Links 10/15/16

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Photo: The subtle sweet beauty of brown pelicans Treehugger (J-LS)

Newly discovered fossils suggest ‘unicorns’ were real (Wat)

People with autism make more logical decisions Business Insider (furzy). And why would one assume not?

Twitter suitors vanish as Salesforce rules out bid Financial Times. I’d rather not have Twitter messed up by a new owner.

China?

Chinese property owners are going to have have a rude awakening Business Insider

Clinton: If we were China, Pacific would be “American Sea” MacroBusiness

Brexit

Nicola Sturgeon’s manoeuvres offer a chance to shape Brexit Guardian (Dr. B)

The City exodus is already happening. It just doesn’t look like you expect it to Telegraph. Vlade: “Of course, voters in Midlands/North England couldn’t give a toss if a number of people from SouthEast lose well paid jobs. At least until such a time that the London tax take starts to erode significantly (and that tax base is mostly on the back of the middle class well paid jobs, not a few high paid bankers who have ways and means of avoiding it anyways), and the unemployment starts going up.”

Ian Hislop: satirist the British establishment loves to hate Financial Times (J-LS)

German Government Has Ruled Out State Help for Deutsche Bank Wall Street Journal

Ukraine/Russia

RUSSIA DROPS FISH BOMB ON NEW ZEALAND AFTER NZ PRIME MINISTER KEY ATTACKS PRESIDENT PUTIN John Helmer. From Helmer by e-mail: The covert story here is the NZ Govt’s decision to end the nuclear-free zone ban on US warships.

Syraqistan

Syria Interview: Assad — “This Conflict is About World War 3” EA WorldView (resilc)

US Goes to War with Houthis in Yemen (Openly) Juan Cole (resilc)

US denies seeking wider role in Yemen war a day after firing missiles Guardian Resilc: “Lyndon Baines Clintoon can do a Tonkin gulf, i mean Baab el Mandab resolution in Jan.”

The Corleones of Kabul Foreign Affairs (furzy)

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Want to know WikiLeaks’ endgame? Julian Assange told you a decade ago Wired (furzy)

Imperial Collapse Watch

Pentagon Video Warns of “Unavoidable” Dystopian Future for World’s Biggest Cities Intercept (Chuck L). Wowsers. They must be desperate for budget. Did they miss that NYC is being gentrified to the degree that poor people are being pushed further and further away by the rents? And that it’s pretty hard to have “subterranean labyrinths” when it takes jackhammers to get into the schist? Now 50+ years out, all bets are off (re urban centers falling apart due to general collapse…but we’re likely to see big populations declines with that, not teeming hordes)

First Nuclear Strike – the positions of Obama, Trump, Clinton Defend Democracy

Trade Traitors

Ecuador’s Legal Battle With Chevron Foreshadows Global Corporate Coup D’état Truthout (J-LS)

Clinton E-mail Tar Baby

‘FOBs’: How Hillary’s State Dept. Gave Special Attention to ‘Friends of Bill’ After Haiti Quake ABC. Li: “Haiti has very clear pay to play connection.”

FBI agents are ready to revolt over the cozy Clinton probe New York Post (g)

Emails Show Aides Pressed Hillary Clinton to Apologize Wall Street Journal (Li)

2016

Jordan Stumps ANOTHER Clinton Staffer On Wall St Transcripts YouTube (Phil U)

Podesta to Tom Steyer in leaked email: ‘I didn’t expect to get f—ed by you’ The Hill

From liberal beacon to a prop for Trump: what has happened to WikiLeaks? Guardian. Prepare the fainting couch. JTM” “From a liberal beacon to a shill for Clinton and the Elite…”

On WikiLeaks, Journalism, and Privacy: Reporting on the Podesta Archive Is an Easy Call Glenn Greenwald, Intercept (resilc)

Senate Update: Clinton Is Surging, But Down-Ballot Democrats Are Losing Ground FiveThirtyEight (resilc). As Lambert and we predicted. Clinton is sucking all the money out of the down-ticket Dem races, while Republican billionaires are targeting them.

Roaming Charges: a Wikileak is a Terrible Thing to Waste Counterpunch (J-LS)

The Fury and Failure of Donald Trump Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone (resilc)

Evangelical clash over Trump reverberates at Liberty University (+video) Christian Science Monitor (furzy)

‘Ostrich’ Republicans disown Trump but cling to election hope Financial Times

Where Do Clinton and Trump Have the Most Upside? FiveThirtyEight. Resilc: “Ries to my chats and Trump signs in Vermont and western Mass this summah.”

The Trump Elite: Why Angry, Not Working Class Whites are Supporting Trump CounterPunch (Li)

Why Google News is adding a ‘Fact Check’ label Christian Science Monitor. Lambert: “I can’t think of a worse idea.”

#RIPJournalism: Trust falls, Gallup 32%, Pew 18%, Facebook 12%, press group 6% Washington Examiner (Phil U). Of course, it’s Trump’s fault.

Rethinking automatic insurance coverage for preventive health care Minnesota Public Radio News. Phil U: “​URGH someone needs to take the ACA out back and shoot it.”

3 arrested in alleged bomb plot targeting Somalis in Kansas Associated Press (furzy)

Journalist Amy Goodman Shouldn’t Be Arrested for Covering Dakota Pipeline Story Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

The governor of Oklahoma created ‘Oilfield Prayer Day’ in hopes of saving the state’s oil and gas industry Business Insider (furzy). Only in America…

A flood disaster in N.C.: Satellite photos before and after Hurricane Matthew Washington Post (Lulu)

Noam Chomsky Unravels the Political Mechanics Behind His Gradual Expulsion From Mainstream Media Alternet (furzy)

The Cheap Airfare Party Is About to End Bloomberg. “About to”? I had major sticker shock when I bought my Thanksgiving and Christmas tickets.

Profit Duds Rattle U.S. Stocks in Winding Week Bloomberg

Class Warfare

The American Dream: Rich are fearful for its survival, but poor still believe CNN (Dan K)

Land With Longest Stretch of Negative Rates Finds Rich Are Getting Richer Faster Bloomberg (resilc)

Data Reveals the American Dream Is Alive and Well—in Canada Wired (resilc)

Antidote du jour. John Z: “My daughter, Lynn, took the attached video clip of a praying mantis in her yard. While filming, the insect turned around and looked straight at her. She later found out that praying mantises have ultrasound hearing so apparently the bug heard her and turned to check her out. The still picture is from the video clip.”

lynns-praying-mantis-links

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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262 comments

  1. Pavel

    Useful reminders from the NY Post article re the FBI on how absolutely useless and corrupted the Clinton email “investigation” was:

    Comey also agreed to have Mills’ laptop destroyed after the restricted search, denying Congress the chance to look at it and making the FBI an accomplice to the destruction of evidence.

    Comey’s immunized witnesses nonetheless suffered chronic lapses in memory, made unsubstantiated claims of attorney-client privilege upon tougher questioning and at least two gave demonstrably false statements. And yet Comey indulged it all.

    What’s more, Comey cut a deal to give Clinton a “voluntary” witness interview on a major holiday, and even let her ex-chief of staff sit in on the interview as a lawyer, even though she, too, was under investigation.

    Clinton’s interview, the culmination of a yearlong investigation, lasted just 3½ hours. Despite some 40 bouts of amnesia, she wasn’t called back for questioning; and three days later, Comey cleared her of criminal wrongdoing.

    Hillary and Bill just never learn, do they? After all the scandals of the first administration (many of which involved Hillary) they just have to keep pushing the envelope, grifting for more millions, and stonewalling any investigation. There really is a psychopathology there. It doesn’t bode well for the HRC administration.

    1. Steve H.

      – HRC administration.

      *Desperately challenging assumption*

      ARAB SPRING! We know it’s possible!

      Dipped my toe in the Green pond and found very sticky sludge. Impedes movement. Much like the ‘Ineffectual Intellectuals’ in Egypt who got kicked to the kiddie table.

      Twenty-year-oldish niece: “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” And the best I could offer was at least she didn’t have student loan debt.

      And our choices are two New York (not that there’s anything wrong with that) billionaires whose first priority on getting elected may be to give Jeffrey Epstein an unconditional pardon. “It is by my order and for the good of the state that the bearer of this has done what he has done.”

      John Robb may be right: “This election will only determine one thing: the focus and the composition of the insurgency to follow.”

      1. Michael

        Greens are for the folks who don’t play well with others. Bernie showed that there’s space in the Dems for the grownups to take over; if he’s smart, he’ll figure out how to take over State parties.

      2. Bev

        Dr. Jill Stein ‏@DrJillStein 26m26 minutes ago
        I’ll be livestreaming for 15 min. in Texas 8-10 p.m. ET to talk about immigration. Join a watch party and phonebank!
        http://jill2016.com/grassroots

        Dr. Jill Stein Retweeted Dan Savage
        The savage hate we face from liberal bullies is staggering. But they’re probably just insecure about supporting fracking warmongers.

        Why are we letting Saudi Arabia drag the U.S. into war w/Yemen? Oil, weapons sales, or #ClintonFoundation favors?

        DNC colluded w/ corporate media to sabotage Bernie, elevate Trump, then present HRC as your only “realistic” choice. #DNCleak #PodestaEmails

        #PodestaEmails reveal ISIS is funded by Saudi Arabia + Qatar—2 big donors to the #ClintonFoundation. Why are we backing these regimes again?

        Corporate globalism and isolationism are both dangerous. We need a foreign policy based on international law, diplomacy and human rights.
        Dr. Jill Stein ‏@DrJillStein 6h6 hours ago

        The path to peace is not war. The only viable way forward to end the war in Syria is a political solution that brings everyone together.
        Dr. Jill Stein ‏@DrJillStein 7h7 hours ago
        Have you signed my petition to open the debates? http://jill2016.com/openthedebatespetition

        Reasons not to vote for #HillaryBecause she:
        ✔️Rigged a primary
        ✔️Bought the media
        ✔️Wall Street bought her
        ✔️Wants WWIII
        ✔️Pushes fracking

        As president, I would put our allies on notice: No funding or weapons to countries that are violating international law + human rights.
        ………

        No WORLD WAR 3. No FALSE FLAG for WORLD WAR 3.
        http://www.jsmineset.com/2016/10/14/the-final-act-will-be-world-war/

        The Final Act will be World War

        …we are on the brink of war because apparently we have lunatics in Washington (and elsewhere) far more insane than the inmates they oversee.

        This past week has seen the lunacy shift several gears in only days. We see the U.S. pushing Russia for war everywhere. We recently stationed and commissioned live nuclear missiles in both Poland and Romania …along Russia border. I can only imagine the response were Russian missiles stationed in Cuba or even Mexico? Russia has taken this (and other moves) very seriously as their population of 40 million drilled last week for a nuclear attack. They have also stationed their S300 and S400 missiles in Syria, U.S. warplanes will be on suicide missions should they aggress.

        This is not “gut feel” or hunch, my conclusions are a result of actions. Yesterday we learned the RAF (British air force) instructed their pilots to shoot down Russian planes over Syria. We also know the U.S. recently painted several planes in Russian colors. Do you really believe this is for a drill? Or more likely some sort of false flag where eyewitnesses swear they saw MIGs with their own eyes attack some target?

    2. a different chris

      >Hillary and Bill just never learn,

      Never learn what? Things seem to be going just as they want them to.

      1. hreik

        u beat me to it. they get away w anything and they learn the lesson well that they can corrupt almost anyone they want. they are truly super-predators.

        1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

          I believe ‘practice makes perfect.’

          One never relaxes. Gotta practice some more.

          “Hey old guys, did you do anything in 2016 to stop her (and just importantly, those who were with her)? Did you do only what you liked, instead of doing what you didn’t like (or as well) in order to shock and shake the status quo foundation?’

      2. DanB

        Many fear them or have tied their wagons to them, but no one really likes them. This is one subtext of the Wikileaks as I read them. They stand to do immense harm to the nation before they are stopped; nonetheless they are two desiccated, debauched, and decadent souls headed for a Shakespearian denouement.

        1. EndOfTheWorld

          True, they have gotten away with a whole lot of dirty deeds. They should have quit while ahead. If HRC wins, and that’s still a big IF, they will get into a whole lot of trouble pretty quickly. Hard to be prez when almost everybody hates you.

          1. Tom

            Add to that the liklihood of another economic meltdown at home and an ever-widening series of military misadventures abroad and newly elected President Clinton may wish she had let old Trump slide into the Oval office instead. She will be up to her eyeballs in deep shit from day one.

            1. Pavel

              Much of it her own doing (along with Bill) — deregulation of the banks & media, NAFTA, increased incarceration & “three strikes” destroying black communities for generations, Iraqi sanctions and wars… The chickens will be coming home to roost and all on her watch.

        2. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

          Stopping them (practically speaking) means doing something unpleasant, voting for someone who is not your choice.

          Not sure about others, but it is for a greater cause…that is clear to me.

          1. River

            Thomas Jefferson said the same thing. The tree of liberty does need the blood of patriots from time to time. Sometimes literal blood, sometimes metaphorical.

            In the end it means sacrifice. In some cases it is something deceptively simple like saying “No”.

          2. sd

            Speaking for myself, this election is truly proving to be a moral struggle.
            If Clinton were to reject Robert Kagan and his wife Victoria Nuland from her circle of advisers, then I would feel more confident in voting for Stein. Clinton hasn’t and she won’t. She’s leaning dangerously towards provoking a war with Russia.

