Customize the Windows 10 Start Menu

Click here for an article at How-To Geek by Walter Glenn entititled "10 Ways to Customize the Windows 10 Start Menu."

Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) Is A Fool

Click here for an article in Rolling Stone by Tim Dickinson entitled "Is This the Dumbest Moment in Congressional History?" Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky)was questioning John Kerry at a congressional hearing on “The Need for Leadership to Combat Climate Change and Protect National Security." Dickinson says:

Kerry is an expert on climate change who helped broker the Paris climate accord and recently criticized president Trump for proposing to set up a task force that seeks to counter the scientific consensus on climate change. Massie calls advocates of climate action “alarmists” and believes that the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is “plant food.”

Here's part of a transcript of the questioning:

Massie: Sec. Kerry, I want to read part of your statement back to you: “Instead of convening a kangaroo court, the president might want to talk with the educated adults he once trusted his top national security positions.” It sounds like you’re questioning the credentials of the president’s advisers, currently. But I think we should question your credentials today. Isn’t it true you have a science degree from Yale?
Kerry: Bachelor of arts degree.
Massie: Is it a political science degree?
Kerry: Yes, political science.
Massie: So how do you get a bachelor of arts, in a science?
Kerry: Well it’s a liberal arts education and degree. It’s a bachelor…
Massie: OK. So it’s not really science. So I think it’s somewhat appropriate that someone with a pseudo-science degree is here pushing pseudo-science in front of our committee today.
Kerry: Are you serious?! I mean this is really a serious happening here?

Freedom Works actually posted a 38-second video clip of the exchange, under the heading: .@RepThomasMassie takes John Kerry to SCHOOL! 😎 #ampFW #SassyWithMassie. I guess they're proud of it.

Massie responded to the resulting ridicule, defending(?) himself as follows:

"When I asked Kerry if he had a science degree, he answered 'no' but forgot to turn his microphone on," Massie wrote on Twitter Thursday. "The left has been using his flub to conceal what this exchange proved which is Kerry admitted he doesn't have a science degree, even though his degree says 'science.'"

Former national security adviser under President Barack Obama, Susan Rice, replied to Massie's tweet, "The idiocy is shocking. Even now."

Massie responded to Rice:

"Big government is the religion. Climate change is the hymnal," Massie fired back. "Have the audacity to tell a priest he has no clothes and all of the Obama administration has-beens will clear the bleachers to jump in the dumpster fire."

It's shocking to learn that Massie has two engineering degrees from MIT.

Mike Lee Makes A Fool Of Himself Mocking Green New Deal

Click here for a 15-minute presentation on the House floor by Mike Lee: see Reagan riding a flag-waving velociraptor, firing a machine gun with a rocket strapped to his back; Star Wars creatures to ride in Alaska, 20-foot seahorses to ride in Hawaii, Lee's description of his conversations with cows, the governor of Utah using a tennis racket to fight off a shark in his office in Sharknado 4 -- and then the most ludicrous part of the speech, where Lee proposes his "serious" solution to climate change: have more babies.

Russia And The Trump Campaign

Click here for an article at Mother Jones, by David Corn, entitled "Here’s the Real Trump-Russia Hoax (It’s Trump defenders and lefty Russiagate skeptics claiming there is no scandal)." The Trump campaign essentially aided and abetted Russia in its interference in the election.

Trump's Barrage Of Lies After Barr's Letter

Trump let loose with a barrage of lies and exaggerations on Hannity's show. Click here for a WaPo article by Aaron Blake entitled "Trump and Hannity binge on conspiracy theories in Trump’s first post-Mueller Fox News interview."

And click here for another cloud of lies at Trump's first post-Barr rally, at Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is an article by Linda Qiu at The New York Times, entitled "Trump’s Inaccurate Claims on Mueller, Health Care and the Great Lakes." "Inaccurate Claims"? More pussyfooting by the NYT.

Task Manager

Click here for a useful article at How-To Geek entitled "Windows Task Manager: The Complete Guide."

Ari Fleischer Can't Stop Lying - Get That Man A Job In The Trump Administration!

Click here for an article at Esquire by Charlie Pierce entitled "Ari Fleischer and the Iraq War Ghouls Are Proof the Republican Party Needs a Total Reset."

God, I thought we'd heard the last of Ari Fleischer. But here he is crawling out from under a rock lying again in defense of the war criminals in the W administration who engineered the Iraq invasion.

Aviation Safety Features Optional - If You Pay For Them?

Click here for an article at Esquire by Charlie Pierce entitled "Boeing's 'Optional' Safety Equipment on the 737 Max Is a Monument to Corporate Greed."

One Boeing 737 Max coming right up. Would you like some added safety features with that?

Patricia and Girls Girls Girls - Whiskey A-Go-Go

Mind Games: The Checker Shadow Illusion

Click here for an article entitled "Do we perceive reality? The checker shadow illusion."

Two squares on a checkerboard -- a dark-colored square in full light and a light-colored square in shadow -- appear to be vastly different, but are in fact the same shade of gray.

Steve King Fantasizes About Civil War

Click here for an article at WaPo by Reis Thebault, entitled "Steve King posts meme warning that red states have '8 trillion bullets' in event of civil war."

