Midday open thread: GDP growth weak in 4th quarter;

Native women run for Congress

Midday open thread: GDP growth weak in 4th quarter; Native women run for Congress

o GDP growth for 4th quarter a paltry 0.7 percent: The Commerce Department reported Friday that
annualized growth in inflation- and seasonally-adjusted gross domestic product clocked in at 0.7
percent in the October-December period. Growth for all of 2015 was 1.8 percent. That compares
with 2.1 percent in 2014. The rate in the last quarter of the year was affected by households
reducing their spending, businesses cutting investment, weak global demand and a strong dollar
which hurt exports. Many economists think 2016 could see even slower growth. Over the past six
decades economic growth as measured by GDP has been falling. In the 1950s-'60s, the average rate
was above 4 percent. In the 1970s-'80s, it fell to about 3 percent. In the past decade, the average
rate been below 2 percent. Friday's is the first of three reports on 4th quarter GDP growth. Two
updates will be released in February and March, and each could contain substantial revisions
because better data are available as time goes on.
What's coming up on Sunday Kos ...
Ken Light's 'What's Going On? 1969-74,' by Susan GrigsbyIt's all about the vote, and all of us are
complicit, by Egberto WilliesWhat is it about political correctness that pisses off Read More the
right, by Mark E AndersenPlanet nine from outer space, by DarkSydeAre anti-poverty programs
really substitutes for reparations, by Vann R Newkirk IIDo Janet Yellen and Bernie Sanders agree on
more than what's the coolest hair color, by Ian ReifowitzHow to really make America great again:
Get rid of 'the dumbest idea in the world,' by David AkadjianBernie vs. Hillary: Idealist vs.
pragmatist? Or revolution vs. establishment, by Sher Watts SpoonerWhy we need Black History
Month more than ever, by Denise Oliver VelezEmails, little Eichmanns, lifeworlds, and right-wing
trolls, by Chauncey DeVegaThe two certainties of health care reform, by Jon PerrMaking many

murderers, by Frank Vyan Walton

o Translators find advanced astronomical geometry in Babylonian clay tablets:
The medieval mathematicians of Oxford, toiling in torchlight in a land ravaged by plague, managed
to invent a simple form of calculus that could be used to track the motion of heavenly bodies. But
now a scholar studying ancient clay tablets suggests that the Babylonians got there first, and by at
least 1,400 years.
The astronomers of Babylonia, scratching tiny marks in soft clay, used surprisingly sophisticated
geometry to calculate the orbit of what they called the White Star -- the planet Jupiter.
Glad these translators are so clever. If they'd said these tablets are just Zirat-Banit's discarded
grocery lists, how would we know?
o Co-Founder of Jefferson Airplane Paul Kantner dead at 74:
Paul Kantner, a founding member of Jefferson Airplane, one of the definitive San Francisco
psychedelic groups of the 1960s, and the guiding spirit of its successor, Jefferson Starship, died. He
was 74. [...]
Mr. Kantner died just weeks after it was announced that Jefferson Airplane would receive a Lifetime
Achievement Grammy Award next month.
o Immigrant women object to "disturbing" strip searches: Women detained in the Santa Ana City Jail
in Orange County, California, are routinely forced to remove their clothing by officers "without
reasonable suspicion, sometimes by members of the opposite gender, in view of other detainees,

[and] in unsanitary conditions," their legal complaint says. One woman, Nicole Albrecht
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/01/29/1476881/-Midday-open-thread-GDP-growth-weak-in-4th-q
uarter-Native-women-run-for-Congress