            Will voting for Trump stop a nuclear war…that’s what it all comes down to. Everything else seems petty in comparison.

            This election really sucks.

        3. Pavel

          And of course anyone who works with them or for them gets dragged down into their cesspool of crime and collusion and unethical behaviour… e.g. James Comey whose reputation is now shattered (though his own fault of course).

          1. phred

            Comey’s reputation may finally be shattered for a broader audience, but anyone paying any attention at all to the Hospital Hero has known for years that the only reason he got the top job at FBI was due to his ass-covering skills for the guys that hire him. Comey has been as sleazy, dishonest, and corrupt as they come. It is only more evident now.

      3. JE

        More like- Doesn’t America ever learn?

        Given the 44% ready to vote for HRC and the callous-kneed subservience of the press, it’s looking like the answer is “No”.

        Germany had it’s Brownshirts, we’ve got Brownskirts. Regardless of the difference, I don’t our nation’s demise will be any less painful.

        1. nycTerrierist

          +1

          Brownskirts repressing Sanders supporters at the DNC – and the entire rigged primary – is prelude…

          Can’t say we weren’t warned.

      4. Paid Minion

        The poster kids for “The ends justify the means” At least in their minds.

        Unfortunately, the “ends” seem to be creating a financial and political crime family, not service to the nation.

    3. JTMcPhee

      “Never learn”? Seems to me they’ve learned all too well. They are “experts,” don’t you know?

      And don’t “we” wish there was some mope-friendly enforcer of moral imperatives on the job? Part of the lesson syllabus for the Clintons is that there ain’t no such thing, and in the words of the once popular song, “Anything Goes!”

      1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        On Nov. 8, 2016, there is always something the Little People can do about it and these ‘experts.’

        And it will the Little People’s victory…not Trump’s.

        1. aumua

          Ok, man. We get it. If pushing propaganda with post after post after post is not against the site policy, it ought to be.

          1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

            Duly noted.

            I will spread it and not say it’s the Little People’s victory post after post.

        2. BecauseTradition

          Well, I won’t vote for either but maybe Trump’s inexperience would give us another four years without nuclear war while Hill and Bill’s “experience” could make them cocky.

          Plus Hillary’s self-righteousness is frightening to me. What on Earth does she base it on since “Blessed are the peacemakers …” seems foreign to her? And to Bill?

          So the best outcome I can think of is a very low turnout to protest the poor choices and a Trump victory.

    4. tgs

      From the WSJ yesterday:

      The source, who spoke to FoxNews.com on the condition of anonymity, said FBI Director James Comey’s dramatic July 5 announcement that he would not recommend to the Attorney General’s office that the former secretary of state be charged left members of the investigative team dismayed and disgusted. More than 100 FBI agents and analysts worked around the clock with six attorneys from the DOJ’s National Security Division, Counter Espionage Section, to investigate the case.

      “No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute — it was a top-down decision,” said the source, whose identity and role in the case has been verified by FoxNews.com.

      A high-ranking FBI official told Fox News that while it might not have been a unanimous decision, “It was unanimous that we all wanted her [Clinton’s] security clearance yanked.”

      “It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted,” the senior FBI official told Fox News. “We were floored while listening to the FBI briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said ‘but we are doing nothing,’ which made no sense to us.”

      1. Procopius

        There was a time when the WSJ had its good points. The editorial page has always been moonbats crazy, but they used to have top-notch reporters reporting good material, especially business news. Rupert Murdoch bought it in 2007.

        1. Emma

          Not sure about that – just yesterday the WSJ had a powerful piece by a member of their Editorial Board, Kimberly Strassel, in which she justifiably decries the biased MSM with regards to Hillary Clinton and WikiLeaks, FBI Interviews and the FOIA releases.

      2. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        Can a congressional committee get a list of names and make those guys (and gals) appear before them?

        1. justanotherprogressive

          Do you think the Congress is going to interview thousands of agents?
          There IS something those agents can do, however. At one of my government jobs we had a completely inept Director. We organized a “vote of no confidence” against that Director and got him removed. It is going to take a majority of the agents to organize that kind of vote (otherwise there will be a mass firing instead), but it sounds like the rank and file is pretty disgusted – as disgusted as we were. Who knows what they might do……

            1. JTMcPhee

              After all, 0Bomba’s fokking hero is Reagan, and look what Ronnie did with those uppity air traffic controllers! To cheers from the Mopery, that he stripped and exiled those overworked people who actually kept the flying mopes safe, pretty damn well, from being burned and crushed and decompressed and shredded as they flew over the river and past the woods on the way to gramma’s and to those meetings where the fokking Powell Memo was effectuated and deregulation and offshoring set in motion …

              NO POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

      3. Paid Minion

        We were played for suckers again. Comey was the FBI Director precisely because they knew he didn’t have enough backbone to take on the Clintons

        That’s the beauty of hiring spineless worms, you know what they are going to do, and you don’t have to pay them off.

        So we endured another month’s long kabuki, long enough to delay any response prior to the election.

        Eventually, we’ll probably find out that the Clintons or one of their toadies came up with the idea of having Trump seek the Republican nomination. She had a real chance of losing to just about anyone else the Republicans nominated, so why not stack the deck?

        No matter that their schemes are always implemented with a touch of stupidity and sloppiness. Having maneuvered themselves into a position that is above the law, they don’t have to care about covering their tracks.

        At least, thanks to Wikileaks/The Russians/whoever, there should be no delusion on anyone’s part as to the type of people being elected. OMG, Russian interference in US elections? LMAO. Like Israel and others haven’t been doing the same for 40-50 years.

  2. jgordon

    To that trust in the media article, research shows that the six percent of people who still have full faith in the traditional media are drooling imbeciles. There’s a meme on the internet going around with some text floating over Anderson Cooper’s head that reads “Today in the news” and at the bottom “some sht we made up”. Yep, that’s about right.

    The legacy media is a bunch of clueless, vile liars. They ostensibly are in the news business but they know nothing about the news. They get their scripts handed to them from the government, their advertisers or the Hillary campaign and then present it as “fact”. That’s it–they do nothing else. Actual research and informed analysis are vestigial organs that were dispensed with years ago. Now they couldn’t stop lying if they wanted to; take away the lying and there’d be nothing left. These shameless liars!

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Is it that ‘they know nothing about the news?’

      Or just only ‘they get their scripts handed to them…”

      I sense some, if not many, know their stuff, and yet, volunteer to serve their true masters that way.

      1. Waldenpond

        What’s bizarre is the volume of lies (hour after hour, day after day, decade after decade) and blatantly over the top propaganda and when sneered at in public by the public…. how dare you challenge them!

        They perform for each other and to see who can be the biggest sycophants to their oligarch owners and when called on their bs, alternate between sniveling mewlers (don’t blame me, it’s just a job) and scurrying cowards afeared to come out of their gated communities.

    2. tegnost

      The cognitive dissonance created in 2009 between listening to npr cheerleading the “recovery” after a couple hours reading NC every day turned me completely off of them long ago, followed by watching the libya cheerleading on the news hour a few years later I’m left with the same distaste for their business plan as you are. The current election landscape is all that on steroids. I think the facebook fake stories thing is the icing on the cake, along with the resultant comments re the WaPo…

    3. JTMcPhee

      The corruption of camaraderie– all that real true stuff about Iron Law of Institutions and paychecks being dependent on both not knowing, and making stuff up. Now the Great Dispasionate Scientists are overtly sticking their snouts and paws and feet in the Great Trough of Dead-End Imperial Corruption:

      “Looking for truth that works: US intelligence agencies team up with National Academies” to pin down the “science” of soft disempowerment of any who might protest and complain and God Forbid take action to oppose the Juggernaut…
      https://www.sott.net/article/331140-Looking-for-truth-that-works-US-intelligence-agencies-team-up-with-National-Academies

    4. Emma

      Maybe the mainstream press think we’re a bunch of flesh-eating mindless zombies. They set the alarm bells ringing for any free-thinking man or woman. Constantly sucking up the Clinton dictum everyone must support Hillary Clinton otherwise Trump will win, is like telling us to support earth-invading martians. Otherwise, heavens forbid! Nuclear war’s gonna start in a cuckoo-clock!

      It’s actually really quite patronizing. Surely if you’re a reasonable, forward thinking, intelligent person, who doesn’t categorize people by gender or race etc. etc., you’ll focus on peoples’ policies. Not how to collectively vote in an anti-trump-clump.

      Why can’t Americans form their own opinion anyway without it being mistreated by a greasy-grinded bunch of uber-piss-poor-powered ‘jour-neighing-blisters’?! When the state/politicans, care of the mainstream media, intervene to silence opposing views and dissent in a nation, that nation doesn’t uphold the values of freedom and democracy. It’s as if the world really IS filled with the mindless undead. ‘Politicians’ in public. Political-Junkies in private. And double deadpan no less.

      Besides, Americans are more than capable of facing challenging views and adversarial situations anyway. They do this through their unshakable belief in freedom. That, and the fact that Americans, every once in a while, are known to be pretty big ball-breakers, ass-kickers and devil-may-care-thinkers…

      Most importantly, Hillary Clinton and her press-posse should really stop spending so much time defeat-dwelling at the small pussy-grabbing hands of Trump. AND stop blaming it on pussy-rioting Russians. Give the brain a work-out instead. And the heart. Yeah, Trumps’ kind of right on that one. As is Kimberly Strassel in the WSJ. Sorry, but a political leader like Hillary Clinton who affects to feel the pain of her citizens, but, as now so clearly revealed, way too often (…along with those she surrounds herself with….) holds those citizens in contempt, really needs to be bypassed.

      Her ‘Endlösung’ for everything really is ‘one minus one’ global wealth management. Which, for paupers in public, really means 1%, and for financiers in private, 99%. But hey, she’s the Rock of Gibralter for sending other people to war isn’t she? And what does war do? War breaks the balls off women and kick the shit out of kids. That is what war does.

      So, for mainstream media, pump-parish polemics might mean a great blow-time, but for many of the rest of us it’s just one big blow-off. In reality, most Americans just want to live-well. Not die-hard. That’s why the many ‘peasants’ are third-party supporters this time round.

      1. Hana M

        Americans, every once in a while, are known to be pretty big ball-breakers, ass-kickers and devil-may-care-thinkers…

        Love this!

  3. I Have Strange Dreams

    From a psychological point of view it is a fascinating election. There are four candidates but Americans will certainly choose one of the two most mentally unstable candidates, while the sanest candidate will receive the least votes. The second-least sociopathic candidate will receive the second-least votes. The entire country appears to be suffering from a mass psychosis. Strangely (or not) it is also the country that consumes the most psychiatric medication in the world. USA, still number 1.

    1. OIFVet

      How to keep one’s mental health in America, in five simple steps:
      1. Roll it up,
      2. Light it up,
      3. Smoke it up,
      4. Inhale,
      5. Exhale.
      Courtesy of Cypress Hill. Better than the big pharma offerings.

    2. Procopius

      I’m sorry, but in my view Dr. Stein and Gary Johnson are just as certifiable as the other two. In other words, no sane person wants to be President for the next four years.

      1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        For many years of my life now, I have ‘learned’ that I don’t always get to do what I want, to, but to survive, I have to do what is necessary to avoid various problems that keep creeping up.

        For example, I couldn’t ‘vote for’ going to a dealer to replace brakes for my car at 7am this Saturday morning. I rather do something else. But to avoid issues later, I had to do it.

        I voted against doing that something else.

      2. JEHR

        My opinion is that if no one holds the Office of President of the United States for the next four years, no one would notice.

        1. aumua

          In a similar vein, I’m convinced that at this point.. if real change ever does come for the human race, it’s not going to matter any more who the president of the United States is, and if it doesn’t come then there won’t be anyone left to care.

      3. Jeremy Grimm

        I am curious what about Stein convinces you that she too is certifiable. I am planning to vote for her. She definitely seems less politically astute than Hillery or Trump which is hardly surprising and the Greens seem to have an unusually large number of left wing crazy types — but then both Hillery and Trump followers include their share of interesting types in their crowds. I think libertarianism is a nutty philosophy so I haven’t paid much attention to Johnson. I did find his lack of knowledge about Aleppo comforting. I think the U.S. is in for some interesting times no matter which candidate is elected but it would be nice to keep the damages local as much as possible, in that hope that might also minimize the total damage.

      4. Oregoncharles

        “no sane person wants to be President for the next four years”

        True; from that point of view, Jill and Gary’s saving grace is that they don’t expect to be. It does take something special to put in a lot of energy on a hopeless quest.

        The real mission, for both, is to break the system. That doesn’t require winning, and of course Trump is making the biggest contribution. The duopoly parties depend on each other; if one collapses, as the the Republicans are doing, the other won’t be far behind. But nobody knows what the aftermath will look like.

  4. allan

    Saudi-led coalition blames Yemeni party for funeral bombing [AP]

    An investigation team with the Saudi-led coalition said on Saturday that wrong information led to the lethal bombing of a packed funeral in the Yemeni capital Sanaa last weekend, which killed around 140 people and wounded more than 600.

