By Lambert Strether of Corrente
TPP/TTiP/TISA
“How the TPP may put your health care data at risk” [Toronto Star].
“45 times Secretary Clinton pushed the trade bill she now opposes” [CNN].
2016
The Trail
“Rapper Killer Mike, Sanders dine in Atlanta” [The Hill]. At the Busy Bee Cafe. Video.
Killer Mike: “I believe it because [Sanders], unlike any other candidate, said I would like to restore the Voting Rights Act. He, unlike any other candidate, said I wish to end this illegal war on drugs. Unlike any other candidate in my life, he said that education should be free” [Atlanta Journal Constitution]. “But as I read The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s comments about me speaking tonight, one jumped out at me. And it broke my heart. It said, ‘I don’t listen to rap and I will no longer be listening to Bernie Sanders.’ I just want to say that, whoever wrote that, before I was a rapper, I was a son of Atlanta.” An act of courage by Sanders, given the obvious possibility of this reaction.
“The Vermont senator said that while King is remembered mostly for his efforts on racial equality, he should be more fully understood as a “revolutionary” who spoke out against “the entire establishment” on matters from race relations to economic and foreign policy” [US News]. “‘What King said, Sanders mused, ‘was that, of course, we have to end segregation at lunch counters and hotels and universities and schools. But he also said, ‘What difference does it make if a family can’t afford to send their kids to those schools or eat at that restaurant?'” And an act of political courage in another way.
“Terror Politics” [Paul Krugman, The New York Times]. Another unmoored column from Krugman (photoshopping a cute cat into the famous situation room shot aside). Yes, whacking Osama Bin Laden — or being seen to have done so — was good politics, but it doesn’t take a “Nobelist” to tell us that. Second, the famous situation shot shows us the watchers. It doens’t show us what they were watching, which is open to serious question. Finally, glorifying whacking Osama, as opposed to, say, putting him on trial on the Hague, buys into the entire so-called war on terror, particularly dubious since France, after the attack in Paris, seems about to double down on our #FAIL. If Krugman is angling for a position with the Clinton campaign, why doesn’t he just say so?
“Edging right, Clinton seeks distance from Obama on ISIS” [The Hill]. Since the essence of a state is controlling territory, and only troops can take and hold ground, don’t we really need to invade Syria? And if that’s not the idea, what is the idea?
“Inside the Southern California factory that makes the Donald Trump hats” [Los Angeles Times]. ““A lot of what he says about Latinos is not correct,” she says just as a buzzer signals the end of her Saturday overtime shift and workers line up to clock out. The sound of Spanish punctuates the air as the machines sputter to a stop. “When we first got the order [for the Trump hats], I said to myself, ‘Just wait until he sees who’s making his hats. We’re Latinos, we’re Mexicans, Salvadoreños.’””
Handy guide to Iowa caucuses [p2016].
The Hill
“The Paul Ryan House Puts A Big Down Payment On The New Republican Prosperity Agenda” [Forbes]. Monetarism never gets old.
Stats Watch
S&P Case-Shiller HPI, September 2015: “Prices of existing homes showed a lot of life in September, up 0.6 percent” [Econoday]. “The breadth of strength is impressive with none of the 20 cities showing a monthly decline.” And: “The authors of the index ask whether “the strength seen in home prices since the bottom in 2012 led some to wonder if we’re entering a new bubble” (!) [Econintersect].
GDP, Q3 2015 (revised): “Third-quarter GDP is revised to an annualized plus 2.1 percent, up 6 tenths from the initial estimate but showing less strength by the consumer with final sales now at plus 2.7 from plus 3.0 percent. Higher inventories are a big factor in the upward revision” [Econoday]. “The gain in inventories is not a positive for the fourth quarter, posing headwinds for businesses which may limit production and employment to pull down their inventories.” In addition: “Inflation continues to moderate as the “deflator” which adjusts the current value GDP to a “real” comparable value continues to moderate” [Econintersect].
Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index, November 2015: “[M]uch lower-than-expected” [Econoday]. “This report along with Empire State, as well as yesterday’s manufacturing PMI, are pointing to a downbeat month for the factory sector which is being held down by weak foreign demand.” And: “Of the four regional Federal Reserve surveys released to date, two are in contraction and the rest are weakly in expansion” [Econintersect].
International trade in goods, October 2015: “a lower-than-expected deficit” [Econoday]. “[D]etails are not positive with exports down 2.6 percent and imports, in a sign perhaps of softening domestic demand, down 2.1 percent and following weakness also in September.”
Corporate Profits, Q3: “Corporate profits in the third quarter came in at a revised $1.786 trillion, up a year-on-year 1.4 percent” [Econoday].
Consumer Confidence, November 2015: Lack of confidence in the outlook for the jobs market sank the consumer confidence index in November, which fell to 90.4 vs a revised 99.1 in October. The November reading is far under expectations and is the lowest since September last year” [Econoday]. The fall is in the expectations, not the current conditions, component. “[T]he decline in job expectations is dramatic and raises the question whether global effects, which have been negative for the U.S., are beginning to weigh on the American consumer — which would not be a positive for the holiday spending outlook.”
State Street Investor Confidence Index, November 2015: “Investor confidence eased in November to 106.8 vs October’s revised 114.0” [Econoday]. “North America shows a nearly 12 point decline to 112.9 with Asia down more than 9 points to a 100.7 level that is still over breakeven 100 which separates demand for risk from demand for safety…. The report attributes the decline in North America to heightened expectations for a December rate hike and the decline in Asia to strength in the dollar and continued declines in commodity prices.”
Shipping: “The possibility that a new wave of M&A may be imminent was touched off by news that several carriers are in various stages of talks aimed at consolidation, including NOL and both Maersk Line and CMA CGM; Cosco and China Shipping Container Lines; and Hanjin Shipping and Hyundai Merchant Marine” [Longshore & Shipping News].
Shipping: “U.S. courier companies have seen double-digit revenue gains this year and expect similar growth in 2016 on surging demand for quick delivery of items bought on the Internet amid a general pickup in economic activity” [Market News]. Seems a different story from container ships and cardboard manufacturing. What am I missing?
The Fed: “Barring an upset, the Fed is expected to raise its benchmark interest rate in December in what may be the most anticipated policy move in its 100-year history. Because investors now think they know when the initial hike is coming, they’ve switched focus to the pace of subsequent increases. And “gradual” is the clue the Fed keeps providing” [Bloomberg]. “This Bloomberg article on gradualism and Fedspeak is quite unique. In thirty five years of reading analysis of the Fed I do not believe I have ever come across quotes from a linguistics professor and an etymology of a word. You learn something new each day” [Across the Curve]. The humanities are good for something!
The Fed: “‘Low inflation is no surprise given the average condition of the economy in recent years,’ [Michael Kiley, senior associate director at the Federal Reserve Board’s Office of Financial Stability Policy and Research] writes. ‘Indeed, relative to expectations based on the prior U.S. experience with high unemployment in the early 1980s, inflation has been surprisingly high.'” [Market News].
The Fed: “The Case for How the Fed Has Already Made Its Policy Mistake” [Bloomberg]. “The upshot is that with joblessness likely to bottom out below its current level, stabilizing inflation may ultimately mean the Fed has to tighten policy enough to boost joblessness by half a percentage point, an amount typically big enough to cause a recession, said Mortimer-Lee”
“Pfizer Inc.’s decision to escape the U.S. tax system by putting its legal headquarters in Ireland has stoked another round of calls in Washington to revamp tax rules and protect the corporate tax base” [Wall Street Journal, “Pfizer Inversion Puts Pressure on U.S. Lawmakers to Revamp Tax Rules”].
