Tom Faranda's Folly

Columbo gets cheesy: nails the perp (Patrick McGoohan)

Four minutes long. Peter Falk - from Ossining, like me! - everyone's most folks favorite detective.

Report: Millennials more open to socialism, touching a hot stove, putting face into a bagful of badgers

An important article from "The Babylon Bee".

U.S.—While most Americans are hostile to socialism, touching a hot stove, and sticking one’s face in a sack full of badgers, surveys show that millennials are much more open to these dangerous ideas and activities than previous generations.

Finding themselves pessimistic about the future and saddled with student debt, millennials often turn to socialism, and also tend to say things like “Hey, maybe it would be fun to touch that hot, glowy thing above the oven.These new attitudes towards stove touching, putting one’s face in a sack full of badgers, and socialism is changing the Democratic Party, already resulting in a surprise win for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the NY-14 primary who openly ran on a platform of democratic socialism along with “democratic sticking your face in a sack full of badgers,” which is “fundamentally different” from the old style of just sticking your face in a sack full of badgers, according to Ocasio-Cortez.

“The system has failed in getting a close look at badgers,” Ocasio-Cortez told an enthused crowd. “It’s past time to just stick our face in a sack full of them.”

“These are exciting, progressive ideas,” said Zachary Nichols, 27, who had attended the speech and is an advocate for putting his face in a sack full of badgers, socialism, and touching a hot stove. “And there are so many benefits from them such as close observation of the habits of badgers, a fairer distribution of income, and quickly heating one’s hand.”

When asked about the potential problems from these ideas and the horrible results from others who tried them, he just shrugged and said, “Real sticking your face in a sack full of badgers has never been tried.”

 

Mrs. Clinton lining up for a 2020 run for President?

Michael Goodwin of the NY Post thinks so. I suppose the Republicans can only hope she does. An interesting article. Hit the link below for the whole thing.

Advancing the vision? ... With the Democratic Party locked in a battle between its far left wing and its far, far left wing, no single leader has emerged to unite it. Clinton is trying to play that role by being a mother hen to the fledgling activists drawn to politics by their hatred of Trump. If they were active in 2016, most probably supported Bernie Sanders in his primary challenge to Clinton. But by helping to fund them now, she is putting them in her debt for later. Ah, but will she need their support later? Is she really going to make a third run for the White House? Not long ago, I told a group of friends, all liberal Dems, that I believed she was keeping open the possibility of a rematch against Trump, and might already have decided to run. It was unanimous — they were horrified. “I would not give her a single cent,” one man, formerly a big donor to Clinton, said emphatically.

Worth reading - here's how his column finishes -

For now, I am convinced Clinton wants to go for it. Doubters should recall the line about pols who get the presidential itch: There are only two cures — election or death.

Besides, the third time could be the charm.

 

WSJ on Washington Post "fact checking"

From James Freeman who writes the Journal "Best of the Web" column. Excerpts below the link - as WaPo spins things and goes after Ivanka Trump... no surprise with that.

Ivanka Checks the ‘Fact Checker’. Should the Washington Post award itself a few Pinocchios?

Ms. Trump got the Post’s attention when she appeared on the Fox Business Network last week and responded to a question from Maria Bartiromo about the possibility of wage inflation. Ms. Trump said:

I think one of the tremendous opportunities that we’re seeing because the economy is so strong is that people who have been out of the workforce are coming back off the sidelines. And this is something we are working incredibly hard to incentivize. Because there is a large population of... prime-age men and women who are out of the workforce and who are now slowly starting to return... Two million people have come off food stamps and have come back into the economy. So we’re starting to see people who have been on the sidelines reenter the economy, and we think that’s incredibly positive and we’re very excited about that.

Most people would agree that, if true, such news certainly counts as positive and exciting. But in its “Fact Checker” feature the Washington Post claims that the President’s daughter deserves two out of a possible four “Pinocchios” for allegedly making false claims.

