Keeping Bees Safe: It’s A Ruff Job, But This Doggy Detective Gets It Done NPR (David L)
Banned pesticides ‘not equally harmful’ to bees BBC (David L). The problem with this sort of analysis (and it applies to humans too) is that they look at the effect of toxins in isolation, and ignore how exposure to several in what appear to be sub-clinical amounts can have nasty effects (a new story on this IIRC a couple of years ago went out of the discourse after one news cycle).
New Politics for Clean Energy Project Syndicate (David L)
God’s Red Pencil? CRISPR and The Three Myths of Precise Genome Editing Counterpunch (Wat)
Teen birthrate hits all-time low, led by 50 percent decline among Hispanics and blacks Washington Post (furzy). A rare improvement in an American social wellbeing indicator.
An outbreak of a highly contagious disease is sweeping through Harvard Mic (furzy)
Bank of Japan Finds It Can’t Win Mohamed El-Erian Bloomberg
Eurozone Economic Recovery Gathers Pace Wall Street Journal. 0.6% growth? This is desperate messaging. And both the WSJ and FT are touting how the Eurozone is doing better than the US. This is what the Japanese call a height competition among peanuts.
‘Europe is a cesspool of deflationary forces’ Reuters (resilc)
Refugee Crisis
AfD Forces Merkel’s Hand: 5-Year Ban on Benefits for Jobless Migrants Coming Up Michael Shedlock (furzy)
UK to pay for Calais ‘wall’ to deter migrants euronews (furzy)
Brexit?
Pro-Brexit economists dismiss trade fears Financial Times
Ukraine/Russia
No, Russia is not in decline – at least not any more and not yet Financial Times
Syraqistan
Pentagon disciplines 16 for deadly attack on Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan Los Angeles Times (furzy)
With Iraq Mired in Turmoil, Some Call for Partitioning the Country New York Times
Iran Daily: “We Will Force US to Implement Nuclear Deal” EA WorldView (resilc)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
FBI would gain new hacking power if search warrant rules change Reuters (furzy)
Letter Details FBI Plan for Secretive Anti-Radicalization Committees Intercept
The Shell Game the Government Played During Yahoo’s Protect America Act Challenge Marcy Wheeler
Amazon Unlimited Fraud Bruce Schneier
2016
Trump Wins Big Among Pennsylvania’s Unbound Delegates NBC (furzy)
Trump Picks Up at Least 37 Unbound Pennsylvania Delegates: Revised Mish Delegate Math Michael Shedlock (furzy)
Donald Trump’s Gender-Based Attacks on Hillary Clinton Have Calculated Risk New York Times. Gotta see the photo they found.
We Asked an Expert What We Actually Know About Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Vice (resilc)
Icahn: Republicans don’t understand economics and it’s killing the country CNBC (furzy). OMFG….Ichan (Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary) makes more sense than anyone on the Dem bench. He advocates more fiscal spending and actually understands that the US can’t go bankrupt in its own currency even though he doesn’t articulate it that way. We are entering into an alternative reality. But I can’t imagine a corporate raider like Ichan would every be approved by the Senate.
Trump’s Cabinet: Who it might be The Hill (furzy). Although there is reason to be concerned, this is scaremongering. As furzy notes, “Yes, it was over the top to suggest Palin could be appointed. ..or Carson. ..he has basically used and dumped both of them.”
Cruz Hopes to Tap Into Immense Popularity of Carly Fiorina New Yorker (furzy)
Satanists are furious that Boehner compared Ted Cruz to the Dark Lord Raw Story
Why Did Trump Invent the Rumor That Sanders Was Dropping Out of the Election? Here’s One Potential Rationale Alternet (martha r)
This is What Will Happen at the Democratic Convention the writing of john laurits (martha r). Someone please check his math. Per the Associated Press: “Clinton is 91 percent of the way to capturing the nomination, meaning that she can lose every remaining primary by a wide margin and still become the party’s standard-bearer..” I’d love him to be right, but his take seems to be an extreme outlier.
Why Hillary Will Govern More Like Bernie Than People Think New Republic. Resilc: “Is he on crack or smack?”
Clinton backers ‘feel the Bern’ of angry Sanders supporters Associated Press (furzy)
The Line That May Have Won Hillary Clinton the Nomination Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone. I don’t buy this. What hurt Sanders was the relentless elite war against him, particularly in the media: first refusing to pay any attention to him way longer than was even remotely justifiable, putting misleading headlines on stories when he scored wins (at debates, in primaries, his Vatican visit), and then going relentlessly on the attack when he became too big a phenomenon to ignore. What Hillary actually said was trivial compared to that. Taibbi, in a rare departure, here is too close to details of the campaign and is losing the forest for the trees.