“Cash will be the most popular payment method for shoppers buying holiday gifts, with 39% of Americans saying they plan to use it for most of their holiday purchases” [MarketWatch]. “The preference for cash seems to be a result of shoppers not wanting to overspend, said Mike Cetera, a credit analyst at Bankrate.” One more reason to abolish cash; withholding consumption is simply immoral.
“The efforts by Hello Alfred underscore how today’s tech companies — even the youngest ones — have accepted lobbying as an essential part of doing business” [New York Times]. Hello Alfred is a personal butler service, and so, like Uber, it has labor issues. Unlike Uber, it’s not going to simply break the law; it’s going to lobby to change it. The headline is “Start-Up Leaders Embrace Lobbying as Part of the Job.” Will somebody please explain to me the difference between a “start-up” and a normal business, except for the novel forms of predation and screwing the workers?
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 56 (+3); Greed [CNN]. Last week: 48 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Never did slip back into Fear; now heading toward Greed again.
Police State Watch
“Cops Took More Property From Americans Than Burglars Did Last Year” [Gawker].
“[T]he conventional wisdom about recidivism in America is flatly wrong. In reality, the authors of the paper [from Abt Associates of Cambridge, MA] report, 2 out of 3 people who serve time in prison never come back, and only 11 percent come back multiple times” [Slate]. “The reason for the shocking discrepancy between these new findings and those of the [original BJS study], according to Abt’s William Rhodes, is that the BJS used a sample population in which repeat offenders were vastly overrepresented.”
Our Famously Free Press
“The Exquisite Poetry From a Day of Subheads on the Daily Mail Sidebar” [New York Magazine]. Whatever else it may be, the Daily Mail is an awesome display of technical and editorial prowess.
“The Porn Business Isn’t Anything Like You Think It Is” [Wired].
Dear Old Blighty
“UK will speed up purchase of F-35 jets, increase anti-terror budget by 30%” [Ars Technica]. “The increases in defence and anti-terror spending, plus the aforementioned plan to cut the government’s overall annual budget by around £20 billion, will mean extensive cuts to most other areas of government spending.” But in exchange, you get three aircraft carriers and a pig of a plane that catches on fire!
The headline: “A new poll shows that Jeremy Corbyn is going nowhere” [The New Stateman]. The lead: “A new poll shows Jeremy Corbyn in a commanding position among members – if not his MPs. Something will have to give – but I don’t think it will be Corbyn.” Maybe “going nowhere” means two different things on opposite sides of the Big Pond?
“Labour must ‘get its act together’ so it can defend low-paid workers who are facing the most concerted attack on their living standards in a generation, the head of the UK’s biggest public service union has said”[Guardian].
“Blairites, Brownites, Corbyn refuseniks: where do the New Labour tribes go next?” [Guardian]. Where the Whigs went: Out of politics.
Gaia
“NOAA chief tells lawmaker: No one will ‘coerce the scientists who work for me’” [WaPo]. Sound great, but is weak; the scientists don’t work for a person, but a government.
“Erowid contains highly detailed profiles of more than three hundred and fifty psychoactive substances, from caffeine to methamphetamine. Last year, the site had at least seventeen million unique visitors” [The New Yorker].
“In a new technical report, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) argues that unnecessary use of antibiotics in livestock is fueling drug-resistant, life-threatening infections in humans, particularly young children. The report, published Monday in Pediatrics, recommends limiting the use of antibiotics on farms” [Ars Technica].
“Explainer: The legal form of the Paris climate agreement” [Carbon Brief (Paul Tioxin)].
“Agricultural policy: Govern our soils” [Nature]. “Soils are a limited natural resource, unequally divided between nations and people. They provide fertilizer for growing food; store and filter water; host rich ecosystems, including many little-known species; provide resources such as peat, sand, clay and gravel; and hold our cultural and historical memory in archaeological artefacts. The ground beneath our feet is a public good and service.”
Water
“How the lack of water led to violence from Mexico to Syria” [Reveal News]. Round-up of coverage.
