The 81

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Monday issued document requests to 81 individuals and entities as part of a sweeping investigation into President Trump’s campaign, business and administration.

1. Alan Garten

Garten serves as the chief legal counsel for the Trump Organization.

2. Alexander Nix

Nix previously served as the head of Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that did work for the Trump campaign and was later embroiled in a Facebook privacy scandal.

3. Allen Weisselberg

Weisselberg is the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, and has worked for the Trump family for decades. Michael Cohen identified him last week to lawmakers as an individual who was aware of the president’s asset inflation and a scheme to silence women who alleged affairs with Trump.

4. American Media Inc. (AMI)

AMI is the publisher of the National Enquirer and has been accused of engaging in “catch and kill,” a scheme to purchase unflattering stories about Trump and bury them.

5. Anatoli Samochornov

Samochornov was a translator for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at a 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Veselnitskaya had promised Trump associates damaging information on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of the meeting, but other attendees — including Donald Trump Jr. — said no such information was shared.

6. Andrew Intrater

Intrater is the head of investment firm Columbus Nova and has ties to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. The New York Times reported that Intrater gave Trump attorney Michael Cohen a $1 million consulting contract in 2017.

7. Annie Donaldson

Donaldson served as chief of staff to former White House counsel Donald McGahn, who left the administration in October.

8. Brad Parscale

Parscale worked for the Trump Organization prior to joining the president’s 2016 presidential campaign to oversee digital operations. Parscale is the campaign manager for the president’s 2020 reelection bid.

9. Brittany Kaiser

Kaiser is a former employee of Cambridge Analytica and was subpoenaed earlier this year in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

10. Cambridge Analytica

The data firm made headlines last year over a privacy scandal involving millions of users’ Facebook data. The firm did work for the Trump campaign and has ties to former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon.

11. Carter Page

Page served as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign and has faced intense scrutiny over his contacts with Russia. Page is also the subject of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant issued against him to wiretap his conversations over concerns raised by his Russian ties. Some House Republicans have claimed the warrant was an overreach of Justice Department surveillance powers and proof of bias against Trump within the department.

12. Columbus Nova

Columbus Nova is a private equity firm headed by Andrew Intrater, who is cousins and business associates with Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

13. Concord Management and Consulting

The Russian consulting firm is one of several groups indicted by Mueller for interfering in the 2016 presidential election and is accused of helping to fund a Russian troll farm. The company is linked to Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, who is known as “Putin’s chef” over his proximity to Putin. Concord is the only Russian entity to fight Mueller’s charge in court.

14. Corey Lewandowski

Lewandowski worked as Trump’s campaign manager until his firing in June 2016.

15. David Pecker

Pecker is the chairman of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer. He reportedly received immunity from prosecutors in the investigation into payments to women who alleged affairs with the president.

16. Department of Justice

Trump has come under scrutiny for his frequent criticism of DOJ officials, including former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who each at one point had oversight for the Russia probe. The president’s firing of Comey sparked the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

17. Donald McGahn

McGahn worked as the White House counsel until his departure in October. McGahn reportedly sat for hours of interviews with the special counsel’s office and is said to have persuaded the president not to fire Robert Mueller.

18. Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust

The trust holds the president’s business assets, ostensibly so that he avoids conflicts of interest during his presidency. Experts, however, have warned that that the trust provides little distance between Trump and his business empire.

19. Donald Trump Jr.

The president’s oldest son is an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, and has drawn scrutiny from investigators over his involvement in and subsequent cover-up of a summer 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information on his father’s then-opponent, Hillary Clinton.

20. Dylan Howard

Howard is the chief content officer for American Media Inc. Michael Cohen testified that Howard would have information on “catch and kill” efforts on stories related to the president.

21. Eric Trump

Eric Trump is the president’s son and an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, largely overseeing the family business during his father’s presidency.

22. Erik Prince

The former Blackwater head caught the eye of investigators over a meeting he reportedly arranged between Donald Trump Jr. and a Gulf emissary in August 2016, the first sign a country other than Russia had sought to influence the presidential election. Prince, whose sister is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, said last year that he has cooperated fully in the Mueller probe.

