Manatee Stranded on Florida Beach After Exhausted From Mating ABC
Obama Mandates Precedent-Setting Task Force to Protect Honey Bees and Other Pollinators Nation of Change (furzy mouse)
WWI Scars Linger 100 Years Later in Europe Wall Street Journal
Should the Higgs boson have caused our universe to collapse? EarthSky (furzy mouse)
Mt. Gox Head Believes No More Bitcoin Will Be Found Wall Street Journal
Ray Kurzweil Says He’s Breathing Intelligence into Google Search MIT Technology Review (David L). But intelligence for what purpose? Presumably, to maximize Google’s revenues.
Aereo could have saved the airwaves from the broadcasters’ ransom Felix Salmon (Financial Times)
Ebola “out of control, we have reached the limits of what we can do,” says Doctors Without Borders Daily Kos (furzy mouse)
Climate: Will We Lose the Engame? New York Review of Books (Nikki)
CNBC caught soliciting essay that would call global warming a ‘hoax’ Raw Story (furzy mouse)
Malaysia jet passengers likely suffocated, Australia says Reuters
China factory profit growth slows in May despite more positive data Reuters
Thailand’s junta sets up media watchdogs to monitor anti-coup dissent Asian Correspondent
Argentina deposits $832m to pay bonds Financial Times. See the NC post today on the legal strategy behind this move.
Iraq
No US airstrikes in Iraq without national unity government DW
Pentagon to Train, Arm Syria Rebels Wall Street Journal
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Oakland emails give another glimpse into the Google-Military-Surveillance Complex Yasha Levine, Pando
German government to drop Verizon over NSA spying fears Washington Post
Facebook Bid to Shield Data From the Law Fails, So Far New York Times
What Americans Need to Know About the History of Spying George Washington
Drone use ‘may create slippery slope’ Guardian. I only had a quick look at the report proper, but it looks to be thoughtful and well argued.
Obamacare Launch
Boehner May Not Have the Ability to Sue Obama After All Daily Beast (furzy mouse)
SCOTUS Invalidates NLRB ‘Recess’ Appointments hpschd, Firedoglake (HotFlash)
Abortion clinic ‘buffer zones’ struck down by court Guardian
Supreme Irony? Court Has Own Buffer Zone WSJ Politics
Cantor’s Defeat—What It Does Not Mean– Part 1 Maggie Mahar
Where Are the Hardest Places to Live in the U.S.? New York Times
No Money, No Water: Detroit’s Shutting Off H2O to 150,000 Residents Yahoo (furzy mouse)
Secrecy in Pensions Triggers Legislative Brawl in North Carolina Bloomberg
HSBC Buys Out New Yorker Print, Digital Editions AdWeek (Carla)
Barclays Not Smart Matt Levine, Bloomberg
Liberal Media Is Desperate to Prove That Student Debt Is a Huge Problem New Republic. I did not make up that headline.
Whether Student Debt Is $100K or $5K, We Still Need Reform Wall Street Cheat Sheet
Consumer Inflation Hits Highest Level Since 2012, Near Fed’s 2% Target WSJ Economics
Q1 GDP Plunge–Austerity Must End Huffington Post
Antidote du jour (Amolife):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
191 comments
Comments are closed.
In light of a recent publishing effort by a certain Mrs. H.R. Clinton I offer an additional link for your delectation, with the recommendation that you scroll down to the Q&A section:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/746833501
(If you’re among the 99.99% of the world’s population who have never heard of John Key he is, in descending order of self-importance, 1) a moderately wealthy ex-Merrill Lynch bankster, 2) occasional golfing partner of the Leader of the Indebted-to-its-Eyeballs World and 3) place-holding Prime Minister of New Zealand on behalf of his former employers.)
If re-elected, Key has promised a referendum on a new NZ flag, to replace the colonial-era flag featuring a Union Jack ensign on a blue field with four stars.
He favours a silver fern motif. I have a killer design to submit, if the project goes forward. Could you serve as my local representative?
Off all the many issues concerning this country upon which a referendum could and should be called – voluntary euthanasia, abortion, religious education in schools, military adventuring, permitting deep-sea drilling, coal-mining and timber extraction in National Parks etc – the colours and pattern of a piece of cloth placed atop a stick is perhaps the most pointless and trivial to waste public money and discussion on. More, it’s just a pretty-coloured toy to rattle before the eyes of the electorate in the hopes of distracting them from what the Government’s other hand is doing.
For what it’s worth I don’t see any point in changing the flag, given that thousands of New Zealanders notionally died for and under it in two World Wars and a number of local ones. However I’m sure Key would be gratified to be able to have changing the flag as his legacy, along with his uncompleted footpath to nowhere.
The effort is best saved for changing the name of a professional football team in America.
Why Are 6000+ Reporters Keeping the Government’s Non-Secret?
Pando fired Rall? Well F#@% Pando!
but don’t worry; they’ll be out with another hitpiece on glenn greenwald’s current venture soon to divert our attention.
Yves has said that Obama–who some of us think of as “Nixon without the liberalism”– acts as though all problems are PR problems and so the mania for secrecy may have as much to do with protecting his public image as anything else. Nixon also spent a lot of time fretting about his public image.
Or the the silly restrictions about the CIA station chief may just be a way of keeping a lapdog press supine. This is one way our times differ from long ago. Back then the press hated Nixon.
A clarification: according to White’s Making of the President 1972 back when we had a load of big city and large town independent papers, over 2/3rds of newspapers endorsed Nixon for President in 1972, so they didn’t all hate him. What hurt Nixon and shaped future impressions of his relationship with the Press is that the NY Times, LA Times, and Washington Post all endorsed McGovern.
Perhaps more accurate to say the intelligentsia hated Nixon and most reporters would be in that group. Newspaper owners–who decide on endorsements–are a different matter (although no doubt they’d also have some say in the coverage).
Pauline Kael famously said nobody she knew voted for Nixon (meaning nobody she would care to know) and the Fox Newsers bang on that one to this day. But I do think it’s true that the “creative class” back then was a lot more leftie than it is now.
At least, that’s how I remember it. The first election I ever voted in was Nixon v McGovern.
“Though CIA Chiefs of Station are secret agents, in practice they often maintain such a high profile — working out of the local U.S. embassy, being seen at ex-pat hangouts and coming and going from major events (c.f., meeting with the president) that their identities are widely known in their host countries. They may be “secret” — but their names aren’t. The predecessor of the Kabul COS outted in May, for example, had previously been identified on Facebook.
The Taliban and other adversaries have superb access to intelligence throughout Afghanistan, including widespread infiltration among the police and Afghan military. They are sophisticated Internet users. They can target a COS any time they feel like it. But they probably won’t. Like other guerilla armies, tracking such figures reveals years of useful information that is far more valuable than the one-off propaganda value of assassinating him.”
You know how you have written that the whole “secret spy thing” is a pretty ridiculous scam? I submit “independent news media” is an equivalent scam…I mean, do you think ace reporter Chelsea Clinton, married to an investment banker, is really going to dig deep into finance, Davos, and how Timmy Geithner advanced in his career???
Forget it Jake….its Chinatown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IruUSNql5JM
From Ted Rall:
Ok, Ted–when has this been true? This is his idealized comic-book version of the journalism as practiced in the U.S. and it is utter fantasy and has been true since the Reagan administration (the CIA) ordered journalists to stop covering U.S. funded death squads in El Salvador in the early eighties. I knew, quite well, a reporter for a major outlet that was ordered out of El Salvador–that person resigned. The press has been largely controlled since WWII anyway but today is it almost 100% controlled, ultimately, by the intel agencies. It isn’t a question of sucking up to the government–it is a question of having or not having a career. A few people can skate the edges and do, to their credit, but few can actually write or speak freely and if the poke their noses in the wrong places there is major trouble.
The comic-book version of fearless reporting is insane and we should put a stop to it. Pando, clearly was given an offer they could not refuse so they fired Sirota and Rall–what else is new? Does this make them “bad”? No, it doesn’t–they do what they have to do to stay alive. Even relatively fearless reporters like Greenwald have to make accommodations with people who have no hesitations in killing anyone that opposes them. This is the world we live in–there is no such thing as fearless reporting–if you don’t have fear you will as soon as you step over the line.
You are awfully acceptive of the status quo. To some of us the intimidated state of the media IS the problem or a large part of it.
Note that Pando – the news site that you are defending – is basically a media organization for rich Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
These are the people you are defending, while you criticize the person who was fired for not being accommodating to their interests.
— Malcolm X, speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, December 13, 1964.
yes, it’s not they do whatever they have to do to stay alive, but whatever they have to do to profit as much as possible.
