Are you looking for effective and powerful core exercises to strengthen, stabilize and help improve your posture? Then look no further! We have 5 killer core moves using the Surge® or the smaller Surge® 3.0, that are sure to make your muscles burn in all the right ways.
The Surge® uses a technology called Hydro-Inertia® which is the utilization of water to create an unstable resistance and moving mass within a mass. Because of Hydro-Inertia®, each exercise requires control, balance, strength and overall muscle engagement, resulting in one heck of a challenging workout!
Start standing with the feet about hip width apart, holding the Surge® in front of your hips. Rotate and pivot, pushing through the bottom hand and pulling with the top hand, as you sweep the Surge® to the side. Brace your abs to add power to the motion and stabilization to the water crash at the end of each sweep. Repeat all the reps on one side or alternate sides with each rep.
Start seated in a v-sit position. With abs braced and shoulders back, pick up the Surge® and hold it in front of the chest. Keeping the back straight, slowly twist side to side, moving the Surge® from horizontal to vertical. Resist the pull of the water as it dumps from one side to the other. For added challenge, lift the feet off the ground to perform the move.
Start in plank position with the Surge® under your chest and off to one side. Widen your feet and narrow your hands for stability. Reach under and across your body to grab the handle of the Surge®. Begin slowing pulling the Surge® all the way to the opposite side, keeping the water quiet. Continue pulling side to side, maintaining a braced core throughout the exercise.
Start lying face up with the knees bent, holding the Surge® in a vertical position above one shoulder. Crunch up and simultaneously chop the Surge® across your body to the opposite hip. Focus on using the core to sit up and move the Surge® rather than your arms. Repeat all reps on one side before moving to the other.
Begin standing with feet about hip width apart, holding the Surge® in front of your thighs. Rotate your torso, bringing the Surge® to one hip. Using power from your core, rotate and drive the Surge® across your body and over the opposite shoulder. Slowly return to the start position. Repeat all reps on one side before moving to the other.
If you're new to Surge® training, try completing just one or two rounds for your first few workouts, then add the third round when you're ready to add more challenge.
To see the full benefit of each of the 5 exercises, check out this video: Get The Surge®!
About the Author: Alison Smith has a Master's degree in Kinesiology and works with athletes, college students, kids, older adults and everything in between. In additional to working as a Hedstrom® Fitness National Master Trainer, Alison owns EnergyX Fitness in San Antonio, Texas.
Come to a MANIA® near you to experience the Surge® and learn all the benefits it has to offer!
New month, new goals. As every month comes to a close, you might view the start of a new month as a time to evaluate the progress you have made toward your 2017 goals. Whether your goals pertain to health, fitness, family, spirituality, career, finances or all of the above, 30 days serves as a good benchmark upon which to reflect, respond and maybe even regroup.
Chances are you have considered abandoning your goals AT LEAST once in 30 days. Not to worry, that is actually a good thing. If you feel like quitting, it means you have chosen your goal wisely. It means that the steps you have taken so far on your path to success have challenged you or made you uncomfortable in some way. This proves that the steps you are taking toward your goal are outside of your comfort zone; which many consider to be the first step in reaching your goal.
Maybe you've thought about quitting because you are not experiencing measurable results fast enough. No one likes to stand still. We are conditioned to receive instant gratification, however, achieving goals often means you have to form new habits and break old ones. This process isn't swift or easy. If you are not where you thought you would be after 30 days, stay the course. Even though it might seem like you are standing still, commit to yourself that you will continue to take small steps toward your goal every day. It won't be long before you can look back and see how far you've come.
What if you feel you are even further away from your goal than when you started 30 days ago? Setbacks are inevitable. We live in the real world where the unexpected is expected. The path to your goal is not a fast-paced, straight-line freeway – it's more like the yellow brick road. Even if you take a few steps backward, don't let a temporary discouragement throw you permanently off track. Acknowledge the setback, reflect, regroup, and then move forward EMPOWERED with what you have learned.
If none of this applies to you because you are happily on your way to achieving your goals – huge CONGRATULATIONS are in order! Seriously, it is important to hit pause long enough to enjoy your victories. Celebrating success will give you the motivation and the focus to stay on track.
Regardless of the kinds of steps you are taking, it is important to remember that each one is significant. On the path to achieve your goals, every step matters.
Most runners and people who train regularly have experienced moments of doubt and other mental roadblocks, which have led them to consider quitting altogether. Like everything else in life, such difficult choices tend to occur for one reason or another. The good thing about running and training is that it trains not only the body but your mind as well. In time, you and your mind will become stronger. Still, there is a big chance that you will face another mental hiccup along the way at some point or another.
There are ways to overcome the mental barricades that can hinder your athletic performance.
Make sure you always believe in yourself! You must be confident that you can achieve anything you want to achieve. Avoid beating yourself up and doubting your own abilities to achieve your goals. You need to trust your strength and abilities and actually encourage yourself, so that you can move forward toward your short-term and long-term running or training goals and results. Although your training or preparing for a race can seem really strenuous and tough – do not give up – you are stronger than this and will overcome it!
Even though you may find the inspirational quotes people post on social media annoying and boring, having your own inspirational mantra can do wonders for your running or athletic performance. By repeating your mantra, you will get a boost of energy and the power to continue ahead. Choose a simple yet powerful mantra to tell yourself when you are facing particular difficulties during training or running, and you will immediately feel stronger and more determined. You even can print out your inspirational mantra on a T-shirt or a bracelet and have it with you at all times!
Create an mp3 playlist that inspires you to run faster and longer and train harder. Listen to music that boosts your performance and you will do better and jump over the mental hurdles we all meet along our way to success. Music will energize you, improve your performance and make training a much more enjoyable experience. There are plenty of affordable MP3 players ranging from small to medium and wireless to wired, so there is no reason not to use one. Of course, everybody is different and inspired by different types of music, so make sure you find the best music that has a positive effect on your mental state, determination and energy level and add it to your training or running playlist now! You will be surprised by the results on your overall well-being, presentation and mood.
Figure out where you should direct your focus. Develop the ability to focus solely on your body, especially during training or a race when the discomfort becomes nearly unbearable. At moments of feeling stressed and fatigued, try to turn your mind inward and focus solely on your body and only your body. On the other hand, some people find that the opposite tactic works better for them when they are ready to give up. Putting your mind into something completely different to try and "switch off" the discomfort your body is feeling is another technique you should try to master. Both these skills can help you pass through the mental barriers, which we all face at some point in our training and racing. Try one or both methods next time you begin to doubt yourself during training!
About the Author: Cara Haley is a fitness enthusiast and blogger who loves running and healthy food. She manages Fitaholic Gear and Comfort Hacks – websites dedicated to helping people find quality footwear to match their needs.
Run to a MANIA® near you and get the motivation you need to overcome your obstacles!
The marvel of meditation is no mystery. A tremendous and developing collection of research demonstrates that meditating can diminish stress, reduce uneasiness and dejection, increment your ability to focus, and extend your sympathy for others, among other numerous advantages. We now realize that regular meditation can change the physical structure of the brain, so the more years you frequently meditate, the greater the potential advantages. Meditation is proclaimed by universal, profound and established researchers alike as irreproachably good for you.
Now, realizing that meditation is beneficial for you one thing — taking a seat each day to do it is another. Consistency, however, is the way to understanding the training's many advantages. Luckily, it's less demanding than you might suspect to build up a consistent meditation practice and receive its many benefits.
Learners should begin with short sessions and steadily increase the amount of time spent sitting.
Here are some ways that can lead a beginner to master this art.
Pick a Technique. On the off chance you've pondered how to meditate, you know there are an overwhelming number of styles and methods. Choices in the vitamin aisle at Whole Foods appear simple by comparison. Think about the different methods as tools or gateways to give you access to the meditative state.
Which procedure you utilize is less essential than receiving the benefits of a calm mind. Beginners should find a practice or method that reliably places them into a meditative state. When this "core practice" is built up, you then can explore other meditation techniques and styles — dependably with the learning that you can come back to one that works for you if you begin to lose your direction.
Build up a Habit. It's useful for beginners to create conditions for a meditation practice that will remain basically constant — the same time, the same pillow, the same calm corner. Our brains and bodies have natural rhythms; they react emphatically to pondering in the meantime consistently and to visual and tangible signals like pillows, clothes and spaces committed to meditation. When you create conditions for your meditation practice, you're setting up signals that tell your brain and body it's an ideal opportunity to turn inward. You also are making it significantly more likely that you'll take a seat.
Discover the Joy. The last key to build up a meditation practice is to find delight in it. That you feel more joyful and calmer implies you are set for a decent begin, and you can anticipate that these little delights will snowball — over the sessions and days, months and years — into greater ones. You are shutting the habit loop. Meditation has turned into a verifiably remunerating piece of your life.
Get a Good Seat. Appropriate posture is vital for meditation, yet you don't need to sit in a classic yogic posture. The main outright is that your back must be upright — straight, however not unbending — to enable the breath and vitality to stream unreservedly. Beyond that, steadiness and comfort are essential; you ought to be in a stable position that you can keep up easily for no less than 20 minutes. Here are two alternatives to kick you off.
Once you're seated, put your hands on your knees, palms up or down, with the thumb and index finger touching. This completes a fiery circuit that enables the vitality to extend and ascend in the body.