23. Federal Bureau of Investigation

Trump has been fiercely critical of former FBI leaders James Comey and Andrew McCabe. The president fired Comey in May 2017, sparking the appointment of the special counsel. The bureau first began investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 election

24. Felix Sater

Sater is the Russian businessman at the heart of negotiations over the attempted Trump Tower Moscow project. Sater worked with Michael Cohen on the real estate project, which never came to fruition. Sater will also appear in a public hearing before the House Intelligence Committee later this month.

25. Flynn Intel Group

The Flynn Intel Group is a now-defunct lobbying organization created by former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The retired general and another partner at the group have since been implicated in illegal lobbying efforts in Turkey.

26. General Services Administration

The federal agency was reprimanded in an internal watchdog report last month stating it failed to properly assess the constitutional ramifications of allowing the Trump family to continue its lease on the old D.C. post office building following the 2016 election.

27. George Nader

Nader is a Lebanese-American businessman who serves as an adviser to the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates. The special counsel’s office has reportedly examined Nader’s influence on Trump administration policy.

28. George Papadopoulos

The former Trump campaign staffer was first thrust into the national spotlight when he pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Since that guilty plea, Papadopoulos has disputed the Trump campaign’s assertion that he was essentially a “coffee boy” for the campaign, saying he consulted on foreign policy.

29. Hope Hicks

Hicks worked as the spokeswoman for the Trump campaign in 2016 and later joined the White House as the communications director. She left the administration in February 2018.

30. Irakly Kaveladze

Kaveladze is an associate of Russian developer Aras Agalarov and was one of the attendees of a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower where a Russian lawyer promised Trump associates damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

31. Jared Kushner

Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and serves as a senior adviser to the president. He has come under scrutiny during his time in the administration over concerns regarding his security clearance. The New York Times reported that the president last year ordered Kushner be given a top secret clearance against the concerns of intelligence officials.

32. Jason Maloni

Maloni worked as a spokesman for Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was convicted of bank and tax fraud in the Mueller investigation.

33. Jay Sekulow

Sekulow is one of Trump’s personal attorney representing the president in the special counsel’s investigation.

34. Jeff Sessions

Sessions served as the attorney general until his resignation in November. He recused himself from overseeing the special counsel’s investigation because of previously undisclosed contact with a Russian official during the 2016 campaign, prompting relentless criticism from the president.

35. Jerome Corsi

Corsi, a conspiracy theorist known for promoting the unfounded Obama birther theory, landed in investigator’s crosshairs over messages he exchanged with Roger Stone about WikiLeaks’s forthcoming release of hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign. He also was given draft court documents by Mueller’s team last year alleging he had made a false statement to the investigators, but has since said he no longer believes he will be indicted.

36. John Szobocsan

Szobocsan was an associate of the late Peter Smith, a GOP operative who sought to track down missing Hillary Clinton emails from Russian hackers.

37. Julian Assange

The infamous WikiLeaks founder has been at the heart of investigations over his organization’s release of damaging Democratic emails ahead of the 2016 presidential election. But Assange may already be facing sealed charges filed against him, after a court filing in a separate case mistakenly named him.

38. Julian Wheatland

Wheatland was named the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica in April in the aftermath of a privacy scandal that plagued the data firm, according to The Wall Street Journal.

39. Keith Davidson

Davidson was an attorney for both Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. He arranged agreements between the women and American Media Inc. as part of “catch and kill” schemes to silence their allegations of an affair with Trump.

40. K.T. McFarland

McFarland was deputy to former national security adviser Michael Flynn. She came under fire after her testimony before the Senate claiming she was “not aware” of Flynn’s contacts with Russians during the transition was at odds with emails she exchanged during that period of time. She also has interviewed with Mueller, but revised her statement after the conflicting accounts emerged.

41. Mark Corallo

Corallo previously worked as a spokesman for Trump’s legal team who reportedly spoke to the special counsel about the administration’s attempts to coordinate an explanation for a summer 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer.

42. Matt Tait

Tait is a U.K.-based security consultant who alleged the late GOP operative Peter Smith tried to recruit him to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

43. Matthew Calamari

Calamari is an executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He previously worked as Trump’s bodyguard.

