January 27 AND 28, 2018
News and Views
BERNIE ISN’T TALKING MUCH YET, BUT HE DOES SEEM TO BE “WALKIN’ THE WALK.” I DO HOPE INTENSELY THAT HE WILL RUN, NOT JOG AS HIS SON SAID, AND WIN THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION (IF HE RUNS AS A DEMOCRAT). IT REALLY IS BETTER FOR HIM TO RUN INSIDE THE PARTY SO HE DOESN’T DRAW ALL THE STEAM OUT OF THE DEM CANDIDATE, AND THEN ALSO LIKELY NOT WIN. THIRD PARTY CANDIDATES DON’T USUALLY WIN UNLESS THEY REALLY ARE A POWERFUL CANDIDATE. I WANT SOMEBODY STRONG-WILLED, INTELLIGENT AND ELOQUENT TO GO UP AGAINST TRUMP.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-says-shutdown-was-morally-the-right-thing-to-do-for-dreamers/
By EMILY TILLETT CBS NEWS January 28, 2018, 12:38 PM
Sanders says shutdown was morally "the right thing to do" for Dreamers
VIDEO – FACE THE NATION
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, says the 3-day-long government shutdown that briefly brought Washington grinding to a halt was "the right thing to do" in order to stand up for "Dreamers."
Transcript: Sen. Bernie Sanders on "Face the Nation"
"I think from a moral perspective it was the right thing to do. And that is to say to these 800,000 young people, we are not going to allow them to be subjected to deportation," Sanders told CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
Sanders said short-term continuing resolutions like the one that ended the shutdown by funding the government at current levels through Feb. 8 are "very detrimental to the military and to many other agencies of government."
"We are a $4 trillion government. There are areas where we should be spending more money, areas where we should be spending less money. But you cannot simply spend in every division of the government the same amount as you spent last year," he said. "It's a terrible, terrible and inefficient way to run a government."
While both Republicans and Democrats have called for DACA legislation to protect Dreamers, Sanders said he still has concerns about the Trump administration's other priorities in any immigration bill, such as cuts to legal immigration programs.
"We cannot let [Dreamers] be put in a position where they're subjected to deportation," he said. "So the main focus to my mind has got to be to make sure that Dreamers have legal status and a path toward citizenship."
The senator says that his main issue lies with the administration's proposed border wall, which he mocked as a "great idea" in 15th-century China but "not so smart today when we have technology that is much more effective and more cost-effective in terms of protecting the border."
Sanders declined to comment on whether he plans to run for president in 2020, following reports this week that he has huddled with his political inner circle.
"There is no big news. You know, I talk to my coworkers, political advisors every other week, every week. We do it by telephone. Occasionally we get together. So I'm afraid to say it was not a big deal," Sanders said.
Speculation about another run kicked into high gear when Sanders' son Levi tweeted that "Bernard is seriously contemplating a run in 2020 and I don't mean a jog." Sanders said his son was mistaken.
"I love my son very much, but he is not aware of all of the things we're doing," the elder Sanders said. "Really, right now, what our focus is is on 2018. It's making, doing everything that we can to see that the Democrats regain control of the Senate, and the House, and some governors' chairs as well."
© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
JUST WHAT WE NEED – A BRAND NEW SEXUAL HARASSMENT/ASSAULT SCANDAL.
MEN LIKE WYNN, INCLUDING DONALD TRUMP AND BILL CLINTON, HAVE MUCH MORE THAN AN OUTSIZED DESIRE FOR SEXUAL GRATIFICATION AND A COMPULSION TO ASSAULT. THEY HAVE, ACCORDING TO SOME PSYCHOLOGISTS A BONA FIDE “ADDICTION” TO SEX. THIS IS “SICK AND SAD,” AS WELL AS CRIMINAL.
IT SHOULD BE PUNISHED WITH JAIL TIME OR AT LEAST MONTHS TO YEARS OF PSYCHIATRIC THERAPY, ACCORDING TO HOW VIOLENT OR OTHERWISE THREATENING THE ASSAULTS ARE. AS A SOCIETY WE SIMPLY HAVEN’T ADDRESSED IT AS A “REAL PROBLEM,” BECAUSE IT IS MAINLY HAPPENING TO WOMEN.
THERE WAS ONE INCIDENT OF A WORKER ON AN OCEANIC OIL DRILLING RIG WHERE THE MEN GOT SO “HUNGRY FOR SEX,” OR “CRUEL” THAT SOME OF THEM PRESSURED A MAN ON THE CREW IN THE SAME WAY. IT ALSO HAPPENS FREQUENTLY IN PRISONS. WE DON’T HEAR ABOUT THAT AS MUCH AMONG WOMEN IN RELATION TO WOMEN AND GIRLS, BUT I HAVE NO DOUBT THAT IT DOES OCCUR IN REGARD TO WOMEN AS WELL. PEOPLE AREN’T MERELY SINFUL, THEY ARE SICK. THAT’S WHAT JESUS SAID AT ONE POINT IN THE BIBLE (I DON’T REMEMBER WHERE.) MENTAL ILLNESS IS NOT AN IMAGINARY CONDITION.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/01/27/steve-wynn-sexual-misconduct-allegations-could-hurt-gop/1071968001/?csp=chromepush
Steve Wynn resigns as RNC finance chair
Ledyard King, USATODAY Published 2:22 p.m. ET Jan. 27, 2018 | Updated 2:49 p.m. ET Jan. 27, 2018
Photograph – President Trump is set to deliver his first State of the Union Tuesday, but, for many of the President’s political opponents, the real State of the Union will be Monday night. Veuer's Nick Cardona (@nickcardona93) has that story. Buzz60
WASHINGTON — Steve Wynn has resigned as the Republican National Committee Finance Chair following sexual assault allegations against the billionaire CEO of Las Vegas-based Wynn Resorts, a Republican official familiar with the decision confirmed to USA TODAY.
"Today I accepted Steve Wynn’s resignation as Republican National Committee Finance Chair," Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said Saturday in a statement to Politico.
Wynn was reported to have engaged in sexual misconduct with company employees over decades, according to a Friday report by The Wall Street Journal.
Wynn has had a complicated relationship with Donald Trump: first as a casino-owning rival in Atlantic City during the 1990s, then as a Republican mega-donor whose first choice for the White House in 2016 was Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, and lately as one of the president's closest confidantes.