Sit upright in a straight-upheld seat chair that has a flat seat, as opposed to one that tilts in reverse. (If you don't have a flat seat, put a collapsed cover underneath your sitting bones to tilt your pelvis forward.) Place both feet flat on the floor, and if necessary, utilize pads or supports behind your lower back to hold your back upright.
To leave the meditation, take a full breath in and tenderly let it out. Notice how your body feels, how your mind feels, the nature of your vitality. When you are prepared, take up your diary and compose what you recall about your recent meditation session.
About the Author: Aman is a Failed Chef turned Adventurer, Writer and Entrepreneur. Has a surly unemployable face. My favorite thing in the world, aside from writing, of course, is traveling, loving Dogs and mountains. You can follow my craziness on Linkedin, Instagram or Twitter.
I always looking for new recipes to keep our taste buds interested and to stay out of a food rut. I often decide at the last minute what I'm going to "throw" into the dish — usually whatever is left in the fridge — and sometimes it turns out so delicious that I end up making it again and again.
I initially made this dish to go with sautéed flounder, and it was amazing! I scooped the rice mixture out of the skillet and cooked the fish in the same pan — so the clean-up was fast and easy. I think it would go great with poultry, shrimp or other types of grilled meats. You can change up the ingredients and make this dish many different ways.
Cook the rice according to the directions on the package. While the rice is boiling, sauté the shallot in the olive oil until brown. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and some white wine. Keep adding a little wine while cooking this mixture until the sun-dried tomatoes get soft. I like to keep adding it slowly as the sun-dried tomatoes soak up the wine and the "broth" gets thicker. Add the asparagus and repeat the process, but be sure NOT to overcook the asparagus.
When the rice is finished cooking, add it to the skillet with the asparagus and sun-dried tomatoes mixture. Add feta cheese and stir well.
Serve the fish (or other protein) next to it or on top of it. Finish the dish with a sprinkling of fresh mint.
It's the perfect side dish … try it, and I hope you'll agree!
Stay Well, Eat Well, & Smile Often!
About the Author: Molly Napolitano has over 23 years of experience in developing medically-based fitness and rehabilitation programs. She earned her Master's Degree in Exercise & Sports Science at the University of Florida and went on to specialize in exercise prescription for the elderly. For a number of years, Molly developed and directed physical therapy centers in Florida. She has presented at health and fitness conferences both nationally and internationally and is currently the President of Black Dog Partners, LLC. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and her dog Jessie.
Molly loves teaching women how easy it is to get fit, improve their health, and unleash their true inner confidence. She is the founder of Molly's Just You, Only Better 30 Day Program which helps women look and feel great on the inside and out. She also hosts free self-esteem workshops for young girls and their mentors through the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.


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Bush=Nazi? Not so much
Despite the extreme abuse he received from the Left, I have always described GWB as a sentimental Christian gentleman -- and the report below by Taylor Griffin reinforces that
As a young White House staffer in the early years of President George W. Bush's administration, I was always struck by President Bush's kindness, warmth and genuine humility. I saw it when he choked back tears as he comforted grieving families after 9/11. Or in the camaraderie he shared with wounded warriors. But, I saw it in small moments too. Here's one of those that meant a great deal to me personally.
As I prepared to leave the White House for a new job opportunity, Ashley Kavanaugh, the President's secretary at the time, called to tell me that the President wanted to invite my family to come visit in the Oval Office on my last day of work. It was 2003, a few days after the start of the Iraq war, when my brother, sister and father arrived at the White House Northwest gate. This was a busy time for the President. I anticipated a quick photo op. So, as we walked down the drive toward the West Wing, I instructed my family not to linger too long with the President. I knew that he had a great deal weighing on him, more than usual, and had an especially tight schedule that day.
We were ushered into the Oval, introductions were made, and White House photographer Eric Draper snapped a photo for posterity. After a few minutes of pleasantries, I thanked the President and began to usher everyone out.
As we turned for the door, he boomed, "hang on," and motioned us back, insisting that we stay a little longer. He asked my brother about his career plans, my sister about her studies in college. He took the time to get to know each of them. As we left, everyone was beaming.
Later, I thanked the President for how generously he had welcomed our family. As much as I appreciated it, I asked why he had taken so much time for a junior staffer and his family from a small town in North Carolina? "Well," he said, "this may be the one time in their lives your family will ever visit with a President in the Oval Office. I wanted to make sure that it was something they could remember."
Everyone who has worked for President Bush has stories like this, my friend Dana Perino has a book filled with them (here's one and another). Many of these are far more awe-inspiring than mine (here here and here). But, sometimes it's the small things that best illustrate true kindness and real character.
Another wonderful Reagan story -- perhaps the best yet
Reagan was giving a speech at a school for the blind in the early 80's. When the speech and the question and answer period were over, Reagan ordered all the journalists and photographers, and even his own staff - including Bennett himself - out of the auditorium so he could spend a few minutes with the children.
Later that day, Bennett was on the phone with the school administrator and asked her about those last few minutes in the auditorium. The administrator recounted how Reagan came down off the stage, sat amongst the children, and allowed them to feel his face.
In Denouncing Alt-Right, Hillary Treads Where GOP Will Not
Jonah is a bit flustered below. That Hillary condemns the Alt-Right confuses him. He does not seem to see that it is just an update of her "Vast right-wing conspiracy". See sees demons where they are not.
Jonah is broadly right in identifying whom the Alt-Right are -- people who acknowledge racial differences -- but he has fallen for a simplistic explanation for their motives. He cannot see that it is a concern for the safety of themselves and those like them that motivates Alt-Righters.
Black on white crime is a huge problem that is swept under the bed by mainstream politicians because of their refusal to talk about racial realities. Alt-Righters want to get that conversation under way without shrieks about Nazism, Apartheid, Jim Crow etc. The world of the 21st century is different from the 20th century and we need to acknowledge that and not go back to fight old battles that were won long ago.
There is no general agreement among Alt-Righters about how to deal with black criminality, but that it must not be ignored is universally agreed among them. Getting the problems of racial differences out in the open is what is aimed at
Last week delivered one of the most remarkable moments of this most remarkable political season. A major politician defended the conservative movement and the Republican Party from guilt-by-association with a fringe group of racists, anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists who have jumped enthusiastically on the Donald Trump train: the so-called alt-right.
"This is not conservatism as we have known it," the politician said. "This is not Republicanism as we have known it."
That politician was Hillary Clinton, and that's astonishing. Clinton is normally comfortable unjustly condemning conservatism and the GOP for the sins of bigotry and prejudice, not exonerating it. After all, she coined the phrase "vast right-wing conspiracy."
Her husband's administration tried — unfairly — to pin the Oklahoma City bombing on conservative critics, specifically radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh. Less than a decade later, she revived the charge in her book "Living History," tying the bombing to "right-wing radio talk shows and websites [which] intensified the atmosphere of hostility with their rhetoric of intolerance, anger and anti-government paranoia."
Just last year, Clinton was comparing the entire GOP presidential field to "terrorist groups" for their views on abortion.
This history suggests that Clinton's attempt to distinguish the party of Paul Ryan from the alt-right was not the product of high-minded statesmanship, but political calculation. The goal was to demonize Trump so as to make moderate voters feel OK voting for a Democrat.
(Trump is not an alt-righter, but his political inexperience, his anti-establishment persona, and his ignorance of, and hostility to, many basic tenets of conservatism created a golden opportunity for the alt-righters to latch onto his candidacy.)
If I were a down-ballot Democrat, I'd be chagrined. By exonerating the GOP from the stain of the alt-right, Clinton has made it harder for Democratic candidates to tar their opponents with it. What's truly extraordinary, though, is that Clinton is doing work many conservatives won't.
There is a diversity of views among the self-described alt-right. But the one unifying sentiment is racism — or what they like to call "racialism" or "race realism." In the words of one alt-right leader, Jared Taylor, "the races are not equal and equivalent." On Monday, Taylor asserted on NPR's "The Diane Rehm Show" that racialism — not religion, economics, etc. — is the one issue that unites alt-righters.
If you read the writings of leading alt-righters, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion. Some are avowed white supremacists. Some eschew talk of supremacy and instead focus on the need for racial separation to protect "white identity." But one can't talk about the alt-right knowledgeably without recognizing their racism.
And yet that is exactly what some conservatives seem intent on doing. For example, my friend Hugh Hewitt, the influential talk radio host, has been arguing that there is a "narrow" alt-right made up of a "execrable anti-Semitic, white supremacist fringe" but also a "broad alt-right" made up of frustrated tea partiers and others who are simply hostile to the GOP establishment and any form of immigration reform that falls short of mass deportation.
This isn't just wrong, it's madness. The alt-righters are a politically insignificant band. Why claim that a group dedicated to overthrowing conservatism for a white nationalist fantasy is in fact a member of the conservative coalition? Why muddy a distinction the alt-righters are eager to keep clear?
In the 1960s, the fledgling conservative movement was faced with a similar dilemma. The John Birch Society was a paranoid outfit dedicated to the theory that the U.S. government was controlled by communists. It said even Dwight Eisenhower was a Red (to which the conservative political theorist Russell Kirk replied, "Ike's not a Communist, he's a golfer").
William F. Buckley recognized that the Birchers were being used by the liberal media to "anathematize the entire American right wing." At first, his magazine, National Review (where I often hang my hat), tried to argue that the problem was just a narrow "lunatic fringe" of Birchers, and not the rank and file. But very quickly, the editors recognized that the broader movement needed to be denounced and defenestrated.
