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English translation of some relevant parts of Macron's Speech

Transcribed some thoughts I felt were relevant.
Introduction
Q1
Q2
There are several options.
Q3
Q4.
Q5. [I will not transcribe this in much detail. This will also be in the 3rd person, not 1st as above. I'm tired, and he's repeating what everyone already knows. Economic reality.]
Q6. [Back to 1st person]
Q7.
Q8.
Q9.
This was exhausting. Alot is missing, but this is the gist of it. I will refrain from adding my opinion in the OP, outside the few interesting points I bolded.
submitted by EmmanuelBassil to lebanon [link] [comments]

Roland Garros Round 2 Men's Singles Writeup

Roland Garros : Aviator Adventurer? Or Mythical Dragon? Let's look at the facts.
1) Pokemon named the dragon looking pokemon Garrados (or something like that). Where did they get that idea? hmm
2) If you rearrange the letters in Roland Garros you get Roslan's Dragon, so the real question is was Roslan an aviator? because clearly Roland Garros was not
3) Many people dispute the realness of dragons, but have you ever been to France? If not, I promise you they had dragons
4) 4
5) Where did people even get the idea for airplanes from? Answer : from dragons. Dragons are notoriously good inventors, ever heard of fire? hoarding wealth? let's be honest, humans are just dragon wannabe's
Here's some tennis :
Djokovic Berankis : Quick standard work from Novak in the first round. No one looks more perfectly effortless than him when he’s in control. Berankis did well to surprise the lackluster Dellien even though clay isn’t his best surface. Dellien will likely be off the tour next year without some major grinding on the challenger tour. This next matchup looked good for a while at the USO but will be a similar result and a faster one on clay. Djokovic in 3.
Galan Sandgren : Cam Norrie and Galan played one of the worst 5-setters you could see if you were betting on either one. Nonstop exchanges of multiple games and no one could really sustain offense. I had thought Galan would run away with this one as he’s such a specialist but Norrie (when he wasn’t making errors) had control here and was the only one who could really change the direction of the ball or serve aces. Just the same scorelines but completely different play in the Sandgren and Hurkacz match. Sandgren hung around in the first set even though Hurkacz was dictating. It appeared fairly obvious that Sandgren’s plan was to hang in rallies and not go for much, hoping for errors. When Hurkacz managed to get broken at the end of the first it began to look like that was a solid strategy.
Sandgren was constantly serving at duece, facing break points in so many service games, and genuinely did not win this match at all. Hurkacz will need time or a new mental approach, because he’s losing matches due to errors, and this is a baaaaaad thing on tour because so many guys strategy when things get tight is to “try hard hope to earn errors”. When you’re known for making them guys try harder, and then you’re in the rare prison of supplying all the offense to a match. Guys like Federer can play 3 sets of offense, most of the tour is going to need to play error-free tennis so that their opponents are forced to at least go for something. Sandgren turned the tide in the 4th and 5th and Hurkacz began facing break points in all his games. The heavy ball Sandgren hits translates to a slightly more annoying pusher style, as he can kinda go for big targets and rely on pace/weight of shot to earn the point.
This next matchup opened at -195 for Sandgren and I tend to disagree. Sandren played an exhausting match but has gone through a number of deep runs at majors before. He’s not mercurial by any means on clay but he’s been working very hard the past few weeks to get his game together. Where Hurkacz has the weapons to really hurt Sandgren, Galan relies more on work ethic and simple consistency to unseat opponents. Barring fatigue, I don’t see Sandgren losing this, and he’ll have ample opportunities to break. His movement isn’t as good as Norrie but his offensive/service game are world’s more reliable. Sandgren in 4.
Garin Polmans : Garin and Kohl played a pretty good match, and Garin’s returning was what really got him over the finish line here. A lot of deep placement kept the times Kohl broke him from becoming a major issue, as he did have his chances. Garin is a player who thrives on flow and the more matches he wins the better he performs. Polmans, well, Polmans partied all over Humbert today. It was one-sided from start to finish, with Humbert just reflecting the ball and Polmans driving it. Fatigue could be a suggestion, but if you look at the guys who came from the ultra-fast courts of Hamburg they all struggled early in their matches. Humbert is not quite the physical talent that Rublev and Tsitsipas are so he wasn’t able to turn the tide, but they all found their timing around the 3rd set. Humbert’s mom is still cool, and he still has a bright future. If you like Polmans’ wacky hat and vivid celebrations on court (he seems almost like he’s about to start awkwardly breakdancing while celebrating/lamenting shots), him notching a win at a major is great for his ranking.
Garin is a better Polmans. I don’t consider Humbert’s demise a total implosion, and Polmans will be involved in this contest, but Garin is a player who usually loses to bigger weapons, and while Polmans moves the ball well he isn’t overwhelming. He can win a set or two because Garin is still in somewhat a daze from Hamburg, but I think Polmans will play Garin into a rhythm and Garin’s precision tend to improve as he strings games together. Garin in 4.
Vesely Khachanov : Vesely is starting to look like himself. Originally the inspiration for some Geico commercials, his transition to tennis has been brilliant, and his serving combined with the fact that he’s a lefty mean his game gives him an edge against most lower-tier players. Khachanov was one of the better comeback stories you’ll ever see in a straight set win. Majchrzak led by a break in every set and just couldn’t keep it together. A hint of future brilliance, but again his biggest issue is not being able to distance himself from his opponents in matches. Once Khachanov buttoned up his errors when he was down a break, it became difficult for Majchrzak to win rallies. I expect something similar in this tie with Vesely.
Vesely’s backhand has been the side that makes errors during neutral rallies, and for a guy who crushes the ball this represents a big target. Vesely will need to serve well to have a shot at this, and while matches between two big hitters tend to never go in straight sets, Khachanov and Garin looks like an inevitability. Khachanov in 4.
Bautista Agut Balasz : I’ve never seen someone look so dominant while getting beaten down. In the first set RBA was broken at love multiple times. Gasquet hit a number of unreal winners down the line with his backhand and worked to earn points with 20 shot rallies over and over. He led 5-2 at one point, but RBA had barely missed a shot to that point, aside from a few backhands into the net. Gasquet was emitting a quality of sweat I recognize as deep deep swampwater, and I know when things are that humid that comebacks are not in the cards. Gasquet lost the 1st set tiebreaker and was just about done. Gasquet is French for something, and while he’s out of the tournament here, he certainly has a neat backhand and a cool name,
Balasz was one of the cheapest and most straightforward options of the day, and Uchiyama never really put up a fight. Balasz has an interesting game and is worth watching, but his tournament is likely over. Gasquet was brilliant in the first set and still only won 9 games. The heavier balls and slower conditions mean RBA has a tough time hitting through the court, but the flipside is it’s very difficult to find points against him. Balasz may confuse him for a while, but errors will come as he forces shots. RBA in 3-4.
Pella Carreño Busta : Busta busta busta, I made you out of clayyyyyy. I know Pella’s name is first but I was just so relaxed watching PCB play his first round. He really comes into a match with a complete gameplan and sticks with it no matter the scoreline. Unpopular opinion : I don’t think he was going to lose in any fewer than 5 sets against Novak in NY. When he’s fresh and not making backhand errors it becomes extremely difficult to beat him, and for a guy whose somewhat regarded as a defensive player he steps into the court and unloads for winners whenever it’s possible. He is what Sandgren is trying to be.
Pella and Caruso played what must have been a depressing match for Caruso fans. Endless rallies, great quality tennis, but no real way for either player to find clean winners. Matches like that are difficult to watch because your neighbor will hear 3 hours of grunting coming from your apt and also because you know a few random points at the end of sets are going to decide things. Pella won those points, and though he was down early breaks he looked like himself for the first time. I’m glad I announced he has a terrible injury; I now know how to summon top play from any opponent.
I don’t know exactly what to expect from this matchup. They’ve traded some wins on hardcourt, but have oddly never played on clay. PCB’s movement/stamina are the biggest differences between him and Caruso, whose game sort of broke down as things progressed. Pella certainly played well, and even in a losing effort he’s going to make you play a ton of balls. The edge has to go to PCB given their recent forms, but his proclivity for going to duece means this could go the distance. PCB in 4-5.
Struff Altmaier : Struff and Tiafoe, or Struffafoe as they’re known from now on, played a pretty good quality match. I once again feel Tiafoe needs better coaching, as he was winning a fair number of the baseline rallies but insisted on playing dropshots. They cost him this match. I don’t know a nice way to outline that winning on tour just isn’t easy. The mental lapses are always going to cost you at a professional level, but Tiafoe has shown great improvements following the tour’s break, and you can’t just summon the type of resolve/focus that Nadal has. It’ll take time.
Altmaier (whose name is super annoying to type) beat Lopez in straight sets but these two pretty much started every service game at 15-40. It wasn’t great, but the conditions were such that Altmaier was able to take deep return positions and frustrate Lopez into forcing offense. A good win, and the comfort level may be a bit higher here against Struff, which should benefit him a great deal. Playing on tour in a major after grinding the challenger tour is something that gives you adrenaline you just don’t need at times, so a bit of comfort is a plus. I see a lot of recent wins for Altmaier but he hasn’t really played someone the caliber of Struff, and Struff’s loss to Coria troubles me but in a 3/5 format and after the good quality rallies him and Tiafoe had, Struff should be able to find an edge here. Struff in 4 or losing because he’s Struff.
Harris Berrettini : Popyrin really struggled on serve at times, and didn’t seem like he’d been playing enough clay leading into this match. Harris seems to get most of his points on tour in the majors, which is interesting for such a young talent. Berretini beat Pospisil like he did something, and there’s not a lot to say about this next matchup. Harris is a great server but lacks consistency. Berretini in 3.
Medvedev Ramos-Vinolas : Oops. The strangest thing about Medvedev’s loss was how early he started complaining about it. Halfway through the first set he was down a break and already fullscale yelling at the sky/his box/local squirrels/some children/the moon/the ocean/a rock/some guy. It reminded me of Novak’s wild frustration early against PCB. These guys shouldn’t be stressing so early in a match, but I think sometimes they know the writing is on the wall and the thought is too much. Fucsovics is not really a household clay name, but he stayed composed and got the job done here. Medvedev just forced shots here over and over, and it’s strange because his serve works fine on clay and his defense is good enough to really grind points.
ARV vs Mannarino on clay is like Mannarino vs ARV on grass. These guys have such specific styles that they really can’t overcome a surface disadvantage. ARV is the sort of test that Medvedev should have been for Fucsovics once he went down a few sets; very solid defensively, doesn’t give you much to work with, and works multiple shots to earn points rather than just hoping for a W. I tend to think Fucs is up to the task, and while the “going to disneyland” notion creeps in after a big win, Fucs has had enough “almost” situations against the top 20 that notching a win won’t change his game. Both should be fresh for this one and it should be a clean, crispy tennis match. Fucsovics in 3-4.
Giron Monteiro : So many matches went to overtime this first round. Both Halys and Giron were up a break in the 5th set, which is a much different feeling from Monteiro’s day. Thiago (which is the coolest name in the draw) added to Basil’s woes, breaking early and often. He just came off a finals appearance at a challenger a week ago and continued his good form. Giron represents a tough test because his speed/forehand are a gamechanger at times, but he’s unlikely to get the job done unless he gets an early lead. Monteiro tends to get out to quick starts and is a brilliant frontrunner. I give Giron a puncher’s chance, but can’t really think of a way he can win unless Monteiro’s backhand completely falls apart. Monteiro in 3-4.
Lajovic Anderson : When I picture these two I always think of them sitting across from each other wearing black turtlenecks and evilly stroking cats. Lajovic had a pretty tough time with Mager, who crushes the ball and is a good indication that Anderson’s hitting (during the rally at least) won’t be too much of an issue. Djere refused to hold serve in this match, and that’s a bad decision to make against a server. They played much of the first stretch of their match in light rain, and Djere seemed visibly upset heading into the break. I would say this was an empty victory for Anderson, but he served well and he at some point, will find his former form since he’s not exactly too old for the tour yet. I feel the same about Nishikori but the question of when is a difficult puzzle if you’re not in his camp.
Being conscious of your biases in assessing matches is a useful tool, and I’m aware that I’d never be backing Anderson in this one with Lajovic in good form. Due to this, Anderson having actually beaten Lajovic on clay two years ago in Madrid makes me think this is going to be closer than I’d normally expect. Anderson at full health gives him a slight nod. Lajovic on a decent run gives it to him here. I wouldn’t bet against Anderson here, but Lajovic in 5.
Davidoch Fokina Rublev : First time watching Mayo and he has a really nice game. Good power, good forehand, pushes the pace well. He was up early in the 1st but once errors crept into his game it slipped away from him. There’s a big key in professional tennis and it’s being able to maintain a level throughout a match, even if it means playing slightly less than your all-out game throughout. Fokina is very solid and very comfortable. He seems like win or lose his expression will remain the same, and that’s more confidence than indifference. Rublev played one of the more difficult first rounds, as anyone who expected Sam Querrey to come out firing that well must have six magic 8-balls hooked up to a super intelligent iguana flying along a slip-and-slide on it’s way to Narnia. Querrey is a scary guy when he serves well and his forehand is a thing of useless beauty. Ruvlev/Tsitsipas/Humbert all seemed like their timing was poor early in the matches and Rublev was the first to turn it around.
Fokina would win the first two sets against the Rublev from the first two sets. There’s no intimidation factor and his backhand/movement are rocksolid which is good since that’s the thing Rublev attacks the most. I think this is a tighter contest than oddsmakers are predicting but Fokina’s ability to hit winners during these baseline rallies is something I think will be absent. Earning errors, fine. Winning neutral exchanges at net, I definitely think so. Finding his way out of baseline rallies without Rublev errors? Idk. Rublev in 4-5.
Shapovalov Carballes Baena : Shap played one of the least inspiring first rounds of the heavy favorites, trading breaks and looking at times like he wouldn’t be able to find the effort to hit through Simon. Simon was happy to move the ball around but really couldn’t find 1st serves at any point in the match. It was not a great match which makes the next round interesting. RCB had some injury concerns for me going in but eclipsed those, beating Steve Johnson 1, 1, 0. For those of you not familiar with tennis, these are not good scores. RCB represents the opposite version of Simon’s game. He is dynamic, has multiple names, and hits with pace. He doesn’t serve aces but he puts his 1st serve in at a good clip, and although Shap should win this matchup almost all the time, his struggles against the pusher style of Simon in the first round make me wonder how much patience/resolve he has left after a month and a half of nonstop tennis. Shapovalov is not the -660 favorite that he is priced at in the books, and I’d avoid this one entirely unless you’re looking at RCB or the over. Shap still did break almost at will, so I’ll give him the slight nod despite his issues holding serve/hitting the ball over the net. (for those of you not familiar with tennis, hitting the ball over the net is often an effective strategy) Shapovalov in 4-5.
Martin Dimitrov : Maybe there’s something about Tuesdays that make me nervous about upsets, but this is an interesting contest. Dimitrov is -700 in this one. I also think he’s playing great ball lately, but that is not the correct line. Dimitrov is a big market and people haven’t heard of Martin so it lands this way. Sousa didn’t particularly do anything wrong in his opener against Martin, except for doing each thing you could do wrong once. He just looks unlucky out there. He’s hitting well at times, but just seems to find an error or unfortunate way to lose the point over and over. Martin, on the other hand, was crushing the ball. He hit clean winners time and time again on Sousa’s second serve, and I think that while he isn’t expected to beat Dimitrov, his ability to generate offense during baseline rallies will give him opportunities in some spots.
