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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way

Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition

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Before and after the recent election, solid assessments on Foxconn came to press, and they confirm how irrational and wasteful is that project. Earlier this year, the local business lobby (the Greater Whitewater Committee) invited the state capitalist stooge official overseeing the project to a dinner in Whitewater. I’ve no idea whether Matt Moroney will show up for a second dinner, but if they can’t book his return, there are sure to be infomercial salesmen, time-share brokers, or skid row bums who would be both available and seamless replacements.

The latest:

Joel McNally writes Walker’s Horrendous Foxconn Deal Exposed:

The Tuesday after Election Day was when Amazon announced the grand prize winners of the largest economic development jackpot in American history: New York, Virginia and Tennessee would gain 55,000 high-paying Amazon jobs in exchange for more than $2.4 billion in state subsidies. It didn’t take long for Wisconsin taxpayers to realize exactly what Amazon’s announcement meant for them. They’d been taken to the cleaners by Walker, Donald Trump and Terry Gou, Foxconn’s billionaire chairman. Walker’s deal with Foxconn provides $4 billion in state and local taxpayer subsidies in exchange for an actual guarantee of only 3,000 jobs paying an average of $53,000 a year in a Mount Pleasant electronics plant.

Compare that to the enormous number of higher-paying jobs costing far less for the winners of the great Amazon lottery. Amazon split 50,000 headquarters jobs averaging $150,000 a year, with 25,000 going to New York (which bid $1.5 billion in direct state subsidies) and 25,000 to Virginia (bidding only $573 million in direct subsidies plus infrastructure, transportation and educational improvements). Nashville, Tenn., was a surprise last-minute addition, winning an Amazon operations center providing 5,000 new jobs in exchange for $102 million in state subsidies.

(Emphasis added.)

Yang Jie, Shayndi Raice and Eric Morath report Foxconn Considers Bringing Chinese Workers to Wisconsin as U.S. Labor Market Tightens, then Ashley Carman reports Foxconn denies looking to transfer Chinese workers to incoming Wisconsin factory, but finally even the Journal Sentinel‘s house apologist for Foxconn (Rick Romell) writes Foxconn will need engineers from Asia at Wisconsin factory, consultants say.

  Professor of Economics Michael J. Hicks writes Wisconsin taxpayers need to pull the plug on this con of a Foxconn deal:

Dismal as that is, the estimate relies on the most optimistic suite of conditions, including the astonishingly hopeful assumption that all the 13,000 workers would reside in Wisconsin. They won’t; the state line with Illinois is less than 20 miles away, and local consulting firm Baker Tilly estimates that as many as half the original 3,000 workers will live in Illinois. The legislature’s study also conveniently failed to take into account the appropriate time value of money, which means they overestimated the future value of the investment.

Neither of these are casual errors. Adjust for more pessimistic assumptions, and the breakeven date for taxpayers on a $3 billion Foxconn deal moves out several hundred years. It is obviously even worse if the subsidy is $4.8 billion.

(Emphasis added.)

Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers,  Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, and Foxconn: Failure & Fraud.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.21.18

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-one.  Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 4:26 PM, for 9h 31m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1877,  Thomas Edison announces the invention of the phonograph:

Thomas Alva Edison conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to “play back” recorded telegraph messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by telephone.[15] He announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877 (early reports appear in Scientific American and several newspapers in the beginning of November, and an even earlier announcement of Edison working on a ‘talking-machine’ can be found in the Chicago Daily Tribune on May 9), and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (it was patented on February 19, 1878 as US Patent 200,521). “In December, 1877, a young man came into the office of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, and placed before the editors a small, simple machine about which very few preliminary remarks were offered. The visitor without any ceremony whatever turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present the machine said: “Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?” The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph…”[16]

How Bamboo Bikes Are Helping a Community in  Ghana:

City, School District

School Board Meeting of 11.19.18

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The City of Whitewater’s Vimeo page now has a copy of the school board meeting of last night. (For more about the cable access programming that took the place of the live meeting Monday night, see After the Referendum.)  The meeting had a significant agenda, and the session is likely worth watching more than once.

