I found this article that may be interesting. Here is the URL: http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/yes-...you/26054/

Here is the article:

Quote:It wouldn’t be an election cycle if Democrats weren’t panicking, fretting, and pessimistically wringing their hands at the slightest bit of real or imaginary bad news – even as Republicans remain confident in their chances even if they’re behind the eight ball. But you can’t blame Hillary Clinton’s supporters entirely for the fact that they’ve become paralyzed this month and suddenly turned into Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, even though their candidate remains in a fantastic position. After all, the media has essentially resorted to reporting a fictional version of the election lately.

The trouble with September is that there’s really nothing that’s going to happen that’s going to change the minds of any voters. Those who have been following the election closely all along have already made up their minds during the course of the conventions and the resulting fallout. Those who weren’t able to make up their minds by August are going to remain undecided until they’ve gotten a look at the two candidates on the debate stage. But stagnant stretches are terrible for ratings, so the media bends over backward to try to manufacture interest in the election during these stretches.

The easiest way to do that is to pretend it’s a closer election than it really is. Three weeks ago, the polling averages said that Hillary Clinton led Donald Trump nationally by around four points. That’s not a race-deciding margin, but it’s the kind of position you want to be in at this stage of the calendar. But headlines like “It’s still the same four point race it was last month” don’t exactly keep people tuned in.

So we’ve seen most major news outlets, cable news in particular, begin describing the race as “tightening” in the hope of retaining enough public interest in the race to keep ratings from falling into a lull. The trouble: the race hasn’t actually been tightening. So CNN decided to change the methodology of its in-house polling to oversample registered republicans, and voila, it had a headline grabbing poll which said Trump was ahead by two points. Suddenly every other major news outlet was reporting the shocking CNN poll as if it were the only poll, even going so far as to ignore their own in-house polling if that’s what it took to get in on the ratings grab of the stunning story about Trump somehow supposedly having taken the lead for no reason.

But the reality is that if you eliminate the illegitimate CNN poll, and if you also discard the consistently inaccurate outlier poll from the LA Times, the national polling averages show that Hillary Clinton is still leading Donald Trump by around four points. In other words, nothing has changed about this race since last month.

So what about all the shocking movement in the swing state polls? Well, for the most part, that isn’t real either. Of the last six polls conducted in Florida, only two of them show Trump leading the state. One is the CNN poll, which at this point is discardable. The other is the obscure JMC Analytics poll, which has been a consistent outlier. Beyond that, Hillary is still winning Florida, according to the polls that aren’t statistically invalid. But the two Florida polls claiming Trump is in the lead are the only two you’ll hear reported right now.

And remember just last month, when every cable news outlet claimed that whoever won Pennsylvania was going to win the White House? That narrative has been abandoned entirely. You know why? Because Hillary is leading big in Pennsylvania. There isn’t even one outlier poll that the media can grab onto in order to falsely paint Pennsylvania as being close, so instead the media has simply decided that the state no longer matters – and indeed no longer exists.

The people who get caught in the middle of all these hijinks are those whose job is to analyze the polls. You have fully legitimate outlets like FiveThirtyEight which try to average the polls in a meaningful way. But what happens when we all know that some of the polls are being rigged by the media outlets conducting them to begin with? These polling analysis sites are between a rock and a hard place. If they start throwing out polls they know are crap, where do they draw the line? At what point do they cease being statistical analysts and start being mere commentators? Their percentages and predictive models go to crap during these times, but it’s not their fault.

For the sake of the sanctity of the election process, the good news is that none of this blatantly misleading and false reporting from the media appears to have any impact on the outcome of elections. Undecided voters don’t sit around watching political news all day anyway, because if they’re the type who are still undecided at this point, it means they’re the type who don’t think the stakes of this elections are too high to begin with. So they won’t be casting their votes based on which way CNN and MSNBC pretend the election momentum is shifting on any given day.

But it’s enough to drive the dedicated supporters of the leading candidate crazy. When nearly every major media outlet spends all month screaming in unison that the race is “tightening” in the desperate hope of keeping their ratings intact during an otherwise superficial stretch of the election, and when some of those news outlets go so far as to produce comically invalid poll numbers to try to “prove” their claims, it can lull anyone into believing that the race actually is tightening.

But if this race really had been “tightening” and if Donald Trump really had been “closing the gap” for as long as the media has been claiming as much, then he’d have to be ahead by twenty points by now. The movement just isn’t there this month. And would there be? This is not a stretch of the election where minds are made up or changed. That’ll come once the debates start. In the mean time, this is still the same race is was three weeks ago. And unless one of these candidates decides to kidnap the Lindbergh baby and join ISIS next week, it’ll still be the same race between now and at least the first debate. Nothing is changing, other than the way it’s being reported. And even that ultimately has no impact.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Pip...wt_NYBrand

