Ohio zoo closes gorilla exhibit for now after boy, 4, falls in St Louis Post-Dispatch and Who was Harambe? Cincinnati Enquirer.
Panama Papers May Inspire More Big Leaks, if Not Reform NYT
The Whistleblower Full Measure. Bradley Birkenfeld, who blew the whistle on UBS offshore accounts held by wealthy Americans, was prosecuted and jailed by the DOJ, and then awarded $104 milllon by the IRS.
The Bank Robber The New Yorker (RA). No, not the executives. The whistleblower.
Once called dishonest and incompetent, could Tampa company be a model for real estate investors? Tampa Bay Times
A question of timing: A lawsuit claims Gilead Sciences could have developed a less-harmful version of its HIV treatment sooner Los Angeles Times (TF).
Diamond Geysers: Rule-Breaking Iceland Completes Its Miracle Economic Escape Epoch Times (JudyB).
Imperial Collapse Watch
How Russia is preparing for WWIII Vineyard of the Saker (WS). Well, it’s not like Victoria Nuland is in line to become Secretary of State. Oh, wait…
Super Warthog: Is the U.S. Military Set to Unleash a New A-10? The National Interest. Wait, I thought the F35 was supposed to replace the A10?
The Price of Perpetual War War on the Rocks
Syraqistan
No Kurd Will Die to Restore Iraqi Unity The Atlantic (Re Silc).
U.S.-led coalition troops seen near front line in new Iraq offensive Reuters
Hush, the Greeks are Asleep The Press Project
Europe on the brink iPolitics. Green defeats the far right in Austria, by a whisker.
Nuit Debout
French revolt against Hollande Defend Democracy Press. Good roundup.
Protests Intensify, Spread Across France as Workers Refuse Submission Common Dreams
France is heading into a ‘summer of discontent’ The Local
Why firefighters are against free trade Le Monde Diplomatique
2016
‘The Great White Hope’ Pat Buchanan, Town Hall. Ideologically, Trump is Buchanan 2.0.
Trump rallies veterans at annual Rolling Thunder gathering US News. At the Lincoln Memorial.
Judge criticized by Trump unseals documents in Trump University case Reuters
Supreme Court asked to rule on Trump casino bankruptcy Los Angeles Times
No masking Trump’s popularity at Chinese Partytime Factory Reuters
LBJ’s Ad Men: Here’s How Clinton Can Beat Trump Politico. Fun stuff!
Financial analyst alleges major holes in Clinton Foundation records Washington Examiner. More Ortel, linked to on 5/10 and 5/20 at NC. I’m not real enthusiastic about Town Hall, but then I’ve lost my enthusiasm for a lot of media outlets this year. Suffice to say that Ortel does not appear to be a product of the right-wing fever swamp, and has a track record.
Hillary Clinton’s Emails Now Might Finally Take Her Down LawNewz. Must read.
Poor polls, scandal, a cussed rival … how it’s all going wrong for Hillary Clinton Guardian
What Trump and Sanders Have in Common The Atlantic. That is a popular trope in our political class. But when we read “Both have supported single-payer health care,” we should remember that Sanders has supported single payer all his political lifetime and drafted legislation for it, where Trump has emitted a random soundbyte suggesting his support. Please, can we have less stupid?
Sanders says voters, superdelegates should take a ‘hard look’ at Clinton email report Daily Dot
Bernie Sanders Fights to Oust Two Hillary Clinton Backers From Key Convention Posts WSJ. Bank board member chairing the rules committee. No optics problem there!
In San Francisco, Bernie Sanders’ message makes believers out of the skeptics San Francisco Examiner
5/29, This is where we stand the writing of john laurits (MR). On delegate math.
Let’s blow up the Democrats: The Sanders coalition is the future — but requires a third party Salon
The left’s obsession with identity politics causes a new injustice Politics (KF).
Libertarians Pick Gary Johnson and William Weld as Presidential Election Ticket WSJ
Clinton Email Hairball
Why the new report on Hillary Clinton’s email is so damning Dana Milbank, WaPo
Feinstein on Clinton Secret Server: “Enough Is Enough,” All She Wanted Was A “Private Life” RealClearPolitics (BC).
Aggressive Lynch makes mark at Department of Justice The Hill. Why is this story appearing now? Best quote ever from the Reverand Al Sharpton: “[S]he is no one that shrinks from the legacy of a Robert Kennedy or Eric Holder.”
Guillotine Watch
A peek inside the Washington area’s most expensive homes for sale WaPo
A Worrisome Pileup of $100 Million Homes NYT. Here’s one of those worrisome homes:
There’s something about the color scheme… And all the reflections… That’s nagging at me. Some resemblance….
Last Time this Happened, the Housing Market Collapsed Wolf Street
One of the World’s Greatest Art Collections Hides Behind This Fence NYT
Class Warfare
As union membership has fallen, the top 10 percent have been getting a larger share of income Economic Policy Institute
Why the Very Poor Have Become Poorer NYRB
Inside the Rebellion at the Biggest Automotive Website in China Bloomberg
How an industry helps Chinese students cheat their way into and through U.S. colleges Reuters (Re Silc). To these admirably pragmatic “students,” credentials really are nothing other than a signalling mechanism…
The mystery of weak US productivity Edward Luce, FT.
Facing the Financial Industry’s Cyber Challenge With Lessons From IT History Irving Wladawsky-Berger, WSJ. I’ve helpfully underlined the bullshit terms; if you hear anybody in your house use them, count the spoons when they leave:
Transforming something as complex as the financial ecosystem is a tall order, but as any student of IT history can tell you, the emergence of disruptive technologies can bring together key stakeholders. … I finished my remarks to the Commission by noting that the emergence of an innovative disruptive technology can serve as a catalyst to propel change forward by bringing key stakeholders together.
I’m giving high marks for the double-stakeholders/innovative disruptive strength move, as well as the grace notes of “tall order,” and “propel change forward.”
Machine Bias Pro Publica. Just because it’s an algorithm doesn’t mean it won’t be used to screw black people.
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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You missed catalyst as a bullshit term…
Also ‘transforming’ …..as in transforming lead balloons into ….. golden sachfulls…
Very nice bumblebee photo Lambert……
I’ve seen huuuuuge numbers of them flitting around our yard this spring………a very auspicious sign if there was ever one ………
While “transforming” and “emergence” are suspect, the 100% bullshit terms are “transformative” and “emergent”.
Oh yeah, that’s the real BS right there. “Ecosystem” and “Disruptive” being the ones I find most egregious.
Yes, yes and yes, but as usual much of the monstrosity (not just stylistic but political) is in the syntax: consider this pile-up of redundancies (and what lies beneath): “a catalyst to propel change forward…”
Or if one worst word must be singled out I’d suggest “change”, here and every time it’s used without specifying what kind of change and who is slated to endure/enjoy it. Would you, dear Disrupters, rather be kicked or caressed? Oh, it’s all the same to you…
I think perhaps we need to ‘unwind’ the zoos, like Sea World is doing with the orcas. Animals are not objects for human entertainment. To me, it’s obvious that captivity causes many of them real distress. And a case like this, where a critically endangered species gets shot to save a 4-year old, is nauseating. Of course, we also need to keep some fragment of this earth available for them to inhabit. There’s the rub.
…and from the reporting, not even clear that the kid was in danger, except from inattentive parents and zoo designers… but who knows, of course? I wasn’t there.
I do take heart that some bunch of gunmen in various uniforms are once again “going into the rubble that is Fallujah” to “retake it” for what, the third or fourth time, from another bunch of gunmen who seem more skilled at the game and certainly more “efficient,” dollar for dollar, than the UnCola-lition that this Memorial Day will be making more dead and wounded Troops for us imperial citizens to moon over as we unlimber our enhanced credit cards…
And the name the zookeepers gave the gorilla, “Harambe,” is interesting — Swahili for ” let’s all work together.” https://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/50531805 Might be a notion that Sanders and those inspired by him understand and embrace?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/12/child-in-cheetah-exhibit/25666839/
Do a search for children falling into zoo exhibits, and it makes me wonder with the quality of parents how any children make it to adulthood…
‘parents’…….ha!….
…more like clueless morons……who should NOT be allowed to raise children !!
leave the zoo alone, issue bike helmets at the ticket gate
IIRC, they shot and killed a lion in a Chilean zoo last week for just the same reason.
two lions. because some guy wanted to commit suicide by lion. he survived, the lions did not.
It is heartbreaking. A friend upon seeing a gorilla said, “It looks like a person in a costume.” And if corporations can be granted personhood, why not apes? (See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-wells/legal-personhood-for-apes_b_6378486.html)
Perhaps they should have shot the child? Or just wounded it so it couldn’t harm the gorilla? Awful that the gorilla was in the zoo. Awful that it was killed. Awesome that the boy is ok and will likely be rich after all is said and done. The last part is a bit nauseating. Maybe they will donate some of the loot to a gorilla preserve. With a little forethought they could have the specimens necessary to clone a brand new gorilla?
There’s a huge error tucked into this, although it is tangential to the main thesis of the article.
Nader wasn’t a Bolshevist, neo or otherwise, and he didn’t change the electoral result in 2000. People can be uncertain about exactly how many Florida Democrats voted for Bush, but it is clear that they diverted more votes from Gore than Nader did.
Agreed. The outcome would have been the same with or without Ralph Nader. Clint Curtis not only gave an Affidavit, he gave sworn testimony before Congress, so yes, both parties know.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=1025
WHISTLEBLOWER AFFIDAVIT: Programmer Built Vote Rigging Prototype at Republican Congressman’s Request!
CLAIM: Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) Asked Company to Create E-Vote Fraud Software!
*** A BRAD BLOG EXCLUSIVE! PLEASE CREDIT! ***
In stunning revelations set to rock the vote from Tallahassee to Capitol Hill — and perhaps even a bit further up Pennsylvania Avenue — a Florida computer programmer has now made remarkable claims in a detailed sworn affidavit, signed this morning and obtained exclusively by The BRAD BLOG!
– Affidavit in .PDF format –
The programmer claims that he designed and built a “vote rigging” software program at the behest of then Florida Congressman, now U.S. Congressman, Republican Tom Feeney of Florida’s 24th Congressional District.
Clint Curtis, 46, claims that he built the software for Feeney in 2000 while working at a sofware design and engineering company in Oviedo, Florida (Feeney’s home district).
Curtis, in his affidavit, says that as technical advisor and programmer at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) he was present at company meetings where Feeney was present “on at least a dozen occasions”.
Feeney, who had run in 1994 as Jeb Bush’s running-mate in his initial unsuccessful bid for Florida Governor, was serving as both corporate counsel and registered lobbyist for YEI during the period that Curtis worked at the company. Feeney was also concurrently serving as a Florida state congressman while performing those services for YEI. Feeney would eventually become Speaker of the Florida House before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002. He is now a member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
At an October 2000 meeting with Feeney, according to the affidavit and BRAD BLOG interviews with Curtis over the past three days, Feeney inquired whether the company could build a “vote fraud software prototype”.
snip
Curtis says that Feeney “was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program.”
“He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment (c) the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected.”
Though there was no problem with the first two requirements, Curtis explained to the Congressman that it would be “virtually impossible to hide such code written to change the voting results if anyone is able to review the uncompiled source code”
Nonetheless, he was asked at the meeting by Mrs. Yang to build the prototype anyway.
Curtis, “a life-long Republican” at the time, claims that it was his initial belief that Feeney’s interest was in trying to stop Democrats from using “such a program to steal an election”. Curtis had assumed that Feeney, “wanted to be able to detect and prevent that if it occurred.”
Upon delivery of the software design and documentation on CD to Mrs. Yang, Curtis again explained to her that it would be impossible to hide routines created to manipulate the vote if anybody would be able to inspect the precompiled source code.
Mrs. Yang then told him, “You don’t understand, in order to get the contract we have to hide the manipulation in the source code. This program is needed to control the vote in South Florida.” [emphasis in affidavit]
Mrs. Yang then took the CD containing the software from Curtis, reportedly for later delivery to Feeney.
In other meetings with Feeny prior to the 2000 elections, it became clear to Curtis that Feeney had plans to suppress the vote in strong Democratic precincts. In the affidavit, Curtis claims that in those meetings Feeney had “bragged that he had already implemented ‘exclusion lists’ to reduce the ‘black vote’.” Feeney also mentioned that “proper placement of police patrols could further reduce the black vote by as much as 25%.”
And the Nader derailment continues… As ever when Nader is mentioned…
It’s almost the perfect dearailleur from a Dembot perspective too, you drop it whenever the conversation is becoming uncomfortable and first, you change the subject so completely that by the time people regain their composure nobody remembers what you were leading them away from by the nose and secondly, it also perpetuates a popular false meme likely to jibe with people’s intuition that promotes your narrative and that the other side has to waste energy defending against. And third, what were we talking about again? Mission accomplished. Who says Democratic hacks aren’t smart? They know which buttons to push and when.
Then helping Ralph Nader and his efforts at Public Citizen are called for. They have a matching fund offer that expires on the last day in May, tomorrow. They are short of what they need. Please help if you can:
https://www.citizen.org/
Public Citizen
Protecting Health, Safety, and Democracy
Donate Button on upper right side in Red. Thank you so much.
Clint Curtis gave his testimony to Congress some years after the 2000 election, so the Democrats did not know at the time of the 2000 election, only afterward.
