kpete
kpete's JournalWashington Times ends Sen. Rand Paul weekly column amid plagiarism allegations
Washington Times ends Sen. Rand Paul column amid plagiarism allegations
By Jim McElhatton-The Washington Times
The newspaper and the senator mutually agreed to end his weekly column, which has appeared on each Friday in the newspaper since the summer.
“We expect our columnists to submit original work and to properly attribute material, and we appreciate that the senator and his staff have taken responsibility for an oversight in one column,” Times Editor John Solomon said.
MORE:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/5/washington-times-ends-sen-rand-paul-column-amid-pl/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/05/1253403/-The-Washington-Times-gives-Rand-Paul-s-Column-the-Boot
Fox "News" got hacked....
MORE:
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/trending/Fox-News-hacked-with-fake-zombie-story-stuff-yo.html
TX-sized floating island containing one million tonnes of junk from Japan tsunami drifting toward US
The 'toxic monster' is coming! Texas-sized floating island containing one million tonnes of junk from Japan tsunami drifting towards US
The most concentrated stretch of rubbish- dubbed the 'toxic monster' - is currently sitting between Hawaii and California
Now The Independent UK reports that an island of trash, some of it presumed toxic from the Fukushima radiation leaks, is floating across the Pacific, headed toward North America:
The most concentrated stretch – dubbed the “toxic monster” ... - is currently around 1,700 miles off the coast, sitting between Hawaii and California, but several million tons of additional debris remains scattered across the Pacific.
If the rubbish were to continue to fuse, the combined area of the floating junkyard would be greater than that of the United States, and could theoretically weigh up to five million tons.
Even accounting for a bit of sensationalism in the projected size of the giant bobbing debris field, it is widely assumed that a significant percentage of the trash has essentially been soaked in radioactive water. In short, more radiation fallout from Fukushima is likely headed our way, and if so in gigantic fashion.
pics & more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-toxic-monster-is-coming-texassized-floating-island-containing-one-million-tonnes-of-junk-from-japan-tsunami-drifting-towards-us-8922358.html
http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18295-massive-toxic-japanese-tsunami-island-of-trash-headed-toward-us
KRUGMAN to GOP "I guess it’s a matter of who you’re gonna believe—Ayn Rand or your own lying eyes"
November 5, 2013, 11:19 am 17 Comments
Free-Floating Inflation Hysteria
....................
It’s not often that you see an economic theory fail so utterly and completely. Yet that theory’s grip on the GOP has only strengthened as its failure becomes ever more undeniable.
Incidentally, small nerdy note. Some people argue that the concept of the monetary base has lost its relevance now that the Fed pays (trivial) interest on reserves. I disagree. Reserves and currency are fungible: banks can turn one into the other at will. But the total of reserves and currency is fixed by the Fed — nobody else can create either. That, as I see it, makes them a relevant aggregate — and anyone who believes that all those reserves are sitting idle because of that 25 basis point reward is (a) silly (b) ignorant of Japan’s experience, where the BOJ sharply increased the monetary base without paying interest on reserves, and what happened looked exactly like our own later experience.
Back to the evidence versus the orthodoxy. I can, in a way, understand refusing to believe in global warming — that’s a noisy process, with lots of local variation, and the overall measures are devised by pointy-headed intellectuals who probably vote Democratic. I can even more easily understand refusing to believe in evolution. But the failure of predicted inflation to materialize is happening in real time, right in front of our eyes; people who kept believing in inflation just around the corner lost a lot of money. Yet the denial remains total.
I guess it’s a matter of who you’re gonna believe — Ayn Rand or your own lying eyes.
...............
more (with graphs):
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/free-floating-inflation-hysteria/?_r=1&
Charles P. Pierce: Nat'l Democrats - Wrong. Very wrong. Incredibly wrong. Spectacularly wrong.
The Lessons Of The Past Forgotten
By Charles P. Pierce at 2:30pm
National Democrats stand by the decision not to play seriously in New Jersey, according to several who spoke with The Daily Beast. The calculation was two-fold, they said. First, the money required just to land a punch on Christie in the pricey New York and Philadelphia media markets could fund an entire campaign somewhere or sometime else when a Democrat had a chance of winning. "When you have someone this powerful and this popular, you shrug it off and wait for the next one," a top Democratic donor said of Christie. "It's not worth the financial investment to try to take him down or out."Second, Democrats firmly believe that no matter how strong Christie looks on Election Day 2013 in New Jersey, the Republican nominating gauntlet will eat his 2016 presidential candidacy alive before he ever gets a chance to face off against a Democrat in a general election. "When it comes to national elections, we've seen how efficient and effective Republicans are at destroying each other's reputations, so I'll leave it to them," said Robert Zimmerman, a national committeeman for the DNC. "Chris Christie is a very powerful national candidate, but the question is can a mainstream Republican be elected by the Republican Party today? No."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/05/why-national-democrats-rolled-over-for-chris-christie.html
Wrong.
