Already 5pm?
Thursday, 19 January 2017 17:11:44 CST David-Braverman Chicago, Entertainment, General, Politics (0)
And I haven't fully read any of these:
Amazon and BBC are co-producing a 6-hour miniseries of Good Omens. Sweet!
There's a proposal in Springfield, Ill., to replace the 32-year-old Thompson Center with a 115-story tower.
I'm really not happy about Scott Pruitt, and his confirmation hearing didn't make me feel any better.
On the last full day of the American Republic, Trump's approval ratings are still historically low.
Only a few more hours until we see how much closer to Rome we get.
Third time running: warmest year ever
Wednesday, 18 January 2017 17:34:39 CST David-Braverman General, Politics, Weather (0)
Not that the incoming administration cares:
Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016 — trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row.
The findings come two days before the inauguration of an American president who has called global warming a Chinese plot and vowed to roll back his predecessor's efforts to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases.
The heat extremes were especially pervasive in the Arctic, with temperatures in the fall running 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit above normal across large stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice in that region has been in precipitous decline for years, and Arctic communities are already wrestling with enormous problems, such as rapid coastal erosion, caused by the changing climate.
Since 1880, NOAA's records show only one other instance when global temperature records were set three years in a row: in 1939, 1940 and 1941. The Earth has warmed so much in recent decades, however, that 1941 now ranks as only the 37th-warmest year on record.
Meanwhile, in Chicago this January week, it feels like March.
Long day, so much to read later
Wednesday, 18 January 2017 17:24:02 CST David-Braverman General, Politics (0)
Tabs open but not read in my browser:
Betsy DeVos, Trump's nominee for Education Secretary, knows almost nothing about public schools.
Trump probably knows almost nothing about NATO, but is still a danger to the alliance.
Republicans in general know almost nothing about health insurance.
Sixty members of the House are skipping the inauguration, including mine.
A drone operator managed to get a $1.2m fine reduced to $200,000. But they're still in trouble.
There was one more item, but it's too big to gloss over.
Tuesday, 17 January 2017 15:58:41 CST David-Braverman General, Politics (0)
Two big Obama stories today.
First, the president has commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence. She'll be freed in May:
In recent days, the White House had signaled that Mr. Obama was seriously considering granting Ms. Manning's commutation application, in contrast to a pardon application submitted on behalf of the other large-scale leaker of the era, Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who disclosed archives of top secret surveillance files and is living as a fugitive in Russia.
Asked about the two clemency applications on Friday, the White House spokesman, Joshua Earnest, discussed the "pretty stark difference" between Ms. Manning's case for mercy with Mr. Snowden's. While their offenses were similar, he said, there were "some important differences."
"Chelsea Manning is somebody who went through the military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing," he said. "Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary, and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy."
(Brian Beutler notes that Snowden's future is pretty uncertain now, too.)
Second, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that, should Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act, it could lead to 18 million people losing health insurance right away and another 12 million in 20 years:
The bill that the budget office analyzed would have eliminated tax penalties for people who go without insurance. It would also have eliminated spending for the expansion of Medicaid and subsidies that help lower-income people buy private insurance. But the bill preserved requirements for insurers to provide coverage, at standard rates, to any applicant, regardless of pre-existing medical conditions.
"Eliminating the mandate penalties and the subsidies while retaining the market reforms would destabilize the nongroup market, and the effect would worsen over time," the budget office said.
The office said the estimated increase of 32 million people without coverage in 2026 resulted from three changes: about 23 million fewer people would have coverage in the individual insurance market, roughly 19 million fewer people would have Medicaid coverage, and there would be an increase in the number of people with employment-based insurance that would partially offset those losses.
Republicans complained that they will pass an alternative plan, but no one is taking this seriously. Because they're not.
American authoritarianism
Monday, 16 January 2017 12:38:08 CST David-Braverman General, Politics (0)
I grew up in Chicago, so I have some recollection of how things were before Harold Washington's mayoral administration. Particularly under the first Mayor Daley, large sections of the city lived under authoritarian rule. It wasn't pretty.
New Republic's Graham Vyse explains what this might look like nationally. It won't be The Hunger Games—and that's part of the problem:
Tom Pepinsky, a government professor at Cornell University, recently argued that Americans conceive of authoritarianism in a "fantastical and cartoonish" way, and that popular media—especially film—is to blame.
"This vision of authoritarian rule," he wrote, "has jackbooted thugs, all-powerful elites acting with impunity, poverty and desperate hardship for everyone else, strict controls on political expression and mobilization, and a dictator who spends his time ordering the murder or disappearance of his opponents using an effective and wholly compliant security apparatus."
"If you think of authoritarianism as only being The Hunger Games and Star Wars, you're likely to focus on the wrong types of threats to democracy," he said in an interview. "You're out there looking for something unlikely to happen and you're missing the things much more likely to happen." Such as legal gerrymandering, he said. "One way to not lose elections that's very common and essential to Malaysia is the construction of so many safe legislative seats that the party doesn't need to get most of the voters to get most of the seats."
In other words, it's already happening in places where Republican governments rule with minority popular votes, such as in North Carolina and (starting Friday) at the Federal level.
Meanwhile, Josh Marshall lays out pretty clearly how Trump and Putin are trying to destroy the EU and NATO, which average Americans might not care about until they're gone.
The next few years are going to suck.
Too Hot to Handel
Sunday, 15 January 2017 13:10:52 CST David-Braverman Chicago, Entertainment (0)
This is what I saw last night:
As a singer who's performed the original Messiah about 10 times, I pronounce Too Hot to Handel amazeballs, and I will be in the chorus next year.