However, it seems as the current computer code “fix” is now approved by both parties, else wise those voting machines would be tossed now or secured for state’s evidence.
http://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-1/
Fraction Magic – Part 1: Votes are being counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers
By Bev Harris May 12, 2016
1 – Summary –
This report summarizes the results of our review of the GEMS election management system, which counts approximately 25 percent of all votes in the United States. The results of this study demonstrate that a fractional vote feature is embedded in each GEMS application which can be used to invisibly, yet radically, alter election outcomes by pre-setting desired vote percentages to redistribute votes. This tampering is not visible to election observers, even if they are standing in the room and watching the computer. Use of the decimalized vote feature is unlikely to be detected by auditing or canvass procedures, and can be applied across large jurisdictions in less than 60 seconds.
GEMS vote-counting systems are and have been operated under five trade names: Global Election Systems, Diebold Election Systems, Premier Election Systems, Dominion Voting Systems, and Election Systems & Software, in addition to a number of private regional subcontractors. At the time of this writing, this system is used statewide in Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Utah and Vermont, and for counties in Arizona, (upcoming) California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. It is also used in Canada.
…………
Statistician, Mathematician Richard Charnin’s Spreadsheets of unadjusted exit polls were catching the fraud that later Bev Harris’s evidence confirmed:
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sGxtIofohrj3POpwq-85Id2_fYKgvgoWbPZacZw0XlY/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=1476097125
Not sure why people like this persist in dragging out this tired old shibboleth (thank you NC for teaching me some new vocabulary!) but it really cheeses me off and makes it difficult to take anything else the person has to say seriously. A guy who wants to make sure corporations are selling exploding cars is now a Bolshevik. Uh huh.
On top of what you mentioned Vatch there is the fact that Gore couldn’t win his home state which also would have given him the presidency and then just maybe that Bush v Gore decision on along partisan lines that stopped the votes from being counted, a decision that explicitly said that it was NOT meant to set a precedent but was valid just for little Georgie this one time.
But hey, why quibble with things like facts. There are Democrats and they need excuses for their failure!
And don’t forget that during the post-election chaos, the Republicans got organized, got on the media repeatedly, and did eveything they could to control the narrative. They acted like they wanted to win, and they did.
The Democrats basically left Gore hanging out to dry and fight the whole thing by himself. They faded into the mist and meekly yielded to the Republicans on any disputes. They didn’t act like they wanted to win it. James Baker was on TV every six hours claiming victory. The Dems were hiding under their beds.
Bush vs. Gore was an abomination, but the Dems did nothing to help themselves.
Don’t forget that Congress has to certify the election results. In 2000, 20 Representatives — mostly members of the black caucus — objected to ratifying Bush as the victor. However, they needed a senator to join them by an 1887 law. Well, aren’t the Democrats special! Not a single U.S. senator, not one of the 50 Democrats, would join the representatives in protest. But hey, they’re only Democratic senators. It’s not like they’re those all-powerful Nader voters.
Always remember that. Not one Democratic senator.
“Not one Democratic senator” most definitely includes [genuflects] Senator Al Gore, who was presiding at the time, and who gavelled the black caucus into silence (one of the more vivid moments in Fahrenheit 911).
Al Gore wasn’t a Senator at the time; he was vice president, and therefore presided over the Senate. I don’t know what, under the rules, he could have done, but I’m pretty sure he could have persuaded a colleague to support the representatives if he wasn’t too ensconced in the establishment to risk any real fight that might show a crack in the smooth surface of elite rituals of power.
The Dems didn’t want to win. That is why they included the poison pill of Lieberman.
Hillary Clinton’s Emails Now Might Finally Take Her Down LawNews. Must read.
“And when you marry that to the fact that (among other things) her admitted failure to use the State Department’s special classified email system for classified (or potentially classified) information constituted a clear violation of a criminal prohibition, you start worrying big-time. And this is especially so given that Ms. Clinton did not just violate such laws inadvertently or even only occasionally — she did so systemically. In other words, her very email scheme itself appears to have been a walking violation of criminal law, one with the mens rea prosecution standard readily met.”
…..
So what you must contemplate, as a leader of the Democratic Party, is the very real possibility of your likely presidential candidate actually being indicted, on criminal charges, sometime between now and, say, (a) the time of the convention at the end of July; (b) the time of the general election in early November; or (c) Inauguration Day in January. Which possibility would you prefer?
………….
What? An already-chosen running mate? Yes, her running mate, chosen by her as the presidential nominee — because you want Clinton to be replaced as your nominee (i.e., after the convention), but not with Senator Sanders, for all the reasons stated above.
And you get that only one way: (1) Clinton gets indicted as she ought to, but not until shortly after the convention; (2) the evidence presented in the indictment (as well as that proffered to her and her attorney privately) overwhelmingly proves to her that she in fact has bigger concerns in the coming months than running for the presidency; (3) Clinton is thereby forced to step down as the nominee (a difficult prospect to conceive of, to be sure); (4) the Democratic Party (translation: President Obama, as its leader) declares an “unprecedented” emergency and asks everyone to rally around a replacement ticket; and (5) slyest of all, the Democratic Party asks Senator Sanders to please not fight this, which he could not so easily do anyway once his “clout” is dissipated upon the convention’s conclusion. (Do you remember the seemingly “odd” statements from both Jim Comey and Attorney General Lynch that their ongoing investigation would not necessarily be concluded by the time the convention is held? Not at all inconsistent with the above, are they?)
==================================================
Some very interesting speculation.
It seems clear to me now that it is indisputable to any objective person (and I originally thought Clinton could get out of this) that NOT indicting Clinton would be equivalent to the Watergate “Saturday Night Massacre” – – and that doesn’t even include the still speculative, but very plausible and likely REASON for the secrecy by Clinton – EASILY discernible corruption – if the average person can see all the naked bribery….
Wow!
That someone on the committee that got Richard Nixon is now ensnared….
Not speculation, is trial balloon.
Yep. I don’t see how the Democrats could throw Clinton under the bus without a Plan B. This looks like a trial balloon for a Plan B.
Of course, Sanders is the real enemy, not Trump, and so Sanders isn’t a Plan B, by definition.
Well, that in fact points out the greatest error in Dan Metcalf’s piece: not the lie about Ralph Nader’s role in 2000, but the claim that establishment Democrats have good reason to worry nominating Sanders would lead to Trump’s election, which is grossly contrary to every poll that has been published. Sanders consistently does better than Hillary Clinton in a match-up with Trump. It is indeed their worry that Sanders would win that necessitates a “Plan B.”
As Mandy Rice-Davies famously remarked: “He would, wouldn’t he?”
I’m more interested in the message that the Establishment is sending to itself than the fact that the Establishment is sending it. I mean, of course Nader is demonized (by an Establishment Democrat) and of course Sanders cannot beat Trump (says an Establishment Democrat) and so of course a Plan B is needed (says an Establishment Democrat). Much of this commentary verges on “water is wet” IMNSHO.
Actually, the Inner Democrats would be worried about a Sanders winning and beating Trump. They would only pretend in public that they are afraid a nominee Sanders would lose. Actually, they and the Clintonites would conspire to do everything they could to assure a Sanders defeat if Sanders were nominated. Because a President Sanders would threaten the Inner Democrats and the Clintonites with a far reaching disinfection, decontamination, a purging and a burning . . . of the Democratic Party. And they can’t have that.
So Sanders will Not not NOT be the nominee, under any circumstances what. so. ever. So why even vote for Sanders in the last few primaries? Because the more people vote for Sanders but see it turn out any which way but Sanders anyway . . . the more people will be educated in “the ways of the world”. And hopefully ready for the several-decades-long effort needed to create a “Pot Party” reciprocal movement of the “Tea Party” . . . and use it to conquer and take over the Democratic Party.
Unless you can get millions of people on the street in protest, the establishment will do what it wants.
And unless the numbers are so overwhelming it will be dealt with like the Occupy movement.
The polling numbers to date are meaningless, you’re polling delegates/people actually involved.
Poll average citizens.
The explanation of how Biden will replace Clinton to become the Democratic nominee rings very true. Great read at LawsNewz.
The only part that is missing is that there will be a massive attempt by the Democratic elite to incite, and then discredit, Sanders supporters at the July convention. This tactic was first tested at the Nevada state convention, to delegitimize Sanders as the rightful Democratic candidate. And MSM was played like a violin.
I keep wondering how Jon Ralston (the previously widely respected Nevada political reporter who set the whole lie into motion) can live with himself.
As Hunter Thompson would say: “Jon Ralston has cashed his check!”
Also, not sure if others heard the fawning profile of/with Ralston and his transgender child on NPR the other day. Such a caring dad! How could he be a political hack?
If sanders is not allowed the nomination on a $hillary collapse he should push rfk jr as the nominee and himself as the vp….
What is it in the rules that would allow someone who doesn’t have any pledged delegates (Biden, for example) to be made the nominee over someone who has almost half of them (Sanders)? I’m asking sincerely, as it just seems crazy that that would be allowed.
“Rules.”
How quaint.
If there’s no nominee on the first ballot, I believe the pledged delegates are free to vote who they want.
Since neither Sanders nor Clinton have enough pledged delegates to win, the pledged could vote their obligation on the first ballot, the superdelegates could vote for Biden. With no one having a majority, there would then be a second ballot where the Clinton delegates and the supers would nominate Biden.
Either that, or I believe Clinton could release those pledged delegates even before a first vote if she wanted to. A few of those might vote for Sanders though, so who knows.
MSM helped write the music.
I may be confused, but if there is no penalty for breaking the FRA rules (as the author discusses in his embedded article), what will / could the FBI charge be?
Is it the “classified” information, because most of what I have read is that they were classified “after the fact”?
I’m not HRC fan, so what am I missing and why hasn’t the Congress acted?
Here is one source. https://informedvote2016.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/do-i-really-need-to-worry-about-hillarys-emails-yes-she-will-be-indicted-full-form/
News articles about the OIG report released in the last week are also helpful.
So how would that work, exactly, if Hillary Clinton was the first POTUS to have a revoked security clearance going in? “I’m sorry Madame President, but I am unable to discuss what’s happening in the South China Sea with you … shall we flip a coin?”
As long as they don’t classify the Clinton Foundation general ledger, it’s all good.
Rather than adhere to the right-wing wacko BS about Hillary’s emails etc., dare to contemplate that there may be other explanations for Hillary’s use of a private email server. Maybe Hillary knew (knows) that the non-classified government servers are really very insecure and she could do a better job of keeping the non-classified emails secure with her own server, as they would normally be routed through those less secure government servers. Here’s a fun post by a server specialist:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Hysterical-Right-Wing-by-The-Pen-Hillary-Clinton_Hillary-Clinton-Emails-And-Server_Information_Lies-Republican-160530-894.html
Leaving aside the fact that the author of this article is a Democrat, as opposed (presumably) to being a right-wing whacko, I thought this sentence interesting:
Lots of thoughts spring to mind when reading that passage, but the one that occurred to me was “Does that apply to the email that her personal lawyer put on a USB stick?”
Also, I’m noting the word “nothingburger,” a keyword used by the Clinton camp. As we’ve seen, Andrea Mitchell does not agree…
Ummm. You could possibly make a case for that except that Clinton’s server was not secure, it wasn’t even encrypted for the first three months she was in office. Not to mention that there is some evidence that she has about as much knowledge of computers, the internet and computer security as the average octogenarian.
IOW, that theory is the result of people looking to justify her actions. It might work better than Feinstein’s private life version, but it is still garbage.
Maybe Hillary knew (knows) that the non-classified government servers are really very insecure and she could do a better job of keeping the non-classified emails secure with her own server,
Classic HRC rhetoric, cast as brilliant and selfless heroine being ruthlessly persecuted for doing the right thing about (fill in the blank)
I think at the Trial, this contemplation would be termed “speculative” unless of course the preamble is more factually nuanced than “and um”.
Has anyone in the HRC staff even implied enhanced server security as a justification? In light of the floated BS justifications offered to date, presumably even Team Clinton knows this idiocy would be a bridge too far..
Glenn, i will concede it is fun sometimes to contemplate fantasies worlds. Dare to contemplate the possibility HRC will be given immunity to prosecution if only she will consult with the various depts. of the USG on free evenings and weekends to provide her expertise on ways and means to secure gov servers –while serving as POTUS! HAHAHAHA
The explanation is simple: she’s an egotist who thinks the rules shouldn’t apply to her. This isn’t a complicated issue; the rules clearly forbid what she did, yet she did it anyway and then tried to cover it up. If she was really concerned about security, surely as fucking SECRETARY OF STATE she would have been in a position to revamp government security.
Again, she broke the law. Her reasons for doing it don’t negate that fact. She then deleted tens of thousands of emails when investigators asked her to hand them over (and joked about it). Further brazen lawbreaking.
I have no doubt there’s a lot of simple partisanship at the root of the motivations of many of the people involved in this. That still doesn’t change the facts of criminal behavior. The same goes for another Clinton scandal, Benghazi. Yeah, what the right-wing obsesses over is bunk, but if not for that same bloody minded obsession with finding something, anything related to Benghazi that was untoward we would never have gotten some key revelations about US involvement in Syria. So I value Judicial Watch, however impure their motivations may be.
Though from the sounds of there are also a lot of genuinely principled people in both the DOJ and the FBI that are planning to go rogue and leak case documents if there isn’t an indictment. Oh, I’m sure some of them are just petty partisans, but 150 FBI agents?
