Scientists Talk Privately About Creating a Synthetic Human Genome NYT. What could go wrong?
Brainjacking: the future of software security for neural implants Boing Boing
Climate Change Is Shrinking Earth’s Far-Flying Birds The Atlantic
How Bad Biology is Killing the Economy Evonomics (Chuck L).
Recession May Loom for Next U.S. President No Matter Who That Is Bloomberg.
WSJ Survey: Recession Odds Remain Elevated Despite Calmer Financial Markets WSJ
Monopoly’s New Era Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate
Chip cards slap U.S. merchants with unexpected higher debit fees Chicago Tribune. What’s “unexpected” about higher fees?
Ethereum, a Virtual Currency, Enables Transactions That Rival Bitcoin’s NYT. I’d be interested to hear what our banking wonks have to say about smart contracts.
Syraqistan
Saudi Arabia Credit Downgrade: Moody’s Cuts Rating, Assigns Stable Outlook Amid Slump In Oil Prices International Business Times
Egypt jails 51 for protesting against Saudi islands deal BBC
China?
China April economic activity data disappoints, hiking recovery doubts Reuters
Chinese Indicators Lag Behind Expectations, Show Economy Struggles WSJ
U.S. concern grows over possible Venezuela meltdown: officials Reuters
How Brazil’s Left Destroyed Itself Foreign Policy
Brazil’s impeachment and the fall of the Workers Party WSWS. Similar to above, allowing for differences in milieu.
The Vultures’ Vultures: How A New Hedge-Fund Strategy Is Corrupting Washington Ryan Grim, HuffPo
A Few Notes on Burkean Conservatism The Archdruid Report
2016
Clinton nets two delegates at raucous Nev. convention The Hill
Bernie Sanders speaks to KTVU, promises strong campaign KTVU. Read all the way to the end for the “wrinkle in the state’s vote-by-mail rules.”
Sanders flies in for surprise visit The State Journal (Kentucky). “Sanders bashed what he calls our current oligarchy form of government caused by the manipulations of the one percent of the wealthiest Americans.” When you think about it, it’s rather remarkable to see a sentence like that in a garden-variety newspaper story.
Sen. Troy Heinert of Mission steals show at Sanders rally Rapid City Journal
Brutally Honest Bernie Sanders Tells His Supporters That He Is Not Their Savior PoliticsUSA
Big rallies or quiet voters? Is Clinton low on enthusiasm? AP. Sanders rallies also convert attendees to contributors and volunteers. Clinton, owing to her control of the party apparatus, doesn’t have to use public appearances for those purposes.
Hillary Clinton’s ‘Delegate Hell’ Politico. Many hilarious details.
Clinton Controversies Drag On as Next Phase of Campaign Begins Bloomberg (Re Silc).
Bill Clinton’s rough day on the trail Politico
Flight logs show Bill Clinton flew on sex offender’s jet much more than previously known Fox
Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private NYT
The Path to a Trump Presidency David Frum, The Atantic
American Caudillo Foreign Affairs
Donald Trump receives the support of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson Los Angeles Times
Meet Donald Trump’s New Energy Adviser Scientific American
Inside the GOP effort to draft an independent candidate to derail Trump WaPo
Uber Settlement Attacked by Drivers Saying Lawyer Sold Out Bloomberg
I loved Uber as a passenger. Then I started working as a driver LA Times
Uber and the economic impact of sharing economy platforms Bruegel
Class Warfare
Burying the White Working Class Jacobin
The Base Boston Review. “There would have been no New Deal without the Hoovervilles, rent riots, sit-down strikes, and Communist Party activism of the 1930s.”
The Six-Hour Workday Works in Europe. What About America? Bloomberg
You Can’t Talk About Robots Without Talking About Basic Income Vice (Re Silc). We can’t even write basic software that isn’t crapified, so I’m skeptical of AI. It looks like another bubble, to me.
Mapping American Social Movements; Through the 20th Century Portside
Post-conflict reconciliation led to societal healing, but worsened psychological health Science Daily (original, with headline: “Reconciling after civil conflict increases social capital but decreases individual well-being.” Not quite the same message…).
Should the state be doing more to fix the economy? INET
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Comments are closed.
Confirmed: Southern hemisphere CO2 level rises above symbolic 400 ppm milestone
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/confirmed-southern-hemisphere-co2-level-rises-above-symbolic-400-ppm-milestone-20160515-govfq7.html#ixzz48iPGNCQm
Disheveled Marsupial…. what is the markets response…. fire the scientists….
We are facked. While we (the US) play hard power games the world over and corporations eat themselves and us alive, the world dies.
Technology isn’t going to save us, solar, wind and of course nuclear aren’t actually green. Once you include the externalities mining, production etc.
The world cannot sustain 7 billion, let alone 9. 1-2 billion is the estimated healthy level for long term ecological stability and we get further away from it every day, while the oceans die and we strip mine mountains for more energy to make more trinkets that fewer and fewer can afford.
Well happy Sunday!
Then the answer is obvious; kill as many as we can, whether through unlimited wars or by the poisoning of our water and food production. You should hope that you are not among the first to go.
@aber
Do you not agree with the prognosis, do you think a closed system can support unlimited growth, we cannot keep growing population and consumption levels in a closed system, that is literally insane.
One option.
Nationalization globally of private concerns to work towards full equality and removal of profit and growth as primary aims ( also addressing and destroying concentrations of wealth). Global universal population controls, a system of aid and uplift to poor exploited countries in concert with education that focuses on making consumption a dirty word and re-education for developed countries for the same purpose.
Systemic humane, equalization, education and reduction of population (through birth rate controls) and consumption levels across the board.
Will any of that happen. Unlikely. Does it need to happen. Yes.
Unfortunately, your version of an ideal Utopia is not what the elites have in mind for us; the term “equality” is not in their vocabulary. First debt enslavement (check), then 1984 surveillance (check), death of the family unit (in process), then total subjugation (coming).
false- what closed system?
We have a problem, Houston:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBpvRAu_ex4
While this delightfully gleeful Anjam Choudary is British, he has fellows in Germany, France, Sweden and other European countries who likewise advocate this “jihad by migration” or hijrah. The similarity to CO2 emissions is obvious. In both cases, fixing the smallest part of the problem will not significantly affect the overall outcome, and in fact, will ultimately put the most conscientious at a disadvantage. This conundrum has provoked little more than impotent hand-wringing among Euro leadership.
Why the vicious attacks always on anyone who points out the reality?
That beats a church sermon!
Is this where I insert the obligatory “WE”RE ALL GONNA DIEEEEEEEEEEE!” commentary?
If the shoe fits.
We are not going to go out with a bang, just a slow wheezing whimper, from sustained environmental degradation as we try to squeeze more and more out of less and spew more carbon in the process.
So gradual that as things get worse and worse, the degradation becomes the baseline and the poor state of things becomes normalcy.
HEY…. Oh…… never mind…..
Here’s a list of the regularly linked publications that are now behind a pay wall and therefore inaccessible to me: WSJ, FT, WaPo, LATimes (the latter two say I have exceeded my number of free articles for the month). If I didn’t subscribe to the Sunday NYT, that site would be out of bounds, too. This is starting to make trying to follow the daily links a frustrating exercise.
Paying for access to all of those pubs, even at the introductory teaser rates, would mean my sending less $$$ to NC. I don’t imagine there’s a damned thing Yves and Lambert can do about this, but just wanted to point it out.
Add Wired to that list, unless you turn off your ad blocker.
For the ones that say you’ve exceeded your number of free articles, you need to delete the cookies they set in your browser. Once you do that, your number of free articles will reset.
For the others some say you can google the article’s title and click that link to see the full article, but in my experience that only works sometimes.
Hope that helps!
In my experience it always works for the NYT —- but not for WaPo, FC, ??
I hate to use Google for anything.
https://duckduckgo.com/ works fine. I never use google.
Also, please click on the paid results once in a while just for fun and their profit. I do the same for this site.
I second DUCKDUCKGO. Rarely use Google outside of the job.
I too use duckduckgo, and am generally happy with it, but do not often find a link in the result set of my query that gets me past a pay wall.
That used to work for me for FT, haven’t tried it lately.
Yes, when Yves (or Lambert or Dave Dayen) provides the precise title, going to Google and putting it in quotes, followed by Financial Times, works for me. But it doesn’t work for others I have spoken to.
I’ve tried to sign up for the “get a few free articles” on FT, and could never make that work, either.
And BTW, I only don’t mind using Google if it’s to screw some other evil corporation, like FT.
A couple of suggestions to get around the pay wall issue:
1) type the headline of the article you want into the search line of your browser, and search. Usually the article, and perhaps additional links to it, will come up. Click on one of those to get to your article. You’ll usually be able to get there.
2) go in to your browser’s “preferences” and clear out cookies & cache items related to the sources you want. These are what the publication use to calculate that you’ve “used up” your free articles.
This strategy is perhaps a bit morally murky, but depriving the WSJ of additional income does not bother me too much.
I have found that I can bypass some paywalls by posting the article I want to read on Facebook and then opening article from there. Don’t know why it works but it does. YMMV
How are these papers supposed to stay in business without subscribers? With internet advertising? I purposely do not buy any product or service pitched to me on the internet. The reason is simple: I don’t want to be pestered through my e-mail or other interruptions while I’m trying to read. I enter the site for the Loyal Manure Spreader and for weeks afterward I am besieged with every sort of manure spreader and every variety of farm machine. Same with any product. A ten second gander at flower seeds and for months ads for seeds litter the margins.
I love reading the news, ever since I threw my first paper route when I was twelve. I grew up sitting on a drink box in Bill Green’s news store, reading articles out loud to Mr. Green while he smoked cigars and rung up his customers. I love newspapers. I always have.
But now I’m mad at them. They have just about stopped reporting the news it seems and spend most of their time and energy on selling me some point of view, some interpretation of events that I can see is propaganda. I’m angry that the newspapers were all in for the Iraq war. I’ll never forgive them for that.
But still, I feel guilty when I read one of my five articles at Wapo or Nytimes because someone is not getting paid, some reporter, maybe one of the ones I like, is going to be let go. I have a problem with that. Part of what has happened is that the internet provider is charging forty or fifty dollars a month and that money is all I can afford for reading material.
That’s why I’m so thankful for sites like Naked Capitalism. I donate what I can afford, even a little more than I can afford. But I get better information here than all the newspapers put together. Thank you Ms. Smith and Mr. Strether. Thank you very much. And thank you too to all the excellent and knowledgeable commenters.
I am a Facebook-free zone.
Not interested in being Zuckerberg’s product.
Taleb’s observation which has some merit is that in the grand scheme of things, if something is worth knowing, it will be revealed elsewhere.
My excellent small town public library system allows me to sign on to any of their subscriptions from my own computer. I’ve got their pass word and ID. I even get to look at the local rabid wing nut rag for free….something I would never pay for. Support wonderfully socialist public library systems…high value for local taxes!
Carla, I understand that it sucks to not have access to articles (I’m in the same position you are), but it’s not Yves’ fault and I really don’t get what complaining about it, as many people do here, does to help the problem. Perhaps you are suggesting the Yves not include links to stories behind paywalls, so as us poor people don’t feel left out?