Buckley grasped something Hewitt and countless lesser pro-Trump pundits do not: Some lines must not be blurred, but illuminated for all to see. Amazingly, Clinton is doing that when actual conservatives have not.
We Have Nothing Left Holding Us Together
On Friday, a South Carolina high school stopped students from bringing American flags to a football game against a heavily Hispanic rival school. Why? The principal was presumably worried that waving the flag might offend the Hispanic students. According to the principal, "This decision would be made anytime that the American flag, or any other symbol, sign, cheer, or action on the part of our fans would potentially compromise the safety of all in attendance at a school event."
This isn't the first such situation. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that a public school in California could ban students from wearing a shirt emblazoned with an American flag on Cinco de Mayo thanks to fears over racial conflict at the school. The lawyer for the children complained, "This opens the door for a school to suppress any viewpoints that are opposed by a band of vocal and violent bullies."
Meanwhile, has-been San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been widely praised in the media for refusing to stand for the national anthem during football games. "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," explained the man earning an average of $19,000,000 per year for sitting on the bench. He continued: "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."
We're watching the end of America in real time.
That doesn't mean that the country's on the verge of actual implosion. But the idea of America required a common definition of being American: a love of country on the basis of its founding philosophy. That has now been undermined by the left.
Love of country doesn't mean that you have to love everything about America, or that you can't criticize America. But loving America means understanding that the country was founded on a unique basis — a uniquely good basis. That's what the flag stands for. Not ethnic superiority or racial solidarity or police brutality but the notion of individual liberty and equal rights before God. But with the destruction of that central principle, the ties that bind us together are fraying. And the left loves that.
In fact, the two defining philosophical iterations of the modern left both make war with the ties that bind us together. In President Obama's landmark second inaugural address, he openly said, "Being true to our founding documents … does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way." This is the kind of definition worshipped by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has singlehandedly redefined the Constitution. He said, "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
But this means that liberty has no real definition outside of "stuff I want to do." And we all want to do different stuff, sometimes at the expense of other people's liberty. Subjective definitions of liberty, rather than a common definition, means a conflict of all against all, or at least a conflict of a government controlled by some who are targeting everyone else. It means that our flag is no longer a common symbol for our shared definition of liberty. It's just a rag that means different things to different people based on their subjective experiences and definitions of reality.
And that means we have nothing holding us together.
The only way to restore the ties that bind us is to rededicate ourselves to the notion of liberty for which generations of Americans fought and died. But that won't happen so long as the left insists that their feelings are more important than your rights.
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Clinton Economist Favors Force over Freedom
As Leftists generally do -- JR
Few candidates spell out their policy proposals in as much detail as Hillary Clinton, but there's still room to wonder about how a President Clinton would set her agenda for 2017 and beyond.
One clue comes in the naming of Heather Boushey to be chief economist of her transition team, giving Boushey an inside track for a major political appointment. She is currently the executive director and chief economist of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and recently published "Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict." That book is one good source for which ideas might rise in a Clinton administration.
The central insight is that American institutions do not support a proper balance between work and family life, and that the burdens fall disproportionately upon women. The proposed remedies are an extensive set of government interventions, including paid sick leave, paid parental leave, subsidized child care and better care for the elderly to relieve care burdens on grown children.
Do we trust the legal machinery of government to be making that decision anew over decades of social and economic change?
This is a thoughtful and intelligent book, but for my taste Boushey holds too much faith in mandated and centralized solutions.
It is striking, for instance, that private insurance companies offered prescription drug coverage long before Medicare did, and many business employers offered benefits for same-sex partners before the federal government did. When it comes to innovation, including benefits innovation, the federal government is often a laggard, due to the nature of bureaucracy, political checks and balances and the one-size-fits-all feature of most legislation. I am therefore reluctant to give government a much larger role in managing American family lifestyles.
Boushey portrays her policies as boosting rather than restricting freedom of choice, but usually trade-offs are involved. She does argue that recent state-level experiments show that mandatory paid sick leave doesn't destroy jobs, but there is not yet a lot of hard evidence on the question. And what works in California may not be well-suited to Mississippi.
The Long-term Effects of Government Intervention
Most likely, there is a big difference between short-run and long-run effects. For instance, employers value the workers they have, and are reluctant to fire them when labor costs go up. A lot of "pro-worker" policies thus seem to be a kind of magical free lunch. Over time, however, as a generation of workers turns over and is replaced, mandatory benefits represent a real added cost, evaluated anew, and employers will respond accordingly. They will cut the paid dollar wage, cut other job benefits, require more hard work, automate more, or cut back on plans for growing the business. The downward-sloping demand curve is the best established empirical regularity in all of economics, and in this context that means some laborers -- maybe most laborers -- will pay a price for their new benefits, one way or another.
So let's say America's future means better sick leave and pregnancy leave for employed women, but a narrower choice of jobs, including lower pay, for those same women. Is that better? And do we trust the legal machinery of government to be making that decision anew over decades of social and economic change? Keep in mind that there is an alternative mechanism, which for all its imperfections is far more flexible: Let companies and workers make such decisions through employment bargains.
Unrealistic Optimism
Boushey doesn't estimate or indicate the expense of her proposed mandatory benefits, although she does suggest on page 1 that the cost would be "very small." She is developing a new kind of supply-side economics, this time on the left, but like her right-wing counterparts she is running the risk of excess optimism about how much her suggested improvements will boost productivity in the system.
I usually suggest comparing any proposed program for amelioration to the simple alternative of sending people cash or leaving more cash in their hands, whether through tax cuts, tax credits or outright payments. With that cash in hand, individuals could try to create better arrangements for child care, elder care, and other problems of work-life balance. Some might work fewer hours or take lesser-paying but more flexible jobs, relying on their cash transfers to make up the difference. Others would spend the money on better neighborhoods, better health care or better schools, or in some cases the expenditures will be wasted.
Freedom vs Government-Mandated Benefits
Might that freedom be better than receiving a big package of government-mandated benefits? There is already a big distortion in the employment relationship that comes from taxing money wages at higher rates than workplace benefits. Workers, at the margin, actually receive higher workplace benefits than they ideally would desire, relative to being paid more cash. The way to remedy that misallocation is a lower net tax on the cash, not more benefits.
A more left-wing version of the cash transfer query would ask this: If workers can claim more resources from their bosses for free, through the exercise of legal bargaining power, why not focus policy changes on boosting minimum and mandated wages?
"Finding Time" doesn't find time to address, much less resolve, such questions. The most plausible response to these criticisms is that individual Americans cannot be trusted to make good decisions for themselves, and I am afraid that is the view being swept under the carpet here.
Obamacare's Economic Assumptions Collapse
Economic reality is making it increasingly obvious that we are in the midst of Obamacare's long anticipated death spiral. Most recently, Aetna joined UnitedHealthcare and Humana as the third of the "big five" insurance firms to announce major cuts to its Obamacare exchange business.
For insurers, it's simple math: Premiums collected must exceed claims paid. If too few healthy, low risk individuals enroll to offset the costs of insuring unhealthy, high risk individuals, the math doesn't work. This imbalance forces insurers to raise premiums on the low risk individuals who do enroll to cover the costs of insuring high risk individuals. The rising premiums cause even more healthy individuals to drop coverage – resulting in what has been called a death spiral.
Aetna's CEO Mark Bertolini explained that his company was dropping out of the exchanges because "[p]roviding affordable, high-quality healthcare options to consumers is not possible without a balanced risk pool," and that "individuals in need of high-cost care represent" a percentage of the risk pool so large that it "results in substantial upward pressure on premiums and creates significant sustainability concerns."
The result: Aetna suffered a second-quarter pretax 2016 loss of $200 million and total pretax losses of more than $430 million since January 2014 when the exchanges opened for business. Aetna wasn't alone.
In April, the nation's largest health insurer UnitedHealthcare, announced that it was pulling out of nearly all ObamaCare exchanges. In 2017, it will participate in only three exchanges instead of the 34 this year. CEO Stephen Hemsley similarly explained that "[t]he smaller overall market size and shorter-term higher risk profile within this market segment continue to suggest we cannot broadly serve it on an effective and sustained basis."
UnitedHealth lost $475 million in the exchanges in 2015 and expects to lose $650 million in 2016.
The problem extends beyond big insurers. ObamaCare established 23 non-profit health insurance companies called Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (co-ops). According to the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, they received $2.4 billion in taxpayer dollars because they demonstrated "a high probability of financial viability". To date, 16 of the 23 co-ops (or 70 percent) have failed due to weak balance sheets. Six of the remaining seven are on the brink of collapse.
As a result, the competition between insurers that ObamaCare counted on to keep the quality of coverage up and the costs down is vanishing.
According to a recent analysis by the consulting company Avalere Health, in 2017 nearly 36% of markets may have only one insurer participating in the exchanges, up from 4% in 2016. Nearly 55% may have two or fewer choices, up from 33%. The reasons: "Lower-than-expected enrollment, a high cost population, and troubled risk mitigation programs have led to decreased plan participation for 2017."
The all too predictable consequence is daunting rate hikes. In an ongoing analysis, independent analyst Charles Gaba recently crunched the numbers for insurers participating in the exchanges. He concluded that for 2017, the national average increase requested is a whopping 24.3%. For the eight states that have approved rate hikes to date (representing about 10% of the total population) the average approved increase was 25.6%. And that's with current overall inflation at about 1 percent. So much for President Obama's promise that the average family would see its premiums decline by $2,500.