Wynn's abrupt departure threatens to complicate the party's fundraising efforts heading into an already challenging mid-term election cycle for the GOP.
And the accounts of Wynn's alleged tawdry behavior — the latest in a series of high-profile men who have been accused of improperly using their power to pressure female employees and other women into sex — will focus more attention on similar accusations that have been made against Trump.
Further complicating matters is that Democrats are now pressuring Republicans to return the money Wynn gave them in the same fashion that the GOP demanded Democrats give back donations from disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
“This is the Republican Party,” DNC deputy communications director Sabrina Singh said in a statement Friday. “This is the party of Donald Trump, Roy Moore, Joe Arpaio and Trent Franks. Democrats will refuse to stand by while the Republican Party denigrates women. We will continue to march side by side with women all across this country because we believe that women must be empowered and respected.”
It's not just Democrats who are trying to tie the accusations against Wynn to similar ones leveled against Trump.
“Steve Wynn needs to go," Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of UltraViolet, a leading women’s advocacy organization. "He is a predator of the worst kind who used his position of power to sexually coerce his female employees. It is sadly no surprise that he keeps company with people like Donald Trump — a man who follows the same playbook of sexual abuse."
Wynn has refuted the accusations.
According to the Wall Street Journal report, the alleged incident was referenced, in broad terms, in a lawsuit filed by Elaine Wynn, Wynn's ex-wife, against the casino mogul and the gaming company.
"It is clear that Mr. Wynn's ex-wife has sought to use a negative public relations campaign to achieve what she has been unable to do in the courtroom: tarnish the reputation of Mr. Wynn in an attempt to pressure a revised divorce settlement from him," Wynn Resorts said in a statement issued Friday.
"It is noteworthy that although Ms. Wynn says she knew about the 2005 allegations involving Mr. Wynn in 2009, she never made them known to the board of directors, of which she was then a member, and she did not raise them until after Mr. Wynn remarried and the shareholders of Wynn Resorts voted not to elect her to the board," the statement said.
"Beyond this incident, dozens of people the Wall Street Journal interviewed who have worked at Mr. Wynn’s casinos told of behavior that cumulatively would amount to a decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Wynn," the newspaper report said. "Some described him pressuring employees to perform sex acts."
Among other things, the report cited accounts from former employees who said they entered fake appointments in casino salon calendars to help female employees to avoid Wynn requests for services in his office suite.
Others recounted incidents in which female employees hid in the bathroom or back rooms when they learned Wynn was on the way to the salon, the Journal reported.
Contributing: Doug Stanglin
“A PAIN SPECIALIST IN THE VIDEO ALSO STATED THAT "THE RATE OF ADDICTION AMONGST PAIN PATIENTS WHO ARE TREATED BY DOCTORS IS MUCH LESS THAN 1 PERCENT." THE COMPANY SAYS IT CORRECTED ITS MARKETING, AND IN 2007, IT PLEADED GUILTY TO MISBRANDING. BUT OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL MIKE DEWINE SAYS THE COMPANY CONTINUED DECEPTIVE MARKETING THROUGH 2014.”
NOT MANY YEARS AGO THE PROBLEM WAS MARIJUANA, COCAINE, ETC., BUT NOW IT’S PRESCRIPTION DRUGS AGAIN. MEANWHILE, BIG PHARMA MAKES NO NOTICEABLE CHANGES AND THE GOVERNMENT ALLOWS THEM TO CONTINUE IN THAT WAY. WHY? BECAUSE BIG PHARMA AND THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRIES RUN THE GOVERNMENT. THERE IS VERY LITTLE CONTROL ON BUSINESS, WHICH IS WHAT THE REPUBLICANS WANT, OF COURSE. SADLY, DEMOCRATS TAKE BRIBES ALSO, I’M SURE. THIS IS THE KIND OF STORY THAT JUST MAKES ME SAD.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drug-companies-flex-lobbying-muscle-in-fight-against-state-opioid-lawsuits/
By JULIANNA GOLDMAN, LAURA STRICKLER CBS NEWS January 25, 2018, 7:45 PM
Drug companies flex lobbying muscle in fight against state opioid lawsuits
Drug makers and distributors accused of fueling America's opioid crisis will be in federal court in Cleveland next week. They are trying to negotiate a settlement as they face hundreds of lawsuits and potentially dozens more from the states -- with a flurry of maneuvering behind the scenes.
"Now I can enjoy every day that I live, I can really enjoy myself," said Johnny Sullivan, a patient Purdue Pharma profiled in a 1998 promotional video.
The video was video sent to 15,000 primary care doctors in 1998 from Purdue Pharma, the company that made $35 billion from the sales of the painkiller Oxycontin.
A pain specialist in the video also stated that "the rate of addiction amongst pain patients who are treated by doctors is much less than 1 percent."
The company says it corrected its marketing, and in 2007, it pleaded guilty to misbranding. But Ohio Attorney General Mike Dewine says the company continued deceptive marketing through 2014.
"It is very addictive and the drug companies knew that and they lied about it," he said.
More than 35 state attorneys general are investigating and negotiating with the opioid distributors and manufacturers in a group known as the "multi-state." But states like Ohio grew impatient with the slow pace of settlement talks.
So in May, Dewine sued Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solutions, Allergan, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Johnson and Johnson. Eleven other states filed suit after Ohio. Purdue recently tried to persuade Dewine to drop Ohio's lawsuit and go back to the negotiating table.
"There's a lot at stake for them, so they have been very aggressive," Dewine said. "They've lawyered up. They've hired lobbyists."
America's opioid epidemic
Lawmaker pushes to focus opioid epidemic fight on international mail
It's a high-stakes, behind the scenes campaign to try and reduce potential damages. Donations from drug companies to political associations for state attorneys general have risen in the past three years, totaling almost $700,000 to Democrats and $1.7 million to Republicans. The contributions are legal, but they allow companies to gain access to the attorneys general at exclusive meetings, golf outings and high-end dinners where they can urge them not to sue.
Paul Nolette is a state government expert and a professor at Marquette University.
"Those under investigation are trying to influence the investigators by giving large amounts of money. They are not doing so out of the goodness of their heart," Nolette said.
Opioid manufacturers and distributors spent more than $100,000 to partially sponsor one meeting in San Francisco of attorneys general from western states. Last year, at a dinner at a Georgia resort, top corporate donors got "preferred seating" with attorneys general.