I don’t think that’s a good idea, as I’d rather have Yves note what she thinks are important or interesting or absolutely off-base articles in any outlet, whether I personally get to read them or not. It’s on the WSJ and the NYT for putting their content behind a paywall, not NC’s (but I don’t really blame them, having a first hand understanding of the difficulty of trying to pay the bills by providing free content). At least we can get the commentary from others on those articles, which is often as not superior to the article itself anyway.
Imho, you should be directing your complaints directly to the publishers who are inaccessible to you, as they are the only ones that can remedy the situation. All Yves can do is not link to them, i.e. ignore their existence in the same way the MSM ignores ours, which isn’t really helpful and might lead to important blind-spots in our analysis.
In summation: I feel your pain (to quote everyone’s “favorite” pedophile), but I think your complaint is misdirected….and do try clearing your cookies after you’ve got to your monthly limit, or use a different browser (I have Firefox, Chrome, and Opera installed on my lappy for just this reason).
If I gave the impression of complaining about Yves, Lambert, or Naked Capitalism, I am very sorry. That was not my intent at all.
It was more of an observation and a lament about our famously “free” press, our miraculously “free” Internet, and of course our wondrously “free” trade.
No, no, not to worry. No such thing.
In addition to searching on the headline (or other quoted material), clear your browsers cache and cookies, and use multiple browsers.
Part of the problem that Yves and I have, however, is that there’s so damn much news out there and we face a production problem of getting Links out on time and every day (and it’s occurred to me that the powers that be are happy to throw out lots and lots of chaff).
In the time that we have, it’s easiest for us to solve that production problem using sources with the greatest circulation. However, there are a ton of good vertical blogs out there — Moon of Alabama, Emptywheel — so if readers will drop free sources that we do not regularly cite to in comments or in mail, we may be able to change our practice to incorporate them. (I say “may” because readers may not know how much work goes into Links and how rapidly it must be done.)
Lambert, the two of you never cease to amaze me. I am always amazed . . . and very grateful . . .that you are able to do what you do. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
In my limited time, I have trouble trying to read it all.
+1 to the tenth power
+1000
Keep linking to FT and other firewalled sites please.
I don’t subscribe to FT but with the links, titles, and small blurbs I can judge the value of buying the cow or not. To date the frustration level has not pushed me to subscribe to FT and I doubt it will in the future.
For me it’s more important you keep the “Antidote du jour:” and the “water cooler plant” pictures coming. It’s a close contest as to pictures or articles when it comes to alerting my cohorts of interesting things.
Also if you happen to have a VPN, you can simply change your server location and that will also reset the paywall count.
Thank you, Lambert.
Simpler than deleting cookies: Copy the link, open a different browser (Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari are free downloads).
Or open a new private browsing tab
“Liberals can delude themselves into believing that it is nothing more than the accumulation of individual prejudices stashed away in the minds of powerful white people that has destroyed black and brown communities in Detroit, Ferguson, and Chicago’s South Side.”
The quote that sums up 2016 the best (so far).
I thought liberals blamed poor white people. Powerful white people are too cosmopolitan after all. After all, many of yesterday’s villains are just fine as long as they swear fealty to frau Clinton.
scott2, what article is this from? Thanks.
It’s from the Jacobin article under “Class Warfare”.
This story has really gotten under my skin:
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/05/clinton-campaign-insiders-want-liz-warren-as-vp.html
It’s NY mag’s version of the “Liz Warren for VP” story (tldr: Some nameless Clinton aides were supposedly gushing to the Huff Post about Warren’s recent Trump Twitter Takedown, because obviously she is “auditioning” to be Hillary’s VP (it is known), and how much they hope Hillary will pick her, zomg!)
The Liz for VP pet rock was tossed around with great vigor in the Friday links comments, and it got me thinking about how many ways this one little vacuous piece of PR is helping team Clinton. So here are my 7 reasons team Clinton wants you to believe Hillary and Liz can be besties (you won’t believe number 5!)
1) It reinforces the false equivalence of “fighting against Trump” = “fighting for Clinton” (because TINA),
2) It helps neutralize the fact that Warren hasn’t endorsed Clinton,
3) It sets up Warren to be asked to confirm or deny the rumor in a future news cycle, tying up her airtime with bullshit and maybe generating a useful sound bite,
4) The aides’ enthusiasm and praise for Warren, phrased like she was some misfit kid who just scored a huge goal for the field hockey team, is not about Warren at all, but about them asserting their role as the Ultimate Arbiters of All the Feminist Things,
5) The aides’ seemingly supernatural knowledge of Warren’s motives conveniently ignores all the obvious reasons she would assert herself, like for starters she’s nobody’s victim, or that she wants to start off on the right foot with Trump if she’s going to be spending the next few years grilling all the gangsters he appoints to his administration after he trounces team Hillary,
6) It keeps the Liz for VP rumor alive in the media space, so the Clinton team can conveniently refer to it as a plausable scenario for as long as it remains useful, and
7) Talking up Warren allows the Clinton campaign to look like it’s adopting popular Sanders policies without actually changing its platform one iota
The whole “how do we exploit Elizabeth” tactic reminds me of back in 2012 when Obama tried to appropriate Warren’s speech about tax-dodging corporations that rely on tax-funded infrastructure, a beautiful piece of rhetoric that instantly resonated with the best part of anyone who really listened to it, and how the Obama team grabbed this gift in its filthy, childish hands and reworked it into the petty “You didn’t build that” line, which Romney’s people promptly tried to strangle him with.
I completely agree, but I don’t think that the MSM would go so far as to ask Warren about it because they know that there is a very high likelihood that she will not give them the answer that they’re looking for. In fact, Warren has made a number of positive endorsement-like innuendos in support of Bernie, none of which have been picked up by the MSM because it goes directly against their pro-Clinton narrative.
It’s the clinton campaign doing ‘lucy with the football’ tricks. Same with the health care plan she floated, which sanders quickly and beautifully slapped down as ‘medicare for some’.
It’s a sign they’re feeling insecure. After obama, we’ve all seen it too much and no one buys it. But they keep trying!
I like the Hillary for transparency on UFOs campaign. I knew she’d run an open admin…, I just knew it!
I’ve had two thoughts on the matter.
-It speaks to the paranoia of Team Clinton. They checked in the 90’s and still think they are being lied to.
-They think Sanders voters are idiots who will be astonished by childish promises.
And a third wild card thought is that Billary are lizard people relatives of the UK royal family from Tau Cygnus and this is a distraction to control the real story. The Greys are from Rigel. Hey, I use to be 12. As to where the orange oompa loompas are from, I fear the Donald is from the Terran system…um. ..the Earth which is what Humans such as me call it.
Door number 3! Door number 3!!!
-they are subliminally concerned that the USS HRC is lacks seaworthyness, and they think Warren is the perfect bilge pump for the listing juggernaught after her ill-fated refitting in Leake Shipyards (the primary season).
She is a ridiculously weak candidate in the general election even against an absurd alternative and everyone knows, even those who wont say it.
If you want to use a warship metaphor for Clinton I think the WWI era Royal Navy battlecruisers are the best fit. Seemingly very powerful but fatally flawed in a major fleet conflict. It seems that her campaign is being led by a team just as flawed as Admiral David Beatty too and you could make the case for comparing Sanders with Admiral Jellicoe so it even works on multiple levels:-)
Not sure if it fits your analogy, but it was unsafe ordnance handling practices and not design flaws that sank the British battlecruisers at Jutland. Naval doctrine of the time called for maximum rate of fire, and gun crews accomplished this by loading up the turrets, hoists and conveyor belts from the magazines with extra propellant (cordite). So a hit on a turret could ignite what was essentially a fuse leading to the magazines. This was discovered during the initial investigation after Jutlland, but Jellicoe (by then First Sea Lord) thought it was demoralizing to blame the gun crews and instead put forth the design flaw explanation. Jellicoe was in many respects a great man, but I hope Sanders doesn’t follow his example in this case.
I went into detail down page, but one question is how is Sanders and even Trump so successful? If a 73 year old from Vermont can galvanize the youth and become the most popular politician, why can’t a Senator from another state? There are two answers. One is Hillary is so wonderful there is no point, and the other is a class of people with designs on the White House made so many bad decisions they cost themselves the opportunity to be a historic change maker. Obama, a empty suit, beat Hillary. Imagine how a smart Senator might have done.
Acknowledging Clinton’s weaknesses means acknowledging that the various politicos around the country could easily be replaced and no one would care. No one asked Chuck Schumer to run. No one asked Claire McCaskill to run. Pelosi is an embarrassment. DWS will probably be booed for the rest of her life. The simple answer is these people weren’t horrible on the way up, but they tossed aside the chance for the big prize. It’s just easier to believe they have to join with Mordor than accept responsibility.
Oh, my dear Optimader……..I just couldn’t disagree more!
Have you not seen the latest Twitter posting by the official Hillary Clinton campaign? Just in the last couple of hours, this: “Incomes haven’t gone up for most Americans in about 15 years. We’ve got to fix that.”
One additional ‘heart-headed’ point Hillary could have included is to demand the raising of dinners for most Americans too.
Ooops!
Silly me!
She’s already fixed that!
She did it on Thursday evening with not just one but two $100,000 plate dinners thanks to her billionaire buddies:
http://linkis.com/investmentwatchblog.com/w2lQh
See! She’s an incredibly strong candidate because she’s ‘Fighting for Us’.
Excellent analysis. An interesting aspect of this was brought up in Friday’s discussion by Aab.
It wouldn’t surprise me that some sort of communication took place between Warren and Clinton staffers. If team Clinton were to exploit Warren like this without any warning or permission, it could easily backfire. Warren has proven herself very much a political animal and could easily retaliate in kind. As it is, Warren comes out fairly clean since she is not explicitly endorsing anyone – and would be viewed sympathetically if exploitation by Clinton team becomes negatively apparent as such to a broad audience.
In the meantime, team Clinton gets to soak the items in your well thought out list for all they are worth.
so why might warren give permission?
Well, one possibility is pressure from Hillary. Hillary is notoriously vengeful. Her thugs could have presented this as a deal Warren couldn’t refuse and again, the cost is minimal. That would be a possible and perhaps plausible reason. Beyond that, I correct myself above and agree with Aab, it is surprising.
It also begs the question as to whether Warren’s anti Trump blitz is entirely Warren’s idea or if that too is some form of ‘protection money’ to the Hillary or at least DNC thugs.
On the Trump blitz, It’s also conceivable that Warren has a real hatred for him and finds this part of any alliance easy to get along with.
i’d hope warren isn’t easily subject to such offers, but i don’t know what kind of pressures clinton can bring to bear, either.
The fact that Warren did not endorse Sanders whose arguments regarding finance corruption so closely resembles hers, strongly indicates that Hillary has already exerted significant pressure and that Warren is indeed a political animal with the sense to choose her battles. Right or wrong has been discussed quite a bit in NC threads, but the background of Clinton pressure is not in dispute.
If a 73 old from Vermont can galvanize the youth, it means anyone else could have done so. Acknowledging Sanders means acknowledging the reason a Senator Boxer (insert random Senator) isnt the front runner. Joe Biden said he’s eight votes, I think he’s counting his treatment of Anita Hill as a vote, away from being the next President.
How did Sanders, a man with no television, do this? No payoff is as great as being President for these people. They’ve ousted after the White House since they won statewide. Sanders doesn’t even hustle for Wall Street or make morally dubious decisions.