Wrong.
Very wrong.
Incredibly wrong.
Spectacularly wrong.
Also, stupid.
First of all, according to the latest NBC News/WSJ Poll, Christie's numbers are plummeting just like those of every other candidate. He's at 33 percent favorable right now. This is not a "powerful national candidate." He's weak and he's insecure and you can make him pop his cork as predictably as Old Faithful. In fact, your job, Democratic panjandrums, was to make him a national candidate before he is ready to be one. It was to make him a national candidate on your timetable, not his. Define, define, define. Spend whatever it takes to do that. Second, as Steve M. relentlessly points out, the Tea Party folk don't necessarily like the fact that Christie spent quality time with the Kenyan Usurper, but they love, love, love the way Big Chicken bullies the helpless and powerless. To hate like that gives their lives meaning, and Christie is a perfect vessel for that. They'll settle for that more easily than they settled for Willard Romney, god knows. So depending on the Tea Party folk to bring him down is to gamble high on phantoms.
This is the same ghastly strategy that aided and abetted the rise of C-Plus Augustus in Texas. It was their one opportunity to bloody him up, to wound him with ridicule until he (predictably) explodes, before the tingle rises up Chris Matthews's leg. That was worth anything they could have spent. And what campaigns, precisely, elsewhere in the country, was the Democratic party spending its money on that were so important that they took precedence over blowing out at least one tire on the Christie bandwagon? If you can't learn from the mistakes you made that helped elect George W. Bush, an intervention is clearly called for.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Lessons_Of_The_Past_Forgotten
Visit us at Esquire.com
Good luck, Terry.
The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Posted by John Cole at 10:29 pm
Look, McAuliffe may be a corporate whore, and I fully think he at times represents the worst of the Clinton era, but the simple fact of the matter is that on the issues that count, Terry McAuliffe is on the right side and is worth electing. With so much going on in our “laboratories of democracy,” I’m ok with a pro gay-rights, pro-woman, pro-minority, corporate whore who will do everything he can to implement the ACA the way it should be, not to mention he was doing what he could to advance the Democratic cause for decades while I was an asshole Republican.
You don’t even have to make a Devil’s choice if you think about it. On most every issue that matters to me, and more importantly, to our friends of color, our female friends, and our LGBT friends, McAuliffe will be light years better than that troglodyte Cuccinelli. Ask your self this- can you imagine McAuliffe ever trying to threaten an academic?
So, good luck, Terry.
FWIW- I think this http://wonkette.com/400198
might be my favorite Terry moment, but I also remember him showing up looking hammered on Morning Joe on another occasion.
..................
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2013/11/04/the-soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations-5/#comments
THE THREE SIEVES
A LITTLE boy one day ran indoors from school and called out eagerly: "Oh, mother, what do you think of Tom Jones? I have just heard that ——"
"Wait a minute, my boy. Have you put what you have heard through the three sieves before you tell it to me?"
"Sieves, mother! What do you mean?"
"Well, the first sieve is called Truth. Is it true?"
"Well, I don't really know, but Bob Brown said that Charlie told him that Tom ——"
"That's very roundabout. What about the second sieve — Kindness. Is it kind?"
"Kind! No, I can't say it is kind."
"Now the third sieve — Necessity. Will it go through that? Must you tell this tale?"
"No, mother, I need not repeat it."
"Well, then, my boy, if it is not necessary, not kind, and perhaps not true, let the story die."
http://www.strecorsoc.org/storygarden/58199_tts.html
great way to censor oneself,
very very difficult on a daily basis, especially the first sieve...
kp
Where were you when they told us the world as we know it is over?
