By Lambert Strether of
Readers, as you about to see, I have taken Monday off, as well as Friday, but not on purpose! The latest post on Clinton myths took much more time than I thought, and unfortunately you pay the price. And I can’t even add UPDATEs, because there are now 75 76 commnents in the moderation queue, which I must process.
Fortunately, there are is only one stat today.
Stats Watch
Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey, November 28, 2016: “Production is picking up as is general activity but new orders are still shrinking, in what are mixed results for the Dallas Fed manufacturing report” [Econoday]. “Still, new orders are disappointing and follow big jumps this month in the Philadelphia and Richmond regions and also gains in Kansas City and New York. But taken together, the advance signs for November’s factory sector are favorable.”
The Bezzle: “7. Pufferfish. c. The practice of making a startup seem larger than it is through subterfuge. [Wall Street Journal, “How Well Do You Know the Language of Startups?”]. “Answer: c. Among other tricks, startups have been known to decorate empty desks and to create elaborate voice-mail systems to make it seem like more people work there.”
Photographing container ships at sea with drones is a thing:
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 70 Greed (previous close: 72, Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 67 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 28 at 1:36pm. Mr. Market swaggers back from the 19th hole!
News of the Wired
Talking Heads in prophetic mode:
Enjoy… I’ll have a complete Water Cooler tomorrow1
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (PS):
PS writes: “Silversword. Occurs only near the summit of Mt. Haleakala.”
Readers, Water Cooler is a standalone entity, not supported by the very successful Naked Capitalism fundraiser just past. Now, I understand you may feel tapped out, but when and if you are able, please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your continued help.
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I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.
– Tom Waits
Solomon Burke – None Of Us Are Free
https://youtu.be/eFkmRp_G2uo
Tony Joe White – Willie and Laura Mae Jones
https://youtu.be/N0tPnGItHWY
Doobie Brothers – Long Train Running HD (Live)
https://youtu.be/eIi_GbFa_nw
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings – Stranger To My Happiness
https://youtu.be/IlPE1rEdAdI
Randy Crawford – Cajun Moon
https://youtu.be/ua-81ASx75E
Sylvain Luc – Nomad’s Land (French guitar and Persian drums.)
https://youtu.be/HEJN_G-RtfQ
AIR – La Femme D’Argent (Live in France, 2007)
https://youtu.be/jZfPXXQs_Qg
The antidote looks like a Dr. Seuss illustration. That is simply wild looking!
Yes. It looks like an albino “Blossom” from those Warner Brothers cartoons.
See:http://livingincinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/wait-a-minute-dracula.jpg
I was thinking it looked like Cousin Itt, but your comparison is better.
Anyone feeling the urge to hug the cute plant?
“You’re so, so adorable. And I am a plant-hugger.”
I think I might have seen it on Sesame Street once.
I’ve been up Haleakala once. I should have done my homework first. It’s a remarkable environment, but I didn’t really know what I was looking at where plants were concerned.
I tried to go up Haleakala in Feb. ’97, but there was a blizzard and 3/4’s of the way up, they closed the road.
Did see the crater from a helicopter in ’93. Spectacular!
Best plantidote ever!!
No rest for the wicked, Lambert … ;-) I hope you do get some, though!
My contribution to the prescient music theme:
Rush – The Big Money
I keep hearing Stevie Wonder, from 1975:
People keep on learnin’
Soldiers keep on warrin’
World keep on turnin’
‘Cause it won’t be too long
Powers keep on lyin’
While your people keep on dyin’
World keep on turnin’
‘Cause it won’t be too long
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wZ3ZG_Wams
‘Cause it won’t be too long
#HowLong … Revelations 6:10
I thought that *pufferfish* stuff sounded familiar. Castro was doing it in the 1950;s, back when the NYT was embedded with communists::
His recruiting was aided immeasurably by his skills at propaganda and psychological warfare. Castro’s greatest ploy was luring a New York Times correspondent named Herbert Matthews to his mountain camp. Though the rebels had barely 20 bedraggled men, Castro marched the same group past Matthews several times and also staged the arrival of “messengers” reporting the movement of other (nonexistent) units.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/fidel-castro-en/article117186483.html#storylink=cpy
Propaganda and psychological warfare? But if they call it “sales” or “politics” their Lebowski Achiever readers (and proud we are of all of them) might have a sad. Must keep a strict boundary between the activities of the “respectable” and the mass, even if that boundary is made entirely of the abuse of words.