Sanders filibustered the extension of the Bush-Obama tax cuts for the wealthy. If Boxer had joined him, she might be the front runner today. All these people who chose the morally dubious path can only advance through Clinton largess at this point. Not joining with Clinton means deep down acknowledging these people sat on the precipice and chose to be small all this time. Biden is moping around about past mistakes. If he wasn’t such a crummy guy, he would get the Sanders support plus institutional support. Voting “no” on NAFTA would only be a feather in his cap. Today, his support is just another reason Biden doesn’t warrant being President.
If Clinton wasn’t on the ballot, a younger congressman such as Tulsi Gabbard would withstand scrutiny longer serving members can. With an unknown young nominee after Obama, the Clinton Era politicians would have to give up their dream.
It’s not pressure but self reflection. Daschle and other party members on the outside supported Obama early on to get back into the game because they saw a candidate they could control. Sanders is his own man.
I think people like Sanders and Warren are genuinely concerned about a Trump presidency.
They should be. If he fails to fix things I suspect some of his supporters may choose pitchforks and torches next.
Of course, I also think that many democratic party supporters may not be far behind in that assessment. The reality is the GOP, despite their fear of almost everything from the gay to brown people, seem less afraid of their political apparatus then the Democratic base. However, I’d say based on Nevada, that we’re catching up.
The DNC and RNC should be careful about making a peaceful revolution impossible.
I believe they are equally concerned about a Clinton presidency. This is shaping up to be the worst choice produced by our corrupt two-party system in history.
It’s quite clear to me now that the rift in the GOP is looking like small potatoes compared to what’s been going on in the DNC. Nevada is just the latest example – this thing is imploding from both sides now.
I don’t know why your comment lead this to pop into my mind, but is it possible that this election is pulling this country towards an overt military coup in the US?
It’s probably just a matter of time before other countries pull a Hillary Clinton and seek to “support democracy” in the US.
It’s going to be ironic when their own model is utilized to take some of our very own greedy oligarchs out of the equation.
They might be concerned about a Clinton presidency but I don’t think they are equally concerned. A Trump presidency concerns them a lot more, I’d think. (They might be very concerned about a Clinton candidacy which, in their view, might very well lead to a Trump presidency.)
I thought Aab’s comment was interesting too. When I checked out Warren’s recent tweets they didn’t really strike me as Clinton talking points, but I’m not on the Twitter so I might have missed the shift from her usual posts.
I agree there must have been some communication between Clinton and Warren — I’m just not sure how much say Warren has in how she’s being exploited (I can see Clinton’s people just telling her “ok, no endorsement? Well here’s how it’s going to be if you want anything from us come November.”)
The whole dem establishment’s approach to Warren seems to be the same as always, to relegate her to a sealed box and keep the oxygen level as low as possible. You can keep apples fresh this way for months, and then bring them to market on your own timeline.
Hillary with a female VP. Hillary with a male VP. Both present novel scenarios. I’m trying to remember when HRC dealt well with a novel scenario?
The story on Clinton and his trips to the Pedophile Island on the “Lolita Express” deserve deeper coverage than it is receiving.
There is no way that a man, an ex president, takes off with a KNOWN and CONVICTED PEDOPHILE, not once but more than 20 times and a wife does not know. That this same man, ex president travels on this PEDOPHILE’s private plane, commonly known as the LOLITA EXPRESS, and travels to the PEDOPHILES private island outside the US and leaves BEHIND his SECURITY DETAIL, and his wife had NO KNOWLEDGE is beyond any reasonable belief.
It is one thing for the Clnton’s to have an open marriage.
It is one thing for them to pay off his mistress with funds from their charity.
It is ENTIRELY a different issue to cover for or enable a man engaged in activities related to PEDOPHELIA.
This deserves much close scrutiny than it is getting in the MSM.
I cant understand it either. I mean if this is innvestigated it s more likely than not that he is a sex offender. I am not saying he is guilty but I am saying it is more likely than not given what we know. The rest of your points are valid. HRC more likely than not knew and did nothing. That in and of itself makes her unqualified for the office. Could it be that the right wing to include Fox since the name is right on the excerpt referred to is holding their fire until she puts Bernie out of the running? As soon as he endorses her, which I hope he does not, it might be pedophilian 24/7 on Fox.
We don’t get investigations any more, we get investigation theatre. Banks, markets, wars, candidates, toxic polluters, serial molester billionaire elites.
“What were you doing while flying around in this sex offender’s ‘Lolita Express’ all over the world?” The first question to be asked in Bill Clinton’s next interview. Not.
“Getting as far away from Hillary as I could. And you’all would be damn smart to do the same thing!”
I think Bill Clinton’s relationship with a known pedophile is a story that could have some legs. Bill has a history of relating to women in a borderline abusive way. Was the jet in question used in service of possible felonies involving teens / children?
Yes, according to a court motion filed by Jane Doe #3:
The brief (well worth reading) goes on to assert that Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who is alleged to have abused Jane Doe #3 multiple times, “helped negotiate an agreement that provided immunity from federal prosecution not only to Epstein, but also to ‘any potential co-conspirators of Epstein.’ ”
This astonishing agreement is why Epstein’s procurer Ghislaine Maxwell was free to attend Chelsea Clinton’s wedding on July 31, 2010, several years after Epstein’s arrest.
One of the lawyers who filed this brief, Paul Cassell, is a former federal judge. That’s the kind of clout needed to upend a conspiracy involving federal prosecutors.
Dershowitz…[shudder]…why am I not surprised?
remember when he was considered a civil libertarian. “even the liberal alan dershowitz” etc.
Not borderline abusive.
Abusive.
It should.
His friends/associates are a direct reflection on him. Basic playground rules.
Presumably when you fly to a private Caribbean island destination on a plane owned by a known pedophile with the nickname Lolita Express, the optics are not very good.
A person that as a minimum apparently does not care to filter behavior based on consequences.
Transcending just being an idiot, what clinical labeling does that support?
Narcissistic Personality Disorder for starters.
Bill “Short Eyes” Clinton is a child molester campaigning for his wife who wants to be our first woman president.
Both Clintons being clinical sociopaths (i.e., lacking any moral compass other than “the end justifies the means”), having old panty-groper Bill as a spokesperson is just fine with Hillary.
Bill is America’s Jimmy Savile — a celebrity with a well-known dark side. Like Jimmy, Bill has plenty of friends in high places willing to overlook and even cover up his predilections.
Really both these people should be in prison: Bill for statutory rape; Hillary for (inter alia) obstruction of justice.
The Clintons are widely disliked, even by people close to them. If Hillary escapes indictment and looks like having a serious shot at winning, my guess is that an outraged Secret Service agent will leak a show-stopping dirt dump.
You make it sound reasonable, but what about the establishment, the big banks, the finance people, the investment whores, the military and military suppliers and private armies. They seem to have a pretty big say in what happens, and wouldn’t they prefer the woman they know and love through and through to the loose canon they don’t?
Sure. A compromised candidate with something to hide can be controlled.
One has to wonder whether all of our recent presidents were managed this way.
Most likely, within 72 hours of the inauguration a group of intel spooks sits down with the new president for The Talk — in which they make clear what his/her boundaries are.
We wouldn’t want the JFK thing to happen to a nice guy like you …
they show them the unedited version of the Zapruder film
Or how they busted Mandela:
Anticommunist white folks gotta stick together. /sarc
Neither Bush I nor II required The Talk: Daddy was Intel and W believed in the program.
Given the continued hints at H Clintons’ fragile health, the choice of Veep looms large. That’s why I see the Warren for Dem Veep rumours as head fakes. Any ‘real’ Veep contender would have to be an ‘insider.’
Either that, or Door Number Three. (The makers of “Iron Sky” had the wrong woman as the female U.S. President. For the Replicant theory, see the teaser trailer on YouTube for the “sequel” to “Iron Sky.”)
Remember the substitution of a Disney Animatronic Robot for Ronnie Reagan after he was killed by the assassin in 1981. Imagine how far Robotics has advanced in the years since. For all we know, H Clinton is already a Robot!
Call me wild and crazy, but I think the robotic Clinton would 1.) be less pear shaped, 2.) not need high collars, and most importantly 3.) have less annoying vocal ticks.
Sure there would still be stupid statements and non answer answers, but all of the above would be within the control of the robot construction.
I’m not 100% convinced Warren isn’t, at heart, an insider.
*Not all insiders are horrible people 100% of the time.
Some are possibly benevolent fascists, who prefer that the boot that squashes us in the face be outfitted with an orthotic heel.
Your comment got shifted no?
Anyway, you’re right, a total headfake, but a useful one they will soak for all it’s worth as Schnormal points out above.
Hillary a robot? Fascinating and gruesome idea. To put that much corruption, arrogance and malice in a machine; the code base would be so far out there beyond anything described in the AI lit. Perhaps a graduate of the ITT Technical Institute could write it as part of a beer chugging contest gone wild.
That, plus no one would design a pear shaped robot, is why I subscribe to the Lizard People Theory.
The ITT Technical Institute crowd? They are more into Beer Bongs and Mexican Brown.
This comment was clear sailing. I’m getting better at finessing the Skynet Algo.
Remember the SNL sketch where Phil Hartman portrayed Reagan as only playing dumb? Then he pretends to speak a foreign language on the telephone, the whole time he’s chanting out Jombies incantation from Pee Wee’s Playhouse. “Mekka lekka hai…”
Oh man….Phil Hartman…… RIP
I chose ITT because the prospect was so ooooooouuuuuuugly that I just couldn’t put real code heads (say from Carnegie Mellon) on it.
It’s a Frankenstein project.
Who, not what.
Hah! however, this is sealed in Court docs. even the “who” aren’t sure. so, neener neener.
Well, on the bright side, if Cersei does pick Warren as her VP and they somehow win (doubtful. but possible) the Dems can trot out Martha Coakley for one more shot at the brass ring.
Re the Numbers didn’t match article in Counterpunch
This may be overly optimistic on my part (very possible given my excessive general sense of optimism), but given how porous the system is and how many states are voting, surely a “smoking gun” has to appear at some point, as in a smartphone video of someone counting ballots or at an audit explicitly instructing someone else to commit fraud. In fact, I’m surprised that this hasn’t happened yet if the fraud is as rampant as it would appear. And we all know by now that nothing happens until the incident is caught on video.
Speaking of videos, I’m looking forward to the Clinton Cash film debuting tomorrow :)
Imperial Collapse Watch:
Given US/NATO says it’s deploying new missile systems close Russia’s borders to protect itself from Iran, perhaps Russia should announce it is considering offering advanced nukes and long range delivery systems to Iran and say this is so Iran can defend itself from US/NATO?
You could call it asymmetrical in your face head on collision type response. It would be fun just to watch the imperial reaction from the Empire by such a move and I’ve long thought Russia waited much too long delivering S300’s to Iran when it was clearly in it’s interests to do so.
Uber Settlement Attacked by Drivers Saying Lawyer Sold Out
More Uber uber alles: On an NYT article about start-ups now requiring employees to agree to arbitration for employment disputes, there was this comment about Uber:
At what point do these techniques to force employees or consumers to accept Changes to Our Terms and Conditions™ if they want to get on with their lives fall under the `shock the conscience’ test
for nullifying contracts?
At what point do these drivers stop complaining about what a lousy “employer” uber is and just quit? Or strike?
Without drivers, the “app” isn’t worth the ether it’s floating around in. Fact is, without drivers, tens of billions of dollars in “value” goes poof! instantly. There is no uber.