Quote:A device exploded in Seaside Park, New Jersey, Saturday morning as about 5,000 people were set to run a 5k Marine charity race and police are investigating another suspicious package in the shore town, authorities said.
The explosive device went off in a garbage can on D Street and Ocean Avenue at about 9:30 a.m., police said.
Source: Device Explodes at Marine Race on Jersey Shore: Police | NBC New York http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Pipe-Bomb-Explodes-on-the-Jersey-Shore-Police-393823801.html?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_NYBrand#ixzz4KX8pgoQl
Follow us: @nbcnewyork on Twitter | NBCNewYork on Facebook

http://peterturchin.com/blog/2016/09/17/...ires-past/

Quote:Apparently my blog posts on the historical roots of European dysfunction (see for example the last one, Visualizing Values Mismatch in the European Union) were noticed. I was approached by people who run Euromind and asked to contribute a short article to the edited volume they are putting together, titled Do Europeans Exist?  I did that and you can see it here:
Deep Historical Roots of European Values, Institutions, and Identities
In my previous post, I used data from the World Values Survey (WVS) to make a point about values mismatch that ensued when the core six countries, which originated the European Union in 1957, grew to the current 28 countries (soon to be 27 if Brexit really happens). Recollect that WVS has been collecting data on people’s beliefs in many countries since 1981. Researchers discovered that much of variation between populations of different countries can be mapped to just two dimensions: (1) Traditional values versus Secular-rational values and (2) Survival values versus Self-expression values. When values for each country in the sample are plotted in a two-dimensional space defined by these two axes, we have what is known as the Inglehart–Welzel Cultural Map.
Well, for the article that I contributed to Euromind, I wanted to explore the question of where do different values come from. Do they have deep historical roots? The argument I made was as follows:

Quote:Historical experience of living in the same state often results in the spread of common values, institutions, and identities among initially diverse groups. Elements of culture, including those that affect cooperation, change slowly, and often persist for long periods of time after the original empire has broken apart.

I then took the WVS data for European countries from the latest survey, and color-coded them by shared history within past states: the Carolingian, Habsburg, Ottoman, British, and Russian Empires. “Nordic” refers to the Danish and Swedish Empires (since Denmark at some points in historical time included Norway, Iceland, and a part of Sweden, while Sweden included Finland). Here’s what I got:


As the figure demonstrates, modern countries, which belonged to the same past and long-gone empire, cluster very closely together. There is little overlap. And when there is, it may reflect the influence of even more ancient empires. For example, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Balkans were all core regions of the Roman Empire, and that’s where the most significant overlap (between the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empires) occurs.
This is really a remarkable result.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/millennials-...1474038301

Quote:Hillary Clinton’s once-commanding lead among young voters has nearly collapsed, several polls show, a factor making the presidential race much closer in recent weeks and prompting the Clinton campaign to move quickly to keep a core Democratic constituency in the fold.

In its most visible response, the campaign has begun sending the party’s most popular stars to college campuses to urge students not to sit out the election or back third-party candidates, who are drawing support from young voters.

“Elections aren’t just about who votes, but who doesn’t vote, and that is especially true for young people like all of you,’’ first lady Michelle Obama said Friday during a campaign event at a university in Virginia, a battleground state where polls show the race tightening....    http://www.wsj.com/articles/millennials-...1474038301

http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/201...any-speed/

Quote:In response to a high-profile crash that killed a Tesla driver, CEO Elon Musk has announced that the company will upgrade its Autopilot function. But will a simple upgrade do the job? While the race to produce fully autonomous vehicles is being breathlessly heralded by the media, vast cost, legal, and security obstacles remain. More importantly, the fundamental limitations of AI technology will make the journey from semiautonomous to fully autonomous much more difficult than most people realize.

The race to bring autonomous vehicles into commercial production has accelerated. In March, GM bought self-driving startup Cruise Automation for $1 billion. In May, Toyota and Uber joined forces, Apple invested $1 billion into Chinese ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing, and Google partnered with Fiat Chrysler. Uber, meanwhile, has rolled out a pilot program to test self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. Google is even determined to create a car without a steering wheel or pedals. These players are betting heavily on transforming the $5.4 trillion transportation services market. While Tesla proclaims that it will have autonomous vehicles commercially available by 2018, BMW is planning for 2021...


http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/201...any-speed/

OH. MY. GOD!

Gov. Matt Bevin ® is worried about the lives of his grandchildren if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin ® said on Saturday that conservatives may have to turn to physical violence to protect their values.
“I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically,” Bevin said during his speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington. “But that may, in fact, be the case.”

Bevin went on to say that he believed the U.S. would survive a Hillary Clinton presidency, but it might require bloodshed.
“The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood. Of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else? The patriots,” he said. “Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something, that we through our apathy and our indifference have given away. Don’t let it happen.”

Asked by the Lexington Herald-Leader to clarify his comments, Bevin said he was talking about military service.
“Today we have thousands of men and women in uniform fighting for us overseas and they need our full backing,” he said in a statement. “We cannot be complacent about the determination of radical Islamic extremists to destroy our freedoms. Nor can we allow apathy and indifference to allow our culture to crumble from within.”

Republican nominee Donald Trump has also used violent imagery during his presidential campaign.
“If she gets to pick her judges ― nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said in August. “Although, the Second Amendment people. Maybe there is. I don’t know.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/matt...4b722c58e3?

...Are Kentuckians getting their tap water from Flint, Michigan?

