Trees seen resting branches while ‘asleep’ for the first time New Scientist (martha r)
200,000 year old soil found at mysterious crater, a ‘gate to the subterranean world’ Siberian Times (guurst)
Grayson Perry creates huge phallus to represent bankers’ worldview Guardian (Dr. Kevin). I assume he appreciates the full ramifications of his imagery. Status with huge penises were symbols of power in many prehistoric cultures.
‘Fundamentally unstable’: Scientists confirm their fears about East Antarctica’s biggest glacier Washington Post (furzy)
Johns Hopkins medical students will no longer train on live animals Baltimore Sun (furzy)
Antibiotics will soon stop working and cause major health treatments to be unsafe, major report warns Independent (martha r)
Theranos Voids Two Years of Edison Blood-Test Results Wall Street Journal. Worse, they sent out redone results…for patients tested in 2014 and 2015! No way do they have the blood samples to reprocess. I believe commercial labs keep them a week, typically. As one reader commented:
Regurgitated results from 2014 and 2015 in corrected form. NO WAY. Our in-house lab servicing my ER (in a JC compliant hospital)) does not have routine blood specimens available for retesting over 30 days passed the initial blood draw.
EgyptAir flight from Paris missing BBC
China?
Chinese jets intercept US spy plane over South China Sea, Pentagon says BBC
Bankruptcy experts bet on China boom Financial Times
Stepson of Malaysia’s Najib Razak Bought $34 Million London House With 1MDB Funds Wall Street Journal (Richard Smith)
Dilma Rousseff Suspension Prompts Accusations Of Parliament Coup; Venezuela, El Salvador And Ecuador Pull Ambassadors International Business Times (martha r)
Chemical industry is the best indicator of EM outlook – and the outlook is not good Financial Times
Europe’s troubled push for bank ‘bail-ins’ Financial Times. Ahem, NC has been writing how this is a terrible idea since the Cyprus bail-in….
Refugee Crisis
Commission scolds EU countries on migrant resettlements from Turkey Politico
Brexit?
What is Brexit-related uncertainty doing to UK growth? British Politics and Policy at LSE
EU Referendum: Downing Street accused of ‘vicious briefings’ against Brexit campaigners Telegraph
Rents and property values would drop after Brexit, say landlords Guardian
Most eurozone firms expect Brexit would hurt economy – survey Times of Malta
A Norwegian view: are things really so bad outside the EU? Open Democracy
Bedroom tax victims resort to CANDLES to light their homes Mirror (guurst)
Ukraine/Russia
Preparing war in Europe! (US anti-missile shield or sword) Defend Democracy
Greek Pipeline Breakthrough To Challenge Russian Gas Dominance OilPrice
Cold War Weariness: Polish President Opposed to East-West Hostility Sputnik New. Wat: “Polish prez laments east-west hostility while hosting ever larger NATO war machine.”
Clinton E-mail Hairball
Clinton aides Mills, Abedin subpoenaed over email; group seeks to depose Clinton Washington Post
2016
The Faux Fracas in Nevada: How a Reporter Manufactured a Riot Counterpunch
Fact-Checking NPR’s Reports On Vegas ‘Violence’ : NPR Ombudsman NPR. Martha r: “A small concession from NPR. Way too little, too late. And still no effort to interview reliable witnesses like Nina Turner, Erin and Jim Bilbray on either the cheating or Bernie’s supporters’ reactions to it. Still big holes in the official story.”
Aide: DNC head has been ‘throwing shade’ at Sanders The Hill (Bill C)
Hillary Clinton left frustrated by Bernie Sanders’ Oregon victory Financial Times. How dare the peasants keep rebelling!
Bernie Sanders, Eyeing Convention, Willing to Harm Hillary Clinton in the Homestretch New York Times. Lambert: “Beyond the hysteria of the headline, note the difference between it and the URL as a fine example of editor’s bias at work.” Time to write the public editor? If so, be sure to mention if you have or will cancel your subscription, particularly if it was a print subscription (those are super valuable).
It’s Not All About Bernie Sanders Booman Tribune. Lambert: “I find myself in complete agreement with Booman on what should happen, though i don’t think it will.”
Clinton discloses millions in book royalties, speaking fees Associated Press
Hillary’s Latest Scandal: She And Bill Siphoned $100 Mil From Persian Gulf Leaders Investors Business Daily (furzy). From last week.
Investigation Finds Clinton Does Best Where Voting Machines Flunk Hacking Tests” Free Thought Project (Judy B)
R.I.P., GOP: How Trump Is Killing the Republican Party Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone (Chuck L). Great details but if Trump wins, this is shaping up to be a massive party realignment of both parties, as opposed to a death of the Republicans. The text acknowledges that further down.
Ex-Generals March Into Campaign 2016’s Political Wars Foreign Policy
Donald Trump releases list of 11 potential Supreme Court nominees Washington Post
Democrats’ latest Supreme Court tactic: No recess till confirmation Washington Post
Warren: GOP ‘ringing the dinner bell’ for lobbyists The Hill (furzy)
Democratic Leadership Needs to Understand That the Political World Is Changing Reader Supported News (furzy)
Fix for VA health snarls veterans and doctors in new bureaucracy PBS
Emanuel uses possible privatization of security at airports to leverage TSA Chicago Tribune (martha r)
Hasidic neighborhood in B’klyn is a top beneficiary of Section 8 New York Daily News (Judy B)
Twelve of 20 drunkest U.S. cities are in Wisconsin; Mankato 10th Minneapolis StarTribune (Chuck L)
Fed
Minutes Say June Is On The Table Tim Duy
Fed to Markets: June Rate Increase Is on the Table Wall Street Journal
Class Warfare
Union seeks to block Southwest from getting new Boeing model Associated Press (martha r)
Uber as a predatory lender John Hempton (Scott)
Whoa. Uber microfinance! @pierre would approve! https://t.co/KgnYSyXB7r
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) May 18, 2016
Remembering the Magna Carta We Kill Because We Can (gurst)
Antidote du jour (furzy):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
237 comments
Comments are closed.
RE: Hillary Clinton left frustrated by Bernie Sanders’ Oregon victory
What is the work around for subscription sites again?
Also, “Preparing war in Europe!” has the wrong link
If you copy the text of the headline and search for it then that should give you a link to the unlocked version.
Thanks! got it.
In the case of NYT you can also open the link in an “incognito” (Chrome) or “Blind” (Firefox) window, and thus not have to roll the dice with google.
How does the “Blind” mode work in Firefox?
Right click on a link, it will be the third option in the menu. It opens up a new window that is not stored in your browser history. NYT allows 10 free articles/month based on what it sees in your browser history, so this will allow you unlimited articles.
pondered what that was…THANKS RG
Or clean out cache. That has worked for me.
Thank you Kim and TG
re: “Bernie Sanders, Eyeing Convention, Willing to Harm Hillary Clinton in the Homestretch”
Thanks to whoever posted the hint about reading for Clinton troll content. The NYT comments on this story are filled with the formulation “I used to______but now I_____”
I too noticed the huge number of comments that are supposedly from disaffected Sanders supporters. The conspiracy theorist in me says this is the work of Correct The Record; if not, it’s pretty sad that so many of his supporters are getting all of their information from the NYT.
I doubt that many Sanders supporters actually read the Times.
Yep.
Not true. Just a few months ago, a typical Times story would draw a lot of pro-Sanders comments, mostly about how the paper refused to mention him in stories about the primaries. Now it appears the Clinton campaign has started saturating the Times comment sections. It’s all very strange. As for myself, I keep the subscription so I can keep track of what the Elites are up to. And read the Food section.
Some of us stick to the Book Reviews, the travel section and the arts and leisure section, with occasional check ins on political content while knowing full well that the “gray lady” is, by and large, the megaphone of the elites.
Unlike the ‘Burka Avenger’, the Pakistani feminist superhero:
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/burka-avenger-the-pakistani-feminist-superhero/
An inspirational story care of Room to Read with the Malala Fund.
I have been struck by the APPARENT incredible shift in sentiment amongst NYT readers over the course of the primaries.
Is it mostly a result of psi trolls or is the NYT somehow in on the act too?
The NYTimes’ “willingness to harm” headline comes out immediately after the chair throwing concoction. Goebbels would be impressed, it’s a Big Lie bank shot. A “climate of fear and violence” is generated, the order a fake democracy had previously propped up starts looking iffy. I think you can see in miniature what the run-up to a declaration of martial law looks like. All of the loose thinking about Trump as a fascist misses the possibility that the disorder his and Sanders’ campaigns generates could be used as an excuse for a crackdown by elites threatened by both campaigns.
You’re Welcome!
I did my due diligence on the Balloon Juice thread, and luckily there was only one of these generic troll comments out of 500 plus.
RE: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz “throwing shade” at Bernie since the beginning. One would have thought she could have thunk up ways to accomplish this goal that were a little less obvious. Debates on the non-tv-viewing nights, sometimes opposite big sporting events? Shouldn’t the “journalists” relentlessly hammer away at her on the blatant throwing of shade? I mean, until they actually get a feasible explanation for why she wanted to schedule the debates on days nobody would be watching?
they just don’t think they need to be subtle, is my feeling. which is not a good feeling.
Of course they can’t admit to anything, but it’s a display on the “meta” level.
They pull back their coat to show you the pieces lining their belts. They don’t “say” they have a weapon, but you get the picture pretty fast.
