By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Readers, today I am weeding the last wilderness area of the property, preparatory to sheet mulching it. When I’m done, my garden will longer be a disgrace in the eyes of the town. Then — sorry, vegetarians! — I’m going to put the burgers on the grill and break out some cheap red wine. So this holiday Water Cooler will be short. Talk amongst yourselves!
Although since this story appeared today, July 4:
2016
Clinton Email Hairball
“Huma Abedin admits that Clinton burned daily schedules” [Daily Post] (and already propagated to The Hill and the Daily Mail, as well as the usual suspects from The Mighty Wurlitzer). Is there a there here?
“If there was a schedule that was created that was her Secretary of State daily schedule, and a copy of that was then put in the burn bag, that . . . that certainly happened on . . . on more than one occasion,” [multi-hatted Huma] Abedin told lawyers representing Judicial Watch, the conservative organization behind the emails lawsuit.
Abedin made the surprising admission in response to a question about document destruction at the Department of State. A lawyer for Judicial Watch asked: “And during your tenure at the State Department, were you aware of your obligation not to delete federal records or destroy federal records?”
Abedin was not pressed for more details.
Clinton has admitted to destroying “private personal emails” as secretary of state. But Abedin’s admission that she used so-called “burn bags” — a container that material is placed in before it is destroyed — for some of her schedules is the first time anyone close to her has disclosed destroying public records.
And:
A former State Department official told The Post it was unprecedented for a diplomat to destroy a schedule like this.
“I spent eight years at the State Department and watched as four US ambassadors and two secretaries of state shared their daily schedules with a variety of State Department employees and US officials,” said Richard Grenell, former diplomat and US spokesman at the United Nations.
“I’ve never seen anyone put their schedule in the burn bag — because every one of them had a state.gov email address and therefore their daily schedules became public records, as required by law.”
But:
Others said Clinton’s careful approach to her schedule further highlights her recklessness in using a personal server for all her email communications.
“The [president’s] schedule was not classified but it was deemed ‘highly sensitive.’ Instructions were given at the White House and on the road that schedules would be disposed of through the use of ‘burn bags’ and/or shredding,” said Brad Blakeman, a scheduler for President George W. Bush.
“This shows, in my opinion, a skewed sense of security. The Clinton people would dispose of the secretary’s schedule in the same manner as if it were classified yet those same safeguards were not in place with regard to email communications.”
Despite Grenell, I’d want to know for certain that copies of Clinton’s daily schedules were public records within the meaning of the act. The story also says “a copy” went in the burn bag. Were there others, not burned? And despite Blakeman’s spin, Obama got to destroy his, so why not Clinton hers? (To which the answer might me that a different body of law applies to the President; exactly as with her demand to have a secure Blackberry just like Obama’s, Clinton would be assuming Presidential prerogatives that she does not, as yet, have.)
No doubt this story will develop throughout the day. To me, it looks like Clinton is systemically destroying evidence of any nexus between her public role and her private dealings, including the Clinton Foundation and Bill’s front-running for contributions with speeches, if that is what he was doing; exactly as she did when she privatized her email server and then threw away half the mail on it, claiming it was personal. Presumably, however, the schedules that went in the burn bag didn’t, this time, include her yoga lessons and Chelsea’s wedding?
* * * Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant:
This is not a very good photograph, but it does illustrate the principle that there’s nothing wrong with one invasive plant that another invasive plant can’t fix! Here we have three, duking it out: Honeysuckle, raspberries, and bee balm.
The bee balm just flowered yesterday, and hummingbirds love the red flowers, so I’m anxiously waiting for them to appear. I’ve also been taught (by NippersDad, I believe) that “Birds love a mess,” and there’s certainly a mess for them here: Birds use straw for the sheet mulch for their nests, they hide in the bushes (and they also like to perch on the bamboo tomato hoops (not shown)).
The whole ginormous tangled mass of greenery also protects me from eyes on the street while I sit outside working on my laptop, and the pedestrians like to sneak the raspberries (so they think; I enjoy it when they do).
