Obama touts legacy of renaming wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying he would close Gitmo Duffelblog (Jim M)
What really happened at Thailand’s Tiger Temple? AlJazeera
The Hidden History of Muhammad Ali Jacobin
I recommended the documentary When We Were Kings, on the “Rumble in the Jungle” over the weekend. Kevin C provided links to Part 1 and Part 2.
Bid to grow transplant organs in pigs BBC. This is mean to pigs.
Rethinking Knowledge in the Internet Age Los Angeles Review of Books (resilc)
Mossack Fonseca
Panama Papers Show How Rich United States Clients Hid Millions Abroad New York Times. Lead story. Weird timing.
Foreign Students Are More Likely to Cheat, Say U.S. Universities Wall Street Journal
China?
How China Fell Off the Miracle Path New York Times (David L)
Beijing unmoved by South China Sea rebukes Financial Times
U.S. to Press China to Curb Industrial Output New York Times. Lordie, so now we think we can tell China how to run its economy? Aside from “Who the hell do you think you are?” the next retort is, “We had to stimulate like mad because you blew up the global financial system. Reputable economists acknowledge that only China did enough in the way of deficit spending. So now you are complaining after you not only created a huge mess but failed to do enough in the remedy phase?”
The eurozone cannot escape political and fiscal union Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times. Important.
Switzerland rejects unconditional basic income in vote CBS
France: Looks a Lot Like 1968 Defend Democracy
Imagine being responsible for the balance sheet of the company driving the nuclear fiasco slowing deployment of green energy in the UK Jeremy Leggett
Switzerland Votes to Reject Basic Income Initiative Wall Street Journal
MERKEL COMPARED TO HITLER BY TURKISH NEWSPAPERS Politico
Italy’s 5-star has big lead in Rome mayoral election: exit polls Reuters
Brexit?
Bank of England in preparations for potential Brexit Guardian
Economic arguments about Brexit have succumbed to group-think Telegraph
Brexit forecasters miss everything that matters to real voters Guardian
How Corruption And Oil Crime Are Tearing Nigeria Apart Oil Price (resilc)
‘Fixing’ Latin America for Hillary? failed evolution
Syraqistan
Libya’s ‘Chaos Theory’ Undercuts Hillary” Robert Parry
Is Russia About To Resume Its Campaign Against Al Nusra In Syria? Sic Semper Tyrannis (resilc)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
New Attack Extracts Cryptographic Keys from a Computer’s Emanated Sounds Communications of the ACM (Dan K)
Exclusive: Snowden Tried to Tell NSA About Surveillance Concerns, Documents Reveal Vice (John C). Linked to this earlier, but worth making sure you had the chance to see it.
Google Removes Chrome Extension That Highlighted Jewish Names SoftPedia (Daniel K)
Imperial Collapse Watch
The US is Raiding its Global Bomb Stockpiles to Fight ISIS Defense One. Resilc: “Maybe we can have a public radio-like pledge drive.”
Made In America: How The US Dominates The World Arms Trade Information Clearing House (resilc)
At least 33 US cities used water testing ‘cheats’ over lead concerns Guardian (resilc)
Clinton E-mail Hairball
Which Clinton Aide Arranged the Private Email Server? Government Executive. Important. Note that IGs can subpoeana for documents but cannot depose witnesses, while the FBI can. This means things are going to get much uglier between now and November.
HOW HILLARY CLINTON’S LOYAL CONFIDANTS COULD COST HER THE ELECTION Vanity Fair. Donna M: “While this is an “old” article [October 2015], I found it useful in understanding Clinton’s current short-comings [at least some of them].” Moi: You can also see the sycophancy, which is what leaped off the pages when I read some of the State Department e-mails.
2016
Ignore the trolls: The foolishness of gauging Hillary vs. Trump based on online comments Salon. I hope some of you who have time will deign to visit Salon and address the misrepresentation of my Politico story (although this also shows how headlines, which the author does not control, influence how a piece is interpreted). The main reason for citing readers was 1. To show it was not just millennials (as in kids with no stake in the system) but older Democrats, many with high incomes and high educations who were keen Sanders supporters; 2. The differences between Sanders and Clinton are deep and large, based on divergent policy positions on many key issues; 3. Many of these voters are not going to fall in line with Team Dem if Clinton wins the nomination (and this is confirmed by other media reports. It’s not as if the “Bernie or Bust” contingent is unique to NC). And that’s before you get to the fact that NC readers are most decidedly not trolls. This article is yet another manifestation of the out of date Democrat assumption that the left has nowhere to go. They refuse to get that they can, and increasingly look inclined, to withhold support. These guys really need to get outside the party/media echo chamber.
Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chairman Can’t Stop Talking About Aliens Vanity Fair
Clinton’s Speech Shows That Only Sanders Is Fit for the Presidency Jeffrey Sachs, Huffington Post
Hillary’s Foreign Policy Speech: Queen Galadriel Before Her Magic Mirror Counterpunch (resilc)
Bernie Sanders Raises the Stakes for the California Primary New Yorker (resilc)
Fueling Sanders’ Turnout Hope, California Reports Record Surge of New Voters Juan Cole. Expect massive vote suppression in CA. Be SURE to vote as early as possible! You can bet measures will be taken to assure long lines in presumed-to-be-Sanders-friendly districts.
California or bust? Clinton hopes to strike gold in pivotal vote Reuters. Lambert: “Headline Clinton, story Sanders.”
Top Dems Are Plotting to Oust Sanders and Convince His Followers to Vote Hillary AntiMedia (Chris S)
Sanders Camp Is Split Over Next Step Wall Street Journal. Lead story. If you read it closely, you can see how dishonest the reporting is. The people who are “split” are not Sanders insiders but people who have some contact with the Sanders campaign and are Dem loyalists. You have to read halfway through the article to see that Sanders messaging on Sunday is consistent with his “I’m taking the campaign to the convention.” This story thus appears to be an effort to mislead superdelegates and Sanders voters as to how committed Sanders is. Lambert similarly says he has seen nothing in the Twitterverse consistent with the story line of this piece. If I were a core Sanders team member, I’d be furious over the pressure from the Clinton camp and the media distortions. It would only stiffen my resolve. And don’t they get that it reveals how weak Hillary is to have to fight this dirty on so many fronts?
Sanders Vows Fight and Attacks Clinton for Foreign Gifts New York Times. Long overdue.
Sanders equates Clinton with Trump on foreign policy Politico. Too kind to Clinton. One reason Trump will probably stick to his messaging of staying away from foreign entanglements (assuming showing him the horse’s head does not get him to fall in line) is he is so insistent on being the top alpha that he will not accept military men telling him what “must” be done, which is inevitable in combat planning and execution.
Puerto Rico Slashes Polling Places For The Democratic Primary, Laying The Groundwork For Chaos ThinkProgress (Phil R)
Clinton Supporters are Scaremongering about Donald Trump to Silence the Concerns of the Young and the Poor Benjamin Studebaker (Phil U)
Bill Clinton: Sanders supporters ‘will be toast’ The Hill (resilc). In case you were operating under the delusion that Sanders voters would be welcomed…But the body of the article appears to have been scrubbed and replaced with a vide! If anyone can track down the original story, please pipe up in comments.
As Hillary Slams Trump University, Right Wingers Go After Bill for Making Millions From For-Profit Laureate Universities Alternet (resilc)
Fact Checking the Clinton Campaign’s Characterization of the Candidate’s Q&A’s with Traveling Press Corps ABC (martha r)
Trump Suggests Muslim Judges Can’t Be Trusted Either Think Progress
Trump University Was a Product of the Housing Boom. But It Thrived During the Crisis Slate (resilc)
Trump or Hillary: We’re Screwed Either Way Smirking Chimp
The Post-Election Political Revolution Reader Supported News (martha r)
See What Happens When Barack Obama’s Teleprompter Breaks Down During Trump Speech The Duran (guurst)
A major Native American site is being looted. Will Obama risk armed conflict to save it? Washington Post (furzy)
Cuomo bans business with Israel-boycott companies, swipes at Sanders Politco. Lambert: “Ugly. More purging of the left. Trying to get them to die on the wrong hill, too.”
Fed Rate Plans Sidetracked by Weak Jobs Data Wall Street Journal
Does Iran Have The Upper Hand In OPEC Oil War OilPrice. Makes an interesting point about Iran having an advantage via greater economic diversification.
College Loan Glut Worries Policy Makers Wall Street Journal. Inaccurate subhead: “Massive investment in improving skills turns sour, echoes of housing crisis.” Should read: “Massive investment in adminisphere bloat turns sour.”
