EL NINO IS TURNING THE PACIFIC OCEAN’S CORAL REEFS INTO GHOST TOWNS PopSci
New earthquake rocks city in Japan BBC
Mars Food tells customers to go easy on the pasta sauce Reuters (EM)
Apple found $40 million in gold from used phones and computers last year Business Insider
China?
How China can still derail markets CNBC
Defaults send chill through China’s bond market Financial Times
Mossack Fonseca
Spanish Industry Minister Soria Resigns Over Panama Leaks Bloomberg (Richard Smith)
E.U.’s Five Biggest Economies Join Tax Crackdown After Panama Papers New York Times
The UK’s position on sharing beneficial ownership data is totally hypocritical Tax Research (Richard Smith)
Brexit?
Tory grandee increases Brexit pressure on Cameron Financial Times
Behind the New German Right New York Review of Books (resilc)
Grexit?
The EFD-IMF sociopaths(?) continue to play their games over the Greek ruins failed evolution
Brazil Impeachment Drama Tears at Nation’s Fabric New York Times
Syraqistan
Pakistan Op-Ed: “I Am on the US Kill List” EA WorldView (resilc)
Refugees Caught in Middle of Syria-Turkey Border Fight Wall Street Journal
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
US anti-encryption law is so ‘braindead’ it will outlaw file compression • The Register (Chuck L)
Apple holds steadfast, refuses to help feds unlock seized iPhone in NY drug case ars technica
IT IS A FEDERAL CRIME TO SHOOT DOWN A DRONE, SAYS FAA PopSci
Imperial Collapse Watch
The Stone Mirror of War American Conservative. Resilc: “When i was at DoState i would run every lunch past this wall. Saw 1000s of parents and friends crying, etching names, laying bottles of jack daniels at the foot of names. For nothing, we never learn.”
Top 10 Most Corrupt Presidents in U.S. History Alternative Resilc: “We’ll have a new #1 next time.”
2016
Magical Realism, and other neoliberal delusions Corey Robin (martha r, guurst)
Bernie Sanders Has Won Something Big, Even If It’s Not the Nomination Slate (Sid S)
Democrats’ ‘battle in Brooklyn’ drew 5.6 million viewers CNN (furzy)
New York presidential race battle is tale of two zip codes Financial Times. Hah, my zip code is the one sandwiched between super duper pro Clinton zip codes. BTW 10021 is far and away the highest income Zip in Manhattan.
Bernie Sanders News Conference at the Vatican C-SPAN (Kevin C)
Sanders takes his message to Rome Financial Times. That was on the front page of the online version. Contrast with article proper:
Sanders misses Pope in campaign detour to Rome. But the conference visit may be what prompted this, from Scott: “This was linked on the Bloomberg macro chat room, hardly a bastion of progressive thought, this afternoon, and not sarcastically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmlmGKKm1XgBernie’s Supporters Look Better Closer Up Than Far Away Dallas Observer (martha r)
Not Quite the 1 Percent: Sanders Releases ‘Boring’ Tax Returns US News (martha r)
Bill Clinton Swipes at Bernie Sanders Supporters US News (martha r)
Release of Clinton’s Wall Street Speeches Could End Her Candidacy for President Huffington Post (martha r)
Clinton Throws Women Under Bus for Corporate Cronies George Washington
Bernie Sanders: I annotated a speech by Pope Francis Washington Post (martha r)
How Rupert Murdoch warmed up to Donald Trump’s candidacy CNN (furzy)
To Protect Hillary Clinton, Democrats Wage War on Their Own Core Citizens United Argument Intercept
Saudis Warn U.S. of Fiscal Fallout if 9/11 Bill Passes New York Times
Report says federal fragmentation, overlap, duplication abound Washington Post (furzy)
Do we need a White House press corps? Columbia Journalism Review
The One-Stop Smuggling Town Motherboard (resilc)
North Carolina community relieved as restroom gender compliance officer appointed TownDock (Bob B)
Tennessee governor vetoes law christening Bible as official book Reuters
T. Rowe Price Marks Down Most of Its Tech Startups Wall Street Journal. The culling of the unicorns..
Going Negative
What’s Wrong With Negative Rates? Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate (guurst). Stiglitz calls central bank models “garbage in, garbage out.”
G20 warns against reliance on low rates Financial Times
New York suburb, officials charged in landmark bond fraud case Reuters (EM)
Shrunken Citigroup Illustrates a Trend in Big U.S. Banks New York Times
US regulator has big banks in his sights Financial Times
Class Warfare
Death Row’s Race Problem Wall Street Journal
Antidote du jour (roddy):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
189 comments
Comments are closed.
Sanders (and his wife) did get to meet Pope Francis in the end.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/16/bernie-sanders-meets-pope-francis-at-the-vatican
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36061855
Pretty sure they talked about global wealth inequality.
Global wealth inequality comes in two forms.
1. First World countries vs. Third World countries.
2. Wealth inequality within each country.
One can not talk about the first without talking about the global reserve currency and the military might to back it up, everywhere int the world.
It enables the corporations of its issuing state to buy land, hire serfs, build coffee shops, among other things, all over the world, and suck the profits out of the victim countries into tax havens.
That the issuing empire can create as much money as it desires, being a monetary sovereign hegemon and all, and lend it out to its favorite corporations at zero interest just make the global domination much more fun.
I hope the Pope said, the Global Reserve Fiat Money, from out of thin air, belongs to the people of the globe.
Doubtless Pope Francis recalled Jesus’s approbation of the widow’s “thin-air mites.”
Turning water into wine is like turning thin-air into global reserve money.
And a mite goes a lot further in the Third World, not doubt. Thus, a greater deed of overcoming inequality for now.
I am not certain what your thinking is on this statement but I believe it would take more than the comment box at NC to fully develop what I sense is behind it.
I am no fan of the United States having 600 (900?) military bases around the world. But that military might has a life of its own; imagine if you will, the United States as a fifth rate economic nation-we’re on our way to that status and may arrive there in my lifetime. Would the Pentagon Machine, on that inevitable day, announce “As there are no longer any economic interests to protect over there, We’re closing all the bases and ordering every officer home to the soil of the Untied States of America?”
I find that unlikely. Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France and Canada all have very strong currencies with the Deutsche Mark the classic one that is used to set the pace for others in terms of performance. The Japanese yen is also much sought after on the world market. China was finally able to bring its currency out of the incubator and onto the stage of currency trading. My point is that none of these countries have a large military establishment to ‘back up’ their trade or to supposedly bolster their ability to penetrate markets.
What does often times keep developing nations in peonage are policies set by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. I see the disastrous results of those institutional machinations benefiting only the small coterie of financial wizards who sit astride the global financial system. Hardly anyone else could say they reap the rewards of investments in places like China, Malaysia, South Korea, or anywhere along the Pacific rim. In fact, our random wars of destruction throughout the Middle East have so destabilized that whole region that investment projects can barely be seen to move beyond the world of fantasy. Our protective military (the idea that U. S military might keeps U.S. owned shops open in other lands or benefits trade relations) can only bluff and puff and purr like a huge tiger that emerges as only a badly trained animal that scares everyone out of the place. One thinks of Honduras (actually more a victim of CIA plots) and Libya, now both huge sources of refugees attempting to flee the bloody chaos unleashed by the deployment of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s poorly designed policy. What is clear is that the pending trade relations inside of the TPP protocols will ship jobs overseas and allow drug companies to reap rewards by garnering huge price increases for medicines.