Here’s the city’s embed, below —

WUSD School Board Meeting 11/19/18 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.

Open Government, School District

After the Referendum

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In response to an email last night and two more today, here are some quick thoughts on the school district and Whitewater.

The gist of these messages is similar: was support for the referendum a good idea, in light of district report cards, and the airing of a Shirley Temple movie (The Little Princess, Twentieth Century Fox, 1939) instead of the school board meeting?

Support. Support for an operational referendum isn’t a gift to officials; it is a preventative against the disorder that would result from cuts to ordinary programming.  Advocating for the referendum (as I did) wasn’t a bargain with this district administrator, this budget director, or this school board.  I have nothing to offer government; they have nothing I want.

The most important referendum result is the avoidance of disorder, of the constant need for bailing buckets to keep the district afloat. Avoiding that prospect is gain for students more than anyone.

(A distant) second, however, is this: without a large project to draw attention, those considering district policies and direction now have a clear field for the next four years’ time.  Politics is now behind us, with instead a vast expanse of policy discussion ahead.

Maneuver & Attrition.  Over these years, this characteristic of officials in Whitewater stands out: they use mostly maneuver (moving this way or that at the moment) to accomplish their goals.  A project, a program, a press release, a referendum – they are all maneuvers, movements at the moment.  Sometimes big, sometimes small, but all are simply discrete acts.

Good policy and good principle, by contrast, work slowly, and are felt by power of attrition, by the gradual wearing away of lesser alternatives.  Other than a reply to a specific act of misconduct, officials’ use of maneuver doesn’t require a quick response.

So, about the report cards and that movie… Those writing will excuse me if I do not feel deterred.  First, one can consider the report cards deliberately, carefully, in context. The key measure will be which schools close gaps, and which do not.  Especially in an economically challenged community, gap-closing is an individual and community good.

Second, it does matter whether this city and this school district will televise board meetings properly, but in response to emailers’ concerns, one can say that it doesn’t matter whether meetings are avoided out of indifference, any more than it matters whether showing an old film instead of a meeting is an intentional taunt.  That’s seeing all this wrongly. Current practice is inadequate; what matters is a permanent solution that doesn’t allow for repeated gaps.

If Central Office, City Hall, or Hyer Hall could defeat open government so easily, and prevail so decisively, then we’d still have the officials we did a decade ago.

They can’t; we don’t.

Our school district has as its motto ‘every graduate an engaged lifelong learner.’  It would make a fine motto for any school.  An engaged, lifelong learner should be able to consider an event with equanimity, learn from it, and responding effectively thereafter.

Bad Ideas, Mendacity, New Media, Politics, That Which Paved the Way

A Site on Facebook: ‘Nothing on this page is real’

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Standards have fallen so low that, whether of right or left, trolls take advantage of gullible and ignorant people on Facebook each day.  Eli Saslow reports how a liberal troll tricks impressionable conservatives.  The people tricking, and the people being tricked, are evidence of (respectively) ethical or educational decline.  First the unethical tricksters:

He [forty-something Christopher Blair] had launched his new website on Facebook during the 2016 presidential campaign as a practical joke among friends — a political satire site started by Blair and a few other liberal bloggers who wanted to make fun of what they considered to be extremist ideas spreading throughout the far right. In the last two years on his page, America’s Last Line of Defense, Blair had made up stories about California instituting sharia, former president Bill Clinton becoming a serial killer, undocumented immigrants defacing Mount Rushmore, and former president Barack Obama dodging the Vietnam draft when he was 9. “Share if you’re outraged!” his posts often read, and thousands of people on Facebook had clicked “like” and then “share,” most of whom did not recognize his posts as satire. Instead, Blair’s page had become one of the most popular on Facebook among Trump-supporting conservatives over 55.

“Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual. What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker. “No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back,” Blair once wrote, on his own personal Facebook page. “Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”

Then, the ignorant people being tricked:

On her [septuagenarian Shirley Chapian’s] computer the attack against America was urgent and unrelenting. Liberals were restricting free speech. Immigrants were storming the border and casting illegal votes. Politicians were scheming to take away everyone’s guns. “The second you stop paying attention, there’s another travesty underway in this country,” Chapian once wrote, in her own Facebook post, so she had decided to always pay attention, sometimes scrolling and sharing for hours at a time.

“BREAKING: Democrat mega-donor accused of sexual assault!!!”

“Is Michelle Obama really dating Bruce Springsteen?”

“Iowa Farmer Claims Bill Clinton had Sex with Cow during ‘Cocaine Party.’ ”

….

“I’m not a conspiracy-theory-type person, but . . .” she wrote, before sharing a link to an unsourced story suggesting that Democratic donor George Soros had been a committed Nazi, or that a Parkland shooting survivor was actually a paid actor.

The arrogance of trolls and the ignorance of readers brought us here.  Weak reporting and too-cozy relationships brought us here.  Cheap wins over valuable accomplishments brought us here.

We’ve a long way back.

Good Ideas

Well done, Rufus King High, well done

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Via Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association

Lainey Seyler reports In response to Nazi salute photo from Baraboo, one Milwaukee high school wants to spread a message of love:

On Friday afternoon, 50 students and about 15 staff members gathered at Milwaukee’s Rufus King High School to take a photo to spread peace. It’s a small act, but one they hope travels as far as the Baraboo photo.

The idea came from Rufus King English teacher Kelly O’Keefe-Boettcher.

“Our goal at Rufus King is to be an upstander, not a bystander,” O’Keefe-Boettcher said. “I put up the idea to take a photo, and the response was amazing. I was moved by the number of kids and staff who were there.”

So very well done.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.20.18

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-three.  Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 4:27 PM, for 9h 33m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1945, the Nuremberg trials begin:

military tribunals held by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war after World War II. The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law.

On this day in 1859, Milwaukee sees its first baseball game:

An impromptu game of base ball, as it was spelled in the early years, was played by two teams of seven at the Milwaukee Fair Ground. The game was organized by Rufus King, publisher of the Milwaukee Sentinel, and is believed to have been the first baseball game played in Milwaukee. In spite of cold weather, two more games were played in December, and by April 1860 the Milwaukee Base Ball Club was organized. View early baseball photographs at Wisconsin Historical Images, and read about baseball’s first decades in Wisconsin at Turning Points in Wisconsin.

Here’s How the Jumping Spider Sees Its Prey:

Elections, Politics, Wisconsin

Wisconsin 2020

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Craig Gilbert writes Wisconsin already expected to be a war zone for the 2020 presidential race:

Almost everything about the Nov. 6 midterm election bolstered Wisconsin’s status as a top presidential target in 2020, when this state has no race for governor or U.S. Senate but can expect an all-out war over its 10 electoral votes.

The state swung back to Democrats for governor and U.S. Senate after Republican Donald Trump carried Wisconsin for president two years ago.

But Democrats failed to dent the GOP’s stranglehold on the state Legislature, and they won the governor’s race by scarcely more than a percentage point.

A few quick points:

1. The governor’s race was close, but Republicans lost every principal statewide contest (gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, Wisconsin attorney general, state treasurer, secretary of state.)

2.  Although the GOP won a majority of legislative races, they did so in a highly gerrymandered state, and Democrats won a majority of total votes cast in those races (winning 1.3 million votes for Assembly, or 54 percent statewide).

3.  There are two more years ahead to reveal the lies and incompetence of Trumpism.  Trumpism is more fish than wine: it’s not aging well.

Elections, Federal Government, Trump

Gains in a Long Conflict

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Stanley Greenberg observes Trump Is Beginning to Lose His Grip.  There’s much work yet to go, and sure to be painful setbacks ahead, but those of us who are Never Trump (mostly libertarians & conservatives) and so many others (Democrats, independents, former Republicans) have taken back a branch of the government with investigatory authority from a party in the grip of a bigoted, self-dealing autocrat.  That’s no small achievement. Greenberg writes that 

First of all, Democrats did not win simply because white women with college degrees rebelled against Mr. Trump’s misogyny, sexism and disrespect for women. Nearly every category of women rebelled.