    The Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT) accused “a party affiliated to the Yemeni Presidency of the General Chief of Staff” of passing wrong information that the hall was packed with Houthi leaders, whom the coalition has been targeting since their militias swept the capital last year and forced Yemen’s internationally-recognized government into exile in Riyadh.

    It added that the party insisted the location was “a legitimate military target,” the statement written in English said. …

    The coalition’s bombing of the hall is not the first attack on civilians by warplanes. Over the past year, busy markets, weddings, schools, and hospitals have been bombed, resulting in hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries.

    Because never in the history of the Middle East has a local faction used US or US-enabled force to settle an old score.

    Nice try. It will be interesting to see how this plays in Washington – the Saudi’s grip has lately been slipping.

    1. allan

      Also: Hiding US Role in Yemen Slaughter So Bombing Can Be Sold as ‘Self-Defense’ [FAIR]

      … Not only is the US’s backing of Saudi Arabia omitted from all these [MSM] reports, the word “Saudi” isn’t uttered in any of them. The viewer is given the impression that the war, aside from Iranian meddling, is an entirely internal affair—when it actually involves over 15 different countries, mostly Sunni monarchies propping up the Yemeni government—and that the rebels just randomly decided to pick a fight with the largest military in the history of the world. …

      1. tgs

        Excellent article that contains a station by station run down of the coverage. Rachel Maddow’s coverage being the worst. Whatever happened to the so-called ‘reality based’ community?

        1. JTMcPhee

          Go visit Daily Kos and Huffpo and see for yourself.

          The little shits in the campaign offices and those cubicles in the White House basement have figured out, with lots of help from “science” and technology, to turn most of us into Flying Monkeys.

          Who’s gonna finally throw a bucket of clear, clean water on Hillary? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aopdD9Cu-So

          1. sd

            Simple statements from and for simple minds…

            If the Russian government is supporting or sponsoring hacking, then it seems like a fairly obvious conclusion that a cyber war is already in progress.

            Unless of course the Russian hackers did it meme is just bullsh*t…

    2. PlutoniumKun

      The fact that the US just lobbed Tomahawk missiles at Houthi installations (see Juan Cole’s article) indicates that the Saudi’s still have a vice like grip on Washington policy. There are absolutely zero strategic reasons why the US should support military action against the Houthi, and yet…. and yet… they are doing it.

      How long I wonder before US special service operatives find themselves arming and training A-Q operatives in Yemen? They are the only serious ground forces opposing the Houthi, so its the logical step for the US.

      1. Jagger

        There are absolutely zero strategic reasons why the US should support military action against the Houthi

        The Shiite Houthi’s and the rebel Yemen government military control the Yemen side of the Bab el-Mandeb strait. At its narrowest point, the Bab el-Mandeb straits are about 20 miles wide and divided into 2 channels by the Perim Islands. Through this very, very narrow strait passes….

        “Almost all of the trade between the European Union and China, Japan, India and the rest of Asia passes through the Bab el-Mandeb everyday. Up to 30% of the worlds oil, including all of the oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf heading west passes through the Horn of Africa daily.”

        http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/11/19/choke-point-bab-el-mandeb-understanding-the-strategically-critical-horn-of-africa/

        The Shiite “rebels” control the Yemeni land side of the Bab el-Mandeb straits and sank a UAE ship there on Oct 1. And supposedly, where the US DDG was attacked.

        I assume the Saudi led intervention into the Yemeni civil war revolves around the Saudi’s unwillingness to accept a potentially hostile Shiite government in Yemen with the ability to halt shipping through the Bab el-Mandab straits.

        Due to the Bab el-Mandab straits, Yemen is very important strategically to almost everyone but particularly the Saudi’s. Of course, why would Yemen shut down the strait’s in the first place? Unfortunately with the Saudi-led intervention into the civil war, now the rebel Yemeni’s actually have a compelling reason to do so.

        1. JTMcPhee

          I think that claim about sinking a UAE ship is wrong. One piece of it: https://warisboring.com/houthi-rebels-claim-they-blew-up-the-former-u-s-navy-ship-swift-4a9d658582d3#.kwbuskxqc Comment in that early limited-facts post: “Looks like the [Imperial] Navy pawned off a lemon at the right time. ”

          And a “strategic” approach to the narrow point would arguably be to keep the conditions that lead to anomic disruptive 4th Gen-with-3rd-Gen weapons from developing. I mean, rather than actively fomenting instability and profitable (for the fokking Few) chaos.

          Of course too many “assets and asses” are “invested” in more of the idiot latter… and now the Battlespace Managers can go on with their Game of Risk ™ Becomes Global Thermonuclear War.

          1. Plenue

            Depends how you’re defining ‘warship’. It is a military vessel, but it’s not meant for combat. Anyway, it wasn’t sunk, but it was very heavily mauled.

        2. PlutoniumKun

          I agree that Yemen is strategically important geographically – however, there is no evidence that the Houthis represent any threat to the Wests interests. On the contrary, they are unambiguously opposed to Jihadism and Wahabbism.

          1. Procopius

            Indeed, they were the only ones actively fighting against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, while the U.S. seemed to be trying to increase their size and influence. We have been doing far more counterproductive stuff in the Middle East than can be explained by mere stupidity. Starting with L. Paul Bremer’s astonishing actions in Iraq. I have never seen a good explanation for the decision to disband the Iraqi army, especially the ones given by L. Paul himself.

          2. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

            Follow the money. Raytheon wants revenue, so they go to Hilary. Hilary says “my best friends the Saudis have a nice little excuse brewing on their borders and they want to gear up. You guys make the best anti-personnel cluster bombs in the world, and those will be perfect since the targets are people, not buildings. Leave it with me”.
            The Saudis place the order, and the Secretary of State approves the sale. Tens of thousands of horrible human deaths ensue, but no matter: the Foundation gets another check from the Saudis, billionaire Raytheon shareholders get another zero on their account balances in Panama, and Bubba gets a $1M check for his birthday.

    3. armchair

      The Juan Cole article in today’s links does not mince words. Cole calls out US policy for “geopolitical paranoia” toward the Houthi’s.

      1. oho

        Hillary 2016: More of the same—except turned up to 11!

        Trump 2016: Do you like playing Russian Roulette w/4 bullets in the revolver?

        not forgetting about Jill Stein or Gary Johnson—just being realistic.

        1. JTMcPhee

          Let’s call it “Imperial Roulette,” okay? That version is played with a 9 mm Glock, with one in the chamber — but you don’t put the muzzle to your own temple or throat, but to the head of the mope sitting next to you in the bar of the Hotel California…

    4. PlutoniumKun

      I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this Warisboring article, but it lays out quite a bit of technical detail about the Yemen attacks.

      It is claiming that the missiles were sourced from older Yemen army stocks bought from China (i.e. they are definitively not Iranian missiles). It suggests that it seems to be quite a random set of attacks aimed at upsetting the Saudis.

      It does seem quite a logical explanation to me. While I wouldn’t rule out a false flag attack, it does seem most likely that a unit of the Houthis is just attacking anything that looks like it might be Saudi with those missiles. They were probably not aware they are American. They probably just identified the vessels as non-civilian, so assumed they were Saudi or one of their allies (of course, the US is an ally).

  5. Unorthodoxmarxist

    The Guardian’s awful attacks on Corbyn and now Wikileaks have revealed it to be just as much a part of the liberal gatekeeping class as any other paper. Sad.

    1. Otis B Driftwood

      A very disappointing offering from Taibbi. Takes the easy swings at Trump and the republicans, yet incredibly and sadly tows the MSM line on the email dumps. A lot of decent people are compromising themselves during this sad and pathetic election season. You can now add Taibbi to the list.

      1. HBE

        Felt more like I was reading the New Republic not Taibbi. There was also (to me at least) a healthy dose of disdain bordering on contempt towards those “deplorables” he encountered.

        While I don’t agree with many of the beliefs and or ideals of the stereotypical Trump voter Taibbi shows his disdain for. I can certainly understand where they are coming from. Something an article shared in comments the other day does well, and something Taibbi won’t or can’t address.

        http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

        1. Michael

          Growing up with the ‘deplorables’ in charge of your life leaves scars. Sadism is a perfectly ordinary human motivation, and a given culture can absolutely adopt it as its primary one.

          1. HBE

            I have read enough of your comments, that it seems clear your dislike (hatred?), is based on a personally traumatic experience.

            Your clear disdain is akin to the same foundational emotional elements that build racism. If someone had a personally traumatic experience with a member of another race and generalized that experience onto the whole race, and said hateful things about all members of that race, you would likely still call them a racist irregardless of that experience.

            What you are doing is really the same thing, just aimed at a particular class and belief system instead of a race.

            Try to understand and empathize with why those “deplorables” hold those (many times hateful) views and empathize, rather than generalizing your personal experiences onto an entire group.

            If you dug a little deeper than “they’re all racist sexists”, into what makes the group you so disdain from personal experience, behave in that particular manner. You may find more in common with them than you would like to admit, you may also find that those things you so dislike about them are a symptom of something deeper and an inability to effectively identity and express it. Similar to what you have been doing in threads of this nature.

        2. DWD

          Read the article and it is well-worth reading.

          I live in a semi-rural area that used to be home to many factories and foundries before people like the Clintons decided that what we had was not worth having. In fact the city served as an employment center for a plethora of small towns that surround it. These jobs are mostly gone replaced with endless medical crap and poverty.

          My only quibble with the article is that it misses one of the central points: it is not so much that Trump is attractive to these people. Rather it is that the Clintons are so unattractive.

          Their values are not our values and their people are not our people. They don’t believe as we do and they don’t live as we do. Their elite contempt permeates everything they say and do and since the Democratic Party no longer values us either: there really is no place to go.

          I am a life-long liberal but most of my relatives are not. Most of them are either church-going conservatives who came to the USA via Holland or just plain old country folk who can fix a car, repair the plumbing, hunt for food and the rest.

          It was decided in the boardrooms in NYC at the central banks that globalization would be good for them and if others suffered, the overall effects would be good. (Well, they would make a lot of money and money = good, right?) They instructed their toadies the politicians of both parties to make it so.

          They did.

          So people are given the choice of someone they hate and a blowhard?

          Best political sign of the season that I personally saw was a yard sign that said simply,

          2016
          Everyone Sucks.

          I think more than anything else I have become an acolyte of Thomas Franks: he gets it. I wish my close minded, liberal friends would put aside their prejudices and class hatred and take the time to consider.

          I guess that is too much to ask.

          Thanks for posting this.

        3. Kurt Sperry

          Thanks, I was thinking of posting the same link. It’s probably the best and most sympathetic explanation of the Trump phenomenon I’ve read this year. It also manages to be insightful and reasonably objective without falling into the boilerplate hyperbolic hate rhetoric of the mainstream press when dealing with the same subject.

          To me, Cracked was when I was a kid an inferior copycat of Mad Magazine. Nowadays it once and a while publishes some great original writing on its site–much to my continuing surprise.

          1. HBE

            It is a great piece.

            The author (David Wong) also has several quite funny books as well. Purely entertainment value (fiction) reading though.

      2. Julia Versau

        Damn. That’s a shame about Taibbi (haven’t read the story yet because of the bad link, and now I won’t bother). I have been wondering about him actually — he’s been kind of quiet lately — and I was thinking perhaps he woke up to find a horse’s head in his bed. Or maybe someone threatened the Michael Hastings “cure for reporters who dare to dig deeply and tell the tale.” I will always be grateful for his skewering of Goldman Sachs, but am sad that he didn’t train his brand of brilliance on Presidential Follies 2016.

        This whole election has left me with too few bedfellows. Michael Moore doesn’t understand that to hate Trump is not to love Clinton. Taibbi has been either AWOL or mediocre. Noam Chomsky — what a radical ha ha — is preaching the gospel of “lesser evil” voting. I can still trust Ted Rall, Paul Street, Chris Hedges, Glen Ford, and some others whose work is decidedly NOT in the mainstream press.

        1. Robert Hahl

          I haven’t finished it yet but its thesis seems fine:

          “The first symptom of a degraded aristocracy is a lack of capable candidates for the throne. After years of indulgence, ruling families become frail, inbred and isolated, with no one but mystics, impotents and children to put forward as kings. Think of Nikolai Romanov reading fortunes as his troops starved at the front. Weak princes lead to popular uprisings. Which brings us to this year’s Republican field.

          “There wasn’t one capable or inspiring person in the infamous “Clown Car” lineup. All 16 of the non-Trump entrants were dunces, religious zealots, wimps or tyrants, all equally out of touch with voters. Scott Walker was a lipless sadist who in centuries past would have worn a leather jerkin and thrown dogs off the castle walls for recreation. Marco Rubio was the young rake with debts. Jeb Bush was the last offering in a fast-diminishing hereditary line. Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer. And so on.

          “The party spent 50 years preaching rich people bromides like ‘trickle-down economics’ and “picking yourself up by your bootstraps” as solutions to the growing alienation and financial privation of the ordinary voter. In place of jobs, exported overseas by the millions by their financial backers, Republicans glibly offered the flag, Jesus and Willie Horton.

          1. Sammy Maudlin

            The first symptom of a degraded aristocracy is a lack of capable candidates for the throne

            I take big time issue with Taibbi’s statement. The Republican Party is not a royal family with all of the attendant baggage of brokered marriages and inbreeding to keep the line pure. Walker is a preacher’s son from a podunk town in Wisconsin. Anyone can rise to the upper echelons.

