Defense powers Broncos, Peyton Manning to Super Bowl 50 win ESPN
Willie Wood Made the Most Memorable Play of Super Bowl I. He Has No Recollection. New York Times
When Your Lived Reality becomes an Algorithm of the Popular emptywheel
Facebook’s algorithms are not your friend Crooked Timber
2016 (Democrats)
Hillary Clinton Pledges Not To Cut Social Security Benefits Huffington Post. A win for the progressive left, who cornered Clinton to make this happen.
Clinton defends Albright and Steinem apologises as sexism claims dominate Democratic race The Guardian (h/t resilc)
Bernie’s Women Supporters To Clinton Backers: Please Stop Calling Us Stupid BuzzFeed
$153 million in Bill and Hillary Clinton speaking fees, documented CNNPolitics.com
Bill Clinton Unleashes Critiques of Sanders and His Supporters Bloomberg Politics. I didn’t think that, of all surrogates, Bill Clinton would attack an opponent for voting for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Which he signed.
Democratic Party Is Pushing Away Its Future Leonid Bershinsky, Bloomberg View
You agree with Bernie Sanders (but you might not know it) David Cay Johnston, NY Daily News
Electability Paul Krugman, New York Times. And here we go again. Money quote: “But what happens even more, in my experience, is an intellectual sin whose effects can be just as bad: self-indulgence. By this I mean believing things, and advocating for policies, because you like the story rather than because you have any good evidence that it’s true. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years going after this sort of thing on the right, where things like the claim that Barney Frank somehow caused the financial crisis so often prevail in the teeth of overwhelming evidence. But it can happen on the left, too — which is why, for example, I’m still very cautious about claims that inequality is bad for growth.” Emphasis mine.
Bernie’s bucks bury Clinton in New Hampshire Politico. Bernie spending big to win New Hampshire.
2016 (Republicans)
Quick poll shows decline for Rubio Politico
Drug Industry Launches Ad Effort Aimed at Lawmakers WSJ
New mortgage companies have ties with subprime lenders Seattle Times
Don’t Break Up the Banks. They’re Not Our Real Problem. Steve Eisman, New York Times op-ed. Eisman cites as the “real problem” inequality, which is at least partially caused by an oversized financial sector, but whatever.
Breaking Up the Big Banks is Easy Dean Baker
Norway fund urges US banks to split top job Financial Times
Big Companies Pull Back After Rough Quarter WSJ
Class warfare:
Hope — and clean water — remains elusive for the people of Flint Washington Post
Financial despair, addiction and the rise of suicide in white America The Guardian (h/t resilc)
Ford to More Than Double Mexico Production Capacity in 2018 WSJ
Cop who killed college student and 55-year-old mother sues for ‘extreme emotional trauma’ The Washington Post
Documentary: Ukraine – Masks of revolution The Vineyard of the Saker
Death toll from Taiwan quake hits 34, hunt on for survivors The Washington Post
A plan must be made for ‘life after Isis’ in the Middle East The Independent
A New Deal for Europe by Thomas Piketty New York Review of Books
Sailing ships back in vogue as a green alternative to conventional shipping The Independent (h/t Chuck L)
Expecting the unexpected: Why the oil price keeps surprising us VoxEU
The problem with newspapers today: the Marty Baron perspective CBC News
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
209 comments
Comments are closed.
Hillary Clinton Pledges… is it possible to have buyers remorse in advance or better yet pre-exsotic travel designation gastrointestinal illness…
Skippy…. hard to believe, but I think she has already over taken Obama on saying anything just to move the news cycle forward… different day… different reality… what I said yesterday, does not, is not, nor is applicable today… sue me…
It all depends on what `not’, `cut’ and `benefits’ mean.
Clinton’s promise is a puff of smoke. Hell, Obama still denies that chained CPI is a benefits cut. Sanders is right to demand details and the Lefty groups should know better by now.
One would think that we would have learned the value of campaign promises by now…and yet, people seem to think this means something. Will wonders never cease?
My first thought also… wasn’t there something about closing Guantanamo?
Was there a camera on her back to confirm she did not have her fingers crossed? Does she consider chained CPI a cut?
Wont cut means wont increase/index
Clinton’s favorite way to “not” “cut” “benefits” was to increase the retirement age. I hope the left pins her down on that one as well. For me it’s 67 and I’m almost 40… the Reagan-era cuts are almost here.
Re the ‘victory’ on Clinton’s I won’t cut Social Security pledge.
Well, I’m glad she said it. Just wished it meant something. I don’t think she’s any less likely to pursue a ‘grand bargain’
It depends on the meaning of the word “cut”
But I am just a cynic, and my Spidy- cyni-sense is overactive (when working in a lab, I was bitten by a radioactive cockroach which has forever imbued me with a hyper acute ability to detect SH*T, in all its permutations and disguises. Of course, campaign season puts me in a permanent state of sensory overload)
For some bizarre reason, I believe, without any evidence at ALL, that the Clintons manipulate language to such an extent that it scarcely means anything at all and puts 0 limits on what they can do.
If “hedonics” means all the crap is so, so, so much better than it used to be, I am sure when Hillary “reforms” social security, “Clintonics” will make those fewer dollars so much better. Probably have little “senior stars” where “special” cash is distributed only to the old folks. You get a special 10% discount at K-mart and the dollar stores! YOUR BETTER OFF!
Of course, you can afford less life saving surgery, but even than YOUR BETTER OFF! When your dead you don’t have to endure all those aches and pains!!! Win-Win!!!!
Cmon people, be pragmatic – your betters, like Dr. K, tell you to look at the evidence!!!!
Dan, the most alarming thing this morning is the statement from a veteran CIA agent that the empire is on the downhill.
Based on the experiences of the last down hill empire, built by Lenin and Stalin, the babushka’s are going to suffer the most.
Only a true peace candidate who will not back down from the MIC will save Social Security, instead of acquiescing to the MIC in the name of saving Social Security.
No kidding. Didn’t even bother to read the article. I’m sure she DID say it.
The only “news” here would be that there are still people who BELIEVED it.
The Washing Machine is big, because there are so many brains.
And per the old joke… it was a – small load – so I did it by hand….
Yannis Varoufakis brings his strategery expertise to the people of EU.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-02/08/c_135083764.htm
Not sure why this isn’t getting much play in the MSM. I assume it’s because YF either needs to be ignored or because he can be ignored after face planting last year.
Let’s see what happens after his official launch of DiEM 25 in Berlin tomorrow…
Picketty’s plan above. NYRB. A New Deal for Europe. Sounds like YV would agree basically. YV leaves me wondering how his leaps of logic tie together sometimes. But Picketty, here, is very logical and clear. Stating the EU’s biggest calcification is 19 different public debts (“sovereign” debts as they evasively call them), and 19 different interest rates. Somebody tell Straus-Kahn his days are numbered and he’s gonna have to change his embezzlement plan because there aren’t gonna be any more free market “parallel interest rates.” Picketty calls for a new union of fiscal (read as social spending) and monetary (read as elite extraction). Picketty wants a “refounding’ of the EU.
we had some records set in the oil patch last week:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/7/1481521/-new-record-for-oil-and-gasoline-stores-a-record-drop-in-the-US-rig-count-global-rigs-for-January
swings in the price of oil the likes of which we have not seen in seven years, driven by the unwinding of a $600 million triple short in the form of an Inverse Crude Oil Exchange Traded Note…
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/everyone-hates-martin-shkreli-everyone-is-missing-the-point
But was Shkreli’s performance actually more objectionable than that of the legislators who were performing alongside him? Elijah Cummings, of Maryland, is the ranking Democrat on the committee, and he used his allotted time to deliver a scolding. “Somebody’s paying for these drugs, and it’s the taxpayers that end up paying for some of them,” he said. “Those are our constituents.” In fact, it’s hard to figure out exactly who is paying what for Daraprim. Shkreli and Turing have claimed that hospitals and insurance companies will pay, while patients who can’t afford it will get a discount, or get it for free. And Nancy Retzlaff, Turing’s chief commercial officer, told the committee about her company’s efforts to get the drug to people who can’t afford it. The arrangement she described sounded like a hodge-podge, an ungainly combination of dizzyingly high prices, mysterious corporate bargaining, and occasional charitable acts—which is to say, it sounded not so much different from the rest of our medical system.
