Cop Finds Stray Puppy And Won’t Leave Her Side Until He Knows She’s Safe Yahoo (Pat S)
Swarm of bees follows car for 2 days to rescue queen trapped in back Treehugger (resilc)
Badass Women Sci-Fi Writers Are The Real Heroines We Need Huffington Post (Pat S)
Nature’s Answer to Climate Risk Project Syndicate (David L)
Let Them Drown Naomi Klein London Review of Books
Dr Henry Heimlich uses Heimlich manoeuvre for first time at 96 Guardian (Chuck L)
U.S. Cellphone Study Fans Cancer Worries Wall Street Journal
The Rogue Immune Cells That Wreck the Brain MIT Technology Review (David L)
Could Alzheimer’s Stem From Infections? It Makes Sense, Experts Say New York Times (David L)
Abe’s grim warning about global economy highlights G7 divisions Financial Times
Malaysia’s 1MDB Web And The 143-Year-Old Swiss Bank It Ensnared Bloomberg
Operation Condor: Former Argentine junta leader jailed BBC
Still Selling Neoliberal Unicorns: The US Applauds the Coup in Brazil, Calls It Democracy Nation
Brazil: Coup or Fiasco? Immanuel Wallerstein
Ukraine/Russia
Ukraine tries ‘you invaded us’ debt defence Financial Times
Syraqistan
Israeli Ex-Officers Issue Peace Plan, Condemn Gov’t Inaction ABC (Judy B)
US Spec Ops Troops on Front Line in Syria with Leftist Kurdish Insignia: AFP Juan Cole (resilc)
“How Many Villages Do They Have To Massacre Before They Become Bad Guys?” Moon of Alabama (Wat)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Facebook and Google Said To Be Leading Facial Recognition Law Change Fortune
How ‘big data’ analysts are counting on your vote Financial Times (David L)
Less than 10% of Germany’s SIGINT Spying Targets Terrorist Marcy Wheeler
Imperial Collapse Watch
The Coming Drone Blowback Foreign Policy in Focus (resilc)
Trade Traitors
US trade rep threatens Colombia’s peace process over legal plan to offer cheap leukemia meds Boing Boing (resilc)
Emails Show TPP ‘Collusion’ Between Big Banks & Obama Administration Common Dreams (Judy B)
Clinton E-mail Tar Baby
Clinton’s E-Mail Shenanigans Sure Don’t Look Like an Honest Mistake Bloomberg (furzy)
Hillary’s ‘classified’ smokescreen hides real crime: Column USA Today (Wat)
A Very Clinton E-Mail Scandal New Yorker. If you harbored any doubt that the New Yorker was in the tank for Hillary…
Game Over: EmailGate Just Crippled the Clinton Express New York Observer (martha r, Pat S)
E-mail – Waiting for the FBI and DoJ. Sic Semper Tyrannis
Do I Really Need to Worry About Hillary’s Emails? Yes. She Will Be Indicted. (Full Form) Informed Vote. From March. Parses all the Clinton excuses.
Travelgate to Furnituregate: a guide to the Clinton scandals of the 90s Guardian (resilc)
2016. Resilc: “North Carolina to Vermont on I-95. 37 BERNIE! bumperstickers. 1 Trump, 1 Hlilary.”
Trump Says No Debate After Sanders Says Networks Interested Bloomberg (furzy)
Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders Tavis Smiley (Kevin C)
Letter Sanders campaign’s lawyers sent to DNC today challenging appointment of platform committee cochairs Dannel Malloy and Barney Frank MSNBC (martha r). Lambert: “See especially the para beginning “In a March interview…””
A pay-to-play pick for the Democratic Party platform committee Southern Studies
Clinton scrambles to salvage California Politco. Lambert: Last para has an amazing quote from a Clinton donor.”
Hillary Clinton: The Neocon in Democrat’s Clothing TruthOut (resilc)
Why the Left will divorce Hillary and the new Democratic Party Fabius Maximus
Mainstream Media Sacrifices Debbie Wasserman Schultz to Appease Sanders Supporters New York Observer (Pat S)
THE CHALLENGES FACING HILLARY CLINTON New Yorker. Lambert: “The conventional wisdom, i.e., reversion to the mean”
Harvard Analyst Accuses Clintons Of Monumental Charity Fraud Your News Wire (martha r)
Green Party’s Jill Stein on the Feminist Case Against Hillary Clinton Rolling Stone
Bill Clinton Gets Into 30-Minute Debate With A 24-Year-Old Bernie Fan BuzzFeed. Lambert stresses how astonishing this is. Clinton could not persuade this voter on the merits yet wouldn’t give up. One of the best studies I’ve seen of top salesmen is that they qualify their prospects and don’t waste time on ones that are a poor fit for their company’s wares. Bill refuses to get that people now see through the Clinton “product” and the part of the population for whom they offer good policies is way way smaller than the inhabitants of their bubble want to believe.
Trump Raised $6 Million in 1st Joint Fundraiser With RNC: WSJ Bloomberg
Clashes at Trump San Diego rally BBC
Trump to Beef Up Media Team as Political Pros Gain Influence Bloomberg (furzy)
Naomi Klein Explains How the Rise of Trump and Sanders Proves She Was Right All Along Vice (resilc)
Women at abortion clinics sent GPS-activated anti-abortion ads Business Insider (furzy)
There’s no substitute for a substitute Steve Waldman. On San Francisco housing market.
Fed
Fed Chief Janet Yellen Sees Rate Hike Coming Soon Wall Street Journal. Bye bye Dems in the White House.
The long twilight of the big oil companies Financial Times (David L)
Three US companies are hoarding the most cash Business Insider (furzy)
Equity fund outflows pass $100bn in 2016 Financial Times
Class Warfare
Rich people don’t move when their taxes go up / Boing Boing (resilc)
Federal Reserve Admits that Fed Policy Is Increasing Inequality George Washington
Wells Fargo Sponsorship of Black Lives Matter Panel Draws Scorn Intercept (martha r)
Students With Nowhere to Stay: Homelessness on College Campuses Truthout (furzy)
The Catholic Cure for Poverty Jacobin (Chuck L)
Antidote du jour (furzy):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
168 comments
Comments are closed.
From Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker puff piece on the email scandal:
So, officials who intentionally disregard laws and regulations concerning the storage, preservation and security of their work product, which belongs to the taxpayers, are responding `in kind’ to the proliferation of lawful FOIA requests? Glad to know where The New Yorker stands on the matter.
I expect that efforts to repeal FOIA will occur soon, and will probably be done in stealth, the way such things are accomplished now. FOIA, after all, is a throwback to the halcyon days of democratic control over government, and therefore utterly contrary to the oligarchical rule we are increasingly subject to. If Clinton is elected, FOIA is dead.
Surely 0zero can take care of this with an executive order before he’s escorted out the back door next January.
Stroke of a pen, baby! :-)
They don’t need to repeal FOIA. When I counseled newspapers on access to public documents, I called FOIA, the Freedom From Information Act. There are so many incomprehensible exemptions and delays built into the system. I am amazed when people actually get any useful information from the Feds.
Had Hillary not been publicly caught using a private server, it might have become the blueprint for future high-level government employees. The public has been brainwashed for years that it has no interest or need to know what is going on with government officials and there is little outside pressure for accountability. There is bipartisan support for secrecy and lack of transparency, covering up embarrassing and potentially criminal activity. Obama has been characterized by many journalists as the least transparent President in history. The Government wants to know everything we are doing, but lets us know little about what it is up to. Totally backwards in a healthy democracy–which we are not.
Andrew Bacevich recently wrote a great retort to the government’s refusal to release the Saudi’s involvement in the 9/11 report: “Yet implicit in this dispute is an issue of even greater moment: Who ultimately exercises jurisdiction over truth? Does it fall within the exclusive province of the state? Or do judgments about truth rightfully belong to the people? On anything that touches national security — an infinitely elastic concept — the state has long since staked out its position: Views expressed by government authorities are authoritative.”