At a meeting last spring in Portland, Oregon, representatives from two opioid companies that had given the Democratic Attorneys General Association a combined $65,000 -- Mallinckrodt, which had given $50,000 and McKesson, which gave $15,000 -- got to speak on a panel, telling a group that they were not responsible for the opioid crisis, according to several attendees.
While there are nationwide rules for Congressional lobbyists, there are none when it comes to lobbying state attorneys general. Those lobbyists don't have to say how much they're being paid or with whom they meet.
"There's going to be real questions about whether that money ended up influencing how the AGs conducted their settlement," Nolette said.
Purdue Pharma declined our request for an on-camera interview, but released a statement saying:
"We are deeply troubled by the prescription and illicit opioid abuse crisis, and we are committed to working collaboratively with industry, policy makers and all other stakeholders to help solve this public health challenge. Although our medicines account for approximately 2% of total opioid prescriptions, for more than 15 years this company has led industry efforts to fight prescription drug abuse which includes collaborating with law enforcement, funding state prescription drug monitoring programs, and distributing the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. In addition, we've recently announced educational initiatives aimed at teenagers warning of the dangers of opioids and continue to fund grants to law enforcement to help with accessing naloxone*."
We were given a statement from the Republican Attorneys General Association saying:
"Elected leaders have an obligation to the people they serve to hear from all sides. This means meeting with key stakeholders in industry, grassroots organizations, law enforcement, advocacy groups and of course - their bosses - voters. Republican attorneys general follow all required legal guidelines to have these conversations, and they will continue to have them because they are committed to advancing solutions that make our communities and states safer and stronger."
The Democratic Attorneys General Association said:
"It's important to keep in mind that over the past year and half as DAGA has grown from a part-time committee to a full-time professional team, we have seen an uptick in contributions across the board including unions, advocacy groups, industry, and business. Our fundraising has doubled in that time.
The powers of state AGs vary not only by state, but also in breadth, depth, and scope-and the challenges Democratic AGs face are complex, especially under this current Administration. That is one of the many reasons DAGA 2.0 is facilitating panels and conversations with not only just members, but also with policy experts, advocacy groups, and key constituencies to make sure different opinions and perspective are shared-and that our AGs are hearing from a wide variety of voices on the intricate issues facing their states. "
© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
“ACCESSING NALOXONE*-- some localities do not have good access to Naloxone, which is a sort of antidote to opioid overdoses.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/medications-to-treat-opioid-addiction/access-to-naloxone
Medications to Treat Opioid Addiction
“Naloxone is an opioid antagonist that can reverse an opioid overdose. Naloxone access increased between 2010 and 2014 . . . .
Naloxone prescriptions dispensed from retail pharmacies increased nearly twelvefold between the fourth quarter of 2013 and the second quarter of 2015.
Many states have passed laws to widen the availability to naloxone for family, friends, and other potential bystanders of overdose.
. . . . After a naloxone training session, a majority of police officers reported that it would not be difficult to use naloxone at the scene of an overdose (89.7 percent) and that it was important that other officers be trained to use naloxone (82.9 percent). . . .”
ON THE ISSUE OF PROTECTING MUELLER IN HIS POSITION AS AN INDEPENDENT SPECIAL COUNSEL FROM BEING FIRED FOR ANY REASON THAT IS NOT CONSIDERED “JUST CAUSE,” SEE THE NEXT SEVERAL RELATED INSERTS. FIRST, HOWEVER, I SUGGEST YOU WATCH THE MADDOW BLOG ON THE SUBJECT. OF COURSE, IF YOU CAN “INDICT A HAM SANDWICH,” THESE TWO PROPOSED BILLS MAY NOT STOP TRUMP FROM TRYING, BUT IT’S A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/26/18
Senators rush to protect Mueller from Trump
Senator Cory Booker talks with Joy Reid about his concerns about Donald Trump's threat to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and legislation he has proposed to protect Mueller from Trump. Duration: 6:14
THIS IS A COMMONLY USED TERM, BUT I’VE NEVER SEEN A CLEAR DEFINITION OF IT, SO I’M GOING TO MY GOOD OLD FRIEND, WIKIPEDIA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_crisis
CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS
In political science, a constitutional crisis is a crisis of government administration, which the political constitution (or other basic principle of operation) of a legal system appears unable to resolve. The crisis usually interferes with the orderly operation of government. In general, a constitutional crisis results WHEN FACTIONS WITHIN A GOVERNMENT IDEOLOGICALLY DISAGREE ABOUT THE EXTENT TO WHICH EACH FACTION HOLDS SOVEREIGNTY TO LEGALLY EXERCISE ADMINISTRATIVE POWER. Specifically, a constitutional crisis results from internal conflict among the branches of government (executive, legislative, judiciary) or, in a federal system, between the state and federal levels of government.
“IN THE COURSE OF GOVERNMENT, THE CRISIS RESULTS WHEN ONE OR MORE OF THE PARTIES TO A POLITICAL DISPUTE WILLFULLY CHOOSES TO VIOLATE A LAW OF THE CONSTITUTION; OR TO FLOUT AN UNWRITTEN CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION; OR TO DISPUTE THE CORRECT, LEGAL INTERPRETATION OF THE VIOLATED CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OR OF THE FLOUTED POLITICAL CUSTOM. MOREOVER, IF THE CRISIS ARISES BECAUSE THE CONSTITUTION IS LEGALLY AMBIGUOUS, THE ULTIMATE POLITICO-LEGAL RESOLUTION USUALLY ESTABLISHES THE LEGAL PRECEDENT TO RESOLVE FUTURE CRISES OF CONSTITUTIONAL ADMINISTRATION. In the U.S. system of government, the Constitution does not explicitly address the matter of whether or not a state can legally secede from the Union; however, after the American Civil War (1861–65) thwarted the secession of the Southern United States, the accepted doctrine of constitutional law is that a state cannot legally leave the Union.
POLITICALLY, A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS CAN LEAD TO ADMINISTRATIVE PARALYSIS AND EVENTUAL COLLAPSE OF THE GOVERNMENT, THE LOSS OF POLITICAL LEGITIMACY, OR TO CIVIL WAR. A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IS DISTINCT FROM A REBELLION, WHICH OCCURS WHEN POLITICAL FACTIONS OUTSIDE A GOVERNMENT CHALLENGE THE GOVERNMENT'S SOVEREIGNTY, AS IN A COUP D'ÉTAT OR A REVOLUTION LED BY THE MILITARY OR BY CIVILIANS.”