The U. S. military has no place on the world stage and does need to be pruned back drastically to a more manageable force. We profit in trade with nations who are at peace with their neighbors.
in the middle of the night i caught where Japan experienced a Volcano eruption TOO…when i woke i thought it might’ve been a very bad dream!
FuckingApocalypse http://www.waow.com/story/31740655/2016/04/15/the-latest-volcano-erupts-in-japan-unclear-if-due-to-quake
a cool site http://quakes.globalincidentmap.com/
Unicorn deathwatch: Shuddle shuts down its ‘Uber for kids’ transportation service
In 9 Democrat debates, there has not been a single question about the unicorn crisis.
i heard MDMA is about to be ‘legalized’…bill is obviously supplying the biomarker data:
“I think it’s fine that all these young students have been so enthusiastic for her opponent and say, ‘It’s all good, just shoot every third person on Wall Street and everything will be fine,'” Clinton told a small afternoon audience in Washington Heights.”
NO BILL. STAY ON POINT… we want them all locked up and doing time with the street gangs THEY created.
I wonder if Bill will defend the House of Saud next.
only if he gets riyal
The Saudi clan has given north of $25 million to the CGI.
yeah.
“……..shoot every third person….”
Wasn’t it just Thursday night that mrs. bill schooled Bernie on how gun violence was not “funny?” I guess Bernie’s chuckle at her “Vermont is responsible for all of New York’s illegal gun violence” was not “facetious” enough.
“Nuance” is such a useful concept in clinton land.
I recall that word being very popular among Clinton enablers when it was time to explain how perjury wasn’t really perjury when it was committed by a president who was a member of Team D.
i was a clinton defender at the time, because the republicans were such hypocrites, but looking back i can’t say he was any better than john edwards–i don’t think it would make any difference to him if his wife was fatally ill. edwards actually seemed to espouse some progressive positions, and his career was destroyed. maybe the “and” should be “hence”.
Speaking as someone who deplores cheating and who is not a huge fan of lying, I tend to think of these things as personal issues rather than national ones. It’s really not our business beyond the national cost we paid for him to continually lie.
Having a peek into a marriage is not the same thing as a full view. Clearly there was dysfunction there but rarely in the case of relationships is everything completely one sided or necessarily as clear as “the person cheating is a big ol’ jerk.)
As someone who is dealing with illness(mine) I can almost understand Edwards, sickness places a great deal of stress on a marriage. It’s not an easy situation to deal with for either party. I don’t find it a huge stretch that someone might try to reach out to another person to talk about things and end up forming a connection in the process.
As for Clinton, I can’t imagine what kind of personal deficit he sees in himself to continue to act like a dog humping a leg over and over again. But who knows, maybe they have an “open” marriage?
In D.C. and other places there is an affluent wives club of cheating husbands, the marriage is more like a business partnership than anything else. A wife has a lot to lose if she likes the good life. It’s just part of the job to mop up after him. Hillary would not have had the same kind of political “career”, and I guess that’s why she thinks it’s her turn now, after all the mopping up she’s had to do.
Yes, and it all just goes to show that they are both disgusting pigs and neither is the least bit trustworthy. The R’s will have a field day running against her and will have even more fun and excitement investigating/indicting/impeaching her should she some how get elected. Hillbots are utterly delusional to ignore it.
or the 1% will just run you down in the street
http://www.alternet.org/activism/striking-verizon-workers-hit-company-attorney-driving-porsche
Trial-free execution for suspected wrong-doing is strictly the domain of our President and his assassination squads…er, drone pilots. We’ll settle for a jury trial, Bill.
Why only “every third person”?
That leaves two of them left alive. You know what happens when two roaches mate?
Now, now, let’s not go overboard. There are plenty of normal, non-criminal people who work on Wall Street. I’ve even met a couple. They were pretty cool people, with a good understanding of what is wrong with the system but a need to pay the bills, just like everyone else. However, once you move from the street to the C-suites, that’s a different story….
edmondo, I am guessing you are older. Perhaps those “young students” are just too damn nice.
I’m waiting for the Clintons to recognise Wall street as populated by “super predators” and to advocate locking away 1/3 of them.
But the Clintons ARE the super-predators.
Yep…and bill should feel the love of the 3 strikers (sorry Cornel)
“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”
Cornel West
Like giving Otis keys to his own cell to let himself in.
Can we bring them to heel?
They ARE under heel, just not by us. Havnt you seen the collars the billionaires have put on them?
Want not all of them locked up.
Yesterday’s links had a story about conscientious Wall Streeters.
“The Street will be spared, if there are fifty righteous people.”
50.
“Oh dear lord, I cannot find 50 righteous people on Wall Street. Can you lower it to 45?”
Then 40, then 30, then 20, then 10.
Nope. No 10 righteous people here.
Time to blow the place up and turn anyone looking directly at it into pillars of salt.
I don’t want to shoot every third Wall Streeter, but I do advocate the use of the guillotine as a deterrent. In addition to the Wall Streeters, I also am advocating the use of the guillotine for those elected officials and former elected officials who make themselves exceedingly wealthy sidling up to them as well.
In the HuffPo article about releasing the Goldman speech transcripts, one attendee described Hill as “gushy.” Another said it was a “rah-rah” speech, as if she was a managing director of the bank rather than a politician. Well, the only repug candidate that would hit her hard on this would be Trump. I think The Donald, with all his faults, would beat HRC. He would hit her harder and nastier about the same stuff Bernie has been hitting her on—-Iraq war vote, taking money from Wall Street, etc.
I’m not certain Trump would be the only one. Elections are opportunities to pick new winners and losers. Who cares if GoldmanSachs gets hammered? GoldmanSachs bigwigs, but guys like Adelson, the Kochs, and Cruz’s backers will just see a big fish who supports Democrats half half the time get hit.
As long as they can limit limited, they can make the attack work. The coverage of Republican candidates giving money to charities raised from GS types would be worth more than any SuperPac.
Doesn’t Ted Cruz’s wife work for Goldman Sachs? For all we know, she was at one of those speeches.
Cruz et all can still hit for being a flip flopper like Kerry. They’re clear on big business being good. Hillary’s answer changes depending who she talks to.
Will someone look into it, already?
http://iwilllookintoit.com/
From the “Top 10 Most Corrupt Presidents in U.S. History” link, item #7 in the rankings, John F. Kennedy:
Perhaps the author did his research sometime before NSAM 263 was declassified in the early 1990s. It was rescinded by NSAM 273 the day after Kennedy’s funeral.
Kennedy had already aroused controversy by refusing to do combat in Laos earlier. He was a fiscal conservative and was not going to escalate the war in Vietnam. He actually wanted world peace–check out his American University speech. I bet the guy that wrote the article about JFK being corrupt would also defend the Warren Commission, which would put him in the minority on that issue.