Class Warfare
“The Dialectic of Love and Authority” [Jacobin (DG)]. ” Belief in ego, superego, and id is optional; the essential thing is to recognize that our minds have a deep structure—an unconscious—formed very early and subsequently difficult to access. The unconscious is the mold of our character, which is our usual pattern of action and reaction.”
News of the Wired
“Comcast Tests Net Neutrality By Letting Its Own Streaming Service Bypass Usage Caps” [Ars Technica].
“Hydra can modify its genetic program” [Phys.org].Hail, Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off a limb, and two more shall take its place! We serve none but the Master—as the world shall soon serve us! Hail Hydra!!
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (OregonCharles):
OregonCharles writes:
Dwarf pieris shrub. The red is the flower buds, which bloom white and pink in early spring and smell like sweet tortillas. This one is a seedling I rescued from a place I was working. I like converting weeds into landscaping.
A weed is just a plant you don’t want…
If you enjoy Water Cooler, please consider tipping and click the hat. Winter has come, I need to buy fuel, and I need to keep my server up, too.
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45 times Secretary Clinton pushed the trade bill she now opposes
I think a better title would have been:
45 times Secretary Clinton pushed the trade bill she now claims to opposes
It really offends me how tepid and inoffensive, even at the expense of accuracy, large media outlets are today.
True dat. If Hillary opposed TPP, Terry McAuliffe wouldn’t be touting it. Hillary wouldn’t let him.
Actually, I think it’s Clinton sending a message to her backers, by allowing McAuliffe to tout TPP, that her “opposition” to it is a headfake left.
I agree.
On Corbyn “Going Nowhere”
I’m from a Brit-speaking country and yes, it means “Staying put/ Not being moved”
Maybe “going nowhere” means two different things on opposite sides of the Big Pond?
It can be interpreted two ways both here and there. It can mean either “making no progress”, or “here to stay”. I think the author means the latter, to wit:
They can’t go on like this – someone is going home in an ambulance: either Corbyn, or his internal opponents. My instinct is that it will be Corbyn who triumphs.
On edit: Seems like bad form to use such an ambiguous term in a headline.
“Going nowhere” vs. “not going anywhere”. I don’t know if it’s Brit-English or we Mercans just change the definitions but there seem to be these ambiguous phrases that can mean one thing or its opposite. “Just about” is another one: in Amer-English it usually means “not quite” (she just about made it to the top) whereas in Brit-English it seems to mean “just barely”.
Corbyn
He seems to be popular within the Labour membership and has moved the numbers up with the general public. Yet the current MPs seem to think they can put the gennie back in the bottle. The press continues to be engaged in hysteria. Whether he will win at the ballot is the real test. Until then the right seems to be whistling past its own grave and the press just seems out of touch.
Rapper Killer Mike, Sanders dine in Atlanta” [The Hill]. At the Busy Bee Cafe. Video.
Killer Mike: “I believe it because [Sanders], unlike any other candidate, said I would like to restore the Voting Rights Act. He, unlike any other candidate, said I wish to end this illegal war on drugs. Unlike any other candidate in my life, he said that education should be free” [Atlanta Journal Constitution]. “But as I read The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s comments about me speaking tonight, one jumped out at me. And it broke my heart. It said, ‘I don’t listen to rap and I will no longer be listening to Bernie Sanders.’ I just want to say that, whoever wrote that, before I was a rapper, I was a son of Atlanta.” An act of courage by Sanders, given the obvious possibility of this reaction.