As an illustration of the important principle of stacking functions, this explanation is as tangled as the greenery; but you see what I mean.
Readers, if you want to send me some videos of plants in whole systems (bees and blossoms, for example, or running streams) — I can use them to practice with FFmpeg and hopefully post them. Because of download times, they’ll have to be measured in seconds, rather than minutes. Thank you! Adding, I got another one today! Please keep sending them; they will ultimately appear!
Adding, thank you once more readers for last month’s rapid and successful Water Cooler Mini-Fundraiser. Checks are arriving in the mail. I’m almost finished writing thank you notes! Yours will arrive! (Adding, to me, a reader’s reality is their handle, and even more their actual comments. I don’t mentally connect handle to email, let alone to a contribution. So if I’ve snarled at you, take comfort that all are snarled at equally!)
* * * Readers, if you enjoyed what you read today, please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your regular support.
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The attitude of Obama and the Clinton’s to the whole Email hairball is so brazen as to be almost unbelievable.
Obama said “No intent, no foul”, endorses HRC when she is under active investigation for criminal wrongdoing and will be stumping with her on the campaign trail starting tomorrow.
Loretta Lynch has what was supposed to be a secret meeting with Bill Clinton…while the Clinton Foundation and HRC are being investigated by the FBI and there’s no conflict or attempt to influence the investigation?
HRC swore under penalty of perjury that she had turned over all work related Emails…oops, she missed a few. And the lies about the whole matter some of which are still up on her website.
And the response of the establishment is “I trust her!”.
Good luck with that. If the Republicans were running anyone less despicable than Trump against her he’d be a shoo in.
Is it the 4th of July or Halloween?
Lord Norths’ Revenge.
I tried to make the case the other day that the problem faced by anyone who sees this all for what it was (technically illegal, although I’m underwhelmed with the law the same way I was when they went after wikileaks and Manning) is that awful weasel term, “work related.” How much mileage to you think a first-rate defense team could get out of playing with that phrase? How much room to muddy the water? If you write someone that you had a lousy day, or to your husband that dealing with the Secretary of Defense is a pain in the ass, is that “work-related”, or just chat? She should have either been told point-blank that all her emails are on the record (some secret, maybe forever, but all in the government record) or they weren’t. This “work related” crap gives her wiggle room, and a battalion of Ivy League lawyers aren’t going to have an insurmountable hill to climb if this ever reaches a jury, which my gut tells me it won’t.
NOTE: I’m underwhelmed by the law on the “secrecy” front, which is always overblown. I am not underwhelmed by it on the “avoiding accountability” front, but that’s rarely the one mentioned even by her media detractors (often Republican thugs who could give a damn about Executive Branch transparency and accountability).
Something that puzzles me about all this is why she thought putting emails on a personal server would make them immune from FOIA etc. As a state government employee I’ve been told the opposite — that putting official emails on a personal device makes everything on it legally discoverable, including personal stuff.
Exactly right. After your emails are subpoenaed by a court or Congressional committee, you don’t get the privilege of editing them first.
That’s obstruction — and it’s the answer to James Levy’s underwhelmment. The derivative offense of obstruction makes the question of whether they were or weren’t “work related” moot.
As shown in this timeline, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a subpoena for State Department documents (specifically including “electronic mail (e-mail)”) on August 1, 2013:
For Hillary to have deleted emails in the “fall of 2014” (as stated by her lawyer David Kendall in a letter) when they were responsive to an August 2013 subpoena to the State Department was flat-out, premeditated obstruction. But penalizing it would require a vote by the full House.
Such a vote should be easy, if the purpose of this was not to create political talking points but to punish malfeasance, if the timeline holds up (and I’m not saying you are wrong, just that with American legal bushwah there are wheels within wheels). How many Republicans are going to defect in order to shield Hillary? No, the reason they are not voting is because they don’t want to vote, same as why they didn’t nail Obama on Libya.