Longtime news consumers have no doubt grown wary of such pronouncements from media outlets. Two years ago, this column’s most celebrated alumnus noted:

Some good work is done under the rubric of “fact checking,” but the label is deceptive. Calling it “fact checking” is meant to convey an extra degree of objective authority, but “fact check” journalists do not limit themselves to questions of verifiable objective fact. Frequently they accuse politicians of dishonesty because the journalists favor a different interpretation of facts that are not in dispute. Sometimes their “rulings” are mere opinions on matters about which they do not know the facts, or that are not factual questions at all.

 

Readers are bound to be especially wary of the Post’s latest contribution to the genre. Even while accusing Ms. Trump of peddling falsehoods, the Post acknowledges that she’s on target with the only checkable fact in her comment. The Post writes that Ms. Trump “pointed to ‘2 million people’ who “have come off food stamps” (an accurate statistic) as evidence of the economy’s strength, noting that they were “starting to reenter the economy.” Experts say that’s debatable.”

Sure, experts can debate Ms. Trump’s analysis of people leaving government benefit programs and question whether this phenomenon is due to a rising economy. Experts—and what would we do without them?—can also debate whether the opportunities are “tremendous,” whether she’s working “incredibly hard” and whether team Trump is “very excited.” But these are matters of opinion, not fact.

Assessing whether the number of people returning to the labor market is “large” can certainly be informed by objective data, but this question also depends on context and assumptions subject to debate by reasonable people. To suggest that Ms. Trump is lying in giving her perfectly reasonable take on the improving labor market is, if not fake news, certainly unfair. And in any case her argument just got much stronger, with the Labor Department reporting that a net of more than 600,000 people joined the U.S. labor force in June.

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Before claiming that Ms. Trump “earns Two Pinocchios,” this latest ”Fact Checker” makes one final point that is reason enough for the Post to retire this recurring feature:

Trump is using accurate data to draw faulty conclusions.

Even the Post is admitting it’s an opinion checker. So why should any reader believe it’s about facts?

 

Japan executes seven after their horrible sarin gas attack of 23 years ago

The sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, carried out by a bizarre cult. What did the execution gain? Just further devalues life. Yes it's a horror, but executing them doesn't bring anyone back - solves nothing.

Japan executes sarin gas attack cult leader Shoko Asahara and six members. Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin nerve attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 killed 13 people and caused illness among thousands of others

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, confirmed Asahara’s execution. The justice ministry later confirmed that six other senior cult members were executed on the same day.

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His Aum Supreme Truth cult, which combined a bizarre mix of Buddhist and Hindu meditation along with Christian and apocalyptic teachings, yoga and the occult, once boasted more than 10,000 followers in Japan and an estimated 30,000 in Russia.

Its members included graduates of Japan’s best universities, who were attracted by promises that they would survive the coming Armageddon – a nuclear attack by the US – by developing sarin, a nerve agent invented by the Nazis, at the cult’s compound in the foothills of Mount Fuji.

Asahara, whose real name was Chizuo Matsumoto, had also been found guilty of masterminding a 1994 attack on a city in northern Japan in which eight people died and more than 100 were injured.

The former cult leader had exhausted all of his appeals after he was sentenced to death in 2004.

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Survivors recalled smelling something that resembled paint thinner before starting to cough uncontrollably. “Liquid was spread on the floor in the middle of the carriage, people were convulsing in their seats. One man was leaning against a pole, his shirt open, bodily fluids leaking out,” Sakae Ito, who was inside on one of the carriages, told Agence France-Presse.

TV footage showed members of self-defence forces, dressed in hazmat suits and full face masks, descending flights of stairs, still unaware of what had caused the incident.

The attack was the worst terrorist incident on Japanese soil and rocked the country’s faith in its reputation for public safety.

 

All time record low unemployment for Hispanics

4.6% breaking the previous low of 4.8%.

While the Hispanic-Latino unemployment rate had been as low as 4.8% in five months, four of those months were during the administration of President Donald Trump; the lone exception being October of 2006

So we now have a situation where both Hispanic and African-American unemployment has never been lower in the whole history of keeping these records.