Dimitrov rolled Barrere, but he served at duece in a number of games. Barrere is a nice hardcourt player, but really hasn’t won too many matches on clay. It became a perfect situation for Dimitrov, who looks great when things are going well. Martin is the type of player that clay tends to produce; not a dominant guy or a title-winner, but someone who is very comfortable with their game and who isn’t too troubled situationally (similar to what we saw from Munar today competing against Tsitsipas without too much mental duress). If this were 2/3 I’d like Martin. In 3/5 I think Dimitrov will have ample chances to break serve, and so will only lose in 5. Martin in 5.
Milojevic Bedene : Upset of the first round for Milojevic. He hit the ball solid and was proactive about his shot selection, hugging the baseline and taking time away. Krajinovic really never had a chance to breathe in this one and as a player who refuses to move off the baseline, Kraj made a number of errors on the backhand trying to stand his ground. Nothing really new from him, as he’s been great on clay and also struggled at times. Bedene was solid against Rinderknech, who reminds me a bit of Ruusuvuori and may make his way on tour in a year or two. Good groundstrokes, very fluid forehand, and just a bit less experience giving Bedene the edge late in the match.
This is another match where I lean towards the upset, but is the breakdown. Milojevic beat a superior player in Krajinovic, but a less consistent one. Kraj has had his fair share of struggles. Bedene isn’t a threat for deep runs in events, but gets the job done very consistently when he’s “supposed” to win. That’s a big thing on tour, as upsets happen. I did like Milojevic’s pace, and were he playing someone who has a bit more variety in their game, I’d think he had a better shot. Bedene tends to play a very similar game though, and the edge here will be very small. Milojevic elevating his game as the Kraj match progressed rather than barely getting across the finish line indicates to me fatigue wasn’t a factor and that it was just a one-and-done effort. Milojevic in 4-5.
Cuevas Tsitsipas : Haha they put the Uruguayan flag for both, I thought. But it turns out I am a muppet and have much to learn about the world. Many countries enjoy stripey goodness it seems. Cuevas was a bit too good today, negating the over of 35 games even while going to 4 sets. Laaksonen looked ok in the second but Cuevas’ loopy returns saw Henri making error after error. The ball hitting the net with an open court is something that seems to compound struggles on tour, and this was over quickly. The polar opposite of Tsitsipas’ war with Munar, which took forever and featured some of the most skillful exchanges of the first round. Munar is everything you want in a smol one. Unexpected dropshots, clean shots down the line, and the ability to transfer luck if you rub his head. Tsitsipas looked very impatient, and I feel for Munar who really never had a chance to win after Tsitsipas found form, but Stefanos making this comeback is a very good sign. He was drenched in sweat, struggling to put this away, and never really blew up.
Stefanos and Pablo played a week ago and although Cuevas was good, Tsitsipas seemed like he was able to defend the court well enough that Cuevas was only going to get the match with errors. I expect to see something similar here, although Stefanos won’t be able to afford the sort of slow start he made against Munar. Tsitsipas in 4 or Cuevas in 4.
Bublik Sonego : Bublik got the job done, and Monfils left fans wondering if he really wants to be out there fighting any more. Nothing wrong with losing to a great server whose career is on the rise, but Monfils seems like he’s not fully engaged out there, and so as a professional athlete, people are going to ask questions. Sonego and Gomez had a good contest, and while I think Sonego matches up well with Bublik, taking 5 sets with Gomez means Bublik will be able to find breaks of serve. There are likely to be some tiebreakers here, but given Bublik’s ability to serve out Monfils, he’s likely to win them. Bublik in 4.
Albot Fritz : If you read my predictions, you know what’s coming. Albot broke his slump by playing spirited ball again Thompson. It was one of the quicker matches in the first round, lasting just (insert however many minutes it lasted). Fritz Fritz’d it up, almost dropping the ball against qualifier Machac. Considering he barely snuck by, there’s reason to believe this will be a tough contest as well, even with Albot’s struggles. Albot tests his opponents movement, Fritz makes errors on the run. Albot breaks serve at a higher clip than most guys on tour, Fritz is mainly just a server. I think Fritz is the better player here, but I think that the lead will be very important for belief here, since Albot has struggled lately. I think Albot’s movement will be a key on the slower surface, but he’ll need to get off to a quick lead since Fritz (as many servers are) is a very dangerous opponent in a 5th set. Albot in 4.
Gombos Rodionov : Finally a good reliable favorite. I warned readers that Gombos is the Gombosiest, but they didn’t listen. Coric found out the hard way, and honestly there difference in this one was just ballstriking. Coric was moving the ball around looking to present the “you can’t hit through me” challenge, and while this is a good strategy in later rounds, guys really crush the ball in the first round and the pace is much quicker. Gombos almost snagged Cilic in the USO, and didn’t falter here. Rodionov waited as long as possible to get going against Chardy, going down 2 sets and only winning the tiebreaker 8-6. He served for the match in the 5th set 3 times, and had a very lucky day to be playing Chardy. Chardy just couldn’t keep the ball in the court on offense, and will have to earn his points in the indoor season this year.
Rodionov plays a solid game, and being lefty helps, but he lacks big weapons which is why he mostly plays on the challenger tour. Gombos has enough power to be able to dictate here, and Rodionov coming through the qualifier and played 5 long sets will make this an uphill battle. Considering Gombos hit through Coric, the defense is unlikely to phase him. Gombos in 3.
Giustino Schwartzman : Lorenzo Giustino and Corentin Moutet had played the match of the first round by the end of the 2nd set. Moutet was just in unreal form and dictating most of the rallies in this one. Where he suffered was in two patterns. Giustino hit his forehand with height/shape rather than pace into Moutet’s backhand. Once into this pattern the shorter Moutet tended to drive the backhand downward crosscourt and Giustino would execute the same shot. The backhand never broke down but Giustino was able to wear down Moutet’s patience, and he took many opportunities as the match went on to run around his backhand and hit the inside in forehand. Giustino hit this ball crosscourt every time, really not missing often. These are simple exchanges but it’s the same shotpatterns that Djokovic employs against Nadal. What transpired was Giustino’s speed being pitted against Moutet’s arm, and while it looked like Giustino wouldn’t find offense, Moutet’s forehand got more loopy and Giustino found winners crosscourt since he was able to drive the ball more, and Moutet’s backhand lost depth and Giustino was able to catch Moutet with the forehand down the line over and over. If people are looking for the way to beat these lefty patterns this was a great example.
I had hoped Moutet would win, as his offense would be able to trouble Diego a bit more. Schwartzman beat Kecmanovic easily, and Kecmanovic had that “this draw sucks and I’m already thinking about the next tournament” glazed look in his eyes throughout this match. Giustino has to be exhausted at this point, after qualifying and playing an extra 2 sets of tennis in the 5th. Diego is the wrong opponent to try to outlast, and I think unfortunately Giustino will be more error prone here which will drive Moutet insane from wherever he’s watching. Schwartzman in 3.
Wawrinka Koepfer : Mats Wilander’s comment that Murray should leave these wildcards to younger players has some validity, but his presentation is part of what is wrong with social media. If he really had this concern, he could send Murray a message and offer some perspective. Maybe the clay tour isn’t really where Murray needs to play at this point. Posting these “open letters” and private messages as tweets is a really bizarre way to posture and the messages tend to be more about the person writing them than the issue at hand. Now, unfortunately, Mats Wilander (who I have never heard of) is an official douchenozzle in my mind. Unfortunate, but not as unfortunate as Murray/Wawrinka not giving us the classic we were all hoping for. Wawrinka has stumbled so badly recently that him playing his normal solid top 10 clay court tennis was unexpected. Murray’s movement was poor, but most players are going to lose to Wawrinka when he plays well.
Koepfer looked solid against in dispatching Hoang, and there’s something to the idea that this next contest will be tricky for Stan. There’s always the crisp shotmaking and overwhelming power, but Koepfer is not really looking to win the hitting contest anyway, and instead thrives on scrambling rallies and working his opponent’s backhand. The outcome here depends entirely on Wawrinka, as Koepfer is likely to be steady throughout. I expect at least one set to go the German’s way, as he has proven to be an extremely difficult out. Wawrinka in 4-5 but I would avoid backing Stan here if you like dollars, especially since he’ll likely show his level and have a more predictably simple match the next round against Nishioka. With guys who are good for deep runs in tournaments if they’re playing well, it often helps to gather information rather than let that fear of missing out have you backing question marks.
Gaston Nishioka : Lefty fiiiiiiiight! Gaston won the all-French affair pretty comfortably and Nishioka’s quality in his win over FAA was completely ignored. FAA can’t serve! FAA so many errors! Part of this is inconsistency but part of this is Nishioka being a wall and constantly moving his opponent. Gaston will be at a disadvantage here experience-wise but lefty vs lefty is always a difficult task for both, and Nishioka has been a mixed bag on the clay so far this season. Very tough to know how these two will match up, but the pre-match edge has to sit with Nishioka. Nishioka in 4.
Ruud Paul : Pretty simple victories for both of these two, and this will be a great match to watch. Paul has shown he can compete at the top level, but watching him in his doubles match today he didn’t seem to be serving great. His partner Monroe is a great player to watch at net which is why I caught it, and inferences from doubles aren’t the most reliable, but I think Paul will need to avoid long rallies with Ruud, who has been improving every week since the restart. Pretty similar styles at different points in their career. Ruud in 4.
Sock Thiem : Sock had some genuine emotion winning games against Opelka, and it’s nice to see him visibly motivated after his chubby troubles. Thiem looked like there wasn’t much adjustment to clay in the first round, and he was extremely composed/reserved while beating Cilic. Cilic isn’t in great form, but beating him so easily is a real testament to Thiem’s solid position in the top 2-3 players in tennis. Sock’s skill and whippy forehand allow him to match up better against the top tier than the results will indicate, but with Sock’s backhand still a liability this isn’t a spot where Thiem will struggle too much. Thiem in 3 and let the inbox threats begin, he is my pick to win this tournament.
Zverev Herbert : Zverev continued his slow start strong finish method against Novak. Once he locks down the errors he becomes a very tough out and he hits the ball with such reservation during rallies that when he does finally go for a clean winner his opponents almost don’t move. In Serena’s age of dominance she’d often lose the first two games and then break back and her opponents level would fall and Zverev’s slow starts give me the same sort of “accidental or genius” psychological strategic vibes. It’s more likely it’s just tall players start slow. Herbert beat Mmoh, who is somehow a pusher that makes errors. I’d like to see him (Mmoh) go a bit more offensive for a season, as looking to be solid from the baseline just isn’t enough to win on tour.
The Herbert Zverev matchup is an interesting one since Herbert’s game has the things that traditionally would snag a player who starts slow. Herbert is an old-school serve and volley player who is adept at adjusting his strokes to keep the ball in the court. Zverev is a bit too crispy at the moment to expect a bit blowup, but Herbert having a higher caliber of offense than Novak (who plays a bit too straightforward to really beat the mid-top tier guys) gives him a better chance. Zverev in 4.
Londero Cecchinato : Londero flipped the result against Delbonis, who he’d lost in straight sets against in their previous meeting. It’s nice to see him back in the win column, as he plays a very unique game, going for accurate offense and looking to test his opponents speed. If it weren’t for fatigue, I’d think he were a decent favorite. Cecchinato has been great though, and murmurs of his previous French Open run were flying with his snowball beatdown of De Minaur. De Minaur isn’t the best on clay, as many pointed out, but he has some notable wins in his past including PCB, and beating him is never simple. Cecchinato’s power gives him an edge here if Londero is tired. Slower legs will leave more short balls and Cecchinato can really dictate. He’s also fairly deft at using the dropshot which can wear his opponents down. Where I hesitate to just hand him the win is that these new wins have been out of nowhere, and he hasn’t played a real top level player yet. Londero is the first such test, as his claycourt game can threaten all but the top 10-20 guys at the French. No pick here, but if either is able to win this quickly then Zverev is in for a difficult 3rd round.
Paire Coria : Local kumquat Benoit Paire played quite well, beating Kwon in straight sets. There wasn’t a lot of hope for Kwon, and he struggled with his serving throughout. Paire, whose attention span is that of a drunk raccoon, will be a small favorite in his next round against Coria, but Coria is the quintessential villain to beat Paire. Coria lacks offense, but is a venerable wall. The errors Kwon made will be less available, and with Sinner looming in the next round both guys will know this is their last chance to advance. I expect Paire to either find great form here or lose. Finding great form isn’t what I expect, and if Coria is able to earn an early lead this could be over quick. Coria in 4.
Bonzi Sinner : Bonzi played great against Ruusuvuori, and I got that match completely wrong. Sinner’s defeat of Goffin coupled with his 6-2, 6-2 loss to Cilic a week or so ago makes me think Goffin is either a bit injured or just not fully engaged in this clay swing, but Sinner looks great. Sinner in 4.
Kukushkin Martinez : Fognini Fognini’d all over the place. He seemed to hurt his ankle during the 3rd set tiebreaker, and for a guy who lacks a bit of self control he shockingly did not withdraw. This seems to be one of his principles, as he’s finished matches injured before. Good win for Kukushkin, who hung around until he was given the match. Martinez on the other hand went out and earned it, downing the hard hitting Vukic in straight sets.
Martinez and Kukushkin are unlikely to have huge edges against each other. Kukushkin does his best work at majors, but not really on clay, and Martinez is a claycourt expert, but generally earns errors/preys on his opponents inconsistency. I expect long rallies, and I expect Martinez to gradually pull away in this one. Martinez in 5.
Korda Isner : I’m gonna have to be honest. I completely missed Isner’s match. It didn’t seem like Benchetrit was returning much, and Isner is generally the same. That being said, I regret this because Korda played very well in defeating Seppi and I’d like to be more confident about defending his chances here. Korda plays very well at net, and while he’s a bit green, he’s been losing in the qualifiers on tour for a few seasons now. Him starting to win matches now means we can expect a solid performance from him. He’ll have the edge in baseline rallies, and given they’re from the same country, he’ll be somewhat familiar with Isner’s game. This will come down to Korda’s ability to avoid bad service games, and whether Isner’s serve is unreturnable or not. These are question marks, and I’m starting to hate question marks. Not as much as I hate people bouncing the ball between their legs before their serves though. Korda in fourda.
Nishikori Travaglia : Clay Nishikori is back! A late 5th set victory against Evans saw many bettors writing creative words into the livestream chat, and if you’ve never been called an assfish, you can only imagine how upset Dan is tonight. Kei was happy to get across the finish line, and he has to feel like he can breathe a sigh of relief. Travaglia beat Pablo Andujar, who I have been instructed by my attorney to point out is not from Colombia and does not live in the jungle and does not train jaguars and does not sleep in a cave and does not channel magical eagles and definitely does not possess the ability to call the wind from within his lungs which are definitely not made out of the spirit of a cursed python. Andujar had been on a tear, and beating him in straight sets coupled with Travaglia’s serving prowess mean I make him a slight favorite to beat Kei in this matchup. Since Kei is struggling to find length and rhythm playing a big hitter is likely a bad situation, and I give Kei a good chance since he’s such a difficult defender to beat but he really will be behind the 8-ball in his service games. Travaglia in 4-5.
McDonald Nadal : Nice win and some much needed points and bucks for Mackie. Nadal didn’t look great against Gerasimov but Egor was hitting some great offense and Nadal doesn’t exactly need to press early. Nadal in 3 and the next round against Travaglia will be a good look at Nadal’s level.
​
Finishing up the women's now. Should be up in an hour or two. <3
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Oct/12/2020 wrap-up: \\ War in Karabakh (Artsakh) \\ Battles in north (Mrav), north-east (Talish), and south (Hadrut) \\ Erdogan's cozy relations with terrorist groups \\ jihadists exposed \\ Casualty report \\ Flashback 1990s: first Karabakh war \\ Ilham feels insulted \\ the international response

Prior events: October 11 , October 10, October 9 , October 8 , October 7, October 6, October 5, October 4, October 3, October 2, October 1, September 30, September 29, September 28, September 27.
 