Some great reporting has come from pando and as long as it didn’t step over the line of offension ( not a real word, but I like it) for the capitalists.
Defending Pando? Not really, just saying that, like other media outlets, it has relatively little freedom in certain areas.
Rall takes pains to explain that his intention is to uphold the principle of free press. As far as I can see, he understands and accepts that there are things that should not be published because it would endanger people or operations. This does not appear to be the case here.
To say that Rall has an ” idealized comic-book version of the [sic] journalism” is unfairly dismissive of Rall’s point. If we didn’t have access journalism, a war on whistle-blowers, a government that doesn’t respect our constitutional right to privacy, militarized police, etc. then there might not be any need for Rall or Snowden and others to take unusual steps – and to suffer for having defied authority.
Now, personally, I just don’t see publishing the name as newsworthy. I have to wonder if that is really why 6,000 journalists sat on the ‘story’. But being prevented from publishing the name strikes me as heavy handed since its already publicly available. I remember when Wikileaks published the State Dept cables and the State Dept make a big fuss, telling people that they jeopardize their careers by reading the cables. Jeez.
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Loss of a job is never, “it’s just a job.” It is a blow. Now, that said, if because of this story I turn on the Sunday shows, and they have used this story as an excuse to dredge back up the Robert Novak, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby thing, which presented as a press-hemorrhage on the order of the Johnstown Flood, then I may just throw the TV set out the window. Seriously, you can do that now with the cheap flat screens.
Yes, extremely troubling that you and Sirota were fired. Even the so-called sort of left gatekeepers are getting fewer and more conservative.
re Obama task force for honeybees.
Task force…studying studying studying…but not doing anything. Stall and allow corporations to continue harm-for-profit.
The usual pattern when it comes to substances that likely harm humans and other organisms and the ecosystem.
There’s good evidence NOW that certain Neurotoxic pesticides are a major cause of harm to pollinators etc- what a surprise- and Europe (with a cautionary approach governing banning of harmful substances vs our pro-corporate continued-study-and-stall approach) has already moved to ban.
And the pesticide companies have moved to sue in response. another surprise.
So applauding Obama’s decision- no different than applauding yet more study on global warming or a gazillion other past stall-for-profit in the face of evidence schemes- is just playing along with the same old game.
http://phys.org/news/2014-06-pesticides-threaten-birds-bees-alike.html#jCp
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/16/eu-fipronil-ban-bees
http://ecowatch.com/2013/11/13/pesticide-companies-sue-eu-protecting-bees/
It’s very frustrating that so little has been done about this problem. More than 15 years ago, The Forgotten Pollinators, by Stephen Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan, was published. Recent events aren’t covered in the book (obviously), but it is still worth reading. Our leaders need to wake up and take effective action — protecting our food supply is crucial, especially since the number of people keeps rising.
and our water. I have little doubt run-off from these pesticides ends up there.
and, again, protecting the whole environment…ecosystems with all assorted life included.
Dear Vatch, we must be clear on what we wish for. Our leaders are on it…
U.S. FDA seeks ideas for nanotech use in livestock feed
Nanotechnology, which involves the manipulation of materials on an atomic or molecular level, is increasingly being tested by food manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and cosmetic firms as a means of improving the shelf-life of food, altering the look of make-up or changing the impact of medicated animal feeds.
The agency’s draft guidance on nanotechnology products for animal foods, released on Tuesday, takes a cautious approach and highlights “ongoing questions about the safety issues for humans and animals if such altered products were included into livestock and animal feed.”
FDA told Reuters it is “particularly interested” in the use of nanotechnology to intentionally change the chemical, physical or biological properties of animal feed and livestock drugs.
The draft comes as public debate heats up over synthetic biology — a decades-old approach of coming up with new combinations of genes and other genetic material in order to create new abilities and biochemical functions.
The goal, say scientists and consumer goods manufacturers, is to produce advances in medical therapies such as new antibiotics, and everyday consumer products such as laundry soap and make-up. Critics fear such tinkering could create unexpected and dangerous side-effects.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/06/26/usa-livestock-fda-idINL2N0P714M20140626
“Incurable diseases will eventually
force mankind to justify
disruptive nanotech and genetic engineering.”
Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident
Obama would never go up against Monsanto…
Monsanto’s gobble’s up bee research company
https://frontview.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/monsantos-gobbles-up-bee-research-company/
like BASF…Obama didn’t make Monsanto. He made them Better.
How did Barack Obama become Monsanto’s man in Washington?
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/04/how-did-barack-obama-become-monsantos.html
wow. thanks for the links.
owning hence controlling the information- just another corporate weapon their arsenal.
why am I still shocked…
The link for the Guardian story on the drone report is not working.
R2PGR? –Responsibility to protect gay rights. An interesting column from Justin Raimondo (who is gay).
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/06/26/political-correctness-and-imperialism/
Take up the White Man’s burden, The savage wars of PC–
For tolerance we’re wild’n Make hate from heathens cease;
Imperial flag is furthest L-G-B bias fought,
Sovereign nations no more, out the rebellious region’s blot. .
Well, they are card-carrying full-fledged members in good standing of the WASP bourgeoisie now, and they’ve been waiting a good long while to reap the benefits of imperialism as reparations, or something.
Or just a convenient excuse for our administration to bash governments they don’t like. As the article says, Saudi Arabia gets a pass and it is far more homophobic than many of the governments we condemn.
That said, Stephen Fry has done a lot to gin up hostility to Russia for their gay restrictions. Apparently he didn’t show quite so much outrage back when British laws were largely the same. So some so-called intellectuals are playing a role in this belligerence, knowingly or not.
Indeed R2P itself can be a very selective sort of high horse. If you are going to go around making moral judgments you have to apply them evenly. Unless, of course, there’s a hidden agenda.
I remember telling someone a decade or so ago that Human Rights maximalists were going to become a tool of the oligarchy someday. And so it has come to pass…
Consumer Inflation Hits Highest Level Since 2012, Near Fed’s 2% Target. I guess we’re at full employment, everybody! In the words of Dan Drezner, the system worked!
Inflation floats like a fever dream in the brain of today’s libertarians. But the 70s were forty years ago. Today’s workers have zero bargaining power. The Fed watches like a hawk to keep it that way.
The middle class stands in a sea of red ink, and the tide is coming in.
Consumer Price Inflation + Lack of Wage Increases = Poverty
Obscene and conspicuous wealth in the face of poverty = . . .
The Fed stands at the ready to suppress any wage inflation.
We are protected…for our own good.
350 Dead in Africa is hardly “out of control” — readers familiar with my misanthropic views on human population numbers can guess what I want.
ditto for the lions, rhinos and cheetahs. Wake me when a few million bite it.
Theres a difference between not having children and people dying. I can see why you would want the former but the second is psychopathic.
And wake you when a few million rhinos die? You realize there are only 17 thousand rhino? And about 30 thousand lions?
It’s always a cheap shot and indicative of the narrow mindset when posters attack syntax, typing errors like lose and loose…
When I dashed that off… and obviously I did dash it off… I meant the rhinos agree with me… you knew that … readers knew that… but yet
It’s always the same neener neener neener should somebody have opinions that are contrary to the doctrinaire left….
I don’t pretend to be a humanitarian… and as per Hamilton’s Rule – I am hardwired to identify with those who look and act like me. At 66, I still think like me and mine.
why not add to the conversation with a COGENT response rather than the teenage gotcha mentality that seems so irresistible to you.
How about this… POSTERS on internet discussion boards often dash off comments and mis spell words, don’t use proper diction, and comments would not pass muster for editorial eyes….
When somebody says Loose for lose… let it pass when you disagree – rather than taking up your pointing out the error of their minds and ways.
Ditto for Rhinos… means Rhinos will be better off with fewer Africans, not to mention Chinese and MIddle Eastern types to want that magic horn.
If you must revert to 8th grade taunting when confronted with contrary and or controversial comments on style – be witty, funny, or at least provocative yourself. As it is you are just a school yard bully.
Well, while I agree with your principle on spelling gotchas, as a matter of fact I also read your post the same way. I was wondering why you included the death of rhinos in the post about a human disease epidemic.
Since your tone and content was otherwise ignorant and self-admittedly misanthropic, I chose (as did Massinissa) to not give you the benefit of the doubt, and instead assume that you were making an equally ignorant (albeit even less coherent) point about threatened species.
Apparently we are hardwired to infer that people being jerks in one realm will be jerks across the board.
kgilmour, perhaps your prose was unclear? I read it same as Massinissa.
It’s the reader’s responsibility to understand exactly what you are saying? That is a novel approach to communication.
I also thought you had it in for the lions, tigers and bears.
