Nancy Reagan death: President Obama leads tributes BBC
Ray Tomlinson, email inventor and selector of @ symbol, dies aged 74 Guardian (furzy)
Jimmy Carter Says He No Longer Needs Cancer Drug Treatment ABC (furzy). At this rate, he’s going to live to be 100.
Rescued bear, lion and tiger “brothers” refuse to be separated after 15 years together Independent (Chuck L). Old story but still a good one.
Bob Dylan’s Secret Archive New York Times
Bacon Chocolate Oreos The Worst Things for Sale
California is about to get 100 inches of snow Slate
This has to be the most realistic robotic hand ever! Interesting Engineering (guurst)
Apple targeted by KeRanger ransom malware for first time Guardian
Redaction Art: How Secrets Are Made Visible Intercept
China?
China Economic Planner Says Slowdown Isn’t Stunting Global Growth Wall Street Journal
China defends veracity of foreign exchange reserves data Financial Times
Carry trades at heart of China capital outflows -BIS Reuters
These 4 charts show just how dire the European economic situation is Business Insider
Faith in ‘healing’ central banks has faded: BIS CNBC. The use of “healing” and “wellness” have always set my teeth on edge, and it’s even more offputting to see that sort of terminology used in the contexts of central banking. Although in this case, “Faith in ‘healing'” can be mis-scanned as “faith healing” which seems apt.
Against Independent Central Banks: The Short Version Peter Dorman
Refugee Crisis
Turkey Struggles to Stop Migrant Smugglers at Sea Wall Street Journal
EU-Turkey summit: high-stakes and unpleasant choices Financial Times
Brexit?
Britain’s biggest environmental charities using public cash to campaign to stay in EU Telegraph
Grexit?
Grexit back on the agenda again as Greek economy unravels Guardian
Syraqistan
Iranian billionaire Babak Zanjani sentenced to death for embezzlement Guardian
The West’s desire to ‘liberate’ the Middle East remains as flawed as ever Independent
Battle for Iraq’s Mosul: The mother of all build-ups Middle East Eye
2016
Thunderdome: Gone Savage For Trump
The local faces of Trump’s army Philly (furzy)
Glenn Reynolds: A Trump wave is on the way USA Today (resilc). Hostile takeovers eventually become friendly.
Donald Trump & Other Shady Types American Conservative
9 most interesting moments of the Democratic debate Politico
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders spar in fierce debate Guardian
Cherry-picking Statistics to Bash Sanders’ Medicare-for-All Plan Huffington Post
Clinton, on her private server, wrote 104 emails the government says are classified Washington Post (Li). This is a big deal.
Why Bernie Sanders Won Super Tuesday Cenk Ugyur (furzy)
Hillary Is Now Picking and Choosing Which Obama Accomplishments to Take Credit For Marcy Wheeler
The painful twilight of Barack Obama’s presidency Ed Luce, Financial Times
The Life and Death of the Political Bumper Sticker Atlantic
How Social Media Policing and Online Vigilantism May Increase Wrongful Convictions Truthout
How an army of DC Pharma lobbyists have locked in one of the biggest ripoff schemes in America Raw Story (furzy)
Cornel West: Most Black Politicians These Days Are Neoliberal Politicians Reader Supported News
Oil
Saudi minister: We’ll maintain our oil market share CNBC
Will Russia End Up Controlling 73% of Global Oil Supply? OilPrice
401(k)s are a tax break, not a retirement system Economic Policy Institute
Fannie and Freddie Shareholders Suffer Stinging Legal Setbacks Wall Street Journal. The logic is mind-boggling.
Class Warfare
Will Inequality Turn Entire Cities Into Ghettos? Forbes
Up From Liberalism Jacobin. Editorial: “Only a forthright anticapitalism can end the reign of Third Way politics.”
Antidote du jour (Kittie Wilson via Lawrence R):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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From Oilprice rah rah Russia op-ed:
“Russia is smart. Vladimir Putin is genius. Moscow senses the opportunity that is almost tangibly floating about in the low crude price environment and appears to be ready to capitalize on it in a way that would reshape the geopolitical landscape exponentially.”
Do I really need to be subjected to poorly crafted Sci-fi without the requisite yawning chasms of eons of time and vast galactic empires, or at least mind bending Philip K Dick plots?
Russia WILL control 73% of Global Oil Supply, the only problem is, by the time all of its fiendishly diabolical plans fall into place, 73% of the current customers will be using the sun as their industrial fuel source. Then with 73% control of the oil in the ground, they can all stand around and look at it. Maybe antique car clubs will start a global fuel coop for their weekend car rallies. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
The Sun is God ~JMW Turner
Okay, I’m going to venture off topic, and grumble about Turner’s choice of pigments. He would use pigments with poor light fastness such as rose madder and carmine. These are very bright reddish pigments, and the sunsets in his paintings must have been gorgeous — for a few years. But after a while, the fugitive pigments would fade or turn brown, and now some of those gorgeous sunsets are downright ugly.
Turner was a colorist, always up for trying the latest pigments, including fugitive lake pigmnets not particularly lightfast. He was less concerned about posterity and more with immediate appearances.
In the oddly adagioed biopic, “Mr. Turner” there is a wonderful scene of Turner in a skirmish with the surface of a painting he is readying for an academy competition, resorting finally to spitting a great gob and working it into the surface. I suppose his wild sunsets, snow storms, paintings like “Rain, Steam and Speed” may be seen as a muddle but really they are fabulous as well.
Further off topic but In the spirit of ruined paintings and oil depletion, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper springs to mind, an experiment with oil, tempera and plaster in the early days of oil painting. The painting took a couple of years to execute and began deteriorating shortly thererafter. ‘I’ll be gone you’ll be gone’ the renaissance version.
Sixty years after its compleition Vasari remarked that it was ruined. Restorations or experiments in error commenced soon thereafter, there may not be much of the original left today. A twentieth century conservator working on the painting was said to have spent a week on section the size of a postage stamp.
In the nineties a conservator had this to report, ““Here we have a surface that is completely ruined, disintegrated into tiny scales of colour that are falling off the wall. We have to clean each one of these scales six or seven times with a scalpel, working under a microscope…Here I can clean an area one day and still not be finished, because when the solvent dries it brings out more grime from beneath the surface. I often have to clean the same place a second time, or even a third or a fourth. The top section of the painting is impregnated with glue. The middle is filled with wax. There are six different kinds of plaster and several varnishes lacquers and gums. What worked on the top section doesn’t work in the middle. And what worked in the middle won’t work on the bottom. It’s enough to make a person want to shoot herself.”
myshkin,
You might enjoy the book Bright Earth, by Philip Ball.
Artist after my own Heart: Turner was indifferent to posterity and chose materials that looked good when freshly applied.
I believe Frank Herbert made the point in his book “Dragon in the Sea” that nothing as convenient, or as efficient as petroleum has been found for lubricating moving parts. As long as we have a mechanical civilization, oil will be important. Then there is the factor of plastics. I’ve yet to read of any industrial scale application of bio oils to plastics production. Excepting some government mandates, I do not foresee manufacturers switching away from plastics. Cost and ‘competition’ generally control production decisions. So far, plastics have fit the “needs” of the economy fairly well. Besides, what time frame are you using to make your assertion? I haven’t seen any of the ‘financial’ rah rah boosters predicting the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” yet.
I have read that 90% of the oil sold is sold to be burned for fuel. All other uses of oil amount to 10% of the current use of oil. If oil were obsoleted for fuel, the oil we have would last a long time for its non-fuel uses.
I know we can synthesize lubricating oil as well, but it’s more expensive and I don’t know the specifics or it’s impact on the environment.
Most cars use synthetic oil these days.
Well there is “synthetic oil” and synthetic oil. Most synthetic oil has crude in it somewhere, but it is possible to create it using no crude at all.
There is also high-heat ceramics, there’s graphene, and even the possibility of lubricating with nanoparticles. Ceramics need no lubrication, graphene is so strong you just replace the worn part every ten years, and ceramic or graphene nanoparticles lubricate better than any oil.
And why would you need rubbing parts on an anti-gravity powered vehicle anyway? Just hop in, speak your destination address into Windows 47, sit back, and relax.
