Judge Denies Motions by Fossil Fuel Industry and Federal Government in Landmark Climate Change Case EcoWatch (Glenn F). This is a remarkable result. But even if the plaintiffs prevail, I doubt the verdict will survive an appeal.
Judge Tells Wildlife Agency to Protect Wolverines From Climate Change TakePart
This Low-Tech Trap For Killing Mosquito Eggs Is Brilliant Gizmodo (Chuck L)
High Schoolers Use Homemade Nuclear Fusion Reactor To Dominate Science Fairs Slashdot
Driverless bus in Greece has had no accidents in six months Boing Boing (resilc)
Thailand is getting close to becoming a military dictatorship Business Insider (furzy)
US soldiers burned their waste in the Mideast wars — and now it’s killing them New York Post (furzy)
Mossack Fonseca
Edward Snowden Calls On The UK To Demand Cameron’s Resignation teleSUR
Cameron releases tax returns information amid row BBC
How a Cryptic Message, ‘Interested in Data?,’ Led to the Panama Papers New York Times (furzy)
Mossack Fonseca street protest portfolio LBC
@thesundaytimes At midnight, the Sunday Times will release exclusive data on more than 40,000 Panama companies set up by Mossack Fonseca #PanamaPapers 1/3 (Richard Smith)
Small Australian software firm helps join the dots on Panama Papers Reuters
China?
Follow Up on Chinese NPLs Balding’s World (resilc). A really good overview.
Harrowing Trip for Chinese Trawler Before Bump in Territorial Tensions New York Times (furzy)
Nuit DeBuit map (ballard)
Syraqistan
Second Russian intelligence report on Turkey’s current assistance to Daesh Voltairenet. Wat: “I don’t think this would be happening without the express approval of one certain other NATO member.”
U.S. Delivers 3,000 Tons Of Weapons And Ammo To Al-Qaeda & Co in Syria Moon of Alabama
Merkel Ally Erdogan Moves Closer to Autocracy in Turkey Der Spiegel (resilc)
World War Three may have already begun in Iraq and Syria Reuters
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
How a Cashless Society Could Embolden Big Brother Atlantic (resilc)
Look who’s here to solve the Internet of Things’ security nightmare – hey, it’s Uncle Sam The Register
Imperial Collapse Watch
Senators Slam NATO ‘Free-Riders’ in Closed-Door Meeting With Secretary General Foreign Policy
2016
Sanders Wins Wyoming Caucuses for Eighth Victory Over Clinton in Last Nine Contests Vice (furzy)
US election 2016: Sanders beats Clinton in Wyoming caucuses BBC
Where’s My Democratic Party – Especially in California? Tony Butka, City Watch
Bernie Sanders Interviewed by Spike Lee for THR New York Issue Hollywood Reporter
GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, Now Slamming Sanders, Once Said It Was His “Task to Outsource” Intercept
Hillary Clinton’s Take on Banks Won’t Hold Up Rolling Stone
OBAMA: Donald Trump and Ted Cruz ‘have done us a favor’ Reuters (furzy)
Can the GOP Get Together in Cleveland? Pat Buchanan. Glenn F: “Pat has tempered his rhetoric recently or the party has passed him by. He almost sounds coherent.”
Cruz Runs Rings Around Trump in Colorado Yahoo
Cruz wins big in Colorado shutout The Hill
The GOP Is Now Openly Bragging About Suppressing Voters Alternet
What’s going to happen to liberals when the Right begins to give way? Corey Robin. This is what happens when capitalists neglect their duty of job creation and don’t let government do that enough or provide social safety nets to soften the blow. In Japan, unlike here, it was understood that businessmen were supposed to create job. Entrepreneurs were revered for building enterprises that employed a lot of people, not for making money.
The End of Ordinary Politics Archdruid
We Have a Lot. We Can Get More. We Want It All Gaius Publius
Super PAC Backer Says Big Money Entitles Donors to Campaign “Oversight” Intercept (Dan K)
Capitalist Deserter Pfizer Just Got a Spanking Bill Greider, Nation
The wolves of Tel Aviv: Israel’s vast, amoral binary options scam exposed The Times of Israel
Investors, first catch your unicorn then hang on to it Financial Times (David L). Sequoia taking its book. And this is the same Michael Moritz who warned of “subprime unicorns” a mere six months ago.
Big Board Aims to Keep an Upstart at Bay, but Copy Its Technology Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times
It’s the end of globalization as we know it Quartz
Class Warfare
New LA Law: Homeless People Can Only Own A Trashcan’s Worth Of Belongings Mint Press (Judy B)
Why Talented Black and Hispanic Students Can Go Undiscovered New York Times
Global inequality may be much worse than we think Guardian
Liberia is outsourcing primary schools to a start-up backed by Mark Zuckerberg Marginal Revolution (resilc)
Antidote du jour (martha r):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
239 comments
Comments are closed.
Re the article on US soldiers burning their waste and it killing them:
“The VA is refusing to admit that my cancers are service-related. It’s frustrating. I have $100,000 in medical bills because I have no coverage.”
I (apparently naively) thought that the VA covered vets no matter what, sort of the way medicare covers seniors. But OK, by that reasoning, I then assume that the medical coverage provided to congress is also only “service-related,” meaning that members of congress have to prove that they got whatever brand of cancer or illness that they may have as a direct consequence of their service? I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that’s not the case. I believe FUBAR is the technical military term for this.
Also, very illuminating and informative article, but there is precisely zero mention of what might have happened with all of the Iraqi civilians that were presumably exposed to the same toxic smoke, albeit perhaps in lesser doses… Silly rabbit, news coverage is for Westerners.
On a different note, I was pleased to see that this other article entitled “Rigged race means Hillary takes more delegates in Bernie’s Wyoming win” was also trending:
http://nypost.com/2016/04/09/bernie-sanders-wins-democratic-caucuses-in-wyoming/
They means test. You can get care if you aren’t service connected if you are low income. I was hospitalized shortly after we arrived in Virginia with pyelonephritis for 5 days. My cost was $9. If I want care there these days though, I’m going to be charged out of network costs for my care(which really sucks because it meant I had to take my records from there to a civilian doctor for an ongoing condition.)
Re: Cameron Tax Evasion
What is now even more mysterious than before is, why did Cameron not release the actual tax filings themselves? “Information used in the preparation of tax returns” doesn’t equal “the tax return”.
And why does he think, like some sort of political creationist, that the world only began in 2010 and nothing that happened before then has any meaning?
Note to Cameron PR hacks — when in a hole, stop digging. You’re making the Clintons look good.
I think he felt safe in his position, no one sane wants Osborne either. Boris Johnson’s name keeps cropping up. He may be snarky and play the clown but everyone knows he’s just “another one”. But the petition to call an election (despite attempts to supress it) has now reached well over the necessary 100,000 — 120, 898 as I type.
It seems to me the BBC and The Guardian have been derelict in not asking what happened to the old man’s and mother’s money when they saw Alex’s name crop up – it obviously went somewhere. Instead the tabloids are doing the digging! His manuever to get TRUSTS kicked out of the OECD protocol for transparency have people hopping mad.
Having your very own tax haven is part of the quarter-million pounds club in Britain. You fly out on the de riguer yearly vacation, taking in the attorney while elbowing the missus shopping and shimmer home with a new tan. Panama is a streeeetch; lots of hookers and bars and the shopping is so tiresome there.
Sam Cam is nearly as loathed as he is ! A salary of 53k pounds for an assistant to dress you and pour over your social dates is seen as beyond a little precious. But it’s nicely competitive with Her Slyness’ 600 dollar haircuts at Bergdorf’s.
Doancha just love it when the tabloids turn on someone you intensely dislike for once??
I wrote some agitprop on Oped News about the defocussing and misdirection to which we keep being subjected over the papers and the tax haven, money laundering issue, esp. in the US. Blame it on Obama who is still deflecting. The Plutocrats on both sides of the pond don’t want us to catch on …
Lovely little video on the home page…
http://www.taxjustice.net/
Thanks for this, Skippy. I was aware of the taxes to regulate the behaviour of taxpayers, but hadn’t thpught of it as a two-way street. Nice music, too, I love pizzicato.
No prob…
Lovely little video on the home page…
taxjustice.net
oops
BBC:
I’m old enough to remember when this kind of reasoning would be criticized as `moral relativism’ by the right.
Today, it’s a Rashomon world.
Yes, right-wing morals are very relative, in my experience. “It’s OK when we do it!!”
Moral relativism: only caring about oneself and one’s RELATIVES (as carefully specified in one’s legal trust).
That should be ‘Nuit Debout’
Why are the Clintons (yes, plural) acting like they’re losing when they’re still extremely likely to get the nomination, given the delegate math? All they have to do is go through the motions and avoid big losses — and given the demographics of the remaining states, big losses are highly improbable — and they can sail on to Hillary’s coronation. I really don’t get the desperate attitude.
If there’s anyone who’s thoroughly disgraced himself in this campaign season, though, it’s Paul Krugman. He’s degenerated from a semi-rational economic pundit (by US media standards, anyway) to a mindless celebrity shill. Having alienated so many of his readers, I’ll be surprised if he keeps his job in the Times after Hillary loses the general.
The Clintons know they are losers when they try to have a rally and almost nobody shows up.
That happens to the best or most popular of us.
the best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of a passionate intensity
The Clintons are doing what they’re doing because they don’t know any better. I think they generally got freaked out that Sanders is this close to them. She had the party leadership rig the debate schedule, she bought off super delegates through the Hillary Victory Fund, and she had 25+ years in the spotlight.