At this point we remember that one reason Caeser crossed the Rubicon was to avoid being indicted by the Senate.
At this point, apparently it’s OK to bribe a sitting Attorney General with a promise of future employment. So, what next? Hillary has, after all, been cultivating Generals….
Lynch should have recused herself and appointed a special prosecutor. Bill is her former boss having appointed her US Atty. in 1999. Hillary could well become her future boss if elected. Lynch couldn’t even tell Bill she could not meet with him, despite the obvious problems.
This is not the appearance of a conflict of interest, it is an actual conflict of interest. “If I choose to indict Hillary, there goes my future job as A.G.”
Does everyone go brain dead when they deal with the Clintons?
Jim Kunstler theorizes that maybe Bill C is trying to sabotage $hillary since he doesn’t want to live in the public eye again. I mean, that WOULD get in the way of his favorite hobbies.
At first I just laughed (my usual response to JHK’s writings) since the value of the “Foundation” could reach the stratosphere. But the more I think about it, the more sensible it appears. Can we ever think too far outside the box when it comes to the Clinsters.
It didn’t get in the way much before. Nothing cockblocks the Clenis – neither hovering media scrutiny, nor grounds for divorce, nor language barriers, nor workplace sexual harassment rules, nor age of consent laws, nor ATMs unable to disburse funds at this time. But nothing shall stay this hound from his appointed rounds.
HRC could have simply created a separate email folder for “personal” and moved all the personal incoming and sent messages there.
Then she could have handed the entire email package to a trusted party (Inspector General?) at the state department who could have inspected the personal email folder to verify it truly did contain only personal email.
And the personal email folder would be available if needed..
That a lawyer such as Clinton would effectively hear the cops knocking at the door and flush half her email stash down the toilet could indicate she had some politically embarrassing emails to hide.
And it smacks of evidence destruction to non-lawyer me.
Why have a search and destroy mission and NOT preserve any copies of these supposedly non-government business messages?
Clinton may believe Nixon would have survived had he burned the tapes and this was her Nixonian way of nipping the “personal” emails problem in the bud.
Perhaps this will be an election with cynical bumper stickers such as “Holding my nose and voting Clinton” or “Trump’s bad, Clinton’s worse”.
“Vote for the crook. It’s important.”
It takes a crook to work with the crooks.
Which one?
David Sirota is tweeting a rumor that Clinton is thinking about keeping Loretta Lynch as AG.
… From New York Times, this morning:
Could this possibly be true? Or someones idea of a dark fantasy that has gotten out of control?
Who knows. I would bet that Lynch is furious with the way she’s been used in this and so a trial balloon may be being floated to appease her. It certainly seems that Bill C. put her in an awful position the other day and has hung her out to dry.
It’s up to Comey now, I think, as she has dumped the whole issue in his lap.
That very public and unmistakable quid pro quo (Lynch cannot continue to be Attorney General if there is no Clinton presidency, and there will be no Clinton presidency if there is an indictment) doesn’t seemed designed to appease anybody. It compromises Lynch every bit as much as the airport meeting with Bill Clinton. It’s a daring, one might say desperate, move. I don’t think all of these apparent misjudgments are coming from a confident Clinton Camp.
As I noted elsewhere in these pages, the only other theory (besides desperately bad judgment) I’ve heard that makes any kind of sense of these acts is that things look so bad for the Clintons that their only hope is an independent prosecutor at this point, a whole new process that could, conceivably, delay any indictment until after election day.
How about:
The Clintons are so arrogant and the system is so rigged, they don’t have to give a fuk about what the rest of us think?
~
Yep.
Nailed it, in fact no one in the magical beltway cares.
Lambert enjoy the burger and wine.
I’m have a salmon steak with rice and opening bottle of whine in a few minutes.
Alternatively, The Clinton’s want to get Lynch off the case (for whatever reason) so they make sure to rub their dirt all over her in public.
