Tag Archives: Shadow

Evidence of Bizarre Trump-Russia Ties Continues to Ooze Out

Mother Jones

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So what’s new on the Trump-Russia front? First up, the Independent tells us that the former MI6 agent behind the now-famous dossier alleging close ties between Russia and the Trump team was dismayed that his findings didn’t generate more action during the presidential campaign:

Mr Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

….By late July and early August MI6 was also receiving information about Mr Trump. By September, information to the FBI began to grow in volume: Mr Steele compiled a set of his memos into one document and passed it to his contacts at the FBI. But there seemed to be little progress in a proper inquiry into Mr Trump. The Bureau, instead, seemed to be devoting their resources in the pursuit of Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions.

The New York office, in particular, appeared to be on a crusade against Ms Clinton. Some of its agents had a long working relationship with Rudy Giuliani, by then a member of the Trump campaign, since his days as public prosecutor and then Mayor of the city.

In related news, BuzzFeed says Israel is extremely interested in the possibility of Trump-Russia ties:

“You can trust me that many intelligence agencies are trying to evaluate the extent to which Trump might have ties, or a weakness of some type, to Russia,” one of the intelligence officers said….The officer said part of Israel’s interest in the dossier — and in other intelligence on Trump’s ties to Russia — stems from concern that secrets Israel shares with the Unites States might be fed to Russia.

Earlier this week, Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported that Israeli intelligence officials were questioning whether to continue sharing intelligence with the incoming Trump administration. The report said that during a recent meeting with US intelligence officials, Israel was told that the Russians had “leverages of pressure” to use against Trump. BuzzFeed News could not independently confirm that a meeting had taken place.

Other reports suggest that British intelligence is thinking along the same lines as Israel. And the Daily Beast reports that a group dedicated to hacking the NSA and releasing its prize malware has suddenly gone out of business a few days before Trump’s inauguration:

The Shadow Brokers emerged in August with the announcement that they’d stolen the hacking tools used by a sophisticated computer-intrusion operation known as the Equation Group, and were putting them up for sale to the highest bidder. It was a remarkable claim, because the Equation Group is generally understood to be part of the NSA’s elite Tailored Access Operations program.

….It soon emerged that the Shadow Brokers really had the goods….Virtually nobody, though, believed the Shadow Brokers’ claim that they were mere hackers trying to sell the exploits for a quick fortune.

The more persuasive theory, supported by no less than Edward Snowden, is that the Shadow Brokers are one of the same Russian government hacking groups now accused of targeting the U.S. election….Under this theory, the Shadow Brokers were part of a tit-for-tat in the intelligence world. The group emerged just as the U.S. began confronting Russia over its election hacking, and then seemed to release its secrets in time with the public thrusts and parries between the two countries….Now, with a new, friendlier administration coming in, Vladimir Putin may be pressing the reset button.

The more I read about this stuff, the harder I find it to believe. It just seems wildly ridiculous, the kind of thing that would barely pass muster on a TV potboiler, let alone in real life. The truth is that I’d probably dismiss it entirely if it weren’t for the vast amount of very public and very strange evidence that Team Trump and Team Putin are very close.

I don’t know. This is all completely outlandish, and I can hardly bring myself to credit it. And yet, there’s an awful lot of evidence that points in the direction of it being true—or at least partly true, anyway. Strange days.

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Evidence of Bizarre Trump-Russia Ties Continues to Ooze Out

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Lefties Earn 10% Less Than Righties

Mother Jones

Well, this is weird. Danielle Kurtzleben summarizes a new study called “The Wages of Sinistrality”:

In the data, around 11 to 13 percent of the population was left-handed. And when broken down by gender — that is, comparing women to women and men to men — those lefties have annual earnings around 10 to 12 percent lower than those of righties, Goodman writes, which is equal to around a year of schooling. (That gap varied by survey and by gender, however.) Most of this gap can be attributed to “observed differences in cognitive skills and emotional or behavioral problems,” he writes, adding that since lefties tend to do more manual work than right-handers, the gap appears to be due to differences in cognitive abilities, not physical.