Black Women Rally Behind Hillary Clinton Wall Street Journal (Li). Taibbi take is probably due to this phenomenon, but those black women were voting for Hillary regardless. As as Li points out, “There aren’t enough old black church ladies for Hillary to win in the general.”
Voters find wrong party affiliation on Oregon registry KOIN (martha r). From earlier in the week, still relevant.
Obama is defending his record on Wall Street against Bernie Sanders Washington Post. Adrien: “Obama’s ego is getting picked by Sanders’s pounding for the last 12 months. I may be dreaming but it would seem as though suddenly the administration is responding..by taken steps it can control and of course over promote — small steps with maximum media coverage..
-Killing the Pfizer-Allergan merger with unexpected IRS tax rules against inversions
-Issuing new rules regarding fiduciaries for asset managers
-Accelerating issuance of new rules regarding Wall St comp
-CFTC largest award to a whistleblower recently etc”
Colorado weighs replacing Obama’s health policy with universal coverage Boston Globe (furzy)
40 Layoffs As Glenn Beck’s Blaze Empire Continues Its Decline and Fall Daily Beast (furzy)
SA official says he was ordered to profile Somali-Americans Minneapolis StarTribune (martha r)
BREAKING: Vermont Will Automatically Register Hundreds Of Thousands Of Voters ThinkProgress (furzy)
Cal Fire blames PG&E for Butte Fire, will seek $90 million Sacramento Bee (martha r). What is with PG&E?
Detroit Satanists mock anti-abortion protesters’ ‘fetal idolatry’ by dressing as leather-clad babies
Corrupt Michigan officials hid lead levels by ‘gaming’ the sampling process to falsify results SOTT (Wat)
Michael Moore on President Obama’s Flint Visit: ‘Unless You’re Bringing the U.S. Army…Stay Home’ Atlanta Black Star (furzy)
Gunz
Amy Schumer Takes On the Gun Lobby in Hard-Hitting ‘Inside Amy Schumer’ Sketch Daily Beast (fu
rzy)
Police State Watch
Witness: Teen Said “It’s Not Real” About BB Gun Before Baltimore Cops Shot Him Gawker
QE4 is coming…and it could fund the next Cold War: Analyst CNBC
Banks raise prospect of court action over Fed dividend cuts Financial Times. I am partway through a good book on the Fed that is generally sympathetic to the institution but nevertheless makes clear that the Fed is clearly unconstitutional in the manner in which it is set up, but courts have consistently rejected Constitutional challenges. I have no idea whether defenders of the dividend cuts might be able to backdoor those arguments into a suit that does not assail the Fed head on.
Why Digital Money Hasn’t Killed Cash New Yorker
Another weak quarter for U.S. GDP JamesHamilton, Econbrowser
Class Warfare
Huffington Post killed story pitch critical of Uber Washington Post You may have seen in yesterday’s Water Cooler that Arianna Huffington joined the board of Uber.
Why birthplace matters so much: Sorting, learning and geography VoxEU. Lordie. Notice the assumption: that where you were born is where you grew up. They don’t even attempt to correct for that in the analysis. I “lived” where I was born for all of the six days that I was in the hospital and lived in three different small towns before I was six, when we moved to a big city.
Birmingham Workers Sue Their Governor For Blocking Minimum Wage Hike ThinkProgress
UK graduates have more debt than US peers Financial Times
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
125 comments
Comments are closed.
Hi Yves. I have checked the math. It is right. The important thing to understand is that Mr. Laurits includes the super delegates in the total of delegates and discards the fact that they are pledged to Hillary. Basically he assumes they could still change their allegiance. Which is technically right. Without these super delegates Hillary can not claim the nomination. It is mathematically impossible. Our famously free press glosses over this fact and declares Hillary the winnder already now. Now Mr. Lautris is arguing that the primaries ahead are very good territory for Sanders. (California alone is already 417 delegates. If Bernie wins 60 to 40 he´ll gain 80 delegates in one day) And one can´t argue with that. If Bernie does indeed do very well he´ll have not much less pledged delegates than Hillary. On top there´ll be tens of thousands of Bernie fans pouring into Philly. So things don´t look over at all. – I believe that Mr. Loutis is a bit optimistic. There are voting machines in California as well and we know how the corporations vote who own the software…
Re the Press — they know which sice their bread is buttered on. That’s why its so rare to see actual, true investigative journalism. I also think its why certain blogs are so successful.