I tried reading that article and had to stop after Benjamin Harrison. I surmise it was written by a 12 year old Libertarian.
Yeah, I should’ve stopped there too after reading that the author cited the Sherman Anti-Trust Act as a supposed example of corruption.
And the National Parks System
Yeah, I was really pissed off reading this un-historical, factually inaccurate screed. For one thing – even if everything in it were true (and very little of it is) none of it was about corruption. Kennedy did let himself get suckered into the Bay of Pigs operation by the CIA (it was an Eisenhower era plot that was supposed to be inherited by Nixon) but was lied to by Dulles about the chances of success (the invasion was designed to fail and provide “justification” for a US invasion). In addition, the myth about Kennedy failing to provide promised air cover is just that – a myth. Cuba’s jet fighters were supposed to be destroyed by exile air raids (thus eliminating the need for air cover) but the initial strike left three remaining and a follow up strike was canceled by NSC head McGeorge Bundy without Kennedy’s knowledge.
Blaming Kennedy for the Cuban Missile Crisis is absurd. That was the residue of US military establishment’s provocation by surrounding the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons based in Europe and flying armed bombers and reconnaissance planes in close proximity and even into Soviet territory on a regular basis. And JFK’s handling of the crisis, averting the nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union that the JCS and intelligence establishment was spoiling for (and had been since the 1950s) deserves praise not condemnation. A lesser man (Nixon) would have led the world into disaster.
Vietnam was another Eisenhower-era legacy that Kennedy clearly wanted to disentangle the US from. This is beyond legitimate dispute as documented by many researchers and contemporary accounts of Kennedy administration insiders. Anyone arguing the opposite, as the “author” of this piece of trash is uninformed, ignorant or just plain biased.
The assassination of Diem was NOT planned for or desired by Kennedy. They wanted to ease Diem out because his repressive rule was becoming a problem but Kennedy was double-crossed by his own ambassador (Henry Cabot Lodge – whom he was planning to fire), some State Department officials who failed (probably deliberately) to carry out his orders and, of course, the CIA (see Jim Douglass’ JFK and they Unspeakable for details).
Finally the “author” descends into character assassination with his slurs about Kennedy’s womanizing. Kennedy almost certainly had an extra-marital sex life but that hardly makes him unique among US presidents and is certainly not an act of “corruption”. I have no idea where this guy got the ridiculous story about Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe but its this kind of drivel that discredits anything else he has to say.
This link is not worthy of NC and I’m seriously disappointed to see it included. I realize that its not possible for you to review in detail every story you link to but you can be certain that I will be ignoring any link to the digital rag that produced this item.
That article was horrible. Not only that, it was so bad I clicked the “Read More” link and it took me to a site that expired about a month ago. Obviously the person that wrote the article wasn’t popular enough for him to justify spending $15.00 to renew his own site.
Did you read your own Wikipedia links?
and
It affirmed rather than rescinded. It’s quite possible that Kennedy meant it just as much as LBJ did. Which is to say not at all. But it appears both were merely policy snapshots based on the poor intelligence that the South Vietnamese could win on their own.
None of which is to defend calling Kennedy one of the “10 most corrupt.” After all that takes in a lot of ground.
yeah, hard for me to see kennedy as a peacekeeper. but 10 most corrupt is a big reach. and mr. nuclear gap didn’t have to go toe to toe over the nukes in cuba imo. it took away some of the advantage our missles in turkey gave us in some scenarios of nuclear war fighting, but it wasn’t an existential threat–it didn’t make nuclear war any more appetizing for the ussr.
When JFK became prez, Laos was actually a hotter issue than Vietnam. I don’t have all the facts at my fingertips, but he basically let them have a neutral gov’t rather than intervening. These people who say he wouldn’t have pulled out of Nam are also (I presume) going on the theory that Lee Oswald the lone nut killed JFK. Actually the CIA killed JFK IMHO and one of the reasons is because he wanted to get out of Nam.
i dont know who killed him, if the cia had a hand it could have been payback for the bay of pigs. truman started the assistance to s vietnam iirc, and every single president after escalated it, till the gaping wound became too much to bear. iirc, the us had “advisors” in vietnam when jfk was elected, not so much in laos. jfk partly ran on the missle gap (he’ll keep us safe by producing more icbms!), hitting nixon from the right.
You are seriously mis-informed about JFK. He refused to escalate (by sending in combat troops in addition to the advisers) and had clearly committed to an unconditional withdrawal that he planned to announce after his re-election
https://www.bostonreview.net/us/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam
The CIA animus against JFK was a result of him firing Dulles, Cabell and Bissell because they deliberately misled him about the chances of success and tried to trap him into escalating the exile invasion into a US invasion. JFK also planned to “splinter the CIA into a 1000 pieces” and had begun to do so by transferring responsibility for cover paramilitary operations to the JCS which could not have made the folks at Langley very happy.
(Sigh). Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy. For an in-depth explanation of the assassination, an a thorough refutation of pretty much every conspiracy “theory” out there, I suggest reading Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History.
We will agree to disagree.
BTW, if you actually believe Lee Oswald was a lone nut and killed JFK all by his lonesome, you’re in the minority. Just so you know.
Sigh…the life magazine cover…the only place purporting to show the hidell weapons in the hands of lee harvey…they forgot to put in the shadow for the handgun…the handgun on his hip…
sorry…I am a reality acceptor…
Mind you obvious errors are left to try to scare people into submission…
me 2 stupid 2 b afraid…
To the victors go the history books…and the truth shall get you fleas…
But I am from ithaki…where we don’t threaten…we vow…
I read an article by Michael Parenti on the JFK Assassination a while back that clarified things for me.
http://www.michaelparenti.org/JFKAssassination.html.
Worth a read as a reminder to what happened that day.
Yes, that article concisely sums it up. Also, the Katzenbach memo is a smoking gun for those who think the official investigation of the JFK murder was impartial and above-board.
The Kennedy assassination, like 9/11, is just too wrenching to dig into, if you’re going to take the time to do it you need to be prepared to contemplate the worst possible conclusions about your own country and the people who run it. Not many people are.
I was pretty underwhelmed by the whole Zionist angle on 9/11 but this video (2nd half) has me wondering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP_Ezjm7xDg
The comment is what is alarming to me: We will have a new #1 next time.
It sounds so fait accompli.
I was only able to see the list of 10, 9, 8, and 7. After that, there was a link to an expired web site. Is there a valid link to the whole list?
Anyone else get the impression that the #1 was going to be FDR?
…when i don’t think ‘it’ can get any stranger: Mars Food, which also produces Uncle Ben’s rice, said it plans to post on its website within the next few months a list of “occasional” products, and “everyday” products, including ones to be reformulated over the next five years to reduce sodium, sugar or fat.
It has also set targets to reduce sodium across its global product range by an average of 20 percent by 2021, and cut the amount of added sugar in a limited number of sauces and light meals by 2018. WHAT NOW? throw out the pyramid for the octagon??