Wow, how bad would that look? Here’s to hoping it all backfires. Greasing the wheels for sure. It just gets more and more appalling and ridiculous-you think you’ve seen/heard it all, and then something new like this comes out. No shame whatsoever.
I am sorry — I just saw the link from this morning… But it’s too late to delete.
Your post independently confirms that everyone reacts with appalled astonishment to the brazen notion of Clinton retaining Lynch as attorney general.
Incredibly, the Clintons have transformed the D party into the image of themselves: tone deaf, suborned, and oblivious until the moment the handcuffs are clicked on.
The tragedy, and it may assume Greekly Tragic dimensions, is that there are people so devoted to the Clintons that they will vote for them no matter what, and demand that the SanderBackers switch to Clinton, no matter what. Loyalty is no doubt admirable and the Clinton supporters’s loyalty is beyond reproach. It is sad that they have given their loyalty to such a family as the Clintons. Is Clinton the hill they want to die on? Really? Apparently so.
There are blogs where the Clinton-loyalists may be read in comment after comment after comment. To name them would be to shame them, and I will not do that here. ( Well . . . if they are blogs I rarely read and don’t care about anyway, I may go right ahead. Otherwise, not.)
“Could this possibly be true?”
It’s probably true that a Dem operative whispered this to a NYT reporter, and undoubtedly true that the reporter wrote it down like it was no big deal. That’s the important part, not whether it ever actually comes to pass.
What’s remarkable is that the Clinton team is so willing to send these signals so publicly.
Offering Lynch an office in a future Clinton administration is a bribe, pure and simple.
More to the point, the Clintons wouldn’t be offering a bribe unless there were a reason to offer it, in exactly the same way that Bill Clinton doesn’t cross the steaming tarmac in Phoenix without a reason to cross it.
These are not the actions of people confident in their innocence!
I assumed that in the reported quid pro quo offer the cabinet position was merely a proxy. There are easier things to do, I’m sure, than being Attorney General — say, sitting on a board of directors, or a paid consultancy to the Clinton Foundation.
But it is the audacity of suborning misprision from the nation’s highest justice official by publicly offering to keep her as the highest justice official that is truly breathtaking.
Lynch: “Oh my goodness no, I don’t want to be AG again. You do me far too much honor.”
Clinton: “Is there any way we can help?”
And so forth…
Does the FBI have to call B. Clinton & L. Lynch in for an interview about this?
“It was reported in the NYTimes that Secy Clinton is considering offering Lynch the AG office, was this possibility discussed or mentioned in any way? ….”
Or something.
How much is FBI supposed to ignore?
Lambert Strether,
Some of the passers by who sneak raspberries might be inspired to develop a part of their yard into the same sort of self-maintaining raspberry garden.
Right next to my yardlet is a semi-unmanaged area where raspberries started growing. I encouraged them with occasional watering and cutting away nearby tree branches which shaded them and impeded their growth. I have let some burdocks right around/among them grow big and tall with slightly groomed tall flower stalks. If the raspberries grow any new canes tall and long enough to need support, I will wind them around the most suitable burdock stalks. I did that with one last year and it is still supported and throwing many little fruiting branchlets along the main cane. Cane-tips grew long enough to touch the ground and tip root there. Maybe new plants will grow from the tip rooting sites.
A war-of-the-invasives I would like to see: A southern pond full of water hyacinth with kudzu planted along the pond edges. The kudzu would grow out over the water hyacinth seeking support and the water hyacinth would keep replicating and growing to the light through cracks in the kudzu roof. As the kudzu and the water hyacinth kept sinking eachother, high carbon organo-muck would build up on the pond bottom at a fantastic rate. A kudzuacinth pond would be a fantastic sky-carbon suckdown drain.
If japanese timber moso bamboo were introduced here, would it become invasive? Or at least super-growing? If so, what if japanese timber moso bamboo and kudzu were planted together in the same place? How much skycarbon would they suck down and how much green biomass would they turn all that skycarbon into?
What kind of raspberries are they? I have black raspberries (a native plant), which I love. A friend is growing them as climbers up a high wall.
