DIET AND IQ

I assume that poor families have poor diets from birth and wonder if this can account for such babies to develop lower IQs?  The main growth stage of the brain occurs in the first three years.

An article in the Telegraph on October 21, 2019, finds that diet in early childhood can influence intelligence to some degree.
The results found after taking account of potentially influential factors, a predominantly processed food diet at the age of three was associated with a lower IQ at the age of eight and a half, irrespective of whether the diet improved after that age.
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She noted the brain grows at its fastest rate during the first three years of life – indicating that head growth at this time is linked to intellectual ability.*

There are other articles claiming diet in the earliest years can raise your IQ

All types of oily fish apart from canned tuna, are an excellent source of

the omega-3 fats which play important structural and biochemical roles in the

brain.

Lack of the fatty acid DHA in the womb can hinder brain development, and

premature babies given non-fortified formula milks develop lower IQs than

those fed breast milk naturally rich in omega-3s.**

*https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/8308726/Food-for-thought-diet-does-boost-your-intelligence.html
** https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3002/The-IQ-diet.html

RECESSION COMING?

Items indicating the economy may go into a recession.

(1) Decreasing carloads for train transport and overcapacity of trucking are good signs.
There’s no bottom in sight as the decline in carloads for large U.S. railroads widened to 5.5% in the third quarter, the biggest drop in three years, according to weekly reports from the Association of American Railroads. Shipments are down for autos, coal, grain, chemicals and consumer goods, with crude oil the only bright spot.*

(2) Millennials are increasingly going into financial debt.
The average American has three credit cards and a total balance of $6,506, up slightly from last year, according to Experian’s annual study on the state of credit and debt in America.**


(3) Outstanding consumer debt now exceeds $4 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.
The average American has three credit cards and a total balance of $6,506, up slightly from last year, according to Experian’s annual study on the state of credit and debt in America.**

(4) A CNBC report says that the ultra-wealthy are expecting a recession.
To mitigate risks, 45% of them are already adjusting their portfolios, including shifting to bonds and real estate, while 42% are increasing their cash reserves.***

(5) Barclays analysis points to a slowdown in capital expenditures by companies.
Barclays used a machine learning tool to analyze company managements’ commentary on capital expenditures during earnings calls. The result revealed a weaker corporate sentiment, where companies are likely to trim investments in new or upgraded plant and equipment in the face of escalated trade tensions.****

(6) While the Treasury Yield Curve had inverted (short term notes higher than longer-term securities) for a part of this year (2019), lately it has become more normal (as of October 22, 2019).  An inverted curve is seen as a sign of a coming recession.
Harvey said the curve needs to stay inverted for three months to be reliable, so in this instance the duration means the indicator is “flashing code red” for a recession.
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The one bright spot, he said, is that those watching the indicator can, and sometimes do, plan ahead. The inversion is not a coincident indicator but rather one that points to downturns six to 18 months or so in the future. So businesses can react to it, for instance, by delaying spending plans until the storm passes.*****

* https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/railroad-loads-continue-decline-casualty-manufacturing-slowdow
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/16/ceo-of-the-largest-us-trucking-company-predicts-difficult-quarter-for-transport-industry.html
**  https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/22/your-credit-card-debt-could-be-making-you-sick.html
*** https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/24/a-majority-of-ultra-wealthy-expect-a-recession-and-are-hunkering-down.html
**** https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/24/computer-analysis-of-ceo-transcripts-points-to-an-economic-slowdown.html
***** https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/pages/TextView.aspx?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/08/inverted-yield-curve-guru-campbell-harvey-prepare-for-recession.html

CAN WE AFFORD TO LET TRUMP CONTINUE?

I realize that the next election is only about a year away; however, can we afford to let President Trump continue his rule until the election is over? I'm thinking of the Syrian Kurds that President Trump has abandoned and are now being slaughtered by the Turks.  And the whole Ukraine corruption scandal deserves an impeachment all by itself.

