US Army Retired

US Army Retired

Thursday, November 1, 2018

News and Interesting Stuff for November 1, 2018

A new month and I think I've got some really interesting stuff for you.

Think you’ll know who won on election night? Not so fast …
I’m not staying up after 9pm PST. If it ain’t known by then, it can wait until morning.
1. Some states count sloooooowly
2. Random glitches cause delays
 
3. Runoffs may be required


4. Provisional ballots could come into play 
5. Someone can demand a recount
6. Lawyers could get involved
All of these scenarios cause heartburn for elections officials who’d much prefer smooth-running contests with clear winners whose victory speeches are finished by bedtime.
“The election administrator’s prayer,” Chapin said, “is, ‘Let the margins be wide.’”
Details @ The Washington Post Election 2018 Analysis

Working-class people are underrepresented in politics.
This graphic is going to blow you away.
Look at it again.
Look at the local and state figures. Not even at that lower level.
And does anyone want to guess what segment of society the most politicians come from. Lawyers/attorneys?
Elites recruit elites
But couldn’t party and interest group leaders help working-class Americans overcome these obstacles? Couldn’t foundations create special funds to encourage and support candidates from the working class?
Of course. But they usually don’t. The people who recruit new candidates often don’t see workers as viable options, and pass them over in favor of white-collar candidates. In surveys of county-level party leaders, for instance, officials say that they mostly recruit professionals and that they regard workers as worse candidates. Candidates say the same thing: In surveys of people running for state legislature, workers report getting less encouragement from activist organizations, civic leaders, and journalists.
The reasons are complicated. Some party leaders cite concerns about fundraising to explain why they don’t recruit workers, for instance, and in places where elections cost less, party officials really do seem to recruit more working-class candidates. However, by far the best predictor of whether local party leaders say they encourage working-class candidates is whether the party leader reports having a lower income him- or herself and whether the party leader reports having any working-class people on the party’s executive committee.
Candidate recruitment is a deeply social activity, and political leaders are usually busy volunteers who look for new candidates within their own mostly white-collar personal and professional networks. The result is that working-class candidates are often passed over in favor of affluent professionals.
How many of you even take part in the lowest level of politics – the precinct. What would happen if more of us went from there to the next higher level. And next?
Maybe the more than 170 military veterans running for Congress this year might make a dent.

Report Card On Trump’s Deregulatory Activity: Billions In Savings Reported
If you can’t get past DimocRATs doing everything they can to block the president’s initiatives, do the next best thing – repeal onerous regulations.
The big headline from “Cutting the Red Tape: Unleashing Economic Freedom” is that agencies’ achieved a 12-to-1 ratio of deregulatory-to-regulatory actions in fiscal year 2018, for a net savings of $23 billion (equivalent to about $1.6 billion in annual savings). Let’s look at these more closely.
Billions in savings reported
The report also presents each agency’s proposed budget for the coming year, which, if met, would yield combined present value cost savings of $18 billion in FY 2019. HHS commits to the largest cuts (almost $9 billion next year), followed by the Department of Education ($3 billion) and DOT ($1.8 billion). The Unified Agenda provides details of the regulatory and deregulatory actions underway.

How Will President Trump Handle Sessions’ Departure
Gleefully, I hope!
It’s no secret that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ days as Attorney General are numbered. The main questions are: (1) How will his exit be handled and (2) Who will replace him.
I don‘t care about the first but the second bothers me. As it now stands, Rosenstein would become the Acting AG. That can’t be tolerated.
I have no insight as to the second question. One hears names like Matthew Whitaker (a former U.S. Attorney — and University of Iowa football player — who currently is Sessions’ chief of staff); Alex Azar, the Secretary of HHS (and not to confused with Alex Acosta); and Rep. John Ratcliffe (another former U.S. Attorney). However, I have no idea whether or to what degree these three (and others) are under consideration.

A Copycat Bomber?
Not a surprise. We’ll probably have a couple of them out to stir up Dim voters for the midterms.
CNN said in a statement Monday morning that another mail bomb had been sent to CNN headquarters in Atlanta, but had been intercepted at a nearby mail processing facility. Jeff Zucker, the cable news network's president, reiterated that all mail is being screened offsite.
"This morning, another suspicious packaged addressed to CNN was intercepted at an Atlanta post office," CNN president Jeff Zucker wrote in a memo to staffers on Monday morning. "There is no imminent danger to the CNN Center."