THE VALEANT MELTDOWN AND WALL STREET’S MAJOR DRUG PROBLEM Vanity Fair. Richard Smith: “Cameo appearances by John Hempton and Roddy Boyd.”
Guillotine Watch
Inside the scandals of 740 Park, the world’s richest building New York Post (Karen P)
Who Would Pay $300,000 for a Handbag? New York Times
Class Warfare
Bill Maher Blasts Capitalism – ‘Real Time’ Host Takes Socialism Critics to Task Danielle Henderson, Esquire (resilc)
Saudi Arabia invested $3.5 billion in Uber. That could be bad news for the global economy. Vox (resilc). Very dumb money investing in Uber is a sign it’s sell-by date has passed. But that does not necessarily mean the downside will be all that large. Note the article focuses on different issues re what the valuation implies. But worrying about valuation also confuses the financial economy (and fads therein) with the real economy.
Antidote du jour. From the heifer fair in Brattleboro, Vermont (resilc):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
161 comments
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Obama touts legacy of renaming wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying he would close Gitmo
A turd by any other name would smell just as sweet.
When can that start replacing E pluribus unum our currency?
Also, first time at DuffelBlog, definitely going to check them out for often.
. . . renaming wars . . .to kinetic foreign advising.
Remaining or remaiming wars for more realism as to what is actually going on
cnchal…you got a real career path at DoD, in the Joint Euphemism Task Group… brush up on your acronym skills, and your future is assured.
‘E pluribus foolem’ …….. williambanzai7
I think Duffelblog is either quoting or miss quoting the President with the ‘kinetic foreign advising’ teleprompter speechifying.
I learned as a kid, after seeing bombed out buildings, war was stupid, and the adults were stupid too, for doing it. It is hard for my imagination to comprehend what it must be like to have mom cooking supper, the kids in the living room playing with their toys, waiting for dad to come home, and then while having supper, a bomb falls on the building blowing everything to pieces. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid cubed.
Or, the hospital that was attacked with gunfire from a helicopter gunship for half an hour killing a few dozen human beings that were there trying to help each other. Imagine being there, at that moment, watching as people you work with and are caring for get blown to pieces in front of your eyes. Would dying with them be preferable to surviving?
Atrocities R US. After the dust settles and the blood dries the military says, oopsie we want a mulligan.
I’m with you JT. Stupid effing humans and war is the pinnacle of stupidity.
What is even worse is that war seems to be the standard in “diplomacy” these days. What happened to giving people a phone call? Going out for a national delicacy or something.
Trump: ‘Sure I’d talk to [Kim Jong Un]
Popular Representation: ‘What are you, NUTS!?”
Seriously, what is wrong with people? The President should make a point to talk with EVERYONE. Especially after our atrocious history. I have a better plan, let’s start a war with Russia!
Not “we want a Mulligan,” unfortunately. more likely “we want a medal.”
From the MSM: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4243092/ns/world_news-brave_new_world/t/too-many-medals/#.V1WpzSGwmt8
More detail from people closer in: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/army-medal-fatigue/
And the voice of the people: http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/23315-too-many-medals/
All the feedback loops just amplify the shite. Speaking not of just medals, but weapons and Real-Time Full Spectrum All Fronts Global Interoperable Network-Centric Ergonomic Armchair Battlespace Management, ant the infinity of profitable ties to corporatocracy. And corruption, and runaway “science” and code and FIRE and combustocrapitalism and all the rest of the endgame structures that are all pushing us naked apes ever closer to self-immolation.
Besides, from a little personal experience, war may be stupid, but it can sure be a lot of plain old exciting FUN. Log into one of the many popular multi-Trooper combat simulations, or fire up the XBox for a dose of Call of Duty. Or spend some time with the video preservation of real actual urban combat in youtube-land. ALLAUHU AKHBAR for the Muslims we hate, but go look for US combat video from helmet cams and the other sources, and gee, those boys be havin’ a good old time except when the foot and vehicle patrolling and fix-base target-sitting the troops be doing under orders from remote Brass results in taking casualties — more empty boots on the ground, next to the helmet and the M-4 stuck into the ground by its bayonet, Taps, the catch in the throat, the vow to take vengeance on other Muslims than the militia tribes people who resent and resist your presence, folding flags into neat triangles for grieving loved ones to display in glass-fronted wooden cases “made in China and sold at Walmart.”
Ain’t no fixing it. Too much momentum. Too much investment.
Renaming wars will also play on the domestic front via kinetic advertising, where your real or virtual presence triggers a targeted ad.
DuffelBlog is a sign that our military is somehow still filled with real and intelligent people. Don’t tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Don’t tell the elites of either party. We can adopt a policy: Don’t Tell But Read
Great coining of an expression: Kinetic foreign advising.
Maybe Chelsea Clinton can take the Clinton Foundation in that K F A direction.
Zero Hedge featured the video of Obama speaking (or trying to do so) without his teleprompter yesterday. Really quite disturbing that he couldn’t at least ad lib a couple of sentences. I really fell for his Great Communicator act during his first campaign, I must confess.
As an antidote to the horrifying Obama video, here is something to go with your morning coffee (or green tea in my case) — British comedian Jonathan Pie makes a scathing attack on Tony Blair in a pseudo-newscast (3 minute video):
Psychopath War Criminal Tony Blair lied UK/US to illegal war, but calls Jeremy Corbyn ‘dangerous’
I’ve only seen Pie’s videos a few times but he is fantastic. Speaking the bitter truth to the corrupt powerful.
…damn if O hasn’t quantified W. with a semblance of brilliance
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises in individual, when displayed ego and self portrayed images are not recognized by anyone. ~Aditya Ajmera
Reaching for his own word and the one he comes up with is “okey-doke.”
Impressive.
“We droned some okie dokes.”
“Hope and okie dokes.”
“Make America Okie Again.”
I can do this all day.
Could you share the link if you have a spare second? I cannot seem to locate the video. Thanks!
Roger, it’s in the Links above, just below the “2016” section. Enjoy! (Well, more properly, prepare to be shocked.)
See What Happens When Barack Obama’s Teleprompter Breaks Down During Trump Speech The Duran (guurst)
Totally missed that earlier.
H-h-h-h-h-h-hHoly Hell that was rough. Based on the disjointed way he speaks (which is something I have never been impressed with) I always thought he did not use teleprompters. After watching this I now know that those long pauses are new slides refreshing on his monitors. I am half sure his stuttering was actually on the prompter as it wigged out.
Why is he a “great orator” again?
Presentation, and our society is fairly racist, more than people realize. “Great orator” was always code for “mighty white of you.” Jessie Jackson sounds a little too black if you know what I mean.
Obama could be your black friend or be the black friend in a 90’s teen comedy. He was safe.
Also, I would say Obama never said much, so one could project onto him. More importantly, he never speaks truth, and truth is often uncomfortable. I remember reading a musing about the “Twilight” books by a ceo. He wanted to find the secret to their popularity because they always seemed stupid. He had daughters who were obsessed. His conclusion was the main character was utterly lacking in any kind of attributes and was a blank state the reader could project onto.
Projection means more jobs for projectionists. We could use more good jobs news about now.
Interesting idea, especially given Obama’s skin color and the spirit his campaign imbued into the public. He set the stage with false promises… then everyone else kept that going with theit hopes and expectations, despite reality.
It’s not my idea.
“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” -Barack Obama, “The Audacity of Hope.”
I read the two books by the potential future President. Don’t worry, I borrowed them and feel the President owes me money for that alone. Needless to say, this was about the only interesting item in the books.
Is that not equivalent to admitting one has zero personal convictions of their own?
And wow, what a quote.
That quote was one of the main reasons why I didn’t vote for him.
Either time.
Our society is fairly that, as you say.
The key, though, is, presently, people can do all those sexist or other things and get away with that, if they just don’t say it out loud.
And thus, the problems never go away, because it’s harder to pin them down.
And Trump comes along and says all those things. When cognitive dissonance is resolved (they can say what they really feel), there is great relief to those people, even if vicariously.
Our advantage, instead of being pessimistic, now, is he allows us to see all those issues naked as they are. So, we can stop deluding ourselves.
Some might want to throw chairs and burn flag because they don’t want to hear that. But not wanting to hearing insulting terms (that dwell in people’s hearts) will not make the problems go away.
Seeing it this say, it does not appears things are getting worse with Trump, but he is making the problems easier to spot (and we can stop deluding ourselves that all those isms, like sexism etc, are lessening).
