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.

: Pope John Paul II shot; English colonists arrive at what becomes Jamestown; Winston Churchill gives his first speech as British prime minister; The U.S. declares war on Mexico; Singer Stevie Wonder born.

‘s like going into the Senate. You know, the first time you get there, you’re all excited, ‘My God, how did I ever get here?’ Then, about six months later, you say, ‘How the hell did the rest of them get here?’

Mike Gravel

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Can the PLA get across the Taiwan Strait?

While the Pentagon appears to be skeptical, the facts and the numbers tell a different story

ByGRANT NEWSHAM

The Pentagon’s recently released 2019 China Military Power Report says PLA forces cannot conduct a full-scale amphibious assault on Taiwan – and are “less likely” planning for one.

The report claims the PLA does not have enough amphibious ships – and isn’t building enough of them either.  In military jargon, the PLA lacks “lift.”

In terms of the newest modern amphibious ships, it’s true China has only five large Type 071 amphibious transport docks. However, three more are in the works or outfitting, and the bigger Type 075 helicopter carrier is reportedly now in production.

Unfinished business: Philippines widows stand in elections for murdered politicians

At least six widows are taking up the political fight in this year’s midterm elections

Jamie Fullerton and Agence France-Presse

Mon 13 May 2019 06.56 BST

At least six widows of slain male politicians are standing in the Philippines’ midterm elections, extending a decades-long tradition of women in the country refusing to let their murdered spouses’ agendas die with them.

“I have a lot of things to do for Rodel, for the people of Daraga,” said Gertrudes Batocabe, who took over her late husband Rodel’s mayor candidacy in the central Philippines city of Daraga when he was shot dead in December. “It’s not really automatic that the wife takes over, but in this case I cannot see my opponents sitting down,” she told AFP.

Saudi Arabia: Oil tankers damaged in ‘sabotage attack’

Two oil tankers sustained “significant damage” in an incident off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, according to the Saudi energy minister. Officials did not say who was behind the alleged sabotage.

Saudi Arabia said on Monday that two of its oil tankers were targeted in a “sabotage attack” off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The announcement comes amid increased tensions in the region between the United States and Iran, although no details have been released on the nature of the sabotage or who may have been responsible.

What happened?

• Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said two of its oil tankers were the target of a “sabotage attack” off the coast of Fujairah.
• He said that one tanker was on its way to the kingdom to be loaded with crude oil to be sent to the US.
• There were no casualties and no oil was spilled, but the incident caused “significant damage” to the two ships.

A DocuDharma tradition now on The Stars Hollow Gazette.

I tease my mother by calling her Emily after Emily Gilmore both because overall my family reminds me very much of the Gilmores and because she’s never met a brand name she didn’t like whereas I’m perfectly content to buy generic.

I thank her among many things for a thorough grounding in the domestic and other arts.

Mom teaches first grade and is actually famous in a quiet sort of way.  The kind parents brag about and angle their kids for though she’s won national awards too.  Of course I owe everything I know about educating to her and among my own peers I’m considered an asskicking trainer.

She also insisted we learn to perform routine self maintenance, little things like laundry and ironing, machine and hand mending. basic cooking.  Of course she always indulged us with trips to museums and zoos, made sure we got library cards, did the usual bus driver thing to swim practice, had this huge second career as a Brownie/Girl Scout Leader for my sister.

At one point when I was old enough for it to make an impression she took her Masters of Fine Arts in Art of all things, so I know a little Art History with Far Eastern.  I understand how to bang out a copper pot and make silver rings because she took me to class once or twice.  She liked stained glass so much that she and dad made several pieces (you use a soldering iron and can cut yourself pretty bad so it’s a macho thing too).  They also did silk screening which taught me a lot about layout and graphic arts.

But she always liked fabric arts and in addition to a framed three dimensional piece in the living room, there are Afghans and rugs and scarves and pot holders and wash cloths and hats and quilts and dolls.

And the training kits and manuals for her mentorship programs, and the adaptations and costumes for the annual first and fifth grade play.  Did I mention she plays 3 instruments, though mostly piano?

She touch types too.

So to Emily, a woman of accomplishment and refinement, Happy Mother’s Day.

Whatever shall I do for content when the Season ends next week?

Press The Meat

Yanks Are Weenies

Steep, but only for 3 – 5 minutes. Green Tea on the other hand you can brew all day long and it never gets bitter. Milk not necessary (yuck anyway).

More About Tea

Millenials Gone Bad

That’s actually a Trilby not a Fedora, you can tell from the size of the brim.