Incidentally, Clinton is now trying to woo moderate Republican voters? Good luck with that, after decades of being the subject of mindless rabid hate, and even coining the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy” to describe her enemies (and she’s even revived that phrase for this election).
To the surprise of no one who has actually objectively followed their careers over the decades, the Clinton’s are in fact blatantly corrupt criminals, though mostly not in the bullshit ways the rabid right has attacked them for. Something like this has been a long-time coming.
I’m not really sure what this guy’s point is. He’s right that all servers are under attack, all the time, and the Republicans don’t have proof that her email was compromised. There are still many more important reasons that the emails should be kept on public computers, such as holding public officials accountable for crimes. These are completely unrelated to the security of the server in question, and despite the government’s laughable track record it seems unlikely that someone’s nephew is going to set up a more secure server than the Department of State.
I was wondering when Correct The Record type people would show up here. This would be a far better use of all that Clinton-money going to David Brock than to have all those well paid quick-responders trolling social media sites.
Here the Correct The Record people could present their most detailed cases and rebuttlals at leisure, for others to analyse and respond to at leisure. More would be learned that way than by 140 character tweets at twitter.
Hopefully, Correct The Record will also begin to engage the various Clinton-skeptics at Ian Welsh and especially at Colonel Lang’s blog Sic Semper Tyrannis.
” THIS! . . . looks like a job forrrr …CorrectTheRecordMan!”
> she could do a better job
If so, she had a steep learning curve.
Clinton didn’t encrypt emails for three months, security firm finds The Hill.
“(1) Clinton gets indicted as she ought to, but not until shortly after the convention; (2) the evidence presented in the indictment (as well as that proffered to her and her attorney privately) overwhelmingly proves to her that she in fact has bigger concerns in the coming months than running for the presidency; (3) Clinton is thereby forced to step down as the nominee (a difficult prospect to conceive of, to be sure); (4) the Democratic Party (translation: President Obama, as its leader) declares an “unprecedented” emergency and asks everyone to rally around a replacement ticket; and (5) slyest of all, the Democratic Party asks Senator Sanders to please not fight this, which he could not so easily do anyway once his “clout” is dissipated upon the convention’s conclusion.”
==================
then what?????
well, sanders supporters will not take such a coup lying down. the close of the convention will not mean game over to them unless sanders is nominated. what will they have to fight with at that point? well, they will get the word out on what has gone down, so the media will have to take some notice.
what else? they are hardly more likely to vote for biden or kerry than for clinton, because they have come to understand the system quite well. they will give more power to sanders in congress than he has ever had there. this writer is mistaken if he thinks sanders’s “clout” will dissipate once the convention is over. he fails to comprehend that the sanders revolution will continue to build beyond the election.
if sanders is not nominated i expect most of the activists in the new movement to walk away from electoral politics in disgust, while some continue their efforts to remake the dem party, working for the sanderista down ticket candidates, fighting citizens united, and the like. many will take up more radical action.
one thing i’m pretty confident of is that there will be more movement/grassroots activism after this election than has been seen in the usa since the 1960s. hopefully it will have nonviolence as a strong basis so that the gov’t’s ability to control it will be limited, and ways will be found to circumvent fbi infiltration and the like. it’s not too late to learn from the 1960s and avoid reinventing the wheel.
the presidency race is so compelling right now, it is easy to forget that the building movement has a greater role to play in history than any replacement dem or repub president who gets elected. what the activists who have adopted and/or been adopted by sanders do after the conventions/election is what will determine whether we can cling to some shred of hope for democracy or today’s children’s future.
If most of the Sandervoters walk away from politics in disgust, then the Clintonites and the Inner Party Democrats will have won right there. Even if Clinton is removed. Because Clintonism will live on.
So hopefully all the Sanderbackers will regard such a candidate transplant as a political learnable moment . . . . take their time to be angry, and then remember the old saying . . .
” Don’t stay mad. Get over it . . . or get even.” And there’s a lot of getting even to be achieved either within the Democratic Party or against it from the outside.
This is the strangest part of the establishment media scrambling. If Hillary Clinton selected Bernie Sanders as her Vice President, she’d get the Sanders’ voters and the Presidency since I would vote for them with him one DOJ indictment or a heartbeat away from the Presidency. He would keep single payer healthcare alive. It also assures her of no Impeachment. What Republican would vote to impeach with Bernie Sanders at the top of Senate podium waiting to take over?
It does document that Bernie Sander is the real target of her pay masters.
Bolshevists specifically believe that the intellectual elite must force everybody else in society to go along with their plans, since the rest of society is insufficiently enlightened to know what’s in their own best interests. So if there’s anybody who’s Bolshie in today’s America, it’s the technocrats, of whatever party. Nader never struck me as one.
What the hell even is ‘Neo-Bolshevism’? Is that like Cultural Marxism, ie something made up by nutjob John Birch Society types?
The term, I believe, was coined by the more subdued and reasonable John Birch Society clique.
Yea that slip bothered me too.
I don’t think the idea of replacing Clinton with non-Sanders is an option either. Many will not accept that and the chances of a win under such circumstances would not be any better than they are with Clinton. He doesn’t address that in the article and seems to state replacement as the only sensible option. At this point the Democrats are almost certain to lose and their folly is in not embracing Sanders… in other words, their party history.
The Democratic Party establishment isn’t afraid Sanders would lose to Trump.
They’re afraid he’ll beat him.
As much as anything, his fundraising model Cannot Be Allowed To Work.
I think the DC (bipartisan) establishment’s plan was to let Hillary get her “historic” nomination and then lose to the Republican in the fall… but they weren’t counting on the Republican being Donald Trump.
So now they’d prefer Hillary — except she’s got big problems too.
They’re flailing, wondering what they can do. But the Dems will gladly take a crushing loss in November if it means keeping progressivism at bay.
Truth.
Biden/Kerry and Kerry/Biden is the best they can do, I guess (ruling out Warren, who would innoculate Biden on his horrid student loan bill, but maybe Reid wants her in the Senate so a Republican governor can’t pick her replacement).
The best isn’t very good, is it? (And I’ll give Kerry, though I make fun of him, some credit on Iran, which for all its realpolitik, is still better than whatever the neo-cons would prefer).
Kerry is a poser and a fraud!……..he should just quit politics and tend to madame ketchup…
This is the clueless former pres. candidate, who, when leaving a campaign venue, allowed thuggish security to lay waste to Mr. ‘Don’t Taze Me Bro !!’ (remember that??)…who was of no physical threat to the esteemed Mr. Kerry……as he and his detail were leaving the room…..and did not apologize to the gentleman for what had transpired…………..’crickets’……..!
From then on, I have considered Kerry as just another smug elitist living in the Bubble, not caring much about the plebs …….phony as a three dollar bill !
Contradicting “I’ll give Kerry, though I make fun of him, some credit on Iran, which for all its realpolitik, is still better than whatever the neo-cons would prefer” how, exactly?
I really don’t feel that need to “Boooo!” or “Yaaaay!” every time I mention a well-known political figure. It adds little value, especially without links; NC readers are pretty sophisticated, and some of us have long memories, especially for grudges.
I believe the “blame Nader” for GWB is insulting to the voters who chose Nader.
The Nader voters clearly did not want either Bush/Gore, so limiting their voting options to Bush/Gore might have led them to not vote at all.
Perhaps Gore would have been elected if the Clintons had behaved better in the run-up to the election?
There was the matter of Monica after all and HRC’s unquestioning support of Bill at this time.
Blaming both Clintons’ behavior for the election of GWB seems far more appropriate.
2000 was the first presidential election I voted in, and I remember at the time all the weird gamesmanship that was going on about “if you live in this state, trade your Nader vote with someone in this other battleground state” and so forth, which, frankly, I found insulting. I wasn’t voting for Nader to make a point, because otherwise I’d be a Gore voter, I was voting for him because I agreed with the Green Party platform. If there had only been two choices for President, I would have left it blank or filled in my own name as a write in. If the D party ever wants my vote, they need to do something to deserve it. Patronizingly expecting that an entire swath of the electorate’s votes belong to you, as if it were your birthright, is part of what keeps driving people away.
“Nader: The Ultimate Derailer.” Discuss.
Quite a discussion. If one searches on “did Nader cost gore the election.” The narrative says YES, what looks to be more thorough research says, “Uh, no…” One fairly rational piece, http://m.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2010/1212/Ten-years-after-Bush-v.-Gore-the-fight-goes-on, that nonetheless wants to make it all about 597 votes, with not a word about Diebold or in the Florida situation, Republican skills at kicking legal voters off the rolls, and other shenanigans that all by themselves would have produced the opposite result (though other means no doubt could have been employed to “fix” that.) One piece of that gaming:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Voter_roll_purge_in_the_2000_Florida_election
Gore is an entitled wimp, he campaigned with the enthusiasm and skill of a cold spaghetti sandwich on Wonder Bread. But let us not propagate the enervating meme that Nader done him in. It is too bad thatNader was no Bernie Sanders, lacking the message and maybe just not stepping in at the right time. Maybe the PTB, in any event, have gotten too implanted and embedded and organized for a leader from the Sanders position to have a chance of being allowed to win, or to live if he or she did…
I saw that. But the rest of the article is awesome and check the author’s bio.
Re Clinton’s emails finally taking her down.
He lays out some very plausible scenarios (at least seemingly – I don’t know that much about what the establishment is thinking) about a possible ticket if Clinton were indicted, but leaves out the glaring fact that Trump would easily win if anyone other than Sanders became the nominee after Clinton backed out. But on the other hand, maybe that’s exactly what the Dem establishment wants. They’d rather bet on four (or eight) years of Trump and then put up a less tarnished establishment candidate than see Bernie in the White House.
Yep.
The entire establishment, D and R, is united in desperately wanting to ensure that a reasonably honest person can’t be elected to office, running a campaign funded by many small donations.
Their whole world depends on people believing that only candidates approved by the big-money interests can run for national office.
RE: The Defense Department is ruining America: Big budgets, militarization and the real story behind our Asia pivot
This bit –
William Hartung directs the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington. The other day he posted an excellent essay on the TomDispatch web site entitled “The Pentagon’s War on Accountability.” It is a an astonishing review of just how the only government institution that refuses to be audited—and gets away with it, preposterously—hides literally countless billions in secret slush funds, off-budget weapons programs, cost overruns, “deterrence funds,” dishonest accounting, no accounting and, of course, deception. The figures Hartung publishes are blood-boiling: They run to the trillions.
– reminds me of a 60 Minutes piece from a couple decades ago back when they were still credible. It was around the time when the Pentagon was getting bad press for $2000 toilet seats and $500 hammers in its budget and the public was decrying the wastefulness. 60 minutes had on someone with inside knowledge of the DOD (can’t remember their position) who said the Pentagon most certainly does NOT spend $2000 on toilets seats – they just say that they do because they don’t want to tell anyone what they’re really spending the funds on (which at the time I believe was destabilizing small Latin American countries).
Plus ca change…
Another problem with that LawNews article:
EVERY poll available shows Sanders doing MUCH better against Trump than Hillary.
“Electability” is as much part of the case against Hillary as anything.
The article’s an interesting read, but it’s obviosuly from the establishment/CW zone.
Read the author’s bio for a sense of where he’s coming from.
Dan Metcalfe is a registered Democrat who has long said that he will vote for Hillary Clinton in November “if she escapes indictment and manages to become the Democratic presidential nominee.” He served as Director of the Justice Department’s Office of Information and Privacy for more than 25 years, during which time he handled information-disclosure policy issues on the dozens of Clinton Administration scandals that arose within public view, as well as two that did not. Since retiring in 2007, he has taught secrecy law at American University’s Washington College of Law.
He’s “handled” dozens of “Clinton Administration scandals” including two no one ever knew about.
“Secrecy Law.”
And as long as she becomes the nominee and is not indicted, he’ll vote for her.
Like nothing ever happened. Which is why it keeps happening.
It’s beginning to look like the only way we avoid President Trump is by the Democrats nominating Bernie Sanders — unpalatable as that might be to the Dem power structure.
Hillary is damaged, and her numbers are getting worse every week. Without superdelegates, Bernie’s virtually tied with her for the nomiantion. She’s fallen behind Trump nationally and she has no plan to reverse her decline — in large part because she won’t acknowledge the economic distress of working (and increasdingly middle) class Americans. (Trump and Bernie do.)
But if Mr.Metcalfe’s suggestion of replacing Hillary with a non-Bernie Dem after the convention actually happens, the Dems will get slaughtered in November. Bernie voters will (rightfully) perceive that their candidate has been stabbed in the back, and the party will look to the general public like a bunch of stumblebums who nominated a criminal and then belatedly decided “maybe not”. The rteplacement candidate will fare at best as well as Hubert Humphrey. And probably far worse.
There’s only one way out of this. Nominate Bernie.
But that’s not an option for the party estabishment. So they’ll just sit there and lose.
I really really hate that Humphrey keeps getting slammed together with this group. He is no Biden or Clinton. I know it is the historical precedent of a messed up nomination process, but the truth of the matter is that if we had a Senator or Vice President Humphrey today, we would be lucky. We would have been lucky to have a President Humphrey. And considering the ideas he championed in his time, I’d be truly surprised to find him doing anything but Feeling the Bern.
