Beekeepers Benefit From The Hive Mind In Community Apiaries NPR
In The Midst Of Drought, California Farmers Used More Water For Almonds Forbes
Longest historic temperature record stretches back 2 million years Nature
Relief arrives for U.S. shale firms as OPEC folds in price battle Reuters. So, more capex in the oil patch?
Trudeau government approves Petronas’ $36-billion LNG project in BC Daily Hive
US drives rainforest destruction by importing Amazon oil, study finds Guardian
California Suspends ‘Business Relationships’ With Wells Fargo Bloomberg
Wells Fargo CEO Isn’t Out of Danger Despite Pay Clawback WSJ
Clawbacks and Consumer Loans Bloomberg
Why People Have Been Worrying About Deutsche Bank, in 12 Charts Bloomberg
Draghi and Berlin drawn into Deutsche Bank troubles FT
Europe’s banks ‘not investable’ says top banker amid Deutsche Bank crisis Guardian
Shadow Banking Bounces Back Conversable Economist
How a Goldman Sachs puppet promoted another Goldman Sachs puppet as the PM of Greece the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens
Exclusive: The explosive allegations at the top of the Championship Telegraph
From Israel via London, an online gambling scam traps thousands Reuters
Seven months after I expose crypto-currency OneCoin, police move in. Mirror (RS).
Who Should Buy Twitter? No One. Slate
US tech groups unite to dispel AI fears FT. There’s a confidence builder….
Hate standing in line? Japan now has self-driving chairs Phys.org
China
Billionaire: Chinese real estate is ‘biggest bubble in history’ CNN
The Chinese Banks Eating Wall Street’s Lunch (in Asia) WSJ
Duterte Calls for End to US-Philippine Military Exercises, Part of Tilt Toward China Foreign Policy
Last PH-US war games for ‘this year’ alone — Duterte top adviser Inquirer
Turnbull: Flunky for the banking mafia Macrobusiness
Brexit
The New Times: Brexit, globalisation, the crisis in Labour and the future of the left New Statesman
Jeremy Corbyn: We can climb electoral mountain BBC
8 key points from Jeremy Corbyn’s rousing Labour Conference speech Mirror
Labour conference live: Shadow Cabinet turns on Jeremy Corbyn over immigration speech Independent. Deputy Leader Tom Watson: “I don’t know why we’ve been focusing on what was wrong with the Blair and Brown governments.” Er, Iraq?
Missile System That Downed MH17 Said to Be From Russia WSJ
MH17 shot down by rebels using Buk system brought from Russia – int’l investigators RT
FLASHLIGHT FROM MH-17 INVESTIGATION — DUTCH, AUSTRALIAN AND UKRAINIAN POLICE ANNOUNCE END OF TUNNEL; RUSSIAN GENERALS ANNOUNCE TUNNEL VISION John Helmer. As always with digital evidence, check the provenance.
Shoot down of commercial airliner precedent rests with U.S. warship Vincennes Globe and Mail (2014).
Syraqistan
9/11 Bill Crashes Saudi Stock Exchange, Bond Market Ambitions Oilprice.com
Override of Obama veto just first hurdle in 9/11 families’ pursuit of Saudi Arabia McClatchy
A Few Links On Syria And Other Issues Moon of Alabama
The Art of the Nuclear Deal LRB
Rogue Mission: Did the Pentagon Bomb Syrian Army to Kill Ceasefire Deal? Counterpunch
Black Injustice Tipping Point
A Homegirl Reflecting on Charlotte Uprising tressiemc
President Obama Wants Colin Kaepernick to Consider ‘Pain’ of Military Families Time
White House Outlines Massive Outreach to Indian Country at Tribal Nations Conference Indian Country
2016
Democrats target Libertarian ticket The Hill. “[S]ome of the nation’s most prominent liberal writers, who are seeking to shame young voters away from the Libertarian ticket.” Bad voters! B-a-a-a-a-d! [slaps voter on nose with rolled-up newspaper].
Hillary Clinton Struggles to Win Back Young Voters From Third Parties NYT. All those Republican endorsements she worked so hard for should really be a help.
Parsing What Makes a Trump Supporter Tick NYT
Hillary Clinton’s awkward history on trade policy FT
The most dangerous conspiracy theory of 2016 Politico
Cheer Up. History Will Forget This Dismal Campaign. Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg. Who needs prediction markets when we have asset prices?
For fear of finding something worse Alternet. From August, but still useful. “The US presidential campaign is more like a contest between Angela Merkel and Silvio Berlusconi, in which the US left has decided to support Merkel.”
The Mytilenean Dialogue From 428 B.C. Explains Who Really Won the Trump-Clinton Debate Foreign Policy
Clinton and Trump Get Most of Their Campaign Funds from These 250 Neighborhoods Wired
House approves stopgap funding, averting costly shutdown The Hill
New nursing home standards preserve patients’ right to sue WaPo
EXCLUSIVE: Elected officials sign letter praising NYC charter schools as ‘world-class education’ prior to rally NY Daily News (AH). Ka-ching.
Class Warfare
Studies Link Cancer Patients’ Survival Time To Insurance Status NPR. Rule #2 of neoliberalism…
Think only low–paid workers get the Sports Direct treatment? You’re wrong Guardian. The academic precariat in the UK.
The Ebbs and Flows of Coastal Maine Deborah Fallows, The Atlantic. The piece ends with a request for Eastport to activate the weather station at its small airport, to make it easier for the Fallows’ single-engine propeller airplane, a Cirrus SR22, to take off and land. Granted, Fallows prefaces her request with “Selfishly speaking,” but if that request doesn’t exemplify privilege, it’s hard to see what would.
Wreaths Across America. A reader writes: “Each year the 4H Club that my family and I are involved with goes to Quantico and Arlington National Cemeteries to lay wreaths.”
A revolution disguised as organic gardening: in memory of Bill Mollison The Conversation
The Coming of the Postliberal Era The Archdruid Report
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
227 comments
Comments are closed.
RE: Duterte calls for end to joint US military exercises, after this year—this drives the point home that the US does not run Asia anymore. The filipinos look over at China and they see a monster that they know they cannot defeat in a war, so they are taking a realistic view. The Americans are still in denial about their descension from World’s Only Superpower status, with the Obama administration trying to run out the clock before the next prez gets superficially stuck with the castigation for losing all of America’s power.
The precariat article is good, reflecting the depressing industrialisation of education in the UK.
The guardian is all for this in its own workplace,however
The Guardian is, increasingly (if you’ll pardon the phrase) getting on my tits at the moment. Is there anything worse in the mainstream media than a Progressive In Name Only newspaper?
The BBC’s fair and balanced news and current affairs departments (driven by its sinister business unit) are perhaps worse because of its greater reach, but it’s a tight race.
Clive, intemperate: The agony of the Guardian is indeed interesting. A while back, I read that its site was the most used among English-language newspapers, particularly by U.S. readers looking for some balance.
With regard to the U.S. political coverage, and their rah-rah Clintonism, as evinced by the resurrection of the likes of Jill Abramson, I tend to cut them some slack. I find that many English (in particular, the English) are somewhat tone-deaf about U.S. culture and folkways. I imagine some Guardian Uxonian editors, who once spent a week in NYC with a side trip to LA, and who have actually eaten corn on the cob, thinking that they understand the U.S. Constitution and U.S. politics. But they still don’t know how to pronounce Illinois and Arkansas.
The anti-Corbyn hysteria shows detachment from their roots. The Guardian editors should get in a car and head out for a field trip to Manchester (do they recall Manchester?) to find out more about Brexit and Corbyn. A trip to the English nether-regions would do them some good.
And yet I can’t complain too much: How often do they present Douthat, Bruni, and Brooks as sages?
they use richard wolffe a lot, who’s spent a lot of time here; imo, they know what they’re doing with the constant pro clinton articles, and bernie (and now trump) bashing. not to mention their treatment of julian assange.
‘they still don’t know how to pronounce Illinois and Arkansas’
And they think ‘Texan’ is an adjective rather than a noun. As in ‘four people taken to hospital after separate shootings in Texan city.’
That’s as bizarre to American ears as yanks who use “scotch” as an adjective (rather than ‘scottish’) whilst visiting the sceptred isle.
Axe?
Grist?
Yet the myth amongst the US colonials is that anyone with a British accent must be very smart. Go figure. The Southern Euros have long ago realised that many Brits are simply obnoxious drunkards and notorious tightwads.
True, After paying inflated prices to do the first we are forced to be the second.
As is common the business owners get the money and their workers remain unrewarded.
Sorry for the outburst. I am a bit miffed at a Brit who resides in my old town, who went on an FB crusade against a BG veterinarian over the latter’s exam fee. It was just a bit over 4 pounds, yet the transplanted Brit acted as though he had been robbed. I know the veterinarian, he does good work and at Bulgarian prices. Which is to say that his fees are exceedingly small, particularly by British and US standards. So for the Brit to make a spectacle of himself left the distinct impression of a British sahib terrorizing and exploiting the native help. Over four pounds! To be fair, most of the other local Brits stood up for the veterinarian, but still. The vet was forced to refund 3 pounds, no doubt because he is afraid of losing British customers. I sincerely hope that the ugly Brit uses the 3 pounds he saved toward his cirrhosis fund.
Oh we don’t really think that. We just enjoy listening to them.
The truth is it’s now the Brits who are the colonials and mighty Uncle Sam who aspires to rule the waves. You can see this in the way most English actors have killer American accents (not you Kate Winslet) whereas American actors who try the trick in reverse are usually a lot less convincing.
As for the media, I agree with everyone here that the Brits merely ape American news and offer no special insight. That said, the rest of the world probably knows a lot more about us than we know about them.
aussie actors are the new accent kings
When I took linguistics 101 as an elective it was explained to us that there was a complication in the implicit rules to British pronunciation that prevented most Americans from ever developing a convincing British accent. British folk, however, (supposedly) didn’t find “American” to be nearly as difficult to master.