There are also red raspberries, the cultivated kind, and wineberries, a super vigorous red raspberry from Asia with mossy reddish prickles, which has escaped to roadsides and which has a rather bland flavor.
Kudzu also has culinary uses, as does bamboo.
Black raspberries make fantastic pies and jams! I love them, too.
we collected a bucket of black currants which were turned into jam a couple days ago.. excellentemente
I have always thought these are wild raspberries. They are small and very dark red ( “black”). They showed up on their own. The burdock plants may well provide support platforms for any new long canes that grow. Also, the huge near-ground lowest leaves of the burdock cast a deep shade on the ground which the raspberries may well like.
And the taprooted burdocks will send their taproots close to a foot deep even in the stiff resistant clay soil in which they find themselves growing . . . . helping to deepen and organify the clay-soil over time. So I will keep encouraging them and trim’n grooming the flower stalks to be good supports.
(In a few other parts of the brushy woods-edge I have also been favoring some already-there raspberry patches. I have seen people stop to gather berries now that the patches have become visibly big.)
Awesome
Please avoid the kudzu…..
Believe it or not the most effective technique to counter kudzu is “Rent-a-Goat”. As long as you have enough goat available, it cannot spring back from the roots.
Find interesting stories by searching for “kudzu eating goats” in you favorite (non-Google) search engine.
I would certainly have to contain the kudzu against spreading further inland away from the pond edges, that’s for sure. Perhaps goat-proof fence a few feet from the pond edge all the way around the pond . . . and let the goats eat any kudzu which dares to show its face on the landward side of the goat proof fence.
Two functions in one from the kudzu . . . . mucho mulch from kudzu out over the hyacinth pond . . . and goat food from kudzu on the landward side of the goat proof fence.
And, to complete the circle of life…. the post goat leavings from consumed kudzu also qualifies as fertilizer.
And to make the circle double back on itself, one could feed some of the water hyacinth and the kudzu one periodically hauls in from off of the pond . . to the same goats. Who would poo even more for even more shoreline kudzu feeding.
Also, for those of you who live further south the University of Florida “Gargening Solutions” site has a large amount of useful information.
gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu
different clue,
There’s such a thing as a goat-proof fence?
I suspect the Japanese are highly amused at our problems with kudzu. They feed the tops to livestock and eat the roots (for instance, as a cornstarch substitute.)
And just incidentally, we don’t have kudzu here in Oregon (knock wood), but i’ve seen wisteria dragging down young cedar trees. Rather similar plant, but toxic and without the edible roots. Highly decorative, though.
I wish raspberries were all that invasive here, but blackberries are, in spades. They do bribe us to let them live, though – and the birds to spread them around. I spend a LOT of time and considerable blood controlling blackberries. Which I probably should be doing right now.
In the botanic garden in Lund they use a border of rocks, about 60 cm wide, to keep the black raspberries (björnbär – bear berries ;) somewhat under control. The idea is to keep the branches from touching soil, which will cause them to root. Of course this plant will always attempt to send secret roots underground for long distances (10-15 meters, I have seen), where branches suddenly pops up and form a new bush.
Lovely idea. Kudzu is excellent for maintaining body temperature, esp for women or people prone to getting cold extremities. The Japanese use the kudzu powder similarly to starch. A friend made excellent “goma-dofu” (sesame tofu) by mixing some kudzu w water and sesame paste. Took 10 min vs 2-3 days for the real thing. Enjoy the organomuck!
In the face of an investigation, she not only destroys emails, she has her IT people deep erase the hard drives. She does this after turning over the emails SHE thinks the FBI should see, except that we know she didn’t turn over everything the FBI asked for. Even if she were not the target of the investigation, how is this not obstruction of justice?
Richard Nixon and Rose Mary Woods are turning over in their graves.
Recall the Watergate scandal. Obstruction of justice was the thing that brought down Nixon and his gang.
Heck, Tricky Dick and Rose Mary are probably slapping their foreheads in frustration and muttering, “why couldn’t WE get away with this?”