What is the point of hiring and paying lawyers to try and force uber to become the employer it has no intention of ever becoming? Exploitation is the business plan and will continue to be until people refuse to be exploited. The refusal of the IRS to address the obvious problem with the classification of drivers as “independent contractors” should tell them whose side the government is on.
The quote from the Boston Review Link is as true today as it was then. “There would have been no New Deal without the Hoovervilles, rent riots, sit-down strikes, and Communist Party activism of the 1930s.” The days of seeking “redress of grievances” through the “legal system” are long gone.
The drivers are holding all the cards. They should just play them.
Pizza delivery barely works, and they’ve been at that forever.
I think the high profit, easy commuter routes will just go private once enough customers are found. Why pay Uber if I cart the same people on a weekly basis? Cant they just pay me under the table? A high school friend who went to a local college drove my little sister and a neighbor child around for four years, but that was an easy job, especially since the chauffer lived at her home, so she would go to school, pick up the two girls drop them off on her way home. Dad could get them on the way home. About once a month, she would cart my legally blind mom around. If an Uber driver can make a similar arrangement, this should work out well. Sure there are the drunks to pick up, but my mom’s brother in law can’t drive or work anymore and started to use Uber because he still went into his business everyday despite his son’s objections. There are enough students where they live who go into town after the morning commute they have made a regular arrangement. It’s an easy trip. Why pay Uber? The easy routes will be absorbed into the underground economy. Cab companies picked up drunks before Uber too.
Amazingly enough, my mom put up a flyer on a bulletin board to find a driver for my little sister. Kate then recognized the name and called my mother’s land line with her land line phone. Can you imagine? There was no need to pay an overlord.
Reminds me of the Teaching English as a Foreign Language racket in Japan. The “schools” provide classes of varying and often dubious quality. The students aren’t vetted so many quickly loose interest and drop out. But those students who really do want to learn quickly find the teachers who are really trying to do a good job (not just turning up without lesson plans or even much idea how to help students make progress in their language skills).
Eventually the committed, gifted teachers gain a reputation and students just get lessons privately cutting out the outrageous fees the “schools” charge.
But for the teachers, it is still a gruelling job. The costs and time burdens of travelling, the complete insecurity (students can simply stop taking lessons), the schools will fire you on the spot if they find you’re soliciting your own customers, plus the job of teaching itself mean that I always advise anyone of thinking of doing it to do anything else they possibly can rather than TEFL. I’d do the same for anyone tempted by Uber’s “proposition”.
Sadly, many are desperate enough to try it.
Sadly, many are desperate enough to try it.
A definite feature vs. bug in the system. One would imagine these drivers see the writing on the wall; namely, that their cheap labor is enabling Uber to launch a driverless car system that will cut their throats, but desperation is a powerful thing.
I had two semesters of Japanese language instruction from a teacher that was the first non Japanese, certified “highschool” level (IIRC) Japanese language instructor. Perfect diction.
Apparently an extremely difficult certification to breakthrough.
He eventually move back to Chicago area w/ his Japanese wife and dropped anchor as a local JC.
I had been working with Nippon Shokubai as a client whom we were providing process development assistance.
It was fun to sit in meetings conducted with internal Nihongo/ external English communication as my comprehension improved and it was safely assumed wherein they assumed I had no grasp of the language.
In truth modest at best, but I often had the drift.
Eventually I did say something relevant in language, along the lines of, “this has all been very interesting but time for lunch break”? Very red faces
Japanese find it difficult to believe that a gaijin can speak nihongo.
It’s as astonishing to them as a talking dog.
I dearly miss the Zuikin Girls :o/
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zuikin+girls
Neighborhood drivers would be a nice niche. A building could get one, a region etc. An individual could be the pickup/dropoff for a particular business. Get rid of the middleman.
I think people are confused and exhausted by our current system and so propagandized by individualism they can’t organize or break out.
Because people in general are confrontation-adverse and everybody has to pay the bills. They started driving for Uber for a reason in the first place. It’s like saying why don’t McDonald’s employees just quit? Because they don’t have any better options. And if they try to strike, as you point out, they would be up against not only Uber, but also the government.
Is there some strike fund for Uber drivers that I’m unaware of? Are the Teamsters rushing in to provide them support? How are the striking drivers going to make up for that lost income while Uber drags out the process to break their will, in typical monopoly capitalist style? And how do you prevent scabs when there are no factory gates to block? I’m sure you know some labor history, so none of this should come as a surprise to you.
The strong take what they can, the weak suffer what they must. Until we pull our collective heads out of our collective heinies (sp?) and learn about something called Solidarity, we’re going to stay weaker than necessary and suffer a lot more than we need to. Why aren’t Uber drivers striking? Because no one is offering any real support to them. Hell, even already unionized workers have to really sacrifice to go on strike, much less disconnected Uber drivers with no pre-existing financial pools to draw on. You want them to strike, start collecting a strike fund.
In most places where uber exists, there are also these transportation devices called taxicabs. Although medallions can be expensive, I do believe they are cheaper than buying your own car.
People seem to forget that uber is merely trying to re-invent the wheel – the alternative has existed for quite some time.
People want the quick and easy money rather than going through the more rigorous process of getting a hack license, forgetting there is no such thing as a free lunch. With the bad press uber has gotten (although admittedly readers of this site have been more exposed to it than the population at large) I don’t know why anyone would want to work for them.
It is true some were out for an easy buck. They thought they would undercut/wipe out cab drivers. Sort of pre-scabs.
One of the reasons Uber has been successful is that the taxi regs are themselves pretty screwy and have led to considerable under-provisioning of taxi services. Uber stepped into the gap by just flagrantly ignoring the law and encouraging others to do so, hiding behind the smart-phone app to claim they’re really a tech company.
It’s not one way or the other, the slimy corporations and the crappy regulations are both at fault.
This is true regarding onerous taxi regs but good cabbies can get around it, or at least they used to be able to. It’s been a few years since I took cabs on a regular basis but I remember when the cab companies in Seattle first started using GPS so dispatch knew where they were as soon as they turned their meter on. Once you accepted a ride you went to the back of the dispatch list for the next bell.
I used to take a lot of short $5-$10 rides and knew where the cabbies lined up . These rides weren’t very lucrative for the drivers, especially if it caused them to lose a potential better ride. I knew what the metered ride was likely to be and I’d offer $5 for a quick ride up the street if the cabbie turned the meter off and they would generally jump it at. They spend 5 mins giving me a ride and would come back still first in line for the next ride as far as dispatch knew. The cabbies I knew weren’t getting rich for sure but they made comparable to what a waiter at a decent restaurant could make – $100 to $200 a day after paying their nut which isn’t bad at all and this was 20 years ago.
Uber riders tout the convenience of getting a quick ride but I lived in a major metropolitan area for over a decade and don’t remember ever having difficulty finding a cab. Maybe if you’re a tourist and you don’t know the area, but still you can just call one on your cell phone. The uber app saves what, 30 seconds in looking up the number of a local cab company and dialing it?
All these people growing up used to immediate gratification for their every whim are going to be in for a hell of a surprise once the jackpot gets here.
‘Although medallions can be expensive, I do believe they are cheaper than buying your own car.’
Got $500K? Give Roy a call. He’ll even throw in the Prius for free.
http://nycitycab.com/business/taximedallionlist.aspx
For upstate, try multiplying your number by .001 :
Nevertheless, Uber and Lyft have upstate cities in their sights and the local misleadership class wants to help them.
I have seen the propaganda assault already. The local newhouse, LLC paper was running stories on the “disrupters” having a picnic! Banner ads to sign a “petition” were obnoxious.
I think other places might learn from upstate NY- How can upstate make them illegal? Very few other places have managed to do so; some with concerted effort.
The PR push was to “allow them to compete”. What’s not allowing that now? There wasn’t much elucidation on this point in the PR.
I stand corrected, at least for NYC. But these are medallions being resold by the current owners and the high price is due to the number of medallions being limited by the city, correct? I’m guessing $500k isn’t what you’d pay to get a new medallion directly from the city if one were available.
Which begs the question, why doesn’t the city just make more medallions available, especially if Uber can show such a demand for more drivers? You’d think they’d want the revenue rather than letting Uber try to put cabbies out of business.
I’d guess an app with a squillion dollar market cap could probably afford to pay off a few government officials though. Or am I being too cynical? And that last question was definitely sarcasm.
Hillary Clinton’s ‘Delegate Hell’ Politico.
Is that even possible?
Like about 45% of the Democratic Party.
Does anyone know of an even handed article contextualizing the HC email hairball? Just Security has a good post on the legacy security issues that have tracked the Dept of State into the Internet era as its budget has shrunk relative to DoD, but I can’t find who has been and hasn’t been prosecuted for offenses like those of HC. The new talking point is “Powell did it, a lot of people did it, Evil Repugs just making this an issue because HC did it.” Who has been prosecuted and how on comparable behavior?
nobody had a private server in their home. they did use unsecured email, apparently. but Hillz stands apart from others in that she planned to circumvent the gov’t servers and was “private” in a totally intentional way to cover her activities.
Jeremy Corbyn refuses to admit he is middle class [auto-start video, The Independent]
Z!O!!M!!!G!!!
Now compare the headline to Corbyn’s (somewhat long-winded) actual answer.
It’s almost as if some people in the media don’t like him. Nah, couldn’t be.
The Hill article on Nevada on the Democrat’s state convention implies that the proceedings had ended when the story was filed. From the twitter, they most definitely were not. Do we have any Nevada readers, or even attendees?
Have you seen this stunt?
https://twitter.com/BernieVolunteer/status/731750706193932288
Um. Wow! With representatives like this. Not even bothering to put the thin and shiny sheen on representative “democracy” this cycle.
Hillary’s campaign doesn’t have supporters–it has operatives. Her campaign is a machine and will grind those who dare stand in it’s preordained path.
That’s actually not fair. There are Clinton supporters, although an online sampling will be highly biased toward operatives!
I dared question a Joan Walsh tweet about Hillary being disliked by the MSM and I was inundated with “outraged” replies. HRC’s twitter brigade (army?) is fast and furious.
They probably had to buy one to compete with the brigade Sanders has of real people.
Either that or all the Hillary twitterers are upper class (but below the 1%) liberals trying to protect their privileges that Sander’s economic policies would endanger.
The picture I have from the Twitter — and it would be nice to have confirmation — is that in the days and weeks leading up to the convention, Sanders supporters flooded the meetings that determined the delegates, and Clinton supporters did not. When the state Party did the math, they awarded some delegates to Clinton that would otherwise have been awarded to Sanders. This was challenged in Court, but the judge declined to intervene (“freedom of association”*). Hence the Sanders supporters arrived at the convention in a not undisgruntled state, and there was a credentials fight. As I understand it, the meeting was run under Roberts Rules, and therefore the Chair adjourning the meeting (a) without a second to the motion and (b) while other motions (points of order?) were on the floor, was highly irregular, even delegitimizing.
Readers?
So Philly should be fun.
NOTE * Here, as in so many places, we see a seam tear, where a private organization is performing a public function.
I was following a few people on twit. It was to start at 10:00. C people started at 9:30. S people refused entry, S people decredentialed. Early rules vote was voice voted down, declared passed, ohh boy Boxer comments, overcharging water, refusing pizza delivery, C person in red C shirt (supporter) demanding police be called on Sanders people.