What I don’t get is why the Bernie campaign hasn’t made an example of Wasserman Shill, and asked the Sanders supporters in Florida to make her a special project. It’s the only language these people understand.
They have in a sense. They have been encouraging Bernie supporters to give $ to Tim Canova’s campaign. He is a progressive running against DWS in FL.
She’s being primaried by Tim Canova, a former adviser to Sanders, who has apparently raised enough money through small, online donations to make a go of it. I don’t think Sanders would get personally involved until after the national convention in July, if then. The Florida primary is a month later.
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/tim-canova-onetime-bernie-sanders-adviser-is-running-against-debbie-wasserman-schultz-7518432
Read an interview with Thomas Frank on his new book, “Listen Liberal”. He gets this down well. Esentially, this new group of Democrat Lites comes out of the elite universities, and have stacked up their resumes with silver spoon jobs. They consider themselves better than the rest of us because of this credentialing, and are very dismissive of anyone who doesn’t have it. They’ve picked Hillary because they are so smart, and we’ve picked someone else because we are not. They feel it’s OK to be openly rude and dismissive because after all, they are right. How could they not be with their credentials?
[Look at two surprise members of this group, Paul Krugman, an Ivy professor and Nobel Prize winner, and Rachel Maddow, a Rhodes Scholar. When you look at others, you’ll see this same kind of credentialing.]
Chocolate Nobel Prize winner
Though I’ve never heard him correct an interviewer’s introduction of his achievements.
I might consider voting for anyone who promises not to hire anyone with Ivy League ties.
seconded.
The book is an absolutely essential read. One of those that should be mailed to every address in the country.
Rather because they hold out a spoon for silver from the top donors to both the Bush and Clinton family and it goes from way back to ’92 to now:
“This means that, in the entire 17-candidate Republican field, Hillary drew more Republican money than did any one of 11 of the Republican candidates, but less Republican money than did any one of 6 of them.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/02/hillary-clinton-backed-major-republican-donors.html
And here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/04/hillary-clinton-s-mega-donors-are-also-funding-jeb-bush.html
And neither articles make mention of those salubrious wealthy FOREIGN donors…………
Foreign campaign donations are highly illegal. haha.
Just like spooning in some foreign parts.
As if that ever stopped the Clinton Crime Syndicate.
People used to call Clinton voters low information.
These smart Democrat Lites think the rest of us low intellect?
There are many ways to relate to others and the world – is she more sincere than me, for example, rather than just, is he smarter than me.
Yes, this book ( I am currently reading) has been able to give me an understanding of just what has been going on with the leadership in this country. The PTB are of the ” professional class”. They believe in Meritocracy, and Frank notes this has lead to the identity politics of today. He argues that the Democratic Party has forgotten the plights of the working class in favor of a ” postindustrial ideology”. He contrasts The cabinets of the Obama administration with that of FDR’s. I will preface this quote by saying Frank thinks the FDR administration was the” golden age of government by professionals.” But I found this contrast most interesting and telling,” Look back to the days when government-by-expert actually worked and you will notice an astonishing thing. Unlike the Obama administration’s roster of well-graduated mugwumps, the talented people surrounding Franklin Roosevelt stood very definitely outside the era’s main academics currents.” He then goes on to list some of FDRs cabinet members. People like Herry Hopkins a social worker, and Robert Jackson the US AG, whom FDR appointed to the Supreme Court, was a lawyer with no law degree! Also mentioned was Henery Wallace who was Agriculture Secretary who came to government after studying at ISU and ran a farming magazine( he ran for president as well but that is a post for another time.) Lastly, Harry Truman VP had no college degree.
Is the problem that the elites believe in meritocracy or that much of the country does? Many Bernie supporters might even, they just think the neoliberal thing has gone too far, and national healthcare etc. might be a good idea, but it doesn’t mean they have all completely rejected meritocracy.
I question whether comparing FDR’s administration to the present really makes much sense there. Less people had degrees in general then, and there were more lawyers without law degrees, engineers without engineering degrees and so on. It’s a different world.
I think that the middle class of today try to emulate the “credentialed” and thereby tend to forget that the history of the Democratic Party of the past and it’s working class roots. Yes, it is a different world and as Frank argues, it is a different Democratic Party, one that has no room or want, for that matter, of the working class stiffs. IMO, Bernies’s campaign is trying to bring the working class back into the Democratic Party. This book has been enlightening to me in trying to understand the changes I have witnessed in the Democratic Party over my lifetime, which I think have been significant. I will note that I have not read this book in it’s entirety yet these are my initial observations.
It’s the decline of noblesse oblige, (such as it was). The “credentialed” (and “the middle class”) universally imitate the working class, with no more social responsibility than they.
If you think about it, beyond the initial period of labor activism early in the 20th century, what did “the working class” have to contribute to society, (as opposed to what they did for pay in the economy)?
Nuthin’. That’s what. Why would anybody in post-industrial US know to do anything else but pursue their own interests?
As for politics, the reason black people and Civil Rights are so central in the D-Party is that they were the only democratic actors in the entire second half of the 20th century.
Without Civil Rights, once again you get nuthin’.
And Bill Clinton, the Man from Hope, is a real landmark here as the first person to use the Office of the President to massively enrich himself.
You know, as if it were any other ordinary “work opportunity.”
All of which is just to say, that we need to find a cultural resource to find and cultivate some other values, not just those we think are represented in “the working class.”
He doesn’t really extend the argument that far. I do not think the average citizen recognizes the professional class/meritocracy at play; one reason this book is so great. He states that knowledge is not a bad thing and of course you want someone competent to perform roles that require advanced training. The problem is the professionals, who used to be an outside aide to social dialogue or issues, have solidified as their own class under the Democratic Party.
It is their inflated egos and focus on credentials that makes them oblivious to everything wrong they are doing. Less people had degrees in the FDR days, which is the point. These inflated credentials are meaningless and are only used as tool to wield power over others, via “rational” or “knowledged” justifications. Despite all the evidence to their contrary, no one is accountable because such is the “scientific world”. Try as we might, natural forces repel us… or some crap like that.
Ex. The Canadian teen who the media pushed through the trenches over his astronomical, Mayan temple search. This boy had an idea, saw some potential connections and pursued with investigation. Anyone should instantly recognize that as the scientific method. The next day I saw several articles about credentialed professors and researches discounting his futile, preposterous, and elementary efforts, for some legitimate reasons, but largely under the pretense that he was a kid and had not yet been whipped into the orthodoxy. He was also encouraged to pursue a degree. Go figure.
To me, regardless of how logical his starting point was, he was doing science a service and thinking outside the box. Maybe he discovers something, maybe not, maybe his initial efforts lead to something else more substantial…who knows, but that is how science works. If everyone is so orthodoxical it is no wonder why incrementalism is so mighty a term for these people.
Very well said sir! Thanks for articulating.
Thanks :)
The credentialed professors were trying to protect their closed guild.
Very typical, paleontology in spades.
August West
May 19, 2016 at 12:38 pm
“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
― H.L. Mencken.
=================================
I would merely substitute “elite colleges” for “public education”
And I can’t help that these “ivy league institutions” state that their greatest value is in the “networks” *** they expose your heirs to….
*** – i.e., grifting syndicates
I saw a documentary the other day about a French town going organic in its canteen to feed their school kids. They also learned to grown them in their garden.
I would include public education in there, along with eilte universities, if the students are not taught permacultture, how to eat healthy, lead a happy life, etc.
Not so much computer programming or accounting.
you wouldn’t think the elite would need to TRY SO HARD, at least anyone beyond the first generation, so many are born into wealth anyway (though I suppose not the Clinton’s so maybe that does explain it). You would think that would be a more middle class thing for people who don’t come from privilege.
I think the credentialing is really mostly what holding elite positions in this society requires. I’m not saying it should require Ivys, just that it tends to.
Sophists have known that if you can craft an ‘ethos’ with enough embellishments’, you get a pass on ‘logic’ and reason. Distracted or mesmerized by the dense “credentialing”, most won’t question the character or credibility and are easily manipulated in the realm of the ‘pathos’ (mostly fear and greed) by meaningless but lofty and/or scary sounding abstractions. This circus cycle has shown on the one hand, “it takes a village” to craft an ‘ethos’ AND otoh ‘it’ can be crafted with unfettered and mind-numbing repetition of reality tv…credentials without character and credibility is really just ‘branding”, which makes ‘it’ even blurrier.
++++
I note that many criminal syndicates mark and indoctrinate their novitiates with elaborate tattoos and solemn ceromonies – – I can’t help but notice the similarity to our “higher education” rituals…
Thanks for the feedback and yes, the semiotics may be conspicuous or subtle but the analogies are uncanny.
Yeah, not just Skull and Bones, but, Opus Dei and The Masons too.
Democracies require transparency and inclusiveness at all levels. No need of any third party certification.
A key element in their claim to superiority is their intensive reliance on polling data to create what is for them a simulacrum of the national mind. Back when, I spent some time at Michigan being trained in the polling arts. It eventually became clear to me that mass polling was inevitably based on inferences from superficial questions that were strongly moored in commonsensical parameters of social reality. Almost every research design I ever saw made no attempt to probe for ambivalence in political attitudes that might hint at a potential to escape established system limits. Any “deeper” notion of political consciousness was methodologically excluded. (If you can get access, check out the exhaustive compendium of polling at the Roper Center.) This narrow understanding of the “logic” of a respondent’s orientation to the world was then strengthened as question formulations became standardized to allow comparisons over time. In a situation like we’re in today, the inertia of their research methods leaves them high and dry. The error in their predictions appear to be caused by “irrational” sentiments largely because those sentiments were declared off limits to investigation, mirroring the real limits to political discourse.
