U.S. national security panel has cleared ChemChina's $43 billion takeover of Swiss pesticides and seeds group Syngenta (SYNN.S), the companies said, boosting chances that the largest foreign acquisition ever by a Chinese company will go through.

The decision removes significant uncertainty over the takeover of the world's largest pesticides maker after the two companies agreed a deal in February.

Syngenta did not disclose whether it had made concessions to secure approval but indicated that any such steps would not have a significant impact on its business.

Syngenta shares jumped 11.2 percent by 0900 GMT (0500 ET) to 423.4 Swiss francs ($439.7). ChemChina's $465 per share cash offer values the company at around 448 francs at current exchange rates plus a special five-franc dividend.

Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Christian Faitz called the step a "major milestone for the deal", adding in a note to clients that

"approval removes a major potential hurdle and should come as a relief to Syngenta shareholders". Kepler Cheuvreux rates Syngenta shares a "Buy". Reuters reported earlier on Monday that the acquisition was in the final stages of being cleared by a U.S. panel that scrutinizes deals for national security implications.

"China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) and Syngenta today announced that the companies have received clearance on their proposed transaction from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)," a joint statement released by Syngenta said.

The statement made no mention of any concessions required to win clearance.

<snip>

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syngenta-ag-m-a-chemchina-approval-idUSKCN10X0DS

Pfizer Inc. said Monday it has agreed to buy biotech Medivation Inc. for $81.50 a share, valuing the total company at about $14 billion, in a move that adds one of the crown jewels of the multibillion-dollar market for cancer drugs to Pfizer’s portfolio.

News of the impending deal was reported Sunday.

It ends months of bidding for San Francisco’s Medivation, one of the most desired independent biotechs because it sells a leading prostate-cancer drug.

The deal is a 21% premium to Medivation’s closing share price Friday. Medivation shares traded up 20% to $80.59 as Pfizer shares fell 0.1% to $34.95 in premarket trading.

Medivation’s drug, Xtandi, already generates about $2 billion in yearly sales and has potential to more than double, according to analysts.

<snip>
http://www.wsj.com/articles/pfizer-to-buy-medivation-for-14-billion-1471864168

And I don't care for all the anti-Russia animus being stirred up. Tensions are bad enough. Let's not fall back into old ways.

Clinton campaign manager suggests Donald Trump may be a 'puppet for the Kremlin'

http://www.businessinsider.com/robby-mook-donald-trump-kremlin-puppet-2016-8

At one minute:

golden tablets and talked with the angel Moroni and all. I'm not claiming Smith was a huckster, even though it's easy to interpret that story in such a way. Maybe he was just plumb nuts. In any case, he founded the Mormon religion. I don't want to mock Mormons. I don't suppose their beliefs are any more ridiculous than a lot of religious beliefs, but honestly, this guy is fucking insane. I can't imagine Vermont's stringent land use laws will accommodate his dream, but a billionaire with a determined agenda that flies directly in the face of what a place values, is still annoying.

Vermont Doesn't Want a Mormon Techno-Utopia

?

In 1954, Tracy Hall got sick of waiting around for the earth to spit out diamonds. He figured out how to press them into existence. David Hall, his son, is sick of waiting around for the earth to spit out idyllic communities, so he’s using his fortune and his father’s high-pressure strategy to try to build them. The man who built and sold Novatek, a company that supplies diamonds for use in oil drilling, is scooping up land around the world, shelling out millions in the hopes that he can finally build a Mormon techno-utopia.

We’re going to need to backtrack. Two centuries ago, Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Along with countless other apparent divine revelations, Smith offered his followers a vision of an ideal community, the Mormon utopia. He called it the Plat of Zion and he detailed its design and order. It was not just Smith’s ideal community; it was the ideal community. These towns would be agrarian, self-sufficient, pious and multitudinous. Each would accommodate 20,000 Mormons on a one-square-mile grid. Smith wanted his dream communities to “fill up the world,” but he failed to build even one.

Hall intends to use Smith’s plans to turn the prophet’s birthplace, Sharon, Vermont into a Plat. He’s already purchased about a thousand acres of idyllic Vermont farmland for upwards of $3.6 million and he’s not stopping there. He wants 5,000 acres to house 20,000 residents and he’s planning to spend a quarter of a billion dollars to make his NewVista development a reality.

<snip>

In Vermont, people take pride in the evidence of this process. Most towns aren’t on grids, and covered bridges from the 19th century have signs that read “Two Dollars Fine for Driving on This Bridge Faster than a Walk.” The Green Mountain State’s redneck and hippie communities can agree on this narrative, if not much else.

This character — along with cheap, abundant, isolated land — makes Vermont an attractive state for outsiders. Utopians have long seen opportunity and freedom in the state’s rolling hills. Beginning in the 1830s, acolytes from various religions, including Mormonism, came to establish colonies, the vast majority of which were eventually dismantled or relocated. The trend continued through the 20th century as social and political revolutionaries followed in the devout colonists’ tracks. In the 1960s and ‘70s, disaffected free thinkers nationwide banded together and headed for those alluring hills. Vermont was overrun with communes.

<snip>

These stringent policies are not the only aspects of Hall’s ideas infuriating would-be neighbors, who have a website dedicated to stopping his project. He’s behaved rashly. He’s buying up acres upon acres of open land in order to build prefabbed developments that won’t look anything like farmhouses or barns. He’s trying to bring 20,000 people to a town with a population of 1,500. To put that in perspective, Vermont’s state capital, Montpelier, has only about 8,000 people. “Coming in with a development at that scale is pretty antithetical to the whole spirit of Vermont,” Jacobs says.