ON THE TWO BILLS IN QUESTION, SEE GOVTRACK:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/s1735
COULD PRESIDENT TRUMP FIRE THE MAN LEADING THE INVESTIGATION INTO HIS CAMPAIGN’S TIES TO — AND POSSIBLE COLLUSION WITH — RUSSIA?
Two new Republican bills, the Special Counsel Independence Protection Act and the Special Counsel Integrity Act, would make such a firing much more difficult, if not impossible.
CONTEXT
Trump and his legal advisers are said to be considering firing Robert Mueller, who’s leading the special counsel investigation, according to a recent Washington Post report.
While Trump certainly expressed no qualms in May about firing FBI Director James Comey, who was previously leading the FBI’s Russia investigation, the FBI director serves at the pleasure of the president. Indeed, Bill Clinton fired FBI Director William Sessions in 1993. (Although not because of an investigation into Clinton.) But a special counsel is supposed to be beyond presidential reach.
No president has ever tried to fire a special counsel before, and some senators want to prevent Trump from being the first.
WHAT THE BILLS DO
The Special Counsel Independence Protection Act, introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), would allow a special counsel to be fired only if a federal court first establishes that they had exhibited “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or other good cause for removal.”
The Special Counsel Integrity Act, introduced the same day by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), would do essentially the same thing, but allow the judicial review to take place retroactively too. So if Trump fired Mueller, a three-judge panel could reinstate the special counsel within 14 days.
Few if any people, even within the Trump Administration, are really claiming that Mueller has yet met any of those disqualifying criteria such as “misconduct” or “incapacity.” So by bringing the ostensibly-nonpartisan judicial branch into the decision-making process for firing a special counsel, instead of just the more political executive branch, the hope is to make it almost impossible for a special counsel to be fired.
WHAT SUPPORTERS SAY
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) bill is notable for its three Democratic cosponsors, while Senator Tillis’ bill has 1 cosponsor, a Democrat. Supporters argue the legislation would protect the politicization or coercion of what is supposed to be an independent and nonpartisan investigation to find the truth.
“Checks and balances have served the country well for the past two hundred years,” Sen. Graham said in a press release. “We should all be interested in making sure that special counsels have oversight. Special counsels must act within boundaries, but they must also be protected. Our bill allows judicial review of any decision to terminate a special counsel to make sure it’s done for the reasons cited in the regulation rather than political motivation. I think this will serve the country well.”
WHAT OPPONENTS SAY
Trump opposes the Russia investigation in general, calling the entire thing “the single greatest witch hunt in American history.”
He claims the investigation is a charade promoted largely by Democrats in order to pin blame on a foreign power instead of on themselves for losing the last election. Trump called the investigation “biased” and noted that three of the members of the special counsel team have donated to Democratic candidates. (Although Mueller himself has never personally done so.)
Trump reportedly also expressed to aides his anger regarding Mueller’s potential ability to subpoena his tax returns, which he’d refused to publicly release during the 2016 campaign in violation of a decades-long common practice for presidential nominees.
ODDS OF PASSAGE
The ‘Protection Act’ has attracted three Senate cosponsors so far, all Democrats: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). The ‘Integrity Act’ has attracted one cosponsor so far, a Democrat: Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE). Both await possible votes in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Last updated Aug 10, 2017. View all GovTrack summaries.
NOW FOR SOMETHING POSITIVELY JOYOUS, AND EDUCATIONAL! THE SCIENTIST NODDY SAYS: “HE DESCRIBES A SOAP BUBBLE AS A NETWORK: "IT'S AN ELECTRICAL NETWORK, ISN'T IT? IT'S MOLECULES IN SPACE … AND THEY'RE LINKED TO EACH OTHER ELECTRICALLY. WHICH IS TO SAY, ONE END OF A SOAP MOLECULE IS ATTRACTED TO A NEARBY WATER MOLECULE ELECTRICALLY. THE BUBBLE IS THIS NETWORK. THE WHOLE THING IS INTER-DEPENDENT. IF I WERE TO SEPARATE A COUPLE OF MOLECULES RIGHT HERE, JUST A COUPLE OF DISTANCES APART FROM EACH OTHER, THE ENTIRE NETWORK WILL COME APART."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-beauty-and-science-of-bubbles/
CBS NEWS January 28, 2018, 9:40 AM
The beauty and science of bubbles
As some of us may recall, bubbles (ostensibly from champagne) were a trademark of the classic Lawrence Welk TV show. But wherever you find them, bubbles are genuine "pop stars," as Faith Salie now shows us:
There is something magical about soap bubbles. They seem to defy gravity - those floating, fleeting, iridescent orbs.
"They're almost not here on the physical plane with us," said Tom Noddy. "They exist in this other 'almost not here' place," he laughed.
Noddy should know. He's one of the world's foremost bubble artists, exploring the topsy-turvy, often wonderful world of bubbles for some 40 years.
bubble-artist-tom-noddy-promo.jpg
Bubble artist Tom Noddy. CBS NEWS
He creates bubbles inside of bubbles, smoke bubbles, clear bubbles, and more.
Along the way, he met "Sunday Morning"'s Charles Kuralt at San Francisco's Exploratorium in 1982. As Kuralt described it, "Bubbles trail away from him wherever he goes, in whatever breeze that blows. He is a wandering minstrel, and bubbles are his song."
From the archives: Bubble magic
Play VIDEO
From the archives: Bubble magic
Thirty-five years later, that "wandering minstrel" wandered back to the Exploratorium to show Salie his latest creations, like a bubble "volcano."
"My initial attraction was just the beauty," Noddy said. "The colors were so beautiful, the spheres were so nearly perfect. I didn't have a background in science. When I went to college, I majored in anti-war demonstrations, you know? I mean, really! But the only guys that knew anything about what I was doing were scientists."
Spend a minute or two with Noddy and you realize what really blows him away isn't the beauty, but the complexity of the lowly bubble.
He describes a soap bubble as a network: "It's an electrical network, isn't it? It's molecules in space … and they're linked to each other electrically. Which is to say, one end of a soap molecule is attracted to a nearby water molecule electrically. The bubble is this network. The whole thing is inter-dependent. If I were to separate a couple of molecules right here, just a couple of distances apart from each other, the entire network will come apart."