            I think the reason that we are seeing fewer and fewer good candidates is because the truly capable people don’t want to leave the private sector. If you are really a top-of-your class type in any field, you may do some public service as a resume booster or as part of the revolving door, but you likely aren’t dedicating a career to it. There’s less and less prestige and money, more instability and more headaches in public jobs, including high-level political jobs.

            Maybe I’m all wet but it seems to me that the job of Governor, President, SEC enforcement officer, etc., used to carry a lot more cache with people in general. Now that’s just another person to be bought off on your way to making bigger profits. I can see why someone who has a choice just would not want to bother with it.

            1. WheresOurTeddy

              Asked a (very well-off) progressive man in his mid-30s who’d just sold his business if he’d consider running for office. His reply:

              “There are 2 reasons I’m not interested. One is that I can’t be bought, I can only be shot, which I have no doubt they’d do if I presented enough of a problem to whichever rich person’s goals I stood to thwart.”

              Me: And the second?

              “The peasants in the countryside aren’t worth liberating.”

              1. Steve H.

                Having run, I decided I was neither honest enough nor corrupt enough to be a great politician.

                Clintons and Sanders appear to be cases in point.

          2. Oregoncharles

            Why would he apply his “degraded aristocracy” premise only to the Republicans? The Clintons are a dynasty! – and Hillary is not distinguished for competence.

        2. Robert Hahl

          I haven’t finished it yet, but this seems important:

          “But Trumpian license has pushed hatred of Hillary Clinton beyond all reason. If you don’t connect with it emotionally, you won’t get it. For grown men and women to throw around words like “bitch” and “cunt” in front of their kids, it means things have moved way beyond the analytical.

          1. pretzelattack

            things have moved way beyond the analytical for the majority of americans. not to mention hundreds of thousands of dead iraqis and millions of refugees. that’s a large part of the animosity toward clinton, obama, and their neocon supporters.

        3. Robert Hahl

          I have finished it now and liked it a lot, especially the conclusion:

          “In the absolute best-case scenario, the one in which he loses, this is what Trump’s run accomplished. He ran as an outsider antidote to a corrupt two-party system, and instead will leave that system more entrenched than ever. If he goes on to lose, he will be our Bonaparte, the monster who will continue to terrify us even in exile, reinforcing the authority of kings.

          “If you thought lesser-evilism was bad before, wait until the answer to every question you might have about your political leaders becomes, “Would you rather have Trump in office?”

          Taibbi has apparently dropped his bid to become the next Hunter S. Thompson, not much snark, which is ok by me.

        4. Kurt Sperry

          The political status quo could not have drawn it up any better. The real change agent who very unexpectedly rose to challenge the Democratic status quo was, after much effort and procedural legerdemain, finally defeated and co-opted, and the stochastic incoherent change agent on the other side of the duopoly does a slow motion, toxic self-destruction, not only ensuring a continuation of a deeply unpopular status quo in the end, but also temporarily discrediting the entire impulse to democratically challenge that status quo. End result: a deeply unpopular leader is installed against the wishes of a majority of the public, a leader who is deeply distrusted by a large majority of the electorate, only popular when placed up against a raging buffoon–a cartoon cutout really, which is what Trump represents. Peaceful change through the ballot boxes has been thwarted for four more years. I’m not sure this is really good news for anyone over any term longer than the immediate future. The stage is being set for a much uglier and more disruptive bout of change in the future.

          1. geoff

            Exactly and thank you. “HRC, all the gridlock and economic stagnation and war you enjoyed under President Obama, now with 100% less charisma!”

            And I’m of the increasingly obvious (to me) thinking that this is exactly what happened in 2008 as well. “Let’s raise the political hopes of an entirely NEW generation of voters and then dash them almost immediately!”

            Kayfabe indeed.

            1. Pavel

              It’s not just a lack of charisma. It is the complete lack of trust and respect for HRC. She will enter office as the most disliked if not despised president in history.

          2. WheresOurTeddy

            Real change comes either through the ballot box or the barricades.

            I voted Sanders, and am French.

            So you can guess how much stock I put in the first and the logical conclusion as to the second.

            I’m quickly entering Chris Hedges territory.

      3. Katharine

        Don’t do it comprehensively. His comments on journalism in the Goodman piece are still worthwhile.

        1. Katharine

          I would have been more openly incensed about the prosecutor’s argument for charging Goodman, which boils down to saying he doesn’t like what she chose to report. If that isn’t a First-Amendment violation I don’t know what is. Taibbi could have made that point better, but at least he reported on it.

      4. alex morfesis

        Taibbi trump RS article is going to be a classic…but probably not for the reasons one might think…if we changed the title to “the fury and failure of matt taibbi”…and reread the piece…just seems more like a cathartic piece, especially if you tie in the language of the amy goodman piece…

        my reading of his mood is that the business of being a “presser”(instead of saying reporter/journalist/scribe)…

        “this gig is not what I thought it would be when I signed up for it…”

        and it isn’t…I was quietly talked out of a life chasing money to pay bills with a media gig by some WOR/Channel 9 anchor at a CJR student event in the early 80’s…and I am forever grateful for his laying out the gripes Taibbi describes in his Amy Goodman piece…

        Trumpsters and trumpettes have been forced to live a life from a page out of “back to the future” where biff takes over the world…

        the “wanna grab my…” statement by a couple of oversized trumpettes pretty much lays out…or more so, it shows the disconnect between the image and reality of many americans…

        the only thing I might disagree with Taibbi in respects to “the $hillary”, is the idea that “the grid is not going to collapse while she is in office”…

        for many americans…the grid collapsed a long time ago…

        even in new york city…the illusion that the city functions properly and all is well comes from the “visual corridor”…the part tourists get to see…manhattan south of 96th street…

        the rest of the city is more or less a faded third world country for most of the rest of the 7 million people who were shown the shinny little trinket called new york city

        Politicians love wall street because they have a parasitic relationship…the economy is 35% to 40% government spending…

        and politicians work it like some old white shoe firm from 100 years ago…handing out taxpayer money via no bid contracts or low competition contracts where the RFP magically matches the requirements that only a small handful of firms can comply with…

        wall street via S&P and buffettCo/Moodys hands off little trinkets called AAA and AA ratings to the government organizations who then add the item in computer form with its own brand spanking new CUSIP to go along with the other 25 million plus CUSIPs into the whirlwind of computer screen capitalism…

        they live in their own little matrixxx…and as our gentleman from st pete recently presented in paraphrasing sir george carlin…

        “you aint invited…”

        unless you surrender and submit…
        and prove yourself worthy of being a “person”…

        where shillary is described in the article as saying she wants

        “growth and opportunity for every person…”

        her definition of “person” probably is not what it seems to be…in her mindset…person is one of the “chosen ones”…

        an american version of the alawi in syria…

        remember…
        if in soviet life under stalin you were called out as “citizen”…

        well…

        hopefully your affairs were in order and you had some food stashed underground in the woods nearby for your family to survive your pending…”vacation”…

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          You are right. One of my buddies moved to Forest Hills and has become a Trump supporter by virtue of riding the trains into Manhattan regularly. The Manhattan trains are well policed but apparently not the other ones. She feels at risk of her safety by virtue of the aggressiveness of the panhandling. She won’t take them any more and is talking law ‘n order. And this is from someone otherwise way to the left.

          1. Cry Shop

            Much the same from my visits to LA, where for at least one day I’ll take the buses and trains to see how grim things are for the car-less. Only the Metro Gold line felt reasonably safe. On the other trains and even buses nearly every ride had addict(s) constantly gaming the riders looking for any sign of fear or weakness. LA is worse than NYC which I also visit because (A) the weather and political climate attract larger number of drug addicts/mentally ill (B) they can easily get on without paying, and (C) because the power class never, ever take public transport and thus have no stake in it, and probably wish it would die off to reduce the mobility of the undesirables. If only Maria the maid wasn’t dependent on it…

    2. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Hillary has failed (the Little People) too many times to list here.

      When I think of Hillary, I think of those Failures.

  6. integer

    If I was investigating the Clintons I would question Neera Tanden. She seems like a weak link in the chain. Here’s a couple of her emails to Podesta:

    https://wikileaks.com/podesta-emails/emailid/5705

    I know you were probably kidding this morning about me in NH. I am aware of your dark sense of humor. But I should say that I would do whatever Hillary needs always. I owe her a lot. And I’m a loyal soldier. I think I might not be so useful because I overly focus on the lessons of the past but if there’s something I should do to help campaign more I will do it. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this and she wins Iowa.

    https://wikileaks.com/podesta-emails/emailid/9572

    You mean pissed? Got held by who? Hillary. God. Her instincts are suboptimal. Pretty typical though. I would not be surprised if wjc told him to do it. Just as I’m pretty sure mark Penn didn’t do his cocaine ran[t] against Obama without some higher up approval.

  7. Pavel

    At The Intercept, an interesting chronicling of all the discussions behind the scenes at Team Clinton regarding the Wall Street speeches by Hill and Bill, and how adamant HRC was that Bill should be able to give his speech despite the political appearances before the Iowa caucuses:

    The way Bill Clinton’s paid speech was cancelled is described in a separate email exchange. In early March, Robby Mook sent an email to Clinton aides with the subject line “WJC Speeches” noting that “Morgan Stanley is coming down” — an apparent reference to the cancellation of a Clinton speech at Morgan Stanley.

    Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin asked if the campaign was involved in the cancellation. When Mook noted that Podesta had intervened, Abedin protested that Hillary Clinton disagreed with the cancellation and that she would lie to her about the reason.

    “HRC very strongly did not want him to cancel that particular speech,” she wrote. “I think if John is getting involved in this scheduling matter, he must feel strongly. I will have to tell her that WJC chose to cancel it, not that we asked.”

    Mook wrote back to Abedin seeking to justify the move: “Yes the issue is that if we’re announcing on the 12th/13th and he’s speaking to a wall street bank on the 15th, that’s begging for a bad rollout.”

    Seven hours later, Abedin wrote back insisting again that Hillary Clinton did not want her husband to cancel the paid speech: “John and Robby — HRC is reiterating her original position. She does not want him to cancel.”

    Mook then put his foot down, and launched into a long explanation of why Bill Clinton should not do the event — a notably political, not principled, objection.

    “I know this is not the answer she wants, but I feel very strongly that doing the speech is a mistake — the data are very clear on the potential consequences. It will be three days after she’s announced and on her first day in Iowa, where caucus goes have a sharply more negative view of Wall Street than the rest of the electorate. Wall Street ranks first for Iowans among a list of institutions that ‘take advantage of every day Americans’, scoring twice as high as the general election electorate,” Mook wrote.

    As the title indicates, a speechwriting aide deliberately inserted some anti-bank content to “futureproof” the speeches if they ever came out.

    –Aide Planted Anti-Bank Comments in One Paid Clinton Speech to Throw Reporters Off the Scent

    1. Mark John

      This article also gives an interesting look inside the bubble. I find it rather fascinating/sad that HRC does not seem to directly communicate with WJC.

      1. sd

        Raises so many questions, did WJC not know that HRC was announcing her candidacy? Is he really so out of touch thtanhe couldn’t see the negative optics? when did they last actually speak to each other? And does Hillary Clinton have Bill Clintons phone number? She could have just sent him a text….

      2. JTMcPhee

        I’ve asked before, here and at other sites, if anyone has any information on when was the last time the Big Dog had sexual relations with “that woman.” The one he is nominally married to, “forsaking all others” and all that. Got banned and bounced and hidden for my chutzpah (not here, I hope.)

        My bad, too, for conjuring that image in my own brain… Eeeeeww

      3. Foy

        Yep, and Huma Abedin is quite happy to lie to Hillary’s face and actually tell others she will do it. Makes you wonder how often it happens. If it happens on small issues it will happen with big issues. Guess thats what happens when surrounded by yes men and women…

    2. a different chris

      >HRC very strongly did not want him to cancel

      Why oh why was this such a big deal to her? It’s not like they needed the money. It’s not like he couldn’t give the speech 6 months later. Ugh. Trump is a sexist nightmare who I want to see 100 women line up and punch in the face, the Clintons make me want to take a very, very long bath with the door barricaded.

      1. m

        The sad truth is during that last congress vs Comey thing on cspan-repubs focused on Clinton emails, whereas dems were asking Comey about Russians hacking the election. Many were thrilled that DHS will be helping 18 states prevent hacking by the Russians. Which 18, I don’t know. That should tell you that the fix is in. She must cheat in primary & now cheat in general. Clinton will win.
        Vote in anyone that is anti-Clinton. Obstruction is our only hope.

      2. Pat

        Funnily enough, I want several thousand former home owners who lost their homes to foreclosure, mostly illegal, line up to kick Bill Clinton, Phil Gramm, Alan Greenspan and Barack Obama in the groin before using Hillary, her campaign staff, and the treasury secretaries from the last three presidencies as targets for the foulest rotten produce and meat available. Then repeat for all the people who got sent to prison for low level drug crimes while their white counterparts faced nothing. Then a run for a few former factory workers in Rust Belt states. And that’s just the United States…

        Here’s the thing, Trump is a sexist pig but funnily enough he probably could have been slapped to women could have used their stilettos on his instep. Pretty much every group listed in the paragraph above was either victimized or legally treated unfairly compared to others because of the people listed above and had little or no options individually. That is barring the possible Epstein enabled atrocities (which would also apply to William Jefferson Clinton).