This was supposed to be a coronation. O’Malley was supposed to be the liberal beard who’d drop out after Super Tuesday. Sanders was supposed to be the fringe liberal scold–the Kucinich who would quickly fizzled after Iowa and NH.
The Clintons, and by large the establishment Democratic Party didn’t realize just how angry the plebs were.
So now we’re at the point where the infamous Clinton paranoia steps in…where they’ll do anything to crush their opponents even if they’re in the lead.
In the Clintons, we’re watching the last of this type of 20th century style campaign. That should be noted, at least.
The Clintons are the Democratic version of Richard Nixon, just as paranoid, but not nearly as liberal. They can’t help themselves, it’s like a pathology. Their ambition and amorality will eventually destroy her as it nearly did her husband. I’m willing to wager that if she does win the presidency she’ll either have to surprise people by being much better on the issues than everyone suspects, or she’s going to be in real trouble quickly. She’s not going to have that benefit of the doubt Obama got, even when it was clear less than a year into his term that he was a neoliberal fake, there will be no rationalizing Hillary’s ideological betrayals, it will be a case of “I told you so.” The angst that fuels the Bernie movement isn’t going away, if anything it’s likely to get more intense and better at making the Democratic Party’s collective life unpleasant.
well they’re up by something like 210 delegates, that seems possible, and it’s a whole lot closer than they expected to be at this stage of the campaign.
The “delegate math” from Wyoming as reported by msnbc this morning:
Sanders wins the caucuses by 12 points but, WHEN THE NUMBERS ARE “CRUNCHED,” Sanders gets 7 “pledged” delegates and clinton gets 7 pledged delegates plus the 4 previously “declared” superdelegates for a final tally of Sanders 7 and clinton 11.
Maybe they’re acting like losers because, except for their quickly discarded southern African American “firewall” and democratic party “delegate math,” they are. And they know it.
The more times she claims a “delegate” victory from a big popular loss, the fishier the whole thing looks.
Bernie “wins” Wyoming, but that b*tch walks away with more delegates? Where’s the f*cking guillotine already?
Yes, its odd – the maths is still very much against Bernie, even if getting better by the day. The Clintons are harming themselves by their obvious panic. The sensible political strategy now is to play it cool, say nice things about ‘how us Dems know how to have a good policy argument but stay friends’, and focus on keeping the super delegates on side.
I suspect their panic comes down to having had a nice plan set out, which is that they would by now be already focusing all guns on the Reps (mainly by stealing their policy clothes), and Sanders is messing it all up. And also that they are nowhere near as competent politically as people think they are.
One guess: The money backing them isn’t playing it cool; the money’s genuinely worried about its investment not paying off… and many of her biggest donors have already maxed out.
Can’t imagine wondering when the FBI will come knocking makes for a restful night’s sleep, either.
Barry told the Wall St crowd he was the only thing between them and the pitchforks.
Hillary is part of the Wall St crowd
ergo
Hill will be spared any pitchforks
(plus it kinda looks bad if members of your administration get indicted, Barry is big about keeping up appearances.)
You don’t even have to be the highest paid lawyer in New York to come up with ‘She’s getting the Lynndie England treatment to protect some men higher, because woman.’
At Obama’s instructions Eric “Place” Holder didn’t prosecute the biggest financial crimes in the history of humanity, I think there’s *zero* chance Loretta “Lynn” Lynch will bother herself about a few illegal emails.
I prefer to call him Eric “Hold’em & Fold’em” Holder. Nothing will come of this unless Bernie or the Republican’s get in.
Not sure about maxing out.
Maybe distracted by March Madness, or with filing taxes.
Also, perhaps busy reading Mossack Fonseca news.
Her fundraising at this stage means she’s having to spend too much time in closed-door $2700 events and not enough time getting the press-worthy photo ops.
From February but still relevant:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-donors-218569
Certainly, Sanders supporters may or may not put up another $27 (avg.) donation, but they’re nowhere near the allowable limits. I have heard repeatedly from progressives who give “weekly” to his campaign in small increments…
A) For the Clintons its not a political campaign, its a fight for survival. President Sanders is less likely to issue pardons for email scandals and a political revolution would mean the New Democrats wouldn’t have anything to trade.
B) They’ve lost a presidential primary before even though they thought they owned it.
Its not logical, its adrenal.
Hill is gonna look really bad…yes, she might have enough delegates to get the nomination but Bernie shows no signs of giving her something for nothing. She will have to give him “something” to get his support. Also, I personally think that, barring extensive vote tampering, Bernie might end up with more real delegates. If she wins with only superdelegates, does she really “win”? And if she barely wins in real delegates but Bernie ends up on a winning streak of most of the last states and everybody in the whole wide world can see the primaries were fixed from day one by Dastardly Debbie scheduling debates on non-viewing days to limit the exposure of both candidates…well, yeah, there’s that..
I’m trying to consider how Sanders prevents a double cross.
Unlike Clinton I don’t think he’s going to want a token part of her administration and a promise that next time can be his turn if he plays nice with the DNC.
Could Bernie choose a running mate who is not bound to stay in the party if they lose at the convention?
Bernie is healthy, but by the next time, he is in his eighties, finishing his terms in the nineties.
It might still work – low caloric intake and lifting weights…and eating beans, organic beans (not from near Fukushima though)….and detoxing often, to rid of microplastics.
Bernie has nothing to lose going all in. He’ll be 75 this year, and has 2.5 years left on his Senate term.
Bills legacy is also an issue. No one is writing books about how smart and wonderful he was as President because he was a terrible President who enjoyed the tech bubble.
Deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, environmental degradation, the destruction of the Democratic party, Alan Greenspan, worthless foreign policy, free trade, and of course minor graft. The Clinton Administration was nothing to be proud of. Hillary is his only shot at salvaging a legacy.
Unfortunately, considering her record at every office she has held means that America will suffer for no reason, even that won’t happen. It will solidify how bad he was, not salvage it.
I fully expect 2020 to be disastrous if she is elected even if she doesn’t get impeached by then. The unhappiness that is fueling both of the outsiders in this elections will expand, and unfortunately get even less rational.
The struggle doesn’t end one day in November 2016.
Be prepared for the establishment to become more entrenched, nastier, more aggressive should one single People’s guy gets into one single position of power.
There will be light at the end of the tunnel, but that tunnel will be long (but fear not), and so, there could be many disastrous years ahead.
Agreed, the Iron Heel will not go gently into the night because the people seize the Presidency.
This is just round 1.
The OverClass would exert itself to the utter maximum to try stopping an R-controlled Congress from impeaching a President Clinton. The OverClass is investing so heavily in Clinton in order to get a Third and Fourth term Obama Administration. They really don’t want to see that slip away in the noise of an impeachment.
And only the bitterest Tea Party Hearty Rs would disobey OverClass orders to NOT impeach a President Clinton. So no. She won’t be impeached if she is elected.
Is Bill thinking ‘Hellery can save the Clinton legacy’? Or is he thinking ‘We are gonna get so freakin rich selling legislative favors’? Hahaha.
If I was the White House Butler, I would be bolting down the furniture in anticipation.
She will be 69 in January. She and Bill already look terrible. They want the White House where they will be the ones handing out favors not begging for money.
Yes, sitting on the veranda of their own personal plantation once again, swatting away the flies.
She’s got forgetfulness from either than brain blockage or the meds she gets for it. He looks like he’s getting transfusions.
Here’s the deal for me, just as a starter; I wouldn’t trust either one of them with the nuclear codes they way they are.
Again, the question of undergarment comes into play.
“This is for both candidates: Regular underwear or adult dignity diaper?”
Some may think that funny, but as America becomes grayer, this is how we can educate ourselves.
‘If I was the White House Butler, I would be bolting down the furniture in anticipation.’
… and substituting ‘silverware’ made with the same advanced plating technology that keeps quarters shiny.
Their popularity could collapse. The super delegates were created for a collapsing candidate, and the Clintons likely made two promises: to raise oodles of cash for state and local parties who collapsed under Obama and believe money is the solution and to draw young women who don’t vote. The Clintons are hoarding the money for their brown nosers and are despised by young people. Her ceiling can only go down.
She’s tied against the non Trump Republicans. The media and Sanders have largely treated her as a saint. Wait until a Republican asks her any question about John Podesta and the revolving door between government and lobbying.
As to your last sentence, Trump might ask that but no other republican will because they are as complicit as she is.
That’s why Sanders needs to start hammering her on this yesterday, otherwise it will soon cease to be an issue.
Until we see more state and local candidates raise money directly themselves (not just through one single source) from small donors, or we have mandatory public financing, the game stays unchanged.
We need game changing at every level.
Sandercrats are the only regionalocal candidates worth supporting with such direct funding methods. Hopefully the Sandercrat Movement works up very thorough lists from DogCatcher and Drain Commissioner on upwards of who are the Sandercratic Candidates and who are not. And all cross-coordinate at and between every level to give their funding ONLY to Sandercratic candidates.
Indictments and threats of indictment in exchange for a hall pass from the deep state would be one explaination of why the Clintons are sabotaging thier preordained coronation.
The Clintons do have a problem. Sanders is winning enough pledged delegates to make the super delegates a serious issue. There is a palpable sense the nomination is being stolen from under our noses. This works only for a narrow group of people, far too narrow, and represents a major weakness in the general as you correctly point out, “…after Hillary loses the general.”
The chattering class keeps referring to this as, “Hillary must be careful not to alienate Sanders’ supporters…”, but that is wishful thinking at best and subservient ass licking is closer to reality. Few indeed are going to be pacified by Hillary’s super arrogant use of super delegates to force her dynasty upon a doubtful public and the media is only exacerbating the problem by trying to cast a complete blackout over this aberration of democracy not to mention their facile categorization of Sanders voters as just needing a little PR talk from the likes of Bill or Paul Krugman to set things straight.