44. Michael Caputo

Caputo worked as a communications adviser on the Trump campaign and has spoken with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

45. Michael Cohen

Cohen worked for roughly a decade as Trump’s personal attorney and "fixer." In testimony to House lawmakers, he implicated the president in potentially criminal activity, including bank fraud and campaign finance law violations. Cohen faces a three year prison sentence for a host of charges he pleaded guilty to last year.

46. Michael Flynn

Flynn served a brief stint as Trump’s national security adviser, but has remained a central figure in investigations into the administration. Trump said in February 2017 that he fired Flynn for lying to the vice president, but later tweeted he also fired the retired general for lying to the FBI, raising questions about whether the president obstructed justice. Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with a Russian official and admitted to lying about lobbying efforts for Turkey.

47. Michael Flynn Jr.

Flynn Jr., the son of the former national security adviser, had a brief role on the Trump transition team, but was fired after he promoted a conspiracy theory.

48. Paul Erickson

Erickson is a conservative political operative and the boyfriend of Maria Butina, who admitted last year to working as an agent of the Russian government. Butina’s attorneys identified Erickson as an individual who helped her establish unofficial lines of communications with people able to influence U.S. politics leading up to the 2016 election.

49. Paul Manafort

Manafort was the Trump campaign's chairman for the months leading up to the 2016 election. He has since been convicted in the special counsel’s investigation on bank fraud and tax fraud charges.

50. Peter Smith (Estate)

Smith, a longtime GOP operative who died by suicide last year, had reportedly raised thousands of dollars to try to obtain emails he believed were stolen from Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 election. But investigators are likely most interested in the Wall Street Journal’s reporting that Smith was in touch with Michael Flynn ahead of his search for Clinton’s emails.

51. Randy Credico

Credico, a New York radio host, found himself testifying with congressional investigators after Roger Stone claimed that Credico was his back channel to WikiLeaks. Credico has repeatedly denied the allegation, saying that he did not get inside knowledge from Julian Assange and the group ahead of the WikiLeaks email dumps.

52. Reince Priebus

Priebus was the chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2016 campaign and went on to serve as Trump’s first chief of staff. He left the administration in the summer of 2017.

53. Rhona Graff

Graff served as President Trump’s longtime secretary at the Trump Organization. Michael Cohen repeatedly pointed to her as being able to corroborate his testimony during his public hearing last week.

54. Rinat Akhmetshin

Akhmetshin, a former Soviet military officer, was one of several Russians who attended a meeting in Trump Tower with Trump campaign officials during the 2016 election. BuzzFeed News reported last month that he received half a million dollars in deposits linked to a Russian businessman around the time of the meeting.

55. Rob Goldstone

Goldstone is a British publicist who set up the 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between members of the campaign and a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.

56. Roger Stone

The self-described GOP political trickster has been eyed by investigators for years now, after Stone made statements during the 2016 presidential election that suggested he had prior knowledge of WikiLeaks’s dump of damaging Democratic emails. Stone, who was arrested and charged earlier this year by Mueller for making false statements to Congress, has denied having any direct contact with WikiLeaks, maintaining that he instead had a back channel to the group.

57. Ronald Lieberman

Lieberman is an executive vice president of the Trump Organization. Michael Cohen testified that Lieberman was aware that the president had inflated his assets to an insurance company.

58. Sam Nunberg

Nunberg served as a staffer for the Trump campaign before being fired for breaching a confidentiality agreement. He has testified with Mueller’s team, after initially publicly announcing that he would defy the subpoena, and has also met with congressional investigators. Nunberg is also known to have made false statements in the past.

59. SCL Group Limited

SCL Group Limited is the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, the data firm with ties to the Trump campaign that was embroiled in a Facebook data privacy scandal last year.

60. Sean Spicer

Spicer was the communications director for the Republican National Committee and worked as the party’s chief strategist leading up to Trump’s election. He went on to serve as White House press secretary for six months.

61. Sheri Dillon

Dillon has worked as a tax lawyer for the president. House lawmakers said earlier this month that Dillon may have given false information to government ethics officials about payments to women who alleged affairs with Trump.