Actually, there’s quite a strong resonance between this constraint on elite rationality and what Friedman was talking about in another site article today. There it’s about being hobbled by the stupefying neoliberalism.
The fact that Maddow is a Rhodes Scholar should delegitimize the entire idea of that having any cachet (as much as a foundation named after a Eugenics-loving elitist POS can be delegitimized).
I have never been impressed with her too-proud-of-my-own-wit self-congratulatory nature in the Bush years, to say nothing of her sycophancy to Barry O and her true and lasting shame, her coverage of election ’16.
Money pays more bills and buys more nice houses than integrity does, I guess.
As Jon Ralston is learning!
As our own ‘ex’ PM Abbott… a Rhodes Scholar can exemplify…..
Disheveled Marsupial…. everything he has done and will do is a win in his mind…. its others that have the drama in not understanding – that – which makes leadership so burdensome….
There’s a work around for subscription sites? What would it be?
as mentioned above, use Firefox browser and “open private window”. It doesn’t work for most subscription sites, but does for nytimes.
see 2nd comment
Twelve of 20 drunkest U.S. cities are in Wisconsin
Many people have asked me how Wisconsin could elect Scott Walker three times. Whelp, there you have it.
That’s an unfair slight on the D’s dexterous ability to lose.
And don’t forget the Waukesha county election clerk.
Fill a state with German, Irish and Polish immigrants and you will get one hell of a lot of drinking. The Norwegians and the Swedes pitch in as well.
I moved to northern Iowa from Louisiana awhile back, and this overall area–a few miles south of Minnesota, and a couple hours west of Wisconsin–and the upper Midwest in general, is the hardest drinking area I’ve ever seen. Grocery stores have rows and rows of generic vodka. Here it’s mostly Norwegians and Germans, and I have read that the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota have the highest rates of binge drinking in the nation.
I lived in Minnesota, close the border with Wisconsin for a few years. The change when crossing over into WI was noticeable. At least half the population there is wearing either Green bay Packer jerseys or camo type stuff—often a combination. Most of their free time is spent in bars or driving to the liquor store or deer hunting while downing a twelve-pack or ice fishing with 24-pack. Of course Minnesotans are above such behavior–we are more evolved etc.,
A few weeks ago, I crossed over the river from Wabasha MN to Wisconsin and noticed a difference right away. I’ve always found Northern Iowa and southern Minnesota to be sort of prim, while Wisconsin seemed rougher around the edges, not a bad thing imho.
given the situation, i’m guessing that you are not talking so much about the women perhaps because you have not seen any–because they do not have any free time and cannot leave the house? i know ice fishing is sometimes a family affair including wives and small children, but i’m not sure deer hunting is. please correct if wrong.
Yes, it is. Not necessarily with wives, but definitely with kids (both boys and girls). I grew up in rural MN in the 80s and was the only kid I knew who didn’t take rifle safety training when I turned 12.
This makes me nostalgic for 90s-era Onion issues featuring The Drunk of the Week.
RIP the Onion.
Thank you all for the warm thoughts. Bottoms up!
Prost!
It’s absolutely amazing to see Biden, and HuffPo and the Guardian so blatantly twist what happened in Nevada, especially given all the videos that exist of the event. It’s not surprising to see Biden spin yarns – that’s all he ever does. It’s surprising to seem him do so in the face of such overwhelming proof to the contrary in videos plastered all over the net. Again, it gives one a new perspective – no matter how jaded – on just how these individuals assume they can get away with virtually anything. Guardian readers get it right away, HuffPo commenters are either better paid Hillary trolls or examples of how wrapped up people can get in what they want to believe. I suspect comment selection as well as paid Hillary subjects in HuffPo but again and regardless, the bias and blatancy is just stunning. In HuffPo, only one commenter was allowed to make the observation about just watching the videos at least in the first dozen or so comments.
The Democratic Party’s ability to turn themselves into the cowering victims in any situation is equally amazing and pathetic.
Apparently they want to learn the hard way that crying wolf will not work anymore.
Yes, spot on regarding the Democratic Party, but it is more. Both parties, the “establishment”, the media, etc., are staggeringly oblivious to how far down the rabbit hole they have gone. This is like a cross between a Fellini movie and King Kong only real time; we are watching empire collapse live and such blatant events as these bring the reality home in a way that is visceral.
My boss owns three stores. He is moderately well-off. He vacations overseas three times a year and owns his own propeller plane. Yet I see in him the same wacky capacity to simply redefine anything he pleases to absolve himself and blame others that is so rampant among those in charge here in the US. It’s as if he thinks that if he’s late, although this has significant consequences, it doesn’t matter, but if anyone else is late, he’ll scream at them and threaten to fire them because their lateness has consequences. In short, it’s the same “the rules don’t apply to me because I own this place and you don’t” and “I can never be wrong–it’s always someone else’s fault” you see from virtually everyone in authority in the contemporary world.
From virtually everyone in authority, and many who are not (yet) in authority.
Those not yet in authority practice that attitude, so when they are are promoted, they will be ready.
Right up to the Preznit himself. Whose House? O’s House! (Mother Jones)
Hope that job can be temporary. What a prick.
I said this to a Clinton supporter friend of mine: Obama’s entire presidency, and particularly the apologia tour he’s given over the past year (see the Atlantic article on foreign policy in particular) have been filled with excuses for why he can’t do things. Obama says the establishment prevented him from having a constructive foreign policy; the republicans from having good domestic policy; Europe from having a good Libya strategy.
The entire party seems to play the victim as a way of securing votes. Hillary has played the victim with Bernie many times over. The funny part about it is that the excuses border on conspiracy theory. The R’s couldn’t possibly go after Clinton on Benghazi because they thought she was being dishonest: it’s a conspiracy against her as a person. People aren’t supporting Obama? They’re racists. Clinton? Sexists. Conspiracy theories are very alive.
I’m quite tired of it. There’s no proactivity, no creativity, no imagination. It’s just excuses for why things cannot be done.
Obama may have had ideas of his own, but we’ll never know because Obama was unprepared. The only way to take the permanent government is to go in with your own Administration, as arguably Clinton did, for better or worse, and Obama didn’t. Obama inherited the dregs of Bush and Clinton.
I think on the whole, he was okay with this. I’m just saying.
Obama was largely elected over Hillary simply because the lies from older Democrats weren’t sitting well. Obama had problems, and many overlooked them. While Obama has been President, his supporters who didn’t make a sober assessment entry of him went crazy to protect their friend, but the same problems that elevated an empty suit with no career to the White House over Hillary Clinton are still here except magnified.
The Democrats avoided a reckoning hiding behind Obama, but no one has ever said, “Joe Biden is the smartest, greatest speaker, coolest, mostest brilliantesty President ever who plays 853rd dimensional chess like Spock!” Obviously comparing Obama to a fictional character who wasn’t even the captain was bizarre, but Obama has a cult of personality. Obama kept the Democrats from learning this lesson.
In case anyone has forgotten, Joe Lieberman was defeated in the Connecticut Democratic primary despite every Democratic name, including Obama, campaigning for Lieberman except for Edwards and Kucinich. The conflict is back on. Sanders has made a race despite a lack of endless speculation, a very late start, his age, his lack of a large state to support him with a major media outlet, and the entire Democratic apparatus behind Frau Hillary.
Obama was elected over Hillary because the FIRE establishment knew the GFC was coming and surveyed the field, then threw the most money behind the candidate — from a bankster family — with the most potential to forestall a replay of anything like FDR and the New Deal. As one African-American friend commented to me at the time, Wall Street played the race card.
You look at his late start, his small state senator status, and see what he has done so far, you ask these questions:
How much of that is simply ‘anyone but Hillary?’
How much is anti-establishment in general?
The optimistic take is that most of it, to both questions, and going forward, that sentiment, that voter frustration/anger can be tapped by many progressive candidates at all levels.
You are hopeful that anyone should be able to do it, and that will encourage more people to run similar campaigns.
I saw Biden just said he denies a split within the Democratic Party. It makes me think of the (Cockburn?) quote, “never believe anything until it is officially denied.” We know there is a split with the voters, but now I’m wondering about splits amoung these super delegates and party elites.
I saw Weaver went out of his way yesterday to say that many people in the DNC have been very supportive, and that they have received a lot of support from many in the DNC throughout the campaign. He made it clear his complaints were about DWS, not the entire DNC. That makes me wonder if there are a lot of party electeds who are expressing their support privately to him, and if many believe that support of HRC and these heavy handed DNC tactics are becoming a political liability.
The same in Bernie’s camp – some are for “Bernie or bust,’ and some, including the leader, are for stopping Trump, as the no. 1 priority.
I have no particular inside knowledge, but I can picture a couple of scenarios, in addition to the plausible one you outlined (than Dem Party elities are starting to have doubts about Clinton).
DNC members may be “keeping channels open” so that if Hillary does get indicted, Bernie can be “brought on-board”, and the Dem party insiders can avoid a Trumping of their own.