….

In 2016, the white working class men that Mr. Trump spoke most forcefully to as the “forgotten Americans” gave him 71 percent of their votes and gave only 23 percent to Hillary Clinton. This year, the Republicans won their votes with a still-impressive margin of 66 to 32 percent. But what was essentially a three-to-one margin was deflated to two-to-one, which affected a lot of races.

….

Third, Democrats made big gains because Mr. Trump declared war on immigrants — and on multicultural America — and lost. His ugly campaign succeeded in making immigration and the border a voting issue for the Republican base, according to the postelection survey I did with Democracy Corps, which asked those voting Republican why they did. “Open borders” was the top reason given for voting against a Democratic candidate. But it backfired among other voters.

On Election Day, a stunning 54 percent of those who voted said immigrants “strengthen our country.” Mr. Trump’s party lost the national popular vote by seven points, but he lost the debate over whether immigrants are a strength or a burden by 20 points. Mr. Trump got more than half of Republicans to believe immigrants were a burden, but three quarters of Democrats and a large majority of independents concluded that America gains from immigration.

These are important gains in a long conflict.

Bad Ideas, Bigotry, City, History

Confederate Iconography is White Failure (Moral and Economic)

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Frances Stead Sellers writes of Confederate pride and prejudice (“Some white Northerners see a flag rooted in racism as a symbol of patriotism”):

Ashort walk from where President-elect Abraham Lincoln made the last train stop in his home state before leaving for Washington on the verge of the Civil War, a Confederate battle flag flies from a home garage.

The property belongs to former mayor Greg Cler, who runs a car repair shop in this central Illinois village of 3,500 people. Cler isn’t from the South. He grew up about five miles away, in Pesotum, where his father, like most others in the region, farmed corn and soy. But Cler has long felt an attachment to the flag.

“Part of it is an act of rebellion,” he said.

The other part is tied to the national turmoil surrounding race and identity. Cler sees the flag as a fitting symbol of white people’s shared grievances, which, he says, have new resonance today.

Cler’s rebellion is like the rebellion of someone sitting in his own filth: it’s a challenge to cleanliness, of course, but that’s not a challenge worth joining. 

One can see flags like this in rural Wisconsin, (sadly) occasionally even in a beautiful place like Whitewater, as banners, bumper stickers, or decals.  There’s an easy response, grounded in history, to their display: that flag is a symbol of racism, oppression, and treason.

There’s another response, relevant to our time, however: Confederate symbols are emblems of socio-economic failure. Whites displaying these banners are found only in low-productivity areas.  Confederate displays are first displays of bigotry and injustice, but they’re also a present-day equivalent of a sign reading: UNCOMPETITIVE & PROUD OF IT.

There’s no more reliable roadside marker of an approaching backwater than the Stars and Bars flying in someone’s yard.

A civilized, productive place will always demand more of itself.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.19.18

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-three.  Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 4:28 PM, for 9h 35m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM, and the Whitewater School Board at 7 PM.

On this day in 1863, Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address.  On this day in 1861, 4th Wisconsin Infantry reconnoiters Virginia’s Eastern Shore: “The 4th Wisconsin Infantry was among Union forces assigned to an expedition in Accomac County, Virginia. The regiment’s historian wrote, “The Fourth and a battery [of light artillery] and small cavalry force, embarked on an expedition to the eastern shore of Virginia, where they remained, encountering some severe marching through the mud and flooded roads, under the command of General Lockwood, until the 9th of December.”

Some of the Best Stargazing is at the Northern Tip of India:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.18.18

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty-four.  Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 4:28 PM, for 9h 37m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 77.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1883, time zones come to America:

U.S. and Canadian railroads implemented a version proposed by William F. Allen, the editor of the Traveler’s Official Railway Guide.[6] The borders of its time zones ran through railroad stations, often in major cities. For example, the border between its Eastern and Central time zones ran through Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Charleston. It was inaugurated on Sunday, November 18, 1883, also called “The Day of Two Noons”,[7] when each railroad station clock was reset as standard-time noon was reached within each time zone.