Because Team D.
Next.
The post about the farce of the democrat primary in my home state of California broke me. I weeped openly for my country, for my people, for the unassailable evil of neoliberalism in our lives. Yesterday. In a restaurant. In Uruguay :(
I don’t know how to continue today, as I try to numb my pain with the excellent tannat (red wine). Who am I? How do I build my future? Do I turn my back completely? Deciding to immigrate was a first step, how far do I go? What is my identity? I twist in these winds as I watch the rain, glad for the shared melancholy.
Why would you allow the day-to-day foibles of a$$holes determine your identity? It’s your decision. The thing about the world is, it’s both magnificent and unbelievably awful. My two cents is that you are obviously USAmerican, because we are the only ones who think it can be one without the other.
The disillusioned squire Jons in Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” found a good way to cope. There’s a brilliant one-minute sequence at the start of this scene: Squire Jons eating his version of theater popcorn, helpfully stepping in as a prompter when necessary, and exclaiming “bravo” — when the players whip up senseless life-dramas — in fate’s shadow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wTgZ6OChq4
The Clintons are shysters and grafters. Out in the open. All day…
Happy 4th, Lambert! Thanks for the work you do. I’m an avid gardener. What kind of files and sources can you handle?–Photoshop? Pinterest?
JPGs through my contact form are best; if people start sending my remote links, I won’t be able to manage.
Re: Messy Gardens
I got a hedgehog nesting box and placed it (or so I thought) in optimum position at the back of the garden under a nice bushy skimmia.
I was dumbfounded to discover in November last year a hibernating hedgehog in the most overgrown (there’s not much in the garden that fits that description but this was one bit that was) part, having not opted to overwinter in the custom made nest box.
(I’ve now made the area around the nest box nice and messy!)
I was going to some extensive (and badly needed) weed-whacking in front of the house, but since it’s the holiday weekend I figured I’d spare the weekenders and renters the awful noise.
And now it’s raining cats and dogs.
Shine on, you crazy diamonds, err thistles and what-not!
~
This house looks big enough to where multi-thousand-gallon tanks could store multi-thousand gallons of roofwater.
Ha ha. Looks like a tiny little cabin, to me. We Mainers have old houses that are big.
I am guessing that old Maine houses get big by being two or three stories tall. Plus a basement too. That is just a guess, though.
So I will retreat and narrow my judgement and say the house in the picture looks like it has enough square roof area to shed thousands of gallons of skywater over a year. Enough to make skywater harvestorage tanks worth the effort.
http://yournewswire.com/almost-one-million-bernie-sanders-ballots-illegally-shredded/ ran through my thread, feel free to verify.
Er, how about you add some value by doing verification on your own?
Yesterday, I heard a roomer that Lynch was walking back her statment of accepting the FBI recommendation to mean just receiving them. Any truth to this?
Breitbart(ugh) reported that the DoJ said she would remain the “ultimate decider,” and that recommendations would be reviewed by herself and assistant AGs.
I don’t know anything about FBI recommendations for indictments. Could the assertiveness of the FBI’s language and presentation of the facts be structured in such a way that Lynch has wiggle room to not indict? Alternatively, could the report be written so forcefully and the evidence laid out so clearly that it could only look like she was letting Clinton off the hook?
This looks like it will be played using the Holder/Petraeus template. The same things that landed others in jail were deemed suitable by Holder to give Petraeus a slap on the wrist; I expect the same thing will happen wrt Clinton and Lynch. AG’s have a lot of leeway, and putting a friend away would be unlikely at a time when open corruption is deemed, even by the Supreme Court, to be just part of the cost of doing business.
I hope I am proven wrong, but I expect nothing to come out of this – except maybe a decision by Sanders to keep on keeping on.
Oh, we might see some ineffectual leaking from the FBI… which will be met by Their Media whining hard about FBI “incompetence” in the Omar Mateen investigation, before getting back to Trump’s latest tweet.
