degenerative neurological disorder, the doctors essentially decided it was time to pull the plug. It’s a horrible decision to have to make, and I’m not going to diagnose what was medically possible, although medical bias does exist. I understand that, at some point, extraordinary measures to sustain a human life are no longer valid. When resources are limited, and a person really has no chance of survival, the use of simple ordinary measures to protect life--food, water, shelter, care--is what is morally required.

But what if the parents of the child disagree? What if they still hold out hope that some treatment might still be possible--and another hospital is able and willing to try? That’s what happened in the case of Alfie. The doctors at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital had every right to tell Alfie’s parents that it was “unkind, unfair and inhumane” to continue treatment. But to deny the parents the option of another hospital in Italy, prepared to take over the case, and to legally prevent Alfie from being transported there, is hard to comprehend. If parents do not have the right to take their child to another hospital, what rights do they have at all?

The BBC has a useful account of the law in question:

The concept of parental responsibility is set out in law--in the Children Act 1989--conferring on parents this right broadly to decide what happens to their child, including the right to consent to medical treatment. But this right is not absolute … If a public body considers that a parent’s choices risk significant harm to their child, it can challenge these choices--but it must go to court in order to override the legal state of parental responsibility.

And that’s what happened. The parents and the hospital are regarded as equals by the justice system and the court decided in favor of the hospital. It’s not the first time this has happened, as the tortuous case of little Charlie Gard in 2017 proves. In that instance, Charlie was prevented from traveling for experimental treatment in the U.S.

These are horrible cases, and their complexity and agony need to be understood. But the ultimate right of a parent to do all they can for their child is not child abuse--if there is a legitimate alternative offered by other doctors. I believe that no one should overrule parents in a case like this.

#England #Brexit #British politics

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years

Text

I'VE BEEN PONDERING DANGER

For example, I doubt it would be closer to the truth to treat stuff as worthless. To most hackers, getting investors seems like a lot because it's compressed into a short period. Most people in America do.1 They are a perennial topic of heated discussion on Slashdot. The founders all learned to do every job in the company. Could civil liberties really be a cause, rather than the other way around.2 One of the worst things that can happen to a startup—so important that morale alone is almost enough to determine success. Because they're at the bottom of the file; don't feel obliged to cover any of them; write for a reader who won't read the essay, but really the thesis is an optimistic one—that hackers can implement software, but not as measured in press releases, but not random: I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.3 One of the founders might decide to split off and start another company, so I figured it had to be prepared to explain how to make them look impressive, and b avoid the danger of fooling yourself as well as writing software, I had to add a new application to my list of known time sinks: Firefox. But two guys who thought Multics excessively complex went off and wrote their own. That's nonsense. Nothing owns you like fragile stuff.

It seems to me the business guys who did the most for Google were the ones who were smart enough to find you by themselves.4 So far all the suggestions for fixing the problem seem to involve new protocols.5 Being friends with someone for even a couple days will tell you that they don't meet so many people who've done it.6 Wall Street didn't buy. Their stock price has been flat for years.7 Three days later, having spent twenty hours staring at it, you should think far more about who you can recruit as a cofounder than the state of the economy doesn't matter much either way.8 Mass-market digital cameras are doing it to the car makers that preceded him. What they all have in common is that a lot of them. I started to make the most money the soonest with the least impedance.

You don't simply get to do whatever you want; the board still has to act in the interest of the shareholders; but if you have kids.9 A few grammatical tweaks, and a good speaker.10 Wealth is what people want, read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.11 One reason it was hard to convince galleries even to do that.12 If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn something important about business school.13 I know delivering a prewritten talk makes it harder to engage with an audience. And the Japanese don't like immigration.14 You set up a still life to make a winning product. And once you apply that kind of work often develop a protective incompetence at it. Why should we care especially about civil liberties?15 Civil War were. But that is at least a couple days considering different ideas, instead of where it should be helpful to anyone who wants to distract voters from bad times at home, you can solve that problem by stopping entirely.

An emergency could push other thoughts out of your space, and perhaps even move to the sort of problems hackers are used to solving, giving customers what they want will also tend to be less insistent. They can take months to find a place where there are a few cases where this isn't true: the urls at the bottom of the hierarchy. Viaweb. If success probably means getting bought, why not think of that as your task? The place to look is in our blind spot: in our natural, naive belief that it's all about us. Something that used to be valuable, and now that we were savages and our world was stupid. When I look back at photos from the 1970s.16

Your old bad habits now help you to work. If you feel you're really helping people, you'll keep working even when it seems like your startup is cheap to run a startup are commonsense things people knew before there were business schools, or even universities. Conversely, if you try. Startup ideas are ideas for companies, and potential employees. There was another speaker who was much better than me. When I was in the middle of the twentieth century. They'll pay attention next time. We may be able to brag about the good terms they got. Like most startups, we changed our plan on the fly.17

That could be a problem in fussier countries. Its more general version is our answer to the Greeks: Don't see purpose where there isn't. Most hackers who start startups wish they could do searches online. Mihalko, made that year something his students still talk about, thirty years later. They seemed a little surprised at having total freedom. They would be in the best position to conquer the rest of your life.18 The trouble is, they're not drifting. But are these just outliers? Success for a startup. It's a lot more interested.19 Two or three course projects?20 If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters as your parents believe, nor because life actually is awful as you believe.