Oh dear. If Obama is as vain as I have read he is, he will be very upset about this.
Obama can’t fail. He can only be failed.
Ha! Yes, start inserting Obama where Chuck Norris used to be. “Obama has already been to Mars, that’s why there are no signs of life.” Or “When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he already had 3 missed calls from Obama.”
One good thing about O’s narcissism and surrounding himself with brown nosers is we will likely get juicy tell all books written by Obama devotees who won’t grasp Obama doesn’t look great in their narrative. Obama will probably have a blurb on the back cover.
the little dog pulled the emerald curtain away……..showing the wizard for the fraud he truly is !!
That billion dollar P-P-Presidential Library will have a secret Dorian Gray room for the orating teleprompter-driven hologram.
That was strange. Maybe he’s on the same path as his hero,The Gipper.
Yves,
The original article for Bill Clinton: Sanders supporters ‘will be toast’ was roughly the same as what is being shown now (a series of tweets) but with more written summary. It was a short post before as well.
What I am surprised not to have seen so far is an actual video.
Thanks! When I looked at it, the tweets weren’t there, and the video was not about Bill, it was on the campaign, a very brief bit on the Bernie or Bust types. Weird.
There is a short the video of Bill speaking at KTVZ:
http://www.ktvz.com/bill-clinton-sasses-prosanders-supporters/39912992
BTW, talking recently with some `60s liberals’ about Clinton v. Sanders, I was shocked at the alternate factual universe they were living in. Talking with NYT readers about Clinton in 2016 is like talking Fox viewers about Bush circa 2004. The Big Lie works.
If you really want to throw up, close your eyes and imagine Bill & Hillary holding hands as they walk back into the White House. And if you still are holding down your cookies, imagine Hillary giving her first state of the union speech with Bill’s fake smile and his staccato clapping.
This sounds like it might be a Repug hit piece, but it reminds me of all the corruption that I’ve forgotten. Someone needs to add links for a great article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kypl1MYuKDY
If the Secret Service book that is coming out on June 28th is about more than Hillary giving Bill a black eye, it is going to be a doozy:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-05/hillary-campaign-reeling-after-shocking-secret-service-book-exposes-clintons-dirty-l
This is the route Bernie needs to take after the DNC trashes him in Philadelphia:
https://www.rt.com/news/345511-italy-rome-mayor-election-eurosceptic-raggi/
Indeed, and the video is of someone pushing the “Bernie’s supporters are violent” meme (under a threat by Bill?). This thing scares me, and the DNC (including Bill !!) really needs to nip this crap, as it’s an obvious attempt to bring out the riot squads in Philadelphia. Does the DNC really want images of granny with her head busted open highlighting their convention coverage, or do they plan to instruct the networks to “make that dark” too?
The plebs ‘needs’ and Bill’s ‘needs’ are not at all similar……..
I lived in St. Paul during the 2008 RNC. The cops put cameras on every street corner from every conceivable angle.
Whenever they decided to clear the protesters out, they turned off the cameras first.
I imagine the media are expected to do the same. If they don’t, they get treated like protesters too. As happened to Amy Goodman at the time. Another tactic is to mass arrest protesters, force them on a bus and drive them two hours away, then release them to their own devices. Or arrest them for a few days just to get them off the street. The city loses the lawsuit but they don’t care. The only thing that matters is the destruction of the people’s ability to influence events and media coverage.
It’s all stage management. As long as the protesters make an appearance on TV, the people watching at home assume there is still a right to protest in this country. Local government goes to a lot of effort and expense to ensure this is the case.
I think both sides must ask this question regarding open-headed grannies:
Cui bono?
“These bloodied grannies, why are they are?”
This whole Homicidal Chair Rattling thing seems like weak tea to me. If the DNC wants some real media impact, there is that vid floating around youtube where the ISIS/Al Qaeda/Terrorist/Immoderate Arab cuts the heart out of the dead (almost???) guy and eats it. This was filmed somewhere in the ME, and it’s desert there just like Nevada. The only thing you need to do then is say the Sander’s supporter ate a live, still beating heart of a Hillary supporter.
No wonder Carl Rove was so admired by the Democrats for his ability to run an effective campaign that knows how to get things done. The Ds are nothin’ but a bunch of amateurs.
This CNN article provides more information on Bill’s Bernie-supporters- will-be-toast comment at an LA rally, no video, tho.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/05/politics/bill-clinton-bernie-sanders-protesters/index.html
If the pundits and pooh-bahs really want to know who the Sanders supporters are, it’s easy enough to figure out: we’re the ones with the reddened and bruised foreheads that we got banging our heads on the desk/wall.
And why would we be doing that? Because of the execrable “reporting” that fills the media. Because most of us strongly suspect that Clinton wants to win so bad that her minions in the Party are seriously fking with the actual election process. There’s simply no other explanation for why California election judges are being instructed to tell unaffiliated voters that they cannot vote via a Democratic ballot, but must vote provisionally. There’s simply no other explanation for why mostly Democrats are being dropped from voter rolls. For why, if they are still on the rolls, they do not have the same party affiliation. For why, polling places have been severely reduced, making it harder for people to vote. IT cannot be a coincidence when there is this much fraud and voter suppression.
I don’t know whether I have a headache from banging my head, or from clenching my jaw; maybe it doesn’t matter.
I couldn’t stomach much of the Sunday shows, they were that bad. Is there anyone who thinks that if it was Sanders with the superdelegates, that the talking heads would spare no expense educating us on how supers don’t vote until the convention?
We are making a mockery of one of the most sacred and intrinsic elements of democracy – voting – and for what?
As much as I don’t want to admit it, I am dreading tomorrow. This is so much worse than Super Tuesday, because other than DC on the 14th, this is pretty much the end. If Sanders doesn’t win, does he keep going until the convention, or does he cave to calls to concede? The media’s going to treat her as if she is the nominee, and there will be no positive coverage – if there is any coverage at all – for Bernie. There’s barely any coverage now, for heaven’s sake, and what coverage there is takes the form of “that poor, deluded old man is still refusing to see the writing on the wall.”
Argh…i can’t stand it.
sounds like you need to spend more time on Youtube.
Just hang out, lay around and chill out watching Rhianna videos until President Sanders gets elected. Then you can raise both arms in the air like Muhammed Ali after a knockout. All these bozos will shut up after that.
Don’t get your forehead red and bruised! That’s like a man (or woman now that Rhonda Rousey and Holly Holm are banging each other like drag queens) in a fight. Let these Politioco Hillarybot fools punch themselves out. Rope a Dope ’em. Let ’em get tired. Let ’em get frustrated. Let ’em get worn down and wobbly from all their exertions. Let ’em get mad and sloppy, drooling and spitting
Then you punch ’em two times (with skillfull rhetorical jabs that is). Left – Right. That’s all it’ll take to kock ’em out. When Sanders is inaugurated they’ll be going through rehab and won’t even be able to get out of bed.
It’s probably not going to be President Sanders, it’s likely going to be President Trump.
The elite in this country have proven to be nothing if not clueless.
The only good that’s going to come from this is for 4 looooooong years the DNC is going to have to deal with the irrelevance they deserve after rigging the primaries. Oh and the GOP will get to deal with the Trump supporters who I suspect, unlike the Bernie Supporters, will be okay with some violence when it comes to a revolution. Eventually everything has a tipping point.
Personally, I would have gone with the non violent revolutionaries. Then again, I’m not one of our elite idiots running the show.
I think he’s going to win. It’ll be so amazing how quick all these bozos will shut up. I’m serious.
Not a peep. Not peep. Peep? NOT!
Not one. They’ll all be so forgotten the moment he wins they won’t even remember themselves. They’ll say “Of course I’m a socialist! I always was, I just didn’t use that exact word. When is my appointment with the president again? 3 o’clock?”
Who’ll be the VP? I suspect maybe the Hawaiian senator who’se evidently some kind of a Hindu or something. The first Hindu VP and a Jewish president? Holy Smokes.
Ain’t that America! That’s a song I’m remembering right now.
There’s so many Jewish holidays if you combine them with the Hindu holidays you wonder if anybody will ever be there at either the White House or the Vice President’s House. Whatever. You can work from home with the internet these days so it doesn’t matter. But if they’re both there on Christmas Day without a decorated tree it may not be the very best idea ever in the history of politics.
I don’t care. Who cares? Bernie! QED
I gave him $200 so far. I’m not through yet.
If you have a system for tenbaggers you believe in, you have to be persistent.
Give more.