ScottW
May 28, 2016 at 10:49 am
Nice analysis. And I agree completely – I don’t think the average person understands the time, money, and KNOWLEDGE (you have to know WHAT to ask for) to undertake a FOIA request
With regard to your Bacevich quote – I think of it this way: Voters are yammered at to elect experienced and qualified leaders. Now Hillary voted for Iraq and than was in the highest reaches of the US government. The policies she advocates and the outcomes she must be responsible for have to be judged in the context of facts. At the time of the Iraq vote, maybe she didn’t know about Saudi involvement (heck, I don’t really know because the government that I help fund won’t tell me!) – but it is time to know. If Saudi’s were substantively involved, our deep state state department has been wrong, wrong, wrong going on at least 30 years (more likely 70), and we need to elect a government (senators, representatives besides the president) that doesn’t believe in injecting itself throughout the world, because the US government has proven it can’t distinguish between allies and enemies…
Even the addresses of zombie houses have been deemed too `dangerous’ to release to the local paper by a NY town in turning down the FOIA request. Because criminals will never notice the uncut grass, collapsed roofs and mold.
I bet they’re more worried about squatters. Usufruct = heresy.
Judgments about truth belong to the people.
Newly created fiat money as well.
I think the writer needs to flesh out what he feels the boundaries of `in kind’ are, as the term implies mutually proportional (btw, the boundaries include the quaint concept of ethics).
Follow up on yesterdays link showing Trump nervous about debating Sanders:
“During 0:24, just after he says the word, “… debate…”, Bernie pulls in his lower lip. This is known as “Lower Lip Anticipation” or a “Lower Lip Retraction”. It’s similar to the “Tongue in Cheek” display – in that it signals an emotional tone of “I Just Won” or “I Gotcha”. These strong feelings of excitation-anticipation are indicative how Bernie Sanders feels he will perform in a debate with Donald Trump.”
http://www.bodylanguagesuccess.com/2016/05/nonverbal-communication-analysis-no_27.html
Trump & H Clinton: 2 right-wingers both broke their promise to debate Sanders, both scared to debate Sanders.
He may be scared.
Or he is playing 11 dimensional chess.
My feeling is Trump declining the Sanders debate shows that he is now listening to the GOP professionals who have come aboard and who: A) know that Sanders would demolish Trump in the debate; B) fear the political power of Sanders’ progressive ideas and want to avoid even discussing them, never mind getting half the country to tune in for a progressive primer; and C) have come to understand that Sanders would be a more formidable opponent for Trump than Clinton. The old Trump would have jumped at this opportunity but now Trump is taking more instructions (and money) from the GOP Establishment. There is significant danger, IMO, that Trump could undermine his appeal as an anti-establishmentarian if this goes much further.
Right, Trump is also going to soften up on HIllary in many ways. His insults will be nasty as usual, but they will be more and more shallow. He wants to run by the Repulican play book now and that means some things (mutual interests) must remain opaque such as any depth in finance or FP blunders as in Syria. I agree with your point that this represents a danger in that it may undermine Trump’s appeal.
I also think Trump himself is somewhat flattered that he is now being courted to “do mainstream.”
This exactly. It shows that he is curving back into the GOP. I was hoping he’d be better than a Reagan show puppet.
I think this was a strategic mistake to begin with though because the base of the GOP can’t stand a waffler(I’ll do it, no I won’t,wait okay maybe, no definitely not) and he just alienated a portion of Sander’s base, which in a close race he may need.
I guess I had the naive hope that if Donald encountered Bernie we could hear him discuss left-wing issues. I guess this has officially shut the door on any consideration of voting for Trump. It’s Bernie or Stein now.
Ethically bankrupt candidates *SHOULD* fear debating leaders of substance who represent the true popular will.
Oligarchs, above all, are cowards who hate doing their own work. Not surprised.
I am thinking that this was the one chance Trump had to demolish all pre-conceived notions and to destroy conventional wisdom.
I would have Trump say, “I am an American before I am a republican” and I would have Trump say 50-90% (if he agrees 100%, why have a repub nominee) of the time after Bernie speaks, “I agree, mostly agree, or agree in part” with Bernie and let Bernie do most of the talking – after all, Trump has the repub nomination, and Bernie would be a more effective shiv into Hillary than Trump could ever be…
Trump has proven that the republican establishment is out of touch and extremely unpopular – with REPUBLICANS. But now he seems to think he has to curry favor with them and “conventionality” is the way to proceed.
Will Trump be surprised when he does no better than Romney when he runs like Romney?
I think Trump is sharp enough to know the best judo movement now is to take advantage of someone else’s chi (or energy) and let Hillary exhaust herself fending off attacks coming from inside her party now.
He will then move in later to do the easy work.
It looks like he would much rather run against Clinton, and lending credibility to Bernie could undercut that. Also, he was sandbagged by a talk show host and played the moment. He loses nothing with those who will vote for him by not debating. Bernie loses nothing with his people by no one willing to debate. Clinton is the only loser.
I disagree. In a close race, his ideal situation is poaching Bernie supporters from Hillary and I think this accomplished the opposite.
He probably convinced a few more people to stay home and with a less than ideal electoral map, that isn’t good.
Maybe, but against Hillary it won’t be a close race. It’ll be a blowout. I’m thinking that Trump’s main objective at this point is making sure that he’s not running against Bernie. And that’s pretty fair considering that he has no obligation to contribute to his own downfall.
I’m not convinced it is going to be a blowout. I think his and her negatives are both high enough that both of them are going to have parts of the Democratic and Republican base that will essentially vote against them more than for them.
I think either way he LOST and appears weak to the GOP base by waffling back and forth on his willingness to debate Bernie. He also loses his high ground position in the unfairness of the DNC when he himself essentially says I’m only going to debate the DNC appointed candidate.
This is Hillary we’re talking about. Put Satan himself next to Hillary and even Satan starts looking kind of acceptable. Hillary may appeal to a few tribalist old Democrats for whatever reason, but the broader public will never accept her.
As for Trump… He’s not Hillary. That’s enough.
I think you are going to be surprised how many people feel the exactly the same about Trump, particularly minorities.
The broader and multicultural diverse nation we live in isn’t going to embrace Trump either.
This is going to be a Presidential election where people are voting against a candidate, rather than for one.
I think the assumption that minorities will flee Trump misunderstands many things, including racism. I have met minority Trump voters, and read about more online. Some of them are voting along change lines. A lot seem quite rational. Small business owners, for example, are often recent immigrants and PoC, and they get screwed by neoliberal/global corporate control. They perceive Trump as their only viable shot at getting change.
It’s also true that absolutely anybody can be racist. Different racial and ethnic groups can be racist against one another. People of the same group can resent those who are newer immigrants, who might be seen as taking their jobs and/or driving up their rents. I have not personally heard of any Latino Trump voters — which makes sense, given that Latinos are the group he explicitly demonizes the most. But if Hillary Clinton is his opponent, I can even imagine him getting Latino support. After all, she, too has advocated sending people back, building a wall, etc. Here in California, there’s a passionate protest movement in the Latino community against her. They recognize her complicity in the destruction of their counties, the diaspora of their families, the assassination of their leaders. She has proved she’ll do what Trump so far only talks about.
Clinton’s best hope is that Trump continue to do what he has begun to do: scurry toward Republican orthodoxy. I agree that Trump vs. Clinton would be a battle of who is hated most. But even with the electoral college advantage, it’s hard for me to see how she wins. Because there are simply more good reasons to hate her, as well as ones, like her gender, that would be unjust were she any other candidate.
I’m not confused at all and while anecdotally you may know minorities that support Trump overwhelmingly his support is not coming from people who are a minority.