Even so, Cummings acted as if Shkreli were the only thing preventing a broken system from being fixed. “I know you’re smiling, but I’m very serious, sir,” he said. “The way I see it, you can go down in history as the poster boy for greedy drug-company executives, or you can change the system—yeah, you.” Cummings has been in Congress since 1996, and he is a firm believer in the power of government to improve industry through regulation. And yet now he was begging the former C.E.O. of a relatively minor pharmaceutical company to “change the system”? It seemed like an act of abdication.
…………..
One of the strangest things about the anti-Shkreli argument is that it asks us to be shocked that a medical executive is motivated by profit. And one of the strangest things about Shkreli himself is that he doesn’t seem to be motivated by profit—at least, not entirely. Last fall, Derek Lowe, a chemist and blogger affiliated with Science, criticized Shkreli’s plan to raise prices as a “terrible idea,” not least because such an ostentatious plan posed “a serious risk of bringing the entire pricing structure of the industry under much heavier scrutiny and regulation.” He called on the pharmaceutical industry to denounce Shkreli as a means of protecting its own business model; from an economic point of view, Shkreli’s strategy seemed self-defeating. At least one person close to Shkreli seems to have agreed. One of the most revealing documents uncovered by the committee showed an unnamed executive imploring him not to raise the price of Daraprim again, saying that the risk of another media firestorm outweighed the benefit. “Investors just don’t like this stuff,” the e-mail said. Shkreli’s response was coolly noncommittal: “We can wait a few months for sure.”
A truly greedy executive would keep a much lower profile than Shkreli: there would be no headline-grabbing exponential price hikes, just boring but reliable ticks upward; no interviews, no tweeting, and absolutely no hip-hop feuds. A truly greedy executive would stay more or less anonymous. (How many other pharmaceutical C.E.O.s can you name?) But Shkreli seems intent on proving a point about money and medicine, and you don’t have to agree with his assessment in order to appreciate the service he has done us all. By showing what is legal, he has helped us to think about what we might want to change, and what we might need to learn to live with.
===================================
Reminds me very much of a movie were the “good” vampires have to kill a “rogue” vampire who is just sucking up way more blood than he needs or deserves. Because the villagers apparently are willing to give up a few people as the normal course of events…
Of course, the hardest thing to take is the unbelievable rationalization proffered by FDA officials (at the behest of their bosses, congress of course) to prevent willing buyers from buying from willing sellers….FUNNY how people who can only yammer about the wonder of the MARKET, the MARKET, the MARKET!!!!! – – when it lowers prices of those with power, than the MARKET has to be thwarted because of…….hmmmmmm……O, the children! OK, they don’t use children – they use something almost as good – SAFETY!!!!!. This from people who are always willing at the drop of a hat to gut safety regulations. But any port in a storm.
Because those sellers are in those hell holes of filth and decomposition like Germany, Switzerland, and France. Funny how wonderful the market is….except when it isn’t. So much better that people go without heat than risk buying prescription drugs from Europe…because our government is SO CONCERNED about their health, so noble congress is willing to sacrifice poor people to protect people who can pay high prices. Where are the market advocates who note that people are free to buy the expensive supposedly high quality domestic drugs, but the market for some reason can’t label those dangerous drugs as from Europe (filthy, filthy Europe) that millions of Europeans use daily and much, much cheaper and let the consumer decide??? BUT market advocates – people can buy expensive domestic drugs if they want – where o where are all the consumer sovereignty proponents???
(IRONY alert – almost all bulk drug manufacture occurs overseas – and the stuff regulated BY FDA causes plenty of problems. Yet, YET, no sanctions against a country demonstrated to provide proven dangerous drugs……..WHY O WHY IS THERE SUCH A CONTRADICTION???? PURE MYSTERY – WHAT EVER COULD BE THE REASON !sarc!)
http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/10/0518/chinadrugs.html)
They hypocrisy and purposeful stupidity demonstrates that dollars can make people believe anything. And there has been such a firehose of BS sprayed for so long, that a candidate that is 1% is a paragon of virtue.
Excellent rant. More people should be as exercised.
Thank you.
Shkreli = Big Pharma’s Madoff
Token, small time hustler who was dumb enough to flaunt the unspoken rules of white collar thievery, now front page scape goat, meanwhile the big show goes on unimpeded.
I really wouldn’t want to bitch too much about the insanity of the FDA regulation of who is allowed to manufacture an orphaned drug. That gets too close to the right-wing insanity that all regulations are terrible. Would you like your milk pasteurized or with tuberculosis mycobacteria? There’s a reason why TB used to be very common and is now fairly rare (although making a comeback, from what I hear). Same with other causes of food poisoning. It is certainly true that many FDA rules are there to support profits for some of the players, but that’s because we allowed the crooks to slip them in there.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Rubenstein Missed Davos 2016: Why?
Was Mr. Rubenstein at Vitol’s Swiss Cressier refinery celebrating the first import of U.S oil? If so he wasn’t far away from Davos.
Cressier is one of only two refineries in Switzerland and accounts for approximately 25 percent, by volume, of all refined products sold nationally.
Some may recall Texas landowners sued Carlyle over failure to meet commitments in the Barnett Shale.
Another topic near and dear to Mr. Rubenstein is high on the WEF agenda, Arctic development. In December 2015 the forum released a report titled:
“Arctic Investment Protocol: Guidelines for Responsible Investment in the Arctic”
Mrs. Rubenstein, also known as Alice Rogoff, and her husband have spent many years proposing Arctic development. Both wish to profit from it.
With such compelling topics what could have kept Carlyle consummate salesman away? Might it be investors fleeing Carlyle’s hedge funds, Claren Road and Vermillion Asset Management? It’s not a good time to ask for new money when existing investors can’t get their money back.
http://peureport.blogspot.com/2016/02/rubenstein-missed-davos-2016-why.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-fallible-mind/201601/why-ted-cruz-s-facial-expression-makes-me-uneasy
“Germans say Backpfeifengesicht, meaning a face in need of a good punch.”
Don’t ask me to pronounce Backpfeifengesicht.
Back-pfy-fen-geh-sickt. Hmm maybe I can use this in my German I class. Thanks!
Close – but the ‘sicht’ has the ‘s’ pronounced like a soft susurrant z, and needs to use the soft back-of-throat-aspirated German ‘ch’ (think of a very soft version of a cat’s hiss). That is a great exemplar of one of those compound nouns the Germans do really well, in that there are multiple levels of colloquialism all tied together neatly into a single word. Gesicht is obviously face and Backe is cheek, but then we have Pfeife, ‘whistle’, which connotes a whistling, stingingly hard punch to the jaw, by way of the subexpression Backpfeife, literally “cheek whistle.” There is a similarly great colloquialism analogous to the English “boxing one’s ears” in the form of Ohrfeige, literally “ear fig.” I’ll leave y’all to delve into the possible imagery behind that one.