Geoffrey Oryema – listening wind ( Talking Heads cover )
Mojique sees his village from a nearby hill
Mojique thinks of days before Americans came
He serves the foreigners in growing numbers
He sees the foreigners in fancy houses
He dreams of days that he can still remember now
Mojique holds a package in his quivering hands
Mojique sends the package to the American man
Softly he glides along the streets and alleys
Up comes the wind that makes them run for cover
He feels the time is surely now or never more
The wind in my heart, the wind in my heart
The dust in my head, the dust in my head
The wind in my heart, the wind in my heart
drive them away, drive them away
And Mojique buys his equipment in the market place
Mojique plants devices through the free trade zone
He feels the wind is lifting up his people
He calls the wind to guide him on his mission
He knows his friend the wind is always standing by
Mojique smells the wind that, that comes from far away
Mojique waits for news in a quiet place
He feels the presence of the wind beside him
He feels the power of the past behind him
He has the knowledge of the wind to guide him on
The wind in my heart, the wind in my heart
The dust in my head, the dust in my head
The wind in my heart, the wind in my heart
Come to drive them away, drive them away
It must be an old trick, well-known to the sort of person who looks for such tricks.
Richard Evans describes a Nazi torchlight parade in The Coming of the Third Reich. A father and is son are watching, and realize that the reason the marchers keep looking familiar is that they are, in fact, the same; marchers left the end of the parade and went right back to the beginning to start over.
60 Minutes, Dec 20, 1998- full interview
Steve Kroft interviews George Soros
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Ux5b6YM9A
Partial transcript;
KROFT: (Voiceover) To understand the complexities and contradictions in his personality, you have to go back to the very beginning: to Budapest, where George Soros was born 68 years ago to parents who were wealthy, well-educated and Jewish.
When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros’ father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.
(Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)
KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros’ friends and neighbors.
(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) You’re a Hungarian Jew…
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
KROFT: (Voiceover) …who escaped the Holocaust…
(Vintage footage of women walking by train)
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
(Vintage footage of people getting on train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) … by — by posing as a Christian.
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.
(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)
KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.
KROFT: In what way?
Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and — and anticipate events and when — when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a — a very personal experience of evil.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that’s — that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Not — not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t — you don’t see the connection. But it was — it created no — no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, ‘I’m Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.’ None of that?
Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c — I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was — well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets — that if I weren’t there — of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would — would — would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the — whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the — I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
Some how I don’t think Zuroff will be going after Soros.
Dude was only 14, living in unimaginable conditions. What you hear on the interview is not his 14 year-old self, but his 68(?) year-old recreation of that self. It’s ridiculous to compare an abandoned child to Groening, and it moreover distracts from legitimate criticisms of Soros’s influence peddling. Or so it seems to me.
Everybody was living in unimaginable conditions. My grandfather and his brother were split up and sent to different orphanages. We learned that his father was killed so “Christian” white men could have his land. Happened less than 60 years before Groening was raised in the Nazi Youth and sent to the Russian Front. Groening recognized and admitted what he did was wrong, though I’m not sure society has admitted what it allowed to be done to Groening in his youth was wrong.
As for my family, we’re never going to get that land back, nor anything in reparations for what was done to our family and tribe.
Bull. Soros is a sociopath, comparing his survival to the “markets”. That’s a horrible evil analogy, and it doesn’t even make sense. Plus, you are no longer a child when you are 14, stop using that as an excuse.