Who ya gonna believe, me or your lyin' spies?
Thursday, 12 January 2017 11:02:12 CST David-Braverman Politics (0)
The latest scandal surrounding Trump is either farcical or truly scary:
Seven months ago, a respected former British spy named Christopher Steele won a contract to build a file on Donald J. Trump's ties to Russia. Last week, the explosive details — unsubstantiated accounts of frolics with prostitutes, real estate deals that were intended as bribes and coordination with Russian intelligence of the hacking of Democrats — were summarized for Mr. Trump in an appendix to a top-secret intelligence report.
Mr. Trump denounced the unproven claims Wednesday as a fabrication, a Nazi-style smear concocted by "sick people." It has further undermined his relationship with the intelligence agencies and cast a shadow over the new administration.
Remarkably for Washington, many reporters for competing news organizations had the salacious and damning memos, but they did not leak, because their contents could not be confirmed. That changed only this week, after the heads of the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency added a summary of the memos, along with information gathered from other intelligence sources, to their report on the Russian cyberattack on the election.
Now, after the most contentious of elections, Americans are divided and confused about what to believe about the incoming president. And there is no prospect soon for full clarity on the veracity of the claims made against him.
Of course, Trump doesn't want this investigated further, thus his protestations that it's a complete fabrication. But as others have pointed out, if non-partisan officials in our government and others believe that the incoming president may be compromised by a long-standing adversary, shouldn't we find out the truth?
But Trump isn't interested in the truth, and never has been. Which is why taking anything he says at face value is farcical. But not clearing him of being a Russian asset? That's scary.
How Eddie Lampert benefits from destroying Sears
Wednesday, 11 January 2017 09:22:42 CST David-Braverman Chicago, General (0)
Via Crain's, Business Insider explains in detail how Eddie Lampert has structured his financial holdings so that he may benefit more from Sears' destruction than from its success:
For all the problems in Sears stores, Lampert has set up his various businesses in a way that means he has other ways to gain no matter what happens to the company.
ESL holds a majority share of Sears, and that stake has lost three-quarters of its value just in the past few years — more than $1.5 billion since early 2015 alone.
But Lampert, through ESL, has loaned Sears more than $1.12 billion and promised an additional $679 million over the past two years to help keep the company afloat. In return, Sears pays origination fees and interest directly to ESL, and, by extension, Lampert. A recent shareholder complaint claims that Lampert and ESL made at least $19 million in fees and interest payments from a $400 million loan in 2014.
Lampert and ESL could potentially seize stores and inventory if Sears can't pay its bills. That $400 million loan, for instance, is backed by collateral of 25 stores valued at $500 million total.
Even if the company went bankrupt, Lampert wouldn't walk away empty-handed, according to bankruptcy experts and former executives.
How on earth did Sears' board allow this to happen? Oh, right—Lampert owns 54% of the company, and so appoints the board.
There are shareholder lawsuits, of course, though it's doubtful they'll succeed. And so the murder continues.
Mandate? What mandate?
Since records began with Eisenhower's inauguration in 1953, no incoming president has had an approval rating below 50% at the start of his administration. Reagan and George HW Bush came in at 51%, and both managed to improve (to 68% and 56%, respectively) in the first 100 days. Even George W Bush, despite the taint surrounding his election, came in at 57% and inched up to 62% by April 2001.
And along comes Trump. A Quinnipac poll released today has him at 37%, and falling. As Josh Marshall puts it, "Trump, his agenda and his party are deeply unpopular. Indeed, Trump's gotten steadily more unpopular over the last four weeks. All of this tells us that political gravity still exists. Indeed, it is already shaping events on Capitol Hill."
For comparison, shortly before he left office under a pall of sex scandals and rampant corruption, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi polled between 33-35%. And immediately before the watershed UK election in 2010, the Labour Party under Gordon Brown polled around 30%. And in 2015, just before losing to Justin Trudeau, Canada's Stephen Harper polled around 33%.
In other words, Trump is coming into office approximately as popular as discredited and failing leaders of other modern democracies right before their defenestrations.
It'll be interesting to see if he notices.
Easier medical requirements for general aviation
Tuesday, 10 January 2017 14:07:33 CST David-Braverman Travel (0)
Starting May 1st, general aviation pilots like me will have an easier time getting aviation medical endorsements:
Starting on May 1, pilots will have the option to maintain their 3rd class medical, or opt to use the BasicMed rule. Under BasicMed, a pilot will be required to complete an online medical education course every two years, undergo a medical exam every four years, and comply with aircraft and operating restrictions. The medical exam will include a four-page FAA form to be completed by your doctor and kept available by the pilot for FAA inspection. Your regular doctor can complete the form, and they don't need to deal with the FAA at all.
The aircraft and operating restrictions under BasicMed include: pilots cannot operate an aircraft weighing more than 6,000 pounds and cannot have more than six people on board. IFR operations are allowed, but pilots must fly at less than 18,000 MSL and no faster than 250 knots. Pilots using BasicMed also cannot fly for compensation or hire. To qualify for BasicMed, pilots also must have held a medical that was valid any time after July 15, 2006.
So instead of a $200 aviation medical exam every 2 years (at my age), I can just fill in a form and keep it in my flight bag? Sign me up. I'll take the online course just as soon as the FAA releases it.
So maybe I'll get bck in the cockpit this spring? I haven't flown for a while because it's expensive and I don't live near the airport...and also because I haven't gotten off my ass to renew my Class III medical certification. Well, here's one fewer thing I need to do.