Yet the myth amongst the US colonials is that anyone with a British accent must be very smart
So how did that work out?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAnIOCIBFR4
What’s an Elf? – The Office – BBC
I’ve always preferred the Scot’s accent… When it turns out they are very smart, it’s always a pleasant surprise HAHHA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICbbPSXUAmY&index=9&list=PLYjaa9h0s4AbnEzOH9sy6a7SyCu_98nlt
Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict
Heh, Irvine Welsh is a proud Chicago resident. I am pretty sure he even knows how to pronounce ‘Chicago,’ too! I am very partial to Scots myself.
am pretty sure he even knows how to pronounce Chicago
I’ve lived here all my life and I’m not sure I know how!
Scotland is a cool place, been to the Firth of Forth once on biz.
The drive to the facility I was visiting was like the Scottish Tourism Dept staged it, down the fly fishers in the stream along the road.
I could happily spend time there. When I visited, the fellow who picked me had a clutter of golf clubs and his fly fishing gear in the trunk . I don’t do either but I was thinking, wow this guy is living the life. Has a rugged aesthetic landscape available for recreation, yet can live is an urban environment if he so chooses instead of going Ted Kaczynski.
I’d definitely add fly-fishing in Scotland to my bucket list if I thought I had a chance to fulfill it.
+1 for the Floyd!
I didn’t know they were parsimonious!
“Scotch eggs”
Yeah, but are they true Scotch eggs?
Ha!
The true scotsegg fallacy, indeed Lambert youdig deep in the debate society kit
There’s also the Scotch opening in chess.
Auntie Beeb’s reporter couldn’t pronounce “Hoboken” at all…
I would have thought that before, but their Sanders coverage was a disgrace – it can’t have been ignorance, it was quite deliberate (and the manner in which btl commentators were ignored when calling it out was very telling).
The thing is, they have some terrific individual reporters such as Gary Younge and John Harris, but its clear they don’t set the overall editorial tone. There has been a very distinct turn since Katherine Viner took over as editor, a big turn to a very specific ‘liberal’ agenda.
Yep. Its Corbyn coverage is mostly despicable.
“Rogue Mission: Did the Pentagon Bomb Syrian Army to Kill Ceasefire Deal? Counterpounch”. IMO the wrong question keeps getting asked, except by the Russians: “Who’s in charge – the White House or the Pentagon?” Is the media too afraid to ask this and is Obama afraid and embarrassed to let it be known? Has POTUS lost control of the military? Will it never by discussed or mentioned by MSM?
I think the Overton Window has been successfully shifted by the media since Obama came to power to ensure that any suggestion that he is not calling the shots in foreign policy can be filed under ‘conspiracy theories’. Every success is his doing, every failure is due to Republican obstructionism or those dastardly Russians and Chinese.
Having said all that, its pretty obvious that Obama has minimal control and quite likes it that way. I think he sees himself as a sort of bored patriarch of a big family, letting them do their own thing with occasional speeches about good behaviour and disciplining only when they have done something outrageously stupid.
Well he certainly ain’t calling any shots on police departments across the country murdering black citizens. You would think that there would be a little outrage from him. Even calling a presidential commission together to get to some facts on why black people across America are being systematically killed by supposed “preserve and protect” agents. I know I sure as hell would like to know what’s going on. However I am starting to believe that he looks upon himself as more of his mother’s son than his father’s in race related matters. Being a worshiper of the one per cent can’t be the only reason for not taking a stand.
Maybe he is outraged by this:
http://admin.americanthinker.com/images/bucket/2016-09/197226_5_.png
Kudos for that infographic. If placed together with an analysis of the funding by Soros to enable the final divide and conquer of America, it might even resonate with the millions of cognitively dissonant.
Cops killing unarmed black people who aren’t committing any crime; who are obeying instructions to retrieve their driver’s license, or to lie down; who pose no threat; who may have been immobilized by taser, handcuffs, or choke holds; who may be struggling to breathe is very divisive. As are comments that don’t see that killing as a legitimate object of protest.
What, didn’t you see the infographic? All of that is okay because people are being killed other ways more. We’re all good, apparently….
My comment neither said nor implied any such thing.
People who support or participate in the #BlackLivesMatter movement are also concerned with and working on other problems of violence in their own communities, and are in solidarity with overlapping communities on matters like cops killing unarmed mentally unstable people regardless of race. In other words, not divisive.
Oh no, I was just being sarcastic because the infographic seems to suggest, as you mentioned, that there is nothing to see here, when indeed there is very much to see here, cops killing innocent people.
Sorry to have misunderstood. Yes, much to see here.
Meh. That’s kind of a garbage graphic.
It comes across as refusing to look at rates for b/b (90) crime versus w/w (82) crime because they are too similar. And ignoring regional crime and neighborhoods (poverty, nutrition, clean air water, jobs) because that would be too similar. Not to mention it is completely ignoring that blm focuses more on police brutality rather than overall crime rates.
It looks like someone went hunting and had to layer cherry picked stats on cherry picked stats.
Fixed it for you.
It’s the strangest thing when you think about it. Even when — mirable dictu — officers who kill are charged with a crime, they are almost never convicted in courts of law. Rarely are they disciplined in any way. They have layers and layers of legal protections, and to a remarkable degree, Americans approve of their actions, no matter how heinous (the exception being sexual indiscretion… tut-tut, can’t have that, no-no.)
Killing black men, armed or unarmed, especially if they are in crisis, mentally ill or otherwise disabled, is so routine that one almost expects it to happen every other day or so.
Their killers as a rule lack empathy for their victims and are incapable of feeling shame for what they have done. In almost every case, their victims are maligned and impugned and blamed for their own deaths, something about “choices” even when — or maybe especially when — their victims obviously cannot make rational choices or obey the commands of officers.
Disobedience is itself sufficient for a “split-second decision” to kill.
And almost every time, the PTB say it’s all good.
There’s a lesson here. I’m not entirely sure what it is…
All this true and it’s not even referencing the recent shooting of a therapist who happened to be black (and luckily lived) who went to the rescue of another black man with emotional problems who the police had in the sites sitting out unarmed in a street.
However, i think the lesson here is, not explicitly stated but for all non-elites to at least subliminally take in and for people of color to get loud and clear, “you live in a police state and they can do as they please with you. You exist at your own risk.”
The police survive because the people guarantee their safety. No amount of Kevlar, lead or Mace is going to protect a police department that has lost its authority. When people shoot back at the cops as if they were just another occupying force (which the faintest drop of class-consciousness and an examination of US history would reveal plainly, if not floridly), that moral authority is very, very thin, and a force protection posture is only going to make things worse for the propertied and their estates they actually do serve and protect.
Who is dividing anyone?
By the way, I keep looking for the All Lives Matter contingent to show up at these protests. I mean after all, All Lives should include AAs shot for little to no reason. It’s almost as if groups like it are meant to be the counter movement that divides people, not the movement that AAs have created to address disparity in their community.
apber, because state terrorism is a compassionate measure in order to keep the poors to a proper height?
Seriously, right-wing terrorists, i.e. the rulng class and their faithful serfs, need to stop wanking with numbers to get their narcissism fix.
This was particularly disgusting:
http://time.com/4512595/president-obama-colin-kaepernick-town-hall/
Kaepernick is inspiring. Obama?
CNN Town Hall at which President addresses members of the armed forces. What town is that?
What do you want? He opened the Black History museum and gave a speech! And Michelle hugged Bushie.
Lord Grantham!
All those governmental fiefdoms established during the reign of Jr continue unhindered, in part because Obama had no interest in changing anything. So now after 16 years of running the store it probably feels like ownership. If they don’t owe you anything then you are just in the way. In partial defense it’s hard to see how it could be otherwise without bringing big changes from day one.
Obama’s lack of control extends far beyond having an independent military and military grade spy network. He couldn’t even protect his buds living in the house of Saud from mean ole lawsuits. It was clear the veto wouldn’t stand but that Obama Foundation isn’t going to build itself. Taking one for “Team Elite”.
Obama may be trusting the TPP is postponed during his lame duck session for the same reason.
This way he can be viewed as still a loyal “Battle of TPP” foot soldier for “Team Elite”, with his future rewards to follow.
If the TPP subsequently passes under a President Hillary, the delayed harmful TPP effects could then be attributed to her, not Obama.
Perhaps he fight for the TPP in the lame duck session just well enough to avoid having it on his record.
Agree. That seems to be the plan. Just like WJC campaigned for NAFTA and did the leg work for Bushie to sign it.
Dunno, you decide:
Here’s the text of the DIA document:
“If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
The latter is the city in question.
Here’s the Daily Beast not disputing the text (though for far different reasons):
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/15/the-putin-trump-mind-meld-a-wondrous-enterprise.html
Here’s the document itself. The text is on page 4.
I’d say the situation is ‘unravel[ing]’ to ‘Western powers’, though not Assad & Russia.
The way i see it the Potus remains in charge but is just disinterested beyond presentation of media platitudes
It might be premature to think of this as an either-or situation. It’s possible Obama was playing both sides of the street and could then act accordingly depending on how the situation changed. The chances of a rogue Deep State aren’t zero, but I don’t think it’s very high, either. All these bureaucrats are churned out by basically the same education system so they all think alike anyways. No need for conspiracy and collusion when you’re education background funnels thought along restricted avenues of thought brought about by “elite education.” It’s the restriction of thought which was the feature that got all governments to push the idea of universal basic education. It’s the most effective method of social engineering man has devised in the last 200 years.
[spam filter flushed a comment with tax data on 0bamacare]
There’s a Spam museum in Minnesota. Of course, this is for the other kind of Spam.
http://www.spam.com/museum
http://youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE
Democrats target Libertarian ticket The Hill. “[S]ome of the nation’s most prominent liberal writers, who are seeking to shame young voters away from the Libertarian ticket.” Bad voters! B-a-a-a-a-d! [slaps voter on nose with rolled-up newspaper].
your suppose to squirt them with a spray bottle…
I heard the mother dog bites the ears of her misbehaving pups. That might work.
revolt of the Mommies …….
Long ago I voted Libertarian, when their candidate was the late Harry Browne.