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/malnutrition/by-country/
com’on Aby…you of all people know stranger! WANNA BET…re German Right Article: “…statements of Beatrix von Storch, a countess from Lower Saxony who is one of the AfD’s deputies to the European Parliament, where she just joined the group that includes UKIP and the far right Sweden Democrats. A promoter of both free-market ideas and Christian fundamentalism she has gone on record as saying that border guards might have to use firearms against refugees trying illegally to cross the border—including women and children. After much criticism, she conceded that children might be exempted, but not women.”
GaG…Trumps Everywhere
Trump isnt anywhere near this bad, or at least, not in this way. Hes not a christian fundamentalist. Im not even sure hes a free marketer. This reminds me more of Cruz.
The article about the restroom gender compliance officer in North Carolina is a hoot, but, as a NC native, I want to assure everyone it is a satire…
… As a South Carolina native, I want to say I’m not so sure that a restroom gender compliance officer is not in the cards for the future. State Senator Bright is proposing a gender bill requiring giggling of the bells before using a bathroom. Not sure who will be doing the ringing.
bells or balls?
At last, the presence and number of bells on Lindsey Graham will be documented…
Anyone who clicks on the link and doesn’t get that it’s a satire immediately needs to have their gender…I mean head…examined.
Who picks up the tab for the stainless steel urinal trough in the Ladies room?
I don’t know why they don’t just go to all “unisex” one-holers, as I have been seeing for years in department stores and airports. The appetite for the euwww factor in this country is ridiculous. Those cattle call women’s bathrooms are depressing and frightening, anyway. There is more chance of a sexual predator in those, and it would be great to have a transwoman in there to kick their ass for me, just sayin’.
Hear, hear!
In Atochia Station in Madrid, a HUGE train station, there is one fking woman’s bathroom! I waited a solid half hour for some to cultivate kidney stones in the queue.
To the good, there is a stand-up bar in the station with the best calamari sandwich(s), ok three of them, I’ve ever had. Best meal I’ve had in Madrid.
Hand out two liter Mountain Dew bottles.. Perfect way to acquaint North Carolinians with a practical application of laminar flow. High school students could study it. Science Fair demonstrations!
Awards for innovative technique as the public buys into it!
For me, a nice row of arbor viates will do just fine.
I’m not bothered by it (I had a transgendered friend in Australia) but I have to tell you, I have a couple of friends who are extremely upset at the idea of men using women’s bathrooms. I’d prefer the line being drawn at ones that had the operation (which the individual I knew did, she mentioned in passing needing to do stuff post surgery while sparing me the details). Thailand is the center for this sort of surgery, and the most of the doctors are Australian or trained in Australia. One of the people I who is fiercely opposed to transgendered men using the women’s room is otherwise very liberal is so disturbed about this development that she brings it up often. She is also a fashonista and has met many men who present themselves as trannies that she regards as cross-dressers.
That’s kind of rude of her. If a person presents themselves as transgender than they should be regarded as transgender. She probably wouldn’t care much if someone questioned who she said she was as erroneous.(I’m a “fashionista.” Uh no you aren’t you’re a personal shopper.) Being transgender as it is, is not exactly a lifestyle choice that is easily made or a transition that happens overnight either. It’s like telling these people it’s not hard enough for them that they feel trapped in the wrong body. No, instead society gets to pile on and make it worse while they’re trapped. Yuck.
So does this mean that you would rather have transmen (transitioned from female to male) use the women’s restroom then? I mean, they typically do not have “the operation”.
Yves, I value your words more than you could ever imagine, but on this subject I hope you will do some reading and gain more understanding. Transgendered people exist upon a broad spectrum, live in fear, and simply want to exist and have the same opportunities that everyone else has. Trust me when I tell you that most transgendered people, no matter where they exist on the spectrum of gender, are always intimidated to some degree no matter what restroom they use in public. We simply want to feel safe while going pee. FWIW, I identify as non-binary and use the men’s restroom, and I will sometimes pass up public restrooms because there is a possibility that they may not be safe (in other words, I might meet some ignorant jerk that might start trouble).
By the way, in the hope that you are simply unaware, tranny is a slur that is the trans equivalent of ni**er.
I have no idea if you will read this since I am a day late, but wanted to share my thoughts.
I don’t know – that picture of the governor being ‘authenticated’ looked very convincing ;)
They will hire someone to write code for an iPad that shows an arrow pointing horizontally. The “monitor” will turn the iPad in the direction they want the bathroom visitor to use. This will keep both hands occupied so they can’t perform inspections of the genitalia involved.
The wages for the monitors will be capped at 6 figures. The code to make the arrow work will only be a few million.
The reaction of these precious idiots in NC leg is stupid beyond belief. These “family restrooms” have been around for years with no problems, so it’s not a stretch to believe that the addition of trans people will present no further problems. They need to start leaving poopy issues alone and grow up.
http://www.astc.org/ap/issues/restrooms/read_restrooms_1.htm
It’s particularly sad when you consider transgender people are more commonly victims then they are predators.
If they are contending with their own brains(the suicide rate is something like 50%) then they’ve got to deal with stupid people who feel threatened because they don’t present to the world like 99% of us. As small in number as they are compared to the general population, 2015 heralded in over 20 transgender murders.
enforced “identity” and the herd. I think there should be a separate restroom for trans people. No one else allowed in there.
From the Jim Schutze piece linked above:
“When I look at the support of young people for Bernie, I also see, among other things, the complete explosion and execration of most of the strategies that marketers, media and politicians have employed since Mad Men days for reaching young people.”
This is a very important point! Just like the effectiveness of penicillin goes down with over-use, so does the power of corporate propaganda. My daughter and her friends have been subjected from birth to so much manipulative bs that they have adopted, simply to preserve their sanity, methods to defend their brains from being washed by corporate media.
The TPTB win, among other things, because their persistence.
They didn’t give up when NAFTA went down the first time, nor with the bank bailout.
So, the struggle is a not race, but a journey, or something like that, or one should race it like a tortoise, not a hare, tiring out quickly, though very energetic when engaged (for however brief a time).
(The impulse for the impulsive is, because we want it, we gotta have it now.)
And, the young people will turn into not-so-young people, as Hippies (relax, only some of them, or not all of them) turned into Yuppies, and old geezers.
This time, it will be different – that’s always the belief. If it’s going to be different, we have to keep the fire burning (as the song goes)…even when the young are not longer young…even when you are in a nursing home.
Don’t give up (people who have waited hundreds of years will tell us of that wisdom).
This not-so-young ex-hippie is canvassing for Bernie tomorrow in Hartford. Never give up, never. Sometimes it feels pointless to do something when you know the chances are slim to none. But honestly it something good to the soul to do it, even against all odds.
You set a good example for all.
thank you. gotta believe it will make a difference.
Booman Tribune is reporting that voting hours in counties outside of NYC and Buffalo are being cut by six hours. If you live in NY state, it might be an idea to go over there and read about it.
Here is a link: http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2016/4/14/141955/280
Here’s the link to the Booman Tribune post nippersdad discussed. I suggest readers forward it to any and all NY registered Democrats you know. Hopefully it will clear moderation in time to be useful.