My expectation of exit poll data vs “official results” is +10% in California.
There will be no comeback. The owners of the voting machines will not allow it.
The more severely the hope is dashed, the more forceful the reaction.
Good night, the D party. It’ was nice knowing you.
Alas, the serfs were allowed a brief glimpse of a hopeful future and will now return back to the salt mines. Again. They calculate just how much bread is enough to throw down the mine shaft to keep them down there. One day they’ll get the math wrong, they always do.
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/election-fraud-my-response-to-joshua-holland/#comments
Election Fraud: Responses to Joshua Holland
Richard Charnin
Last week, actor and activist Tim Robbins tweeted on the exit poll discrepancies . And the media presstitutes went after him with a vengeance.
snip
The mainstream media (including The Nation) won’t dare touch the Third Rail – ELECTION FRAUD. They never discuss malicious, proprietary voting machines and central tabulators that were built to flip the votes. Holland fails to see the significance of that.
Fitrakis and Wasserman responded to Joshua Holland:
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/36568-is-hillary-stealing-the-nomination-will-bernie-birth-a-long-term-movement
Is Hillary Stealing the Nomination? Will Bernie Birth a Long-Term Movement?
By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News 4/27/16
Exit Poll Gate
http://leecamp.net/my-response-to-being-attacked-by-josh-holland-in-raw-story-concerning-exitpollgate/
My Response To Being Attacked By Josh Holland In Raw Story Concerning #ExitPollGate
I want to take a moment to respond to a recent hit piece against me by Joshua Holland in Raw Story.
It involves a meme I created that the actor Tim Robbins then retweeted. The meme shows the difference between the exit polls in several states and the results given by the voting machines. I and many others believe the massive difference in the numbers is due to election fraud, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Wow. The NYT really outdid themselves with that photo. They must’ve been so proud.
I see a pretty boring photo of Trump pointing and a shot of Hillary fans who looks like they’re watching a football game. Did they change the picture or am I missing something?
The pointing arm should be much shorter. Then more people would recognize the symbolism.
Matt Taibbi thinks people actually listen to what Hillary says. Maybe his boss, who endorsed Hill, wishes people could stand to listen to her. Of course, the complete media blackout was the only way Bernie could be defeated. A year ago I told somebody the only way they could beat Bernie was by killing him. But I didn’t foresee the media basically refusing to even put his name in print or mention his name on the air. Not that they would have had any scruples about murdering Bernie, but it would have been very messy. Since they own the press (literally) the media blackout was their path to victory (barely).
‘Clinton Cash’ Has Been Made Into a Movie
The Breitbart-funded broadside against Hillary Clinton will be screened in Cannes and have its U.S. premiere the week of the Democratic convention.
A year ago, before Donald Trump dubbed her “Crooked Hillary” and Bernie Sanders was assailing her secretive speeches to Wall Street banks, Hillary Clinton looked like a powerful presidential front-runner. Then, in May, HarperCollins published an investigative book about the Clintons by the conservative author Peter Schweizer that caught them off guard and took a prominent place in the political conversation for months. Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich became a surprise bestseller.
Today, Clinton has righted the ship and her candidacy looks stronger than ever. But while polls suggest Trump and Sanders will have a hard time stopping her, the team behind Clinton Cash—Schweizer and Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News—haven’t given up. They’ve turned Clinton Cash into a movie, directed by M.A. Taylor, that will premiere next month in Cannes, France, during the Cannes Film Festival. (The movie is not a part of the festival, but will be shown at a screening arranged for distributors).
As the trailer below indicates, the Clinton Cash movie is less Ken Burns than Jerry Bruckheimer, featuring blood-drenched money, radical madrassas, and ominous footage of the Clintons:
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-28/clinton-cash-has-been-made-into-a-movie
How anyone(Dem) could pick her over Sanders blows my mind.
Many party loyalists are wrapped up in their tribal identity. They can’t possibly comprehend that their leader is evil.
It’s really no different than Republicans rallying around Trump last fall. Instead of merely being anti-Jeb and anti-Jeb sheepdogs, the nominal Trump supporters and by extension anyone who was undecided were attacked. They just latched on.