Or in other words … pop!
For years bubbles have been a staple of children's entertainment. But today you are just as likely to find them in the lab as you are at the playground. In professor James Bird's lab at Boston University, lots of experiments are bubbling away.
"Bubbles are important because they transport gases into liquids and liquid into gases," he said.
"They can affect the way that we might perceive or smell certain beverages, like champagne -- the aroma and the flavor is enhanced by having small bubbles that are able to, when they pop, make tiny jets that break up into little droplets."
Taste ice cream -- you're eating bubbles! When you "churn" ice cream, you are folding air into it. Without bubbles, ice cream would be hard as ice.
When you hear waves crashing, you're actually listening to bubbles form.
"Not many people know that the sound of the surf, the tinkling fountain, the babbling brook, the rushing waterfall, all those sounds are bubbles," said Grant Deane of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego. He counts bubbles in the ocean and in sea ice by, believe it or not, listening to them.
"Every time a bubble is formed, it makes a pulse of sound, these musical tones," Deane said. "It's like hitting a bell with a hammer. It radiates this pulse of sound."
water-bubbles-in-ocean-620.jpg
Water bubbles in the ocean. CBS NEWS
The sound a bubble makes depends on its size.
"As the bubbles get smaller and smaller, they radiate higher and higher tones," said Deane. "And so it's from the tone, the frequency that we can figure out the size of the bubble."
The more bubbles you have, the louder the surf is. By measuring tiny bubbles in the vast sea, Deane says we can understand the workings of our oceans.
"Bubbles lie at the heart of everything that's going on at the ocean's surface," he told Salie. "When a wave breaks, the bubbles are pushed into the water. As they do that, they help transfer gases from the atmosphere into the ocean. About a third of all the carbon dioxide we produce ends up in the ocean. And bubbles help carry it there."
There's no doubt bubbles connect our world in ways large and small, from the bubbles of oxygen that fill our lungs to the bubble wrap that keeps our packages safe.
mit-bubbles-in-circuit-244.jpg
Bubbles factor into a ring oscillator, part of a microfluidic computer. MIT
At MIT, scientists have built computers that use bubbles in circuits instead of electrical pulses to convey information.
Doctors are now even using microscopic bubbles to administer medicine -- popping them with ultrasound to precisely deliver drugs.
So the next time you see a bubble, take a minute to appreciate its delicate shape, its color, its mysteries … all before it pops!
"I had this memory of being with my aunt, who I loved, you know, and watching her blow some bubbles in sunlight, and my heart fluttered when I watched her," said Noddy. "There's mathematics to it -- it can be explained and discussed -- but it's just, there's something beautiful about that."
For more info:
Tom Noddy's Bubble Magic
Exploratorium, San Francisco
Boston University's Fluid Lab Uncovering Interfacial Dynamics
Grant Deane, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, U.C. San Diego
© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
MSNBC MADDOW
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/26/18
Mueller still vulnerable to Trump, Republican smears, sabotage
Neal Katyal, former acting solicitor general who wrote the special counsel rules, talks with Joy Reid about the vulnerabilities of the special counsel to smears and sabotage by Donald Trump and Republicans. Duration: 13:56
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/26/18
Can a sitting president be charged with a crime?
Nick Akerman, former Watergate prosecutor, talks with Joy Reid about the peculiar and nearly untested legal liabilities of the president of the United States. Duration: 8:44
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/25/18
Trump June firing of Mueller stopped by McGahn threat to quit:...
Michael Schmidt, Washington correspondent for The New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about breaking new reporting that Donald Trump ordered the firing of Robert Mueller based on dubious conflict accusations and only held back when Don McGahn threatened to quit over the matter. Duration: 17:59
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/25/18
Trump's intent at issue in effort to fire Robert Mueller
Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about the legal liabilities suggested by new reporting that Donald Trump ordered the firing of Robert Mueller for dubious reasons. Duration: 7:36
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/25/18
White House counsel McGahn oddly central in recent Trump stories
Bob Bauer, White House counsel to President Barack Obama, talks with Rachel Maddow about what can be inferred about the relationship between Donald Trump and White House counsel Don McGahn from reports including the New York Times story about Trump's order to fire Robert Mueller in June. Duration: 9:14
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/25/18
Trump evokes Richard Nixon again with June order to fire Mueller
Michael Beschloss, NBC News presidential historian, talks with Rachel Maddow about parallels between Donald Trump's desire to fire Robert Mueller and Richard Nixon's criticism of his investigation. Duration: 4:43
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/24/18
Trump lawyers quick to walk back Trump bluster on meeting Mueller
Rachel Maddow reports on Donald Trump boasting that he would be happy to testify to Robert Mueller's investigation under oath, only to have that statement promptly turned back back his lawyers making excuses for his outburst. Duration: 4:36
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/24/18
Manafort lawyers accidentally publish case notes not court doc
Rachel Maddow reports on Paul Manafort's lawyers apparently intending to publish a relevant court document to the court web site and instead apparently publishing a page of their case notes. Duration: 2:53
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/24/18
DoJ warns Nunes against political stunts with classified material
Rachel Maddow reports on a letter from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd to Rep. Devin Nunes, cautioning him that whatever political stunt he is trying to pull with classified material, he risks endangering national security in doing so. Duration: 8:47
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FACTCHECK THIS:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings
Findings and impact
A Guardian investigation revealed the true number of people killed by law enforcement, told the stories of who they were, and established the trends in how they died. The US government responded
Killings by US police logged at twice the previous rate under new federal program
US government pilot program, which draws on information collected by the Guardian, publishes first data gathered under new ‘hybrid’ counting system
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-government-finally-has-a-realistic-estimate-of-killings-by-police/
The Government Finally Has A Realistic Estimate Of Killings By Police
By Carl Bialik
Filed under Police Killings
DEC. 15, 2016 AT 4:59 PM
About 1,200 people were killed by police officers in the U.S. in the 12 months that ended in May, according to a federal report released Thursday. That number is much larger than government counts of police killings for earlier years — and is much more in line with private estimates.
Criminal justice researchers have long argued that official counts of police killings, which rely on voluntary reports from local police departments, are woefully incomplete. Over the past decade, about half a dozen efforts by activists, volunteers and media organizations have sprung up in response to widespread outrage about high-profile killings by police officers to try to fill the breach using information from media reports and other sources. Their annual death toll estimates since 2013 have generally ranged from 1,100 to 1,400, more than twice as high as the counts from official government sources.