        I do not excuse Trump, but frankly we have bigger problems in this country and in the world that are directly the result of the actions of most of the very people who are claiming moral superiority to him. Locking your door is not going to keep them from stripping you cleaner than that bath.

        1. justanotherprogressive

          Hooyah! As a woman, I’ve been wondering why those women didn’t slap him in the face or walk out on him. I would have! Nope, they were willing to put up with a little “grope and peek” at the time to further their own careers. No, I’m not overly impressed with the women coming forward bashing Trump for the Clinton Campaign claiming to be “victims”……
          Having said that, no, I am NOT condoning Trump’s behavior – it was disgusting but is it as disgusting as the Clintons rigging the election, taking money from foreign nationals, rigging an FBI investigation, and threatening a war with Russia to cover their tracks? In the bigger scheme of things, I really don’t think so……

          1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

            Pat doesn’t excuse Trump.

            You as a woman is not condoning his behavior.

            I find it inexcusable as well.

            Yet, as I mentioned, many commenters write they have seen acts like that often. You consider it in light of the bigger scheme of things.

            I am trying to get a more general explanation for not Trump’s act, but the reactions of commenters.

            Is it because men have not free themselves of their biology, that they constantly need to impress and brag about themselves?

            Men, even in their teens (the part about biology), seek wealth or spiritual/political/artistic/intellectual/social power to impress. They can also become physical or use force to impress and to brag.

            Of seeking wealth and power by men, how much of our GDP is comprised of that?

            “Let me buy your a car, my darling mistress.”

            PS: only real male saints, male monks (sometimes) or old guys (too often than they would like, I suppose) can free themselves of their teenage biology to impress.

            Again, I don’t condone his behavior.

          2. Pat

            I am not discounting shock as a reason for inaction. Hell, standing there with a WTF look on my face was my reaction a couple of times where someone had been physically inappropriate with me. Unexpected actions can do that. OTOH I disrupted a sold out movie theater the time I realized a stranger decided to start groping my thigh and was heading higher. I’ve also been around Trump where he had repeated contact with a whole group of beautiful women who avoided him because he was annoying but considered him a gnat compared to some of the men they had met in their career.

            There are two reported incidences that give me pause about that description of Trump, one the rape charge, the other the Ivana story that she has since said did not happen. But those are it. Otherwise he largely is a gnat they refused to swat.

            The sad thing is that this, as with so many other things the Clinton touch, has pretty much made an issue that should be examined and addressed and turned it into a circus that will benefit them and few others. It may not be one of our top problems, but our culture does enable a whole lot of inappropriate language, attitude and physical actions toward women. But once Clinton gets her crown, this concern and outrage will all go down the memory hole and nothing will have changed for the better.

          3. Yves Smith Post author

            Go watch the Juanita Brodderick video. She describes how he moved on her.

            He is an over 6 foot man and she was all of 120 lbs at the time.

            He got behind her, spun her around, and bit her (and apparently hung on) on her upper lip while forcing her down on the bed. He was then on top of her.

            So it was surprise, pain, and use of his body weight.

            Now someone trained even when he was on top of her on the bed would have boxed his ears or tried to gouge his eyes out. But you have to be trained to be disinhibited about hurting people when they are attacking you. Most people, particularly women, merely try to stop the attack, which is ineffective. You have to be prepared to hurt them in a very serious way, and you have to know how to do it. It does not take much training (people have tons of vulnerable points) but it does take some.

            And she was a state employee and he was the governor. So she had another set of reasons to be paralyzed.

        2. nycTerrierist

          Not a bad scenario. And while we’re dreaming…

          I would love to see every megabuck grifted by the Clinton Foundation seized to help the non-rich.

          Bernie Sanders and Cornel West could decide the best way to spread the wealth.

        3. Light a Candle

          I agree, Trump is a sexist pig that should have had his face slapped a bunch of times.

          Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton is far worse and it looks like she will be elected President.

          God help us.

          1. Yves Smith Post author

            See my comment above. He was already on top of her on the bed before she could respond. At that point, with him clearly in the dominant position, he could not just have slapped her back but slugged her in the face. She’d need to injure him in a big way, not just slap him. She could do that by trying to gouge his eyes out (moving toward her would put him again at risk) but you have to be trained to be an aggressor and ready to really hurt someone. It does not take much training but you need to have enough to be disinhibited about attacking and hurting someone.

        4. crittermom

          Pat–
          OH! Pick me! Pick me!
          I want to be the first of the 8 million whose homes were stolen to deliver some mountain woman whoop ass using my pointed cowgirl boots on both the men AND women mentioned. (Rotten fruit? Spoiled meat? For the women? Hell, no. I want to do damage, dammit!)

          May I add Eric Holder to that list, as well?

          Heck, I’d even be willing to polish my boots first—before walking through some ‘meadow muffins’ and ‘road apples’ prior to delivering the first blows.
          Oh,yeah! THAT would be my idea of a good time. Bring ’em on!

      3. Sammy Maudlin

        Trump is a sexist nightmare who I want to see 100 women line up and punch in the face

        I think you’re on to something. If Trump went on national TV and allowed himself to be punched in the face by 100 women, he’d be a shoo-in.

      4. Pavel

        They seem to have been obsessed with money all their lives — remember taking tax deductions for donating Bill’s boxers to charity, and taking the White House china with them? On the much larger scale, taking donations from despots and horrid regimes from around the world. For them it is never enough.

    3. flora

      Is Clinton running for Prez of the US? or for Prez of Global Capital, Inc? Does she know the difference between the two? Hard to tell sometimes.

    4. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Gotta square the public position with the private position.

      Let’s insert some anti bank comments, just in case.

    5. Oregoncharles

      ” Abedin protested that Hillary Clinton disagreed with the cancellation and that she would lie to her about the reason.

      “HRC very strongly did not want him to cancel that particular speech,” she wrote. “I think if John is getting involved in this scheduling matter, he must feel strongly. I will have to tell her that WJC chose to cancel it, not that we asked.””

      Hillary and Bill don’t talk to each other? If they did, Hillary would catch that lie immediately. This sounds like they’re virtual strangers – not surprising, but a crack in the mirage.

    1. flora

      Very good article. Thanks.
      This quoted bit from British political philosopher John Gray sounds right:

      “A globalised economy existed before 1914, but it rested on a lack of democracy. …

      “If the tension between global capitalism and the nation state was one of the contradictions of Thatcherism, the conflict between globalization and democracy has undone the left. From Bill Clinton and Tony Blair onwards, the center-left embraced the project of a global free market with an enthusiasm as ardent as any on the right. If globalisation was at odds with social cohesion, society had to be re-engineered to become an adjunct of the market. The result was that large sections of the population were left to moulder in stagnation or poverty, some without any prospect of finding a productive place in society.”
      (emphasis in original.)

      1. WJ

        This. Hence the continuing relevance of Karl Polyani’s The Great Transformation. Polyani shows that the “market” was never and can never be isolated from or dominant over the social because, were it to become so, it would destroy itself. Moments when the “market” assumes too distant or hostile a relation to the social are corrected by massive readjustments of the social. E.g. WWI.

        In many ways, our scenario is closer to the run-up to WWI than to the WWII analogues we hear more about.

        How could the assassination of a duke propel all of Europe into self-slaughter? How could the fate of a little place like Syria lead the two biggest powers to annihilate most of the world? Maybe people will be asking that question in 100 years, assuming there are any people left.

    2. Pat

      Once again it was a little strange to see a Wall Street guy refer to that famous Times cover from 1999 with Rubin, Greenspan and Summers and point out that pretty much none of their promises were fulfilled the other day. Mind you his solutions and mine differed greatly.

      Lack of growth isn’t fueling just nationalism…

    3. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Left unsaid, and always unsaid when the topic comes up, about the end of growth is that, with better distribution, with more wealthy equality, it’s possible we can be happier with no or negative growth.

      Last year’s GDP was smaller than this years (unless we get a nasty recession within the Great Recession), and yet, we are less happy this year.

      One can compare any two years like that, and conclude a smaller GDP can mean more happiness, because the opposite – more GDP and yet less happiness – happens way too often.

    4. Robert Hahl

      “There is no growth. There hasn’t been any real growth for years. All there is left are empty hollow sunshiny S&P stock market numbers propped up with ultra-cheap debt and buybacks, and employment figures that hide untold millions hiding from the labor force. And most of all there’s debt, public as well as private, that has served to keep an illusion of growth alive and now increasingly no longer can.”

      During a conversation about peak oil, a physicist friend of mine once remarked “We have taken the oil and turned it into all these people!” And I would add that those people have been taught the only way to do anything, anything at all, is by consuming energy. This may be at the heart of no-growth, because otherwise energy prices will rise and bring down the house of cards.

    5. VietnamVet

      I second this recommendation. This is what Matt Taibbi’s article doesn’t discuss. The 2016 election is about plutocrats and the upper 15-20% who support the current global corporate system and all the rest of us who have been thrown under the bus. The status quo means the looting of the deplorables will continue until youngsters with nothing left to lose destroy it. Most likely, they will be Abrahamic religious warriors obeying God’s will. That is if World War III or Climate Change don’t end it first. It is striking how the humiliation of Barrack Obama three times in Syria (no air attack for crossing the red line, the Russian intervention & no cruise missile attacks of Syrian/Russian positions to save Islamists in East Aleppo) slides into oblivion. But because of it, a super power cyber war could be ignited. That could ignite WWIII if America’s electricity grid is taken down by hacks. The existential risks of a war with Russia and the documented corruption are ignored.

  8. nechaev

    the taibbi article link above is for the reuters story.
    the link should be
    although after reading about half of that predictably banal piece i question whether it’s really worth linking to. For example: “her most serious obstacles this year were less her faults than her virtues. The best argument for a Clinton presidency is that she’s virtually guaranteed to be a capable steward of the status quo, at a time of relative stability and safety. There are criticisms to make of Hillary Clinton, but the grid isn’t going to collapse while she’s in office, something no one can say with even mild confidence about Donald Trump. …”

    really?
    Perhaps Taibbi is a tad overrated?

    one piece that inquiring minds might want to familiarise themselves with today is Roger Stone’s latest. Whether there’s an ounce of truth in it is well beyond my paygrade, but well worth giving him the three minutes:

    1. JTMcPhee

      Ahhh, maybe an obscure reference to possible parallels (one might hope?) between Hillary behavior and mantises, where the males cannot start the copulatory act until the females have bitten off and started to eat the males’ heads? And instead of a post-coital smoke, they complete the ingestion of the male’s spent carcass?

      “Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

  9. funemployed

    Ummm, “foreshadows” global corporate coup? Well, I guess we’d better stop that from happening before democracy gets corrupted and corporate ideology dominates policymaking around the globe and creates it’s own global legal system that… oh…. wait…. godammit.

  10. Ignim Brites

    “Data Reveals the American Dream Is Alive and Well—in Canada” Of course, the american dream is a housing bubble.

    1. justanotherprogressive

      LOLOL….deflect, deflect, deflect….yea, “cleaner stores”….odd that I haven’t noticed that….
      It couldn’t be that all those striking workers were giving Bernie Sanders a platform to bash the Clintons, was it?
      But it is odd that NYT came out with this article now, because it DOES remind people of those striking days and Clinton’s seat on the Board. Is there something in the wind that we don’t know about? Do the Clintons feel that they NEED a positive Walmart story now?

    2. allan

      Correct Control the Record is refreshingly absent from the comments on that story.
      Real readers (for once) are pushing back hard on the corporate happy talk.
      A reminder of what the NYT comment sections used to look like.

      1. oho

        thank you. I thought I was going paranoid by getting the hunch that shill trolls were astroturfing the NYT comments sections on articles related to specific topics.

    3. Procopius

      Paid its people more? Impossible. People will only work if they are on the verge of starvation and terrified that they might be terminated. As Samuel Insull put it, “The greatest aid to the efficiency of labor is a long line of men waiting at the [factory] gate.” /sarc

  11. HBE

    The Assad interview on ea is quite good ( a little propaganda-y but still good). He definitely appears to be quite rational and realistic about the progress of the war and the potential outcomes. However I don’t know how that rationality will hold up against the irrational and schizophrenic policy of the US, who seems to be reaching peak delusion, thinking a direct confrontation with Russia there is a good idea.

    We’ll see.

    1. Roger Smith

      I agree. Compare his interview with any U.S. Officials. The amount of simplistic crap we are given is staggering.

      1. Montanamaven

        Read Putin’s speeches. His speech to the UN last year on their anniversary was quite deep and explains the real meaning of collectivism and what the UN should be which does not mean globalism. He never speaks in cliches and always has concrete ideas. He, to me anyway, cares about Mother Russia and is proud of the people and the country without resorting to “exceptionalism” and needing to be running the world and mostly meddling without any good results accept chaos.

        1. crittermom

          Montanamaven–
          Good point.
          Does anyone realize how much more press Putin has gotten than Bernie ever did?

          I’m considering having a bumper sticker made saying “I’m a proud deplorable”.
          SERIOUSLY considering it…

        2. m

          And Putin took over & kicked out the greedy American Wall Street looters, Then threw the oligarchs in jail (some fled). Ha!
          Why can’t we have a Putin?