Why?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/donald-trump-blames-crime_n_3392535.html
or this
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/12/politics/donald-trump-muslim-ban/index.html
The guy has a big and offensive mouth with plenty of material for Clinton to work with.
By the way, I am basing my statements on polling.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/20/politics/fox-news-latino-poll-donald-trump-hillary-clinton/index.html
http://time.com/4346730/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-asian-american-poll/
Clinton, though, holds an overwhelming lead among registered African-American voters, 89 to 5 percent.
That little tidbit came from this-
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/05/19/cbs-news-poll-clinton-trump-sanders/
Here’s where his support is coming from by the way-
Trump holds a 12-point advantage over Clinton among white voters and a five-point lead over her among men. Trump is crushing Clinton in the white male vote by 22 points – 54 to 32 percent.
I’m not sure if this will thread correctly. There was no reply option to your posts countering my comment about Trump doing better than expected with minorities.
It’s funny, because after I posted, I thought, “I should have mentioned the polling is backing me up. That’s more significant than my anecdotes.” And if you look at that CNN piece you linked to, it DOES back me up. I wasn’t arguing that Trump will gain the majority of minority voters — only that he’ll do better than the MSM messaging and establishment assumptions would lead you to believe. And that is what that CNN article also discusses. Clinton isn’t doing as well as Obama did. Because of her deficits with white and male voters, she needs to do better with minority voters than she currently is, if she is to win. The assumption has been that she can scare them more easily than angry young white voters back to her. I am just not sure that’s true.
There are reports today that since Bill Clinton visited Puerto Rico a couple of weeks ago, the number of polling places for the primary has been cut by 2/3, as it has become clear that voters are swinging to Sanders. There are a lot of minority communities who have been disenfranchised in the primaries in order to get the nomination for Clinton. I have no data to prove this, but I suspect that will be one of many factors that will keep this fear strategy from working. Anger is also a very powerful emotion, and anger against the Clintons seems to be growing, in minority communities, among other voter demographics.
I hope you were not offended by my counterargument. I love reading your comments here.
I hope you were not offended by my counterargument. I love reading your comments here.
No worries, you weren’t offensive at all. If I wasn’t prepared for people to occasionally disagree with me I would consider myself in the entirely wrong place. I come here because I know that people here can and will challenge me.
I agree. If you are an ABC voter, Trump’s best plan to win the election is to run against HRC and not Bernie. As detestable as Trump is, the more you (re)acquaint yourself with Clinton, the more you come to realize that she embodies everything that seems wrong with the world today. She is the embodiment of a corrupt, duplicitous politician ca. 2016. All that Trump needs to do to win is just keep reminding everyone listening that HE IS NOT HILLARY. She may actually suffer a coronary event in the 2nd or 3rd debate fercrissake.
That seems to say Sanders is confident or over confident.
Perhaps there is also something else about Trump’s nervous body language.
“Rich people don’t move when their taxes go up” – except to Florida?
And not even out of New York City when their incomes go up?
Well so much for getting rid of them by raising taxes, guess we’ll have to find some other way.
You want to rid them of their assets.
Their persons can stay, unmolested.
wealth tax
100% income tax over an agreed-upon-amount.
Time for the Maximum Wage.
Don’t be calling it a “max wage.” Wages are, sort of by agreement I believe, what ordinary people get paid to do actual productive Real Economy WORK, as in labor in all its forms. “Maximum Grift,” maybe.
Except for those who from their hypocritical shells offer that ‘the wages of sin are DEATH!”
Rent control
Yes indeed on general principle, RP, but yes to JT on the point about wages. “Wages are for failures” ideology is evident for a start in the way respectable media prefer the tastefully aspirational term “salaries”. And see also the “financial literacy education” sponsored in schools by Visa, Mastercard, et al, which teaches nothing about systemic financial looting but hammers home the lesson that income is a matter of “making your money work for you”.
Meanwhile, here’s one more stopgap measure (i.e. the sort that could only be applied in a world so changed that it would no longer be needed): a reverse property qualification for the electoral franchise. If you ‘own’ more than a certain enormous amount (to be determined), you have quite enough political clout by default: voting as well is just conspicuous consumption of a petty power that other people may actually need.
(No of course it wouldn’t work in practice, but as a publicly debated ballot referendum or something it might at least direct some healthy ridicule towards the idea of “equality before the law”.)
This is a shibboleth that on its face is just ridiculous. Taxes are high in CA, higher in the big cities of CA, and there are far, far more squillionaires trying to move into these mega mansions than are leaving.
Their tax lawyers might tell them to have their primary residence, for tax purposes, somewhere else.
Still have to pay property taxes.
Prop. 13 helps.
Not if you’ve bought your house recently. My sister pays maybe 300 bucks a year for a house bought in ’74 now worth a million. My dinky dive bought in ’01 (now worth 700 k — go figure — I paid half that) costs me $5400 per annum for taxes.
The big Prop 13 savings are for corporations. When, for instance, B of A (or was it Wells? Interchangeable) got Wachovia and all those failed banks, the properties were transferred but the tax base never reset.
Those wealthy enough to afford tax, trust and estate planning — and to wangle deferred or tax-preferenced compensation from their board of directors — can mitigate the impact, while staying in the geographic industry clusters where they need to be.
It’s the middle class that takes the full brunt of confiscatory taxation. Folks in dying dumps like NJ, IL and CT can see what’s coming, and are migrating accordingly.
Some of them may not appreciate the suddenness with which financial crises can erupt. Greece was fine until 2010 … then suddenly, news comes out that the books were cooked, and it was already too late.
Not totally, absolutely, moronically ridiculous. The key bit of insight we should take away here is that for some Weird Reason, rich people are just not as sensitive to the price of things as the rest of us.
Now the thing I think is weird is that I read NYC and London $10M – $100M “condos”, Beverly Hills mansions, etc… seem to be unlived in much of the time. This implies to me that no one knows where rich people live! That would be an interesting investigative journalism piece this journalist could publish – next time (s)he feels the country needs to be enlightened.
Rich people may not move, but rich corporations often do.
And that’s where the focus should be…on corporate inversions.
But they don’t even actually move. They just fake move.
Take away their (illegitimate) personhood “rights” and go back to limiting their charters to a fixed period–twenty years at most, after which they have show cause for why their charters should be renewed.
We used to know enough to do this, back in the 1800’s. Somehow we “forgot.”
Agreed. That’s where we should (re)focus.
+100
And leave those large rent controlled apartments? no way, at least the senior richie riches won’t.
Rich people do not live in rent controlled apartments or rentals of any kind. They own. The only exceptions I know of are people who want to live on Park or 5th, which are pretty much all coops, and the coops won’t let them in. For instance, three apartments in my building are full floors (the original layout BTW) which means 5000 square feet. They rent for a small fortune.
Actual income or declared income?
Nearly 40,000 workers, represented by the IBEW and CWA unions, have halted their strike against Verizon. My rank-and-file sources tell me that the agreement in principle is promising, and that they are cautiously optimistic that members will vote to ratify a new contract soon.
After more than six weeks many strikers were beginning to feel real pain, from the lack of pay and benefits, while the company was also losing money.
http://www.cwa-union.org/news/releases/striking-verizon-workers-win-big-gains
Thanks for the push, but we try hard never to run press releases.
well at least Bill’s out there talking to people. I gotta like that & I give him props for it.
But if only they’d all come and talk to me first before they do anything, and I include Trump and Hillary, then everything would be fine. Even the craziest republican can come and talk with me and they’ll walk away thinking “Wow. I just had my mind opened like a wine bottle I even heard a pop! Now I feel I understand things that before I didn’t even ever think about! I was lost, but now I’m found.”
There’d be not only a renewal of democracy in American but a transcendent evolution toward the eshaton.
It would be amazing. it’s so easy, why is it so hard? The problem would be if they went and talked to somebody else after me and got themselves confused again. or if they got distracted and then forgot what I said. That’s always a risk.