“I also thought you had it in for the lions, tigers and bears.”
you would if you posted like a shiverin yappin Toto
As if misanthropes hate everything and everybody…. give it up
Animal lovers left and right are becoming more and more misanthropic… racism is a necessary bi product of that because population pressures are from black and brown peoples in those places…
I’m not sure the French are squeezing out the local foxes. Nor are Carolinians fish bombing the reefs of the East Coast.
Yes — racism is a necessary bi-product of humanity. Not a damned thing an individual can do about it.
I believe the population of the world would be a much smaller problem if folks like kgilmour died of ebola. I’m so damned sick of them whining while dragging humanity down with their incessant breathing.
But what accounts for the overpopulation in these places? Mostly inventions and policies implemented by white folks. The green revolution and public health measures ( even haphazardly put in place) for example, are responsible.
Something to think about. No good deed will go unpunished. Or maybe the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Yves, please don’t ban gilmour. She brings a refreshing honesty to this site which is at times clotted with moral preening as shown in this thread.
Yes, I agree, don’t ban her. Almost everything she wrote, made me think (so what if it was with utter disagreement), whereas the innumerable moral preening posts don’t. For instance she wrote:
“and as per Hamilton’s Rule – I am hardwired to identify with those who look and act like me. At 66, I still think like me and mine”
Now I will start looking around. How much of that do I see around me? Do I see any in me?? My belief is that I find the people who are most like me more depressing than anything (Yankee women), and so I avoid them despite wishing them well, but maybe I am wrong? Maybe I am secretly favoring them?? Wow, I have a new mental project.
That’s the story the Archdruid wrote about last week, wasn’t it? “All that’s needed to get people to listen is to have the Correct Answer” is a narrative that fails spectacularly in practice in a world that is pointedly uninterested in the Correct Answer and prefers to either be left alone or cut up Happy Answers to fit.
Not really. It’s a staple of bourgeois “social justice” slacktivism (looks like we can now add VHEMT to that exclusive list), usually delivered in the form “Why is it my responsibility to teach men how to x”? Never mind convivial community. Even the lessons of humble shift work don’t seem to reach some people for some reason. Probably the humble part.
The issue isn’t doctrinaire Leftism, it’s common human decency not to wish a horrid death on people who literally drown in their own blood. If you think there are too many humans, why don’t you volunteer, say, you and your family to take one for the team? Since you are so indifferent to human life and suffering, it shouldn’t be a big thing for you to watch your family die of an Ebola infection.
But . . . but . . .
. . . they’re AKC-registered purebreds!
It is “out of control” in the sense that public officials realize there is nothing they can do about it. In terms of scenario forecasting, there is nothing standing in the way of it growing from 300 to 3 million, except whatever the disease decides to do. The health officials do not exist in the scenarios.
This impotence in the face of disease shocks and scares the crap out of them.
Which article or link are you commenting on? Well, it doesn’t matter, I remember some of your previous misanthropic messages. Just three days ago, I said:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/06/risky-business-climate-report-little-late-denialists.html#comment-2257472
Clearly I was wrong. At least one person (you) is demanding that people be wiped out. When you post your anti-human messages, you harm the credibility of the rest of us who care about the severe problem of human overpopulation. I spend a fair amount of time advocating smaller families, and I have to waste some of that time responding to people who ask “who are you going to kill?” or “how are you going to decide who lives and who dies?”.
Please stop what you are doing. It is very counterproductive, because you just provide ammunition to the pro-natalists. Or maybe that’s what you want …. Hmm. Maybe you don’t care about human overpopulation at all. Maybe you just want to make population activists look bad.
I do NOTHING to your CREDIBILITY – AGAIN you use one set of standards for those you agree with and another for those you don’t.
The common practice of banning commentary that is contrary to doctrinaire .. goes like this… if we LET HER SPEAK SHE MAKES US ALL LOOK BAD — therefore she cannot speak.
We have quite enough of that in America today.
Do not worry. Your reputation is still lily white… I’ve been chastened for rooting for Rhinos over Africans.
I am joined by millions however – too afraid to voice the opinion that if all of Africa was wiped out by Ebola, the continent would be a better place. I say it… millions whisper.
You believe that – ‘I am joined by millions however – too afraid to voice the opinion that if all of Africa was wiped out by Ebola, the continent would be a better place. I say it… millions whisper”
Really?
Millions too afraid to voice that?
If you just want to vent your frustration, then go right ahead, and say whatever comes to mind. But if you actually want to convince people, and possibly initiate a change in policy, you might consider a different approach.
I still suspect you are deliberately trying to make population activists look bad.
‘I am joined by millions however – too afraid to voice the opinion that if all of Africa was wiped out by Ebola, the continent would be a better place. I say it… millions whisper.’
You are scum.
You go first! We’ll all follow. We promise. :-0 bwaaaaaaaaak!
…and you can nominate one of your children to survive. Prefereably the least likely to act like a fecund savage.
So, horrific disease is okay with you, as long as it strikes the deserving, who haven’t had the foresight to nurture their cultures and their environment as we did here, in (now) primarily “white” North America? (Where, BTW, both the fox and deer remains line our highways).
I would wish a deadly pox on you, in the name of all that is good (IMO) — but then I would be like you. So, instead, I will wish you a long, peaceful, happy life, in which you work towards finding a way to manage our way out of our global predicament without resorting to misanthropy and hatred towards people you have never imagined, much less met, in person.
“Wake me when a few million bite it.”
__________________
Wake you? If we’re lucky, you will have bitten it, too.
Today, three different kinds of seasonality begin affecting the stock market:
1. End of month: most gains occur during the last two trading days of the month, and the first four trading days of the next month.
2. End of quarter: a/k/a ‘window dressing.’
3. pre-holiday: next Friday is Independence Day.
Put them all together, and the probability is around 70% that next Thursday finishes higher than yesterday.
As a guess, the S&P might take a run at the 2K round number. Yesterday the St. Louis Fed guvnor said, “I don’t think financial markets have internalized how close we are to our ultimate goals.’
2.2%, to be precise, Mr. Bullard. And there’s no Mr. Bearfort to claim otherwise.
What happened at Pando? David Sirota and Ted Rall have been fired. Why?
Glenn Greenwald tweeted, “Pando is furious that anyone would suggest its tycoon-funders influenced its editorial judgments, driving a machete into the heart of irony.”
why? Because investor-based media will inevitably behave like investor-based anything…
GG entitled to a little gloating?
So what is it Greenwald, do tycoon-funders influence editorial judgements or not?
Re Ted Rall and accidentally exposing station chiefs….
.. and so the White House press hack that emailed out the guest list wins the Pucker of the Month award!
I can only imagine the phone call: Mr. Press Hack? Yes…? This is the Head of the CIA, you just blew the cover of our Kabul station chief.
Usually anyone who wants to know knows who the CIA station chief is. The whole point of this farce was to say that there is a line the press is not allowed to cross–it is the line that concerns the authorities not the actual threat to security.
From “Secrecy in Pensions Triggers Legislative Brawl in North Carolina Bloomberg”
This…
“Cowell warned that giving out more information would cost more than $1.8 billion for violating secrecy agreements, and instead supported a bill that would conceal details for five years after a contract is completed.”
Well, Mrs. Cowell, who was responsible for signing such a contract? Is this not a direct violation of FOIA regarding public information? Presumably you knew that this information could be demanded before the contract was signed. I swear, these public servants at state funds seem to not realize that they are actually supposed to be serving us, the public.
Also…
“Of the $1.1 million Cowell received for her 2012 campaign, $196,710 came from the financial industry, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics in Helena, Montana. People in New York City donated $133,300, more than came from Charlotte, North Carolina’s biggest city.”
“She has taken campaign contributions from some companies that have won contracts to manage alternative investments.”
So, let me get this straight, these “People in New York City” (Business? Person? all the same right?) are the single largest contributor to her campaign, and we cannot see the contracts that were signed with the same people? And we will penalized by $1.8 billion if we see that contracts?
Wonder if we will get to see how pretty Mrs. Cowell looks in a orange suit and flip-flops, or if her “transparency” gambit (which actually blocks anyone from seeing anything) will win, and we will all go about our business. After all, it is the financial services industry – we can trust them right?
Here’s a story that’s certainly appropriate for Links, perhaps today or tomorrow even. Serious studies of this phenomenon may enhance understanding of the Demonic Sadistic Godless Equation (DSGE) and its acolytes who are possessed by it, rather than vice versa.
Three kids in Mexico get possessed by demons after playing with a Ouija Board. This is breaking international news. No lie! And it’s certainly more serious than a story about a fish laying on a beach after too much sex. If the fish was smoking a cigarette listening to Barry Manilow that might be newsworthy. Where’s the editorial judgment around here? I mean really.