Well now. We might as well opt for “Buckyballs” in the end. As the history of mercury has shown, new technologies come with new, and generally unexpected, problems. All those mine tailings out west are treated as toxic waste dumps for good reason.
Anti gravity cars are great, but I see Zero Point to holding our collective breaths waiting for it’s commercial implementation.
Or, as the late Shah of Iran once observed, “Oil is too valuable to burn.”
@ambrit, March 7, 2016, 8:49 am – Hemp oil is as good a lubricant as most petroleum based oils. It can handle high heat and holds up well under pressure. IIRC, it can also be used to make plastics. It can certainly replace petroleum feedstocks for a lot of chemical processes which is one reason Dow and duPont have been among the biggest opponents to legalization over the past 80 years.
Ha! Good one. And now, back to reality…
A few million years to produce and a century or two to burn through.
It does have its uses but 90 million barrels a day up in smoke seems excessive.
http://www.busiweek.com/index1.php%3FCtp%3D2%26pI%3D1936%26pLv%3D3%26srI%3D61%26spI%3D117
It may be well to recall why oil supplanted coal in naval applications in the first place, to wit, higher energy density and ease of transportation and transfer:
href=”http://oilpro.com/post/4796/britain-vs-germany-coal-vs-oil–the-coming-of-the-great-war”
These advantages will be relevant as long as the military is. Not all naval vessels will be solar or nuclear powered, nor will tanks, humvees, and other land vehicles; they’ll be running on oil for all the old reasons. I myself don’t foresee either Lockheed or Sukhoi powering their F-35’s or PAK T-50’s with banks of on-board storage batteries with solar cells on the wings. The only way such aircraft would achieve near 1g acceleration is by choosing the proper direction, which would be straight down. We might introduce wind-powered air shows, but drifting colored baloons would lack a certain something found in present-day high-speed acrobatics.
Nothing like the buzz from fast-burning hydrocarbons. Unfortunately.
…and don’t let us dare point out the idiocy and futility of all that military hardware, that facilitates more, and more expensive, war toys in each “new generation” and for some reason can’t provide the means and power to crush little 4th Gen tribal warriors. I guess that’s sort of covered in the “relevant as long as the military is” phrase, but still, there’s this Popular Mechanix fascination with individual troop helicopters and death rays and autonomous battle robots on the ground, in the air and under the sea… all powered by what, again?
A macabre, interesting point is, you could probably power a constructive social infrastructure on renewables just fine. A half-century ago, some science fiction writers were showing how exciting such developments might be. The fragility of an efficient electrical grid, for instance, would be of no relevance in a peaceful society.
But if you want to wreak mayhem without having it wreaked on yourself, there’s nothing like carrying your own cordless energy supply with you. And I don’t mean a lithium power pack.
Like yourself, it saddens me to see how much creative effort and resources are today devoted to destruction, while our physical infrastructure so badly in need of constructive attention and imagination decays about us.
re: DC Pharma Lobbyist “In Texas, a Medicaid “decision tree” called the Texas Medical Algorithm Project was instituted that mandates doctors prescribe the newest and most expensive psychiatric drugs first.”
scalp scabs bleeding again…how do algo’s fit in?
correct link for Slate story “100 inches of snow.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/04/el_ni_o_rain_and_snow_storms_headed_for_california.html
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3258
The less sensational version.
I look forward to the downpour! The coastal erosion process should be revealing. The traffic crashes have already begun.
The coastal erosion process should be revealing.
imagine the depreciation of the soil/cuft as it breaks away from the Malibu coast and drops down into the ocean
Dude, Where’s My Recovery?
John Kenneth Galbraith said it quite succinctly some years ago. “Trickle-down theory – the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”
It is like sending billions in aid to a corrupt, Third World nation, where little of what is sent actually makes it to the people for whom it is intended.
It is not the stimulus or the principle behind it that is discredited. What we have had is not the kind of stimulus designed to kick start aggregate demand. It has been the sustaining of the status quo, the continuation of a major policy error and widespread financial fraud, resulting in an asset bubble collapse and ongoing financial malaise.
It is the failure to reform, and to target aggregate growth and the well being of the public, which sadly takes last place on the agenda of those who have been blinded and corrupted by the greed and the power of Big Money.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2016/03/dude-wheres-my-recovery.html
Lewitt Identifies Two Worrisome PEU Moves
Lewitt is concerned about two private equity practices given the huge debt levels corporations. i.e PEU affiliates, have taken on. Private equity firms also package, sell and service corporate debt through collatoralized loan obligations (CLO).
http://peureport.blogspot.com/2016/03/lewitt-identifies-two-worrisome-peu.html
zero sum game. guess who lost?
I’d like to thank Snakedcapitalism.com for fixing the editing function…
Anyone know where i can find a link to the Flint Dem Debate? The Bernie Bros/Bras on twitter last nite were saying Bernie was On Fire. Kinda wondering if they were right or biased.
The NY Times has a transcript:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/us/politics/transcript-democratic-presidential-debate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FPresidential%20Election%202016&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=Collection®ion=Marginalia&src=me&version=newsevent&pgtype=article
The MSM and Hillary supporters are criticizing him for being brusque with her when he would try to finish his answers while she was rudely interrupting him.
And look for the “artful smear” from HRC when she criticized him for not supporting the auto industry, as she did. (He voted against TARP, but did separately support assistance for the auto industry.)
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/articles/2016-03-06/auto-bailout-debate-moment-shows-whats-wrong-with-bernie-sanders
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2016/03/06/debate-gets-contentious-hillary-clinton-interrupts-bernie-sanders-over-bailout/hzSqUSDZOVYbcJk3XJe2BL/story.html
https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/706655455930621952
I turned on the TV late last night, and Debbie Stabenow was piling it on about how Hillary voted to save the auto industry while Bernie didn’t.
Ugh!
He did very well.
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2016/03/06/final-rush-transcriptcnn-democratic-presidential-primary-debate-flint-mi/
Thanks cwaltz. That helps.
Would still like to see the video if anyone has a link. I heard the fur was flying. :-)
He did, didn’t he! I was kind of surprised that he was so aggressive. Not as much as he needed to be, though. He never quite goes in for the kill.
I really wish someone would call Clinton on her filibustering. What is the point of having time limits if they are going to be completely ignored?
I wish they would just increase the time limits so we can get detailed answers.
But then you get into the issue of thirteen point plans that make the audience’ eyes glaze over. It is a fine line, but it would be nice to see them enforce their own time rules occasionally.
Sanders is behind. He needs to go in for the kill.
This is not New England. There is not the South.
There is Michigan, a large industrial state, and a win will boost him tremendously.
That would be my instinct, too; to go in for the kill. She is one of the most professional victims I have ever seen in politics, and maybe he recognizes the dangers inherent to that strategy better than I do. The hay they are making out of his trying to get in a word edgewise on his own time is shocking to me.
But, say, her stance on KORUS and her flip flops on the Colombian trade deal should be fair game, seems to me. This is a case in which her e-mails should be very interesting to him.
Don’t under-estimate your opponent.
Know what they will do.
If Sanders doesn’t win Michigan, their game will be to cast in doubt his ability to win other similar industrial states, like Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. And while he has money to go a long way, they will start framing it as futile.
The MSM, all the progressive radio shows during the day except Thom Hartmann & a lot of bloggers have been trying to cast doubt on Bernie’s candidacy since it got started. Along with spreading flat out smears & lies every bit as bad or worse than the ones Hillary herself tells. They’ve BEEN framing his campaign as futile.
After a near-better-than-best-case scenario on Super Tuesday (complete with doubts about the legitimacy of the Mass loss, both ballot counts & the Bill poll blocking/campaigning fiasco) they redoubled their efforts. After he took three out of the last 4 states before today and had maybe his best debate performance yet while she came across (at least on radio, I didn’t see it) as somewhat tired/discouraged in places, and then easily performed better at the town hall while she undercut a lot of her liberal credentials to play to the perceived fox audience, they stepped it up further. No matter what happens today they are going to keep doing it.