Even President Obama knows something must be done. As recently as August 2nd, he proposed a "public option" government run insurance company that would compete against private insurers on the exchanges. This "public-option" insurer could operate at a loss indefinitely with taxpayers footing the bill, driving private insurance companies that actually have to turn a profit, out of the market. The result: A massive taxpayer-funded government bureaucracy supporting a single-payer healthcare system that eliminates consumer choice as well as the competition necessary to keep benefits up and costs down.
Hillary Clinton, who sees more government as the solution to every problem, has endorsed the idea. Perhaps those sceptics who saw ObamaCare as an intentionally flawed plan paving the way for a single payer system had a point after all.
But making ObamaCare more bureaucratic, economically indefensible and politically untouchable is not the answer. Americans deserve quality affordable care, not more bureaucracy. It's past time to do something that makes sense.
Any meaningful effort to repeal and replace Obamacare will require cooperation between the President and Congress on a plan that incorporates economically rational free market principles while preserving ObamaCare's most popular provisions. The good news is that both GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan have outlined such plans.
Among other complimentary proposals, they both would encourage much needed competition by allowing insurance sales across state lines while using health savings accounts and tax credits or deductions to reduce insurance costs. They would also increase the role of states to more effectively manage and administer Medicaid (the state-federal program for low income Americans that accounts for the lion's share of those added to the rolls of the insured under ObamaCare).
Ryan's more detailed plan would, among other things, implement much needed medical malpractice reforms and allow small businesses and individuals to pool their collective purchasing power. It would also preserve ObamaCare's more popular provisions such as protecting those with pre-existing conditions and prohibiting sudden cancellations if continuous coverage is maintained.
At this point, it is evident that ObamaCare's economic assumptions are collapsing. It's time to elect lawmakers who will offer effective legislation, vet it through congressional committees and learn what's in it before they pass it. Trump and Ryan are on the right path.
It Pays to Be a Liberal
Wall Street is accused of many things — some legit, some not — but flying under the radar is its alleged watchdog, the federal government, which is actively utilizing an egregious form of blackmail that makes banks' impropriety look like child's play. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce adviser Andy Koenig makes a startling revelation of the federal government's forcing large banks to fund leftist fads in the name of "social justice." Here's how Koenig describes it:
"The administration's multiyear campaign against the banking industry has quietly steered money to organizations and politicians who are working to ensure liberal policy and political victories at every level of government. The conduit for this funding is the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, a coalition of federal and state regulators and prosecutors created in 2012 to 'identify, investigate, and prosecute instances of wrongdoing' in the residential mortgage-backed securities market. In conjunction with the Justice Department, the RMBS Working Group has reached multibillion-dollar settlements with essentially every major bank in America."
Koenig adds, "Combined, the banks must divert well over $11 billion into 'consumer relief,' which is supposed to benefit homeowners harmed during the Great Recession. Yet it is unknown how much, if any, of the banks' settlement money will find its way to individual homeowners. Instead, a substantial portion is allocated to private, nonprofit organizations drawn from a federally approved list." Some of the groups include La Raza, the National Urban League and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition — entities with an obviously leftist bent. The total windfall is unclear, but these and other leftist groups have benefited handsomely off the $11 billion the government has managed to purloin from the nation's largest banks.
This sounds appalling — and indeed it is — but it's not without precedent. Consider that something similar happened with Obama's infamous "stimulus" package. The near-trillion dollar injection of taxpayer funds went almost exclusively toward funding Obama's leftist cronies. As much flack as banks receive, their indiscretions are nothing compared to what the feds are doing behind the scenes.
When murder is punished with death, fewer criminals will murder
When the death penalty is on the books and consistently enforced, a significant number of homicides will be prevented
By Jeff Jacoby
Writing in support of Proposition 62, a California ballot initiative to repeal the death penalty, former El Dorado county supervisor Ron Briggs makes the tiresomely familiar claim that "the death penalty does not make our communities any safer" and "is not a deterrent to crime."
For death penalty opponents, it is a venerable article of faith that executing murderers doesn't deter other murders and that abolishing the death penalty doesn't make killings more likely. Never mind that a thick sheaf of peer-reviewed academic studies refutes the abolitionists' belief, as, of course, does common sense: All penalties have some deterrent effect, and the more severe the penalty, the more it deters. Let a parking meter expire, and you risk a $20 ticket; park in a handicapped spot, and risk a $200 ticket. Which violation are you less likely to commit?
It doesn't take a social-science degree to grasp the real-world difference between facing vs. not facing a potential death sentence. Criminals grasp it too.
Dmitry Smirnov did. A resident of British Columbia, Smirnov was smitten with Jitka Vesel, a pretty Chicago woman he'd met online playing "World of Warcraft" in 2008 and then dated for several weeks. When Vesel ended the brief relationship, Smirnov took it badly. He returned to Canada, but kept pursuing Vesel by phone and online. When she broke off communication with him, he began plotting to kill her.
Smirnov returned to the United States in 2011, bought a gun and ammunition, and drove back to Chicago. He attached a GPS device to Vesel's car so he could track her movements. On the evening of April 13, he tailed her to the Czechoslovak Heritage Museum in Oak Park, Ill., where she was a curator and board member. When she came out after a meeting, Smirnov ambushed her. He shot her repeatedly, firing multiple rounds into the back of her head even after she had crumpled to the ground.
A deranged suitor? Maybe — but Smirnov wasn't too deranged to first check out whether Illinois was a death penalty state. He headed back to Chicago to murder Vesel only after learning that Illinois had recently abolished capital punishment. When he was questioned afterward by police, according to prosecutors, he told them he had confirmed Illinois' no-death penalty status "as recently as the morning of the murder." In an e-mail sent to a friend after the fact, Smirnov — who voluntarily surrendered to the police — made clear that he knew what to expect. "Illinois doesn't have the death penalty, so I'll spend the rest of my life in prison," he wrote.
At trial Smirnov pleaded guilty, and was given a life sentence.
Would Jitka Vesel be alive today if Smirnov had faced the death penalty? Obviously there is no way to know for sure. But we do know for sure that when the cost of a crime goes up, the frequency of that crime goes down. Raise the price of any behavior, and fewer people will do it. The deterrent power of punishment is axiomatic; criminal law would be meaningless without it.
Still, a penalty cannot deter if it is never imposed. California hasn't executed a murderer in 10 years. Only 13 killers have been put to death since 1972, when the state legalized capital punishment. Hundreds of savage murderers have been sentenced to death — there are currently 746 inmates on California's death row — but endless legal appeals and procedures have made executions, for all intents and purposes, impossible.
Most Californians understand that their state's death penalty needs to be fixed, not abolished. Voters defeated a repeal initiative, Proposition 34, in 2012 and appear likely to do the same to Proposition 62, the new repeal measure, this November. According to a statewide poll released last week by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, voters oppose the new death penalty repeal measure by a 10-point margin, 55 percent to 45 percent.
On the other hand, California voters strongly support a second death penalty measure that will also be on the November ballot. Proposition 66, as summarized by the San Francisco Chronicle, would "speed up executions by setting tight deadlines for court rulings, placing some limits on appeals, and requiring many more defense lawyers to take capital cases." The UC Berkeley poll shows voters backing Proposition 66, with its mend-it-don't-end-it approach, by an overwhelming 76-to-24 ratio.
The politics of capital punishment are complicated and emotional, but human nature doesn't change. Granted, incentives and disincentives are never foolproof. Granted, there will always be cases in which deterrents don't deter. On the whole, however, when the death penalty is on the books and consistently enforced, a significant number of homicides will be prevented.
Pretty much by definition, murders that don't happen because criminals are deterred by the prospect of being executed can't be systematically tallied. But felons often disclose their motives when asked. In a striking 1961 opinion, California Supreme Court Justice Marshall McComb plumbed the files of the Los Angeles Police Department to demonstrate the deterrent effect of the death penalty on the thinking of violent criminals.
McComb listed numerous examples of homicides not committed because a would-be killer didn't want to risk capital punishment. Among them:
* Margaret Elizabeth Daly, arrested for attacking Pete Gibbons with a knife, who told the investigating officers: "Yeah, I cut him and I should have done a better job. I would have killed him but I didn't want to go to the gas chamber."
* Orelius Mathew Steward, imprisoned for bank robbery, who acknowledged that he had considered shooting the unaccompanied cop who arrested him: "I could have blasted him. I thought about it at the time, but I changed my mind when I thought of the gas chamber."
* Paul Brusseau, convicted for a string of candy store holdups, which he committed while pretending to carry a gun. "Asked what his reason was for simulating a gun rather than using a real one, he replied that he did not want to get the gas chamber."
Criminals may be evil and pitiless, but criminality isn't a synonym for stupidity. When murder is punished with death, fewer criminals will murder. When murder is punished with nothing worse than prison, more criminals will be emboldened to kill. In the never-ending debate over capital punishment, that is always what the choice comes down to.
If Dems Don't Win Senate, Thank ObamaCare
If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency on Nov. 8, her running mate Tim Kaine will provide the tie-breaking vote in the Senate if Democrats win just four seats. Democrats will hold the White House and the Upper Chamber of Congress. But there's a glimmer of hope for the Senate, and, ironically, we can thank Democrats for it.
While Donald Trump beat the entire field of polished résumés, Republicans have a strong field of incumbents and a deep bench of candidates and potential candidates due to the shift of political majorities in the states. The New York Times agrees as it frets, "Democrats find themselves hobbled by less-than-stellar candidates in races that could make the difference in winning a majority."