I feel you. I am so tired of being told that there is “no proof” of fraud etc…. what about the alarmingly consistent coincidences? “Aww stop whining because you lost!”
All these years we’ve been working to identify cases of election fraud, almost always against the Democrats, only to get strangely rebuffed by the party. “Shhh,” they would say, “we don’t want the voters to lose confidence in the system.
Well, I kept hearing that over and over until is just stopped making sense. The beating was so one-sided, that the rationale couldn’t possible have been true. I finally came to the conclusion that the Democratic Party was in on it to, but just wasn’t so in a rush to use the capability ot override elections.
Well that’s over. The instructions have come down. “Hillary must win. Pull all the stops.”
I know. I’ve been at this too long. I’ve grown a tin foil hat.
OK. We’ll see in California. It’s supposed to be close. We’ll see.
After the ballot switching/murky instruction stories that came out last week that directly impact Independents, I am not holding out much hope. I am thinking we will see a (again, coincidental!) virtual tie in which Clinton just barely wins.
Hopefully I am wrong!
shorter
Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has a new fundraising effort, the purpose of which is to report on and therefore try to remove from office, those most egregious politicians and their crimes against kids and crimes against the state, such as convicted criminal former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. How does someone as criminal as Hastert ever rise to be the third most powerful leader in the U.S.? Who owns those those voting machines?
Please donate if you can.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/141490519/support-a-100-people-funded-online-news-outlet-pha
Support a 100% People-Funded Online News Outlet, Phase 1
This project will only be funded if at least $150,000 is pledged by Wed, Jun 22 2016 1:03 AM CDT.
………
Because Hastert was from Illinois:
http://www.forums.mlb.com/discussions/Chicago_Cubs/General/ml-cubs/1?tsn=76&nav=messages&tid=443191
# 443191.76(76 of 76)
The GOP’s new plan for voter suppression
…….
Are the Clintons’ CIA?
http://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4719
Who owns Scytl? George Soros isn’t in the voting machines, but the intelligence community is
by Gerry Bello
…………
http://www.thelandesreport.com/VotingSecurity.htm
The Case For Open Voting
by Lynn Landes
There is no transparency to our current voting system. Congress has legalized election fraud by allowing, if not mandating, non-transparent voting systems that prohibit direct access to a paper ballot and meaningful public oversight.
Making matters worse, our public voting system has been privatized and outsourced to a handful of domestic, foreign, and multi-national corporations, most of whom have close ties to the right wing of the Republican Party. Just two companies, ES&S and Diebold, started by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich, electronically process (using touchscreen machines or optical scanners), 80% of all votes. Their employees are in a perfect position to rig elections nation-wide. And evidence is mounting that elections in America have been computer programmed to prefer conservative candidates of both political parties.
……
Get Rid of Those Voting Machines Now, because look what Bev Harris found–EVIDENCE:
http://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-1/
Fraction Magic – Part 1: Votes are being counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers
By Bev Harris May 12, 2016
– Summary – This report summarizes the results of our review of the GEMS election management system, which counts approximately 25 percent of all votes in the United States. The results of this study demonstrate that a fractional vote feature is embedded in each GEMS application which can be used to invisibly, yet radically, alter election outcomes by pre-setting desired vote percentages to redistribute votes. This tampering is not visible to election observers, even if they are standing in the room and watching the computer. Use of the decimalized vote feature is unlikely to be detected by auditing or canvass procedures, and can be applied across large jurisdictions in less than 60 seconds.
GEMS vote-counting systems are and have been operated under five trade names: Global Election Systems, Diebold Election Systems, Premier Election Systems, Dominion Voting Systems, and Election Systems & Software, in addition to a number of private regional subcontractors. At the time of this writing, this system is used statewide in Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Utah and Vermont, and for counties in Arizona, (upcoming) California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. It is also used in Canada.
……………
A good effort in New York to get back our democracy and elect much better leaders:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Three-Letters-to-Preet-Bha-by-Stephen-Fox-21st-Century-Tammany-Hall-New-York_Brooklyn-And-Bronx-Disenfranchisement_Election-Rigging_Preet-Bharara-160605-173.html
OpEdNews Op Eds 6/5/2016 at 11:23:56
Three Letters to Preet Bharara asking for Federal Court to Decertify NY’s Primary and Order a New One
By Stephen Fox
The scary thing is the GOP tried to do the same to Trump, but he somehow overcame that.
Even with the last party nominee coming out openly to stop him.
Trump’s had media coverage up and down the block from the start. From the very beginning Trump has had more coverage than anyone else. Positive negative whatever. One thing Trump is proving is that you can’t go broke overestimating the ignorance of the average American.
exactly. and then comes the “3 million vote lead” bullshit.
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2016/05/28/democratic-primaries-is-clinton-leading-by-3-million-votes/
Democratic Primaries: Is Clinton leading by 3 million votes?
Richard Charnin
May 28, 2016
The 3 million Clinton vote margin is repeated endlessly by the media. This analysis shows that the number is grossly inflated. Sanders may very well be leading the popular vote and corresponding delegate count. This is an updated analysis of estimated probabilities of fraud in the Democratic primaries.
This is why Sanders has done much better than his recorded vote:
– Actual votes in caucus states are not included in the count – to the benefit of Clinton.
– Exit polls indicated voting machines were hacked – to the benefit of Clinton.
– Voter rolls were manipulated – to the benefit of Clinton.
– Long lines and reduced polling stations reduced voter turnout – to the benefit of Clinton.
Sanders leads by approximately 780,000 votes (51.5-48.5%), assuming a) caucus votes are included, b) unadjusted exit polls represent the true vote, c) 10% of Sanders voters were disenfranchised and d) 5% of Clinton’s votes were fraudulent early/absentee ballots. View the Democratic Primaries spread sheet.
I know how you feel. It’s so obvious CA is being stolen, that unless Sanders has a really big margin, they’ll suppress enough votes to turn it into a clear-looking Clinton win.
Amazing, isn’t it, that the coronation of the most flawed Presidential candidate will proceed by hook or by crook?
i can only hope that every single one of those disenfranchised voters will vote for abc.
For a good send-up of the press, try some Carl Diggler campaign coverage at http://www.cafe.com/tag/the-dig/
FWIW, Tyler Pedigo ran his models for the Tuesday primaries and it’s a mixed bag. He’s sees CA as a tossup that should go Bernie but probably won’t. I’m wondering if all the pressure being put on Bernie to drop out (not the media leaks but in the back room, closed door discussions) is focusing on how nasty his supporters will be treated in Philly. Kind of like a Game of Thrones warning: “Surrender your castle and save your men.”
His model is conservative against Sanders’s chances. Tyler Pedigo is assuming a 60-40 split (in favor of Clinton) in early voting, but polling is showing at 51-49 split in early voting. My sense from what I am seeing on the ground in California is that it will either be very close or Sanders will have a huge win.
Yes, and it was also predicated on the number of early votes being in the 60-70% range of the total votes. Tyler has since updated that it appears that the early votes will NOT surpass 50% of the vote total, all of which would equate to a Sanders win in his models. As an aside, Tyler was the only one to project a Sanders win in MI and IN (almost to the vote), as well as the blowout in OR.
That will be impressive if Sanders scores a hug win (not a just win that is huge in importance but a huge-margin win), especially given the size and the diversity of the state of California.
I expect it to be close.
”does he keep going until the convention, or does he cave to calls to concede?”
it may not be much solace at this point, but he will not cave. he will keep going and will be at the convention with his active supporters. the convention will still be contested. this is not a guy who caves, and his supporters have plans for the convention.
meanwhile to avoid brain damage from the wall, you may want to recall:
1. we never expected him to get this far. now more than ever, every day he is in the fight he has a way to reach people he could never have reached otherwise. every time he is on the media speaking, it is him the people are getting, not anyone else.
2. a lot of people in CA will be very angry if he does not do well, along with all his supporters nationwide. they know their own state and they will know what has been done. some will be radicalized by this experience. they will join a rising force of new leaders.
3. sanders is playing a long game. he understands full well what he is up against, and he is playing the election process like it hasn’t been played before. we are very lucky that this man is still alive and kicking. he has singlehandedly sparked a gathering movement that will continue to strengthen. his campaign has probably shortened by years the time needed for it to gather real force.
4. sanders was never going to turn everything around by becoming president. his worse demonization would begin if/when he got the nomination and would continue through his presidential term.
5. he will now have a strong following for his work in the senate that will give him more power than he’s ever had.