    2. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

      America is about to be handed yet another final military defeat in Syria.
      But in The Empire of Laughter and Forgetting this will not register or influence future policy in any way.
      Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, now Syria.
      At least we triumphed in Grenada, so there’s that.

      1. flora

        “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” – Milan Kundera

        …since you mentioned Laughter and Forgetting.

    3. Cry Shop

      Cracked me up that the translation of that interview was posted on an Academic school named after Bill Clinton.

  12. Jamie Dimon

    Honestly Yves and Lambert, y’all are not doing a great job moderating the trump trollls that have taken over the comments over the last 4-5 months. There’s spirited opposition to HRC (and good articles about it that you post) and then there are the endless people tying themselves into pretzels to blame everything on her and completely ignoring Trump’s hate. You can hate HRC’s warmongerism and hypercapitalism AND not dismiss Trump’s anti-semitic, racist and hyper-misognist comments, and the commenters on NC of late have been unable to do so; they’ve not shown themselves able to actually discuss capitalism, finance politics, the things we used to talk about here – they have been taken over by this vapid election and I believe some of that is your [lack of] moderating.

    Just look at Gaius’ excellent megadrought post.. The comments are comically stupid and evince no reading of the post, just some blathering about HRC. I used to come here for the comments just as much as the links, as I learned so much, had my convictions shaken and relaly thought about the “game behind the game.” I’ve given to NC for 4 years now, and will likely do so this year once I get my finances in order, but this trend troubles me. My .02c.

    1. flora

      with apologies to emily dickinson:

      I’m a Deplorable! Who are you?
      Are you a Deplorable, too?
      Then there’s a pair of us -don’t tell!
      They’d banish us, you know.

      ( sorry. couldn’t resist. )

    2. jgordon

      Want to talk about real issues Jamie Dimon? How about we start by going over the three Goldman Sachs speeches released by Wikileaks today. A lot of good stuff in there. I can’t fathom why the Hillary campaign didn’t release them sooner, or why the entirety of the legacy media had collectively agreed that they aren’t newsworthy and should be studiously ignored.

      By the way Jamie, is it a felony or not for a government employee to send an email to a lobbyist’s insecure gmail account and flatly state that the information within that email was obtained from government intelligence sources? You might be asking yourself “why isn’t this person in prison already?”

      Go ahead and ignore the suffering of the people and let Hillary steal this election, and the monster who will come along next will have all your heads in the guilitine and leave America in cinders.

    3. aab

      You just demonstrated in your own post that the discussions here are on point. Why on earth should a blog devoted to economics and the political and business ramifications thereof put as much emphasis on bigoted verbal statements — that are being promulgated and litigated relentlessly in the corporate press — as on the warmongering and hypercapitalism of the status quo representative who looks on pace to steal* a national election in the country with the largest military in human history? Particularly given that, if you’re being honest, you will acknowledge that Clinton has said bigoted things as well, and helped enact laws and policies that devastate marginalized communities and demographic groups.

      * The Democratic Party insiders clearly rigged the primary in numerous ways, so even if she isn’t rigging the machines in the general, it’s election theft. She shouldn’t be the nominee, and she should be under indictment.

    4. TalkingCargo

      I agree with Jamie to the extent that the comments section has become filled with obsessive Hillary haters and I find this drearily tiresome. I won’t cite specific examples, but I’ve read enough that I now skip any comments on the Clintons. While I can see why some people would wish to vote for either Clinton or Trump, I think they are both disgusting. The saddest part to me is that if there was ever a chance for a third party to win, this is it. But both Stein and Johnson seem incapable of taking advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity.

      1. flora

        Why are “Hillary” and “Trump” so often paired with the word “hate”? The NC comments are remarkably free of the frothing found at other sites.

        It’s neoliberalism I find objectionable. The objection is not ‘personified’ by emotionalism toward any particular candidate.

      2. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

        We wouldn’t need a third party if we just had a second party. We don’t. Across the globe political factions in the past were roughly split along one gigantic fault line: Capital vs Labor. Repubs have always been for Capital, Dems used to be for Labor. Now both are for Capital. That the worst vitriol on this site is reserved for Hilary just reflects that simple fact.

    5. WJ

      Actually, if you look back through the actual threads accompanying the Links and Water Cooler posts over the past couple months, you will see that, 9/10 times, comments that veer celebratory toward Trump receive their own immediate correction from other commentators on the site. What is striking is not only how regularly this occurs, but also how infrequently, given the many hundreds of comments there are, such fraternal corrections are required.

      So I don’t think that Dimon’s characterization is accurate, or even plausible. You only have to read through the threads to find that everytime Trump’s sexism etc comes close to being excused, rather than being judged *relatively* less bad than profiteering genocide, somebody pipes up (rightly) to push back.

      I think the real aim of Dimon’s comment is to delegitimize the analysis that only occurs here by suggesting that it is motivated by Trump apologetics.

      I will also say that the personal narrative that accompanies Dimon’s concerned critique is somewhat familiar for those who have been paying attention.

    6. DJG

      Jamie Dimon, indeed: I am going to weigh in on this comment about how the comment threads at Naked Capitalism have become a swamp of Blame Hillary and Somehow Exonerate Trump. It is more than ironic that you’d say so, given that many of these commenters have hinted that they voted for Bernie Sanders and many also are voting for Jill Stein. In fact, I sometimes think that the whole membership of the Green Party is commenting here these days. Or haven’t you noticed the tone of the politics and cultural stances of these same commenters?

      Also, I understand that some people have been put off by the vehement exchanges. I was privileged to read cwaltz’s spirited defense of his opinions and some personal revelations. I note that MikeNY has checked out, which I would rather not see.

      The way that I interpret these exchanges is that we are seeing the agony of a large group of educated (not necessarily degreed), skilled, articulate, experienced, and curious people who feel betrayed by the failure of both political parties. We see retired people (some forcibly retired) who don’t like what has happened to the work ethic in the U S of A and the way that people cultivate a business. Lately, I am noticing a group of younger commenters who are willing devote the time to bring in all kinds of new information. We are seeing the comments of several Europeans who are wondering why U.S. life is now so stultifying.

      I may have been lucky: My agony started shortly after Obama was elected the first time. I was enthusiastic about his first campaign. I am a Chicagoan and I’m a couple of degrees of separation from both Barack and Michelle Obama. I sent in a contribution. I was part of one of those bake sales (quick breads!). Yet Obama’s cabinet in the first administration proved to be a disaster. He squandered his majority in the 2010 elections. He took too many of his pals out of the Senate–and, oops, there was the Scott Brown fiasco.

      When Obama ran again, I had been in political (not personal) agony for some three years: I voted for Jill Stein in the last presidential elections.

      It may be that I am not in the same kind of agony: I have few illusions about the Democratic Party, being Chicago-born. I’ll just mention the vile Ed Burke. I have few illusions about Republicans, having seen what the Republicans have done to the Great Lakes States. I’ll point to the vile governors of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana (Pence!).

      I am used to voting for people who “can’t win.” Yes, I regularly have “wasted” my vote. I voted for people hwo ran against Daley. I voted for Chuy Garcia against Rahm. I have voted for several (probably dozens of) local and state candidates who went down in flames. (My great neighbor D.D. and her campaign for alderman.) But it was the right thing to do–every time. I am trying to maintain my dignity. I am trying to engage in the power of the powerless (to use Vaclav Havel’s term).

      At least there is a place where all of these articulate people can try out their ideas. Where they can vent and be gently corrected. Have you looked at other sites? The comment sections are icky, to put it politely.

      So for all of you delicate flowers of U.S. manhood and womanhood who can’t stand people criticizing Trump and Clinton, just where will you go for some discussion of corruption (which isn’t going to be pretty), public policy (which is being ignored by our celebrity-politics), and economics (Don’t mention the Class War. I didn’t mention the Class War!)?

      Which reminds me: I guess that I’d better write out that check after all, eh, Yves?

    7. witters

      Ah, yes, an excellent post that finishes like this: “But we can influence the winner afterwards…”

      Who are “we”?

      How do “we” “influence” things?

      And how – and why – only afterwards?

      With all due respect, this is empty “progressive” blather, and with the usual upshot – smug little dinner parties of the caring as they warm each other with superior moral sensitivities.

    8. integer

      You can hate HRC’s warmongerism and hypercapitalism AND not dismiss Trump’s anti-semitic, racist and hyper-misognist comments, and the commenters on NC of late have been unable to do so; they’ve not shown themselves able to actually discuss capitalism, finance politics, the things we used to talk about here – they have been taken over by this vapid election and I believe some of that is your [lack of] moderating.

      Frankly, whenever I see someone put the “anti-semite” card into play I question their motivation for doing so.

  13. Steve H.

    Today’s metaphor runs deep:

    “To understand how a small mountain brook can have such a dangerous reputation, take a walk upstream. In less than 100 yards, this “small” stream will have expanded to a substantial river 30 feet across. This is River Wharfe which runs through Yorkshire, but when it comes to the area of Bolton Abbey the river is forced through a narrow gap causing the water to gain tremendous speed and depth. The narrow gap on the Strid is only an illusion as both banks are seriously undercut. Hidden underneath is a network of caverns and tunnels that hold all of the rest of the river’s water. Nobody really knows how deep the Strid goes.”

  14. Knifecatcher

    Bernie Sanders to speak in favor of Amendment 69 (ColoradoCare) on Monday:

    http://www.denverpost.com/2016/10/14/bernie-sanders-amendment-69-boulder/

    I’d love to see Bernie stop stumping for Clinton and spend the rest of the campaign barnstorming for legitimate issues and candidates. With Wikileaks confirming pretty much every complaint he had about the DNC and Clinton campaign he has to be pretty disgusted at this point. Let the kid running his Twitter feed toss out an anti-Trump message now and then, but focus Bernie where he actually might make a difference.

    From on the ground here in Denver there’s very little info coming out in favor of ColoradoCare. The only TV spots I’ve seen are funded by the insurance CO front groups, and don’t even mention that Amendment 69 is related to health care. (cue ominous music….) “the biggest tax increase in state history… It would DOUBLE the size of state government… vote no on Amendment 69…”

    Hopefully Bernie can change the narrative a bit.

    1. ProNewerDeal

      agreed! Even if “officially” Sanders holds an pro-HClinton event/speech in CO, he could in actually focus mostly on ColoradoCare, as well as supporting any state/local social democratic Bernie-esque pols.

      Do you think ColoradoCare will pass? I am not in CO, but I was hopeful that perhaps if COCare passes, it will be start of eventual Canada-style MedicareForAll, similar to how Saskatchewan was the 1st province to pass MedicareForAll before it eventually spread to all of Canada. I hope that I am not being too optimistic or naive. I read a sad newsstory perhaps 1 month ago, noting that a poll showed COCare losing, & that the EvilDoers were outfunding the COCare supporters by 6:1.

      1. meeps

        ProNewerDeal @ 12:13 pm

        As someone who pounded the pavement for signatures to get COCare on the ballot, I’d like for it to pass for the reasons you cite. Polling revealed that people (especially the young) favor the plan WHEN THE TAX IS EXPLAINED to them. That’s a yuuuuge hurdle though, because the text begins with, “SHALL TAXES BE INCREASED $25 BILLION ANNUALLY…” which really means that all Coloradans will be covered for $4.5 Billion less than the current outlay, but the text isn’t required to include these (or other) salient facts.

        The current mis-leadership class including (but not limited to) Hickenlooper and Bennet, are obstacles as much as any out-spending by other opposing forces.

        I try to leave a measure of space for optimism (my naivete?) but the violence of TPTB is relentless. Stay tuned.

        1. Rhondda

          Thank you for your hard work in trying to improve health care options for regular people, meeps. Sincerely. Pounding the pavement is hard work. Kudos.

      2. Tvc15

        Just spent a week in CO for work. Hoping it passes, but based on my minuscule sampling of “liberal” upper middle class voters from a Boulder area office, it felt unlikely to me. Common comment seemed to indicate a confusion around implementation. Specifically, would their taxes go up to support CO care, and would they still also be required to pay for the year-over-year premium and deductable increases for our corporate subsidized crapified healthcare plans.

        CO also still seemed in play for the presidency based on the number of HRC/Trump commercials I had the displeasure of hearing or maybe they were purchased a while ago. I also saw numerous ads in favor of a new “death with dignity ” law, but nothing for or against CO care, amendment 69.

        1. meeps

          Tvc15 @ 3:46 pm

          I thought that voters here would be aware by now that the tax replaces premiums and does away with corporate subsidized crapified healthcare plans and deductibles.

          Thanks for the feedback. I’ll share your anecdote with the campaign.

        2. oh

          People don’t realize that their current premiums to ACA and other policies, deductibles and co-payments are actually a tax. ColoCare will result is lot less premiums, deductibles and better health care without the insurance crooks lopping off 30% and then playing games on what’s covered and what’s not.

    2. Isolato

      I got this from “Our Revolution” yesterday (excerpt)

      “In essence, the Citizens United ruling handed millionaires and billionaires — who have already rigged the economy — unlimited influence in American elections. It gave billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson the opportunity to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to elect candidates from the White House the state legislatures who will represent their interests. In essence, Citizens United is moving us toward an oligarchic form of society in which a handful of billionaires will control the economy and political life.