More Bad Daytime TV

Continuity Errors

More Bad Cinema

Still More Bad Cinema

Guilty Pleasures

All About The Mom

Oh, you want news.

Banana – Remy

Carry On – Kygo & Rita Ora

No Sleep – Martin Garrix featuring Bonn

Pakistan attack: Gunmen storm five-star hotel in Balochistan

Three gunmen who stormed a five-star hotel in the restive Pakistani province of Balochistan, killing at least one guard, have been shot dead by security forces, officials say.

The attack and subsequent siege, which targeted the Zaver Pearl-Continental Hotel in the strategic port city of Gwadar, lasted several hours.

A hotel spokesman said there were no guests and few staff due to Ramadan.

The separatist Balochistan Liberation Army said it carried out the attack.

The group said that the hotel, the centrepiece of a multi-billion-dollar Chinese project, was selected in order to target Chinese and other investors.

The Observer view on the European elections and Nigel Farage’s malign message

Observer editorial

Neither of the major parties has done enough to challenge the leader of the Brexit party

Across Europe, rightwing nationalist populism is on the march. Britain is no exception. Polls are putting Nigel Farage’s Brexit party in the lead. If it does as well as expected in the European elections, it will be the second time Farage has pulled it off: in 2014, Ukip topped the poll with 27% of the vote. Farage’s relative success is partly the product of his intuitive understanding of how to deploy the populist playbook: whip up public disenchantment with the establishment, accuse the elites of thwarting the will of the people and offer misleadingly simple solutions to complex problems.

With voters so disillusioned with the two main parties, it’s a seductive formula. But his success is at least as much explained by the eagerness of mainstream politicians to yield to his brand of politics, rather than to challenge it. On Europe, Farage has only ever stoked anti-EU sentiment without ever offering constructive fixes. He has consistently got away with telling untruths: that the EU is on the cusp of creating a pan-European army; that EU membership costs the UK £55m a day; that three-quarters of British law is made in Brussels. He has repeatedly praised Norway as a model for the UK’s relationship with the EU in the past, but last week denied it.

Yemen war: End to fighting could be in sight as Houthi rebels announce withdrawal from lifeline port

UN peace deal placed pullback of all forces from city in September, but until Saturday neither side had compliedBel Trew @beltrew

Yemen’s Houthi rebels said they are beginning a unilateral withdrawal from Hodeidah, a move which could save a fractured peace deal and end the fighting.

The bulk of food and humanitarian aid to the war-torn country comes through the lifeline port, which over the past year has become the front line of the war between the rebels and the Gulf-backed Yemeni government.

The fighting had strangled the flow of aid to millions who are on the brink of famine.

A witness told the Reuters news agency that Houthi forces had started leaving the port. The information is yet to be confirmed by the United Nations (UN).

Terror Group Boko HaramThe Suicide Bomber Who Survived

Halima was supposed to die at a market in Chad. And her mission was to take as many people as possible with her — a mission forced upon her by the terror group Boko Haram. But she survived, and the 20-year-old is now learning how to live again.

By Till Mayer in Bol, Chad

With just a few meters left to go before reaching her village, Halima can hardly stand it. The 20-year-old quickens her pace when she sees the first huts, ecstatic to be back home, even if only for a brief visit. Her gait is a bit unsteady — after all, it’s not easy to walk through fine sand on two prosthetic legs.

Halima doesn’t come often to the Lake Chad island of Gomerom Doumou, which lies at the southern edge of the Sahara and straddles the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. It takes an hour and a half to travel by boat from the small town of Bol in Chad to Halima’s home island, weaving through a maze of small islands and floating grass carpets.

“Am I a bad person?” Why one mom didn’t take her kid to the ER — even after poison control said to.

The emergency room bill I can’t stop thinking about.

Two years ago, 36-year-old Lindsay Clark was facing a terrible decision.

Her 2-year-old daughter Lily had gotten into a small bottle of the anti-nausea drug Dramamine.

“It had a child lock on it, but I caught her sitting there with a bunch of white stuff in her mouth,” Clark says. “I immediately swept her mouth with my finger, but I wasn’t sure how many pills she ate.”

Clark had to decide: Should she take Lily to the emergency room?

Sri Lanka Catholics hold first Sunday mass after Easter attacks

Thousands of Catholics attended mass in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo Sunday amid tight security to prevent a repeat of Easter bomb attacks that killed 258 people.

Soldiers armed with automatic assault rifles guarded St. Theresa’s church at Colombo’s Thimbirigasyaya residential quarter, while members of the congregation were searched for explosives.