It's a simple fact that since 2010, from the courthouse to the state houses and to the governors' mansions, voters have placed their trust in Republicans. According to Ballotpedia in 2016, there are 23 states with a "Republican trifecta" comprised of state representatives, state senators and governors. Only seven states have a "Democrat trifecta."
The statement's been made before: Barack Obama has been the greatest thing for the GOP in a long time. Why? Obama's failed policies and lawless approach have originated from a hard-Left view of the role of government — it's the answer to everything! But when the solution doesn't look much better than the problem, that hurts Democrats.
According to The New York Times, "Democrats are mired in their own struggle, as they try to identify future stars who can appeal to a base increasingly insistent on a progressive agenda." Going further, The Cook Political Report's senior editor Jennifer Duffy predicted, "Democrats are going to have their own Tea Party movement in 2018." Why? The rigged primary for Hillary, shutting down Bernie Sanders' passionate crowd.
In the U.S. Senate races, the Democrat field is weak when assessing its recruits and institutional structure to support them.
But the personnel isn't the Democrats' only weakness. Their record of failure during the Obama administration is hard to dismiss.
Obama will soon become the only president to never have a single year of GDP growth of at least 3%. Data will show that the rich got richer and the poor had to get more government hand-outs during the "fundamental transformation" of America. On the foreign policy front, the Middle East is a roiling cauldron of stew featuring beheadings, the rape of children and married women and, oh yeah, the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons.
But one issue alone should serve to solidify voters' movement away from Democrats in these Senate and House races. The predicted and absolute failure of the laughably misnamed "Affordable Care Act," Obama's "signature legislation," has proven, again, that there's never enough money for a government program and there's always a negative consequence to a competing private sector entity.
On March 23, 2010, the flock of Democrats surrounding Obama at his bill-signing ceremony that enacted ObamaCare into law stood with plumage in full show. Today, the birds of that feather are being stuffed into the nests of insurance companies and hospitals that spent millions to lobby for the government takeover of America's health care. Insurers are now reporting hundreds of millions in losses and crying for a taxpayer-funded bailout as they flee the exchanges. Hospitals are wailing for states to expand their Medicaid rolls to prop up their financial losses. Oh, and those oft-forgotten folks called the taxpaying public are seeing their insurance premiums rise annually up to 60%.
Not only have enrollees in the IRS-enforced ObamaCare seen their doctors and their plans change, but their out-of-pocket expenses are skyrocketing. On Saturday, Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, gave the GOP Weekly Address citing the "very near collapse" of the ObamaCare Insurance Exchanges with an "intolerable increase" in premium costs to be administered in 2017.
Will Senate Republicans effectively remind middle class voters that their budgets are busted by health care expenses thanks to the Democrats? Will they win hearts and minds by engaging in policy discussions of portable health savings accounts and price transparency that would drive consumerism in health care? Will the GOP articulate that the working class will be restored through work and personal savings, not government taxes and redistribution?
The quadrennial voting pool has every reason to support Republicans due to their own financial losses during the Obama "recovery," and the prospect of better days ahead with effective policy
Liberal whining
If you want to be a victim, become a liberal. It doesn't matter whether you want to go online to whine about your lot in life or whether you want to harm others with everything from shutting down free speech to fiddling with the climate. Both work.
It comes down to our different world views. When liberals talk about triggering, they mean someone said something their precious little ears couldn't handle. (Note: That video spawned the "trigglypuff" meme. Watch it and you will understand.) When conservatives talk about triggering, they are discussing the correct placement of their finger for optimum accuracy.
All of that calls to mind Chris Ray Gun who makes song parodies that mock everything "ridiculous happening right now in the real world including Social Justice Warriors, The Regressive Left, and whatever else slightly annoys me." Chris wrote the excellent "Ain't No Rest for the Triggered" which includes the lyrics:
"Oh, there ain't no rest for the tiggered
"We're easily displeased
"We've got hair to dye
"We've got tears to cry
"Please gimme your sympathy
"No I won't let loose, I get my news
"From places like Salon
"No there ain't no rest for the triggered
"Donate to my Patreon"
It turns out you can donate to his Patreon to help fund his efforts. And as for Salon, it wouldn't be a week on the crazy, left-wing internet without them. And as for Salon, they came out criticizing the University of Chicago's commitment to academic freedom.
Now, let's talk about the biggest victim of them all -- Mother Nature.
Deadly Volcanoes Are A Blast: The Year Without Summer (Happy 200th anniversary!) was set in motion by the massively deadly eruption of Indonesia's Mt. Tambora. The volcano spewed ash around the globe and killed about 100,000 people nearby. Who knows how many more starved to death. Those sure were the days -- at least to liberals who want to geo-engineer our weather. According to the nutballs from Slate: "Though the aerosol haze produced by the Tambora eruption reflected less than 1 percent of sunlight, that was enough to drop global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the summer of 1816, causing a catastrophic weather chain reaction." Crop yields dropped 75 percent and people starved, but Slate found a bright side. The site wants to know: "Could we use the same mechanism that cooled the planet then to cool the planet now?" Actual quote: "Strangely enough, massive volcanoes might be part of the answer." If massive volcanoes are part of your "answer," maybe you ought to rethink whatever stupid question you were asking.
Pity The Poor, Female Olympian: American news outlets have been peddling the pity party for our female soccer Olympians since before the Olympics. They aren't paid as much as the men, and that's a national crisis apparently. Journalists, who are lucky to be able to count the five Olympic rings bemoan that pay gap without understanding it. Our friends, the whack jobs at Fusion, are especially unhappy. "The sad reality is that male athletes still get paid way more than female competitors." The article forgot to point out that top male athletes are typically much better than female athletes. Find me a female Lebron, a Tom Brady, a Cal Ripken, Jr., then maybe I'll care. Fusion looked at sports such as soccer, cycling and golf and complained women earn less than men in those sports. Poor Taryn Hillin, "Fusion's love and sex writer," thinks that all sports and athletes are equal. Actual quote: "So as we all continue to root for Lydia Ko, Mara Abbott, and the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team outside of Rio, just know they could make a gabillion times more money if they only had penises." In this day of liberal-mandated gender equality, they don't need penises. They just need to play better than men. The Rams drafted Michael Sam just because he's gay. Think they wouldn't draft a woman to play if there was one who could?
A Cut Below Other Protesters: More than 200 million women have been victim of the horrific practice of female genital mutilation. But here in the West, we've got idiots protesting … male circumcision. The head (Sorry!) of the anti-circumcision group (Intactivists) Anthony Losquadro claims, "You can't force a medical procedure on someone, no matter how beneficial it is." Fusion, the same outlet that just bought Gawker and its component lunatic parts, forgets that parents make medical decisions for their kids all the time. But liberals love victims, and so the wrong kind of genital victim gets attention. Actual quote: "One thing that hardly tempers intactivists' reputation as a group of isolated crazies is their fondness for blood imagery. On that day in D.C., fake blood is everywhere." A guy wearing all white with his crotch spray-painted red is always the rational source I go to for medical information.
Social Justice Ceramics! "The politics of clay" sounds a lot more boring than "The Politics of Dancing." That's because it is. Fusion (with the column hat trick) did a Q&A with ceramic artist Robert Lugo, who fires up his politics in the kiln -- putting people like Che, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown on his artwork. Fusion went to Lugo because of his "use of pottery as a medium for political progress." Actual artist quote: "I put Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin on a pot. Their faces will be on a pot for thousands of years, even when people have forgotten. My role in the new civil rights movement is keeping the conversation going long after it's left the news." At least when conservatives say the culture is going to pot now, it won't just be a lame 420 joke.
Leftist lies about poverty in America
Today is the 20th anniversary of welfare reform. Two decades ago, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, known as welfare reform, into law.
The highly popular reform cut welfare caseloads by over 50 percent, sharply boosted the employment of the least-skilled single mothers, and pushed the poverty rates of black children and single-parent families to historic lows.
But the left always hated welfare reform. It now claims that reform has thrown 3.5 million children into "extreme poverty," the kind seen in the developing world, living in destitution on less than $2 per day.
CBS News asserts that, because of welfare reform, " … America is joining the likes of Third World countries." The New York Times proclaims "welfare reform has resulted in a layer of destitution that echoes poverty in countries like Bangladesh."
Bloomberg News gasps that millions of Americans now "live on less than the average GDP [gross domestic product] per capita of a low-income country such as Afghanistan, Mozambique, or Haiti." It insists millions in America are poorer than the "disabled beggars of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia."
The origin of these sensational claims is a recent book, "$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America," by Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer.
The authors argue that welfare reform has led 3.55 million children (and 1 in 25 of all families with children) in America to subsist on less than $2 per person per day, which they identify as "one of the World Bank's measures of global poverty." According to Edin and Shaefer, these families live in "extreme destitution," regularly engaging in prostitution, selling their blood, and collecting scrap metal to survive. Edin claims that "extreme poverty" is actually "much worse" in the U.S. than in developing nations because there is no "barter economy" here.
Edin and Shaefer's bizarre charges are based on the government's Survey of Income and Program Participation. However, examination of the survey data reveals that the families Edin and Shaefer claim are living in "extreme poverty" don't actually appear to be particularly poor, let alone living in "extreme destitution."