Apparently the cognitive differences were already well known (though I didn’t know about them), but this paper is the first to document the earnings gap. It’s surprisingly large. So if you’re a lefty and you’re doing well, congratulations! You’ve beaten the odds.

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Lefties Earn 10% Less Than Righties

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A Question About Botched Executions

Mother Jones

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I’m reluctant to ask a question that may strike some people as too cavalier for a subject that deserves only serious treatment. But after yesterday’s botched execution in Arizona—the latest of several—I continue to wonder: why is it so damn hard to execute people?

For starters, there are plenty of time-tested approaches: guillotines, firing squads, hanging, electrocution, gas chambers, etc. Did those really fall out of favor because people found them too grisly? Personally, I find the sterile, Mengele-like method of lethal injection considerably more disturbing than any of the others. And anyway, if you’re bound and determined to kill people, maybe you ought to face up to a little bit of grisly.

Beyond that, is it really so hard to find a lethal injection that works? Obviously I’m not a doctor, but I do know that there are plenty of meds that will very reliably knock you unconscious. And once you’ve done that, surely there are plenty of poisons to choose from? Or even asphyxiation: place a helium mask over the unconscious prisoner and he’ll be painlessly dead in about ten minutes or less.

Can anyone point me to a readable but fairly comprehensive history of executions over the past few decades? When and why did lethal injection become the method of choice? Why does there seem to be only one particular cocktail that works effectively? Lots of people have asked the same questions I’m asking, but nothing I’ve ever read really seems to explain it adequately.

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A Question About Botched Executions

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Quote of the Day: John Boehner Invites Obama to Ignore Congress on Immigration

Mother Jones

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From House Speaker John Boehner, who is currently beavering away on a plan to sue President Obama for dealing with too many problems on his own:

We’ve got a humanitarian crisis on the border, and that has to be dealt with. But the president clearly isn’t going to deal with it on his own, even though he has the authority to deal with it on his own.

Man, this begs for a follow-up, doesn’t it? What exactly does Obama have the authority to do on his own, Mr. Speaker? What unilateral actions would you like him to take without congressional authorization? Which particular law would you like him to reinterpret? Inquiring minds want to know.

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Quote of the Day: John Boehner Invites Obama to Ignore Congress on Immigration

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Will Republicans Finally Find a Tax Cut They Hate?

Mother Jones

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Charles Gaba makes an interesting point about today’s Halbig decision: if upheld, it would amount to a tax increase. Everyone who buys insurance through a federal exchange would lose the tax credits they’re currently entitled to, and losing tax credits is the same as a tax increase. This in turn means that if Democrats introduce a bill to fix the language in Obamacare to keep the tax credits in place, it will basically be a tax cut.

This leaves Republicans in a tough spot, doesn’t it? Taken as a whole, Obamacare represents a tax increase, which makes it easy for Republicans to oppose it. But if the Halbig challenge is upheld, all the major Obamacare taxes are unaffected. They stay in force no matter what. The only thing that’s affected is the tax credits. Thus, an amendment to reinstate the credits is a net tax cut by the rules that Grover Norquist laid out long ago. And no Republican is allowed to vote against a net tax cut.

I’m curious what Norquist has to say about this. Not because I think he’d agree that Republicans have to vote to restore the tax credits. He wouldn’t. He’s a smart guy, and he’d invent some kind of loophole for everyone to shimmy through. Mainly, I just want to know what loophole he’d come up with. I’m always impressed with the kind of sophistries guys like him are able to spin. It’s usually very educational.

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Will Republicans Finally Find a Tax Cut They Hate?

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Seven Hours of Sleep Is Just About Optimal

Mother Jones

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How much sleep does a normal, healthy adult need? The Wall Street Journal reports:

Several sleep studies have found that seven hours is the optimal amount of sleep—not eight, as was long believed—when it comes to certain cognitive and health markers, although many doctors question that conclusion.

Other recent research has shown that skimping on a full night’s sleep, even by 20 minutes, impairs performance and memory the next day. And getting too much sleep—not just too little of it—is associated with health problems including diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease and with higher rates of death, studies show.