If Hillary somehow manages to crown herself queen in spite of the will of the people, it will have little to do with the people and a lot to do with just how far down the rabbit hole we’ve gone.
“Hillary must be careful not to alienate Bernie supporters.” Thing is even if Bernie never decided to run, the people who are now Bernie supporters were already alienated by Hillary. If Bernie had not run, the candidate who would really be kicking ass right now would be….Trump. I will vote for anybody who at least admits the Iraq war and the disastrous trade deals were mistakes.
I’d rather have Trump than Ted Cruz. I’d rather be invaded by Canada than have Ted Cruz in the White House. Heck, even Mexico.
Ted Cruz is the one candidate who would actually make me vote for Hillary. I look at Trump’s recent struggles with trepidation…
The PTB decided on Hillary and their power is something to behold. The extent of that power is the real revelation to me in this go around.
But they initially thought Trump would do the boogyman trick; everyone would jump in her arms. But no, Trump vs. Hillary is too close for comfort. This is why Trump has had a complete media makeover in the last month; giving him three heads and babies stored for snacks in his freezer. He is portrayed with stunning consistency accross the media as worse than Ossama bin Laden. He helped out a bit here and there (suspect he started out to help Hillary but is now dog chasing car, tongue out – and remains so), but without the media pivot, he would have the nomination right now.
The only difference with pro wrestling is the candidates end up believing this sh*t.
I recently got in a FB clash with an upwardly mobile black homemaker. I suggested race issues cant be solved till class and , as a concillitory sop, unsecified economic issues are solved first. She ignored the class and denied the economic troubles in SARCASTA-CAPS. People avoid fears by identifying with their captors.
Tsk, tsk, tsk……you forgot to use his title. Shah Cruz…….our own little theocratic President so we can have the country run biblically just the way the religious nutballs want.
You mean Ayatollah Cruz, don’t you?
Paul Ryan and John Kasich, if selected at a contested convention, could also make me vote for Hillary more so than Trump could: Their economic policies, social security privatization support, and anti-abortion views would make them just as dangerous as Cruz, particularly w/ republican majorities in congress. Whereas the politics of Trump appear to be hastily constructed on a napkin over lunch and tend to shift with the news cycle and GOP and establishment media pressure, the views/policies espoused by the likes of Ryan, Kasich, and Cruz are based much more on long held beliefs and principles–dangerous true believers. Dems and lefties shouldn’t get their knickers tied up in knots over a Trump general election candidacy, for his lack of a clear enough majority of delegates has opened the door for the GOP elites to snatch it from him at the convention and give it to a more effective evil.
I have read, perhaps here, that Hillary doesn’t need Sanders supporters.
She will move to the center and pick off moderate Republicans and conservative Independents.
Depends who she runs against.
Trump: Yes she needs them badly.
Cruz: No, she only needs two votes (hers and someone else’s).
She’ll try. The problem is there are no swing voters. One votes for their party, a fringe party protesting the relevant party, or doesn’t vote. Maybe five people in the country actually go, I like Trump’s wig but Hillary rocks the pant suit…I don’t know.
59 million people voted to make Palin VP, and Republicans hate John McCain, always have. They aren’t crossing over for Hillary Clinton.
A million more people voted for GWB than Romney, and 6 million more voted for Obama than Kerry. Some of the later is population growth I’m sure, but there are a few million swing voters.
Also, just getting people to stay home instead of voting is a common tactic. Both Trump and Cruz are so hated, there is a good chance millions of people will just not bother voting. Hillary is hated enough the same will happen on the left, but to a lesser degree if polls can be believed.
It would be a shame if all those people stayed home. They could still come out and vote downticket and vote about referrenda and initiatives. Do they not realize that?
I think most people just see it as one huge corrupt enterprise and nothing they do can change that. Having an inspiring candidate at the top of the ticket gets them to care.
Why would anyone want to vote downticket? The downticket Dems are all the superdelegates in the tank for Clinton. Any chance my congressperson had of winning my vote was lost as soon as she decided to support Clinton despite an overwhelming win by Sanders in my state. That and she’s married to a billionaire.
That’s compared to 2012 which was a very partisan election, in 2008 Obama got 10 million more votes than Kerry, but I don’t want to give credit for “the whole country is falling apart, lets try the other party”.
They are all partisan elections. Swing voters are a myth.
Virginia has a growing population, and Jim Webb, he killed a guy, and George Allen, noted racist, both had more votes than the once very popular Mark Warner did in 2014 with Democratic control of the Senate at stake.
The GOP is getting older, but the Democrats aren’t receiving the benefits they Imagined. Mark Warner is basically the perfect Republican and the GOP candidate only needed 22,000 more votes to win. Gillespie, Warner’s opponent was a nothing who wasn’t taken seriously by GOP donors and had no major point to his campaign beyond name recognition to run for governor.
She needs Sanders supporters to win if she gets to the general. She may not like them, but she can’t count on getting the lions share of “moderate republicans” (which in the present is an oxymoron in my view) and conservative independents to offset the loss of Sanders supporters since quite a few moderate repubicans and independents may favor the GOP opponent if that candidate is effective in framing policies in moderate terms. I could see her throwing Sanders supporters some disingenuous progressive bones to get their support for the general or scaring them with the threats to America on the abortion and safety net fronts from the GOP.
Al Gore came within a few hanging chads of the presidency (or one Supreme Court Justice), and won the popular vote, all with Nader launching the most successful leftist campaign in some years. She doesn’t need Sanders supporters as long as they stay home. Of course she can probably guilt enough of them anyways, after all look at those scary republicans.
I would normally agree with you, except that Gore is not Clinton. No one should ever forget that Clinton has the highest net negative score of anyone who ever ran for President EXCEPT Donald Trump. She may be counting on Republican moderate voters holding their nose and voting for her, but I think that is downright foolish. Some may, but many will crawl over glass to vote against her.
Admittedly the primaries are not the general but turn out for the Republican campaign has been greater than for the Democrats, Even with more competition than she has, she isn’t running over Trump vote wise. And while I think the moves they are making indicate they think they won’t be facing Trump in November, unless it is panic, it is stupid to think that some of his voters won’t turn on her as much as on any other Republican they might nominate. She needs every Democratic voter she can get. Every single one.
Hell, about the only damn person I think she might beat is Trump, and I’m not even sure about that. And I say that as someone who might have to reconsider my decision to never vote for her again from 2003 for the first time if they nominate Cruz.
Cruz and Trump both have worse favorables than Clinton. Those two are likely to be the nominee.
If it’s not either of them, the Republican party will be in full revolt. If ever the Dems could get someone hated into office, it’s this year.
Alienation already done. I know no one under 40 who will vote for her if she gets the nomination. #BernieOrBust is real.
What would it take me to vote for Hillary? The reanimated corpse head of Nixon attached to a giant robot body a la Futurama shouting “Nixon’s Baaaaack!”
Hellary is counting on older voters.
The irony is that she, not Bernie, is the one who’s going to cut social security!
I’m waaaay over 40 and will not vote for her.
I know someone who is 65 who was making vague noises a few weeks ago about how Clinton stands for things, women etc. But a few days ago I saw her again, and she’s now completely anti-Clinton and hoping Sanders gets the nomination. I can only assume that between then and now she sat down and actually researched Clinton (perhaps spurred on by my unfavorable reaction to the idea of voting for Clinton?) and didn’t at all like what she read.
Other than name recognition Clinton only has two selling points: what she supposedly stands for and ‘experience’. Any serious inquiry into the subject reveals she doesn’t stand for much of anything; she’s an opportunist who flip-flops all over the place based on whatever is cynically calculated to be expedient at any particular time. The handful of things she actually does show consistency on are mostly horrible. As for ‘experience’ well, she has held a lot of different positions. And been inept at best, evil and destructive at worst, in all of them. The most charitable verdict is that her career is one of utter mediocrity.
Well, there’s also the fact that she has a (D) in front of her name. So there’s a core of people who will vote for her because they’ve always voted Democrat, and other people who will put some thought into it and hold their noses to vote for the ‘lesser evil’. There are people out there who would probably vote for Harlan Ellison’s sadistic Allied Master Computer if it ran as a Democrat.
And I know NC doesn’t want us making aesthetic judgements of female leaders, but it doesn’t help that her looks and manners are that of a cackling witch. In fact the term seems made for her. “We came, we saw, he died. HAW-HAW-HAW!”
https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/hillary-clinton-shoe-duck-2.jpg
The glamour fell away when startled by the flying shoe…
There would be snowballs in Hades before I would vote for Trump and I suspect I am far from the only person who supports Sanders who feels this way.
I would vote for Trump to keep Hillary out of the White House. On the other hand, if Cruz is the republican nominee, I will vote for Hillary and a straight Republican ticket down ballot in the hopes that they will impeach her before the misterms.
I could vote third party if its Trump v. Clinton. I would vote Clinton if its
Brand Name R versus Clinton.
No one asked but, I want to upend either party. The puppets are dancing hard from Wall St strings and I want someone not dancing to their tune. Sanders or Trump. Both are against trade deals and aren’t taking money for their campaigns from Wall St and both don’t buy the line on 9/11. IF Sanders, my choice, that would be super-fantastic. If Trump, one would have to think the Congress would keep him in place for his more egregious tendencies. Can’t vote for either HRC or Cruz. If it’s either or, I’ll write in Bernies name.
One might take the view that, with Sanders out of the picture, gridlock is the best option. Imagine a first 100 Days with TPP passage and a Grand Bargain (could happen from either party), with the press sighing about the wonderful effectiveness of a government that’s not divided.