Since Hillary is such an obviously terrible candidate for the Democratic Party and it’s nominal values, this demonstrates a complete lack of research or knowledge of the world around them on the part of her supporters. Acknowledging criticism of Hillary means a Hillary supporter might not be as “woke” as they believe they are. I’m reminded of the parishioners who know the priest didn’t rape those lying kids who just want attention or those high school football fanatics who blame slots for daring to suggest football doesn’t produce quality young men at a 100% success rate. Attacking Hillary is as heinous as suggesting “The West Wing” or “House of Cards” is garbage.
I agree. And I think there is no greater example than sports, although the defense of pedophile priests, is also a great example. Of course….Paterno.
Do you mean the standing ovations for Kobe, Roethlisberger, and Manning?
Didn’t you know Tom Brady destroyed his phone after being told it wasn’t needed? We have to protect the integrity of the game. The commissioner should not have to understand middle school science. After all, Goodell is the son of an appointed, Republican Senator. Brady v. NFL was the real violation, the concussion law suit. Tom and then Brees made the named players get on board. Gee, who have been the targets of cooked up investigations?
It seems to me that Sanders kind of pulled back on attacking Hillary on her Wall St speeches. He could have made it a center piece of his standard campaign speech demanding she release the transcripts. He certainly mentioned it often but he could have used this as a hammer. Basically Bernie was too nice to Hillary (and the Dem elites). If he had played a more ruthless hardball with Clinton’s weaknesses he might not be in the position he now is.
Please note how the clinton side in links today is hammering on those mean sanders supporters, and imagine what they would be saying if sanders attacked a poor defensless woman named hillary.. He’s gotten as far as he has by walking a fine line and the real hostility comes from clinton supporters who want him to go away so bad because he’s making them look bad and they think they’re not bad so he’s bad. Love the way McCauliffe adds 200,000 supposed dems to the rolls after the primary but before the election and how that somehow proves he’s not a party hack? Love the way the nyt paints hillary as a war mongering crusader for the right to blow women and children to pink mist but somehow this makes her qualified to claim she loves over hates . Oh, and gene editing, paging dr. moreau, you are now being hailed as an innovator whose crimes only led to porcine muscularity and abbreviated lifespans so that qualifies him to be the new head of biotech at the state dept. Ugh.
I’ll think I’ll learn this one over the weekend, but not likely it’ll sound this good…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL0xWGJ8hNQ
The late great doc watson
I agree with much of what Taibbi wrote. We have all written it here in many different ways. Why didn’t Bernie expand his attack on so called, “Wall Street?”
“He never found a way to talk about the special edge the financial sector brought/brings to the exploitation of nonwhite America.”
The banks systematically targeted and focused their most toxic products on minorities and then after it all collapsed made it even more racist by blaming them because “free stuff”.
That being said, I feel a shift happening after the NY primaries. Could it be possible that with all the enormous pressure off of Bernie to win the nomination in pledged delegates alone prompt him to expand his stump points and go after the Hills more thoroughly? Trump will open that door for him. I hope he takes advantage. The gloves have got to come off, she needs to be taken down.
The minute Bernie goes hardball after Hillary the MSM press will collectively spout “Gasp! Oooohhhh, how could he? He attacked the woman! The brute!”
Hillary would love to sucker him into that trap before the nomination. The MSM is waiting with pens poised to do the dirty work.
Trump is an entirely different proposition. The ‘wronged woman’ shtick she uses when it suits her won’t work with Trump or his voters at all, no matter what the MSM says or does.
And he can’t go hard after Obama either.
Thus, this campaign is not fighting for the “Truth about Neoliberalism and Reconciliation.’
Any one who wants the truth about Iraq and desire to reconcile, the self-proclaimed presumptive R nominee is the one to go to.
Capping off 30+ years of “holding my nose and pulling the lever for the lesser evil”. Dukakis was a hard one, so was Mondale. And Kerry. The scale of Hilary’s evil, and especially the whole cloth of lies she blankets it with (“I’m fighting for you!”) means I would pull the lever for a sentient slime mold over her.
Which I may be doing.
Jeff Grundlach nailed it: “I know exactly what this candidate will do. I have no idea what this other crazy buffoon over here will do. But it’s got to be an improvement”.
OTPBDH: Most of us know by this time who Mrs Clinton is, what
she intends to do, where she’s going to do it, when it’s going to happen,
and why she has to do it this way. That’s about as captured as you
can get, but the oligarchs don’t stand for teasing.
I think it’s safe to say that if Trump decides to play the “follow the money card,” hillary won’t demand to be “dealt in,” but it’ll be pretty hard to avoid playing the hand.
What to do? The misogyny card? The personal attack card?