It’s also possible that, should Hillary & Co decide they cannot (openly) scorn their own left, that DWS will be vivisected and fed to sharks under the bus as a sort of ritual sacrifice.
(Now that I think about it, it seems likely to me that Hillary could offer to trade future reforms to the primary process in return for being fully supported for the nomination now. After all, what does she care about future primaries as long as she gets the nomination this year? Whether that would be a worthwhile bargain or not, I have no idea.)
Does it take an indictment or does being under FBI investigation do it? Because the DOJ and FBI are in a tight spot in Jason Leopold’s FOIA case and Judicial Watch’s FOIA case. The FBI will be forced to admit an investigation is underway or be forced to turn over lots of documentation in the next couple of weeks.
As many or you know, there have been many FOIA requests about Clinton’s emails and server. Jason Leopold of Vice News had filed one against the DOJ seeking records regarding Clinton’s Server and the DOJ filed a Motion for Summary Judgment claiming they were exempt from producing these records due to an ongoing investigation.
Yesterday, Leopold’s legal team filed a response to the DOJ’s Motion for Summary Judgment alleging that the DOJ had failed to meet its burden which required it to more specifically identify the individual being investigated, the incident being investigated, and the possible security risk or the violation of federal law.
Ouch.
The DOJ will not have much time to reply to this response. (My guess is between 7 and 15 days. The old rule was 14 days and now it is up to the court).
Leopold’s legal team suggested that perhaps “Clinton or her aides [could be] the subject or target of an investigation into the mishandling of classified information, a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1924.”
But since the DOJ hasn’t really said anything of substance about who it is investigating or what criminal law they were investigating they have not met their burden according to Leopold’s legal team.
The uspshot of all this is that Comey’s hand my be forced much sooner than he wants. The DOJ better come up with a target and an incident and an applicable criminal statute in their reply or their Motion for Summary Judgment will be denied and they will have to give up the documents Leopold requested.
Here’s the link to LAW NEWZ and the Response to the Motion for Summary Judgment:
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/atto…investigation/
weird why have i had for awhile the creepy feeling, just from looking at her visage, that, somehow, DWS’s abject, rabid loyalty to HRC could make her, to HRC, even more likely expendable?
…not sure why i sense the Clintons are adept at not really rewarding loyalty to the extent they fool their loyalists into believing they will. it just seems to fit.
maybe those who are most manipulable are also the most vulnerable when no longer useful.
Weaver: “Bring me the head of Debbie Wasserman Schulz”
I read that as Weaver proffering one potential clause in a deal; one that would cause the Establishment some pain (as it should).
Nah, Weaver has his own career to worry about and can’t burn bridges with the DNC as a whole. He has to work with them day to day.
There’s a piece in the Guardian, harvested by Truthdig, wherein Wikileaks’ Jacob Appelbaum says “There’s a real split between journalists who are working to reveal information and journalists who are propagandists. And in the United States most of the journalists are propagandists. They’re stenographers for the state.”
Of course, Chomsky and Herbert demonstrated that back in ’88, which makes it all the easier to trace the machinery behind this particular link of sausage.
i think today is the 19th…but my dumass phone is reading the 20th.
Mars & Mercury are in retro an me don’t feel so gud.
There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream ‘Oppression!’
And the oaks, just shake their heads
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
‘The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light’
Now there’s no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet,
Axe,
And saw. The Trees, Rush (thanks martha r. for resting trees)
Poignant. Thanks for that. I like this very much. Now, I am going to work in the garden, tis a beautiful day in the Chi, finally!!
Police and Prison Guard Groups Fight Marijuana Legalization in California
Lee Fang
May 18 2016, 11:21 a.m.
ROUGHLY HALF OF the money raised to oppose a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana in California is coming from police and prison guard groups, terrified that they might lose the revenue streams to which they have become so deeply addicted.
Drug war money has become a notable source of funding for law enforcement interests. Huge government grants and asset-seizure windfalls benefit police departments, while the constant supply of prisoners keeps the prison business booming.
https://theintercept.com/staff/leefang/
——————————————————————————————-
Another addition to the Democratic Party platform from the Bernie Brigades: Decommission the DEA, the Nixon Era Police State apparatus that has criminalized untold millions, ruined entire cities, built an American Gulag Archipelago that is the living nightmare of America’s pretension to the land of the free, yeah except for the millions behind bars and millions more under parole supervision. Like the coal industry, the war on drugs is a sunset business. Legalize pot, decriminalized cocaine and heroin, make them health issues at worst with heavy state regulation without prison or police involvement for abusers. Suppliers, another story altogether.
A common practice called “equitable sharing” makes matters even worse.
The laws passed by the California legislature actually provide pretty good protections for individuals caught up in asset forfeiture proceedings.11 But California equitable sharing allows those cops to get around laws by handing property they have seized over to federal law enforcement agencies. That property then gets handled under federal asset forfeiture laws, which are much harsher than California’s. Local and California state agencies get to keep eighty percent (80%) of the proceeds of the property seized, while the feds keep the other twenty percent (20%).12
What this means is that California cops can do an end-run around the restrictions on asset forfeiture that were put in place by California’s own elected officials … and still make plenty of money for their departments! Over three hundred million dollars ($300,000,000) worth of assets were seized in California through equitable sharing between 2000 and 2008.13 (2016, guess we can compound 300m x 300)
http://www.shouselaw.com/asset_forfeiture.html
I’m from California.
The last time I got pulled over I told the CHP guy flat-out “As a business owner & a homeowner, we have no confidence in law enforcement. We are on our own. Unless you can seize property or assess a fine, you’re not interested in doing your job.”
His response “If you’d have let me talk first, I’d have let you off with a warning.”
My response: “I am a citizen, not a subject, and it is not incumbent upon me to lick your boots.”
I’ll be challenging the ticket in court. I hope he shows up.
Time for robocops?
You put wheels on robot cops, you can save two ways – 1. you save with cheaper robots and 2) you can auction off all police vehicles.
Fearless, they will not shoot back even if they mistaken toy guns for real ones.
Excellent idea.
But why stop there? The US has become the poster child for self-enrichment and gratification. So here’s to robo-politicians and robo-clergy, too.
Who knows? They may be programmed to shoot first in this bizzaro police state.
Hillary: “We’re going to put a lot of prison guards and correctional companies out of business.”
Sarcasm, folks. As John Lennon used to say, “Imagine.”
checkout this intricate web http://www.dunwalke.com/10_Clinton_Administration.htm …no way no how she could eliminate those donors
Inconceivable!!!!
(as stated in the Princess Bride)
This is a corporatization scheme not a legalization scheme. All regions have gotten their regulations on board before this hits the ballot. It will still be illegal on the individual level with a vast regime of fines and penalties and only accessible through large growers in extremely restricted outlets.
Also, it’s expected there will be several legalization options on the ballot to confuse voters.
Trees don’t cry, hear, see or laugh because they don’t have a nervous system, and the morphologies to do these things are absent. Trees are plants, not humans. Plants are a wonder in and of themselves. As are many animals.
Trees have evolved very efficient chemical communication abilities within their physiology. They do not need to mimic mammalian evolutionary adaptations to stimuli. They are successful and we depend on them for our existence.
Leaves and branches can respond, via physical movement, to the sun and its photons because they is how they metabolise energy to live. Do they sleep? Probably not. Does their plant metabolism slow down at night? Well it should, they’re not feeding and they are content to remain in place. They may droop a bit when not ‘feeding’. They do not, perchance, dream since they lack a brain. And I haven’t heard one single plant ever complain about their situation, or the desire to mimic mammals.
my tuppence worth, peace out
who hears the complaints of the missing ‘)
EX: Aspen — the most widespread tree in North America — are disappearing across the western United States. Eastern Idaho’s aspen community, once estimated to cover 40 percent of eastern Idaho’s forested areas, has declined by an estimated 60 percent in the past 100 years, while Arizona has seen a 90 percent decline during that time, said Aren Eddingsaas, chairman of the science and technology committee for the Eastern Idaho Aspen Working Group and a wildlife biologist for the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe. http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2014/08/aspen_trees_disappearing_in_ea.html
EX on a global scale:http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/09/02/3697519/tree-cover-loss-2014/ WRI has been tracking forest and tree loss for the past several years. Earlier this year, the organization found that the planet’s boreal region has had the steepest loss of forest cover between 2011 and 2013, with Russia losing an average of 16,600 square miles of tree cover every year. And a mapping project put together by WRI and other groups in 2014 found that Canada leads the world in forest degradation.
abundant Bayer Piss http://fs1.agrian.com/pdfs/Merit_Tree_Injection_Insecticide_%28082806%29_Label.pdf
Ash is another tree that is widely threatened and also makes up a huge part of our forests. Bad times.
indeed. from my search, the list is TOO long
funnee i posted the bayer connection while monsanto begs HELP
‘Bad times’ only in the context of civilization …….
this planet has seen a multitude of extinctions, along with many changes in climate and geology….
It’s only us…humans..who feel that the natural world just has to remain static, unchanging…….
well, guess what………..nature don’t do static….
also…what makedoanmend said……
Why do people have to anthropomorphisize EVERYTHING about other living things??……
…and why, in the main, does our modern culture endow certain species lovable, cuddly, and cute, when the majority of species are ignored, due to being too small, too ugly, not cuddly enough, toxic in some form, creepy, crawly, etc., etc.??
modern humanity has become completely narcissistic and shallow…wallowing in it”s own hubristic mud pit !!