The media is our enemy. People on the left, myself included, sometimes forget just how responsible they are for how much of the horror of the last 15 years in particular. Without the media grossly distorting the campaign, Gore beats Bush, 9/11 & Iraq never happen and we get started on combating global warming. (say what you will about Gore, and yes his campaign was awful, he would have won by a long shot with remotely accurate coverage of the campaign issues,ou and say what you will about what you think his deficiencies as a president, he would not have ignored warnings from every possible corner in order to let planes fly into buildings, and even if they’d done it anyway he would not have used the occasion to turn us into a full blown fascist state complete with the KGB-creepy “Department of Homeland Security” & he would not have invaded Iraq)
The media gave us Bush, they helped Bush turn us into a really scary place, then they deliberately helped Bush lie us into Iraq. Their is no excusing this. In 2004 they helped take down Howard Dean (yeah, I know what’s become & I dunno how he sleeps nights & I’d kill myself before I did that, but at the time he appeared to be a good option, and they clearly thought so too & went out of the way to torpedo him). Then they helped swiftboat Kerry, who, again, at least was better than the opposition.
Now we have the first truly good candidate who isn’t corrupt and does have a realistic chance to win in my adult life, and I’m fifty, and they are doing everything possible to take him out, on a scale unprecedented in the past (and that’s saying a lot! tho prolly only because they
didn’t need to do so much in the past to take out people.)
In sum, the media is responsible for Bush/Cheney, as responsible for Iraq as Bush/Cheney, and maybe worst of all, as responsible as Exxon & the other fossil fuel companies for obscuring the problem that is global warming. They’ve practically killed themselves trying to avoid the problem. Let’s face it, the American MSM frequently is followed and liked by people who make fun of stupid Republicans, but the same media is responsible for making everyone much more ignorant and ill-informed than they should be, and the Republicans & conserva-dems #1 benefactor.
They have a sacred trust to keep people informed so they can make informed decisions and know what the world around them is. That is their only reason to exist. They violate this every day and probably don’t even recognize it. They only seem to recognize that they exist as profit centers for rich scumbags and think their only duty is to service those rich scumbags. Far more than Hillary or Trump who they so like to make fun of, they are the problem. And if we wind up with Hillary or Trump this go round, they will be the reason.
HRC has made deflecting and filibustering questions her specialty. I didn’t watch the debate (her voice drives me insane) but I gather Cooper asked her how she would handle Trump’s attacks re her email and she totally ignored the question.
If I were the God of Debates I’d have a few simple rules. The first and most important: if the candidate doesn’t immediately give a direct answer to the question, a buzzer sounds and he or she has lost her time. This would get rid of the other annoying habit, “Before I answer [sic] your question, Jim, let me respond to what Senator Cruz just said…” about the previous question!
Perhaps even more effective: rather than just a buzzer, the candidates are zapped with an electric shock, with the amperage increasing each incident. HRC’s hair would look like Don King’s by mid-debate.
Missed the live TV spectacle but I did read the entire transcript. I liked the feistier Sanders but he was bad, as usual at defending himself against unfair Clinton attacks on his record that contained a sliver of truth. His defense of Clinton’s “you were against the the Detroit auto-bailout” was particularly bad. His incoherent and evasive answer made him look guilty as charged.
Knowing the debate was in Flint and knowing much of the debate would center around the water crisis I thought Sanders should have figured out how to connect the dots between the water crisis and Wall Street greed a little more clearly. His quick pivot from contaminated Flint Water and sick babies to Wall Street greed in the same breath did make Sanders like seem a bit of a one-issue candidate even though the two are undoubtedly related. There’s been no serious investigation of the Flint water scandal and as such there is no smoking gun, but Sanders could have demonstrated how the long and creeping arm of greed and big finance are destroying America by at least raising doubts about the motives of the various Synder appointed emergency managers and their connections to finance. Simple government incompetence doesn’t explain the Flint water situation. The whole affair reminds me of the corruption surrounding the Jefferson County Alabama water facility, and I think the specter of municipal water corruption and convictions in Jefferson County would have been an excellent talking point for Sanders to raise in the debate. Questions swirling around Flint’s mystifying decision (emergency managers’ decision – there were several in the last five years) to stop using treated water from the publicly owned Detroit municipal system and switch instead to the toxic water in the Flint river have no logical answers unless one considers corruption and conspiracy. Shady operators such as French transnational water privatizer Veolia are involved and there were multiple, possibly corrupting profit motives in the actions of the emergency managers. One of the bonds sold to fund the Karegnondi Water Authority (newly commissioned but yet uncompleted pipeline to bring untreated water from Lake Huron to Flint that started the water crisis) was given the “Bond of the Year” award in 2014 by Bond Buyer magazine. There is a money trail to be followed in Flint, until someone does, those interested in justice can at least point at it.
Not to mention the fact that when GM complained about the corrosiveness of the Flint River water, its factory water supply was surreptitiously switched back to the unpolluted source. The car parts were saved, the people were called hysterical and left to twist in the wind.
hillary’s “GM bailout” support language is the only dog whistle for labor the democrats have left after their multiple trade deal disasters. (To quote Trump.)
But it’s disingenuous at best. Through its GMAC and Ditech subprime mortgage and subprime car loan financial units, GM had become a financial company with a second rate car manufacturer attached. They were going down the tubes with the rest of the shoddy lenders.
Hard to say what would have happened to the manufacturing jobs without the financial component demanding a bailout, but I suspect hillary would not be as proud of her “vote” as she now seems to be. She might even be forced to chalk it up as another unfortunate “mistake.”
GM like GE had it’s toes (leg?)in the subprime lending disaster. If I recall, Ford didn’t need the bailout as they had wisely raised cash and retired debt under CEO James Mulally before the meltdown.
Bernie should have raised that as a point during the debate.
Clinton’s attack on Sanders for not supporting the auto industry bailout was worse than disingenuous. Sanders was 100% in favor of bailing out the auto industry but was opposed to the bank bailout, a.k.a. Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) At the time of the vote on TARP it was completely unclear if any of the TARP funds would be available for Detroit automakers, but lawmakers expected it to go exclusively to the banks. Obama controversially managed to use a portion of the second tranche of TARP funding to bailout Detroit, but it was an unexpected move by the administration and the legality was questioned. Sanders supported a stand alone bill that would have gifted Detroit automakers with a 15 billion dollar assistance package, but I believe the bill died in the House. Anyway, equating TARP support with the bailout of the big three is not truth, and Sanders was very much on the record as favoring a bailout for the big three, just not big finance. Clinton is a rotten liar and the queen of what she calls the “artful smear”.
GMAC as you pointed out was a different animal altogether, and if I recall correctly they lost even more money betting on derivatives than they did on subprime real-estate. Like the rest of Wall Street GMAC should have been allowed to suffer the consequences of their reckless gambling habit. GMAC was hardly “systematically important”. My local credit union will gladly finance a new GM car purchase, for very reasonable rates, as long as the buyer can afford it. GMAC should have perished.
There was a good question put forth about the cost of replacing all the lead pipes in the US and how neither candidate’s plan has enough money to do it all.
They both pretty much ignored the question and went into mini stump speeches, but I wish one of them had pointed out that the federal government doesn’t need to pay for 100% of it. State and local governments, and the water companies themselves can each contribute. Sanders could have pointed out his larger plan will encourage state governments to also spend more for synergistic effects or to “finish” the job.
It occurs to me that most of those lead pipes, though, aren’t on public property. The replumbing of the infrastructure past the mains would largely be the responsibility of the property owners. That may be why they didn’t fully answer the question. It would just be so daunting for those who you are asking for votes from.
Nothing short of a Manhattan Project sized WPA is going to work in poorer cities if that is the goal, and maybe they don’t want to get down into the weeds on that one this early.
It kind of pisses me off because we gave states money for shovel ready infrastructure improvements. Apparently that money went into things like studying plankton or black holes.
Didn’t it occur to any of the people in charge that they might want to spend the money on pipes?
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/13152
So little of that stimulus was directed at shovel ready projects that what little there was was almost immediately subsumed by road building activities, IIRC. I doubt that most cities have even considered the idea of replacing all of their pipes; the mere idea of it would make most city councils pass out in fright. Updating the sewerage in Atlanta was a heavy lift, fixing the supply lines would be almost unthinkable.
