Mrs. Betty Bowers

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Nazis and Soviets sign a non-aggression pact on eve of World War II; Sacco and Vanzetti executed; Defrocked priest John Geoghan killed; Movie star Rudolph Valentino and Broadway’s Oscar Hammerstein die.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Ray Bradbury

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So I’m also the site’s clinically diagnosed sufferer from Depression and Anxiety (also SAD and PTSD) and I’ve been in Therapy for years (I recommend it to everyone). I’ve come to the conclusion that Existential Depression is not my main problem at the moment, in 14 Billion years or so the Universe will either disperse into thermal non-existence (Entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics) or disappear beyond the Event Horizon of Light itself (Dark Energy).

Pick your poison, Physics is no help.

But my Anxiety focuses me and is persistent and unrelenting.

I find it difficult to hear the remote diagnosises of Psychiatrists (who are no more real Doctors than Chiropractors) of Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio. So much of his behavior is explained by the fact that he, and all Republicans, are evil. Their policies are evil, their personna is evil, their motivations are evil. They are all driven by selfishness and self-aggrandizement, not some mystical mind demon that makes their acts sickness instead of crime.

You see, it’s not just him- it’s all of them, all together (“it’s all of them”) the 40% of Deplorables who for some reason are allowed to dictate what’s politically acceptable and what is not.

Screw you and the .01% Media. Evil!

Indefinite detention in Concentration Camps? How are we different from Nazis again? Were they just crazy or was it something else?

I suppose as the resident Viking (I’m a quarter Danish, that’s why I have the Ben Franklin seal of ‘Whiteness’ you turkeys which is proof enough that not every idea is a good one) I have to say something about Greenland, and Denmark for that matter.

Denmark is basically a flat swampy part of Germany that nobody really cared about (certainly not the Germans). It is attractive and wealthy only in comparison to more fjordy parts of Scandinavia while there are many parts of Germany with much more potential. Today their best known product Internationally is Butter. You should try some, it’s really good.

But most parts of Scandinavia are depressingly isolated except by sea and while Vikings are impressively piratey and fierce it’s not really condusive to developing advanced political structures like Kingdoms and Empires and so for a time the Danes were the Top Dogs by virtue of organization.

It’s during that period that the Viking age of Exploration and Expansion occured and all of a sudden there were Vikings everywhere. Normandy? That’s Norse Man’s Land and it is certainly arguable that the Battle of Hastings was nothing more than a squabble between 3 rival Viking Princes. It’s the Harolds, Hardrada of Norway and the Danelaw and Godwinson of the (Danish) Anglo-Saxons that confuse you while William, the Viking of Norse Mand’s Land in France conquered the island. Vikings sacked about every city that was worth it from Paris to Moscow and were employed as Palace Guards by the Byzantines (kind of a bribe really).

What made this possible was the Longship, a marvel of design that is easily constructed, incredibly seaworthy (well, for the time, you might find the accomodations a bit Spartan today), light, and shallow drafted. That’s the real secret of their success, they could sail up rivers like a canoe and if they couldn’t be portaged you just build a new one. Easy peasey.

But also ocean and in 874 or so (CE) Garðarshólm (named after Garðar Svavarsson who kind of bumped into it by accident) became a thing and it’s not as bad as all that. You have hot springs, you have fish.

But it’s a tough neighborhood and six months of darkness can make you cranky. After being booted off Iceland for being a big dick who buried his neighbor’s farm in a landslide Erik Thovaldson took his boat and sailed west for a bit and basically discovered what is now North America.

Not discovered in the sense that it was utterly uninhabited because Native Americans had been there for thousands of years, but new to ignorant Europeans.

So anyway, Vineland, a place of milk and honey. I’ve tasted Newfoundland wine and found it not terrible, if unremarkable. Evidence of Viking settlement shows they persisted for a time and then assimilated or perished.

Greenland

From 986, Greenland’s west coast was settled by Icelanders and Norwegians, through a contingent of 14 boats led by Erik the Red. They formed three settlements—known as the Eastern Settlement, the Western Settlement and the Middle Settlement—on fjords near the southwesternmost tip of the island They shared the island with the late Dorset culture inhabitants who occupied the northern and western parts, and later with the Thule culture that entered from the north. Norse Greenlanders submitted to Norwegian rule in 1261 under the Kingdom of Norway (872–1397). Later the Kingdom of Norway entered into a personal union with Denmark in 1380, and from 1397 was a part of the Kalmar Union.

Yeah, the Kalmar Union is kind of complicated so we won’t deal with it here, my point is that Greenland is basically an icy rock with a certain strategic value and some mineral resources which have heretofore been buried under Glaciers over a mile thick. It’s so tough it killed off the Vikings for the most part and the only thing that makes it marginally more attractive today is that GLOBAL WARMING IS BURNING OFF THE GLACIERS AT AN ALARMING RATE!