Russian outlet analyses the terrorist recruitment and deployment operations in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Syria.

news-front.info article: in early September, Turkish police arrested one of ISIS leaders, Emir Mahmud Ozden, who allegedly tried to plot attacks on Turkish soil to pressure the government.
Emir used to be friendly with Turkish special forces in the early 2000s. In 2012 he joined ISIS and began organizing the transfer of jihadists to Syria from Northern Caucasus, Crimea, and Central Asia. Before moving to Syria, the jihadists would stop in Turkey and undergo training. It's unclear what had broken up the relationship between Emir and Turkish special forces in the 2000s.
 
This July, there were two anti-terror raids in Izmir (Turkey), and Batumi (Georgia), which resulted in the arrest of 78 militants, 9 of whom were Turkish citizens, illegally residing in Georgia.
One of the arrested men in Georgia was Binal Jamgioz, the second in command of Turkish [ultra-nationalist terrorist] organization Grey Wolves (GW). He was engaged in money laundering, arms sales, and recruitment of ethnic Turkic Uyghurs in China for a separatist movement.
Back in 2014, Binal Jamgioz was recruiting militants in Azerbaijan and Georgia to fill the ranks of ISIS in Syria.
[About GW. Turkish special forces were using this group to suppress opposition, assassinate union activists, Kurdish activists, journalists, politicians. They are responsible for the death of thousands of Kurds.]
Binal Jamgioz reports to the leader of GW Devlet Bahcheli, and a billionaire and cash-machine of GW Ismail Chelebi. Chelebi resides in Georgia while remotely managing the GW financing in Turkey, Caucasus, and Central Asia.
 
In April, Turkey's Erdogan pardoned another large GW donor and a known mafioso Alaattin Chakothi. A question arises: why did Erdogan make so many GW arrests in September if he's also friendly with some GW leaders? Erdogan might be trying to send a message that these radical groups must play exclusively by his rules.
Erdogan had instructed the members of ISIS, GW, Al Qaida, and few others to fight in Libya and Karabakh. The leaders of [ultra-nationalist] GW had refused to fight in Libya due to not seeing a benefit for the Turkic world. Meanwhile, leaders of other Islamic militant groups had refused to fight in Karabakh in support of secular-Shia Azerbaijan.
In the end, they were forced by Erdogan to agree to fight, in exchange for freedom.
The full article contains more info about Karabakh. The above translation is a fraction of it: https://news-front.info/2020/10/10/ustami-erdogana-london-i-vashington-dayut-signal-rossii-v-karabahe/

50 more jihadists are reported dead

Middle East reporter says 50 more Syrian militants were killed in Artsakh. Among them are Ibrahim Jum'a and Ahmed Lahalak from Rastan. The 50 bodies will arrive at the Hiwar Kilis crossing soon.
The source is a fighter with the Levant Front, a Turkish-backed group from Rastan. He personally knowns the two aforementioned militants.
Photos: https://twitter.com/Elizrael/status/1315699232699973632
 

Ilham Aliyev feels personally insulted by Russia

The overly self-conscious autocrat of Azerbaijan, who recently resorted to using camera filters to make his skin appear bronzed on TV, feels personally insulted by Russian media outlets for not being pro-Azerbaijan enough.
"I have always said that Russians are attracted to Azerbaijan not only by cuisine, beaches, history, but also by the fact that they feel comfortable, they feel in their environment. They talk to people in Russian. You probably know that nowhere there are so many schools in Russian as in Azerbaijan.
But you have already spent several days here and you know how the factor of the Armenian occupation influences the mood of the people. People catch every word, every gesture, every facial expression.
And, of course, I will tell you frankly: during these two weeks, when on some Russian channels we see rabid anti-Azerbaijani propaganda, falsification, manipulation, an unbalanced composition of talk show participants, when the Azerbaijani people are insulted, the president of Azerbaijan is insulted on the leading Russian channels - this, of course, does not add credibility to Russia," Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with RBC.
(Context: prominent Azeri reporter was fired from Russian media outlets for justifying the bombing of an Armenian church in Shushi. Russian prime-time TV shows are critical of Azerbaijan for bringing Turkey and jihadists into the conflict.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20201011210840/http://azeridaily.com/politics/58892
 

the ethnic minority oppression and their history of pushing for independence from Azerbaijan

CivilNet outlet: during the Karabakh pro-independence movement in 1988, when ethnic cleansings of Armenians were committed by Azeris, the ethnic Udis, who were predominantly Christian and very close to Armenian, even with their first names, were also forced to flee Azerbaijan. Most Udis moved to Russia but some had settled in Armenia's Noyemberyan region.
During the first Karabakh war, two minorities were "active" in Azerbaijan. Lezgins created the "Sadval" movement in 1990 to preserve their ethnic identity.
The second movement was by Talysh, led by Aylakram Gumbatov, who even managed to establish the Talysh Republic in the southern Lenkoran region, for a brief period.
Lezgins, who live in northern Azerbaijan, live on the Azeri and Russian sides of the border. Talysh, who live in the south, are divided between Iran and the Azerbaijani border.
There are no widespread attempts by ethnic Talysh and Lezgins to establish independence today. Aylakram Gumbatov, the leader of the self-proclaimed Talysh Republic in the 90s, was later arrested and sentenced to death but was subsequently pardoned and exiled.
"Artsakh could serve as a role model and allow these persecuted Azeri minorities to settle in Artsakh and have representation in Artsakh Parliament."
https://youtu.be/tmYU6nWA3Cw
 
Interview with ethnic Talysh journalist Zabil Magerramov:
https://youtu.be/EzAQSLKWA3o
 
March, 5, 2019: an interview with another Talysh activist Zakharaddin Ibrahimi.
https://youtu.be/Da6sP6KWiAY
 

a few more things from yesterday

Tens of thousands of Armenians gathered in Los Angeles in support of Artsakh. They marched to the Turkish consulate to condemn the aggression. They beamed the Artsakh flag on the Turkish consulate building.
https://twitter.com/geviskajyan/status/1315512371343839233?s=20
Beaming: https://t.me/reartsakheng/482
Video: https://youtu.be/2C6QjiXqo6M
Video: https://www.facebook.com/ABC7/videos/707456450121067/
Videos: https://news.am/arm/news/607455.html
Photos: https://www.reddit.com/armenia/comments/j9jych/la_was_all_armenian_today/
 
NY Post Editorial Board: Erdogan’s proxy war in Armenia in an ugly echo of Turkey’s genocidal campaign century ago.
On Sept. 27, Azerbaijan resumed its conflict with Armenia, accusing it of unprovoked attacks. At issue is the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, a mountainous territory of 150,000 people (mostly ethnic Armenians) that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but claimed and governed by Armenia since an earlier war.
The Azeris are plainly the aggressors: They not only outnumber the Armenians 3-to-1, they’ve been modernizing their military with a huge assist from the Turks.
Full: https://nypost.com/2020/10/11/erdogans-proxy-war-in-armenia-is-an-echo-of-turkeys-genocidal-campaign/
 

October 12th arrives / the battlefield / international response

8:31 MoD: the front lines were relatively stable-tense last night. Azeris are shelling the southern front right now.
https://twitter.com/ShStepanyan/status/1315510964578590726?s=20
9:02 Artsakh army: the northern, north-eastern, and southern fronts were active. All the Azeri attack attempts were repelled. They sustained heavy human and equipment losses. Their ongoing artillery fires are being suppressed with appropriate measures.
https://t.me/infocomm/23021
10:32 army: the operation to locate and destroy the Hadrut infiltrators continues. Azeris accumulated large backup forces with an attempt to enter the city. There are fierce battles.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031307.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031309.html
11:28: Artavazd Knyazyan, an Armenian-Spanish businessman, has posthumously received the title of Artsakh Hero.
https://factor.am/294320.html
11:39 army spokesman: I have repeatedly referred to the fact that it is not so appropriate to indicate clear positions, landscapes, even settlements at this stage of the war. The war is fierce, the Armenian army is fighting hard against the Turkish-Azerbaijani forces, which is several times larger and is fully supported by the Turkish air force, other intelligence systems, a large number of mercenaries, terrorists, and private military organizations. The Armenian army is resisting these forces with great success, with such success that even international experts mention it.
According to the tactical-operative necessity, the defense army carries out both retreat and change of lines, as well as attack and counterattack. Trust our army, we will win.
https://factor.am/294327.html
12:30: soldiers released a video from the front lines.
https://youtu.be/fx2cj1aXwhA
12:58 army: the losses from the Azeri side: 4919 soldiers (one Lt. Colonel today), 4 TOS (Solntzepyok?), 514 tanks and armored vehicles, 17 aircrafts, 16 helicopters, 168 drones, etc.
https://factor.am/294389.html , https://t.me/infoteka24/8698
13:26: army released footage showing the destruction of another Azeri AN-2 drone.
https://youtu.be/eP95wv5DdD0
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031324.html
13:38: Azeri media reports that the Azeri govt is accumulating more riot gear and water trucks to disperse possible demonstrations. "Some residents aren't happy that the govt keeps the data about casualties secret."
The war resulted in large migration from bordering cities Ganja, Terter, Barda, Gerambo towards Baku. Azeri Telegram channels earlier shared a video showing large vehicle traffic near a Baku suburb called Kherdalan. The police blocked the road to prevent them from reaching Baku.
Azeri Twitter began sharing a hashtag that demands answers from Aliyev.
https://youtu.be/LOGVjlPnSzw
https://factor.am/294412.html
14:23: Artsakh president Arayik met the veterans of the first Karabakh war. "In this dire state, we must all stand up as one."
https://news.am/arm/news/607506.html
 
CivilNet recalls the first Karabakh war in 1990 to draw comparisons: today, the heaviest battles are in southern borders between Horadiz and Jabrayil; it's about a 15km section. This isn't new. In the 90s, when Azeris attacked, that's where their Operation Ring was carried out. It was around Hadrut.
In the winter of 1994 when Azeris made their last push, we lost a lot of lands there, then recaptured some of it. The line of contact stopped between the Armenian and Azeri towns of Horadiz (both similarly named). Those 5 months were Aliyev's last push. Armenians suffered 2,000 deaths and Azeris 5,000.
The situation was also dire in 1992 when Abulfaz Elchibey won the elections and started a new war. Azeris captured Martakert and Shahumyan in a few weeks. They captured 40% of Karabakh. That's what I call "dire".
Another dire situation was in 1991 and Karabakh leader Leonard Ter-Petrosyan went to Baku to negotiate with Azeri president Mutallibov.
Another dire one was in 1992 when the Lachin corridor with Armenia was about to be blocked. At the time, Azeris controlled the northern Qarvachar region and were pushing south to cut off Artsakh from Armenia. Only a few kilometers were left from the Lachin corridor.
How did Armenians change the course? It was the Armenian political unity, cold-heartedness, lack of panicking, good governance, problems within Azerbaijan.
Ceasefires have been broken before. On April 10, 1992, while the Russian delegation was there for negotiations, the Azeri army entered Maragha village and massacred dozens of civilians. The war isn't easy to stop; it's expected that today's ceasefire is hard to achieve.
More: https://youtu.be/X75N4yEp7Kk
 