That’s sort of interesting. In the past, I would have had no idea how to guess at this. I always slept exactly the same every night, so I always felt about the same every morning. Over the past couple of years, however, my sleeping habits have become far more erratic, spanning anywhere from six to eight hours fairly randomly. And sure enough, I’ve vaguely come to the conclusion that six hours makes me feel tired throughout the day, and so does eight hours. Seven hours really does seem to be pretty close to the sweet spot.

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have much control over this. I wake up whenever I wake up, and that’s that. Today I got up at 6, tried to get back to sleep, and finally gave up. There was nothing to be done about it. And right about now I’m paying the price for that.

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Seven Hours of Sleep Is Just About Optimal

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Wage Stagnation Is No Illusion

Mother Jones

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Bloomberg has a long article today wondering whether wage stagnation is mainly due to demographic shifts:

25- to 34-year-olds will make up 22.5 percent of the workforce by 2022, compared with 21.6 percent in 2012….Meanwhile, the share of 45- to 54-year-olds in their best earning years will drop by 3.3 percentage points in the decade ending 2022.

….Hollowing out the middle-aged working population could cut median earnings because such employees bring home the biggest paychecks. The median 45- to 54-year-old household earns $66,400 a year, compared with $51,400 for 25- to 34-year-old households.

Well, sure. Compared to 30 years ago, the theory goes, we have more young workers bringing down the average and fewer prime age workers raising the average. As a result, the average is declining. But all that means is that baby boomers are aging out of the workforce, not that wages are necessarily in bad shape.

That makes sense. At least, it would make sense if it were true. The thing is, in an article more than a thousand words long, we never learn that we can look at this directly. The chart on the right shows the median wages of just 25-34 year olds, and as you can see, they’ve been declining for more than a decade. This has nothing to do with demographics because it’s measuring wages for the same age group the entire time.

Now, these figures don’t include health insurance, and they only go through 2012. So they aren’t of much help if, say, the Fed is trying to gauge the tightness of the labor market in the second quarter of 2014. Nonetheless, they certainly show a long-term trend of wage stagnation that plainly has nothing to do with demographics. This makes it vanishingly unlikely that wage stagnation over the past six months is merely due to demographic shifts.

It’s a nice fairy tale to pretend that wage stagnation might just be an artifact of boomers retiring, but easily available data quite clearly shows otherwise. It’s real.

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Wage Stagnation Is No Illusion

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Do We Need More Business Folks In Congress?

Mother Jones

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Ed Kilgore points to a new Gallup poll that asks what kind of people you’d like to see in Congress:

So is this a vote for more business experience? Or even—shudder—a retroactive yearning for Mitt Romney? Like Kilgore, I’m skeptical. At a guess, people who answered the question about business experience were implicitly contrasting it with lawyers or career politicians, and that’s a rigged deck. Of course business leaders will come out ahead compared to those two despised professions.

Which makes it too bad that Gallup screwed up this question. Instead of throwing out a kitchen sink of qualities (occupation, religion, ideology, etc.) they should have asked specifically about a list of occupations. Do you think the country would be better governed if our legislatures had more:

Business folks
Teachers
Lawyers
Doctors
Retired people
Military leaders
Scientists
Etc.

That would be kind of an interesting poll. Personally, I’d vote for more kindergarten teachers. I suspect that’s a pretty appropriate background for serving a few years in Congress.

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Do We Need More Business Folks In Congress?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 6 June 2014

Mother Jones

Today we have a stripey Domino. This picture required a bit of art direction: I had to pick up Domino and move her a few inches to the left to get her fully into the stripey shadows. Surprisingly, she allowed me to do this without complaint. This was never a problem with Inkblot. I could plonk him down anywhere I wanted and he’d obligingly lay there like a sack of potatoes. Domino is not normally so cooperative.

Anyway, I’m mentioning this because I don’t want a big scandal after I win my Pulitzer Prize for catblogging and somebody rats me out to the jury. They’re pretty strict about this kind of thing.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 6 June 2014

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On This Earth, A Shadow Falls

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