Such language always takes me back to the classic Wilhelm Busch illustrated stories of my youth … there is of course the most-famous Max und Moritz — rather analogous in many ways to a 19th-century German version of Beavis and Butt-Head — but also many shorter stories such as Das Pusterohr (Puste is synonym for breath, but specifically in huffing-and-puffing sense … ‘mir ging die Puste aus’ refers to being out breath), about a naughty young lad who likes to shoot passersby in the nethers using his blowpipe through a hole in a fence, and gets a typical Buschian comeuppance.
I realise this, but it’s kind of hard to explain to someone without being able to say it to them.
Google translate has a nice pronunciation feature, but I can’t imagine what English phrase you would have to enter to be sure of getting backpfeifengesicht back so you could play the audio. I gather they’ve gotten pretty good on the European languages, but they are still pretty limited on Thai. I don’t know about other non-Indo-European languages. Very useful, though. I consider Martin Shkreli the exemplar par excellence of the meaning of backpfeifengesicht.
In French it’s tête à claques…
His face reminds me of a tragedy mask.
When it comes to Peyton Manning, I am very happy for someone I don’t know about something that doesn’t matter. So I was pleased and surprised to see the opening link.
Then I saw the second link and realized the set-up. “A draw-play, or simply draw for short, is a type of play that is run in American and Canadian football. The draw is a running play disguised as a passing play.” Peyton did them often, out of the shotgun. We were lucky enough to see them, being in the Indianapolis telly range, back when you could watch sports for free.
Well played, Mr. Dayen, well played.
I have gotten along all the way though his career without knowing who he is, I wouldn’t recognize recognize a picture of him.
At least it’s not because I don’t remember.
And that is entirely fine. This site is superb for explicating things that are extremely important. I have found it relieves my animal nature to howl about things that aren’t.
youtube.com/watch?v=l-rNIAN5o5M&feature=youtu.be&t=35
Maybe Peyton Manning should be relegated to the not-so-clean group. There was a remarkable expose documentary on Al Jazeera about drugs in sports, with lots of secretly recorded video. Some of the key video interviewees said that illegal growth hormones were going being sent from an Indy company to Manning’s wife. With endocrinologist interview describing the very small number of situations in which these hormones would be used for legitimate medical concerns. The response was that Manning’s wife’s medical affairs were a private matter between her and her doctor. The interviewees who had incriminated themselves said they misspoke about everything.
The documentary got little or no coverage in USA. They talked about drugs in NFL, NBA, etc.
Do a search on Manning, Tennessee, trainer, and settlement. Manning is a pig.
Paul Krugman’s “which is why, for example, I’m still very cautious about claims that inequality is bad for growth.”
“The more the reporters and editors of different important publications ate their meals off the wonderful china used by the ruling elite, the more time they spent with members of the elite who were high up in the federal government, the less likely they were to listen to the comments of the thin, desperate, emotionally agitated people who just might have happened to have been the custodians of truth, and the more likely they were to listen to the views of the rich and the powerful, even though the rich and the powerful have a more or less permanent need to lie to themselves and others, because they are constantly trying to maintain that the status quo isn’t really so bad, when, actually, it is.” – Wallace Shawn, Six Questions for Wallace Shawn, http://harpers.org/blog/2009/09/six-questions-for-wallace-shawn/
Shawn once took the New York Times to task, questioning why the editors and writers were so accepting of government policies:
“The people who write in the New York Times pages seem to have a need to believe that their government, while sometimes somewhat wrong, of course, can’t be entirely wrong, and must be at least trusted to raise the right questions. These writers just can’t bear the thought of being completely alienated from the center of their society, their own government. The New York Times is committed to telling its readers that many things will not happen, because the world is under control, benevolent people are looking out for us, the situation is not as bad as we tend to think, and while problems do exist, they can be solved by wise rulers.”
“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?” – George Orwell, Animal Farm
H. economicus subsp. botnpaidfer
correction: botnpaidferensis
Correction duly noted, thank you.
Thanks for the link!
Grand Nagus Zek.
Ha !
Wasn’t one of the Rules of Acquisition “Exploitation begins at home” ?
It’s not an official one but, yes!
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition
The money quote on inequality is an amazing reversal for Krugman, who has earlier said a primary theme of his move to New York was his study of inequality, Except of course that Krugman had to make the reversal to support Hillary.
The fact of the matter is that if Sanders is elected President, inequality will be on the table for the next eight years, while if Clinton is elected President, it will not. Wall Street HATES any discussion of inequality, and even if you believe Clinton will not change her “votes” for money, she certainly will still control the agenda.
Krugman and his wife paid $1.7 million for his apartment. How can anyone effectively study inequality living in an apartment building and a neighborhood filled with millionaires? What’s he going to base his research on, anecdotes about buying coffee and a bagel at the deli where he might bump up against someone in the working class?
Safety and the view from 30,000 feet.
inequality and the discussion thereof will not go away regardless of whether clinton or sanders win unless it literally goes away. same with trumpism. trump may lose, but unless the malaise that trump stokes is banished, the sentiment will only grow.
if inequality were no longer a talking point it would be a great thing; it would mean it were reversing. a clinton presidency would only kick the can down the road and make inequality an even greater issue in 2020.
Krugman is confusing growth with happiness.
Our goal for organizing a society, an economy, for living as one peaceful species among many, is the latter, not the former.
I was going to say. Who cares if inequality is bad for growf or not? If the choice were between an ever-increasing GDP or more equality, the only correct option is equality. Sooner or later economists are going to have to come to terms with the fact that cancerous, infinite growth isn’t physically possible on a single planet.
I am a fan of Shawn’s writings. Pretty good for someone who played the leader of the Ferengi Consortium! I always loved that juxtaposition.
More Empire….
http://chinamatters.blogspot.hk/
Instead, all Aquino got was Marwan’s finger and 44 body bags holding the remains of his own troopers. He may spend the rest of his life battling the consequences, legal and otherwise, for that decision. And his successors will have to deal with the fact that the US expects and demands its own direct channel into Malacanang Palace as the price of the alliance.
It appears that after a twenty five-year hiatus, the US has successfully re-embedded itself in the Philippines: not only basing rights but deep penetration into the Philippine security, civilian, and political spheres, as well as military.
Good to see Peter Lee cited here. There are few better or less occident-centric occidental sources on Empire, and very few better prose stylists.
re: Bill Clinton Unleashes Critiques of Sanders…
Interesting to see the phrase Bernie Bros used by the reporter. I have yet to see an actual identifiable human Bernie Bros. It appears to be mostly a twitter meme created by the Clinton campaign and amplified by the MSM. Joan Walsh is not “left leaning” and has a long history of attacking real progressives on identity politics grounds. A few years ago she was accusing the left of a soft racism for not being supportive enough of Obama.
—-Clinton cited a blog post published last week by a woman who called herself “one of the most ardent Hillary haters on the planet” but who has come to support the former secretary of state after reading her State Department-era e-mails and a piece by left-leaning writer Joan Walsh, who recently recalled the negative experiences that she and her daughter, who works for the Clinton campaign, have had online.—-
The Clintons are trolling for s Sister Souljah moment. They are hoping to get the mythical Bernie Bro to pay off by doing what Bill’s Sister Souljah moment did: Humiliate a part of the Democratic coalition to show to “moderates” that you are a serious politician.
Yesterday, Bill called Sanders “hermetically sealed,” I gathter. Too bad Bill couldn’t have kept the old zipper hermetically sealed so as to spare us the awkward adventure of his impeachment for sexual harassment of an intern.
Too bad you close with an inaccuracy. Hardly harassment. More like Predation on a young stalker. Actually more like mutual predation. They both got what they were looking for.
I might agree with this, but I know (little) people who have been fired from their jobs for showing a FB pic on their iPhone of shirtless men washing cars, another fired for showing a pic of her shirtless son practicing target shooting while stationed in Iraq. You can face certain dismal should someone have a grudge and bring the episode to HR, because….”settled law” is that this is sexual harassment.