A bit OT to your comment, but the Claazyman Fund (as our Japanese comrades call it) is up 3.83% since March 2nd inception, vs a 3.38% gain in its SPY/AGG benchmark.
Junk bonds (+7.26%) and emerging markets (+3.96%) have done great. Meanwhile our lovely pet rock, gold, is off a sad -2.42%.
Nobody loves gold any more, with the resurgent US dollar barking in its face like a psycho German shepherd. But do the fierce Yellenites actually have any teeth?
I haven’t gotten rich quick but at least I haven’t blown myself up.
It’s been a few years since I made a trade. Everything I bought used to go down right away and I’d panic and sell. I’d lose money on a continuous basis. not only was I not getting rich quick it wasn’t even getting rich slow.
So I said, “I’m taking some time off from this.” And then I decided to study math. I haven’t bought or sold anything in 2 years now. I didn’t sell my GLD or my SLV so those have bounced back a bit.
The problem now is what do you buy that goes straight up, so youre not exposed to panic risk. If it goes down even 1%, that’s panic time. That can’t happen. it makes it hard but not impossible, if you can buy some puts it can almost work, but I can’t figure out what to buy. I’m too busy studying math to put any work into it and frankly I find it boring, researching investments that is. I don’t know how people do it. I just want to get lucky without doing any research or analysis, and then lay around doing nothing.
What does research and analysis have to do with anything? All you have to do is buy a shit load of SPY at current market levels. Sure the Fed will raise rates a quarter point one of these years, then Wall Street will panic sell the market down 50%, corporate media will go ape shit trumpeting the end of the world and an asteroid hit is imminent as well – how will we save the wimens & chillens? – then the Fed will cut interest down to negative 20% and the market will go to DOW 30,000 – just like the Wall Street pundits said it would. That’s a half bagger right there. You can’t get too greedy at today’s market valuations. Of course those valuations are using GAAP accounting, and losses broken out separately, which everyone knows is like a shackle around the necks of corporate America. If Congress would repeal accounting, that would free corporations up to quote earnings that are commiserate with the company’s stock valuations. That would be enlightened thinking right there.
that’s not a bad idea. truth shouldn’t constrain fantasy or people will lose the capacity to dream big dreams and we’ll never get to nirvana.
Profit is what a corporation says it is, no more and no less . Well, at least no less because it there was more the corporation would have already said it.
Yes, well, corporations on an acquisition binge say their stock price is their “currency”. So obviously, if you can just print earnings, you are printing money. You don’t even have to print that much with a PE ratio of 20-100, so this is efficient too – and efficient is good. Think how easy it would be to take over the world! Eventually, there would be only one company left – Gargantuan Corp, or something like that. Just be sure you buy your ticket to Nirvana, otherwise you will be SOL and have to buy Gargantuan products instead of being a rich dude!
Ever considered using your math chops to solve the most perplexing problem in finance — namely, that the famous CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) developed in the 1960s doesn’t actually work?
This iconic model claims that the main factor that determines the return on an individual stock is its beta, or covariance with the market. High beta (that is, volatile) stocks should return more than the market, while low beta stocks should return less, since they are less risky.
But it isn’t so. Low volatility and high volatility stocks perform about the same. Beta doesn’t really explain much of anything.
Fama and French became famous for adding a bandaid to the broken CAPM with their market cap and book value factors — sort of like patching a rusted-out muffler with that messy epoxy tape. Carhart added a fourth factor, momentum, in 1997.
Now it is absolutely de rigeur in every paper on portfolio theory to regress the results against the four-factor model, if not five or six or seven factors. This is a sorry, inelegant, degrading kludge. We can do better!
The CAPM, beautiful for its simplicity but practically useless, needs to be replaced with a killer app theory that actually works. And it’ll probably take a crazy man (or woman) to find it.
so true. it really is a mess. the entire line of thinking doesn’t seem to want to confront the reality vacuum inside the surface arithmetical constructs. Why should these so-called factors have any return premium at all? It’s not self evident if somebody really thinks about it.
Beta itself is circular, it’s constructed from substance of the very phenomenon (the summation of individual stocks) it presumes to describe. (that’s a bit ambiguous but I’m tired and can’t sharpen it)
You look at this stuff and it makes you really scratch your head. It’s not that these people are dumb but their perceptions were very limited, I think, by their narrow academic experience and cloistered intellectual reality framing.
People can beat the market consistently and still be worse off than someone who loses consistently. That seems absurd to say, how could it be? Well, consider somebody climbing a ladder inside a box that’s falling. They go up but they go down faster. If society’s chosen market structures and models somehow enable social destruction, then the society in which somebody has to spend their wealth itself underperforms relative to the probability distribution of potential future societies. Someone who underperformed into a different future would be better off than someone who outperformed into a dystopia. They try to escape from normative judgments with math, but the faster they try to run the slower they go, until they end up going backwards. LOL
“climbing a ladder inside a box that’s falling” +1000000
And of course most of us are falling off the ladder, inside the box that’s falling.
so true. I composed a reasonably thoughtful reply but it got eaten. too tired to reconstruct it. next time! :-)
Don’t get it. If my model of reality is wrong, it’s not a problem but an opportunity. Buy low beta. Don’t get hung up modeling something which is just a board casino.
Gold is a tortoise.
Just ask King Midas.
Gold has outlasted him and his state by thousands of years.
When one’s relationship with it is one of obsession, jealousy or possession, it doesn’t last long.
True love (with anything) is unconditional and open to be shared.
Or they could start reading NC! I have been amazed and disgusted by the NV and tweety episodes and subsequent distortions/omissions in the MSM. Without an informed citizenry there IS no democracy. Only Seth Abramson and Shaun King have called out the networks. And tho the former posts on Huffpo, their news coverage is not informed by his posts.
It is next to impossible to penetrate the bubble.
‘The Catholic Cure for Poverty’. jacobin.
That article doesn’t do Jacobin any favours (or the author, as a historian). The first two paragraphs relate a discredited story – the original historian who found the graveyard stated that the story had been highly distorted by the media and there was no evidence whatever of having children dumped in a septic tank, or a mass burial. It was a small graveyard of children who died of natural causes – something you would find next to any orphanage or similar of the period or earlier. Not that the factory schools were anything but a disgrace, but exaggerating what happened, or failing to note the overall context, doesn’t help anyone.
Yes, the essay works much better as a polemic against moralizing attitudes, than it does as a carefully balanced piece of research. I find that very often people with a true talent for indignant polemic are very careless in their research– often uncritically repeating stories that they feel bolster their point of view.
+1000.
All such hyperbole does is give evil people a way to discredit those telling the truth.
Sometimes reality is so heinous it just SEEMS like hyperbole. This occurs frequently when the catholic “church” is involved.
What on earth is “balanced research?”
research that isn’t cherry-picking
“It was a small graveyard of children who died of natural causes” and yet your link states this:
Death rates were extraordinarily high: 34 per cent of children died in the home in 1943; 25 per cent died in 1944; 23 per cent died in 1945; 27 per cent died in 1946. The report states “The death rate amongst infants is high…
The opening two paragraphs of the article only state her claim, not the results of of the investigation. True, it should have been more accurate regarding this, but your claim is more than ridiculous.
I lived directly across the street form a similar Institution, the Mental Hospital in Willard, NY and have talked to a few nurses that worked their their entire lives (a few are still alive and living in the area). It has a fascinating history, originally the Land Grant College of NY State (prior to Cornell University), that opened a year before the American Civil War. When the war started, the school emptied out, teachers and students volunteering en masse to join the Union Army, and so it was closed.
It re-opened in 1871 as a Mental Hospital and over the course of it’s 124 year history many thousand of people were institutionalized there, people that did not necessarily belong there but were put there because society had no clue where else to put them. The graveyard there is far far smaller than that of Bon Secours 36 year history and most actually did die of natural causes.