62. Stefan Passantino

Passantino previously oversaw compliance with ethics rules during a stint in the Trump White House. He has since reportedly joined a private law firm run by former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.

63. Stephen Bannon

Bannon worked as the chief executive on the Trump campaign and went on to serve as White House chief strategist. He left the administration in the summer of 2017.

64. Ted Malloch

Malloch, an American businessman said to have played a minor role in the Trump campaign, claimed last year that he was detained and questionedby the FBI at Boston’s Logan Airport about his involvement in the Trump campaign and his contacts with Roger Stone.

65. The White House

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that White House officials will review and respond to Nadler’s request “at the appropriate time.”

66. Trump campaign

The president’s 2016 election bid has been the subject of several investigations, probing whether it colluded with Russia to win the election. Campaign figures, including former head Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, have been questioned by investigators over their roles and what they observed during the course of the campaign.

67. Trump Foundation

The president’s private charity is already the subject of a lawsuit with New York state, alleging that it participated in a “shocking pattern of illegality.” Among the allegations are that Trump used the charity to illegally benefit his campaign, as well as settle issues with his privately owned Mar-a-Lago estate.

68. Trump Organization

Questions about the president’s private business have been a sticking point for Democrats, some of whom have suggested that Trump may be using the presidency for financial benefit. Trump handed over responsibility of his company to his adult sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., but questions about the role of the Trump Organization even before the election, including negotiations on the Trump Tower Moscow project, have lingered.

69. Trump transition

The team overseeing Trump’s transition into the presidency is also facing questions from investigators. Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russians during the transition and Jared Kushner reportedly being the official who ordered him to do so have captured widespread media attention.

70. Viktor Vekselberg

Vekselberg is a Russian billionaire with ties to the Kremlin. He was a target of U.S. sanctions last year related to Russia's election interference. He reportedly attended Trump’s inauguration and has spoken with investigators from the special counsel’s team.

71. WikiLeaks

The group known for its distribution of classified materials has been facing intense scrutiny from Congress and reportedly from federal prosecutors. WikiLeaks released sensitive Democratic emails in the months ahead of the 2016 presidential election in two separate dumps. Mueller has indicted a dozen Russian military officers in the hack of the Democratic National Committee, the source of some of the emails shared by the group.

72. 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee

The president’s inaugural committee is reportedly under investigation for possible misuse of funds. Multiple attorneys general have also subpoenaed the organization for documents related to how it raised and spent money.

73. Christopher Bancroft Burnham

Burnham is the head of Cambridge Global Capital and served on Trump’s State Department transition team. He was recently named an independent director at EN+, a business with ties to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

74. Frontier Services Group

Frontier Services Group is a private security and logistics firm founded by Erik Prince, the ex-head of Blackwater.

75. J.D. Gordon

Gordon worked in the George W. Bush administration and served as a national security adviser to the Trump campaign. He reportedly exchanged messages with Maria Butina, a woman who admitted last year she worked as a Russian agent.

76. Kushner Cos.

Kushner Cos. is owned and operated by the family of White House senior adviser Jared Kushner.

77. The National Rifle Association

The NRA has come under scrutiny from Democrats over its communications with the Trump campaign in 2016.

78. Richard Gates

Gates worked as an aide on the Trump campaign and is a business associate of Paul Manafort. Gates pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of a plea deal with the special counsel and later testified against Manafort.

79. Tom Barrack

Barrack is a longtime Trump associate and was chairman of the president’s inaugural committee in 2016.

80. Tom Bossert

Bossert worked as Trump’s top homeland security aide from the time the administration took office until his resignation in April.

81. Tony Fabrizio

Fabrizio worked as a pollster for the 2016 Trump campaign and was once an associate for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. He was spotted by CNN reporters late last year interviewing with Mueller’s team.

Get rid of the Electoral College

Twice in the past twenty years - Clinton and Gore - we have elected the person who got fewer votes nationwide than the other aspirant. Well, over the past few years something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has been approved by twelve states. By the terms of the Compact these states will award their electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote nationally, regardless of the results in the Electoral College.

