Hurricane Harvey Could Cost $160 Billion

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hurricane-harvey-will-be-most-expensive-us-natural-disaster-at-up-to-160-billion-accuweather-2017-08-30?siteid=bnbh

In Praise Of Kazakhstan

KAZAKHSTAN

The Land of the Wanderers

Kazakhstan is vying for a seat at the table with global power brokers.

To get it, Central Asia’s largest economy faces a decision, the Economist notes: Open its markets and modernize, or stagnate.

That’s not the easiest choice for the “land of the wanderers” in the Great Steppe.

Here’s why: Kazakhs are a bit averse to foreign influence – to put it mildly – given their brutal history with the Soviets. Shortly after the founding of the USSR, Kazakhstan was annexed, hyper-industrialized and collectivized, resulting in millions of deaths, the BBC notes.

Kazakhstan also served as a guinea pig for the Soviets’ nuclear program during the Cold War. Nuclear tests left behind a legacy of death and destruction, birth defects and environmental degradation.

Nobody expected an independent Kazakhstan to be a significant player in foreign affairs once it gained independence in 1991.

But the discovery of the giant Kashagan oil field in the Caspian Sea spurred economic confidence and led to Kazakhstan solidifying energy deals with China. It’s now included Kazakhstan in its “Belt and Road” program of modernizing transportation links between Asia, Europe and Africa.

A nexus of sorts between all regions, Kazakhstan’s surprisingly futuristic capital Astana, with its intriguing architecture and foreign expos, could very well become the transit hub of Eurasia.

Kazakhstan utilizes its geography to make up in international influence what it lacks in other sectors. Many Kazakh enterprises are still partially state-run, for example, and stagnant oil priceshave hurt its economy, which relies on oil and energy exports, Stratfor noted.

But with its strategic global address, Astana often plays negotiator in international conflicts. It’s active in talks on the Syrian civil war and helped to broker the Iran nuclear deal. It will likely also mediate discussions regarding the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine, Euractiv notes.

Despite its troubled history with Russia, Astana has promoted nuclear non-proliferation with its northern neighbor, boosting investor confidence in the country’s economic potential. It could soon have the funds to back up its soft power on the global stage.

Also, Kazakhstan’s trajectory toward global prominence could serve as an example to struggling states like North Korea, the Washington Times reports.

Instead of stiff-arming its way to significance, Astana chose a conciliatory approach with its powerful neighbors.

It’s a bet that looks likely to continue paying off.

The Old Days Of Drug Addiction In The USA

Forget Tums & Tylenol. Forget Aleve & Benedryl. Look at the cool stuff they had back then!    A bottle of Bayer's 'Heroin'.  Between 1890 and 1910 heroin was sold as a non-addictive substitute for morphine. It was also used to treat children suffering with a strong cough.  Coca Wine, anyone?  Metcalf's Coca Wine was one of a huge variety of wines with cocaine on the market. Everybody used to say that it would make you happy and it would also work as a medicinal treatment.  Mariani Wine.  Mariani wine (1875) was the most famous Coca wine of its time. Pope Leo XIIIused to carry one bottle with him all the time. He awarded Angelo Mariani (the producer) with a Vatican gold medal.  Maltine.  Produced by the Maltine Manufacturing Company of New York. It was suggested that you should take a full glass with or after every meal. Children should only take half a glass.  A paperweight:  A paperweight promoting C.F. Boehringer & Soehne (Mannheim, Germany). They were proud of being the biggest producers in the world of products containing Quinine and Cocaine.  Opium for Asthma:  At 40% alcohol plus 3 grams of opium per tablet. It didn't cure you... but you didn't care!  Cocaine Tablets (1900).  All stage actors, singers, teachers and preachers had to have them for a maximum performance. Great to 'smooth' the voice.  Cocaine drops for toothache.  Very popular for children in 1885. Not only did they relieve the pain, they made the children very happy!  Opium for newborns.  I'm sure this would make them sleep well. (not only the Opium, but also the 46% alcohol)       Lydia Pinkham was 20% (40 proof) alcohol herbal concoction cure for all feminine problems. Also, some of the cough and cold medicine for kids and adults had a high percentage of alcohol in it. A common remedy for babies cutting new teeth was to rub the gums with whiskey . Click here to Reply or Forward

Nuclear Terrorism Indonesia-Style

INDONESIA

Beyond the Veil

An Indonesian court sentenced a woman to seven and a half years in prison for plotting to blow herself up outside Jakarta’s presidential palace.