Here's the Democrat response to the good news:

Dems blast booming jobs report, Trump worker agenda, ‘reckless’

An excerpt from the DNC chairman:

“Trump and Republicans in Congress are trying to build a winner-take-all economy that enriches their wealthy friends and saddles working families with the bill. Democrats want to create good-paying jobs and build an economy that works for everyone. And we will continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with workers and with our brothers and sisters in the labor movement as they fight for the wages, benefits, and livelihood they deserve.”

Good luck with the slash and burn attack...

Talking crow in Brigid's old neighborhood.

Wow! The crow even has a Yorkshire accent! 20 second video.

Facebook flags Declaration of Independence as hate speech

UPDATE: Facebook corrected and apologized.

Right. Only part of it - not the whole thing. Hit the link to find which part was "hate."

In the week of America’s Independence Day, the algorithms of Facebook decided that the Declaration of Independence was hate speech. The Liberty County Vindicator, a community newspaper between Houston and Beaumont, had been posting the whole declaration in small daily chunks for nine days on its Facebook page in the run-up to July 4. But the 10th excerpt was not posted Monday as scheduled, and the paper said it received an automated notice saying the post “goes against our standards on hate speech.”

Part of the standard notice, Vindicator managing editor Casey Stinnett wrote, included a warning that the newspaper could lose its Facebook account, on which it depends for much of its reach, if there were more violations.

Maria Bartirommo on FBN - "Mornings with Maria" is crushing her old (CNBC) station.

I'm sure it doesn't hurt that she's known Trump for years. This off Forbes website. And note that no business shows have anywhere near the viewers that the evening cable news stations get.

'Crushing It': Maria Bartiromo Beats 'Squawk Box' As Fox Business Sweeps CNBC In Q2 Ratings

When Maria Bartiromo left top-rated CNBC for the upstart but ratings-challenged Fox Business Network in 2013, Bartiromo described CNBC, where she'd worked for two decades, as stuck in a rut: same voices, same format. "That was what people wanted in the '90s," she told The Daily Beast. "But today I really do feel that audiences want something different.”

Bartiromo saw it coming: a huge shift in viewership that has seen Fox Business rise to the top, with FBN posting a sweeping win in the second quarter, according to ratings data released Tuesday by Nielsen. Fox Business has now beaten CNBC for seven consecutive quarters, and for the first time, Bartiromo's Mornings With Maria beat CNBC's marquee morning show, Squawk Box, CNBC's last hold on the core business viewing audience the network was built to serve.

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In 2Q 2018, Bartiromo's Mornings led Squawk Box among total viewers, 109,000 to 104,000, as CNBC reached a four-year low in both total day and prime-time ratings.

In 2017, Fox Business posted its first full-year win over CNBC among total viewers (Business Day, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday). In the second quarter of 2018, FBN grew, with Business Day ratings climbing 17% compared with 2017 and beating CNBC by 23% (203,000 total viewers compared with CNBC’s 165,000).

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FBN had the top-rated business news show on cable, Lou Dobbs Tonight, which won among total viewers (319,000) and among viewers 25-54 (36,000), the show's 10th consecutive quarter in first place. Overall, FBN had six of the top seven business shows in cable, including Varney & Co, Countdown to Closing Bell With Liz Claman, Cavuto Coast to Coast, and The Intelligence Report With Trish Regan.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I never watch any of these shows; I do tape her Sunday morning interview show "Sunday Morning Futures" which  is usually very good.

Here's a scary airplane landing - 40 second video

A KLM flight into an airport outside Amsterdam.

The 4th: Grand Funk - 1974 - "We're an American Band"

Today I'll be posting stuff - book reviews, photos... beware! They'll pop up over the next week or so. Meanwhile ...  "tear that hotel down!" Live in '74. The 1997 version is also linked below - they left their shirts on for that one.

 

And here they are in 1997 - equally fun. Same song, shorter hair, shirts on.