Browne authored numerous financial books. He proposed a “permanent portfolio” consisting of 25% T-bills, 25% T-bonds, 25% stocks and 25% gold. It was so successful that it still trades today, in slightly altered composition:
Sharp-eyed readers will spot the Craazyman Fund’s inspiration from Harry Browne. Its 50% junk bond allocation replaces the T-bills and T-bonds; stocks are upped to 30%; gold is 20%.
Harry Browne was an original thinker. Would I vote Libertarian today? No way.
Harry Browne….
Self help book section… eh
At the time Harry Browne (the author) was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, investigative reporting in Liberty Magazine, by the editor, Bill Winter, about the spending practices of the campaign, and some other practices which were seemingly in violation of the Libertarian Party bylaws. (The particular bylaws were intended to prevent conflicts of interest between presidential campaigns and Libertarian Party staff).
Disheveled Marsupial… Flexians…. its what they do… seek self gratification….
Skippy- writing books, whatever the subject matter, that other ppl willing buy, is an honest endeavor certainly more so than the gov sector/for profit/not for profit occupation jumping Flexians parasites you refer to.
I dont believe the noted claims directed at HB ever were substatiated under scrutiny?
http://www.harrybrowne.org/2000/Controversy.htm
On balance, if HB ever had achieved any level of influence in the gears of gov, potus or not, i do feel he would have put effort toward our not be so deeply mired in the weeds of the perpetual imperial war economy that we presently find ourselves subjects to..
I think HB understood that the institutionalized perpetual war/aggression/fear focus was a root cause of much of our societies problems, social policy, foreign policy, economic and otherwise.
https://psmag.com/meet-the-flexians-110946356f8#.9hy53dme1
And his Libertarian tool kit to fix all that would have been what, again? Markets…
How about unintrusive government?
You prefer perpetual war and a domestic police state? ADA instead of healthcare?
http://www.harrybrowne.org/articles/LibertariansAndWar.htm
Alternative realities are always speculative at best, but do you think it would be a worse World (Country, quality of life for the average person), had HB been elected POTUS rather than GWB?
When it comes to “policy” in reality our government is like a supertanker at helmspeed with a stuck rudder and the POTUS is akin to a guy dragging a canoe oar. It’s easy to doubledown on bad policy, say imperial war, that is institutionalized as the status quo by dilitantes like BHO or true believers like BushCheney and the Clintons.
The huge lost opportunity was (is) electing a POTUS who does not have perpetuation of the warfare state as an organizing principle. With that off the table we (theUS) would have huge capital and human resources to direct inward. You may quibble about the most efficient political philosophy at the executive branch, the first step (IMO) is someone who has the energy and intent to try and unwind at least some of the utterly corrupt and destructive policies that are passed along like toxic genetic code.
I beg your pardon.
All Hillary has to do to scupper the Libertarians and Greens is to announce that she is in favor of the Federal legalization of cannabis.
What an insulting oversimplification of the goals and values of third-party voters– we’re all a bunch of single-issue voters who only care about legalizing weed.
Yeah … but it would be sooo adulterated with paraquat … no one would indulge … ;(
I’d like to think the Greens stand for more than that. For instance, we continue in states like Oregon where it’s already legal.
More realistically: it’s probably too late for that tactic, since it’s clear that legalization is proceeding apace anyway.
It does raise the question: why doesn’t she? Why didn’t Obama see to rescheduling, or float a legalization bill? Given the popular support, there’s a lot of room for secret interests or “conspiracy” theories there.
I think it’s pretty clear that Big Pharma does not want it legalized until such time that they can fully capture the profits. Right now, it’s a threat. It’s also a threat to Big Incarceration. Private prisons are still there, and I’m sure they expect Hillary to continue to deliver on their earlier donations, even if she has to go through the motions of rejecting them for now.
If you remember which corporate sectors have captured the Democratic Party, it’s easy to see why they do what they do.
It’s interesting that the media are putting so much effort this cycle into Johnson & Stein hit pieces that they wouldn’t have bothered with in the past. That this demonstrates some media people are outright coordinating with one of the campaigns is too obvious to be argued at this point, though my guess is that they would all deny it.
The foundation of civilization is “trust”. I trust that the mechanic working on my brakes is sober and competent. I trust that the kitchen hand preparing the salad washes her/his hands after defecating. I trust the medias, the banks, the governments, the scientists, the commentators….. I used to. Now I am a N=1 scientist sort of thinker. I test and retest everything. It is time intensive living in a corrupt world. BUT fascinating. Up is down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpcWJGN3aOI
Published on Sep 8, 2016
YouTuber Matt Orfalea discovered that PBS had censored parts of an interview with Jill Stein where she criticizes Hillary Clinton. Matt then uploaded the video exposing said censorship to Facebook, and they later took down the video, alleging it did not comply with their community’s guidelines.
Many years ago now, my father, an investment manager, observed to me that a culture of honesty is worth a lot of money – the amount it costs (in business, is what he was thinking of) to check and recheck everything, and the opportunity costs of not doing things that require trust.
I think he would agree with you, vociferously, even though you’re focusing more on broader social costs. It’s all the same problem – and one reason NC keeps posting links to the Archdruid.
Of course, it may be we were wrong to trust, say, the media, in the past, and the real difference is that we’re more aware, thanks in part to sources like NC.
Australia… severe weather one moment and beautiful the next….
The new phase of the destructive storm came 24 hours after supercell thunderstorms knocked out the state’s entire power network, ripping up transmission towers. 30,000 properties remained without power on Thursday night, some from the blackout and some because of new storm damage.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/almost-the-entire-south-east-corner-of-australia-under-severe-weather-warnings/news-story/093893a832c03638faa73981bc7c27e0
Quiet, there are many here who seem to discount all storms as N=1 events and there is no such thing as climate change or that man has nothing to do with it. Just ask Gary Johnson – it doesn’t really matter:
The very activities that appear to contribute to climate change also contribute to mankind’s health and prosperity, so we view with a skeptical eye any attempts to curtail economic activity. We believe that a motivated and informed market will demand efficiency and reduced greenhouse gases, mitigating at least some of mankind’s effects. It is a virtual certainty that consumer demands and the marketplace will produce tangible benefits.
RW: the markets will decide.
Vulnerability. It’s the new orange.
Re: President Obama Wants Colin Kaepernick to Consider ‘Pain’ of Military Families
What the hell does performing a obsessive ritual (no questions asked) have to do with the pain of… anyone? The religiosity of this whole thing is sickening. Really, this was the whole micro-aggression, trigger warning thing before it was a thing. You did not take off your hat and now a bunch of people are needlessly offended by your perceived lack of respect!
Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Congressional voters, Media outlets — they killed your family. Not the lack of a hat or some mundanely recited song lyric.
When in doubt, hide behind the troops.
Kaepernick should respond if Obama worried about the troops when he put Shinseki in charge of the VA.
Got the little
single-payerBLM advocates up here.Shinseki wasn’t nearly as much of the problem as were the Congress and administrations that made sure their MICC contributors were fattened before considering passing on a few scraps to those who have to deal with the grunts who are maimed by their policies. The VA has been perpetually underfunded.
..while wrapping oneself in the Flag.
So now that this Colin Kaepernick fellow has put his foot in it and has the media circuses brief attention he should indeed push back…. hard.
I heard a Millennial yesterday talking about the merits of someone, blah blah blah,.. and “he served”…I prefer to listen to not affect the rap, but i thought Served what?.. time? Served who?.. me, no!! My Countries best interests??? Certainly not!
If someone chooses to join the military for some perceived advantage, I’m good with that and good for them if they get spit out at the other end in a better place in life.
In fact I feel the military -retooled for self defense -is a Sovereign requirement. As I’ve said in the past the Mil is an insurance policy, only to be cashed in and used as a regrettable final remedy, but the implied “Hero” BS inculcated into our Society tries my patience.
If the service was good at the restaurant, you should leave a generous tip.
*100
+1
Like Petraeus and Westmoreland “served.” I was dumb enough to enlist to “serve.” Serve the Fokking Empire. “War is a racket.” Exactly.
And maybe it’s just me, but I hear a whole lot less of that saccharin “Thank you for your service” these days. People catching on?
Nah, I hear it every now and then. Most of the time it seems to come from genuine conviction, even. Thankfully those obnoxious magnetic yellow ribbon bumper stickers seem to be entirely gone.
Prior to his death, he was also working on a book called The War Racket: The Lies, Myths, and Propaganda that Feed the American War Machine. War, he contended, was just another government program…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Browne
“Wrap that flag TIGHTER ! …. “
“When in doubt, hide behind the troops.”
You can judge a man’s quality by the nature of his enemies: both who they are, and what they say. On that score, Kaepernick though very young and unduly famous, is looking better every day.
Roger Smith
September 29, 2016 at 7:49 am
I agree 100%
Just the culmination of a long period of equating the military and war with patriotism. And of course, equating any one actually practicing the US CONSTITUTION with being a traitorous (Putin) commie….the Irony burns…
Surely it is time to remove that obsolete reference to the “constitution” in the US military oath, and replace it with the Pledge of Allegiance, adopted by Congress in 1942.
Modern oaths for modern folks … USA, USA!
The effort is already under way. So not to worry.
What I would like is for a so-called Constitutional lawyer, who took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution of the United States, to have some respect for Kaepernick’s right to express himself.
I’d just once like to hear someone ask why the heck it is that sporting events are the primary venue for playing the anthem. Why is “God Bless America” played in the seventh-inning stretch of many baseball games? WTF does the signing/playing of any nationalistic song have to do with sports? It would make more sense to have everyone rise to their feet, turn toward a flag emblazoned with a picture of a $100 bill, and sing “Money.”
Honestly, sometimes people get so full of artificially-induced patriotism – perhaps fueled by all that beer and ribs/burgers/BBQ chicken wolfed down tailgating before the games – that they fail to appreciate the dissonance of paying homage to a flag of a country where all are still not treated equally, where many still feel marginalized and oppressed, and where leaders have such little respect for “the troops” they willingly send into harm’s way on lies, and then order them to inflict pain and death on many innocent families. And then, to add insult to injury, these same leaders who guilt and shame others into properly honoring the flag, can never seem to find enough money to properly care for veterans in need.