Just look at the expression on that girl’s face and ask yourself “Is she kidding??!!!!”. If so, send her to Hollywood and let her star in the next thriller.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2665899/Possessed-girl.html
Every time I used a Ouija Board it would make me a little nervous. You can feel them flying around looking for a place to enter.
Maybe you have confused the Manatee (a mammal), with a salmon (a fish).
BTW: I’m sure that fish have tried smoking after sex, but their cigs and matches were water logged. They have a similar problem with “dry” martinis.
Didn’t the Daily Mail used to show boobies? They’ve really gone downhill.
couldn’t get a comment through earlier, trying again…
-re No Money, No Water. this is so evil. and in cases like this, the working poor can be pitted against the poorer poor (I pay my water bill!) and it works for the resource-grabbing profiteers at the top.
(In the NYT today a piece about corporations backed by private equity squeezing prisoners for profit. Squeezing the very bottom in any way possible.)
-re No US airstrikes. But the armed drones are already flying.
-re Obama task force for honeybees.
Task force…studying studying studying…but not doing anything. Stall and allow corporations to continue harm-for-profit.
The usual pattern when it comes to substances that likely harm humans and other organisms and the ecosystem.
There’s good evidence NOW that certain Neurotoxic pesticides are a major cause of harm to pollinators etc- what a surprise- and Europe (with a cautionary approach governing banning of harmful substances vs our pro-corporate continued-study-and-stall approach) has already moved to ban.
And the pesticide companies have moved to sue in response. another surprise.
So applauding Obama’s decision- no different than applauding yet more study on global warming or a gazillion other past stall-for-profit in the face of evidence schemes- is just playing along with the same old game.
http://phys.org/news/2014-06-pesticides-threaten-birds-bees-alike.html#jCp
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/16/eu-fipronil-ban-bees
Pesticide Companies Sue EU Commission for Protecting Pollinators
Pesticide Companies Sue EU Commission for Protecting…
On Nov. 6 BASF, a German agrochemical company, took legal action in the General Court of the European Union
sorry for a little duplicate commenting on links, but had trouble getting comment to go through much earlier.never a sign it did tillnow …
On flood of immigrant children at holding centers….
“They are well behaved. When meals are served some of them weep at the fact that they’re eating better than their families can back home. They wait till all are served before they’ll eat. They turn up at prayer services”
What a load of crap. PUHLEESE come to Espanola [heroin capital of North America] – Santa Fe – and Albuquerque – not to mention El Paso and Las Cruces … These poor little darlings turn into tattooed thugs in just a few years.
Breaking Bad was an equal opportunity demonizer of the Southwest. Yes, there are white kids who too, devolve into that world…. but the overwhelming numbers are indisputable… you risk your life driving late at night on any of our highways… because of drunken Indians and Latinos… the numbers don’t lie – and our revolving door courtrooms turn em back to routinely kill whole families.
Albuquerque is highly self segregated, so you can escape the 3rd world feel if you are fastidious. But newbies from Long Island move to Corrales, Santa Fe, and Placitas for the ‘cultural diversity’…. translated – that means no zoning. Multi million dollar adobes next to run down casitas … where the teenage son of your cleaning lady keeps your insurance premiums going up each time he visits your home for a quickie …. phones, tvs, micro waves… what ever he/she can pack away on foot in 10 minutes.
I don’t know about Texas- but New Mexico is drowning… try ordering at the drive through…. if you don’t say it exactly as on the menu.. forget “hold ketchup” or any deviation from the menu language… I have had meltdowns with managers on several occasions because the accents are so thick you cannot understand a word. “Eece tha wee-out kashap? No?
Try it for a few weeks… you’ll become a Republican.
Your ignorance is astounding. Poverty’s impact knows no race limits. Perhaps in your part of the country, poverty is over-represented by its original native inhabitants. However, there are other parts of the country where the poverty and bad behavior is overwhelmingly dominated by the whites. Google: meth epidemic.
The numbers, ahem, don’t lie.
Meanwhile, you seem to be arguing in favor of zoning laws. How very un-Republican.
who said I was a republican? Where I live in Albuquerque – if a Comcast truck is parked too long… the cops are called. And those cops look just like me… ABQ has had many years to work out multi culturalism… and it’s remedies.
My house is unlocked…. no need for locks when neighbors are vigilant. there is nobody around here to who doesn’t belong.
Things seem to be going great down there http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/04/the-brutality-of-the-albuquerque-police-department/360514/
The police are out of control … and your point is?
I’m of the opinion that anyone anywhere who gravitates to ENFORCEMENT — has problems to begin with. And after a few years of deferential treatment.. ESPECIALLY if the cops, guards, soldiers or IRS are minorities… they become monsters.
Our police problem is Mexican on Mexican… not Mexican on white… or white on MExican… again.
New Mexico has a very pragmatic policy toward multi culturalism… and YES the Latino cops are thugs … but usually only toward other Latinos and the homeless or drunks.
The problem is always race… and class. People like me don’t have problems with cops. But then I”m not a problem anywhere but around here.
” But then I”m not a problem anywhere but around here.” You ought to get out more. Oh I get it, you don’t want to be in the vicinity of coloreds, thankfully you have white cops to do the killing. “Cops give a damn about a negro Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he’s a hero.” Amiright?
http://rapgenius.com/2pac-changes-lyrics
Shorter kgilmour:
All cops are out of control, but brown cops caused it.
Right.
anybody noticed that regulars are not chastened for bullying invading commentary?
My ignorance is ASTOUNDING? I’ll compare IQ points, passport stamps and advanced degrees with anyone on this board.
You don’t agree with me. That is something quite different.
The far left hates those AFricans as much or more than the far right…. spend a few Days in Santa Fe… Democratic stronghold and home of Outside Mag… read a few issues..
People.. specifically 3rd world people are the enemy of all the travel and expedition publications. All those greenie rock climbers? – poll em for thoughts on Ebola…. they want Africans GONE… but only after a few tokes around the campfire… and among other outdoor activists. [how will it make us look???]
The far right is honest about their prejudices… the lefties I know.. and I know a bunch of em… they want rivers, mountains, forests, jungles and glaciers… SANS PEOPLE.
Conveniently… those “people” are usually dark brown in the places where population pressures are greatest. Check out the politics of Costa Rica… Whoa… green frogs have more value than any local… at least to the burgeoning Tico population that is deciding the future of that country turned National Park.
For a self-described man of intelligence and travel, you sure talk exactly like an ignorant troll.
Strawmen and all.
IF only JERKS want to see Africans gone from Africa… check out the Colorado Mountain clubs..
WOW — the lefties I know throughout the West HATE people… and unfortunately the population pressures on the places they love are from BROWN and BLACK people.
I am also very close to Adventure and Travel Magazine publications… If only you were privy to those late night talks about how to “approach” the problem of wildlife habitat – without looking too racist.
Forget it… The FAR LEFT is as racist as the FAR right.. but for different reasons.. and the left absolves themselves of icky motive by saying it doesn’t matter what color the locals are.. there are too many of em…. and they are displacing the local flora and fauna…
and I’m a 66 year old Grandmother
Let’s we stand up against those racist people then, far left, far right and anywhere in-between.
Lemme get this straight. You think that there are too many people, and wouldn’t mind if a bunch got killed off by an epidemic. And this is okay because of your hard-wiring.
But when liberals think there are too many people, and would like to keep some of them out of some geographic spaces; they are racists?
Classic.
PS. You write much more like a 66 year old grandpa.
Grandmother? No fucking way in hell. Youre a grandpa. Theres just no way.
Ignorant troll? No, he is talking just like a racist. You learn to identify the racist real fast in the south but you find them all around the country. The western racist usually describes latinos in exactly the same manner as a southern racist describes a black. He is a western racist. I have always thought of a racist as having a dark soul. Not much you can do about them but watch out if you see him buying a white hood or rope. Means he is considering moving from words to action.
This quick and dirty classification of “racist” is too easy. Criticizing Mexican culture is no more racist than criticizing Jewish culture is anti-Semetic. Science has proven that we are all, at least subconsciously, racist so let’s drop the name calling and look specifically at the dude’s comments and points.
Speak for yourself. If this guy is not a racist, there are no racists.
Lumping everyone of a certain characteristic together is ignorant, prejudicial, and bigoted.
The “dude’s” “point” is that he doesn’t give a F about anyone who is darker than he (she?) is and/or who does not speak HIS (her?) language.
Is that not clear to you?
Banger have you READ this guys comments? Save that speech to defend someone who doesnt want Africa to die of Ebola.
He didn’t say that–he said that people who write for travel magazines think Africans should die off etc. That’s how I read it.
oh hog wash… we are all racists..
Blacks are as bad or worse than whites.. empowered racists are reviled… unempowered racists are elevated to star status.