Recommended for reading in full —  the truth about the migrant caravan, fact-checking Trump’s broken record of lies, the radical [Putin-oriented] evolution of WikiLeaks, acting A.G. Whitaker’s company hawked crackpot ideas like time travel, the hunt for Bigfoot, and fresh fruit laced with cannabis (I’ll take my fruit plain, thanks very much), and a video on turkey carving — 

  Stephanie Martin reports a Pastor Wanted to Know the Truth About the Migrant Caravan. So He Joined It:

Saying he’s interested in people not politics, a Texas pastor is traveling with the migrant caravan in Mexico. Gavin Rogers, associate pastor at San Antonio’s Travis Park United Methodist Church, has been documenting his journey—and the relationships he’s forming—on Facebook.

Rogers writes about long days of traveling with 6,000 refugees via a wide variety of methods. Reaching Guadalajara, for example, involved covering 400 kilometers in “23 hours of walking, hitchhiking and police escorts. Walking. Car, semi-trailer, truck, police truck, dump truck, bus, shelter.”

On November 11, the pastor posted, “It is a long road. But life is good when you are with people filled with love and hospitality.” A Mexican truck driver who volunteered to drive some refugees to their next shelter site said he acted “because I’m human.” The subway in Mexico City also provided free rides to the traveling refugees.

Hoping to dispel fear and falsehoods about caravan members, Rogers is sharing photos of what the migrants and the people helping them really look like. “Kindness is all over the place,” he writes next to posts of “real images of Mexican police officers and refugees.”

The pastor criticizes people, including Christians, who are sharing images about “the supposed violence in the caravan.” When someone posted to Rogers’ Facebook page photos depicting violence, an image search revealed they were actually from 2012. One such post has been removed, probably because of its misleading nature. Local officers Rogers has talked to say the caravan has been overwhelmingly peaceful, with no police-related conflicts.

  Daniel Dale writes It’s easy to fact check Trump’s lies. He tells the same ones all the time:

I’ve made it my mission to fact-check every word Donald Trump utters as president. That means trying to watch every speech, read every transcript, decipher every tweet. I’ve accidentally established a reputation for using Twitter to point out that he’s lying within seconds of him telling a lie.

People sometimes ask in response how I can blast out these corrections so quickly. But I have no special talent. My secret is that Trump tells the same lies over and over.

On his fifth day in office, Trump baselessly alleged widespread voter fraud. He did the same thing this past week. In his third month in office, Trump falsely claimed that the United States has a $500 billion trade deficit with China. He has said the same thing more than 80 times since.

Listen to this president long enough, and you can almost sense when a lie is coming. If Trump tells a story in which an unnamed person calls him “sir,” it’s probably invented. If Trump claims he has set a record, he probably hasn’t. If Trump cites any number at all, the real number is usually smaller.

Fact-checking Trump is kind of like fact-checking one of those talking dolls programmed to say the same phrases for eternity, except if none of those phrases were true. As any parent who owns a squealing Elmo can tell you, the phrases can get tiresome. I’m sure my Twitter followers get bored when I remind them that Trump wasn’t the president who got the Veterans Choice health-care program passed (Barack Obama signed it into law in 2014 ), that U.S. Steel is not building six, seven, eight or nine new plants (it has recently invested in two existing plants) and that foreign governments don’t force their unsavory citizens into the lottery for U.S. green cards (would-be immigrants enter of their own free will).

(Can’t recommend Daniel Dale highly enough – one can follow his excellent work on Twitter @ddale8 . Trump, himself, is a challenge in part because he’s a stunted man – intellectually & knowledgeably who speaks grandiosely of himself and responds to others mostly through crude, irritating fallacies. Normal, rational people have trouble managing outrageous liars, and usually seek to avoid them, and Trump battens on others’ discomfort.)