For those who are curious, here is one link The Suitcases of Willard.
Unfortunately I’m unable to find another link to a history published on the web at a personal web page that goes into excellent detail on the history of the Willard State Hospital and Dr. Sylvester Willard, a true humanitarian and definitely not influenced by the institutional side of the Catholic Church. Asylum Projects does have a short summary, however.
( I kept looking and I found the link that I referenced above )
It’s a fascinating story and I’m sure that those that live in Upstate NY, at least, will find it very interesting.
Important point from the interesting Jacobin piece linked above:
Even today, in 21st century NYC, we see exactly the same dynamic where poor women are “helped” by do-gooders– who mostly don’t realize that they are part of the systemic problems that entrap people in a cycle of misery.
Quite a bit of this article sounds disturbingly familiar. Like:
Oliver St John Gogarty summed up the situation well in 1928, declaring to the senate: “it is high time that the people of this country find some other way of loving God than by hating women.”
and
Unsurprisingly in this atmosphere, the provision of birth control was driven underground, and legal cases highlighting the short leash of moral rectitude littered the press and court reports. Reproductive rights were consistently framed as a moral rather than medical issue, and from 1935 to 1978, contraceptives were banned in Ireland, leaving women to rely on the importation of illegal contraceptives and back-alley abortions.
Correct link for companies hoarding the most cash: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-companies-hoarding-cash-2016-5
From the comment on Bill Clinton Gets Into 30-Minute Debate With A 24-Year-Old Bernie Fan BuzzFeed.
It’s only astonishing because it’s so obvious; fraudsters ignore that rule. They pretty much have to, since they’re selling crap. Time was (the 70’s and 80’s) when this kind of behavior was recognized as revealing a huckster; these days, everybody’s doing it.
Agreed. The Clintons’ only real weapon against the many many scandals that would have sunk any other politician is their audacious mendacity. They cannot concede even a single point, yield a single inch, and generally go out of their way to make any enemy into the coming of the Antichrist, because otherwise the whole house of cards will tumble. Here’s hoping the DOJ finally breathes on it.
Their only virtue is their shamelessness. We see that on display here.
The Emperor and the (incredibly, irritating presumptive) Empress-to-be have no clothes.
Amazing it took until 2016 for so many to realize that they never did in the first place.
These people are career criminals on a massive scale and should be treated as such.
No debate after all?
Donald Ducked!
Quack, quack, lots of money, snapped the duck with its manicured beak.
Ducks, doing good deeds.
Now I’m going to be thinking of this all day.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=mcscrooge+duck&view=detail&mid=273AFBFF0BAFB0CDBE03273AFBFF0BAFB0CDBE03&FORM=VIRE
He just needs a blond toupee.
Maybe Clinton can use this to turn the tides. It’s not like Clinton is afraid to… oh wait.
Ha! should be front page of NYPost! (whatever their politics, they are gifted punsters)
Operation Condor: Former Argentine junta leader jailed. BBC
________________
Nitpicking here, but just to clarify: BBC buries the lede and the headline is incorrect. The junta leader in question, Bignone, was already serving multiple sentences including a life sentence for kidnapping newborn children. So he has not been “jailed” he already was in jail. Secondly, the significant aspect of yesterday’s judgement (which you kinda sorta get from the HRW quote in the article) is that the court ruled that Operation Condor was a “Criminal Conspiracy” (asociación ilícita). This could possibly (depending on appeals) open the door to new prosecutions of those involved in the military regime(s) under laws mainly written for mafias. From a moral standpoint, however, it is an important step to bring Condor out from the shadows into a formal legal recognition of its illegality.
And one last note: this news was not prominent in Argentine newspapers today. (The big stories are the government offering a tax amnesty and Pres. Macri having doubled [!] his net assets over the last year). Under the Kirchner regimes we had a constant stream of “waving the bloody flag” as they prosecuted the dictators and their accomplices. Now there is either fatigue from 12 years of that or the current government does not want to make a big deal of it– draw your own conclusions.
One of the more interesting critical moves in the Marxist repertoire is to relate cultural trends to underlying economic processes. This smacks of trying to prop up a failing market by jawboning. Young people are asked to ‘invest’ in a system in which their investment will not succeed and also to shun other opportunities so that competitors never arise. In the meantime, the promoters of the investment will steadily try to convince the young that the failure of the investment is somehow their fault, papering over the objective weakness in the investment with subjective responsibility. You should have been more passionate!
I’ve lately had a couple of really surprising conversations in which people use the term “un-American” seriously. Contrary to the vile claims of Barney Frank, they were not Sanders supporters. Is anyone else here running into this?
It’s been been more veiled. The words “un-American” haven’t exactly been uttered, but it’s been strongly implied-as in all but said. I have no patience or tolerance left after 15 years of “un-American” being thrown around when one questions or goes against the powers that be.
petal
May 28, 2016 at 10:36 am
If you had told me 30 years ago that a “liberal” democrat could even utter the word “un-American” I would have said you were nuts.
Its a topsy turvy world when repubs* say the country is in the sh*tter, and the dems say American has never stopped being great….
* repubs surprised after years of controlling congress and saying the government sucks that voters believe them and act to correct the problem by….not voting for repubs!
America’s best allies in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East, in Africa, etc.
They are never un-American. They do their best to be American.
When “America first” and “Buy American” no longer mean anything, that’s unAmerican and that’s where we are with both parties. It amazes me that the Democratic party thinks Democrats that don’t align their values with the party, aren’t Democrats. Then what are they pray tell…
That quote is just stunning. Do these people have a death wish? How do they not see where this will lead?
Stunning and the thinking behind it pervasive.
The system – neoliberalism, neocolonialism, global reserve currency, hegemony – is even more rigged against young people who are not Americans, or un-American young people.
Throwing in ever growing GDP, resource depletion, global warming, environmental degradation – we are talking rigging the system against animals, plants and Nature herself.
I think the logic is, “I’ll be gone by the time there are any consequences so game on!”
Inod, that is it in a nutshell. “What are you mopes going to do, dig up my rotting corpse and spit on it? Collect my scattered ashes and electrocute them?” Dead, comfortably, with the most caring of care by caring people, nurses and doctors and aides. After years of pleasure-taking in an effort to fill an all too human infinite capacity for titillation…
Also in this article are the standard falsehoods “June 7th is the night hrc will clinch the Democratic nomination.” Clinton clinches nothing on June 7, but apparently the media has agreed on that date as their consensus. Also the canard that “Clinton will have won 55 percent of the popular vote,” completely dispensing with the caucus states which Bernie dominated. I tend to disregard such commentary as is filled with such embedded lies.
“Telling young people that the American system is rigged against them? That is so irresponsible,” said Kounalakis, “it verges on un-American.” kounalakis is implying it should remain a secret?
That’s exactly what he’s saying. How charmingly unselfconscious of him.
The system supports me (my class), and since this is America, it is the American system. All Americans have a responsibility to support the American system. Since I am fine and upstanding and meritorious, the system supporting me should never considered to be rigged.
Apparently unaware that rigged systems require even more participatory support than normally functional ones.
Gotta be a team player! If you’re not falling into line and on our side, you’re one of those bad people, etc etc. USA! I have read too much history. Once someone starts in on that un-American stuff, my BP goes through the roof and I have to walk away. My brain explodes. Just cannot handle it.
And as for JCC’s posts about Willard, when I was little my mother used to try to scare me into behaving by threatening to send me to Willard. The Suitcases of Willard article is amazing-had seen it before. Very sad.
The story on Novartis and Hatch colluding to jack up the cost of meds in Colombia needs to be shouted from every rooftop, spray painted on walls, and posted on social media sites across the land.
The sheer arrogance is breathtaking. I keep thinking that “they” will start behaving for a little while, if only to appease the voters and mask the depth of sheer evil that drives them. I keep being proven wrong.