The case marks Indonesia’s first conviction of a woman in such a case, Reuters reported.

Dian Yulia Novi, 28, was arrested along with her husband, Muhamad Nur Solikin, late last year. The prosecution had sought a sentence of 10 years, but the court reduced her jail term because she admitted her role in the plot, the agency said.

Novi is pregnant and due to give birth in early September. Meanwhile, her husband’s trial in the same case is still underway.

The authorities believe that Novi was radicalized through social media, amid an escalation in homegrown militancy since the rise of the Islamic State.

Last week, Indonesian police raided homes and arrested five suspects in Bandung, West Java, foiling an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb, Reuters reported separately. Though experts questioned their ability to carry out the plan, police said the suspects hoped to transform low-grade radioactive Thorium 232 (Th-232) into deadly Uranium 233 (U-233).

SF Deltas Game 4

SF Deltas Game 3

SF Deltas Game 1

SF Deltas Game 2

A Surprisingly Small Number of Republicans Are Needed to End Trump's Presidency

It's time for them to put country above party.

.

The crisis that Donald Trump represents cries out for movement toward impeachment and trial to remove him from the Presidency, unless he agrees to resign, or Vice President Mike Pence, in league with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senate President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and a majority of the Presidential Cabinet agree to remove Trump under the 25th Amendment Section 4, as mentally incompetent to stay in office. Neither of these seems likely at this stage, as we enter the eighth month of the Trump Presidency later in August.

So the issue arises whether there is a good chance that the House of Representatives will take action, with the reality that the Republican Party is in control of both that chamber, as well as the US Senate. One must remember that a simple majority of the House is needed on at least one article of impeachment and a two-thirds vote of the Senate to convict and remove him. IF enough Republicans can be convinced to join with the Democrats in both chambers, even under GOP control, the mission can be accomplished.

So what are the numbers, assuming all Democrats are unified to move forward? As of mid-August, there are 194 Democrats in the House of Representatives, and 48 Democratic Senators, including independents Bernie Sanders and Angus King. A minimum of 24 Republicans are needed in the House to reach the threshold of a majority, 218. In the Senate 19 are needed to reach a two-thirds majority, 67. So just a total of 43 Republicans are needed to accomplish the goal of removing Donald Trump from the White House, which seems not all that difficult.

Of course, there is the issue of party loyalty, and the difficult act of the minority party allying with enough of the majority to force the issue, particularly in the House, which is run by Speaker Paul Ryan. But realize that Ryan has been under constant attack and criticism by the Trump Presidency, including the Alt Right element in the White House, individuals including Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller. And the unwillingness of many moderate Republicans to support their President on many issues, domestic and foreign, is well documented, as they see him as a “loose cannon” who is more an independent than a Republican.

The centrists and moderate conservatives who are uncomfortable with Donald Trump are known as the Republican Main Street Partnership, estimated at 67 members of the House (about one out of every four Republicans) and a minimum of 4 in the Senate. The members of this group are often called RINOS (Republicans in Name Only), and are often challenged in Republican primaries by the Club For Growth, FreedomWorks, and The Tea Party Movement. They’re frequently the target of the Alt Right movement represented by Breitbart News.