They came with the intent to change rules, deny S delegates. They made the outcome they wanted. They had to, their candidate can’t win without superdels. They are finishing this and moving onto the general.
Someone should let them know that the superdelegates aren’t going to save her in the general and that all those people who they pissed on yesterday are going to remember it in November when the DNC “needs” their vote.
Personally, I’m going to laugh if they lose in November, at this point, they deserve to.
yeah…Boxer and her ‘I’m from the Bronx,and I know what bullies are!’ reference to Sanders supporters……
Boxer, Pelosi, Feinstein ………the Bay Area Harpies……….uuurrp!
Did someone forget to tell the C people that the Superdelegate rules were not even going into effect until next election? Or are the C people already trying to protect Shillary from a populist Democrat in 2020 already?
Hillary’s support crashes at age 38. 8 years ago, her support crashed at age 30. The Clintons are simply a product of another time. If she isn’t doing well with 18 year olds, she isn’t doing well with 17, 16, 15 year olds. Combined with buyers remorse as she is exposed, a primary is a real threat in four years.
hahaha. Looks like the Borg Assimilation Plan has a hitch or two.
A lot of video footage was collected by heavy.com:
http://heavy.com/news/2016/05/nevada-democratic-convention-what-happened-roberta-lange-delegates-election-fraud-videos-recount-denied/
There’s a summary of what happened here.
Wow! Hillary supporters yelling “arrest them”! So Hillbots are really on board with the Police State! Not fooled by her at all, apparently.
Couldnt believe those comments either.
so much for unity at the convention.
I’m pretty sure most Sanders supporters realize that “party unity” coming from the Clinton supporters is equivalent to the calls for ‘bipartisanship’ from Republicans in the 90’s and DLC retreads ever since. As in screw your supporters and voters, do it our way and nothing else.
An updated, 20th anniversary edition of her 1996 book will be released
this summer, just in time for the convention, as It Takes a Pillage.
Ha though I think Nomi Prins owns the rights to that title but stealing an election is a pillage indeed.
Har!
Next: remastered editions of Grifting History and Harsh Choices.
Thanks for the link and it’s great that people had the presence of mind to stream it. That should be standard operation procedure henceforth (as Occupy and Black Lives Matter people know).
A great seed for a post-campaign news organization, maybe,.
Just going through the #nvdemconvention twitter feed was a lesson on how the oligarchy works. They brought in state troopers to guard the stage.
Let me tell ya, they ain’t seen nothing yet. If $hillary keeps up this election rigging Philly’s gonna be a riot. Booking ticket now.
“The Convention is not reconvening tomorrow, it was announced.”
Note the lack of agency.
When a meeting is closed, there are procedures for determing whether or if there will be another meeting. So this looks like another irregularity.
More links:
Clinton widens delegate lead at Nevada Democratic convention Reno Gazette-Journal (AP).
Chaos At Nevada Democratic Convention; DNC Leaders Flee Building As Sanders Supporters Demand Recount Real Clear Politics
The Latest: Nevada Democrats fight allegations of unfairness Charlotte Observer (this too is AP, but ends at 9:44PM, before the SHTF).
Nevada Democratic Convention: The Videos You Need to See Heavy
Judge tosses part of Sanders backers’ lawsuit against Nevada Democrats Las Vegas Sun
So far as I can tell, no violence. And the most effective landfill meeting we ever had was marked by a lot of booing.
Correct link for: Chaos At Nevada Democratic Convention; DNC Leaders Flee Building As Sanders Supporters Demand Recount
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/15/chaos_at_nevada_democratic_convention_dnc_leaders_flee_building_as_sanders_supporters_demand_recount.html
Thanks, fixed.
Politeness works well in one-on-one situations, but not so much in political dog-fights. Sometimes, the people in power need to be scared a little into doing the right thing. Hearing a room full of people booing you is pretty scary for anyone, and especially so if you got your job via popularity contest.
not just “political dog-fights”. in any political situation where the little people go up against wealth and power. without screaming, yelling, booing, making TPTB so uncomfortable they can’t stand it in whatever way will work, the little people achieve
nothing.
e.g. the albany antifracking movement followed cuomo around, showed up and every single appearance he made and screamed and yelled about his bad history. just one of many, many examples.
TPTB do not listen, they do not behave themselves in the considerate, civlized manner they say the little people should behave, they do not respond to constructive criticism, they stonewall, ignore, manipulate, lie, make secret deals, flout the rules, and so on. this is what goes down in every local and state government across the country.
no constructive change ever happens at the national level without the commitment and willingness to make big trouble–to risk everything, including life, of a very large mass of people. expecting anything else to “work” is dreaming.
Cripes between the bullshit rules that have hamstrung Sanders from the get go, even when the rules somehow advantage him (as in Clinton delegates not doing their jobs) the PTB have to make sure that is corrected.
I do have to wonder how many of those with their thumbs on the scale will make it to the National Convention in Clinton’s delegate hell.
Unfortunately for America, the multitude of fools who have been issued worthless ‘checks’ by the Clintons don’t get that for most of them if they don’t play their game the Clintons will lose and they will be better off.
The thing is if they really manage by shenanigans to choose someone who lost the popular vote then it follows that logically they are the less popular choice and thus the poorer choice to go up against Trump. If you want to win the sensible thing is to level the playing field and let the most popular man or woman win and go up against the other parties nominee because they are by definition whom more people prefer.
I think it’s unclear the people really prefer Sanders though (although of course he gets little media coverage – another unlevel playing field). I guess we’ll just have to see how Sanders does in the remaining states (and keep an eye on how much fraud is going on there).
Keep an eye…
I think, sadly, that once an election result is certified, it’s rare to un-do that.
Instead, it’s ‘Let’s fix the problem the next time…4 years later. The Future is always bright. A better tomorrow.’
For Sanders supporters, many think he’s a savior, and Mr. Sanders has to tell them he’s not, it’s Win-Now, and you fix the problems later. Open or closes primaries, fraud, etc will have to get better in the next election cycle.
There is no re-doing of anything.
Win now, meaning winning the remaining primaries, not overturning past primary/caucus resultls – that’s the reality.
And the problems of the nation are here, now. That’s also the reality….thus, more urgency to win now.
Just like ‘Impeachment’s on the table’…remember that one??…..
here’s the football……………………………………..SUCKERS, HA HA !!
It’s one of the reasons I actually think it would be easier to revamp a third party to get them on the ballot then it will be to takeover the Democratic Party.
Every 4 years, for at least 16 years I’ve heard how the Democratic Party is going to become more progressive next time with the next primary and each and every time it has failed, lather, rinse, and repeat.
Look, I’ll complain about the mysterious changing voter rolls in NY, but NOT the closed primary. Those were the rules. Clinton had an advantage with those rules, but that was how it was. And yes, the only way to change them is down the line. But the rules on the caucuses were your supporters don’t show up to the county meetings, you lose those delegates. Once again, perhaps unfair, but the way it is and should only be changed down the line. Funny how the rules that advantage Clinton remain, but the ones that might advantage Sanders get ignored or avoided illegally.
Sanders has had a massively uphill battle, and been disadvantaged not just by the rules but by the media and by a deeply partisan DNC. Do I think he would have this nomination without those added disadvantages – frankly yes. Do I honestly think that Clinton is the most popular candidate regardless of the vote count so far? No. And yes, my POV regarding all this is biased because I do believe that Sanders is the best possible candidate for America as a whole.
Much of the polling also supports my beliefs. And that includes the mysteriously wrong exit polling in some of the Democratic primaries so far. Then there are the shenanigans from the election processes in several states so far. Sadly, I’ve known our election system is badly broken before but this has convinced me that it is not just the remarkably unrepresentative two party system or the corrupt campaign finance process that our elected officials are unwilling to address. Both groups embrace the obvious disenfranchisement, and the inherent fraud that is possible in our balloting system. Reports that show the process like Nevada or the Illinois hearing make this abundantly clear.
Those are the rules in New York but the problem was not just New York’s closed primary, it was New York’s insanely early deadline—October 9, 2015, 193 days before the primary—by which to switch parties in order to vote in the closed primary. That effectively blocked a lot of the registered voters from switching parties in order to have some say in the Democratic primary (which is very probably that deadline’s intent). Rules are rules—and it wasn’t like someone could not find out about these deadlines earlier—but having a deadline that it is so early it has already passed by the time many people are likely to inquire about it seems substantively unfair, even if it’s “procedurally fair.”
I agree, but that was still a rule one could find out about. Being wiped from the voter rolls in the final weeks before the election after being a long term Democratic voter? Not so much. And it was amazing how this only seemed to be an issue for Democratic voters. Look it was largely in a district that was supposed to favor Sanders, although the wipe happened throughout the state. And then there is the mysterious difference between the exit polls and the final count.
There is plenty of NOT RULE BASED questions regarding the NY election that are not going to be answered because yet again the people with their thumbs on the scale are certifying elections that have serious questions.
Agree completely. Whatever argument can be made concerning the unfairness of the rules (such as the one I made) pales in comparison to the “irregularities” that occurred in the New York primary.
It’s still a contest of equally corrupt parties and noxious candidates. I still think Clinton pulls it off on political name recognition and the ability to be polite about her bigotry.
Barbara Boxer Meltdown Exposes Deep Divisions In Democratic Party
“I grew up in Brooklyn. I’m not afraid of bullies,” The California senator continued…
“We need civility in the Democratic Party. Civility.”
The supporters of the Vermont socialist were still angered that their charge had lost the Nevada caucus and were having none of it.
She then tried reverse psychology on the angry crowd.
“When you boo me you’re booing Bernie Sanders. Go ahead. Bernie is my friend. You want to boo Bernie, boo me. Go on, you’re booing Bernie. You’re booing Bernie,” she said.
As the boos rained down on Boxer, her tone became more acrimonious as she began to reprimand the malcontents.
A party divided? It appears very much so.
Or a nation disgusted at the cronyism of the status quo? After watching the clip above, it seems rather obvious.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-15/barbara-boxer-meltdown-exposes-deep-divisions-democratic-party?
I used to drink. Sometimes too heavily. Now when I recognize the brand label it induces dry heaves. Same with toxic candidates?
you could have saved a lot of words and said you think clinton will win because she’s polite. But she’s not and neither are her supporters.
that Vulture’s Vulture article is the most deeply disturbing thing I have seen.
That’s all they want, really? They are entitled to win in a risk-prone enterprise. No, they are the new improved Mob and the “cement overshoes” they use are a much fancier version of ruination.
They’re government guaranteed, ergo, not worthless.
MBS is guaranteed, but Fannie corporate bonds and stock are not. This is typical vulture fund BS.
Ah, thanks. One might almost imagine the insane complexity was purposeful.
the purpose was a guaranteed return on junk. of course, they would scorn that kind of expectation from the masses.
Not correct. The GSEs now have a guarantee from the government to maintain a positive net wroth.
There seems to be a whole new workaround to the ancient dictum, “Debts that cannot be repaid will not be repaid.”
Oh, there’s always been the Kneecaps workaround, the Removable Fingernails workaround, the Cement Shoes, the Shanghai Death of Ten Thousand Cuts, and others, but the only one that has ever worked reliably in the halls of the US Congress is DGLB (presenting the debtor with a photo of them in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.)
