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Toxic products cost the US $340 billion a year Treehugger
Tasmanian devil milk fights superbugs BBC
London Zoo gorilla drank five litres of blackcurrant juice after escaping enclosure Guardian (furzy)
The Man Who Gave Us Trench Coats and Pantsuits WSJ. I wonder what YSL would think of the way Hillary rocks one of his signature looks.
Reputation Management Company Linked To Bogus Libel Lawsuits Now Hyping Its Anti-Cyberbullying Skills Techdirt (Dan K)
Two Dangerous Fault Lines Under San Francisco Are Connected, Study Finds Popular Mechanics (Selva)
Flaw in Intel chips could make malware attacks more potent Ars Technica
Elvira Nabiullina hunts down Russia’s banking ‘banditry’ FT. Wouldn’t it be nice to see more equivalent zeal in the US?
Wells Fargo
California attorney general investigating Wells Fargo on allegations of criminal identity theft LA Times
Attorney general leads criminal probe of Wells Fargo bank AP
Airbnb faces fight for survival in New York City FT. Readers, please consider emailing Cuomo in support of the law. Many people in NYC and elsewhere who are AirBnBing are overwhelmingly NOT people trying to pick up some cash while on vacation but are renting out their properties full-time, thus removing them from residential housing stock.
Your Driverless Ride Is Arriving MIT Technology Review
A changing climate for coral reefs Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The West Is Burning, And Climate Change Is Partly To Blame FiveThirtyEight (Resilc)
Greenland is Melting New Yorker
India headed for coal power overcapacity India Climate Dialogue
India is all set to produce long range missiles that can take down targets deep inside Pakistan Business Insider
Bollywood Becomes India and Pakistan’s Latest Battleground NYT
The evidence is clear: population growth and prosperity are NOT linked Macrobusiness
Syraqistan
Mosul braces itself for next bloody chapter having been ravaged by 13 years of war The Independent
Major Russian naval deployment to intensify Aleppo assault: NATO diplomat Reuters
Merkel Says Putin Slapped With Blunt Language on Syria Role Bloomberg
Here’s What Economists Don’t Understand About Race INET
Larry Sanders on brother Bernie and why Tony Blair was ‘destructive’ Guardian
2016
Why did Julian Assange lose his internet connection? New Statesman
The Silicon Valley Candidate Counterpunch
Why These Americans Refuse to Vote Vice
IS DISCLOSURE OF PODESTA’S EMAILS A STEP TOO FAR? A CONVERSATION WITH NAOMI KLEIN The Intercept
If Trump Wins, Here’s How The Map Might Look FiveThirtyEight
Scott Walker, other Republicans tread lightly on O’Keefe video sting WaPo
Tom Daschle Pushed Hillary Clinton To Back Aetna Merger While Refusing To Register As Aetna Lobbyist International Business Times
Donald Trump refuses to say if he will accept election result in final debate (furzy) Funny, I don’t recall anyone asking Bush or Gore to make a similar pledge in advance of the 2000 election.
America’s Voting Machines Are a Disaster in the Making The New Republic. Problems with US voting machines are so obvious even The New Republic weighs in.
Liberalism and capitalism have hollowed out society – so where do we turn now? New Statesman
Margaret Thatcher named worst prime minister of the century Politico (Margarita).
Imperial Decline Watch
The World Doesn’t Need More U.S. Interventionism The American Conservative (Resilc)
Does America Really Need Overseas Bases? The National Interest (Resilc)
Mass incarceration in America, explained in 22 maps and charts Vox
ACLU Wants 23 Secret Surveillance Laws Made Public The Intercept
Zuckerberg group proposes changes to Obama ‘startup visas’ The Hill (Dan K)
Trade Traitors
How the ‘Losers’ in America’s Trade Policies Got Left Behind The Atlantic
Brexit
Huge increase in Britons seeking citizenship in EU states as Brexit looms Guardian
Brexit steals magic from UK law firms Politico
Brian Monteith: Deutsche Bank’s liabilities show why we need a quick clean Brexit Brexit Central
U.K. Banks’ Brexit Hopes Boil Down to One Word: QuickTake Q&A Bloomberg
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
314 comments
Comments are closed.
Re: AirBNB
AIRBNB Ban on Dublin apartment
This legal decision in Ireland means that in law renting out an apartment full time on AirBnB, etc., is now a separate ‘use class’ in terms of zoning – the landlord needs to apply to the local Council for permission. Its a major precedent because its a strong legal weapon in the hand of neighbours upset about any apartment in a building (or house) being used for this purpose.
That particular case is site specific – it only refers to the sole full time use of an apartment. No doubt there will be future ones relating to irregular use.
I should start a gated enclave AirBNB and market it as a Veblen good for middle class boomers to spend their kids inheritance on…. scented candles and box wine welcome packages as bait [free stuff]….
Disheveled Marsupial…. any local complaints will be met with a land slide PR campaign about free markets and commie hand wringing…. from the collectivists… eh`eh`eh~~~~
Can someone clue me in about Disheveled Marsupial? I’ve seen it so many times and google isn’t helping.
Its a creature stored in Skippys kit that just drops in to see what condition Skippys condition is in — and offer editorial clarification
You’ll find references to marsupial editing standards in here:
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/graduatecentre/forms/thesis/docs/thesis-editing-standards.pdf
Maybe…
In today’s Charleston SC newspaper, an Airbnb rental trust won a victory against its neighbors and regulation as Charleston’s downtown is abandoned to tourists.
And an apartment building in Dublin has banned the rentals. I would question though if this will survive a legal challenge (Irish law tends to fall very much on the side of freeholders, even in an apartment building).
I dont understand the point on AirBnB. If someone owns a property and rents it out via AirBnB and then has to stop due to a regulatory change…that will simply shift the demand to hotels. And if we have increased demand for hotel stays, that makes hotel investment (or residential-to-hotel conversion) more attractive on the margin. I don’t see any impact on the residential market from banning AirBnB.
We need more supply and everyone’s focus should be on getting rid of protectionist zoning policies not on fiddling with tiny distinctions like AirBnB – a giant distraction from the elephant in the room.
“We”? “We” who?
Imagine that you live in an apartment building in (say) New York. Contrary to your co-op bylaws or condo articles, and in as much secrecy as possible (AirBnB doesn’t show specific addresses, IIRC), several of the apartments in your building are rented to strangers. Suddenly, there’s no security, no assurance that your fellow dwellers have passed the co-op board’s scrutiny, and people in your building with neither obligation nor interest in abiding by regulations prohibiting such things as loud noise after 10 pm. And so on, and so forth. Not good for people who live in the buildings. Hotels are designed for rental to strangers; let them go to hotels.
I agree there could be security, taxation, and other concerns with AirBNB. But i see zero benefit to housing supply from banning it.
What do you think taking apartments that are rented to locals and instead turning them into single room occupancy hotels does to the number of units available for rental? It reduces them. This is supply and demand 101. And in places like New York City, we already have people paying more and more and being driven to further and further commutes due to the ever rising price of rental apartments.
Here in Pima County, Arizona, the property tax assessor’s office went on an online adventure. The goal: To seek out local Air BnB listings. Many were found.
Then came the fun part: The mean ole County Assessor re-classified those properties as rentals. Bingo. Higher property tax rate.
Let’s just say that the local reaction was a mix of outrage and schadenfreude. There were plenty of howls from property owners who were crying poor because their rentals were, gasp, finally being taxed as rentals.
The schadenfreude came from the rest of us. We already live in neighborhoods that are full of residential properties that are being mis-reported as owner-occupied when they’re actually rentals. To the Pima County Assessor’s Office, we say “Thank you!”
Uber – AirBnB are basically tax work arounds e.g. law[s work arounds with some glossy advertising, app gimmick and new age marketing…
Trump won’t accept the election results? Trump made a very good point last night that even running against someone who by all rights should be in prison right now has a priori already made this election not exactly legitimate. Put that way, it does seem kind of ridiculous.
I didn’t see the debates but from the live blog, this looks to be a big overstatement of his position. He was asked if he would accept the results and he refused to commit. And the Gore campaign did not accept the results in Florida in 2000 when the learned they had initially lost by 1500 votes. They requested a hand recount of three counties and lawyered up for appeals. So how is it reasonable to ask Trump to say he’ll stand pat at this juncture? Now the odds do not favor a swing state being as tight as Florida was in 2000, but that can hardly be ruled out ex ante.
I so hate having to defend Trump upon occasion but the MSM campaign against him is over the top.
It’s completely ridiculous to tie him down to accepting results ahead of time. The thing that’s really irking me though is that he appears to be making the same types of Republican claims of potential voter fraud which doesn’t happen as opposed to election fraud which does. Now his minion Paul LePage is starting to echo what he’s saying. He’s starting a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation where no one will believe it when election fraud does occur in the future because the whole idea has gotten more publicity through him than it has from what I’d consider more legitimate sources. Everyone knows who Trump is but how many have heard of Brad Friedman’s work?
To those who would try to discount the idea of any possible election fraud ahead of time I can only say, if you don’t have anything to hide what’s the problem with allowing someone to take a look? Trust but verify according to St. Ronnie. Except when someone wants to verify what the establishment is up to I suppose.
Zerehedge has a good compilation of headlines all saying Trump won’t accept election results.
Do you suppose the real question they mean to ask Trump is not “Will you accept the election results?” but “Will you admit you’ve lost and Clinton has already won?”
A 45% to 43% style election would be a great outcome. Republicans will be under pressure to appease their base especially if Mormons vote for that Mitchell guy out West beyond Utah. They will make the Obama years look like a honey moon.
The Democrats won’t be able to provide enough votes because 2018 is coming up, and 2010 and 2014 really did wipe out the worst water carriers for grand bargain style initiatives.
McMullin it seems has pulled ahead in polling (for now) in Utah:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865665209/Final-debate-between-Trump-and-Clinton-may-help-McMullin-in-Utah.html?pg=all
Thats a better restatement.
I shut it off after 20 minutes, I missed this.
Like frostyzoom reflected, one wants to reach into the screen and shout answers. Do much low hanging fruit.
The platonic method would be so effective with stupid, loaded questions like this.
“Chris, can the American people survive another POTUS that is comfortable telegraphing answers to strategic questions without knowing the best available facts at the time?”
Did CW pose the same hypothetical to Doris Day’s evil twin? (who was the Vegas makeup artist/embalmer they brought into HRC’s sarcophagus ?)
imagine getting sucked into it, “tron” style.
Platonic, or Socratic? Oh, maybe you were archly alluding to the nature of the marriage between the Clantons…
HA.. meant Socratic! You know as a lawyer, so many of the stupid “debate” questions could be answered with a string of questions that drill holes in the absurdity.
(I was probably thinking of Michael Moore / HRC….. )
The Clintons? I suspect they hate each other but at this point they are mutually entwined like a toxic Gordian Knot that if ever split they will spontaneously explode
Can we just lament how the press is determined not to talk about anything resembling a policy, between the coverage of groping and the coverage of whining you would think we all have rising incomes, affordable healthcare, and world peace and are just looking for some more irrelevant distractions.
Hilary will win and be impeached, the mountain of corruption and lies and lawbreaking will topple over, so we’ll get that sweaty little misogynist frat boy fascist Tim Kaine, a singularly unimpressive and uninspiring drone. So maybe that’s the tale, we become our worst actions, with a drone sending out lots of drones.
He can be impeached to .. as we work down a regrettable food chain
I like the idea, the people, backed by their unshakable and fair democratic ideals, rise up and root out the corruption and rot, starting at the top and working their way down. Eventually they’ll get to all the local city councilmen who are on the take. Sounds alot like France in 1789. Bring it.
:..then look at France in 1810, to get the full picture… and that Sartre guy, “No Exit…”
I think it’s easier to not elect her than impeach her.
Voter fraud has never been taken seriously. Why would people stop caring about something they don’t care about in the first place?
Voter fraud is small ball. Election fraud is something different, something we haven’t really had to deal with as such, and something that strikes at the very assumption of good intent on the part of rulers.
Voter suppression is not little league, however.
Yes, it’s an overstatement partly due to the fact that all major US papers used his “non-acceptance” as the front page headline. Trump is a good man to merely verbalize what many Americans already suspect but what the MSM refused to utter: that since absolutely anything on digits can be hacked and toyed with, the US system of voting with computers can’t be trusted. Just as he said out loud the Iraq war was a disaster.
A very litigious man all his life, he might well challenge any possible discrepancies in court.
Yup it’s the frontpage headline here in Maine today. What a coiny-dink that it is elsewhere too but nothing’s rigged of course.
It led all three local police blotter reports (abc/fox, cbs) in our little podunk town in CA.
If there was a trial where the judge was taking kick-backs from private prisons, the prosecutor and defense lawyers are married blackmailers, the police running a sex trafficking ring, the witnesses trying to get lesser sentences and half the panel lied to be on the jury…. would someone ‘trust the outcome’?
I don’t know if anyone has written about this, but Trump did say during the debate that he felt that there was something seriously wrong with the fact that he is running against someone who clearly belongs in prison.
Yes, Hillary Clinton belongs in prison, there’s no doubt about that. However, due to the apparent embezzlement of Trump Foundation funds, shouldn’t Trump also be in prison? Trump paid for a portrait of himself, made a donation to a politician in Florida, and bought autographed football memorabilia, all with Trump Foundation money. The foundation wasn’t even properly registered to accept donations. Perhaps these are civil violations, but they sure seem like theft.
This. They should both no doubt be.
Skip the foundation civil shite….that is merely the wafer to cleanse the palate w/regard to HRC admitted but unindicted felonious random walk through the CFR and international law.
This. Unfortunately, all up to now has merely been warm-up stretching preliminary to the Constitution-butt-wiping and violating of international law to come if the Borg succeeds in dragging her festering, maggot-dripping carcass over the finish line. Enthused by that prospect I am not.
Misogyny and leftism? Can they really co-exist?
She’s an oligarch, not a woman. Stop running interference for oligarchs.
Trump’s misuse of his foundation are tax scams and are a matter for the IRS. One of our many institutions that used to try to fulfill its duties. What has been described are civil infractions which we all face to some degree. On the other hand, Pay for Play is seriously bad stuff. As has routinely been the case, the issues are spun to suit tose whose side are already favored and we cheer for our favorite, much like big league wrassling. We have lost our ability to properly analyze all of the BS data that is being thrown at us and we can trust no one. I maintain that if it became a requirement that only those whose position has been changed by the debates be allowed to post here, the comments section would be empty now. As Pogo said: “we have met the enemy and he is us.” – and by us, I do not mean TPTB.
That’s like comparing a jay walker to Hanibal Lector. False equivalency.
How many people has Trump killed with his extreme carelessness and bad judgement so far? The number is in the hundreds of thousands now for his opponent.
Remember when Trump advocated killing the families of terrorists? Clinton did plenty of terrible things, and she should not be President, but Trump also wants to do terrible things. He would routinely cheat the people and businesses which supply his company, as well as customers, such as Trump U. students. He wasn’t Secretary of State or a Senator, so his decisions weren’t likely to directly kill people. But like Clinton, he views other people as things to be used in any way that will benefit him. They’re both sociopaths.
The next U.S. President will be hideous.
also wants to do terrible things
I think he has a strategy of being hyperbolic, getting free media then walking it back. At least I hope he does? But this is all work for the future crimes bureau to divine. In HRC’s case it is historical fact.