According to the data, some 67 percent of families with children allegedly living in "extreme poverty" have a computer, 86.5 percent have air conditioning in their homes or apartments, 89 percent have cellphones, and 88 percent have a DVD player, digital video recorder, VCR, or similar device.
What about hunger? Surely, hunger must be widespread among families in "extreme destitution." But, according to the survey data, only 1 percent of families allegedly living in "extreme poverty" report that they "often" did not have "enough food to eat" over the previous four months; another 8 percent said they "sometimes" did not have "enough to eat." The remaining 91 percent report that they "always" had enough food to eat.
Despite having alleged incomes of less than $2 per day, only 1 percent of these families were evicted during the prior year, while 4 percent had their oil, gas, or electricity cut off.
Edin and Shaefer concoct their remarkable claim that 3.5 million children routinely live in "extreme destitution," on $2 per day or less, through a combination of statistical sleight of hand and lousy data. In 2014, federal and state government spent $221 billion on cash, food, and housing for low-income families with children. That's two and a half times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty among families with children.
But when Edin and Shaefer calculate "extreme poverty," they exclude nearly all of that welfare spending from their count of family income. With welfare out of the picture, it's not hard to find families with very low incomes.
The authors admit that if food stamps and the earned income tax credit are counted, the number of kids in "extreme poverty" drops to 1.2 million. But that number is still misleading because the survey used by Edin and Shaefer undercounts receipt by more than 20 million welfare benefits distributed to recipients each month.
In a nutshell, Edin and Shaefer have used a survey that omits more than 20 million welfare benefits each month to conclude that 1.2 million children live in families that go without welfare in that month. They are simply measuring large data gaps in a flawed survey, not actual holes in the safety net.
Poverty experts understand that government income surveys, such as the Survey of Income and Program Participation, always underreport the incomes of the poor, especially welfare and off-books earnings. No surprise then that the U.S. Department of Labor's Consumer Expenditure Survey has shown for decades that the poor households routinely report spending roughly $2.40 for every dollar of apparent income. For families in Edin and Shaefer's "extreme poverty," the expenditure-to-income ratio in the Consumer Expenditure Survey rises to around $25 to $1.
Based on self-reports of consumer spending, "extreme poverty" has been practically nonexistent for three decades.
From 1984 through 2015, the Consumer Expenditure Survey shows only 61 instances in which a family reported spending less than $2 per person per day out of a total of 272,597 quarterly family records. (Two-thirds of the 61 underspending families lived in public housing.) According to spending data reported by the families themselves, the number of families with children living on $2 per person per day is not 1 in 25, as Edin and Shaefer contend, but 1 in 4,469.
Edin and Shaefer argue that welfare reform increased poverty, but expenditure data show that, after reform, both official poverty rates ($17.44 per person per day for a three-person family) and deep poverty rates ($8.72 per person per day) fell sharply for the main group affected by reform: single parents with children.
In fact, poverty fell much more for single parents than for other groups in society. In other words, the group directly affected by welfare reform had the greatest drop in poverty.
Exaggerating poverty has been a mainstay of progressive politics since the beginning of the war on poverty. No matter how much the taxpayers spend on welfare, the sky is always falling. Bogus claims of widespread "extreme destitution" promote social polarization and political paralysis, distracting attention from the real problems crippling low-income communities.
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- mainly about Muslims
New scare about hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer
HRT is very beneficial to many women as they cease menstruation. It relieves the many physical problems they experience at that time. So, as with anything popular, the elites had to find something wrong with it. And there was a big scare around the beginning of this century saying that it caused breast cancer. Subsequent research, however, largely cleared the HRT pill of that danger and official guidance these days is that there is little to worry about.
A new study just out (summary and journal abstract below), however, has renewed the scare. And the new study is methodologically strong. It takes careful account of things not well considered in previous studies. There are a couple of reasons not to be too bothered by the findings, however. The first is that, as with most medical research, only the relative risk is reported, not the absolute risk. I had to scratch fairly deeply to find the absolute risk behind the current results. It was about 40 in 1,000. Out of 1,000 old ladies, 40 will get cancer from taking the HRT pill. That is not negligible but it is not a great risk either. Most of us do more risky things with some regularity -- like driving a car.
The second thing to note is that not all HRT pills are the same. What is most lacking in old ladies is the female hormone estrogen. Those old ladies who get around in masculine haircuts have lost most of their female hormones so are in a sense post-female. So replacing the estrogen is all that should be required to restore the old balance in the woman's life. And that is what most HRT pills do.
For women whom the estrogen doesn't help much, however, there is another sort of pill: estrogen plus progestogen. And that is inherently risky. Progestogens produce progesterone, which is a major pregnancy hormone. Worldly-wise men know why their women get irritable once a month (PMT). It is when her ovaries are producing progesterone to prepare the womb for conception. So progesterone is vital for conception but it is also the bad-mood hormone. I once saw a rather spectacular example of progesterone-induced rage myself. The woman concerned was deeply embarrassed afterwards. That increased progesterone levels might have other problems is therefore easily understood.
And it appears that it does. The research below found absolutely no problem with the estrogen-only pill but did find problems with the combined pill. The progestogen-containing pill does slightly elevate the risk of breast cancer. Giving old ladies a pregnancy hormone is pretty wild to start with so it is no surprise that it might have some ill effects.
But there is a BIG problem with the causal arrow here. As is deplorably common in the medical literature, the authors assume that correlation is causation, which is a gross statistical fallacy.
What they have not done is ask WHY the women concerned were put on the combined pill in the first place? Were they less healthy in various ways from the beginning? Would they have got more cancer anyway, with or without the pill? So being put on the combined pill may be an indicator that the old ladies were from the beginning more likely to get cancer rather than the pill causing the cancer.
So this research is not conclusive at all. Only a before-and-after experimental design could answer questions about cause. Even the combined pill could be completely harmless.
Nonetheless, I agree with the most common medical advice, that women should by and large stick to the estrogen-only pill. We KNOW that it is harmless
HRT raises the risk more than threefold for women who had taken it for 15 years, the Institute of Cancer research found Credit: Press Association
Hormone replacement therapy can triple the risk of breast cancer, the biggest ever study has found, following more than a decade of controversy.
Last year the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice) changed guidance to encourage more doctors to prescribe HRT claiming too many menopausal women had been left suffering in silence.
HRT is used to treat uncomfortable symptoms of the menopause - such as hot flushes, migraines, disrupted sleep, mood changes and depression - by topping up the decreased levels of hormones produced by the body.
But doctors were reluctant to prescribe it after a study in 2002 suggested it could raise the risk of cancer, a claim later widely disputed.
Now new findings by the Institute of Cancer Research and Breast Cancer Now suggest the original risk had actually been underestimated.
A study of 100,000 women over 40 years found those who took the combined oestrogen and progestogen pill for around five years were 2.7 times more likely to develop cancer compared to women who took nothing, or only the oestrogen pill.
The risk rose to 3.3 times for women who took the drugs for 15 years or more.
Around 14 in 1,000 women in their 50s are expected to develop breast cancer, but that rises to 34 in 1000 for women taking the combined pill, the study suggests.
"Our research shows that some previous studies are likely to have underestimated the risk of breast cancer with combined oestrogen-progestogen HRT," said study leader Professor Anthony Swerdlow, of The Institute of Cancer Research.
"We found that current use of combined HRT increases the risk of breast cancer by up to threefold, depending on how long HRT has been used.
"Our findings provide further information to allow women to make informed decisions about the potential risks and benefits of HRT use."
Women taking the oestrogen-only pill have no greater risk
HRT was first developed in the 1940s and was first made available to women in Britain in 1965.
However in 2002 the British Millennium Women Study published findings claiming that HRT raised the risk of cancer. Many doctors immediately withdrew prescriptions while the Medical Healthcare and Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued new guidance recommending all women be given the "lowest effective dose should be used for the shortest time."
Since then the number of women taking HRT has more than halved with around one in 10 eligible patients now using the drugs, approximately 150,000 women.
More recently a review by Imperial College and a 10-year study by New York University found no evidence of a link, adding further to the confusion and last year the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) changed its guidance to encourage doctors to offer HRT claiming one million women were suffering in silence.
At the time Nice said that the cancer risk was 27 in 1,000 so the new research, which followed 100,000 women for 40 years, increases that risk by 54 per cent.
The health watchdog said that the new study should not change how doctors prescribed HRT.
We found that current use of combined HRT increases the risk of breast cancer by up to three fold, depending on how long HRT has been usedProfessor Anthony Swerdlow, Institute of Cancer Research
Professor Mark Baker, director of the Centre for Guidelines at NICE, said: "As with Nice guidance this study recognises there is no increased risk of breast cancer with oestrogen-only HRT but the combined HRT can be associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.
"The guideline makes clear that menopausal women should be informed that the impact of HRT on the risk of breast cancer varies with the type of HRT used.
"The message from our guidance to women is clear - talk about the menopause with your clinician if you need advice on your symptoms - it's very important to discuss the options to find what might help you."
The new study also found that the risk declined when women stopped taking HRT and there was no danger at all for women only taking oestrogen, which accounts for half of all prescriptions.
Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive at Breast Cancer Now, said: "Whether to use HRT is an entirely personal choice, which is why it's so important that women fully understand the risks and benefits and discuss them with their GP. We hope these findings will help anyone considering the treatment to make an even more informed decision.
"On balance, some women will feel HRT to be a necessity. But in order to minimise the risk of breast cancer during treatment, it is recommended that the lowest effective dose is used for the shortest possible time.