One of the pillars of every Congresscritter’s career is maintaining an impeccable appearance of integrity and rectitude. The other pillar is 6 hours a day of dialing for dollars, in exchange for promises.
But this hedge fund workaround clearly shows that the Federal government never broke the Mafia in America. Nope. They nationalized it.
Interesting little detail in all this, “revolving door” Eric Holder’s law firm, Covington & Burling, is “amongst the hedge fund mercenary groups”.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/05/13/blockbuster-story-how-hedge-funds-invest-heavily-in-washington-d-c-s-culture-of-corruption/
The item I find noticeably absent from all discussions of robotic automation and self-driving cars? Security. It’s been well established the computers on the cars we have now are fairly easy to hack, and I’ve seen nothing to indicate the manufacturers are making any concerted effort to address that. Yet the tech world is all agog about releasing onto highways vehicles without any kind of manual backup about which I’ve yet to see any kind of in-depth article about the security of same.
Am I the only one who finds this worrisome?
I think it is the same mentality Microsoft always used in putting out crap “upgrades” and letting the public debug while they made their pile of dough. Only this time, you can get killed “debugging”.
Not to worry. They’re working out the kinks in power brakes, ignition switches, and airbags now. They’ll get to computers, software and sophisticated sensors soon. In the mean time, “steer clear” of anyone with a can of black spray paint or a laser pen.
They’d have to straight jacket me into one of those things……..
No, you’re not alone, it seems to me the fatal flaw.
It is part if the integrated “privacy vs security” question that should be a public political debate resulting in transparent and enforceable legislation but has instead been privatized by opportunistic industry first movers. The “public goods” in these arrangements are now private toll booths so lucrative their possessors have been very nearly able to purchase the Govt they want: TPP etc. if passed and implemented would neuter resistance, we would have no legal choice, the population would simply be made to bear whatever cost.
There are in fact huge energy and environmental benefits to be reaped from these captured public goods, but if rolled out as crapified rent extraction tools, society gets all the cost, up to and including “accidental” death by coding error and copyright holders all the benefits.
Nothing to worry about auto-S-P-L-A-T cars. They are working out the problems inherent in software in the usual meticulous way, by lobbying congress and local governments to pass laws removing any liability on the part of the car mfgs for accidents as in, SPLAT! opps, used an int instead of a float – ouuh God that’s gross…oh well, there’s plenty more where they came from! It’s all goodness all around since auto-splat cars will reduce accidents by 80% of something (something very lucrative for pols but otherwise left ambiguous).
Nah, if robotic cars kill or maim significantly fewer people than human-driven vehicles do every year, then the American public will cheer the “amazing progress” these marvelous vehicles have wrought in our lives.
Far more worrisome is the question of who’s going to clean up these robot cars? It’s been brought up very delicately in the MSM that, inevitably, people are going to use these cars for sex. Even more than that, they’ll use them for a safe ride home from the local pub, throwing up as the need arises along the way. And people will drink more than ever if they know they don’t have to worry about getting home.
The above human activities call for some degree of cleaning up afterwards, probably best done with HazMat suits and live steam. This isn’t at all practical if the car is needed elsewhere immediately, right around the clock. Time spent cleaning stains off the upholstery doesn’t turn a profit.
Nobody cleans up during a party. They stagger away, leaving the mess to someone else, tomorrow. Without a human driver to turn around and yell, “What the hell is the matter with you?” we may as well install a roll of toilet paper in these cars. It’s going to be necessary.
So when Grandma’s robot car arrives Sunday AM to take her to church, it will arrive straight from taking home the very last of the all-Saturday-night revelers, who got delivered to their home in the rosy dawn of a new day, or delivered to their front lawn, or at least to the curb in front of their house, with no memory of what they did after 5 PM the previous day, during which time they grew increasingly uninhibited about propriety, sanitation, or any social norms. Whoopee!
I’m with Grandma — there’s no chance I’ll ride in such a car. Indeed, for the sake of all humankind, I might feel compelled to set it on fire. The judge will understand. It was a public health issue. Case dismissed.
So the emerging problem for these driverless car companies is, to coin a phrase, “What happens in a driverless car stays in a driverless car.” Ewww.
Perhaps a live steam automatic washdown needs to be built into every driverless car? Perhaps a large box of cleaning supplies and rubber gloves under the seat, and the doors won’t unlock until you clean that up, pal. If you’re not passed out. Perhaps automatic video of what you do back there gets posted to YouTube, should it transcend propriety.
Perhaps the back seat needs to be stainless steel halfway up the walls, a ceramic tile floor, and a drain in the middle of the room. That’s what we did for our childrens’ nursery, and we’ve never regretted it.
Foreign Policy on Brazil: file under rationalization. Surely the real story is the impeachment itself and not whether Rousseff is corrupt, or more accurately is merely under the suspicion of being corrupt (as even the story itself admits). As Brazilian Pepe Escobar has pointed out the impeachment takes away the votes of 54 million people and is part of the new hybrid war of delegitimization. Since the people impeaching her are also by all accounts far more corrupt that she is then this should be seen as a story of spin versus democracy.
Similarly the Washington led foreign policy establishment decides that Assad is corrupt and dictatorial and has to go and ignore that he was protecting large ethnic minorities from slaughter or that a respected international poll showed that a majority of Syrians preferred for him to stay. When it all goes wrong and hundreds of thousands die and thousands flee to Europe they then get their preferred media outlets–the NYT, WaPo, PBS Newshour (one of the worst)–to lie about what’s happening and pretend the whole thing is Assad’s fault. All of this is part of what that Dubya aide declared: “we are an empire now and empire’s make their own reality.” Orwell wrote a book about it some years earlier.
André Singer, a political science Professor at São Paulo University (and former press secretary of President Lula) who now writes for Folha de São Paulo wrote yesterday an excellent piece of analysis on the impeachment.
The link is in Portuguese, but a Google translation (with some ad hoc adaptions) of the more relevant parts reads like this:
Thnx for reply. Here’s Escobar’s column.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/13/dilma-out-brazilian-plutocracy-sets-54mn-votes-on-fire/
I have to think that this will only push the Brazilians ( and other south american countries ) into extracting themselves from the U.S. dollar completely, and dealing with Russia, China, Iran, India, and others exclusivey !! ………Just how much more shit are they going to eat served by New York, Washington D.C., along with the extra helpings of London and Brussels sauce ??
Dear Mr. Sanders; Please don’t worry about the nonsense of the present. You are the only person that isn’t turning to jello as potential crimes are revealed day after day. All you need to do is wait and run as an independent and we, the people, will know at least one honest politician exists, and that we can vote for you. We can’t “primary” because half the nation is independent now, and don’t get to participate in democracy, because lets face it, there isn’t any. This is a republic, and the D/R changed all the rules to favor themselves and to screw us out of everything we hold dear.
We’ve already done that vote for a crook thing, and an idiot, a pervert, a drug baron, and a traitor. Hell, we even voted for an actor that made one good movie that no one could remember, nor could he.
Give us a real choice, BECAUSE, We are not voting for either of your potential opponents under any circumstances.
Bernie’s looking like the only candidate who’s not a crook. Which is why the system is pulling out all the stops to undermine him, since they apparently lack the dirt to control him.
When there’s only one honest candidate, this candidate deserves the vote regardless of partisan affiliation or electoral platform. Crooks end up subverting the rule of law.
Looking? It’s looking like doom if he doesn’t become president. How far can the political system be distorted to serve a few at the top, at the expense of the peasants?
Pretty far it seems. A super predator finance monster on top of the heap eating everything underneath it, and no matter how much the monster gorges itself, it always ravenous for moar.
Reminds me of a super sized Jabba the Hutt.
Jabba the Hutt was one of the galaxy’s most powerful gangsters, with far-reaching influence in both politics and the criminal underworld
Some have stated the Global Warning doom is here regardless who is the next president.
Can the same be said of the other doom?
His ‘other’ name is Summers……..or is it Soros……?
…….hummm……..I can’t recall which is Jaba, ……and which is Palpatine !!
Please stop using george’s fables to describe this.
Have you looked into his politics, family and family foundation with huge, close ties to Rahm, and money, and banking, and investment?
End it already. He is, if anything, part of the empire, to use his own work.
Sanders has repeatedly stated his priority is that Trump not be president and stated again last week that Clinton will beat Trump. I agree we need an independent party but Sanders has made clear it will not be him.
Hmm, both Sanders and Warren march very closely to that tune.
If so, then, there is a split between Sanders and those who support him, but will never vote for Hillary.
The latter are the vocal majority here, though, that is not to say the less vocal think the same.
With these ardent followers, will we see the revolution devours its own children?
I’m not entirely able to understand that thought, but I am no longer as naive/stupid as I was for the first forty years of my voting life. And I’ve come to the conclusion that many people really are terrified by the unknown. That can include Sanders. Even harder is to admit that your choice is screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t. And that probably includes most of our population. Which is worse, a blow hard racist misogynist bully with little political machine experience who could become a puppet or screw up the machine because he doesn’t take orders well? Or a war mongering corrupt fully bought corporate tool who is sad we don’t have a four front war in the Middle East because regime change is good for her owners, not to mention itching for a war with Russia?
Me, I don’t see much difference, both are disastrous choices. But I have finally admitted that evil is evil and there is no real lesser.
hmmm… ok, the question that people need to ask themselves is what their own priorities are. Sanders has long and continues to be bound by convention, also he’s a senator and that’s just what they do. hillary people have nothing other than “not trump”, however, the people have numerous grievances even if the elite dems refuse to acknowledge them. hillary is not the shoe in you claim she is. Clinton will not beat Trump.
Right. Assuming Clinton is the Democratic party nominee and Sanders, in fact, supports her, I don’t think there is any inherent contradiction between Sanders, who is running in the Democratic party, doing so, and his supporters not doing so. If his support is in the nature of comity, certainly his supporters are not in the same position he is and they are not at all bound by that. If his support reflects a “lesser of two evils” position—which he could hold even if none of her positions were close to his—his supporters can reasonably differ as to whether they want to make a similar calculus or not. Quite clearly, many will not.
Thank you so much for the Bad Biology article. This needs to be read and repeated constantly. It strikes at the core of what is ailing humanity.
“Our great strength is precisely our ability to overcome competition. Why not design society such that this strength is expressed at every level?
Rather than pitting individuals against each other, society needs to stress mutual dependencies.”
What? No more Bruce Willis movies? No more MMA? NASCAR? Olympics? Wars of choice on faraway continents?
Mister Rogers is retired, and he was the only hero I ever knew of who didn’t take steroids or hit people.
The Jacobin article by Kilpatrick is excellent. Must read of the day IMO
It is indeed. Kilpatrick writes:
Following Sanders’s win a significant chunk of the punditocracy came to the conclusion, mostly by abusing the hell out of exit polls, that a vote for the Jewish socialist was actually a vote for white supremacy.
Unreal.
The cabal writes its story, and the facts that don’t comport are ignored….
And:
After decades of being told white workers would never support socialism because they’re racist, we’re now told that they support the socialist candidate because they are racist. Yes, this is where liberals are in the year 2016.
How did we get here? How did we get to the point at which universalist, social-democratic politics — the antithesis of Reagan’s welfare queen and the very set of policies we’ve long been told white workers would never support out of racist spite — have become the last gasp of white supremacy? Where a working-class program — that would disproportionately help women and people of color — is the new white flight?