Who is feeding the thousands of Central American migrants in caravan that Trump wants to stop?
A perfectly good question. I’ve also noticed on TV reports guys with bullhorns telling the people what to do. Who are they and who’s paying them?
Volunteers with the bi-national group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which has stepped in to help coordinate the caravan after migrants crossed into Mexico from Guatemala, insist no political agenda or hidden hand is guiding the caravan.
Local residents, church groups and municipal officials in the towns where the caravan stops are feeding the migrants, many of whom are families traveling with children and babies and fleeing poverty and violence in Central America, coordinators say.

Whatever happened to Blasey Ford?
Suddenly nowhere to be found in the news. Not a word about the over half a million dollars in her GoFundMe account.
What’s going on?
She is apparently taking time to weigh the book offers and other opportunities that now come her way, but let us follow the (hard) money. Paul Sperry reports for RealClearPolitics that Ford has monetized her service to the cause in a big way: “‘Nothing to Gain,’ Kavanaugh Accuser Raises Nearly $1 Million.” And the cash is still rolling in. Sperry called on GoFundMe spokeswoman Katherine Cichy to get a handle on the uses to which the funds might be put.
Cichy told him that Ford and her husband can withdraw as much as they want whenever they want for any purpose.
Sperry notes that “the total does not include a third account collecting $120,000 for an academic endowment in her name.” Hippocamupus, here we come.
And no word on whether or not she’s been referred to DOJ for lying under oath.

Hubble Space Telescope back to 'normal operations,' NASA says
Really hi-tech solution. Turn it off and then on. Bingo!
Launched in 1990, Hubble has had trouble with its gyroscopes before. Spacewalking shuttle astronauts replaced all six in 2009.

How could a brand new plane crash?
It had only been in service a few weeks.
This aircraft is the hottest selling Boeing product. No idea whether it was a technical problem or pilot error.

'Spectacular' diabetes treatment could end daily insulin injections
Lord but that would be nice. I’m sick of jabbing myself 3 times a day with 2 different types of insulin.
It sounds really icky.
A potential medical breakthrough that could put an end to the daily insulin injections endured by people living with diabetes has been unveiled by Dutch scientists.
By destroying the mucous membrane in the small intestine and causing a new one to develop, scientists stabilised the blood sugar levels of people with type 2 diabetes. The results have been described as “spectacular” – albeit unexpected – by the chief researchers involved.
In the hourlong procedure, trialled on 50 patients in Amsterdam, a tube with a small balloon in its end is inserted through the mouth of the patient down to the small intestine.
The balloon is inflated with hot water and the mucous membrane burned away by the heat. Within two weeks a new membrane develops, leading to an improvement in the patient’s health.
Even a year after the treatment, the disease was found to be stable in 90% of those treated. It is believed there is a link between nutrient absorption by the mucus membrane in the small intestine and the development of insulin resistance among people with type 2 diabetes.

Weak Eight: NFL Stadiums Still Showing Thousands of Empty Seats
All that red in the various Tweets are empty seats – think the owners might decide to change the color to something more neutral?

10 Items That Have A Military Past
I always love stuff like this. So many things we take for granted either came from the space program or the military.
Cargo Pants
Duct Tape
Bug Spray – this one I know about as I served at the Army medical research lab where testing was done on this.
Carhartt Duck Detroit Jacket
M&Ms Hunh?
Ray-Ban Aviator Sunglasses
Carhartt Acrylic Watch Hat
Silly Putty
Super Glue
Dr. Martens – just like the combat boots I wore.

Ever Wonder How Much Your Cable Box Costs?
And how much do you pay for it every month in rent?
The bottom line of this article is that nobody is telling about the cost. Every other item of electronics has the price going down. Why not a simple cable box?
If the FCC was right about the average customer paying $231 a year (as of 2016), that suggests the typical pay-TV company is recouping its investment per box in about a year or less, and all fees paid beyond that point are pure gravy, even allowing for any maintenance expenses.
Each analyst I spoke with said box fees aren’t a huge source of revenue for pay-TV companies, but they obviously add up.
Charter, for example, still has more than 16-million residential customers with set-top boxes, many with multiple boxes.
After the Spectrum fee rises within days to $7.50 a month, that will translate to at least $120 million. Monthly. Or at least $1.4 billion a year.
Rival Comcast charges $9.95 monthly for a high-definition box. It has about 22-million TV subscribers. It’s thus looking at potential revenue of $2.6 billion annually.
Yeah, if I ran a pay-TV company, I’d want to keep that to myself as well.
After all that, the author comes up with this:
But the general consensus was that Arris sells basic boxes to pay-TV companies for about $150 apiece and more advanced boxes for closer to $250.
So, figure it out for yourselves.



Posted by Dale Day at 2:49 AM

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