I dont think any Bernie supporters will hold their nose and cast their ballot for Clinton. At least I won’t. It’s a Bernie write-in all the way.
Have these people even bothered to look at the demographics? Have they taken any time at all to consider what it means that almost every demographic group has abandoned Clinton? Independents, young people, young people of color, middle-aged people, the poor, the middle and some of the upper-middle, men – have they thought about what that means? Have they discussed or thought about the fact that Clinton is considered untrustworthy by something like 63% of the country?
All I keep hearing is that she’s gotten more votes than Sanders – but have they talked about whether she can win the states in November that she’s won in the primaries?
Thursday’s debate could be quite something – it could make a difference for Sanders, not just in NY, but in the states that still have not voted.
If you want to beat Hillary, no place is sweeter than New York to do it.
It’s her ‘home’ state.
Wall Street is there.
A big apple in any candidate’s eye.
Now is not the time for senatorial collegiality and quid pro quo legislative horse trading, Bernie needs to channel his inner warrior and take the gloves off for New York, if he can get around Hilary’s New York Maginot Line then we have a good shot.
I fear for California, my friends there say that very reasonable informed people are planning HRC votes, don’t know what the DNC put in the water there…
Did the California friends say why they are voting HRC instead of Sanders?
Feel the Eternal Burn:
Hillucifer / Krugthulhu 2016!
Interesting read:
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/08/with_saudi_and_russian_ties_clinton_machines_tentacles_are_far_reaching_according_to_panama_papers/
“The Saudi regime is one the largest donors to the Clinton Foundation. It has poured between $10 million and $25 million into the organization, which has been accused of carrying out an international money laundering scheme.
Perhaps most egregious of all, huge arms deals approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department also happened to place weapons in the hands of governments that donated money to the Clinton Foundation — including the autocratic Gulf regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar — an investigation the International Business Times found.”
Hellary our soi-disant ‘fighter’ for (rich) women has no problem taking beaucoup bucks from the Saudis and seems to have no problem getting them plenty of guns.
The Clintons figured out that War and its affectations is much more profitable than cattle futures and shady land deals.
That the almost incomprehensibly corrupt clinton foundation and its master-slave connection with the federal government has not become the foremost issue in this election season must surely be the eighth wonder of the world.
The craven incestuousness of it all is so overwhelming that it just does not seem possible.
I’m noticing that where there be messes in the world, the stench of the Clinton Foundation and of USAID be upon it. In the deeply disturbing Hubert Sauper documentary, We Come As Friends, Hillary, USAID and George Clooney were all present in the background. Is anyone seriously tracking or investigating their nasty entanglements?
A genuine genius would have transformed the foundation (though it still needs more money) into the permanent standing committee of the politburo of the party.
Maybe they will still get it done.
Perhaps the Clinton’s saw this graph of Bernie closing the polls over the last year. Hellery’s trend ain’t lookin good.
https://twitter.com/sugelema/status/719172262612611073
That poll is much more about a Sanders surge than about a Clinton decline. It’s a nice trend, but, really, what does Hillary have to DO to finally convince Democratic voters to bail out on her?
I continue to scratch my head over how any reasonably well-informed, non-elite Democrat could find any appeal in Hillary Clinton, much less regard her as the Dems’ best bet in November.
Obama declares Hillary innocent
Time to move on, little people.
Yeah, lets ignore this, but god forbid those Medical Marijuana dispensaries might have served someone with a prescription they lied to get. Can’t always move on.
IOW “she hasn’t made me look like a liar and a war criminal yet despite being incompetent and careless with our security, so sure we can move on, now that Manning and Snowden and…”
He isn’t even trying to hide how little he cares anymore.
If you want to run against Hillary Clinton, you have to be prepared to run against Obama and the Clintons…the status quo.
It’s a personal decision – to cross the Rubicon or not.
Nevermind that Chelsea Manning is rotting in jail for doing something as “benign” as she did for the good of the country. Screw Obama and the horse he rode in on.
Obama either now knows for sure there will be no indictments, or he has decided to use the bully pulpit to tip the scales of justice regardless (just as he did for then Bradley Manning only thumb down in Manning’s case). This is the grand new American presidential tradition (I know, traditions are not generally new – but they have to start somewhere) of declaring a verdict before a trial.
I think Yves’ point (in other threads) that Obama does not like Hillary suggests that 1) he has not gone feral yet (one of the clean ones as Joe Biden likes to point out) where he needs to be brought to heel, and 2) has been given his marching orders from his own corporate bosses.
Oh brother! He actually used the word “careless”? I repeat what I said 2 days ago, the Clintons are like the Buchanans in “The Great Gatsby”. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Read more at http://www.allgreatquotes.com/great_gatsby_quotes8.shtml#PgcZL0yEGMM8XVAx.99
Kinda of reminds me of that “there’s rape, and then there’s rape-rape…”
Actually…the interview on fox means he has thrown her under the bus…expect billary to have a massive medical issue soon…val jar(ie berria) werx in mysterious ways….
As president, I continue to think(kauf hak) she did not put the national security interest at risk…but since my ag and fbi heads are soooo independent, as prez I just wont get in the way of the pending grand jury…
oh well billary…so much for telling the party to ignore me in the 2014 election…
evenger is a dish best served ice cold…
Have to disagree. I think O threw the FBI under the bus.
The interview means that he and Rupert Murdoch are on the same page –
Goldwater Girl is their gal.
You think Hillary has got something on O?
Or Decorum – no sitting president shall criticize (or should avoid the best one can), previous presidents (and their spouses), including not to make them look bad.
It’s a small group.
Legacy. Sanders is a campaign against the status quo and not a continuation of Obama. How does Obama look if Sanders turns NSA data to the IRS?
Obama would prefer a candidate more like him.
why are they so panicky given the delegate math? I think it’s the Fbi steadily working its way up the food chain. A single indictment would flip all of her supers, and if/when it comes, it won’t be one count, but tens or hundreds… And maybe the foundation, too, if they uncovered those emails.
The scariest thing is that Obama will neither obstruct or pardon, and lynch knows Comley would loudly quit if she refuses to indict in the face of overwhelming criminality… No doubt prompting senate committees to jump in with subpoena powers.
Hill wanted to be able to sell favors out of state, much easier to do with her own email not subject to Foia… Many in gov knew about it, but didn’t become public until that Romanian, just now extradited to Us by Fbi, hacked her and her buddy blumanthal with his cheap computer… Kind of like how Nixon’s brilliant taping came to light…
Lots of juicy stuff on her plate, must be distracting. I feel her pain.
Pass the popcorn.
They aren’t losing it. This is the same strategy as ’08. Go racist to pick up the white vote. Those white people were cheering BC going off on the black protestors. The Clinton’s aren’t running for the mythical D vote, they are running for the Reagan, Bush voters that hang out in the D party and indies, plus disgruntled Rs.
Isn’t BS current run about over? I thought he was to lose NY, and some of MD,RI, DE,CT and PA and then he was to pick back up in the west?
They aren’t trollin for indies. As it is they practically spit while pointing out that Bernie isn’t a “real Democrat”, with that kind of behavior you can be certain that they won’t garner the support of independent minded voters.
“WW3 may have already begun in Iraq and Syria.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but Obama basically won the presidency on the claim he would withdraw completely from Iraq. Instead, we still have troops in the region. The American people know very well that our foreign policy is stupid, ridiculous, and evil. Hence the rise of Bernie, and yes, Trump. Give Trump credit for making Jeb Bush run home to his momma by calling a spade a spade and saying the Iraq war was a disastrous mistake. I will cast my one vote for somebody who is anti-war, if there is such a candidate. I heard Caspar Weinberger on some obscure radio talk show about twenty years ago, and he said something which stuck in my mind: “It’s hard for a democratic nation to start a war, because the people are always against it.” I wanna be one of those pesky people, always against war.
I see the US has now deployed the B-52 bomber fleet to fight ISIS.
I assume blowing up ISIS bad guys one at a time with drone Hellfire missiles is too slow. Let the True Carpet Bombing begin. Should spawn some wonderful election year teevee video and Hellery Fire Breathing Atmospherics at her rallies.
i was wondering what the targets would be, then i realized, wedding parties.
Hospitals. Baby food factories. Water treatment infrastructure.
Of course, first responders since Obama introduced the double tap.
I recall just a few weeks back reading that Russia ended their air campaign because they were satisfied they hit all the ISIS targets. So now I am wondering what our B-52s are gonna do? Make Syria safe for European refugees? Someone needs to give me a scorecard. I can’t keep track.
Yes, yes it does. Until you realize that most of the action in Syria has NEVER been about Daesh. That is has all been about bringing about regime change (and destroying the Syrian Kurds if you are Turkey) without saying it. It is why the obvious Daesh targets were never hit. It is why Erdogan’s son in law could make a fortune selling and transporting oil for Daesh.
So what could they want now, except perhaps the thing they wanted all along, but who am I to say.
But what you describe was the state of things BEFORE Putin intervened. Putin messed up the plan and really did knock out ISIS, if we can believe anything we read anymore. So maybe we are going in to finish off Assad without our allies of moderate ISILs? That could be, but, like I say, I’m having trouble keeping track of what inning we’re in, which team is the enemy, and are refugees coming or going to Europe. I guess Russia might even look the other way, because even Putin mentioned it may be time for Assad to go. But Russia still has strategic interest in Syria as a country. Not to mention Iran/Hezbollah support for Syria.
ISIL is still in Iraq no?
Also, I got the impression the Russians were more interested in making sure Assad didn’t lose than actually win.