In my experience, good-ol-boy hires tend toward loyalty, while diversity hires tend toward incompetence.
AG Lynch appears to have both of those bases covered, but here’s to hoping that she takes her oath more seriously than most of her recent male predecessors appear to have…
From your lips to God’s ears, but the robotic efficiency with which she cranks out judgments that feature inadequate fines for corporations without admission of guilt foreshadows her every move for me. I will be AMAZED if anything substantive comes from her office.
She is just another Holder with different underwear, and maybe she lacks even that much of a difference.
What if “diversity” is just a cover for “good old boy”? That’s how black voters and others were fooled into thinking Obama was not a secret Wall Street agent. Because he looked “black” to all intents and purposes and knew how to play Black on TV. In his case the diversity was camouflage.
A friend of mine put a bee swarm capture box out in the yard, and one moved into it a few weeks ago. It has been hot, so you can see lines of them flying to the birdbath from their hive and back. They have been pretty obnoxious to the smaller birds, but clouds of them get out of the way fast when the crows (who just ignore them) show up. There is one small bird that just bounces off of the water, repeatedly. It is really just the wildest thing to watch; bounce, bounce, bounce…
I saw some box turtles this week, a male and a nesting female, that I haven’t seen in a very long time. They are in a fenced in back yard, so one would think that you would see them occasionally. They are really good hiders, as is the five foot rat snake that lives here and the possums (or raccoons or armadillos…) who eat everything that hits the “compost heap” within a day or so.
While it has gotten a little jungly for the neighbors’ tastes (and, truth be told, my own…just don’t tell them that), I haven’t missed the huge lawn it replaced one bit. It’s quickly becoming its’ own world back here behind the hedges, and watching it evolve has been a real pleasure.
Once, I watched a 3 foot black snake disappear into a tiny little hole in the yard. I would have never imagined that little hole was big enough for a snake hole. Since then, I have seen the same thing happen in other places. So you never know what that little, tiny hole in the ground might have in it.
The Wolves of Silicon Valley: how megalomaniacs in hoodies became tech’s answer to Wall Street
You can see why, too. Martínez’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg’s empire and the rest of Silicon Valley is pretty damning. The tech hub is described as akin to a cult – with the day employees join dubbed their ‘Faceversary’ (complete with baptism-style levels of celebrations), the day they leave classed as their ‘death’ and a dress code to stop female employees ‘distracting’ male co-workers. Beneath the Frat House-esque atmosphere, the company’s elite are painted as sociopaths in hoodies, with an internal security division called ‘The Sec’ monitoring staff members’ movements. Forget the dog-eat-dog capitalism of Wall Street – these guys make Gordon Gekko look like Ghandi.
“Wall Street is the open ruthlessness of gladiatorial combat,” says Martínez. “You’re tossed in there, a lot of blood flows and one man triumphs. In Silicon Valley, it’s more like this mafioso drama with a lot of aggressive behaviour and back-room dealing. Behind the manicured exterior of being an entrepreneur or an investor, there are all these knives in the back which are never discussed publicly.”
The changing face of the Valley
The spirit of Silicon Valley, he says, is changing. What sprang from a 1960s counterculture is morphing into just another industry where Ivy League kids go to try to make a name for themselves. ‘So many people in tech have no sense of right or wrong’, he says describing one guy he saw close up behaving abusively in the form of a gangster rather than a company exec. “He’d probably be in jail if he had a bit more violence to him,” he says. “These companies are temples to the founders’ egos. You don’t even have that level of self worship on Wall Street.”
“But that techie kid who goes and gets his $5 single-origin, cruelty-free pour-over in some trendy coffee shop? He doesn’t give a s***. He just wants to get some liquidity around his shares and steps over the homeless guy en route to his yoga class.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/the-wolves-of-silicon-valley-how-megalomaniacs-in-hoodies-became/
if the liquidity goes will their ego’s go, too?…
it sounds like there’s some gyrovagues up there in Maine that eat private sector raspberries.
