Category Archives: Politics

I can’t vote in this election

… but I’m interested in the outcome nevertheless.

John Scalzi: My Endorsement for President, 2016: Hillary Clinton.

“[L]ook at the 2016 election, in which a racist, sexist, ignorant boor of a straight white male, with no experience in public service and no policies he could personally articulate beyond “it’ll be great, believe me“ went up against a woman who spent the better part of four decades in and around public service, including occupying some of the highest positions in government, and who had exhaustive, detailed policy positions on nearly every point of public interest — and was ahead of her in some polls on the day they had their first debate.

If that tape in which Trump bragged about sexual assault hadn’t hit the air, the polls might yet still be close. It literally took “grab ’em by the pussy“ to get some air between arguably the most qualified candidate ever to run for president, who is a woman, and inarguably the worst major party presidential candidate in living memory, who is a straight, white man. I cannot know that fact and not be confronted by the immense and absolutely real privilege straight white men have — and just how much better a woman has to be to compete.”

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916 Million in one year

New York Times: Donald Trump Tax Records Show He Could Have Avoided Taxes for Nearly Two Decades, The Times Found.

“Donald J. Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years, records obtained by The New York Times show.

The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

Tax experts hired by The Times to analyze Mr. Trump’s 1995 records said that tax rules especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed Mr. Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period.”

“Ethical failings in a politician are like raisins in a cookie: They shouldn’t be there. They disgust people.“

Huffington Post: John Oliver Is Back, And He Wants You To Get ‘F**king Outraged’ Over Donald Trump’s Scandals.

“If you think this election is simply a choice between two candidates with a scandal-filled history, John Oliver has a message for you… and it comes in the form of raisins.

In his return to HBO’s “Last Week Tonight“ on Sunday, Oliver took an in-depth look at the scandals surrounding both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and found they’re not even close to equal.”

“Hahn: If they have really got it, they have been very clever in keeping it secret.”

German History in Documents and Images: Transcript of Surreptitiously Taped Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (August 6-7, 1945).(PDF)

“At the beginning of the war, Germany’s leading nuclear physicists were called to the army weapons department. There, as part of the “uranium project“ under the direction of Werner Heisenberg, they were charged with determining the extent to which nuclear fission could aid in the war effort. (Nuclear fission had been discovered by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner in 1938.) Unlike their American colleagues in the Manhattan Project, German physicists did not succeed in building their own nuclear weapon. In June 1942, the researchers informed Albert Speer that they were in no position to build an atomic bomb with the resources at hand in less than 3-5 years, at which point the project was scrapped.

After the end of the war, both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union tried to recruit the German scientists for their own purposes. From July 3, 1945, to January 3, 1946, the Allies incarcerated ten German nuclear physicists at the English country estate of Farm Hall, their goal being to obtain information about the German nuclear research project by way of surreptitiously taped conversations. The following transcript includes the scientists’ reactions to reports that America had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The scientists also discuss their relationship to the Nazi regime and offer some prognoses for Germany’s future. As the transcript shows, Otto Hahn was especially shaken by the dropping of the bomb; later, hecampaigned against the misuse of nuclear energy for military purposes.”

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