The Russians know Assad would win an election. All governments rule by the consent of the governed, even dictators. People fled to Assad controlled areas in Syria. Syrians aren’t about to risk a change. They’ve largely driven rebel forces into the desert and abandoned areas which can be starved to death. They already won. They don’t have enough first class soldiers to go put and clean up the country in short order. They had militias who could fight the enemy at the gates, but an army in the field is very different than what exists in Syria. They have to be judicious with their top tier soldiers.
Jordan joining the Russian strategy and closing their borders was a significant event. Iran coordinated Shiite militias have hammered ISIS in Iraq, but creating armies capable of advancing is fairly difficult. Given Iraq’s sectarian problem which was exacerbated during the occupation, the Sunni don’t want to replace ISIS with Shiite overlords, and the Shiite fighters have little interest in fighting to protect the Sunnis.
AFAIK, Isil is still in Iraq and now in Libya too.
Russia has always been allies w/ Syria and Assad was blocking the Qatar NG pipeline project which would compete with Gazprom NG sales to Europe. So any friendly Syrian leader would do. Most likely someone Iran/Hezbollah likes. Then we’ll need to put Isis back again. Baseball forevah!
I’m pretty sure they won’t be actually targeting ISIS any more than the Hellfires were. It took the Russians to do that. Which makes me think this is more about Putin and his support of actually fighting the terrorist ‘rebels’ and not demanding regime change in Syria, and not fighting terrorism. We have been too busy arming them to really be about that.
As someone outside the loop its hard to know if the fact that the Russians, with fewer and overall inferior aircraft that carry, on average, less, and less accurate, ordnance, were able to pave the way into Palmyra in a matter of days being suppressed, or are there not enough journalists who know anything whatsoever about military affairs to bring the most obvious truth to light. The American F-15E is probably the best strike aircraft on the planet. Marine Corps Hornet pilots also know how to hit things with a load of high explosive. The US should have mopped the floor with ISIS in a matter of weeks. Their continued existence as a coherent political and military force can only be the result of deliberate policy that both political parties covertly adhere to. And the press has to be either complicit in that policy or hopelessly incompetent. That they are both likely complicit AND acting as a drumbeat of ISIS hysteria speaks volumes.
“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”
– William Randolph Hearst, January 25, 1898
Smash the MSM.
I have some friends that are either ex or current Navy and AF fighter jocks. A major, a colonel, a Navy commander. Privately they will tell you that the top of the line Russian Suhkoi fighters are superior planes. Their air-to-ground ordnance is, as you mention, not as accurate as ours. But their air-to-air munitions and dogfight capabilities are superior to ours, enough to put even top pilots in our planes at grave risk. As one told me, “You come up against Russian pilots in one of the newer Flankers one-on-one or two-on-two and you’re probably dead meat. At best, you’re in deep, deep trouble.”
Howdy Doody has more knowledge of and control over what he says than the MSM.
The Russians have a much longer history of using aircraft in support of ground forces – the use of ‘flying tanks’ is something the Russians have been using since the Il-2 in WWII, and the Night Witches biplanes. It is fundamental to Russian battlefield strategy. The US has always given lip service to this, primarily because the USAF hate the role. Even the A-10 was always conceived as more of a tank buster than a close air support aircraft and drones have their limitations. It was always intended that combat helicopters would carry out the close support role, but in Iraq they proved far too vulnerable to ground fire, such as mass firings of RPG’s, so have not been with real success.
But the fundamental reason the Russians have been so successful is that they did not rely on air support. They have, in the Syrian Army (with the very significant help of Hizbollah) a very capable ground force who know exactly how to fight this type of war. In strengthening them with amor and using sophisticated electronic warfare to suppress the weaponry and control equipment used by the Al-Nusra and Isis forces, it tipped the balance very firmly to Assad. The Russians, quite simply, fought with greater ruthlessness and focus and intelligence.
Doctrinally, you are absolutely right. But US pilots have been bombing the daylights out of places for years. They have much more combat experience than Russian pilots, and that counts for a ton in aerial warfare. My larger point, however, is that the US isn’t even trying, and the Republicans, Democrats, and press all know that but don’t seem inclined to share that information with the citizenry.
Daesh, call them Daesh. Isis is the goddess of rebirth in Egyptian mythology. Let’s give her back her name.
Good call. Bob Dylan will probably appreciate it as well.
…and the writers of Archer.
It’s mostly the US media that calls them ISIS. US government uses ISIL and most of Europe uses Daesh. Once again our media is ignorant.
I’m in Germany. I follow the German and British press, which both use ISIS. Please stop spreading nonsense. Thank you.
Fair enough, press is ignorant everywhere.
The dots are all out there to be connected; we have truly evil policy makers, principally in the State Department and Executive Branch who have sold us all out for the filthy lucre of the MIC and Zionist controllers. We have no need or right to enable the dual citizen neocons to establish Israeli hegemony in the ME; because that’s really what it is all about, other than total world totalitarian domination of course.
Well, when you have America, Britain, France, Russia, Turkey, and many smaller actors all lobbing bombs around…it DOES start looking like WWIII. And with nuclear weapons in hand in Israel and perhaps hidden in other’s…it only takes a miscalculation to unleash Armageddon. And isn’t this where we always knew it would start…in the scramble for oil? America’s policies can be seen as a series of absurd blunders…or as a deliberate attempt to sow chaos in the region requiring our eternal interference. I’m w/the latter theory. Not to mention the MIC payoff, making, using, and selling more bombs.
Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
Hermann Goering
“The Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper” – Dick Cheney
Birds of a feather
when are we going to restrict how much crap the elites can own? like houses and cars and planes.
RE: US soldiers burned their waste in the Mideast wars — and now it’s killing them New York Post (furzy)
There have been suggestions that Beau Biden’s brain cancer may have been the result of exposure to these burn pits during his time in Afghanistan.
No way that could ever be admitted, though, since the VA liability triggered would be enormous.
The sheer range of toxins likely to be produced by such open fires would make any sort of causal ‘proof’ almost impossible, even though it is a very likely hypothesis.
Of course, what the article didn’t mention is what the impact is on Iraqi’s, especially children, who were exposed to this over much longer periods (not to mention such things as DU and other war toxins).
The incineration of the waste generated numerous pollutants including carbon monoxide and dioxide—the same chemical compound found in Agent Orange, which left many Vietnam vets sick after it was used as a defoliant.
The writer pointing a finger at CO and CO2 does make me wonder about the value of a contemporary liberal arts journalism degree? Isn’t waste destruction down to CO2 and CO the ideal objective of a well designed incinerator?
I think some concern should be directed at dioxin formation from mixed waste, low temp, incomplete incineration and very likely ingestion of airborne DU dust and various volatilized heavy metals from batteries and electronic waste. Very bad sht.
An investigator might wonder what differentiates these burn piles burn piles in Vietnam? Probably more chlorinated plastic waste and volatilized metals, and of course exposure/ingestion of alpha emitters (DU dust), the latter being a likely death sentence
http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin/catalysts.html
I thought CO and CO2 where adequately covered in high school science class. Then again in Global Orangeing.
It is a probability, but the author of the reporert isn’t doing the case any favors when they write something sloppy like:
I suspect the author meant dioxins for the later, as dioxide is another chemical name for an ionic oxygen (molecule) of two atoms, like Carbon Dioxide. The former, carbon monoxide is a common toxin present in the atmosphere, but which can inhibit oxygen transfer at a sufficient dose/exposure time but is not carcinogenic or teratological.
.
What’s particularly interesting about dioxin, etc, is that the health impact from this massive industrial scale polluting, the use of spent uranium ammunition**, has left deadly legacy in Iraq that kills far more men, women and children than does ISIS, yet it’s only an issue (and barely) when US military might be affected. ( ie. Fuck the rest of the world, and fuck our poor when we can get away with it). The USA has given Vietnam peanuts for all the Dioxin sprayed over their country, and given nothing at all to Cambodia or Laos for their dose of dioxin.
## Normally, Agent Orange as sold over the counter in the USA, does not contain dioxin, but Monsanto spotted the opportunity to use the Military spraying programs to clear out stocks of otherwise legally unsaleable substandard reject products. Doesn’t that say something about the criminality of the MIC and the failed democracy that’s suppose to keep it under control?
**the toxicity of powered / vaporized spent uranium is by multiple powers far more deadly when ingested than long term exposure to gama particle emissions from new uranium fuel pellets). Our army helps reduce our waste storage levels by spraying spent uranium as ammo it all over the Balkans, the Middle East, as well as Military weapons ranges inside the USA (which is why parts of Colorado do have high cancer levels, Yves). Most of the 30 mm chain gun ammo used to kill the the civilians, like in this video, left a haze of vaporized uranium in Iraq which will never degrade or go away. There’s no half-life for uranium toxicity.
Yes, that error about ‘dioxides’s is blatant – but to be fair, its a likely spellchecker error – I assumed reading it they meant dioxins and furans. Dioxins hang around a long time so it should be simple enough to test the areas around waste burns for it – but for obvious reason nobody is likely to do it. The problem with dioxins are that they have an impact via the hormonal system which means it has a range of difficult to predict impacts – it actually suppresses some cancers (but makes others more likely). Different types of exposure can potentially have very different impacts on health and the cancers caused. Which is why establishing a cause/effect is so very difficult, even in the case of proven exposures. Dioxin also biomagnifies, so if, for example, children are drinking a lot of local goats milk from animals grazing in exposed areas, they will be getting a particularly high exposure.