They should be taxed but they don’t have any money.
If they’re tied by ropes to dogs it may be the dog’s fault, and then the dog pees. What an assault on private property.
Armed guards are evidently needed, although a dog can’t tell an armed guard from a mailman.
It makes it hard, that’s for sure — that’s why you need an ascot and Edward Green shoes, to numb the pain the proletariat inflicts upon a man of culture. The photo isn’t bad actually. if you look at plants enough you start seeing Jackson Pollock type compositions (or backgrounds and details from some of the Old Masters, that’s proably where Jackson Pollock got it from in the first place. It really takes a lot of mental locomotive power to do that kind of thing, I think more than math actually, having looked into both of them a bit),
“…that’s why you need an ascot and Edward Green shoes, to numb the pain the proletariat inflicts upon a man of culture.”
I have recently discovered Boyd’s shoes and bought a pair like this: http://www.styleforum.net/t/168002/shoe-damage-report-shoe-p0rn-central-part-ii/6510. Shoe porn, indeed; check out the soles! Step aside Edward Green! One could inflict a lot of pain on the proletarian that dared to intrude upon the cultured man wearing such as these.
As someone in comments said: “Beautiful in their brutality.” He ain’t kidding; putting on a pair of these can actually change your personality. No ascot required, Labrador optional. :)
Congratulations on the “intercropping” as I heard it described on my first trip for CARE to Peru. Much more durable form of horticulture if you choose the elements wisely. And a nice picture in a textural way. We photographers who are graced w/lovely subjects are fortunate.
From the FT:
Could this be the start of another Lehman event?
CNN: Sanders’ campaign is over, yet Secret Service motorcade roars on
Because on July 4th, and with no white Broncos or missing blondes to report on,
CNN has nothing better to do.
Missed this from WaPo, worth a read:
When you’ve lost Chris Cilizza….
And of course, the old joke; “‘Trust me’? That’s [insert disfavored ethnic group of choice]-ish for ‘**** you!'”
And so it is. I mean, first the “chance meeting” on the tarmac, then the open bribe. How is any of this on the up-and-up?
Trump’s anti-trade rhetoric rattles Clinton, unions
Best.Headline.Ever.
A Sanders endorsement, if it ever comes, will do little to convince workers who’ve been scr*wed over three times:
by their corporate employers, by the Democratic Party, and (in some cases, not all) by their unions.
And somehow I don’t think that a Salon article or twitter storm from a Clinton surrogate will change their minds.
Before I read this, I will think to myself . . . why would unions be rattled? Unless it is a few tiny corners of a few unions, like the bulldozer makers at Caterpillar who think they will save their jobs by selling bulldozers overseas. And see their greater-union brothersisters net net lose jobs as Komatsu sells more machinery over here than Caterpillar sells over there.
And maybe the Las Vegas and Miami service unions support Free Trade because the richer the foreigners keep getting, the more foreigners come to play in Las Vegas and Miami. So the Las Vegas and Miami service unions could make a fortune off their country’s misfortune. For a while. Till the whole country goes terminally Ukraine-shaped.
Leadership are members of the 1%
Rank and file are not.
Just something to keep in mind whenever the word Union pops up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmzzuMzOcKM
AS-BD-0002 P-51 triple ace BUD ANDERSON recorded Nov 15, 2013
I still can’t bring myself to use the Repuglans’ term of abuse for the Democratic Party . . . the “Democrat” Party . . . . because it is a Repuglan-invented term. But I understand the need for a term of abuse for the Party in question.
So I will start using the word “Decromat”. Its wrong and abusive, easy to understand, and not the term that the Repuglans invented. “Who are the Decromats? They are the people who make up the leaders and apparatchiks of the mainstream Decromat Party of today.” ” Let’s help Sanders make the Decromat Party democratic again.” Stuff like that there.
‘Democrat Party’ is bad but ‘Repuglan’ is a-ok? I don’t really follow. Didn’t the Democrats come up with the terms like Repug and Rethug and such?