It’s really a tale of two economic programs and two kinds of politics: Sanders versus the Democratic Party, represented by their standard-bearer, Hillary Clinton.
The Sanders program is a recognizably working-class one: higher minimum wage, free college for all, labor unionism, and a re-regulation of finance with steep taxes on the one percent. And his actual politics go far beyond that.
He preaches the necessity and righteousness of class war, calls out our oligarchs by name and — in the case of his Immokalee farmworkers advertisement — asks us all to question “who benefits from this exploitation?” This politics puts Sanders considerably to the left of every major Western social-democratic or labor party leader, short of Jeremy Corbyn. Howard Dean and Bill Bradley he is most certainly not.
The Clinton program — which is the kind of politics that’s defined the Democratic Party and American liberalism for decades — is also a class program. But to paraphrase Adolph Reed, it’s a politics that few would recognize as a working-class one.
==========================================================
It is a testament to modern manipulation techniques that all our problems are caused by poor white people. NOT having money doesn’t cause any problems whatsoever!!!!! And that the thing that can cure most problems (health care, college, etc.) that would involve higher taxes is the solution that MUST NOT be spoken of – – because that would hinder our meritorious, our noble, our most creative, diversity loving non-racist 0.01%ers…..they are such virtuous people – except just don’t take any of their hard, hard, hard earned money!!!
I think Yves linked to this, but again, because it’s so good:
Are we going to see Jake Tapper or someone like him ask Bernie to disavow the ‘white trash’ vote?
+1
Double ditto on how good the article is. I’ve been watching the Netflix Grace and Frankie about two women whose law partner husbands decide to get married to each other. Needless to say the funny show is impeccably liberal and sensitive and yet not above making redneck jokes. The notion that this sort of stereotyping contradicts their own theme probably didn’t even register.
A Few Notes on Burkean Conservatism The Archdruid Report
Now of course a good part of the confusion arises because the word “conservative” no longer means what it once meant—that is to say, a person who wants to conserve something. In today’s America, conservatives who actually want to conserve are as rare as liberals who actually want to liberate. The once-significant language of an earlier era has had the meaning sucked right out of it, the better to serve as camouflage for a kleptocratic feeding frenzy in which both establishment parties participate with equal abandon. Putting meaning back into the words can be a risky proposition, in turn, because so many Americans are used to waving them about as arbitrary noises linked to an assortment of vague emotions, the common currency of what passes for thought in so much of modern American life.
======================================================
One can NOT convince a repub that Obama has droned more people than Bush and slaughtered as many constitutional rights as well. It upsets too many believers of TV commercials, i.e., repubs can’t believe a dem is tougher (more war like) than a repub cause ALL their advertisements say dems are wimps, and dems won’t believe it either cause all their advertisements say repubs are the worst war mongers. Facts and logic can never defeat mass advertising….
I liked the idea of Burkean conservatism as the precautionary principle applied to politics very much.
Needless to day, today’s neoliberal spectrum has nothing to do with that. For example, in health care policy the precautionary principle would indicate single payer, because it’s simple, rugged, and proven in a polity similar to our own on this continent. But n-o-o-o-o-o. We get ObamaCare, a massive experiment (and on a helpless population, too).
It’s apparent many people have lost the ability to use free will in thinking critically about the things that affect them so importantly……and instead rely solely on manufactured hype/propaganda….
……..engaging in the emotions of the ‘animal brain’, as it were….
In DC, there must be a whole swarm of Clinton acolytes waiting in the wings for appointed posts once she wins the presidency.
With the behavior, there is a really good chance they are going to be disappointed.
Every time a Clinton operative cheats, Trump gets another supporter-
Re: New Chip Credit Cards. From the merchants perspective there is evil lurking in how the fees and percentage per transaction are manipulated but it is even worse than that. The new terminals take a paper roll that is much smaller than the old roll but the price to the merchant is the same. Then the printer prints out longer receipts that use more paper. Then the “batch out” reports at the end of the day are longer and use more paper. Then every two or three weeks a “needless” report is printed out by the processing company on your terminal to use even more paper. Our receipts paper costs are now twice as high as they were on the old terminals. They are squeezing everything!!!!!!!!!
saw a story lt week that said considering the sluggishness of chip cards, wallets are superior and of couse it dawned on me why i had been given a debit card that slowed the transaction down, to promote wallets. My lg441g doesn’t do wallets.
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/in-the-race-to-pay-mobile-wallets-outpace-chip-cards/
Good Jacobin article “Burying the White Working Class.” I just started reading ” Listen, Liberal” by Thomas Frank and this ties in nicely with his thoery of professional technocrats taking over the Democratic Party and then waging war against workers or just ignoring them all together. Even more disturbing was this article by Rick Pearlstein, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/04/chicago-public-schools-charters-closings-emanuel/
The technocrat/professional class are infiltrating and evcerating every pubic entity that is left and are well on their way to creating a dystopian nightmare that I’m afraid we can never recover from. This is what scares the shit out of me if the Hills were to be elected!
As a Chicago resident, I am still shocked that Rahm was reelected and now we have his best bud Rauner as governor. I don’t know how much longer I can live in this State. I wouldn’t be surprised if Illinois becomes purple state come November’s election.
I support Bernie, and it is looking unlikely he will win the nomination(although sometimes miracles happen), but it would be so important for his progressive movement to continue. After a 30 year absence, we need a voice for the working class people of this country. Thank you for giving me this space of likeminded individuals to come to for my daily dose of sanity in this increasingly insane world we live in! End of rant.
August West: I happen to have a friend visiting Chicago who lives in Queens, NY, although educated here in Chicago, as am I. The visit is a pretext for a gathering of the clan: Theme of our dinner discussions: Chicago is a city in decline, and it is the bellwether of what a Hillary Clinton administration will be like, much as it is a reflection of the venality of the Obama administration. (Penny Pritzker?) The Democrats are so out of touch that they have no plan for halting the decline of Chicago, other than encouraging policies that are causing a massive flight of the black population. Then we build some expensive high-rises in the South Loop. Oh, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will save us all. But let’s not touch the TIF slush funds or the odious blob of (all) charter schools sucking away the life of the school system. Meanwhile, the Republicans elites (Rauner) have devolved in nihilists who refuse to govern.
Expand that to the nation itself, and you have Hillary “Incremental” Clinton’s plan. More misuse of power. Another museum on the Mall? Maybe a museum of the Glorious War for the Middle East, still going on.
I know, Rahm is acting as if his life depended upon this Lucas Museum being built!! He must owe the investors a heavy favor. The thing is all of them are friends and they have this neoliberal cabal that is controlling the city……and the country. Red and Blue is but a mere distraction to the mopes. To quote Perlstein from his Jacobin article,
“A journalist once wrote of the emergent New Right of the 1970s, “any diagram of its organization looks like an octopus trying to shake hands with itself.” So it is with the conspirators at hand.”
And this is who sits on the board of the Chicago Public Education Fund, to quote from the same piece….
“Its board includes: Kenneth Griffith, a billionaire hedge fund manager and donor to conservative causes; Helen Zell, wife of billionaire real estate mogul and Chicago Tribune owner Sam Zell; the African-American investment firm president Mellody Hobson, who is married to director George Lucas; Anthony Miller, cofounder with Barack Obama’s best friend and campaign finance chairman Marty Nesbitt of a firm specializing in the acquisition of “companies that are highly regulated, where we think the government and the public will need to leverage private capital to address social problems”; US commerce secretary Penny Pritzker, heiress of the ancient and honorable Chicago family whose scion, Abe Pritzker, famously died a billionaire but his lawyers told the government he had a taxable estate of about $10,000; and Bobby Mehta, CEO of the sketchy credit-reporting bureau Transunion, previously controlled by Pritzker.
All the usual suspects are accounted for….and lastly
“But the donation in fact flows the other way. Education technology is an $8 billion industry in America. One of its largest costs is software development; one of the largest costs of software development is software user testing; free child labor, courtesy of the Chicago Public Schools, with parents footing the bill (tax dollars pay for the products when the companies sell them back to the CPS), is a pretty neat way to cover the cost. And, wouldn’t you know it, a major investor in such education technology happens to be a member of the Chicago school board.”
These people are so busy helping themselves to tax payer dollars(and then blaming teachers, who don’t get social security here in Illinois) how would they have time to govern? I could go on and on. This cabal of elite professionals are straight outta Shock Doctrine and the Chicago school. Yet, nobody I know, knows what a Neoliberal is.
People know what “crooks” are. “Neoliberal” is just a nice word for fraud or grifter. Obama hid his Wall Street connections as much as possible in 20th for this simple reason.
I had a comment that went into the black whole of moderation,but the point I wanted to make in reply to DJG is that they all know each other and there is,as we all know to well, a lot of back scratching going on. Blue and Red is but a mere distraction for the majority of unaware of voters. From Pearlstein’s Jacobin article, which is discussing the board of the Chicago Public Education Fund(in case of TLDR)
“board includes: Kenneth Griffith, a billionaire hedge fund manager and donor to conservative causes; Helen Zell, wife of billionaire real estate mogul and Chicago Tribune owner Sam Zell; the African-American investment firm president Mellody Hobson, who is married to director George Lucas; Anthony Miller, cofounder with Barack Obama’s best friend and campaign finance chairman Marty Nesbitt of a firm specializing in the acquisition of “companies that are highly regulated, where we think the government and the public will need to leverage private capital to address social problems”; US commerce secretary Penny Pritzker, heiress of the ancient and honorable Chicago family whose scion, Abe Pritzker, famously died a billionaire but his lawyers told the government he had a taxable estate of about $10,000; and Bobby Mehta, CEO of the sketchy credit-reporting bureau Transunion, previously controlled by Pritzker.”
The usual suspects are accounted for….and then this,
“But the donation in fact flows the other way. Education technology is an $8 billion industry in America. One of its largest costs is software development; one of the largest costs of software development is software user testing; free child labor, courtesy of the Chicago Public Schools, with parents footing the bill (tax dollars pay for the products when the companies sell them back to the CPS), is a pretty neat way to cover the cost. And, wouldn’t you know it, a major investor in such education technology happens to be a member of the Chicago school board.”
“The reports frame their activities as the perfect admixture of idealism and commerce, squaring the circle between Milton Friedman and Mahatma Gandhi. That’s the most remarkable thing about all of this. They think of it as charity. As they like to call it, the “new civil rights movement.” Which brings us to Jonah Edelman.”
Perhaps this is why Rahm is acting as if his life depended on this Lucas Museum. He owes a favor to his buddies.
Oops. Usually when my comments go into mod I never see them again. Sorry for the redundancy. :-/
I agree.
And it seems the whole subtext is that poor people are poor because they deserve to be poor.
These technocrats “We work so hard for these folks, but they are just so lazy and do so many drugs” that is why we don’t succeed at reducing poverty!!! (free college would NEVER work!!!!) – – – – I don’t know if they say that the poor deserve what they get because it is part of the conspiracy to imply, insinuate, and credit the poor existing because !!!Meritocracy!!! and that these people are poor because they can’t measure up!!!
OR because they are too obtuse to understand that the modern institutions are captured by the richest and most venal who want ALL the Money, and there is nothing else for anybody else…
From comments on a ‘Venezuela Apocalypse’ thread on another site
As Mark Weisbrot (who knows the country well) as said again and again what Maduro has to do is scrap exchange controls and introduce a floating exchange rate. Then the situation will be in automatic recovery mode (as it was in the past during the brief period when Chavez allowed the currency to float).