When humans say, ‘I love something,’ that something is doomed.
For example, when foodies say, “we love tuna sashimi,’ they are likely to face extinction.
When they say, ‘we love pork,’ well, good luck to the piggies.
BEWARE WHEN THEY SAY THEY LOVE YOU.
You should cry then.
I’ve tended to notice that with their offspring
“Why do people have to anthropomorphisize EVERYTHING about other living things??……”
I know, right? They hate that.
:-)
aby
Maybe Scooter’s ‘ode to Judith Miller was the last straw that creeped out the Aspens sensibilities and they’ve decided to leaf ?
Scooter Libby’s September 2005 letter to the then imprisoned Judy Miller created one of the great enduring mysteries of the Valerie Plame saga. Urging Miller to give up her fight against Patrick Fitzgerald’s subpoena, Libby wrote: “You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover — Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out west, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning (ed:and running?). They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work — to life.”
Opti, you are my kinda wicked wicked wicked…”Dear Judy,” she posted “No one is crediting you with starting the Iraq war. We know you were not actually on the team that took us into the biggest, most tragic U.S. foreign policy debacle ever. You were just cheering from the sidelines. Your attempt to re-write history is both pathetic and self-serving.”
~Valerie 2015 root canal’n
Aby,
good for Valarie.
I think a congenital problem in this country is a disinterest in the body politic to take the time to reflect on consequences. Intentions, execution and outcome.
9/11, and the diversion called Iraq War II with all it’s consequential events has never ben honestly reflected on. GWB, who was “the decider” at the epicenter had many enablers, one of which is running for POTUS.
Aspen is disappearing because of the human appetite for meat.
Executive summary: Predators targeted because they might damage cattle (e.g. wolves) would keep down the wild herbivore populations that eat aspen and willow. So…not only are carnivores behind the deforestation of the Amazon (free pasture!), and not only has meat eating increased five-fold since the ’50s….now the secondary effects, on both land and sea, are altering ecosystems that previously sustained us.
Bottom line: One of the most important things anyone can do to personally curtail species extinction (including our own) and climate change / global warming is to stop eating meat.
The other side is as tragic – animals dying because of human appetite for trees.
Apparently, the last wild tiger in Central and South China died and was eaten in 2009. Over thousands of years, trees were cut down to supply the imperial palaces. So much so, when they ran out of trees locally (typically in Central China, where the capitals were located, like Xian, Beijing Kaifeng, Loyang, etc), the Ming emperors had to ship them from distance provinces, like, for example, Yunnan.
Without trees, tigers die.
Alan Savory explains why your thinking is full of it:
http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change
prefer to read and came across this, care to comment?
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/04/allan_savory_s_ted_talk_is_wrong_and_the_benefits_of_holistic_grazing_have.html
tegnost @ 6:47 pm
Countering Alan Savory has become time consuming, thankless, unpaid work and I’m tired of doing it. My regards to you for sharing the load.
Plenty of research being done on the very alien, but very real area of plant communication.
http://www.wired.com/2013/12/secret-language-of-plants/
Clearly they have faculties that are roughly analogous to those of mammals, but it’s much more complicated than that.
Yeah, amazing stuff. But maybe it behoves us “sapiens” to rethink how we think about communication – what it is, how it can be done in a myriad of ways, and how communicative functions evolve in different lifeforms (or even within our own personal cell based communicating ecosystem) over time. It’s just possible as we learn more we’ll have to adjust our attitudes to our fellow lifeforms. It is one function of human endeavour that I do admire. We do ask questions and we can learn, and many of us are more than willing to try.
thanks for the link
peace out and happy communication
yeah sleep is an imprecise word choice, although usage has been corrupted to include a possible energy efficiency mode on my computer. That noted, I think “rest” would be more accurate word choice so as not to imply a nervous system which then suggests states of consciousness.
Not withstanding all that, as a gaze upon a beautiful spruce, I am thinking it might just make for a better POTUS choice than what is on offer. the dog sniffing it can be the VP running mate
Majestic Spruce/Cute Small Dog -2016
i love this
“they are content to remain in place” says makedoanmend
who clearly is a tree lover
wonder what the trees make of that?
Hi5 catch aletheia. “I only have secrets that keep you safe, Darlin”
My bad.
“Have not evolved motility and so conserve energy” would be a better description. Though, it must be said sage brush is plenty mobile and seeds just find ways of getting around and about that verge on the amazing.
And yes I’m really taken with trees and plants in general (and living in things in general) and even some people. Trees, I must say however, have been very so slow to reciprocate. They remain defiantly silent. But I put this down to their nobility ;-)
Ash die off is a serious problem in Scotland as well as. And for some reason the bumble bees have seriously declined in numbers these last couple of years. Can’t remember when last I saw a honey bee. Also, the Tories were invited into local govt by Labour and the number of trees cut down (the council having privatised this function because austerity) is just beyond comprehension. They get paid to cut down trees out of the tax payer’s pocket (some privatisation) and find reasons to cut down trees all year round now.
Disease comes in many forms.
Also thinking that water flow through branches and leaves, which can be incredible during summer months, may have a very big impact on the structure and reactions of the plant between daytime and nightime functions.
Some say they grow taller and happier when you play classical music for them.
I wonder if that’s another attempt at brainwashing.
So the NYTimes headline says Bernie is willing to “harm” Clinton, instead of saying more accurately that he is willing to “defy” her. Bernie’s supporters are being portrayed as violent. It’s a false charge. Doesn’t matter to the MSM that it’s false. The DNC and the MSM are trying to paint a picture.
“The DNC and the MSM are trying to paint a picture.”
I am expecting some kind of false flag event in Philadelphia. Creating a “pattern of violence” now, and hammering it into the public consciousness relentlessly, will justify the authoritarian violence the establishment is planning. It will make Chicago 1968 and the Occupy Movement police actions seem tame. It’s the way they roll.
Perhaps a Black Bloc undercover police attack / event—more sophisticated than this amateurish attempt by Quebec law enforcement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJtfoILYT2c
That’s my worry as well. Given the likelihood only those closely following Bernie’s campaign are unaware demonstrations are being planned, the DNC and the media are clearly setting a foundation for something. That long, lying letter from the Nevada Dems to the DNC that barely touched ground before it was off to the media, and Joe Ralston’s “narrative nonfiction” alleging to be straight from the convention floor that helped flesh out the fairy tale—it’s all too pat.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of good people are going to Philadelphia to defend their rights as citizens. And are being painted as “violent” months in advance. That can’t be a coincidence.
Agreed.
At some point, someone’s going to come up with the idea of defamation lawsuits. The lies about Sanders supporters’ violence in Las Vegas should provide an ideal opportunity. If done competently, they’ll get in discovery the process of controlling the press. They’ll discover the distinction between press freedom and conspiracy to commit crime.
It’s one thing for a reporter or opinion writer to advocate invading Iraq, or some other criminal policy. It’s another for people in control to require particular positions, or to enforce coverage with particular slants, or to prohibit coverage of certain things. So press elite controllers who require their reporters to call for the invasion of Iraq, or to slant their coverage in favor, they are conspirators to commit aggressive war.
How was the media blackout about the dead body in then Representative Joe Scarborough’s office managed? (It was covered in the local press, but nowhere else. You can only find the coverage in the Internet Archive now.)
I’ve seen claims that the CIA brags about having its people in high positions of every major media outlet.
there have been suggestions on twitter of suing jon ralston. who could/would actually do this remains uncertain.
Doesn’t the Clinton campaign recognize that all these charges against Sanders only hurt his chances against Trump in the general?
That’s a Cat Five Snark-nado! +++++
yeah she should drop out now and save face, for the party….
snark nado that’s a good one (and appropriate)
How many here would like to harm Hillary’s chances?
Frankly, many would like to harm her chances.
The only correction to the headline is (many) Bernie supporters are willing to harm Hillary’s chances, as in ‘Bernie or Bust.’
And I think that is a proud principle thing to stand up for.
And many Bernie supporters are hoping Bernie sees it the same way…that is, hoping Sanders will harm Clinton’s chances.
Theranos — I kind of laughed my way through whole 9/11 fraud, the Patriot Act(s) fraud, the need to run tanks down American streets fraud, the whole need to militarize our police forces fraud, the continuing and escalating TSA fraud, the declaring war on terrorism fraud, the dot.com fraud(s) and the housing fraud and the subprime mortgage fraud, the banking frauds, the pension frauds, and the whole “Science Will Save the Planet” fraud, and (as a displaced former GE employee) the “we will never out-source high tech jobs” fraud. This, not so much.
Especially, since this news just came out the day after my latest speed visit with my general physician and the American Healthcare System (“Is the BEST!) fraud.
Somebody actually confused the president of Theranos as being the same person running Yahoo (Marissa Mayer). Priceless.
cool list i like it
to which may be added
the gulag and drug war frauds (discussed in comments above)
the visas for cheap immigrant workers fraud
the offshore tax havens fraud
the charter schools fraud
the university managerial budgets fraud
the obamacare fraud (with big pharma and insurance subfrauds)
the middle east/asia wars fraud
the globalization fraud
that should make your day
Taibbi’s article talks about the current Republican moment when the entire fabric of their narrative myths is unravelling.