6. our corporate overlords have rigged the media. they have rigged the election. they have rigged our economy. our judiciary, legislature, and executive. our health care system, our education system, our environment protection system. the list goes on and on. yet look at what sanders has been able to win! so many hearts and minds, so many primaries, so much coverage in the face of a massive, crushing, entrenched opposition from all sides. this is a powerful sign, not just of his abilities but of the momentum and potential that actually exist among the uprising.
OK, enough for now. let us nurture the determination and guts sanders has awakened in us. let us not become discouraged. a movement is forming, and our grandchildren’s future depends on it. now are just the early days of the coming shift in our favor. remember how terrible the situation looked in 2011, and then came occupy. the movement has kept growing since then. inevitably, the tide has now begun to turn.
Great comment, thank you. I needed some encouragement.
Ditto! Today is the beginning of working for my local congressional candidate who backs Bernie and is being ignored by the Democratic Party because the district is “too red”. I’m giving my time, which is worth so much more than the few dollars I might contribute to a campaign. FORWARD
Thanks for that and I look forward to what comes next.
Thanks aletheia, that’s true. I too needed to hear it.
it’s just so effing frustrating to see how close he is, and look at all the dirty tricks in ca that will be ignored by the msm, and realize he would still have a shot at the superdelegates if he got the win in california that he probably would if the clinton campaign weren’t rigging it. i’m as mad about this as i was at the florida vote suppression in 2000.
Thanks for the “snap out of it!” reminder – I really needed it! I have been telling myself some version of what you so well enumerated, but there are times when “outside forces” combine to make it all just too much to keep the pessimism/cynicism at bay.
It has heartened me quite a bit to know there are people of honor and truth out there like Bernie Sanders, people who aspire to work for the people, not themselves, who are enriched not by checks from corporate entities and special interests, but by doing the right thing because it is the right thing. I know he is not giving up on what he believes in, and I know he’s not going to be deterred by these media and political nitwits who want to run him out of town.
The media has such power to marginalize, dismiss and ignore that, as hard as it’s been to get coverage, it’s going to get even harder. Or maybe not. I suspect that if Clinton is the nominee and is elected, our ratings-driven media will be happy to use him to go after Clinton – something that is as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun. Bernie will not play along, taking advantage of whatever airtime they give him to champion what he’s been fighting for since high school.
I will keep track of the voting tomorrow without the endless chatter of a media that doesn’t know nearly as much as it thinks it does. And I will be hoping for the best!
+1
Sanders’ determination really shows up the usual Democratic search for approval on the DC cocktail party circle, doesn’t it? No wonder they’re all so offended and others are so inspired.
Thanks, aletheia, for the blast of hopefulness… much needed these days!
our corporate overlords have rigged the media. they have rigged the election. they have rigged our economy. our judiciary, legislature, and executive. our health care system, our education system, our environment protection system. the list goes on and on. yet look at what sanders has been able to win! so many hearts and minds, so many primaries, so much coverage in the face of a massive, crushing, entrenched opposition from all sides. this is a powerful sign, not just of his abilities but of the momentum and potential that actually exist among the uprising.
It’s understandable, but this is not too different from Clinton declaring herself the nominee before polls close anywhere.
This is doing it before voting starts tomorrow.
“Tomorrow is your day. Don’t forget to vote.”
soooo what’s going on in Character Heavyweight-land…
Edward Snowden
✔
@Snowden
Wow: New documents prove I raised Constitutional concerns within the #NSA. For years, the @WhiteHouse denied this. https://news.vice.com/article/edward-snowden-leaks-tried-to-tell-nsa-about-surveillance-concerns-exclusive …
___________________________________
Edward Snowden
✔
@Snowden
Wow: New documents prove I raised Constitutional concerns within the #NSA. For years, the @WhiteHouse denied this. https://news.vice.com/article/edward-snowden-leaks-tried-to-tell-nsa-about-surveillance-concerns-exclusive …
Follow
Edward Snowden
✔
@Snowden
Interesting that this still shows an incomplete history of the concerns I expressed. Simple incompetence, or did NSA destroy records?
7:16 AM – 5 Jun 2016
754 754 Retweets
1,280
Hey, when Sanders is prez he can pardon Snowden – oh, wait…
Snowden can do the most good/damage outside the barricades…
I believe that when [senator Ron] Wyden and [senator Mark] Udall asked about the scale of this, they [the NSA] said it did not have the tools to provide an answer. We do have the tools and I have maps showing where people have been scrutinized most. We collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians. ~S
Of note, Snowden refused to be interviewed for the Vice article and believes NSA’s responses to Vice’s FOIA requests are in bad faith. From the linked article:
Rabid, Snowden should never trust NSA; just read what happened to other NSA whistleblowers who preceded him:
Thanks Rabid & JHER. i wouldn’t trust nsa anymore than Shane Smith’s ego…sad for the talent that carries his conglomerate.
Let us not worry too much about snowden…he has a get out of jail free card…his grandfather….
How China Fell Off the Miracle Path New York Times
Here is the link to the article. http://tradebrokersdiaries.com/how-china-fell-off-the-miracle-path-new-york-times/
From the Reuters link:
If you don’t want Trump to win, you vote Sanders, not Clinton.
Who’s more to blame for this kind of gross ignorance, the media or the voters?
Blame the media…if you find yourself near a media van/truck, go find the reporter and use your video recorder on the phone to catch what the interview subjects tell them and then watch to see what is actually presented after the edits…sadly, most media people are told to fill a news hole with a specific twist and will keep asking the “random” public until they find enough mopes to fill in the response they were asked to present…you will also notice, if you follow along, who is trying to get what angle of a story…some corporate astroturf “non profit” insisting a new regulation is for the benefit of the citizenry and not designed to reduce competition…
There is no ftc type agency to promote “truth in reporting” and the fcc has never cared…
If Sami thinks Clinton is the one to beat Trump, only he (she?) knows why.
While polls have shown Sanders doing better than Clinton, that is no guarantee.
Like expert predictions, polls are just polls, and the contestants still have to actually go through it.
Re: The heifer fair.
Looks like a good time, even if it’s no Reed Point Sheep Drive….something about summer makes everyone want to show off their livestock.
Schumer wants a national law modeled on Cuomo’s efforts. Is the next step ghettos for BDS?
Make them wear green stars. Plus roll out a Chrome extension to put parentheses around Arabic names.
That’s “tolerance,” Lobby style.
The LGBT crowd had better be careful there. In the Reich, all “deviants” were lumped in with the Jews. LGBTs had to wear a pink triangle, and went into the camps with many other groups. This is relevant because the Reich followed hard on the heels of the Weimar Republic, one of the more ‘tolerant’ periods in German history. Never say “It can’t happen here.”
Anyone read Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake books? Loved it all but I thought the transgenic telepathic organ pigs just too goofy, made it cartoonish. Well, life is goofier than fantasy, which is kind of her point. She’s keeps proving prescient and wise, and ever more likely accurate. The Apocalypse will be goofy.
And they better get the Pay TV series out fast before reality renders it trite.
Pig + Neoortex tissue = really smart ‘pigoons’ …….
….Maybe Margaret’s the prescient one….
No, I read The Blind Assassin and that was scary enough, thanks. I’m steeling myself to begin the Handmaid’s Tale. Scary druic Cassandra can stay north of the border. She writes like Neil Young sings but with more dread in the shadows.
Re: “Which Clinton Aide Arranged the Private Email Server?”
Maybe I’m misreading, but If the assertion is that the FBI can can compel testimony via depositions, I’m not sure what legal authority that’s based on. Over the years, the FBI has acquired almost unfettered authority to subpoena records, but afaik the only right to compel testimony is through a subpoena issued by a grand jury.
Of course, people are interviewed by the FBI routinely, but it’s by agreement. Maybe that is what was meant.
I thought that the Feds can “take you downtown” for questioning, and then you choose either ‘cooperation,’ or stonewalling. One gets you back on the street quickly, unless you take the Fifth too much; the other gets you kept in a locked room, constantly observed and questioned as a ‘person of interest’. If the Feds do this right, you do not manage to tell anyone where you are, and why, for quite a while. (“Where’s a phone. I want to call my lawyer.” “Why? You got something to hide? We’re not charging you with anything yet. Calm down and just answer a few questions.” I’m answering nothing. Let me go!” “Oh, what a crybaby. You want a coffee? We’re going to be here a while.” And on and on.)
According to an attorney at Judicial Watch, the fact that Pagliano has received a grant of immunity means a grand jury has been empaneled. Immunity isn’t granted if testimony isn’t going to be required.