Where were you when they told us the world as we know it is over?By Michael Collins, on November 5th, 2013
According to a leaked draft of the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), http://www.ipcc.ch/ the world as we know it is over. The report presents substantial and well documented predictions of global suffering and massive social disruption resulting from the impact climate change on the water supply, food, and natural resources, and successively mounting human loss. http://www.flickr.com/photos/24662369@N07/5333202438 (Image 11/2013 eclipse)
Oddly enough, the recipient of the leak, the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/science/earth/science-panel-warns-of-risks-to-food-supply-from-climate-change.html?adxnnl=1&seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimesscience&adxnnlx=1383469518-lEpf14Q4HkvxnE2HWnGu+g acted like it was a story about the “food supply.” In fact, the totality of the draft makes it clear that we’ve gone too far for too long to avoid the dire consequences of man made climate change.
The documented risks presented include (Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptations, Vulnerability, IPCC, here http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Climate_Change_2014_IPCCsmallpdf.com1_.pdf or here, http://www.scribd.com/doc/180989207/LEAKED-DRAFT-IPCC-Change-2014-Impacts-Adaptation-and-Vulnerability pp. 6 & 7):
✓ Food insecurity linked to warming, drought, and precipitation variability;
✓ Death injury and disrupted livelihoods in low-lying coastal zones … due to sea level rise, coastal flooding and storm surges;
✓ Severe harm for large urban populations due to inland flooding;
✓ Systemic risk due to extreme events leading to break down of infrastructure networks and critical services;
✓ Loss of rural livelihoods and income due to insufficient drinking and irrigation water and lower agricultural productivity particularly in poorer regions; and,
✓ Loss of marine and terrestrial ecosystems and the services and livelihoods that they provide
What’s left?
Lots of links:
- See more at: http://agonist.org/told-us-world-know/#sthash.cj6GS3nG.dpuf
Sections Of Rand Paul’s Op-Ed On Drug Sentencing - Plagiarized From Article Week Earlier
Sections Of Rand Paul’s Op-Ed On Drug Sentencing Plagiarized From Article Week EarlierPortions of the Kentucky senator’s op-ed in The Washington Times appear to be copied word-for-word from an article published a week earlier.
Sections of an op-ed Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wrote on mandatory minimums in The Washington Times in September appear nearly identical to an article by Dan Stewart of The Week that ran a week earlier. The discovery comes amid reports from BuzzFeed that Paul plagiarized in his book and in several speeches.
...
Here’s how Stewart wrote his introduction to his article on “Rethinking mandatory sentencing”:
Mandatory sentencing began in the 1970s as a response to a growing drug-and-crime epidemic, and over the decades has put hundreds of thousands of people behind bars for drug possession and sale, and other non-violent crimes. Since mandatory sentencing began, America’s prison population has quadrupled, to 2.4 million. America now jails a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country, including China and Iran, at the staggering cost of $80 billion a year.
Is that a good thing?
Most public officials — including liberals, conservatives, and libertarians — have decided that it’s not. At least 20 states, both red and blue, have reformed their mandatory sentencing laws in some way, and Congress is considering a bipartisan bill that would do the same for federal crimes.
And here’s how Paul wrote it a week later with the text bolded that appears copied:
Since mandatory sentencing began in the 1970s in response to a growing drug-and-crime epidemic, America’s prison population has quadrupled, to 2.4 million. America now jails a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country, including China and Iran, at the staggering cost of $80 billion a year. Drug offenders in the United States spend more time under the criminal justice system’s formal control than drug offenders anywhere else in the world.
Most public officials — liberals, conservatives and libertarians — have decided that mandatory-minimum sentencing is unnecessary. At least 20 states, both red and blue, have reformed their mandatory-sentencing laws in some way, and Congress is considering a bipartisan bill that would do the same for federal crimes.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/sections-of-rand-pauls-op-ed-on-drug-sentencing-plagiarized
Patti Smith on mourning Lou Reed: Lou had chosen the perfect day to set sail—the day of poets
Patti Smith on mourning Lou Reed:
paper- colored sky. The first was the face of his wife, Laurie. She was
his mirror; in her eyes you can see his kindness, sincerity, and
empathy. The second was the “great big clipper ship” that he longed to
board, from the lyrics of his masterpiece, “Heroin.” I envisioned it
waiting for him beneath the constellation formed by the souls of the
poets he so wished to join. Before I slept, I searched for the
significance of the date—October 27th—and found it to be the birthday of
both Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. Lou had chosen the perfect day to
set sail—the day of poets, on Sunday morning, the world behind him.
more, just beautiful,
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2013/11/11/131111ta_talk_smith
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