As I am writing this, Mick Mulvaney has confessed to quid pro quo on Ukraine for political purposes.*

Trump could do something else like these in the next year, even several scandals.  Let's see there is NATO that he seems not to like because many participants haven't paid up.  Or maybe withdrawing all our troops from Afghanistan.  What about withdrawing our troops from South Korea?  Trump at some point has considered all of these actions.  And of course, he stopped our Naval military maneuvers to please the dictator of North Korea.

Then there are possibilities of Trump doing something not considered like removing all troops from Iraq.  There may be something in our foreign relations I have not even considered.  My guess is that Trump will do something more of the nature of the Syrian troop withdrawal during the next year, and, maybe, even more than one thing such as involving Ukraine or some other country he thinks he can bribe.

Note added November 21, 2019:  An example of what I mean is a Trump change to a long-held policy stated November 18, 2019: The U.S. no longer will consider Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, officials said Monday, in a move that formalizes the Trump administration’s treatment of the West Bank and shifts decades of U.S. policy.
(https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-to-say-israeli-settlements-arent-illegal-11574104691)

Note added November 25: Now President Trump has dipped deep into military justice by ordering that a Navy Seal who took a picture where he poses with a corpse killed in Iraq should retain his navy Seal medal.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/opinion/letters/trump-navy-seals.html)  How did Trump even know this was going on? Trump began to get involved in the Gallagher case in the spring after Bernard Kerik, a former business partner to his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, became an advocate for the family and made appearances in conservative media.

The SEAL also changed his defense team to include Marc Mukasey, a lawyer for the Trump real estate company.
(https://www.stripes.com/news/us/trump-s-actions-in-navy-seal-case-raise-concern-about-role-in-military-justice-1.608691)

What will it take to get Senate Republicans to act?

* http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/white-houses-mulvaney-admits-there-was-quid-pro-quo-ukraine

WHAT IS IT ABOUT DONALD TRUMP?

What is it about Donald Trump that people are willing to trash their reputations to try to save him?  Recently I wrote three posts on Save A$$ Time for Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, and Mike Pence.*

The sadist story is perhaps Rudy Giuliani who was a hero of 9/11 that earned him the title of America's Mayor and for decreasing crime in New York City.  I haven't written about him regarding SaveA$$ Time because his story is so well known.  He may be the one in a most hazardous situation because of recent developments regarding two of his associated being indicted for campaign finance violations.**  Why couldn't Giuliani just be happy with being called America's Mayor, but instead risk going to jail for Donald Trump?
Giuliani, an attorney for President Trump, said he finds it "extremely suspicious" that the arrest [of  Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman] was made in connection with an FEC matter that has yet to be resolved, and which Giuliani said is a civil matter. Giuliani acknowledged that both men "logistically helped" in his collection of evidence against Hunter Biden, and that they helped connect him with former Ukrainian top prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko.

Bill Barr seemed to leave his first tour as Attorney General with a good reputation.  Why has he risked going to jail for Donald Trump trying to save Donald Trump from himself and leaving his reputation in shambles?

Though Mike Pompeo is less well known than either of these other two, he makes statements about Donald Trump such as, "He is known to make extravagant statements about Donald Trump suggesting Trump is sent by God."  Talk about "over the top" language.

Mike Pence's story is also different from Guiliani, Barr, and Pompeo in that he seemed to be in trouble in Indiana politics and his political career was saved by Trump making him his running mate.  Thus Pence has a reason to be grateful to Trump for political career  Pence who is known as being a good speaker has repeatedly lied for the President.  His ability to do this with a straight face is amazing.  Pence's lying about Ukraine is a case in point.  It is hard to believe his political career will survive his Vice Presidency.  There are even rumors that Trump might ditch him in the 2020 election.