Story made me so spitting angry I don’t even know how to comment. One thing I will say is there is this idea down here that if we just play nice with Washington they will be nice to us in return. They are mean to Cuba and Venezuela but nice to Colombia and Honduras. Well, there’s no way Novartis could have pulled this BS in Cuba or Ecuador.
Lando Calrissian could have been Colombian: “This deal is getting worse all the time”.
It’s irresponsible, verging on un-american, to tell young people the truth now.
No decency (I can’t even say “at long last”).
RE: the email scandal—OK let’s get on with it already.
Bring on the indictment!
This site is lapping the field with its analysis of the the Hilary Clinton email issue.
You’re far out in front on more than a few things.
There will be no indictment before Clinton has been nominated and Sanders disposed of. There may or may not be an indictment AFter that, but there will be NO indictment until Clinton has been safely nominated and Sanders safely disposed of.
And NO. The Clintonite Sh*tobamacrat Party will NEVer EVer turn to Sanders to fill the hole left by an imploded Clinton. NEVer. EVer.
The Sandernistas will have to settle for a Long March through the institutions and levels of the Democratic Party.
I wrote out a long rant about Clinton’s basement email server. But stopped when I realized I don’t know for sure that she is the only person in the history of the world to set up an email server in her home basement and then conduct government (or any work) email through it — rather than the totally functional email server at work.
Maybe this is becoming a common thing? Should it be investigated?
Or is it as insane and bizarre as I think.
(To clarify, I have known many people who have been given home access to work servers … It’s putting work servers in the home that is new to me)
Many times, in the pre-Yellen era, I tried sending messages to various permutations of “bsbernanke@federalreserve.gov” or “chairmanben@federalreserve.gov” or “benb@federalreserve.gov”.
But my emails (warning of grave policy errors) all got bounced as undeliverable.
Okay, so I’m not Guccifer. But one has to wonder why Fed chairs have carefully disguised emails, when one can often reach corporate employees just by using their name and initials @ the company’s domain.
Hmmm … “JYel@yellenemail.com” … let’s give it a shot!
As ol’ Ben used to sing on his way to work (adapting the lyrics of Waylon Jennings’ “Black Rose”),
I’m sure that Hillary has figured out that if elected prez, there is an enormous opportunity in the financial newsletter space for Top Secret government information. Think what Wall Street would pay for a private newsletter that could 100% accurately forecast what the USG is gonna do in advance? Short sellers could time their trades better if they knew when we are gonna invade someone or start WW3. Or long traders would know in advance who’s getting those juicy guv contracts. You could charge Wall Street traders millions for a subscription to a newsletter like that. “Hillary’s Boom, Bust and Greed Financial Newsletter”. It’s just too good an idea to pass up.
There was also a Bush email scandal with millions of records destroyed and, IIRC, not on a home server, but a contractor’s server; it was about I decade ago, but I think this was the gwb43.com scandal (and I’m too lazy to do the research right now, although it’s in Corrente’s incomparable archives).
Clinton supporters are pushing this hard, asking “Where were you then?” — in my case, the answer is writing scathing posts about it — but it doesn’t seem to me that showing Clinton has the ethical standards of a Bush regarding government record keeping is full of win. But what would I know?
(Nodding) I remember that now!! … I wasn’t blogging then but I wasn’t quiet in real life.
I hated that. (Asking myself) Why would I vote for someone who took that idea to an extreme? I won’t.
Rove and other White Housers were using RNC email accounts instead of White House email accounts. IIRC, when the special counsel investigating the exposure of Valerie Plame’s CIA cover sought those emails, they not-so-mysteriously got wiped. Gee. How could that have happened? Sure wasn’t intentional or anything.
See, she’s running for prez. If she’s a criminal we should have found out 3 months ago. One reason for the delay is there was no permanent IG at State for 4 years. But I say rapidity is in the best interests of all concerned right now.
From the new season of ‘Bloodlines’, just out:
Me being sheriff it gives me certain control over things.
So, I don’t have a choice, Meg.
I have to run.
-Let them Drown
Powerful address outlining the urgency of the crisis we face. A while back, Yves mentioned the power of social shunning as a tool for bringing about change. This shunning, this loss of legitimacy as expressed by the people, is the first step in bringing about real change. Klein ends her address by stressing the notion that the time is upon us to evaluate our values. We all must look into the mirror and question if we are acting in a decent and honorable manner.
Rejecting corrosive values is the only way to prevent approaching disaster. I have to agree with Klein that climate change will act as a catalyst to change our political and economic system. Only thru cooperation do we have a chance. A vision of a brutish and ugly world motivated by force is a hard sell when contrasted alongside a system of cooperation. You will never change the mind of an unreflective sociopath, but you can reject their worldview and refuse to legitimize their views.
The tools and information are all around us to form connections both intellectually and socially. The trick will be to direct that power in a truly honorable endeavor. The good vs evil narrative is one that cannot be won by greedy self-interest. Evil, if it means anythings to human beings, is the promotion of systems of death over life. Evil cannot hide- it can only exist when the human mind can pretend it has or is driving it from the world.
You do not fight evil, you decide not to perpetrate it.
If H Clinton voters, campaign hacks, & BigMedia owners/”funders” like C”N”N & ms-HRC insist on using the sexist, insulting “Bernie Bros” label for Sanders voters,
I propose using a non-sexist, yet insulting label for H Clinton voters:
SHillaryBots
what do you think? Feel free to suggest an alt/better label.
HillarityBots
Hillarhoids …
+1000!
Now that is funny!!!
So let it be done!
I’m partial to Hilboughts.
*g*
Bernie Bros is a sexist insult its own self.
One good sexist insult deserves another.
Sexist insulters don’t deserve fairness, and one should never play fair with sexist insulters.
So, whenever a misandronist sexist uses the sexist epithet “Bernie Bros”, the equal and opposite reaction should be to use the equal and opposite counter-epithet “Hillary Sistahs”.
“Federal Reserve Admits that Fed Policy Is Increasing Inequality”. Talk about the executive committe of the ruling class! Bernie would have benefitted from some consultation with scientific socialism.
They had to destroy the economy in order to save the economy…
OR, more accurately:
They had to destroy the economy for 99% of the people to make 1% of the people richer…
My Dear Professor Tremens;
This is to alert you to the proposal to add a new sub department to the University of Magonia Department of Political Science.
The new instrumentality is tentatively named; The School of Moral Ambiguity (SOMA.) Admittedly, the explication of ambiguity does seem counter intuitive. However, preliminary research results show that MA is extensively employed in politics. Since MA is ubiquitous in Economics, we felt it appropriate to reach out to you for comment and feedback.
The funding method designed for SOMA is intriguing and prosperity inducing. As a Fellow at SOMA, you Dr. Tremens need merely sign up three other academics as Fellows of SOMA. Then, your department receives a percentage of the financial resources dedicated to SOMA by the new Fellows. An appropriately reduced percentage of the financial resources dedicated to SOMA by those academics recruited by that latter cohort will also accrue to your personal Department operating budget. As an economist, you of all people should appreciate the almost limitless potentialities the SOMA funding model provides. The Law of Compounding then applies. As with all transformational programs, time is of the essence. Please send SOMA the irrevocable assignment of ten percent (10%) of your departments annual budget now. Don’t delay! You don’t want your Department to lose out in the funding race! Just use the handy form supplied at the end of this missive and you will be on the road to unimaginable budgets!
Yours in Prosperity!
The SOMA design team.
http://nickholmes.tumblr.com/post/144508247623/bandits-boundless-courage-suddenly-turned-to-fear
A note on the Politico link about Clinton’s possible loss in California: Politico has joined the chorus pushing the idea that Clinton will have clinched the nomination when New Jersey’s polls close. As is rapidly becoming standard, there’s no explanation of how they’re arriving at that conclusion, and in this case it’s passed along as a background fact, a simple truth not worthy of any discussion or examination.
