Kansas City Star:
Last year, former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat down and later took a knee during the playing of the national anthem as protest against racial injustice.....which doesn't exist in any significant way. There are examples of police injustices towards blacks, but whether they are directed at blacks or would have happened because some police officers act like thugs remains to be seen. But the media coverage of shootings by police officers of black men is way out of proportion with what happened, as the later investigations have shown, and been subsequently ignored by the media.
Continuing:
More players have joined the protests and President Donald Trump spoke out against the activity in September and has continued to do so.In other words, the players doubled down on stupid, and our president jumped into the fray.
Why would the president care if some overpaid athletes protest? Because the protest is directed at nationalism, which in turn is used by the military-industrial complex to encourage support of our never-ending war on Islam. We cannot have our war effort even remotely questioned, ergo...
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday wrote a letter to all 32 league owners regarding the protests that have taken place during the national anthem, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported.The billionaires have spoken.
In the letter, which Schefter shared on his Facebook page, Goodell wrote that the “current dispute over the National Anthem is threatening to erode the unifying power of our game, and is now dividing us, and our players, from many fans across the country.”
...Goodell would like players to stand, but the national anthem is not mentioned in the NFL rulebook. However, players “should” stand for the anthem, according to the league’s game operation manual.
“Like many of our fans, we believe that everyone should stand for the National Anthem,” Goodell wrote. “It is an important moment in our game. We want to honor our flag and our country, and our fans expect that of us. We also care deeply about our players and respect their opinions and concerns about critical social issues. The controversy over the Anthem is a barrier to having honest conversations and making real progress on the underlying issues. We need to move past this controversy, and we want to do that together with our players.”
In other news...
CNN:
Wildfires raging across Northern California have killed at least 17 people, as hundreds of firefighters battle the flames and keep thousands of people away from the blaze's path.This isn't the first time such fires have happened. In fact, economist Thomas Sowell discussed the California fires back in 2007:
Most of the fires were ignited Sunday, driven by winds of more than 50 mph and dry conditions. With no rain in the forecast this week and a chance of gusts of 35 to 40 mph on Wednesday, forecasters say the weather will create challenges for firefighters.
More than 20,000 people had been ordered to evacuate as of Tuesday night and authorities were encouraging others to pack "ready-to-go bags" with documents and medicines, in case they had to flee the fast-spreading flames on a moment's notice.
As for the flames sweeping across...California, tragic as that is, this has happened time and again before — in the very same places in the very same time of year, just like hurricanes.So when you hear about this "natural catastrophe", just remember that it could have been prevented. But it won't be because...California.
Why would people risk building million-dollar homes in the known paths of wildfires? For the same reason that people choose to live in the known paths of hurricanes. Because the government — that is, the taxpayers — will get stuck with a lot of the costs of dealing with those dangers and the costs of rebuilding.
Why is there such a huge amount of inflammable vegetation over such a wide area that fires can reach unstoppable proportions by the time they get to places where people live? Because "open space" has become a political sacred cow beyond rational discussion.
The same severe government restrictions on building that drive home prices sky high also lead to vast areas with nothing but trees and bushes. Where it doesn't rain for months, that's dangerous.
No matter how much open space there is, it is never enough for environmental extremists, who will make political trouble if anyone is allowed to break up those miles and miles of solid vegetation with buildings, even though pavement and masonry don't burn.
In other words, government preserves all the conditions for wildfires and subsidizes people who live in their path.
Finally, on Wall Street yesterday...
Tech Crunch:
[Tuesday] morning Dow Jones shot some fake news out over the wires announcing that Google was acquiring Apple for $9 billion. For a brief second, the news sent Apple’s stock up about $2 to $158 per share. To the benefit of everyone’s morning, both stock prices quickly returned to normal.Robots may take over the world someday, but not today.
The story went something like this. Larry Page and Steve Jobs started discussing an acquisition back in 2010. Jobs outlined the plans in his will, which dictated the sale to close tomorrow. Google would get nine Apple shares for each Google share at a deal value of $9 billion. Insane to a human, logical to a bot.
Dow Jones issued a statement to 9to5Mac, who first reported the drama. The company asserted that the calamity was the product of a technical error and all erroneous headlines would be stripped from the newswire.
But the human reaction wasn’t fast enough for the algos. We can only admire the poorly written rules from a distance. It’s irritating, as it always is, when the curtains get pulled back for a brief moment and we all realize that our financial markets are being run by bots with the intelligence of infants. Keyword search, sentiment analysis, trend identification (certainly caused by other bots) and whatever other magic was at play really don’t cut it when long-tail events like this happen.
(hat tip to Fake Posters for the pic)
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