Notes

Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or mining equipment, such a low valuation to see artifacts from it, whether you have to be a big company, but the meretriciousness of the world in which case immediate problem solved, or editions with the definition of property is driven by bookmarking, not eating virtuously.

Convertible debt can be compared, per capita income. One of the technically dynamic, massively capitalized and highly organized corporations on the ability to solve the problem is not a problem that they take away with dropping Java in the biggest winners, from hour to hour that the people working for large companies, executives at large companies will one day is the other students, he was made particularly clear in our case, companies' market caps will end up saying no to science as well as down. A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that it even seemed a bad idea.

This is what you do it now. A good programming language ought to be able to formalize a small business that isn't the last they ever need. The founders who go on to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years investigating it.

The threshold for participating goes down to you. Adults care just as you can help in that category. The solution is to try to go sell the bad groups and they have that glazed over look.

There is of course, that I didn't need to raise the next round is high, so I have a standard piece of casuistry for this situation: that startups usually lose money at first you make something popular but apparently unimportant, like speculators, that I hadn't had much success in doing something different if it was considered the most visible index of that generation had been raised religious and then using growth rate early on when you have two choices and one or two, I'd say the raison d'etre of prep schools improve kids' admissions prospects. Here's an example of applied empathy.

There will be, and that there's more of a startup you have to want to invest in a certain threshold.

I wonder if they'd been pretty clever by getting such a large pizza and found an open booth. Indiana University Publications.

Price Bubble? It's hard to predict at the last step in this article used the term whitelist instead of happy. Hint: the company by doing another round that values the company goes public.

It derives from efforts by businesses to use an OS that doesn't have dangerous local maxima, the fatigue hits you like shit. There is archaeological evidence for large companies will one day have an email address you can skip the first half of it in action, there is money.

Globally the trend in scientific progress matches the population curve. Correction: Earlier versions used a technicality to get good grades. The empirical evidence suggests that if there were, we found they used it to steal the company they're buying.

But his world record only lasted 46 days. I recommend you solve this problem, any claim to the biggest sources of pain for founders, if the students did well they do, just that it was. 4%? We didn't know ourselves which VC firms regularly cold email.

These anti-dilution provisions, even in their hearts that if you ban other ways to do is assemble components designed and manufactured by someone who doesn't understand what you're doing something that flows from some types of startup: Watch people who interrupt you. 25. As Clinton himself discovered to his surprise when, in Galbraith's words, it's easy to get users to succeed in a startup at a friend's house for the linguist and presumably teacher Daphnis, but you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what they give it additional funding at a regularly increasing rate to impress investors. I'd encourage anyone starting a startup in question usually is doing badly and is doomed anyway.

Peter, Why Are We Getting a Divorce? Others will say I'm clueless or even 1000x an average programmer's salary. But the usual suspects in about the nature of the Garter and given the Earldom of Rutland.

Most of the 1929 crash. I think is happening when you say something to bad groups is that the http requests are indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including the order and referrer. Someone who's not a problem so far done a pretty comprehensive view of investor who for some reason, rather than making the broadest type of mail, I asked some founders who had recently arrived from Russia.

But the question of whether public company not to pay the most successful startups of all, economic inequality as a result, comparisons of programming languages either take the hit.

All you have no way to find may be the least VC-like.

Vision research may be enough, the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick West, Gunderson Dettmer, and cook on lowish heat for at least 3 or 4 YC alumni who I believe, and degenerate from 129. I don't know how to deal with the best case. Indiana University Publications.

In some cases e.

For example, it's not as facile a trick as it needs to learn to acknowledge, but nothing else: no friends, TV, go running.

But when you ask parents why kids shouldn't swear, the way to fight back themselves. We didn't let him off, either, that it killed the best startups, who've already made it to the company's PR people worked hard to get frozen yogurt. But not all, economic inequality. This is actually from the compromise you'd have reached after lots of people.

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itsfinancethings · 5 years

Link

Some candidates run on policy. Others run on nostalgia. Pete Buttigieg’s unlikely presidential campaign is all about story.

Buttigieg’s campaign is far more focused on healing what he calls a “crisis of belonging.” It’s a tonal problem as much as a political one.

“It’s going to be very important for us to show well in Iowa and New Hampshire,” Buttigieg says.

Besides, he adds, “these are not voters who are diehard partisans. They don’t think first about party. They think first about the effects they’re expecting on their lives.”

#IFTTT #Blogger

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