I believe the Dems are just one election cycle behind them, and the scope of the unraveling will then be 360 degrees. The entire warp and woof of the State and each of its institutions will be finally recognized as corrupt beyond repair (per your lists above).
Afterwards, as Lenin asked, “what then shall be done?”. The optimist in me hopes whatever is “done” can be done peacefully, but the realist in me says the only way to water the tree of liberty is with blood.
Now that’s a party platform I’d like to see come out of Philly! lol
Independent infections article.
The article only gave it passing mention, but the primary and most concerning overuse of antibiotics exists on the massive factory farms with livestock. Where it is administered arbitrarily and in massive quantities (they make human usage levels look subdued).
This is the worst possible place to be overusing it and allowing resistance to build. I think once we start seeing mass die offs from diseases on these factory farms, we will get some forewarning on the likely transition to humans, we might look back on the estimate of 10 million deaths a year as mild.
Anyone else see Bayer wants to buy Monsanto?
damn, what a chess board: The proposal comes as ChemChina’s deal for Syngenta faces regulatory review in the United States over concerns about the security of U.S. food supply. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/international/bayer-makes-preliminary-o/2798398.html
oh, forgot to mention
the monsanto fraud
it kinda is implied in the “science will save the planet” fraud
–but not exactly the same thing
which reminds me
the nuclear energy fraud
(because before saving the planet, a relatively new fraud, we had
“better living through science” fraud)
oh i just thought of
the sharing economy/innovation/entrepreneurship fraud (OK, file under dotcom fraud)
In a sense, European companies are not as aggressive and hard-nosed as American companies are. So considering Monsanto’s harsh tactics on American farmers, maybe?
Hmm, could this be a distant early warning sign that the current housing bubble may be in the 8th inning?
http://www.heraldcourier.com/community/is-fha-reviving-its-condo-financing/article_6659d1f4-1b9e-11e6-8639-e7117441aa28.html
Condos are always the last to recover from a housing bust, and the first to go down like an oxygen-filled blimp with a smoking section when the next bubble bursts.
Engelstad’s commentary about the advantages of being outside the EU are spot on. The onslaught of FUD in UK re: Brexit is monumental. I wish Scotland shared Engelstad’s point of view.
Except Norway is part of the single market and therefore subject to many EU rules, including those on migration, while having no say in their drafting. The UK Leavers want the UK to quit the single market so as to be able to prevent/reduce immigration, so Norway is not really an apt analogy.
One new item left off today’s list was the continuing gun controls the government of California seeks to inflict upon its defenseless civilian population. I say defenseless because these new laws are the direct result of the continued, willful, and wanton failure by the government to fulfill its most basic responsibility to its citizens — protecting the people. In this case, call gun control for what it is “the oath fraud.”
The state of California looks to pass dozens of new gun control laws as a result of the San Bernardino terrorist attack — the result of our DHS allowing Muslim extremists into this country bent on committing domestic acts of terror. As a result, the people are being held responsible — being made victims again — by their own government. The government is responding as though it were the people of California who carried out these acts. Taking away the people’s constitutional rights to bear arms and to defend themselves, especially when their government either cannot or will not, is not the answer. But to California and in other states, this is exactly what is going on.
This country had a civil war over which rights took precedence; those held by the state or those held by the federal government. Some say the Civil War was all about economics. Some would say it was about the rights of the slave owner to his property — in this case to another human being. Nobody talks about repealing the Thirteenth Amendment. And why would they? Slavery is alive and well in the country. But today, it is open season on the Second Amendment. These attacks upon the Second Amendment are also attacks upon Article V requiring a Constitutional Convention be called to change or amend the constitution.
I am not a gun nut. But I am a Constitution nut, and Bill of Rights nut. What has been going on in Connecticut (where the “good” people of Newtown failed to perform their most basic responsibility to protect their children and to help neighbors in crisis). And here is New York state (with their unconstitutional NYSafe Act). And California. This needs to be stopped. Gun control (Oh, sorry Mr. President . . . I meant “gun safety”), as it is currently being carried out is illegal and unconstitutional.
I am an American citizen where ever I go, “Civis Americanus Sum”, protected by the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights. If states can inviolate and pick and choose which parts they wish to respect and those parts which they believe they have the right to take away, isn’t it the responsibility of the federal government to bring those states back into line? Isn’t it the responsibility of Americans everywhere?
“their most basic responsibility to … help neighbors in crisis”
how sweet a sentiment
Sorry, I don’t get it. Constitutional fundamentalists join the line behind Biblical fundamentalists, for me. It’s motivated by some kind of anxiety behind reading, maybe the enclosure movement (“Here, this written deed trumps your rights to land you and your ancestors occupied for centuries, now go work in those factories!”)…not necessarily what’s best for humanity. The obsession with the letter of the law is a form of OCD, not an exemplar of sanity.
Add to that the observation that the constitution, and a variety of laws it authorizes are routinely ignored when it suits our plutocratic masters. But we continue to obsess about it, just as the “Christian” fundamentalists obsess about sex (abortion, gay marriage) but ignore many other scriptural admonitions.
FYI, among other things, Leviticus also forbids usury, advises debt jubilees, and tells the Israelites they cannot have permanent title to land. One of the ten commandments forbids covetousness, but the U.S. has a covetousness industry called “Madison Avenue.” I’ll believe the fundamentalists are sincere, not just political pawns, when they start picketing ad agencies too.
The reformation’s insistence on “Sola Scriptura” (only scripture had the authority, not the popes) was one of the features of the enlightenment that led to lots of trouble. It originated before the differences in the available biblical manuscripts became apparent, too. There were 35,000 such differences in the 18th century. Now the differences are in the millions (more manuscripts). So appealing to the “holy writ” is not so unambiguous. The case law and Supreme Court rulings about the Constitution have at least made its points ambiguous too, if not impossible to implement.
Given the suffering that followed the reformation and counter-reformation, this insistence on “following the law” is something that needs to be taken in context. The abuses are simply too great. People, even perverse people, not divine beings, wrote the Bible and Constitution. Jefferson’s mistress was his late wife’s (slave) half sister. He and Washington were slave owners, and land speculators. Washington waged genocidal war on the Iroquois, etc.
Current example: Islam has a tradition of merchants whose focus is on doing the honorable thing, rather than following the letter of the law. When U.S. (law-obsessed) merchants sell goods, they send goods that are legal, but may not work. The Arabs are often outraged because U.S. commerce, while it may be legal, is not honorable.
If you ask me, Islam has the right idea.
+1
I often find it odd when people cling to the Constitution as some all powerful exemplar of our societal union. The document acknowledges shifting times and was made to be interpretable or changeable if such an occurrence or need arose. Instead it is largely viewed as an iron clad defense for whatever an individual flavor of the century or decade happens to be. It should be a guide to progress and unity, not a boundary around our allowed pasture.
Bloomberg was interviewed on the BBC News hour about the race. See here.
The interview contained a few interesting points.
First he declined to endorse Clinton but he did disparage both Trump and Sanders (the “Nontraditional Candidates”) as being people who offer a free lunch and, to use his analogy, “will eat you for breakfast.”
Second, he blamed technology for both angst and for the changes in elections. For the angst he commented that technology makes people more productive so it destroys jobs.
Oddly enough for a billionaire who made most of his money in real estate and the financial sector he did not mention the 2008 crash, foreclosure problems, or other misdealing as a source of “angst.”
But, his chosen example was coal which is being displaced by solar, not exactly globalization. He then said that we need to find a way to “help” coal miners such as giving them new skills or even “moving across the country.” He did not exactly explain how that would work just said that “we should find it.” This is ironic because…
Third he disparaged Bernie Sanders as someone who lacks detail and is not explaining how his plans would work.
Fourth, he took the time out to blame millenials, in a backhanded way, for not thinking deeply by noting that they don’t have the experience of getting information from people who have digested information before publishing it and that they are surrounded by information in 140 characters and on social media. He even took the time to note that “their parents can’t control them.”
Obviously he has nothing worthwhile to say: I have my billions, suck it up. A windbag.
“people who have digested information before publishing it”
bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha lol
yes they have the toughest digestive systems
we can truly rely on them
to process the garbage in and garbage out
Yes. My mind went immediately to Thomas Friedman when he said that.
did he have his hands in the ‘forward prayer’ position when he said those sage words of wizz dom??….that’s allways a tell !!
…and was he wearing black?
Typical Bloomberg. Seriously. I remember his reaction when not even the usual subjects would accept his obviously unqualified choice to be in charge of the schools. Blame everyone around him for not being as smart as he is, while saying things that show he would have a hard time seeing the hand in front of his face on a sunny day when it comes to reality.
…….well….he IS ‘richer than you’……..
… am I right? ……..Bueller? …….. Bueller? ………………….Dimon???
and the fact that he’s rich must mean he’s more deserving because everyone knows the capitalist model is a model where only those with merit become rich……
I mean doesn’t every company that lays people off hand out 10 million dollar severance packages that people can parlay into their own opportunities?
Why….Yes!
On the proposed Caspian-Adriatic gas pipeline, the article gives no numbers or estimates of expected throughput. That matters a whole lot. There is only the hopeful statement that when finished it will provide “Europe with another large source of natural gas that will help the continent diversify away from Russia.” That’s PR talk. I have a tube of toothpaste that “helps prevent cavities when used as part of a regular dental hygiene regimen.”