"The good news is that the increased risk of breast cancer begins to fall once you stop using HRT."
Menopausal hormone therapy and breast cancer: what is the true size of the increased risk?
Michael E Jones et al.
Background: Menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) increases breast cancer risk; however, most cohort studies omit MHT use after enrolment and many infer menopausal age.
Methods: We used information from serial questionnaires from the UK Generations Study cohort to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) for breast cancer among post-menopausal women with known menopausal age, and examined biases induced when not updating data on MHT use and including women with inferred menopausal age.
Results: Among women recruited in 2003-2009, at 6 years of follow-up, 58?148 had reached menopause and 96% had completed a follow-up questionnaire. Among 39,183 women with known menopausal age, 775 developed breast cancer, and the HR in relation to current oestrogen plus progestogen MHT use (based on 52 current oestrogen plus progestogen MHT users in breast cancer cases) relative to those with no previous MHT use was 2.74 (95% confidence interval (CI): 2.05-3.65) for a median duration of 5.4 years of current use, reaching 3.27 (95% CI: 1.53-6.99) at 15+ years of use. The excess HR was underestimated by 53% if oestrogen plus progestogen MHT use was not updated after recruitment, 13% if women with uncertain menopausal age were included, and 59% if both applied. The HR for oestrogen-only MHT was not increased (HR=1.00; 95% CI: 0.66-1.54).
Conclusions: Lack of updating MHT status through follow-up and inclusion of women with inferred menopausal age is likely to result in substantial underestimation of the excess relative risks for oestrogen plus progestogen MHT use in studies with long follow-up, limited updating of exposures, and changing or short durations of use.
British Journal of Cancer (2016) 115, 607-615. doi:10.1038/bjc.2016.231
Hillary Clinton Denounces the 'Alt-Right,' and the Alt-Right Is Pleased
Below is the NYT take on the Alt-Right. Since I am often seen as Alt-Right, I think I am in a position to give a more accurate perspective.
For a start, in its best misleading style, the NYT lumps together all sorts of quite different interest groups. If there is a discernible common theme in Alt-Right writings, it is probably a belief that racial differences are real and that some of those differences matter. And I think you just have to walk around with your eyes open to see that. But where you go from there is quite various. Stormfront, for instance, is clearly neo-Nazi and I never go there. Vdare, on the other hand, I do read occasionally and I have donated to them. But I see Vdare as just old-fashioned conservatives. They would be Republicans if Republicans could bring themselves to mention racial differences. But Republicans have been thoroughly cowed by the Left so that is not going to happen.
I myself think that most racial differences are trivial or temporary but some are not. And I don't think America will have good public policy until the real differences between blacks and whites are acknowledged and integrated into public policy. For instance, there should be special schools using high-discipline policies for those blacks who are unable to adapt to traditional white classrooms. White education would thus no longer be held back and the blacks concerned might actually learn something for a change.
And let there be no doubt that the real racists are the Left. They never stop agitating about black "inequality" and they have in place a whole raft of laws and regulations that are as racially discriminatory as Jim Crow. And they are consistent in that Jim Crow laws were the work of Democrats too. Race, race, race dominates their thinking. It has got to the ridiculous stage in some schools where blacks cannot be punished for misbehavior unless whites and Asians are being punished at a similar rate. And since black kids are much more unruly, that leads to a very serious breakdown of order and means that all the students learn very little in the course of their education.
So, as usual, Leftists have turned reality on its head. They are themselves the most zealous racists but, with their unending torrents of abuse, they have managed to pin the racist label on other people. Leftists DO see differences between blacks and whites but no-one else is allowed to. Crazy.
So, one thing that would unite all those described as Alt-Right is the view that the "forgiveness" of disruptive and violent black behavior should end. There should be one law for all, impartially enforced.
The only other commonality that I see in the alleged "Alt-Right" is a respect for traditional European values. Britain, Western Europe and their derivative societies have created modern civilization and the modern world generally. Western European culture (including U.S. culture) has been enormously creative and its influence extends worldwide. A trivial but instructive example of that is that young Japanese females these days sometimes blond their hair! The European example is a powerful influence in just about everything these days
But where you go from acknowledging that is another matter. Most Alt-Righters would simply be pleased to have their membership of a dominant civilization generally acknowledged. They don't seek "white supremacy" at all. Why? Because they already have it! Their culture and laws already rule the roost. The Left devote demonic energies trying to tear down the dominant culture and its systems but they can only nibble at the edges. Alt-Righters would mostly be happy if the Left simply became constructive rather than destructive -- but that is an impossible dream, of course.
The Alt-Right does however explore a variety of possibilies for protecting European-descended people from hostile minorities. The phenomenon of "white flight" suggests that most Americans have some wishes in that direction.
And even Abraham Lincoln wanted to send all the blacks back to Africa. So was the Great Emancipator a racist? In the addled thinking of the modern Left, he was. What the Left will not see is something well-accepted in law -- that motives matter. Wanting to protect yourself and those like you from harm is radically different from wanting to do harm to others. And such different motives will produce quite different behaviour sets.
But because the thinking categorizes people by race, it is racist, according to the Left. You can categorize people in all sorts of ways but the one way in which you must not categorize people is by race, according to the Left.
In all political movements there is a considerable diversity of viewpoints. Among the far-Left they can be quite vicious to one-another over what to us would seem like very tiny differences of doctrine. And insofar as there is such a thing as the Alt-Right there is even less unity. Mrs Clinton was attacking a paper tiger. She has form on that. In 1998 she was attacking a "vast Right-wing conspiracy" to account for opposition to the Clinton with the overactive penis.
There is also a libertarian take here on the Alt-Right. Again it is over-inclusive. Very little of what it says would apply to all Alt-Right thinkers.
For instance, it says: "What is the alt-right theory of history? The movement inherits a long and dreary tradition of thought from Friedrich Hegel to Thomas Carlyle to Oswald Spengler to Madison Grant to Othmar Spann to Giovanni Gentile to Trump's speeches"
That is an amazing lumping together of disparates, mostly Communists and Fascists. Hegel, for instance, was the inspiration of Karl Marx, not the Alt-right. And the article goes downhill from there.
So let people do a bit of Googling and read for themselves what the various Alt-Right sites say. You won't agree with them all but you may agree with some -- JR
As Hillary Clinton assailed Donald J. Trump on Thursday for fanning the flames of racism embraced by the "alt-right," the community of activists that tends to lurk anonymously in the internet's dark corners could hardly contain its glee.
Mrs. Clinton's speech was intended to link Mr. Trump to a fringe ideology of conspiracies and hate, but for the leaders of the alt-right, the attention from the Democratic presidential nominee was a moment in the political spotlight that offered a new level of credibility. It also provided a valuable opportunity for fund-raising and recruiting.
Jared Taylor, editor of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance, live-tweeted Mrs. Clinton's remarks, questioning her praise of establishment Republicans and eagerly anticipating her discussion of his community. "Come on, Hillary," he wrote. "Talk about Alt Right."
In an ode to Mr. Trump's characterization of Jeb Bush, Mr. Taylor described her speech as "low energy."
Other white nationalists mocked Mrs. Clinton, saying she sounded like a neoconservative and a "grandma," while welcoming the publicity.
Mr. Trump has publicly kept his distance from the alt-right, but his critics have accused him of offering subtle cues to invite its support. His appointment of Stephen K. Bannon, the head of Breitbart News, to be chief executive of his campaign was cheered by alt-right members who are avid readers of the Breitbart website.
The alt-right claims to support the preservation of white culture in the United States, and many of its members want to see an overhaul of the entire political system. However, its views are widely seen as white supremacist and anti-Semitic.
Many who align themselves with alt-right philosophies say that they do not subscribe to all of Mr. Trump's policies, but that electing him would be a step in the right direction because of his "America First" worldview and his hard line on immigration. This week, some expressed disappointment that Mr. Trump appeared to be softening his tone on deporting people who are in the country illegally.
Richard B. Spencer, the president of the white-nationalist National Policy Institute, who is credited with coming up with the name "alt-right," pushed back against claims that the group promotes violence and said in a statement that there was a double standard at play.
"While Hillary & Co. condemn the alt-right — nonviolent activists seeking social change, largely through a vibrant internet presence — she allows noted supporters of terror to attend her rallies and has never once disavowed the actions of domestic terrorists associated with Black Lives Matter," Mr. Spencer said.
Mrs. Clinton's public criticism of the alt-right could turn out to be a boon for the movement, and its members did their best to capitalize on the moment.
Some, in an effort to show a lighthearted side, circulated footage of Mr. Taylor playing the saxophone at the group's most recent conference. The white nationalist website VDare published a "What Is the Alt-Right?" video and blasted out a fund-raising pitch warning, "Hillary wants to ignite a witch hunt against the alt-right because she knows we are finally starting to make an impact on the public's thinking about immigration." And the Stormfront forum set up an online thread for potential new members.
After Mrs. Clinton's speech, one group of white nationalists convened a 90-minute videoconference that was broadcast on YouTube. The consensus was that Mrs. Clinton was "toothless" and "lackluster," and they expressed disappointment that she had not mentioned alt-right leaders by name. She made reference only to David Duke, the former Klansman whose support Mr. Trump was slow to disavow.
Although the alt-right tried to put its best foot forward, there was plenty of venom directed at Mrs. Clinton, and the conspiracy theories ran wild. A popular attack was the continuing effort to raise questions about her health.