His theft and fraud is historical fact, too. This is not a case for pre-crime.
Anyone who votes for either Trump or Clinton should be aware that one’s chosen candidate is a criminal.
His theft and fraud is historical fact, too.. mmm
He would routinely cheat the people and businesses which supply his company, as well as customers
He may have extricated himself from sinking ships which faaked ppl over,—objectionable but legal. If it were a routine business practice, I doubt ppl would work with him.
I think the IRS/ NYAGen would have crushed him, particularly if he serially engaged in fraud. What a spectacular takedown for someone.
The Trump foundation, honestly I really haven’t read to deep on it. I will.
Perhaps. But Bernie Madoff was only prosecuted after he turned himself in, despite multiple warnings from Harry Markopolos. And wouldn’t it be a spectacular takedown to prosecute some of the top executives who caused the Great Financial Collapse of 2008? Somehow, that hasn’t happened. It would also be a great takedown to prosecute Hillary Clinton, but Comey let her off the hook.
Well, in Madoff’s case they did prosecute him after they stumble-bummed into it.
I don’t think anyone was protecting Madoff, rather it was Bureaucratic incompetence that his Ponzi scheme ran out as long as it did.
from Wpdia
The Federal Bureau of Investigation report and federal prosecutors’ complaint says that during the first week of December 2008, Madoff confided to a senior employee, identified by Bloomberg News as one of his sons, that he said he was struggling to meet $7 billion in redemptions.[13] According to the sons, Madoff told Mark Madoff on December 9 that he planned to pay out $173 million in bonuses two months early.[74] Madoff said that “he had recently made profits through business operations, and that now was a good time to distribute it.”[13] Mark told Andrew Madoff, and the next morning they went to their father’s apartment and asked him how he could pay bonuses to his staff if he was having trouble paying clients. With Ruth Madoff nearby, Madoff told them he was “finished,” that he had “absolutely nothing” left, and that his investment fund was “just one big lie” and “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme.”[74] According to their attorney, Madoff’s sons then reported their father to federal authorities.[13] On December 11, 2008, he was arrested and charged with securities fraud.[15]
In fact the Bank of Ireland was bamboozled by him as well.
The Central Bank of Ireland failed to spot Madoff’s gigantic fraud, when he started using Irish funds and had to supply large amounts of information which would have been enough to enable Irish regulators to uncover the fraud much earlier than late 2008 when he was finally arrested in New York.[71][72][73]
““““““““““““
top executives who caused the Great Financial Collapse of 2008?
Well who can say w/a straight face the fix was not in at the highest levels of the FedGuv? that was systemic, not just some tapdancing RE tycoon.
Why does Hilary Clinton belong in prison?
If there has not been a criminal indictment?
Do you just want her to go to prison because you don’t like her?
There appears to me to be far too much screamy shrieky Clinton drama. In the real world if evidence existed sufficient to prosecute why wouldn’t that case be made? Is it more accurate to say that people are getting histrionic over some issues other than what is legal? The shortage of magic unicorns maybe?
It is never about voting for the lesser evil. It is often about voting for the evil you prefer or the harm you wish to see inflicted on your enemies.
She accepted bribes, violated laws concerning classified materials, and lied to Congress. These events happened whether or not an indictment ever occurs.
…but, Binky, Clinton has a perpetually renewed Get Out Of Jail Free card, and every time she passes “Go” she collects $200 MILLION…
And in Chicago you got this: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/The-Shadiest-Ward-In-Chicago-140586103.html
Why does Hilary Clinton belong in prison?
Whether in prison or not? I don’t know. I do know she has admitted to what are felonies for anyone else. AS a minimum, she broke an oath of office at the Federal level, no?
Writing this, yeah I guess she belongs in prison , if she were ever prosecuted and convicted.
Trump university alone ought to get him some kind of punishment.
LOL the woman sold the business of our government to the highest bidder for immense personal gain and her “Foundation” provided fully 5.7% of donations to actual charitable activities.But sure let’s go after Trump
Not a disqualifier if actually being in prison isn’t.
http://www.ushistory.org/us/37e.asp
After being arrested for antiwar activities during World War I, he {Debs} ran for President from his jail cell and polled 919,000 votes.
See above link, Chi alderman Tom Keane ran the 31st Ward from prison. All kinds of gangsters do it…
As moonofalabama points out, the media want us to believe two contradictory things.
1) russia is trying to interfere with or rig our elections.
2) trump is whining, as obama said, about election fraud which isn’t possible because our system is fool proof.
The ‘Merican People, though not the sharpest tools in the toolbox, are nevertheless not as stupid as the MSM seems to believe. The MSM may well go completely belly-up with this election, if Trump emerges victorious. Even if Trump loses, corporate media is steadily losing viewer/reader-ship. People just don’t believe their crap anymore.
However contradictory these claims appear, they are the very ones which together have provided the social mythos for the American deep state from 1963 to the present. On the one hand, our already optimal political order is under existential threat from powerful external enemies. On the other, our political order, because optimal in itself, is obviously also trustworthy and legitimate, etc.
When Trump leaves open whether he will accept the results of a US election, he is undermining one of the two bases of this myth, he is suggesting that the sacrament of validation of our state might be as empty and false as that of our enemy. It is instructive to reflect on the anxiety elicited by this throwaway and commonsensical remark of his from those whose professional livelihoods most depend on the power of this myth to compel belief.
No country is so exceptional.
Fortunately, China has not yet offered to send neutral observers.
Trump wins, there would be no need, because Hillary will accept that.
Before even pointing fingers at “the Russians”, Count Orlok in a gas mask, or a bunch of evil kittens, perhaps we could consider whether big money is essential to compete for POTUS in a ‘democracy’ in the first place?!
I suspect one finds that any corruption of results starts there…..but this point might warp peoples minds just the way that very controversial film ‘Freaks’ did in 1932.
Further, Al Gore stopped on his way to venue to accept his loss, when he was phoned that one e-scanning machine was reporting a Negative -16,000 votes. True fraud.
That negative counting machine, the close margin, and the many ballots that did not have punched through chads and so did not initially count, were all reasons that created the need for hand counting. That was a big problem, so to discount as many votes as possible, FL Gov Bush set a higher standard of discerning voters’ intent to mean 3 corners punched through the chad when the standard in Texas under brother Bush was just 1 corner punched through. And, then they made fun of the people straining to view the chad corners correctly. Laughing at counting votes.
And, as an independent journalist Dan Rather reported from his interview of the company employees that produced the ballots, new paper known to shrink in Florida’s humidity was used to print ballots so that they would not align with hole punches of the voting machines. The employees knowing of this paper shrinkage, would not sign off on ballots, but management did.
Also, the scanning machine trays that catch the chads once punched, were not emptied from previous elections, creating a hard surface that resisted any room to punch through any more chads. So, those ballots never registered an initial vote and had to be hand counted (at a very high standard, as if voter intent could not be ascertained by one dimpled chad) which was stopped before completion to ensure Bush a win.
Then there was the voting machine computer programming:
http://www.votinglies.com/
Clint Curtis was an everyday computer programmer in Florida until he was asked by a powerful Republican legislator to create vote-rigging software for electronic voting machines.
The way I see it, after he’s spent the last week or more railing about the fact that the election is rigged, that millions of people are on the voter rolls who shouldn’t be, he had no choice but to hedge. If he had said “yes, I will accept the results,” we then move into a non-stop media storm of “well, if you are going to accept the results, what was your purpose and intent in undermining people’s confidence in the process? Is this your version of Get Out The Vote? What’s wrong with you? What else are you telling these crowds that comes straight out of your nether region?”
The other thing is, we’re looking at this in light of something that actually happened in 2000; if Gore had been asked in a debate if he would accept the results, do you imagine he would have given an answer like Trump’s? Was John Kerry grilled about the integrity of the process and whether he would accept the results when he ran in 2004? I don’t remember it being an issue, nor do I remember Kerry bellowing about rigged elections in his campaign. And if Trump’s intent was one of caution in light of 2000, it seems odd to me that it was left to his surrogates to trot out the Gore story, which I don’t believe had seen the light of day in any of these rallies and interviews with Trump in the last 10 days.
Trump seems to be a master at painting himself into corners. Fact-checking him has to be a full-time job, for crying out loud. He keeps saying things he then denies saying, as if we can’t find proof of what he’s said in a matter of nanoseconds.
Yes by all means let’s not fact check Hilary stating that 17 intelligence agencies have decided the Russians faked all her illegal emails when in FACT they have done nothing of the sort. James Clapper (yes the guy who perjured himself before Congress) said: “However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government.”
But that’s OK you can keep on your merry way, the attitude is “yes she’s a fascist and liar but she’s MY fascist and liar so it’s OK”
Hey, Hal – since the subject was Trump and his comments, that’s what I was addressing – there is nowhere in my comment where I suggest Clinton shouldn’t be fact-checked.
I know she lies, I know she’s been lying, cheating and stealing her way through political life right alongside her soulmate/partner in crime – which is exactly why I never wanted her to run, much less get the nomination. Full disclosure: I did support her in 2008, when she was vying with Obama for the nomination, but what I have seen and learned these last 8 years is why I cannot support her now. Sanders was my choice, was who I voted for in the primary, but since he’s not on the ballot in the general, I will likely vote for Stein in November.
I am, at this stage, just overwhelmed at the depth and extent of Clinton’s lies, of the lengths to which she and her campaign will go to get her elected. I don’t understand these people who keep trying to sell her as some sort of liberal icon, when it’s so obvious that she’s anything but.
If she’s elected – and that looks more and more likely – I’m hoping for gridlock.
Finally, I don’t have a problem if you want to disagree with me – about anything – I’d just appreciate it if you’d disagree with things I’ve actually said or expressed, and stop twisting my words, or putting thoughts into my head, so that you can have the argument you want.
It was a stupid question. They were asking if Trump would accept without question whatever was handed to him and called election results. Trump fumbled the answer originally, but they pressed him on it several times, allowing him to hone his answer. By the end, Trump got a good enough answer, and it seemed that even the audience got how stupid what they were asking Trump to do was.
The emails alone show why he shouldn’t accept outright. We have written proof they rigged the primaries against Bernie.
Honestly my respect for the man has waned greatly with his total about-face sheepdogging after the convention. He should have taken Stein’s offer.
Readers don’t like hearing this, but a condition of him running as a Dem was endorsing her if he lost. Sanders is a man of principle. If he says he’ll do something, he’ll stick to his word. You may not like how this played out in this scenario but this is part of the package as to why he was the only clean candidate running.
In addition, he had no hope of beating Clinton on the Green ticket. They are on the ballot in only 37 states. Neither Johnson or Stein were allowed to participate in the Presidential debates.
Sanders and Warren are now barons in the Democratic party, each with independent funding bases. If Clinton wins, they can harass her like crazy on their issues (Sanders re free college education and single payer, Warren on banking and anti-trust). Look at how surprisingly ballsy Warren is being now. She’s already told Clinton she will fight any Wall-Street connected finance appointees, which means she has already declared war on Clinton’s two top Treasury picks, Larry Fink and Tony James. I don’t expect Sanders to continue his required kissing of the ring after the election is over. He’s not campaigning for her hard (like writing op eds or seeking out TV gigs). It looks like he’s showing up only where and when asked.
HRC can pick whoever she wants because she doesn’t need Warren and Bernie, because she’s got the majority of republicans and democrats.
OK, Bernie is a “man of his word.” But also, when backed up against the wall, most people fight back. I don’t think Bernie signed anything that would make him vulnerable in a court of law if he switched to the Green Party. (Granted, I don’t know that with absolute certainty.)
Any count on how primary candidates supported by Clinton did vs one’s supported by Sanders? If Bernie Sanders is going back to Congress alone, he’s not going to be much of a Barron. I don;’t think his fund raising will work over a larger base, while Clinton can use the virtuous cycle of selling access to prime the pumps for her camp.
I asked an ethicist of my acquaintance, based on two main unacceptable candidates, and a quarter of the electoral base that might possibly be mobilized (the Sanders voters), what considerations there should be in the Sisyphean task of mobilizing a shift to an alternative choice.
He said I’d outlined ‘multiple ethical questions’ and of course ‘do what you think is the right thing,’ which of course is the core problem. But he also said ‘you can’t predict the future, even if you get what you want.’ And boy, does that resonate this year.
So I’m going with the house special here at NC, that the best case is gridlock. Putting my energies into the homestead which gives me life and the theatrical productions to produce joy. And to continue to work on understanding What’s Goin’ On, which NC has been a critical part of.
Tomorrow is payday. I’ll put a check in the mail by Saturday. Thanks, and thanks again.
I honestly don’t see how endorsing a candidate who, for 30 years, has promoted policies specifically designed to create the income inequality and middle class destruction that Sanders so vociferously decried, and continues to do so with increasing intensity, can be called “principled.”
That his “word” to the democrat party took precedence over the trust placed in him by his supporters was betrayal, not “principle,” and is, in my opinion, every bit as responsible for the current anger in the electorate as anything Trump has said.
Especially given the rigging of the primaries against him — the mysterious disenfranchised voters, the poor debate scheduling, Brazile and DW-S colluding with Team Hillary… I think any “contract” Bernie made with the Dems to endorse the winner could be deemed invalid.
Bingo! That’s exactly the way I view him. Also, has anyone noticed the uptick in emails from the “revolutionary guards” at Act Blue and Bernie himself. Fool me once, shame on me etc. etc.
Just create a “Junk Bin” filter for your email app and that annoyance goes away.
I don’t like it either however if he had simply run as an independent from the beginning he would have been marginalized even more than he was by running as a Dem. If he changed his mind after the fact he would not have had time to get on the ballot. If he ran as a Green, see Yves above. If he had done any of these things I’m guessing the Dem “leadership” would have stripped him of any authority he currently has in the Senate.
I’m pretty pissed off about the whole charade we call an election but before giving up on Bernie let’s see if he can make anything happen in the Senate. If they Dems strip him of his committees after cooperating and he does nothing, or if he doesn’t speak up when Clinton inevitably pulls the bait and switch and fails to follow up on the party platform that he helped put together, that’s the time to heap him with opprobrium.
The real failure was his inability to recruit any Dem to run on his platform of reform, not really Bernie’s fault but a complete lack of ethics and historical vision by all of the senior Dems he tried to convince. It depends whether you’re after civic service or just raw power, if you’re after raw power then of course you would run for the center like Hilary has but if you gave a single solitary damn about the actual people in the country then you would have a very different answer.
Huh? Sanders endorsed plenty of down-ticket Dems and showered them with money. Getting like-minded people elected is the most important thing he can do and he turned on a heck of a money spigot for those candidates. I hope to see more of it.
Good point. But I’m lamenting the fact that we could not get the kind of influence the man at the very top would bring. With inspiring and effective *leadership* the troops below can be brought into line much more effectively
But what kind of Democrats are we talking about? Are these principled progressives, or neo-liberals that just happen to have “D”‘s by their name?
I remind you he endorsed Clinton. So I have to ask what kind of standard could he possibly have?
See my question above:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/links-10202016.html#comment-2689532
How many candidates did he back in the primary and how did they do vs. those backed by Clinton. Debbie Wasserman Shultz still won her primary. If Sen. Bernie Sanders goes back to Congress with no one on his coat tails that Clinton opposed, then he’s going to be in worse shape than before. Everyone will see the
EmperorParty Baron is naked.“that’s the time to heap him with opprobrium” ….