  Kathy Gilsinan reports The Radical Evolution of WikiLeaks:

In the meantime, though, WikiLeaks has been accused of turning into something much worse than a mere purveyor of information, however uncomfortable—or even, some would argue, dangerous—for its subjects. For WikiLeaks’ role in releasing hacked emails stolen by Russian intelligence from the Democratic National Committee, then–CIA Director Mike Pompeo in 2017 declared it to be the agent of a “hostile intelligence service.”

In that case, too, it appeared that many of the documents released were authentic chronicles of real disputes within the DNC about the conduct of the 2016 primary contest between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Yet even true information can paint a distorted picture: The publication of a large volume of information detrimental to Clinton and not to Trump seemed to align with what the intelligence community identified as Russia’s intent to help Trump win.

Over the years, the common thread connecting WikiLeaks’ biggest stories, from Collateral Murder to the DNC leaks, is that even what’s billed as anodyne “transparency” is seldom neutral. The choice to publish anything of consequence will always have political effects. And mere “information” may be something less than the truth if it comes without context about who is wielding that information and to what end. Even a massive document dump never quite tells the full story.

Greg Walters and Nick Miriello report Acting AG Matt Whitaker Worked for a Company that Hawked “Time Travel” Technology and Other Insane Products:

The company’s Twitter account also traded in racist messaging and political outrage, and appeared to throw its support behind Trump, announcing plans in 2015 for a super PAC called Republicans Invent.

Oh, and it promoted a future where “time travel” technology was within reach.

“World-renowned physicist, author, and scholar Dr. Ronald Mallett believes time travel is possible, perhaps within the next decade…. World Patent Marketing has partnered with Dr. Ronald Mallett to make his vision a reality,” the company wrote in a caption on its Vimeo page.

….

Below are a list of some of the ideas and products World Patent Marketing promoted before a federal judge forced its closure and ordered the firm to pay $26 million in this year.

—The hunt for Bigfoot. World Patent Marketing CEO Scott Cooper offered $1 million for proof of Sasquatch’s existence, while peddling Bigfoot dolls.

—A toilet specially designed for well-endowed men. “The distance between the rim and the water surface needs to be long enough to ensure there is no risk of contact,” the press release for the “masculine toilet” said.

—A sticky-dart gun, for mounting on the grill of a cop car. “When the officer gets within range of a fleeing vehicle, they simply pull the trigger and a sticky dart shoots out and attaches itself to the criminal’s ride,” the press release says. Then the dart provides GPS coordinates of the fleeing suspect.

— An invention that combines weed with “fresh fruit,” whatever that means.

—Disposable underwear for women. A product called Kntrol Disposable Underwear was featured in a press release as “a personal care invention created for women to prevent leakage.”

— The next skinny jeans, which are apparently just big, bulky, workman jeans. “Hipster’s Skinny Jeans Are Out And World Patent Marketing’s Miller Industrial Jeans Are In For Hard Labor,” the company announced.

— Green Leaf Organic, an “alternative to smokeless tobacco and chewing tobacco,” which the company presented as a solution to a smoking habit.

Turkey Carving 101:

America, Mendacity, Propaganda, Putin, Russia, Trump

Operation InfeKtion: The Worldwide War on Truth (Part 3 of 3)

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Russia’s meddling in the United States’ elections is not a hoax. It’s the culmination of Moscow’s decades-long campaign to tear the West apart. “Operation InfeKtion” reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the promulgation of lies about America — continues today, from Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies. Meet the KGB spies who conceived this virus and the American truth squads who tried — and are still trying — to fight it. Countries from Pakistan to Brazil are now debating reality, and in Vladimir Putin’s greatest triumph, Americans are using Russia’s playbook against one another without the faintest clue.

Part 3: The Worldwide War on Truth.

Governments from Pakistan to Mexico to Washington are woefully unequipped to combat disinformation warfare. Eastern European countries living in Russia’s shadow can teach us how to start fighting back, but only if our politicians decide to stop profiting from these tactics and fight them instead.

Previously: Meet the KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News (Part 1) and The Seven Commandments of Fake News (Part 2).