14:37: European Parliament MP Jaromir Stetina has called for the official recognition of the Artsakh Republic. "What is happening now is dictator Aliyev's policy towards small Artsakh. In order for all this to stop, the international community, and first of all European Union, must recognize Artsakh as an independent state."
https://armlur.am/1050860/
https://infoteka24.ru/2020/10/12/72262/
14:52: Russian MFA says it's important to follow the ceasefire agreement reached in Moscow.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031334.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031336.html.
15:22 army: we shot down an Azeri Su-25 jet in the north. The Turkish F-16 jets continue to accompany and aid the Azeri jets.
Hours later: at first Azeris denied losing Su-25, then their front line administration confirmed it, without realizing that we had already confirmed it.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031340.html , https://news.am/arm/news/607558.html
15:25: Los Angeles Lakers player Danny Green expressed solidarity with Armenians, saying "they want peace but are under attack now". Lakers won their 17th NBA champion title yesterday and tied it with Boston.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031342.html
15:27: British journalist Dominic Lowson wrote an article for The Sunday Times, in which he criticized Boris Johnson for his silence over Turkish aggression.
He reminded that Johnson's great grandfather was a Turkish man named Ali Kemal who was murdered in Turkey and had an Armenian name written on his body for his support for Armenians and the condemnation of the Armenian genocide.
The article notes that Artsakh has already voted to be independent from Azerbaijan.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031338.html.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/turkeys-game-is-lethal-as-johnson-well-knows-5zz5v57kx
15:47: the Armenian side reaffirms commitment to the humanitarian ceasefire if Azeris do the same.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031347.html
16:25: Armenian MFA met his Russian colleague and spoke about Azerbaijan's involvement of jihadists, "which poses a threat to the whole region."
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031353.html
15:07: PM Pashinyan held a meeting with non-parliamentary and opposition parties (HHK, ARF, etc.) to discuss various topics about independence recognition, security, possible official military agreement with Artsakh, etc.
The ambassador to several states entered the government building after the meeting. Pashinyan urged the ambassadors to recognize Artsakh republic during the meeting, "which will help end the humanitarian crisis."
Ruling party MP says that Armenia should recognize the Artsakh Republic only after another state does.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031359.html , https://factor.am/294472.html , https://factor.am/294469.html , https://factor.am/294458.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031390.html
15:10: Armenians have intercepted a radio communication of Azeri Syrian jihadists near southern borders. Some segments are presented, about how they discuss miserable conditions, mistreatment by Azeri commanders, snipers shooting some Azeris in the back in case of surrender, them being told to be careful not to shoot at the Iran border, etc.
Video: https://youtu.be/ivh80u7pPy8
https://factor.am/294475.html
https://youtu.be/53KtWWZhY4U
15:17: Galina Simova, the community leader of the 1,500 ethnic Russian community of Artsakh, has asked Vladimir Putin to take steps to stop the bombardment of civilian settlements and to "fight the Syrian militants in Karabakh just as Russia fights them in Syria because they are a direct threat to Russia, too."
Full: https://news.am/arm/news/607521.html
16:51 Armenian MFA: we agree to the installation of a ceasefire verification mechanism across the border, but Azerbaijan refuses.
https://news.am/arm/news/607545.html
16:59: the Russian reporter Yuri Kotenok, who was targeted by Azeri drone and severely wounded while inside a church in Shushi, is still in Armenia. Doctors advised against airlifting him to Russia for now. He is feeling better after the surgery.
https://news.am/arm/news/607547.html
17:14: Armenians held a demonstration in Luxemburg near the EU building.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031358.html
17:17: video showing the destruction if a few more Azeri drones.
https://youtu.be/SlUdHlwEGrY
17:24: the European Parliament has received the report written by Artsakh Human Rights Ombudsman about Azerbaijan's crimes against Artsakh civilians in Sep-Oct.
https://factor.am/294575.html
17:30 U.S. Congressman Tony Cardenas: We must immediately end security assistance to Azerbaijan and Secretary Pompeo must make it clear to Turkey that it cannot continue to fan the flames of violence. The U.S. leadership cannot be silent while the people of Nagorno-Karabakh suffer.
https://twitter.com/RepCardenas/status/1315401322368294912?s=20
https://news.am/arm/news/607557.html
17:38: Chief conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra Lior Shambadal expressed solidarity with Armenians. "I am proud of the Armenian spirit as you defend your beautiful country and wonderful culture."
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031364.html
17:59: the list of the names of deceased soldiers has been updated since yesterday, to 525 confirmed.
https://news.am/arm/news/607596.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031369.html
18:07: yesterday, several Israeli scientists wrote an open letter to their govt, asking to stop the weapon sales to Azerbaijan. Israel Charny, the executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, believes most Israelis support Armenia.
He called Erdogan a murderer who oppresses Kurds in Syria and has set his eye on Jerusalem. "President Reuven Rivlin supports the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, but as a president, he has fewer powers than when he was the speaker of the Parliament."
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031371.html
18:08: the govt of Azerbaijan has launched a criminal case against the Russian WarGonzo journalist Semyon Pegov, who has been actively documenting the Azeri war crimes against civilian settlements in Artsakh.
Pegov is charged with "illegal entry to Azerbaijan" (Azeris consider Artsakh their territory) and "making calls against the Azerbaijani state."
 
In other news, Russian authorities are investigating a Russia-based Azeri propagandist Saadat Guliyev. The latter publicly stated that he wishes for the aforementioned Russian reporter Semyon Pegov to die [from an Azeri bombardment] in Artsakh. "Armenian citizens should not shield the military reporter," he added.
After that statement, prominent Russian TV hosts became furious and called for Russian authorities to launch a felony case against Saadat Guliyev, including for inciting ethnic hatred, which is a sensitive topic in Russia due to its ethnic diversity. The authorities are investigating and will decide whether to charge Guliyev.
https://ria.ru/20201012/zhurnalist-1579403698.html
https://factor.am/294592.html
https://news.am/arm/news/607534.html
18:34: footage showing the aftermath of Armenian troops capturing possibly one of the hills near the northern Mrav mountains. Date unclear.
Graphic: https://twitter.com/301_AD/status/1315662201286426625?s=20
https://t.me/infoteka24/8739
18:03 army spokesman: Azeri media outlets have claimed that their artillery shells "caused heavy damage on Armenian soldiers who were retreating towards Red Bazaar in the south".
The Azeri propaganda machine, as usual, distorts the reality, trying to prove at all costs that they control Hadrut. It's a naked statement by Aliyev.
The operation to blockade and destroy the Hadrut infiltrators continues. The operative situation is under the full control of our army.
https://www.facebook.com/arcrun/posts/3429257187109865
19:13 Artsakh official: the heavy battles continue near Hadrut and in the south. Our army responds proportionately.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031375.html , https://t.me/reartsakheng/496
19:19: the Conservative party of Estonia, part of the ruling coalition, has urged Turkey to "stop sending the jihadists to Karabakh front."
"We are concerned about the large-scale military aggression unleashed by the Republic of Azerbaijan against the Republic of Armenia and the Artsakh Republic on September 27. We call on the Azerbaijani authorities to immediately stop the bombing of civilian infrastructure."
https://infocom.am/Article/38678
19:24: MoD of Russia and Turkey discussed the situation in Syria, Libya, and Artsakh.
https://news.am/arm/news/607584.html
19:33 Armenian MFA: Turkey, being unable to achieve its goal, is actively preventing the establishment of the humanitarian ceasefire signed in Moscow. The army of Azerbaijan, being under the control of Turkey, continues the military actions and the attack on civilian settlements.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031377.html
19:35: watch out for fake GoFundMe pages.
https://factor.am/294649.html
20:11: Armenian hackers stole $20,000 from a bank account that collects funds for the Azeri army, used it all on purchasing sex toys from Amazon, and wrote the Azerbaijani Government building address as the shipping address.
https://t.me/reartsakheng/505 [link 404]
20:46: Turkish internet regulators have blocked several Armenian government websites in Turkey.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031388.html
20:57: the Armenian delegation to PACE has presented Azerbaijan's war crimes against Artsakh civilians and urged PACE member-states to recognize the independence of Artsakh.
https://news.am/arm/news/607598.html
21:21: Belgian-Armenian musician Sevak Avanesyan gave a performance in Shushi's St. Ghazanchetsots church that was earlier bombed by Azerbaijan twice.
https://youtu.be/0ejPlScu_uU
https://t.me/infocomm/23088
21:32 Ombudsman: 31 civilians have died in Artsakh since the beginning of the war.
https://t.me/infocomm/23089
22:00 army spokesman's briefing: Azeris refused to follow the ceasefire. Since its beginning, they launched an attack in 3-4 directions. A heavy weapon was used near Martakert. In this recent period, Azeris lost 1 jet, 3 drones, and 200 soldiers.
Turkish air force helped the Azeris to conduct 36 flights, during which we downed an Azeri Su-25 jet near north-western Qarvachar (near Mrav mountain). This region is less intense than the south.
Throughout the day, battles continued in the south. We stopped their advancement and pushed them back near Hadrut. The city is under our control.
Azeris refuse to accept the ceasefire to exchange bodies because that would mean the introduction of international mediators (Red Cross), which they don't like.
The north-eastern village of Talish is not "under Azeri control". Their forces are stationed on the Talish outskirts. The regrouping activities made by us in this northern section allowed them to publish videos from Talish. Once again, the positions can change quickly and I ask you again not to fixate on a specific location during a large war.
Hadrut is completely under our control. There were, and maybe still are, certain Azeri groups on the outskirts.
The drone attacks are still with the same intensify but the artillery is weaker now.
We will win.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=2857021897850761
 

the donations continue

Ajarabet betting firm donated 50mln Drams To All Armenia Fund. Another 400mln from IRS's savings fund.
https://news.am/arm/news/607575.html , https://news.am/arm/news/607580.html
Kylie Jenner has joined the social media campaign to raise awareness and urged donations to himnadram.org
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031331.html
Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetyan (Tashir) has donated another $3m.
https://t.me/reartsakheng/491
The Armenia Fund has received $100m in donations so far.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031320.html
A video from a volunteer group's office showing the humanitarian aid collected by ordinary people
https://youtu.be/ykmeUN1ZIHw

in other news

The Constitutional Court judge Arman Dilanyan has been elected by fellow judges as their new president. The previous nominee, Edgar Ghazaryan, had failed to secure 5 votes.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031363.html
 
You've read 3388 words.
U.S. tax-deductible donations: www.ArmeniaFund.org
Global donations: www.HimnaDram.org
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Bloomberg: Nikola founder Milton's fall reveals what his backers feared

Back in March, long before a short seller would raise questions about electric-truck company Nikola Corp. and hasten its founder’s exit, early investors in the company were expressing concerns of their own. Those investors, led by mutual-fund giant Fidelity Investments, were worried that Trevor Milton, for all his brash visionary talk and Twitter braggadocio, lacked the ability that Elon Musk possesses to deliver these sorts of newfangled products to market. They lobbied successfully to remove him as CEO before the company’s June IPO and for Milton’s father to leave the board, according to people familiar with the matter. When the deal was done, Milton only held the title of chairman, the post he resigned this month.
The back-room negotiations show that Milton’s past was a concern to investors months before General Motors Co. executives placed a bet on the company in a US$2 billion deal carved out after the IPO. They liked Milton’s vision and his ability to raise cash and felt the venture was safeguarded from his shortcomings in operations by his push upstairs, say people familiar with the matter. Nonetheless, the events that have unfolded since the short-seller report, with Nikola’s stock plunging amid a steady stream of negative headlines, have exposed just how high the risks still were.
Now, it’s up to former GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky, whose blank-check company VectoIQ took Nikola public via reverse merger in June, and Nikola CEO Mark Russell to stabilize the business and regain investor confidence. The plan with GM was to use Nikola’s hot stock and Milton’s ability to raise money to build a hydrogen-fueled trucking business with GM’s technology.
“There is obviously someone on the diligence side who isn’t going to get a nice bonus this year,” said Reilly Brennan, founder of the venture capital fund Trucks Inc. “The best possible thing if you’re a shareholder is that Milton is no longer running the company and you have Girsky as chairman and GM providing technology.”
The GM deal was originally scheduled to close Sept. 30, and the automaker has said it plans to carry through, but that timing may slip, say people familiar with the matter. BP Plc is still engaged with Nikola in talks to partner on a network of hydrogen fueling stations for fuel-cell trucks the company hopes to sell, but also is slowing the pace for a deal, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. BP and GM declined to comment.
Milton’s tale reads like a Greek tragedy. The report by short seller Hindenburg Research accused Milton of overhyping Nikola’s technology and has prompted investigations by the Justice Department and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A cousin has accused him of a decades-ago sexual assault, which he denies. The company’s value peaked at US$30 billion and is now worth about US$7 billion.
Girsky and GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra have both said publicly that they did plenty of due diligence. People familiar with the matter say that GM found out when scouting the deal that it had better batteries and fuel-cell technology but joined forces because Nikola had a working semi truck and access to capital markets. In addition, GM will get paid to build Nikola’s Badger pickup on existing assembly lines. Milton was so excited to get the Badger pickup program moving that he signed a deal that heavily favored GM, one of the people said.
Nikola’s stock and GM’s US$2 billion stake are worth less than half what they were on Sept. 8, when the deal was announced. Milton’s own stake is worth US$1.7 billion, down from almost US$5 billion at one point.
Milton said in a June interview with Bloomberg News that he grew up in modest surroundings in Layton, Utah. His family moved to Las Vegas when he was very young and he lost his mother to cancer shortly after moving back to Utah in the sixth grade. He wrote on Twitter he didn’t finish high school, earning an equivalency certification instead, and later dropped out of college. His Twitter account has since been deleted.
He grew up in a tight-knit Mormon family, according to Aubrey Smith, his first cousin. She went on social media recently and accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1999 when she was 15 and he was 17.
In a public account on Facebook and Twitter, and repeated in a phone interview, Smith said that Milton came onto her at the funeral of their grandfather. He took her shirt off without permission, Smith wrote, and then he touched her inappropriately before someone knocked at the door and she ran out.
Milton denied the allegations through a spokesman.
Smith said Milton raised money from family members to get his start. He founded and ran several businesses, including a home-security company that Milton claims he sold for US$1.5 million. Next, in 2009, he founded an e-commerce platform called Upillar.com, which Milton claims “pioneered the shopping cart online.”
Then he got into clean propulsion but ended up embroiled in litigation with dHybrid Inc., which he founded in 2009. The company retrofitted diesel vehicles with natural-gas-burning turbines, claiming the dual system had greater efficiency.
But a deal with Swift Transportation Co. in 2010 ended in court when Swift alleged dHybrid defaulted on a US$322,000 loan and that it retrofitted only half of the agreed vehicles. The case was dismissed in 2015.
Milton later tried to sell dHybrid to a company called sPower in May 2012 but that, too, got mired in lawsuits after sPower backed out and accused Milton of exaggerating its technological capabilities.
Amid the litigation, Milton started another company with a very similar name, dHybrid Systems, selling it in 2014 to Worthington Industries.
During an interview with Bloomberg in June, Milton said that dHybrid Inc. was a success but conceded that, “we ended up closing that one down because of some litigation.”
His next startup was Nikola, founding it in 2014 in Salt Lake City before moving to Phoenix. Emulating Musk, he took the name from the electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla, and the company was soon billed as the Tesla of Trucks. His plan was seen as potentially disrupting the entire transportation industry by making trucks that ran on batteries or hydrogen-fuel cells. He also planned to build a network of hydrogen filling stations.
Friends and Family
Milton had friends and family members working for Nikola despite resumes that didn’t match the job. His brother, Travis Milton, is director of hydrogen and infrastructure. His LinkedIn profile shows that most of his experience was being “self-employed” in Maui. The short seller, Hindenburg Research, said that Travis Milton poured concrete as a contractor. Milton’s father Bill was originally on the board but stepped down when VectoIQ took the company public.
The company’s stock prospectus said that Nikola had awarded more than 3 million stock options “to recognize the superior performance and contribution of specific employees.” The list included Travis Milton and an uncle, Lance Milton, the document said, acknowledging that they are relatives.
As Milton went public with Nikola’s technology, questions soon arose involving his claims about the company’s fuel-cell system. He bragged in an investor video in 2019 that the company had created “what other manufacturers said was impossible to design.” But while Nikola holds patents in fuel-cell and battery technology, most of its planned hardware was coming from German supplier Robert Bosch Gmbh.
Nikola Demonstrations
It became clear that Milton had gotten ahead of himself. A 2016 demonstration showed a truck that didn’t have a working hydrogen-fuel-cell system and was missing key parts, people familiar with the matter said in June. Milton said at the time that the parts were removed as a safety precaution.
In July of this year, he recorded a video of the semi truck in which he ran alongside the vehicle as it coasted at low speeds in a parking lot. Aping Musk’s combative social-media persona, Milton took a shot at his detractors saying, “these damned trolls, I wonder if they are going to apologize to everyone for the lies they spread the tens of thousands of comments about how fake we are.”
Girsky said in the webcast “Autoline This Week,” in which Bloomberg participated, that he has been in Nikola’s fuel-cell trucks and that they work.
Still, when the GM deal was done, GM will be supplying all of the technology for every global market except Europe. Nikola’s pickup truck, called Badger, will use GM’s Ultium battery, and the semis will run on a fuel cell developed by GM and Honda Motor Co.
Since Milton’s departure, Nikola has billed itself more as an integrator of other technologies into its Badger pickup and semi trucks.
For GM’s part, the automaker is protected from any financial downside. GM got 11 per cent of the stock for no cash investment and gets paid for its technology. If Nikola fails, GM won’t lose a dime.
Milton has remained silent and is out of the company. He unknowingly presaged his own downfall in the June interview with Bloomberg: “Part of becoming a better person in life is losing everything you have got and having nothing left.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/nikola-founder-milton-s-fall-reveals-what-his-backers-feared-1.1500376
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This week 12 yrs ago--Lehman Bros collapsed......(Best Interest) Explaining the Big Short and the 2008 Crisis