At that point it’s too late to grab Bernie by the collar ….. telling him he f#cked up!
…. the damage has already been done ….
Here’s what I got from “Our Revolution”
“James,
The disastrous decisions of the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case and related cases are undermining the very foundations of American democracy and allowing billionaires and their super PACs to buy politicians and elections.
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.”
Who does he think GOT the 1.1 billion?
Louis Brandeis apparently said: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Given other issues like gerrymandering, the Gore/Bush debacle, and what recently transpired between Sanders and Clinton, it may make sense why the US is ranked where it is in the Democracy Index of 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index ).
Though it be a fine goal to aspire to for all countries, including the USA, Robert Dahl thought that democracy was a theoretical utopia anyway and I’m inclined to agree…..if we pretend those pesky Scandinavians don’t exist!
What we’re presently experiencing in the US is perhaps a little akin to the effective emergence of a circulatory ‘elitocracy’ a la Gaetano Mosca.
Stripped him of any “real power in the Senate?” He doesn’t have any REAL power in the Senate. He should have told the Dems to kiss his donkey and ran as third party dude. They could never take his job away from him.
You have more trust in someone who does whatever an ever-changing group of people tells him to do? Vote Clinton!
His word was not merely to the party but to himself. He kept faith with himself. That is always the priority, or you end with no self but an endlessly shifting image.
This. Bernie kept faith with himself, and therefore he can be trusted to keep faith with others, even at cost.
At whose cost? The same people bearing the cost for the two bourgeois parties now get to bear the costs of some aristocrat’s class solidarity.
Thanks. Let me repeat that.
How quaint.
Yea but my morals doesn’t require I keep my word to those who promote things I am morally opposed to. I don’t accept that definition of morality. That’s being a chump not a truly moral actor in my view. But it’s just who Bernie Sanders is I guess. He’s a politician and he’s not perfect.
Yes, but
It was a major quixotic effort for Bernie to take on the powerful and fearsome clintons, one he did not really want to do, remember he first unsuccessfully campaigned to get warren to run. The campaign itself must have been exhausting for him, and the NY loss, after false hopes, clearly took not just the wind from his sails but all hope for victory.
After that a rearguard action, hoping for some crumbs in a platform that of course would not bind the nominee anyway and getting nothing.
We owe him a debt for drawing back the curtain a bit and getting the country to once again consider progressive positions and candidates. Hopefully his example will inspire others to campaign on an anti-corporate platform. Surely some are thinking how they could harness the crowds that came out to hear him speak.
So yes, he is campaigning for someone who is antithetical to everything he campaigned for, and a warmongering lieing grifter to boot, but her opponent is also unacceptable, we should let him pick who he sees is the lesser.
I guess I misunderstand current use of ‘principled’. Historically, it had to do with determining right from wrong and seems it has now been narrowed down to keeping your word. Ensuring committee promotions to advance your personal power by colluding with corrupt politicians is not principled.
+1000
Keep your word to those who don’t keep their word, who hold all the power anyway, in order to what exactly?
But at least the committee promotions might serve some practical end, although really Bernie himself doesn’t have that many more years as a politician anyway though as he isn’t young, so it’s kind of for diminishing returns at this point.
Loyalty and integrity. Obedience and welfare. Conflate them and the result is authoritarianism, which authority expects us to deny, of course.
He made that promise to support whoever the DemParty nominee was , if it wasn’t him, before he began running at all. So that promise was made in public, on TV, on the record.
So his supporters knew all about it to begin with. So he didn’t do anything different than what he pre-said right at the beginning that he was going to do. So where’s the betrayal?
According to this web site, the Green Presidential ticket is on the ballot in 44 states plus DC, with a write-in option in 3 other states.
http://www.gp.org/ballot_access
Other than that, I agree with you.
He would have made the debates. Since 90% of people don’t pay any attention till then it would have at least put his ideas on the table.
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=16a737fe-f202-42b4-965f-e76b137ba826
45 states plus write-in for 3
http://www.jill2016.com/ballot_access
I love your optimism. Let’s hope it plays out.
I would really like to see words like labor/capital/class become common again. Those two might be the ones to do it.
The other thing that they will force is a total coup in 2020. If Hillary even makes it to that election, given her poor health and chance of impeachment, she will be a terrible candidate. If she isn’t running, Kaine, who looks like your creepy uncle, will be a terrible candidate. There are many others who could step in at that point.
I would think another condition of him running as Dem would be that the party would not actively collude to undermine his candidacy.
And I just don’t buy this whole “man of principle” argument as a rationale for why he continues to support Clinton. To me, a person of principle stands behind his or her word as long as the other party continues to act in good faith. However, if the other party is exposed repeatedly as acting in bad faith, then a person of principal stands up and says that the deal is off — they have no obligation to continue to honor an agreement made with crooks.
Just try asking Hilary whether she will go on the record as supporting the policies in the official Democratic platform and then listen for the tsunami of weasel words.
When you pit an honest person against a dishonest person in any negotiation the outcome is obvious.
You would be wrong. Bernie knows how the sausage gets made.
In other words, he’s a collaborator with a sausage factory that no one wants and no one needs.
A man of his word, principles may vary.
I think that if Sanders had joined the Green ticket the debates commission would have come under intense pressure to allow third party candidates into the debates. Continued refusal to do so would have automatically rendered the debates illegitimate and done much to expose the entire election for the farce that it is. Sanders may be a man of principles, but stumping for Clinton, however reluctantly, killed his movement.
I’m not certain it killed the movement, but endorsing Clinton certainly had the impact of running over an IED.
That all depends on whether the Sanderbackers stay together for reasons and goals of their own. They saw eachother gathered toghether, now they can stay together if they want to, Sanders or no Sanders.
I’m alone in the wilderness here but I think Sanders, based on the way he constructed his remarkably successful candidacy, had to make the pro forma show of support he has for the winning nominee. I’ve been criticized by both Hillary and Bernie supporters for saying that publicly, but I respect the choice he made, and suspect over the longer term it will prove the wiser one.
I take it now as a given that Hillary will win the election, and unlike the gridlock cheerleaders (and there’s admittedly a pretty good case for that viewpoint), I’d prefer the Ds to capture both legislative assemblies as well to force accountability on them. In a gridlock situation, the gridlock just is too damn convenient for running the kayfabe. Having the executive/legislative fall into the D’s hands will break the kayfabe in a way it couldn’t in 2008 because the electorate has become a lot more cynical/informed about the duopolistic reality. The excuses from eight years ago, the filibuster and blue dog blame pinatas, won’t fly this time. Take away the gridlock excuses, and the Democratic Party will be naked in the light. And it won’t be a pretty sight either.
If it happens your way, the Dems will dance on Social Security’s grave while naked in the light.
I don’t wish to see the Clintron get a Catfood Democrat majority in the House or Senate.
Yves’ on the right track here, I think. Sanders fans don’t have to agree with his strategy, but let’s not attack his credibility at this point. I gather that he genuinely thinks Trump is an awful person who’ll do awful things and that Hillary can be pushed in a positive direction. Many here on this blog disagree, but that’s a perfectly valid viewpoint.
Think about context. He’s got 20ish years in Congress where he’s learned to survive as a genuine do-gooder in a pro-corporate infested, Clinton-dominated Democratic Party. And he’s got a track record of getting good, concrete changes made. That’s why he’s been dubbed the Amendment King. Getting Community Health Centers funded was quietly a very big deal and those Centers are crucial for dealing with the opiate crisis in many places. Without CHCs, the body count would be much higher.
1) Warren and Bernie are both committed to burying TPP in the lame-duck.
2) Look how popular Bernie is per yesterday’s Jacobin article. He’s got massively positive favorability ratings which have continued to grow since the end of the primaries. This is political capital and he’s able to stockpile it right now. It’s his choice how he puts it to use. Let’s see what he does.
3) Wouldn’t readers rather Warren and Sanders praise her to the rafters in public and then actively fight to smash her awful plans when she tries to implement them?
Let’s face it, the Republicans often talk a good game about fighting hard and being the party of “no”, but they often fold up when it comes to resisting at crucial moments. Take the much-hated individual mandate from Obamacare, do Republicans really want to repeal it? Or do they just want to campaign on repealing it? Nancy Pelosi did the same thing in 2006 on W’s war crimes. She didn’t want justice, she just wanted a winning campaign theme!
4) Regarding the Greens, it’s on them to build the foundation of a party base that can attract a candidate like Sanders. If he’s not joining up, it’s probably because he doesn’t see any upside to doing so. Occupying the ‘moral high ground’ isn’t enough to win or get things done.
>> Yves’ on the right track here, I think. Sanders fans don’t have to agree with his strategy, but let’s not attack his credibility at this point.
I simply must disagree with you here. Even if it may be argued to be recoverable in time, Sander’s credibility has been greatly damaged. And I say justly so.
An old childhood friend comes to you for help. He reminds you that he once saved your life and that you owe him. So naturally you readily agree to help him any way you can. So he has you drive him to the bank, he hands you a gun, and asks you to wait outside with the motor running. Are you really applied to honor your promise to help your friend any way you can? And if you do, does your loyalty to your friend absolve you from your part in the bank robbery?
Any promise that Sanders may have made was made under the assumption of some degree ethics. If Sanders had lost the primary because Clinton’s argument pulled more weight with the voters; than yes, he would be honor bound to abide by his promise to support Clinton. But with substantial evidence that the DNC rigged the vote – an unethical activity, Sanders is not bound to that promises. At a minimum, he has a duty to be honest – and he simply cannot do that so long as he supports and defends Clinton.
He may be a good person with strong personal virtues – but the fact remains he is still behind the wheel of the getaway car as Clinton steals the election.
>> I gather that he genuinely thinks Trump is an awful person who’ll do awful things and that Hillary can be pushed in a positive direction. Many here on this blog disagree, but that’s a perfectly valid viewpoint.
It’s also completely IRRELEVANT!
I wish I could leave it there, but this is a foundational talking point for the Clinton apologists from the very beginning. One can’t even mention Clinton having so much as an ingrown toenail without getting the real or imagined failings of Trump thrown into your face.
You are basically trying to defend Sander’s being behind the wheel of the getaway car because – that man on standing on the curb is a real jerk.
Fact: The Democratic primary was rigged in Clinton’s favor. An equal fact: Sanders has indorsed the results.
>> Think about context. He’s got 20ish years in Congress where he’s learned to survive as a genuine do-gooder in a pro-corporate infested, Clinton-dominated Democratic Party. And he’s got a track record of getting good, concrete changes made. That’s why he’s been dubbed the Amendment King. Getting Community Health Centers funded was quietly a very big deal and those Centers are crucial for dealing with the opiate crisis in many places. Without CHCs, the body count would be much higher.
True, true
>> 1) Warren and Bernie are both committed to burying TPP in the lame-duck.
Also true. But it may also still prove to be insufficient at the end of the day. Passing the TPP is a long term strategy. No matter how many times it is voted down and defeated – it will always return. And usually after some of its opponents are removed from office or weakened. Our current strategy is doomed to failure – it’s just a question of when. It stands to reason we are due for a rethinking of our strategy. Sanders may be committed to voting the TPP down at every opportunity, but I have seen little leadership from him in changing our strategy.
>> 2) Look how popular Bernie is per yesterday’s Jacobin article. He’s got massively positive favorability ratings which have continued to grow since the end of the primaries. This is political capital and he’s able to stockpile it right now. It’s his choice how he puts it to use. Let’s see what he does.
The problem here is that when he indorsed Clinton and by extension waved away the rigging of the primary – he lost much of the political capital he had managed to accumulate on the campaign trail.
True, let’s not count him out just yet. But nor can we ignore the fact that he switched sides. And this was a point that many of his critics pointed out from the very beginning. They knew from the start he would cave rather than takes risks.
>> 3) Wouldn’t readers rather Warren and Sanders praise her to the rafters in public and then actively fight to smash her awful plans when she tries to implement them?
Why would I want that? Must Sanders now publicly support Clinton in public, but plot against her in privet? Is he really to self-censor his concerns when he addresses the voters? If that is the case, then I must ask you, when shall it stop? When CAN it stop? I assure you that should Clinton win the election, she will waste no time in erecting a new boogie man to replace Trump. Probably Putin if I had my guess, or simply “showing respect for the office” or “the will of the voters” or “we are at war.”
I find it ironic to have you argue that Sander’s credibility is largely intact while at the same time insisting he now has to lie to the public regarding his opinions of Clinton.
I would not consider myself bound by any promise made to Team D, considering that they acted in bad faith from the outset.
I was totally fine with the endorsement.
But the ongoing campaigning and the tweets are not necessary under that agreement. And I’m sick of it.
I’ll give you benefit of the doubt on this, these are good points.
Here’s to hoping that Sanders-style Dems can start winning some lower offices and try to move up in the coming decades.
One way such SanderDem office-seekers can move up is if SanderDem voters are committed to Nadering every Catfood Democrat who stands in any SanderDem’s way. And that means accepting Republicans in those offices until the Catfood Democrat infrastructure around any seekable office has been exterminated from existence from anywhere around that seekable office.
If you want a SanderDem Senator from the State of Washington, you first have to exterminate the Catfood Democrat Party from existence in the State of Washington. Or am I wrong? If I am not wrong, then the SanderDems will have to be ready to wage a decades-long purge and purification program against the Catfood Democrats in Washington State, for example. Are they patient enough to spend the decades it will take to do that? Is their hatred for the Catfood Democrats pure enough to sustain their efforts?
UPDATE: Stein/Baraka have ballot access in 45 states (including DC) and achieved write-in status in three additional states (Georgia, North Carolina and Indiana). Greens worked hard to expand ballot access for the 2016 election and just 5% of the vote will help the party with federal funding in the next merry-go-round.
Good. A realpolitik reason to vote for them.
Well, that sounds like the Greens are trying to do something real. Much as I don’t like Greens, if I end up being unable to vote for Trump then I might well vote Green to at least withhold my vote from Clinton and get it counted as having been withheld from Clinton.
A defeat for Clinton would be a defeat for Catfood Clintonites everywhere. And voting Green may be a measure of Necessary Naderization.
Yves said:
The ‘man of principle’ meme was apparently Sanders’ Achilles heel. If he had made some statement at the Dem convention like: “I said I didn’t care about Hillary’s emails, and I don’t! But these DNC emails are a whole different matter. The Democrat party has rigged this primary! Therefore I have accepted Jill Stein’s offer to be her V.P. on the Green ticket”.
This would be have probably (arguably) given the Greens enough polling mojo to get Stein into the debates with Trump and Clinton. And seeing Stein onstage with the other two would have been a game changer (IMHO).
Bernie either didn’t see this angle, or he wasn’t playing to win (i.e. sheepdog, after all).
First, Sanders being the second banana to Stein is not an appealing offer.
Second, him running in only the states where the Greens are on the ballot guarantees he’d act as a spoiler for Clinton. He’s deeply opposed to Trump and regards his racism as intolerable. I think the racism charges are somewhat overstated but if you are a person of color, the fact that Trump was very slow to distance himself from David Duke and has made way too many dog whistle of the wrong sort is a risk that it is utterly sane to regard as way too high to be worth taking. So no way is he willing to support Trump even incidentally.