Whatever Humphrey’s virtues, I was referring to the process, not the candidate.
And he DID lose to an evil man.
Party optics matter.
Oh, I get why it happens. And it isn’t an egregious comparison, such as Nader is the reason Gore lost. I just really regret that someone who might have been a truly remarkable President gets shoved in with the dreck of Biden and Clinton. Especially since I can honestly say that I’m not sure that over time we won’t find that the evil Nixon administration will turn out to have been better for America than the Obama administration. I’m not sure Obama and the policies he advanced will have anything of a long term beneficial effect remotely close to the EPA and Clean Air or Title IX. And while Nixon and Vietnam probably top Obama for bad, he isn’t lagging that far behind with the Middle East, and regime change policies there, in the Ukraine, and South America.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, there is little concern in the Democratic party that Biden or Kerry or whoever looses. The only concern is to make sure that Sanders doesn’t win.
And to make sure that the democratic party does not return to being, well, the democratic party.
That’s essentially it. Circumstances have forced the Dem leadership to tip their hands and show that it’s ALL about keeping Sanders out of power — as Metcalf’s piece illustrates. Everything else is secondary.
But there might be no Democratic Party left after November.
It could be just ineptitude, too. I can’t believe there was no (establishment) backup plan for a Hillary implosion.
Where have all the statesmen gone?
What Democratic Congressman or Senator has demonstrated fitness over the last eight years? Or 10 just for fun? The Democrats were swept into Congress an with crises at the VA, the Pentagon, Iraq, Afghanistan, the fraudulent Homeland Security busting civil servants and replace them with Republicans scam, and so forth, and what did they do? They investigated baseball players, not owners and GMs, the players. Roger Clemens faced a perjury trial. The jury let him off largely because the knew it was a waste of government resources.
For the last eight years, they did nothing except to wait upon Herr Obama to take time off from the golf course to serve mindless platitudes.
Just to be clear, the Democrats are a political party where they would actually tolerate an independent in Sanders as the ranking member of the budget committee and veterans affairs, one of the most powerful and one of the best committees for positive political exposure. Team Blue simply isn’t a political party. It’s a club desperate for perks but no work.
I read ages ago that Bernie got Veterans Affairs because no Democrat wanted it, even as Chair, because it didn’t have good donation opportunities. There’s no big money hose pointed at the committee — just the needs of the actual human beings who survive fighting our money hose generated wars.
But I hadn’t realized until fairly recently that he was also now the ranking member on the budget committee. Why would that be, seriously? Shouldn’t the budget committee be something the money hose normally aims at?
…waiting till the ‘demoncrat party’ has stepped over the event horizon……never to be seen or heard of again……
Tom, WHAT statesmen? Or women, for that matter? I’ve been watching for 60 years, having been misled into believing that a few special politicians were “men of the state.” Any even marginal inquiry into such information as is accessible to “the public,” about any other the people acclaimed to be such a chimaera, quickly reveals the depths of corruption and venality and dissimulation and the other Virtues of Politics that are the llargest part of the collective CV of the shite that make up the Ruling Class. Pick anyone, it’s pretty easy to pick them apart at their fraudulent seams.
I think you’re missing something:
If I were a member of the Clinton hive mind, that would look to me very much like a blackmail threat.
I don’t see the relevance of who the author will vote for. As LeCarré has George Smiley say somewhere, one looks “not for perfection but for advantage.”
That the author will not, himself, produce change is no reason at all to think that what he writes will enable, however partially, to produce it.
If it’s a good thing that Clinton doesn’t run, how about we take yes for an answer?
Of course it’s from the establishment. That’s the point. And we see the establishment hive mind:
1) Coming to the conclusion that Hillary will be indicted,
2) Working through scenarios how the indictment will happen, and when
3) Floating a trial balloon for Clinton’s replacement at the the top of the ticket.
That’s big news!
“It’s a Big F*ckin Deal !!”
Ha!
I agree. The writer is clearly on the Biden side of the nominee contest. But I also think if the establishment zone is putting out articles like this, it just might mean something is up in the buyer’s remorse world.
It will be interesting to see if our famously free press starts backing off on the “Hillary has just won!” talking point if Clinton wins California or New Jersey; IIRC, Clinton does not really win until the Superdelegates put her over the top by actually voting. So the Calendar gives the Democrat Establishment some breathing room.
I mentioned this once before, but I really do wonder if there’s going to be a tension between what’s better for the party establishment, and what’s better for the media companies. Comcast is going to want to shove Clinton across the finish line at all costs.
I can imagine party insiders starting to think, “we have to get somebody else in there,” while her donors lag in giving up on their sunk costs. Clinton certainly wants her “lock” announced before people start voting after work in California. Comcast will want that. Time Warner will want that. But the same people talking about getting rid of Wasserman Schultz might prefer the networks start explaining that superdelegates can switch up until the actual final minutes of the first floor vote at the convention, so no one can now actually lock up the nomination until that floor vote. Unless they really are absolute idiots (which, you know, wouldn’t shock me) they’ll want time to pry Hillary’s death grip off the controls and start preparing her female supporters, especially, for the man they will almost assuredly replace her with. (I can’t imagine them having the good sense to nominate Warren, even though she is now being a good girl and playing footsie with both Schumer and Clinton. I now consider her a sell-out, but I think she’d do better at holding the tribal base and at least some progressives than Biden. But I can’t imagine the donors seeing her that way. They demand clear fealty.)
June 7th will be interesting.
I am completely missing the reference here. Resemblance to what, specifically?
I believe Trump’s main digs or the room in one of the St. Petersburg palaces the Nazis stole and disappeared at least in color scheme.
ummm…Versailles??………uhhh…..Jamie D’s residence??…….i donnoknow…..who?
The Amber Room?
See:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Room
But, more probably, sensing Lamberts’ tastes, the rooms that Dave transmogrifies in at the end of 2001.
See:http://www.collativelearning.com/PICS%20FOR%20WEBSITE/stills/2001-Unsworth2.jpg
The caption is: “Hillary, I’ve come for you.”
Versailles ??
More like Downton Shabby. Versailles went completely over the top, pegging the gaudy meter at all times.
This, however, is hideous on so many levels.
The two styles of chairs should never be in the same room. The seat cover material on the dining chairs should only appear in a tacky country setting. The lighting would make me frown in at least three ways at once before I ran from the room screaming. The white mantle with brass… Tammy Faye Baker comes to mind. What they did to the art with those frames… Old yellow newsprint would be better than that wallpaper.
“The two styles of chairs should never be in the same room.”
Eclecticism, my man.
It’s like wearing torn jeans with your tuxedo jacket.
All the serious venture capitalists do it now.
It looks like a restrained version of what Tom Wolfe once called “Hog Stomping Baroque”.
I’m wondering whether the paintings are real. Degas on the left and Matisse(?) over the fireplace. Who would want to advertise that they own stuff like that?
But if they are real, the owners surely paid NYS sales tax on them.
I mean, fine upstanding citizens who live in the Pierre wouldn’t have had them shipped out of state to avoid paying the price we pay for civilization. Right?
I’m reliably informed that people who have the money to buy the originals can, and do, commission high-quality forgeries of the works, and display THEM instead, while the originals are nestled safely in a vault someplace. (Another one of the habits if the ultra-rich that make me yearn for 95% marginal tax rates)
That’s a Van Gogh over the fireplace. It’s a copy. The Dégas original is about 3x as big.
btw, I’m changing my handle. I’m no longer Chris in Paris. That’s all folks!
Thanks. The one over the fireplace looked familiar but I couldn’t track it down.
Now, if they had had a Rembrandt seascape, I would have been impressed.
Anecdote….many years ago I was invited to a New Years Eve dinner at a Fifth Avenue apartment. Iirc, the dining table sat 24. Massive apartment, lots of photos of the owners with various politicians and the like, Ford, Kissinger, etc.
But the best part was the art. Very expensive elaborate gilt frames with brass plaques, “Monet, Water Lillies” with picture lights over each one.
They were cheap 8×10 prints from the Met Museum.
Lesson learned, just because it’s a multi million dollar home doesn’t mean the art is anywhere near the same value.
When referring to very large and hideously expensive, audacious homes such as this..it might as well be Versailles……l
I didn’t get the reference myself.
Suburban Atlanta is saturated with builder/designer tract house display rooms that look just like that, sans tacky lighting schemes. If that is the best that our overlords can do then it really doesn’t say much for the architects and interior designers they hire. My Wife is an architect with some spare time and the need for millions, they should give her a call. I’ll volunteer to help them spend it.
IMHO, they would be better off buying a Neel Reid in Druid Hills and spending the rest on a place out in the country. You wouldn’t be on the forty first floor, but you would have a nice garden beyond the French doors. They need a subscription to Veranda or Traditional Home, at the least. Give ’em something to aim for.
NYC ‘Trophy Apartment’: $250 Million
A $250 million mansion in the Manhattan sky is the prize property in a 70-story building that is still under construction at 220 Central Park South. Monthly common charges will be more than $45,000, with annual taxes of about $675,000, documents show.
Floor plans show 16 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, five balconies and a massive terrace in a 23,000-square-foot, four-story apartment.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2016/05/nyc-trophy-apartment-250-million.html
High end brothel…
Oh, good Lord! How could one even live there? That looks like a Seventies airport waiting room with a view.
They never show the parking spots for the riding scooters needed to get from the couch to the bathroom.
Eyes wide shut?
What’s unusual is the cove lighting pointing down rather than up. Normally it’s bounced off the ceiling to make a diffuse, indirect glow.
Probably the downward pointing cove lighting is an adaptation to provide better ambient lighting for the costly pictures. Art is driving architecture in luxury buildings, necessitating 11 to 13-foot ceilings to accommodate the more monumental pieces.
Still, don’t know if I could live with those heavily light-washed walls. No crappy art collection is gonna push me around.
Kind of reminds me of a place Jeffrey Epstein and his distinguished guests would have “supped” post “massage.”
Intimate, in a pornographic sort of way.
That gilding really tied the room together.
This room is one of the rare instances where Jeff Koons’ bulbous balloon dog, perched on the dining room table, would actually make an ironic statement about the sublime self-mocking silliness of the Nouveau Riche.
“Y’all are just luckier than a two-dicked dog,” I’d assure them, patting its shiny metal head.
i don’t know if you say this knowing that jeff koons was the guest artist at versaille a few years ago or not
I meant the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles:
But the Winter Palace is a good guess. (“Let’s to the Winter Palace, quickly!”)
I feel a vindication johns commin on….! ………ok…I didn’t mention ‘which’ room it was….but let’s not kwibble over small details…eh :’)
The Hall of Mirrors may be ostentatious, but it is at least well-proportioned and consistent in its design. The room in the photograph is an abomination. The ceilings in the room are too low for the style in general, and definitely too low for the ill-conceived and poorly executed cove lighting. Track lighting doesn’t belong in a space like that, either. Lighting should enhance a room (especially in a private home) not be the first thing one notices. Quite frankly, I think the room’s best feature is the floor. I don’t have an issue with eclecticism and am not a purist about mixing styles, but that room is a prime example of my mother’s old saying: you can’t buy taste.
Form follows function: Versailles was meant to be ostentatious. That tract house interior, as you say, fails at the most basic design level.
If you want to be kept out of the elements then I s’pose it will do the job. Otherwise, I have to say, someone spending that kind of cash prolly isn’t wanting to come off as one of Home Depots’ mid-level managers in support of lighting fixture procurement. And yet that is exactly the image that they just bought for themselves.
Aw, my thought was Titanic.
Remember that electoral map everyone was sure Clinton would dominate?
http://cloutpolitical.com/oregon-poll-trump-leads-clinton-in-new-general-election-poll/
Whoops, there goes Oregon.
So that makes it Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Oregon…And Oregon wasn’t even a so-called battleground state.
Heck of a job, Hillary!
A Worrisome Pileup of $100 Million Homes NYT. Here’s one of those worrisome homes:
The 13,000-square-foot property, built and owned by the fashion magnate Pierre Cardin, is composed of giant terra cotta orbs arranged in a sprawling hive. The home’s name befits its price. “Le Palais Bulles,” or “the Bubble Palace,” is being offered for sale at approximately $450 million.
==============================================
For that price, I am assuming every model that ever worked for Cardin conveys with the property…..
(and I hope they have some meat on their bones – no emaciated women for me….I’ll donate the male models to charity)
Now, all I have to do is get me one of those negative interest rate mortgages, and I will have enough money to feed all my models and provide all the champagne we want as well as 110 inch TV… I might – might be able to afford HBO…
So I guess “Les Palais Beares” would be “the Popped Bubble Palace”….
Thanks, I’ll be here all week!
(high-hat, snare tap)
Anyone with half a brain knew 15 years ago that the Clinton Foundation was designed as a money laundering organization.
Anyone with half a brain knew from Day 1 that the “private e-mail server”‘s purpose in life was to circumvent government regulations.
Anyone paying any attention at all knows that everything the Clintons do involves selling out the wretched refuse to the New York banksters.
Yet HillBill are going to get the chance to form “Administration 2.0”, with the enthusiastic support of the Democratic Party.
Say what you will about Trump, but from Flyover America’s perspective, he seems to be pizzing off the right people.
No matter what happens, the US is going to get the leadership it deserves.
But but but Dianne Feinstein said Hillary was simply searching for a “private life” so she set up a private server. LOL
If she was searching for a private life, then why is she running for president?