      The Washington Post, in an excellent article, showed us how far the country is moving toward becoming an oligarchy. Incredibly, just TEN donors have poured more than $1.1 BILLION into super PACs in this election alone.”

      Never is it mentioned who got this 1.1 billion. I was almost speechless, but then a surge of righteous indignation prompted a fiery reply and an “unsubscribe”. Bernie…you are dead to me.

    3. meeps

      Knifecatcher @ 10:52 am

      If you’re willing to put out a yard sign for ColoradoCareYES, please contact the campaign. Signs are going up this weekend because ballots will be mailed on Monday.

  15. tgs

    Obama Tells CIA To Prepare For Cyber War With Russia

    The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

    They have given no evidence that the hack was ordered by the Russian government. But we now live in a post-evidentiary environment. Reality simply is what our leaders fantasize.

    1. nothing but the truth

      everyone has become a consultant for hire.

      decisions have been made. now you have to come up with reasons to justify them.

      exactly as economists operate. the evidence has no relationship to the conclusion.

      just follow the money.

      follow the company line or you’ll lose your job.

      “You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.” – CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham

      1. oh

        Now I get it. O’s pimping for Hillary and the DNC so he can charge “fees” for his campaigning for them when he’s out of the WH.

  16. Pelham

    Re the bomb plot in Kansas: Garden City is an economically struggling town way out on the lonely plains of western Kansas. How does it make sense to have an apartment building full of Somalis way the heck out there?

    It’s funny how the people responsible for our borders essentially being fully open to all manner of wage-lowering immigrants and refugees somehow channel their settlement not to the luxe neighborhoods of Washington and its oh-so-lovely neighborhoods, where these decision makers live, but rather to the darnedest corners of the land, usually where residents are already having a hard time of it.

      1. Paid Minion

        That’s how all of the Meatpackers Unions were busted back in the 80s.

        The packers promoted immigration, legal and illegal. Then, at contract negotiation time, cut wages/benefits to practically nothing, then dared the unions to go on strike.

        Some did, on principle. They were immediately replaced by immigrants (legal and illegal)

        Unless and until some of the people who hire illegals go to jail, and dumb-azz wall on the border plan is just kabuki to placate the wretched refuse.

        I guess we’ll get to see how inserting low income/low education Muslim refugees into a primarily low income/low education Hispanic Roman Catholic works out for us. I’m thinking “not good”, but I’m one of the deplorables.

        1. Pelham

          Thanks for the reply. Notably missing from the NPR story linked above is much reaction from the locals, other than the mayor. But maybe it’s not surprising that, decades after the horrors of the brutal union-busting in the packing plants, an alternative economy based on low-wage, dead-end service jobs is generating new, severely down-scaled ways of making a living.

          I was aware of the union-busting by the meatpacking industry in the ’80s but thought that the need for a steady flow of scabs had long since been filled by illegal immigrants from south of the border. Maybe a second wave of even lower-wage immigrants is now necessary to ensure that the first desperate wave doesn’t get too uppity.

          Still, you’d think that the federal geniuses who let these people in would find a way to mercilessly exploit them in their own fabulous Washington-area environs instead of shipping them off hither and yon to the hinterlands.

  17. allan

    D.C. Hivemind Mulls How Clinton Can Pass Huge Corporate Tax Cut [Intercept]

    Treating the whole voting thing as a formality, serious political players are now pondering how exactly President Hillary Clinton can pass what Sen. Elizabeth Warren has called “a giant wet kiss for tax dodgers.”

    This discussion isn’t happening on television, where normal people would hear about it. Or on Reddit, where people would freak out about it. To the degree it’s taking place in public at all, it surfaces in elite publications, where only elites are paying attention. …

    So, NC is now officially an elite publication. Congratulations!

  18. ProNewerDeal

    I get the sense that the majority of voters are in the dark on the Podesta Wikileaks. Team D hacks (including BigMedia) ignore it or claim it is bogus fictional data Putin created (despite Hellary acknowledging the leaks were genuine in the 2nd debate). Team R hacks including Trump & Faux News are likely to focus on irrelevant Fake Scandals, ala Benghazi!

    I have a hard time keeping up with it myself, last I heard it was on Pt 7. Jordan Chariton at TYT Politics has been doing informative clips.

    I wish a journalist like Chariton would keep an updated page with say the Top3 items on the Podesta Wikileaks, & say a 2nd tier of the 7 more items. This would allow us an “elevator pitch” type overview when explaining it to friends/acquaintances.

    My guesstimate at the Top3 (no order)
    1 HClinton’s public position is often opposite of her genuine private position, such as her being pro-TPP

    2 HClinton is pro-Grand Bargain Ripoff SS & MC cuts

    3 HClinton is for West Hemispheric “free trade” & open borders (how exactly is the already crapified US worker conditions supposed to get better if anyone in the hemisphere, much of which have < $1/hr min wage are free to immigrate to the US – 'open borders')

    Some of the Next7 (no order)

    4 HClinton is pro-Syrian war, wanting to BOTH overthrow Assad regime & fight IS1S (side note – any Hellary supporter bashing Jill Stein's intelligence needs to be faced with this Syrian comment – IMHO it is as stupid as Trump's Climate Change denial comment)

    5 admission that Saudi/other Gulf states fund 1SIS

    6 new further evidence that HClinton's hacks including DNC rigged the primary election, such as Donna Brazille relaying CNN "town hall" questions to HClinton campaign.

    7 HClinton believes that 2B2F Bank$tas should "self-regulate" (ala #4, sign of Hillary's mediocre judgement & intelligence). This may explain why HClinton is anti-Glass Steagall & breaking up 2B2F.

    8 HClinton is pro-hydraulic fracturing, & happy to sell/spread the practice/globally

    9 BigMedia including NYTimes, WaPo, C"N"N, ms-DNC collusion with the HClinton campaign, renders US BigMedia as state media as propagandistic & low quality as what the same US BigMedia accuase state-run Russian/Saudi/Qatar media as being.

    Do you have a take on this list? What am I missing, or am I misprioritizing the Top3? Cheers & happy weekend to all.

    1. tgs

      5 admission that Saudi/other Gulf states fund 1SIS

      To which I would add ‘and continued to receive donations from those states to the Clinton Foundation.

    2. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Will we do everything possible to stop her and those who are with her?

      The Little People are capable of greatness.

      They say to her, ‘You can’t even beat Trump.”

    3. tgs

      There is this one that should be top three, IMOP:

      Hillary said, I believe in 2013, that imposing a no-fly zone in Syria, would kill many innocent people. Now, imposing a no-fly zone in Syria is a top priority of her foreign policy.

      1. winstonsmith

        The transcripts have only recently been available, so the corporate media are so far mainly guilty of pre-crime for not covering them. If you want post-crime, however, the FOB (Friends of Bill, Haiti, pay-to-play) (silent) scandal is a good case study.

        news organization: number of stories with ‘FOB’ in text according to google in the past week

        npr.org: 0


        pbs.org: 1


        cnn.com: 1


        nytimes.com: 2


        thegaurdian.com: 0


        washingtonpost.com: 1


        huffingtonpost.com: 0


        wsj.com: 1


        cnbc.com: 0


        cbsnews.com: 0


        abcnews.go.com: 10+


        dailmail.co.uk: 1

        1. nycTerrierist

          I just skimmed the abcnews coverage of the Clinton$ and Haiti and was pleasantly surprised they refer to ‘pay for play’. interesting.

        2. winstonsmith

          Oops. I should have written “pbs.org: 0” not “pbs.org: 1” because the only pbs.org hits are in reader comments on other stories.

  19. Michael

    Uh, people who actually support Trump all do so for the exact same reason — they are super racist and sexist.

    There are people who’ve landed on Trump out of despair over HRC, and I accept that. But the folks who backed him all along . . . agree with him?

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      I hate to sound like I am defending Trump but I know several women in the dead center of the supposed Clinton demographic (older educated professional women) who have long loathed her and would never consider voting for her. And I am pretty sure both will vote for Trump (as in I don’t see them as third party voters). This is not about despair. I’ve similarly had readers tell me of young people they know who voted for Sanders in their primaries but will vote for Trump because they don’t see the elites as giving a damn about generating jobs for them and they see Hillary as representing that whereas Trump has a pro-job generation message. So you are really overgeneralizing here.

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        Oh, and to update: later in the day I was in the hair salon and struck up a conversation with the woman who colors my hair and another woman I see there. They are both pretty outspoken but I still took the line of “the elections are so upsetting” so as to not appear to appear to be looking for support of a point of view.

        The hair colorist, early 40s, Long Island accent, now lives in NJ, snorted about the Trump sex allegations. “All men are like that”. This in front of no other patrons but another staffer. So this can’t be a taboo view there. And she’s not keen about getting in a war with Russia. Dunno if this means she’d vote for Trump but she is definitely not keen re Hillary and not at all deterred by the Trump sex scandals.

        The other woman is in her late 50s, French-Romanian (French accent, born in Paris, father a diplomat, lived in Vienna before a divorce, then in Romania, college and white collar work in Paris, concluded she’d make more here) said right off the bat she’s voting for Trump and will move back to Europe if Clinton wins. She regards her as a crook who will greatly increase corruption here. Also thinks she is an idiot regarding foreign policy, that we need Russia as an ally.

        So you are seriously off base in your stereotypes.

    2. aab

      And to build on Yves’ point, from the beginning, as far as I can tell, lots of the people supporting Trump were doing so because, as Republican voters, they knew their party elite didn’t care about them, was lying to them, and was expecting them to vote for people and policies that had killed their children pointlessly and destroyed their communities.

      The first Trump voter I met in person was an immigrant restaurant owner from the middle east.

      Clinton insiders and Clinton supporters have all revealed themselves to be incredibly racist and sexist, as well, starting with Hillary herself.

      That dog won’t hunt.

    3. Jeff

      So I’m “super racist and sexist”. Got it, thanks. Is that better or worse than Clinton’s “basket of deplorables”?

      I’m all for much tighter immigration control, both for legal and illegal immigrants. My perspective is that there are enough people in the USA now, and I’m going to prioritize US citizen’s well being before intervening in other country’s affairs and encouraging more immigration into the US.

      Which candidate is most in-line with that line of thought?

      1. ewmayer

        Hey, look at this in a positive light – even if you failed to qualify for the BoD, you can still make the “creel of execrables”, or the “pail of reprehensibles”, or the “trough of the atrocious”, or any of many such containers. It’s a big tent!

        1. aab

          More like a big hole. Basically, if you’re not a goodthinking liberal with a lot of money from the corporate state (which, reminder, runs on military violence, resource extraction by force, slavery and peonage), those goodthinking liberals would like to consign you to Tartarus.

    4. Massinissa

      Your comment roughly translates as “Everyone who votes for the opposite side of me is EVIL!”

  20. Shwell Thanksh

    Oh, it might have been just a harmless birthday gift! Gosh, we all get those I guess nothing to see here folks.

    The emails released by Wikileaks do not appear to confirm whether Qatar gave the promised $1 million, although the foundation’s website lists the State of Qatar as having given at least that amount. There is no date listed for the donation. A spokesman for the foundation declined to confirm the donation.

    Reuters could not rule out the possibility the $1 million was intended as a birthday present for Clinton personally, not for the foundation. His spokesman did not respond to questions.

    Hacked emails raise possibility of Clinton Foundation ethics breach

    1. alex morfesis

      incompetent criminals…I look forward to 48 months of the return of the keystone kops to 1600…$hillary and the not ready for prime slime playuz…

      this is gonna be interesting…wrecknology at its finest…

      these were the best of times….

  21. Paid Minion

    Pentagon’s Dystopian Future.

    Yeah, all of the FSA/Obamaphone types (according to the Official Republican Stereotype) are suddenly going to become hard-rock miners.

    What’s going to happen is already happening. The “undesireables” are being shoved out into the suburbs. From which point they, like everyone else, can commute to their “day jobs”

    The (inadvertant side effect) good news is that many of the kids are finding that they can get a “starter job” much easier, and many can walk to work with reasonable safety.

  22. Oregoncharles

    Praying mantis story: I was working (I’m a landscaper), stopped to talk with the client. In some alarm, she pointed to my shoulder and asked “What’s that?”

    Of course, it was a mantis, getting a handy free ride around the yard.

    And oddly: either spelling of “preying” works.

  23. barrisj

    I see where Justice RBG is walking back her earlier intemperate remarks concerning the professional football player Colin Kaepernick’s ongoing protest against injustices visited upon African-Americans by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem before matches. Kaepernick himself had a very thoughtful response to Justice Ginsburg’s comments:

    Speaking to reporters Tuesday in the 49ers locker room, Mr. Kaepernick said Justice Ginsburg had shown a lack of sensitivity. “It is disappointing to hear a Supreme Court justice call a protest against injustices and oppression ‘stupid, dumb’ in reference to players doing that,” he said.

    He said he was reading an article that he said referred to “the white critique of black protests and how they try to delegitimize it by calling it ‘idiotic, dumb, stupid,’ things of that nature, so they can sidestep the real issue. As I was reading that, I saw more and more truth how this has been approached by people in power and white people in power in particular.”