I’m sick of being smothered in symbols to cover up and distract from how badly this country is failing so many of its citizens.
Indeed, we all know why it is there…to keep the maximum numbers of sheep docile until shorn or turned into mutton, and to heap shame upon any fool dissenters into giving up & clicking their heels together while saluting those with the shears/butcher knives.
Trouble is, there are a few more sheep then usual who are awake these days.
One of my best friends from High School – rabid right wing, patriotism uber alles, member ‘Reagan Youth’ fell for the hype Post 9/11. Joined the National Guard, went to Iraq, got to kill small brown people. Got hit w/an IED and survived, but not one of his friends.
Came home a completely different person and became one of those ex-Vets you used to see at Occupy Wall Street-type events – angry at TPTB for pointless wars. Interesting thing is, he still hangs out with many of his old Nat’l Guard buddies and others…participates in a WWII ‘historical reenactment’ group. Sometimes 101st Airborne, sometimes Wehrmacht, sometimes Russian partisans depending on the event.
They practice small unit tactics, comms, guerilla warfare, taking out tanks/APCs, and similar stuff. Just keeping their old Guard skills honed, dontcha know. Nothing nefarious or worrisome about that at all. Strange how some of the cannon fodder occasionally come home and decide those who fed them into the maw are no longer to be trusted….
The entire “God Bless America” theme seems completely wrong for an ostensibly God fearing nation to advocate.
If God is omnipotent, then God is truly not resource constrained, so if one assumes God is listening and might react to someone’s request for a blessing, why limit the blessing to only America?
“God bless the World” seems a far more inclusive sentiment, particularly for a nation that advocates it nobly attempts to help foreign citizens with its foreign military actions…
But if God is all knowing, a petition for a blessing should be unnecessary, as we are observing God’s considered earthly plan.
Singing “Money” does have a more honest feel about it.
What if someone believes there is no God? Or worships a different deity? “God Bless America” is a slap in the face to them, and it especially is a slap in the face to the essential right that we all have: the freedom to worship or not as we please.
Now, sporting events at the professional level are private sector activities, so if the NFL or the NBA or MLB or any other sports league wants to play the anthem or a God-centered musical number, that is their right – but it is also the right of those in attendance, and possibly the athletes themselves, to choose not to participate.
It definitely is not the place of the president, or any other government official, to opine on what anyone else should or shouldn’t be doing, or shame anyone by declaring that sitting, kneeling, or going to the concession stand for a beer when the anthem is played, is disrespectful to the military.
I’ll lead the singing, Anne. C’mon, everybody:
Professional and college Sports keep American men dumb, docile, distracted and distant from anything real in their lives or communities. Keep them worshiping at the Temple of Ball.
Why is “God Bless America” played at baseball games? It might have something to do with the millions of dollars the military pays sports teams for marketing.
A pastor acquaintance of mine calls it the liturgy of empire
I seem to recall that “God Bless America” during the traditional 7th-inning stretch was one of many post-9/11 überpatriotic “innovations”. Hard to think coherently about and thus possibly come to question The Mission when one is drowning in ritual-fetishistic adoration of Our Hero-Warriors.
Probably just a coincidence that Obama tries to discredit Kaepernick after he remarked that both Clinton and Trump are “proven liars”.
No it isn’t a coincidence.
You can bet this didn’t sit well with Team “I’m With Her”. In fact, so long as Kaepernick was protesting on behalf of BLM and there was a chance he could be put into service as a tool against Trump, taking a knee was A.O.K. But now that that gambit is no longer operative, and in fact he is using his platform to call B.S. on our election process, it’s time to dishonestly invoke the men and women of the military as the target of that protest.
Obama is revealed as a consummately cynical politician. A delicious irony that he does so in vain service to his good friends, the Clintons.
About the only thing that is mildly amusing to me about this election is watching the Obamas put a good face on while urging people to vote for Hillary Clinton. I’ve actually watched a couple of things with them just to watch for the mask slipping. Every once in a while you can watch the smiles get tighter, and the body language screaming. Even so it is just one more thing for the huge paydays they expect in the years to come, lying about being ‘with HER’ still their discomfort is not nearly bad enough.
(I never expect to see Michelle Obama embrace either Clinton.)
I usually watch for his eyes to start fluttering and I can guess the veracity of his words.
“Kaepernick to Obama: your wife gives aid and comfort to war criminals.” I am so sick of my good name being dragged through the mud by every Tom, Dick, and Barry hiding behind me and all other victims of their warmongering imperialism.
What’s even more interesting is what is Obama going to say now that a “troop” has decided that she, also feels the mistreatment of AAs and the blatant ignorance of our government on the issue is a national disgrace?
http://hellobeautiful.com/2016/09/29/black-female-sailor-anthem/
Why shouldn’t the families of soldiers imagine the pain of an AA family that everyday has to deal with or worry that when they leave their home that they’ll be shot and killed simply because someone assumed something about them based on their skin color? It’s a national travesty when you have so many people dying from excessive force being utilized against them. Until there are concrete and direct actions that force this country to address this, supporting people who are bringing attention to injustices should be a no brainer.
When I was a sailor it was my job to make sure that people like Colin K. were able to have a platform to speak out if they felt it was warranted. Families of military members should be proud that their “pain” and sacrifice was not made in vain. Their loved one died or fights to protect free speech and nothing validates their sacrifice more than watching someone exercise that right.
Protest is by its nature disruptive. When the powerful tell us that it’s OK to protest provided it doesn’t offend or inconvenience anyone they are promoting an absurdity.
http://kisscartoon.me/Cartoon/The-Simpsons-Season-07/Episode-009?id=418
At 5:10
At this point in time I would to direct your attention to the particular air vehicle next to which I am currently standing, the Harrier jet which is one of our more dollar intensive ordinance delivery vectors.
===================================
This is where Sideshow Bob escapes prison and steals a nuclear bomb at a air show on an air force base to compel the ending of television.
One of the voices is the great R. Lee Ermey
Ordnance.
That episode had one of the all-time great Sideshow Bob quotes:
“God bless the idiot-proof Air Force.”
Soldier one parachuting ” This is what happens when you put health care ahead of the military!”
Soldier two parachuting ” It’s a good program! Just give it a chance!”
Replace Harrier with F-35 and Hilary’s plan with Obamacare. It becomes even funnier!
Always the good reference, the simpsons are.
Thats Yoda speak
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/humans-are-unusually-violent-mammals-but-averagely-violent-primates/501935/
Which mammal is most likely to be murdered by its own kind? It’s certainly not humans—not even close. Nor is it a top predator like the grey wolf or lion, although those at least are #11 and #9 in the league table of murdery mammals. No, according to a study led by José María Gómez from the University of Granada, the top spot goes to… the meerkat. These endearing black-masked creatures might be famous for their cooperative ways, but they kill each other at a rate that makes man’s inhumanity to man look meek. Almost one in five meerkats, mostly youngsters, lose their lives at the paws and jaws of their peers.
==================================================
Paws and jaws – give me a break. Its guns!
and they don’t wear masks cause they’re going to Halloween parties!
Disappointing, Dan. The noble weasel does not even appear in the ranking.
It’s just another blow for James “I am not a Weasel” Comey, perhaps the saddest snowflake to head the FBI since J. Edgar Hoover in his pink tulle tutu, pleasuring himself with the aid of a magnifying glass and tweezers.
Jim Haygood
September 29, 2016 at 8:05 am
Calling Comey a weasel is a despicable, contemptible, loathsome, hateful, detestable, reprehensible, abhorrent, abominable, awful, heinous; odious, vile, low, mean, abject, shameful, ignominious, shabby, ignoble, disreputable, discreditable, unworthy; dirty, rotten, lowdown, lousy, and last, but not least, ironically beastly insult ….to weasels.
I thought Clinton’s “it depends on what the meaning of “is” is”
was torturing the English language beyond conscience, but Comey has actually out Clintoned Clinton.
I would’ve assumed it was Tasmanian Devils …….??
I’m pretty sure the Devils are not mammals, but marsupials.
Are they disheveled?
Carnivorous marsupial, the mean ones will go you.
Disheveled Marsupial…. tho’ the face cancer thingy might work, looks like that have that sorted, time will tell, transmissible cancer from biting….
I was going to geuss the tree sloth…
A slooooow death
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2016/09/28/st-michaels-facing-15m-deficit/91212534/
I thought the reasoning was interesting:
bolding and comments in () mine. I am an eye-roller for sure, and they got a workout here.
The ghastly horror of competition roils the cozy academic cartel:
Creative destruction, comrades: Who is Joe Schumpeter?
To be fair, IMO computer science is an ideal online course, coding being something most people do alone. And only the self-disciplined will endure.
” destructiveness as mostly a matter of the normal costs of doing business”, i.e., “go die, because markets”…OR “self-destructiveness”, i.e., “Killing the Host”, comrades, who is Michael Hudson?
“All those Republican endorsements she worked so hard for should really be a help.”
But you’ve got to admit that the John Warner endorsement is a game changer.
If John Warner can bring Liz’s other husband’s along, that’s what…the third largest voting bloc in the country.
catty…but LOL!
Moar: Steve Case: Why I’m voting for Hillary Clinton
Not sure how this will play with the former Time-Warner shareholder demographic.
Why do all the wealthy have to make up individual excuses to support for Hillary? They could just all sign on to one op-ed and admit it’s because they hope to keep all their $$$.