On a related note, I haven’t seen much about Hillary’s contention that she would be eliminating lead wherever it is to be found. The first thought we had when she said that is how is she going to replace the top three inches of topsoil across the continent in five years? All of that lead exhaust went right into the soil, after all. Talk about raising expectations, she should look at some of her own rhetoric.
What a loathsome dirty trick by the Clinton campaign to plant the woman who asked the last god question, “Denise Ghattas”, can’t remember her name exactly. It gave an opportunity for Clinton to recite a rehearsed canned speech that went way over the time limit.
“…Well, I have been several times in your services and have joined in those prayers and have also been privileged to lead them in some settings.”
Gee, what a coincidence, she just happened to be in the same services as the questioner and got the pulpit as a political forum? That church should loose it’s tax exempt status.
Note also, that people who watched the debate live on streaming, thanks to the zero sum buffering, where the video stream continued without loosing any content after a time gap, lost the last segments where Sanders was able to make his final statement.
I am meeting more and more former Obama voters who plan on voting for Trump if Clinton is the nominee as a protest against the democrat$ corruption.
Weeks on the trail have imparted a nasty rasp to Hillary’s voice, giving it the distinctive timbre of a crow’s croak.
She’s the living embodiment of the antiheroine who — had Oscar Wilde’s protagonist been a meretrix rather than a man — would have gained iconic status as The Face of Doreen Gray.
After four decades of grimly determined grifting — the political equivalent of furtive BJs in Capitol Hill broom closets — you can see it in her lyin’ eyes.
“I’m ready for my closeup, Mister Podesta”
I believe we’re not supposed to make these sorts of truthful comments about candidates’ appearances. However I’m a big believer in the theory that the camera reveals much if not all. Therefore Cruz looks like a weasel, Trump a blowhard etc.
Yea personally I think Kim Kardashian should run. Looks are everything. Policies? Oh really you want some aging jewish grandpa over Kim Kardashian, don’t you have eyes? You know and I know who is better looking.
Anybody else notice how Clinton sounds a lot like Mom from Futurama?
Yup, my thoughts too. Obvious Clinton plant and CNN coordination. What a gross question too. It would have been extremely unwise, but I would have enjoyed a snarky answer from Sanders about believing in a secular government and something about separation between church and state. Every time I see Hillary debate I think she sounds like she is running for the Republican nomination. Too bad Ted Cruz wasn’t on stage in Flint, he could have one-upped Hillary by getting all weepy about God before rolling around on the floor and speaking in tongues. She’s on the wrong stage.
“Getting all weepy and speaking in tongues.”
That was laugh out loud funny. Thanks for that! It would have been unwise, but of the four people who loved it I would have been counted as one of them.
Sorry, I misread that. I still cannot get the picture of Sanders rolling around and speaking in tongues out of my head, though.
I would have laughed like crazy at Sanders rolling around and speaking in tongues in response to a “what does God mean to you question” as well, but that would have been even less wise than a snarky ‘separation of church and state’ type of answer. Would have been hilarious though. For the punch line he could have jumped up when he was finished and said, “Oh, I’m sorry… your question made me think I was at a Republican debate”
Looks like Clinton has read the book, How to Win Elections with Dirty Tricks.
And the War of Attrition continues, as she tries to nurse her lead. There was no knock out punch last night.
I thought it was probably his best so far. He’s been in good form lately, seems to be gaining confidence. He still doesn’t pivot & counter as well/quickly as I’d like at times, but when he’s on he is great. And he was on a lot. He’s always good on substance but i thought he was mostly great on style as well this time; very funny, got a lot of the energy from his rallies going, and his directness and non-equivocal support/opposition to things played well against Hillary’s typical pol-speak.
I also thought her tone was downright odd at times. She seemed almost discouraged in a couple of places, and gave this downright weird laugh after saying we were getting to universal coverage thanks to the ACA and her stupid 90% talking point (I will save my rant about that 90% for Lambert’s new post; I wonder how many of that 90% are like me and don’t even know if we have coverage coz they screwed up and aren’t fixing it, aside from the people who have coverage they can’t afford to use and would be better off without). I *think* she thought she had just made a brilliant, deadly riposte. I doubt many others thought so. He was wonderful on fracking & climate change & trade. She was godawful. Her best moment was probably that lie/distortion/whatever about the auto bailout. Hopefully didn’t confuse people. Hopefully enough people watched this n the town hall instead of following the MSM “how can we distort things to help Hillary & hurt Bernie” coverage to make up the gap in Michigan. Hopefully the voting machines aren’t rigged. Hopefully if they are rigged someone will catch them. I guess today we find out.
Here’s the full debate on youtube.
Colonel Clinton and Colonel Sanders face off.
Whom will the poor chickens believe? Will they ever get it right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSd9HmZXf5I
Nice, thanks craazyboy!
Generational warfare:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/revealed-30-year-economic-betrayal-dragging-down-generation-y-income
i know that this site is loathe to play on the boomer bashing riff, but there’s some interesting, even unmistakable, data in there. some parts are phrased poorly, such as when they write
when they’re really talking about income and not wealth, but worth sharing, if only for the potential reactions.
TPTB want the age groups to blame each other for their problems and keep the focus off of the Rigged System. I’m a boomer but certainly sympathize with the young folks. Job offshoring and its inverse (H1Bs and the alphabet soup of work visas) are destroying the prospects of all professionals who do their work via computer. The abuses of H1Bs are well documented and it is simply a cheap worker program to lower wages of US workers.
And that’s why Obama et al talking about STEM education is so cruel. No one in the govt makes any attempt to enforce H1B laws and abuse. So anyone running up $100K in debt to get a STEM degree ends up with no job prospects and a mountain of debt.
All the under-30s and retired people in America together are poorer than the Overclass. The Overclass is the people who took the money and the Overclass is who the rest of us will have to take our money back from.
Just a thought based on my personal experience as a 73 year old retiree. My 2015 gross taxable income was the highest ever but there is a catch. About 1/4 of the income was due to required withdrawals from IRA and 401(k) savings plans which are taxed as ordinary income although the money just comes out of one pocket and into another. I cannot quantify this effect but wonder if part of the increase in the saving of current older Americans is due to the growth in pretax savings plans from about the 1980’s.
– required withdrawals from IRA and 401(k) savings plans which are taxed as ordinary income
I did not know this. Seems like its treated opposite of capital gains.
I don’t understand the logic.
If you’ve got money in an savings plan, you know it’t taxed when you take it out. And you got a way better deal than paying taxes on the income at the time you earned it.
Oh Zing! Sanders debate quote in the Guardian article:
He needs to quit saying “if”. And he needs to Zing Clinton, Clintonian neoliberalism much much more.
What shocked me was that Bernie Sanders engaged in White Poverty Denial last night and the crowd cheered and Hillary said nothing. Depending on the source used, there are 20-31 million whites living in poverty — far more than there are blacks — and yet seemingly these people don’t exist for Sanders. Surely he misspoke and will issue a correction?
Even Flint is about 60-40 Black/White with many poor whites now familiar with the taste of lead in their water.
The ruling elite in the US have always engaged in a divide and rule strategy of pitting poor whites against poor blacks. There is no more divisive move than to deny the very existence of a class of people living in poverty. To see a self-professed Social Democrat doing it is surprising to say the least. Again there is no way Bernie Sanders actually really means that white people don’t know what it is to be poor. Fox News is starting to run with this so Sanders will be forced to issue a statement.
The question asked that solicited that particular answer was: What racial blindspots do you have?
Well this one time they can’t complain that the candidate didn’t answer the question!
In context, what he means is that white poor are not harassed by the police in the same way that black poor are.
When white poor people are harassed by police, it’s because they’re poor, which is viewed as a threat. When black poor people are harassed by police, it’s because they’re black, which is viewed as a bigger threat.
At least, that’s how it seems to me.
Poor white people are not being imprisoned a remotely similar rate. Something like 50% of inmates are black despite being ~12% of the population.
I think that sounds about right.
If you are white and poor then you are a target.
However, if you are black, rich or poor, then you are a target.
If you happen to be rich and white you can get away with killing people while drunk driving, molesting children, defrauding customers, etc, etc.
Says who?
I’m white and got tired of being stopped by the police on my regular walks. I actually ended up having to go down to the town hall to get resolution. It actually got to the point where I started refusing to show my id.