I had questions about that too. My opinion is that the grant of immunity does not necessarily mean a grand jury has been empaneled. An individual can give self-incriminating statements in a variety of settings. Whether Mary tells the FBI in an interview that she shot Jane or in a courtroom in front of a grand jury, that statement will be used against her unless she has some form of immunity.
In an interview setting, if the FBI thought the individual had information sufficiently useful to the case, it makes perfect sense that they would grant him immunity–he would have no obligation to show up for an interview anyway since it would be voluntary.
Of course none of this precludes the possibility that a grand jury is underway, that they issued a subpoena to testify, and the grant of immunity was necessary in view of the fact that he would invoke the 5th.
My understanding from years of Perry Mason etc is that the investigators can offer a deal, but a prosecutor has to sign off on it before it actually counts. The prosecution office negotiates the deal, not the investigators. And in some cases there is even a judge in the process.
So once again, no direct evidence of a grand jury, but certainly a more involved process than just an interview as the more correct version is the DOJ granted immunity to Pagliano.
No idea about legalities. What interests me is that all the people named are in appointed positions (you can tell by their titles.) They are not in State Dept. non-political civil service jobs. US State Dept has civil service jobs in information and technology management that includes IT Management Specialist positions. One job description:
“IMSs manage and operate worldwide information technology infrastructure, including PC local and wide area networks, telecommunications systems, telephone and UHF/VHF programs, and diplomatic pouch and mail services.”
Non-appointed career civil service employees generally follow rules and care about the secure functioning of the department more than the political whims of the latest appointee.
The fact that Hillary selected political appointees (loyal to her?) instead of career IT professionals at State to set up her server suggests to me that she was trying to subvert inhouse controls. I would bet that the non-appointed, non-political, civil service IT people would have made sure that any offsite server was vetted and approved by all appropiate security personnel at State before proceeding. I’d also bet that vetting is the last thing Hillary wanted.
http://thiscantbehappening.net/print/3177
With Clinton’s Nixonian Email Scandal Deepening, Sanders Needs to Demand Answers
May 26, 2016 – 11:51am — lindorff
Key issue not being addressed is secret financial deals
by: Dave Lindorff
When it comes to Hillary Clinton’s State Department email scandal, reporters — and even her right-wing critics in the Republican Party — are asking the wrong question.
Sure, doing all her official business on an unprotected, unscrambled private server in her own home and on an unsecured private Blackberry phone device means that any two-bit spy outfit, not to mention sophisticated ones like those of Russia, Iran, Israel or China, could easily hack it and read secret State Department and other agency communications. But really, those entities have ways of getting that kind of secret stuff anyhow.
The real question is what kind of private conversations Clinton, in her role as Secretary of State, was having with powerful people both at home and abroad that may have involved cash donations to the Clinton Foundation and to her and Bill’s personal enrichment or her future campaign for president.
Hillary Clinton is a lawyer, and while she’s slippery, she’s no dummy. She may have played dumb when asked earlier by reporters about her server’s hard drive being wiped clean of data before she turned it over to the FBI, saying, “What, like with a cloth or something? I don’t know how it works at all,” but she surely was involved in the deletion of her private emails — over 30,000 of which were reportedly erased.
And those erasures were made without any involvement of State Department security or legal officials. The decision, according to Clinton, on which emails were “private communications,” was made by her personal attorney, whose interest, by definition, was her and not the public or even national security for that matter.
As the Washington Post has reported, the Clintons went from being, as Hillary Clinton has said, “dead broke” upon leaving the White House in January 2000, to earning some $230 million by this year — a staggering sum of money even in a new Gilded Age of obscene wealth. Most of this money has been little more than influence buying by corporations and wealthy people trying to curry favor with a woman who was already Secretary of State, perhaps the second-most powerful position in the US government and whom many expected to become the next president after Obama.
The power couple’s two foundations, the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, now together reportedly worth more than $2 billion, both function effectively as money-laundering operations providing salaries to Clinton family members and friends. And Hillary Clinton, particularly while serving as President Obama’s secretary of state, was in a perfect position to do favors for unsavory foreign leaders seeking to have their countries kept off of State Department lists of human rights violators, and for US businesses seeking lucrative business deals abroad. It’s those kinds of email conversations that would have benefitted from a private server, since US State Department official computers have dedicated back-up systems that would be hard or impossible to wipe, and are also by law subject to Freedom of Information inquiries from journalists and the public.
It beggars belief to think that Hillary Clinton wasn’t hiding such conversations when she had her private emails deleted from her server.
Great article on the People’s Summit (The Post Election Political Revolution). I love this comment:
“michelle 2016-06-05 13:06
…and let us call ourselves ‘solutionaries’ . We want to fix the problems.”
Right on Michelle and all the other solutionaries!
For all the residual optimists out there, bear in mind there is so much going on that we don’t or don’t want to see, or prefer to discount as CT or SF or the maunderings of the deranged. Like the reporting about fiddling with the bits that currently indicate that we people are “human,” behind claims that the fiddling will “help people.” Hey, the transfer of huuuge wealth to Banksters and other FIREmen and -women “helps people.” Just a category and definition issue, standing between the mope with the nominal “vote” in our “democratic” system and the reality.
https://shofarblastblog.com/2016/05/20/chimeras-animalhuman-embryos-grown-in-pigs/
And I hope folks here read the piece linked yesterday on a Russian’s view of the Russian economy in time of prep for WW III, http://russia-insider.com/en/business/why-bad-relations-west-are-good-russia/ri14790. Seems that there are some universal constants in human behavior of huge states with their inevitable rations of war-heads and warheads. Who would have thought that post-oligarchic Russia would build its own version of the US MIC (which is really a global phenom, corporatism at its cancerous and most virulent worst — follow the reporting at places like this, http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=did&utm_medium=logo, to see the huuugeness and globalized stretch of Playstation Militarization of Everything.
And also Paul Craig Roberts’ cautionary piece at this link, http://www.defenddemocracy.press/%CE%B1-%CF%84hird-world-war/
All of a piece — all the vulnerabilities constantly being searched out by people hoping to make a personal career and a fortune out of deploying “threats” to attack every one of those “vulnerabilities.” In service of WHAT outcomes in the political-economic world? Appears to me that whatever the stated purposes of all that festering pathogenesis, that it’s all just the buildup to Ragnarøkkr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar%C3%B6k. Whether cyber or Real World, economic, political, propaganda, environmental/weather/climate.
One has to wonder which parts of that marvelous human brain are most active in the quest for successful species murder/suicide, by people who apparently are just fine with nuclear demolition, a “Terminator” future, bio-weapons, nanotech Really Cool Toys, all that stuff, only a part of which is listed here.
Thank goodness for distractions like “Antidotes,” the kayfabe of faux electoral political theatre, and psychoactive medications to help us let a smile be our umbrella, on a rainy, rainy day…
Yep.
Hear! Hear!
Here:
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/donald-trump-is-the-mosquito-not-the-zika-virus/
Though, there have been discovered natural antibodies to Zika —
“Right Wingers Go After Bill for Making Millions From For-Profit Laureate Universities”
Man, that is so fifty years ago — desperately spinning every event into a lamebrained partisan football game. Laws against bribery and graft make no reference to ideological affiliation.
Quite simply, honorary chancellor “Bill” secured a $150 million “investment” in Laureate Education by a World Bank subsidiary — $16.4 million of which was routed to “Bill” as his fee. You’ll recognize this as the standard 10 percent commission that fixers charge in banana republics (plus expenses).
One is shocked only that “Bill” failed to demand an honorary doctorate as well. Then he could recruit Lolitas with a new pick-up line: ‘Hey there, cutie … LET’S PLAY DOCTOR!’
The “vast, right wing conspiracy” is at it again, unfairly smearing a couple of poor public servants just trying to help people.
clinton & company must feel pretty confident that they can keep this story from catching fire, pounding away as they are continuing to do, on the predatory abomination that is/was Trump U. With a little help from their friends like this author, who declares the issue “a false equivalency,” conveniently without elaboration.
Any minute now I expect them to declare Trump U. “a great vampire squid, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” and then lamenting the vast right wing conspiracy’s charge of plagiarism.
imo, the C’s are in dire straits trying to account for the manipulated landslide being handed them…everyday the molten 8 ball of reality closes in on’em.
comparatively, Hil would be damn lucky disclosing closets full of blue dresses & cigars…
admittedly, i never realized how unoriginal she really is…further proof she’ll NEVER get her footing as a sitting president.