Jenna’s 2004 testimony here is devastating; it’s clear the EPA’s coverup killed more New Yorkers than the trade center bombers did:
9/11 Truth 15 Years Later: Jenna Orkin on EPA Lies and the Legacy of 9/11 — (1 hour MP3, 15 min video testimony)
“There is overwhelming evidence that this government agency had reason to suspect the air in the vicinity of the World Trade Center following the attacks was not only toxic, and deliberately misled the public about the quality of the air. As a result, numerous first responders, and ordinary citizens in the New York area inhaled dust and debris containing dangerous quantities of not only asbestos, but lead, mercury, cadmium, toxic organic compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), glass fibers, pulverized concrete, and caustic particles so alkaline they had pH levels near that of liquid drain cleaner. [4] Over 1,000 people have died from illnesses tied to exposure to debris. That number is expected within five years to exceed the number who were killed on the day of the attacks. [5] Other aspects of 9/11, including the ‘false flag’ counter-narratives, appear to have gained more prominence in mainstream and alternative media than the crime of thousands losing their lives as a result of agency disinformation.”
“The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.”
– Bill Mollison
Perfectly stated.
If we follow this train of thought then one of the major hindrances to a progressive movement is that high price of owning a house w/ enough land for gardening or finding land that you can work for yourself.
The ubiquity of Home Owner Associations that demand manicured lawns prevents many homeowners from gardening at a scale that allows self reliance. Roughly 1/4 acre can feed a family of 4 or 700 sq ft per person if it is farmed intensely using raised gardens and a hybrid of square foot gardening.
I agree though. I could never take anyone seriously who had an iphone and wore Gap products back when I was in progressive protest movements circa 2001-2004. I am still the same way today.
New nursing home standards preserve patients’ right to sue WaPo
Short article. Being a cynic, I suspect in a few days we will see critiques that the law is written that while ostensibly protecting rights, it de facto reduces patient rights.
Linked on sidebar to the NPR cancer story:
This is ObamaCare gaming at its highest level, and the type of gaming I predicted as I watched the bill being written. My only surprise is that this has taken so long to appear, although that’s probably because of the delays in the employer mandate. (From January, but still highly relevant.)
Benedict@Large
September 29, 2016 at 8:44 am
Do you think that is because the election offers good cover to do it (i.e., switch to medicaid)
or is it simply of matter of cost pressures becoming so compelling?
Would companies switching to medicaid suffer a public relations hit of any significance?
I’ll bet that people with good insurance are generally healthier to start with, less smoking, less alcohol, drug abuse and obesity.
Researchers need to correct for those variables if they want to better isolate the effects of private insurance.
I’m not even going to address your assumptions about the habits of those with better insurance, but I do feel the need to ask what that has to do with an employer deciding to push their lowest paid employees into the government funded Medicaid system rather than provide insurance? Are you just assuming this is because poor people automatically smokers, drunks and obese?
Or did you not get this was about the cost of insurance – not the health of those employees.
(Although it is very likely there will probably be more health care available to those employees than would come with any employer provided insurance because of the likely cost passed on to the employee in the form of co-insurance and deductibles, unless they are old enough for estate reimbursement.)
You’ve got some weird ideas on addiction.
The one equalizer is that disease strikes people up and down the economic ladder. It just happens to be a little more noticeable when you don’t have a monetary safety net.
Case in point: Noelle Bush going to rehab for stealing a prescription pad. I’m pretty sure she had “good insurance.”
Seems likely – you get good insurance through a good job, and getting a good job usually entails the sort of background (plenty of $) that would engender good health (plenty of sleep, good nutrition, time to exercise, no punishing repetitive physical labor that leads to chronic pain that can lead to an opioid addiction.)
It doesn’t have to be a knock on poor people to be true, not to mention relevant as another reason single payer is the only way to go.
Having access to better nutrition or time to exercise doesn’t inherently affect drug or alcohol use. There are plenty of high-earners who abuse drugs, prescription or otherwise, and who imbibe more alcohol than is healthy. And while anecdotal observation is certainly not data, I see plenty of non-poor (and well-insured) people who are overweight, including my own family members.
John helmers piece contained this gem from the mh17 investigators:
“the absence of evidence [of the Buk missile system in the Russian material] does not prove it was not there.”
I would think that would also make it difficult to prove it was there. By why let a good “The Russians did it” go to waste.
MUST….Keep…The……Russian…..bashing…..in ….the….news
All Air Force jet jockeys would agree that the circular holes shown in the downed fuselage were made, not by missile shrapnel, but by air-to-air cannon fire. Strange that those pics have disappeared.
…And as to that air traffic controller … what ever became of him, and what was his take on the events of that day….. ?
The WSJ headline wins my vote for today’s best The-Rooskies-Did-It propaganda: “Missile System That Downed MH17 Said to Be From Russia”. So even if was the Ukronazis who used the system to down the airliner, the dastardly Rooskies are still responsible. Win-win!
The Coming of the Postliberal Era The Archdruid Report
Ironies of this sort are anything but unusual in political history. It’s astonishingly common for a movement that starts off trying to overturn the status quo in the name of some idealistic abstraction or other to check its ideals at the door once it becomes the status quo. If anything, American liberalism held onto its ideals longer than most and accomplished a great deal more than many, and I think that most of us—even those who, like me, are moderate Burkean conservatives—are grateful to the liberal movement of the past for ending such obvious abuses as chattel slavery and the denial of civil rights to women, and for championing the idea that values as well as interests deserve a voice in the public sphere. It deserves the modern equivalent of a raised hat and a moment of silence, if no more, as it finally sinks into the decadence that is the ultimate fate of every successful political movement.
The current US presidential election shows, perhaps better than anything else, just how far that decadence has gone. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is floundering in the face of Trump’s challenge because so few Americans still believe that the liberal shibboleths in her campaign rhetoric mean anything at all. Even among her supporters, enthusiasm is hard to find, and her campaign rallies have had embarrassingly sparse attendance. Increasingly frantic claims that only racists, fascists, and other deplorables support Trump convince no one but true believers, and make the concealment of interests behind shopworn values increasingly transparent. Clinton may still win the election by one means or another, but the broader currents in American political life have clearly changed course.
=====================================
Great article IMHO – I certainly agree about the portion concerning immigration.
And for an example of a contradiction – Police unions and big cities. Unions do much more than raise wages and pensions – many of the protections of police by hamstringing complaint investigations against the police are exposing a fissure that has reached the point of earthquake.
Or one could take the idea that “Health” or “College” reform is merely funneling ever more resources to insurance companies and College administrations with precious little if any improvement in the real cost or quality to the users of the service.
@fresno dan – I was reading a few months ago that the police unions have also been successful in getting contract provisions that hide investigations of bad behavior and require such things as the destruction of investigative documents once the investigation is complete. Some also prevent the written documentation of internal sanctions such as reprimands from being placed in the officer’s personnel file. They may also prohibit the use of outside agencies to perform the investigation. Basically, it seems the idea is to prevent any kind of paper trail.
“This doesn’t mean, by the way, that Burkean conservatives quote Burke’s writings the way Marxists quote Marx or Objectivists quote Ayn Rand. Like other human beings, Burke was a blend of strengths and weaknesses, principles and pragmatism, and the political culture of his time and place accepted behavior that most people nowadays consider very dubious indeed. Those of my readers who want to hear what Burke had to say can find Reflections on the Revolution in France online, or in any decent used book store; those who want to engage in ad hominem argument can find plenty of ammunition in any biography of Burke they care to consult. What I propose to do here is something a bit different—to take Burke’s core ideas and set them out in a frame many of my readers will recognize at once.”
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/a-few-notes-on-burkean-conservatism.html
Disheveled Marsupial…. barf~~~~~~~ rhetorical smoke screen to obscure fundamentalism with a wafer thin preemptive ad hominem clause… he might as well out himself as a Hayek devotee….
I’ve been reading JMG for a few years. Never detected a whiff of Hayek, who famously declared why he is not a conservative.
Was it because he needed socialist institutions to live off of despite spending all his time railing against them?
I am surprised at your reaction to the Archdruid. I don’t know what sort of politics he espouses — other than the self label Burkean — and I guess I’ve never noticed much political drift in those of his writings I’ve read. I agree today’s post definitely has a political flavor though relatively bland compared to other things I’ve read about the current American politics. If the Archdruid hadn’t put a political label on his writing I would never have been able to pick one for him.
His other writings — again those I’ve read — seem concerned with the future exhaustion of resources and what an individual might do to deal with that future. Most of his writings seem to assume individuals will need to take action for themselves because the Invisible Hand of the “Free Market” seems devoted to enhancing the problems and Government action is either paralyzed or aids the connivances of the Free Market.
I didn’t read the latest utopia story he just finished. I couldn’t find any interest in it. Today’s piece seemed no more controversial than some of Howard Zinn’s analysis of the motivations behind past events. I think the Archdruid is correct about change in the wind but beyond that I don’t see quite the same big picture he sees.
What about the Archdruid upsets you so? What am I missing?
See below….
I did read below — including a cursory scan of the paper comparing Burke and Hayek — before asking my question.
I probably haven’t read, don’t read and probably won’t read the Archdruid writings reflecting his self-label as a Burkean. I’ll check the paper Lambert referenced for a better notion of Burk’s philosophy. I don’t think that will convince me to give attention to the Archdruid’s Burkean writings and will likely avoid reading them to avoid sharing your distaste for him.
I read the Archdruid for his thoughts on practical ways to deal with Peak Oil, Global Warming and the fragility of our society and its infrastructure. I thought his Sci Fi novel Star’s Reach made an interesting addition to the many Sci Fi stories about radio astronomy contact with aliens in line with Sagan’s “Contact” and the earlier “Cryptic” and “Hercules Text” by Jack McDevitt.
I guess you dislike Burkean Philosophy and that dislike carries over to the Archdruid’s Burkean streak. I abhor Hayek and neoliberal economics and social theory and if Burkean thought can be compared with Hayek without too much contrast I will probably share your vehement dislike for it — and will assiduously avoid the Archdruid’s Burkean writings as apparently I already have.
Don’t see the point in dragging about the 1600s our necks or the warmed over versions, using environmental concerns as a matrix to incorporate the former is not vindication of the latter imo…
Disheveled Marsupial…. I don’t do halo effect…
“Like other human beings”
Like real people – memes and tropes…
Disheveled Marsupial…. the wizard should stick to D&D…. where he can play the game master… sorta like Hayek et al…
Values v Interests.