DU of course is disastrous. Its been known since the 1980’s at least that its use on ‘hard’ targets spreads active radioactive waste – thats why in Europe A-10’s were only allowed target practice at sea (there is a small chunk of Scotland which is off-limits because of its initial use for high calibre target practice). But this was conveniently ‘forgotten’ when everyone was getting excited by modern ‘precise’ smart weaponry. And its not even all that useful as a weapon – as you say, it is mainly used because its such a cheap way of getting ride of mid-range nuclear waste.
Ah ic you covered those points! I suspect fact check error, not spell check error
We may have to increase the money (reparations) we send over there.
They’ll admit crap after a good batch of them are dead, just like Vietnam.
Driverless bus in Greece… drives the robots to work and to the robot mall to consume all the “stuff” the robots make.
Not much different than how it used to be if you think about it.
I wonder if Yats has a Panama problem?
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-yatseniuk-idUSKCN0X70JO?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
Are you kidding? The Kiev cabal is one of the most openly corrupt operations out there. Yats has a too many brownshirts and no way to control them problem along with rampant unemployment and a collapsing government at all levels. The Netherlands wont let them into the EU, and Merkel, Cameron, and Hollande are embattled leaders who cant run to his aid. Americans who know where Ukraine is dont support any kind of action or lending activity.
The Panama Papers are meaningless.
btw, it’s Nuit “Debout” : literally “night standing” figuratively, “Up All Night”
via DailyRadical History @radicaldaily
These sound like the words of a dangerous extremist. That’s why Albert Camus warned us in “L’homme revolte” that all revolutions contain the seeds of a totalitarian dictatorship.
I don’t know that the methodology is exactly scientific, but the FreeLancers Union is tabulating wage theft from freelancers (i.e. unpaid invoices). Add your line items to the World’s Longest Invoice here:
http://www.worldslongestinvoice.com/
Argentina’s La Nación reports on former president Cristina K’s final bucolic days in retirement in Patagonia, before she heads back to the capital to face the music on money laundering charges:
Reportedly, Argentina is arranging emergency popcorn shipments from Uruguay, Brazil and Chile, as local supplies have been exhausted.
Okay, I made that up. But the rest is more or less true.
Per Wikipedia, Kircherism is generally considered to fall into the category of left-wing populism.
The ideology of Lula’s Workers’ Party is Socialism of the the 21st Century.
Then there is Venezuela, another ‘socialist disaster experiment.’
How do you view candidate Bernie the Socialist Sanders?
Domino theory:
Bernie is not an exceptionalist and (unlike those listed above) is not a crook. That’s more than enough.
What about Venezuela?
He dislikes Venezuela too, Ive seen him post about it before.
Anyway, comparing Sanders to them is a bit unfair. Sanders isn’t a state socialist but a democratic socialist. Theyre not the same thing at all.
I enjoy Jim’s updates down south.
Them make me wonder if socialism doesn’t work, or if there are outside forces undermining it.
Could it have worked if they have the global reserve currency? Or will socialism with global reserve currency merely outsource wealth inequality abroad?
Would it work better if we combine Gaia green socialism with a People’s Money, created and injected into the economy from bottom up?
Of course the only industry Sanders wants to nationalize is health insurance, of which we have dozens of working examples.
One might start to think he isn’t a socialist at all, but just used an easy term that the republicans were going to throw at him (like Obama) anyways.
“socialist” is the term that repubs throw at anyone who isn’t to the right of them.
Are you equating, or seeing as similar, Hillary and Dilma?
Bernie keeps correcting his “socialist” tag saying he is a “social democrat”, presumably in the hope that numbskulls in the press might understand the meaning. It’s what Germany was roughly between the period post Hitler and pre Merkel. Another disaster story?
If you’re going to be “ostracized”, El Calafate is not a bad way way to go! Kirtchner’s made a fortune there.
We will see if the predictably mercurial nature of Argentine public sentiment that result from Argentina’s economic downturns and currency devaluations that strip wealth from the citizens has an adverse effect on Kirchner. Maybe so, as she is merely a former politician rather than a connected frmr military member.
like my greek grocer quips about pols in Greece “They stole too much this time”. Like drug dealers, the Kirchner’s became very blatant and didn’t know when to stop. Serious graft I think is best done behind closed doors, I think Nestor was pretty blatant. Maybe tolerated in a rising tide, but the knives come out when things go south.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/9076133/The-Argentine-president-and-her-empire-in-the-south.html
Some balance for todays conjectural tandem…
“Oho!” said the pot to the kettle;
“You are dirty and ugly and black!
Sure no one would think you were metal,
Except when you’re given a crack.”
“Not so! not so!” kettle said to the pot;
“‘Tis your own dirty image you see;
For I am so clean – without blemish or blot –
That your blackness is mirrored in me.”
-Maxwell’s Elementary Grammar
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/More-Dirty-Money-Mauricio-Macri-Accepts-Illegal-Campaign-Funds-20160410-0011.html
Excellent articles and links this weekend, Yves. Thanks.
Where’s My Democratic Party – Especially in California?
This is a great little article on politics in California today. Much enjoyed.
From the article;
“What can I say?”
That’s all? “(H)e talked so smooth and pretty?”
That was not the only time he got fooled, was it?
‘Cause I know at least one other guy who talks like that.
The title of this article might mislead some people. Achieving nuclear fusion isn’t new. But until the reactor produces more energy than it consumes, it’s just another drain on the local utility’s electric power supply.
I thought the article was about another Disney kid genius movie. Then I read it. It also has an adult genius that works at MSFT for his day job and does genius atomic stuff at night with kid geniuses. Disney is upping the genre.
Last I heard in the “real” world, Princeton researchers with Ivy League funding still target 2135ish for something net energy positive and can run longer than 100 seconds or so. The doohickey is in a big building and they can’t take it to science fairs, however.
2135 is a nice round number when looking for grants. Not 2130 or 2140, gotta love implied precision where you can find it!
They may not have clue one on how to actually achieve a net positive energy balance but at least the committee can agree on a date.
(full disclosure, IMO its a more cool way to throw money in the pit than most)
Go team Princeton!
If they can get it to work, it does nicely solve a lot of problems….
Who, the science fair kids or Princeton?
On second thought, doesn’t matter which, it would indeed be a game changer
My bet is still on Princeton.
Lockheed sounds pretty confident about their fusion reactor. Would be cool no matter who figures it out.
Considering the science faire kid’s surviving children will be shitting themselves in assisted care living in 2,135 –given the choice I guess Princeton is the safer bet for us moderately numerate gambler.
Oopsie. I just realized I forgot what century I’m in. I mean 2035. How embarrassing.
Before I read the article, I thought the reference to fusion was a metaphor for solar energy, and that the author was having fun with us. After all, the sun is powered by nuclear fusion.
http://insidestory.org.au/keeping-the-sea-lanes-open-a-cost-benefit-analysis
One e of the convictions that drives military policy in the developed world is a shared belief in the importance of keeping sea lanes open.
……
The 1967 crisis, which began with the Six-Day War, resulted in the closure of the canal for eight years. This lengthy period provides useful evidence of the impact of such a closure, evidence that has been neatly analysed by James Feyrer and summarised in an article for VoxEU.
Feyrer begins by working out the average increase in shipping distances between countries caused by the canal closure. For any given country, these increases can be weighted by trade flows to give an average effect. For a few countries, like India and Pakistan, the trade-weighted increased shipping distance was large (about 30 per cent) and so, it turns out, was the impact on trade and economic activity. Mostly, however, the effect was smaller. For example, the increase for Britain was 3.3 per cent and for France 1.5 per cent.
Feyrer estimates that, in the long run, a given proportional increase in shipping distances – say, 10 per cent – produces a reduction in trade of about half that proportion (in this case 5 per cent). Further, he estimates, a reduction in trade produces a reduction in national income or GDP that is about 25 per cent as large.
To produce an estimate of the total impact, we need one more number: the ratio of seaborne trade to national income. This is hard to measure precisely, but a figure of around 15 per cent looks reasonable. With this in mind, we can run the numbers for Britain and the Suez Canal closure. A 3.3 per cent increase in shipping distances should produce a 1.6 per cent reduction in trade, which is equivalent to 0.24 per cent (0.016 x 0.15) of GDP. The loss in GDP is 25 per cent of this, or around 0.06 per cent of GDP. The corresponding number for France would be about 0.03 per cent.
Is this a lot or a little? An obvious basis of comparison is defence expenditure, which is typically around 2 per cent of GDP, and is commonly thought of as being equally divided between armies, navies and air forces. On that basis, naval expenditure amounts to about 0.6 per cent of GDP, ten times the cost to Britain of the blocking of the Suez Canal.
To compare these two numbers properly, we need one more piece of information, which is more speculative than those discussed so far. How much difference do navies make to the openness or otherwise of commercial sea routes? On the historical evidence, it might seem, not very much. The one major intervention since the end of the second world war, Suez in 1956, produced exactly the outcome it was supposed to avoid.
Advocates of military expenditure can always argue that it’s only because of powerful navies like that of the United States that we don’t see lots of attempts at closing sea lanes. This argument, like the case of Lisa Simpson’s tiger-repelling rock, does not admit a definite refutation. Still, given the relative magnitudes, the counterfactual in the absence of naval expenditure would have to be a chronic state of crisis ten times as bad as the blocking of the Suez Canal.
=======================================================
Reminds me of how much is spent on “intelligence” monitoring and the military, which fails at actually preventing terrorist attacks. Of course, advocates say we would be overwhelmed by terrorist attacks if not for all this spending – even though what appears to have actually stopped further hijackings is locking the doors….but where’s the profit in that?