A lot of these Republican House members come from the Northeast and Midwest, as well as California and the Pacific Northwest and even a few from South Florida, belying the idea that all Republicans come primarily from the South, the Great Plains, and the Mountain West. It would seem reasonable that at least 24 and more, likely up to half of the 67 members of this GOP group, would be susceptible to being convinced to vote to bring Donald Trump up on impeachment charges. No one can be certain which specific members would do so, but among those who would seem likely to do so, without any guarantee of course, would be, in alphabetical order, Barbara Comstock of Virginia; Carlos Curbelo of Florida; Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania; Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida; Lynn Jenkins of Kansas; Peter King of New York; Adam Kinzinger of Illinois; Darin LaHood of Illinois; Leonard Lance of New Jersey; David Reichert of Washington; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida; Elise Stefanik of New York; Fred Upton of Michigan; Greg Walden of Oregon; and Lee Zeldin of New York. This totals 15 members, just a dozen or so shy of the needed number, leaving only about another dozen needed to join them. Even if some of the above did not follow through, it is hard to imagine that the small number of 24 or more could not be persuaded to join the cause given the size of the Republican Main Street Partnership.

Then, the issue of the US Senate, and who would be likely to be willing to remove Trump in an impeachment trial arises, with the fact that Vice President Mike Pence is well regarded among many Republican Senators, and the clear reality that many would be much more comfortable with a President Pence than President Trump. So the estimate is that it would be likely, when push came to shove, that enough Senators would support the removal of Trump, based on such considerations as suspicion of Russian collusion, obstruction of justice, abuse of power, violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, and Trump’s abusive treatment of such Senators as John McCain and Mitch McConnell. Not all of the above factors would directly come up in an impeachment trial, of course, but since impeachment is a political act, any underlying factors could shape the outcome as proved to be the case in the impeachment trials of Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999.

So who in the Senate would be likely to vote to convict Donald Trump of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in office? Alphabetically, the list might include the following: Lamar Alexander of Tennessee; Richard Burr of North Carolina; Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia; Bill Cassidy of Louisiana; Susan Collins of Maine; Bob Corker of Tennessee; Joni Ernst of Iowa; Jeff Flake of Arizona; Cory Gardner of Colorado;  Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; Chuck Grassley of Iowa; Dean Heller of Nevada; Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; Mike Lee of Utah; John McCain of Arizona; Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (after the embarrassment his wife suffered sharing the stage with Trump last Tuesday, and Trump’s constant attacks on McConnell himself);  Jerry Moran of Kansas;  Lisa Murkowski of Alaska; Rand Paul of Kentucky; Rob Portman of Ohio; Marco Rubio of Florida; Ben Sasse of Nebraska; Tim Scott of South Carolina; Dan Sullivan of Alaska; John Thune of South Dakota; Thom Tillis of North Carolina; Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania; and Todd Young of Indiana. This is a list of 28 Republican Senators, of which just 19 are needed, and it seems like a legitimate list, when one studies these Senators and their records and utterances in the age of Trump.

So the idea that we cannot get rid of Donald Trump is clearly false. It is urgent that these members of the House of Representatives and Senate, of the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan begin the process. It’s time for them to put country above party.

Click here to Reply or Forward

Some Wonderful Humor

Stand Up To Trump-A New Leadership Imperative For American CEOs

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2017/08/22/standing-up-to-trump-a-new-leadership-imperative-for-american-ceos/#13410e8e3f63

Who Knew If You Turned Donald Duck Upside Down You'd Get "The Donald"

More Of The Awesome Sound Show

An Awesome Sound Show

A Drum Playing Upside Down

Some Words Of Wisdom For A 26 Year Old Woman Disillusioned With All The Violence And Cruelty In The world

Good morning everyone. A dear friend of almost 20 years lives near Barcelona. She is Dr. Marivi Briones. I got the wonderful news that she is all right and was not hurt during the awful terrorist attack in Barcelona.
Since we humans started life on earth, brutality,unfairness, cruelty, arbitrary treatment, injustices, etc have been part of our existence.. I often wonder how many Albert Einsteins were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
In one respect my time in Rio de Janeiro was one of the happiest parts of my life. The people were wonderful. I learned what an incredible country that Brasil is. On the other hand, for years I had to live with the harsh reality of literally millions of people living in slums right near to me. I had to just shut it out of my mind or I would not have been able to survive mentally.
Soon I will make it to 69 years of age. I have personally seen so much brutality. All of us need to be thankful for the good things we have in life, even if we aren't rich or fabulously successful.
There is one reality we all need to keep mind. The media loves to report bad news. Rarely do they report good news. Try to look for the good things in life everyday. There are so many good people out there. There is so much love out there. And yes, there is justice out there also.