In all likelihood, Hillary does not have a private life.
Behind the facade of frenetic activity (the permanent campaign; the daily back-to-back fundraisers; visiting 112 countries; etc), nothing is there.
Hillary reminds me of a couple of sad cases I knew personally. They were so defined by their careers that when their careers ended, they promptly faded away and died. They didn’t know who they were anymore.
Let me get this right. Hillary lost 55,000 e-mails she wrote her daughter? Must be a very close relationship.
Since the email hairball started breaking I’ve wondered whether hubby Bill had access to her email server. The answer may lie within the trove of the 30,000+ deleted “personal” emails, or the testimony of the erstwhile IT guy Brian Pagliano. I mean if Bill was out there wheeling and dealing via the Clinton Foundation he would have wanted to be up to speed on the latest policy developments…I mean graft opportunities. Do ex-presidents retain their top secret security clearance? If you pay him $500,000 for a speech will you some really useful information on the side?
The formula used by professional D.C. influence peddlers is “I’ll personally bring your issue to her attention.”
Progeny and spouses of House speakers, majority leaders and committee chairs have invoked this magic incantation for years.
Never, before the Clintons, did ex-presidents ever stoop to such degrading grifting, which is considered far beneath the dignity of an elder statesman.
I like that formula. It reminds me of the formula that you use to open negotiations with a Malaysian policeman: “Is there any way we can settle the matter?”
Were Bills emails auto forwarded to Hillary and we’re Hillarys emails auto forwarded to Bill? Or perhaps he could just login and read the copies on the server.
As asked yesterday, the technical aspects of the server have barely been covered.
Feinstein on Clinton Secret Server: “Enough Is Enough,” All She Wanted Was A “Private Life” RealClearPolitics (BC).
Good grief!!!!! Clinton is someone who CEASELESSLY injects herself into the public sphere, since being a “Goldwater girl” – the constant running for office, than president, the foundations, the Goldman Sachs speeches – so I am just curious, when did she have time for all this “private” stuff???
Could it be that an inordinate number of “private” emails were about Bill’s hanging out on a certain private jet and what that may do to Hillary’s election chances? Because it seems too much time and money went into keeping private discussions of what Hillary’s grandchild would be named…
Patriot Act for thee, but not for me.
-HRC
Forget that, Clinton was a public employee working for the people who have a law that says they get to look at what she is doing. If all she wanted was a private life, the logical choice was to follow State and NSA procedures, use a government email account for all State business and have a government issue cell phone for business as well. Her private email clogged by tens of thousands of Bed Bath and Beyond coupons would be for her private use. IOW, act in the manner the rest of the State Department employees had to act, but Clinton (and Feinstein) seems to have forgotten that is what she was.
The fact that Feinstein, someone who has pretty much embraced the idea that American citizens not in Congress or named Clinton don’t have any private life at all was even remotely allowed to state such a thing without having her skin stripped from her body piece by piece by the reporter only proves that our press is a toothless corrupt shell anymore.
Had George Moscone not been assassinated, we all might be sharing a different reality….with ole Diane remaining nothing but a toothless, two-bit pol…….’sigh’
If you want a private life, you don’t become Secretary of State. Duh.
And you don’t run for president.
The pragmatic progressive: what sets Obama apart from Bernie Sanders [even the liberal Guardian]
With his efforts to overhaul healthcare and crack down on Wall Street, the president has demonstrated the benefits of practicality and compromise
Doesn’t stuff like this need a consumer warning label?
i used to respect the guardian, can’t remember why now. “crack down on wall street”, yeah that’s his legacy. the neo bolshevik.
ObamaCare remains deeply unpopular (as it deserves to), and his Wall Street “crackdown” has been about as effective as a pea shooter in Damascus.
There’s a reason Trump and Sanders are popular.
When your crackdown consists of handing the criminals the keys to the safe and saying “No. stop, don’t do it. Cut that out,” to an empty room, or just claiming to have said it, the pea shooter has a much higher chance of success.
It’s worse than that. Matt Taibbi’s reporting heavily implies that Holder’s Justice Department actively colluded with banking executives to lessen charges into fines.
This seems to be of a kind with the Loretta Lynch legacy saving piece. While Obama is president, I guess, they think there’s still time to convince us that his administration wasn’t the moderate Republican one it was. What’s more, real animus toward those policies, if not at the moment toward the man himself, has already been mobilized, and history won’t be kind. To be sure, whoever comes next will likely tell us it’s time to move on, nothing to see here, but the hippie punching has been taken to such an extreme in this election that I feel like people will no longer take it lying down. No matter who ends up in office, there will be conflict from day one.
Moderate? Except for being embarrassed into reasonable policies by the likes of Ted Olsen on gas rights, Obama tried to make destroying Social Security part of his legacy. He’s brutalized the poor, etc dedicated white collar prosecution, attacked immigrants, launched unchecked wars, and tolerated the Paul Ryan budget. If Obama is a moderate, he smashed the Overton Window on the right side of Glenn Beck’s head.
I meant moderate, because the actual Republicans want to do all that AND eliminate the department of education AND gut the EPA AND give complete control over women’s bodies to the state AND get rid of the weak sauce Dodd-Frank AND refuse to expand Medicaid despite the Federal government paying for it etc. And they have wanted to do these things since Reagan at least, and certainly among the hard-liners at the National Review well before Reagan’s ascendancy. He was their avatar, after all.
Perhaps Obama in his darkest of hearts wants all these things as well (or something equally terrible), but the fact remains he has not, unlike the actual Republicans, tried to carry any of them out, either for fear he’d never get away with it or because he genuinely does not want to. If he were an actual member of the current Republican party, he would be well to the left of most of them, which I realize says a lot about the R party’s recent history, but we don’t need to resort to hyperbole and false equivalence in order to make the President look bad. As you note, he’s done plenty of unforgivable things in his tenure.
he tried to privatize social security, he appoints some of the same republicans that gave us iraq to various positions in his administration, he admires reagan–he’s moderate in comparison to the current crop of republicans, but that doesn’t mean he is a moderate compared to the average american.
‘Pragmatic’ is a popular codeword among Clinton hacks. Places like The People’s View (which I just looked at again, they’ve said exactly nothing about the State Department report) love to portray Sanders as some crazy far-left radical and even if he did get elected (which he obviously can’t be, since he’s only popular among white male Berniebros) the mean old Republicans would block everything he attempted. That he’s actually a throwback to vintage Democratic party platform positions, and that the things he wants to accomplish have overwhelming public support, are never mentioned. “Pragmatic” means “will ‘work’ with Republicans and give them what they want”. Anything more is unachievable. Perhaps they don’t want it to be achieved, since in the heart of the average Clinton hack is a petty wannabe oligarch. Just as Corbyn is portrayed as some out-of-step fringe loon. The only thing these men are out-of-step with is mainstream political group-think. Literally nothing they’re proposing hasn’t been successfully done before, and in many cases is being done right now in numerous countries.
Also, I seem to recall the Democrats controlling all the levels of power for two years between 2008 and 2010. Funny how they couldn’t accomplish anything even when the GOP literally couldn’t stop them…
But it does have a warning label – it says “The Guardian” right on the wrapper of every edition.
Diamond Geysers: Rule-Breaking Iceland Completes Its Miracle Economic Escape Epoch Times (JudyB).
Although its overgrown banks were one of the causes of the global financial crisis, Iceland responded to their meltdown in the opposite way from the rest of Europe—and against the received wisdom of most economists. It allowed its currency to fall in value—an option unavailable to eurozone members, which had to ratchet down wages and prices through “internal devaluation.” It nationalized the big banks that had run up unsustainable debt, rescuing only the fraction that served the domestic economy. It imposed capital controls so that the banks’ creditors and other foreign investors couldn’t withdraw their money. Locals, including pension funds, couldn’t invest abroad.
Let’s Get Fiscal
The central bank also tightened monetary policy. Its policy rate peaked at 18 percent in 2009, and was still at 5.75 percent this month. In the U.K., eurozone, and the United States, central banks pushed their rates to near-zero and applied quantitative easing. Defying the austerity that prevailed across Europe, Iceland then allowed fiscal policy to take the economic and social strain. In particular, public money was used to relieve households of the debt that would otherwise stop any spending recovery.
====================================================
“….Iceland responded to their meltdown in the opposite way from the rest of Europe—and against the received wisdom of most economists.”
There are people who believe the world is flat and there are people who believe the nostrums of economists….
Kinda shows how easy it is to fix things when your number one priority is not restoring, maintaining, and increasing the wealth of bankers….
Contrary to the news in the western press, all is not well in Iceland. Cronyism is rampant and the current coalition government is doing everything it can to privatize as much as possible before they leave office. The right wing government has done some very real and serious damage to the medical system. Housing is in an insane bubble.
What saved Iceland was the massive increase in tourism 500,000 in 2009, expecting 1.5 million in 2016. If tourism drops, the country is in some very serious trouble.
Don’t worry, the yearly EVE Online fanfests will ensure a constant stream of visitors.
Lambert, thanks for flagging the WaPo article on the Grand Hairball. For the record, Dana Milbank wrote it, not Cilizza.
Fixed, thanks. How could I possibly have mixed them up?
(how could I have mixed them up) ha,ha,ha!
“The United States did not choose this era of perpetual warfare.” ~ How to make an article about U.S. perpetual war unreadable. The “terrorists” made us do it!
Loretta Lynch on public bathroom etiquette, ” remarkably aggressive”
If I didn’t view this issue as an apple of discord tendentiously and cynically tossed to the Republicans by the otherwise do-nothing Democrats in an election year, I’d have a lot more sympathy for Lynch’s efforts.
RE: Identity Politics, the left
My sense is that the establishment really, really wants to frame the election as being men vs. women (both R’s and D’s) and they’ve been frustrated because they expected it to be much more in play by now than it is. On a very basic level (without deconstructing or analyzing), this is probably more generational divide (of expectations) at work.
They’ve been anticipating it since Geraldine Ferraro (both liberals and conservatives) and the election of Barack Obama made it appear the logical next-step. It’s glaringly evident in Hillary Clinton’s assertion, “I’m qualified! It’s my turn.” And the Republicans keep signaling they’re ready to go there too.
If only Bernie Sanders would come to his senses and stop talking about economic disparity for the working class, crony capitalism, banking/campaign reform, political revolutions…. getting the young people all involved and registered to vote and stuff.
p.s. I call this ‘Gen-X-splaining’ the issue
Please don’t foist this on Gen X – this is clearly the Baby Boomer’s last stand.
Not sure why you call it Gen X splaining’, Gen X was first in line to be screwed. We started our work careers under Reagan and were told that if we all paid a little more into our retirement account with Uncle Sam then we too would be able to retire just like our grandparents. We aren’t even 65 yet and the rich who used the money on ill advised wars in the name of imperialism are already doing everything they can to renege on that. Now 67 isn’t even the limit to how long we’re supposed to work according to the ruling class. We lost the most net worth when the bankers crashed the economy and wiped out equity in homes. 2/3 of us have less than our parents in net worth(which compounds that little retirement problem.)We’ve seen our jobs sent overseas so that the rich investment class could reap even more profit and have found ourselves having to compete with millennials for jobs, often being told we’re “too old” for.
Screw calling it Gen X splaining- my generation is the precursor to the millennial screwing.
Yes, let us mopes of various Generations make the Rulers happy by savaging each other in a debate over who is more screwed by the predations of said Rulers. Cue the video of the Baron’s hunting dogs ripping at each other over the scraps and gnawed bones discarded by the greasy, corpulent, self-appointed aristokleptocrats… Intelligent curs would feed better by eating the rich…
While the millennials don’t often understand how the baby-boomer thinks and operates, they understand far better than the baby-boomer himself/herself does. Of course, they’re rapidly approaching the year(s) of cognitive decline where they can’t muster up insight even if they want to.
Most of the liberal-leaning elder-folks I’ve listened to lately just simply can’t wrap their heads around Bernie Sanders this campaign except if there’s a reference to Nader or other 3rd party spoiler (antagonist vs. protagonists). I think that’s the real payday for distilling the ‘official’ narrative (both past and present). It gives special access to the minds of voters sympathetic and receptive yet no longer able to follow complicated sub-texts.
————-
“In AA they always say to you, ‘How come your family knows how to push your buttons? Because they installed them,’” – Elizabeth Gilbert
from 2014. Applies equally to Hillary methinks. Privilege masquerading as Persecution.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/223359/what-eric-holder-doesnt-want-talk-about-bruce-thornton
“Yet is it just a coincidence that Obama has been surrounded by so many lighter-skinned blacks who, like himself, come from middle or upper class backgrounds? There’s Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s trusted counselor until he had to be thrown under the bus when his racist sermons were exposed. His father was a Baptist minister, his mother a high school teacher and a vice-principal. Obama’s senior advisor and closest confidante is Valerie Jarrett. Her father is a pathologist and geneticist, and she spent her early life in Iran and London. She is a Stanford graduate with a J.D. from Michigan law school. Eric Holder’s father and maternal grandmother were immigrants from Barbados. His father was a real-estate broker. He graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. and J.D. Susan Rice’s father was a Cornell University economics professor and the second black governor of the Federal Reserve, and her mother is a fellow at the Brookings Institute. Her grandparents emigrated from Jamaica. Rice is a Stanford and Oxford graduate. In other words, all of them are untypical of the lives of ordinary black Americans whose ancestors were slaves or lived under legal segregation.