edit: thanks for the awards. I'd be a dick to take credit. Go check out the one-man-band who actually wrote it---I've been reading for a couple months, good stuff https://bestinterest.blog/explain-the-big-short/
(Best Interest) This post will explain the Big Short and the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse in simple terms.
This post is a little longer than usual–maybe give yourself 20 minutes to sift through it. But I promise you’ll leave feeling like you can tranche (that’s a verb, right?!) the whole financial system!
Key Players
First, I want to introduce the players in the financial crisis, as they might not make sense at first blush. One of the worst parts about the financial industry is how they use deliberately obtuse language to explain relatively simple ideas. Their financial acronyms are hard to keep track of. In order to explain the Big Short, these players–and their roles–are key.
Individuals, a.k.a. regular people who take out mortgages to buy houses; for example, you and me!
Mortgage lenders, like a local bank or a mortgage lending specialty shop, who give out mortgages to individuals. Either way, they’re probably local people that the individual home-buyer would meet in person.
Big banks, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who buy lots of mortgages from lenders. After this transaction, the homeowner would owe money to the big bank instead of the lender.
Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)—deep breath!—who take mortgages from big banks and bundle them all together into a bond (see below). And just like before, this step means that the home-buyer now owes money to the CDO. Why is this done?! I’ll explain, I promise.
Ratings agencies, whose job is to determine the risk of a CDO—is it filled with safe mortgages, or risky mortgages?
Investors, who buy part of a CDO and get repaid as the individual homeowners start paying back their mortgage.
Feel lost already? I’m going to be a good jungle guide and get you through this. Stick with me.
Quick definition: Bonds
A bond can be thought of as a loan. When you buy a bond, you are loaning your money. The issuer of the bond is borrowing your money. In exchange for borrowing your money, the issuer promises to pay you back, plus interest, in a certain amount of time. Sometimes, the borrower cannot pay the investor back, and the bond defaults, or fails. Defaults are not good for the investor.
The CDO—which is a bond—could hold thousands of mortgages in it. It’s a mortgage-backed bond, and therefore a type of mortgage-backed security. If you bought 1% of a CDO, you were loaning money equivalent to 1% of all the mortgage principal, with the hope of collecting 1% of the principal plus interest as the mortgages got repaid.
There’s one more key player, but I’ll wait to introduce it. First…
The Whys, Explained
Why does an individual take out a mortgage? Because they want a home. Can you blame them?! A healthy housing market involves people buying and selling houses.
How about the lender; why do they lend? It used to be so they would slowly make interest money as the mortgage got repaid. But nowadays, the lender takes a fee (from the homeowner) for creating (or originating) the mortgage, and then immediately sells to mortgage to…
A big bank. Why do they buy mortgages from lenders? Starting in the 1970s, Wall St. started buying up groups of loans, tying them all together into one bond—the CDO—and selling slices of that collection to investors. When people buy and sell those slices, the big banks get a cut of the action—a commission.
Why would an investor want a slice of a mortgage CDO? Because, like any other investment, the big banks promised that the investor would make their money back plus interest once the homeowners began repaying their mortgages.
You can almost trace the flow of money and risk from player to player.
At the end of the day, the investor needs to get repaid, and that money comes from homeowners.
CDOs are empty buckets
Homeowners and mortgage lenders are easy to understand. But a big question mark swirls around Wall Street’s CDOs.
I like to think of the CDO as a football field full of empty buckets—one bucket per mortgage. As an investor, you don’t purchase one single bucket, or one mortgage. Instead, you purchase a thin horizontal slice across all the buckets—say, a half-inch slice right around the 1-gallon mark.
As the mortgages are repaid, it starts raining. The repayments—or rain—from Mortgage A doesn’t go solely into Bucket A, but rather is distributed across all the buckets, and all the buckets slowly get re-filled.
As long as your horizontal slice of the bucket is eventually surpassed, you get your money back plus interest. You don’t need every mortgage to be repaid. You just need enough mortgages to get to your slice.
It makes sense, then, that the tippy top of the bucket—which gets filled up last—is the highest risk. If too many of the mortgages in the CDO fail and aren’t repaid, then the tippy top of the bucket will never get filled up, and those investors won’t get their money back.
These horizontal slices are called tranches, which might sound familiar if you’ve read the book or watched the movie.
So far, there’s nothing too wrong about this practice. It’s simply moving the risk from the mortgage lender to other investors. Sure, the middle-men (banks, lenders, CDOs) are all taking a cut out of all the buy and sell transactions. But that’s no different than buying lettuce at grocery store prices vs. buying straight from the farmer. Middle-men take a cut. It happens.
But now, our final player enters the stage…
Credit Default Swaps: The Lynchpin of the Big Short
Screw you, Wall Street nomenclature! A credit default swap sounds complicated, but it’s just insurance. Very simple, but they have a key role to explain the Big Short.
Investors thought, “Well, since I’m buying this risky tranche of a CDO, I might want to hedge my bets a bit and buy insurance in case it fails.” That’s what a credit default swap did. It’s insurance against something failing. But, there is a vital difference between a credit default swap and normal insurance.
I can’t buy an insurance policy on your house, on your car, or on your life. Only you can buy those policies. But, I could buy insurance on a CDO mortgage bond, even if I didn’t own that bond!
Not only that, but I could buy billions of dollars of insurance on a CDO that only contained millions of dollars of mortgages.
It’s like taking out a $1 million auto policy on a Honda Civic. No insurance company would allow you to do this, but it was happening all over Wall Street before 2008. This scenario essentially is “the big short” (see below)—making huge insurance bets that CDOs will fail—and many of the big banks were on the wrong side of this bet!
Credit default swaps involved the largest amounts of money in the subprime mortgage crisis. This is where the big Wall Street bets were taking place.
Quick definition: Short
A short is a bet that something will fail, get worse, or go down. When most people invest, they buy long (“I want this stock price to go up!”). A short is the opposite of that.
Certain individuals—like main characters Steve Eisman (aka Mark Baum in the movie, played by Steve Carrell) and Michael Burry (played by Christian Bale) in the 2015 Oscar-nominated film The Big Short—realized that tons of mortgages were being made to people who would never be able to pay them back.
If enough mortgages failed, then tranches of CDOs start to fail—no mortgage repayment means no rain, and no rain means the buckets stay empty. If CDOs fail, then the credit default swap insurance gets paid out. So what to do? Buy credit default swaps! That’s the quick and dirty way to explain the Big Short.
Why buy Dog Shit?
Wait a second. Why did people originally invest in these CDO bonds if they were full of “dog shit mortgages” (direct quote from the book) in the first place? Since The Big Short protagonists knew what was happening, shouldn’t the investors also have realized that the buckets would never get refilled?
For one, the prospectus—a fancy word for “owner’s manual”—of a CDO was very difficult to parse through. It was hard to understand exactly which mortgages were in the CDO. This is a skeevy big bank/CDO practice. And even if you knew which mortgages were in a CDO, it was nearly impossible to realize that many of those mortgages were made fraudulently.
The mortgage lenders were knowingly creating bad mortgages*.* They were giving loans to people with no hopes of repaying them. Why? Because the lenders knew they could immediately sell that mortgage—that risk—to a big bank, which would then securitize the mortgage into a CDO, and then sell that CDO to investors. Any risk that the lender took by creating a bad mortgage was quickly transferred to the investor.
So…because you can’t decipher the prospectus to tell which mortgages are in a CDO, it was easier to rely on the CDO’s rating than to evaluate each of the underlying mortgages. It’s the same reason why you don’t have to understand how engines work when you buy a car; you just look at Car & Driver or Consumer Reports for their opinions, their ratings.
The Ratings Agencies
Investors often relied on ratings to determine which bonds to buy. The two most well-known ratings agencies from 2008 were Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (heard of the S&P 500?). The ratings agency’s job was to look at a CDO that a big bank created, understand the underlying assets (in this case, the mortgages), and give the CDO a rating to determine how safe it was. A good rating is “AAA”—so nice, it got ‘A’ thrice.
So, were the ratings agencies doing their jobs? No! There are a few explanations for this:
  1. Even they—the experts in charge of grading the bonds—didn’t understand what was going on inside a CDO. The owner’s manual descriptions (prospectuses) were too complicated. In fact, ratings agencies often relied on big banks to teach seminars about how to rate CDOs, which is like a teacher learning how to grade tests from Timmy, who still pees his pants. Timmy just wants an A.
  2. Ratings agencies are profit-driven companies. When they give a rating, they charge a fee. But if the agency hands out too many bad grades, then their customers—the big banks—will take their requests elsewhere in hopes of higher grades. The ratings agencies weren’t objective, but instead were biased by their need for profits.
  3. Remember those fraudulent mortgages that the lenders were making? Unless you did some boots-on-the-ground research, it was tough to uncover this fact. It’s hard to blame the ratings agencies for not catching this.
Who’s to blame?
Everyone? Let’s play devil’s advocate…
​
To explain further, there are two things going on here.
First, Goldman Sachs bankers were selling CDOs to investors. They wanted to make a commission on the sale.
At the same time, other bankers ALSO AT GOLDMAN SACHS were buying credit default swaps, a.k.a. betting against the same CDOs that the first Goldman Sachs bankers were selling.
This is like selling someone a racehorse with cancer, and then immediately going to the track to bet against that horse. Blankfein’s defense in this video is, “But the horse seller and the bettor weren’t the same people!” And the Congressmen responds, “But they worked for the same stable, and collected the same paychecks!”
So do the big banks deserve blame? You tell me.
Inspecting Goldman Sachs
One reason Goldman Sachs survived 2008 is that they began buying credit default swaps (insurance) just in time before the housing market crashed. They were still on the bad side of some bets, but mostly on the good side. They were net profitable.
Unfortunately for them, the banks that owed Goldman money were going bankrupt from their own debt, and then Goldman never would have been able to collect on their insurance. Goldman would’ve had to payout on their “bad” bets, while not collecting on their “good” bets. In their own words, they were “toast.”
This is significant. Even banks in “good” positions would’ve gone bankrupt, because the people who owed the most money weren’t able to repay all their debts. Imagine a chain; Bank A owes money to Bank B, and B owes money to Bank C. If Bank A fails, then B can’t collect their debt, and B can’t pay C. Bank C made “good” bets, but aren’t able to collect on them, and then they go out of business.
These failures would’ve rippled throughout the world. This explains why the US government felt it necessary to bail-out the banks. That federal money allowed banks in “good” positions to collect their profits and “stop the ripple” from tearing apart the world economy. While CDOs and credit default swap explain the Big Short starting, this ripple of failure is the mechanism that affected the entire world.
Betting more than you have
But if someone made a bad bet—sold bad insurance—why didn’t they have money to cover that bet? It all depends on risk. If you sell a $100 million insurance policy, and you think there’s a 1% chance of paying out that policy, what’s your exposure? It’s the potential loss multiplied by the probability = 1% times $100 million, or $1 million.
These banks sold billions of dollars of insurance under the assumption that there was a 5%, or 3%, or 1% chance of the housing market failing. So they had 20x, or 30x, or 100x less money on hand then they needed to cover these bets.
Turns out, there was a 100% chance that the market would fail…oops!
Blame, expounded
Ratings agencies—they should be unbiased. But they sold themselves off for profit. They invited the wolves—big banks—into their homes to teach them how to grade CDOs. Maybe they should read a blog to explain the Big Short to them. Of course they deserve blame. Here’s another anecdote of terrible judgment from the ratings agencies:
Think back to my analogy of the buckets and the rain. Sometimes, a ratings agency would look at a CDO and say, “You’re never going to fill up these buckets all the way. Those final tranches—the ones that won’t get filled—they’re really risky. So we’re going to give them a bad grade.” There were “Dog Shit” tranches, and Dog Shit gets a bad grade.
But then the CDO managers would go back to their offices and cut off the top of the buckets. And they’d do this for all their CDOs—cutting off all the bucket-top rings from all the different CDO buckets. And then they’d super-glue the bucket-top rings together to create a field full of Frankenstein buckets, officially called a CDO squared. Because the Frankenstein buckets were originally part of other CDOs, the Frankenstein buckets could only start filling up once the original buckets (which now had the tops cut off) were filled. In other words, the CDO managers decided to concentrate all their Dog Shit in one place, and super glue it together.
A reasonable person would look at the Frankenstein Dog Shit field of buckets and say, “That’s turrible, Kenny.”
BUT THE RATINGS AGENCIES GAVE CDO-SQUAREDs HIGH GRADES!!! Oh I’m sorry, was I yelling?!
“It’s diversified,” they would claim, as if Poodle shit mixed with Labrador shit is better than pure Poodle shit.
Again, you tell me. Do the ratings agencies deserve blame?!
Does the government deserve blame?
Yes and no.
For example, part of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 mandated that the government mortgage finance firms (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) purchase a certain number of sub-prime mortgages.
On its surface, this seems like a good thing: it’s giving money to potential home-buyers who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for a mortgage. It’s providing the American Dream.
But as we’ve already covered today, it does nobody any good to provide a bad mortgage to someone who can’t repay it. That’s what caused this whole calamity. Freddie and Fannie and HUD were pumping money into the machine, helping to enable it. Good intentions, but they weren’t paying attention to the unintended outcomes.
And what about the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the watchdogs of Wall Street. Do they have a role to explain the Big Short? Shouldn’t they have been aware of the Big Banks, the CDOs, the ratings agencies?
Yes, they deserve blame too. They’re supposed to do things like ensure that Big Banks have enough money on hand to cover their risky bets. This is called proper “risk management,” and it was severely lacking. The SEC also had the power to dig into the CDOs and ferret out the fraudulent mortgages that were creating them. Why didn’t they do that?
Perhaps the issue is that the SEC was/is simply too close to Wall Street, similar to the ratings agencies getting advice from the big banks. Watchdogs shouldn’t get treats from those they’re watching. Or maybe it’s that the CDOs and credit default swaps were too hard for the SEC to understand.
Either way, the SEC doesn’t have a good excuse. If you’re in bed with the people you’re regulating, then you’re doing a bad job. If you’re rubber stamping things you don’t understand, then you’re doing a bad job.
Explain the Big Short, shortly
You’re about 2500 words into my “short summary.” But the important things to remember:
​
And with that, I’d like to announce the opening of the Best Interest CDO. Rather than invest in mortgages, I’ll be investing in race horses. Don’t ask my why, but the current top stallion is named ‘Dog Shit.’ He’ll take Wall Street by storm.
If you don’t mind my cussing but you do like this content, consider subscribing to the email list to get these articles (and nothing more) sent to your inbox every week.
I hope this post helped if you were looking for someone to explain the Big Short. Thanks for reading the Best Interest.
​
Source: https://bestinterest.blog/explain-the-big-short/
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/r/neoliberal elects the American Presidents - Part 52, Bush v Gore in 2000