Third, as of August, the Greens were on the ballot in only 25 states. They were waiting for results in another eight and are petitioning in an additional 14. Two more states will accept a write in but the track record of write-in votes being counted is poor.
http://www.snopes.com/green-party-state-ballots/
And please stop this sheepdog meme. It’s agontology which is against our written site policy.
Making Hillary campaign hard to win the primary (spending lots of campaign $, forcing her to at least pander to the left, which gave undeniable evidence of how two-faced she is as she’s since aggressively courted moderate Republicans) and subjecting her in her not great physical condition to the rigors of an extended campaign, when her plan was to coast as the coronated candidate until Labor Day and start sprinting then, was totally opposed to Clinton and orthodox Dem interests. The savagery with which her campaign and the media went after Sanders should be proof of that. If he was just playing palsy-walsy with her, he would have dropped out after New York if not sooner. You seem to forget how outraged the press and Dem outlets were that Sanders had the temerity to keep campaigning through California. And he has refused to hand over his most prized asset, his e-mailing list (not that it would work for Clinton, but her operatives are so deluded that they are convinced it would).
I think Sanders has his own game in mind. Clinton has sucked all of the money out of down ticket races, and she’s poison on the campaign trail. Bernie is fundraising for some democratic candidates (not all of whom I’m enamored of, admittedly) and campaigning for them. If part of the sausage making involves reminding your caucus of what you can do for, and to them, Bernie may be positioning himself to have a bloc that is beholden to him, and that he can defend against any Clinton backlash. Certainly his fundraising email the other day about giving him a gavel seems to have struck a nerve.
And I came across this the other day in RT, quoting Senders from an interview in Now This:
“People have to vote their conscience,” he said. “I’m not going to lecture anybody who is voting for a third party candidate. I was a third party candidate. I’m the longest serving Independent in the history of the United States Congress!”
And
“We are going to be introducing legislation piece by piece on trade, on raising the minimum wage, on making public colleges and universities tuition free on a medicare for all, on rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure,” he explained.
Commenting on his supporters’ lack of trust that Clinton would come through on her promises, Sanders said, “In that case, they’re going to have to work with me to make sure that it happens.”
“This is not trust, we’re not here to trust,” he explained. “It is the very opposite of what I am saying.”
https://www.rt.com/usa/363215-sanders-clinton-not-trust/
Yes, even as he is campaigning for Clinton, he is still offering caveats and making clear he will make demands from what she and the party depict as the left, even though poll show his policy stance to be largely entrist as far as voters (as opposed to monied interests and the media) are concerned.
Sanders and Warren, by having independent funding bases, are now barons in the Democratic party. They may not be ideal on all issues (particularly foreign policy, which is not a strong beat for either one of them) but both are determined to stymie Clinton as much as they can in her effort to govern as a Republican. Warren has already made it loud and clear she will go to war with Clinton over her appointees to Treasury and other financial services regulatory positions. Ironically, the party hope of retaking the Senate will be a poisoned chalice for Clinton. She will be pressured on the left in the Senate by Sanders and Warren, and won’t have the excuse of a meanie Republican majority as far as her Cabinet appointments are concerned, and will face House Republicans that are so rabidly against her that they could conceivably move to impeach her, and at a minimum will seek to otherwise make her life miserable.
I don’t think clinton was asked the same question. Given that I’m pretty sure she thinks she has this election in the bag, I assume she’d have answered in the affirmative.
But does anyone really think that if she lost, we’d never hear the words “Putin” and “Russia” again? A clinton loss would generate a lack of “acceptance” of biblical proportions.
Agree with Yves. The msm campaign against Trump is way over the top. He deserves credit for hanging in, as far as I’m concerned. He probably should have just lied, but on issues like this he seems incapable of doing that.
The great fear is the Clintons are arrogant and don’t have much of a legacy beyond getting into the White House in the wake of the tech boom and the collapse of the USSR. Given Hillary’s deranged rhetoric, I don’t see any reason to believe Hillary doesn’t believe that American exceptionalism garbage and likely believes Russia is a proper colony. Putin by rebuilding Russia and pushing Eurasian cooperation is ending what I imagine the Clintons try to take credit for, American dominance. A multi-polar world is an affront to Hillary.
I seem to remember that some of the “evidence” demonstrating the “necessity” of the u.s. deposing Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi was that they always won their elections with massive percentages of the votes. Oh, and that their families perpetually controlled their countries through manipulation of state institutions and the election apparatus.
In this exceptional country, the arbiter of all things “democratic,” even suggesting that this may be the case threatens to erode the very “bedrock” of this, the planet’s finest, most respected democracy. And it’s against a sacred “tradition” that’s been upheld throughout our storied history, except in 2000 and 2004 when the democrats did it.
There’s a goose and there’s a gander, and never the twain shall meet.
If Trump won, I would actually expect Obama to declare that the election was bogus and that a recount or a transfer of power to HRC or a third term was next. Of course, he worries about his legacy, but he’s a hack through and through.
The Russian interference meme is a perfect justification.
Agreed. I’d call this “Russian/Putin” thing preemptive. They’ll keep it at the ready in case it”s needed. And, of course, all the overwhelming polling “data” will be used as affirmation.
Since the Democrats are bringing up Russia as being able to co-opt election count and so results, then they should be very happy to get on board for the following solution. Get Trump on board since he too is concerned about election rigging. Neither party then has any argument to doing the following unless they are doing the rigging:
http://trustvote.org/latest-updates/the-solution-to-vote-fractionalizing/
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It is well known there is a power vacuum in the Mid East, and Russia benefits.
However, there is also an information vacuum on the Mid East, and again Russia benefits.
The more the Mainstreamers/Establishment bow to the absurdities coming out of Washington, the more people will seek information elsewhere.
What will happen when people see their president has Parkinsons? She’s got three self-injuring falls on record.
Now, John Kerry crashing his bike was funny, but Hillary is seriously ill.
Gary Johnson, I believe, was quoted on NPR as saying “To rig the election, would be like faking the moon landing.” (slightly truncated rendition) but the language and meaning are clear to those who can hear.
Further, nobody’s e-mail is safe anymore. Thanks NSA!
The schadenfreude alone would be worth it.
Why should Trump commit to a quick acceptance of a rigged election? …. How quickly we forget. Obviously in 2004 neither Kerry nor Bush were prepared to admit they’d accept election night results:
FEC says presidential candidates can use legal compliance fund
Nah.
a) Trump doesn’t get to decide unilaterally who should be in prison
b) Eugene Debs was allowed to run for president from his prison cell
a.) yeah, we’ve got our incorruptable institutions like the FBI and the DOJ to make sure lawbreakers go to prison LOLOLOLOL
A quick meeting on the tarmac with the highest law enforcement official in the land followed by coordinated destruction of subpoenaed information, and yeah, you got yer gosh-darned truth and justice there, yes siree
a) LOL indeed
b)?
b.) a more interesting question is whether Hilary will be allowed to govern from prison, worked great for Pablo Escobar. He was doing $60M per week so would give the Clinton “Foundation” something to aspire to
non-responsive
I read all this questioning of Trump about this subject as more a warning to the rest of us than being about Trump himself.
Fresh Off Employing Evan Bayh, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Attacks Him [NYT]
Given the choice between GOP-lite and the real thing, people will always go for the real thing.
This is a known fact, even a cliche for lame internet commenters,
and yet the Dem leadership is shocked every time it rears its head.
And if Bayh does lose, this is Indiana, so there won’t even be any hippies to blame.
Poor Chuck, so near and yet so far … he can almost taste the majority leader’s seat.
I was always mad Bayh skipped his well deserved beat down in 2010, so it will be hysterical to see him lose this November.
2016 NPR had bug up their arse abt rigged elections. Didn’t hear entire episode as I was commuting but they had “experts” like former Minnesota prosecutor Sen Kloboucher saying election rigging against Trump is unpossible and yesterday NPR closed the evening 6 o’clock news with a terse “Donald Trump has not offered any evidence to support his unsubstantiated claim of election rigging” then on to the next program. Back to this morning NPR news said the “problem” with Obamacare heading into Obama’s rescheduled Miami speech on its awesomeness is “not enough young people have signed up.” At that point I had to get out of my car to catch the train but suspect no mention of why the selfish young people sabataging 0care aren’t signing up nor mention of 0care being declared “collapsing” or the Affordable Healthcare Act being “unaffordable”in a growing number of states. If anyone else heard the broadcast please correct me as I couldn’t listen till the end.
When I saw what the insurance companies were asking for in premiums–not to mention the $6k deductable, I gagged. I’m young and healthy; I’d be an idiot to waste my money on this crap. Isn’t that called being a “rational actor” or some such?
I have always encouraged the elderly and the sick to get on Obamacare quick–even way back in 2014, the sicker and more terminal someone was, the more I’d extoll the virtues of Obamacare to them. Heck you probably wouldn’t have found a better salesman for Obamacare in that case. I’m proud of the good work I did.
It’s almost a cliche, but I have no idea how young people make it anymore financially. I’m lucky to be getting old. I go on medicare in a couple of weeks and the total for my medical insurance is only $260.00 a month. I’ve been paying $510 a month on a cobra policy, and am fortunate to have been able to escape the exchanges.
Medicare for all.
$510/mo vs. $260/mo probably doesn’t say it all when you compare the deductible, co-insurance and other factors that medicare does not impose. Yes, medicare for all and pox on those politicians’ houses who try to meddle with medicare.
As an older millenial, most don’t make it “on their own”. They rely heavily on parents and family in order to make ends meet, either through living with them or staying on insurance until 26 or otherwise relying on support like sharing a car with a grandparent or something of the like. I have friends in their late 20’s and early 30’s who live part time at home. Many who live on their own have relatives paying for some portion of their household budget.
Casual black markets are a pretty common piece in the puzzle. Selling drugs being the easiest thing to do. Going back to school and relying on living student loans can buy them a few years of reprieve from their budget and the promise of a career on the other side.
Most live very modestly. They stay in their apartments at night cruising the internet and watching movies, as it’s a low barrier to entry at 12 bucks a month or whatever for netflix, plus free content on youtube.
Beyond the obvious problems, I think society suffers in that hobbies, which I use Aldo Leopold to define as vocations outside of careers, are nonexistent. For instance, I am by far the youngest in the hobbies I engage in, from gardening to hunting to ham radio. People just don’t have the money to pursue interesting things anymore. Culture suffers for it, I think, and we’ll see the problems for years to come.
The point being that young people make it work through a mishmash of different approaches and severely constraining their means.
The Silicon Valley Candidate Counterpunch
Something I just learned today – Silicone Valley – Cleavage canyon, the area on the chest between the tits.
“That’s a boob job, just look at the silicone valley.”
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=silicone%20valley&defid=274796
DNC Bus dumps human waste along highway in GA.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/10/19/talk-about-an-october-surprise-a-dnc-bus-dumped-stinky-poo-into-a-ga-storm-drain/
We must take our metaphors where we find them, the Dem’s Awesome Corrupt-O-Bus taking a giant dump on the rest of us is perfect
“I detect the powerful odor of mendacity”
The conversation between Glen Greenwald and Naomi Klein is so disappointing on so many levels.
Please describe the levels and indicate where it was so disappointing.
This is what made me cringe. This isn’t much of a conclusion at all. Impunity? How about a cogent idea of WTF they are doing?
Gov’t figures can’t expect their work to be kept private. We employ them; their work is ours far more than it is in a business. Much of their work should not be hidden in the first place and what is kept private/secret should be carefully publicly circumscribed. Their personal lives are theirs, as ours should be. Glenn and Naomi know this, so am unsure what’s going on here.
Right now we’re upside down: gov’t work is kept private while personal lives are public to gov’t/corps. “Do unto others” isn’t the best response in situations like this. It’s more effective to expose the problem by making it personal to those who refuse to see it, and then say, “Yep this is absolute crap but until we together re-establish balance, you will keep getting hurt too.’
The left makes itself dismissible by not understanding that we are in a fight. Laws/conventions are no longer functioning for those who need it most, those in power. When getting beat up in an alley, one doesn’t say, “Well, it is wrong to hit people, so I shan’t.”
Also, not keen on psychoanalysis in contexts like this. And too, one can think credit card #s (etc) should have been left out and still be glad for the leaks. I was disappointed because it’s important.
I mean, they could have framed it differently. For eg, we get into huge trouble when major political parties are privatized, and that reflects directly into this situation.
People often go acquiescent when they become successful. I hope these two are not doing that. It’s worrisome.
Preach it! The left often betrays its soft idealist underbelly just as soon as it has managed to achieved something worthy of frontal attack, because dangerous to the interests of, the oligarchy. Now, I happen to think that Greenwald is wrong to frame the Podesta issue in terms of the need to balance the benefits accrued to the public good against even a graduated “right” to privacy, but this is because I don’t really believe in rights in the way Greenwald does. But this is because he, I take it, is a kind of old school, JS Mill-seque liberal, and I am not.
Another way of putting this point is that, in real politics, the answer to the question whether you have such a right and how far it extends is less a principle and more a function of what you can get away with and why.
Only to the extent that their personal lives don’t impact on their public duties. Can a relative or friend benefit from their action/inaction? Are they having discussions outside work with people who can benefit from their action/inaction? Do they belong to alumni, societies, corporations or other organs that together have excessive influence on government? Prior joining government, did they work with organs who might benefit from that relationship… That’s the devil in the details which makes this idea of separating private from public pretty much a non-starter if governance is to be clean.
Some of this can be very subtle, who having a child needing an organ transplant would not want to have the same crooks who helped Dick Chenney game the heart organ transplantation system twice help their child by bending a rule or two or doing nothing.
Thanks. I wondered if I was the only who who felt that way. It felt like a lefty variant of Sunday-morning cronyism, and coming from people who are both capable of so much more it was a let-down.
the internet is a postcard not a sealed envelope…it is a commons and was designed to be such…not sure the notion that it is or can be secure…evah…is one based on realities…it was an open network in a closed environment…it is now an open network in an open environment…there is not and can never be any computer “security”…it is a mail box…anyone can pop open the lid and look in on most mailboxes…on the commerce side, most folks dont have anything worth protecting in their minds…they beg credit providers to extend access to currency via extended lines of credit or to get a car lease or rent an apartment…
most people have already given in to mammon…that is not going to change any time soon…most people have never tasted economic freedom and the choices that can provide so they have no clue what they are missing…
it is easy to mesmerize those who might have access to “national security” information and convince them there is some “magic” to keeping secrets from “them”…
the “thems” is not the russians, nor the chinese, nor the iranians, nor the telavivi insti2teez…
the themz is the red hat church ladies of ohio who are so bought into the idea of how this country should be run, if they knew how it actually was run…
there would be an accounting…
as the river flows…
I like the postcard analogy.
Where it differs a bit from practice is that far more than a person’s postman can read what they send. Any email on the inner-tubes that is not encrypted with public/private keys is available to anyone with the right skill set or access that wants it. This silly notion that because you wrote it you own it has been dis-proven numerous times in court. Cops can read it, lawyers can read it and of course motivated hackers can read it. Email providers can read it, copy it and depending on the user agreement scan it and sell the contents to other businesses. Imagining that email private is silly unless the author takes steps to protect it.
People that want privacy on the tubes must invest the effort to acquire it themselves. GPG is one such project but it doesn’t provide much hand holding. Even after being setup it requires the effort of exchanging public keys with those you want to safely communicate with and almost certainly still isn’t safe from NSA supercomputer brute force decryption.