Thursday’s report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics* is effectively an acknowledgment that the amateurs were right. It used media reports to fill in the gaps in data provided by law-enforcement agencies and reached a figure similar to those from the private groups.1
The corroboration by BJS of other outfits’ numbers “speaks to the power of some of what we’ve been collecting and what so many others have been collecting — that it’s really been able to approximate those numbers,” said Samuel Sinyangwe, who leads one of the volunteer efforts, Mapping Police Violence, and co-founded Campaign Zero, a group that promotes policy ideas that it says can reduce the number of people killed by police officers. Sinyangwe said the new estimate from BJS “sounds correct.” Mapping Police Violence lists 1,198 people killed by police during the period covered by the BJS report; the Guardian, which has been counting police killings since last year, lists 1,127.
Sinyangwe and other activists worry, however, that the government’s new efforts to collect better data on police killings won’t continue under Donald Trump and his nominee for attorney general, Jeff Sessions. If the Senate confirms Sessions, “I am skeptical about whether they will move forward with this,” Sinyangwe said. Spokespeople for Trump and Sessions didn’t return emails seeking comment.
The inadequacy of official statistics on police violence has drawn national attention since Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson, who is white, killed Michael Brown, a black man, in August 2014. Brown’s death and other high-profile police killings raised the profile of the Black Lives Matter movement and sparked a nationwide debate over police violence. But without reliable data, researchers couldn’t answer even basic questions about who was killed by police or whether the number of such deaths was rising or falling. FBI Director James Comey — whose agency, like BJS, is part of the Justice Department — last year called the lack of good data “ridiculous.”
Now the government is trying to improve its data. Last year, BJS researchers found that the agency’s existing methods of counting arrest-related deaths — basically, asking police departments to report totals — were probably missing about half of all cases. (Some researchers think even more were being missed.) Thursday’s report builds on that research by trying to find the deaths that were missing from official counts, using several methods.
First, researchers used automated searches to identify media articles and webpages that might contain information on arrest-related deaths — including shootings and other intentional killings (which BJS classifies as homicides), as well as suicides, accidents and deaths by natural cause. They then sorted those reports manually to find the ones to investigate further. Researchers also took advantage of the BJS’s existing contacts with the 18,000 local law-enforcement agencies around the country to go further than the nongovernmental efforts can. They contacted local law-enforcement agencies and medical examiners or coroners involved with deaths over a three-month period to confirm that the deaths happened and determine whether they should be counted; agencies and the researchers sometimes disagreed. (For example, some agencies resisted counting suicides or accidents that killed someone being pursued by police officers.)
The researchers also asked local agencies whether there had been any deaths that weren’t reflected in media accounts. That allowed them to estimate how many deaths their media-based counts were missing — information that BJS then applied to a full year of data to arrive at its annual death-toll estimate of 1,900, including 1,200 homicides. Deaths by suicide, accident and natural causes were more likely than homicides to get no media coverage.
“This hybrid approach was shown to, we think, really do a great job improving our coverage,” said Michael Planty, who co-wrote the report, is a deputy director at BJS and has been working for five years on measurement of arrest-related deaths. (The BJS counts deaths after arrests separately. In other reports released Thursday that were based on analyses that didn’t use new techniques, BJS reported that in 2014, 1,053 people died in local jails and 3,927 died in state and federal prisons — both figures higher than a year earlier.)
Using media accounts to supplement official reports has become a common research tactic in the grim accounting of terrorism, school shootings and police misconduct. Since 2009, the BJS has used what Planty called an “ad hoc” process of analyzing media accounts to improve its collection of police killings by identifying cases that agencies weren’t proactively reporting.
Speed-reading death reports and turning them into data is difficult and psychologically taxing work. The BJS contracted with RTI International, a nonprofit research organization based in North Carolina, to conduct much of the research. Between June and August 2015, a dozen RTI researchers read through and logged roughly 150,000 media reports that potentially contained information about a death. To try to reduce strain, “we limited folks to no more than 30 percent of their time a week,” said Duren Banks, a senior research criminologist at RTI and co-author of the new report. “It takes a little bit of a thick skin to read about this for hours on end.”
It also isn’t cheap. Even after researchers found ways to dramatically reduce the number of media articles that their algorithm flags, the work costs $40,000 a month, Planty said.
bialik-bjs-1
It’s not clear how the Justice Department will collect police-killings data in the future. The department hasn’t committed to adopting the methods described in the new report for its official statistics. (On Thursday afternoon, the department said it would release more information about its data-collection plans on Friday morning.) BJS has more work ahead of it, including reports planned for next year delving into the characteristics of people killed by police — other efforts have found that black Americans are killed at a rate much higher than their share of the population — and comparisons of its data with nongovernmental counts. The FBI is also mounting a parallel effort to get better data.
Activists worry that improving data on police killings, which has proceeded at a pace that many have found disappointing under President Obama, won’t be a priority in a Trump administration. This past summer, Trump blamed Black Lives Matter, without any evidence, for instigating killings of police officers, an issue he emphasized much more strongly in his campaign than killings by police officers. Planty, when asked whether he sensed that the change of administrations would affect BJS’s work in the area, said, “No.”
Even if BJS does proceed with more complete data collection, it won’t necessarily replace private estimates. Sinyangwe said he plans to continue his work regardless, because unlike BJS, which only aggregates deaths for statistical purposes, he and other independent counters provide details on individual deaths, allowing for more granular analysis.
D. Brian Burghart, who founded and runs another police killings database, Fatal Encounters, said the BJS effort was long overdue. He said he started his site because he “realized that the internet meant this information could no longer be hidden.” If the government improves the way it collects data, Burghart said, he would be happy to step aside after nearly five years.
Carl Bialik was FiveThirtyEight’s lead writer for news. @carlbialik
Bureau of Justice Statistics*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Justice_Statistics
The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is a federal government agency belonging to the U.S. Department of Justice and a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System. Established on 27 December 1979, the bureau collects, analyzes and publishes data relating to crime in the United States. The agency publishes data regarding statistics gathered from the roughly fifty-thousand agencies that comprise the U.S. justice system on its Web site.[1]
. . . .
BJS, along with the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), and other program offices, comprise the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) branch of the Department of Justice.