Sad to see this error repeated here. Clinton was impeached for obstructing a grand jury and perjury, not for sexual escapades per se.
It is one of the great successes of Team Blue (with a hat tip to Republican doofuses) that people now think Bill was persecuted for hankypanky and not actual federal crimes. Lucky in their enemies.
I read that article by Walsh. Walsh supports Hillary ‘joyously’ because:
1. Bernie called Planned Parenthood an ‘establishment organization’ and therefore, he does not support women’s power.
2. Millennials who support Bernie are mean to millennials who support Hillary.
3. Hillary is ready to take the lead on women’s issues.
Of course, Walsh worries about, Hillary’s ties to Wall Street and her hawkishness. And she wishes Hillary hadn’t taken all that money from Wall Street donors.
But, at the end of the day, Walsh concludes that Hillary, unlike her ‘liberal husband’ is a true progressive.
i don’t read walsh because i don’t like the taste of vomit
Here’s hoping tomorrow Bill really has something to whine about. If the Hillary people were smart they’d tell him to stfu. Perhaps one reason people have so little respect for Hillary is that she is still married to him.
I could care less that Hillary is still married to Bill. What I care about is that she still listens to him. He blew up her 2008 with his (I didn’t mean them to be) racist remarks, and every time the media writes about him this time, he’s damned close to blowing up her campaign again.
Ding, normal people would move on from serial humiliation unless they simply dont have the financial wherwithall. She does, obviously, so it speaks loud andclear to the measure of her character–hanging on for some measure of political contingency IMO. Same goes for Huma
Meh, I think it’s wrong to judge their decision to stay married or even their marriage without actually being part of it as character flaw.
I’ve been married for over 2 decades and can honestly say that I’m not 100% certain I’d divorce my spouse if I found that he were fooling around. It’d hurt me and I’d want counseling(both for myself and as a couple) but I’m not convinced I’d throw away the marriage based on his inability to commit to monogamy.
And I say that as someone who isn’t a Clinton supporter.
Thanks, cwaltz. Agree completely. There are plenty of valid grounds to dislike Hillary Clinton. Staying married is NOT one of them.
There are plenty of valid grounds to dislike Hillary Clinton
Who said it is a basis to “like” or “dislike”? I said it is a measure of character.
I voted for Al Gore, but that’s really no measure of me “liking” him.
I guess I don’t see loyalty and the ability to love someone in spite of their imperfections as a character flaw.
The only reason I would see this as ” humiliation” is the quaint American position that everyone gets to weigh in on someone else’s marriage, even if they actually aren’t part of it nor their opinion wanted on it(I find this true of Christians believing they own the institution of marriage too by the way.)
I’m not privy to what Bill and Hillary each bring to the table in terms of their marriage, so I’m certainly not going to use it as a basis to condemn or judge them or consider their decisions within the marriage as character flaw.
Don’t get me wrong, the Clinton, Inc are welcome to pursue their hollow, rotted existence, but when they start shit-talking other people on the subject of presumed carnal motivations behavior as a litmus for political “service”, then well, I don’t mind saying..
And in their case, to be clear, it’s not a matter that “she found out he was fooling around”. She’s found out he was “fooling around” at least a half dozen ( I won’t count) times.
I think it’s interesting that you care to count how many times he chose to be unfaithful and that you consider her ability to forgive HIS unfaithfulness a character flaw.
While I certainly wouldn’t have blamed her for being angry and resenting his repeated breaches of fidelity(it definitely would be a trust issue for me if I entered into the marriage with the position that we’d be monogamous), I think it shows great strength of character to forgive someone who has hurt you(and keep yourself in the position to allow them the ability to hurt you again.)
My opposition to her candidacy stems from her being a cog in our status quo system which allows the rich to fail upwards while telling the rest of us that we deserve to suffer from our failure to be perfect all the time.
whatever..
If people are serial liars to their own spouses I really have no reason to believe anything they say. Why would they tell me the truth?
If someone use their serial liar spouse as political attack dog on venial sht, I have no reason to believe them (her) either.
Sorry, I think at the character level they are both demonstrably bankrupt
Fair enough, but they also have a political marriage and her commitment to the “twofer” is what gives her away. It’s only by distancing herself from what went on during the Clinton administration that she has any credibility at all. What does it say that Bill is nostalgically remembering his first run in 1992 and 24 years later these people are still running for President. They have been around far too long.
I don’t know. If your whole game is that you are on the high moral road, and out to help the rest of us, probably you should be that. “My family” was used by them to defend quite a lot of things. Maybe this is ringing a little hollow.
1) Why is anybody still listening to Bill Clinton who prolly most responsible for the 2008 economic collapse — by virtue of pushing for ending the Glass–Steagall Act and signing the bill.
2) The Clinton “artful smear” of Bernie-Bros is so obvious. Call men who support Bernie “Bros” to make them appear as sexist women haters (ala to old sexist line ‘Bros before Hoes’). News flash, I have a bunch of women (all ages) in my Facebook feed pulling for Bernie. Way more of them than Hillary-Fan-girls.
I guess this means Bernie picks up the Victoria’s Secret girls too. Cool!
Everyone under 30 and almost everyone under 40 knows what’s up.
She’s bought and paid for. No amount of sexism charges can cover the stench of Wall Street $$$ on her.
Hey yo, I’m over 50 but can see through HRC’s mountain o’ crap. I am a Sanders Sis. And certainly not because that’s where the “boys” are, fer criminy’s sake! You could hear my eyes roll when I read that garbage.
Bill Clinton, he’s why I voted for Obama.
The thing Bill clinton did to set the stage for the 2008 collapse was listen to Robert Rubin. He juiced up off-shoring and corporate raiding while he “reduced the deficit” like a muslim terrorist chopping off the head of any domestic inflation that poked its head out of the ground. And now 20 years later we are devastated by his ignorant “economic” crap. Which I’m sure Hillary is also only smart enough to push like Bill did. Idiots. Shills.
and also, let me toss in traitors.
Hillary: Next time, I go first. You help me get elected and then, it’s your turn.
This would will never heal.
It’s 24 years too late. Nasty people talked about trust and character.
re: David Cay Johnston. Thanks for the link.
re: Paul Krugman. Oh, Paul. More veal pen noise ? Were you ever on the left ? Why make peace with neoliberalism and Third Way Dem corporatism? Have you really given up on the future; that the future can be better than the present for lots of people, not just for a well-connected few? Your reputation is entering ‘hack’ territory.
” which is why, for example, I’m still very cautious about claims that inequality is bad for growth.”
Well, given our recent history it would appear that “growth” isn’t actually a positive for most people. But Krugman knows that growth is always good, always (which is why he couldn’t hack it as an oncologist and had to settle for econ).
Krugman has his. He really would like it if you had yours too, but not so much that he’d risk a little bit of his own.
This is the perennial rich liberal cop-out. While they’re all in favor of social progress (so they say), it must never happen in a way that they think might take a piece of theirs away.
No, Krugman was never on the left. He has spent most of his career making fun of the left.
There are many like that.
In a non-flat-Earth political realm, the way to the right is through the left.
Krugman is a Phil Ochs “Love me, I’m a liberal” liberal.
“…ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally…”
On Electability:
It isn’t Bernie’s electability I’m worried about. I think his major opponent is Ms Clinton and if she gets pushed out of the way, the total lack of substance on the Republican side gives him more than a fair chance. No, what I worry about is the gerrymandering induced gridlock in the Congress. What could an endless stream of Democratic or even ‘Progressive’ Presidents do against a permanently illiterate Congress?