Previous editions:
(All strawpoll results counted as of the next post made)
Part 1, Adams v Jefferson in 1796 - Adams wins with 68% of the vote
Part 2, Adams v Jefferson in 1800 - Jefferson wins with 58% of the vote
Part 3, Jefferson v Pinckney in 1804 - Jefferson wins with 57% of the vote
Part 4, Madison v Pinckney (with George Clinton protest) in 1808 - Pinckney wins with 45% of the vote
Part 5, Madison v (DeWitt) Clinton in 1812 - Clinton wins with 80% of the vote
Part 6, Monroe v King in 1816 - Monroe wins with 51% of the vote
Part 7, Monroe and an Era of Meta Feelings in 1820 - Monroe wins with 100% of the vote
Part 8, Democratic-Republican Thunderdome in 1824 - Adams wins with 55% of the vote
Part 9, Adams v Jackson in 1828 - Adams wins with 94% of the vote
Part 10, Jackson v Clay (v Wirt) in 1832 - Clay wins with 53% of the vote
Part 11, Van Buren v The Whigs in 1836 - Whigs win with 87% of the vote, Webster elected
Part 12, Van Buren v Harrison in 1840 - Harrison wins with 90% of the vote
Part 13, Polk v Clay in 1844 - Polk wins with 59% of the vote
Part 14, Taylor v Cass in 1848 - Taylor wins with 44% of the vote (see special rules)
Part 15, Pierce v Scott in 1852 - Scott wins with 78% of the vote
Part 16, Buchanan v Frémont v Fillmore in 1856 - Frémont wins with 95% of the vote
Part 17, Peculiar Thunderdome in 1860 - Lincoln wins with 90% of the vote.
Part 18, Lincoln v McClellan in 1864 - Lincoln wins with 97% of the vote.
Part 19, Grant v Seymour in 1868 - Grant wins with 97% of the vote.
Part 20, Grant v Greeley in 1872 - Grant wins with 96% of the vote.
Part 21, Hayes v Tilden in 1876 - Hayes wins with 87% of the vote.
Part 22, Garfield v Hancock in 1880 - Garfield wins with 67% of the vote.
Part 23, Cleveland v Blaine in 1884 - Cleveland wins with 53% of the vote.
Part 24, Cleveland v Harrison in 1888 - Harrison wins with 64% of the vote.
Part 25, Cleveland v Harrison v Weaver in 1892 - Harrison wins with 57% of the vote
Part 26, McKinley v Bryan in 1896 - McKinley wins with 71% of the vote
Part 27, McKinley v Bryan in 1900 - Bryan wins with 55% of the vote
Part 28, Roosevelt v Parker in 1904 - Roosevelt wins with 71% of the vote
Part 29, Taft v Bryan in 1908 - Taft wins with 64% of the vote
Part 30, Taft v Wilson v Roosevelt in 1912 - Roosevelt wins with 81% of the vote
Part 31, Wilson v Hughes in 1916 - Hughes wins with 62% of the vote
Part 32, Harding v Cox in 1920 - Cox wins with 68% of the vote
Part 33, Coolidge v Davis v La Follette in 1924 - Davis wins with 47% of the vote
Part 34, Hoover v Smith in 1928 - Hoover wins with 50.2% of the vote
Part 35, Hoover v Roosevelt in 1932 - Roosevelt wins with 85% of the vote
Part 36, Landon v Roosevelt in 1936 - Roosevelt wins with 75% of the vote
Part 37, Willkie v Roosevelt in 1940 - Roosevelt wins with 56% of the vote
Part 38, Dewey v Roosevelt in 1944 - Dewey wins with 50.2% of the vote
Part 39, Dewey v Truman in 1948 - Truman wins with 65% of the vote
Part 40, Eisenhower v Stevenson in 1952 - Eisenhower wins with 69% of the vote
Part 41, Eisenhower v Stevenson in 1956 - Eisenhower wins with 60% of the vote
Part 42, Kennedy v Nixon in 1960 - Kennedy wins with 63% of the vote
Part 43, Johnson v Goldwater in 1964 - Johnson wins with 87% of the vote
Part 44, Nixon v Humphrey in 1968 - Humphrey wins with 60% of the vote
Part 45, Nixon v McGovern in 1972 - Nixon wins with 56% of the vote
Part 46, Carter v Ford in 1976 - Carter wins with 71% of the vote
Part 47 - Carter v Reagan v Anderson in 1980 - Carter wins with 44% of the vote
Part 48, Reagan v Mondale in 1984 - Mondale wins with 55% of the vote
Part 49, Bush v Dukakis in 1988 - Bush wins with 54% of the vote
Part 50, Bush v Clinton v Perot in 1992 - Clinton wins with 71% of the vote
Part 51, Clinton v Dole in 1996 - Clinton wins with 91% of the vote
Welcome back to the fifty-second edition of /neoliberal elects the American presidents!
This will be a fairly consistent weekly thing - every week, a new election, until we run out.
I highly encourage you - at least in terms of the vote you cast - to try to think from the perspective of the year the election was held, without knowing the future or how the next administration would go. I'm not going to be trying to enforce that, but feel free to remind fellow commenters of this distinction.
If you're really feeling hardcore, feel free to even speak in the present tense as if the election is truly upcoming!
Whether third and fourth candidates are considered "major" enough to include in the strawpoll will be largely at my discretion and depend on things like whether they were actually intending to run for President, and whether they wound up actually pulling in a meaningful amount of the popular vote and even electoral votes. I may also invoke special rules in how the results will be interpreted in certain elections to better approximate historical reality.
While I will always give some brief background info to spur the discussion, please don't hesitate to bring your own research and knowledge into the mix! There's no way I'll cover everything!
Al Gore v George Bush, 2000
Profiles
  • Al Gore is the 52-year-old Democratic candidate and the current Vice President. His running mate is US Senator from Connecticut Joe Lieberman.
  • George (W.) Bush is the 54-year-old Republican candidate and the Governor of Texas. His running mate is former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
Issues and Background
  • Roughly two years ago, President Bill Clinton became the first President in over 100 years to be impeached by the House of Representatives. He was eventually acquitted in the Senate. Clinton was accused of grand jury perjury related to his extramarital sexual relationship with 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He was also accused of obstruction of justice. The full report from the independent counsel can be read here.
    • Vice President Gore has said that President Clinton made a mistake, and has even called Clinton's behavior "inexcusable," but has claimed that "the people" want to move on to other issues. Likely aware of some polling evidence that Clinton may be a drag on his numbers, he has distanced himself from the President during the campaign, emphasizing that he is his own man. Stories in papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times regularly describe leaked frustrations from Clinton loyalists and Clinton himself about this distancing. Joint appearances are being minimized. In one of the primary debates, Gore stated:
      As an American who was serving as vice president, I was critical of the president. As an American, I also defended the office of the presidency against an effort by partisan Republicans in the House and Senate to deliver a thoroughly disproportionate penalty for a serious and reprehensible personal mistake on the part of the president. He should not have been removed from office for that offense. And fighting against their efforts to remove him from office and undo the act of the American people in twice electing him, I think I was serving the public interest well.
    • The Bush campaign, and Bush himself, have emphasized that they will bring "honor and dignity" back to the White House. In his convention speech, Vice Presidential nominee Dick Cheney said:
      George W. Bush will repair what has been damaged. He's a man without pretense, without cynicism, a man of principle, a man of honor. On the first hour of the first day, he will restore decency and integrity to the Oval Office.
  • The federal budget is set to be in surplus for the third year in a row this year, and many government agencies and forecasters are expecting well in excess of $1 trillion in total surpluses over the coming decade. Thus, one major election issue is what each candidate will do with this surplus.
    • Governor Bush described his plan for the surplus in the first debate as follows:
      I want to take one-half of the surplus and dedicate it to Social Security. One-quarter of the surplus for important projects, and I want to send one-quarter of the surplus back to the people who pay the bills. I want everybody who pays taxes to have their tax rates cut.
      Vice President Gore's main criticism of the Bush plan has been that because the tax cuts are across the board, a large amount of the surplus dollars will wind up going to the wealthiest Americans. Bush has countered that as President, he doesn't want to be in the business of picking winners and losers when it comes to tax relief.
    • Vice President Gore says that for every $1 of the surplus he will use for tax cuts or new spending, he will use $2 for deficit reduction. Gore intends to set the United States on a path to eliminate the national debt by the year 2012. He also proposes $500 in targeted tax cuts intended to reach low and middle income families. Bush accuses Gore of intending to increase the size of government dramatically, which Gore denies.
  • Just recently, the FDA approved abortion pill RU-486. Governor Bush has said he will respect the FDA's independence, but is concerned this will lead to an increase in abortions. Governor Bush describes himself as pro-life, but says "a lot of good people disagree on the issue" and that the issue is not a litmus test for any potential Supreme Court nominations he could make. He argues there are pro-life objectives that can be accomplished which exist on broader common ground, like parental consent laws on abortion and the banning of "partial-birth abortions." Vice President Gore is pro-choice but says he would be willing to sign a law banning partial-birth abortions "provided that doctors have the ability to save a woman's life or to act if her health is severely at risk."
  • Following US participation through NATO in the Kosovo War and the overthrow of Milosevic in the recent Yugoslavian elections, the United States maintains a presence in the Balkans. Gore supports continued US involvement and support in the region "until the mission is complete," while Bush would like to see a more immediate reprioritization of where some resources are deployed, pending consultation with NATO allies. The New York Times summarizes their differences:
    Mr. Gore is an interventionist, and over the years has repeatedly pressed for more vigorous United States involvement in hot spots around the world, including Bosnia and Kosovo. Mr. Bush denies he is an isolationist, but says United States troops should not be used for nation-building abroad. He would start by bringing home the 11,400 troops in the Balkans, once this country's NATO allies had agreed.
  • Following reforms in the 1980s, the Social Security system is not in particularly dire shape, though the trust fund could eventually run out by the 2030s if no further changes are made. Governor Bush has proposed a dramatic reform of the system which would allow workers to divert 2 percentage points of their 12.4% payroll tax into personal investment accounts. The Gore campaign argues that this plan will mean that the Social Security trust fund will run dry over 10 years earlier than currently expected.
  • Over the next 10 years, Medicare by itself is expected to run significant surpluses. Vice President Gore proposes taking Medicare "off-budget" in the same way as Social Security, putting Medicare funds in a metaphorical "lockbox" so they cannot be used for new spending or new tax cuts.
  • This campaign has seen significant discussion on the topic of education. Unlike other prominent Republicans, Governor Bush does not want to get rid of the Department of Education. He is an ardent advocate for standardized testing and wants to help more states set up such testing. Under Bush's plan, a school which shows poor results for three years in a row will see its students granted the option of a voucher which can be used for tutoring or private school tuition - for each student who chooses a voucher, the school will lose a proportional amount of federal dollars. Gore's plan calls for universal preschool, and for schools which show poor results two years in a row to reorganize with new leadership and even potentially new teachers.
  • The Columbine High School massacre remains on the minds of many. On guns, the main difference between the candidates is that Gore supports licensing for new handguns at the state level, while Bush does not. Gore also supports restoring the three-day waiting period under the Brady Law. Both candidates support instant background checks at gun shows. Governor Bush argues for greater enforcement of existing laws and raising the age when one can carry a handgun from 18 to 21. For Columbine specifically, Gore argues that some gun control measures could have possibly prevented the school shooting. In contrast, Governor Bush argues "it's really a matter of culture," that "somewhere along the line we've begun to disrespect life."
  • A few years ago, Vice President Gore helped broker the Kyoto Protocol/Treaty, an international commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement was signed by the Clinton Administration but effectively killed by the Senate via a resolution that strongly signaled they would refuse to ratify it. Governor Bush says global warming is "an issue that we need to take very seriously," but also says, "I don't think we know the solution to global warming yet," and that we need to have "the full accounting, full understanding of what's taking place."
  • Just days before the election, it has come out that 24 years ago, Bush was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. Bush says that the report is true, but argues that he has always been candid and remorseful about the fact that in his youth, he occasionally drank too much. Asked about why he had not previously disclosed this particular incident, he said he did not want his daughters to find out and for it to undermine his parenting.
Debate Excerpts
Quotations in excerpt titles refer to moderator's prompt, block quotations are from named candidate(s).
First Presidential Debate (full transcript)
(1) Bush on whether he would "try to overturn the FDA's approval last week of the abortion pill RU-486":
I don't think a president can do that. I was disappointed in the ruling because I think abortions ought to be more rare in America, and I'm worried that that pill will create more abortions and cause more people to have abortions. This is a very important topic and it's a very sensitive topic, because a lot of good people disagree on the issue. I think what the next president ought to do is to promote a culture of life in America ... I know we need to change a lot of minds before we get there in America. What I do believe is that we can find good, common ground on issues of parental consent or parental notification. I know we need to ban partial birth abortions. This is a place where my opponent and I have strong disagreement.
(2) Gore on the budget:
I think that we have got to balance the budget every single year, pay down the national debt and, in fact, under my proposal the national debt will be completely eliminated by the year 2012. I think we need to put Medicare and Social Security in a lockbox. The governor will not put Medicare in a lockbox. I don't think it should be used as a piggy bank for other programs. I think it needs to be moved out of the budget and protected. I'll veto anything that takes money out of Social Security or Medicare for anything other than Social Security or Medicare.
(3) Bush on "nation-building":
The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place. So I would take my responsibility seriously. And it starts with making sure we rebuild our military power. Morale in today's military is too low. We're having trouble meeting recruiting goals. We met the goals this year, but in the previous years we have not met recruiting goals. Some of our troops are not well-equipped. I believe we're overextended in too many places. And therefore I want to rebuild the military power. It starts with a billion dollar pay raise for the men and women who wear the uniform. A billion dollars more than the president recently signed into law.
(4) Gore on education:
We agree on a couple of things on education. I strongly support new accountability, so does Governor Bush. I strongly support local control, so does Governor Bush. I'm in favor of testing as a way of measuring performance. Every school and every school district, have every state test the children. I've also proposed a voluntary national test in the fourth grade and eighth grade, and a form of testing the governor has not endorsed. I think that all new teachers ought to be tested, including in the subjects that they teach. We've got to recruit 100,000 new teachers. And I have budgeted for that. We've got to reduce the class size so that the student who walks in has more one-on-one time with the teacher. We ought to have universal pre-school and we ought to make college tuition tax deductible, up to $10,000 a year.
(5) Bush on what he would do in the event of a financial crisis:
Well, it depends, obviously. But what I would do first and foremost, is I would get in touch with the Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, to find out all the facts and all the circumstances. I would have my Secretary of the Treasury be in touch with the financial centers not only here, but at home. I would make sure that key members of Congress were called in to discuss the gravity of the situation. And I would come up with a game plan to deal with it. That's what governors end up doing. We end up being problem solvers. We come up with practical, common sense solutions for problems that we're confronted with. In this case, in the case of a financial crisis, I would gather all the facts before I made the decision as to what the government ought or ought not to do.
(6) Gore on campaign finance reform:
And that's one of the reasons I've said before, and I'll pledge here tonight, if I'm president, the very first bill that Joe Lieberman and I will send to the United States Congress is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. And the reason it's that important is that all of the other issues, whether prescription drugs for all seniors that are opposed by the drug companies or the patient's bill of rights to take the decisions away from the HMOs and give them to the doctors and nurses, opposed by the HMOs and insurance companies, all these other proposals are going to be a lot easier to get passed for the American people if we limit the influence of special interest money and give democracy back to the American people.
Vice-Presidential Debate (full transcript)
(1) Cheney on Iraq (full moderator question included):
MODERATOR: This question is for you, Mr. Secretary. If Iraq's president Saddam Hussein were found to be developing weapons of mass destruction, Governor Bush has said he would, quote, "Take him out." Would you agree with such a deadly policy?
CHENEY: We might have no other choice. We'll have to see if that happens. The thing about Iraq, of course, was at the end of the war we had pretty well decimated their military. We had put them back in the box, so to speak ... Unfortunately now we find ourselves in a situation where that started to fray on us, where the coalition now no longer is tied tightly together ...The Russians and French are flying commercial airliners back into Baghdad and thumbing their nose at the international sanctions regime. We're in a situation today where our posture with Iraq is weaker than it was at the end of the war. It's unfortunate. I also think it's unfortunate we find ourselves in a position where we don't know for sure what might be transpiring inside Iraq. I certainly hope he's not regenerating that kind of capability, but if he were, if in fact Saddam Hussein were taking steps to try to rebuild nuclear capability or weapons of mass destruction, you would have to give very serious consideration to military action to -- to stop that activity. I don't think you can afford to have a man like Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
(2) Lieberman on whether gays and lesbians should have "all the constitutional rights enjoyed by every American citizen":
The question you pose is a difficult one for this reason. It confronts or challenges the traditional notion of marriage as being limited to a heterosexual couple, which I support. I must say I'm thinking about this, because I have friends who are in gay and lesbian partnerships who said to me, isn't it fair. We don't have legal rights to inheritance, visitation when one partner is ill, to health care benefits. That's why I'm thinking about it. My mind is open to taking some action that will address those elements of unfairness while respecting the traditional religious and civil institution of marriage.
(3) Cheney on the same question as above:
This is a tough one, Bernie. The fact of the matter is we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. We shouldn't be able to choose and say you get to live free and you don't. That means people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It's no one's business in terms of regulating behavior in that regard. The next step then, of course, is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction of the relationships or if they should be treated the same as a traditional marriage. That's a tougher problem. That's not a slam dunk. The fact of the matter is that matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate.
(4) Lieberman on Hollywood:
Al Gore and I have felt for a long time, first as parents and then only second as public officials, that we cannot let America's parents stand alone in this competition that they feel they're in with Hollywood to raise their own kids and give their kids the faith and values they want to give them. I've been a consistent crusader on that behalf. John McCain and I actually requested the Federal Trade Commission report that came out three or four weeks ago which proved conclusively that the entertainment industry was marketing adult-rated products to our children. That is just not acceptable. One finding was that they were actually using 10 to 12-year-olds to test screen adult-rated products. When that report came out, Al Gore and I said to the entertainment industry, stop it.
Second Presidential Debate (full transcript)
(1) Bush on whether our country's wealth brings "with it special obligations to the rest of the world":
Yes, it does. Take, for example, Third World debt. I think we ought to be forgiving Third World debt under certain conditions. I think, for example, if we're convinced that a Third World country that's got a lot of debt would reform itself, that the money wouldn't go into the hands of a few but would go to help people, I think it makes sense for us to use our wealth in that way, or to trade debt for valuable rain forest lands, makes that much sense, yes. We do have an obligation, but we can't be all things to all people. We can help build coalitions but we can't put our troops all around the world.
(2) Gore on Iraq:
I was one of the few members of my political party to support former President Bush in the Persian Gulf War resolution, and at the end of that war, for whatever reason, it was not finished in a way that removed Saddam Hussein from power. I know there are all kinds of circumstances and explanations. But the fact is that that's the situation that was left when I got there. And we have maintained the sanctions. Now I want to go further. I want to give robust support to the groups that are trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and I know there are allegations that they're too weak to do it, but that's what they said about the forces that were opposing Milosevic in Serbia, and you know, the policy of enforcing sanctions against Serbia has just resulted in a spectacular victory for democracy just in the past week...
(3) Bush on Serbia:
I think it's a triumph. I thought the president made the right decision in joining NATO and bombing Serbia. I supported them when they did so. I called upon the Congress not to hamstring the administration, and in terms of forcing troop withdrawals on a timetable that wasn't necessarily in our best interest or fit our nation's strategy, and so I think it's good public policy, I think it worked, and I'm pleased I took -- made the decision I made. I'm pleased the president made the decision he made. Because freedom to go in that part of the world, and where there's a lot of work left to be done, however.
(4) Gore exchange with moderator on eight major interventions of the last 20 years:
MODERATOR: ...in the last 20 years there have been eight major actions that involved the introduction of U.S. ground, air or naval forces. Let me name them. Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo. If you had been president for any of those interventions, would any of those interventions not have happened? GORE: Can you run through the list again? MODERATOR: Sure. Lebanon. GORE: I thought that was a mistake. MODERATOR: Grenada. GORE: I supported that. MODERATOR: Panama. GORE: I supported that. MODERATOR: Persian Gulf. GORE: Yes, I voted for it, supported it. MODERATOR: Somalia. GORE: Of course, and that again -- no, I think that that was ill-considered. I did support it at the time. It was in the previous administration, in the Bush-Quayle administration, and I think in retrospect the lessons there are ones that we should take very, very seriously. MODERATOR: Bosnia. GORE: Oh, yes. MODERATOR: Haiti. GORE: Yes. MODERATOR: And then Kosovo. GORE: Yes.
(5) Gore on "nation-building":
This idea of nation building is kind of a pejorative phrase, but think about the great conflict of the past century, World War II. During the years between World War I and World War II, a great lesson was learned by our military leaders and the people of the United States. The lesson was that in the aftermath of World War I, we kind of turned our backs and left them to their own devices and they brewed up a lot of trouble that quickly became World War II. And acting upon that lesson in the aftermath of our great victory in World War II, we laid down the Marshall Plan, President Truman did. We got intimately involved in building NATO and other structures there. We still have lots of troops in Europe. And what did we do in the late '40's and '50's and '60's? We were nation building. And it was economic. But it was also military. And the confidence that those countries recovering from the wounds of war had by having troops there. We had civil administrators come in to set up their ways of building their towns back.
Third Presidential Debate (Town Hall) (full transcript)
(1) Bush on health care:
I'm absolutely opposed to a national health care plan. I don't want the federal government making decisions for consumers or for providers. I remember what the administration tried to do in 1993. They tried to have a national health care plan. And fortunately, it failed. I trust people, I don't trust the federal government. It's going to be one of the themes you hear tonight. I don't want the federal government making decisions on behalf of everybody.
(2) Gore on the estate tax:
I'm for a massive reform of the estate tax or the death tax. And under the plan that I've proposed, 80% of all family farms will be completely exempt from the estate tax. And the vast majority of all family businesses would be completely exempt, and all of the others would have sharply reduced. So 80% -- now the problem with completely eliminating it goes back to the wealthiest 1%. The amount of money that has to be raised in taxes for middle-class families to make up for completely eliminating that on the very wealthiest, the billionaires, that would be an extra heavy burden on middle-class families. And so let's do it for most all, but not completely eliminate it for the very top.
(3) Bush on morality and protecting children:
You bet there's things that government can do. We can work with the entertainment industry to provide family hour. We can have filters on Internets where public money is spent. There ought to be filters in public libraries and filters in public schools so if kids get on the Internet, there is not going to be pornography or violence coming in. I think we ought to have character education in our schools. I know that doesn't directly talk about Hollywood, but it does reinforce the values you're teaching.
(4) Gore on morality and protecting children:
I've been involved myself in negotiating and helping to move along the negotiations with the Internet service providers to get a parents' protection page every time 95% of the pages come up. And a feature that allows parents to automatically check with one click what sites your kids have visited lately.
Platforms
Read the full 2000 Republican platform here.
Read the full 2000 Democratic platform here.
Internet Resources
Bush/Cheney Website
Gore/Lieberman Website
Videos
Debates
First Presidential Debate
Vice-Presidential Debate
Second Presidential Debate
Third Presidential Debate (Town Hall)
Advertisements
Bush personal responsibility ad
Bush education ad
RNC prescription drugs ad
Gore anti-Bush energy ad
Gore anti-Bush Social Security ad
Gore "keep the faith" ad
Bonus:
SNL's Gore v Bush Debate
Strawpoll
>>>VOTE HERE<<<
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(Okay here's the real poll, vote here)
submitted by John_Charles_Fremont to neoliberal [link] [comments]