FOR A PEEK INTO THE DARKNESS, LOOK AT THIS ARTICLE FROM THE GEORGE W. BUSH ADMINISTRATION:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/us/front%20page/profiling-report-leads-to-a-clash-and-a-demotion.html
Profiling Report Leads to a Clash And a Demotion
By ERIC LICHTBLAU AUG. 24, 2005
WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 - The Bush administration is replacing the director of a small but critical branch of the Justice Department, months after he complained that senior political<b> officials at the department were seeking to play down newly compiled data on the aggressive police treatment of black and Hispanic drivers.
The demotion of the official, Lawrence A. Greenfeld, whom President Bush named in 2001 to lead the Bureau of Justice Statistics, caps more than three years of simmering tensions over charges of political interference at the agency. And it has stirred anger and tumult among many Justice Department statisticians, who say their independence in analyzing important law enforcement data has been compromised.
Officials at the White House and the Justice Department said no political pressure had been exerted over the statistics branch. But they declined to discuss the job status of Mr. Greenfeld, who told his staff several weeks ago that he had been asked to move on after 23 years of generally high marks as a statistician and supervisor at the agency. Mr. Greenfeld, who was initially threatened with dismissal and the possible loss of some pension benefits, is expected to leave the agency soon for a lesser position at another agency.
With some 50 employees, the Bureau of Justice Statistics is a low-profile agency within the sprawling Justice Department. But it produces dozens of reports a year on issues like crime patterns, drug use, police tactics and prison populations and is widely cited by law enforcement officials, policy makers, social scientists and the news media. Located in an office separate from the Justice Department, it strives to be largely independent to avoid any taint of political influence.
The flashpoint in the tensions between Mr. Greenfeld and his political supervisors came four months ago, when statisticians at the agency were preparing to announce the results of a major study on traffic stops and racial profiling, which found disparities in how racial groups were treated once they were stopped by the police.
Political supervisors within the Office of Justice Programs ordered Mr. Greenfeld to delete certain references to the disparities from a news release that was drafted to announce the findings, according to more than a half-dozen Justice Department officials with knowledge of the situation. The officials, most of whom said they were supporters of Mr. Greenfeld, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel matters.
Mr. Greenfeld refused to delete the racial references, arguing to his supervisors that the omissions would make the public announcement incomplete and misleading. Instead, the Justice Department opted not to issue a news release on the findings and posted the report online.
Some statisticians said that decision all but assured the report would get lost amid the avalanche of studies issued by the government. A computer search of news articles found no mentions of the study.
Congressional opponents of racial profiling, who have criticized what they see as an ambivalent stance on the issue by the Bush administration, said they were frustrated to learn that the Justice Department had completed the Congressionally mandated study without announcing its findings or briefing members of Congress on it. They accused the Justice Department of effectively burying the findings to play down new data that would add grist to the debate over using racial and ethnic data in law enforcement and terrorism investigations.
"My suspicions always go up if a report like this is just deep-sixed," said Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, who is dean of the Congressional Black Caucus and plans to introduce legislation this fall that would ban the use of racial or ethnic police profiling.
The April study by the Justice Department, based on interviews with 80,000 people in 2002, found that white, black and Hispanic drivers nationwide were stopped by the police that year at about the same rate, roughly 9 percent. But, in findings that were more detailed than past studies on the topic, the Justice Department report also found that what happened once the police made a stop differed markedly depending on race and ethnicity.
Once they were stopped, Hispanic drivers were searched or had their vehicles searched by the police 11.4 percent of the time and blacks 10.2 percent of the time, compared with 3.5 percent for white drivers. Blacks and Hispanics were also subjected to force or the threat of force more often than whites, and the police were much more likely to issue tickets to Hispanics rather than simply giving them a warning, the study found.
The authors of the study said they were not able to draw any conclusions about the reason for the differing rates, but they said the gaps were notable. The research "uncovered evidence of black drivers having worse experiences -- more likely to be arrested, more likely to be searched, more likely to be have force used against them -- during traffic stops than white drivers," the report concluded.
In April, as the report was being completed, Mr. Greenfeld's office drafted a news release to announce the findings and submitted it for review to the office of Tracy A. Henke, who was then the acting assistant attorney general who oversaw the statistics branch.
The planned announcement noted that the rate at which whites, blacks and Hispanics were stopped was "about the same," and that finding was left intact by Ms. Henke's office, according to a copy of the draft obtained by The New York Times.
But the references in the draft to higher rates of searches and use of force for blacks and Hispanics were crossed out by hand, with a notation in the margin that read, "Do we need this?" A note affixed to the edited draft, which the officials said was written by Ms. Henke, read "Make the changes," and it was signed "Tracy." That led to a fierce dispute after Mr. Greenfeld refused to delete the references, officials said.
Ms. Henke, who was nominated by Mr. Bush last month to a senior position at the Department of Homeland Security, said in a brief telephone interview that she did not recall the episode.
Brian Rohrkasse, a spokesman for the Justice Department, declined to discuss Mr. Greenfeld's job status, citing confidential personnel matters, but said that "there was no effort to suppress information since the report was released in its entirety." Mr. Rohrkasse said the department had also posted on its Web site a number of other statistical reports without issuing news releases.
Mr. Greenfeld declined to discuss the handling of the traffic report or his departure from the statistics agency. But he emphasized in an interview that his agency's data had never been changed because of political pressure and added that "all our statistics are produced under the highest quality standards."
As a political appointee named to his post by Mr. Bush in 2001, "I serve at the pleasure of the president and can be replaced at any time," Mr. Greenfeld said. "There's always a natural and healthy tension between the people who make the policy and the people who do the statistics. That's there every day of the week, because some days you're going to have good news, and some days you're going to have bad news."
When asked if those political pressures had grown worse for his agency lately, as many of his employees asserted in interviews, he said: "I don't want to comment on that. It's just a fact of life."
Disputes between statisticians and policy makers at the Justice Department have flared occasionally over the years, particularly over the question of what credit if any the administration in power could take for dips in national crime rates. But a senior statistician, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that "in this administration, those tensions have been even greater, and the struggles have been harder."
Another veteran statistician said: "Larry wanted to ensure that the integrity of the data was not compromised, and that's what's causing a lot of anxiety. We've seen a desire for more control over B.J.S. from the powers that be, and that's what seemed to get Larry in trouble."
