Why Firing Comey Only Amplified Trump’s Russia Problem

People have called it a misstep that Trump fired Comey if he hoped to bury the concerns about his campaign’s ties to Russia. He usually has a knack for redirecting the country’s attention away from ‘that man behind the curtain.’ But if it was a mistake, it probably was inevitable with his ballooning ego. The enfant terrible’s arrogant sense that he can get away with anything is growing beyond all bounds — and, hopefully, will be his undoing, as suggested by the rampant comparisons to Nixon’s firing of Archibald Cox during the Watergate investigation — the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre”. Leading Republicans are denouncing Trump’s action and calling for a special prosecutor. Hopefully, things have reached a point where the more Trump tries to obfuscate the more the press and the public pay attention.

Source: WIRED

U.S. voters think Trump is an “idiot,” and now trust media more than him to tell truth: Quinnipiac poll

‘Not a good day in the polls for the beleaguered President. Everyone knows he’s lying, and when asked, “What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump,” the top answer? “Idiot.”

A new Quinnipiac poll shows that American voters, “who gave President Donald Trump a slight approval bump after the missile strike in Syria, today give him a near-record negative 36 – 58 percent job approval rating.”

Also in this survey, the widest margin ever measured for this question in a Quinnipiac poll: 54-38% want the Democrats to take control of the House.’

Source: Boing Boing

How the Cookie Crumbles

I always liked Hydrox far better than Oreos and wondered why they lost out.

‘A few years after the launch of Sunshine Biscuits, the company came up with the biscuit sandwich it called Hydrox in 1908—four years before the Oreo. Like the sunlight that glimmered through its factories, the name was intended to speak to a basic purity of product.

The truth was a bit more complicated, however. Intended to imply hydrogen and oxygen—the two chemicals that make up water—the result has a more clinical, less roll-off-the-tongue convention to it, and instead evokes hydrogen peroxide, a chemical you probably don’t want to drink.

And it didn’t help that that there was an existing Hydrox Chemical Company on the market, one that sold hydrogen peroxide andwas caught up in a trademark lawsuit at the time over the use of the word “hydrox”—a lawsuit that noted the term was used for coolers, for soda, even for brands of ice cream.

Hydrox cookie

An early Hydrox cookie design. (via the Akron Evening Times)

Long story short, it was a weird name for a cookie. But the cookie’s design, which was initially sold with an exotic “English biscuit” twist, was pretty interesting for its era: With an industrial press from a mold, the cookie took on the look of a flower.

It felt like a game-changer, but it turned out to be a game-changer for Nabisco, under a completely different (and better) name. It was one of three cookies introduced by Nabisco on April 2, 1912, with the other two—the Mother Goose biscuit and the Veronese biscuit—being lost to history, but Oreo’s “two beautifully embossed chocolate-flavored wafers with a rich cream filling” living to the modern day…’

Source: Tedium