These states control only 181 of the 270 electoral votes needed. This may change as legislators in 16 states have introduced bills this session seeking to join the Compact.

Not looking good

Every year Gallup issues a report "Rating World Leaders". Here are what they feel are the highlights of this year's report.

REPORT HIGHLIGHTS
• In 2017, U.S. leadership approval ratings declined substantially — by 10 percentage points or more — in 65 countries. In 2018, it declined this much in just five. 
• The median 40% worldwide who disapprove of U.S. leadership is still at record levels — and higher than median disapproval of Germany’s (22%), China’s (28%) or Russia’s (31%) leadership. 
• China’s advantage over the U.S. in terms of leadership approval has widened

She passed the advanced driving test with room to spare

What do you say?

And they are still doing well

Will Trump experience something similar?

It is expected that Netanyahu will be indicted on three charges - bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. The indictment is pending the results of a hearing and is not final. Naturally, Netanyahu has accused investigators of leading a “witch hunt” against him and decried the “liberal” media for conspiring to undermine him. He believes that he is “the most vilified person in the history of Israeli media.”

Family reunion

The father of a Central Florida woman died in 2013 and was cryogenically frozen and is stored at the Cryonics Institute in Michigan. She's in love with her dog and would like to put the dog as well as herself into cryogenic freeze after their respective deaths so that in the event science catches up and can revive those who have died, that her father would not be lonely when he wakes up. The cost for keeping a human in that state is $28,000 while the cost for storing a pet is around $6,000.

The Institute claims to be the largest storage facility for full bodies frozen in a cryogenic state with 173 patients and 167 animals as of September 2018. 

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent.

Monitor the conversations

Where did the growth come from?

I found this part of Cohen's statement interesting

When I say conman, I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.

As I mentioned, I’m giving the Committee today copies of a letter I sent at Mr. Trump’s direction threatening these schools with civil and criminal actions if Mr. Trump’s grades or SAT scores were ever disclosed without his permission. These are Exhibit 6.

The irony wasn’t lost on me at the time that Mr. Trump in 2011 had strongly criticized President Obama for not releasing his grades. As you can see in Exhibit 7, Mr. Trump declared “Let him show his records” after calling President Obama “a terrible student.”

The sad fact is that I never heard Mr. Trump say anything in private that led me to believe he loved our nation or wanted to make it better. In fact, he did the opposite.

When telling me in 2008 that he was cutting employees’ salaries in half – including mine – he showed me what he claimed was a $10 million IRS tax refund, and he said that he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving “someone like him” that much money back.

Talk about small

A baby boy in Japan weighed 9.45oz. at birth. He was so small he could fit into a pair of cupped hands. He was put in intensive care. After being there for five months, he was healthy enough to be released. He weighed about 7 pounds. He is believed to be the smallest boy in the world to be sent home healthy.

A different kind of hand

What does this tell you?

Born to play soccer

Olivia Moultrie is 13 and a soccer player - a professional soccer player. She just signed a representation deal with the Wasserman Media Group, a sports agency, and a multiyear endorsement deal with Nike. In doing so she gave up a scholarship offer to play college soccer at the University of North Carolina. She signed that contract when she was 11 years old.

She must be a fantastic player. She has long played with older girls on the United States youth national team and with boys’ clubs. She has met and trained with some of Europe's biggest clubs: Olympique Lyon and Paris St.-Germain in France, and Bayern Munich in Germany.

However, when she can actually play with the pros is up in the air as both FIFA and the US pro teams require a player to be at least 18.

Microfibers from your clothes wind up in the ocean

There are all sorts of wackos

Today's is acting principal at a Wisconsin middle school. Apparently, an 11 year-old girl and a friend sprayed perfume on themselves in the bathroom. The teacher, who is allergic to some perfumes, asked the class who had sprayed perfume on herself. When no one responded, the teacher call the acting principal, who proceeded to "push the girl out of the classroom and into a row of lockers, then lost his balance and fell on top of her." Her mother said that when the girl came home she was “crying and her lip was cracked, bleeding and she handed me three of her braids that were pulled out from her scalp.”