The Iowa Republican broached the subject in a Saturday evening Facebook post — a meme of two fighting Frankenstein figures, one red and one blue, each an amalgamation of states based on their political leanings. The art was ripped and uncredited, as meme art usually is, from a New York Times book review in 2013, and was originally designed by Yarek Waszul.

“Folks keep talking about another civil war,” the meme read. “One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use.”

Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, tweeted “This is treason. Steve King should be expelled from the House immediately.”

In reply, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe commented that King “isn’t actually COMMITTING treason, but he is fomenting and inciting it. Ample reason to expel him.”

Just another congressman joking about civil war and how his side would win. Move along, folks -- nothing to see here.

Cool Mathematical Trick

x% of y = y% of x

An easy example: Let x=10, y=60.
Then x% of y -- 10% of 60 -- is 6.
But y% of x -- 60% of 10 -- is also 6.

Those calculations are rapidly performed in your head. But what if the calculation is just a little more difficult: What is 4% of 75?

You can divide 75 by 100 to get .75, and multiply by 4: .75x4=3

Or you can flip the equation; instead of doing 4% of 75, do 75% of 4.

"Fox News has become an American plague."

That's the closing line of an article by Margaret Sullivan at The Washington Post entitled "It’s time — high time — to take Fox News’s destructive role in America seriously." Click here.

Kavanaugh Hearing Revisited

When Michael Cohen was testifying in open session, at one point Trump lieutenant Mark Meadows was trying to rebut the idea that Trump is racist. During this bit, he had a black woman named Patton, apparently one of the few black people who work for Trump, come and stand beside him. She just stood there awkwardly for 30 seconds or so, not saying anything and not mentioned; and when a junior Democrat accused Meadows of using her as a prop in a racist way, Meadows hit the roof. Paul Waldman at the Plum Line compared the incident to the Kavanaugh hearing:

You’ll recall that when Christine Blasey Ford testified, she was calm, controlled, deferential and polite, because she knew that if she displayed any anger she’d be called a lunatic and her allegations dismissed out of hand. Kavanaugh, on the other hand, was utterly unhinged — crying, shouting, sneering, interrupting senators — and his anger was taken not as evidence that he was unreliable but just the opposite. It was considered proof that he was the true aggrieved party and the victim of a terrible injustice that had to be remedied.

Seth Myers, Green Book Criticism

More Coal-Fired Plants Close In Trump's First Two Years Than In Obama's Eight

Click here for a Reuters article by Scott DiSavino entitled "President Trump can't stop U.S. coal plants from retiring."

First sentence: "More U.S. coal-fired power plants were shut in President Donald Trump’s first two years than were retired in the whole of Barack Obama’s first term..."

More:
"The number of U.S. coal plants has continued to decline every year since coal capacity peaked ... "in 2011, and is expected to keep falling as consumers demand power from cleaner and less expensive sources of energy."

"Cheap natural gas and the rising use of renewable power like solar and wind have kept electric prices relatively low for years, making it uneconomic for generators to keep investing in older coal and nuclear plants."

Increase Top Marginal Tax Rates

Click here for an article in The New York Times by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman entitled "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Tax Hike Idea Is Not About Soaking the Rich." Here are a few points from the article:

From 1930 to 1980, the top marginal income tax rate in the U.S. averaged 78%; it exceeded 90% from 1951 to 1963. These rates applied to extraordinarily high incomes only. In 1960, the top marginal tax rate of 91% started at what today would be $6.7 million a year. For incomes in the hundreds of thousands (in today’s dollars) marginal rates were 25% to 50%.

The income per adult of the lowest 50% was $16,000 in 1980 (adjusted for inflation), and it still is around $16,000 today. At the same time, for the highest 0.1 percent of earners, incomes have grown more than 300 percent; for the top 0.01 percent, incomes have grown by as much as 450 percent. And for the tippy-top 0.001 percent — the 2,300 richest Americans — incomes have grown by more than 600 percent.

A common objection to elevated top marginal income tax rates is that they hurt economic growth. Consider the examples of Japan and Russia.

The United States grew more strongly — and much more equitably — from 1946 to 1980 than it has ever since. But maybe in those years the United States, as the hegemon of the post-World War II decades, could afford “bad” tax policy? The United States occupied Japan after the war, imposed democracy and a top marginal tax rate of 85% on it (in the U.S., the rate was 86% in 1947). The goal was to prevent the formation of a new oligarchy. In 1982, the top rate in Japan was still 75%. Yet between 1950 and 1982, Japan grew at one of the fastest rates ever recorded, one of the most striking economic success stories of all time.

When Communism fell, Russia was also a poor country, with income and life expectancy well below that of Western economies. Russians got fast privatization and a top tax rate of 30 percent — again modeled on what was prevailing in the United States at the time (31 percent in 1991). That rate was replaced in 2001 by an even lower flat rate of 13 percent. That shock therapy created a new oligarchy, led to negative income growth for the bottom half of the population, fostered a general discontent with democracy and produced a drift toward authoritarianism.

Democracy or plutocracy?

Bits and Pieces

- Under the Trump administration, EPA civil penalties have fallen 85 percent compared with the previous two decades. The inflation-adjusted figures from Trump’s first two years in office were the lowest since the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance was established. Former agency officials expressed alarm that the decrease in fines could affect the EPA’s ability to deter wrongdoing. (Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis)

Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker (2016)

Sand Dunes Base Jump