Seems to me Jihadism is a values-based system…
Will the – real – neologism please stand up…..
Yep (have to agree with Skippy above from down below)… but I admire the Greer for his views and persuasive abilities about conservation issues like the environment and urging individuals trying to pursue a less complex personal lifestyle… and it seems like the writer walks the talk (write)…
but his big push for the so-called moderate Burkean political statements of late is just a mish-mash of near wishful thinking… another type of utopia, having tangently defined what he thinks Burkean politics and culture should look like in a future world, (just like utopian Marxism)…
…but he has no idea of what Burkean life entails…it’s authoritarian, to the extreme…and it’s grey, grey and grey with shades and tones of grey…oh, and did I mention authoritarian… and curtain twitching…and anonymous letter writing to authorities to grass out neighbors…and authoritarian…a narrow and distrustful world…
…but, at the end of the day, all politics points out the inconsistencies of life and especially if one ends up supporting politics at the end-spectrum of what constitutes good and evil…
myself, I don’t see Liberalism as the opposite of Conservative… I see a synthetic spectrum and I see myself picking and choosing amongst the myriad of factors that compose a world view… as I get older I have seen the goal posts move and my need to adjust the factors to deal with actual people in the actual world…
life does not stay still and I cannot afford to stay still until I come to an equilibrium (death) … but until that fateful moment rely on brief lighthouses of clarity to live by —
simple, simple things like: tyring to treat one’s neighbors as I would like to be treated…and when I fail, not to beat myself up…but to reflect and find ways of staying true’ish
I still like to read some of his writing, but just skip most political based articles these days…and his straw-manning of social based politics is becoming more than a trifle stifled…
I do miss the Contrary Farm (Jean Logsdon) but read old articles on Thursdays… he seemed like a very human human
Corey Robin has a new article on Burke: Edmund Burke and the Problem of Value (PDF). Very interesting.
Thanking yee…downloaded…and a must read for the weekend
Read first 5 pages and last 2… much grist for the mill, but Corbin brings nice clarity to the contradictions with which Burke had to grapple…one wonders what Burke, at the later end of his life, would make of our new lords and masters and their corporate castles…
In a harsh world, getting harsher by the day, I think that Ben Franklin, in many, differing and even unforeseenable contexts, has wiser words to impart: “…we all hang together or we hang seperately.”
… C Robin (not Corbin, Corbyn on my mind? Burkean slip?) …doh
The Liberalism/Conservatism Of Edmund Burke and F. A. Hayek: A Critical Comparison
http://www.nhinet.org/raeder.htm
Disheveled Marsupial…. Narcissistic youth meets the corruption of the body…. dies old and cranky….
Well if “liberalism” is a 200 year old movement you are not denoting what usually goes by that name in modern America which is social democracy (lite perhaps, it’s not Scandinavia), the welfare state, FDR etc.. Maybe the term is being used in some 19th century sense (like neo-liberalism uses). It’s possible what he is describing is more accurately termed “progressivism” (in the early 20th century sense).
“Let’s take current US immigration policy as an example. This limits the number of legal immigrants while tacitly allowing unlimited illegal immigration. There are solid pragmatic reasons for questioning the appropriateness of that policy. ”
Blah blah blah. There are solid pragmatic reasons for accepting immigration as well, mostly the impossibility of actually enforcing a border, the inhumanity of people dying crossing it etc.. I suppose the most humane way to enforce it might be by cracking down on the employers of illegals. But these realities really have little to do with “liberal” idealism. It’s like one can have had family members who died of drug addiction and be therefore HUGELY anti-drug (or at least anti some drugs) and still see the drug war as more harm than good just because of it’s OTHER consequences (say mass imprisonment etc.). Liberalism (or libertarian ideology either for that matter) ain’t got anything to do with it. In the same way as drug legalization the immigration issue can be a pragmatic calculation of the enforcement being worse than just accepting it.
Somewhat disappointed in the Archdruid analysis of Liberalism.
I believe he is correct to argue that we are on the cusp of moving into a post-liberal politics but he doesn’t really get granular enough in linking the demise of liberalism to the very assumption of liberalism itself (this is a huge topic which is impossible to go into in a few brief paragraphs.).
From my perspective modern day liberalism nicely fuses the visible hand of the State with the invisible hand of the market, at the expense of popular participation(or democracy). The Archdruid analysis does get at this elitist dimension of liberalism–but he could have been even more specific.
Modern liberalism has reduced contemporary politics to little more than a type of managerial and technocratic bureaucracy.
Today the liberal left appeals to the State to protect us from the forces of the market and the liberal right defends family and national values against the multiculturalism and emancipation the liberal left celebrates.
This “Left” advocation of a type of social and cultural liberalism that promotes individual rights and all types of individual self-expression coincides with the right’s support of an economic-political liberalism that champions markets liberated from the constricting structures of the bureaucratic State.
Both of these types of liberalism end up championing a type of negative liberty of unfiltered personal choice and freedom with little constraint other than private conscience.
The end result legitimates the the power of the opportunistic and the ruthless–hence the move towards some kind of postliberal thought.
The community apiaries are great. I belong to the local club here in SE PA and there’s all kinds of advantages, most especially husbandry and monitoring. Beekeepers are very private creatures and so getting them together can be difficult.
It’s bizarre that the beekeepers have to rent the public spaces on which the hives reside, in the case of the apiary in the article. Most places are more than happy to have beekeepers on site. Also, you’re damn right that it’s my equipment and my honey. They’re my livestock!
These kinds of restrictions are some of the stupidest things in the world. Your chances of being severely hurt by bees kept in someone’s yard are probably around the chances of being mauled by a stranger’s dog. But we don’t make dog owners keep liability insurance.
We had the same problem wanting to do a beekeeping exhibit at a MG Demonstration Garden. Once the lawyers got involved even fencing it off became problematic; “what was to prevent the kids from throwing rocks at the hive?” A month later we discovered a number of enormous yellow jacket nests in the park adjacent to the garden, and the guy who ended up getting rid of them (a beekeeper in full beekeeping outfit) was stung about fifty times. Lots of us were stung by those critters, and we were all thinking that we would much rather they had been bees.
Lawyers had no problem with the deadly yellow jackets though; we were insured for those.
That is maddening. Fortunately our agreement with the local park system was favorable. They gave us space next to a swamp so there’s no problems with “kids throwing rocks”.
On a personal note, we moved to a very rural location with zero township restrictions on anything we wanted to do. Downside is that my neighbors can crash cars into their yard and light them on fire (not that they have, but they could). Upside is I can keep as many hives as I want. There’s a real advantage to going into the country.
From: The most dangerous conspiracy theory of 2016
“…those kinds of poll numbers have both Democratic and Republican election observers worried”….”It creates opportunities for the worst sorts of people to try to get political power through complete fairy tale,” said Richard Painter, a former senior ethics lawyer in George W. Bush’s White House who has endorsed Clinton’s campaign.” “This is very dangerous stuff. If conspiracy theories start to take over you can lose your democracy.”
I am both shocked and awed by the sheer nerve of these people. Mission Accomplished?
Mr. Painter is indeed a prime example of “the worst sorts of people” so I guess he knows whereof he speaks
Perhaps we should be contributing everytime Bernie shows up in the Facebook feed or receiving a Berniemail extolling the virtues of Hillary?
i unsubscribed from berniemail. suggest you do the same. and from every single down ballot candidate who i don’t recall giving the sanders campaign permission to share me email address with.
Train wreck (real one):
Pascack Valley is a non-electrified, single-track commuter line. The tracks dead-end straight into Hoboken Station. A waiting room and retail shops are right behind the buffer at the end of the track. “Partially inside the building” is bad, bad news, meaning injuries to bystanders as well as passengers.
From photos, it looks like the impact occurred close to the entrance where stairs descend to the PATH subway station located on a lower level.
At rush hour, this area is packed with people. Horrible.
One death confirmed.
I cannot imagine. Nightmare.
On bygone election days, I met former Senators Bill Bradley and Frank Lautenberg within steps of where this crash happened. it’s an ideal place to greet hundreds of people an hour.
The PATH station entrance funnels in passengers arriving on 15 or 20 surface level commuter tracks that terminate at the station.
That’s why it’s tragically likely that some bystanders — even people in the waiting room — were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I’m sure there were. I went in and out of it on a daily basis a few years back. So many of the logical paths in and out of the station and to the various transit options would take you right through that area. I was never traveling at official rush hour, but even at those times it always full of people. At this peak travel time….
God is this wasting time or what . . .
I don’t know what I’ll be eating tonight
Got a feelin that the sushi ain’t right
I’m just glad I’m in a self drivin chair
I don’t care about a table upstairs
Crowds to the left of me, standers to the right
here I am, right in the middle with you
yes I’m, right in the middle with you
and there’s nothing that we both have to do
It’s so hard to keep this smile from my face
cause we’ll roll right in when they fix our place
Crowds to the left of me, standers to the right
Here I am, right in the middle with you
Well, you thought we’d leave with nothing
Now you’re proud you’re with a lazy man
the other diners, they’ll be crawlin’
to slap a waiter on the back and say, ‘Please, please’
If the sushi ain’t right, I’d make do with the bread sticks if I were you. Reminds me of the time I felt so sorry for a really, really old woman selling octopus from a roadside stall in the middle of nowhere, Shikoku I think it might have been. I bought some, just to give her a few yen, but boy, that octopus must have been treading water outside a sewage outfall. I barely left the bathroom for a whole week.
Oh man. Are you sure she wasn’t a kamikaze?
Jst kddng. That sounds miserable. I’ve always been pretty daring in terms of what I’ll eat so I can empathize. Somettimes when eating weird shlt I’d be sure to drink lots of alcohol under the theory that, if there’s germs in it, hopefully the alcohol will kill them.
