September 11, 2019

This Map Shows the Happiest (and Unhappiest) States in the U.S.

https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/happiest-states-in-the-us-america-2019-wallethub

Before I hand you WalletHub’s new ranking of the happiest states in America, I’ll say this: Statisticians in their work can account for many factors, but there's no equation to represent the fleeting nature of joy. A welcomed swell of euphoria --despite a region’s scenic drives, temperatures, and kombucha shops --will shrink inevitably into that middle place of every day, and you’ll be left in emotional limbo to reflect on whether you are content with your true home… the self. Now, go ahead and lean into your escapist fantasies, because that more fun!

It probably comes as no surprise that the United States isn't the happiest country in the world (Finland’s had that title on lock for two years). But our massive country is No. 19 this year, according to the World Happiness Report, meaning that despite all the unhappiness festering in our country, we still came out sorta kinda on top-ish, and must be doing soooomething right.

To determine general happiness and unhappiness at a state level, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 31 key indicators of happiness. The data set range from emotional health to income level to sports participation rate. So, without further ado, let’s check in on our country:



The top 10 happiest states in the US:

10. Connecticut
9. Nebraska
8. Maryland
7. Massachusetts
6. Idaho
5. New Jersey
4. California
3. Minnesota
2. Utah
1. Hawaii

The 10 least happy states in the US:

10. Missouri
9. Tennessee
8. Oklahoma
7. Alabama
6. Kentucky
5. Louisiana
4. Mississippi
3. Alaska
2. Arkansas
1. West Virginia

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September 11, 2019

NYT : Republican Gerrymander Whiz Had Wider Influence Than Was Known

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/us/republican-gerrymander-thomas-hofeller.html

Thomas B. Hofeller was known in political circles as a master of drawing political districts and using demographic data to further the aims of Republicans. But before his death a year ago, the public record of his work was limited to gerrymandered political maps in North Carolina and a handful of other states, and a sheaf of expert-witness depositions in lawsuits. That only skims the surface of his political work over the last decade.

Tens of thousands of maps and documents, kept on computer backups that were uncovered after Mr. Hofeller’s death in August 2018, show his work on a broad range of projects nationwide, from drawing political maps that maximized Republican representation during the 2011 redistricting cycle to a host of smaller projects to advance the party’s fortunes. He kept at it to the end, promising to “bedevil the Democrats” with Republican-friendly voting districts shortly after receiving a likely fatal medical diagnosis in 2016.

The few documents made public from his work have loomed large in two major lawsuits. A legal analysis found in his files appeared verbatim in a draft proposal to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, pointing to his personal involvement in a plan that most experts have concluded was intended to skew the census process toward Republicans. And a North Carolina state court cited data from the backups last week in striking down partisan gerrymanders in State House and Senate maps that Mr. Hofeller had drawn.

But files from the Hofeller backups recently made available to The New York Times offer a much broader view of Mr. Hofeller’s partisan work. The New Yorker reported on the contents of the Hofeller files in an article published on Friday.

Among the highlights from the files obtained by The Times:

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September 10, 2019

There's an NSFW Twitter account called 'Sweary Bercow' and let's enjoy its foul-mouthed genius

https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2019/09/09/swear-bercow-twitter/

Forget about, you know, all of the other stuff, the biggest fallout from John Bercow’s decision to stand down as speaker of the House of Commons is surely for the Sweary Bercow Twitter account? No better excuse than his imminent departure to take a look at its greatest, potty mouthed hits.

https://twitter.com/BercowSweary/status/1171075802571649024
https://twitter.com/BercowSweary/status/1111018903193505792
https://twitter.com/BercowSweary/status/1168954330596220928
https://twitter.com/BercowSweary/status/1169220870507831296
https://twitter.com/BercowSweary/status/1169348969601863682
https://twitter.com/BercowSweary/status/1111040679814316032

September 10, 2019

John Legend jokes Melania is "occupied" with Justin Trudeau after president's #filthymouthedwife

attack on Chrissy Teigen

https://www.newsweek.com/john-legend-donald-trump-crissy-teigen-melania-twitter-1458244



John Legend has jokingly suggested that Melania Trump is too "occupied" with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to pay any attention to her husband following Donald Trump's late night tirade against him and his wife Chrissy Teigen.