Killer Mike: “I’m not here to elect our own Margaret Thatcher.” Zing! Which follows on the heels of Bernie calling Hillary’s proposals “GOP-lite.” Zing again. And how do I know these zings have zing? Just yesterday a Daily Kos Front Page writer authored a piece entitled, “Hillary Clinton Is a Democrat.” Pretty sad when the Democratic cheerleaders have to start by ensuring that the presidential nominee frontrunner actually is part of the party. (If intended as a dig at Sanders it backfired.) And so what is Hillary is nominally a Democrat? So was Joe Lieberman. So is Joe Manchin. So was Mary Landrieu. So is Rahm Emanuel. So was Bill Clinton. So is Barack Obama. They all suck. They are all Republicans, they just adopted the Republicans’ positions (and financial benefactors) and drove the GOP into Wingnutistan. Our own Margaret Thatcher indeed.
It is encouraging to see the emergence of a new group of black leaders who don’t appear interested in playing the Al Sharpton game. Bernie’s only real hope is to break through and get AAs to listen to him and compare his policies with Clinton’s. Maybe this will help.
It will be dffucult to get them to listen but I agree
I think the real significance of the endorsements of such people as Killer Mike is that no one actually needs the black misleadership class anymore; no one is really listening to them. This is a new generation speaking in its’ own voice, and tapping into that voice will be far more powerful than all of the superdelegates Hillary can pay off. Much has been said about Sanders not going for the jugular, and what that may signify, but he has people for that now (“I’m not here to elect our own Margaret Thatcher.”); why should he dirty his hands when it is not actually necessary?
I think that he is doing a lot better sub rosa than the polls would have us believe.
I love Killer Mike, I think he’s great. but despite him being a black rapper I’m afraid he’s more of a celebrity to people like myself, in other words college-educated, white male nerds than he is among the general black population. I have a Run The Jewels T-shirt that I wear on occasion and it always draws comments and compliments, but its always from males in their twenties with less melanin than Mike. I congratulate Bernie on the endorsement from a smart, articulate, outspoken, and politically attuned celebrity but I don’t necessarily see this as Bernie making inroads with the greater Black Community. I would file this endorsement under “youth vote”. ‘Run The Jewels 2’ was the number one album of 2014 on Pitchfork, which is basically a website that reviews college kid rock. I don’t think any of the corporate media outlets that cater to the black demographic want to touch Killer Mike’s material. It’s too overtly political and out of step with the mainstream.
“The Vermont senator said that while King is remembered mostly for his efforts on racial equality, he should be more fully understood as a “revolutionary” who spoke out against “the entire establishment” on matters from race relations to economic and foreign policy”
‘Foreign policy’ is a euphemism for ‘Martin Luther King spoke out against the Vietnam war, to the disgust of the NatSec state.’
If you aren’t opposed to America’s permanent war in the middle east, then you might as well just go piss on King’s grave.
Because he sure as hell would have been.
It’s so nice to know that we’re All in it (austerity) Together TM. Otherwise how else could there be money for trophies like F35s and Trident? Oh, wait a minute …
I went to the supermarket today and they were collecting for a food bank. We have food banks and F35s (and Trident) in the same country. FFS.
Rather than an advanced society sharing the cost of feeding our hungry, we leave it up to the wealthy and guilt-ridden souls to hand out breadcrumbs to make them feel good.
Breadcrumbs for the poor via shaming the wealthy at the supermarket is still better than switching your facebook profile to a rainbow flag or a tricolor flag to show some insipid form of solidarity with no actual effort or sacrifice involved.
I’m not sure private charity isn’t counterproductive. It provides cover for those who don’t want to implement policies that would make private charity unnecessary, like universal benefits. I in fact seethe when I see people starting up a fund to help people pay the emergency medical bills of friends or people they’ve seen on the news. The same energy expended to implement universal health care would make all such future appeals unnecessary.
I agree that big ticket things like health care should be government responsibilities. I suspect though that a number of people will fall through the cracks of any system (especially highly bureaucratic ones like the government sets up) and that some kind of private charity will always be necessary. But it shouldn’t be a band-aid fix (like now) for governments not doing their jobs.
My secret pet peeve is the “we are (fill in the blank for victims….Virginia Tech, WDBJ7, etc,etc).