All of this should be irrelevant, and would be if Martin Luther King’s dream that blacks be judged by character rather than color had been realized. But the racial orthodoxy created by identity politics assumes a Jim Crow one-drop rule that bestows on every black in America – no matter how privileged, no matter if their parents and ancestors, like Obama’s, never suffered through American slavery and legal segregation – the mantle of victim of racism, which qualifies them to be spokesmen and less threatening proxies for millions of other black Americans who lack their advantages. By this ahistorical and incoherent racialist calculus, the child of a Kentucky coal miner or a Dust Bowl migrant has more social capital by virtue of a genetically endowed “white skin privilege” than a half-white Harvard-trained lawyer. The immense advantages bestowed by parents with college degrees and non-ghetto zip codes are invisible. Many middle and upper class blacks enjoy what David Horowitz and John Perazzo call “black skin privilege,” even as in the sixth year of Obama’s presidency millions of their underclass fellows remain mired in unemployment, dependence, crime, addiction, and broken homes.”
Re Politico/LBJ’s ad men–yes it’s just a matter of time before either Trump or Hillary reboots the Daisy ad. I say Trump should go for it. He can have Hillary’s voice reciting (or perhaps Trump would prefer screeching) the launch countdown on the audio.
Of course the great irony of the Daisy ad is that Lyndon called Goldwater a warmonger and then launched the most damaging war in modern American history after getting his landslide. So perhaps it would indeed be more appropriate for Hillary to use it. HRC’s pitch: just like old times.
You’re right; the iconic daisy ad fits for Hillary. Then Trump responds by updating Apple’s 1984 ad, with gray pantsuited Hillary droning to her zombiefied minions from the big screen, just before it’s smashed.
But Hillary’s more into the darker side of the LBJ legacy … the “divert the Dallas motorcade route” sort of thing.
Or arranging the sad final departure of her beloved consort “Bill,” so that she can look presidential in veil and widow’s weeds at the state funeral.
*sheds an anticipatory tear*
can $hillary choose dolla bill as her veep? if so, then you could have your scenario backwards. upon entering office, $hillary suffers an unfortunate accident and $bill becomes president for an unprecedented – in the modern era, at least – 3rd term.
I think that depends on how the Supreme Court would reconcile the 22nd Amendment (no one can be elected to the presidency more than twice) with the 12th (no one ineligible to be president can be vice-president). Also, since they’re both residents of New York, the 12th says they can’t both get the state’s electoral votes, which might be a significant consideration.
Hillary is actually a resident of Washington D.C.:
“Whitehaven” — has a lovely ring, don’t it? Keeps Anacostia outta sight, outta mind. :-)
No doubt they have plenty of houses, but as they both just voted in the New York primaries, I’m guessing that’s their legal residence for electoral purposes.
Though I suppose Bill could pull a Dick Cheney and claim to reside somewhere else, like Arkansas. (Cheney, like Bush, lived in Texas; but somehow he claimed residence in his Wyoming property for the 2000 election.)
A good anti-Hillary ad would be to take short clips of her cackling & stitch them into a 30 second loop. Then buy up a bunch of air time on the major networks and play it over & over &over…
(I shudder at the thought of that)
Will this do?
That would be difficult to watch on shrooms
That would be brilliant.
Re: “the left wings obsession with identity politics produces another injustice”
The topic is similar to the excellent Corey robin post last week. However, although roughly the author is pointing to a real problem–that identity politics are being used by establishment Democrats in a way to oppose the fight for economic justice–this author I think makes some errors in his particular argument.
First, he confuses “left wing” and “leftist” with establishment Democrat. Or New Democrat. There is a real left and leftist politics (maybe not “left wing”) in this country that views racism, sexism, homo/trans/islamophobia, xenophobia, etc etc and economic injustice as inextricable. And I think that the author ignores or disregards that real anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-war, etc. socialist left.
Black people in this country lost half their wealth during the financial crisis. The economic crisis hit women and minorities disproportionally. In general, those who are the target demographic for “identity politics,” have the most to gain from a socialist economic agenda, and are often at the forefront of socialist movements.
The establishment Democrats on the other hand, have a brand of identity politics that divorces “identity” from the true politics of the left. Ie, Hillary Clinton. We are told to vote for her because she is a woman, even though she is not a feminist. Some troll from her campaign tweeted the other day tweeted a doctored video of Sanders entering a rally to a homophobic rap song, and then a pro-Hillary LGBT blog made a huge deal of calling Sanders a homophobe.
… This is hard to put into a quick blog comment, but the problem is the author is using the horrific politics of Hillary Clinton and establishment democrats to argue against “intersectionality” and a socialism that is also anti-racist, anti-imperial, etc etc etc, and to argue for a simple “class over race, sex, etc etc” position.
On the topic of how the Clinton campaign is casting socialism as necessarily racist–which it is indeed doing, and which is an extremely important topic– the Corey Robin post is much, much better.
It also serves to paper over the fact that economic means are one of the primary modes (along with incarceration) that systemic racism gets expressed: redlining, predatory lending, food deserts, job discrimination, etc. all have as their means of oppression a threat to one’s livelihood. It serves as a complement to Audre Lorde’s dictum about the master’s tools. If you take his tools away (legal and economic), then he can’t build/maintain all that crap that keeps you subservient.
Hillary Clinton’s Emails Now Might Finally Take Her Down – LawNews. Must read
Here is the blurb about Metcalf at the end of the article purely to save you time if you haven’t read it.
This article is a must read mainly, if not only, because of who the author is and the fact that such a self described mainstream Democrat and former head of the Justice Department office of Information, Dan Metcalfe, is saying “it’s over” for Hillary Clinton. That is, if such a mainstream adult in the room, never mind an insider mainstream adult in the room, says it’s over, then you can take it to the bank.
For this alone the article is “important”, beyond that it’s sheer dreck (to use a colorful expression that has popped up in comments recently).
The rhetorical premise of this “Adult in the room” article is that you are,
As such, you realize Hillary is vapor if not now, then soon, but you have doubts about Sanders’ viability,
formal proof distilled (you may need time to digest):
1) Bernie is 4, maybe 5 years older than Hillary (wooooooooooow )
2) You (as mainstream Democrat) believe Trump will prevail – because,… because you should (double woooooooooooow)
Dreck, pure dreck.
As Vatch points out above, Metclalf also raises his own dreckey flag signaling his opinion that Nader was a spoiler and he did this as an aside he tried to “slip” in to the article, hopefully unnoticed but “digested” by the reader,
Oh yes, an addition to my enumerated list of formal proof:
3) Think subliminal thoughts of Eugene McCarthy and Howard Dean and of likable failed utopia seekers.
Perhaps, the Team Blue elites know Hillary is done, but the only way to stop Sanders is to convince him to drop out before the convention where the can put up a Biden, but Biden. Only the completely brain dead would consider Biden for more than a few minutes.
The Team Blue elite believe they are the smartest kids in the room despite the results to date, so they might think they can con Sanders.
We must remember to practice our hand writing so that when “Bernie Sanders” is written on the ballot, Your local polls can’t claim it says Bull Shit.
Think about it folks, would you really vote for any 1% candidate again?
Total insulation. As Yves and Lambert put it, all they have to do is press “reset” to make Hillary look good. Biden the bufoon is MORE than acceptable -Clueless in DC
Agreed, they (who have shredded any last vestige of term team when it comes to the Democratic party and fairness) think they can force Sanders to be a “team” player. Team for me but not for thee.
If I had anything to do with the propagation of the phrase “sheer dreck” than I think my work here is done. I can’t even remember where I originally heard it as a kid, but I’ve used it throughout my life. The very sound of the word dreck conveys its sense; you don’t even need to know the meaning.
Your work is hardly done, but bravo, a great contribution. I should have taken the time to look it up so as to give you proper credit.
I first ran across the word ‘dreck’ in the role-playing game Shadowrun more than a decade ago. In that setting the word ‘dreck’ is most certainly a substitute for ‘shit’.
It’s yiddish for shit, crap, manure, garbage, junk…
As the Pythons would put it, “dreck” has a very woody sound.
Let’s not o’erleap this passage at the beginning:
I think it’s truly remarkable that this passage comes from an Establishment Democrat. I remember back in Nixon’s day, that there was a Beltway Institution called “The Wise Men,” respected elders who could take Nixon aside, and tell him it was time to go. We don’t seem to have such an institution today; I would imagine leaks to the press, either by the FBI or even this author (“two that were not”) would have to perform the same function. Clinton is trying mightily to inflate her bubble of sycophancy to include the entire Beltway, but it’s not working, as the Andrea Mitchell video showed yesterday, and this article shows today. And in a variant of Stein’s Law: If you can’t inflate a bubble forever, it will pop.
I suspect the long weekend came none too soon for the Clinton campaign and various other factions in the Democrat Establishment. It will be interesting to see what the talking points are on Tuesday. And who makes them.
NOTE It comes from the Democrat Establishment. Of course it’s dreck. The question is: What purpose does the dreck serve? What purposes can it be made to serve?
I’ve been saying Biden was going to be the nominee for awhile now. I admit Kerry has not been on my radar, but I’ll still say I was seeing the writing on the wall a while. The thing I think is interesting about all this is that I’m no longer getting the ‘you’re crazy’ response, I’m getting ‘how’. The idea/fact that Hillary is a disaster and will likely be replaced is no longer as out there as it was even a couple of weeks ago.
As more of these ‘insider’ pieces and trial balloons pop up, the more it will seep into the subconscious of the public. I don’t know how it will happen, but I think it is becoming clear that Clinton is now fighting a two front battle to be the Democratic nominee for President and then President and neither Trump or Sanders is the threat her own party is.
I think the article is important from the standpoint that you have someone in the elite democratic establishment acknowledging that Clinton is guilty of felonies by any OBJECTIVE analysis of the KNOWN facts. Its very, very hard to imagine that more facts will be exculpatory – it seems highly likely that more facts will be inculpatory not only to the present security crimes, but will include bribery.
What the dems can actually do to ameliorate that will be quite entertaining.
When our present day Titanic goes down at this next presidential election, at least the songs available to us on our mobile devices will be much more entertaining than “Nearer my God to Thee”
I think as I sink beneath the waves I’ll listen to “Lola”
That Morning Joe clip with Andrea Mitchell (watch, if you haven’t) was the first real crack I’ve seen in the Establishment wall. This is the second. I’ve seen tweets and posts from Brock’s flying monkeys on the IG report, of course, but I haven’t seen these cracks papered over. (Obama never goes near anything that might make him look bad, so he’s not the party heavy-weight to put this to rest through a public statement, though as the author points out, he’ll be a player as long as he has the power to pardon. So who, exactly, is? Takes one or more Superdelegates, I would think. But who?)
This is all some pretty serious Kremlinology, isn’t it? Utterly fascinating though.
I’m wondering if this is actually a crack, or just a sign of panic from one Dem faction? Like you say, we’ll probably find out Tuesday (or otherwise at some point this week).
Indeed, the passage at the beginning was the most significant given who the author is. I should have emphasized that I agreed on the importance factor and wasn’t simply dismissing it. Also that if Metcalfe was floating the Biden/Kerry idea, then it is certainly is being thought about by tptb. .
The dreck of Metcalfe’s utter lack of argument was also important (on top of being painful to read). He seems to be talking to insiders. Who else would swallow that vomit?
Unfortunately, or not, I am not able to get MSNBC, but looking at their web site, one would think the Mika interview with Todd and Andrea and co had never happened. All’s quiet, it’s full steam ahead for $lithary, until suddenly – it isn’t. Then Todd comes on and does his serious face routine, We have breaking news that Hillary has stepped down
to pursue other opportunities, hahahahaand – thank God – Joe Biden has reluctantly agreed to take her place…But I’ll have to see it to believe it. I can’t believe for instance that these people are not aware of what would happen if Sanders were simply cut out of the equation like that. If they are that far gone, I suppose we will be seeing Martial law imposed as soon as the announcement is made.
“Who else would swallow that vomit?”
That matter is handled during the interview for the position.
And Joe Biden is just one year younger than Sanders.
well……there’s always Hunter…….right??
Well, he does have hair plugs!
..and a nose for blow ……??
“Well, there she goes again,” reminds the NY Post:
Funny how during this whole brouhaha, not one mention of all those emails lost during the Bush-Cheney years….What ever happened to that story? Seems to have disappeared down the whole look-forward-not-back memory/rabbit hole…Was there even a slap on the wrist?
http://linkis.com/Serpo
“Less stupid?” In the Atlantic? Keep dreamin’.
But, but… They had Barry’s Doctrine on the cover!
A housemate has a subscription. We keep it in the bathroom. Never fails to get the old bowels moving….
@JTMcPhee: re the child & the gorilla: report I read said the gorilla had dragged & tossed around the child for 10 minutes before being shot. Still sad, for all the reasons, but an agitated gorilla dragging a 4-year old around for 10 minutes could do a lot of damage, (and was not the child severely injured & hospitalized?) and if so, it’s understandable to me what they did.
What’s not understandable is how a parent (and the design of the facility) allowed a child to enter the enclosure. Or for that matter, why a person would want to go look at animals in prison, but that’s a different thing.
“What’s not understandable is how a parent (and the design of the facility) allowed a child to enter the enclosure. Or for that matter, why a person would want to go look at animals in prison, but that’s a different thing.”