This might have been excusable before the IG’s report, when there was no concrete reason why superdelegates might be afraid to nominate Clinton after all. Now, when there are plausible reasons why superdelegate promises might not stick after all, it seems less like practical realism and more like misinforming the public on behalf of a favored candidate.
Regarding Bill Clinton engaging the Sanders supporter…
Anyone else remember the days when people used to assert that “Bill is the smartest guy in the room”?
The optics on the argument are what’s so fun about it. It’s not just that the looming figure of Bill can’t impose his words until they come out the mouth of another. It’s that he’s directly challenged by an ordinary person, who can keep forcing him to engage, and totally negates the impression of “well, this guy is smart, even if we don’t understand, we should just support him.”
The Sanders support base don’t buy the ‘facts’ as asserted by the Clintons or the prior neo-liberal agenda. And they’re conversant to the point where a large portion of them are likely able to hold their own, one on one, with “the smartest guy in the room.”
They won’t support the Clintons no matter what happens because the Sanders base live in reality, and experience it every day. They can’t be convinced to abrogate their personal understanding of it, no matter how hard the sell.
Clinton won’t be able to declare war on the climate. Trump won’t be able to negotiate with the storm.
And Clinton’s standing the whole time; the kid is sitting.
So Clinton adopts a position of physical dominance, but can’t achieve a position of moral and intellectual dominance.
That’s gotta sting.
Bill Clinton’s fading, cognitively as well as physically, I think. I also think that his brand of politics is decidedly pre-internet; the difference between Bill C. then and now is that he is vulnerable to omnipresent video. I remember his insinuations against Obama in the South Carolina 2008 primary and thought to myself that he was playing the room without considering how it would play on the internet.
But Bill has always had a hard time walking away from an argument. This clip is from 2000 when he was making generic “get out the vote” calls to radio shows and got grilled by Amy Goodman. It’s hilarious. He can’t help himself!
The Alzheimer’s piece is promising. This is anecdotal but one year ago my aunt, living alone in her retirement community condo (my uncle died 3 years ago) became confused and disoriented. She wound up in the health center where they discovered she had a UTI. At that time the family discovered that in the fine print for this community (Carolina Meadows) it states that the community has sole authority (notwithstanding the input of an individual’s doctor or even lawyer) regarding when a resident needs a higher level of care. Because she has an excellent LTC policy and could afford a caregiver, with the advocacy of her longtime doc and her dtr who flew in from CA, she was allowed to go home with someone there during the day.
However, she began waking up at night and calling my mom (her sister) in a panic because when she went outside it was dark.
ALTHOUGH HER LTC POLICY WOULD HAVE ALLOWED HER TO GET 24/7 CARE AND REMAIN AT HOME, the community gets serious $$ for residents in their dementia unit and forced the sale of her condo so now her policy pays them rather than the caregiver.
What is remarkable to me is that within a year my aunt went from being MUCH higher functioning than one of my hospice patients who is about the same age (mid 80s) to living in one small room that can only fit a single bed.
My mother, 2 years older, is sharp as a tack (she turned me on to this site) and there is no history of dementia in the family. I know losing her life partner must have been disorienting but I really wonder about that UTI.
In my work I have known many patients who while in hospital got UTIs and never fully recovered from the mental status changes they cause in the elderly.
I guess this is about the infection piece but also an occasion to alert folks to read that fine print!
Time for a nickname contest for The Donald?
Donald the Duck (mentioned above)
Herr Drumpf
Hair Trump
Loose Cannon (hillary’s)
The Deranged Don
My vote will be for Butthead.
Mr. President?
http://www.thehypertexts.com/Donald%20Trump%20Nicknames.htm
This seems a little unusual to me, the Justice Department stepping into a civil matter involving someone who is now a civilian, or does it indicate that the DOJ expects charges to be brought and is protecting it’s turf?
Feds fight to prevent Clinton deposition in email case
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/281565-feds-fight-to-prevent-clinton-deposition-in-email-case
Oh boy, here it comes.
From the excellent Do I Really Need to Worry About Hillary’s Emails? Yes. She Will Be Indicted. (Full Form)
So the fix is already in.
And what’s the rationalization? Obama has no love for Clinton. There remains the single leg the Clinton campaign stands on: Because Trump. (and because Bernie is completely off the table, having so pointedly turned his back on the political donor class).
Because Trump, Robert Reich tells Bernie supporters to get in line behind HIllary:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/advice-for-divided-democrats_b_10162184.html
Reich says that Bernie shouldn’t be made to drop out of the race, as Hillary and down ticket Democrats need Bernie’s supporters, and Bernie is telling a basic truth about our economy and inequality. With no sarcasm, Reich says, “Nothing important can be accomplished — reversing climate change, creating true equal opportunity, overcoming racism, rebuilding the middle class, having a sane and sensible foreign policy — until we reclaim our democracy from the moneyed interests. The longer Bernie Sanders is on stage to deliver this message, the better,” followed by, “Next, my advice for Sanders supporters: Be prepared to work hard for Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination.”
Heh, that ain’t gonna happen.
If the country burns then Reich can blame the DNC. They’ll be snowballs in hell before I stump for a crook.
Thank you. Enough said.
After advocating for Bernie over the Clintons who appointed him labor sec and vaulted him to national prominence, Reich almost had me convinced that he was no longer a shill for Hillbillary until I read this.
The Reichs of the world remind me of people trying to quit an addiction – OK for a while but almost impossible not to fall of the wagon.
Uh…”work hard for Hillary Clinton?” I don’t think so. At this point, it pains me just to type her name.
Reich has been very supportive of Sanders, has written extensively about why Sanders is the better candidate, but it is crushingly depressing to see him already going into loyal-Dem mode. Does he not realize that’s part of the reason things are so screwed up?
When you are constantly given only lesser of two evils to choose from, the whole process becomes a race to the bottom; I can’t do it any more.
I don’t mind the concept of a temporary truce. If Sanders wants to work hard to defeat Trump — and that’s not the same as working hard for Hillary Clinton — by stumping for Canova and Russ Feingold, messing with Blue Dog heads by giving money to real Democrats, and (say) campaigns in Colorado for single payer and against fracking (and against the local establishment Democrats), have at it, say I.
Sounds like a plan. There will certainly be many, many supporters right there with him.
Well, I think the ground is being laid to make Bernie supporters the 2016 version of 2000’s Nader. I keep hearing reference to how Nader caused Gore to lose the election, but never a mention of the poorly designed butterfly ballot which caused a lot of confusion among voters in Dade County (iirc).
I had a friend who has hated on the Green Party ever since that election. Because…Nader.
Back in the waning days of the Roman Republic, it was important to string together public appointments in order to remain immune to prosecution. Maybe that’s what’s going on here.
I thought that Mary Mellor had an interesting turn of phrase by referring to money that is channeled by central banks to private banks to be lent to individuals as ‘commercial currency’.
“”It is a political decision to make this money only available to the banking sector. The failure to create a public monetary function for the Eurozone will tear it apart if it is not addressed. Without the capacity to create public money for public purposes, the Eurozone merely has a common commercial currency, not a monetary union.”” (Debt or Democracy: Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice)
Money can be distributed directly to people without going through the banks by such programs as a job guarantee or an extended social security (pension program) or even some type of BIG.
——————
Tim Barker has a very interesting essay ‘Small, not Beautiful’ in “The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century”
He takes a critical look at our enthusiasm for small businesses and entrepreneurship and how this can still exploit workers.
“Second, the fetish for small business endorsed a deeply flawed ideology of human fulfillment. It implies that true fulfillment is achieved through the ownership and command of property and people.”
“For socialists, the problems with large and small businesses share a common source – the private ownership of productive wealth and the unchecked power that employers exercise over workers as a result.”
He likes the idea of cooperatives owned by the people that work there.
Also of interest in the article.