Any loss in the GDP due to fewer sea lanes, can be made up for by employing more GDP counters to catch under-appreciated GDP activities, to include, among other things, hair-styling at home, organic vegetables grown in backyards all over America, self-service health care (such as Zen meditation), etc…
The End of Ordinary Politics Archdruid
“Those of my readers who don’t happen to know any people from the salary class, and so haven’t had the opportunity to hear the kind of hate speech they like to use for the wage class, might want to pick up the latest edition of the National Review, and read a really remarkable diatribe by Kevin Williamson—it’s behind a paywall, but here’s a sample. The motive force behind this tantrum was the fact that many people in the Republican party’s grassroots base are voting in their own best interests, and thus for Trump, rather than falling into line and doing what they’re told by their soi-disant betters. The very idea! It’s a fine display of over-the-top classist bigotry, as well as a first-rate example of the way that so many people in the salary class like to insist that poverty is always and only the fault of the poor.
May I please be frank? The reason that millions of Americans have had their standard of living hammered for forty years, while the most affluent twenty per cent have become even more affluent, is no mystery. What happened was that corporate interests in this country, aided and abetted by a bipartisan consensus in government and cheered on by the great majority of the salary class, stripped the US economy of living wage jobs by offshoring most of America’s industrial economy, on the one hand, and flooding the domestic job market with millions of legal and illegal immigrants on the other.
That’s why a family living on one average full-time wage in 1966 could afford a home, a car, three square meals a day, and the other necessities and comforts of an ordinary American lifestyle, while a family with one average full time wage in most US cities today is living on the street. None of that happened by accident; no acts of God were responsible; no inexplicable moral collapse swept over the American wage class and made them incapable of embracing all those imaginary opportunities that salary class pundits like to babble about. That change was brought about, rather, by specific, easily identifiable policies. As a result, all things considered, blaming the American poor for the poverty that has been imposed on them by policies promoted by the affluent is the precise economic equivalent of blaming rape victims for the actions of rapists.”
and this:
In both cases, please note, blaming the victim makes a convenient substitute for talking about who’s actually responsible, who benefits from the current state of affairs, and what the real issues are. When that conversation is one that people who have a privileged role in shaping public discourse desperately don’t want to have, blaming the victim is an effective diversionary tactic, and accordingly it gets much use in the US media these days. There are, after all, plenty of things that the people who shape public discourse in today’s America don’t want to talk about. The fact that the policies pushed by those same shapers of opinion have driven millions of American families into poverty and misery isn’t the most unmentionable of these things, as it happens. The most unmentionable of the things that don’t get discussed is the fact that those policies have failed.
It really is as simple as that. The policies we’re talking about—lavish handouts for corporations and the rich, punitive austerity schemes for the poor, endless wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, malign neglect of domestic infrastructure, and deer-in-the-headlights blank looks or vacuous sound bites in response to climate change and the other consequences of our frankly moronic maltreatment of the biosphere that keeps us all alive—were supposed to bring prosperity to the United States and its allies and stability to the world. They haven’t done that, they won’t do that, and with whatever respect is due to the supporters of Hillary Clinton, four more years of those same policies won’t change that fact. The difficulty here is simply that no one in the political establishment, and precious few in the salary class in general, are willing to recognize that failure, much less learn its obvious lessons or notice the ghastly burdens that those policies have imposed on the majorities who have been forced to carry the costs.
It’s easier to be roused under a dictatorship.
When the people voted for the politicians, at every level, in a creeping series of lesser than two bad choices (principles and perfect choices are for daydreamers) who put into all those policies, it takes a little longer to wake up.
“The people are responsible in a democracy, until they are not, or not able to.”
I read the article and his endless hammering of the undifferentiated “salary class” (which I occasionally teaching as an adjunct with a Ph.D. and my wife as a high school teacher with two Master’s degrees making 58,000 working full-time in a district across the border in NY must be in, just like Krugman and Yellen) is way too close to “four legs good, two legs bad.” I was waiting for the denunciation that we must liquidate the salaried as a class the same way Stalin got rid of the kulaks. The idea that you are noble because you are a worker is as ridiculous as thinking you are better than others because you have more money. It’s stereotyping at its dumbest.
I was going to, but forgot, mention, what’s the cutoff for the affluent 20%?
Is it really affluent? How much are we talking about, salary per year-wise?
When he introduced the term in January in “Donald Trump and the Politics of Resentment”, he explicitly caveated that not everyone falls neatly into one of those four classes (emphasis mine):
Note also that the source of income is not dispositive of the magnitude of income, a separate, significant contributor to economic and social prospects. The two named outliers, the profit class and the royalty classlet, each span nearly the whole gamut, from the Uber jitney driver to Koch Industries, from the indie folk musician to the retired Hollywood director. In the particular case of the wage and salary classes, the precarity of that income is a separate contributor to economic and social prospects.
Duke sociology prof Kieran Healy’s forthcoming paper, “F— Nuance”, seems an apropos recommendation.
Government retiree pension class.
http://www.bettergov.org/news/six-figure-pension-payouts-soar
“F*ck Nuance*” (PDF) [Sociological Theory]. “Abstract: Seriously, f*ck it.” (Water Cooler, March 28, 2016).
Pure class warfare.
And it isn’t even particularly logical differentiation. Plenty of “the wage” class are higher earners than “the salary class”, many of whom are probably workin toward minimum wage based on real time served, so to speak.
The notion that either wage or salary class employees (both of whom incidentally work for wages, either pre-defined or related to hours worked) are even calling the shots on how the legislated benefits derived from “offshoring” are concentrated seems a poorly considered notion.
Stated more simply, isnt wealth concentration less related to salary/wage income, more related to interest and special benefits income?
Hmm. You regard rental extraction, corruption, and facilitating crapification as morally neutral, then? Even Adam Smith didn’t do the first.
If the US wants to spend so much money on War, then pray continue. The US controls NATO – those in control get to pay the bills.
Would it not be better for the US to cut its defense budget? The current policies don’t have any appearance of making the world a safer place – for example the war between the CIA proxies and the DOD’s proxies in Syria.
re: “High Schoolers Use Homemade Nuclear Fusion Reactor To Dominate Science Fairs ”
Thanks for that link. Science is a challenging, interesting, and creative process. Great to see high school students so interested in this wonderful endeavor.
re: today’s antidote –
“Tiger Tiger, burning bright, ….”
Really good video laying out the case that Hellery will be One Hellofa Warmonger ‘n Chief. Ugh.
https://youtu.be/pIRfeVcG-eM
Youza!
I’ll just leave this here, seems apropos:
(CNN)President Barack Obama said the worst mistake of his presidency was a lack of planning for the aftermath of the 2011 toppling of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/10/politics/obama-libya-biggest-mistake/index.html
Is Obama utterly unfamiliar with the history of Iraq since March 19, 2003?
Or Afghanistan? Or the fact that in Kosovo (however you feel about this particular invasion) the Clinton administration did properly plan how to do the transition. Didn’t Obama hire a bunch of Clintonites back?
uh, a warning of the video’s graphic nature would have been appreciated.
Yeah, ur right sorry, did not occur to me.
thanks. it’s not the first time it’s happened. i feel neither ignorance of nor blindness to the horrors of war; unfortunately, i’ve seen these pictures all my life.
nonetheless, i made a conscience decision to eschew violent images many years ago, be they in “entertainment” or reality. i sleep way better.
Obama: Not going to help Hillary get out of FBI investigation
Let us hope.
I am not hopeful about that.
As President, Obama can pardon her in advance – but that wouldn’t look so hot… now would it?
as if mr. obama had any say..
I used the search function on NC to see if this was already posted. Apologize if this is a repeat. Go to the bottom of the page of the link for the front page .pdf.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/04/09/etrump/JPOQJZK9hUBdBx5rdPkWFK/story.html
Now The Boston Globe needs to do a front page for President Hillary Clinton with second coming print at the top that reads:
WAR BEGINS AGAINST RUSSIA & CHINA
Nuclear War Expected to Continue; Wealthy Unaffected
I’ve been working out my own plan for survival. I figure if I can track the movement of all the Victoria Secret Girls, then when they suddenly all catch a plane and converge at a single location in the country, I’ll then know where Dr. Strangelove converted the abandoned coal mines into luxury 100 year bomb shelters. I estimate I’ll have about 24 hours to catch a plane there and find a way in. Still working on that part.
Pluck your eyebrows, shave your legs?
The Victoria Secret Girls are pretty intimidating. I was thinking of maybe offering to carry their luggage.
Yeah, better plan. Besides, how heavy can all those silkie skimpies be?
I can bench press 240 lbs 10 times.
OK, you’re good for the makeup, shoes and hair dryers!
Hey, dude, don’t get all, like, greedy there. That’s two Victorias Secret models you’re aiming at. Have a heart and leave one for other ‘personal assistants.’
For those who came in late:
“A spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!”
don’t forget:
“Social Security payments frozen after retirement age raised to 75”
“Clinton Foundation wins Nobel Peace Prize”
“Chelsea Clinton named NY senator after Kirsten Gillabrand named to cabinet”
On the Chelsea headline, I think “reluctantly accepts” is probably too long for the headline, but should definitely go in the lead.
Maybe a president Hillary Clinton doesn’t get a chance at China.
South China Sea won’t wait.,,a key item on the agenda of the upcoming G7 meeting, per South China Morning Post.
Driverless bus in Greece had no accidents in six months.
Can we also say the same about leaderless Greece having no accidents?
“The prime minister’s office has been completely automated. Voters’s votes go directly into the CPU of a giant computer called Democracy 101, and voila!, directly democracy. You can even vote from your bed.”
The country does seemed mixed up. A gyro steers the bus pushed by 12 starving Greeks because Greece can’t pay for diesel imports. Maybe they’ll get it figured out someday.