No actually just because you sympathize with someone you aren’t them and feeling bad for families that lost people isn’t the same as actually being them.
Erowid contains highly detailed profiles of more than three hundred and fifty psychoactive substances, from caffeine to methamphetamine. Last year, the site had at least seventeen million unique visitors” [The New Yorker].
Erowid is useful (though I found the article too precious). The real work on psychedelics is being done by MAPS:
http://www.maps.org
Erowid is a great place to visit for the user experience logs. These are usually well written, and sometimes harrowing, essays from people who have tried various substances.
Revealing quote, which could be from Syria, Saudi Arabia, or California instead of Mexico:
It’s magic! As Alfred E. Neuman says, “What, me worry?”
“Seems a different story from container ships and cardboard manufacturing. What am I missing?”
The courier companies are all quite small, so they are showing big jumps in growth. The article says that one has 75 drivers. Seventy-five drivers?
What else that you may be missing: These courier and quick-delivery services mainly seem to serve upper-middle-class women, at least anecdotally. We have a couple of women who are thoroughly addicted to them, here in my building. Working-class households aren’t having deliveries sent from Blue Apron, a service that pre-makes your dinner for you and puts the ingredients in a nice box.
So: Class
No surprise.
In my ideal educational system, kids learn by the 3rd grade that home cooking is the healthiest and you get to see what ingredients go into your stomach.
‘No extra hair with that order.’
I would also emphasize the journey part, instead of the destination part.
“It’s not that they can deliver fresh organic apples to your penthouse. It’s the journey you undertake to the store to obtain those apples. That makes you very spiritual. Maybe a spiritual CEO. At least a spirituality spouting CEO.”
George Scialabba (a good Sicilian name!) on love, authority, psychology, and Christopher Lasch is in the Baffler:
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/dialectic-love-authority
It occurs to me that my politics are Baffler / Jacobin / Harper’s / Naked Capitalism. I guess that combo makes me even “gruffer” than Bernie Sanders.
That’s a great article on Lasch and his “Culture of Narcissism”. I read that book not long after its publication and in retrospect it was a seminal read for me. I’ll have to re-visit that work this winter.
“the strength seen in home prices since the bottom in 2012 led some to wonder if we’re entering a new bubble”
OMG, laughing.
Wake up, Rip Van Winkle.
In other news today:
China to massively re-organize the PLA (per South China Morning Post), as Russia and Turkey/NATO try to stare each other down.
“Keep the powder dry.”
I was wondering what Turkey thought of the Silk Road concept:
At this point the “New Silk Road” looks like vaporware or a vacuous PR exercise. What actually is it supposed to be? Nobody seems to have an answer.
Maybe an excuse to project influence.
“Gotta protect our New Silk Road.”
The last Chinese general to reach that far was Ban Chao in the East Han dynasty. He was said to be within a few miles of encountering Roman soldiers.
The farthest west they got in the Tang dynasty was Talas near Samarkand.
A New silk road is not vulnerable to blockade by a large Navy. It makes the large Navy strategically obsolete.
It also moves economic activity to the area served by the new road.
“From Istanbul, the Silk Road crosses the Bosporus…”
Then it’s heading east, Lambert.
http://www.iron-clay.com/the-tpp-of-the-iceberg-roundup-glyphosate-monsanto-dow-2,4-d.html
really the plan is to monetize the entire genome. It’s pretty disgusting I think the “intellegence of our corporate persons is pure malevolence. And as is made clear in the PE posts the people at the top circulate among themselves and don’t give a rats ass about the rest of us rubes. Pretty irritating. I’m waiting for the mountain to fall.
that they have the proto religious zeal to say they’re saving the world through science is epic hypocrisy.
Got a link to “Dialectic on Love and Authority” Jacobin? Sounds interesting; I can’t find it.
I suspect they meant the one in The Baffler:
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/dialectic-love-authority
Thanks.
“Since the essence of a state is controlling territory, and only troops can take and hold ground, don’t we really need to invade Syria? And if that’s not the idea, what is the idea?”