Let's start out with a doozy:

http://www.news.com.au Wrote:

WANNABE property investors now have another option for getting a toehold in the booming Sydney property market. A new company is selling houses just one brick at a time.
There’s no need to attend a single open inspection or auction, pay stamp duty, or deal directly with tenants.
And you can do it all in 10 minutes, online, and sell whenever you want.
The BrickX investment scheme which launched officially today is billed as Australia’s first stock exchange for residential property, offering part ownership via buying single ‘bricks’, which start at $67, under a system called ‘fractional ownership”.
While it’s open to anyone, since it’s soft launch a month ago, the bulk of the earliest stakeholders are those in the under-34 year old age group.
BrickX CEO Anthony Millet said it’s early days, but the investor breakdown so far indicates 60 per cent of those buying in are in that age group: the one most likely to be feeling frustrated at not having the funds to get a foothold in the market.
Alyssa Raymundo, 20, of Blacktown, is one of them.
She graduated from university last year, is now working full time and can’t afford to move out of her parents’ home “anytime soon” and had no idea how to get into the market,.
“I just know that if I want to, I have to start now”.
She found out about BrickX via a Google search.
“I’m a first-time investor and I had no idea really about the whole housing market or investing and I had no idea how to go about it,” she said.

Alyssa Raymundo Googled ‘first homebuyer’ and ‘investment property’ and ended up buying her first bricks. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied
Like any tech-savvy 20-year-old worth her salt, she typed “first homebuyer” and “investment property” into a Google search, and BrickX came up in one of the results.
Her investment in three bricks — costing a total of about $300 in two properties in Mosman and Annandale — was completed online, and while it’s modest to say the least, she says it’s a start as she tries to get the feel of the market.
“I am saving for an investment property — I wasn’t to own my own, and this is a start,” she said.
“I just got out of university so I don’t really have a stable savings account — there are things like car payments and a uni loan to take care of, so this was a way to put just a little bit away.”
“I’m not expecting a huge return. To me it is a set and forget kind of thing, I’ll buy some more bricks when I can and it’s a way of learning about the market. So it’s a learning curve and savings account as much as anything,” she said.
BrickX works by buying a property, then splitting it into 10,000 ‘bricks’. Prospective investors can go onto their website to check out the properties (currently there are five, including in Sydneys Enmore, Mosman and as of last week, Double Bay, and Melbourne’s Prahan, and the aim is to have 100).
“We provide as much information as we can to empower investors to choose what they want to buy into,” said Millet.
Bricks start at less than $100. Investors can buy and sell whenever they like, and can own up to a maximum of five per cent of any single property’s bricks.
Investors get a proportional share of any monthly net rental income.

One of BrickX’s first properties was this sone in Parriwi Road, Mosman. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied
Until recently the scheme was open only for wholesale investors under the Corporations Act, but has now received approval from ASIC to open to regular “mum and dad investors”.
As for BrickX’s cut: “When you buy in you pay 1.75 per cent and when you sell you pay 1.75 per cent,” said Millet.
“There are no funds under manage. The only other expenses are the specific expenses that would relate to any standard property. like strata, water, council rates etc, and these are administered before investors get their dividend.”
“We also revalue the bricks every six months so people can follow what us happening with their capital returns.”
The scheme was inspired by crowd-funding models, with the aim of tackling what have become the biggest hurdles to buying into property: Affordability, big initial costs, loan requirements, exit and commission costs and long investment periods.
Asked why would-be owners wouldn’t just keep saving a deposit or invest in shares, Millet said “without comparing this to shares, I wouldn’t say whether this is any better or worse. they’re just different”.
“This can provide a way for investors to get their foot on the ladder, to it could be an interesting tool for saving a deposit because you are investing in line with there housing market.
“We have a mix of investors from first-timers dipping into the water and getting comfortable with investing to the sophisticated investors who are putting in larger amounts and enjoy the ease of getting into this without the traditional hassles of investment properties.
“What this does is it doesn’t over-complicate things. you invest where when and how much time you want to invest for.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/.../90193752/

Quote:2 hours ago
The woman at the center of an iconic Times Square photograph taken at the end of World War II has died, her son confirmed to media outlets Saturday.


Greta Zimmer Friedman, then a 21-year-old dental assistant, was kissed by a sailor on Aug. 14, 1945, during a celebration as news of the Japanese surrender reached home. The photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt was published inLife as “V-J Day in Times Square.” Friedman didn’t know the sailor, George Mendonsa, who grabbed who he thought was a nurse and planted a kiss.
World War II veterans Ray and Ellie Williams recreate the iconic Alfred Eisenstaedt photograph in ...more
Bryan Thomas, Getty Images
Friedman’s son confirmed to NBC and CBS that his mother died Thursday following a bout with pneumonia. She was 92, and had been living in an assisted-living community, Joshua Friedman said.
Several similar photos were taken on V-J Day in New York City, celebrating the surrender of Japan.
National Archives
Greta Friedman will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery alongside her late husband.
The black-and-white photo captured a nation’s relief and joy at wars’ end, with dozens of sailors and civilians celebrating on the street as Mendonsa kissed Friedman.