Running an email server costs money and the standard way to recover costs for “free” email is to exploit the contents and or the account address. When Gmail, and Google in general, targets you with ads that is a very successful business model built around a lack of privacy.
This of course also comes back to what sorts of things the NSA knows about various silly politicians that think they own their privacy by default when it comes to email. If the NSA doesn’t know everything about HRC’s emails they must be too busy looking at pr0n. If the FBI can’t just ask directly for the information then they must not be getting along very well.
And that’s just email.
Consider all the inter-tube activity you produce with your Browser. Lot’s of interesting data to be exploited for revenue development. Try using the NoScripts app and you’ll see dozens of cookie trails attempting to infiltrate. Use CCleaner app and you will see a multitude of unique identifiers placed on your computer (or smart phone) that give others specific information about you and your activity. And that’s just considering the “commercial” skimming. The NSA bulk collection is even more impressive. (Sure, they don’t review it real time, but the essentials are likely somewhere in a Utah data farm when needed.)
The Internet has become a truly Faustian Bargain.
I found the article interesting. It does raise a serious issue, i.e., who should determine what we, the public, are told. I think the article failed in that it ignored the role of journalists. Perhaps wikileaks exists because journalists have been refusing to do their jobs for the American public? Do you think WaPo, the Guardian, or NYT would have published ANY of the information about the Clinton speeches or the collusion between Hillary’s Campaign, the PACs or the Clinton Foundation if it were given to them first? Where does a whistleblower go when he/she has information that concerns all of us?
It is all well and good to blame wikileaks for releasing too much private information, but is anyone giving us an alternative?
According to Klein, defeating Trump means burying smoking guns like this. This one is brand new.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22030
The evidence is mounting – this IS bribery, quid pro quo, what ever you want to call it.
This piece from Politico, hardly a Trump booster, is further evidence that H is bought and paid for, but in this case, they still preferred Sanders – so Hillary is a criminal. Now that Sanders is gone, no crime.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/clintons-morocco-117979#ixzz4Ne5gVhxi
I need a shower after this. And this is just the tip of the new iceberg about to sink the DNC.
The public is making the determination. If ‘private’ information is disclosed with public/work information, it’s because it is so melded. Leaks and hacks have always happened and will continue as long as there is corruption and criminal activity among elites. The public will continue to rely on alternative media as long as elite owned media seeks out to collude with the corrupt. It is absurd to me that a media person that publishes planted stories let alone one that contacts campaigns to plant stories and manipulate voters expects ‘privacy’.
This is exactly correct. Which shows you that the debate is not about how we should apply some fixed principle like “right to privacy” to a difficult and complex new scenario. (That’s what the idiots at MSNBC want you to believe.) The debate is really about who gets to decide what is legitimately “private” and why, and the answer to the question “who gets to decide” is always, at bottom, whoever has sufficient enough power to do so.
And so the next time a privacy fetishist starts expressing concern about Podesta’s right to privacy, remember that “right to privacy” here really means something like “favorite pet unicorn.”
The implication here was clear: “the Intercept has chosen to manage releases of information in a much more ethical and grown-up manner”
Cha-ching! I think the greatest achievement of the Intercept/Snowden event is the degree to which they privatized/monetized whistle blowing while they limit distribution and trumpet the crumbs they release. Uninformed and compliant achieved.
I listened to the whole hot mess. My takeaway was Naomi Klein’s statement to the effect that, “I’ve only met Julian Assange, I don’t know him.”
Klein and Greenwald are definitely afraid of a Clinton presidency and want to distance themselves and their sources from the clear “vendetta” that they discussed that is playing out between HRClinton and Assange. Given that HRClinton never denied the right-wing canard that she inquired about dropping a drone strike on Assange, “I don’t recall saying that, but if I did it was a joke,” Klein and Greenwald are right to be afraid. Very afraid…
We should all be afraid.
Re Kamala Harris looking into criminal identity theft.
There is zero doubt that criminal identity theft occurred; Wells employees intentionally used customer information to open unauthorized accounts, a kind of identity theft known as ‘new account fraud’.
There are only two basic questions:
1) Is she serious, or is it posturing for electoral advantage? I’m so eager for it to be serious, I’ll assume it is until proven otherwise.
2) will this be the classic small fry issue, or will she use the pattern and practice of felonies, orchestrated by management, to bring RICO charges against execs? The RICO charges should also be a near-gimme, given the evidence. And if she’s afraid of beyond a reasonable doubt, let her bring civil RICO against the execs, personally, and confiscate large amounts of their wealth. And let no ‘settlement’ involve shareholders foot the bill.
AMEN
My sense is good Democrats or the vaguely sane ones were afraid of Obama’s wrath*, so ultimately, they just followed his lead. Hillary will be a lame duck President. Kaine is probably begging for campaign trips to Iowa and New Hampshire (have they out him out to pasture? I don’t watch the msm, but I would think the local paper would run more Kaine oriented stories if he was still in the loop). Democrats at large will now be running in the shadow of Hillary with a doofus VP. Team Blue will be off the reservation going forward.
The most accurate polls have a tight race between a former SoS, Senator, and Team Blue Scion and a reality TV show host who has trashed virtually every great Republican.
*100,000 people at individual rallies is real power.
Yeah, she’s gotta move on the executives to make this anything more than just another nothing-burger. You can’t meaningfully criminally prosecute a corporation. You go after the real-life people involved or it’s just a show.
I’m never one to get overly optimistic about public officials, but I’m hoping Harris does the right thing here and goes for some individual C-level jugulars. She’ll be the most popular AG ever is she does.
the Calipornia AG is protecting Wells by opening the “criminal” investigation…which allows wells to hide in “civil” litigation by saying…oh…sorry we can’t provide that “discovery” since our good friend in guvmynt was kind enuf to give us cover and with this (2 year…5 year..??) pending “criminal” investigation…we just wish we could hand that off…but you know how it is your honor…
Speaking of companies deserving a criminal investigation, the grift that keeps on giving:
The Patients Hurt by Theranos [WSJ]
I know a woman who worked closely with Kamala Harris at the S.F. DA’s Office. My friend eventually quit when it became clear to her that everything that Harris did was posturing for electoral advantage.
Sanchez for Senate!
Trump failed again to emphasize the Podesta Wikileaks scandals. Off hand, he could of stated how HClinton’s “private position” is pro-TPP, “Grand Bargain” cut SS & MC, & that she knows her Clinton Foundation funder Saudi royals also fund IS1S.
Given Trump’s failure to effectively discuss Podesta Wikileaks, I’d guesstimate the election is over, HClinton will win.
#JillStein2016 #ImWithHer #NeverHillary
I’m not sure what Trump was trying to do last night. Was he trying to look more “presidential”? Has he given up? He certainly did not touch much on Clinton’s sore spots – it was almost like he was purposely trying NOT to rile Hillary or to mention her corruption. My question is WHY? He had nothing to lose at this point by being the same Donald Trump of the last debate. Frankly, I am perplexed.
I didn’t follow the debate at all last night, but if he didn’t, I would still be interested in knowing what his ads are focusing on these days in the swing states.
It is instructive to listen to conservative media. Trump has a base. He needed the low information, “I hate them both” voter.
It was pure Ropa dope, including letting her drone on and on in a voice many find grating. I, myself had the mute button handy, so I didn’t have to listen. She is a caricature of the mother in law we all avoid.
Sorry to the purists. I stayed up listening to red eye radio because I couldn’t sleep. Astonishing how many people notice that she spoke over him, talked beyond her time, and that they chose the CC version to listening to that voice.
Trumpsters will complain that 2/3 of the speaking time was hers. That was by design according to the Rush/Coulter/Hannity observers.
Trump let Clinton be herself in all her gory glory. There is a visceral dislike for her. She cannot mask her demons. And for some, even supporters, they instinctively respond to the self evident, well, EVIL.
Not at all. Yes, WikiLeaks was explicitly mentioned only briefly, but during that entire segment (about 12 minutes), Hillary had two monologues, and she literally babbled through both of them. I mean, if I hadn’t know what the lead in for those monologues was, I wouldn’t have had any idea what Hillary was supposed to be talking about. Yes, she followed the rules for sentence and paragraph structure, but there was zero content.
She never completely recovered from that. She had started with a zip, but it was now gone. She was on the defensive now, and stayed there. I’m not saying she got blown out, but Trump won. From the moment she started babbling and on through the end, Trump won.
Yes, but do you think a single KKK ( Klinton Koolaid Kult) member heard it that way?
Can CA readers clarify if the Kamala Harris’s parting-shot warrant against Wells Fargo is purely window-dressing for her campaign or potentially something more? I recall that when states could have pursued the massive mortgage fraud nearly a decade ago her position was ambiguous at best.
I no longer trust any of the CA state Democrats, including Harris. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was Governor, the state legislature was Democrat controlled and passed a single payer law multiple times only to see it vetoed by Arnold. With the current Democrat governor, the legislature stopped passing a single payer law even when the legislature had a supermajority of Democrats. Harris herself does not have a good track record in terms of civil rights or progressive positions, and I suspect the action against Wells Fargo is her picking on an easy target for some political traction. (Some have suggested that Wells Fargo is an easy target because they do not have anyone close to the Hillary Clinton apparatus, whereas other banks are suspected of engaging in the same illegal activities but have been spared because of their close ties to Hillary.)
When she held out to go after the mortgage companies on the MERS fraud she and the NY Attaorney generals were only one who remained to pursue it (the others dropped out one by one). My reading is that she was
threatenedarm twisted into dropping the legal action (along with the NY AG) by Obama. She might face the same pressure again,I can only state that I sent her a letter, the day that the Wells story came to light, and informed her that because she chose not to criminally prosecute Wells that I would most certainly not vote for her to take Boxer’s seat. I expect she received many such letters, hence the “action.” Window dressing is all you can expect from this bunch and frankly Loretta Sanchez is not much of a viable alternative. I’ve always been a registered Democrat but have been looking for answers as to why there are no Republican candidates for the US Senate in California. I’ve had little to no luck getting answers. Anybody out there know why there is no opposing party candidate here?
The new primary system in California is that the two candidates with the most votes in the primary go on to the general election. There were Republican Party candidates for US Senate in California, but they did not advance to the general election since they got less votes than Harris and Sanchez. This situation has been repeated for a high profile US Congress race between Democrats Mike Honda and Ro Khanna. Honda is not perfect, but is arguably more progressive than the average Democrat in Congress; on the other hand, Khanna represents the New Democrats viewpoint, and has pulled significant backing from Silicon Valley elites.
aab gave a pretty clear answer in Water Cooler the day before
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/200pm-water-cooler-10192016.html#comment-2688959
Thanks for the shout-out.
New NH poll out last night:
“The new numbers from the UNH Survey Center, released on Wednesday night, show Clinton with support from 48 percent of likely voters in New Hampshire, compared to 33 percent for Trump, 7 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson, and 2 percent for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.”
This depresses me. I honestly don’t see how anyone can vote for Hillary Clinton. I realize the propaganda and attendant social shaming is intense. I just thought more people would be able to connect their own life experience to what they’re hearing. Sigh. If she “gets” a big electoral majority and flips the Senate, it’s going to be hideous.
> the propaganda and attendant social shaming is intense
It’s at a level I’ve never experienced, and I was blogging daily during both the run-up to the Iraq War and the 2008 election.
On the Senate, I have more hope. A Democratic Senate would empower two party barons — Warren and Clinton — who have independent power bases (as in, they can raise money on their own). Both of them are to the left (in my sense of the left) of Clinton, at least in some areas. That’s a good thing.
I also think the intensity comes from the fact that the Acela class is entirely inside the Clinton bubble. But underneath it all, Clinton’s base of support — the true believers, as opposed to the people she bought — is thin. Not commensurate to their ambitions. As I keep saying, campaign 2020 begins November 9.
For those of you in a rush I’ll summarize:
On startup visas: I’ve pretty much had it with these tech “geniuses.” Having read the book: “Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley,” and reading the author’s own admissions of how H1B visa holders and their ilk steal jobs, with our duplicitous CONgress helping to disenfranchise their own constituents, I’ve decided these folk are long past their “sell by” dates. Dump their massively inflated stock and kick ’em to the curb, is what I say about them. And don’t get me started on F*&^erberg or Musk, both of whom I hate with a passion. Useless eaters all. So, by all means, bring more of these folks into our banana republic. sarc/
Duterte aligns Philippines with China, says U.S. ‘has lost’ [Reuters]
Am I incorrect for thinking this is possibly the biggest news this month? Seems the US was using the Philippines as cover for its need to “pivot to Asia” and meddle in the South China Sea issue. If Philippines genuinely has made an agreement with China to resolve it, without the US involved, that is a massive step and quite humiliating for the US. Creators versus Destroyers global theme continues. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Turkish South stream and Brazil’s endorsement of BRICS are the contenders. The U.S. election will result in a deeply unpopular person. Hillary might hold the core better, but she’s despised around the empire. Inevitably, her racism will shine through.
Kind of like Hilary, I would love to see Obama attempt a list of his foreign policy “accomplishments”. He’s had 8 years so let’s recount:
1. Europe: told the Brits not to Brexit; flooded the continent with war-fleeing refugees
2. Asia: the so-called “pivot” is well and truly dead, and China further in the “oppo” not the “co-oppo” camp, even lost the Philippines fer chrissakes
3. The MidEast: the strategy in each and every theater is a complete and total fail, loss, and embarassment, unless of course you are rooting for al-Qaeda or Raytheon
4. Latin America: ignored, except for engineering a coup in Brazil and Honduras so hedge funds can squeeze bond payments out of local grandmothers
5. Antarctica? Maybe the Antarctica policy was a smashing success. He should put his library down there.
It’s eleventy-dimensional game of checkers, there is no way for a mere mortal like yourself to appreciate His brilliancy…
6, Pursued the Bolivian President’s plane and forced it land. Searched same for Snowden on board but came up with a Big Fat Zero. Violated all diplomatic immunity considerations.
The civil war in Ukraine can be added to the European “accomplishments”.
It’s like Duterte is making a tribute trip to see the emperor.
Like Manarejiana, king of Boni (or Brunei).
From Wiki:
In August 1408 (the sixth year of the Yongle reign), Manarejiananai, the Boni ruler, and his companions reached the Ming Empire’s capital Nanjing, to attend the imperial court. He fell ill after he had stayed in Nanjing for over a month. He was 28 years old when he died in his residence in the tenth lunar month of that very year. In his testament, he showed a desire to “be buried in China”. The Yongle Emperor suspended court for three days, dispatched officials to mourn for the King, and conferred the posthumous title of “Deferent” on him. After the Boni ruler’s death, he was buried outside Andemen in Shizigang, which was in the southern part of Nanjing, according to the traditional burial customs of Chinese vassal. In addition, the Yongle Emperor ordered the king’s son to succeed to his father’s crown.
That was when the South China Sea was China’s ‘our sea.’
I think you are right, it is huge news. I think perhaps the perception that Dutarte shoots his mouth off has ensured that its not treated as seriously as it might. But from the little I’ve read, it seems to be a very deliberate and calculated statement. For all his buffoonishness, he is a very experienced political operator and he must know he is playing with fire. I doubt he would say such a thing unless he had a very firm agreement with the Chinese.