If I imagine my own 14-year-old self put in a similarly impossible position, I don’t know what I would have done.
> distracts from legitimate criticisms of Soros’s influence peddling.
Agreed.
Now, if somebody could show that the psychological splitting (“if it hadn’t been me, it would have been somebody else”) is common to the 0.01% and a consequence of their social position, that would be interesting and useful. But as Soros-bashing, it’s not very useful.
Do any of us really know what our 14-year-old selves would do, in the clutches of the Nazis?
or 18, or 21, or… at what age and what condition does wisdom flow? Many of mankind’s heros went to their deaths of old age clutching fiercely to their truths which are today’s absolute moral degeneracy.
Here’s a link from me, a blast from the past: Nixon’s Plan For Healthcare Reform.
http://khn.org/news/nixon-proposal/
> No family would ever have annual out-of-pocket expenses for covered health services in excess of $1,500, and low-income families would face substantially smaller expenses.
If only we had the advanced computer technology, peaceful environment and robust economy of 1974, maybe something like this would still be viable.
Will it be that 40 years from now, we (those still around) will look back at 2016, and say, ‘those good old days?”
…and in other news, Afghanistan Is All Ready To Be Donald Trump’s First Foreign Policy Disaster
The next president has tough choices to make as Taliban forces push forward.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/afghanistan-war-taliban_us_581cb5aee4b0d9ce6fbb71ff
The killing and dying goes on, the “Coalition” presence continued to catalyze the growth and success of the “insurgents” who seem somehow to be more “legitimate” than the corrupt slicks “we” are backing in Kabul… What is the Game, again? How do you know when you have “won”? “Know when to fold ’em…”
I do like the jejune glee with which the HuppPo headline writer seems to view the idiocy over there as little more than a chance to embarrass and distress “the only president
we’ve gotwe’re about to have…”Oh, and PETRAEUS for WHAT cabinet post, again? Jeebus love us…
If he picks Petraeus then he might as well tell his supporters that he has no intent on going after Hillary for mishandling classified data.
Petraeus actually was found guilty of mishandling classified data(with his mistress no less.)
Why, because, suddenly, hypocrisy is a line he won’t cross?
+1
He IS going to be up for re election in 4 years and the Democratic Party will have a field day with his hypocrisy.
He’ll probably be impeached long before he has to sit for election. There are enough Democratic Senators so corrupted that they may vote with the Republicans to do it. Lets remember Obama & Hillary both preferred Republican Congress, because (a) they share neo-liberal/neo-conservative corporatism and (b) a Non-Democratic Congress gives (would have given) cover to ruling by executive order/fiat. The later is very important if your primary interest in political office is honest corruption. ala Bush, Obama or Clinton
Huh? Bills of impeachment originate in the House, not the Senate, where the Republicans hold a comfortable majority.
And an impeachment would hurt the Republican party and help the Dems. They don’t have an institutional reason to do this. If Trump gives them tax cuts, they’ll be plenty happy.
My bad, I meant the trial by the Senate after the impeachment (A necessary step probably based on Trump), which requires a two thirds majority, vs. the simple majority for articles of impeachment in the house.
My understanding is the Republicans do not have a two thirds majority at this time, but who knows what might happen after the next federal election, when another 1/3 of seats are up for re-election.
I can think of many reasons why traditional oligarchy Republicans might want Mike Pence taking over, particularly if Trump falls on his face. The future is of course always an unknown.
I’m trying to figure out if Petraeus would even be eligible for a security clearance after actually pleading guilty to mishandling classified information while committing adultery and lying to the FBI about it. I would kind of hope not. I mean geez, if that is the case then what would disqualify a person from a clearance?
If this had been an enlisted person they would have thrown the book at him with a court martial and then tossed him out. It’s insane that we’re suggesting criminal behavior deserves some kind of reward whether it be Clinton or Petraeus.