Banks and the new tax laws

The Hill reports: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) revealed that the nation’s 5,406 federally insured banks reeled in $236.7 billion in profits last year, according to the agency’s quarterly banking profile. 

Yearly profits increased increased $72. 4 billion from 2017, and the rise includes $28.8 billion more than banks would have kept under the previous tax regime. Bank profits in the fourth quarter of 2018 rose to $59 billion, an $8.1 billion increase from the same period in 2017.

Is China on the way out?

Some Chinese entrepreneurs think so. In a recent poll of 465 wealthy individuals only one-third said that they are very confident in the country’s economic prospects. Two years ago, nearly two-thirds said they were very confident. Those who have no confidence at all rose to 14 percent, more than double the level of 2018. Nearly half said they were considering migrating to a foreign country or had already started the process. Polls have been wrong before, but it does look as though a number of these wealthy types have left the country. One of them is the subject of a NY Times article. He says, "China’s economy is like a giant ship heading to the precipice. Without fundamental changes, it’s inevitable that the ship will be wrecked and the passengers will die. My friends, if you can leave, please make arrangements as early as possible.”

It seems to them that Beijing has become more interested in solidifying its control over people’s lives than promoting economic growth. Others think that China’s leadership has mismanaged the world’s second-largest economy, and they are losing confidence in the country’s future.

An exoskeleton can help

Could you match his efforts?

Insects are leaving us

Farmers are the victims of our trade dispute with China

From Reuters:
“The share of total U.S. agricultural exports to China in value terms is projected to be 6 percent, down sharply, with China falling from the top market in 2017 to fifth place,” USDA Chief Economist Robert Johansson told the USDA annual forum in Washington.

He said the United States had exported 24 million metric tonnes of soybeans in the 2019 crop year, down 13.5 million metric tonnes from this time last year.

“Under the trade dispute, exports to China alone have plummeted by 22 million tonnes, or over 90 percent,” he said.

Johansson said sales of U.S. soybeans to the European Union, Egypt, Argentina, and others had risen, but that has “not been enough to make up for the lost exports to China.”

A few people who think they should be president

William Rivers Pitt has a lot to say about the status of a president, but I found the following laughable:

"On this Presidents’ Day, let us all take a moment to gaze in awe at the ever-expanding field of 2020 candidates, which now officially includes California Sen. Kamala Harris, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former New Jersey Rep. John Delaney, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and, of course, President Donald Trump.

The list of as-yet-undeclared Hot Maybes includes former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld; Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke; Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown; former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz; former New York Mayor and current billionaire Michael Bloomberg; Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam; former Vice President Joe Biden; California Rep. Eric Swalwell; former Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet; Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; Washington Gov. Jay Inslee; Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton; Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan; Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley; Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe; and probably the surviving cast members from Ben-Hur, I Am Spartacus and Gone With the Wind before all is said and done."

Agent Orange Lives

Arrested at 11

A sixth-grade student in Lakeland, Fla. refused to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance throughout the school year. A substitute teacher did not like that and had him, 11-years-old and black, arrested. The student told the teacher that he did not stand because he believes the pledge represents racism.

Fortunately,the state attorney will not prosecute the child. Interestingly, thousands of Florida students are arrested every year, probably because the state allows the police to arrest students of any age.

Fewer Banks, Less Competition

In the last twenty years 4,823 U.S. banks disappeared, some through mergers, some failed. We have gone from 10,220 to 5,397, a drop of 47%. Now, just nine banks hold 40% of domestic deposits. They also hold a heck of a lot of derivatives (remember these from the Great Recession?) and do a lot of trading among themselves. In 2016 the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR) found that the Federal Reserve’s stress tests were failing to capture the predominant risk on Wall Street.The FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund has only $100.2 billion as of September 30, 2018. Yet, just the none biggies hold over five trillion in insured deposits. Are you starting to worry yet?

Was I blind?

Yesterday the cover article in the NY Times Magazine was "The Secret History of Women in Coding." It was about the decline in the number of women programmers. There were a lot of them in the early days, but, at some point, the number dropped quite a bit. I began my career in the software programming field in 1961 and can attest to the fact that many women dropped out of the field in the '70s and '80s. I could never figure out why. The work was fascinating and challenging, did not require heavy lifting and paid well. Many of us felt that we were helping to change the world. The best programmers then were women. They moved up in the programming world at the same rate as men. I worked for women managers and, as a manager, hired many women. Several women built their own companies.