Why do these people do this?  What is it about Donald Trump that people are willing to trash their reputations for Donald Trump and follow Donald Trump over a cliff?  They should have talked to Republican Rick Wilson first.
In Everything Trump Touches Dies, political campaign strategist and commentator Rick Wilson brings his darkly funny humor and biting analysis to the absurdity of American politics in the age of Trump. Wilson mercilessly exposes the damage Trump has done to the country, to the Republican Party he served for decades, and to the conservative movement that has abandoned its principles for the worst President in American history.***

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2019/10/its-save-time.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2019/10/its-save-time-mike-pompeo.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2019/10/its-savea-time-mike-pence.html
** https://www.foxnews.com/politics/giuliani-associates-indicted-on-campaign-finance-charges
*** https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Trump-Touches-Dies-Republican/dp/1982103124

IT'S "SAVEA$$" TIME - MIKE PENCE

President Trump says "Why aren't people looking into Vice President Pence's telephone calls?"  How does that make you feel VP Pence having the Prez ready to throw you under the bus?*

Vice President Mike Pence (60) was a member of the House of Representatives from 2001-2013 and the 50th governor of Indiana 2013-2017.  Among other things, Mike Pence really was an "altar boy."** Early in his career, Pence became known as an excellent speaker.

Pence is among those who call "global warming" a myth.

Before being governor: And, while Pence ran the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, it published an essay arguing that unmarried women should be denied access to birth control. ***

While governor, Pence signed bills intended to restrict abortions, including one that prohibited abortions if the reason for the procedure was the fetus's race, gender, or disability.*
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Eventually, the [Indiana] legislature went along with what Pence often describes as “the largest income-tax cut in the state’s history,” even though Indiana already had one of the lowest income taxes in the country, 

As a congressman: In 2011, he made the evening news by threatening to shut down the federal government unless it defunded Planned Parenthood. ***
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He sponsored an unsuccessful amendment to the Affordable Care Act that would have made it legal for government-funded hospitals to turn away a dying woman who needed an abortion. 

Pence is on shaky ground as he supported Gen. Flynn as National Security advisor and got messed up in the Comey firing where he said the firing had nothing to do with the Russians only to have Trump contradict him awhile later.

Pence has also gotten messed up in the Ukraine business.
The vice president would very much like to stress that he did not intend to speak in code and knew nothing about Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine whatsoever. Officials close to Pence told the Post that “he was unaware of Trump’s efforts to press Zelensky for damaging information about Biden and his son,” and that even though such efforts were laid out plain as day in the briefing book he undoubtedly received, “he traveled to Warsaw for a meeting with Zelensky on September 1 probably without having read—or at least fully registered—the transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with the leader of Ukraine.” (Amusingly, at least one Pence aide could not abide the notion that his boss wouldn’t have read or registered the significance of the call, and “disputed the notion that the vice president was poorly prepared for his meeting with Zelensky,” which kind of blows a hole in the whole “he had no idea what was happening!” defense.)***

One thing we do know is that Pence is at least as good a lier as Donald Trump and that says something.


* https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/25/trump-pence-ukraine-phone-calls-1512771
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Pence
*** https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23/the-danger-of-president-pence
**** https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/mike-pence-ukraine-scandal

IT'S "SAVE A$$" TIME - MIKE POMPEO

Like so many of President Trump's appointments, the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (ag 55) has a strong religious connection as an evangelical Presbyterian Christian and is said to keep a bible open on his desk.  He is known to make extravagant statements about Donald Trump suggesting Trump is sent by God.*  Pompeo was briefly Director of the CIA under Trump where he planned to hire chaplains.**

Pompeo is a graduate of West Point graduating with a degree in engineering management and served about five years of active duty in Germany leaving the service as a Captain.  He also obtained a law degree from Harvard and was involved in both the Law Review and Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.**  As Secretary of State Pompeo has said that Isreal is how the Middle East should look.
In rejecting a claimed double standard in recognizing Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights but placing sanctions on Russia for annexing Crimea in 2014, Pompeo said "What the President did with the Golan Heights is recognize the reality on the ground and the security situation necessary for the protection of the Israeli state."**

Pompeo's most recent trouble regards his lying about not being on the telephone during the infamous call by Donald Trump to Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which he urged Ukraine President to investigate the Bidens (father and son).  Now Pompeo admits he was in on the call.