    Justice Ginsburg has now said:

    “Some of you have inquired about a book interview in which I was asked how I felt about Colin Kaepernick and other N.F.L. players who refused to stand for the national anthem,” she wrote in a note to reporters. “Barely aware of the incident or its purpose, my comments were inappropriately dismissive and harsh. I should have declined to respond.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/us/ruth-bader-ginsburg-colin-kaepernick-national-anthem.html

    Unfortunately, Justice Ginsburg, as Antonin Scalia before her, doesn’t seem to recognise the significance of a Supreme Court Justice making strident commentary on topical issues that may in fact reflect poorly on one’s temperment and juridical mindset.

    1. Steve H.

      Two cases in point:

      : Being in court and noting how cautious the judge was about what information she took in. When a note dropped out of a book being passed by the bailiff (long story), she passed it back without looking despite it possibly verifying a claim made on stand. Though she did mutter “there’s always something.”

      : Yves: “I am careful to speak only to what I know.”

      ‘Nuff said.

  24. Mahesh Mumbaikar

    Purely Out of curiosity – anybody here following BRICS summit ? Would love to get an “Outsider Observational” view about Indian seriousness.

  25. Paid Minion

    Interesting…..

    Zero Hedge just posted a story about Hillarys Goldman Sachs speeches. When you try to open it, the browser on my IPhone shuts down.

    A hack by Hillary? Or a hack by opponents of Hillary, who want you to think Hillarys minions hacked your phone.

  26. rich

    Inside the Secret Society of Wall Street’s Top In-House Lawyers

    Wall Street general counsels have met for roughly two decades
    Lawyers discussed banding together against plaintiffs’ lawyers

    It’s a Wall Street club that’s virtually unknown on Wall Street. It has no name or official membership list, and it meets only once a year, in locations such as Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne, Connecticut’s Litchfield County, and, this year, Versailles.

    The attendees are top in-house lawyers for some of the world’s most powerful banks — people who sit at the table for decisions that can shape multibillion-dollar litigation tabs for the likes of Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Deutsche Bank AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

    The gatherings, which were described by several people familiar with them who asked not to be identified, tend to feature discussions of nuts-and-bolts issues such as managing relationships with the board and whether compliance personnel should receive stock incentives.
    Sticking Together

    The annual gathering, whose existence hasn’t previously been reported, is the brainchild of lawyer Robert Mundheim. A general counsel for the U.S. Department of the Treasury in the 1970s, Mundheim went on to become a dean at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, then general counsel for the former Salomon Smith Barney in the 1990s. He’s now with the firm Shearman & Sterling and has been hired by independent directors of Wells Fargo to investigate the bank’s retail sales practices and other matters.
    The Decider
    Mundheim decides which top bank attorneys should be tapped for membership, according to the people with knowledge of the meetings, one of whom said they have been held for roughly two decades. The group includes banks that have in recent years grappled with investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve and other regulators, as well as class actions. Besides the swaps case, major banks have paid settlements related to alleged manipulation of foreign exchange rates and the ISDAfix benchmark, which is used in the sale of interest rate derivatives.

    After inquiries by Bloomberg News, some members of the group complained to one another about a breach of confidentiality, according to the people. Mundheim declined to comment, as did Grossman and Weerasinghe.

    Also representing the U.S. banks at the Versailles gathering were current or departing general counsels including Stephen Cutler of JPMorgan, Gary Lynch of Bank of America and Gregory Palm of Goldman Sachs, according to the people familiar with this year’s meeting.
    Across the Pond

    Joining them were counterparts representing banks on the other side of the Atlantic, including Markus Diethelm of UBS Group AG, Richard Walker of Deutsche Bank, Robert Hoyt of Barclays, Romeo Cerutti of Credit Suisse Group AG, David Fein of Standard Chartered Plc, Stuart Levey of HSBC Holdings Plc and Georges Dirani of BNP Paribas SA, according to the people.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-14/what-top-bank-lawyers-were-doing-at-secret-versailles-summit

    “There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.”
    ― Joseph Pulitzer

  27. paul

    RE: Syraqistan

    Prepare to blow your mind

    “[The Mother] agreed to speak with ABC because she wanted her story–and the story of her neighbors–to be known; however, with no visuals coming out of Madaya, our team spent a considerable amount of time imagining the ways we could illustrate her powerful journey,” said ABC News Digital Executive Producer Dan Silver. “With their storied history of innovative and emotional storytelling, we knew that our colleagues at Marvel would bring this story to life in a truly unique and expressive way.”

    “This meticulously researched collaboration between ABC and Marvel goes where cameras can’t and provides visuals to the true story of Madaya Mom–a story that needs to be seen and told,” said Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso.

  28. Vikky

    Nc, if you have the resources could you please increase your coverage in your main articles of Indian politics and finance and economics? Would be great to get an informed and straight perspective on the situation here as the mainstream media is pitiful to say the least. Plus it seems after China it’s India who the busines community is looking at for growth.

    1. Oregoncharles

      Doesn’t their new associate live and work in India?

      NC reporting has been heavy on Europe, for obvious reasons, but India is extremely important. We understand that resources are limited, though.

      1. Vikky

        Yes Jerry lynn scofield has ties with India. She posts links in the links section but iirc Nc hasn’t yet posted a main article about India yet. I’m sure a lot of Indian policy makers and bureaucrats would Loke to read this website.

    2. paul

      That’s an extremely large and difficult task to take on.
      Considering the depth and complexity (to put it kindly) of social/federal/judicial/international politics I think it would require a seperate naked india site.

  29. Jesper

    White-washing by faint damning: “Eleven revelations from Wikileaks’ hacked Clinton emails”:
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37639370
    Seems to be the twin of damning by faint praise.

    I have to admit that if my knowledge of what was found in the Clinton e-mails was limited to what was reported in Main Stream Media then I wouldn’t care much about the issue either.

  30. Oregoncharles

    Thelink for the Taibbi article goes to “Hacked emails raise possibility of Clinton Foundation ethics breach”

    Not that I mind.

  31. rich

    Kentucky Retirement Systems plans to get out of hedge funds

    The $14.9 billion Kentucky Retirement Systems plans to end its controversial investments in hedge funds.

    The KRS board’s investment committee on Friday reached “a general agreement” on a three-year plan to withdraw about $1.5 billion that KRS has invested in hedge funds over the last six years. Formal votes must follow for the committee on Nov. 2 and the full board on Dec. 1.

    “This is big news today. This is really a big reversal for KRS,” said Chris Tobe, a Louisville financial consultant who sat on the KRS board from 2008 to 2012. “I think it’s generally a good move. I don’t think we were getting much of value out of these.”

    KRS is responsible for retirement benefits for more than 355,000 people who have worked for local and state government. It faces nearly $15 billion in unfunded liabilities, largely because the state government failed to contribute adequate sums for much of the last two decades. Only in the last few years has the General Assembly committed to full state pension funding.

    Jim Carroll, who monitors KRS for an advocacy group called Kentucky Government Retirees, said he understood the arguments for and against hedge funds, so he never took a personal position on them.

    “What KRS was attempting to do was find an investment that was less volatile than stocks that could provide a good long-range income,” Carroll said Friday. “The flip side, obviously, is that the performance these last few years hasn’t been good. Also, fee transparency has been an issue. This is public money, and we haven’t always known exactly what fees were being paid for these investments.”

    “The cynical view is that individual investments don’t really matter at this point because the systems are so poorly funded,” he continued. “It’s really just tinkering around the periphery. No investment is going to make us 25 percent a year, and that’s what we would need to climb out of the hole we’re in, barring a substantial increase in contributions.”

    http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article108291592.html

    Not much but still…..

  32. alex morfesis

    good thing amy goodman is getting charged…to me it is a bit full circle and karmik…cleansing and purifying…she was in Morton County which is next to the State Capital county of Burlington, which holds Bismark…but…

    the cut out who is charging her and handling the matter is some little rincky dink mayberry prosecutor, Ladd Erickson…

    why is a prosecutor from a county TWO counties over handling this when Bismark is actually connected to Morton County…

    McLean County, where Erickson is from, is actually on the “Other” side of Burlington County…so in theory this stinks to high heaven…mind you…

    the first nationers should be filing quiet title suits against the properties they are worried about and then they would have a colorable title and the right to be on the property, clouding the capacity of guvmintz types to confuse the equities…

    but for the bright side and full circle karma thingee…

    Ladd Erickson is from and in Washburn, North Dakota…
    the entire guvmynt works out of one po box…
    everyone uses po box 1108…
    the town has less than 1250 people in it…

    Where the events actually happened, Morton County, has 27 thousand people and the main city, Mandan has 21 thousand…and a Tesoro Refinery…oil country…

    but the full circle karma thingee…

    a few months after I was born, the events of nov 22 unfolded…

    and we all got to see some secret service agent dive on the back of the limo after the fact…

    he seems to come out of nowhere since the tape has been edited to cut out the fact the jfk limo driver slammed the brakes and totally stopped since the first wave of shots missed (see nix tape)….

    the guy jumping onto the back of the limo is Clint Hill…

    the only famous person or thing about Washburn up to this date and time is that….

    Clint Hill was raised in Washburn…

    so maybe this is a universal shifting moment…

    when the clowns that be suddenly push their hand a little to hard and gaia strikes back….

    1. alex morfesis

      correcting myself on the good thing amy goodman arrested…or maybe an adjustment,,,this is even more questionable…these events appear to have happened in cannonball north dakota…sioux county, north dakota…but that would have required the “complainants” to go to a tribal court…so instead some prosecutor from a county with no jurisdiction in sioux county files paperwork and then another prosecutor…not 2 counties…3 counties away…mr erickson…is in the middle…good thing all the radio stations in bismark are owned by clear channel or cummulus…hard hitting investigative reporters they have there I am sure

  33. robnume

    On Oilfieldday Prayer: eminds me of when General George S Patton forced a U S chaplain to produce a “Victory over our enemies” prayer. Only in America, indeed!

  34. robnume

    On Oilfieldday Prayer: reminds me of when General George S Patton forced a U S chaplain to produce a “Victory over our enemies” prayer. Only in America, indeed!

  35. Jim

    How are we to think about Trump culturally.

    Is his personality representative of the complete passing of any type of ascetic system of moral demands?

    Most traditional cultures created systems of interdicts or “thou shalt nots” or taboos.

    In classical Christian culture there was a renuncitory mode of control in relation to the sexual opportunism of individuals. Christian asceticism seemed to have as its purpose not the total suppression of natural drives but rather the control and attempted spiritualization of them.

    What does Trump’s sexual opportunism represent culturally? Is it totally transgressive?

    Can such transgressive behavior lead to a new symbolic system of controls?

    Is Trump not only attacking are social/political/economic order but our cultural order as well?

    Was militant socialism the secular version of militant religious asceticism–with both movements now passing into history?

  36. ewmayer

    Local ABC n00z affiliate just devoted a full 3 minutes of their hourlong evening newscast to “Trump hits back at accusers!”. They featured in-their-own-words clips from two women:

    1. Former contestant on The Apprentice, shown with high-profile attorney Gloria Allred. #1’s “sexual assault” accusation, in her own words, appeared to consist of “after the episode taping, he hugged me and pulled me close … I pushed him away and said ‘get real’ … he mocked me by repeating my words back to me”.

    2. Another fmr contestant, saying “we all had to sign $5 million NDAs to the effect of if-it-doesn’t-air-it-didn’t-happen”.

    Then 30 seconds devoted to HRC: “Hillary Clinton is spending a quiet weekend away from the campaign trail”, then brief clips of Bernie and 0bama both “stumping for Hillary”, then a stock photo of HRC giving thumbs-up and wearing her patented frozen manic grin. Nary a peep about the latest Wikileaked document troves.

    As Lambert likes to say, seems legit.

    1. Sammy Maudlin

      The exact same story sequence was run on my local Disney affiliate last night. Mickey must be working overtime down at the Magic Kingdom sending out canned election stories to all his clubs throughout the land.

    2. paul

      A ‘contestant’ on a mainstream reality ,ritualised humiliation based, existential snuff movie complains about being mocked?
      That, and michelle obama’s broadcast trauma , makes me hope thay never go on holiday to las vegas, the gambling and open lewdity might prove fatal to their delicate sensibilities.

  37. OIFVet

    Eff Trump, eff Hillary, eff militarism, eff imperialism. Eff greed and eff groaf, and the wanton destruction of Mother Earth that results from all of these. Let us enjoy what we have, and save it for future generations and for all other life on this beautiful planet: Planet Earth II: Official Extended Trailer – BBC Earth. BBC is a shameless tool for many of the policies and actors that threaten Mother Earth and its inhabitants, but they still produce the best nature programming. I can’t wait to watch the series.

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Speaking of nature and animals, the new Thai king once named his pet poodle an air force marshal in the Thai military.

      Not good enough to be a consul, I suppose.

  38. Jay M

    dusk tracks this election, the fading empire along with the fading images of the advocates
    nuclear war, sad epitaph, none will read it
    we have made enemies everywhere except where “friendship” pays
    people like lindsey graham up to their boots in pig shit

  39. Plenue

    >Newly discovered fossils suggest ‘unicorns’ were real

    “We should point out first, however, that real unicorns are not pretty horses with wings and horns.”

    Excuse me, but Pegasi are the ones with wings. Unicorns just have horns. A horse with both is an Alicorn. God, can’t journalists get anything right?

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