 

 

Rescuing the Thai boys in the cave - will be very tricky

Wow. I didn't realize just how stuck they are. They will have to be scuba trained. A 46 second video.

 

"Happy Birthday to the real Yankee Iron Man"

Radio announcer John Sterling. This is amazing - great article in Forbes of all places. He turns 80 tomorrow - the 4th of July. 

Sterling likes to say he is the only living person who saw every pitch thrown by Mariano Rivera and every pitch thrown to Derek Jeter. John Sterling's work ethic puts Lou Gehrig’s to shame; since 1990, he has not missed a single moment of any Yankee game. That means 162 regular-season games, a few dozen spring training games each season, and over that span, an addition 181 post-season games.

Great video - "How Trump manipulates the media"

Not that he's the first politician to do this - and he won't be the last. This could be viewed as an educational (entertaining also) 13 minute video. I have an intern in my office and I'm going to have her and my son Tim watch it. The youtube channel is "Charisma on Command" and it has 1.6 million subscribers. Interestingly, the guy predicted Trump would become President months before he even was nominated by the Republicans.

We may not like it, but this is how the system works.

"Peace in out time" with North Korea? Maybe not

From the Wall Street Journal -

North Korea Expands Key Missile-Manufacturing Plant. New satellite imagery indicates Pyongyang is pushing ahead with weapons programs even as it pursues dialogue with Washington

North Korea is completing a major expansion of a missile-manufacturing plant, said researchers who have examined new satellite imagery of the site, the latest sign Pyongyang is pushing ahead with weapons programs even as the U.S. pressures it to abandon them.

The facility makes solid-fuel ballistic missiles—which would be able to strike U.S. military installations in Asia with a nuclear weapon with little warning—as well as re-entry vehicles for warheads that Pyongyang might use on longer-range missiles able to hit the continental U.S.

The socialist "Girl from the Bronx" - grew up in Yorktown Heights

HAha. The new Democratic party rock star, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I posted this Socialist Democrat primary winner aims to be President   the other day. So she actually grew up a few minutes from me (See the article below). Here's her platform. She's sure to win the Congressional seat - it's a total Democrat district. Nice work if you can get it.

And here's an interesting article, quoting extensively from the NY Times.

"Girl From The Bronx" Ocasio-Cortez Called Out In Fact Check; Actually Grew Up In Wealthy Enclave

“Well, you know, the president is from Queens, and with all due respect — half of my district is from Queens — I don’t think he knows how to deal with a girl from the Bronx,” Ocasio-Cortez told Stephen Colbert during an appearance on The Late Show. 

The socialist phenom also told the Washington Post "I wasn’t born to a wealthy or powerful family — mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx. I was born in a place where your Zip code determines your destiny."

Except Ocasio-Cortez isn't quite the blue-collar champion she's branding herself as. Breitbart's Josh Caplan is out with a "fact check" on the Democratic Socialist's background - only to find she grew up in one of the richest counties in the United States. 

Around the age of five, Alexandria’s architect father Sergio Ocasio moved the family from the “planned community” of Parkchester in the Bronx to a home in Yorktown Heights, a wealthy suburb in Westchester County. The New York Times describes her childhood home as “a modest two-bedroom house on a quiet street.” In a 1999 profile of the area, when Ocasio-Cortez would have been ten years old, the Times lauded Yorktown Heights’ “diversity of housing in a scenic setting” – complete with two golf courses.

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Westchester County – which the Washington Post, in a glowing profile on Ocasio-Cortez, describes as only “middle class” – ranks #8 in the nation for the counties with the “highest average incomes among the wealthiest one percent of residents.” According to the Economic Policy Institute, the county’s average annual income of the top one percent is a staggering $4,326,049.

Yorktown Heights, specifically, offers a sharp contrast from Bronx living. According to USA.com, the town’s population is 81 percent white, and median household income is $96,413 – nearly double the average for both New York state and the nation, according to data from 2010-2014.