We are no all racists just because racism is eating at your brain like ebola.
Look, the science is pretty clear on this–all of us have negative reactions subconsciously to pictures of black people even black people. That doesn’t make us all racists in that our lives are not centered on race but it’s there in all of us somewhere.
It must be very subtle. I don’t typically feel negative about people I have never met. Those dark-skinned people I have met don’t make me very uncomfortable (and I grew up a white boy in a black neighborhood, in the ’60s).
What does scare the F out of me is rednecks and that emblem of insecurity: the Confederate flag (I now live on the very fringe of Redneckistan, in Cantor’s district).
That is utter horseshit. You can take the Harvard Implicit Bias test to see if you are biased towards blacks or not. You get the same result even if you know how the test works on repeated testing, so its results are valid. Not everyone is biased against blacks. This is your issue, buddy.
pychological problems … they know no education boundaries ..
The far left may be as you say.
The right may be also as you say.
We all have to say or do what we believe, it matters not what others say or do.
Yes, that is the thing.
I certainly don’t know any white liberals who have black friends, or who are truly by choice living in partly-black neighborhoods. I suppose it happens, but I don’t see it around me for sure. The white liberals I know all hang out with other white liberals. The libertarians I know hang out with other (white) libertarians. I can’t think of any conservatives I know (except see below). I had black friends back when I lived in Chicago; not here in Silicon Valley (well, I do have a friend who is originally from Nigeria).
What white people do I know who have black friends? Well, my redneck Indiana relatives. Their daughter married a black guy (hey, I have black relatives!). Consequently they were “dropped” by some of their white relatives, and my cousin’s husband stopped playing in his band (which had been the focus of his life)(since the band won’t play at places that let in blacks), since he can’t bear racism anymore. The liberals I know would just have total contempt for my Indiana relatives – uneducated, Catholic, anti-abortion, Republican – but they are the only white people I know who have made personal sacrifices in the anti-racism department. They sure do love their grandkids!!!
” the lefties I know.. and I know a bunch of em… they want rivers, mountains, forests, jungles and glaciers… SANS PEOPLE.” Whereas yours is “SANS BLACK AND BROWN PEOPLE.”
I think your POV is interesting and what you say about your experience in the SW seems heart felt. I remember once making a comment on DKOS that I thought one of the main problems with illegal immigration was that it was illegal and casually breaking the law harms the law. Is it then any surprise that, today, the law is largely ignored by the authorities unless it is politically expedient to enforce it? For my efforts i was called a racist and so on. One of the major reasons for the moribund status of the left in the USA and Europe is this obsession with political correctness–we are not allowed to criticize Mexican culture or Black culture because they are classified as victims. We are not, similarly, allowed to describe the rich as not all bad and everyone knows the outlines of political correctness so I won’t go on.
It should be bloody obvious to your critics that the catastrophe that has victimized Mexican culture since NAFTA is spreading here–as I’ve said before the cartels are moving into the drug market all over including my region, the Southeast. Illegal immigration benefits the Mexican oligarchs and drug gangs as much as he American oligarchs by allowing the rich to enjoy cheap labor.
Personally I like Mexican culture and most Mexicans I’ve met–but we all need to understand that the gangster culture has become deeply embedded into Mexican society as the central authorities have lost their legitimacy in many parts of Mexico.
We’re all damned lucky that the Italians and Sicilians never conceived of and implemented gangsterism as a means to wealth and power.
It’s those goddamned blacks and Mexicans.
Now you are entering an area I know quite a lot about. In many areas gangster culture was interwoven into Italian neighborhoods and political culture–this was true of all immigrant groups. Even worse, of course are the criminal gangs in Washington.
This is not about knee jerk defense of minorities and NAFTA, this is about his or hers virulent belief in the innate superiority of those with white skin. Otherwise what is KGilmour’s issue with Africans living in Africa and his heartfelt wish that Ebola would wipe out a few million of them? I thought we were reading the same commentary Banger. And I guarantee you his ilk despises legal immigrants just as much as illegals; I have been dealing with this shit my whole life in the US despite my degrees, command of English that is much better than KGilmour’s trailer trash brethren, and otherwie being Americanized through and through. It appears that your reaction to the blind apologia of the left has moved you into blind apologia of the other extreme, as represented here by KGilmour.
No, he was referring to travel writers or whatever wanted the Ebola virus to spread–read it again. He of she is not terribly articulate.
The reason I am writing about this is that we should not automatically react to people being upset with what are to them an invasion do foreign culture both in the US and Europe. As the listener of many emotional harangues about both Mexicans and African-Americans I have learned to listen just I’ve listened to harangues by minorities about white culture. We need to listen more and judge less. If people on the left expect to break out of the ghetto we have to listen to the experiences of others and not just label it and be done with it. The fact is that real white kids who live in neighborhoods that are predominantly minorities do get beaten up because they are white, not always–good friends of mine solidly intellectual and on the left wanted their kids to experience the public school system in their mixed neighborhood and finally had to take their kids out. The fact is that a gang of swaggering minority kids could well be dangerous and if you don’t know that you are a fool. Doesn’t mean all the kids in that group are “bad”? No, in fact, if you spend time around those kids you begin to learn what to look for, as I have–but it comes only through experience and a lot of listening.
What part of ” 350 Dead in Africa is hardly “out of control” — readers familiar with my misanthropic views on human population numbers can guess what I want” is open to alternative interpretation? Just because s/he claims something about travel writers and rock climbers that may or may not be true does not mean that we are to overlook the hate oozing out of his or her posts. Again, you choose to disregard the expressed views on the racial superiority of Caucasians and go off on a tangent that, while valid up to a point, in the end absolves racial theories are little different than those of the third reich. Liebesraum for white folks, most likely based on some long-forgotten phrenological “proof” of the white race’s superiority.
OIFVet fails to mention the worst parts. Kgilmour also says:
and,
I did miss those, at a certain point I began to see red when reading KGilmour’s lunatic rants. Not much ambiguity there, that’s for sure.
Can’t you simply rise above it as an individual?
Your “culture” is exactly as old as you are.
Culture is a continuum, and you are a product of your unique and precise set of experiences within it.
Same as everybody else.
“Absolves” in my previous post is to be read as “ignores” or “gives a pass to”
Banger, you blew this–read his comments. He’s be happy to see 800 million Africans wiped from the face of the Earth.
You don’t reason with an Eichmann. You get him before he destroys your civilization.
Not difficult to see:
* This phrase was misunderstoon by some to refer to animals, but Kgilmour corrected them saying: “Rhinos will be better off with fewer Africans” and later explaining that “Animal lovers left and right are becoming more and more misanthropic…”. Kgilmours other comments make it clear that it is black africans that he/she wishes to perish.
and, reinforces the above with:
–
Ironically, Banger’s attack on the left – that they are too judgmental – is overcome by the evil intentions of the person that he chooses to support.
It strikes me as doubly ironic, I might add, that despite depicting the left as insipid losers, Banger (and others) exert so much effort to attack the left. In fact, as Banger is no doubt aware, it is the compromised ‘institutional left’ – who survive on the DP teat – that is an insipid failure (this point has been make many many times at NC) and is the most involved in identity politics. Banger (and others) don’t like to make a distinction. Could it be because using a broad brush is a means of undermining the progressive left which is more involved in class issues like inequality?
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H O P
“doesn’t belong” hmmmm
“when neighbors are vigilant” or vigilantes.
It’s great when anger can be successfully turned from the real criminals at the top to those at the bottom who, throughout the world, are often there due to the criminality at the top.
People at holding centers, at detention facilities, etc, are humans, with families- presumably just like you- struggling, struggling to live better lives, often facing hardship after hardship after hardship.
i don’t endorse the original comment.
nevertheless the reality is that the US has a permanent multi-ethnic underclass. having a de facto federal policy of allowing more unskilled labor (the last thing the economy needs) into the country makes no sense.
right now it’s a zero sum game for local school districts, for every English as a second language teacher a school district hires that’s one less science or arts teacher on payroll.
those are just the facts and my inner liberal doesn’t like it but the most local tax bases are broke and funding one social service means cutting back somewhere else.
No doubt the economic fallout is hurting the US middle class, as wage arbitrage (in both directions), is used as an economic/political bludgeon.
That said, someone is making a tidy profit off of it, and race and language seem not to matter, to them.
and I see many instances of middle class and bad behavior and then you get into wealth and bad behavior (often going beyond to criminality) that translates into harm on a grand scale to the rest of the people on the planet.
But it’s those genetically-evil, bush-dwelling blacks and genetically predisposed criminal hispanics that DESERVE disease. Superior white folk, like kgilmour, deserve better.