Pompeo's obsequious behavior toward President Trump has received some very strong responses.
Meanwhile, Pompeo’s slavishness toward Trump somehow deepened even more, leading to the notorious comments from former officials in a New Yorker profile that Pompeo is “among the most sycophantic and obsequious people around Trump” and “a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.”***

Pompano has turned over a large segment of the State Department in the effort to get Ukraine President to investigate Hunter Trump and his father.  Hunter got on the board of directors of a private Ukranian electric power firm said to pay him $50,000/mo. So Trump feels something is crooked  (or at least he hopes so).  As they say, it probably is "not what you know but who you know."  I've had it explained to me why the company probably did this, but I won't go into it.  If that is a crime, then Trump's family better lookout.  The Chinese have given daughter Ivanka a load of patents or is it copyrights.

Pompeo is trying to keep his subordinates from participating in congressional oversight, which has caused the chairmen of three House committees to issue a warning to Pompareo about bullying his subordinates.****

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2019/08/mike-pompeo.html
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2019/08/mike-pompeo.html
*** https://www.republicreport.org/2019/koch-puppet-to-trump-henchman-mike-pompeos-never-gonna-be-president-now/
**** https://www.newsmax.com/politics/mike-pompeo-impeachment-witness-intimidation/2019/10/01/id/935155/?ns_mail_uid=142cf6cb-b757-4a77-afda-d3310b9288ee&ns_mail_job=DM55752_10012019&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010124awf001

IT'S "SAVE A$$" TIME - BILL BARR

I think that Bill Barr (age 69), Attorney General,*  should start being more careful.  Remember George Mitchell, President Nixon's Attorney General who went to jail.  I don't know why Barr took it upon himself to protect President Trump from himself.**  Barr had seemed to be a rather respected Attorney General the last time he held the position in the George H.W. Bush's Presidency (Bush-41), though that is not my opinion.  I'm not sure that saving Trump from himself includes going to jail for him, but if Barr isn't more careful, and that could happen.

Barr was known to promote increased incarceration.  Why would he come back to save an, ahem, crook from his crooked ways?  His belief in increased incarceration did not apply to Republican politicians.  Back in the Bush-41 period,  New York Times writer William Safire began to refer to Barr as "Coverup-General Barr.*

Like so many of Donald Trump's appointments, it also may have spiritual roots.

Barr seems to be uncomfortable with things like secular government, church-state separation, religious pluralism and indeed the realities of modern life.**

But William Barr continues his A$$ Kissing by reserving a grand party facility at the Trump Washington Internation Hotel (where Trump is in violation of his lease with the government).***

I would guess that Bill Barr will be remembered, at best, for being President Trump's errand boy as he is running all over the world trying to promote Trump's fallacies.****
Think about that for a moment. The attorney general of the United States is personally chasing shadows and phantoms around the world to try to prove that the CIA secretly tried to sabotage the campaign of the current president of the United States. Yet somehow the spooks kept it all under wraps until after the election, at which point they launched an investigation to cripple him. Why they would have done all this is unclear. It's not as if the intelligence agencies haven't worked for Republicans before.****

But Barr is not alone.  Consider Pompeo.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barr

**  https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/william-barr-wants-to-bring-gods-law-to-america

*** https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/28/opinions/barr-sucking-up-to-trump-begala/index.htm
**** https://www.salon.com/2019/10/02/yes-its-this-bad-conspiracy-hunter-bill-barr-is-roaming-the-globe-under-trumps-orders/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/01/government-by-conspiracy-theory-rides-again/