French Artists In World War I

Artists on the Battle Lines, From France (Where Else?)

By DAVID W. DUNLAPAUG. 16, 2017

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Photo

Gaston Balande (bearded) and another artist near the front. The original caption noted that they were “working behind a screen which protects the road on which they are sitting from observation by the enemy.”CreditPictorial Press/The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial, Aug. 16, 1917

The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial exemplified how powerful a tool the camera had become in telling the story of war. But technical limitations still left a lot to be desired. There were many French artists who believed they had a role to play in conveying the war’s terrors in ways that photographers could not.

Photo

CreditCentral News/The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial, Aug. 16, 1917

Among the most vivid examples is Félix Vallotton’s unsettling oil painting, “Verdun (Interpretive War Painting, Projections in Black, Blue and Red Colors, Devastated Lands, Gas Clouds),” of 1917. Vallotton was among a group of established artists who were accredited by the French Army to work near the battlefront.

“Some of the foremost artists of the day are employed by the government to make pictures of scenes and episodes for which the camera is unsuited,” the Mid-Week Pictorial said 100 years ago.

Although the caption in the magazine identified neither artist, the website Bon Sens et Déraison says that Gaston Balande is the man in the background.

The cover image was of a battery of five 14-inch guns that seemed almost to jump off the page. “To defend the freedom of the seas,” the headline said.

Another photo with a nearly three-dimensional quality showed the ruined village of Craonnelle through the window of a mansion that had been wrecked during fighting along the Chemin des Dames ridge.

Photo

The ruins of the French village of Craonnelle. CreditThe New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial, Aug. 16, 1917

Times Insider is offering glimpses of some of the most memorable wartime illustrations that appeared in The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial, on the 100th anniversary of each issue:

• A graphic look inside a German bomber (Aug. 9)• Raw recruits muster at Gettysburg (Aug. 2)• A hellish battle scene captured by the camera (July 26)• Feeding troops with a cumbersome kitchen (July 19)• A phony battleship lures real sailors (July 12)• Carrier pigeons in military duty (July 5)• Fijians join the fight (June 28)• A “dead town” in northern France (June 21)• Immigrants among draft registrants (June 14)• Terror on the high seas (June 7)• General Pershing shows some vanity (May 31)• The face of chemical warfare (May 24)• Germans lose Cameroon (May 17)

Pangong Lake-Another Flash Point Between India and China

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-india-china-soldiers-involved-in-border-altercation-indian-sources-2017-8

Did Scientists Just Unveil The Largest Dinosaur Of All Time?

Did Scientists Just Unveil the Biggest Dinosaur of All Time?

The jury’s still out—but if you can get over the size contest, far more fascinating patterns about these giants emerge

An artist's illustration of Patagotitan mayorum, the latest and possibly most gargantuan in a series of recent giant dino finds.

Dinosaurs are superlative animals in every sense of the word. Their ranks include some of the strangest and fiercest creatures ever to have evolved, not to mention the largest to have walked the Earth. Now paleontologists have announced a species proposed to be most massive dinosaur ever discovered: an enormous herbivore estimated at over 120 feet long and weighing over 70 tons—or longer than a blue whale and heavier than a dozen African elephants.