I got an email from my Bernie campaign about this. I’m not sure if this is normal procedure for Primary’s. During the general election they open at 6AM across the state. It does possibly favor Hillary to some degree for getting votes in NYC area.
I think my comment disappeared into the ether so I’ll try again. Monroe County is 12p-9p, so is Wayne County. Primary voting time window is different than for a general election. MC has added extra inspectors to some sites due to a large increase in registrants and the passionate nature of this race. I tried to look up Erie and Niagara but didn’t get too far. The law dates back to 1909.
Bernie Sanders Has Won Something Big, Even If It’s Not the Nomination Slate (Sid S)
Just great, another “Bernie Sanders has already won” story. Here’s the kicker:
The article is predicated on the idea that Sanders has “framed the debate”, but in the last line the author completely negates his own argument.
i’m sure she’s up to the challenge.
I think you just won the snark of the day prize!
To put it another way: “We all know she’s lying about her new-found progressive stances, but at least we got her to lie about them. Victory!”
:-) Can’t help smiling at, “Victory!”, but indeed, pretty sad.
Hillary, after calling Bernie a sophomoric twit for believing in single payer, went dashing off to the NYC projects to see first hand the squalor people were living in. Pure photo op. And she herself indulged in unabashed sophomoric twitism by promising those low income NewYorkers that she “had a plan to combine decent new housing with medical care and all the other things” into one big package for them. Hillary must think nobody ever pays attention to what she says.
But they do! Her rich donor$ will think, “Awwww, she’s looking after the unfortunate.” and pony up once more, so they won’t have to think/feel about it again.
““had a plan to combine decent new housing with medical care and all the other things” into one big package for them”
yep, privatized prisons, oops, workhouses…..a dormitory you won’t need to leave, (which is good because you won’t be allowed to)
Groceries! Clothing! Phone! Social life!
Speaking of plans I am reminded of how, during his campaign, Richard Nixon said he had a plan for peace in Vietnam – which involved lots more people dying on all sides, as it turned out. Don’t know what made me think of that.
remember her touching concern for the people of flint.
And a check for $500,000 the day before the Michigan primary. Tacky.
Shes describing Union Mission Rescue.
http://urm.org/services/
I think in some small way that Bernie has won from the point of view that he has exposed the corruption of the DNC. He’s shined a light on issues important to what he believes…..that’s a personal win even if he doesn’t seize and force change within the party.
Now the question becomes can the American people win? Can the left pull themselves away from a corrupt party that doesn’t represent their interests if Bernie doesn’t win? Or do they just continue to expect very little from their representation and expect the same ol’? That part remains to be seen.
On exposing the corruption of the DNC: I’m wondering how fund-raising by the DNC, DCCC and DSCC is going? Early on I sent back their missives, with nasty notes about how I wasn’t going to contribute to a stash of cash that could be dispensed to the lousy “Dems” they usually supported.
Thankfully I’m now off their list, but I wonder how it’s going for them overall — I mean other than those big bucks contributions.
Most true. And I am also now much more aware of the primary process — superdelegates, closed primaries, early voting, uncounted “provisional ballots”, reduced polling places, and (probably) warped voting and counting machines — win or lose, we have lots of work to do in the years ahead. Better if ‘win’, of course.
I’m thinking right now that the only way for the Left, say Hillary does win the nomination, to make an impression that lasts much past November, is to make sure that Trump takes the Presidency. Throw the tea overboard, IOW.
No matter the distance, no matter the obstacles, when Clinton runs to the right, she runs with swiftness and grace that is unmatched.
swift, yes. grace, never. she has none
RE: Saudis Warn U.S. of Fiscal Fallout if 9/11 Bill Passes New York Times
Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate panel in February that the bill, in its current form, would “expose the United States of America to lawsuits and take away our sovereign immunity and create a terrible precedent.”
If you didn’t know better, you’d almost think he was talking about TPP instead of knuckling under to saudi arabian blackmail.
+
Every time Kerry opens his mouth I’m more embarrassed at having supported and voted for him in 2004.
desperation. things have finally gotten so bad i just can’t vote for these people anymore.
he just spews horsesh!t where ever he goes !!
I feel exactly the same way. Unfortunately, I can’t erase the record of giving money to that moron. I guess I could re-watch bits of the 2004 Republican national convention and give myself a good scare again.
Nearly, but not quite. I think he deserves credit for Iran and Cuba negotiations and results.
The pope and the “green” patriarch declare “Elmer season” at lesbos….
My eisegesis to this effort:
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-speech-bernie-sanders-gave-at-the-vatican/
A Vatican Conference, pure genius. A lot of traders otherwise indoctrinated to revile Sanders as a commie happen to be Catlics. Trading is, after all, the less patrician up-or-out ladder for persons who are not like one. Sanders is mobilizing the lumpenbourgeoisie.
The additional schedules on the Sanders tax return show just how much bullshit Clinton was spewing.
All of the business expenses which were itemized in the amount of $8,946 are meals.
Other than that, you have mortgage interest, income and property taxes paid and $8,000 in charitable donations itemized.
The 1040 is fantastic – $11 in interest income, $2 in dividend income and $39,281 in social security income on top of the Senate salary and Jane’s small amount of income.
It used to be that when we talked about taxing the rich, we talked about $250,000 and up.
Many had said, that’s actually upper middle class.
The Sanders at around $200,000 would be pretty to being part of the rich, under one definition.
Personally, I think anyone making under $1,000,000 deludes himself/herself thinking they are now rich, and should spend like one.
Perspective watch:
At $205,000, Bernie and Jane earned $20,000 less than hillary did in one secret hour on wall street, $130,000 less than some unknown person paid to have dinner with her at the clooneys last night, wouldn’t even be considered “middle class” in new york or san francisco, and would be receiving “housing assistance” in palo alto.
The Blair rich project: How ex PM uses secret trusts to hide his massive wealth
New Labour was just the New Democrats with better clothes and classier accents.
…
Nothing about New Labour was classy.
RE: The Stone Mirror of War
This excellent article describes in beautiful prose the emotions created by the architectural configuration of the Wall dedicated to Vietnam war casualties. The architect is a woman who was 21 when her plan was accepted.
I have a first edition of the book on a shelf in my living room. Everyone thumbing through it over the years has been moved to tears.
Frankly I’d scoff at it. I don’t have much sympathy for people who carried out murder on a massive scale. It’s one thing to lament US or other imperial policy, but never forget that the orders of generals and politicians are meaningless without grunts in the field willing to pull the trigger.
The idea that 58,000 US soldiers get a shiny memorial, a steady stream of sympathetic Hollywood movies, and a permanent place in the national psyche, while the nearly 4 million dead Vietnamese get jack and squat makes me angry.
http://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Harvest-Legacy-American-Bombs/dp/1934159492 this is representative of the only types of Vietnam War related books I allow on my bookshelf. Nearly as many civilians have been killed in Laos alone from all our crappy unexploded ordnance as the number of US soldiers killed over the course of the American war on Vietnam. Tell me when they get a memorial and big-budget movie.
Would be great to have a half-buried black stone slab that completely encircled the US soldiers memorial, on which was written the names of those 4 million Vietnamese. Everyone who wanted to visit the US soldier part would have to walk over that first.