You Need How Many Narcotics To Function?

Many many moons ago, I worked in a Pharmacy Call Center for a state insurance company.
I had moved from medical coding/billing to medical call center and on to pharmacy call over the span of 5 years, so I prided myself on having some common sense when it came to how Doctor's offices/staff and Pharmacy staff "usually" operated. However, it also clued me in to how patients (a.k.a. clients) would try to game the system.
One of my favorites was the repeat callepatient/client who called in on a monthly basis in order to request a "vacation override" on a narcotic. If you're not familiar with the idea - our company allowed patients to call in to request an early refill for a monthly medication (whether blood pressure med, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, etc.) if the patient was "going on vacation and needed to take the medication with them, but there was a viable chance the medication could run out while they were out of the area." The script could be filled up to two weeks early, but was usually limited to once every six months.
With this in mind, we also had patients who would "doctor shop" - basically making appointments with multiple doctors to have the same medication prescribed without the doctors being aware.
Combine these two practices and; if you have a semi-intelligent patient, this could be a recipe for one hell of a drug supply ring successfully paid-for-in-full by the insurance company.
Every Pharmacy Rep had been warned to watch for these red flags during training and we were even given actual examples from the system to show us what we would see and who to contact when it happened. When - not if.
Imagine, if you will, the following exchange with Ms. Narcotic-On-Vacation (Narc):
Me: Thank you for calling MEDPharm101(not really! LOL)
Narc: Hi, my name is Narc, ID#123abc and I need a vacation refill on my Vicodin.
Me: Thank you Ms. Narc - can I ask you to confirm your DOB for me.
Narc: Sure it's Jan 1st, 1899.
Me: Thank you, and I understand you need a vacation fill for your Vicodin? Let me pull up that information.
At this point, if my system had a klaxon alarm, my ears would have been bleeding. Red Alert, Red Flag, take cover and call Superman!
Me: Ms. Narc, I'm seeing in the system that you asked for a vacation refill last month on your Vicodin, is this correct?
Narc: Yeah, I keep running out, the doctor's supposed to up my dose, but hasn't done it yet.
Honestly, if the doctor had changed the script to a higher dose - if probably would have killed an elephant, but what do I know?
Me: All right, Ms. Narc - may I ask you to hold for just a moment while I get that started for you?
Narc: (totally bored by now) Yeah, sure.
I put Ms. Narc on hold and frantically flag down my Floor Manager. I show her the whole history - Ms. Narc apparently had not one - not two, doctors writing scripts for her; she had a total of SIX doctors writing scripts for the same high dosage Vicodin and was refill all of them religiously on a two week cycle. The account had been flagged previously and she hadn't been able to fill anything in about two months. We were betting her second-hand sales were starting to get a little slim now that her supply chain was running out. However, we couldn't arbitrarily cut her off and were running out of reasons to not refill the script.
Then something she'd said to me flashed like a light bulb over my head - she'd said the doctor needed to change her script! Well - we need an authorization from the doctor's office to accommodate that a change in narcotic scripts! We've got a reason to shut this one down!
Fist bump the Floor Manager and she hovers nearby in case this goes belly up on me.
Me: Ms. Narc? Thank you so much for waiting, I'm sorry that took so long. Because you mentioned a change in the script, I went through our authorizations from your doctor's office to see if anything had been sent through for you. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anything authorizing the change in script - so I reached out the doctor's office for a new script. They weren't aware of any new changes in your script, so they need to call you to set up an appointment to come in for some lab work in order to change your medication. This also means that, without the doctor's authorization, I can't release your next refill early.
Now keep in mind - I haven't done anything of the sort - the Authorizations Dept would take care of contacting the doctor's office after I get off the call.
Narc: (somewhere between aghast and enraged) You did what?? Who the H-E-double hockey sticks told you to do that??
Me: I'm sorry, Ms. Narc - but that is normal procedure with a change in script on a narcotic. The doctor's office should be giving you a call shortly in order to set up a good time for you to come for your lab work. I'm so sorry I couldn't help you with that refill - but is there anything else I can help you with today?
Narc: (spluttering, but not able to do a stinking thing about the situation, through clenched teeth) No thank you, I think you've helped quite enough.
*click*
I am grinning ear-to-ear and my Floor Manager's doing a happy dance next to me. I send the ticket to Authorizations outlining what happened. Now here's where it's gets even better! Now that Authorizations is taking over - they can contact ALL of the doctors on her file to confirm a script change and "alert" them that she's doctor shopping. This will effectively shut down her ring and black flag any new scripts being paid by the insurance company.
Extra for me? I got a nice bonus check and a Thank You letter from the Head of the Pharmacy Call Group.
submitted by LadyGrey1174 to talesfromcallcenters [link] [comments]