But I’m not here to talk about that, I’m here to talk about Economics.

Seward’s Folly may seem a bargain at 2 Cents an acre but while it has potential it is not quite the bonanza some people promote.

The White House Saw Riches in the Arctic Refuge, but Reality May Fall Short
By Henry Fountain and Steve Eder, The New York Times
Aug. 21, 2019

When the Trump administration first pushed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration, it predicted that drilling would generate a windfall for the federal Treasury: $1.8 billion, by a White House estimate.

But two years later, with the expected sale of the first oil and gas leases just months away, a New York Times analysis of prior lease sales suggests that the new activity may yield as little as $45 million over the next decade. Even the latest federal government estimate is half the figure the White House predicted.

The lofty original projection was just one element of a campaign within the administration to present in the best possible light the idea of opening the refuge’s coastal plain after decades of being stymied by Democrats and environmentalists, according to internal government communications and other documents reviewed by The Times.

Opponents of exploration have said the 19-million-acre refuge, one of the largest expanses of pristine land in the United States, could be forever damaged in pursuit of oil that would bring little benefit to American taxpayers.

The administration, bent on proving them wrong, turned to the federal bureaucracy to help make its case, the records show.

Even before plans to allow the lease sales were completed and approved by Congress in late 2017, the Interior Department pressed for new — and possibly rosier — assessments of the prospects for oil discoveries that would entail field research in the environmentally fragile refuge, according to the documents.

In revising a draft plan for the new assessments, officials played down evidence that the refuge might not have much oil, deleting references to disappointing wells nearby.

They also pushed scientists to provide studies and other information so quickly that some expressed concern over the speed of the process, according to the documents, which were obtained through public records requests by Trustees for Alaska, an environmental law firm that has opposed oil exploration in the refuge.

An Interior Department spokeswoman said the agency “absolutely” respected the work of its scientists and staff, and had not interfered with it in any way. She said negative information about nearby wells was not pertinent to prospects in the refuge.
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When the Interior Department drew up plans in 2017 to update assessments of the potential oil reserves in the refuge, officials stripped out disappointing findings about test wells drilled just outside the area. The details were included in a draft but removed from the final plan, a comparison of the documents showed.

In response, the Interior spokeswoman noted that only one well had been drilled in the coastal plain, and that only one seismic survey had ever been done. “Other wells and geophysical studies do not apply to the coastal plain,” she said.

Even with all of the discussion about the refuge, major oil companies have been relatively quiet about whether they intend to bid. Some people in government and in the industry attribute this to a lack of interest based on the companies’ own data-gathering over the years. Others say the companies are probably just trying not to tip their plans to competitors.

The question will not be answered, of course, until bidding begins.

“Will it be a stupendous billion-dollar bid? Probably not,” said Larry Persily, a former federal gas official responsible for Alaska, who noted that there was no shortage of oil or gas reserves now. “Maybe it would be good to have the lease sale and find out if there is any interest,” he added. “And we can move on.”

I’ll note this has been a mainstream Republican policy for decades, not the fever dream of Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio.

You can have a mountain of gold and if it costs more to get to Market than you can receive in legal tender (say Ur Cow Tokens for example) you’re just like the retailer who takes a loss on each purchase but thinks they’ll make it up in volume. Watch some Gold Rush, serious dudes like Parker, Tony, and Rick know it’s all about controlling the margin of what it costs to get and what people will pay for it.

Greenland could be sitting on an ocean of Oil as big as the Atlantic (it isn’t, we know that much geology) but it won’t matter a bit going forward because Oil (if you can’t produce it for about $10 a Barrel) is not cost competitive with Solar and Wind.

Unless you really are counting on the incineration of the Earth turning all those fjords into Golf Courses.

Jesus!

Oh, absolutely. Did that part for 3 years, constantly directed to “gay it up” because I was the only first tenor in the cast, why do you think I got Ralph Rackstraw?

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

The last Jewish settlers leave the Gaza Strip; President Bill Clinton signs welfare reform into law; Black Panthers’ co-founder Huey Newton killed; Sci-fi author Ray Bradbury and singer Tori Amos born.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

George Carlin

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Fascism is not dependent on anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is an unfortunate side effect. Accusing people of “dual loyalty” based upon religious belief is to say Catholics or Jews or Muslims are “other” and is pure hatred and bigotry designed to separate winners (fascists) from losers (everyone else).

It’s an expression of the anger they have for anyone more fortunate than themselves which is what puzzles me when Neo Liberals embrace it (supposed to be all about merit and the market guys, be intellectually consistent).