But one thing I won’t eat under any circumstances is insects. I’ve noticed some Links here about insects as human gourmet food — I’m not sure if Yves is going nuts or if it’s Lambert, posting links like that when they won’t post my Science links about other dimensions. Not that they’re both not already nuts — following politics and economics night and day would turn anybody into a straight jacket case — but the insect stuff just confirms it. Just the thought of that would put me in a vomit position in the bathroom.
they do go good with peanut butter …
i always wanted to try the chocolate covered grasshoppers at the chinese restaurant across the street, but my parents would never buy them. now, i could likely order them, but i have lost the craving.
There was a funny commercial a few years back ( that probably means 10 years for me :o/ ).
In any case, a metaphor about judgement was the consequence of the guy who walks into gas station convenience store and walks out a moment later wolfing down a tired sushi lunch out of a plastic clamshell container.
BTW CMan
http://www.geek.com/science/lobsters-really-are-cockroaches-of-the-sea-1614260/
Lobsters really are cockroaches of the sea
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/09/28/federal-employee-health-premiums-to-rise-6-2-percent-on-average/?wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1
The enrollee share of premiums in the health-care program for federal employees and retirees will rise 6.2 percent on average in 2017, an increase about in line with the general trend for employer-sponsored health insurance, the government announced Wednesday.
=====================================================
Well, I am glad to see the FED is so fantastically successful with regard to its inflation targets…
Some Police Chiefs get it.
http://usuncut.com/news/cop-fired-using-racial-slur-social-media/
Although he had one major advantage in his favor, she was still on probation so the Police Union there probably was unable to fight back.
The only reason they stopped requiring that police live in the cities they patrol was to keep them from siding with the locals. Same reason as landlords are usually not of the prevailing ethnicity/culture: the successful ones have no real investment in the intangibles of the community.
Who da law now? I SAID WHO DA LAW NOW HONKEY? Hoping she gets a beatdown.
The Ebbs and Flows of Coastal Maine
Eleanor Roosevelt:
“I was impressed by the excellence of the work shops and by the tremendous interest which the boys show in the work they are doing in aviation mechanics…”
The varnish of adulation toward the Roosevelts can’t hide that this was setting the boys up as cannon fodder and bomber mechanics in the war they knew was coming and wanted against the wishes of the American public.
What exactly, did these boys and their parents get out of that war?
The avoidance of hitler in command ot Europe and Japan of Asia.
…and the perpetuation of Stalin in command in much of Europe and part of Asia, the Cold, Korean and Vietnam “wars”.
OK, thanks for clarifying.
My aunt in Maine will be so happy to know that she did her part losing two sons fighting for “our freedom” in Vietnam.
Just to totally screw with your evening….
Mrs Gina Rinehart talks with Prof.David Flint Show #50 Conversations with Conservatives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvKMfe2Lhek
It’s worth asking if Obama has gotten as tone deaf as the Clinton campaign, recently. This seems insane!
“I want Mr. Kaepernick and others who are on a knee, I want them to listen to the pain that they may cause someone who, for example, had a spouse or a child who was killed in combat,” Obama said. “But I also want people to think about the pain that he may be expressing about somebody who has lost a loved one that they think was unfairly shot.”
The Dems are really struggling with maintaining black turnout, and the president tries to take the whole “both sides need to listen” approach. There’s NO centrist middle ground here. It’s really telling that he thinks a kind of healing, bi-partisan approach to the issue is the right approach. It’s not.
It’s a completely respectable, and respectful, protest that seems to be ingenious in that it shouldn’t arouse controversy, yet still it gets howls of opposition from the hard right. There’s no compromise here. One side is completely in the right, one side is batty.
Rhetoric is Obama’s standard go to, when it comes to issues of social or economic justice. It’s never a matter of actually correcting the institutions or behaviors that create and maintain inequities, rather these concerns always just demand better PR, in his mind. That’s why in his speeches, he rarely refers to injustice as a fact of someone’s existence but rather as a feeling. So, then, his solution is always to make them feel good, not to remediate the underlying problem.
Many in the AA community have already realized or are beginning to realize that 8 years of an AA president has gotten them exactly bupkis.
Why do so many people have a need to make everything so freakin’ binary? What is it about making everything an all-or-nothing choice?
It is completely possible for someone to have great respect for the contributions and sacrifices of members of the military, and at the same time, protest the unfair treatment and killing of so many people at the hands of law enforcement. I can simultaneously appreciate the many good cops out there, while expressing a desire to weed out and hold the bad ones accountable, and raise the standards within the law enforcement community. Someone calling the cops for help should not end up dead.
The flag is not a single-issue symbol, and we should not be insisting that it is. We should be raising our own standards, demanding and expecting more from our country, holding the people in charge of it accountable, and working to ensure that the country works for all of us, no matter our race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, income level.
My feeling is that people resort to protest when other efforts to bring attention to issues fail. Protest is, to me, a sign that the people who can do something to right wrongs aren’t listening, aren’t hearing and aren’t seeing.
Colin Kaepernick doesn’t need the president to talk, he needs the president to listen and hear and see. He doesn’t need the president to lecture him about what other people are feeling, he needs the president to give the time and attention to what Kaepernick is saying that he feels.
Kaepernick doesn’t need Obamasplaining; he wasn’t looking for a kumbayah moment, he was looking for an awareness moment, and the president, in his comments, has shown a remarkable lack of awareness.
It will mean more protest, not less.
Plus about a million
go for the middle ground ……. it’s the least droneable …
Kaepernick has repeatedly said his protest is not against the military. I’ve heard him clearly and emphatically say this a couple of times.
“I have great respect for the men and women that have fought for this country,” Kaepernick said. “I have family, I have friends that have gone and fought for this country. And they fight for freedom, they fight for the people, they fight for liberty and justice, for everyone. That’s not happening. People are dying in vain because this country isn’t holding their end of the bargain up.”
(quoted in article at Deadspin”
Obama uses soldiers as human shields for his battle to support terrorism by police… Does he really think soldiers fought for some jingoistic anthem more than the right to peacefully protest it? That man is really sick. I can’t believe I ever voted for him.
Remember the house slave in Django Unchained?
Remember when Ry Cooder paid a fairly hefty fine for doing business with Cuba because of “Buena Vista Social Club” and the liberal outrage at what Cooder did? Or the anger when those cruise ships brought in tourists from Europe? Or the displeasure over Obama proposing to normalize relations with Cuba? Well, those days of forgiving people for interacting with an enemy of the state are gone.
Trump broke embargo, Salon is displeased
These new-liberals now hate the idea of consorting with known commies or their fellow travelers. Cooder had better watch his step.
Of course this could just be faux-outrage but that might imply dishonesty.
(First time with putting in a link with this editor. Sorry if it is malformed.)
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/economists-keep-getting-it-wrong-because-the-media-coverup-their-mistakes?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beat_the_press+%28Beat+the+Press%29
We are now seeing the same story with trade. The NYT has a major magazine article on the impact of trade on the living standards of workers in the United States and other wealthy countries. The subhead tells readers:
“Trade is under attack in much of the world, because economists failed to anticipate the accompanying joblessness, and governments failed to help.”
Of course many economists did not anticipate the negative impact of trade, but of course many of us did. The negative impact was entirely predictable and predicted. (Here are a few from CEPR, there are many more books and papers from my friends at the Economic Policy Institute.) The argument is straightforward: trade policy has been designed to put manufacturing workers in direct competition with low paid workers in the developing world. This costs jobs and puts downward pressure on the wages of these workers. It also puts downward pressure on the wages of less-educated workers more generally, as displaced manufacturing workers seek jobs in retail and other sectors. Stagnating wages and increasing inequality are the predicted result of this pattern of trade, not a surprising outcome.
There is one other important point that needs emphasis here. There was nothing inherent to trade that required growing inequality, it was the structure of trade policy that gave us this result. There are millions of very bright ambitious people in the developing world who would be very happy to study to meet U.S. standards and work as doctors, dentists, lawyers and other professionals in the United States. We could have designed trade agreements to facilitate this process.
The result would be massive economic gains in the form of lower cost health care, dental care, legal services and other professionals services. In the case of physicians alone, if the increased supply brought the pay of our doctors down to the levels of Western Europe and Canada, we would save close to $100 billion a year. This comes to roughly $700 a year in savings for every family in the United States. And, this would lead to a reduction in inequality.
==================================================
A cynic might surmise that economists benefit those who fund their think tanks….but that would be cynical…
And I can’t resist the quote
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
If you are interested in listening to US investigative reporter, David Cay Johnston, on how Trump operates, see here. (the piece starts at 22:34 and lasts about 25 minutes). Trump is even suspected of having Mafia connections in his business dealings.
Piffle. Clinton has the DOJ, Wall Street and the MSM in her pockets. Her actions are history, not just suspected.
From what I understand of the NY market, getting anything built will result in acquiring Mafia connections whether one wants them or not.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been more discussion of David Cay Johnston’s recent book on Trump (along with Wayne Barrett’s earlier work). This is not to defend HRC, but they are both scum.
http://usuncut.com/politics/gary-johnson-train-wreck/
This is actually hilarious, Gary Johnson’s a real disaster! :) I was ready to blow off the Aleppo thing as a fluke, but now it seems he really knows absolutely nothing about foreign affairs.
I think this kind of thing hurts him as he’s supposed to be the “moderate” and “respectable” alternative to obnoxious Trump. He got a pass after screwing up once, but twice shows he’s a real lightweight, and I mean lighter than most commenters here.
Most American’s couldn’t find Syria on a map, couldn’t name a single person on the Supreme Court, nor their state representatives.
Fortunately your heavyweight offers some balance to the general population of commenters here.
Regardless of what level of knowledge most Americans have, I’d expect Johnson voters to care about their candidate’s level of knowledge of world affairs.
Matthews asked him to name ONE leader, anywhere in the world and he STILL couldn’t do it. Weld tried to bail him out, but Matthews smelled blood and dug the knife in a bit further.
I think the call has gone out among Dems in the corp media that Johnson’s more of a problem than a help to them and should be neutralized. It’s a wonder Johnson hadn’t been exposed sooner. The fact that he’s being outed now as a know-nothing is telling.