<snip>

https://www.inverse.com/article/19500-david-hall-newvistas-mormon-utopia-sharon-vermont

To give the church credit, it has officially come out against Mr. Hall's plans for both Sharon, VT and Provo, Utah.

August 20, 2016 - 4:59pm
Mormon church opposes plan for futuristic, green communities in Utah, Vermont

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/mormon-church-opposes-plan-futuristic-green-communities-utah-vermont

How much more surreal can the Trump campaign get??

The former Minnesota congresswoman attended a fundraiser in the state for Trump on Saturday, where she revealed to the press that she has his ear on foreign policy.

“He also recognizes there is a threat around the world, not just here in Minnesota, of radical Islam,” she said, according to MPR News. “I wish our President Obama also understood the threat of radical Islam and took it seriously.


“He’s a common-sense guy, not into political correctness,” Bachmann added, according to the Star Tribune.

Bachmann is already part of Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board, providing “support” to Trump on “issues important to Evangelicals and other people of faith in America.”

<snip>


http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/292126-michele-bachmann-advising-trump-on-foreign-policy

For the first time in July, more than half of her fundraising haul came in checks under $200.

<snip>

Much of the fundraising strength was, for the first time, on the back of small donors, with whom Clinton fared much better as she clinched the Democratic nomination. Fully 58 percent of the July haul came in checks of less than $200, compared with just 31 percent across the cycle.

About $12.8 million of the small-dollar contributions came through the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee and state parties.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/hillary-clinton-small-donors-227234#ixzz4HyFXlkXU
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

Jared Taylor hits play, and the first Donald Trump ad of the general election unfolds across his breakfast table. Syrian refugees streaming across a border. Hordes of immigrants, crowded onto trains.

<snip>

Taylor, one of America’s foremost “racialists,” is impressed and relieved. “That’s a powerful appeal,” he said. “If he can just stick to that, he is in very good shape.”

From his Fairfax County home, Taylor has edited the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance and organized racialist conferences under the “AmRen” banner. He said that Trump should “concentrate on his natural constituency, which is white people,” suggesting that winning 65 percent of the white vote would overwhelm any Democratic gains with minorities.

When Trump made Breitbart News CEO Steve Bannon his campaign’s chief executive last week, Taylor found reasons to celebrate. It was the latest sign for white nationalists, once dismissed as fringe, that their worldview was gaining popularity and that the old Republican Party was coming to an end.

<snip>

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/racial-realists-are-cheered-by-trumps-latest-strategy/2016/08/20/cd71e858-6636-11e6-96c0-37533479f3f5_story.html

Not that I didn't know, but for me this did it. I dashed over to HRC's site and made a $27 dollar donation. And I think it was damned smart of the campaign to put that number up as a contribution amount. It's a nod to Bernie supporters and it lets the campaign know that we're on board.

The Tragically Hip drew a sell-out crowd to the last show in Kingston, Ontario, on Saturday, broadcast live across Canada.

PM Justin Trudeau, who was at the live show, said the band had "been writing Canada's soundtrack for over 30 years".

Lead singer Gord Downie, 52, announced his illness in May.

The news caused shock across Canada.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called Mr Downie the country's "unofficial poet laureate".

The Globe and Mail newspaper reported that the 15-stop Man Machine Poem tour "left a trail of heartbreak but also celebration across the nation".

Mr Trudeau tweeted after the concert that the band would be "forever in our hearts and playlists".

He also tweeted a picture of himself writing on a wall of messages to what he dubbed "Canada's band".

<snip>

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37147588

&list=PLjzxksagVkmyZZahPb0TbJfuVZAOFYD-G

He's up in his tower, face a glower, his tie is made in China
He bellows at rallies, and in interviews bites
Under his jacket, he's fish belly white
I even heard he raped his first wife.

He's always late for chapel, and his penitence is fake
He's rarely late at rallies where he screeches out his hate
I really have to say it that I very firmly feel the Donald's not an asset to
our country or the world

Half-heartedly a word on his behalf;
The Donald sometimes makes me laugh.

How do you solve a problem like the Donald?
How do you catch a creep and pin him down?
How do you find the word that means the Donald?
A sociopath! A bigot! A psycho-clown!

Oh, how do you solve a problem like the Donald?
How do you hold a steaming pile in your hand?

When I'm with him I'm confused, out of focus and bemused
And I never know exactly where I am
Unpredictable as weather, he's as flighty as a feather
He's a Cheeto. He's a demon! He's a flimflam man!

He'd out pester any pest, drive a hornet from its nest
He could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl
He is nasty! He is wild! He's a mean boy child!
He's a devil. A false prophet. He's a churl!

Many a thing you know you'd like to tell him
Many a thing he ought to understand
But how do you make him stay and listen to all you say
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?

Oh, how do you solve a problem like the Donald?
You beat him soundly on November 8
And off the stage he'll waddle
Just vote for Hill, and don't be late!

(with sincere apologies to Oscar Hammerstein and all fans of the Sound of Music)

Here's the front page of the LA Times this morning. I have to say I'm impressed. Donald Trump gets a huge headline in the lead spot for spending—what? Two days? Maybe three? Anyway, two or three days without doing anything egregiously idiotic. It's like the way we lavish praise on a two-year-old for not throwing his food all over the kitchen.

According to the story itself, Trump gave a good speech! He ran some TV ads! He visited Baton Rouge for 49 seconds! The first was plainly aimed at his white base, not at the African-Americans it was putatively meant for. The second is the bare minimum that any presidential campaign is expected to do. And the third was transparent hucksterism. Still, he managed to avoid imploding the entire time. Good boy, Donald!

<snip>

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/08/breaking-donald-trump-avoids-imploding-two-days