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yallerdawg

yallerdawg's Journal
yallerdawg's Journal
August 18, 2016

Another damn thing I have to apologize to my children for.

"Hey - you keep doing that, you're going to end up with hideous knuckles!"

Knuckle-cracking is actually good for you

Source: CNN, By Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent

For the past 15 years, Tanya Johnson has been driving her boss nuts.

It's not her job skills -- Dr. Robert Szabo says Johnson is an excellent nurse -- but rather her incessant knuckle-cracking that makes him want to strangle her.

"I kept telling her to stop, that it was bad for her," Szabo said.

You'd think Johnson might have listened, given that Szabo is a hand surgeon at the UC Davis Medical Center and former president of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand.

But she just kept right on cracking.

"I told him, 'Prove that it's bad,' " she said.

*****

The idea was simple: Gather a bunch of knuckle-crackers (Johnson among them) and have them do their thing under ultrasound to see what was really going on inside the joint. Then examine the knuckles pre- and post-crack, along with the knuckles of a group of non-crackers, to look for problems, including hand swelling and waning grip strength.

Szabo felt quite sure that the study would prove that his nurse needed to stop cracking her knuckles (and also thereby stop driving him crazy). But that's not the way it turned out.

*****

Read it at: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/health/knuckle-cracking-good-not-bad/index.html
August 18, 2016

Survivor Season 33: Millennials Vs. Gen-X

This should be real entertaining for "baby boomers"!

Instead of "Redemption Island" they have something called "The Basement"?

After 32 seasons, Survivor is back with a brand-new theme that's sure to up the ante for the latest crop of castaways: this fall, the competition will be played between Millennials (which is considered anyone born between the early 1980s through 2000) and Gen X-ers (the generation born in between the early 1960s through the early 1980s.)

Before Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X kicks off with a 90-minute premiere episode on Wednesday, Sept. 21 at 8/7c on CBS and CBS All Access, let's get to know more about the 20 new castaways that will be competing for a chance at $1 million and the coveted title of Sole Survivor.

http://www.cbs.com/shows/survivor/photos/1006780/survivor-season-33-meet-the-cast-of-millennials-vs.-gen-x/
August 18, 2016

Why President Obama is pushing the TPP.

Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Lee of Singapore in Joint Press Conference

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You're here today touting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but Hillary Clinton is against it. Her vice presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, has now reversed himself and is now against it. Donald Trump is, too, meaning that the next President is opposed to this deal. So my question is, if you take both candidates at their word, how do you plan to get Congress to pass this deal during the lame duck, and what’s your plan to convince members to do so given the opposition I just described?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, right now, I'm President, and I'm for it. And I think I've got the better argument. And I've made this argument before; I'll make it again. We are part of a global economy. We're not reversing that. It can't be reversed, because it is driven by technology, and it is driven by travel and cargo containers, and the fact that the demand for products inside of our country means we've got to get some things from other places, and our export sector is a huge contributor to jobs and our economic wellbeing. Most manufactured products now involve a global supply chain where parts are made in all corners of the globe, and converge and then get assembled and packaged and sold. And so the notion that we're going to pull that up root and branch is unrealistic. Point number one.

Point number two. It is absolutely true, the evidence shows that some past trade deals have not delivered on all the benefits that were promised and had very localized costs. There were communities that were hurt because plants moved out. People lost jobs. Jobs were created because of those trade deals, but jobs were also lost. And people who experienced those losses, those communities didn't get as much help as they needed to.

And what is also true as a consequence of globalization and automation, what you've seen is labor, workers losing leverage and capital being mobile, being able to locate around the world. That has all contributed to growing inequality both here in the United States, but in many advanced economies. So there’s a real problem, but the answer is not cutting off globalization. The answer is, how do we make sure that globalization, technology, automation -- those things work for us, not against us. And TPP is designed to do precisely that.

Number one, it knocks out 18,000 tariffs that other countries place on American products and goods. Our economy currently has fewer tariffs, is more open than many of our trading partners. So if everybody agrees that we're going to have lower tariffs, that's good for American businesses and American workers. And we should want that, we should pursue it.

Number two, the complaint about previous trade deals was that labor agreements and environmental agreements sounded good, but they weren’t enforceable the same way you could complain about tariffs and actually get action to ensure that tariffs were not enforced. Well, TPP actually strengthens labor agreements and environmental agreements. And they are just as enforceable as any other part of the agreement. In fact, people take them so seriously that right now, for example, Vietnam is drafting and presenting unprecedented labor reforms in Vietnam, changing their constitution to recognize worker organizations in Vietnam for the first time.

So what we're doing is we're raising standards for workers in those countries, which means it’s harder for them to undercut labor standards here in the United States. The same is true for environmental standards. The same is true for things like human trafficking, where we’ve got a country like Malaysia taking really serious efforts to crack down on human trafficking. Why? Because TPP says you need to. It gives us leverage to promote things that progressives and people here in this country, including labor unions, say they care about.