He’s superior. He said so (at least, he implied it), and I have no reason not to believe his self-assessment. Pigmentation and not speaking English, as god and nature intended, are clear give-aways regarding the relative virtue(s) of all people.
And, in case you were wondering, no — he does not need to meet them to judge them.
If only they would be more like white, American kids, and NOT get tattooed.
May your teen daughter get tattoos in places you will never see.
If they were your parent, wouldn’t you?
Id do just about anything to rebel against a parent that would casually say words of support for genocide.
I suggest the film Narco Cultura the shows shows the infiltration of Mexican popular culture in Mexico and the US of the gangster mystique–not because Mexican culture is violent but for complex historical reasons originating in el Norte.
‘i feel good, cause i knew that i would’…
Vaccine researcher charged with felony crimes for research fraud; may spend 20 years in prison over faked AIDS vaccine
In the United States, a vaccine manufacturer could spike their vaccines with motor oil, cancer viruses, live bacteria, hexavalent chromium, Agent Orange or any other chemical they wanted, and the manufacturer would still have total immunity from all lawsuits. Because of this immunity, vaccine manufacturing has zero quality control pressure in the real world, because vaccine manufacturers are not liable for defective products. So what’s the difference if a few batches a year accidentally contain SV40 cancer viruses, or shards of glass, or too much mercury?
That’s why Dr. Maurice Hilleman, former Merck vaccine developer, openly said, “I think that vaccines have to be considered the bargain basement technology for the 20th century.”
http://www.realfarmacy.com/vaccine-researcher-charged-with-felony-crimes-for-research-fraud-may-spend-20-years-in-prison-over-faked-aids-vaccine/
Vaccine manufacturers have total immunity from all lawsuits?
Why can’t we all have the same equal ‘protection?’
invent something that controls the population and ya climb the food chain
“The law is above the law, you know”
Dorothy Salisbury Davis
Preemptive blanket immunity is a major facet of crony capitalism.
– Nuclear power
– Commercial property and terrorism
– Vaccine makers
– Telecom companies and privacy
Those are just the ones that come to mind off the top of my head
The vaccine injury fund is a pooled approach to providing recourse to people who suffer injuries from vaccines, which is really designed in Orwellian splendor to protect vaccine makers by socializing their externalities, and also make it HARD for those injured to get any recourse by creating an uphill Kafkesque slog for claimants, carved out of our existing legal system and inserted into an adversarial bureaucratic swamp instead. It’s the drug company form of mandatory arbitration clauses.
Bottom line is even if your kid dies with the needle still in his arm, the injury court will try to claim that there’s no proof the vaccine caused the injury. Which is the central conundrum of proving vaccine injury. Nevertheless, thousands of people are injured every year within proximate timing of a vaccination. Kids get a vaccine and within hours/days/weeks develop major adverse health issues: neurological meltdowns, catatonic states, autism spectrum behaviors, extreme fevers and nausea.
When government and pharma claims that vaccines are “safe”, there is a major asterisk. They mean excluding the thousands of people awarded for harm by the court every year, and thousands more turned away due to lack of provable causal links, and thousands more with lesser adverse reactions and/or who don’t bother to make a claim.
But how the hell can you prove harm? You have a perfectly healthy kid, he gets a vaccine, and within a week he has become a vegetable, destined for a lifetime of institutional care. Alas, that’s not enough proof for the court.
The corporate super-citizen cannot be punished.
As someone once aid: I’ll believe that corporations are people as soon as Texas executes one.
btw McMike this was priceless and worth a re-post…thanks and took it with me to a safe place!
We are on a collision course with a fascinating biological experiment
– We are creating super-germs through antibiotic over/misuse and hospital acquired infections
– We are assaulting our bodies (from the womb on) with massive doses of air/soil/food/water/surface pollution and toxic and disruptive/mimic chemicals, and our lungs with toxins and particulates, and chemical leaching and off-gassing in our food prep, bedding and furniture, car interiors, etc
– We are heavily interfering with basic immune & neurological development processes and immunity and acquisition in newborns, children, and adults through vaccines and preemptive medicine
– We are medicating ourselves with rivers of chemicals over a lifetime – including periodic scorched earth wipeouts via antibiotics and colon purges, and long term medication
– We are subjecting our bodies to scorched earth sanitation practices (i.e. hand sanitizers, etc)
– We are feeding ourselves on nutritionally sterile or even bio-toxic not-food – featuring intensively processed food, laboratory created ingredients, and mono-crop chemical intensive phony food
– We subject our bodies to a lifetime of stress and inactivity
– We are subjecting ourselves to large doses of nuclear radiation including releases and medical tests
– We are subjecting ourselves to large lifetime does of electronic radiation, massive magnetic fields, etc from electronic devices, microwave ovens, and radio and power transmission systems.
– We subject ourselves to lifetime of sugar and saturated fat overdose and glucose/insulin roller coasters
– We subject our bodies to long term stress and inflammation of obesity
– We subject ourselves to the low level long term stresses of constant noise and light pollution
– We subject ourselves to long term sleep deprivation and also chronic lack of rest/recovery times
– We subject ourselves to increasing doses of artificial lighting
Man, you couldn’t do this to a lab rat. ~McMike
Thanks for reposting it, Aby.
Everything (or almost everything) on the list came courtesy of Big Science (science as practiced by Big Money for more money or world domination).
Almost all science today is Big Science.
There are exceptions of course.
One would be if someone decides to show, scientifically, that, since science only provides the current best explanation (logically can not be related to how close it is to what is out there, i.e. reality), we have no moral authority to alter Nature, since we don’t fully know what we are doing (partial knowledge because, again, it’s only the current best explanation, to be supplanted by a later one, as we ‘progress.’) with many documentable negative results.
That would a science project worth of pursuing.
Measles parties seem almost scientific by comparison.
WaPo headline: How the Clintons went from ‘dead broke’ to rich: Bill earned $104.9 million for speeches
http://tinyurl.com/qamhjb9
That’s Bill’s earnings from public speaking, from Jan. 2001 to Jan. 2013. Hillary’s aren’t included. But since the Clintons were reported to have earned $109 million from ALL sources (including $30 million from books and $15 million from investments) as of April 2008, one could extrapolate a $200 million total take by this year.
Only recently, Hillary was so poor that she had to sell her daughter into presstitution at NBC News for a tawdry $600,000. Now that her public service-induced hairshirt poverty has ended, though, the Clintons are diligently working their way up the social ladder. Enough with the bohemian ‘shabby chic’ of the 0.1%, with their dinky 30-foot boats and turboprop transport.
With entry to the 0.01% bracket comes the solid, bourgeois respectability of 90-foot oceangoing yachts and comfortable (if slightly cramped) private jets. Dinner in LA this evening, darling?
$105 million for speeches.
Apparently after eight years of listening to Bill talk for free, some people still just hadn’t had enough.
Bill Clinton certainly did not talk for 8 years “for free.” It cost us a lot…the so-called “Democratic Party,” the manufacturing base, universal health care, the final safety net for the banking system….I’d say he was pretty damned expensive.
They are now probably richer than many Kennedys.
Ah, the irony, kgilmour, of a white (I assume), English-speaking Settler, in the region now known as Texas (Tejas in the indigenous Caddo language) and New Mexico (Mejico in Nahuatl?), complaining that descendants of indigenous inhabitants of the region mispronounce the language of their Occupiers.
Whoops, that was in response to kgilmour @ 9:51 above. Must go inhale more caffeine.
We also expect people everywhere in the world to speak English, especially when we are on vacation there.
At the minimum, all rebels/protesters interviewed on US TV, should speak good English.
NO I expect the clerk at McDonalds to speak English – BIG difference.
And I speak Spanish in Latin America… I lived there.
I’m so sorry you returned to the US.
How much food do you have to eat, and of what kind, for your body to produce so much bile?
They should – they make more money if they do.
But we shouldn’t expect people everywhere, in Latin America, in Russia, in Syria, etc, to speak English.
On one hand, for individuals, the ability to speaking English means more $$$, but on the other hand, for societies collectively, that’s how their cultures are destroyed…as ways of looking at the world, relationship with nature, lifestyle change, body language (that goes with speaking English), consumerism, CIA propaganda, etc follow English comprehension.
Seems their employers make more money despite the language barrier.
Read Mitcheners Centennial…. widows left to starve – not even children tried to save their own mothers should their father die… Plains Indians were monsters.
Ditto for all those Anasazi… local Universities have their panties in a twist over what to do with all that data showing the locals were cannibals. Bone yards filled with munched on tibias…. OH GOODNESS>.. What will readers think???
When the Spanish took the area with 16 horses and a few cannons.. it’s because the locals said GREAT… let’s kill the bastards!