  

You may have already heard of this ancient titan. The dino started making headlines back in 2014, before its bones were even fully out of the ground, getting its own David Attenborough-hosted documentary and American Museum of Natural History exhibit in early 2016. Over and over again, the Cretaceous dinosaur’s status as the biggest of all time was proclaimed. But the dinosaur didn’t have a name (it was simply referred to as “The Titanosaur”) and no formal description of the bones was published for other experts to check this sauropod’s claim for the title. 

Today, in the pages of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, paleontologist José Carballido of the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio and colleagues have finally published the scientific details of this enormous plant-muncher.

The dinosaur’s official name is Patagotitan mayorum, meaning “the Mayo family’s Patagonian titan.” That’s because its bones were excavated in 2014 at La Flecha ranch, owned by the Mayos, in Chubut Province, Argentina, from their 101-million-year-old-resting place.

This wasn’t the resting place of just one animal. The stone was littered with the remains of at least six individual dinosaurs of different ages and sizes. By the time they were done, however, the paleontologists had excavated parts of the neck, back, tail and limbs, which were enough to come to two conclusions: This was a dinosaur no one had ever seen before, and it was a true giant.  

But was it really the largest dinosaur of all time, as some of the media hype has proclaimed? 

Not everyone is convinced. Mathew Wedel, a paleontologist at the Western University of Health Sciences who has been following the titanosaur’s story since 2014, notes that the body of the new paper doesn’t include the necessary measurements of the dinosaur’s bones to tell. On top of that, Wedel says, the measurements reported in the media so far hint that Patagotitan was comparable in size to the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus, also known fromCretaceous Argentina. 

“So not the world’s largest sauropod, probably,” Wedel says, “but the most complete super-giant sauropod by far.” This means Patagotitan joins a club of previously-discovered immense dinosaurs; its real claim to fame is that far more bones of Patagotitan are known than for other giants. “I think it would be more accurate to say that Argentinosaurus, Puertasaurus and Patagotitan are so similar in size that it is impossible for now to say which one was the largest,” Wedel says. 

But step back from the “my dinosaur is bigger than yours” contest for a moment, and a curious pattern starts to appear. “All the big sauropods for which we have good evidence seem to be clustering in the same general area,” Wedel says, whether those are titanosaurs or other sauropod giants from different lineages. “That suggests a real upper limit that all these lineages were hitting,” Wedel says, with Patagotitan not so much blowing past previous records as reinforcing an emerging pattern.

Which brings us to the question of why these dinosaurs got so large at all. Macalester College paleontologist Kristi Curry Rogers points out that these huge sauropods were bellwethers of the times they lived in. “Titanosaurs like Patagotitan evolved huge bodies because they could,” Curry Rogers says, adding that “the ecosystems they inhabited had the resources to support their bodies, and their unique and specialized physiological adaptations made behemoth sizes work for them.”

 Furthermore, Wedel says, a giant like Patagotitan “is a case of ‘them that has, gets.’” 

Living large has definite benefits. Big sauropods, Wedel says, laid more eggs, were harder for predators to kill, could survive on lower quality food, could migrate long distances on less resources, and more. The bigger they got, the more benefits they reaped: “So to me the mystery is not ‘Why did some sauropods get so big?’; it’s “Why didn’t all sauropods gets big at Argentinosaurus, Puretasaurus and Patagotitan?’” Sauropods came in sizes from about as large as a draft horse to the biggest animals on land. What led to that range of sizes is still unclear. 

Yet for better or worse, it’s the giants who transfix our attention, and it seems that every few years there’s another dinosaur that’s touted as the largest of all time. Brachiosaurus, Supersaurus, “Seismosaurus”, Argentinosaurus and more have all had their turn laying claim to the title over the years. 

Could there still be larger dinosaurs out there? Curry Rogers thinks so. “So far, all of the very biggest sauropod dinosaurs how clear signs that they are still growing” when they died, Curry Rogers says. Even the largest Patagotitan bones, she points out, show signs of ongoing growth at death. “Even if we’ve discovered the largest terrestrial animals ever known,” Curry Rogers says, “we haven’t found the biggest representatives of their species so far.”