Agreed. The whole affair is deplorable. A thought: as a message to inattentive parents, I believe there should be a significant fine paid by these parents to support gorilla rescue. There is no excuse for letting your kid get inside a zoo enclosure. If it means putting your tot on a leash, so be it. Disgusting waste of life.
my first reaction was to blame the parents as well but, despite not having kids myself, i thought back to a time i was one. all it takes is one lapse of attention by the parent(s) who are maybe focusing their attention on the other kid(s) who is creating maybe even more of a liability somewhere else, and that can create a window large enough for a kid to do something really stupid.
so i feel for the parents. really, there is no excuse for the zoo, however, which had created a gorilla enclosure a freakin’ four-year-old was able to get through.
‘sigh’…………This is why the ‘War on Terra’ is condoned…same reasoning! …… Please, Pleeeeaase keep me safe….I”M TOO STUPID TO THINK FOR MYSELF !!!!!!!!!
Speaking as a parent, who was a stay-at-home dad, you have to watch over your child, and have common sense……you don’t let your children do whatever they want……you have to be firm and use discretion in raising them!!………and frankly, there are many people who are not fit to be considered a ‘parent’……..
RE: Poor polls, scandal, a cussed rival … how it’s all going wrong for Hillary Clinton Guardian
Quite the image at the top of the article.
It reminds me of that old deodorant commercial–“Never let ’em see you sweat.”
Why wasn’t the Gorilla enclosure designed with small children in mind? Children are a major part of any zoos’ user base. We have two Sumatran tigers here in the Hattiesburg Zoo. It would take a suicidal escape artist to get into their ‘display space.’ The Gorillas should have been treated with the same care the other obviously dangerous critters are. The Gorillas are first cousins to the most dangerous creature on Earth; Humans. Appropriate care is required.
PARENTS were “designed” with small children in mind. The obvious design flaw is the tendency to blame other, unrelated adults when parenting behavior is inadequate.
I find myself wondering if a cell phone was somehow involved.
At Columbia, SC Riverbanks zoo you only get to see the gorilla behind a glass wall and I believe that is also true of the Atlanta zoo if recollection serves.
Zoos can be sad places and it often seems the primates are the saddest part. They wanna get out.
Disney!
Why wasn’t the Gorilla enclosure designed with small children in mind?
Because gorillas are jealous about sharing their space? i dont blame them.
because, to a chillins eyes….every gorilla is Mighty Joe Young !!
….or one of those way coooool Jungle Book characters !!
“Wait, I thought the F35 was supposed to replace the A10?”
From the very end of the article:
“Air Force leaders had previously said that the emerging multi-role F-35 would be able to pick up the close-air-support mission. With its sensor technology, 25mm gun and maneuverability, there is little question about whether the F-35 could succeed with these kinds of missions. At the same time, there is also consensus that the A-10 provides an extremely unique set of battlefield attributes which need to be preserved for decades.”
Those ‘unique set of attributes’ being that it isn’t a self-igniting dog. Also contrary to the above, the F-35 can’t maneuver for crap.
Also I laugh at the claim that a 25mm cannon qualifies the F-35 for CAS. The A-10 uses a 30mm, as do its Russian counterpart the Su-25 and all the planes in the Su-27 derived series of multi-roles (and the Su-34 ground attack plane). In fact I believe 25mm is the caliber of round the A-10’s GAU-8 gun is compared to when they make the claim about it having more than a dozen times the kinetic energy. And even with depleted uranium rounds, the harsh reality is that 30mm simply can’t penetrate any MBT more than a couple generations old. The real secret to the A-10s tank killing ability is its strong wings that can carry a lot of missiles and rockets. The cannon has always been something of a gimmick.
Whereas the F-35 can’t even fit the Joint Strike Missile designed specifically for it. I haven’t seen the specs on what it can carry externally (also external munitions degrade stealth, but stealth almost certainly doesn’t work anyway, and the F-35 is reported to be garbage at it because of the engine heat plume, so maybe it’s a wash) but given the abysmal wing strength and carrying capacity of the Harrier, a plane also designed around the VTOL gimmick, I doubt it can handle even a respectable load.
That the Air Force is seriously considering keeping and even upgrading their A-10 fleet, a plane they notoriously despise because they have visions of aerial knights jousting and don’t want to do mundane ground support, says a lot. If they keep the A-10 they’ll have CAS covered, but they’ll still have nothing modern and competitive to fill the air combat role, other than a very limited number of now irreplaceable F-22s. The Chinese and Russians are going to eat us alive in any future war.
Let us not get too carried away with the idea the micc is “$uddenly” corrupt and wastes money…it is what militaries do and have always done…last I checked, the russians still use a prop plane as their long term strategic bomber…and china has a …oh yeah…not so much…we are quite good at war…we just stink at transition…
how many russians actually hate americans…how many chinese…
it takes more than orders to lead a military…
how many american soldiers chose to shoot past the enemy in vietnam and refused to fully engage in lbj and westmorelands dystopian nightmare…
The chinese could not take advantage of the cuban missle crisis to beat down much on india
and the russians ??…
other than beating down their former nazi allies after the US invasion
on d day…
what bombing runs did the russians do during ww2 over berlin ??
Perhaps I missed that chapter in history class…
bombing berlin on the last few weeks of the war when there were no air defenses does not count, no matter how much ordinance the russians insist they dropped on an already dead berlin
And as for everyone with the noise about thermo new que lyr and missles…no general with half a brain would rely on those burp boxes…last I checked, every time a butterfly farts in miami, a launch is canceled at cape…couple of guys in a silo turning some keys and pushing some buttons…hollywood props…
Boots on the ground lads…no one wants to get their uniforms dirty anymore…no one anywhere…
Memo to little miss nullie…
War as we know it is dead…smoke and mirror staged events are harder to pull of…considering every lumpen has a digital camera recorder in their hands…
although i’ve despised donald trump as a human being long before he began his campaign for president, if it’s down to him or $hillary for president, i’d rather it be him, no question.
on policy, it’s a coin toss on who would be worse, though probably, they’d likely be interchangeable. $hillary has a proven record of warmongering that is unrivalled, but trump is cowardly and unhinged. trump may say dumber things on climate change but, if you ask me, believing in climate change and not doing anything about it is worse than not believing it and not doing anything about it. what it comes down to is this: trump won his nomination fair and square, even going up against forces who tried to steal it from him. $hillary, however, has used every dirty trick in the book, legal or otherwise (voter tampering, alleged electronic vote fraud) to steal hers.
France is heading into a ‘summer of discontent’ – The Local
Another example of dreck. The premise: The strike effort to prevent Holland’s “reforms” from screwing the French workers (my way of putting it) will end up defeating itself by poisoning public opinion – which the author, Martin Dixon, sees as a good thing because it will lead to a situation where a minority of workers,
What a nasty perverted way of looking at things: spoiled brat workers will never again be able to throw a tantrum. Dixon is clueless. Besides the reality that Holland’s proposed changes to the law (which he can’t even pass by normal means) represent real threats to ALL French workers, the French have a considerable tolerance for strikes and it is highly unlikely that public opinion will crush any future ability of workers to protect themselves.
If anyplace can do it, France can – though I admit this is a far cry from ’68 or the seventies.
Ireland, Portugal, the US, Spain, Greece, now France; people trying desperately to protect themselves against a monolithic international machine that produces the very fanatics that drive it. Awesome.
Mister Laurits has not factored in the game-changing effect of Hillary’s new message to Sanders supporters:
STOP RESISTING!!! Whack whack whack, STOP RESISTING!!! Zap, frazz Blam blam blam
FOOL. Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put ’em i’ the paste alive; she knapped ’em o’ the coxcombs with a stick, and cried, ‘Down, wantons, down!’ ‘Twas her brother that, in pure kindness to his horse, butter’d his hay.
If the Democrats need a progressive “other than Bernie” candidate to replace HRC, why not consider Russ Feingold?
He was a Rhodes Scholar, voted against the Iraq War resolution and the Patriot Act, so he is willing to take unpopular positions..
Bernie Sanders endorsed Feingold (for the upcoming Wisconsin US Senate election) this month, so Bernie supporters could easily fall in behind Feingold, while they might not support thoroughly compromised Joe Biden (Iraq War support, bankruptcy bill support, Clarence Thomas hearings, a son on Ukraine oligarch’s payroll).
Feingold then can choose Bernie as VP.
But but but, the whole point is to achieve an establishment candidate, a business candidate, a team player, a neo-liberal, a corrupt shill, a power-tower.. Feingold is as far left as Sanders. By replacing Sanders with Feingold they would infuriate anyone who still believes in fair play (me for instance) while ending up with another Bernie by any other name.
Of course I do like the idea; Feingold could make Bernie his VP and then on the first day declare he (Feingold) had a hang nail or something and give the presidency to Sanders who would then make Feingold his VP. Then four years later, assuming he won a second round, Bernie could get his own hang nail or something and swap out. That would be a well warranted poke in the eye of the Democratic party.
Because Feingold “voted against the Iraq War resolution and the Patriot Act”?
Seriously, Feingold lost. How is he on the trail?
Adding, on Biden, you forgot plagiarism. And decidedly illiberal remarks on the Civil War. He’s gaffe-prone.
Nevertheless, 300 or so people in the Beltway think he’s a loveable goof, so it’s probably a lock for him, as opposed to windsurfin’ John Kerry.
NO Lambert….he has Israel’s back……nothing goofball about that!
Hardly a differentiating factor.
Feingold not only lost in 2010 but to a do-nothing carpet-bagger, Ron Johnson, whose “business experience” was having the packaging portion of his in-laws’ manufacturing co. hived off and given to him, so that the profit of the packaging co was guaranteed because its only (or at least) dominant client is the mfg. co it used to be part of. Johnson also “self-financed” his campaign to the tune of $9 million (though the normal Wisconsin right-wing funders also helped quite a bit with outside funding) and, coincidentally, was given a $9 million bonus by his firm when he took his leave of absence to run. Granted it was a wave election, but still.
Feingold is personally a very good guy but, unlike Sanders, he has no stomach for hand-to-hand combat. He was completely AWOL for the 2011 protests (including refusing entreaties to run against Walker in the recall election) and, indeed, has done virtually nothing to speak of for the last six years other than wait for a rematch that it is not obvious he will win. In his current TV ads, he is running as the same old “folksy Russ,” a “real” Wisconsinite whose primary talent is his ability to listen. But in Washington, he was always primarily focused on foreign policy (not all bad) and constitutional issues (again, not all bad). Having seen him in action for more than 20 years, I’m still not quite sure where he stands on basic economic issues. He has never run as an economic populist.
That’s very bad news on 2011. Can I assume that Sanders supporters in Wisconsin include a very heavy component of 2011 activists?
For sure. Anyone with an even remote interest in politics/gov’t in WI is now completely politicized. In gross terms, state is split 50-50. But the interesting thing is the coalitions. On the D side, activists (Sanders’ supporters) now dominate EXCEPT among office holders, who are predominantly D hacks or “independent” D’s (Pocan, Feingold) who could be drawn to a more activist program is they saw any chance of it succeeding. On the R side, the suburban Milwaukee establishment runs the show but they depend on the votes of religious conservatives and outstate working class who have been taught to hate Milwaukee (blacks) and Madison (public employees and university eggheads). The key is whether the working class can be won back. For some reason, LOTE doesn’t seem to resonate.
Haven’t you answered your own question? There is a reason the Democratic elite want Clinton or Biden.
“He was a Rhodes Scholar”
That’s not really a selling point. See: Rachel Maddow. Oxbridge is part of the problem. The people actually worth listening to are usually defacto exiled to ‘lesser’ universities.
or bill clinton for that matter.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to throw ‘credentials’ out the window entirely……..i mean, they’re only used for ‘gatekeeping’ now! ….to hell with what knowledge a person might hold… to do good for themseves and/or their community…….gotta have that cert., that skin, that paper that codifies what…your….worth….. and if you can’t jump enough hoops, or know the right cons of influence…well then it’s f#ck you buddy, go pound sand !!
Former Morgan Stanley Chief Asia Economist: “Don’t Listen To The Ruling Elite, The World Economy Is In Real Trouble”
Over the past two decades, the global economy has been blessed with the entry and participation of 800 million hard-working Chinese, plus the information revolution. The pie should have increased enough in size to make most people happier. Yet, the opposite has happened. The world has gone from one crisis to another. People are complaining everywhere. This is due to mismanagement by the very people who attend the G20 meetings, the Davos boondoggle, and so many other global meetings that waste taxpayers’ money and put inept leaders in the limelight.
One major complaint that people have is that the system is rigged – that is, the rising income concentration is not due to free market competition, but a rigged system that favours the politically powerful. This is largely true. The new billionaires over the past two decades have come mostly from finance and property. Few made it the way Steve Jobs or Bill Gates did, creating something that makes people more productive.
The most important factor in the rigged system is monetary policy being used to pump up financial markets in the name of stimulating growth for people’s benefit. This is essentially the trickle-down wealth effect, that is, making some people in the financial food chain rich while the spillover gives people a few crumbs. Yet, instead of crumbs, the wealth effect has pumped up property prices in Manhattan, London and Hong Kong, as well as the price of modern art. Essentially, the wealth effect has stayed within the small circle of the wealthy. And these people show up at Davos to congratulate policymakers on their “successes”.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-28/dont-listen-ruling-elite-world-economy-real-trouble?
and how will we ever know how rigged policy is when the so called “PEP”s(see above The Whistle blower) use off shore anonymous vehicles/jurisdictions/havens to hide the pay offs?