I’m of the opinion that the essence of the modern neoliberal state is to open and control markets, which may or may not require “boots on the ground” – air space and sea lanes come to mind as obvious exceptions. Perhaps the chaos created and intensified in Syria/Middle East is as much an effort to prevent others from controlling it, while not having the desire to do same – for now at least. Sort of an ‘if I can’t have it nobody can” strategy, aimed particularly as Russia and China. Logically this doesn’t make sense, but remember we are dealing with the insane here.
I guess I’d say file this off topic link under corruption…
of the earth, link to surfline for the photos, it seems as bad as it is at the ocean, it’s worse inland and it traveled 500km to get there…sad
http://www.surfline.com/surf-news/regencias-boca-do-rio-a-perfect-left-rivermouth-in-southeastern-brazil-is-covered-in-mine-waste-after-environm_133863/
“…only troops can take and hold ground, don’t we really need to invade Syria?”
If we acknowledge that World War III has started, it puts things into perspective. The USA is supporting the Sunni Arabs: Turkey and the Gulf Monarchies plus Israel. There are Opportunists in the West who want to profit from Russia’s collapse. Russia sending troops to fight in a perpetual civil war is guaranteed to accomplish this (Afghanistan I). Identifying Muslims as the “Others” has allowed the Iraq/USA conflict to go on for 25 years and counting. Clearly psychosis has set in. The proxy Jihadist Army that is taking down the Russians is at the same time attacking the West and flooding it with refugees. Turkey’s shoot-down of the Russian bomber today makes the war hotter. We are collateral damage. There is no chance that the West will invade Raqqa and Mosul. President Clinton would free Crimea.
Um Putin isnt really using ground troops so its really not like Afghanistan.
Hopefully not started, but barriers are being removed. Could it be that the “powers that be” have gotten used to russia withdrawing within itself? Not any kind of scholar on things russian, but it seems to me that collapse and restructuring can be viewed as withdrawing in a way, but say in martial arts, that’s the best course, maintain your sphere and protect yourself (depending on your teaching I’ll guess). The dynamic has shifted now in what I see as a very negative way and we’re led by octogenarian armchair generals who’ve been stamping around the beach kicking sand in everybody’s face. I think some of the contradictory actions you note, jet shootdowns and refugee flooding looks like two successful damaging efforts suddenly converging on each other like a venn diagram, so now we’ve increased the odds of unintended consequences.
“Sara-JE-vo, you’ve got me under your spellll…”
All those self-serving a–holes, each one setting his or her ration of mousetraps with Ping-Pong balls poised on the jaws, hanging, breathless, waiting that one little perturbation that causes the first mousetrap to snap! sending its little ball bouncing to set off two or ten more to set off the rest of all those carefully poised and loaded parcels of stored mortal energy…
RE: Pfizer. This in the NYT is priceless: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/business/dealbook/pfizer-allergan-merger-inversion.html
The CEO of these pirates is telling politicians the merger is good for the US because Pfizer will use the tax savings on R&D. So far this year, Pfizer admits to $7.1 billion in after-tax income, so obvs that’s going to executives and shareholders, and if you want new and improved drug advertising, you need to let Pfizer increase concentration in Big Pharma. Also too, they want the tax extenders so the ha ha R&D will be immediately deductible.
The greed: it knows no limits.
Pfizer’s promise to use their tax savings to boost R&D spending in the US is hilarious,
given that Pfizer is a creative H1-B abuser:
For ease of reading and searching https://wikileaks.org/tpp-final/
Higher income inequality makes rich people more Scrooge-like
linky
Great, the gold bugs have taken over the asylum (the House). The whole thing is an opening move to try and reimpose the unworkable and useless gold standard that gold perverts like Ron Paul masturbate over.
Go back on the gold standard and FORCE austerity! That’s the GOP motto.
Wow the gentrification of the porn industry.