The ‘C’s do not recognize that dire straits apply to them at all. True sociopaths have no shame, or conscience. Plus, to H Clinton, “getting ones’ footing” is a euphemism for “putting the boot in.”
The ‘C’s do not recognize that dire straits apply to them at all.…my turn to slap forehead ‘)
i’m guessing as time nears, their shenanigans will be sweated by their backer$. we could actually witness a fiasco the likes of what the dems dreamed for W. …hopefully worse! let’m all roll out the red carpet for OUR PARTY.
i hate calling them “shenanigans”, like kids papering a house. it’s just blatant cheating, with the connivance of the media and probably the republicans.
They’re F*ckin HOOLIGANS !!
Team Blue Dress is probably the code name of Hillary’s “hit squad” tasked with torpedoing Trump in the press. It reminds me metaphorically of one of those “polish* pistols” – the cartoon of a pistol with the barrel facing the wrong direction.
* My apologies to Poland, the Polish government, and Polish people anywhere and everywhere.
Considering where we are commenting Comrade Jim, that should be: “Hey there cutie….LET’S PLAY ECONOMIST! You’ve got a supply of something I demand.”
“Playing economist” is strictly a solitary vice.
Just look what it did to the hairy-handed Krugthulhu.
Well, if it’s Krugthulhu we’re blaspheming against, and a lot of the, er, ‘creation of value’ occurred on board Epsteins’ jet, wending its’ way from Treasure Island to ‘kinetic daycare centre,’ then Ks’ expertise in international flows does apply.
Naturally now we’re all absorbed in the rigged spectacle of half-assed reformer Sanders getting robbed and defrauded at every turn to install CIA’s choice, The Queen of Mena. But once Philadelphia gets going, and you finally get disgusted with the spectacle of Sanders being forced to kowtow and crawl for Clinton and tell you what to do on her behalf like you’re his serfs, and hers, maybe you would rather see something that’s not so masturbatory and futile.
Cheri Honkala will be marching on the convention. You remember her, she ran for VP. Well, no, you don’t, your rulers stuffed her into the media cone of silence. But she was your dream candidate, until she got tired of phony rigged electoral bullshit. Now she’s the police state’s worst nightmare, MLK+Malcolm X+Evo+Leonard Peltier. Cops and Feds are blanketing the march preparations with surveillance because she adheres to the revolutionary ideology that supplanted communism as the gravest threat to US rule. The UDHR.
http://economichumanrights.org/
The Maher capitalism piece on Esquire credited to Charles Pierce was actually written by Danielle Henderson FYI.
Sorry, will fix!
Well, I read the available excerpts from Gary Byrne’s book Crisis of Character. It seems to have been heavily edited, replacing whatever authorial voice Byrne had with a breezy, bland, professional content provider tone.
It also seems a bit light on new facts. Byrne describes overhearing a shouting match in the private quarters of the White House, followed by “Bill” emerging with a black eye. Hillary is still heaving lamps in rage, as described by the Arkansas state troopers in 1994. However, White House lamps are on a government property inventory.
But the book’s fundamental limitation is that it deals with events of twenty years ago. What have the Clintons done to us lately? We await fresh dirt dumps from those who have access to the secret server, where Hillary’s 30,000 deleted emails likely provide a roadmap of racketeering.
So those reports of he clintons stealing White House property are completely unjustified.
They didn’t steal things, they just threw them at each other and “they got broken.”
Too bad they didn’t keep the shards of things over the years so they could say to the curators oh that pile of toothpicks over there was a table and four chairs. I always felt the excuses at the time were a way of shifting the blame onto the staff, even if I didn’t think it was a big deal. My bad for being in denial.
uhh….’Pottery Barn’??
Prepare for HRC’s auto-coronation at 8:01 pm ET/ 5:01 p.m. PT Tuesday:
… like the late, great Alexander Haig:
“As of now, I am in control here in the White House.”
Huge price rise forces NHS to ditch life-changing drug
Patients are being taken off a life-changing thyroid medicine made by a single UK supplier after the price of a tablet shot up from 16p to £9.22.
Doctors have been encouraged to stop prescribing liothyronine 20mcg tablets by the NHS after AMCo, which enjoys a monopoly on the drug, implemented the price increase.
AMCo is one of four companies whose business practices were exposed by The Times last week in an investigation that revealed how they have exploited a loophole in NHS pricing rules to implement dramatic rises in the cost of medicines after removing a brand name. Jeremy Hunt,
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/huge-price-rise-forces-nhs-to-ditch-life-changing-drug-09xlwh0j7
CEO of Concordia who owns Amco pays himself 9 MILLION/year in USD….nice, eh?…
The video clip of Obama stumbling when the teleprompter breaks down was eye-opening.
Also the Oct 2015 Vanity Fair long form article on Clinton and her inner circle was a good read. It explains a lot of her poor political campaign—-they’re all living in a self-referencing bubble.
And that’s why Clinton must lie and cheat to win despite being a high profile political insider with every conceivable advantage.
And how they lie and cheat, Puerto Rico being the latest example. The facade of democracy is wearing very thin this election.
One can hide that problem by giving the same speech every time.
I’d be curious if someone does that, saying the same thing at each rally.
The story in Salon read like a synopsis of the comments on the Politico piece. Lazy writing at its’ worst. Imagination seems in short supply these days. If it weren’t so sad it would be really funny.
Fraudulent, disingenuous, lazy political writing about Clinton/Sanders? The MSM is full of it.
Re: Bill Clinton: Sanders supporters ‘will be toast’
They may be toast in the fall, but you can bet the Clintons will come crawling back to them when they get in trouble, again.
It Takes a Village to Maintain a Dangerous Financial System
Abstract: I discuss the motivations and actions (or inaction) of individuals in the financial system, governments, central banks, academia and the media that collectively contribute to the persistence of a dangerous and distorted financial system and inadequate, poorly designed regulations. Reassurances that regulators are doing their best to protect the public are false. The underlying problem is a powerful mix of distorted incentives, ignorance, confusion, and lack of accountability. Willful blindness seems to play a role in flawed claims by the system’s enablers that obscure reality and muddle the policy debate.
Democratic governments should ultimately be accountable to citizens. Policy failures can persist, however, if citizens are unaware of the problem, confused about the issues, or powerless to bring about change. Enablers often come from across the political spectrum, leaving citizens few if any choices of effective advocates. Financial regulation is often not a salient topic in political campaigns. Even when there is anger about the financial system (as is the case currently in the U.S.), some key issues are not well understood.
Bernie Sanders was the only one really hammering home this issue. If Hillary gets the nomination, neither of the major party candidates will do anything about the parasitic and cancerous financial system.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/06/06/it-takes-a-village-to-maintain-a-dangerous-financial-system/#more-34812
I guess he means when HRC gets in we’re all burnt??
Re Salon’s attack on NC. Wow, lectures on the crazy from a site long run by Clinton suck up David Talbot. This is the man who recently published a book speculating that the Allen Dulles killed his hero JFK. Takes crazy (or if you prefer recklessly opinionated) to know crazy, eh?
To be sure Salon–no longer edited by Talbot– does allow some articles by non-shills and even Joan Walsh has departed but they are a nakedly Dem and Hillary partisan site. It’s not exactly the platform to be giving lectures on objectivity. As for the swipes at the commentariat: congrats Katniss….you’re famous…..
Yes, well…..I’m expecting a “cease and desist” order from Suzanne Collins’ publishers any second.
I had a look at the author’s twitter feed. He is a fool. Cocky and ignorant.
The comments are largely more interesting. In my opinion the group saying that the Dems are at fault and are going to be at fault if there is a President Trump because they ran an unlikable largely corrupt neoliberal hack are winning. The few cogent retorts against any comment supporting that usually get smashed in the replies until the supporters are sounding like whiny children. ‘he doesn’t SAY innocents!’.
I don’t think this is really going the way they wanted.
They keep saying ‘if there is a President Trump’ often enough, there will be one.
Whatever happened to just focusing on the present?
Yes! We linked to an article pointing out that this is the WORST possible messaging. Saying “beware President Trump” promotes Trump and reinforces the idea that he could be President. Coke would never name Pepsi in its ads, but Team Dem is regularly breaking a cardinal rule of marketing.
My favourite comment on the Salon article:
I hope the rest of this article is worth it cause man you LOST me as soon as I SENSED that her name
was coming.,
anyone else get that feeling – you know that a person’s name is coming and you are about to hit dread and
anger?
f. I don’t even know why I should scroll back.
‘Back in 2012, conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan infamously said that she had a
gut feeling that Mitt Romney would win based on the fact that in one neighborhood in Florida somewhere,
she had seen more yard signs touting him than Obama.’