Indeed.
Initially, I was impressed by this poetic lament. But later on, I found the lack of a true lesson learned.
“Such wars are not won by foreigners. As outsiders, we can help one side or the other. But the wars must be won and lost by the people in the country.”
No, I do not think that was the lesson. The lesson was that we must learn to resolve conflict without resorting to war, and that requires sharing the limited resources of this small blue dot. All wars to some degree are fought to control resources, and Vietnam was no different.
Vietnam was a war essentially started by foreigners. The United States could have let the national elections go ahead, as per the Geneva Accords. Instead it projected the Communists would win, didn’t like that idea, and so sought to set up South Vietnam as a permanent country. In the context of Vietnam specifically what this guy is saying is downright obscene. The side he thinks we should help was basically created by us. And then he says the people of our fake puppet country should do the bulk of the fighting and dying, against people who were until very recently their countrymen, because some foreigners drew a line on a map dividing their country in half. The true lesson should be “Mind your own damn business”. What happens in Vietnam is the affair of the Vietnamese, no one else. That should hold true universally, it should be the default position.
Unless that country’s political leaders happen to curtail western corporations’ exploitation of Bauxite that was needed for aluminum production. Again: resources, like oil in the ME. That war was about imperialist aggression.
Well, let me clarify that I think of myself and my closest friends as pacifists and humanitarians. I was most definitely anti-war in the 60s, even though I was drafted in 1966. Fortunately, I did not go to SE Asia at the time. But I know many who did and a few who didn’t come back as nearly the same individuals. The Vietnam Memorial speaks to people in many different ways. That is the haunting, enduring nature of Maya Lin’s work. You may scoff at it as a “shiny memorial” but it stands as a focal point for national reflection for those of us who understand the uselessness of military aggression, as well as those who lost friends and loved ones.
I think your anger is misdirected in condemning a bunch of 18/19/20 year olds, most of whom were conscripted, as “murderers on a massive scale”. I would also ask whether you have gone to Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia? I’ve been there on several occasions in the past 20 years and I can tell you that they don’t hold individual soldiers responsible for what happened.
every time you build a memorial to war you give the stupid a reason to turn themselves into cannon fodder – to transform their insignificant lives into support of some ‘noble’ cause. if humanity wants to eliminate the curse of war do we have a better chance of eliminating the psychopaths among us, or teaching everyone they can’t transfer moral responsibility for their actions onto someone else?
Most weren’t conscripted, that’s one of many myths about Vietnam. Two-thirds were volunteers.
The Vietnam Memorial is a focal point for national self-pity and whinging. It represents, and in its own way helps facilitate, an American-centric view of the war.
“Vietnam was bad because it killed so many young Americans.”
“Vietnam was bad because it negatively affected the lives of the soldiers it didn’t kill.”
“Vietnam was important because of what it caused domestically in America.”
“Vietnam caused X,Y, and Z for America.”
“America America America.”
The majority of Americans view Vietnam the same way they view Iraq and Afghanistan, and have no conception of the complete disparity in casualties and destruction between our side and theirs. There’s a reason revisionists and neocons can now crawl out of their holes and makes insane claims that America could have won Vietnam if it had just tried harder. “If we’d just bombed more, if the generals didn’t have their hands tied behind their backs by the sniveling politicians.” Most people have no understanding that we turned South East Asia into a forested moonscape strewn with corpses. We didn’t win, and it was most definitely not for lack of firepower.
Westmoreland is that you ?…$till trying to convince us everyone loved you…duh…the draft had a tweek…if you did not Volunteer before 18 & 1/2 yrs old you were forced into a branch instead of getting to choose…also instead of 4 yrs (active plus active reserve) it was 3 on and three inactive…westmorelands 1986 speach should be…well…maybe we should just forget him…he was useless and is the poster boy of everything that is snafu….
Re: Bill Clinton swipes at…
It is incredible to watch the New Democrats (Neo-liberal, whatever you want to call them…) push away educated students, whom they dumped the working class for when they established the party’s new dynamic (fully cemented when Slick Willy here took office), simply because they don’t think what the elites want them too. Whoops, guess they got too smart.
Or too deep in debt, with too little hope for the future.
IOW, not likely candidates for donations?
The new students have watched the New Democrats push the Grassroots and everyone else under buses, trains and bulldozers, likely their own parents. There’s only so long a surprise factor works to suspend belief that your own party is lying their asses off to you.
too smart by 1/2……
I remember the years, when the Clintons too had their youth followers.
Hopefully, the too smart, educated students know that one day, we all will not be rugged individuals anymore and do not forget the dignity of free nursing home care as well as free tuition, and to not forget those who are not students today, but are still burdened with student debt, that will not be free, with merely with rates lowered, and also not forget hungry kids who could free, organic, whole foods everyday.
I find it amazing that the people who once ran on “It’s the economy, stupid” are so loath to engage in any substantive discussion of the economy. This goes for the GOP as well; both the right and what passes for the left in this country (at least in the mainstream) are utterly incapable of talking about why so many people are angry. Attempts to explain Trumps massive support by claiming they’re all just a bunch of idiot racists are downright laughable. No one has any money, many don’t have jobs, those who do are mostly stuck in terrible positions, the only way to ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ is to take on decades worth of debt, and even then you’ll probably still end up with a crappy job because the glorious free-market has decided that an immigrant with a work visa is more cost-effective. But we aren’t allowed to talk about any of that. Sanders supposed ‘one issue’ is to a very large extent the only issue worth talking about.
And they call Bernie a single issue candidate, when he’s only copying Bill saying it’s the economy, stupid.
Just two months after QE1 began in Nov. 2008, Ben Bernanke foresaw an exit strategy. “At some point, the Federal Reserve will have to unwind its various lending programmes,” said Bernanke in a speech at the London School of Economics.
Then came QE1-extended, QE2, Operation Twist, and QE3. And here we are in 2016 with an oceanic $2.5 trillion of excess reserves, making it impossible to lift the Fed Funds rate by restricting supply. What to do? Why, move the goalposts:
Brainwave! It’s like solving the obesity epidemic at a stroke, by declaring previous generations to have been pathologically emaciated. Why haven’t the health authorities thought of this?
Noting the shrinking size and relevance of the Fed Funds market, Pozsar projects where the Fed’s cascading spiral of vicious QE consequences leads next:
Lovely, just lovely. Having destroyed the domestic Fed funds market with an irreversible tsunami of supply, now the Fed is obliged to “go global” in its quixotic quest to prop short rates.
Actually this objective is unrelated to the economy’s needs. Rather, it derives from the Fed’s obsession with maintaining its institutional prerogative by accumulating some interest rate “ammo” so it can “do something” (i.e., cut rates) next time the feeble Mr Economy or the erratic Ms Market hit a soft patch.
You can already guess how Bernanke and Yellen’s long-running QE shaggy dog story ends: in tears.
I remember in Star Trek there was no money–maybe we are just well on the way to money being absolutely meaningless in reality, and it will just disappear, after all of the weeping and wailing.