By addressing the alt-right in such a prominent setting, Mrs. Clinton ran the risk of helping its cause. But Richard Cohen, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, dismissed the idea that Mrs. Clinton was doing the public a disservice by drawing attention to the alt-right.
"I think every public official ought to denounce racism, and that is what Secretary Clinton did," Mr. Cohen said, noting that the alt-right ideology opposes the notion that all people are equal.
Referring to the term "alt-right," which was trending on Twitter, he added, "It is a fancy, almost antiseptic term for white supremacy in the digital world."
VA Whistleblower Gets the Boot
When it comes to the Department of Veterans Affairs, miracles do happen. Just ask Anthony Salazar. The Los Angeles-based VA employee was fired last year for ostensibly violating the agency's code of conduct. Great news, right? Well, not exactly. Even when miracles like this do happen at the VA, they're shrouded in malicious ulterior motives. According to the Office of Special Counsel, a few years ago "Mr. Salazar described how 30 of the 88 agency vehicles were unaccounted for, explained how ten fleet cards were suspected of fraudulent purchases, and pressed the urgent need for the VA to get the situation under control."
That's pretty alarming stuff, and an ensuing investigation found Robert Benkeser, who oversees the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, culpable. According to The Daily Caller, "The department convened an 'administrative investigation board' (AIB) that resulted in 'a letter of counseling' to Benkeser for mismanaging the motor pool." But instead of rectifying the situation and moving on, a vengeful Benkeser terminated Salazar … for exposing his own misdeeds. As the Caller goes on to note, "The ease with which Salazar was fired … stands in contrast to the many employees who unambiguously committed egregious misconduct and are still on the job." No joke.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reports, "A 76-year-old veteran committed suicide on Sunday in the parking lot of the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Long Island, where he had been a patient, according to the Suffolk County Police Department." An anonymous source said the man, Peter A. Kaisen, "went to the ER and was denied service. And then he went to his car and shot himself." If the VA put as much effort into helping folks like Mr. Kaisen as it does looking to retaliate against whistleblowers — a problem that's systemic — perhaps fewer vets would be killing themselves.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Although many rumors about dislike button on Facebook will not dislike button. Instead of bringing a feature through which people can express their different emotions.This Friday Ireland and Spain, has opened up a feature for Facebook users, which can be expressed in different expression. Facebook officials associated with various ways of expressing emotion, but no dislike option will not be offered.
Mark Zuckerberg said, is not always the best time. It takes a lot of time to express sympathy. To share some moments which seemed more expression? Just like not all can be published.Ireland and Spain, as well as six emotion Like Facebook users are getting the chance to experiment with things. They are not meant to be any post. These options are 'made', "Iain " wow " HA ',' sad 'and' angry '. Emoji, such as providing messaging options are used.
Zuckerberg said, but these options can not be easily dislike sorrow, empathy, joy and warmth will allow sharing.Facebook product manager Chris won the reaction or response option, Facebook users will add more diverse stories and content.Chris won the dijalaika button Adding Facebook Facebook would not add any additional value that Facebook said.


text:
Hadoop startup Cloudera lands big funding for big data
Brandon Butler (Network World)
Big data is expected to be a big deal in the coming years and venture capitalists seem to agree, having pumped an additional $65 million into Cloudera, a company that promises to bring Hadoop data management tools to the enterprise.
Cloudera's CDH4 platform is a commercially distributed version of the open source Apache Hadoop project that allows enterprises to deploy Hadoop clusters to manage structured and unstructured data. Cloudera says it already works to some degree with half of the Fortune 50 companies and specifically names AOL, CBS, EBay, Expedia, Experian, JP Morgan Chase, Monsanto, Morgan Stanley, Network Appliance, Nokia, RIM, and The Walt Disney Company in its press release announcing the funding today. The company also has a free trial version and a Cloudera Enterprise version available.
MORE HADOOP: Hadoop wins over enterprise IT, spurs talent crunch
CLOUD DATA MANAGEMENT: Amazon wants to manage your data in the cloud
TIPS: Supercharge your browser with these top add-ons
Cloudera says its number of customers, employees and data under management have all doubled in the last year. It's trained 15,000 people in its Hadoop classes, the company says.
With the infusion of cash the company plans to expand globally, with plans to open up a European headquarters in England next year.
The company had already raised $76 million through four previous rounds of funding. With its newest round, the company has received a total of $141 million. The new funding round is led by Accel Partners, with additional financing from Greylock Partners, Ignition, In-Q-Tel and Meritech Capital Partners.
Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social collaboration. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.
Read more about software in Network World's Software section.
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text:
Putin's hope to ignite a Eurasia-style protest in the United States
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a news conference during the BRICS summit in Benaulim in the state of Goa, India, on Oct. 16. (Kremlin pool photo by Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik via European Pressphoto Agency)
By Jackson Diehl
Jackson Diehl
Deputy editorial page editor and columnist focusing on international affairs
In the fall of 2004 Vladimir Putin suffered a blow he has never forgotten. The fraudulent election of a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president, which Putin had directly and brazenly engineered, was overturned by a massive popular uprising. What came to be known as the "Orange Revolution" created a model for resistance to rigged elections in autocracies across Eurasia — in Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan and, in 2012, Russia itself.
Most of the rebellions didn't succeed. But Putin developed an obsession with "color revolutions," which he is convinced are neither spontaneous nor locally organized, but orchestrated by the United States — and in the case of the Moscow protests four years ago, by Hillary Clinton herself.
That's the context in which Russia's intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election must be understood. Putin is trying to deliver to the American political elite what he believes is a dose of its own medicine. He is attempting to ignite — with the help, unwitting or otherwise, of Donald Trump — a U.S. color revolution.
Let's look at the way those revolts unfolded. In every case, they pitted an outsider political movement against an entrenched elite willing to employ fraud and force to remain in power. The outsiders mobilized their followers to collect evidence of rigging on election day and, when they could, conducted exit polls and "quick counts" to obtain vote totals they could contrast with official results. They disseminated their findings through satellite channels and other foreign media. When the inevitable victory of the ruling party was announced, they called their followers to the streets for mass protests they hoped would cause the regime to crumble — or at least discredit its phony election triumph.
Of course, Trump's populist campaign is no more comparable to the pro-democracy insurgencies in formerly Soviet lands such as Ukraine and Belarus than Clinton's administration-in-waiting is to the Putin regime. But Putin's audacious goal is to create the illusion that they are. "He's trying to establish that our system is just as bad, just as corrupt, as his," says Brian Whitmore, a senior editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says the scandal that has erupted in the United States over allegations Russia hacked Democratic Party emails has not been in Moscow's interests and that both sides in the U.S. election campaign are just using Russia to score points. (Reuters)
The first step of the campaign was to hack the computers of the Democratic National Committee and senior party figures and distribute — sometimes with alterations — material that was purported to show Clinton's rigging of the system. The DNC was revealed, unsurprisingly, to lean against socialist-turned-Democrat Bernie Sanders; Clinton's campaign team was shown to be making political calculations about her public statements. As if on cue, Trump and his surrogates responded with mock shock and charges of "corruption."
Next came the suggestions that the balloting itself might be tampered with. Most likely, that was the point of the hacking probes into the voting systems of more than 20 states, including key battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania and Florida. A joint statement by the Department of Homeland Security and the office of the Director of National Intelligence said it was unlikely voting systems could be tampered with "to alter actual ballot counts or election results." But the reports of cyber-intrusions are by themselves enough to damage public confidence — which may be the point.
Trump meanwhile plays his part; he could not be doing more to aid the Kremlin's narrative if he were reading from a script. (Which in some cases, he literally is: See his citation last week of a Clinton-related email doctored by the Moscow-run Sputnik news service.) Repeatedly warning that the election may be rigged, Trump has been enlisting his supporters as observers to watch "certain areas" he is likely to lose, such as Philadelphia. His "Stop the Steal" movement is planning to conduct its own exit polls outside key precincts. Its inevitable reports of "irregularities" will provide the predicate for Trump to claim fraud.
That, in turn, will prompt reactions like that already heard from a Trump supporter at a Mike Pence rally last week. After raising the specter of rigging, she said: "If Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself, I'm ready for a revolution, because we can't have her in." After a thousand cable broadcasts of that moment, Putin surely was still smiling.
And the revolution? Putin understands that Washington is not Kiev; mobs are unlikely to mass in front of the White House or Congress. But rebellions can happen online: Imagine a blizzard of Internet posts, reinforced by the Kremlin's paid trolls, its satellite television network and the Trumpian corners of Fox, alleging that what Trump calls the "political establishment" has stolen the election for Clinton.
That wouldn't stop Clinton from taking office — any more than the Bolotnaya Square protest in Moscow prevented Putin's presidential inauguration in May 2012. But Clinton would start her term politically wounded, both domestically and abroad. Putin will have obtained payback. And Trump will have shown himself to be a most useful idiot.
Read more from Jackson Diehl's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
The Post's View: Donald Trump, Putin's puppet
George F. Will: Vladimir Putin is bringing back the 1930s
Carl Gershman: Remembering a journalist who was killed for standing up to Putin
Marc A. Thiessen: How Trump's praise of Putin could cost him the election
Jackson Diehl: Putin's lesson for Obama in Syria
Jackson Diehl Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor of The Post. He is an editorial writer specializing in foreign affairs and writes a biweekly column that appears in print on Mondays. Follow