If Bernie does get the nomination I hope he takes the opportunity to lecture long and loud to actual and potential voters about how he can’t effect the ‘Change We Need’ without a proper cleaning out of the barn.
Of all the legion worries in the world, the worry that HRC might not get elected should be pretty low on the list.
I expect the Bernie administration (if he’s elected) to use the power and influence of his supporters to apply pressure to members of congress to obtain votes needed to pass progressive legislation. We have to start somewhere and we have to get started on the incredibly difficult road ahead.
We Americans put men on the moon, we can accomplish what we put our minds and hearts to.
No, what I worry about is the gerrymandering induced gridlock in the Congress. What could an endless stream of Democratic or even ‘Progressive’ Presidents do against a permanently illiterate Congress?
Sigh.
No one ever takes this thought to its logical conclusion.
The RNC-led congress that blocks everything Bernie tries to do will also block all of Hillary’s weak-tea banker-friendly “nudges”. They won’t work with her either.
In the face of RNC obstruction I’d still rather have Sanders as president. Simply because of what he wouldn’t do.
He wouldn’t try to cut Social Security or Medicare benefits. He wouldn’t try for some damn “grand bargain” that trades away core democratic platform programs in exchange for closing some tax loophole that amount to couch cushion money for the elites. He wouldn’t sign the TPP, and he wouldn’t let oil companies build pipelines across our water supply, and he probably wouldn’t get us into any more land wars in Asia.
Yes! Exactly right. It is so frustrating to find that the left doesn’t routinely, hell, automatically respond with this fact.
We must support Sanders precisely because of what Clinton would get done!
Yes, yes, YES. The Congress IS totally gerrymandered and Sanders is a committed person who will not cooperate with them in doing awful stuff. Clinton isn’t.
if crude burps, stocks crap themselves
08 crash was due to high oil
16 crash is due to low oil
but it all comes out in the wash…
https://lokisrevengeblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/no-soil-water-before-100-renwable-energy/
Clinton’s female surrogates call young female Bernie supporters Hot Sluts who are going to Hell. Would make a nice cover headline, with the appropriate illustration, for a men’s pulp fiction magazine.
http://www.stagmags.com/T-to-Z/True-Adventures/
Nice job Hillary for supporting all the progress women have made in the last 60 years.
Its’ turning into women against women.
Like the male members of the human species, they can be ruthless and aggressive
“…and if she gets pushed out of the way”…..I guess you mean that if she doesn’t get enough votes.
Thanks for posting the link to the Guardian article on increased suicide rates among middle-aged white Americans. I was unaware that we here in MT had surpassed AK as the suicide capital of the country. Sh*tty…
What they never say directly in that article though, is that people are becoming depressed because they think it’s their fault that they’re not making it financially. We’ve been told that we should have it better than our parents, that if we don’t it’s our fault, and then had our economic opportunities destroyed in the name of increased profits. People blame themselves, and punish themselves, rather than laying the blame where it actually belongs: at the feet of those whose policy choices have created this dystopian economy.
1/3 struggle with depression…at least it’s good to know I’m not the only one…
Not that i’m missing your point diptherio, but don’t you think that ‘better than our parents’ meme is rather overdone and false? As bad as things are for people currently, the idea of ever greater abundance plays into the growth at all costs mantra that is wrecking havoc around the globe. I have my share of angst and anguish over the shit being shoveled at /on the plebes by people of stature who should know better, but this false idea of ‘better than the previous generation’ is bunk……….better compared to….what?.
I guess what I’m trying to convey is if having iwatch’s, google glasses, facebook, non-stop kardashians, all things robotic, etc.,etc…….well…..I’ll take lower abundance any day !!
The brainwashing is pervasive, this materialistic indoctrination.
And just as pernicious as religious indoctrination
I see it as the failure of our educational system that students are not equipped to resist unhealthy food assaults or demand that they be stopped legally, but rather it focuses primarily on preparing them to serve the machine and to believe in ‘growth’ instead of happiness, that our generation should be happier (and not necessarily better material-wise) than our parents’.
That’s another aspect, for sure. Our expectations are out of line with our planet’s ability to provide for them. However, places like Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in MS have managed to provide a middle-class existence with only 1/10th the average energy consumption.
What I’m saying is that there is a social expectation, which I definitely got growing up, that every generation was supposed to do better, materially, than the last. It was a given, like some kind of law of nature. While I figured out that this was an aberrant situation, historically, and that material wealth is highly overrated at the expense of non-material wealth (relationships, etc), a lot of people never got that memo. And you can’t blame them for not getting it, seeing as how they’ve been struggling to just stay above water for years now and the MSM keeps pumping everyone full of the old BS.
In this situation people blame themselves for not living up to unreasonable social expectations of material wealth, but even more than that, they are now having to struggle to just afford the essentials, and that is a social failing. People blame themselves for not only not doing “better” than their parents (or even as well) AND even more so for just barely being able to take care of themselves and their children. It’s a real psychological mind-f**k and can be absolutely crushing.
And just a little added info for you out-of-staters, Butte is the Detroit of Montana (well, if you don’t count the Indian reservations).
You are describing the money tree. Some people have it, and some people don’t. Here’s the thing, the money tree doesn’t actually exist but the black hole of debt does. Things don’t make us happy, that’s what friendships are for.
How can one (I) have ‘friendships’ when most everyone won’t see what’s blatantly in front of their eyes……….the ship is sinking, but most everyone still wants to party! I Feel like the neighborhood freak, with the garden, bees, and chickens, but who doesn’t work (Mrs. polecat brings home the bacon,as it were). Most people from what i can tell seem too ensconced in escapism, while walking past the graveyard!
Look at the Superbowl for example — pure spectacle/bread & circus. Although, light on the bread.
Agree, you are describing people’s perceptions, Polecat is describing the substance of those perceptions. Many people DO believe THEY should be doing better than their parents regardless of the fact that 1) it’s impossible and 2) Even if they could, the earth can’t support capitalism’s forever growth contradiction. I haven’t seen an age limit, young or old, on those caught up in the fallacy of #1 or the socially engineered inability to recognize #2.
But the results are horribly real.
I wonder how much is attributable to accumulating untreated chronic pain/disease processes? That can bend the mind.
my lill brother/47 was diagnosed with cancer Thursday…it began in his hip years ago and has metastasized to liver and throat. what started in Nov as a pea size bump is now something he is carrying around on his shoulder. the 8th doc last week fired all the other docs and scratched radiation & chemo BUT he wants my brother to do a ‘Trial’ drug with 47 pages of instructions…THIS on top of the 100 Oxy’s they gave him to take anytime he needs it. COMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMME ON…they gone data mine the oxy effect? fucking Welstar !
my brother hasn’t digested any of it…or is working on it and when he does get this all lined up i’m pretty sure the oxy will be used for other means.
remember when my father was dying 2yrs ago…my cousin committed suicide after being diagnosed with uterine cancer. she wouldn’t dare burden the family with the circus of care based on little left family money.
my sister/45 is down to 102 and her hair is falling out…she looks worse than my brother. she has always been firm with her personal accounts but i notice she starting to max her credit lines…she always said she wouldn’t stick around to watch people suffer.
my older half brother announced 2wks ago his cancer has returned…he’s keeping to himself so i don’t know whats going on there but pretty sure my mother can’t take much more.
…as for me I A BENT
I’m very sorry to read that Aby. It’s terrible to loose family. I cant imagine having that going on with multiple siblings. :o(
My parents are both on the brink, but they’ve had full lives.
Thanks Opti…take my love with you as you journey your parents.