Yves’ very name causes terror in liberals. They can’t even write it.
Clinton may declare herself the party’s nominee before the polls close there.
I hope she does.
Such a display of entitled arrogance may just be the push Bernie needs to declare a run as an independent, which he, in the final analysis, is.
Sometimes the stars align, and Bernie doesn’t strike me as a person who lacks comprehension of that fact.
He also strikes me as a person who seriously asks himself the questions, “If not me, who, and if not now, when?”
He’s been banging his head against the congressional wall for 30 years, and all he’s gotten is frustrated membership in a branch of government with a 9% approval rating, in a rapidly decaying country. Even in a “long game,” opportunity knocks once in awhile, and wise people know when to answer.
Sorry. Reply to allan.
‘Such a display of entitled arrogance may just be the push Bernie needs to declare a run as an independent, which he, in the final analysis, is.’
It may also be the last straw for James Comey to conclude that it’s time for the FBI to act, officially or unofficially, to shut down the Clinton criminal conspiracy for good.
Enough is enough.
When the fate of Democracy lies in the hands of the former general counsel at Lockheed and member of the management committee at Bridgewater, you know we’re in a bad place.
Except for never holding elected office, Comey has the resume for any job. Bringing down Clinton will make him rich and a real celebrity and more importantly the GOP 2020 front runner. Arguably democracy is working.
If he lives in Virginia, he could thrash Kaine in 2018.
Who could offer a better deal? The answer is no one.
In that case, the Clinton camp will make sure to let the whole world know his GOP plan.
That makes so much sense my “Daily Happiness Index” just increased 50%.
The last straw perhaps, because by itself, that pales in comparison to many other causes to never have joined/to leave the party.
Trouble for our
occupation troopsfreedom fighters in Japan:Seems like Obama’s visit failed to pacify the natives. Sterner measures may be necessary.
‘pivot’ to Hell….
RE: Puerto Rico Slashes Polling Places For The Democratic Primary
Time to grovel to the Queen of chaos!
snicker…
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/hillary-clinton-brother-in-law-busted-dui-california-article-1.2662816
two comments on this hilarity, one, long ago on this site it was postulated that someone with so many skeletons in the closet, no matter how adept they are at obfuscation, would have something “unexpected” happen, and two it’s also been postulated that lower level federal agents may rebel from the hands off hillary program and make something happen in a different way, think fbi agents with license plate readers and stingray maybe? no….it couldn’t be….
Ol’ Roger was just celebrating his imminent, triumphant return to the White House …
… though poor Roger don’t get cut in on the seriously remunerative deals, as do Hillary’s little brothers Tony and Hugh, who have their sticky fingers stuck in all kinds of rancid pies.
It’s been a long time since the good old days in Arkansas, when Roger and “Bill” used to snort cocaine in Roger’s apartment in Little Rock.
Roger, showing a spark of ambition, proposed expanding his dealership under Bill’s gubernatorial protection. “Bill” was overheard through the thin sheetrock wall croaking, “That’s Lasater’s deal. That’s Lasater’s deal!” [referring to Arkansas bond daddy Dan Lasater, who’d already been granted the franchise]
Good times were had by all! :-)
Wow…RI Treasurer @SethMagaziner charges retirees $10K to see docs from Wall St firms hes investing their money in
Question: What’s worse than having your retirement savings invested in funds that fail to provide you with a prospectus before you invest?
Answer: Funds that demand you pay money to view their prospectuses.
Question: What’s worse than having to pay for prospectuses of funds in which your retirement savings are invested?
Answer: Paying $10,000 for the documents and still not getting them.
The questions and answers above sound like bad jokes and they’re not funny.
But that’s exactly what happened when retired school teachers in Rhode Island requested the prospectuses of the funds in which the $7 billion-plus state pension had invested their money. Thirty-one year old General Treasurer Seth Magaziner demanded the elders pay $10,000 for the documents and then, after the retirees had raised the monies and paid him, he refused to provide the offering documents.
Worse still, it’s happening to public pension stakeholders around the nation—not just in tiny Rhode Island. Simply put, state pension officials are withholding prospectuses from investors, i.e., taxpayers and participants, in funds.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2016/06/06/state-retirees-forced-to-pay-for-prospectuses-get-stiffed/#1570f55b3e8e
https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/739874293933211649
Had to go find out more about this guy. He is indeed the son of Ira Magaziner. Teach for America grad. Yale MBA. The whole package.
Best line from his wikipedia profile:
A bit more on the actual story. The Forbes’ piece is written by the guy who requested the documents (Ted Seidle). After being informed it would cost $10K for them (presumably copying costs?), the retired teachers voted to pay for them. According to Seidle, all they got were the promotional materials, not the actual propectuses.
Magaziner Should Return $10K to Retired Teachers for Withholding Key Documents, Says Siedle
Money quote:
Hurt their performance? “In our first-ever crowdfunded investigation, Double Trouble: Wall Street Secrecy Conceals Preventable Losses in Rhode Island issued in June 2015, we revealed that real estate is the Rhode Island state pension’s worst performing asset class by far. Real estate investment performance has been nothing short of horrific over the past 10 years—2 percent versus the Fund’s benchmark return of 9.6 percent. Real estate underperformance has cost the pension approximately $638 million over the past decade,” wrote Siedle on his Kickstarter in December.
Seth Magaziner. From Rhode Island. Any relation to Ira?
Re. Bid to grow transplant organs in pigs BBC. This is mean to pigs. — It’s also a recipe for breeding pandemic flu and other species-hopping-capable viruses.
I had a very weird time trying to get my vote into the california primary. In March I requested a ballot via email and waited. The wording on the state site made it seem as if I could send it in via email. “Why doesn’t everyone do this?” I foolishly thought. We signed mortgage papers online from abroad and do online banking, so why not? Let people register up until the day before elections and vote by email, I say. (what a radical, that’s unamerican!)
I wait for my ballot, it never comes, finally I call the registrar. They insist they sent a ballot by email in March and a second email with instructions, I never received either. She sent it again, but when I got it, it was non-partisan with no candidates (yes we have all read about this now, but this was 3 weeks ago). I freak and ask a friend to fetch my mail, figuring he can overnight the paper ballot to me when I go to New York for a visit. He takes many days to get the post sorted due to this and that, and there’s no paper ballot. I call the registrar just in time to fax a signature to receive a Dem ballot via email.
I fax the signature, they say they can’t read the fax (thank god I though to call her again since I was just going to go home and wait for the email!). Fax again, they say it’s good, and they will email me the ballot. I think this was Monday. Tuesday I call, and she says she’ll send it. Wednesday I don’t bug her. Thursday, she apologizes and says it’s on the top of her desk. Friday she says another woman sent it already. I freak out again. Not receiving emails repeatedly from the registrar? How is that possible? She had the correct address; nothing was in my spam folder etc.
Today, Monday, I get a hold of the other woman and she says she sent it on Saturday (…?). She is pissed that I used the phrase “supposedly sent,” and she stays on the phone with me as she sends it again. That time it came through no problem. I drove to town and tried faxing it from 3 papelerias over the course of 2 hours. One place let me sit there as we tried for 30 minutes straight. I call back, what’s going on with the fax machine, we can’t get through. She went into the fax room and it sounded like the machine was quiet. she said the fax machine was working fine and that the line was open (this is while we are hitting send and getting a busy signal) then we get the fax through while she was on the phone with us…weird. If I wasn’t already paranoid this would kind of make me go hmmmmm…
Thanks.
‘Pelosi-Bidenoid-Clintonite-Obamacrat’ !
Wonder why NC did not embrace this one from a poster a few days ago.
Thanks for all the great info and insights.
As a black writing from Black Africa, please fill me in, why are blacks over there voting for hER? Are they respecters of corruption or is it a sports fan mentality that roots for the favourite no matter what? Or are they secretly creaming it off neolib? I’m genuinely puzzled.
We are genuinely puzzled too.
The Black vote here is not monolithic. The Blacks cited as H Clinton supporters are generally depicted as older women, and apparatchik types. The kind of people who would respond well to a candidate who promises “more of the same.” The more radical Blacks are under reported in the American Media. (Actually, the more radical anyones are underreported.) This election is notable for the blatant bias being ‘pushed’ by the Media. Todays “declaration” of H Clinton Democratic Party Delegate dominance is a case in point. Briefly, by declaring “victory” now, the Clinton camp hopes to suppress the turnout of Sanders California voters and thus win a ‘real’ victory in the California primary election.