The Morning News: GOP: Ben Carson Is My Kind of Nigger, Trump Wants Microsoft to Stop Giving Visas to South Asians

Microsoft is on top and Nordstrom on the bottom in new and huge Vancouver B.C. building. Charles Mudede

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Because many of these workers come from South Asia, and because Trump and Sessions are racists, it's hard to believe their plan to dismantle the H-1B visa program has anything to do with protecting American jobs. What this is about is adding fuel to and making political gains from white America's xenophobia.Puget Sound Business Journal has the story

One can also see Trump's visa plans as an attack on the values of the city, which in this case do intersect with neoliberal globalization. (This intersection exposes the left's complicated relationship with globalization.) South Asians, many of whom work in the tech industry, have helped transform Bellevue into the only major minority-majority city in Washington. This has only made our region more cosmopolitan. By the way, Microsoft, whose CEO is from India, recently opened a major center in downtown Vancouver B.C., the largest minority-majority city in the Pacific Northwest. Canada has a reputation for being more open to immigrants than the US.

Drone Crashes Into Space Needle: KOMO posted a video of a drone flying around the Space Needle, then flying toward it, and then slamming into it. The camera continues to run after the crash. The images the flying machine took of our only iconic building and our ever-rising downtown are very impressive.



Major Sports-Arena Corporation Considering Constructing a World-Class Facility At KeyArena Site: This is what AEG President Bob Newman told the Seattle Times’ editorial board. And they would build the thing with or without an NBA or NHL team attached to the project. The entrepreneur Chris Hansen, on the other hand, is planning to build a sports arena in the Sodo area, but he will not start construction unless an NBA team is secured. But here is an important difference between both proposals. Link services Sodo and not Seattle Center. What services the latter is the Monorail, which is currently run by a private company, not a part of ORCA, and mainly used by tourists, despite the fact it easily flies over some of the worst traffic in our city. If a stadium is built at the KeyArena, it may be worth extending the Monorail to it, modernizing it, and making it a part of the ORCA mix.

Owner of Magnolia Gym Says RVs Are Hurting His Business: The gym is called 3D Total Health. It is in Magnolia and owned by Joe Palumbo. Here is the problem. Vehicles initially made for recreational trips around America, a civilization of roads, have been appropriated by people who live in the city but can't afford its apartments and homes. They are a part of the mobile city. Some members of this moving community park near 3D Total Health. The owner of the gym does not want them there because their very sight, he believes, disturbs his customers. He also claims that RV people leave vomit and needles on the streets.

Polar Bear in Portland Zoo Wakes Up and Finds The World Is Back to Normal: The bear is Nora. She woke up yesterday and found the open area of her prison packed with the stuff she was made to live with and love, snow. It made her very happy indeed. But the humans who imprison her know that this is all an illusion. They know Portland has just experienced "the heaviest daily snowfall in a decade." They know it will all go away soon. Some of Nora's fellow inmates—harbor seals, sea otters, Samudra the Asian elephant—also enjoyed the snow.



While Composing Morning News: Mudede heard his garbage collector playing Tears For Fears' "Shout." Yes, let it all out.

During the HUD Confirmation Hearing This Morning, Ben Carson, a Retired Surgeon, Told the GOP Exactly What It Loves To Hear: Namely, that the housing crisis for black Americans has been caused not by racism or capitalist greed but their own culture and attitudes toward education. He, you see, learned that problems were not solved by the government but by the effort and performance of the individual. His mother told him that, and he, as the head of HUD, is going to send that message directly to people who look like him. Carson will bring tough love to the nigger department.

BBC On Golden Shower Gate: "There was 'more than one tape', 'audio and video', on 'more than one date', in 'more than one place.'"

News In the Age of Trump:



BuzzFeed Is Bad For Journalism? Last week, the editor of Wall Street Journal informed the public that his paper would not use the word "lie" to describe false statements made by president-elect Trump. This approach, he argued, represents good journalism because it's more objective. Calling a person who lies a liar is a judgement, not a fact. This is sheer nonsense, of course, and yet it caused no real outcry from the established press. What is causing an outcry, however, is BuzzFeed's decision to reveal a truth: Members of the intelligence community have been circulating a story about how the Russians have compromising materials, kompromat, on Trump. In our dark times, BuzzFeed "undermines all journalists," but Wall Street Journal does not.

Welcome to the English Language: Kompromat.

Present Mexican President Says Mexico Will Not Pay for Wall:



Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto: "Of course" we won't pay for Trump's wall https://t.co/9oRgB8zp0L

— CNN International (@cnni) January 12, 2017

The former Mexican president, Vicente Fox, put it more bluntly: "We wont pay for that fucken wall ."

Welcome to the English Language: Fucken.

To Hear More About Life in the Age of Trump: Listen to this week's Blabbermouth, which concerns a conversation with a white supremacist and thoughts on Trump's alleged piss tape.