Are you odd in any respect? Conform or die.

Trump Accuses Most American Jews of “Disloyalty” to Israel, Deploying Anti-Semitic Trope
by Robert Mackey, The Intercept
August 20, 2019

President Donald Trump revealed again on Tuesday that he subscribes to the anti-Semitic belief that American Jews harbor a secret dual loyalty to Israel.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president first accused Democratic lawmakers of insufficient support for the state of Israel before adding, “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”
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That Trump was accusing the vast majority of American Jews who vote for Democrats in election after election of being disloyal to Israel was clear in the context of his full answer to the question he was asked: Should U.S. aid to Israel be suspended following the Israeli government’s decision to prevent two Democratic congresswomen, Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, from visiting the Palestinian territories it occupies?

Trump, who pressed Israel to block the visit by the two Muslim Democrats, responded by falsely smearing Tlaib and Omar as “two people that hate Israel and hate Jewish people.” In recent months, he has repeatedly mischaracterized as anti-Semitic the two lawmakers’ criticism of Israel’s far-right government, and their support for the Palestinian-led campaign of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against companies that enable the occupation to continue.

Trump also took time out of his meeting with Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, to mock Tlaib for crying on Monday as she described her disappointment at not being allowed to visit her Palestinian grandmother in the Israeli-occupied West Bank without surrendering her right to free speech during the trip.

The Romanian president, who comes from the country’s ethnic German minority, made no comment on Trump’s remark, but his presence was a silent reminder of the horrific violence that has resulted from the idea of Jewish dual loyalty. At least 380,000 Romanian Jews were slaughtered between 1940 and 1944 by a fascist government that was allied with Nazi Germany.
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This was at least the second time this year that Trump invoked the anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty. Speaking to a group of Jewish Republicans in April, the president referred to Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, as “your prime minister.”
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That group, the Republican Jewish Coalition, defended Trump on Tuesday, accusing the 79 percent of American Jews who voted for Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms of defending “a party that protects/emboldens people that hate you for your religion.”

A far larger number of Jewish Americans were appalled by what they saw as the clear anti-Semitic undertone of Trump’s logic.

“This is it, Trump’s antisemitic philosophy exposed,” the progressive Orthodox activist Elad Nehorai wrote. “If Jews don’t agree with him, they aren’t good Jews. This is how he gets us killed. Sides with the “good ones” and spouts hate at the rest, coded or not. Thus the Soros caravan conspiracy that led to the Pittsburgh massacre.”

“This is an explicit dual loyalty charge wielded by the President of the United States against 80% of American Jews who voted against him,” Emily Mayer, a spokesperson for the anti-occupation group IfNotNow said in a statement. “It is not merely an antisemitic dog whistle — it’s a bullhorn to his white nationalist base.”

As Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg explained last year, the ancient dual loyalty charge is what lies beneath Trump’s use of the phrase “globalist” to describe people he sees as insufficiently American. “Globalist — one of Trump’s favorite dogwhistles — implies that someone is not of-this-nation, they’re not tied here, their loyalty is not to *us* of this country but to *each other* internationally,” Ruttenberg wrote. “The idea the Jews’ loyalty is not to France or Germany or Poland or etc. because they are infiltrators, outsiders–that’s one of the oldest tropes in the book. They’re out to get us, to undermine us, not one of us. It’s being used to great effect these days.”

“This is outrageous,” Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on Twitter. “So US Jews’ ‘loyalty’ is mainly to Israel? Or it is supposedly in Israel’s interest to back Netanyahu’s right-wing agenda of creating a discriminatory, repressive one-state reality?”

Crap, if you are Jewish you already understand. If you are Catholic or Evangelical and believe in the divinity of the soul from conception and consider abortion the same as murder, I think you misguided but basically I don’t care. See the difference?

How about them Mets?

This is a really helpful take given that I’d be tempted to start with Aleric’s Sack of Rome on August 24th, 410 (CE), not the less well known one by Brennus of the Gauls in 390 (BCE). Clio is a harsh mistress. After over 1000 years of division Giuseppe Garibaldi (a fascinating man, you should look him up) helped develop the Risorgimento which culminated in the period of 1870 to 1918. You thought the only thing that happened between 1914 and 1918 was a World War. It’s more complicated than that.

Oh, he was a Mason by the way.

So we’ll skip past the 20th Century and fast forward to today where Italy is a basket case hamstrung by the austerity policies of the European Union and the vagaries of the Euro.

Italy’s prime minister just resigned. What the heck comes next?
By Jen Kirby, Vox
Aug 20, 2019

Matteo Salvini is pretty much what’s going on in Italian politics.