I have some health issues, which I’m hesitant to have looked at, not because of whatever the prognosis might be, but because it might lead to bankruptcy and total asset seizure, considering the state of sickcare, being what it is. I’m currently in a state of quiet desperation………….I simply don’t know where to turn. I have family and friends who all have fairly decent heathcare (not ACA) receiving treatments, surgeries, etc., which I and my family absolutely no access to, and whenever they bring said care up in conversation, all I can think of is how truly fucked I and my immediate family are should something serious occur!
i’m sorry Pol…i share your fear. Please don’t hesitate to Share more at anytime. NC is cool about this…
Example Uno:
diptherio
March 23, 2014 at 12:29 pm
I hope it’s true that a pain shared is a pain lessened, Aby, you’ve got enough for all of us. {hugs}
scroll the comments under mine http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/links-32314.html#comment-1937400
tight Hugs Pol…i’m here with you as are others
I’m sorry to hear that you are in the same predicament as me.
I explored my symptoms with my surgeon sister-in-law and she confirmed that it would likely cost thousands to get a diagnosis specific enough to decide treatment.
Well, we don’t have any thousands to spend and no health insurance because we can’t afford it. And even if we could somehow manage that, then we’d have nothing with which to pay for treatment. So poorer or more in debt with nothing to show for it.
I’m in constant pain which makes it very difficult to work, but I’m only 55 and work I must. I imagine whatever this is will be what kills me. Just hoping it’s fast and not too soon.
Goddamit! i’m very sorry GlobalMis. i wish i could take some of your pain…please take our strength in numbers with you. you are too very young (i’m 54 going on 74). This is ALL Wrong!
Thank you.
You’d think commiseration would make it even more depressing, but it’s strangely tonic. I do worry that we are very many indeed.
Why these f*cking mothef*ckers have to be stopped.
Sorry to hear that. We recently lost a friend from our tea class. He was only a college student. It happened so fast, between when they detected that last year and his departure. I was shocked and saddened.
yes, that is a shock to the psychie. i’m too busy to recognize the shocks to my system. when all is said and done with my immediate family, i’m not sure where i’ll be mentally & emotionally… hell even physically.
i’ve never dealt with so much illness. both sets of my grandparents lived into their late 90’s and died naturally in their sleep. im not made up for this but i dare complain b/c there is so much suffering everywhere…look around. the beautiful people don’t look so beautiful. i can’t imagine the suicide toll of the sick…the next wave will probably be the caretakers. many young going into the field are throwing their hands up in frustration. we’ll never get all the numbers…but the Wave is Undeniable.
Thanks All !!!…..It’s not death that I’m afraid of , it’s the possible impoverishment of my survivors, at the hands of a corrupt government and new-age gilded class, that worries me!
So sorry Abynormal, Polecat, GlobalMisanthrope; love to your familes and to you all. Awful burdens!
Thank you.
Thank You BB and Yes, Love and Strength to our families, those that follow this this this Constructed Massacre…
A – b – y……
love you too buddy…….
Really, what is needed is for Bernie to have an TV campaign that shows a simple split screen.
On one side all those good decent hard working American folk, with health issues like the above, explaining their circumstances, and on the other side an Englishman, Dutch, German or Dane, with the same condition, explaining how public medicine in their country made a difference.
If not to cure, then at least to provide people with a little dignity.
Oh oh oh oh no no no no…
To all of you, love and shared rage, kia kaha.
OMG how terrible. I am so sorry.
White male sucice
Question: This is a sidebar cultural issue, but talking about lack of self-esteem and social identity, part of what causes depression, what percentage of Hollywood movies and TV portray normal white males as heroes?
As villains, or bumbling idiots?
Can anyone name one recent production that shows a normal white male taking responsibility for his family, doing the right thing, working and creating something of value? If portrayed at all in commercials, we are bumbling idiots who allow our wives to go on to make the proper consumer purchase of an advertised item that fixes everything.
The Oppression Olympics permeating our universities will bear strange fruit in the future, either legions of emasculated white punks or cadres of militant reactionaries.
This is what a lot of people fail to realize: the white-supremacist patriarchal system is bad for EVERYBODY, even white males, unless you happen to be one situated relatively close to the top of the hierarchy.
puh-lease. the white male psyche is so fragile that it needs affirmation in tv and cinema? also, i bet that the overwhelming majority of movie heroes are white males.
meh people often complain about media seeing women mostly as sex objects, and they are right. People complain about the lack of minorities in the media and that’s likely right as well.
As far as I’m concerned most of it is pretty toxic. Hollywood: consume at your own risk.
For some reason, cats are always portrayed as cute.
Maybe we feel not at all threatened by them…as we so dominate the world.
There is no way they take over the planet, unlike them apes.
Also needs validation shooting unarmed and non-violent black people while working as police officers.
who allow our wives…????
[a] production that shows a normal white male taking responsibility for his family, doing the right thing, working and creating something of value?
err, you mean like Ward Cleaver or Jim Anderson or perhaps Jamie Dimon? Apologies if I’m missing something…
Walter White.
1. Normal and hero are oxymorons.
2. You appear to be confused about the purpose of commercials, TV shows and movies. That purpose is to make profits. They do not exist to make you feel good about yourself. In fact, undermining self-confidence is a chief aim because studies show it makes people spend more money.
3. Emasculation is a bad thing because effete because weak because female because… Sexist, much?
4. Punk died in the eighties. Sigh.
5. Or maybe you were kidding? Darkly. Like in Falling Down?
Punk is still happening, it just isn’t getting the corporate media attention it used to get.
Sorry. Can’t agree. Punk was of a moment.
There are some very thoroughgoing copiers, true enough, but they’re too studied. What makes them punk? That they want to identify with that music or moment? Or is it that they represent a punk tradition or a punk ethos? I know this is a generation famous for its irony, but that’s too hilarious.
I don’t mind them. I just wish they’d be at least original enough to come up with their own label.
Too long a digression to go into here, but it’s with old skin — permanently marked by the electric eels (lower case is correct) — in the game that I’d say ‘punk’ in London is called Grime, and it’s black youth-led, though not exclusive ‘race’- or age-wise. Cf. Slimzee, Riko Dan, Mumdance on Soundcloud. And as for the USA/the rest of the world, one word: OBNOX.
Agreed. The swarming whiplash of PC fluent projectiontists above bodes ill. As does the story you tried to bring attention to.
Someone else said that Homer Simpson is the best example of an acceptable male in today’s merica.
Doh!
Homer Simpson is a union man.
Using PC as an epithet is the indelible mark of a whiner.
Is that you Thomas Sowell?
Ouch.
This is going to be the week when the SS Clinton has well and truly jumped the shark.
Madeline “500K kids” Albright talking about special places in hell.
And serial philanderer (if not worse) Bill Clinton calling Sanders “sexist”.
Well, we know the Clintons play mean and nasty when they get desperate. No doubt they’ll claim whatever they get in NH tomorrow as a victory of some sort.
It’s not just Bill’s philandering but the sexist and vile nature of the Clinton attack dogs towards Lewinsky and others. Oh and David Brock is a player in the Clinton campaign.
I fully expect them to blame and insult the voters of NH after they get crushed tomorrow. The nasty streak is out and it doesn’t take much to provoke it.
Well speaking of that nasty streak… and jumping the shark. Incredibly, HRC is now accusing Sanders of the most negative campaign in the history of Democratic presidential nomination contests. Unfriggingbelievable.
Is Clinton really a victim of most negative campaign in Democratic history?
Sanders sounded defensively on that. Why joking about it, if that’s a common comment about all candidates?
Perhaps we joke too much about all candidates that jokes are common when it comes to commenting about political candidates.
Seriously, this has to backfire!
Comment intended for Pavel at 1:29pm
Forget who mentioned it a couple of days ago, but Hillary is indeed beginning to smell strongly of sulphur.