Ole Chakmool had that bowl on his belly for human hearts…. usually those of children… such a fine man… and a GREAT people.
this is sooo funny… Europeans hold no honors for humanitarian impulses throughout history… but the Locals? …. now THEY were savage… and the instinct to demonize white Euros for invading the peaceful Americas is just plain silly… not to mention IGNORANT?
Your historical source is James Mitchener’s 35 year old work of fiction? Really? You are extremely bright and highly educated and that is your source on the lives and attitudes of the Plains Indians? Wow.
Funny — leaving mothers and children to die is a modern American concept, too.
If European invaders had not destroyed the long history of pre-Colombian peoples, perhaps they would have at least one documented redeeming, human quality, in your eyes.
The religious cultures of the organised pre-Columbian South America empires were incredibly brutal and cruel. I have yet to come across any evidence of redeeming features.
And I’m sure you won’t. Their histories were largely destroyed. Let’s not forget we (of European extraction) burned people alive (among other grizzly tortures).
Does that mean you, personally, or our “culture” have no redeeming features?
Lots of people of European descents had to resort to cannibalism, just in the last couple of centuries…and even not too long ago.
This sad phenomenon is not particular to any people.
If I was a plane crash survivor in the Andes, I’d cannibalize the non-survivors before I missed my first lunch — only because I know I’d resort to it, eventually, anyway. Hopefully, there would be some well-marbled fellow Americans among them. Good ribs.
Sincerely,
Alfred Packer
Dearest kgilmour, while denial is a comfortable, if rather stifling, state of being, believe me it is better to work through it and come out on the other side …. acceptance. We do understand that anger is a necessary stage as well.
We white Europeans, descendants of the tired and poor and hungry immigrants , fleeing from the results of land enclosures, foreign occupiers, and rapacious landlords, have relied for too long on the comforting myths (perpetrated by writers such as James Michener, BTW) that “the land was empty,” “the indigenous inhabitants were savages (cannibals, child-murderders, pagans, etc.), or, my personal favorite, the doctrine of discovery and manifest destiny. Face the facts: our armies, Spanish, Portugese, English and, later, US, murdered and raped and burned the locals and their villages so that we could acquire the land and its resources. We’re still doing it.
And, I one-up you! I’m a 73-year old grandmother.
New grandiose term – Pandonion Irony. Whilst Glenn ever so briefly deserves this moment… the fact we live in a society with so much State secrecy, with 6000 journalists who allow it…. possibly two brief heroic ones who tried no to do so… because they rely upon billionaires and corporations for ownership/funding is THE problem. No need to read endless commentary or tweets to know without doubt people will yet again lose this teachable moment.
I hope they have thick shag carpeting at Langley, W.H. and Afghan station… because they must all spend most of their days rolling on the floor laughing at the rest of us.
As Nader riffed a couple years back – only the super-rich can save us. Gee, what can go wrong with that plan?
I know a few billionaires indirectly. As F Scott observed, the rich aren’t like us. Well, if that’s true, then billionaires are from Mars.
Beware of people who seek that sort of fortune.
Some billionaires are from Mars.
The rest of them other billionaires are from Venus.
I have met a number of upper hundred millionaires and billionaires through my full and part time occupations. 95% really are the stereotypical cheap, greedy vampire leeches everyone imagines. 4% are clueless/benign/embarrassed(guilty)/or want to help but aren’t sure where to start, and the last bit are actually some amazing people (the way they treat everyone except that first 95% is a model for the entire planet), who I’ve noticed tend to have not sought that wealth but instead had it fall in their lap. They actually volunteer time, not just money, to worthy causes like feeding the poor instead of attempted social engineering to maximize future profits. If all the oligarchs were like this we’d live in something like a benevolent dictatorship but unfortunately they are SERIOUSLY outnumbered.
If abortion clinics don’t get buffer zones, neither do penthouses.
Agreed. Nor should our lawmakers, world business leaders, or economic conference attendees.
and that last bit, the amazing ones where gazillions of dollars fall in their laps. Do they also push for a more progressive tax system that would take much more of their gazillions? and to eradicate corporate welfare and channel tax dollars toward the public good? and…
Yes. The ones who realize excessive greed is destroying society do, even if with some it is only to understand that destroying society destroys their place in it or even the possibility of a “normal” life under complete societal breakdown. Please make no mistake, I’m not in favor of supporting their excessive wealth. I just saying there are a few forces for good at the top, just not many. They also tend not to be politically active the way people like the Koch brothers are because, as I mentioned before, they have no interest in maximizing their profits through legislation.
The press has always been owned by billionaires or, back then, millionaires. Let’s not pretend this is a new phenom. The main diff might be that in the past they were mostly fat cats who just owned newspapers, not other things.
Still, as the era of Hearst shows, they had their own agendas.
To me the prob with the Ames attacks on Greenwald is that they are of the “it would be irresponsible not to speculate” variety. Bad when you are taking Rumsfeld as your model.
Yea the teachable moment will be lost. Does Glenn even have a point? Is it that journalism is not influenced by the rich owners and that such speculation is baseless smearing such as with Odiymar and with Pando? Or is it that it IS influenced by rich owners, in which he doesn’t come out smelling any sweeter.
Oh it’s to score cheap gotaches on twattle er twitter. I got it. Because that’s our intellectual state now. Teachable moment? There goes the culture …
I think the point is that after smearing Greenwald with a kind of pre-crime hit piece then Pando is the one that ends up kowtowing to rich backer interference (allegedly). This is what is called irony. Rumor has it that Greenwald wrote something disparaging about Ames which sent him into a tizzy.
As I say above, most journalists work for people who may be dubious or even downright sleazy. All that matters is the work and you can’t say that Greenwald’s collaboration with Snowden hasn’t had an impact. The Ames piece on Greenwald was, in my opinion, alone enough to discredit Pando. Do they have editors? Really not surprising, then, to read articles such as this
http://valleywag.gawker.com/pandodailys-threatening-email-meltdown-1149039909
Tsk. He needs to fire her.
Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.’s woes will continue: Columbia Journalism Review: http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/rupert_murdoch_and_news_corps.php
As, in turn, will ours.
Final thought for kgilmour:
If your rants are ever discovered by future cultures, and used as a representation for us, your contemporaries, we will probably be judged as being as bad as, or worse than, the (non)people you detest.
Because something has “always” been one way or another doesn’t make it right. With such massive State secrecy how can anyone look into matters without speculation… for certainty is rare by design and intent.
10 to 1 the chief’s name is Redd Mister. Either way it’s who he/she is, what they do. In secret.
just saw this: Report Shows Obama’s Negotiators in Trans-Pacific Trade Scheme Being Paid Millions by Big Banks..
wow, I am stunned!
the government/corporate kleptocrats don’t even need to wait to go out the revolving door.
thanks for the link.
notice the time stamp on my comment above is after yours…
that was posted as a reply to trish below…
Lauren Hudson of SolidarityNYC and Data Commons has a thought provoking piece on the politics of the “new economy” up on GEO this morning:
Who’s Responsible for the ‘Moral Compass’ of the New Economy
Regarding the Higgs article,
Here’s the RAS press release at http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2469-should-the-higgs-boson-have-caused-our-universe-to-collapse
It shouldn’t go unremarked that the EarthSky site pasted the press release text into their page.
Science journalism should lead to key questions being asked — not just a copy-paste jamboree. For example, the Fairbairn & Hogan paper (the topic of the press release) does discuss many contingent and speculative modeling and theoretical issues. Naturally that doesn’t make it into the press release(!)
Anyway, just for context, a quick description of false vacua:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum#Stability_and_instability_of_the_vacuum
And a readable discussion of Big Bang modeling shortcomings and areas of research — published in the 90s, but a good intro to inflationary theory & Andrei Linde’s work:
http://web.stanford.edu/~alinde/1032226.pdf
that’s reassuring indeed. It’s traumatic to think the universe might have collapsed a second after the Big B. That sounds like a cheap knock off of a real universe, too much like some store brand frozen pizza you can “fix” in your kitchen with extra tomato sauce and cheese. But who could make a universe so flimsy it crashes within a second of booting up? You can try to rationalize, digress and evade the question, but there’s only one answer. God. That’s not a warm and fuzzy thing to think about. You’d expect God to get it right the first time, wouldn’t you? This isn’t amateur hour where you can fumble around and have people give you an “A” for effort.
Message from the one percent. Maybe someone has already linked this but if not, interesting.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_full.html?print
From the article. Note that Walmart is officially neutral on the minimum wage increase and before that made noises of being in favor, then pulled back.
He is talking about restoring the sort of “grand bargain” that existed in the post WW2 era–that the rich will be allowed to be reasonably rich, the poor will be allowed to live–and therefore saving “capitalism.”