His rise to power fits into a broader resurgence of right-wing populism that swept Europe in recent years. When Salvini took over leadership of the Lega in 2013, it was a regionalist party with a narrow focus on northern Italy (its full name is Lega Nord, or Northern League), and it lacked national appeal.

Salvini helped changed that, especially in the lead-up to the 2018 elections. He pushed the party rightward and embraced a populist, “Italians first” message. Most notably, he embraced an anti-immigrant platform at a time when Italy was on the front lines of Europe’s refugee and migrant crisis.

A savvy politician, Salvini plays up the anti-elitist, “man of the people” vibe, and he’s skilled at promoting this persona on social media. This summer, he campaigned on Italy’s beaches, deejaying, snapping selfies, and going shirtless, where he showed off his “proletarian paunch.”

Salvini also invokes religion a lot, something Conte criticized Salvini for during his resignation speech on Tuesday, saying it “undermined the principle of secularism of the modern state.” Salvini, in response, kissed a rosary.

All of this has worked out well for Salvini so far. He’s arguably the most popular politician in Italy right now, and his Lega party is polling at 38 percent — very close to the number needed to fully take control of government. Salvini’s party also came in first in the European parliamentary elections in Italy, with his anti-EU campaign taking 34 percent of the vote.

What hasn’t worked out well for Salvini is the awkward coalition government he’s a member of, which consists of his party and the Five Star Movement.

The Five Star Movement is a true hodgepodge. Founded by a former comedian in 2009, the party’s only real unifying ideology is that it’s anti-establishment. Georgetown political scientist Hans Noel described the party as “like what would happen if you put Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Jon Stewart in a blender.”

But the Five Star Movement received the most votes — about 32 percent — in the elections last March. The center-left coalition, led by the Democratic Party, came in second place. In third was the center-right coalition, which included Salvini’s Lega. Lega got about 17 percent of the vote.

Thus ensued a long and complicated process of trying to form a government, in which neither the left nor the right could do so without the support of the Five Star Movement. It flirted with both sides, but Five Star’s leader Luigi di Maio eventually reached a deal with Salvini to form a government.

Both party leaders became deputy prime ministers, and they brought in Conte — an independent law professor who had never held a political office — as a compromise choice to be the prime minister.

But the Five Star-Lega partnership was an odd fit from the start, and since the 2018 election, Salvini and Lega have gained in popularity, while support for the Five Star Movement has waned.

The Five Star Movement, new to government, struggled to keep pace — or match Salvini’s political savvy. Tensions arose between the two partners, and sometimes spilled over into public feuding.

Salvini, buoyed by his popularity, saw a chance to increase his party’s power in government and perhaps become prime minister himself. In early August — just 14 months into the government — Salvini declared that the coalition with the Five Star Movement had failed and the only way to break the deadlock was to hold new elections. He pushed a confidence vote to take down the government in the hopes of getting those elections this fall.

But Salvini may have miscalculated.
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Salvini called for a confidence vote earlier this month, which was expected Tuesday. But Conte sidestepped him by resigning, putting the power into the hands of Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, who would decide whether to accept Conte’s resignation. It also undercut Salvini. (Conte’s resignation didn’t cancel the confidence vote, but Salvini and Lega, perhaps recognizing their blunder, withdrew it anyway.)

Mattarella said he requested Conte stay on as he figures out what’s next: either calling new elections or trying to piece together a new governing coalition with Italy’s party leaders.

This might be a caretaker-type government, meaning a coalition that would stay in power to pass some critical legislation and then disband in a few months, or a more long-term one that would last for the remainder of what should have been Conte’s five-year term.

But in either case, it could also mean Salvini gets pushed into the opposition and out of power altogether.

That’s because a possible option is a coalition between the center-left, led by the Democratic Party, and the Five Star Movement — which would mean Lega, and Salvini with it, would be gone.

It would certainly be a twist if Salvini’s machinations ended with a center-left coalition in power. If that happens, Salvini can still be an agitator from the outside, and skilled politician he is, he may be able to spin the narrative in his favor. But his influence within government — and right-wing, anti-immigration policies — would be diminished.

Salvini seemed to realize this over the weekend, trying to make nice again with the Five Star Movement. But it looked to be too little, too late. The Five Star Movement leader di Maio called such offers “regretful” and “tardy,” and reports suggested that they’d already started making overtures to the center-left.

Umm… yeah.

Look, Jon Stewart has always been a little “Centrist” for me. If it pushes Five Star and moves the Overton Window slightly Left it’s a good thing.

How about my Metropolitans?

Nine games trailing the Braves and 6 shy of the Nationals riding a 3 game streak. Two losses behind the Cubs for the last Wild Card.

Yankees and Dodgers tied at 83 – 44 for best.