A glance at the many gas sources and finished pipelines to Europe already extant in Russia indicates that this one new pipeline will have the net effect of adding a single piccolo to a symphony orchestra. Russia can still turn off the heat in Europe any time it feels the need.
Besides which, given the US drive for military containment of Russia, and stacking missiles right on the Russian border, if it ever does come to fighting. one of the first and most effective things Russia could do is sever this pipeline. Repeatedly. Or, give Turkey a highly compelling reason to turn it off.
Bankers’ worldview represented by huge phallus proved unsustainable as it leads to collapse.
immediately after the explosion and deluge
Shorter: Bankers caught with pants down.
Ratcheting the attack narrative one more turn
I recently read Jon Krakauer’s fine book, Missoula. It’s just a matter of time before some of Bill’s victims show up on tv and in print to tell their stories. This will be brutal and it couldn’t happen to a nicer family.
Big kudos to Counterpunch for getting to the sources. Answered a lot of my questions.
The Faux Fracas in Nevada: How a Reporter Manufactured a Riot
Yes, it was a well researched article. The assertions were backed up with factual references. The reliance on facts made for a real contrast with the scare-headline coverage in the mainstream papers.
But, no one is going to reference this piece in the ‘better’ news venues, even if the reckless mainstream narrative gets tempered over the next few days. Because, ironically, this calm, sane piece of journalism was published in fire-breathing Counterpunch.
Yahoo News link says “Hillary Clinton filed financial documents Tuesday night showing that in 2015 she earned more than $5 million in royalties from her book Hard Choices.”
Help me out here. This is from July 2014, a month after the book’s launch:
By July 2015, Time reported that sales of Hard Choices were 280,000 RTD (Release To Date), exhibiting the typical pattern of sales decay.
If 200,000 sales would have failed to cover the exorbitant $14 million advance, how in the hell could 280,000 sales in a year not only cover the $14 million advance, but generate $5 million in royalties besides?
Ask any other author (you could start with Yves Smith) whether they find authorship so wildly, improbably lucrative. Something is special — very special — about the money-spinning knack of the Clintons.
The conservative scam is to use bulk sales to boost their numbers…has something similar happened with this one?
That was the first thing I thought. Nothing a peek into the Clinton Foundation warehouses might not solve. Nice grift! Buying back your books on the Saudi petrodollar and still getting paid for it.
Yeah tip to Yves: next time have Sumner Redstone buy up half your printing run. Fast track to an HRC-style ten bagger.
Maybe thats why morley safer passed away today…with someone asking him that question…s&s is the progeny of engulf and devour…and cbs spin off from viascam…follow the honeymoney….
Buying future access or payback for 8 years in the 90’s…
Investments. Bill didn’t even have the Clinton Global slush fund until after Kerry lost. What was the point?
OK, I feel totally better now…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3598049/Google-proposes-protective-coating-pedestrians-stuck-car-accident.html
now I’m a human fly
after the human is stuck to the hood of the car, as in the diagram with crash dummy, the car will run into another car, a wall or pole or hydrant and crush the legs, but that must be better than what would have happened.
….didn’t they have those in ‘Naked Gun’ ??? or was that ‘Airplane’ ?
I hope Matt Taibbi is hard at work on a dissection of the Dems similar to the excellent one he did on Cruz & the Repubs. His article is funny and pointed, but I fear it will give Dems too much “hope” at how f**ked Repubs are. All the evil things that Trump did to Cruz [and the other Repub contenders] were just practice of what he’ll do to Hillary, and the Hillary-bots are too enthralled in their Cult of Personality and “It’s Her Turn-ism” to see that.
It is truly funny, in that you can either pound your head against the wall until you bleed or laugh despairingly way, that people who buy that Sanders is harming Clinton and is being mean to her delude themselves that she is ready for Trump and can handle him.
Think how the most recent attempt to take down Sanders would play against Trump, they are so not ready.
Many of his supporters want to see him harm Clinton’s chances.
Possibly, I mean I want her to flame out and be frog marched to her arraignment so she can watch someone else be sworn in from her prison cell. Not likely, but that is what I want. Similar to that, I don’t think Sanders is the biggest threat to Clinton’s chances, and besides pointing out her policy and ethics problems as he has done all along, he really isn’t trying to do that.
I think most Sanders supporters are beginning to get what I think Sanders got even earlier, the biggest damage to Clinton is always self inflicted. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t or won’t get blamed for it, but just as most of her policy decisions have been terrible, her campaign choices are pretty bad as well.
Hillary and her supporters belief in her destiny is Cruz-like in its intensity. Why would you worry about Trump if you know the $$ gods have anointed you?
I know it is Yahoo, but currently on the front page Matt Bai is taking down Clinton’s decision to say that Bill will be in charge of revitalizing the economy. And it is not pretty.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-argument-clinton-shouldn-t-1431736289370166.html
And apparently the Hillbots and/or paid staffers aren’t even bothering with Yahoo. I am going to have to confirm the figures from the Clinton Foundation in one of the first comments I read. I knew it was pretty useless regarding its supposed goals, but if those numbers are correct, they will be very useful in arguments about her vast charitable nature.
One of the comments to the Yahoo article is priceless:
Who says one shouldn’t read the comments??
that should really be a hashtag by now: #thingsItrustmorethanhillaryclinton
LOL!
However, did forget a Charlie Sheen condom…
and i didn’t think the list could go FUNNIER ++Fresno Dan
Smile — it’s Federal Reserve Groundhog Day, as NY Fedster William Dudley confirms that the FOMC’s June meeting is “live” for a possible rate hike.
Didn’t we see this movie last December?
More on the serene complacency of the central planner:
A legend in his own mind …
Will these guys(gal) ever meet a lampost ??
…along w/ their TBF Bankster/Hedgefund/PE buddies….?
What are they planning on hiking it to? Isn’t the benchmark right now 0.25 to 0.5? Did investors think they were going to get free money forever?
I’m not always a fan of the Fed but geez, at some point, we might actually try to get the banks to actually have to cover the cost of capital they borrow, and who knows maybe it will prevent them from risk taking (bahahahahaha- okay I just listened to myself. I’m pretty sure the hubris of those running these institutions will guarantee their stupid behavior and continued rationalization for said stupid behavior.
Bond king Jeffrey Gundlach reads the tea leaves:
… as a Junuary [sic] chill settles over the markets.
Every four years, like clockwork: Unpopular candidate gets picked by party insiders, populist outsider gets picked by party laymen (“the voters”).
Meanwhile, 42% of registered US voters say they are not affiliated with a political party (although you wouldn’t know it, reading a Washington Post op-ed that annexes these voters as unregistered partisans). The way the two-party system is constructed, a little over a third of the country’s registered voters have no say in who they get to vote for in November (since “none of the above” is not an option and most primaries are closed to independent voters). To call this dysfunctional is an understatement. This is the very definition of oligarchy.
At no time since 1968 has the failure of this system been more apparent than in the 2016 presidential election. The absurdly long campaign cycle has finally revealed to the general public that the primaries are when the real election happens — who gets the right to appear on the ballot at all. Even more disheartening to the general voter: the two main political parties are private corporations and their candidate selections are not governed by federal voting law, to the point where the entire state of Colorado did not even have a Republican primary this year as a punishment for backing the wrong candidate in 2012.
The US is running the very real risk of having national elections lose their legitimacy in the eyes of the general public. They derive their right to govern from the people, and once the people no longer think they get a say in who is in charge…
The Democrat nomination process is finished when the super-delegates are selected. The primaries and caucuses are just for publicity and to get the suckers involved the spectacle.
Exactly. It is all set up to create the illusion of competition. Through in the winner with some other, lesser establishment riff raff and then have a few states vote until the riff raff drops out… Until someone like Sanders comes in that is. Then the party flips their shit and scrambles. The worst part of a D (Clinton) win in the general after this will be a likely fortification of their system so this cannot happen again.
If so, that makes those who have known and yet still participated in it complicit in the making and dissemination of that illusion.
“Why did you join to run?”
Here’s a very disturbing quote from the article:
Scalia? Scalia?? Brilliant Supreme Court Justice???
There’s a short mention of Trump’s list in this article:
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/politico-pulse/2016/05/house-approves-zika-funds-ebola-214385
On our overpopulated planet, opposition to contraception is one of the worst traits to see in a potential high ranking judge. I’m disgusted by this.
This is the kind of statement that confirms in the minds of many blacks, gays, and conventional liberals that Trump is a dangerous extremist who must be kept out of the Oval Office. When you praise Scalia, you instantly alienate millions and drive them into the Clinton camp. It was a maladroit move on Trump’s part, who doesn’t need to praise Scalia to the skies to keep the reactionary element on side, and disaffected voters worried about their jobs and life chances don’t care.
What I find even more disturbing is that sounds like a statement ghost written by Trump’s newfound BFFs in the GOP establishment (I would be stunned if Trump could name one Scalia opinion). This is a bad harbinger for those who like to think Trump might portend some sort of break from the status quo.
The Trump hostile takeover was easier than the Sanders one because Trump looks very easy to co-opt. Sanders not so much.
For me, not so much Trump was very easy to co-opt.
The key, I think, was that he was able to dispose of Bush early.
For Sanders, had Clinton been of Jeb’s caliber, the take over would have been completed a while back.