The multiple Grammy-winning singer was responding to Trump's criticism of Legend and his "filthy mouthed wife" after he appeared on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt to discuss criminal justice reform in the U.S. The president appeared irate about not getting credit for passing the First Step Act into law in December 2018.

https://twitter.com/johnlegend/status/1170925100717051905



#PABPOTUS

September 9, 2019

LOL, Rick Wilson on Rump : You fuck porn stars and pay them to keep quiet about your tiny cock.

https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1171042370160386049

September 9, 2019

Trump attacked Chrissy Teigen on Twitter. She wasn't having it

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/09/politics/trump-teigen-twitter-feud-trnd/index.html



The Twitterverse lit up Monday morning over model Chrissy Teigen's response to an attack from President Donald Trump, an exchange that was heated even by the standards of his routine social media fights.

The spat began when the President, apparently venting about a town hall on criminal justice reform that aired on MSNBC Sunday night, tweeted that he and other Republicans should be getting more credit for signing the First Step Act into law. The legislation, signed back in December, includes measures that allows thousands of federal inmates to leave prison earlier than they otherwise would have, eases some mandatory minimum sentences and gives judges more leeway in sentencing, among other things. It had support from lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle and received personal attention from Trump's son-in-law and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner.

"I SIGNED IT INTO LAW, no one else did, & Republicans deserve much credit. But now that it is passed, people that had virtually nothing to do with it are taking the praise," the President tweeted late Sunday night. Then Trump went after singer and activist John Legend (who appeared in the MSNBC town hall) and his wife Teigen.
"Guys like boring musician @johnlegend, and his filthy mouthed wife, are talking now about how great it is - but I didn't see them around when we needed help getting it passed," the President wrote.
Teigen fired right back with a colorful insult of her own.

"Lol what a p**** a** b****. tagged everyone but me. an honor, mister president," she tweeted.
By Monday morning, Chrissy Teigen, #TeamChrissy and #filthymouthedwife were all trending on Twitter.

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https://twitter.com/erinscafe/status/1171000269129146370

https://twitter.com/middleageriot/status/1171059113473826819

https://twitter.com/cricketmeesh/status/1171015177862434816

https://twitter.com/hashtag/PresidentPussyAssBitch?src=hashtag_click

September 5, 2019

Boris Johnson's Unconservative Party

The Tories’ tightening embrace of radical populism sets Britain up for a dangerously polarised election

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/09/07/boris-johnsons-unconservative-party

Boris johnson has been Conservative leader for little more than a month, and until this week had appeared in Parliament as prime minister only once. But that did not stop him carrying out the biggest purge in the party’s history on September 3rd. After a backbench rebellion led to a resounding defeat of his uncompromising Brexit policy, 21 moderate Conservative mps, including seven former cabinet members and a grandson of Winston Churchill, had the whip withdrawn and were told they would not be allowed to stand as Tories at the next election.

It was the most dramatic step in a long process: the transformation of Britain’s ruling party from conservatives into radical populists (see article). The capture of the Tories by fanatics determined to pursue a no-deal Brexit has caused the party to abandon the principles by which it has governed Britain for most of the past century. With an election looming, and the Labour opposition captured by an equally radical hard-left, the Tories’ sinister metamorphosis is terrible news.

Junking more than 40 years of cautious pro-Europeanism after the referendum of 2016 was itself a big change. But under Mr Johnson and his Svengali-like adviser, Dominic Cummings, who masterminded the Leave campaign, the Tory party has become not just pro-Brexit but pro-no-deal. Mr Johnson claims he is working flat-out to get a better withdrawal agreement from the eu. Yet in his flailing performance before mps this week, like an undergraduate bluffing his way through a viva, he was found out. He has no real proposal for replacing the contested Irish backstop. Reports that Mr Cummings privately admitted the negotiations in Brussels are a “sham” ring all too true. Mr Johnson’s unconservative plan seems to be to win a quick election, either after crashing out with no deal or, as it has turned out, claiming to have been thwarted by “enemies of the people” in Parliament.