The article asserts that they dropped out because of sexual discrimination. I think the bulk of the departures occurred in large companies where they were developing programs to better the company’s business. In my experience, the departure rate was less in small companies and really less in companies that developed basic software, such as operating systems, languages, testing aids, etc.

Things are evening off

Today's NY Times is heavy

I don't mean intellectually, although it may be. I mean physically. It must weigh a couple of pounds. That's due to the fact that it includes T Magazine, a fashion magazine. It's 225 pages long. The revenue from this publication must be quite high. If the Times averaged $100,000 a page, you're looking at $22,500,000.

Removing the mountain can ruin lives

There is a technique of mining coal in Appalachia that has destroyed the water people need to live. The technique, known as mountaintop removal, blows the top off the mountains where coal is located so that the coal, buried deep below the surface, can be excavated. One study estimates that an area the size of the state of Delaware has been flattened by this type of coal mining, which was first practiced in the 1970s.

In one typical house in the area the taps have been worn down, the washing machine frequently stops working, and the bathroom and kitchen have been stained a deep, bloody orange by the pollutants - iron, sulfur, even arsenic - that have seeped into home's water supply. A glass of water from the kitchen tap soon has a strange smell and a sticky texture and within minutes begins to turn dark orange. A layer of black sediment soon sinks to the bottom of the glass. The owner of the house says, "This is what we have to live with. We don't bathe in the water and we don't cook with it. It stains our fingernails, our knuckles, and our clothes. It's really, really difficult living like this." They have to drive for more than an hour to stock up on bottled water to drink and cook with.

I don't see our names on this list

from Bloomberg via The Big Picture

Do women wear pants or skirts more often?

Does this theory still hold?

True statements from our President?

“In fact, I think I can say this, Prime Minister Abe of Japan gave me the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize. . . . He said, ‘I have nominated you respectfully on behalf of Japan. I am asking them to give you the Nobel Peace Prize.’ ”

"If you look at Idlib province in Syria, I stopped the slaughter of perhaps 3 million people,” he said, saying it was something that nobody talks about.

“When I asked President Xi, I said, ‘Do you have a drug problem?’ — ‘No, no, no.’ — I said, ‘You have 1.4 billion people, what do you mean, you don’t have a drug problem?’ — ‘No, we don’t have drug problem.’ — I said, ‘Why?’ — ‘Death penalty. We give death penalty to people that sell drugs.’ End of problem,” Trump said.
“What do we do? We set up blue ribbon commissions, lovely men and women. They sit around a table, they eat, they dine, and they waste a lot of time.”

Flying again

1 mother, 2 fathers

An advocate in the court

Millionaires want to be taxed more...

...at least in New York. Forty-eight of them wrote to the governor and legislator that the millionaires should pay more in state taxes. Some excerpts from their letter:

"We millionaires and multi-millionaires of New York can easily invest more in the Empire State, and lawmakers like you have a moral and a fiduciary duty to make sure we do so."

"The taxes we're talking about will not affect people's quality of life. They will not have any fewer private airplanes or boats because of this tax."

"Raising taxes on high-income New Yorkers like us in order to invest in our people and our communities is not just the right moral choice, it also happens to be in the long-term economic best interest of everyone, including millionaires like us."

One comparison

Electric cars on the rise

Another indication of our weak economy

The NY Fed reports that 7 million Americans are 90 days or more behind on their auto loan payments. This is worse than the same situation during the wake of the financial crisis. There were over a million more “troubled borrowers” at the end of 2018 than there were in 2010.

Half male, half female

The cardinal above is both male and female. Its left side is the taupe shade of female cardinals; its right, the signature scarlet of males.

This is not the first time nor the first species where this has occurred. It has been reported among birds, reptiles, butterflies and crustaceans. The researchers are not totally sure that the bird is half and half without analyzing its genes with a blood test or necroscopy, but the split in plumage down the middle is characteristic of the rare event.