Trump is tacking right, just as Hillary would, if she is nominated (party platform or not), for the general election.
The time to move Clinton to the left is not during the primary phase, but in the general election.
If Sanders doesn’t win, if he is not running in the general election, it would be as if the whole thing never happened, with both candidates go hard right in the next few months.
“Pilot….60 degrees starboard……that should steer us away from the rocks”…………^^/\^ /\^ ^^/\^ ^^
I’m not as convinced as others that his intent is going to be tack right as much as it will be throw anything against the wall and see if it sticks.
This IS Trump we’re talking about. He’s not going to be a predictable political cog.
Anyway, I’m not afraid of the Trump boogeyman because I tend to think genocide in countries we don’t belong in(even though they decrease the “surplus population”) is worse then not providing contraception to women.
One of the major causes of many wars is a shortage of resources. Often, the resources really aren’t in short supply; it’s just that there are too many people who need or want them. Population growth causes war, and lack of access to contraception causes population growth.
Trump is a boogeyman, and Clinton is a boogeywoman. They’re both unacceptable.
It’s unfortunate, but if Sanders hopes to stop one bogeyman (Trump) with a bogeywoman (Clinton), he is just another bogeyman.
I think Sanders wants to stop both the boogeyman and the boogeywoman with a Sandersman.
That means never, not even post convention, appease her going forward.
He’s a politician. I’m sure in his mind he THINKS that she is guaranteed to be better than Trump.
I’m not a politician so I have absolutely no incentive to play nice with the DNC and vote for their disaster of a candidate post Sanders.
The American Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over contraception in other countries.
@ Vatch….Feb 2016 “In times of delay, we could have a Diane Sykes, or you could have a Bill Pryor, we have some fantastic people,” Trump said. “But [the death of Scalia] is a tremendous blow to conservatism. It’s a tremendous blow, frankly to our country.”
Pryor, who was the former attorney general of Alabama from 1997 until 2004, drew the ire of some evangelicals and conservatives when he helped lead an effort to oust Chief Justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court Roy Moore for his refusal to obey a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments statue from the front of the state judicial building.
*************
Trump also indicated last summer that his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, who sits on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, would be a “phenomenal” justice on the Supreme Court. As a judge, Barry helped strike down a partial-birth abortion ban in New Jersey.
At the debate, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz warned pro-life and conservative voters that Trump will nominate a “liberal” to the Supreme Court.
Trump responded to Cruz’s charge that he will appoint a liberal to the Supreme Court by attacking Cruz for “pushing” John Roberts to be on the Supreme Court. Cruz then explained that he would have nominated his former boss, Mike Luttig, who was Justice Antonin Scalia’s first law clerk.
christianpost.com/news/donald-trump-supreme-court-nominee-conservatives-diane-sykes-bill-pryor-157714/#BbswBfLTOlY2rMeT.99
his sista :/
Your point being, I guess, that Trump lies and/or contradicts himself at every turn? Or is this some kind of weird exculpatory exercise–“Sure he loved and praised Scalia, but don’t worry, that’s meaningless drivel!”?
Somehow, the idea that Trump saying one thing, then another, is somehow a positive in assessing his candidacy is inexplicable to me.
you know me James…the guy was inexplicable before he vied for supreme poo-bwhahahaha
i do find it funnee he trashed the W fundies…they don’t forget
You know who also “always kind of liked Justice Scalia”- Bill Clinton
Let’s not play pretend that the Democratic Party and the DNC have not spent a good portion of their time fundraising and playing progressives on issues such as women’s reproductive rights.
It wasn’t the GOP that codified Hyde into law……that was the Democrats.
But Bill Clinton is a terrible human being and I wouldn’t dream of suggesting anyone should vote for him for president. All I’m saying is that the same thing, if you are saying they are the same on this issue, applies to Trump.
My point is I have absolutely no reason to believe the DNC themselves wouldn’t vote for someone Scalia like. Heck, based on the propaganda like way they handled this election cycle I’d think someone like Scalia (authoritarian douchebag) ought to be right up their alley.
Obama did just nominate a Republican to the Court. So much for repealing Citizens United.
Souter, one of the more liberal justices, was appointed by the GOP.
I’m okay with taking my chances with the GOP.
RE: Resting Trees
Easier to fell when their wood is *substantially* drier; not likely to occur overnight. The wood in your wood pile has been drying for a very long time. Dead trees are the driest of trees.
The article mentions nothing about the weight (mass) of the atmosphere surrounding the trees. Cooler morning temps and the dew point may be a factor here. Ah, those messy variables!
They’ll just use Republicans instead. (The Undead).
…and the ‘Devil’s Concubines’…….
Hillary, Valery, Victoria, Barb, Diane ……and Nancy…………..the ‘Embrace the SUCKubus’
oh….and little ‘Shadow Debbie’
…did I miss anyone ?
Debbie reacts to polecat’s slur:
Ha ha……but where did the fangs go……Eh?
….retractable??….
Found this about Neo reactionaries on Facebook. What do people think about the future appeal of this line of thinking?
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11434098/alt-right-explained
Follow the money and the neoreactionaries are currently fringe theorists with no substantial access nor hope of getting any. The smartest and most interesting of them, Nick Land, literally seems to have had a nervous breakdown at one juncture.
More to the point, the neoreactionaries are right about some aspects of what they call ‘Cathedral’ thinking and how our ‘democracy is a joke …weak … (and) corrupt.’ And that’s exactly why they almost certainly won’t ever get anywhere near any levers of power.
Your Vox article’s attempt to couple the neoreactionaries with Pat Buchanan-style paleocons mostly shows its author is pretty much is at sea in the ‘alien-ness’ of all conservative thought.
That stipulated, none of the above is to say that TPTB’s overall project can’t accurately be described as neofeudalism.
Booman:”What they’re saying now is that we still need to question the Washington Playbook on foreign policy, and we need to have more urgency about climate change, and we have to get serious about doing something about money in politics, and that the Democrats have to pivot away from the donor class and develop programs that will appeal to middle class folks who are really struggling in this economy.
It’s hard to see where they’re wrong about any of this, at least in the big picture. Even if their critiques often break down when analyzed at a more granular level, that doesn’t mean that the aspirational nature of their critiques should be silenced.”
Like all Hillary acolytes, an itemized list of real problems problems followed by an imprecise disclaimer “if their critiques often break down when analyzed at a more granular level” with no citation as to what positive is revealed in the granularity. What has hillary fought for, and what will she fight for, to respond to those policies that are unfavorable to the people she needs to vote for her? Caring is not enough, what is she going to do? What has she done? Aspirational? ok so you’re a “bernie bro” until you toe the line and become an “aspirational” hillary supporter. Also get a kick out of his claim that “And they’re beginning to irritate a lot of Democrats ” they’ve been irritated for a long time. I say we leave them waiting for us under the bleachers while we go do something more aspirational.
Preparing War in Europe: the correct link.
http://www.defenddemocracy.press/preparing-war-europe-us-anti-missile-shield-sword/
What Obama & co. are doing is reckless beyond belief.
I strongly recommend Stephan Cohen’s discussion of this at the Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/article/slouching-toward-war-with-russia/
thanks for correct link re missile defence in europed.
re : Missile “defence” Another Progaganda job.
Campaign for nuclear disarmament:
“Contrary to US claims, this system (consisting of missile bases and radar stations across the world and including sea-based components) will allow the US to attack other countries in a first strike capacity without fear that they will be able to effectively attack back because such a retaliation would be neutralised by the system. In other words, the US Missile Defence system is offensive. Having such a weapons system inevitably leads to an arms race as other countries feel pushed to level the balance of power and threat by developing their own competitive missile defence systems or weapons systems that might overcome the US system.”
And now there is a new nuclear arms race with Russia.
Thankfully, this system wouldn’t actually work at all. If a deranged US President attempted to use it, DC would be obliterated by Russian nukes within minutes.
Missile Defense is not possible. They figured this out in the 1950s. It’s still not possible.
Get yer MMT tee-shirt!
Listen to the Owl
Re. Warren: GOP ‘ringing the dinner bell’ for lobbyists | The Hill — Given the number of Dem-party Superpredators, erm, I mean Superdelegates who are paid lobbyists, curious – or perhaps not – that Warren singles out the GOP here. Rah, rah, sis boom bah Blue Team!
Over time, this will lead to irrelevancy for Warren. One can only define one’s self. The Republicans weren’t any better in 2010. Warren use to be the architect of the CPB and exposed of truths about our system. People except Republicans know the GOP is a clown show.
I’m reminded of Senate Majority Leader McConnell. The msm and Democratic elites laughed at him for destroying the GOP after November 2008 when he announced his policy of obstruction and refusal to work with Obama. The Democrats huffed and puffed about the GOP being mean. In the end, minorities didn’t show up to vote Democratic.
Even in 2006, the GOP had crashed after W’s pivot to social security and then the Iraq War started to make the news again, but all that time, the Democrats never improved their standing until Murtha came out to oppose the war and it became the position of the party. Their numbers soared.
The GOP’s polling improved during the Terry Schaevo mess. Democrats were smug, but they didn’t define themselves and did nothing.
200,000 year old soil found at mysterious crater, a ‘gate to the subterranean world’ Siberian Times
The gash looks like the vertebra of an early tetrapod (among other things). The aerial photograph reveals that the pattern [adjacent] may repeat in the landscape.