“the way Steve Jobs or Bill Gates did, creating something” well, Bill Gates bought DOS from Seattle Computer Products (where Tim Patterson wrote it by, shall we say heavily basing it on CP-M?) for $75,000 and pretty much all of the Lisa/Mac features came from XEROX-PARC… Not saying that Apple and MS didn’t actually build real industries and wealth and they certainly have much more real value than the financial and managerial chicanery that dominate the economy now but let’s not go overboard praising them.
Whenever I read a sycophantic article on Jobs I always think of how he dealt with his friend Wozniak in the deal to create the Breakout arcade game.
…or that tiny little wage-fixing scandal….
. . . This is due to mismanagement by the very people who attend the G20 meetings, the Davos boondoggle, and so many other global meetings that waste taxpayers’ money and put inept leaders in the limelight.
. . . Essentially, the wealth effect has stayed within the small circle of the wealthy. And these people show up at Davos to congratulate policymakers on their “successes”.
After the 2008 financial crisis, the US government and Federal Reserve spent trillions of dollars to bail out the people who created the crisis. Instead of facing bankruptcy and jail, these people have become richer than ever. Predictably, they have used their resources to rig the system further.
It was perfectly and artfully managed by those policymakers bought to be in charge of enriching their Davos masters, and the peasants are even suckered into paying for the luxury airfreight and hotel accommodations of those attending to collect their congratulations. The super rich are the cheapest people on the planet, always shoving expenses onto the shoulders of those least able to pay and claiming every gain for themselves.
Andy’s description of the Chinese overcapacity ponzi scheme leads to this statement.
All indications are that China wants to export the overcapacity. And why not? China overinvested to bail out the global economy. It shouldn’t pay the whole price for the mistake.
The GFC originated with the Wall Street criminals, and China somehow felt a responsibility to go on a factory and infrastructure building spree to bail out whom, exactly? Wall Street? The displaced workers in the US flyover states that had been losing jawbs to China for the previous fifteen years?
China’s elite bailed themselves out, and now the results are in. It’s a mad dash to get as much cash out as possible before they choke on their own pollution. Yes, the Chinese elite should pay for this mistake all by themselves, however like the elite everywhere, the expenses get shoved onto the shoulders of the peasants, and the gains are claimed for themselves.
Worldwide, the peasants are pissed and know the game is rigged.
The world is on the cusp of a prolonged period of stagnation and instability. Our ruling elite is blaming it on people seeing things. Their strategy is to change people’s psychology. Unfortunately for them, the world is catching fire and that fire will eventually reach their Davos chalets.
People are seeing things alright. Seeing how the are getting screwed by the insufferably smug elite and their servants, the policymakers.
I am keeping an eye out for the next big investment growth industry, the modern day trebuchet.
‘The Great White Hope’ Pat Buchanan, Town Hall. Ideologically, Trump is Buchanan 2.0
Buchannan is an interesting study.
A couple contrasts between Buchannan and Trump is the former was seemingly in it (POTUS campaign) for face time and financial retirement planning as he clearly had no chance of winning.
http://www.fec.gov/press/bkgnd/fund.shtml
We have also prepared a chart listing all candidates who have received at least $1 million in matching funds over the course of the public funding program. (Excel version) (PDF version) Five candidates have received more than $20 million each over the course of the program: Bill Clinton (D), Ronald Reagan (R), George H.W. Bush (R), Robert Dole (R) and Pat Buchanan (R).
As well, PB grew up and has lived to date in the “beltway” ecosystem his entire life, even as a kid. while as n adult, either nesting in a POTUS advisory role (Nixon, Ford, Reagan) or in intermediate gigs at conservative MSM organs of propaganda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_funds
..Hence the anomaly of Ross Perot standing as Reform Party candidate in 1992 and receiving 18% of the vote, yet receiving no matching funds because the Reform Party did not receive 5% of the vote in 1988; whilst Pat Buchanan, running as the Reform Party candidate in 2000, did receive matching funds despite winning only 0.4% of the vote.
Good gig if you can get it. IIRC, there was a hairball legal battle over who received the matching funds, PB won.
Sidebar on Bucannan’s OPED, he is absolutely correct about the presentation of “middle age white guys” in popular media.
They are generally cast in the silly/evil/ incompetent roles as it is the last safe demographic to use as foils due to the percieved repercussion of legal/economic risk.
There is an interesting Tavis Smiley excellent interview of Jimmy Walker http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/comedian-actor-jimmie-walker/
wherein he wistfully reflects that he and other blacks are typecast out of roles that would present a negative impression or stereotype of resulting from the studios calculation of these commercial risk resulting from “political correctness backlash”.
One of his examples was “Married with Children” written by Michael Moye ( happens to be black) was commercially viable until it was cast w/the white trash stereotype.
A Worrisome Pileup of $100 Million Homes
Ceiling track lighting in a $10mm home?
I like the backlighting behind the ceiling cove, nderstated but elegant.. I wonder if they have a with cupid spitting water
re: The left’s obsession with identity politics causes a new injustice – Politics
Thanks for the link. Very good read.
Unlike the following, I think it is a bigger threat to the Clinton general election strategy for victory. Sure it is going to siphon off dissatisfied Republicans, but that is exactly who Clinton has been and obviously was planning on targeting. Both candidates are going to lose voters to this ticket, but for a campaign that is ignoring or pissing off old school democrats and democratically leaning independents, suddenly having a couple of guys who speak their language and have a record regarding most of their issues really puts a crimp in Plan A.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/libertarian-johnson-weld-ticket-bad-101500880.html
Sadly, I do think the Libertarians are the third party that is going to benefit from this year’s train wreck, not the Greens.
I think the libertarians have a ways to go on optics:
Then again, I don’t know the nuances of libertarian politics at all. Perhaps the above video was a grassroots reaction to William Weld as VP, Boston Brahmin, Republican Massachusetts governor, and an all-round vicious “nice guy” type, but hardly a principled libertarian, assuming there to be such a thing.
…Sumo Libertarian….??
When it is the second time you have run for President and most of the nation wouldn’t know who the hell you are, I don’t think optics are your biggest problem. And despite the protest, this is a repeat for Johnson. Hell I have my doubts about how many New Mexicans remember Johnson. I admit to remembering him because he was the first politician I heard who pointed out that War on Drugs was an overall loser for the states. And a sitting politician at that. He also made a pretty cogent argument that was based on the economics of it.
But pandering to the Koch Brothers and picking Weld is right in line for picking up the unhappy Republicans who cannot stomach voting for Trump. May not be principled, but it is politic – especially in getting an outsider party past the level needed for matching funds. And that is certainly what Johnson is going for. He may have won the most votes ever for a Libertarian (and the best for a third-party since Perot) but it was still only 1% of the vote.
And we may not want him, but apparently Weld does have a following, from something I read he was one of the prime targets for the Clinton campaign plan of wooing Republicans.
Politico:
Thank you. That was it.
i l ike the nazi cross tattooed on his shoulder. classy all ’round.
Re: The Bank Robber – New Yorker
Frauds double-crossing frauds. Criminals all around. The little ones do 5 years in the pen, the big ones pay a fine and walk away free.
Not sure that “the Network” is actually a thing, but if his fantasy ends up seeding the idea for actual people to create it, more power to him. Falciani is obviously a greedy liar caught in his own lies, which is convenient for the big-wigs, as it draws attention away from the one time he did tell the unvarnished truth.
Orson Welles made a movie about this sort of thing, which I believe you can find on Youtube, called F is for Fake. Might be time to watch it again….
The article seems completely focused on things other than the names and quantities of money revealed in the data Falciani has. Regardless of the flaws of the messenger, I have seen no claim that his data is not accurate.
My point exactly. The one time the guy tells the truth….
Why the Very Poor Have Become Poorer
I’m confused: Jenks says, more or less, that a family’s pretax income is a poor indicator of the money they actually have on hand month to month, as it doesn’t account for things like the earned income tax credit and TANF. Regarding the EITC specifically, I’m having a hard time following his logic. How can a family’s pretax income ever be less than it’s post-tax-plus-EIC income?
Hillary re-remembers her memoirs for revised paperback edition.
Hillary Clinton’s Memoir Deletions, in Detail
by Ming Chun Tang
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/28/hillary-clintons-memoir-deletions-detail
L’histoire, et moi. What’s a little revisionist history between
friendsroyalty and subjects?And et, it is c’est.
I agree with above comments that the Metcalfe article is clearly written from the DNC establishment bubble. But, having read all 100+ pages of Do I Really Need to Worry About Hillary’s Emails? Yes. She Will Be Indicted. (thank you for the link to that btw), I am curious how Metcalfe (or the DNC) is able to conclude that only civil charges might be forthcoming. If Hillary had SAP information in emails she either received, stored, or sent by her private email through her unsecure server, that’s a felony (see the unhinged (?) rant about Hillary deserving the death penalty if she did so from a purportedly “retired US Army intelligence officer”).
I do wish articles about this kept an equal spotlight on the hubris and “if I did it, it’s not illegal” angle of this whole affair, which to me is the most disgusting part.
I’m looking at this passage:
If Lynch’s sense of prosecutorial integrity were such that she could not bring charges, it would be “in effect” a civil penalty (that is, Clinton would lose a lot of money). That’s how I read it, anyhow.
Yes thanks for that link, I let it be my weekend reading and thought it was pretty comprehensive and somewhat evenhanded as he at least presents both sides, but that said doesn’t look good, how does blumenthal getting regular updates vs chris stevens, the murdered ambassador didn’t have hillary’s email address and had requested more security. That added to the double standard where regular gov employees get roasted for mishandling classified info but clinton does what’s most convenient (and conveniently covers her 6 by deleting emails, a guaranteed no no…) for her royal highness probably rubs some people who could do something about it the wrong way. The main take away as far as damning evidence to me (not a lawyer) was that not all of the emails blumenthal gave investigators were included in the 30k plus emails hillary gave the state dept that were work related so proof everything wasn’t presented to state. Also interesting the author thinks grand jury already convened and this is from march. Imagine the leverage a prosecutor would have over hillary if said prosecutor could say guccifer has given us emails, we’d like to ask you some questions under oath. My personal feeling is they won’t do that to her, but I think they could, if they wanted to.
Interesting pick-up from the always entertaining Daily Mail. HC has cancelled an even on Thursday in NJ in order to swing through California. Also interesting to see her wearing…so much on such a hot day? Quite buttoned up in what looks like heavy material during a parade where you’re walking? There’s a pic of her sitting with Bill and has the jacket off, but I still find it kind of odd.
“Today Hillary Clinton changed her schedule for the week, canceling an event Thursday in New Jersey and announcing a California swing that would last through the eve of the state’s delegate-rich primary.
Once considered an easy win for Clinton, California looks ripe for an embarrassment with rival Bernie Sanders gaining ground in the polls – with a survey out last week by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California showing Clinton up by just two points, within the poll’s margin of error.”
And the call goes out to Executive Flightways:
Wait a second. Run that by me again … the Clinton Foundation spent $50 million on travel????
How is that even possible?
*picks up jaw off floor*
That makes me sick to no end. I don’t care if she runs against Satan himself-I’ll never cast a vote for her.
Hillucifer and Satan: two sides of the same coin.
“Either way you look at it, you lose.” — Simon & Garfunkel, Mrs Robinson
Re. the Cyber Challenge IT-babble-a-thon, I would have also highlighted “complex”, “emergence” and “catalyst” as loud BS flags. At least they spared us “agile”, “synergistic” and gratuitous mention of “the singularity”.
On dreck — perhaps popularized in the US via the Yiddish, but also means more or less the same (dirt, filth, muck) in standard German. The “anything trashy” sense is definitely from the Yiddish usage, though.
Other German words in the same broadly synonymous group: Schmutz (from which the English ‘smut’ derives), Mist, Unflat, Glumpert (latter is specific for “junk”).
Cleveland authorities to tout convention preparedness
Steve Loomis … I know I’ve heard that name before …
Cleveland Police Union Chief Keeps Blaming Tamir Rice for his Own Death Despite $6 Million Settlement
Shorter CPPA: That’s a nice convention you have. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.
USA Today Editorial Board
Feinstein on Clinton Secret Server: “Enough Is Enough,” All She Wanted Was A “Private Life”
Now THAT’s rich. Exactly what Feinstein and Burr believe we peons should not have if
we communicate electronically.
Well then she shouldn’t have privatized her public life.
Recommended Reading: Election Fraud Mega Edition
http://www.ninaillingworth.com/2016/05/07/recommended-reading-election-fraud-mega-edition/
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1955111/why-american-pow-chose-maos-china-over-home
He volunteered to cooperate with the new authorities because he wanted to survive and respected the Chinese for treating black and white prisoners with equal dignity – or, at least, equal indifference.
“For the first time in my life, I felt I was being treated as an equal rather than as an outcast,” he writes, and when the opportunity arose for prisoners of war to choose any nation for repatriation after the war, he and 22 others chose China (although two got cold feet at the last minute).
“I might not have known what China was really like before going there but I certainly knew what life was like for blacks in America and especially in Memphis,” he said. “I decided to go to China because I was looking for freedom and a way out of poverty and I wanted to be treated like a human being.”