When I lived in a trailer park. A poor, white guy across the street was shot when the police busted in the door and freaked out and thought his mom’s prosthetic leg was a weapon.
I don’t take what Sanders is saying personally because I think his purpose is to “legitimatize” the BLM movement. He’s trying to help give them a national platform. However, I do wish he’s done it differently because I do agree that part of the problem with the bottom of the economic ladder is that the people at the bottom are pitted against one another.
Says the media. They report regularly on the police shooting black poor. I can’t remember any remember any reports about the shooting of white poor although as you say it happens.
Okay. If you believe the media narrative is in your best interest rather than in the interest of the ruling elite than I don’t know how to help you.
Considering every position Sanders has taken during this campaign, and his political positioning and voting record for the last 30 years, are you seriously suggesting that he “denies” white poverty? Or that he is somehow trying to pit poor whites against poor blacks?
That’s just patently ridiculous.
And hillary-trollish.
Working Class Nero wants to be the hero of the Aryan working man against the brown and black people who are ripping said Aryan working man off and stealing their jobs. It’s the thrust of every post he makes.
It’s great that you are so proficient at reading Sanders’ smoke signals. But I’m betting there could have been plenty of poor white viewers scratching their heads at that statement. The fact that the statement was uttered by a Social Democrat is what makes it so shocking — if a neoliberal like Hillary had said it no one would have noticed.
I am sure there are plenty of poor whites who are trying to decide between Sanders and Trump. It would be in Sanders’ interest to just issue a statement recognizing white poverty and explaining what he really meant.
Unfortunately, you’re right.
History is often decided on such trivial matters.
What he has done over the years vs. what is perceived to be said.
Unfair? True that.
Cleopatra’s nose is still Cleopatra’s nose, though I agree it wouldn’t hurt to issue a statement to clarify it.
He probably meant not many white guys like him experience what many black people experience–a slip of the tongue or mind.
And btw I think the Sandernistas need to concede that Sanders comes from a place that isn’t much like the rest of America. For example the black population of Vermont, according to my encyclopedia, is .5 percent. Therefore it’s possible that nobody in Vermont experiences the sort of militant policing to be found in places like Ferguson.
That was exactly how I read his response. They were, after all, asking about HIS blindspots. Anyone reading more into it than that is probably looking for something to criticize.
Not just criticism, if I read it correctly, but also a suggestion…something simple and I believe helpful – a statement to elaborate what he said, a cost free concession so we can move on.
By elite standards Bernie Sanders isn’t rich, however, he isn’t poor either.
He makes a 6 figure income.
While Bernie appears to have grown up in an environment that allows him to identify with those in poverty, I suspect it’s been awhile since he personally has had to struggle the way those at the bottom do.
While he may not have had the experiences that many black people do, there are quite a few poor whites that have.
White poor are overwhelmingly rural. They don’t live in “ghettos” which implies neighborhoods in cities.
And lest you forget, Sanders actually grew up in what amounts to a white ghetto, yet he says he has no idea what the black experience is like. And you don’t either. You don’t walk into stores and regularly have store owners look at you as if you might be a thief.
I’m going to have to disagree with the idea that if you are poor and white that you aren’t necessarily treated as if you might be a thief or treated by the police as if you might be engaging in criminal behavior.
As I have stated I am very definitely white and my experiences counter that narrative to the point that I ended up speaking with the town and having the chief of police putting a memo out to their police on Terry laws.
Yes, its sad that I live in a region that has had problems with meth. That doesn’t mean I feel like I personally should have to play 21 questions with the police every time I take a walk(I don’t drive.)
I consider myself pretty tolerant too since two of my brothers are sheriff deputies in Florida so YES, it got to the point where they were engaging in what I considered harassment.
Living in the one of the whitest states in the nation, with the second lowest average income, I get where you’re coming from. I think in areas with more racial homogeneity, the natural outlet for bigotry is the poor. The police are, as always, the worst about it. Guy in the park with a tall-boy in a paper bag gets dragged into the jail house — drunken college kids literally filling the streets every weekend after the bars close and proceeding to drive home get nary a second glance.
The difference, however, is that economic circumstances can change. You might make more money in a couple of years than you do now, and move to a neighborhood where the cops don’t look at pedestrians with suspicion. But if the reason you’re being discriminated against was something that would never change, and additionally that forms a part of your identity in a way that your income-level never can, the psychological fallout would be…well…unimaginable to me, being a white dude.
A lot of us have been discriminated against in one way or another, and it all sucks, but racism has an especially nasty character that I think is worthy of special emphasis, as a matter of triage. If you have a patient with a nasty case of gangrene on their foot and a gushing wound on their thigh that pulses along with their heartbeat, you stop the bleeding before you do anything else. The gangrene is a problem too, that has to be dealt with, but “worst first”. That’s my current take, anyway.
I heard the statement at the time & it didn’t come across to me at all as saying no white people are poor, tho I can see how it looks that way taken out of context. It sounded at the time as if he was saying he, as a well off (by most standards) white person didn’t know what it was like to be black & poor.
That said, yeah, being poor & white gets you hassled by police. I’m in somewhat better circumstances now, but there was a time a few years ago I had to walk miles to & from the bus stop going to work or getting groceries. During that time I was stopped and questioned 3 times while on the way home carrying groceries at night, frisked twice. (to be fair, while I think this is an evil police state tactics, the cops were nice & polite about it, and one of the times they actually gave me a lift the rest of the way home. Granted, he took the opportunity to run my license while I was sitting in the back, but fortunately that wasn’t a problem). Also was twice sitting at bus stop when EVERYONE THERE was subjected to a random check of our licenses for warrants. Again, the cops were nice about it, but this creeps me out and should not happen.
All that said, I took no offense and did not think it rational to believe Bernie doesn’t believe in white poverty. At the same time, I had to explain to one furious person the next day who hadn’t heard the debate that the statement was taken out of context and Bernie’s entire life disproved the way it was being portrayed etc etc.
Smoke signals? What the hell are you smoking. This man has been fighting the good fight for 25 years. You don’t know his record? You’ve never heard him speak on the issues of poverty? You’ve never heard him attack “oligarchy” and use the word class (as is billionaire class) ad naseum, a thing that isn’t heard of in this country? What do you think the color of the skins of the poor in Vermont he’s been fighting for for decades is?
Everything you say is correct and at the same time just makes Sanders’ statement more bizarre.
Bernie Sanders, who grew up poor and pretty much in a ghetto, saying “when you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor.” is as incongruent as Donald Trump saying “when you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a mansion. You don’t know what it’s like to be rich.”
The incoherence between the words and the mouth they were coming out of is exactly what makes them so striking.
But let’s not belabor this. After reading all the responses I think the best explanation is that Sanders was using a racial royal we (a royal white?) and attempting to universalize his whiteness in order to match the dominant current Narratives of white privilege, etc, while sublimating his actual experience with white poverty and deprivation. The fact that he has spent so many years in Vermont by definition makes him a little awkward on racial issues anyway which further explains the answer. I have enough now to defend him in another forum.
His best way to win the black vote is to win some big primaries and start getting some momentum. Remember blacks supported Hillary in the early days of 2008 until Obama won Iowa and got some headwind.
His comment was specifically in response to the question: what racial blind spots do you have?
Guys, he’s just trying to win votes.
You people put WAY too much thought behind such bland, un-encompassing words. Bernie is simply trying to RELATE to the average voter. The average voter has seen, for the past decade, poor black hoodlum vs white cop on TV.
Obviously, in reality its the rich/nobility vs the poor. Read “The Locust Effect” for more details on how horrible it is to be in abject poverty in 3rd world countries. http://www.thelocusteffect.com/the-problem
The average American doesn’t even have an inkling of what it means to be living as a “subhuman” in a poor country. The average American comes home from work at 5pm and turns on the TV and sees “Cops Shoot and Kill 13 yr old Black Teen” or “BLM Protesters on the Streets of Baltimore”. Therefore, in the eyes of the average voter, Bernie’s statement is absolutely correct.
You have to understand that all these debates and speeches are engineered to get a point across to the AVERAGE person. Not a Naked Capitlism reader who thrives on reading political discourse and economic trends. All the points Hillary and Bernie made were entirely targeted to a specific subset of the avg voter, namely a Michigan auto factory worker or a poor African American living in Flint (or who relates to the Flint crisis), etc etc. Its all campaigning is in this country.