Star Trek is a utopian vision of a post-scarcity society where needs are universally met and all the more unpleasant tasks are automated. The entire population is free to pursue whatever interests them, without ever having to worry about their needs, basic or advanced. It’s not our world, not a world we’re going to achieve anytime soon, and very likely an entirely impossible world.
yep….
……that’s why it’s termed science ‘FICTION’…….
Unfortunately…..too many people of influence who hold a megaphone believe fiction for reality…..
Income guarantee to meet universal needs is impossible.
Get over it already.
If you can’t out-compete a robot (yes, you have a tuition free college degree from the Academy, I heard it already), you’re an evolutionary dead-end.
Robots are also an evolutionary dead end, because even the most hardened ones can’t survive in intensely radioactive environments — and that is what the earth is destined to become due to human stupidity (nuclear power and weapons).
Yes, but the Homo Rent-Extractus will do just fine when they escape to another hospitable ex-planet.
When I hear talk like this, I remember that there was a potato blight all across Europe, it was only a potato famine in Ireland. And that was a *political* decision.
We have enough stuff, enough food, enough energy, enough technology for all of us to live reasonably happy lives and, as Captain Picard told the thawed-out American businessman in “The Neutral Zone”, “to improve yourself, to enrich yourself, and your life“.
only
It is about the choices we make, not only as individuals, but as a society.
yeah, but the money thing–that’s all I was talking about. it’s already a myth
Project Syndicate. Stiglitz. Interest rates do nothing. Economists’ models are garbage in garbage out. And standard economist nonsense that ignores the role banks play in the economy are suffering from cognitive dissonance because if there are no banks affecting the economy there can be no central bank affecting the economy. I wonder if anyone will politely tell Krugman that Stiglitz just called him garbage. The true problem is demand which both nonexistent entities seem to have intentionally decimated with their bizarre nonexistent behavior.
Stiglitz is great. Its fun learning that (SME) stands for small and medium-size enterprises. It is not so fun to learn that SME’s are starved for capital and interest rate cuts are nearly irrelevant to these companies. I left the article thinking that the economy is rewarding the wrong people. It is rewarding gamblers and hoarders.
Another illustration of Stiglitz’s theme — this puff-piece interview with the handsome Mr Chris Lagarde, head of the IMF:
“Channels unblocked” … “agile in providing credit” … “weakening business models” … “doing work on the impact of negative interest rates” — all the MBA buzzwords are here. But what do they signify? This could be Chauncey Gardner talking, with deceptive profundity.
To put it in crasser terms, expending ten minutes of my life on the putative “thoughts” of the dashing Mr Lagarde ain’t makin’ me any money.
Ah yes, Mme Lagarde, I cannot hear her name without thinking of this episode of The Juice Rap News.
Negative rates.
The Little People need money to spend.
If they have to pay in order to have their money sit idle in bank accounts, they will have less to spend, no?
“You should have spent it yesterday, to save the economy! Do you duty!”
“But”
“But what?”
“Last month, I put my paycheck in the bank and the next day, when I went to spend it, it was gone, due to negative rates.”
“Yes?
“So, this month, I spent it all on food the day I got paid. But because we couldn’t afford refrigeration, they all went bad in a few days. So, we are practicing fasting, to cleanse our bodies.”
“No, you’re exaggerating.”
“Well, yes and no. Food loses their nutritional value in a few days. They might as well be ‘bad” even when refrigerated.”
“You whine like a spoiled baby.”
“Well, I should be free to spend WHEN I want to, and free to gamble, sorry, to chase yield when I want to, not when the Fed says so.”
Magical Realism, and other neoliberal delusions Corey Robin (martha r, guurst)
By his own admission, President “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars” made the same mistake in Libya that President “Mission Accomplished” made in Iraq. It’s almost as if that Best and the Brightest thing doesn’t always work out.
Obama’s admission that his failure to plan for a post-reconstruction Libya was his greatest mistake—and his concomitant refusal to say that the intervention was a mistake—makes me wonder how many times a government gets to make the same “mistake” before we get to say that the mistake is no mistake but how the policy works.
=======================================
As well as the pseudo choice between “dumb” wars and the …uh, ?smart? hmmmm, ?better researched? oooo, ?well planned? um, ?totally necessary? er, ?existentially critical – wars???? ….well, at least it wasn’t initiated by a stupid repub….
Dumb wars, smart wars, best wars, worst wars.
“We just got bombed heavily, but fortunately no one got hurt, sir.”
No one?
What about the ants, squirrels, great Monarch butterflies?
What about the trees that fell?
“Fortunately, no one got hurt…”
Livestream of day 6 of #DemocracySpring.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153577056459205&id=210277954204
Focus today is climate change. Looks like arrests happening now. I think this is final day. I personally know about 40 participants.
Climate change.
Airplane pollution.
“Plane exhaust kills more people than plane crashes.”
Discover the beauty in one’s backyard.
If you are not happy in your local neighborhoods, you won’t find it in exotic, far away places.
“I hope we staff will sail on a sailboat (yes, wind power) to Roma, instead of flying on a jet plane.”
“But the small donors approve.”
“Yes, but do the seabirds?”
““`
In another room:
“Sir, I think delivering your speech via satellite is a great, green idea.”
99Rise originated this idea after doing the same thing in California in 2014. http://www.marchfordemocracy.org/
I met 99Rise when they marched 480 miles from Los Angeles to Sacramento, California to push through three pieces of legislation. I was one of the 47 arrests made over the 12 days of occupation, and I opened my house to the marchers. It was an amazing action and they are an amazing group. They are absolutely professional and handled my arrest far better than when I was arrested with major unions protesting Walmart on Black Friday later that same year. (I’m still waiting to go to trial for that.)
Anyway, I know almost the entire leadership team of 99Rise, and they give me hope.
>Bernie’s Supporters Look Better Closer Up Than Far Away
“I wonder sometimes if there may not be a whole conversation going on between them and Bernie, a kind of high-level contrapuntal chorus of thought that the rest of just don’t hear.”
Well, at least you recognize there might actually be something to the whole phenomenon. This sounds exactly like the GOP veterans cluelessly talking about Trump supporters: “Well, they’re angry about something…not sure what though…”.
The whole article has a sneering, condescending quality, even when it’s attempting to praise Sanders voters. “They’re naive, doomed people, except when you zoom in on them and actually find them accomplishing things. Shame they’re so doomed though.”
And Sanders supporters are the ones who are bleak? What the hell? The entire Sanders campaign is based on hope and making a better country. It’s galvanizing a huge number of people, especially the young, which is the entire point of the article! It’s Clinton’s campaign whose entire message is that things suck, but we must stop the mean Republicans from making things worse.