The religion of no-deal has wrecked other Conservative principles. Sajid Javid, the fiscally prudent chancellor, this week dished out billions of pounds worth of pre-election goodies. He gave money to public services without demanding much in the way of reform, and focused on day-to-day spending rather than investing for the future. Spending power was supposedly being kept aside to cope with a no-deal crash-out. But faith dictates that no-deal will do no great harm to the economy, so no safety-net is required. To show any such caution, as Mr Javid’s predecessor (now an ex-Tory) did, is a form of heresy.

The most unconservative behaviour of Mr Johnson’s government has been its constitutional recklessness. Not only has it suspended Parliament (having said that it would not), so as to limit mps’ time to legislate on Brexit (which, again, it said was unconnected). It also toyed with using even more underhand tactics, such as recommending that the queen not enact legislation passed by Parliament. Would the government abide by the law, a cabinet ally of Mr Johnson was asked? “We will see what the legislation says,” he replied. In a country whose constitution depends on a willingness to follow convention and tradition, even making such a threat weakens the rules—and paves the way for the next round of abuses, be it by a Labour or Tory government.

This week there were still just enough conservatives in the Conservative Party to block the most dangerous part of Mr Johnson’s Brexit policy. As we went to press, a bill designed to stop no-deal was making its way through the House of Lords. But the defeat of the government, and its loss of any sort of majority, points towards an election. It will be a contest in which, for the first time in living memory, Britain has no centre-right party. Nor, thanks to Labour’s far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn, will it have a mainstream opposition. Instead the two leading parties will, in their different ways, be bent on damaging the economy; and both will pose a threat to Britain’s institutions. Brexit’s dreadful consequences continue.

September 4, 2019

Jonathan Pie - The Purge!

Boris and Mogg used to be a joke. They now run the country and it's not funny anymore.

September 3, 2019

Jezza the Jamaican

https://twitter.com/LaboursBlackPLP/status/1168396652820029440

September 2, 2019

'Prorogation': Britain's populist coup

Proroguing Westminster is a transparent manoeuvre by Boris Johnson to set up a ‘people versus Parliament’ election, even with the UK on course to crash out of the EU.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/prorogation-britains-populist-coup



Whether one calls it a ‘constitutional outrage’, an ‘abuse of power’ or an ‘affront to democracy’, whether one focuses on its formal characteristics or on its institutional consequences, the British prime minister’s decision to prorogue Parliament, against its will, constitutes a political coup in both senses of the term. It is a ‘do-or-die’ move (to borrow Boris Johnson’s hyperbole) and it is a step outside the margins of democratic legitimacy.

The line between constitutional encroachment and unconstitutional power grab has always been thin in times of accepted dictatorship (China), elected dictatorship (Venezuela), illiberal democracy (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic) and elected authoritarians (Russia, Turkey, Philippines), as with Donald Trump and ‘Brexit’. Johnson has just elided the two.

The United Kingdom does not need to have a written constitution to be bound by constitutional principles and participate in the worldwide ‘constitutional acquis’—the rule of law and the interpretation of such rule always in favour of, never against, democracy. In fact, despite its unwritten character and arcane proceedings, the British constitution has inspired and influenced many national practices through the solidity and continuity of its democratic and parliamentary tradition and through the pre-eminence of liberty in the public and the private sphere. Johnson’s initiative, supported by blatantly populist motives, has clearly broken with this trend.

‘Will of the people’

The most salient characteristic of populism is that it subjugates legality to the ‘will of the people’—or it creates a new ‘legality’ to serve such an imaginary construct. Democracy, however, in its constitutional practice, puts legality first and enables only the courts—never politicians, elected or unelected—to judge or interpret it. Legality is always, especially in the British tradition, a dynamic notion: it is judged on a case-by-case basis, where circumstances matter. The democratic spirit matters even more.

In the case at hand, it is true that prorogation of the parliamentary session is not only permitted but usual and that it constitutes a government prerogative: the monarch is ‘asked’ to embrace the proposal and does so, because it cannot shape or influence any political decision. Prorogation is thus only normal, and legal, when there are no urgent, very important or outstanding parliamentary matters.

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