I’m just reading Gore Vidal’s “Empire”, where McKinley is almost mistakenly handed Manila and the journey began. But if you were Duterte all you need to do is glance at a world map and it’s obvious whom you need to be friends with.
A WarisBoring commentary here.
I wonder if one trigger not mentioned is the billions Israel is getting from the US. The Phillipines in comparison has only got the barest scraps. The lesson handed out by Netanayu is that you can treat the US president like dirt and still get free cash if you play your cards right.
Filipinos are not Israelites, nor do they have AIPAC to speak for them…
The CIA is busy attempting to arrange a coup, but I suspect they will probably fail this time.
One thing the US media isn’t reporting is that Duarte has quite a few ancestors who were slaughtered by US Troops. I have some sympathy. Part of my family kept moving West, starting in New England 600 years ago. We left a long trail of murdered ancestors, lost lands and culture along the way. My father finally decided it was time re-cross the Bearing Straights to ancestral grounds, and here we’ve prospered.
I doubt a coup would succeed right now – he is very popular. They will wait until things start to go wrong.
At first I thought he was playing elaborate games, but reading more about his background I think his hatred of the US is real, and quite visceral.
The CIA will make sure those unpopular events and slanders start to happen, as your are right, it may take them years to work the play book.
The Guardian has an interesting article on Duterte today (I can’t link at the moment, that site keeps crashing on me for some reason). If its correct, it seems the US thinks he is just playing crude games to extract more cash and benefits from the US. But it also implies that this is pretty much a catastrophe for Obama’s ’tilt to the Pacific’ if its a real move. So no wonder its been kept low key, the last thing O and HC want is for everyone to see the failure of their keynote policy before the election (or to be precise, the failure of yet another keynote policy).
For all his crudeness, Dutarte has been successful in politics for several decades, he is no idiot, he’s certainly not a Trump. I suspect he sees himself as something of a Chavez figure, just without the oil. When you look at the figures for financial support the US has given the Philippines over the years its just chump change, a rounding error in what (for example) Israel or Egypt have gotten over the years. My guess is that he sees this as an opportunity to fundamentally reshape the Philippines role in the Pacific – from poor relation and poodle, to a strategically central role. China will pay a lot of money for an ally in the region (they’ve been amazingly bad at recruiting friends in Asia over the years), Dutarte knows this.
I suspect between Bill, Shrub, and Obama and F-35 style fiascoes this could be the long feared domino effect (a poor metaphor), but I could see Southeast Asia, Japan, and Australia searching for new arrangements especially with Russian and even Iranian supplied defensive weaponry. Insurgents don’t require a working F-35 to be defeated.
It’s remarkable, but the last President to be respectful of foreign countries threw up on a head of government.
Yes, I myself was trying to link to that article but I haven’t figured out how to post links. Yes, this is actually big news. The US can just forget about all the tough talk about the little artificial islands. The Filipinos have always had a “Big Daddy”, first Spain, then the US, now I guess it’s China.
Duterte is just being realistic and smart in casting off the crumbling far away empire and cozying up to his big strong neighbor. Looks like he got a lot of goodies in the deal, including money for drug treatment. Duterte has an interesting attitude toward drugs: he supports medicinal marijuana but has been killing people for dealing speed. Well, as the saying goes, “speed kills.”
Simple reality of the modern world means every country has to recognize the U.S., Russia, and China (Brazil and Indonesia could get there) are necessary the modern world. You have to pick one or organize an EU which works or have a UK/France or France/Germany arrangement. (Pan Africa and Pan Arab were always mistakes. Smaller regional arrangements were the better answer.).
The U.S. is a colonial power In the Philippines even if we don’t put “U.S.” in parentheses on the maps anymore, but British rule in India was dependent on the Blue Raj needing protection from competitors. Duerte has elections not a council of Lords. He doesn’t need immediate protection which is how the old colonial governments actually worked. The British were kicked out of India, not because Ghandi maintained a weird harem, because Nehru had six million men under arms and told the British to leave.
As time progresses, local leaders will see they can negotiate better deals with the empire or tell it to get out. A strong Russia and an amicable China are key.
The U.S.’s soft and relatively cheap empire is by virtue of fear of the Soviets and the Chinese in certain areas. The Chinese were still too backwards in 1991 to fill the void, but that Era is over. In the intervening years, the U.S. went crazy.
The sensible approach for any small to mid sized State in the Pacific is to play the big powers off against each other. The difficult thing is often to escape the embrace of one to do this.
I’ve suspected the reason that the Generals of Myanmar gave up so much power so quickly a few years back was that they realised they had fallen too much under the embrace of China and so a Tibetanisation of their country was inevitable. The lurch to ‘democracy’ was primarily a way of trying to find themselves a more lucrative equilibrium between China and the US. I suspect Dutarte has the same idea. Make a big jump to China, and he will hope to extract a bigger price from the US to be seen to make a visible change of direction back to ‘freedom and democracy’. Its a very dangerous game, but if he plays it right, it could set him up as a major regional player.
It’s hard to separate the locals from the “overseas Chinese” influence in most of SE Asia, Thailand is perhaps the exception but in most other countries Chinese money already controls >50% of the businesses. They tend not to demand political submission or troops in bases so they get the benefit ($ extraction) without all the costs and baggage
From Wiki, about Thailand:
The present Thai royal family, the Chakri Dynasty, was founded by King Rama I who himself was partly Chinese. His predecessor, King Taksin of the Thonburi Dynasty, was the son of a Chinese immigrant from Guangdong Province and a Thai mother.
The whole history of the region is about beating back invading Chinese, 800 years for the Viet, Khmer, Lanna, Lao, eventually they carved out their own polities. My favorite part of the world
The Thai people came from as far north as the Shandong province.
They were probably the losers in the legends of the Yellow Emperor and Yandi, who together drove out Chiyou, or some other vanquished tribes at around the same time.
In turn, they displaced other natives, including Austronesians, like, for example, the Cham people.
So, it’s more than just 800 years.
Many minorities in South China today originally dwelt further north.
He can go to Moscow.
Russia is a better partner. They offer everything but domination. They are too small for that short of pan Russo sentiment leading to major breakaways. A Moscow-Tehran axis would be a fairly attractive partner. There is a mommy to run to, and the two cultures are so divergent there is a place for everyone in a way there no for China.
If Russia was weaker, this wouldn’t have happened.
Instead of entering a link why not just enter the Internet path in brackets. It’s a little more work for someone to follow but it avoids the path hiding of a link making it easier to spot or repair errors.
Better yet, spare the BBcode brackets and just paste the raw link with spaces or line breaks separating it from sentence punctuation. Also, a more accurate way to test links is to examine them in the preview of the comment, below the comment field — if the link is correct, I will have previously visited it, and therefore almost all browsers will color the link pale blue instead of orange. If still in doubt, Shift+click the link and see if the new window goes where you wanted.
This does require that JavaScript be enabled, which is not something to be done too lightly or too broadly.
Wow. Duterte is a full-scale ranter but his timing is impeccable. US mil actively pushing in Iraq and Syria (Thanks Obama) are a serious distraction from buckling down the bases. TPP crushed. Political transition in the US constrains overt responses.
I am uncertain about the legal timing of base closures and whatnot. But it’s not inconceivable that Duterte moves the Chinese in while the bases are still there. And if I were him, I’d want some protection pronto.
Now, if only the spineless Europeans would grow a spine… They are just as sclerotic as their imperial overlord.
Mr. Duterte needs to watch his back. Ever since the Dulles brothers were in power. American elites have a way of removing leaders of countries that stray from their vassal state and doing it in a nasty way as a warning to other rebels.. I believe that the Hulands, the Powers and their cohorts in State, Pentagon, NSC, and CIA already have a plan in motion. The Philippines are America’s keystone for controlling the Pacific empire and won’t lose it without underhanded resistance. Aren’t you people so proud of our Republic? If not then do something about it.
See also Will “They” Really Try to Kill President Duterte? | Information Clearing House – ICH
Looks like we got some liberatin’ to do!! Anybody have any moderate freedom fighters lyin around?
Merkel Says Putin Slapped With Blunt Language on Syria Role Bloomberg
Putin must feel like the loneliest man alive sometimes:
“…German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande confronted him with “blunt language” over what she described as an “inhumane” onslaught in Syria.”
Angela Merkel – “It was right to use this blunt language” in the talks with Putin because “Russia bears a clear responsibility in Syria, including exerting influence over” President Bashar al-Assad, the German leader said.
Hollande, Merkel, and UK have accused Putin of war crimes in Syria. If they are in fact stupid enough to believe any of what they are reportedly saying to Putin, then Merkel and Hollande deserve to perish politically before their challengers. The refugee crisis threatening to topple them is caused by U.S. regime changes and Russia happens to be fighting for itself and them by putting a stop to it. But they are too dim to see that or controlled by Washington to admit it.
Add to this Kerry, Samantha Powers, Obama & Co’s daily accusations of war crimes by Putin, it’s surprising Putin doesn’t burst out laughing when they say thing like that to his face. Have they no shame?
One thing is for sure: I don’t think Europeans get to act smug and claim they’re better informed these days. Between this and the insane Der Spiegel piece from yesterday, my head hurts. ‘Russian aggression in Syria’? They’re literally there at the behest of the internationally recognized government, unlike…well, everyone else in Syria, come to think of it.
Also the Russian ‘war criminals’ just extended the Aleppo ceasefire for another 24 years, and that after three of their own officers were wounded by ‘moderate rebel’ shelling of one of the humanitarian aid/evacuation corridors.
I don’t think there is much more in this world that pisses me off more than this kind of shit.
People who have been screwed by policies beyond their control – and whose benefits were accrued by a certain segment and region of this country – are told that they have to leave their homes, their families, and their lives to move to where they will be more convenient for the assholes who fucked them in the first place?
How about a heavy tax used to subsidize jobs and the EXISTENCE of people who have been treated so egregiously?
Why not move some government offices that can operate independently from places like Taxes and the big cities to areas of the country that have been screwed by the government’s (bought and paid for) economic policies?
Blaming and punishing the victim is a morally indefensible position.
Assholes
you know,
these fools are so confident that they have destroyed mr. trump that they won’t rig the election and he’ll actually win.
The Losers in American Trade article has another excellent example of what is wrong with economics it is embedded in this paragraph:
The human cost of the dustbowl was huge. Many of the people moving suffered terribly. The communities left behind often died or were left depressed indefinitely. And to the extent that the costs were mitigated by government programs (a little thing called The New Deal). Massive as that program was it did not eliminate the human suffering.
Mexican migrants do leave their communities now without government support. They face severe hardships in doing so and the net effect of their migration and the remittances, from those that survive, is not enough to alleviate the crushing poverty at home or the drug-related violence that has come with it.
This is of course not counting the very real suffering caused by families that are torn apart by this economic migration or who suffer along the way. It also ignores the other basic question as to whether the jobs that these migrants might find are plentiful enough to meet demand, pay high enough to meet there needs, or even exist at all.
Only an economist with their absolute disinterest in human suffering would look at these conditions and wonder why Americans don’t want to relive the dustbowl era. Or would assume that the solution to all of our problems is to become impoverished gypsies.
Bingo. Very well put.
I b*tched a good bit about this in school, to blank stares all around. My pointing out that moving is expensive in both financial and emotional terms, that an unemployed worker is stuck with the catch-22 of not being able to afford to move to where the jobs are, even if they wanted to, which most people don’t, got the silent treatment from pretty much everyone in the dept.
Attachment to place, to family, to community, are all things that have no place in the toy models of @$$hats who pass themselves off as experts — funny, since those are some of the major things that give life value. But then, why would I expect an economist to be concerned with value?
Unless you have money behind you or an absolute guarantee of a job, moving long distances is not just expensive, its a high risk strategy that can easily go badly wrong with some bad luck. I’ve a friend who worked as a volunteer social worker with Irish people in England and there were loads of stories of capable, hard working people who ended up homeless or impoverished because they simply misjudged the cost and difficulty.
To give one example I know of from the 1980’s, I know of a poorly educated carpenter from a rural area in Ireland who went to England on the promise of a job and lodgings. He arrived in London with a small bag of clothes and his carpenters tools in the afternoon and, never having been to a metropolis like that in his life, got hopelessly lost trying to find the address he was given. At nightfall, he decided to hop over the wall of a railway yard to sleep, thinking he’d find his way the next day. He was arrested there, and his possession of the tools of his trade was used as evidence that he was trying to break into the storage buildings. He had no idea how to arrange his own defence. He got two years in prison. He left prison a broken man with a criminal record and no means of looking after himself. There are many, many similar stories around.
“Attachment to place, to family, to community, are all things that have no place in the toy models of @$$hats who pass themselves off as experts — funny, since those are some of the major things that give life value.”
They should have to move across the country from their spouse, they can fly in on weekends for conjugal visits. No they are too privileged to get it, I just hope they are the first to the guillotine. Even nuclear family relationships are strained with moving, as there’s no point in moving in a TWO INCOME household, unless BOTH spouses can get jobs at the new location. But that’s not so easy as they might be in VERY different careers and not all parts of the country are hot job markets for every possible job. And that’s couples, even when couples can wing it there are the costs of moving away from extended family (parents, siblings, nieces/nephews, etc.) and friends and so on.
But who cares if you live near most of the people you love, you can always fly in etc.. How much carbon does their f-ed up way of being require? I mean I know most people are burning gas to commute to their job, it’s not great but it’s hard to avoid, but one plane ride uses as much as the average commute does in a whole year. This is the lifestyle these privileged @$$hats preach. What maroons. But you can always keep in touch via social media, email, texts etc. they’ll say. It’s not the same, of course, but also not everyone is so digital. So no back in the real world relationships are sacrificed in moving especially with those people who for whatever reason are simply not going to move into the digital world regardless of whether one thinks they should.
It puzzles economists even though Americans are some of the most mobile people in the world, and partly as a result of that, and much else of course, are some of the most LONELY community-less people in the world.
“Before we married, I saved my money
Brought my dear wife over
Now I want to bring my family state side
But off the boat they stayed awhile
Then scattered across the coast
And once a year I’ll see them for a week or so at most
I took a walk”
‘tangiblity’ .. is what almost all economists are missing .. ei. the real world effects of their bankrupt technocratic policies … ( Externalities DO NOT COMPUTE ! ) … by which they aren’t affected …. YET !
When a person moves, the first question the new landlord (or banker) asks is what that person’s income is. “I’m moving to where the jobs are” is not going to land him or her a new lease or mortgage.
But economists are stupid like that. They keep wondering why wages are so sticky, but never ask why rents and electric bills and water bills are also so sticky. There is a hardwired bias in them that allows them to understand why the businessman must hold so firm on his prices, but they are completely baffled by why the laborer must do the same also.
In the end, the best thing a person can answer when told that some economist said this or that is, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were talking serious.”
That fact that Americans don’t just pick up and move from economically depressed areas to booming ones—like they did during the Dust Bowl—has puzzled economists for decades
I totally agree with you and diptherio. I just want to add that maybe these geniuses should consider the fact that people fled the Dust Bowl because, in large part, their living was tied to agriculture and there was nothing growing where they lived. They fled to, literally, find greener pastures. Also, California was not as populated as it is now and workers were desperately needed to fuel the booming agriculture economy there.
These days, if the factory closes down, are you supposed to move where the factories are opening? Well, what if you don’t want to emigrate to Mexico? I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of people there already to fill those jobs.