The FBI Has A Great Cooperating Witness Against Russian Hackers

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/world/europe/russia-ukraine-malware-hacking-witness.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

The Charlotteville Tragedy-My Family Members Fought Nazis In World War II

Everyone my father was named Vasco L. Walters. He served in the US Army from 1940-1946. He bravely fought the Nazis in France, Belgium, Germany and into what is now the Czech Republic.

My late Uncle was named Hubert Noel Ballew. He bravely fought the Nazis as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force from 1940-1942 and the US Army Air Force from 1943-1944 when he was shot down in France and became a Nazi POW.

Let me not forget, also, my late uncle John Robert Helms who served in the US Army Air Corps from 1942-1946. He flew a B-17 and survived his 26 missions over the best-defended targets in Nazi Germany.

If you were at a party and met these three men, you would find them to be warm, friendly, and decent people. You would never hear them brag about their war exploits. You would never hear them boast about their courage in battle. You would never hear them feel sorry for themselves about the sacrifices and hardships they endured fighting Nazi tyranny.

My dear friends, all these men were from the south of the U.S. In all the years that I was privileged to be around them, I never heard one of them utter a hateful or a racist comment. In fact, all of them treated every man and woman decently regardless of their color.

If they were alive today, they would be heart broken, as I am, over what happened in Charlottesville on Saturday.

Can A Humanitarian Non-Profit Help Save American Healthcare?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2017/08/14/can-a-humanitarian-nonprofit-help-save-american-healthcare/#72f7d426a506

While Everyone Focuses On North Korea, Here Is Another War Waiting To Happen

BHUTAN

Three-dimensional Chess at the Top of the World

Only around 300 feet separate angry Chinese and Indian soldiers on the Doklam plateau, where the border of Bhutan, China and India meet.

The two sides have hunkered down into a dangerous stalemate after the Indian army heeded a Bhutanese request to stop Chinese troops from building a road that Bhutanese officials feared would violate border agreements.

In a so-called “flag meeting,” Chinese and Indian military brass conveyed messages to each other. China wants the Indian soldiers off land claimed by Beijing. But the Indians won’t leave unless the Chinese also remove their construction equipment from the area. Neither side bent. So now they expect to stay through the winter.

“Since this flag meeting hasn’t resulted in a resolution of the conflict at Doklam, it appears to be a long-drawn affair,” S. L. Narasimhan, a defense analyst and ex-Indian army officer, toldBloomberg.

The conflict pits the world’s two most-populous countries against each other as well as the largest democracy against the largest economy by purchasing power parity – a standard that accounts for price differences, as explained by the World Economic Forum.

India lost a war with China that stemmed from a Himalayan border dispute in the 1960s and India’s army is still smaller and less well-equipped than China’s, so Indian leaders are justifiably cautious, especially since economic ties between the two countries have increased in recent years.

But nonetheless, it seems New Delhi is not only prepared, but also has little choice but to stand up to China.

“India’s decision to move more troops closer to India-China border in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh is guided by the ground realities of the northeast,” wrote India Today over the weekend. “Doklam plateau is not very far from the Silliguri Corridor – also referred to as the Chicken Neck – that connects the northeastern states with the rest of India.”

The standoff reflects Beijing’s new aggressiveness, a stance exemplified by China flexing its muscles in the South China Sea and frequent incursions into disputed territories in what India considers part of the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. Chinese aggression in the region is also probably a play to shore up its hold on Tibet, whose leader, the Dalai Lama, now lives in exile in India. Bhutan is a Buddhist kingdom, by the way.

“China has been trying to dominate the Himalayan region because it believes unless it does, it will not be able to retain firm control over Tibet,” said Brahma Chellaney, a strategic studies professor at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, in an interviewwith the Financial Times. “The big obstacle it still faces is Bhutan. Driving a wedge between Bhutan and India is clearly a Chinese strategy.”

It’s a game of three-dimensional chess that adds yet another hotspot to the world, this time at the top.

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