Farmers are in trouble

Bankruptcies in courts that cover the largest farm states in the country were nearly double in 2018 what they were in 2008, The Wall Street Journal reports. Farms in these states produce nearly half of all American farm sales. Revenues are down, especially with corn, hogs and soybeans. And competition from overseas has gotten worse. Dairy farmers are also in trouble; the retaliatory tariffs China and Mexico imposed on U.S. cheese and tariffs on pork have led to a record buildup of meat and caused prices of beef and chicken to plummet. The Wall Street Journal points to Trump’s trade war with countries like China and Mexico as a key driver in the rising rate of farm bankruptcies.

According to the Department of Agriculture, the median farm income was negative by $1,548 in 2018 while farm debt climbed to more than $400 billion, a rate not seen in the last four decades.

Visiting the neighbors

What the war in Yemen costs us

Aurora Borealis in Sweden

We need to act on global warming today.

Hotel Boeing

Another war we're losing

Test driving a new car

We keep dropping in these polls

There is something called the World Happiness Report. Last year it ranked us as the 14th happiest country in the world. This year we're down to #18. For several years, they have been ranking 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants.

The leading countries had high-quality social interactions which can happen when you have safe, balanced and harmonious shared experiences.

Don't go to a hospital in Venezuela

Hard to believe

She has starred in a documentary about her life, fronted fashion campaigns, been the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, carried out design projects at the White House under every president from Truman to Clinton, aside from George H. W. Bush, launched lines of jewelry and ready-to-wear fashion, as well as a 2018 book, became the oldest person to have a Barbie doll created in her image. That's a heck of lot of accomplishments. And, now at the age of 97, she's  signing a major modeling contract, with global agency IMG.

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent.

Where does fine perfume come from?

He doesn't want to be here

A Mumbai businessman, Raphael Samuel, plans to sue his parents for giving birth to him without his consent. He believes that it's wrong to bring children into the world because they then have to put up with lifelong suffering. Ergo, we didn't ask to be born, so we should be paid for the rest of our lives to live.

His mother's response, "I must admire my son's temerity to want to take his parents to court knowing both of us are lawyers. And if Raphael could come up with a rational explanation as to how we could have sought his consent to be born, I will accept my fault."

Riding the bus in Venezuela

Do you understand the rationale of this?

The person on the left is the mother of the person on the right, who has been recruited by the University of Pittsburgh football team. Apparently, this is not the first time such a photo has been taken. More and more parents are being photographed in a college team's football uniform. These photos happen more often as national signing day nears on Wednesday.

Exercising in DC

I wonder if the purpose of the State of the Union speech is to have our leaders do some exercise. Very often, the speech is filled with banalities and a repeat of what the president has been saying for a long time. Yet, the audience rises from their seats almost every other minute. They get some good exercise in their legs, arms and hands.

What is the real unemployment rate?

It's been seen at being around 4%, which is pretty good. However, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco points out that "This represents about 1.4 million additional individuals who are stuck in part-time jobs. These numbers imply that the level of involuntary part-time work is about 40% higher than would normally be expected at this point in the economic expansion.". Mass unemployment — the historic kind, with dole queues, unemployment benefits, and idle workers on street corners — has been replaced by low-paid, part-time, "gig economy" or "zero-hours" contract work.

Finger nails you've never seen before

Do we need an arms control treaty?

Stop wasting food

Marrying a dog

Well, not really. But she was able to get her story in the NY Times wedding section yesterday. "Lilly Smartelli, 55, of Phoenix, is dreaming about marrying her best friend, Bernie, who happens to be her dog. The reality is that she is dying from a form of pulmonary fibrosis, a respiratory disease. She donated a kidney 12 years ago to a childhood friend in Detroit and is still trying to save lives, while at the same time, keeping alive her own childhood dream: to know the joy of a wedding day.

But there will be no actual wedding day. She is pushing the idea of marrying a dog as a fund-raising event that will draw attention to organ-donor groups and animal welfare shelters that lack proper funding, “and still get to experience the thrill of having a wedding, even if it’s a fake wedding.” She is 'marrying' Bernie, a 9-year-old cocker spaniel-poodle mix.