The problem is that it may be already too late for a new new deal. The right has become more extreme, the left more rightwing.
http://www.minyanville.com/trading-and-investing/personal-finance/articles/Credit-Card-Household-Debt-May-Be/6/26/2014/id/55403
“But there’s a third factor that is going to keep all but the richest on the treadmill, and that is the upward surge in interest rates for unsecured consumer credit. At a time when banks are borrowing money at near-zero-percent interest, they are lending it to consumers at an average annual percentage rate of 15.61%, according to Bank Rate Monitor.
Even that figure is deceptively low. The average interest rate for customers with “fair” credit hit 21% in April, up 2.12 percent from just one year earlier, according to the industry group CardHub. People with “good” credit paid an average 17.35%, and people with “excellent” credit paid 12.86%.”
Low, low rates are so, so, so important…..credit is the lifeblood of the economy….yada, yada, yada.
Funny how the FED thinks low, low rates are so important….for BANKS, and no one else…
of the banks, by the banks, for the banks
trolls in general—ignore them, and they go away. really, seriously. ignore them entirely.
you reward that which you despise by arguing and drawing attention to their idiocy.
lie down with pigs, get up with fleas….er, or something!
sometimes it’s just so, so, so hard to ignore. like deer flies. (only deer flies are just annoying pests. trolls pushing their propaganda can do harm).
They are the fleas. They carry illness with them and lay eggs wherever they go.
HOW CAN YU SAY IGNOOR THEM! STOPID LIBTARD
It’s all too easy for a ‘Troll’ to be merely someone whose views you don’t agree with and who lacks the eloquence, humility or gentle humour required to at least make their views palatable to you. I’ve given up following a number of blogs because over time a coterie of like-minded commentators have taken it over and chased out with hostility anyone with a contrary – or uncomforting – view, resulting in its becoming a cosy, windowless, circular echo-chamber. It would be a great shame for that to happen to NC.
I believe it is often claimed that the grip of feudalism was broken when the Black Death wiped out half Europe’s population, giving a lot more ‘negotiating power’ to the survivors at the bottom of the food chain and opening the door on greater social mobility, the mercantile revolution and the Enlightenment, and eventually the modern world. Did that make the Black Death a good thing? Can you honestly say you wish the Black Death hadn’t happened, given that if it hadn’t the world would be a very different place today and you wouldn’t exist?
On a daily basis I thank the Lord I don’t believe in that I’m not American and live in a stable comparatively safe democracy where the ideas of egality and social justice still hold some sway. Hence I know nothing about the actually of life in the US. However what I read on there net here and elsewhere makes me suspect the views articulated by kgilgour are not those of an isolated mad-women but represent widely beliefs which are likely repressed in face-to-face daily social intercourse yet can be exposed via the annonymity of the WWW. Whether the facts and understandings behind these views are true or false is actually irrelevant. The danger is that they exist and you ignore them – and turn your backs on those who hold them – at your peril.
Exactly. I found kgilgour’s accounts of some liberal white environmentalists whom she encounters, very interesting, and, to my sorrow, plausible. I also found her description of her own neighborhood, and race relations in New Mexico, and the behavior of cops there, and zoning, and other parts of her posts interesting. I am a grown-up and I can ignore the parts of her posts that I find obnoxious (and by the way, I would bet that she is actively trying to be obnoxious, and might very well just be tweaking people by saying that she wants African people dead). The problem in Africa is not population; it is bushmeat eating (which is more of a preference thing than a calorie thing) and ivory sales to Asia. I am sure (I don’t get the impression that kgilgour is stupid) that she knows that you could kill of a whole lot of African people, and the remaining people (if they chose) could still cause great extinctions: small numbers of people have often managed to drive species to extinction without difficulty.
Yves and others, thank you for the follow up regarding my font comment in yesterday’s daily links. For future reference, your user base does not always have the ability to control fonts. Most of the time, I’m coming to your site from an IOS device, via a Digg Reader app, and your RSS feed. IOS devices offers no control over fonts. I can zoom to enlarge but text does not wrap on NC unlike some other websites. For your reference I’ve included two screen shots showing how Vice.com and NC appear on an iPhone. Vice is readable, NC is not. I realize not all users can be satisfied, but I’m not using an arcane platform and if you look at the provided screen print, my readability issue is legitimate. Can you read anything aside from the site name? Other Apple iPhone users likely will also find NC unreadable. This is not a small number of potential eyeballs. The orange font is definitely a part of the problem, but overall site design is not helping the orange. Ditching the orange is an easy fix, but a redesigned mobile experience would allow you to keep the orange and improve mobile readability. My 2 cents… I love NC and offer this constructive criticism with the idea that this can be an area for improvement in future. Good luck with The Google, in the meantime, I’ll save NC reading for when I’m in front of the an actual computer.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9snlw26jm0962e0/2014-06-27%2009.11.36.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/izzi1y3dzygzjbo/2014-06-27%2009.11.20.png
Vice has staff and a budget. We can’t afford to optimize for handheld devices and readers despised the off the shelf choice and opted out of it, on mobile devices, to read the desktop version.
You can easily resize the text on an iPhone, so I am at loss to understand what your issue is. We have readers tell us they read NC in bed which means on handheld devices. We also had readers give us feedback during the redesign process on readability on mobile devices, and in the later phases, the feedback was positive.
We can’t implement a separate mobile design. It’s not even remotely what we can afford.
I have read this kgilmour’s entertaining comments since it began commenting here. I will continue reading its comments until it is banned or gives up and leaves.
Based on its comments up to now, I believe it to be an elderly white-identified animal-lover woman. Remember how its heart bled for those poor goats being chained up in bathtubs being eaten alive one leg at a time? All that was missing was photographs or video footage. All very animal-lover pornorrific.
For those who affect to be displeased by its comments . . . remember that the more you reply to it, the more it will comment.
Yves, I think and hope this comment stream today is an aberration. Most of the time when we see a flame thrower, people just ignore the miscreant. Not today. Please delete. This type of discussion will chase away your target audience.
Geopolitics and geo-finance — one and the same.
Why discuss the Ukrainian/Russian factions fighting over Crimea, or the ISIS/Iraq debacle, or any of the other horrid topics in the daily links at NC, when we have an opportunity to confront the BS directly?
BTW: I love any comment stream that devolves to discussing cannibalism. I eat that shit up.
Respectfully, I disagree. Don’t sterilize the site. Pretty soon it will become so politically correct as to be insipid.
Personally, I must confess to experiencing racial biases. And I do think that human subspecies exist. It astonishes me that people think fairness can be attained by denying subspecies differences. Subspecies exist in most other mammals, why should humans be so exceptional? After all, children take generally after their parents, and, in some environments, some characteristics are unfavorable. For as long as we deny these differences and thus fail to find fair ways to accommodate them, we will be tripped up by this issue.
Despite having racial biases and at times feeling like kgilmour, a moment’s reflection on the reality of suffering is enough to make one recoil from such wishes. I think it true of the original poster as well, thus read his comments as venting great frustration with our degenerating society. From his part of the world, the racial lens may bring this degeneration into particularly sharp focus.
I’d rather try to understand the differences and how they can be accommodated fairly. Thus I value the fact that it was brought up, but despair of the outcome. If I may have my wish, I’d urge Yves to delete all the holier-than-thou comments, including this one.
I saw this only now and kgilmour is getting banned. I can’t delete without destroying the entire comments section today. Everything will unnest and fall in a heap.
“kgilmour is getting banned”
Disappointing censorship.
“I can’t delete without destroying the entire comments section today”
But you can ban today, and damage your credibility as a host of ideas and conversations (at least for me)?
Down with this kind of thing.
This site is private, hosted space. We have policies which are clearly posted. This is why we continue to be one of the few sites that has a robust comments section with a decent caliber of comments.
I am not going to have my site, which is about finance and economics, dominated by a troll spouting openly racist ideas. It crowds out commentary on what this site is about. Since you appear to like that sort of thing, I encourage you to read sites more to your liking.
Defending someone’s right to an opinion is not the same as agreeing with it. I’ll even defend your right to ban those with opinions you don’t like, without agreeing with your reasoning or conclusion.
If I didn’t like this site I wouldn’t care about censorship in the (unusually valuable) comments. I would be saddened to see groupthink take over.
New York AG Schneiderman finally flexes muscles against Wall Street: Reuters: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-banks-schneiderman-barclays-bk-20140627,0,1517684.story
What a puff piece.
Facebook mass psychological manipulation experiment published in PNAS:
http://www.avclub.com/article/facebook-tinkered-users-feeds-massive-psychology-e-206324
PNAS article:
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full
“Significance
We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.