But the orthodox left still conserves remnants of a gold standard mentality, does not like an open BoP financial account and believes currency sovereigns can “run out of money”. This very same mindset (minus the exchange rate controls) also paved the way for the demise of the austerity believer Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. A MMT approach is urgently needed in order to save the left from near extinction and political oblivion in South America.
Agreed; Venezuela’s misaligned multiple exchange rates are a self-imposed disaster.
Do you think if they get rid of exchange controls and let if float, those with money (good like gold) won’t come in and buy up local souls cheaply?
yep, man the stockade, defend every gap
I’m shocked- shocked I say, that a gold standard like system isn’t working.
I’ve known a few people who worked for NGO’s in Argentina. They were all paid in USD, via american bank accounts.
That’s aid these days?
Where’s the black market? That’s a good place to start.
They are completely at the mercy of US banks, and therefore US monetary policy. They are not a monetary sovereign.
They could be, but that would probably require troops.
Jim Haygood
May 15, 2016 at 2:03 pm
My cat is very frisky and is always grabbing me with her claws and biting me – I’m gonna make her read that article, than we’re getting her a passport, and I’m telling her its off to Venezuela if she doesn’t start behaving…
What happens when a candidate, Bernie Sanders, doesn’t spend time on a cheesy version of theological virtue (Hope):
>>In the middle of his rally in North Dakota, Sanders asked what was the truth? A supporter shouted out, “You.” Sanders said, “No. That is exactly not the truth. The truth is you, not me. If there is any person here, any person here that thinks I’m coming to you as some kind of savior, that I’m going to do it all — all myself, you’re wrong. No president, not Bernie Sanders or anybody else, can do it alone. We don’t need a savior. We need a political movement.”
>>
As the Buddha said long ago, no human being can save another. Each of us must have “agency,” which is the postmodernspeak word for responsibility, meaning answering for ones own actions. Bernie has entered the moral territory of Albert Camus, and un-get-around-able thinker. Yes, it is time to end the infantilism. No, we don’t want a grandma president, making cookies and Ukrainian stews. No, we don’t want a condottiere to make America great again. Yes, a citizen must participate.
I was there. Big applause line, btw.
When each of us has agency, when we don’t need a savior, when that is the case, then, we all are in the moral territory of Albert Camus.
That is to say, no one is more exceptional than each of you.
You are the Buddha. You are Albert Camus.
And if Sanders supporters don’t realize they are all Albert Camuses, it risks becoming a religion.
You are the one.
If not you, there is no one else.
‘we don’t want a grandma president, making cookies’
Hillary swore off baking cookies in 1992.
Joking about this serious matter could bring adverse consequences:
why…we have an assistant sec.of state to do that……
….”Hey”………”Hey You”, …..”You Ukrainians……..want some more of these cookies………..Muammar didn’t really like them very much……..”
In response to a question about the small fortune she “made” in cattle futures speculation, IIRC.
Me. We.
Software security…neural implant.
How widespread are those devices? How many people have them?
What kind of behavior? How will bad guys use them?
‘The Terminal Man’
My youngest sister had subcutaneous ‘devices’ implanted behind her ears to restore her hearing. The outer ‘microphones’ sit on her skin via magnetic devices. The implants are mini computers that stimulate her cochlea (inner ear.) She has been going to the docs every week now for ‘tweaking’ sessions to optimize the result. Her original experience of this device was that, in her words, “Everyone sounds like Mickey Mouse!” She went from less than 5% hearing to 80% hearing.
Maybe Phil Dick would have thought of literal subliminal messaging direst to ones’ brain. He would not have been a fan. The Corp will only see dollar signs and political control modularities. Even such machines as these could be hacked? The Borg is self regulating it seems.
True, the potential for technology is amazing, and while we hear of little other than invasions into people’s privacy for control and profit, there are probably many many more instances of really useful innovations. Glad to hear your sisters at 80% (wow, from 5%).
Back to usual self, I’m probably at about 80% now and am thinking of going down to 5%. I wonder if it’s easier in that direction.
my sis as well
From Bad Biology Killing the Economy:
Don’t they do that in school as well?
“You are an F student and everyone knows. You will be axed from this class.”
The economy and the All Nature Conquering Army needs geniuses, and the intellectually unfit must be left behind.
Creating a synthetic human genome.
Here we go again. We don’t just stop at understanding nature scientifically. We have to change it, based on our ‘best explanation today.’
Do nuclear scientists regret investigating the atomic nucleus over 100 years ago?
Well, how could they have foreseen atomic bombs?
OK, fool me once.
Are we going to be fooled twice, with today’s best explanation again?
I really don’t know how anyone could be fooled again. We have a humongous body of sci-fi works on the subject.
Hillary a cokehead? It’s a doubtful claim, though Bill’s brother Roger was a coke dealer, and Hillary famously threatened a couple of doctors that they’d never work again if they talked about Bill’s cocaine-related emergency hospital admission.
Hard to tell in Sally Miller’s salacious narrative how much is factual vs. possibly exaggerated for revenge.
But the basic outlines are consistent with accounts from other ex-Clinton women.
She is our plan B to stop Trump
How much do we want to know about her?
It seems Independents are waiting for the FBI to legitimize what many already suspect – that awful smell of rotting flesh really is coming from HRC.
But situations/confrontations such as that which happened in Nevada might provide sufficient motivation regardless of formal investigation. As terrible as is sounds, eventually Trump becomes plan A to stop the Clinton juggernaut.
:-) MLTPB: Always a novel perspective!
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Carlyle’s Rubenstein Keynotes SCALT Conference
Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein spoke from Las Vegas, the city of high rollers, last week. TopNews reported:
In his opening remarks, David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group said that the it is important for the hedge fund industry and private-equity companies to explain what they do good to the community.
Private equity underwriters enjoyed an extra decade of preferred taxation via carried interest. This came courtesy of both Red and Blue political parties.
The conference was attended by celebrity guests Will Smith and Kobe Bryant, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers as well as a popular rock band, the Killers.
How grateful are the greed and leverage boys?
There is a general feeling in the industry that the government is to blame for the troubles of the industry.
Skybridge Capital promoted their annual Alternatives Conference with:
The SALT 2016 Conference will take place from Tuesday, May 10th – Friday, May 13th at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference is committed to facilitating balanced discussions and debates on macro-economic trends, geo-political events and alternative investment opportunities for the year ahead. With over 1,800 thought leaders, public policy officials, business professionals, investors and money managers from over 42 countries and 6 continents, the SALT Conference provides an unmatched opportunity for attendees from around the world to connect with global leaders and network with industry peers.
Past featured speakers have included President George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton, President Nicholas Sarkozy, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prime Minister George Papandreou, Vice President Al Gore, Governor Mitt Romney, General David Petraeus, General Colin Powell, the Honorable Gordon Brown, Leon Panetta, Timothy Geithner, T. Boone Pickens, Sam Zell, Jamie Dinan, Dan Loeb, John Paulson, Paul Singer, David Tepper, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Magic Johnson and Francis Ford Coppola.
Note the members of both of America’s corrupt political parties. Many of the political figures listed above have or held a private equity job as managing director or special advisor. They count on insider access for information that will steer their next profitgasm adventure.
It’s odd that Mr. Rubenstein would be a keynote speaker given Carlyle’s abysmal performance in the hedge fund arena. Investors have been fleeing from a number of Carlyle Group affiliated hedge funds.
Our hedge fund partnerships had outstanding redemption requests for $3.1 billion in the aggregate as of the beginning of the first quarter of 2016.
In the 1920’s that would be known as a bank run. Before the SCALT crew can convince the wider community of their “good work”, they need to show results to investors. The conference symbolically closed on Friday the 13th in Sin City. Enough said.
http://peureport.blogspot.com/2016/05/carlyles-rubenstein-keynotes-scalt.html
Rumor has it a sighting of the Whore of Babylon riding the seven-headed Beast recorded ?What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
> Ethereum, a Virtual Currency, Enables Transactions That Rival Bitcoin’s NYT. I’d be interested to hear what our banking wonks have to say about smart contracts.
I’m not a banking wonk, but from what I’ve read, the people behind this are incredibly sketchy and the technology seems to be mostly vaporware. So in that sense, it is sort of like bitcoin…
I’m seeing open source software and reasonable documentation. Those are good signs.
Brainjacking the future of…
It appears the digital war has begun.
#OperationIcarus is being conducted by Anonymous and they have declared a 30 day war against the global banking cartel.
In the US, they have shut down Chase’s ATM network and have caused some double charging on Chase’s credit cards!
Whoopie! Let the games begin. I’m celebrating at my house upon hearing this news.
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2016/05/shoot-first-ask-questions-later.html
The first verified wolverine spotted in North Dakota in nearly 150 years was shot and killed by a rancher last month.
The rancher said the animal had been harassing livestock when he shot it, which would make it a legal kill, according to the Helena Independent Record.
The rancher “came out to a calving pasture and the cows had surrounded the wolverine and he felt it was a threat,” state furbearer biologist Stephanie Tucker told the newspaper.
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How much is a cow worth?
How much is a species worth?
Fortunately, I will be long gone by the time we have killed off all the species we can kill and are left with only the species we can’t kill (cockroaches, rats, yersinia pestis) – I assume at some point in the future your meat choices will be rat or soylent green…
re: ‘How Bad Biology is Killing the Economy’
The Enron dog-eat-dog human capital strategy was also the one used at Lehmans – you only got promoted if you were willing to knife your workmates to get to the top – and we know how that all ended..
re: ‘How Bad Biology is Killing the Economy’
given that Eukaryotes have a huge amount of ‘junk’ DNA should hint that evolution is more than simple efficiency & optimization as economists view the world.. economists’ view of world more closely matches dynamics bacteria & phages…
California primary for Vote By Mail and No Party Preference….
Vote by Mail in California for No Party Preference voters in California is very confusing. There are multiple applications, for instance, at both the county and state level. Which one is the correct one to use?
http://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/vote-by-mail/pdf/vote-by-mail-application.pdf
https://www.lavote.net/home/voting-elections/voting-options/crossover-voting
Approximately 4,000,000 registered voters in California are NPP. That’s a lot of voters and the information is just not that easy to find.
Sacramento Bee:
There’s been a bit of confusion in our house regarding registrations. (I’ll leave out details) We found out through our county registrar when checking the status of our registrations that we were required to file an application. This is our first Vote by Mail primary as past elections were done in person.
There’s just something off about this primary…
things we don’t know about our criminal justice system:
how many people have a criminal record
how many people have served time in prison or jail
how many children are on some type of supervision or probation.
how many juvenile offenders graduate to become adult offenders
how often people reoffend after being released from prison
how many shootings there are in America
how many police are investigated or prosecuted for misconduct
how many people in America own guns
how often police stop pedestrians or motorists
how many incidents of domestic violence are reported to police
what percentage of those eligible for parole are granted release from prison
how many corrections officers are disciplined or prosecuted for abusing prisoners
how many criminal cases are referred to prosecutors and how they decide which to pursue
The White House trumpeted the progress of its Police Data Initiative. The nearly one-year-old project prods local cops to publish data …. The results were underwhelming. Of nearly 18,000 police agencies… just 53 had signed on to the effort. (in the end only) eight released data on officer-involved shootings, and six published information on their officers’ use of force.