The nasty streak is out
its out and we know the leaky SS Clinton dreadnaught has a wide streak in spades. The less substance to work with, the more venial.
Trailing a big oil slick from the rotted hull
“Hillary Clinton pledges not to cut Social Security”
You know, Hillary wouldn’t lie so much if you all weren’t forcing her to do it! Or rather, instead of cutting Social Security she’s going to “strengthen” it?
“Stop forcing Hillary to lie” would make a great bumper sticker, lapel pin
Hilliarrhea.
+1000 Jgordon + Optimader. Awesome bumper thumper!
Hillary’s problem is she is telling small lies.
The lesson from history is you have to make your lies big and repeat them often enough, then people will believe them.
If these many people are not believing Hillary, perhaps there are better liars we are not detecting.
Vote Sanders or hold your ankles for a “Grand Bargain”
One concern is how we get more money for Social Security.
I hope we first take money from the MIC, rather than just trying ‘we are not limited by anything.’
Re Krugman: But it can happen on the left, too — which is why, for example, I’m still very cautious about claims that inequality is bad for growth.
This is a great example of Krugman’s sly MO. He loves to slip in straw man after straw man and then swat them away like so many gnats, instead of actually making an argument. Who on the Left is arguing that inequality is bad for growth? Who on the Left is arguing for growth? I think on the Left we’ve twigged that perpetual growth is unsustainable and, thus, a paradigmatic problem.
So who is he talking about? Well, there’s Stiglitz and Picketty, for instance, and less popularly known others, who, while they may be to the left of Krugman, could hardly be considered leftist by anyone looking at an actual (rather than a Beltway) spectrum. Or maybe he means the notoriously Leftist OECD.
Whatever. This is the dishonest approach he takes whenever he attacks the supposed Left for supposedly untenable positions. Like with Obamacare when he complains that the left demonizes insurance companies rather than looking at the math that results in our concluding that Obamacare is not a good deal, period.
The conscience of a liberal, indeed.
Krugtron – not too left, not too right – just perfect….as an insufferable as*hole
Yes….just like an oreo cookie, it’s not the crunchy outer layers that’ll kill ya……it’s that creamy hydrogenated filling that’ll do ya in.
Again, Paul Ochs describes Krug-types to a T:
10 degrees to the left of center in good times;
10 degrees to the right when it affects them personally
– When Your Lived Reality becomes an Algorithm of the Popular
“…Twitter wants to take the serendipitous global conversation we’ve been having and instead replace it with a living dream world chosen for us algorithmically.”
There is a lot of depth in this short post. Please forgive a self-quote from a different site:
“It also makes clear that we need that more free-floating time, into dreamspace, in order to incorporate information and insight. Without that, we are only able to live in current-time. Can there be fullness of being of a dream without that memory? Or is the world made of selected combinations of responses, where to fully remember the experience that leads to the combination slows response times such that simpler responses get to resources (score a goal, in basketball terms) so much quicker that in-depth reflection is selected out?”
Twitter has been a current-time experience, well-suited to emotional responses, trash-talk and snark. This makes it very entertaining, and provides great fodder for reflection, in terms of what fast responses reveal about the subject. These concern what Theo Compernolle refers to as the reflexive brain and the reflective brain.
Compernolle is also concerned about effects on the archiving brain. Without down-time, there is no incorporation into long-term memory, and part of down-time is dream-time.
Stretching the bond connecting the meaning of dreams, the incorporation into LTM is what organizes what has been referred to as framework, orientation, paradigm. The cognitive filters that we use to view the world and make sense of the information, which are not just pre-programmed but can be subject to learning.
This reinforces the importance of the deeply insidious nature of what is happening, as paradigms are being altered non-consciously by external agents with their own agenda. It could be argued that these companies are just pushing for a successful business model, as the Crooked Timber article suggests. But the algorithms are working on choosing ‘positive’ words for its victims, restricting the primary elements used to construct the world-view. That goes well beyond a simple market-share explanation.
What is the point of growth exactly if wages and employment aren’t going up? Alternative formulation: growth for who?
Exactly!
And that is exactly what is wrong with Krugtron – it just doesn’t EVEN occur to him.
“he’s a robot…Kane (Krugman), he’s a goddamn robot!!!”
We need a good robot to save we humans from this renegade robot, if I recall my Robot Series correctly.
Extreme inequality is bad in and of itself. Any person of ‘conscience’ should be able to understand that.
+
Universal equality.
Don’t promise anything domestic if it also make other people around the world suffer.
Whereas meanwhile I have come to the conclusion that steady state or degrowth requires greater equality. What’s that you said Krugman? I thought I heard a head explode somewhere in your direction …
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/02/07/daily-202-rubio-suffers-a-big-setback-in-new-hampshire-as-the-governors-strike-back/56b51448981b92a22df69d07
A number of NC commenters yesterday made the point about Rubio repeating himself. The post has some clips, and yes, those are taken at different times – even though it really looks like they are just playing the same clip over and over…
Re A New Deal for Europe by Thomas Piketty
This is interesting. What he’s calling for is already under way in the DiEM 25 campaign that Yanis Varoufakis has mounted and will officially launch tomorrow in Berlin. Why not name it? And why hasn’t Pikkety endorsed it?
Maybe it’s his way of supporting an idea that he can’t credibly be against while, because Varoufakis trashed him when Capital in the Twenty-First Century came out, seeming to have come up with the idea on his own. I mean, the timing and audience (markedly U.S. rather than Europe) don’t smell very nice.
Then again, maybe I’m being too cynical and this is his way of giving grudging support.
Anyway, things are about to get really interesting in Europe!
re: Democratic Party Is Pushing Away Its Future, Leonid Bershinsky, Bloomberg View
“By so openly declaring their allegiance to Clinton, with her bird-in-hand approach, the Democratic Party’s leaders are pushing away the people who could have been its future. ”
The Dems have been doing this for 30 years. (Why else are they always looking for the ‘new’ youth vote.)
The Third Way Dem establishment has a standard play. If Dem candidate wins and sells out Dem base then Dem base is lectured on being practical, Dem base must lower sights. If Dem candidate loses, Dem based is blamed for being impractical and causing the loss. Dem base is told to ‘get real’ and ‘grow up’ and vote Dem next time. It’s almost like the Dem establishment motto is: ‘yeah, we’re going to sell you out. Grow up, get used to it, and vote for us because where else ya gonna go?’
Hillary has proposed a $12/hour minimum wage while Bernie wants $15. Why is she aiming so low and why would any working class woman vote for this? But she wants US to break the glass ceiling for HER?
Thank you. Well stated.
Should be $20 or $25, even $30!!, why do negotiations for these things start so low? Always ask for more than you want so you have something to give up.
We will break that glass ceiling for one woman: LIZ!
She’ll be president in 2025 if she plays it right. Just a matter of whether it’s starting 1st term or 2nd
In some places, you need more than $15.
Why not $20?
Absolutely. Just contrasting the two. Just tired of Hillary’s promises to fight for more crumbs for us.
It seems to me that she is not that good a liar.
There are others better than her. I can’t name them off the top of head, because that’s the reason they are masters of deception.
i think Hillary should work for $12 an hour.
Maybe that should be the going rate for her speaking fees? How long must one bloviate to earn $675,000 @ $12/hr?
Seems that is 56,250 hours, or 2,344 days, or 6.4 years. That gets her well into her second term of non-stop logorrhea.
Yes, definitely a case of the pot and the kettle calling each other names. There wasn’t a straightforward vote on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (H.R. 5660). Instead, it was rolled into the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 4577), along with about 10 other bills. Sanders voted yes on H.R. 4577, probably because there were things in that giant bill that he supported. See this for information on the bills and the roll call vote:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/links-11016.html#comment-2533261
Actually, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act was slipped into the bill at the eleventh hour. Most Congress people went to bed without the CFMA in the bill, and woke up to voting on it, never knowing that it had been slipped in overnight.