UFC 253 Fight Predictions

Hello friends!
Firstly, I hope you're all doing well, I hope you're all happy, healthy and ready to watch a monumental event.
This has been a very fun card to talk about. It may not be as star stacked as the last card was, but it's stacked in terms of raw talent alone. But... I will state this now because it's pretty important. There are very controversial decisions in this prediction post, I'm sure you'll spot it. and with that warning said, please bet at your own discretion, it's a very hard card to predict.
With all the formalities said and done, lets get dirty.
(c) - Champ
(D) - Debut
FLS - Fight Lose Streak
FWS - Fight Win Streak
NS - No Streak
(#x) - Rank in Division
Lets go!
Prelims
Light Heavyweight
Khadis Ibragimov (8-3-0, 3 FLS) v Danilo Marquez (D) (9-2-0, 2 FWS) - I’m not sure if i’m keen on this, but I suppose any Light Heavyweight bout could be explosive. Ibragimov is on a pretty severe losing streak so far, and considering he hasn’t won any fight in the UFC in his 3 fights, he seems to be on the brink of being kicked off the roster, which is a shame really because he kinda just started. Ibragimov seems somewhat well rounded, he is an adequate grappler and has serious power behind his punches, but at the end of the fight he just seems to be outdone, so i’m a little skeptic about his future performances. Marquez is coming off the regional circuit as a fairly strong finisher who only has one decision win in his professional career. One relatively large issue that I see straight off the bat is his inactiveness, he hasn’t had a fight in over two and a half years, so I feel like there might be some ring rust, and well, it’s hard to tell what he’s gonna bring to the fight. I’m not sure who is gonna win this one, but judging from how active versus how inactive each fighter has been, I feel like Ibragimov has this one.
Ibragimov via KO R2
Heavyweight
Jeff Hughes (10-3-0, 2 FLS) v Juan “Cejudo but bigger” Espino (9-1-0, 7 FWS) - Well, that’s a name I did not expect to see. Hughes seems to be one of those heavyweights that made it through to the UFC on power alone. He’s a big dude that swings and if this was the early 2000’s that would be fine, but considering he lost to two much more well rounded fighters, I strongly hope that he finds a quick turn around because he’s still young and no doubt hungry for victory. In his last fight against Pessoa, Hughes was incredibly patient and didn’t take any unnecessary risks because Pessoa is fairly explosive, he was methodical with his approach and even though he lost the fight, we saw that he didn’t always have a one dimensional approach to fighting. Now, the interesting fighter in this bout is Espino. Now, you might be wondering where you heard that name from, well, he’s the winner of TUF 26 (Heavy Hitters), and at the ripe old age of 37 he won in quite dominant fashion against fellow contestant Justin Frazier. For two years now, I have always asked, where the hell is he? Here he is, his announcement must have completely flew under my radar because I had to blink twice to see if I was dreaming. Espino is an excellent submission artist who has a relatively large background in grappling and submission competition and he has absolutely dominated the scene. Expect the fight to go to the ground early, because that is where Hughes doesn’t want to be, and where Espino needs to be. The tricky part about Espino is how will he look after a 22 month layoff? I’m not sure but i’m pretty excited to see him come back. I got Espino on this one.
Espino via Sub R2
Light Heavyweight
William Knight (#1 US Northeast) (D) (8-1-0, 2 FWS) v Aleksa Camur (6-0-0, 6 FWS) - Knight has been at the forefront of hype during this season of DWCS, he is built like an absolute Abrams and he has insane punching power. Now, whether or not he’s a clean fighter with just insane Usman-esque genes or if he’s best friends with Jon Jones, but either way, he’s a dangerous opponent. We have only seen almost 3 minutes of him beating up his opponent so there’s not too much analysis, but just know that when he lands, he lands extremely hard. The best way for Camur to deal with him, is to avoid him for the first round, gauge the explosiveness, read his setups and then counter. Camur is the longer fighter in terms of range, he can counter jab any aggressive movement that Knight makes. Now, this at the moment is all pure speculation because we’ve only seen a little bit of Knight and Camur, but judging from each fighter's style, if Camur can survive the onslaught from Knight then he’s got it. It’s a tough one to call though, but I might go with the hype train for now, I could be wrong so please don’t bet based on this prediction.
Knight via KO R1
Featherweight
Shane Young (13-4-0, 2 FWS) v L’udovit Klein (D) (#2 Europe Eastern) (16-2-0, 7 FWS) - That’s one hell of a debutant right there and in my opinion an underrated matchup. Young is an excellent kickboxer who throws excellent and slick combo’s efficiently and with such speed. He has often outstruck his opponents and he’s always throwing and always in his opponents face, the pressure is insane and if Klein can’t handle that then he’s in trouble. Klein has an extensive knockout record and at a young age of 25, the fact that he’s knocked out veterans of the sport with relative ease, shows how dangerous he really is. These european guys don’t mess around and we’re seeing more and more talent from that part of the world dominate the scene, and this man is no exception. 7 knockouts, 8 submissions, all action. I don’t like betting against my fellow Aussie/NZ fighters but all of my eyes (I only have two) are on Klein on this one. Such an insanely fun matchup.
Klein via KO R2
Welterweight
Diego Sanchez (30-12-0, NS) v Jake Matthews (16-4-0, 2 FWS) - I love how much of a big favourite Matthews is even though he’s facing a legend in Diego Sanchez, someones probably going to make a whole lot of money. Sanchez might be the strangest fighter both personality wise and his antics in the octagon, but he is no doubt one of the most experienced fighters on the roster. He’s exceptionally well rounded and he gets the job done in many cases. The big question here is whether or not Sanchez will be all there, he’s been knocked out and to many people out there he seems to be a shell of his former self. Now, my man Matthews has one hell of a mountain to climb this coming Sunday, it’s a large step up in competition considering his last fight was against Meek (who at the time of the fight, was 1-2 in the UFC). So to say that Matthews has an opportunity of a lifetime to pull a significant win and get his name in the spotlight is to put it pretty lightly. Matthews is very well rounded with a heavy focus on ground control to major tom. His grappling is excellent, and his relatively large frame allows him to smother his opponents and control everything that his opponent does. Now, will Sanchez be able to avoid the ground? Sure, he’s done it before, but each fight is different. This is a very interesting fight and I wonder how the stress/anxiety of Matthews will be handled, he’s been known to shrug off pressure and get to work without any forethought, but I feel like Sanchez has this one, very controversial I know, you can yell at me in the comments below, so feel free to bet against this, the reasoning why I think Sanchez wins this one is simply experience and knowledge. I just hope that Sanchez doesn’t somehow trip on DMT as he enters the Octagon.
Sanchez via Sub R2
Lightweight
Brad Riddell (8-1-0, 5 FWS) v Alex Da Silva (21-2-0, NS) - The more I watch RiddellThe more that I realize his style is very similar to Volkanovski, with a wide variety of feints which gives his opponent a false sense of varied attacks incoming, when in reality, it's just setting up a strong right hand. It’s exactly how he managed to knock down Mustafaev earlier this year, he started off with many different looks, then amongst the confusion, and the anticipation of something, Mustafaev got hit with the right hand. Riddell is a very good kickboxer, he’s extremely loose on the feet and has great defensive movements. The only thing he really needs to work on is his ground game, in both of his fights in the UFC, his opponents have taken him down numerous times, and whilst Riddell did manage to stand back up and power through, it wasn’t a very technical stand up. That’s pretty dangerous territory if you’re coming up against a submission specialist in Da Silva. Now, Da Silva isn’t only just a submission specialist, he has 13 knockouts as well so its clear that he’s got phenomenal power in his hands. He’s a high level finisher and I’m so glad the UFC picked him up at such a young age. He only has two losses, that’s pretty nuts. This is a very good fight, and I feel like if Riddell has an advantage here, it’s in the striking, it’s very advanced and the fact that he has a heavy focus on feints and different looks he gives off to his opponents, he’s going to be trouble for Da Silva whilst the fight stays on the feet, although i’m quite curious to see if he has upped his ground game and grappling defence a bit. Very interesting match up.
Riddell via UD
Main Card
Featherweight
Hakeem Dawodu (11-1-1, 4 FWS) v Zubaira Tukhugov (19-4-1, NS) - This is lowkey a banger. Dawodu is a solid kickboxer who has a solid background in Muay Thai (42-5-0), a prodigy in combat sports is what I feel Dawodu is. Dawodu has such great consistency with his accuracy and variety of techniques, his kicks are fast, his punches and combos are fast, he’s powerful and he’s always moving. If you watch him closely, no matter what he throws, he has his defence up ready for a counter from his opponent. Do not sleep on Dawodu. I don’t care if your house is on fire, shit it’s probably on fire coz it senses Dawodu on the screen. Tukhugov is well known for his escapades after the Khabib v Conor fight, and he probably boasts about his ability to punch an already defeated McGregor, but all that stuff aside, Tukhugov has very fast and powerful hands, but his most advantageous style over Dawodu is the grappling and Sando style that typically comes from being a cousin of a Nurmagomedov. I highly doubt Tukhugov will exchange with Dawodu. I clearly have Dawodu on this one, very confident with this pick, I just hope Dawodu can avoid the takedowns of Tukhugov.
Dawodu via KO R2
Women’s Bantamweight
Ketlen Vieira (#5) (10-1-0, NS) v Sijara Eubanks (#14) (6-4-0, 2 FWS) - This is a pretty interesting fight because Eubanks was in a fight fairly recently and whilst her being active is great and the opportunity to stack up wins is certainly there, I personally don’t think it’s safe nor smart to get back to back fights considering her history with rough weight cuts and weight misses. All that aside… Vieira is a dominant grappler and BJJ based fighter who drives for a takedown or a trip, she’s very much a ground based fighter and she’s going to be looking to get close and personal, get into a clinch situation and then take Eubanks down because Eubanks has strong striking, and not necessarily clean striking at that. Her only loss was against Aldana who is now headlining the next card after this one, so really that’s a pretty rough loss but it was against a dangerous opponent. Expect the fight to go to the ground during this fight, because Vieira will be looking for it consistently. Eubanks is, as I said before, coming off a decision win over Avila, and what that tells me is that she is going to be cutting weight twice within a month so that’s no doubt going to be detrimental to her health in the long run, but i’m not sure how much it will affect her performance, but i guess we’ll see how she looks at the weigh ins. Safe bet? Vieira, she’s got a great set of techniques that can take Eubanks to the ground and has the experience to keep her there.
Vieira via UD
Co-Main Event
Kai Kara-France (#8) (21-8-0, NS) v Brandon Royval (#12) (11-4-0, 3 FWS) - Now, before you scratch your head and say “Slayer, this isn’t the co-main”. Hear me out, I always do this with multi-championship bouts, and I firmly believe that Reyes v Blachowicz deserves more praise than “Co-Main”. Back to this fight. Kara-France is a very well rounded kickboxer coming out of City Kickboxing (which, I mean, doesn’t surprise me, it seems whenever Izzy is fighting, his whole team is, it’s one hell of a thing to see). Kara-France is a majestic fighter to watch, the way he moves and gets in and out of range, the way he switches stance to launch an attack then switches back almost instantaneously, his footwork is truly something to marvel at, and it’s the main reason why it’s been so successful. It’s just so hard for his opponents to keep track of. It seems to be the core technique of City Kickboxing to have excellent feints and well timed strikes from those feints, because every fighter coming from that camp does it exceptionally well. Kara-France is no different, he doesn’t rush for a finish, he sets a plan and executes it. Royval is still very new to the UFC and has one very good submission win over Tim Elliott, he’s clearly comfortable on the ground and with his relatively dominant time in LFA, it’s clear that the UFC is his next stage of evolution as a fighter. He’s got a very tough challenge ahead of him in Kara-France, but if he can take the fight to the ground I'm fairly confident he can make Kara-France struggle because he’s so fast on the ground. Not only is he fast, he’s significantly taller than Kara-France and longer, so it could be easier to maintain position or to slip in a choke. Either way, This feels like your typical striker v grappler fight and I have a feeling Kara-France has this one.
Kara-France via UD
Light Heavyweight Championship bout
Dominick Reyes (#1) (12-1-0, NS) v Jan Blachowicz (#2) (26-8-0, 3 FWS) - This is a fucking phenomenal fight. You have no idea how loudly I said “holy fucking shit” when I saw that these two were fighting. Reyes went 5 rounds and arguably won his fight against Jon Jones, we haven’t seen Jones in trouble like that in a long time and that’s why I firmly believe that Reyes has the toolset and athleticism to become the champion. Reyes’s background in American Football is pretty beneficial when it comes to MMA if you think about it, explosiveness and cardio are two of the main things for that particular sport and when transferred to MMA you get Reyes. Reyes has what seems like the perfect amount of power and speed, and we saw how much he can adjust in a championship fight against Jones and he exceeded everyone's expectations. The variety of strikes and targets he attacks is incredible and just shows how much he has implemented into his style so early on in his career. Blachowicz has some serious Fuck You power. The way he shut down Corey Anderson in the very first round with a powerful right hook just shows how dangerous he is. Blachowicz has an extensive record and with that record comes devastating knockouts and slick submissions. We have seen him dominate opponents on the ground, in that Jared Cannonier fight he managed to just smash and smother him the whole fight. I do honestly feel that Reyes in this case, having experienced Jones and his ability to survive and thrive, has no doubt added a substantial amount of experience to his fight game. I have Reyes on this, I’m very confident that Reyes has this, it doesn’t need to be a flashy fight, he can avoid the power of Blachowicz and just put on a striking clinic from a distance. This is an insane fight.
Reyes via KO R4
Main Event
Middleweight Championship Bout
Israel Adesanya (c) (19-0-0, 19 FWS) v Paulo Costa (#3) (13-0-0, 13 FWS) - Now, this is the fight I feel like all of us have been waiting for. This is going to be long. Adesanya is one of the biggest names in combat sports at the moment, his extensive kickboxing record has left a mark on that sport, and his introduction to the UFC has shaken the world of MMA. Adesanya has consistently proven to us that he can get it done, it doesn’t have to be a fancy or explosive finish, because at the end of the day, he still wins, and he’s going to win this time… or is he? Adesanya has every technique in the books covered, he has mastered the sport of striking, he has been capable of setting up submissions (See Gastelum fight), he is evasive, but he does have one glaring issue, and that’s the fact that Costa is fighting him. See, Adesanya has fought some big motherfuckers in his time, he has knocked out some huge fighters, and he has survived an onslaught. But everyone slips up, and as the promos about this fight say, someone's 0 has got to go, and we saw some openings in his fight against Gastelum where he suffers, and that’s his inside defence, he’s exceptional at evading and dodging attacks from a distance, but with Gastelums ability to hop into range and land a clean strike, we saw where Adesanya's defences lack, and that’s the movement. Now, before you scratch your head, look at where Adesanya has always been in trouble, against the cage. Costa has this remarkable ability to just constantly be in the face of his opponent and throw hooks, and hooks are dangerous for fighters who evade using lateral movement, it cuts off routes of escape, and I can see Costa cutting off the Octagon and landing solid strikes on Adesanya. Now, what Adesanya does best is counter, if he can counter the oncoming attack from Costa, and change angle to get out of the way, he’s got a very solid chance, and well, his range advantage (8 inches) will play an important role in this bout. Costa on the other hand is all offense. His fight against Romero? Evident that he has the power and weaponry to knock out Adesanya, but he needs to cover that distance first, and by the time Costa goes from his position in the Octagon, to where Izzy is, Izzy is to Costa's left, or right, way out of danger. Costa needs to find an opening, catch a body kick, do something to get into that range where he can land some solid hooks, but this fight is that hard to predict, that anything can happen. Costa is the definition of power. Whether it's Costa winning by KO R1 through 5, or Izzy winning via KO or UD in any round, this is one of those fights that is near impossible to predict. In my honest opinion, I feel like Izzy will simply outstrike Costa, and perhaps knock him out in the championship rounds, so here’s the official prediction.
Adesanya via KO R4
There we go!
See, a few controversial picks, so please implement your own bets into this, i doubt i'll get all of these correct, some ballsy picks haha.
If you would like to follow me on twitter, you can find me @Slayer_Tip or if you want, add me on discord and we can have a super friendly chat about all things MMA: Slayertip#7013
With all of that said and done, I hope to see you guys in the comments down below, it's an amazing event, and I wouldn't pick a better community to share my thoughts and have a discussion with than you fine people.
Much love and happiness to all.
o/
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