And let’s discuss the “booming” Texas economy.
My brother is a typical example of the average displaced worker. Moved to DFW 15 years ago when he was in his early 40s.
Fifteen years with the same company. Still making less than$20/hour. Even living in the far north suburbs, can’t afford housing without having two roommates.
The Texas/New South economy is based on forcing workers in Northern states to take pay cuts to keep their jobs, either by blackmail/extortion (see Boeing), or by forcing them to move, while swallowing a pay cut at the same time.
(Would ANYONE relocate from anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon to a scorched hellhole like DFW voluntarily?)
Even with skills that are “in demand” it makes more sense to take a 50% pay cut and stay in flyover, than it does to move to the coasts for a 10% raise, and see your housing costs triple.
I also might mention that its a lot easier for a 20 year old Mexican with no attachment to a given area to relocate, than it is for a 40 year old with kids, who may also have other family attachments to a geographic location.
Anyone can tell you that jobs nowadays are more mobile than people. But we have idiots writing policy who havent figured this out yet.
Well, economists choose to believe in a human universe governed by rationality but that is similtanously bereft of morality (A form of modern nihilism) which is to say they believe in a world of calculating machines rather than human beings. They are, as a group, evil in the Kantian sense of seeing human beings only as a means for the massing of wealth and political power. I find them, as a rule, the most difficult social scientists to work with on any humanitarian issue, and I think this may be the main reason.
They are also frequently much less rational than they pretend. I’ve always been amused by the line in an intro micro text that the person who was willing to pay more for an apartment placed a higher value on it. Not proved! He may just have had a lot more money. If you wanted to assess the value people placed on things, you would need to do it in terms of something more equally distributed, like time.
Well .. considering that most ‘economists’ are neither rational nor moral …….
they don’t make grandmas the way they used to…nip and tuck instead of oatmeal and cookies…the missing link is that the immigrant family unit is based on a homestead as secure grounds for economic opportunism…if all else fails there is always a couch and a warm meal…with no back talk and no nattering negativity…just…relax…enjoy the soup…rest and when you are ready…get back on the horse…
for all the mammonite complaints that people have the audacity to nest back into the homestead in america…I consider that a very good turn of events from this economic malfeasance…
the immigrant has a system in place of communal cooperationalism…
mammonites preach discooperationalism to americans…
and the river flowed…
Megyn Kelly questioning Donna Brazile about debate cheating via Trumps facebook page. She sure looks like she’s lying.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157934436595725&id=153080620724&_rdr
Wowsers. Brazile calls herself a “persecuted woman?” For what, being asked direct questions about her potentially unethical conduct? After being a central figure in an organization that used every dirty trick in the book to bring down Bernie Sanders?
Kelly had Brazile desperately flailing on the ropes there. The video ends but I sure hope ex-lawyer Kelly followed up with a question about what Brazile’s own documents, that Brazile is so glad she still has, reflect in regards to her communications with CNN. Hey, maybe the Wikileaks stuff is doctored, prove it Ms. Brazile!
LOLOL….maybe should dig into her “private files” and prove that the Podesta email was doctored. Is that too simple? Or perhaps……
As a victim, one can scream the loudest and no one has the moral authority to say anything about.
“When in doubt, claim oneself to be a victim.”
‘cough’ … race card …. ‘cough’ .. hack !
Whoops, she said she was a “Christian woman” who understands persecution. Sorry for the mistaken quote above.
I saw a longer version where she says over and over that CNN never provided her with anything. However, that’s not the question. Kelly’s question is who provided it to her? She blathers on and on without ever answering it.
This is (perhaps) a simplistic point of view, but in my opinion, there are two sorts of religious people. There are those who love other people, and try to interact with them accordingly. And there are those who love themselves, and will use their religion to justify their behavior.
I know (and am related to) some absolutely wonderful, very religious people. There’s probably a lot that we don’t agree on politically, but I can’t help but admire their conviction, and the manner in which they try to live their faith. On the other hand, you have the sort of people who will pull out the religion card whenever they’re being scrutinized for shady behavior, like Donna Brazile seems to be doing. It bothers me that her professed religiosity allows her to be lumped in with those others, who really do act ethically.
On the other hand, you have the sort of people who will pull out the religion card whenever they’re being scrutinized for shady behavior, like Donna Brazile seems to be doing.
Good point. I wonder if the Bible has anything to say about that?
As Brazille is a Christian, she might remember Matthew 6:5, and a confidant of the former first lady comparing herself to Christian martyrs is a bit much.
“An honest witness does not deceive” Proverbs 14:5
Brazile cloaking herself with “religiosity” instead of simple forthright answers before millions of people is pretty un-Christian if you ask me
Brazile’s last snipe to Kelley at the very end of the video is “Go to Russia!” To Brazile, the “liberal,” I’d say “Go fork your Xtian self.” Lying liar.
– Greenland is Melting
“It appeared from his analysis of the Camp Century core that, in the midst of the last ice age, temperatures on Greenland had shot up by fifteen degrees in fifty years. Then they’d dropped again, almost as abruptly. This had happened not just once but many times.”
Mae-Wan Ho has written about how systems at the unstable edge can suddenly shift states with great efficiency. This is distinct from equilibrium dynamics, and highlights an implicit bias in the hard sciences and laboratory conditions. The idea is to make a model, preferably mathematical, which is done by constraining conditions. This allows the math to be limited to lower-order equations that are easy to solve.
While it is empirical, it is insufficient for understanding the complex world we live in. It’s fine for industrial applications where a factory can be controlled as a large-scale lab. But this article uses the word ‘feedback’ a half-dozen times, and feedback is very tough to model in an open system. Which is why Jay Forrester, as well as the Limits to Growth team, produce robust results; even a simple, almost cursory incorporation of feedback does a better job of mapping to the real world than equilibrium models can.
That’s relevant to the economic models which NC has eviscerated, in fact to the full spectrum of ‘finance, economics, politics and power’ of the header. Even more, to the conditions which those human enterprises are contingent on. So this quote:
“It’s one of those things where, wow, you realize you can be resilient, you can be adaptive, you can be clever, and you can still all be extinct,”
is unsettling for couple of reasons. One is personal, that adaptability is the strategy our family has chosen to weather those changes which we have assessed cannot be turned back. The more general corollary is just how massive the migrations coming up are likely to be. There is simply no precedent for the scale.
Fecebook getting ACA dollars
RE: Your Driverless Ride Is Arriving.
If one-tenth of the resources for driverless fantasies were dedicated to the mostly
broken-down public transit system and normal good, taxi services, uber would just be a yuppie-nerd science fiction story.
Imagine the 3X costs of unreliable uber-wagons everywhere!
doesn’t the BIG MIC own so of those things ??
The MIT Technology Review article about the readiness of self-driving technologies is quite good. There is a path to low-cost commercialization of many of the currently extremely expensive technologies being employed like high-precision GPS, lidar, and high-powered computational nodes.
But there are massive barriers left for widespread deployment including how anyone is going to test or certify the systems to cover the absolutely enormous range of unforseen circumstances that can pop up on public roads. Driving a million miles under favorable circumstances doesn’t show that you can manage a quirky intersection that you hadn’t envisioned as a possible scenario.
Notice that self driving vehicle stories started right after stories about “shortages” of truck drivers started to appear.
“Shortages” in that there are only “X” number of people who will drive trucks for low pay.
Maybe they are willing to spend a gazillion dollars, and get the problems sorted out. Even though the railroad industry isn’t talking about “self driving trains”, and the problems are fewer with that application.
Or could it be propaganda to make the wretched refuse think their jobs would go away, if they try to actually implement the “supply and demand” paradigm, by demanding more money to drive trucks?
Well, on the plus side , there will never be an at fault accident.
Will hackers be the new legal assistants?
India and Pakistan go to war over missile from Iran…since Pakistan has such limited military intel capacity, and in August 1998 SSP almost started world war 3 by killing off 11 iranians in afghanistan…what if SSP pulled another attack and this time Iran did not wait and just sent off missiles to retaliate…would Pakistan actually realize it was Iran or would they just start sending off dunce cap V-2 rockets and hope they do not land back on their own heads…
august 8th (17 mordad) is mahmoud saremi day in iran
Re: is-disclosure-of-podestas-emails-a-step-too-far-a-conversation-with-naomi-klein
Imagine that two groups of people had downloaded Podesta’s email dump.
One above reproach group curated and published only emails what they judged “important for people to know”.
The second group does not have similar good intentions.
After the limited release by the first group the second group knows precisely those emails that were not published and can mine the undisclosed emails for political and personal blackmail in the future.
Who knows what political decisions might be influenced, quite silently, in the future by the second group?
The disclosure all of Podesta’s email does have the advantage of signalling to many in the world, maybe even Hillary “bathroom email server” Clinton that computer security IS important.
Another advantage is that it demonstrated to all that, while one’s own computer security might be fairly adequate, sending an email to someone else with compromised security, such as Podesta or HRC, might be quite harmful.
Podesta might have indirectly been of great public service.
Perhaps this is his, completely unintentional, finest hour of his long career.
JW, just a couple of rhetorical questions, since I’m sure you know the answers:
You think the Panopticon turned and turns a blind eye to all the emails in question, or the rest of the drivel and disruption from the rest of the political Potemkin apparatus? You think the people drawn to and re-drawing the entire realm of power on the planet, in favor of what, more disruption, more destruction, more wealth concentration, wont’ be “influencing, quite silently” what our nominal rulers do to the rest of us for their personal pleasure and gain, or just because there is this wonderful momentum to the death wish that seems to undergird and direct so much of what is happening, from biosphere destruction to massing up WMDs attached to all kinds of visible and also unperceived hair triggers?
Another broader question that drives me nutz: Why do people like the Clantons and the whole rest of the Rulers do what they do? Is it just the pleasure principle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure_principle_%28psychology%29? Or a death wish? Or what? Singular motivation, or a congeries of stuff that’s for some reason not much studied or talked about (that I can see, at least)?
The raw desire for dominance in the primate is strong because with it comes the right to reproduce and secure a reliable supply of resources like food. In politics “dominance” translates as “power”, so you don’t have to go any further down Maslow’s hierarchy to answer the question “why?”. It’s when we rise above this hierarchy and first demonstrate compassion for others that we have a chance to become “civilized”, otherwise we’re just down in “law of the jungle” territory. The answer, as Bernie and the Founding Fathers knew, is to separate resources from political power so you can get altruistic outcomes not jungle outcomes. Jefferson and several other major Founders died broke.
I believe we are witnessing the near total capture of the media, elected government and US regulatory agencies for the benefit of the wealthy elite (of both parties).
As far as what motivates Clinton, I suspect she is many sigmas away from the mean on the ambition scale, coupled with little awareness of how she ridden, not triumphed over, serial failures and harmful actions (Whitewater, commodity trades, her health care plan, welfare reform, Iraq vote, Bankruptcy bill support, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, the Balkans),
Maybe she simply does not care. .
At least other politicians and political appointments, LBJ and Robert McNamara, for example, were haunted by their mistakes, but the new breed (Bush jr, Obama. Hillary Clinton, the Neocons) seem to be elevated because they have no conscience/empathy making them perfect for the task of serving the elite.
Hillary may do for the Democratic party what George W. Bush did for the Republicans, convince the party that they have completely figured out how to install a very harmful person in the White House to do what THEIR elite wants to do..
The Democrats and the media have run a very successful campaign to recast Clinton’s many failures (and evidence of bad judgement – per Bernie) as “experience” and “most qualified ever” for the Presidency.
In my neck of the woods, the Northern Ca Wine region, the lack of enthusiasm for either candidate is evidenced by the near total absence of Clinton/Trump signs and bumper stickers.
There will be none of the hope followed by disappointment of electing Obama in 2004 with Clinton.
The voters are already resigned to a bad four years.
Gridlock is our primary hope as Clinton supporters wait for the inner liberal Godot of Hillary Clinton to manifest.
London Zoo gorilla drank five litres of blackcurrant juice after escaping enclosure
He just wanted his “fair share”!
Who can blame him? I would do the same thing if i knew it was squirred away in the canteen.
I am suprised that he needed to be tranquilized after drinking five liters tho? I would be groaning and looking for a familiar bathroom in my “suite” .
They maybe could have just put a trail of dixie cups filled with mango juice back to his “suite”.
Kumbuka for PM!
The article gives his weight as “184kg (29st)”. I understand the use of metric kilograms, but stones? Really?
I already knew that the British stone is equal to 14 pounds, but curiosity made me look it up anyway, and I found this, which is probably not the meaning in the article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picul#The_stone
All my British friends use stones when talking about a person’s weight. Bathroom scales I’ve used there are in stones, sometimes with a dual lb/stone scale.
Google “lose half a stone in a week”, and you shall see!
Fascinating!
FIle under: The arcane ecosystem of the NFL
Kumbuka could be a tightend, same weight.
The Baylor tight end had his pro day in Texas this week and, as NFL.com reported, he measured at 6-foot-6 1/8 and tipped the scales at 405 pounds.
Nope, not a typo. McGowan actually lost weight — five pounds — from last season. Then, there’s this: He ran the 40 in 5.41 seconds in one attempt.
When he woke up again he must have been thinking he shouldn’t have had the last drink.
HA no kidding.. a Black Currant hangover…..oooh my head, I’ll never do that again.. until next time, where’s my coffee??
maybe he was suffering from a bout of gout … and was in need of some quick relief ! ‘:]
I think they may have inadvertently frustrated him to no end by just giving him Chimpanzee portions of Black Currant Juice. He saw his opportunity and took it.
A friend of mine saw a Rottweiler make that value judgement w/ an outdoor wedding caterers table that was on the same property w/a no leash (at the time) dog park.
Human consequences be damned, the table came down but He got the Prime Rib!..
“Smart Doggy”
It looks like the Clinton campaign attempted a sting operation to implicate Assange as a paid Russian agent and a pedophile to boot. This is the kind of crap we can expect from the Clinton 2.0 administration. Social movements beware.
http://www.thecanary.co/2016/10/20/extraordinary-plot-wikileaks-founder-foiled-new-evidence-comes-light/
There is still time for the Little People to not let Clinton 2.0 happen
One of the other commenters here was privileged to have watched the false-flag develop and then disappear on Kos, with a “LOOK A PEDO” post on the front page followed shortly thereafter by “[Pulled pending investigation]” followed by 404, followed by Kos’ oh-so-self-aware canned indignation that they’d accuse bourgeoisie of such a thing. I wish they’d have gotten screenshots. Perhaps we’d all better have our “body cameras” on while surfing politics today.
Video of the Day – Watch Donna Brazile Squirm When Asked About DNC Rigging of Democratic Primary
screen-shot-2016-10-20-at-9-16-24-am
I firmly believe that denying Bernie Sanders the Democratic nomination for President in 2016 will go down as an event of pivotal historic significance. By forcing one of the most corrupt, dishonest, greedy war-mongerers upon the American public as the only alternative to Donald Trump, the DNC effectively alienated the entire youth of this country from the political process at a crucial moment, and prevented tens of millions of citizens from feeling they have a real choice.
The negative consequences of this tragedy will reverberate for many years, if not decades to come.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/10/20/video-of-the-day-watch-donna-brazile-squirm-when-asked-about-dnc-rigging-of-democratic-primary/#more-38718
Hillary says what rigging?..lol
If one wades through to the end of that clip, you get to the last 1.5 seconds, where Donna “I’m a persecuted Christian whose emails were stolen by robbers” Brazile tells Megan Kelley, notorious patriotic conservative to “Go to Russia.”
