CapitalistImperialistPig

The Trump team's furious efforts to extract themselves from the Russian manipulation scandal look more and more like Watergate everyday. Kevin Drum summarizes the state of play: Now there are three people involved in revealing classified information to Rep. Devin Nunes: One of those involved in procuring the documents cited by Nunes has close ties to former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The official, Ezra Cohen, survived a recent attempt to oust him from his White House job by appealing to Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon, the officials said....After assembling reports that showed that Trump campaign officials were mentioned or inadvertently monitored by U.S. spy agencies targeting foreign individuals, Cohen took the matter to the top lawyer for the National Security Council, John Eisenberg. The third White House official involved was identified as Michael Ellis, a lawyer who previously worked with Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee but join...

Stoning is an ancient and cruel form of execution, and I don't even believe in the death penalty. So why do I want to pick up a rock every time I listen to Sean Spicer?

One of the lamer claims about Trump is that he is "intelligent." He's obviously a skilled huckster and television performer, but any evidence of intelligence relevant to governance is completely absent. He's incoherent and unprepared on seemingly every issue, couldn't bother to learn enough to understand his own health care plan, and comes across as ignorant in his discussions with foreign leaders. He has the attention span of a gnat and the self-discipline of a five-year old. So is this encroaching senility, or just a deformed personality in over his head? Seventy is a little early for real senility, but it might fit with the cocaine theory . The subhead: Drug use had biggest impact on the prefrontal and temporal cortex, which are associated with attention, decision making and self regulation Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2134414/Cocaine-rots-brain-Using-Class-A-drug-doubles-ageing-process-grey-matter.html#ixzz4ceV0Z11y

A few weeks ago Elon Musk announced that Humans will have to become cyborgs to compete with machines. Billionaire Elon Musk is known for his futuristic ideas and his latest suggestion might just save us from being irrelevant as artificial intelligence (AI) grows more prominent. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said on Monday that humans need to merge with machines to become a sort of cyborg. "Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence," Musk told an audience at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where he also launched Tesla in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Musk is not one of those guys who sits around waiting for the future to happen. So he is putting (some of his) money where his mouth is: SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is backing a brain-computer interface venture called Neuralink, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company, which is still in the earliest stages of existence and has no public prese...

Paul Krugman: “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” So declared Donald Trump three weeks before wimping out on his promise to repeal Obamacare. Up next: “Nobody knew that tax reform could be so complicated.” Then, perhaps: “Nobody knew that international trade policy could be so complicated.” And so on. Actually, though, health care isn’t all that complicated. Basically, you need to induce people who don’t currently need medical treatment to pay the bills for those who do, with the promise that the favor will be returned if necessary. Unfortunately, Republicans have spent eight years angrily denying that simple proposition. And that refusal to think seriously about how health care works is the fundamental reason Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress now look like such losers. The trouble is that that conflicts with the Libertarian religion - and billionaire greed. And: One important answer would be to spend a bit more money. Obamacare has turned out to be remar...

Another bizarro world sighting from Trumpistan: We all knew that the White House meeting between President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been awkward. But things were even more uncomfortable than we thought. Turns out Trump’s version of diplomacy with one of the country’s most important allies in Europe involves handing over a bill for billions of dollars that the White House believes it owes NATO, according to the Times of London. One German minister did not hesitate to qualify the invoice as “outrageous,” saying the intent was clear. “The concept behind putting out such demands is to intimidate the other side, but the chancellor took it calmly and will not respond to such provocations,” the minister said. Is this real? With Trump, nothing is to weird to be dismissed.

Too bad that headline is as bogus as a Trump tweet. For one thing, Lubosh is an former Harvard prof and his target, who is apparently a Harvard Junior, is likely 20 or 21. The Lumonator did take on Harvard Crimson staff writer Nian Hu for her rather formulaic column entitled: Beware the Male Feminist. So far as I can tell, her substantive message is "Hey girls, that guy in the pussy hat spouting fem-speak may be using it as a ploy to get into your pants!" She pads this message with some femi-militancy right out of formulary: What these male feminists fail to realize is that, as men, they will always be oppressors. ... On the contrary, feminism is a radical and revolutionary movement that will upheave the status quo and remove men as the monopolizers of power. In general, people don’t like to lose power, especially when they’ve had it for so long. Feminism is not supposed to be palatable to men; it is supposed to be threatening. OK...but I'd like to concentrate o...