So if you care about preventing abuse of workers, child labor, wildlife trafficking, overfishing, the decimation of forests, all those things are addressed in this agreement. I have not yet heard anybody make an argument that the existing trading rules are better for issues like labor rights and environmental rights than they would be if we got TPP passed.

And so I’m going to continue to make this case. And I’ve got some very close friends, people I admire a lot, but who I just disagree with them. And that’s okay. I respect the arguments that they’re making. They’re coming from a sincere concern about the position or workers and wages in this country. But I think I’ve got the better argument, and I’ve got the evidence to support it.

And hopefully, after the election is over and the dust settles, there will be more attention to the actual facts behind the deal and it won’t just be a political symbol or a political football. And I will actually sit down with people on both sides, on the right and on the left. I’ll sit down publicly with them and we’ll go through the whole provisions. I would enjoy that, because there’s a lot of misinformation.

I’m really confident I can make the case this is good for American workers and the American people. And people said we weren’t going to be able to get the trade authority to even present this before Congress, and somehow we muddled through and got it done. And I intend to do the same with respect to the actual agreement.
August 17, 2016

Here is Trump's new campaign manager.

Breitbart boss and Cruz's surrogate now on Trump team - this is going to get ugly.

Fortunately, Hillary group is ready!

Kellyanne Conway Says Worst Mass Shooter in U.S. History Was at Hillary Clinton Rally

August 17, 2016

University of South Alabama starts school year with new transgender bathroom policy

A more sophisticated metropolitan student body (Mobile), not like those two northern 'A' universities!

My alma mater! Go Jags!

According to the university's FAQ sheet:

• The policy was initiated because of the federal action, and that it was important to have in order to ensure that USA is "an inclusive space for all employees, students, staff and visitors."

• If someone is harassed for using the restroom or changing facility consistent with gender, that person is encouraged to contact the University Police Department at 251-460-6312 or local law enforcement. Non-emergency situations are to be directed to the Title IX Coordinator or by emailing titleix@southalabama.edu.

• The campus has a list of single-stall and unmarked bathrooms on the main campus.

• If a community member is uncomfortable with the policy, they are encouraged to locate the nearest single-stall restroom. Questions about policy compliance are to be directed to the Title IX Coordinator via email.

More at: http://www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2016/08/university_of_south_alabama_st_1.html#incart_2box
August 17, 2016

What's Trump going to do with all that money?

The Hillary campaign has an idea.

Today's fundraising email:

<name> --

Over the weekend, we learned that one of Donald Trump's super PACs is preparing to launch a nationwide series of attack ads targeting Hillary -- with most of their spending concentrated in the battleground states.

The Trump campaign proper, meanwhile, is still sitting on a massive war chest from their big July fundraising haul. And Trump himself is planning 21 separate finance events this month with top donors in the Republican Party. For the first time in this election, he's making a serious effort to raise incredible amounts of money.

Taken together, those two things signal a shift in strategy from Trump and his allies -- at least if I'm reading the signs correctly.

Knowing they can't compete with our organizers on the ground, Trump and company are going to try to swamp us in the worst attacks they can dream up -- and make this race so ugly and awful that they'll convince a bunch of people to stay home.

The gamble they're making is that Trump's true believers are more committed than we are. They think if they're the only ones who show up on Election Day, they'll win.

If that's actually what's coming, we really can't afford to get knocked off our game. We really can't afford to get outraised. And most of all, we can't afford to show less enthusiasm or commitment than Trump's core supporters. Not when Hillary's counting on us most.

The attacks are coming. Chip in $XX right now to show that you have Hillary's back!

Hillary needs you now more than ever -- chip in $XX and be one of the more than 2 million grassroots donors standing with her:

<name>, chip in $XX

Thanks,

Robby

Robby Mook
Campaign Manager
Hillary for America

August 17, 2016

The new version of Pennywise the Clown from movie "It"!

Actor Bill Skarsgard.

"We are such stuff as 'really bad freakin' nightmares' are made on..."

August 16, 2016

Support for TPP Grows as Americans Become More Familiar With Trade Deal

Morning Consult, by Ryan Rainey

Americans are paying more attention to the debate over the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership as the general-election season kicks off, but they’re split on whether they support the trade deal, according to a new Morning Consult poll.

Still, more than half (62 percent) of registered voters surveyed from Aug. 8 through Aug. 10 said they had heard little or nothing about the agreement, which would cut tariffs in the trade bloc and establish new rules on issues such as intellectual property, labor and government subsidies. If Congress approves TPP, the pact with trading partners such as Japan, Malaysia, Canada and Mexico would be a major addition to President Obama’s foreign and economic policy legacy.

More than a third of those surveyed (35 percent) either somewhat support or strongly support the accord, compared with the 22 percent who oppose it. Forty-three percent either didn’t know how they felt about it or had no opinion.

This month’s results mark a slight shift in TPP supporters’ favor when compared with a March poll that found 72 percent of surveyed registered voters either hadn’t heard of TPP or didn’t know much about it. In that survey, 29 percent of respondents opposed TPP and 26 percent supported it.

Read it all at: https://morningconsult.com/2016/08/11/support-tpp-grows-americans-become-familiar-trade-deal/


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