I don’t know who is advising Trump on this appointment but it strikes me as having train wreck written all over it.
Trump can assign/order any security clearance he wants through an executive order, as well as pardon Petraeus. Congress could subpoena information regarding clearance investigations as part of oversight, but can not (directly) challenge the clearance. POTUS could reject a subpoena based on executive privilege. Then I guess it would go SOCUS.
Hillary pretty much did what she wanted with regard to security inside her personal office, as it was clear to the wonks that Obama would not rein Hellary in. Obama himself sent classified information via unsecured email to Hellary, the FBI admitted as much in their chat with Huma Abedin. IE: If POTUS backs you, like Stratfor over the last 4 administrations, you can sell highly classified secrets to approved corporate clients for profit.
ed: The Security Clearance Reform Act of 2014 (H.R. 4022) died in Congress, partly because no one in the Oligarchy wants to end the party.
He may be able to.
The question is, should he?
The reality is that if he does he looks like the world’s largest hypocrite.
Contrary to popular belief he didn’t win a mandate. He won narrowly in a bunch of states and hypocrisy is not going to play well in middle class America. He’ll look like a typical politician….which is NOT what he ran and won on.
It’s a pretty crappy way to begin things IMO.
> field day with his hypocrisy
Because that worked so well in 2016?
Trump was a blank slate a la Obama for the right who seem to think for some strange reason the guy is genuine(this appointment should disabuse at least a few of them of that). That coupled with the indies and the marginalized left who finally got the balls to give the DNC the finger gave Trump the presidency.
In 2020 he’s not going to be a blank slate for the right and his hypocrisy will give the DNC some great sound bites. How big was his margin in those 3 states he won by again?
The people advising him appear to be idiots.
America was built by murderous tellers of tall tales and bold lies. Unabashed racism and slander is served over many a breakfast table. Read any Mark Twain? Most Baptist preachers have forgotten half empty beers parked next to used condoms behind their couch, and their parishioners know it.
Donald’s secret is he has no shame about his lies, and that makes so many of the people feel good about theirs; his lies are their sort of lies. If and when he gets caught telling the wrong sort of lies, then he’ll get into trouble with his electorate.
If the DNC runs Corey Booker or some other elite, corporatist neoliberal, you’ll just get more people staying home, which should mean the Republican still wins, because Republicans are more likely to turn out, the Republican party has control of most of the country and has a robust GOTV system in all these devastated areas that matter in the Electoral College.
The Democratic Party is barely a national party now, in the real world. It was razor close in many states, so I suppose it’s possible a candidate with equally terrible policies but a less terrible history and some charm could flip states using another expensive air campaign. But on the other hand, they portrayed Trump as actual Hitler. In four years, if there’s an election, he’s not Hitler. Even if he governs very poorly, he probably won’t seem as bad as Hillary and the media portrayed this time around.
Once marks have bought into the con, they get invested in not seeing that they have been conned. Witness all the people begging Obama now to “be his true self” and protect Standing Rock, cancel the TPP, etc. He’s been showing them for years who his true self is, having set aside the fig leaf excuse of Republican opposition. But to see him as he truly is would cause them psychological pain they’d rather avoid. So they…don’t see it. There’s no reason to believe Trump won’t likewise benefit from that phenomenon to some degree.
When you add all these forces together, I just don’t see a “field day” for a New Dem led DNC in 2020.
Drat.
Cory Booker. Cory.
I prefer the Coreys who spell their name the other way…
+1
Once marks have bought into the con,…
Yep, 200 years of buying into it.
It’s really not the Republican or the Democratic base that decides election. It’s an evergrowing pile of people sick of both parties who are independent.
It just so happens that this time they basically told the Democratic Party to pound sand.
I’m not at all convinced that this will be a Republican sure thing based on what I am seeing. As a matter of fact it looks like the GOP is planning on throwing the drowning democratic party a lifeline. Personally I hope not since no deserves to die a faster more irrelevant death than the DNC at this point. We can’t pick a replacement for them fast enough.