In the states the President will soon be called FNNFKD(1, 2, 3, …, n)
Landmark Climate Change Case — While they appear to have found a judge willing to let the Plaintiffs be heard, one can easily imagine the counter argument that will sink it: the US Military, being the primary consumer of fossil fuels, will be cited as an overriding concern for the defense and security of the nation. The arguments will proceed with proof that every segment of the commercial economy requires fossil fuels to function — including renewable energy production — and that the Government “in good faith” and “weighing all interests” is doing “the best it can” to transition.
Conservation groups have no ground to stand on because they accept tax-exempt donations from foundations set up by the very corporations that are profiting from both fossil fuel extraction and so-called renewable energy infrastructure development. All of the “renewable energy” produced thus far has not diminished the consumption of fossil fuels / emission of GHGs, nor is there any evidence that it could; so the argument that fossil fuels need to be “abandoned” and “substituted with renewables” is baseless. Abandoning fossil fuels would mean ending industrial civilization and nobody in a position of authority wants to do that (nor has the power).
In any case, it is too late to avert the catastrophe. Earth’s climate stability is breaking down with accelerating rapidity and now nature’s release of methane gas is having a forcing impact greater than human emissions of CO2. The massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting, and numerous other feedbacks have kicked in. New scientific studies expressing increasing alarm at the unpredictable and accelerating pace of climate changes are coming out more often, but human behavior remains immutable and loathe to change, especially the privileged, highly consumptive wealthy people who exert nearly total control over institutions and government.
Some say that money, or the love of money, is the root of all evil and they point to short-term-gain capitalism as the systemic evil. Actually, I think it is the obsession with self and the disdain for nature that has been the seed of our self destruction, and we in Western societies especially, have allowed this perversion to dominate all other impulses. Nature will be the ultimate arbiter of cosmic justice and we humans stand guilty.
The following was the lead item on my Google News Page load, which should be good news, but instead of Hellary’s beastly head, it showed a head shot of Bernie Sanders, with no explanation. Just shows that NC’s earlier posts about Google’s marketing arms working for Hill-Billy were spot on.
I was just thinking earlier today that, instead of going to Rome, Bernie should visit Libya.
Just to emphasize a point, non-verbally.
Then, add these:
“I believe it was a mistake, just like the Iraq War (take that Donald Trump) to get involved in Libya.”
“I promise not just aid, but because it was a mistake, I promise reparations. Morally, it comes first free college tuition.”
A screen shot would have been useful. You could tweet the screen short, and then embed the tweet?
Sorry, I don’t tweet, Google+, or fecesbook, etc; so I didn’t think to take a screen capture (on my desktop). Links won’t work a dynamic page like news.google.com. Any other suggestions for my future reference?
For Windows computers, Alt+PrtScrn takes a screenshot of the application with the focus, saving it to memory called “clipboard.” Open Paintbrush (Start > Run pbrush) and paste the contents of the clipboard there. You can save the file and forward it…if Lambert’s submission form ever gets fixed…;-)
Yes, I know how to take a screen shot. I just don’t know how to submit it as I don’t blog, don’t have any social media accounts, and as you note the form is broken. emailing doesn’t seem to work, probably everything I send gets in the spam bucket.
Well, the screen shot probably isn’t for you. Tweeting the photo and then embedding the tweet would probably be the best way, but if you don’t have an account…
Panama firm usurped name of Red Cross to hide money [AP]
“It’s easier that way.”
Shouldn’t we be celebrating their attempt, however careless, to find a Pareto optimal solution?.
http://www.investors.com/news/technology/amazon-microsoft-among-techs-that-say-employing-economists-adds-up/
Good news for those who don’t like Apple, Google, et al and want them to go out of business: they’ve begun employing economists.
>World War Three may have already begun in Iraq and Syria Reuters
“Though arguably the story of Islamic State, Iraq and the United States can be traced to the lazy division of the Ottoman Empire after World War One”
It isn’t ‘arguable’, and it started in 1914 when the British invaded and laid claim to ‘Mesopotamia’ (actually the Italians started even earlier, in Libya in 1911). Whole vast swathes of history have been flushed down the memory hole here in the West; the “whole disgusting scramble” as Woodrow Wilson called it (and it must have been bad for that scumbag to dislike it) to carve new colonial assets out of the carcass of the Ottoman Empire. No one remembers the 1920 Iraqi Revolt against the British, or the Churchill Doctrine of village burning and aerial terror bombings to impose order on the ‘uncivilized tribes’, or his willingness to use gas on civilians. There’s a direct chain of events and blowback stretching back 102 years that has brought us to our present circumstances. If there is clash of civilizations going on, we started it. We may have forgotten, but the Arab world most definitely hasn’t.
“They hate us for our freedoms” my ass. The more I learn about this history, the more I hate us, and I’m not even one of the victims.
The Wolves of Tel Aviv. Wow. Fine criminal minds there.
Guralnek sat in a call center with about 50 other employees, many of whom were new immigrants fluent in a variety of languages. His job was to call people around the world and persuade them to “invest” in an ostensible financial product called “binary options.” The clients would be encouraged to make a deposit — to send money to his firm — and then use that money to make “trades”: The clients would try to assess whether a currency or commodity would go up or down on international markets within a certain, short period of time. If they predicted correctly, they won money, between 30 and 80 percent of the sum they had put down. If they were wrong, they forfeited all the money they put on that “trade.” Guralnek soon saw that the more trades a client made, the closer they came to losing the entirety of their initial deposit.
He had been instructed to present the binary option as an “investment” and himself as a “broker,” even though he knew they would most likely lose all their money. “The client isn’t actually buying anything. What he’s buying is a promise from our company that we will pay him. It’s gambling and we’re a bookie,” he says now.
Before he started the job, the company gave Guralnek a week-long sales course in which he was taught enough financial knowledge to sound good to a customer who knew less than him. He was also instructed in high-pressure sales tactics.
“They taught us how to make people uncomfortable, how to answer objections, how to keep them on the phone.”
The training session was known as a “conversion course” and the goal was to learn how to turn a telephone lead into a customer by taking their first deposit. At his company, salespeople were not allowed to take a deposit of less than $250.
During the sales course, the company’s management gave Guralnek advice that haunted him later. “They told us to leave our conscience at the door.”
The article does clear up a mystery.
Most of the customers of Sam’s company were from the United States, even though it is against US law for companies to sell binary options to US citizens in this way. Additional clients were from Africa, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Many had clicked on an ad hawking ways to “earn money from home” or watched a video that claimed to reveal secret investment strategies.
“The majority seemed to be… the stereotypical dumb person,” recalls Sam. “You don’t even realize that people like this exist outside of movies. They actually believe that they’re going to become a millionaire just by doing this. And it’s almost sad.”
Asked about his managers, Sam said they were young Israelis who appeared to think it was cool to rip people off.
As clear a message there is that it is all scam all of the time. Beyond the bounds of reason, something like this grows to employ thousands of people in Tel Aviv, right under the noses of officials
“Why should I be blamed for selling something to stupid people?” a woman replies. “If someone is over 18 and wants alcohol, cigarettes, a knife, a binary option account, it`s his own responsibility.”
“If you don’t like it, don’t do it,” reads another. “Work what you feel is an ‘honest’ job, make your 6,000 shekels (approx $1,500) a month take away, spend it half on rent and live like a rodent with the rest of it.” He continues, “While the Binary and Forex industry and I pay 50% taxes on our salaries to pay for your health care, social security, and security, I can speak for all of us, we don’t need to be judged.”
“There’s so much money pouring into the city; it’s literally an industry here — I’m including forex too. It’s probably paying for the subway system we’re installing. Can you imagine thousands of people in Tel Aviv out of work?”
That’s why the official nose smells nothing, even though a rotten fish is inches away.
“It is doing terrible harm to its victims, and it risks doing the same to Israel’s reputation.”
Israel’s business reputation has been terrible for decades. Whether it be Gene Simmons surprising scheming Israeli businessmen discussing how to screw Kiss out of money by revealing his knowledge of Hebrew, or the notorious Canon Films founders Golan and Globus being infamous for their ‘Israeli attitude’, ie always looking for ways to squeeze out more cash, 24/7, there seems to be an endless amount of anecdotes of how sleazy Israeli business regularly is. Israel often seems like an entire country trying its best to live down to every stereotype about unscrupulous Jewish merchants.
It was noteworthy that the immigrants to Israel working for the criminal enterprises have moral qualms about their boiler room scam.
And then there is this.
“They told us to look up people’s homes on Google Maps to see how rich they seemed and to check their credit card information to see if they had gold or platinum status. Also, when we offered training to them, we would share their desktop and walk them through the website. We were told to [abuse that access and] look around their desktop for pornography or online slots or other signs of compulsive behavior, because that means they’re more likely to make a deposit.”
Pure criminal enterprise, now an ingrained and vital source of revenue to the government. They will never be able to stop.
Phew! What a stench! Couldn’t we claw back some of their ill-gotten gains from the $3 billion a year we send their government?
I have to highlight three of the Link’s articles; Archdruid’s on spiraling failures, the End of Globalization and World War Three may have started. They are interrelated. Also, the Washington Post today started a front page series on the drastically higher death rates for rural poor white American women.
The free flow of capital and people has resulted in the destitution of a class of Americans, endless wars and collapse of the consent of the governed. Even though mostly blacked out by corporate media, this underlies the 2016 election. If the oligarchs’ extortion of the people isn’t halted through elections; the dire predictions for the future of mankind will come to pass.
This is beautiful, a whole subreddit just for the latest Hillary outrages:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ClintonforPrison2016/
It’d be great if someone could post this into Links tomorrow morning so the early risers will see it.