I agree with the basic tenor of your comments. OTOH, this is also the season of campaign operative scavenging within a broader era of social media nitpicking.
I submit another angle on this ghetto comment:
“More of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’ racial blindspots are showing.
During a CNN debate on Sunday night, Sanders said that white Americans don’t know “what it’s like to be living in a ghetto and to be poor” — assuming that all black people lived in ghettos and were poor, which is a gross misunderstanding of how racism in America actually works.
But when NBC News asked Sanders to elaborate on his comments, he dug himself into an even deeper hole. “What I meant to say, is when you talk about ghettos, traditionally what you’re talking about is African-American communities.” Which, again, is wrong. Not all of black America is poor, and racism works across the spectrum of class.”
http://mic.com/articles/137268/bernie-sanders-tries-to-explain-his-ghetto-comment-and-made-things-even-worse
Which is just to say that black people who are doing okay don’t want to find themselves shoved back into Uncle Bernie’s new and improved ghetto because racism (in hiring, for example) isn’t anybody’s liberal project anymore.
Women could be worried about a similar thing. These are your “well, if nothing else, sexism is something that Hillary gets” voters.
I can honestly say that Sanders owes exactly nothing to anyone who is willing to ignore 30 years of passion, commitment and advocacy in favor of a tortured misinterpretation of a few throwaway “debate” phrases. Even though, should he be elected, all will benefit from the policies he has spent a political lifetime championing.
It’s not a “smoke signal,” it’s history.
Deliberately misconstruing current words in service of an alternate agenda while minimizing or discounting previous actions is an old political trick. It’s how bad pennies like the clintons can keep “credibly” turning up. And genuine articles like Bernie Sanders can be smeared.
Most of the policy positions he offers are color blind. That’s why it felt a little odd that he threw that out there.
That being said, I do believe Sanders was probably trying to ensure BLM activists felt included in his campaign and empowered, the system has disenfranchised many AA people and I can’t imagine that sits right with someone like Sanders.
I lived in Flint, and was poor at times on both the white side and the black sides of town. Bernie is absolutely right. Being white and poor is bad–very bad–of course, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the sheer unremitting horror of what being black and poor is like.
On Secretary of State Clinton utilizing a private server. Is it not flat out illegal to do so? If not, isn’t deleting any of that correspondence illegal? If not, how could that possibly be the case? That type of official correspondence is our information, our business, our history.
Do we really have to bank on the ‘classified’ angle? All of which only reinforces law which says none of it is our correspondence, business, history.
This has been my question about the email issue all along. …. Who gets to move government email outside of the agency that owns it? And why did she want to? Why was she mixing government messages with personal messages? Who would even think of doing that? It sounds like a gigantic pain … And for why?
Sounds illogical to me too. However, the investigations thus far suggest she was not alone and it seems many government employees were also regularly using private e-mail addresses. But what I don’t understand is why the private server located in her private home? Even if it’s innocent, it smacks of pre-meditiated cover-up.
I have always considered the reason for doing it to be “control”. She wanted to control her communications from prying eyes, from outsiders. How effective it was is beside the point. She thought she could have full control over her communications if she did it this way. THAT’S why she did it.
From what I’ve seen with how senior government officials operate, she may have already been using the server, and didn’t want to change once she became Secretary of State. As for the classified information being found – that could also be explained away through overclassification, as well as general sloppiness (I think that happens more than they would care to admit).
That being said, if the State Department is run like other departments, she would’ve had a dedicated team of communications people, who would’ve set up connectivity for her both at the office and at home, as well as when she was traveling. There’s no reason why she would’ve needed to use her own server, when the State Department could have provided everything for her. Did they set all this up for her, and she just chose not to use it? That’s entirely possible.
The most benign explanation, I think, is that she just didn’t want to change her ways. I’ve seen that happen quite a bit, and when you’re in such a senior position, not many people will force you to conform to established procedures. That being said, there’s no way that her own private server provided more reliability and security than what the State Department offered, so this whole situation at least demonstrates poor judgement on her part.
Did all of the admins who had access to her server(s) have the appropriate security clearances?
The obvious suspicion was that she used it for coordinating Clinton Foundation activities with State Dept initiatives that could benefit the Foundation — and all the inherent conflicts of interest and gray areas of legal boundaries. She would not want those emails on an official govt server where she can’t control who will see them.
If the investigation was done properly, the FBI would have walked in her home and seized the email server before she had a chance to delete the 30,000 emails that she claims were just personal chatter. So now Hellery claims they were all just dinner recipes and she skates off scot free.
I also wonder if her email server used secure http (https). If not, then any top secret emails were streaming across the web un-encrypted.
I think you mean something like SMTPS, not HTTPS. Mail transfer protocols, like IMAP and SMTP, are distinct from HTTP, though there some frameworks can/do make use of HTTP in limited ways.
That said, I’m pretty sure most government servers use SMTP, but I’m not an IT guy.
SMTP puts mail in transit to a mailbox on the sender’s behalf. POP and IMAP examine and manipulate mailboxes on the receiver’s behalf. All three have optional provisions for TLS transport security. Which is not a shield of solid unobtainium (see Green et al.’s Logjam attack, cf. NSA’s CORAL REEF cryptanalysis system). The Secretary of State is the sort of high-value target that attracts the attention of competent state-level actors with state-level computing resources and privileged network access. She almost certainly would not have been able to legitimately acquire military-grade crypto for her home server, which algorithms are themselves classified, without all sorts of agency approvals which don’t appear to be in evidence.
I personally think that the purpose of the private server was most definitely to obscure the use of the power of the State Department to grant clinton global initiative favors, making face time with bill clinton privately profitable. Very profitable.
This classification business is just obfuscatory and diversionary noise.
It seems obvious that since “classification,” overused or not, appears to be assigned retroactively, ALL information should be considered “classified” until otherwise advised.
Of course, as is typical of the clintons, it never seems to be a problem until they get involved.
Nixon made his tapes in hopes to use them to write profitable memoirs eventually.
So Nixon was in it for the money. I have sometimes seen Clinton referred to as the “Democrat’s Nixon”. Did she move this stuff to her private server to exploit it for money someday? I have also seen the theory that she moved it all onto a private server so as to hide it all from Freedom Of Information Act requests. Word of that server was never supposed to get out, apparently.
Colonel Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis has written several posts about this private server action.
I think that’s spot on. The record shows that Nixon was convinced that Kissinger was going to throw him under the bus and blame every mistake and mishap in Foreign Policy on Nixon to exonerate himself. So Nixon wanted the goods on Kissinger. That’s also why Kissinger literally had a Mac truck collect all “his” papers the night before he left State. Bill and Dubya simply had millions of emails expunged. We have entered a black hole for historians like myself. The record of who did what and why in the English and Spanish governments during the Armada campaign is likely to be better known and understood in 100 years than what happened between 1993 and today in US governing circles.
“We have entered a black hole for historians”
True dat! The fascinating possibility is that the old-school political/military/diplomatic history may become harder to study than social/cultural history. We may know more about what 21st century consumers– of pop culture and Facebook– were thinking and feeling than what the elites were doing.
OTOH– there is a strong possibility that things will take such an authoritarian turn that studying “history” will become the exclusive province of those who work for the Ministry of Truth :(
At the time she did it, it was not illegal or even against the rules. It is illegal to send or receive information marked as classified or that either the sender or receiver knows to be classified, but plenty of emails are not classified at all.
Since she left, the state dept has changed the rules and made sure everyone is using government email.
I swear I read that Ash Carter uses (or has used) private email for some of his official communications. Uhm, yeah, here ’tis:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/17/politics/ash-carter-personal-email/index.html
I believe both Powell and Rice used private emails as well for what it’s worth (not much).
They changed the law in 2014 I believe.
Not sure where you folks live, but secret and top secret files on a private server are illegal. Use of them goes toward treason. Ask the “little” people that have been prosecuted.
Tell us what difference Clinton using the state department to get “contributions” from foreign nationals to do their bidding, and what Edward Snowden did? Snowden did not profit, and yet he is going to be arrested.