The sprawling church car park was empty as the authorities did not allow any vehicles into the compound as part of high-level security.

Or perhaps I should call it News Delivery Specialist to pair with my Newsstand Delivery Manager cred which was a real job where I was in charge of 50 or so Retail locations on a weekly basis (I had other responsibilities too, I was full time). I have awards from the Columbia School of Journalism also (though not from that job, albeit the same publisher) so I think I’m above average qualified for a Journalist.

But Paperboy is not a real job (except in the sense of dutiful delivery with desultory demand for payment). My first real job was doing mall intercepts for a Consumer Research Field Service company (Do you you have pimples, oily skin, blemishes, white heads, black heads, or zits? What do you mean “No” you Pizza Faced Zombie?).

Opinion sampling is a kind of Gilmore tradition and Richard and my activist brother are still employed in the field. My magnum opus of coding was a Crosstabulation Program to process Survey Results. At the time this was done by specialist Data Processing Houses that charged Thousands of Dollars per run (COBOL and Hollerith Card Tech, I later was able to get my hands on a genuine 9-Track paid for by a client who wanted backwards compatibility). It was big, really big, including 10s of Thousands of lines of Data Entry, Import/Export, Data Maintenance (more difficult than it seems damn it, you need to screen for duplicates and while assigning a unique internal ID is the start of a solution, you need an in RAM Hash Table of Used/Not Used which is not trivial in 64K of CP/M) and a Report Writer, all of which required a user interface and not just a scripting language.

I don’t work at that any more and it’s because I’m just too damn good at what I do.

My last field gig was doing NHTSA breath tests, manning “voluntary” stations in a lab coat with a clip board and a safety vest and explaining to people (after I got them in the habit of mindlessly agreeing to a series of innocuous questions) that the Police were no longer involved (true enough) and we wanted them to give us a breath-a-lyzer.

Do I have to?

No. Not at all. You can drive out that exit right there and I’ll mark you as a refusal. We’re really doing this to test the efficiency of the Police (partly true, but in a bad way).

I’ll put it the way my Cataract Surgeon did, I’m only legally allowed to claim a 98% success rate but I’m really much better than that.

But I have Milgram scruples about abusing the authority of the lab coat and I was obviously uncomfortable about the job which also involved hours of commute and standing around late at night in whatever weather so my services became less essential and I’m not unhappy they did.

But what is persuasive coercion compared to the State Enforced kind.

Electronic Warrants And Roadside Blood Draws Are The New Normal For DUI Checkpoints
by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt
Fri, May 10th 2019

A few years ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration brought down the heat on itself by teaming with local law enforcement to set up roadside blood/saliva draws. The plan was to compile data on impaired driving, but the “voluntary” sample stations were staffed by cops who flagged motorists down, leading many to believe this was just another DUI checkpoint.

I am not a Cop. I never have been a Cop. No Officer was part of our Survey Team. What they did when we were not around? Anyone can abuse a lab coat, I’m only surprized more don’t.

Now that the NHTSA is out of the picture, local law enforcement is taking care of this itself. Only it very definitely is mandatory and any data-gathering would be incidental to the real purpose of these checkpoints: arresting impaired drivers. It’s 2019 in America and we can only now proudly say we’re the Home of the Roadside Blood Draw.
…
With the legalization of marijuana use in several states, there’s a new form of impairment that can’t be caught with a breathalyzer. While there’s definitely a law enforcement interest in limiting impaired driving, there’s also a lot of fiduciary pressure to continue to bust drivers generate revenue even when the driver’s drug of choice isn’t alcohol… and the driver may not even actually be impaired.

This is leading to two things: an increase in electronic warrants sent at odd hours to judges who will likely approve any boilerplate sent from a DUI checkpoint… and a whole bunch of minimally-trained officers running roadside blood drives out of police vans.
…
The only thing keeping this from being even worse is a 2016 Supreme Court decision. Without it, these blood draws wouldn’t even have a hasty judicial scrawl at the bottom of a dozen pages of boilerplate authorizing Officer Nurse to take blood from drivers’ arms. Meanwhile, officers are touting the speed of this new dystopian feature as a win for the public, since the guilty parties will be able to processed into the criminal justice system in less than half the time.

I want to emphasize these are mandatory blood draws that can be screened all sorts of ways for DNA and other markers.

New York City – Kylie Minogue

The Good Place Song “Pobody’s Nerfect” – Whitney Avalon

She’s So Mean – Matchbox Twenty