“”Alternatives to wage labor, such as a guaranteed basic income (paid to everyone whether they worked or not), could provide an economic buffer for even more radical experimentation, including the production and transfer of certain goods and services without any exchange of money at all.””
“You have cherry-picked facts, which contradict the truth,”
What a classic Bill Clintonism. Facts… which contradict… the truth. Haha.
Lambert..on politico clinton kalipornia problem…is it not sad politico did not address the supporter as $hillary ambassador to Hungary ? Or that she worked for her dads real estate development firm with that little EPA problem that went up to potus where the fed appeals court ruling against her was upheld by a split decision…also ties to phil angiledes and new democracy political party in greece…but…
details details…what is a poor journalist to do at politico except cut and paste the press releases….
well at least the father in public and loudly is against golden yawn…
I mean breaking dawn…
oh wait…golden girls ??…
it will come to me…
old age…
Oh yes…the right wing greek party…
Breaking wind..
Seems that Sanders has requested the removal of a couple of convention co-chairs. DNC refuses. I hate linking to WaPo, but I’m gonna hold my nose and do it anyway…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/28/dnc-rejects-sanderss-challenge-of-rules-committee-co-chairs
Say, aren’t those the people that move the goalposts at the last possible second?
Just in time for the weekend rush at the airport, a collection of TSA cartoons.
Spellers from Texas, N.Y. state battle to tie in U.S. Spelling Bee | Reuters
Call me narrow-minded, but precious few of the example words from the spell-off cited in the article are, well, English-language words of any kind of long standing. Feldenkrais (Russian-immigrant name), gesellschaft (German), biniou (Breton), taoiseach (Gaelic), draathaar (Dutch dog breed name), ayacohuite (Mexican tree), mischsprache (German), tetradrahm (Greek coin). I realize English is in very large part a loanword-based language (aren’t they all?), but c’mon, people. Looking forward to next year’s bee, I can’t wait for a contestant to ask for a usage example for ‘Donaudampfschifffahrtgesellschaft’ (German but no umlauts, perfectly legitimate Englisches schpelling Biene word there, ending in a spelloff-round word from this year’s bee, no less).
I could have sworn there was a link for this article earlier today:
“A former senior U.S. general again calls for abolishing the nuclear forces he once commanded–
A new memoir by a former head of the Strategic Air Command recounts his battles inside the government to rein in a nuclear targeting plan he considered reckless”
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/05/27/19731/former-senior-us-general-again-calls-abolishing-nuclear-forces-he-once-commanded
It was more than just a “nuclear targeting plan,” it was the whole BS by our Peace Prize awardee about ramping down one of the more effective means of planetary extermination.
In his last couple of days, my father with his diabetes and kidney failure and heart failure moved into a dream state — said his goodbyes, after a fashion, made a swipe at undoing some of the hurts he caused, but then just said he wanted to sleep until it was over.
This, among and added to all the links over the past several days, kind of got me thinking that with all the stuff that’s going on, maybe it would be a good strategy to just go to sleep, until it’s over…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biuoagnGCFQ
The Crafty Coconut Octopus
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell says this, “f the U.S. followed Donald Trump’s suggestion, and began to “negotiate” repayment of the “debt,” there would be a massive, worldwide depression, that would make the “Great Depression” look like a children’s picnic.”
https://www.quora.com/If-the-US-starts-to-default-on-its-20-Trillion-of-national-debt-how-will-that-impact-the-rest-of-the-world
Then later he says this “To pay off the “debt,” the FRB does what any bank does: It simply debits your T-security savings account and credits your checking account. No new dollars needed, so there is no need to default on anything.”
My question is why would there be a depression. I think the usual answer is that to pay off the debt you’re taking money out of circulation, but from his second sentence it would seem that money is being put back into circulation.
Trump is talking about negotiating the repayment of the debt for less than face value. This would mean that there are fewer dollars being credited to the “checking account” than are in the T-security account, removing those dollars from the economy. If the discount is big enough, there could certainly be a depression.
I suspect that if Trump did this it would be the final nail in the coffin of the dollar as the global reserve currency.
The debt is climbing every year. IMHO a reset is inevitable, whether or not Trump gets elected and tries to take control of it. The demise of the USD as the world’s reserve currency is also inevitable—in fact it’s already begun.
I agree it’s already begun. Our leaders foreign interventions were what began the push to undermine the dollar as more and more nations got tired of helping cover the cost of our military imperialism. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that a lot of the ME had to do with places like Iran and Iraq moving away from the dollar as trade currency.
That being said, Trump is playing a pretty dangerous game if his intentions are to shortchange people who invested in this country to begin with by declaring he’ll pay pennies on the dollar for debt owed.
While the rich may not be happy with this the alternative to undermining our government as being one of the safest investments in the world is to increase revenue via taxes and get rid of the multitudes of ways people have to exempt wealth from being taxed.
RE Clinton’s emails. I’ve found 15 documented hacking attempts into Clinton’s private email server by IP addresses located in China, Republic of North Korea and Germany. This is just from readily available public sources. No doubt FBI specialists pouring over the Clinton’s server logs are finding many other attempted and possibly successful hacks.
Many leading IT security pros say it’s safe to assume she was hacked. The question is, what does a foreign government do with that leverage?
For instance, Putin and Clinton are no mutual admiration society. But does Putin prefer to allow Clinton to win the Oval office, or is he waiting to reveal possession of the emails to blow Clinton out of the water? If Clinton is elected, and Putin has the emails, how will we, the citizens, ever know how policy is being manipulated? It’ll be like astronomers trying to locate the position of a hidden planet by the orbit of other bodies. The emails could be the gift that keeps on giving to rivals.
Here’s the hack attempts, btw:
January 9, 2011
1. “On January 9, 2011, the non-Departmental advisor to President Clinton who provided technical support to the Clinton email system notified the Secretary’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations that he had to shut down the server because he believed “someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in i didnt [sic] want to let them have the chance to.
2. Later that day, the advisor again wrote to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, “We were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min.” On January 10, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations emailed the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning and instructed them not to email the Secretary “anything sensitive” and stated that she could “explain more in person.”
OIG Report, Page 40
May 13, 2011
3. “In another incident occurring on May 13, 2011, two of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff discussed via email the Secretary’s concern that someone was “hacking into her email” after she received an email with a suspicious link.
4. Several hours later, Secretary Clinton received an email from the personal account of then-Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs that also had a link to a suspect website. The next morning, Secretary Clinton replied to the email with the following message to the Under Secretary: “Is this really from you? I was worried about opening it!”
OIG Report, Page 40, footnotes
August 3, 2011
5-10. “Russia-linked hackers tried at least five times to pry into Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email account while she was secretary of state, emails released Wednesday show. It is unclear if she clicked on any attachments and exposed her account. Security researchers who analyzed the malicious software in September 2011 said that infected computers would transmit information from victims to at least three server computers overseas, including one in Russia. That doesn’t necessarily mean Russian intelligence or citizens were responsible.”
AP article, Emails: Russia-linked hackers tried to access Clinton server
October 17, 2013
11. “Unauthorized traffic was found scanning the network and was subsequently blocked.”
Senator Ron Johnson, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs letter to SECNAP Network Security Corp., Page 1
February 8, 2014
12. “Cyberattack allegedly originated from IP address located in China
Ibid.
February 17, 2014
13. “Cyberattack allegedly originated from IP address located in China”
Ibid.
March 4, 2014
14. “Cyberattack allegedly originated from IP address located in ‘Korea, Republic of’”
Ibid.
June 18, 2014
15. “Cyberattack allegedly originated from IP address located in Germany”
Ibid.
on Megan McArdle of: Clinton’s E-Mail Shenanigans Sure Don’t Look Like an Honest Mistake Bloomberg (furzy)
Always thought McArdle was a raging Libtard but wow:
Savvy piece – I loved the details . Does anyone know where my business might be able to get access to a template VA 10-0426 form to edit ?