Maybe not a bad idea — at least the Russians seem to be ready for what the Brazile-ians are bringing on…
My notion is that there’s a certain amount of corruption that any polity needs, a slightly larger quantum that the polity (and species) can survive/live with, and a tipping point where the corruption and stupidity roll over and crash, killing everyone on the Juggernaut…
One of the keating 5 says no rig……https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
John McCain issued the following statement today regarding the integrity of the U.S. election system:
“All Arizonans and all Americans should be confident in the integrity of our elections. Free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power are the pride of our country and the envy of much of the world because they are the means to protecting our most cherished values, the right to liberty and equal justice.
“In the last days of the Cold War, a Czech protestor proclaimed, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.’ He was claiming solidarity with American values and demanding a voice in governing his country as Americans have when we choose our leaders.
“America has a reputation and an example to uphold in the eyes of the world that is at the core of our ability to influence world events.
When a foreign adversary, like Vladimir Putin, tries to interfere with our election he’s trying to undermine our standing and influence.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-20/john-mccain-issues-statement-integrity-us-election-system
feel better now?
“UUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP” !!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/10/19/megyn_kelly_vs_donna_brazile_did_you_receive_debate_question_beforehand_brazile_i_will_not_be_persecuted.html
Yes, good video. RCP is picking it up, too. Good job by Megyn Kelly.
Kelly gave her a Brazilean without anesthesia so the howling was real. That should take months to heal, and not less than three weeks if there is any follow-up treatment.
I wonder if Kelley will obey Brazile’s parting command at the end of the clip, to “Go to Russia.” Gee, staying on the message du week! Good girl!
they’ll have to pry that war-mongering kant from her cold, broke fingers ….
They do still have a measure of choice. They can choose to aquiesce to a Clinton win by just not voting.
Or they can choose to register their distaste for a Clinton win by voting for Stein or Johnson or whatever. Or they can seek to maximize the vengeance-impact of their vote by casting it for Trump, thereby adding 1 vote to Trump AND subtracting 1 vote from Clinton with the same vote.
” Problems with US voting machines are so obvious even The New Republic weighs in.”
Except TNR peddles bullshit, as usual. The *idea* of using networked machines is the obvious problem.
This is not infrastructure, this is fundamentally an abdication of responsibility. Counting votes, even more than jury duty, is the bedrock of a democratic process. The proposal that machines would somehow be more “objective” than counting votes is irrelevant. The proposal that a network of machines would be more trustworthy and reliable than a large number of human beings – esp. if randomly chosen and randomly paired – is a fallacy. In the Internet Of Oracles, the question is whether mistakes can be pervasive, or whether malicious intervention can be coordinated. Machines offer little more than mechanic obedience, which can be hacked. Human beings might be corrupt and corruptible, but hacking them – in large numbers – is an expensive proposition.
Count the fucking votes, by hand. Pick the counters randomly, through the same processes used for jury duty. No algorithmic or electronic proxy should serve as authority on sentencing, pardon, misdemeanor charges, taxes owed – for no judiciary or executive decision, and certainly not for counting votes. A legislature conceived as reference implementation of algorithms is a nightmare proposition, taking the distinction between justice and “due processing” to its extreme. In the current embodiment as closed source, secret, corporately owned implementations on for-profit hardware, the proposition is so ridiculous that machines and software should not be trusted to count votes – not now, not ever.
If somebody wants to suggest that we need electronic voting for a more democratic society with more frequent, more specific polling, then we will figure out how to engineer “trustworthy” counters by the time they actually might be needed.
“Liberalism and capitalism have hallowed out society..” New Statesman
That all depends on how you feel about resistance to imposed social structures.
People will find ways to make their own social structures. Control freaks prioritize order (that they are comfortable with and within) above all else. What if we started saying “control freaks” have hallowed out society? Then that would cover the problems with most of the “-isms” we event.
Now nobody is really challenging capitalism. It is also an imposed social structure.
That’s the big one to overcome.
(Note how the biggest driver of the information and tech age are alleged innovations that proport to give “us” more “control” in some way. That’s the main selling point and appeal of tech…control. A company can ultimate control over labor, etc).
One can undermine it just a little bit around the edges by more direct production for subsistence consumption ( garden food in suburbia), more direct barter between people, etc.
Nate Silver: Clinton Probably Finished Off Trump Last Night
IBD/TIPP: Trump 41, Clinton 40, Johnson 7, Stein 5, undecided 5
Rasmussen: Trump 43, Clinton 40, Johnson 6, Stein 3, undecided 6
IBD/TIPP has an excellent track record: http://www.investors.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ISSpoll101216.png
I was noticing that this morning, too. That’s two trackers that have the race neck-and-neck. The one above, IBD/TIPP and the LAT/USC tracker. Once is an outlier, two makes me think there could be some substance there.
I’m also remembering some of the primaries on the Dem side where pollsters were SHOCKINGLY bad, most famously on Michigan.
Looking at Real Clear Politics, there’s actually a bunch of states that had results well outside the margin of error with the pre-election polls. Indiana, NC, WI were all pretty bad misses. Those are possible swing states, too.
The BIGGEST election rigging is right here before – to conjure up a Clinton victory before the voters vote, so that virtual reality is reality itself, when people give up.
“They win when you believe their propaganda.”
She probably finished him off last night….according to those 2 polls?
Hummm … now where have we seen THAT before ……??
He’s said that before… Who still listens?
In 2010, one of the union bosses at my construction trade union chided me when I told him I would vote Peace and Freedom rather than for Jerry Brown “D)”over Meg Whitman “R”: “This election is too close and pivotal for a third party vote.”
I’m sure if I saw him today, the same guy would give me the hard sell for Hillary Clinton over Jill Stein or Gloria LaRiva, despite the fact that the first person Clinton greeted last night after the debate was the infamous Meg Whitman.
Same excuses every election as conditions worsen for the bottom 90% or so without a meaningful place to express our electoral interests.
And St. Bernard, the sheepdog that kept his word, has worsened matters.
Testing the waters for Bill Clinton-style neoliberal policies? After all, only a Democrat could kill Social Security and Medicare.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/clinton-entitlement-reform/504743/
https://baselinescenario.com/2016/10/17/you-cant-get-there-from-here/
The first recent Clinton-Trump poll that I could find with crosstabs was by Morning Consult from last week. In that poll, Trump loses to Clinton by 4 points (see Table v16g5) in a two-way race (for comparability with 2012). Among households making less than $50,000, he loses by 7 points. So Trump does 3 points worse among poor families than he does overall, while Romney did 20 points worse.
17 percentage points are a big difference. (I think this is what journalists call burying the lede.)
It’s about as strong proof that Trump’s supporters are “disproportionately poor” as you could find. Also note that if Clinton is beating Trump by only 7 points among poor people, including African-Americans and Latinos, she could very well be losing among poor whites.
=============================================
Pretty long and intricate article on the media analyses of whether Trump supporters are racist versus economically bad off.
Of course, it is not one or the other, but it certainly shows that most analyses isn’t very good or is biased.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/10/19/cnns_wolf_blitzer_grills_john_podesta_about_clinton_wall_street_speeches_calling_sanders_a_doofus.html
Wolf Blitzer actually making an effort to ask uncomfortable questions. Not pressing too hard, of course, but asking nonetheless. Clearly, CNN has been shamed into doing a little journalism here and there.
I watched their focus group segment, too. They tried to clean up their act a bit, there, too. Again, only in response to the fact that the favoritism and manipulation creeped a bit too far and they got called out.
Redemption is evergreen in America, but will the populace forget all the Clinton News Network partiality and subjectivity. CNN and numerous other outlets would be embarrassed to have their inner plotting WikiLeaked or otherwise revealed.
It was appropriate to frame the articles by “Why These Americans Refuse to Vote” and “Donald Trump refuses to say if he will accept election result in final debate ” Just tuck the voting machines in there for a finished demonstration of US elections.
U.S. judge picks monitor for Deutsche Bank over regulator’s choice [Reuters]
A duty not to be a rubber stamp? What is this guy, a hippie?
Why, it’s almost as if the judge doesn’t trust the CFTC.
Mosler reports on Ibd/tip poll, supposedly most accurate pres poll, showing trump 1% ahead before debate. A popular vote tie is not good for Hillary because of rep electoral college advantage… Remember bush lost the pop vote but (just) won the EV.
Didn’t watch, but didn’t sound as if he lost debate.
I continue to think polls mostly under predict his support, partly because cell phones, remember Brexit and Michigan…
Wonder how many ethnics would like a wall, maybe wouldn’t say so out loud…
Wonder what bad weather would do in the swings…
3 weeks…
I almost scrolled past the PBSNewsHour poll of the debate but decided to do it just to see the results…
It is now, Trump 60 / Clinton 32 (18,800+ Votes)
I double checked because I thought my memory was off but it really is a huge win for Trump on this poll at least
This used to be an excellent site for a wide range of economic/business news. Now it is a sore loser forum with Yves/Lambert leading the charge. No thanks.
Sounds like a member of the 1% who does not like having the curtain pulled back so the 99% can see how rentier capitalism works. Since when is providing extraordinarily in-depth coverage of The Train Wreck That is Obamacare and launching similar coverage about driverless cars not important business news? How about being just about the first commentator to predict correctly that the Greek bailout negotiations would be a train wreck, and covering them in depth as they progressed? Or being out in front of the media on private equity grifting and continuing to provide nitty-gritty coverage on this beat? Or the systemic risk of creaky bank IT systems?
And in case you missed it, income inequality has been a hot topic for the last few years (just look at the Financial Times opinion page), and has been implicated as a cause of low growth. But I gather you regard covering that as “sore loserdom”.
Better trolls, please.
Inside Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Comeback
In 2013, an insider-trading scandal brought down his hugely successful hedge fund. In his first interview about the firm since then, Cohen tells Fortune how he’s rebuilding for redemption.
The fact that Cohen can even consider returning to the hedge fund business is a startling victory. Eight people were convicted of having committed insider trading while they worked for him at SAC Capital (though two of those convictions were later overturned), and in July 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Cohen with failing to supervise them. Damned by the accusations, Cohen retreated as his clients withdrew their money. Though Cohen was never charged criminally, many assumed that his days as a hedge fund manager were over. He had delivered astonishing annual returns of 29% over nearly 21 years running SAC, managing $16 billion at his peak. The government’s investigation tainted those achievements and threatened to ban him from the industry for life.
But in January, the SEC suddenly settled with Cohen, who neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. The settlement barred him from managing outside investors’ money, but only until 2018—and it didn’t keep him from playing the market with his own money, or preparing for a day when he might have customers again. As confident as they were that Cohen had to have known that his traders were getting inside information by crooked means, the government could never amass enough evidence to prove it.
Out for blood, the SEC settled for a fingernail.
“Everybody was fairly shocked,” says a former SEC attorney. “It does seem like Steve Cohen beat the SEC.”
Cohen took a microphone and proposed a toast, vowing, “We’re going to be the only company that survives a criminal charge from the government.”
Cohen’s burst of activity has rankled financial watchdogs who feel Cohen is thumbing his nose at them. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) upbraided regulators for allowing “a recidivist hedge fund manager” to “make a mockery of the SEC’s core mission.” And the dismay spans both sides of the political aisle. Letting Cohen associate with Stamford Harbor while banned from hedge funds, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa tells Fortune, “raise[s] questions about whether the SEC is as tough on enforcement as it should be.”
http://fortune.com/steve-cohen-billionaire-point72-hedge-fund/
Who knew there was a nail salon at the SEC?
“Major Russian naval deployment to intensify Aleppo assault: NATO diplomat”
There’s a lot wrong with this piece. If Russia just wanted more planes in Syria, they would simply fly them there. It’s not like they’re lacking for airfield space at this point. Also the Admiral Kuznetsov isn’t an aircraft carrier, even though the media always claims it is. It’s a heavy missile cruiser that can fly a small number of aircraft as support. And Russia already has enough ships off the coast for air defense and missile strikes. It doesn’t even look like they need additional forces to take back East Aleppo; it’s been falling at a steady pace for weeks. I think they’re sending this new group of ships simply as a show of force, and to give the Kuznetsov’s crew some much needed practice.
Reason #2: The US Fleet may show up.
Yes, it makes no military sense to send the Kuznetsov to Syria. Its probably more to do with internal Russian military wrangling – the Navy wants to show it can make a contribution. I’d guess that means that they think victory is assured, if they thought otherwise, the Navy would want to avoid any blame.
o “Toxic products cost the US $340 billion a year | Treehugger” — from the site that brought the recdnt highly misleading “ZOMG!! 43 million gallons of milk dumped so far in 2016!!!” story. (That nets out to ~0.3% of total production, ergo “clearly more can be done, but in no way a national emergency”.) Also oddly, or not, omits mention of the costs of toxic financial & economic products.
o “Your Driverless Ride Is Arriving | MIT Technology Review” — Not mine. Speak for yoursekves, you arrogant techno-utopian übergeek a**holes. (And for the record, I have graduate degrees in Math and Engineering and am a practicing geek myself.)
o “India headed for coal power overcapacity India Climate Dialogue” — Clearly time to get that birth rate up even more! If it’s good for GDP, it must be good for humans, right? (Ignore that misleading Macrobusiness piece a few links below the India one – “most credentialed economists agree agree that eternal exponential GDP groaf is what it’s all about.)
o “Merkel Says Putin Slapped With Blunt Language on Syria Role Bloomberg” — I’m sure the porr man is trembling in his deepest bunker after such a verbal dressing-down from the likes of Kanzlerin Ferkel and Dead-PM-Walking Hollande.
o “Why did Julian Assange lose his internet connection? New Statesman” — Lemme guess … he was using Comcast?
o “ACLU Wants 23 Secret Surveillance Laws Made Public The Intercept” — Remind me, which section of the Constitution grants Congress the right to make secret law, interpreted by a secret court system in which the Bill of Rights does not apply? I must have missed that one. Perhaps our Dear Constitutional-Scholar-In-Chief can help me out here!
Amendment 10. The elites get first pick and the rest get whatever rights are left over.
Gah – kleerly a singal spellchick was nought enough!
Oh the subject of Mosul:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-mosul-idUSKCN12K0G6
“The forces are pushing toward the town more quickly than we thought and more quickly than we had programed.”
And I’m seeing reported elsewhere that:
“French President Francois Hollande, who was opening a meeting in Paris to discuss the future of Mosul, said that there was evidence that Islamic State fighters were already fleeing to its Syrian bastion of Raqqa, and that everything needed to be done to stop them regrouping there.”
So it looks like there may not be much of a fight for Mosul, as the US allows (directs?) ISIS to flee into Syria in a last ditch effort to reverse the SAA’s gains in the war there. Absolutely disgusting. It’s like our leaders are having a competition amongst themselves to see who can be the most evil, insane monster.
Maybe Hilary can loan out her sh*t spewing campaign bus and take them from Raqqa straight to Aleppo. McCain can show up and high-five them on their way
Aleppo is a lost cause. It’s also an AQ/’rebel’ show rather than an ISIS one. No, they’ll try to erase the SAA pocket around Deir Ezzor and to retake Palmyra.