This vapid explanation for treason/influence peddling doesn’t cut it any longer. Big name makes it okay?
there is a difference between a private email account (such as in Ash’s case, and others in government) and a private email server.
With the former one has no control over all of the data once an email is sent since it resides on a server somewhere (controlled by Google, Yahoo, Comcast, or some other email provider). Even deleting it from your inbox, sent file, and archive doesn’t necessarily remove it from the system. With a private server, one has ultimate control of the information and can ensure that such data is deleted permanently from the network whenever needed. This is Hillary’s problem – she went out of her way to control the data in her correspondence which give the appearance she is trying to hide something.
The distinction between account and server is critical (Clinton privatized her server) and thus has been obfuscated by all parties throughout the process.
I agree, although in many cases (such as Carla’s comment) I give the benefit of the doubt that it’s not intentional, but rather an oversight of a rather technical – albeit important – issue.
I do not give that same leeway to CNN, who wrote the article Carla posted. They should know better and it’s either laziness/sloppy reporting or deliberate obfuscation on their part. Readers can decide for themselves.
I have seen only a few articles that attempt to make this important distinction.
That has been the common response, but it does not answer the question of privatization of public property. Those communications were on behalf of an agency and made whilst an employee of that agency, ergo they are agency (public) property. Steal a loaf of bread and maybe die in jail; steal public information and run for President.
Also, too, those former SoS’s were using private e-mail systems run over government servers; not the same thing.
RE: Up From Liberalism Jacobin.
The photo accompanying this article has to be one of the CREEPIEST I think I’ve ever seen. Especially in view of how that “new beginning” worked out.
It looks like those two black women have been taken hostage by a gang of smug, smirking southern white county sheriffs, who traded their white sheets and hoods for expensive business suits for the photo op.
You can almost imagine the hoots and hollers of lesser KKK flunkies, threatening to lynch their husbands or fathers if they don’t cooperate, just outside the photographer’s field.
(Reposting this from yesterday’s comments in Links.)
Talk about vote buying. Wow. And I don’t mean in a good way. The Michigan primary is Tuesday. Funding is from Pritzker. Do the Clintons seriously not get that this looks like vote buying? I’m all for helping the people of Flint, but this is just in unbelievably bad taste two days before an election.
Chelsea Clinton, Flint mayor announce new jobs program
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/03/06/chelsea-clinton-flint-mayor-announce-new-jobs-program/81403878/
According to Weaver, the Flint WaterWorks initiative was developed in partnership with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whose team helped the mayor establish the public-private partnership program.
The initiative is being started with a $500,000 contribution from J.B. and M.K. Pritzker to the Community Foundation of Greater Flint.
If you don’t fund government agencies the answer always seems to be these public private partnerships, which from what I have seen, always seem to cost taxpayers MORE in the long run.
the looting will continue until morale improves…run it into the ground (name any gov’t program), rebuild with public funds, enter partnership with private entity (preferably fire sector), hand all revenue to private entity, retain all risk to the public….and they wonder why we hate them…made good ground this weekend portraying hill as worse than trump, better vote sanders while you still can “folks”, or it’ll be prezzie trump. It’s a numbers game and the elite have been expending a lot of effort trying to get all the dough, but at the same time reducing their electoral impact, probably thinking that citizens united (there’s a real piece of newspeak for you) and national propaganda radio would take care of the rubes, but what it got them was the king of the rubes… Ha Ha Ha…when I run up against a hardened neo lib I just laugh and say “there’s more of us than there are of you”. Also get a big kick out of the angst regarding the unitary executive now that it’s not likely it’s going to be one of their shills in the oval office come january…
Thanks for re-posting this. Hillary is the new “Boss” Tweed. To quote from the Wikipedia entry on Tweed:
Given that the Pritzkers are involved, Hillary’s just taken a leaf from the old Mayor Daley playbook, as first honed by Tweed.
I wonder how many more primaries they can buy this way…
Money can’t buy you love, but it buys primary victories.
Then, with the right person at the Justice Dept, you’re home free, unless people vote Trump.
x1000!
this is seriously disturbing.
Perfect Clinton Foundation headline. Just enough money to make a headline, not enough to do more than hire a few well connected non-profiteers for a year or two.
500K? Wow. Not even enough to fix one block.
Anyone know why the Maine Dem caucus results are “stuck” at 91% reporting?
Probably due to the Portland caucus organizing fiasco, where people were waiting 4-5 hours to register for the caucus. The party officials finally offered participants paper registrations that doubled as ballots. Those pieces of paper will need to be hand counted.
Hats of to them! A real paper trail. I could wait a few days for election results if that means accuracy and honesty.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/04/el_ni_o_rain_and_snow_storms_headed_for_california.html
Link for “California is about to get 100 inches of snow Slate”
I can remember driving through northern California in the nineties in May after a wet El Nino winter and the wildflowers were just crazy. Might be worth a go this year.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-07/ukraine-bonds-jump-on-reports-jaresko-offered-prime-minister-job
I’m sure John Helmer will have a thing or two to say about this.
I didn’t realize Yats lost his majority in Parliament when a pair of parties bolted from the coalition. How much longer can they hold this rickety project together?
Looked her up. Flexian exemplar. Chicago born.
I wonder what Europe shall think about an American on their eastern border.
Europe already has more distracting things to think about.
she worked for USAID prior to taking on her first ukraine role
Redacting reality (intercept-ion)…torture and interrogation are pure signs of failure…govt cosponsored s&m for those who cant afford it on their govt salary…a malady designed to waste resources and create nothing of value…a concept whose only purpose is to create false naratives by excrementing the “missing keys” to preposterous “official” stories…
a boondoggle of the legends, by the legends and for the legends
Unpunished failure of public problems is the first signs of a system on its descent down to disruption and possible terminal conclusion…
The days of the red channel and the blue channel are over…
I hope the lines get long at the whitney…
Corey Robin at http://coreyrobin.com/2016/03/06/two-entries-on-nancy-reagans-birth-certificate-are-still-accurate-her-sex-and-her-color-almost-every-other-item-was-invented-then-or-later-reinvented/ writes on Nancy Reagan and the biography of her by Kitty Kelley. A must read.
I thought this was sort of interesting:
Nancy Reagan and the Problem of the Two Nancys
“There were two Nancy Davises in Hollywood in the early ’50s. One ended up in the White House—the other one ended up flipping burgers in a snack bar.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/nancy-reagan-and-the-problem-of-the-two-nancys/
The Billionaires’ Loophole A tax law helps David Rubenstein perform major patriotic philanthropic works. Is it fair? By Alec MacGillis
Over the years, Rubenstein’s Democratic allegiance has loosened. In 1990, Carlyle put George W. Bush, who had just left the oil business in Texas, on the Caterair board. In the late nineties, Rubenstein and Rogoff still hosted the Carters at their Nantucket vacation home, but they more often socialized with George and Barbara Bush.
In 2000, Rubenstein, Rogoff, and their three children (two daughters and a son, now grown) accompanied Barbara Bush and her grandchildren on a safari. That same year, Rubenstein and Rogoff attended Barbara Bush’s seventy-fifth-birthday party, in Kennebunkport.
Rubenstein has admitted that his relationship with the Bush family affected his politics, but he also developed strong ties with the Clinton Administration. In 2001, Carlyle hired two former Clinton officials—the chairmen of the Federal Communications Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. For years, Rubenstein has refrained from contributing to political campaigns, and Carlyle has never formed a political-action committee. Rubenstein told Reuters in 2012,
“I don’t really try to get involved politically by giving money to politicians or by saying I’m a Democrat or Republican. Right now, I just view myself as an American.”
Last year, when President Obama visited Anchorage, he had dinner with Rogoff at her home.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/david-rubenstein-and-the-carried-interest-dilemma?
What a guy….takes a baker’s dozen, gives back a cookie…..and why Trump and Sanders will get stronger….the establishment pol’s are on both payrolls.
Wells Fargo, Rhode Island Agency Charged With Fraud for 38 Studios Bonds
Yet another public-private partnership successfully creating jobs. For white collar defense attorneys.
Might as well just give that money directly to the People.