Certainly Bill knows this, which just goes to show he hasn’t learned a thing about integrity since he didn’t inhale or have sex with that woman.
So the behavior of Clinton, Phil Gramm, and a few other insiders is even worse that I realized. Not very surprising, I suppose.
The real battle is to for control of Congress.
I am still mystified by the fascination on this one on one jousting contest.
If it’s because the one single position is very powerful, perhaps we need to balance the legislative and judicial branches. If not that powerful, then we are paying too much attention to it alone.
Because this position controls the mechanisms of the Democratic Party. Team Blue will be even more Team Blue under Hillary and will never regain Congress. Bill ushered in long term Republican majorities which hadn’t happened since the 1920s. This will determine funding, candidate recruitment, staffing, goals, and so forth.
oh that Bill. Attacking Sanders’ character while Hillary runs push-polls in NH and Nevada. Is Karl Rove a Clinton strategist ?
Thanks for noting the specific numbers on the bills. Turns out that Bernie was able to get through an amendment on the appropriations bill (by a vote of 313-109) that he had been trying to pass for at least 3 years. The amendment required that drug companies receiving the benefits of NIH research, funded by taxpayer dollars, be required to offer the subsequent drug developed from NIH research at reasonable prices to American citizens. In addition to Bernie speaking on behalf of the amendment, Dana Rohrbacher, a California Republican, spoke on behalf of the amendment.
After working for years to require drug companies to charge more reasonable prices to Americans on American taxpayer-financed drug developments, there was no way Bernie was going to vote against the appropriations bill, even with the last minute addition of the CFTMA.
The Sanders amendment was a major achievement, and for Bill Clinton to make it sound as though Bernie voted for derivatives deregulation rather than for Bernie’s own amendment is beyond slimy.
Top Hillary Clinton Advisers and Fundraisers Lobbied Against Obamacare [Intercept]
Pragmatic!
the interview with ray mcgovern on salon is really good. they also have a bunch of articles criticising hillary. seems that they have shifted back to the left after ditching dead wood the likes of joan walsh.
anyway, a few points from the interview:
1-assange thinks that we have lost the war over mass surveillance. i agree. we have acquiesced without thinking it a big deal.
2-mcgovern thinks obama is cowardly and not corrupt. i see it as a little from column A and a little from column B
3-lambert won’t like this but mcgovern sees kennedy as having been assassinated by the deep state
a lot of other interesting insights including about vicky nuland and her role muddling againt russia.
Talks this week on the local agenda:
1. Jane Mayer, New York Times bestselling author, will be talking about her new book Dark Money. The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Sadly, there is another one at the same time about the legal battle over $19b of Ecuador’s oil (Paul Barrett’s “Law of the Jungle”).
2. Kathryn Lofton from Yale: A talk considering the relationship between the most prestigious bank holding company(GS) in the world and the universities that provide so much of its talent, wondering whether the thing that binds them is religion.
If anyone is interested, I can give a little write-up after they occur. I will probably go to the Dark Money talk and the Lofton talk, unless someone is super interested in the Barrett talk.
I have seen my first Jeb! sign, as well. I have half a mind to write “Please clap for” at the top but I’m being good. Cheers!
As for the Jeb! sign:
Just. Do. It.
I’ve never seen one in my life, and I live in Iowa.
Jeb! sign……..uh….uh………an omen??
Yes, please do! Dozens of them sprung up like mushrooms along Route 10, north of Hanover. All of them were placed along empty fields. Not a single one before an inhabited building. Campaign office unloading excess inventory perhaps?
. . . A talk considering the relationship between the most prestigious bank holding company(GS) in the world and the universities that provide so much of its talent, wondering whether the thing that binds them is religion.
The cult of Money Worship? Biblical teachings of wealth extraction? Doing God’s work?
It should be an interesting talk.
And then there’s this:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-08/geithner-gets-jpmorgan-credit-line-to-invest-with-warburg-pincus
Openly, brazenly corrupt.
The 2008 campaign should have been also about who would the Secretary of Treasury and the Fed chairperson.
The team approach…some sort of slate election.
‘My team includes…”
The NYDaily News column on how the American “mainstream” overwhelmingly supports Sanders’s policies is spot on, but there is one statement that demands an answer: “Think about a song so it plays in your mind. Now try to recall anything written by a music critic.” So I thought about a song everyone in the world knows–specifically the “Ode To Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. And. like every other time I think about it I recall what was written by a music critic who was not only the greatest critic in the history of music but also Beethoven’s full equal as a composer–Hector Berlioz. Berlioz was scathing about the “Ode To Joy” whose melody he found banal, whose prosody he (like every singer) found virtually unsingable, and–worst of all–was structurally a complete disaster that undid the effect of the first three orchestral movements which (according to Berlioz, and I quite agree) rank among the greatest music ever written. And of course Berlioz was not merely writing words. he went on to compose, in the Dramatic Symphony “Roméo et Juliette,” a fully integrated choral–orchestral–and vocal masterpiece that deserves to be played (but is not, because of its length) as often as the Beethoven Ninth.
Top Hillary Clinton Advisers and Fundraisers Lobbied Against Obamacare
Hillary Clinton is campaigning as a guardian of President Barack Obama’s progressive policy accomplishments. In recent weeks, she has called the Affordable Care Act “one of the greatest accomplishments of President Obama, of the Democratic Party, and of our country,” and promised that she is “going to defend Dodd-Frank” and “defend President Obama for taking on Wall Street.”
Meanwhile, however, Clinton’s campaign has been relying on a team of strategists and fundraisers, many of whom spent much of the last seven years as consultants or lobbyists for business interests working to obstruct Obama’s agenda in those two areas.
Consultants associated with the Dewey Square Group, a lobbying firm that has been retained by business interests to defeat a variety of progressive reforms, are playing a major role in the Clinton campaign. Charles Baker III, the co-founder of Dewey, is a senior strategist and the campaign’s chief administrative officer. Michael Whouley, another Dewey co-founder, played an early role in advising Clinton’s plan for the current campaign by convening some of the very first strategy sessions. Senior Dewey officials Jill Alper and Minyon Moore are also close advisers and fundraisers for Clinton, while at least four other Clinton officials have worked at Dewey within the last four years. In addition, disclosures show that Clinton’s Super PACs Priorities USA Action and Correct the Record have also paid Dewey Square Group for a variety of services in this election.
Undermining Obamacare reforms
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/08/hrc-inner-circle-lobbyists/
who needs trolls ??
just read on zerohedge that some Haaavarddd Prof.(Sands) suggesting that large currency bills ($100 & up) be banned from use…….. because criminals. I shit you not!!! These elite mofos are playing with fire!!!
Now tell me everyone….how much does it cost to buy a weeks’ bag of groceries for an average family, say three or four??? ……surely not over $100 bucks, right? /sn
It’s not on ZH, it’s one of the lead stories in the Financial Times.
be that as it may, what I read was posted on ZH, ok?
Saying it was on ZH implies ZH originated it.
ZH does originate stories, like things their readers tell them, or publishing analysts’ reports (not always with permission, BTW!!!) or analyses they do off Bloomberg data. But this was not one of them.
No. My saying I read said article on ZH means I read it on their site, not as to where the article originated,…. not trying to pick a fight …..sheesh
The obvious questions for Team Clinton on Social Security:
Does raising the retirement age count as “cutting”? Or not.
Does tinkering with the Cost of Living Adjustment count as “cutting”? Or not?
Take drone bee money and move it to Social Security and health care.
People live longer and healthier here.
And over there.