Amid the debate over the traffic stop study, Mr. Greenfeld was called to the office of Robert D. McCallum Jr., then the third-ranking Justice Department official, and questioned about his handling of the matter, people involved in the episode said. Some weeks later, he was called to the White House, where personnel officials told him he was being replaced as director and was urged to resign, six months before he was scheduled to retire with full pension benefits, the officials said.
After Mr. Greenfeld invoked his right as a former senior executive to move to a lesser position, the administration agreed to allow him to seek another job, and he is likely to be detailed to the Bureau of Prisons, the officials said.
The administration has already offered the director's job at the statistics agency to a former official there, Joseph M. Bessette, but he turned it down, officials said. In an interview, Mr. Bessette declined to discuss his conversations with the administration but was quick to praise Mr. Greenfeld's work.
"I've never met a finer public servant," Mr. Bessette said, "and I think the agency has been taken to new heights by Larry."
https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-counted/a-note-to-our-readers/765675203580600/
A note to our readers
THE COUNTED·TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2017
The Counted will not be tracking officer-involved deaths in 2017.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI have committed to reforming how they track officer-involved deaths, partly in response to the Guardian's investigation. Our journalists remain committed to covering criminal justice news in the US — and will continue to monitor the federal government's efforts to reform how it tracks arrest-related deaths. You can read more on that topic here. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/us-police]
Thank you to those who have read the reports, submitted tips, and helped spur this change,
– The Counted Team
GOAT YOGA – ARE YOU FEELING LOW TODAY? WATCH THIS VIDEO. THESE GOATS AREN’T BABIES. THEY’RE PYGMY GOATS, AND THEY’RE FRIENDLY. I’VE ENCOUNTERED GOATS FACE TO FACE SEVERAL TIMES IN MY LIFE, AND THEY COME UP TO GET THEIR NOSES RUBBED. WONDERFUL ANIMALS.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/welcome-to-goat-yoga/
CBS NEWS January 21, 2018, 9:47 AM
Welcome to Goat Yoga
We "kid" you not -- pygmie goats are the hottest thing in yoga, as our Luke Burbank found out:
It's a typical Sunday at Laughing Frog Yoga Studio in Santa Monica, California, and yoga enthusiasts are lined up, mats in hand, ready to go. But this particular class can't start until two of its most adorable participants show up: Floyd and Roscoe.
"They're really funny creatures. They're affectionate, they're social, but the thing that is really neat about goats is that they seem to bring out the best in people," said Floyd and Roscoe's "mom," Michelle Tritten.
"People really have a good time with them," she said. "They say things like, 'This is the best day of my life. I can't remember the last time I smiled this big,' And so it's, like, they make people feel good.
"The goats have no boundaries, they'll do anything."
And she means anything. Yoga enthusiast Sarah Dawson was peed on. "Yes, which I believe is very lucky," she laughed. "So hopefully now I'm gonna win the lottery this week, or something good is gonna happen. My mat is a little bit wet!"
goat-yoga-perched-on-bottom-620.jpg
A practitioner of goat yoga. CBS NEWS
If yoga is "all about breathing," then goat yoga might be all about laughter.
Now, Goat Yoga just seems like something they would have invented in Southern California. But it actually got its start in 2016, almost a thousand miles to the north, in the central Oregon town of Albany.
Morse started offering this "goat therapy" to others, hosting "goat happy hours," where people could come and just hang out with the goats. That led to a conversation with a friend who, it just so happens, is a yoga instructor.
"The goats are all around us," Morse recalled. "And she's like, 'You should really let me have a yoga class out here.' I said, 'Okay, but the goats are going to be all over the humans. You know this, right?' And she was like, 'Cool.'"
The idea took off immediately.
"Thousands of people were lining up to do these classes," Morse said. "At the end I had, like, 2,400 people on this waitlist to do Goat Yoga."
In fact, it proved so popular that Morse eventually quit her marketing job to run Goat Yoga full time: "I have big and small, old and young. People who've never even tried yoga before come to these classes."
There's no denying more and more people are seeing goats less and less as just livestock … and goats looking cute and making silly sounds seem to be popping up everywhere, from the Country Music Awards to YouTube, thanks in part to Leanne Lauricella. She was working as a corporate event planner when she got two baby goats on a whim.
"What surprised me about being a goat owner was how much I liked it -- working outside with goat poop and hay and straw," Lauricella said. "The more time that I spent outside cleaning stalls, the less that I wanted to go back to the city and go to work.
"So I took the plunge and quit my job with zero plans, and on my first day of unemployment Instagram featured one of my photos on their homepage, and I got, like, 30,000 followers within a few hours. I took it as a sign that I was on the right track."
Today Lauricella's full time job is caring for the "Goats of Anarchy" -- her Instagram-famous herd of mostly disabled goats from her home in rural New Jersey.
"Luckily, because of social media, people are finding out, 'There's crazy goat lady in New Jersey that will take your goat with no legs,'" Lauicella said.
Burbank asked, "Are you okay with us putting that message out on CBS television? That there's a crazy goat lady in New Jersey that will take your special needs goat?"
"Sure!" she said.
And if there's an especially legendary goat … sort of the Kim Kardashian of ruminants … it would have to be Polly, a blind goat that (according to Lauricella) suffered from anxiety attacks unless it was wearing a duck costume.
Polly and Her Duck Costume... this was one year ago! Time flies! Do you have Polly's book about her costume yet? Just click on the link in our bio to find all of our books, and our 2018 calendar! 100% of the proceeds go into the GOA fund to support the goats!
A post shared by Goats of Anarchy (@goatsofanarchy) on Oct 15, 2017 at 8:47am PDT
And yes, Polly's story is now the subject of a kid's book, "Polly and Her Duck Costume" (Walter Foster Jr. Books).
And it took her a while, but even Lauricella has embraced Goat Yoga at her farm … at least, her version of it. "We use full-size goats; we don't use baby goats," she said. "So this is yoga at your own risk."
A risk Burbank was willing to take, in the barn that started it all back in Albany, Oregon.
It was fun … and actually a little harder than it looks, what with all the adorable distractions. After a "petting break," he got back to the session, before wrapping things up in the customary Goat Yoga fashion, with a chant, of baaaah-maste.
For more info:
Goat Yoga | Locations
Laughing Frog Yoga Studio, Santa Monica, Calif.
Goats of Anarchy
Follow Goats of Anarchy on Instagram
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