California is about to get 100 inches of snow
This link is incomplete as shown:
p://www.businessinsider.com/el-nino-rain-and-snow-storms-headed-for-california-2016-3
should be :
http://www.businessinsider.com/el-nino-rain-and-snow-storms-headed-for-california-2016-3
so again on independent central banks (peter dorman and simon wren-lewis). independent central banks are a replacement for a gold standard. in a world of floating exchange rates independent central banks lend confidence in currencies. but it is a superficial confidence because there really can be no monetary policy sans fiscal policy – so there can be no ‘independence’ in reality. it’s a pipe dream. like capitalism doesn’t need socialism. capitalism is just as incapable of creating a functioning economy as independent central banks are incapable of creating a sound currency. it’s all nonsense.
Haven’t seen much about the upcoming Fox debate. I expect the e-mail server will followed up. Might Fox try and ambush Clinton? MIght they going to go all McCarthy on Sanders?
And can Sanders going to go after Trump’s votes?
Or Clinton the anti-Trump votes??
The whirling daily discussions in the media and blogosphere about Presidential candidates, debates, statements, and who zinged who will all be forgotten in a week, like whitewater rushing down a narrowing gorge.
If electing Bernie Sanders were the goal of the movement he has stirred up, that is a sad and pointless movement, indeed. No, the entire value of his efforts are to get a generation involved, an entire class of the population involved, in taking apart the oligarchy and building a democratically governed nation that is not also the world’s hegemon and policeman. This work will be going on long after Bernard L. Sanders has contributed all he can. We’re not fighting Hillary or the DNC. We’re coming after the plutocrats, now and from here on.
There won’t be any plutocrats in the future. A human being privately owning the wealth of a billion other human beings is going to be an extinct species, just like the dodo bird.
Hillary and the DNC may or may not grasp that they are way behind the times, still operating in 1990 politics. Doesn’t matter if they get it, or if they never get it. They are acting on behalf of the status quo the plutocrats decree, while we all have our backs up against the usual wall of abject and growing poverty PLUS the existential wall of weirding weather and dead oceans and a runaway greenhouse effect about to make it impossible to even be here. And we’re not going along with it for a moment.
Even if Hillary and her superdelegates accrue the numbers to guarantee her nomination on the first ballot, which is increasingly in doubt after March 15th, Bernie is not leaving the race until the convention. We will be heard, and we will change the direction of this nation. Besides, she may not show. Hillary is about to hit any one of five, or all five, of some legal brick walls that will see her testifying under oath, her aides testifying under oath, all singing about a concerted conspiracy orchestrated by Hillary to violate a suite of Federal laws so she could make some scratch.
So how is an evening debate an even contest when she is about to get horse-collared and indicted by the Federal Government? When one fine morning it will be, “Excuse me, Mrs. Clinton, will you please come with us?” She’s unlikely to be in attendance at the convention. She’s going to be “spending more time with her family,” in Washington-speak.
Bernie and we always have the option of an independent run, with a good chance at success. Again, this isn’t about winning an election, this is about getting a whole different direction going in national politics. We don’t have any interest in a standard, “horse race” election ending in business as usual. We want change.
If Bernie does not win the Oval Office, we will simply continue with what we’ve started. We can’t possibly accept the status quo, after all. Does 130 degrees in northern Minnesota sound acceptable to you? There’s nothing between where we are now and that kind of heat if profound change doesn’t happen. It’s a direct line between here and there. We’re on our way directly to that, and that will not do, so we’re way past business as usual.
If Bernie does win the Oval Office, every Congresscritter and Senator will have to wade though the throngs of protesting citizens demanding change. They can look out any window in Washington and see the crowds, rain or shine. We’re coming after the plutocrats, including all their bag men in the Capitol. There will be no obstructing by the Senate or Congress of a nation on its feet.
We cannot do otherwise.
It’s nice to see someone optimistic.
In my mind, the wealthy will continue to prey on the weak ad infinitum. Humans are animals, after all, and pretty horrible ones at that.
Neolithic tendencies, medieval institutions, godlike technology. We can’t change the first, have a tremendously hard time changing the second, and love acquiring the third to the detriment of every living thing on this planet.
I don’t see a great outcome happening anytime soon.
The children see a future of serfdom, and will not accept it. Why should any of us accept it?
:)
Some public education defender friends of mine from Rhode Island told me this walkout was the most inspiring thing they’ve seen for a long time.
“When our schools and kids are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!!”
Amen!! These words lift my weary heart after a tough week of death and other losses. Thank you!!!
Hokie Smoke Bullwinkle!.. $5.2 B-B-B-B-Billion? :o0
Fk Me Man, am I ever in the wrong business, time to get some baby Jesus injection molding dies to China and get them smok’in!
I want some of those socks!… (I am sooo sick of those sock size: “fits 6-12”…well no actually they don’t and what if you’re a 12.5??)
http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/louis-de-belle-besides-faith-070316
Christ! Louis De Belle’s fantastic images of the World Fair for Church Supplies
Words by Rebecca Fulleylove, Monday 07 March 2016
Every two years in Vicenza, Italy, the World Fair for Church Supplies, Liturgical and Ecclesiastical Art happens across three days. For last year’s fair, photographer Louis De Belle decided to capture the sights and eccentricities of the event for his series Besides Faith. “A few years ago in Rome, I stumbled upon many religious shops (some say they sell the best socks, the ones for bishops) and started researching liturgical goods,” says Louis. “It didn’t take long until I found the World Fair and immediately booked a flight to attend. It’s a huge event with around 13,000 people and a big business too.”
The religious goods industry has an estimated worth of $5.2 billion, so with sales in mind it made photographing the fair easier for Louis. “As it’s a trade fair everyone was eager to be photographed and promote the products, though my focus was slightly shifted towards the uncanny side of the event,” explains Louis. From a table full of Baby Jesus’ to a nun perusing ornate chalices, the religious grandeur and faith attached to some of these objects on their own is completely removed when seen with 20 identical versions…….
OT:
I’ll add this special bonus link just for the pic of the polar bear on the melting ice cube in the rock glass
http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/a-smile-in-the-mind-070316
forget religious socks. upsidasium is where the real money is at.
upsidasium is where the real money is at
Ha! Pretty risky stuff, that Upsidaisium.. not so sure I want it Badenov!
The Sierra Club did sell out after all, to McClendon, et al, and just for money, a lot of it. It can’t be excused as some lofty purposed trade-off that went wrong
Now I know at least one of the prizes the Sierra Club Collected for backing Obama’s Sec. of Interior and Queen of Fracking, Sally Jewell. I’m sure there were personal favors to the leadership as well. However Michael Brune, McClendon, and the Sierra Club, can’t take the whole blame for her near sweep of Congress.
Sally is an ex-petroleum engineer for pre-merger Mobil and they must take credit for spotted her talent for corrupting systems early. She was a long play by Exxon-Mobil, while she was still ordering the use of depositors money to financing/underwriting Green Field oil developments for them as a director of some West Coast banks, oil fields opposed by some of the banks own small depositors, but none were the wiser, she’s that good. She even cut the leggs out from under a few of Exxon-Mobil and Shell’s competitors by yanking loans at the last minute, then turned it all into a self-fulfilling prophecy that she saved the “depositors” money from going to companies who’s loan sheets were compromised, probably by her own acts. Finally, 1996 long before running her up the flag pole, Mobil (and Shell) got her into REI and finally got her the REI chairmanship by rigging the vote at REI, to give her a slap on paint job of Green credentials. All the time she was at REI she was still a “non-executive” director for banks funneling money into oil and gas fields.
However well the wash job, anyone with a computer could have searched out Jewell’s background, and her pro-oil (even pro-arctic exploration) background before she was appointed. The money just convinced the Sierra Club managers (and probably many other green groups) not to look that hard.
I want to point out It wasn’t just my friends and I writing to congress to oppose her, it was common knowledge, and even celebrated during and after her nomination and through her approval by a near sweep of the Republican and Democratic Senate . Just as damming, every time there was a chance to it, the progressive press and other organization to correct their mistake they did nothing. The money was too hot in their hands.
Unfortunately, even Bernie Sanders voted for her, only 11 Senators, all Republicans voted against her (…cause Obama). At least Sanders must be regretting his vote, because his weekly record is chock-a-block with statements condemning Sally Jewell and the admin.