I had a different read. To me it seemed like the author was, against all of his expectations, finding the Bernie supporters likable, thoughtful, credible, and in his word “cool”. That is how Bernie wins supporters.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434144/9-11-report-28-pages-saudi-arabia-terrorism-connections-should-be-released
After his fellow fundamentalists murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, Awlaki was interrogated by the FBI several times and made patently false statements minimizing his acquaintance with them. Yet, he was somehow* allowed to leave the United States in March 2002. The investigators who believed he was complicit in the 9/11 plot were overruled by other agents who rationalized that his contacts with the hijackers and other radicals on both coasts were (as the New York Times put it) “random, the inevitable consequence of living in the small world of Islam in America.” Remarkably, the Justice Department intervened to direct that Awlaki be un-arrested and allowed to enter the U.S. freely. Sometime after leaving the country, Awlaki made his way to Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, the Justice Department developed a passport-fraud case against him and an arrest warrant was issued. As I’ve outlined here, Awlaki was thus placed under arrest when he arrived at JFK International Airport in New York on October 10, 2002, on a flight from Riyadh. Remarkably, the Justice Department intervened to direct that he be un-arrested and allowed to enter freely . . . in the company of the Saudi government representative who was conveniently on hand to assist him.
=============================================
After one gets passed the BOTH Bush and Obama are equally culpable blather, (NR can’t state that Bush “he kept us same” not only didn’t keep us safe from “day one” but massively blotched the investigation – the only question being due to sheer stupidity or something much, much darker) the ineptitude and unwillingness to acknowledge that the Saudi’s are not allies goes beyond corruption for oil and approaches treason.
* Who made that decision and why? My experience in the American “intelligence” community is that you do what your boss tells you, but when something goes wrong your “autonomous” – of course, supervisors being totally unaware of what their employees are up to is not a bug, but a feature – indeed, the most critical feature.
Or perhaps a desire to LIHOP/HIHOP/MIHOP whatever Awlaki was part of planning and facilitating?
Obama refuses to endorse Hillary…will sit out primaries…the plot thickens…run bernie run….
The Obama family is doing what they have been doing since the 2008 campaign: Disliking the Clintons.
It’s not like Obama is a bold person. It should come as no surprise that he isn’t going to choose a side if he’s not forced to.
But why not? …it’s so easy for him to change sides, once he learns which side gets buttered!
Striking Verizon Workers Hit By Company Attorney Driving a Porsche
instant flashback to tale of 2 cities
if we opened up some tumbril and guillotine factories, that would provide some domestic jobs. win win.
Caught in the Aftermath of a Minsky Moment by a Credibility Trap
We do not have ‘capitalism.’ We have a corrupt system of kleptocracy ruled over by the big money power of a relatively few. And a system based on the primacy of selfishness, power, and unbridled greed and a free hand to cheat and deceive and manipulate will serve to create a kind of hell on earth.
I think it is time for all of us to take a deep breath and seriously consider where our passions are taking us, and what our spirit of contentiousness and will to power is causing us to say and do. The ultimate irony is when we become that which we have hated. I do not seek to persuade you all. The kind of greed and lust for power and revenge we are seeing is driven not by normal desire but rather a pathology. Rather, I would wish all of us to step back, take a deep breath, and see what we may become before this goes too far.
Saturday, April 16, 2016 at 05:32 AM (in reaction to the two recent PK columns on Sanders):
“Paul Krugman has decided that if there is any way to destroy a decent, humble, caring, thoughtful candidate for president, a candidate who offers the possibility of actual change in domestic and foreign policies that have created so many problems for so many people for so long, if there is any way, any word that can be used, to destroy that candidate then destruction there will be.
What Krugman has done however is show me what wild intolerance, what authoritarian political thinking in an American context amounts to, and the attempts by Krugman at destruction of a decent person and candidate will with me turn me completely away from the desired effect.
Were I a student of Paul Krugman, I would smile and nod as if in agreement and very quietly go in the opposite direction. After all, I fortunately learned early on which teachers always had to be agreed with.
I have no idea where this disdain for a truly decent person and candidate comes from, obviously not from the person, nor do I care about the psychology on where the disdain comes from. Krugman is being as fierce as can be, harsh as can be. I record the fierceness and harshness, know such an anti-intellectual posture can never be for me and move away.
“As you know, I’m only saying these things because I’m a corporate whore and want a job with Hillary.
Related: Paul Krugman, Why I Haven’t Felt the Bern
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2016/04/an-open-letter-to-establishment-both-at.html
I stumbled across this sweet little animation this morning on “the state of progressive politics today”
A Tale of Power & Vision
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZVIWZGheXY
#whyifeelthebern
++++++++++++++++++!!!
Trouble in the Bolivarian Workers Paradise:
Who needs comics, when you’ve got President Maduro on TV, handing out holidays like penny candy?
Less TV watching could be a blessing in disguise.
Federal crime to shoot down a drone.
Those Japanese Imperial soldiers were lucky shooting down a B-29 was not a federal crime.
Billion now at http://www.moonofalabama.org
The conservative group Judicial Watch has FOIAed documents of then Secretary of State Clinton related to the September 11 2012 attack in Benghazi which killed a U.S. ambassador and several CIA honchos. The documents prove that the Obama administration knew that the attack in Benghazi was part of an Al-Qaeda operation. Clinton and the Obama administration have publicly claimed the attack was in reaction to some anti-Muslim movie that was circling on the Internet.The conservative group Judicial Watch has FOIAed documents of then Secretary of State Clinton related to the September 11 2012 attack in Benghazi which killed a U.S. ambassador and several CIA honchos. The documents prove that the Obama administration knew that the attack in Benghazi was part of an Al-Qaeda operation. Clinton and the Obama administration have publicly claimed the attack was in reaction to some anti-Muslim movie that was circling on the Internet.The conservative group Judicial Watch has FOIAed documents of then Secretary of State Clinton related to the September 11 2012 attack in Benghazi which killed a U.S. ambassador and several CIA honchos. The documents prove that the Obama administration knew that the attack in Benghazi was part of an Al-Qaeda operation. Clinton and the Obama administration have publicly claimed the attack was in reaction to some anti-Muslim movie that was circling on the Internet.
Clinton informed the Egyptian foreign minister that the attack had nothing to do with any film, and even her daughter Chelsea was informed by her that an ‘al-Queda-like group’ was responsible when she was peddling the story about the film to the US public. Can you imagine, she confines state secrets to her daughter—that kid must know more state secrets than even Obama! And she’s going to be president.
When are the revolutionaries going to go after the Obama administration and the man in charge?
“No in our 11 dimensional chess plan.”
Sorry, not in our strategizing.
We can’t do that if we want to win.
X3 !! it must be really important. What’s new in evidence?
I’m sorry, but what is it that you don’t understand?
Hillz is above the law. It’s the “Z” it makes anything bullet proof, and sexy…
Not just a pretty face then? Justin Trudeau stuns room full of reporters and scientists with perfect answer to complex quantum computing question
Surely the current inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and all five remaining candidates could do the same.
Inside Panama Papers: Multiple Clinton connections
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article72215012.html
“Apple found $40 million in gold from used phones and computers last year Business Insider”
The story is horrible. “they use robots”….wow, great insights.
They also didn’t “find it”, just like everything else apple, you rent it. They get it back, it was never yours to begin with.
Sauds threaten to release 750 billion of basel 3 compliant capital at a discount…third world bankers cheer…imf breathes a sigh of relief…draghi toasts to the genius of janet and her secret plan to let the saudis think it would hurt the market…bravisimo…