Recent precedents (presidents) Ford, Reagan and Bush the younger, suggests that voters sometimes don’t really care all that much whether their candidate is the sharpest tool in the shed. I wouldn’t vote for any candidate that supports TPP or its ilk but that’s just me.
Neither the Rs or Ds should not be calling the shots for journalists. Contrary to the hopes of the faithful I doubt that concerted attacks on Johnson by the press will translate into votes for Hillary. More likely it will simply look like collusion among the corporations for their favorite candidate.
The way things are going it might be beneficial to have a President who was unaware of any world outside the US national borders and staffed all his appointments accordingly. That would of course be very bad for the US but at least the damage done would remain confined.
Patrick Lawrence has fled the sinking Salon ship for the safer confines of The Nation:
The Russian Blitzkrieg on Aleppo Is a Direct Challenge to Washington
The war hawks really are trying to blow up the entire world. And yet, people still think that Clinton is a sane alternative to Trump.
‘Blitzkrieg’ huh? The whole point of the lighting war was that it was fast. The battle for eastern Aleppo is mostly a slow urban grind. And now Washington is apparently making noises about flooding Syria with MANPADs. How they expect to get anything inside Aleppo, I don’t know.
Maybe they’ve gotten MANPADs in there already. If so, they can do some damage, but they’ll run out soon. The key is that if the Turks have really flipped sides out of fear of a YPG proto-state, then it won’t matter if they can’t get stuff across the Turkish border.
What I’ve been hearing is that some anonymous Pentagon sources have leaked that the US has actually been blocking the Gulf States from sending a huge number of MANPADs to Syria but is now threatening to stop preventing their distribution.
As for Turkey, nah, they probably haven’t changed sides. Their invasion seems to be a. to prevent the Kurds from linking their territories along the Syrian-Turkish border, and b. to make it easier for militants to get stuff across the border by…well, simply moving the border closer to them.
None of this matters to the surrounded fighters inside Aleppo. Unless the US thinks it’ll be allowed to airdrop supplies to them.
Aleppo’s fate seems sealed at this point. The rebels took their best shot at opening the supply lines and couldn’t get it done. It’s probably a matter of time, now. I’d imagine the SAA and friends would like it wrapped up before the US election.
With the Pentagon supposedly torpedo-ing the cease-fire deal, I’m a bit confused about the state of play. I thought it was mostly the CIA that had the ties to the jihadis of Al Nusra and the Pentagon mostly backed the YPG. Apparently, the Pentagon loves jihadis, too?
This is the Future of the Left. Robocop 4 is in preproduction like Robocop 3 wasn’t bad enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm1D_Se7sfQ
Bill mollison and the gifts of gaia…as the current trustees of this blue marble we tend to “fight” things as they are when gifted to us…
water tables collapse where mankind has grown in population multifold yet we worry and perhaps complain when storm bursts replenish our wasted resource…
Brazilian pepper trees have been outlawed in a few counties in florida as “invasive” as researches rush to see if in fact they can be a natural option to reversing the trend of anti biotics declining results…
Psycho hoa and condo association “headmasters” proclaim lawns must be cut to pga putting green standards while insisting chemicals be used to eliminate the edible “weeds” gaia tries to gift us instead of the “used puppy poop” that passes for nutritional filler…
as brain cancer races to become the number one killer of children who end up playing and running in these chemical minefields of “manicured” lawns…
May bills life not have been in vain….
the pentagon has been supporting DAESH and Quada to try to establish a destabilizing “province” of Sunni Salafists in Iraq/Syria for some time. no surprise they are carrying out their own agenda. and this is for those morons who say Nader got us into war w Iraq: the 9/11 bombings were the reason, plus the neocon security experts who were looking any excuse to get rid of Saddam. it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference if Gore were elected. Wars are seldom the whim of presidents.
>The Mytilenean Dialogue From 428 B.C. Explains Who Really Won the Trump-Clinton Debate Foreign Policy
“Both Athens and Mytilene belonged to the Delian League, a Greek rehearsal for NATO. Just as America dominates the latter, Athens was the heavy lifter in the former.”
It isn’t about ‘dominating’ or being the ‘heavy lifter’. Both the Delian League and NATO were/are defacto Empires. Both were supposed alliances ostensibly set up to counter a foreign threat, but then managed in the interests of the single most powerful member to pursue objectives that had literally nothing to do with that threat. FP is being way too soft and generous here. NATO is a key part of the American Empire.
I enjoy this blog immensely, but I am hardly a financial services professional. In fact my background is in the teaching of reading and early elementary education.
But I know when something sort of smells.
Yesterday, while out of town – having a good time in Traverse City, MI – I went to use my debit card and it failed. (We had first been advised that a new card would be issued on our expiration date – DEC in this case) We were not concerned about the cryptic EMail I received the other day saying new cards would be issued. Guess I should have been, eh?
Though it was a damned inconvenience, we made it back home (with less than ten bucks and change) and retrieved our new cards (Which had arrived while we out of town)
We activated the things and went to an ATM to get some cash.
Failed again.
Went to the CU and they told me that my debit card (That I have been using about 15-20 times a month) was never intended to be a POS card and that I would have to – BY LAW – apply for a Master Card credit/debit card and furthermore I would be limited — BY LAW – to eight transactions a month for free and after that there would a $1.00 per transaction feed (Payable to MC I assume. I already have a VISA and see no need of another card)
This sounds like bullshit: there is a law saying I HAVE to have a credit card to use a debit card and that I can only use this less than twice a week without a fee?
Please advise. (I love my CU but convenience will will-out)
I can’t find anything on it but that doesn’t mean anything. I would confirm any supposed requirements with your state’s banking authority. And complain if it isn’t true.
http://www.michigan.gov/difs/
It sounds like bull to me, but we have lots of evidence that the depositor is not always considered when banking regulations are passed.
I’ve been hearing different variations of your story for the last few years and I’ve never been able to get to the bottom of it. In a few instances where I’ve heard of a final outcome it was traced to either badly- trained employees giving out horribly incorrect information or equally badly-trained supervisors advising their employees to tell customers “it’s the law” in order to get them to sign up for things they don’t want
I think I even remember one variation where it was advertised as some sort of grotesque package deal, where you sign up for checking and saving accounts along with debit and credit cards in return for, I guess, the privilege of paying higher fees.
I would think that if you shop around you’d be able to find something better from a competitor. In the meantime, thanks for alerting fellow readers to another con game that we’ll have to be on the lookout for.
Re: “Longest historic temperature record…” Nature:
This further evidence for expecting a much larger increase in global temperatures than the worst case numbers coming out of the IPCC should be of great concern. The book from some years ago “Six Degrees” made the case for how bad six degrees could be. Six degrees is already part of the IPCC worst case predictions. The potential for nine degrees — at any time in the future — is frightening.
I have kids and hope to have grandkids someday and even if my line dies out I am depressed by the thought of what nine degrees increase in temperature could mean for humankind.
Cspan today with Comey, repubs hit him about emails and the dems are concerned about Russia hacking the election process. 18 states have asked for help from DHS. I guess help ensuring a Clinton win.
Five minutes listening to Gary Johnson spouting random randianisms, which is all i spent, should be enough proof to anyone what an airhead, not merely a lightweight, he really is. A lightweight may simply be out of his depth, or lack the foundation to discuss a topic. An airhead is not improved by exposure to foundational knowledge, they lack the tools to make anything of it.
His entire spiel amounts to small gubmit only military and courts. No regulations, private lawsuits will do, flat regressive taxes = utopia! Then he just of kind spaces out on anything at all. Like a wind up doll.
Speaking of which, anybody see Madame Clinton “win” the “debate” in her crimson Mao suit? I kept looking for Zou En-lai, or Mini-me.
Marx said history plays like farce the second time, is this what happens the third time around?
I could not find the link between “Black Injustice Tipping Point” and “White House Outlines Massive Outreach to Indian Country at Tribal Nations Conference Indian Country” from reading the article, unless there is a subtle point about (some) Native American Tribes are being offered more money (and blacks are not?)? It must be arguing over peanuts, because a quick calculation showed sums handed out didn’t break $100M
However, the particular article showed Sec. Sally Jewell getting hugs and kisses; which flabbergasted me. It’s been Sec. Jewell who has driven on behalf of Obama’s admin several reposetions of Western Native American Indian lands for selling off of mineral rights, and it’s her department which failed to prevent the Energy Dept from having the largest, most toxic mining tailing dam failure on Navajo land, etc. She’d be skinned alive by most western tribes. So I got to digging around, and it turns out that particular “news” website is owned by one tribe, the (Eastern) Oneida Indian Nation, funded and run out of their Turning Stone Resort Casino”. The primary function of this news service is to drive the agenda of the Casino operating members of some Eastern tribes and their non-tribal business associates. Anything out of that organ has to be read with this narrow agenda in mind.
Justin Trudeau makes me crazy. Everyone I meet in Kuala Lumpur is in love with the guy, which is annoying enough. But aside from being rebuffed by a royal child in a high-five request, he hasn’t really done anything substantive.
His father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau (love him or hate him) had balls. He was a Canadian Nationalist. He built PetroCan and kept our foreign policy as independent as he could. Between Canada’s shameful participation in the dismemberment of Libya, drift toward NATO and away from multilateralism and likely purchase of F-35s, PET would puke.
The west coast LNG project is as dumb as a bag of hammers. There is a global glut and that stuff should stay in the ground until CANADA needs it or can do without it.
Sorry if that was a bit “rant-like”.
On an unrelated topic, Baby Beavers are SO CUTE, and way cuter than Justin Trudeau.
Unlike the lamestream media and TPTB who bash the millenials, I think “The kids are all right”. They see through all the brainwashing by the lamestream media & refuse the false choices – “getting shot”(Repubs) vs “getting stabbed”(Dems), prefer socialism over capitalism etc etc.
The writing keeps repeating that millenials don’t support Clinton and keep leaving off the ‘enough’. Aren’t millenials Clinton’s largest age block? 65 and over for Trump, 45-65 barely Clinton etc. It looks like it’s up to millenials to get the neoliberal boomer capitalist (everything some claim to despise) over the line.