I am seeing an awful lot of headlines like that, everywhere! Like Afghanistan wasn’t already a policy disaster? On so many issues, it looks like someone may have just woken up. Where have they been all of these years?
Hmmm, let’s see. Annual U.S. Military Budget:…………. $600,000,000,000 (600 Billion)
Afghanistan total Annual Gross Domestic Product……….$19,000,000,000 (19 Billion)
Sooo (licking my pencil) Afghanistan’s total G.D.P. equals 3% of U.S. military budget.
Okay, 15 years, $9,000,000,000,000 (that’s 9 Trillion Buckaroos)
But, at least we won, right?……right?
right?
No wonder they want an increase, do they expect us to win a war on the cheap?
Have we stopped dropping big bags of cash over there for the leaders to collect?
Ah. “Tough choices.”
Afghanistan has been a blowback debacle since Zbigniew Brezinski gave Stingers to the jihadis. So the headline is a little unseemly.
I was under the impression that Carter/Brzezinski actually introduced the Wahabist jihadis to Afghanistan. Best example of a self licking ice cream cone since Eisenhower’s Mossadegh regime change.
Can’t let the Republicans have all of the fun.
Most of the fighting was done by Afghani mujahideen. They were also the recipients of the bulk of CIA aid. Foreign jihadi fighters like Bin Laden showed up and claimed the defeat of the Russians as a great victory, even though the native Afghanis did most of the actual work.
Mainland Tourist trying to off Taiwanese with Drones. apparently is a thing too. Come back to the motherland or else.
Yeee. Forgot what I was going to do, deposit this link on Obama trying to out Trump Trump.
Well, that’s disgusting.
At least the Obamamometer’s consistent in going to the mat on sparring with himself. Look how effective that approach has been with the Merrick Garland nomination. Oh wait…..
The Taiwanese do a pretty good job trying to off themselves at the annual Yanshui Beehive fireworks festival:
It’s all in honor of the local god Guan Gong who saved the city, so it’s not gonna stop.
In Kinmen it use to be real artillery shells the locals dodged. Have a kitchen chopper made there from the shell fragments, really holds an edge.
meant to mention this this morning: re an old NC thread, from Art Berman at OilPrice:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/the-billion-barrel-oil-swindle-80-of-u-s-oil-reserves-are-unaccounted-for.html
an important post about the inaccuracies of the weekly EIA data, but it turns out that it isn’t the oil inventory figures that are in error, it’s the oil production figures that have been understated…i compared the weekly production estimates to the confirmed monthly figures, which shows that the EIA’s weekly output figures were 233,000 barrels per day short of what was actually being produced in August, the last month we have confirmed data for…
http://focusonfracking.blogspot.com/2016/11/finding-missing-us-oil-production-while.html
inventories might still be off too, but by nowhere near what Berman alleges…
while i’m here, here’s a link for N Dakota road conditions:
http://www.dot.nd.gov/travel-info-v2/
click the “camera images” tab for pictures
it’s winter storm Blanche, same system that’s giving the Mississippi and Ohio valleys rain & high winds… warnings continue thru Wednesday….i’m sure the Sioux can take it…the hollywood types and journalists, maybe not so much…
A nice shout out for Yves and NC by Matt Taibbi: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/washington-post-blacklist-story-is-shameful-disgusting-w452543
Great to see the real Taibbi’s back (and not the David Remnick version who’s been appropriating the Taibbi by-line).
Really the fiasco year, I think. I caucused for Sanders, but didn’t expect him to be nominated. When Trump emerged on the R side I could see the long march to the office happening after living through Reagan and Arnie emerging in Cali. I guess my normal instinct would be to “right on” the Jill Stein disruptive recounts. But I have to say I am exhausted, let the new prince hold sway, I guess.