I don’t know…….
It will be interesting to see how hard Trump goes after HRC on the “follow the money card”. The MSM will likely portray this as a personal attack rather than a serious ethics and legal issue. The Clinton’s are well-versed in how to play the victim, and the have many surrogate/ sycophants in the media to amplify the meme.
Couple of days ago I posted a link about how Hastert made millions on inside land deals by manipulating highway funds.
The thing of it is, the Clintons are the best at it, but EVERYBODY in Washington does it, so no politician can take moral umbrage, which, conveniently, according to MSM standard operating practice, means no one can report on it. The US is pretty much like every other third world country now, where the “tribute” is just an accepted and unremarkable aspect of how the society functions. EVERYTHING in the US is now PAY TO PLAY. Trump acknowledged this in one of the first debates. But it is now so ingrained into how both parties operate that changing it has the same chance of success as apportioning senators based on population.
“….have many surrogate/ sycophants in the media to amplify the meme.”
True, but you forgot the paid bagmen, as well as the bribed….
Also in the ‘best at something’ category, everyone and every organization tries to play in politics with money.
WE NEED TO GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS, though.
So, everyone does it, but AIPAC is the best, or among the best at it. You don’t see, in every election cycle, candidates journey before, say, the AARP, to prove themselves to retired seniors.
So, any serious candidate who wants to get money out of politics has to point AIPAC out (mentions the name explicitly), it seems to me.
“The Clinton’s are well-versed in how to play the victim,…”
Yes. Hillary’s campaign slogan could be:
‘For pity sake, vote for Hillary!’
Something to ponder: have the Clintons promised, if Hillary is elected, to shut down or curtail fund raising at their charitable foundation?
Why, no … no, I don’t believe they have!
Based on their forty-year-long rap sheet, one can safely project that if the Clintons worm their way back into the White House, the Clinton Foundation will
doubletriple its revenues, as Bill and Chelsea hike their speech fees to $500,000.Think I’m joking? Underestimate the chutzpah of this grifter family at your own risk. They absolutely do not care.
Perfect adjective: “grifter” One who takes money illegally, such as in a confidence game.
Historically found among groups of families in Appalachia from the 1890s.
Websters New Collegiate Dictionary
How to off-shore your earnings / inhalings? Make it a tax dodge foundation to save the world
This is the one that befuddled me. The entire primary, I’ve been saying, what about the Clinton Foundation? Now, I didn’t know a damn about the Clinton Foundation, but I do know what a protection racket looks like when I see one, and even if the Foundation wasn’t meant to be that at the onset, there’s no way it wouldn’t end up acting like that. Oh, we want something for the Secretary. Well there’s this (chuckle) “foundation …
Now I know that Sanders wanted to keep it to the issue, but he went after Hillary’s money raising practices pretty hard, and it was working. So why didn’t he ever go after this foundation? I didn’t know about this book, but how could he not have? Why would he leave this on the table when any idiot would have know the GOP candidate would pick it right up?
Roger on the Bernie media blackout.
And, if I may ask, why didn’t the campaign make an issue out of this?
I was a campaign volunteer for a while, and the HQ people seemed like they were playing a one-note symphony. Regardless of what was happening around us, we volunteers were exhorted to phonebank, phonebank, and phonebank some more.
Well, sorry, campaign. In case you haven’t noticed, your all phonebanks! all the time! strategy ain’t working.
Phone banking is a cornerstone of political campaigning. It is terrible work. I have a hearing problem so I can not phone bank. I hated phone banking and the vast majority of volunteers burn out from phone banking. Campaign managers rarely throw a bone to volunteers by offering a day to knock doors.
You hit the nail on the head! Phonebanking is the reason why I am feeling the Bernout.
Terrible work. You have that right.
That’s a really dopey Taibbi piece. Sometimes he’s great. Sometimes….
Without a doubt Hillary will try to make the upcoming election all about “racism” since what else does she have? But it’s a fairly hoary truism that elections are about economics (and of course the candidates themselves) so Sanders focus on the big banks and class conflict was entirely appropriate. You can’t really blame him for losing something that he was never going to win anyway. Turning Taibbi’s premise around one might make the headline: Clinton’s evasive line about racism and banks shows why Sanders has done so well. Her “great line” does her little credit.
I saw it as a huge opportunity for him to retort, “taking on wall street won’t end racism, but it will mean that a lot of black homeowners would be able to keep their houses that were stolen through illegal foreclosures and mortgage fraud.”
Colorado weighs replacing Obama’s health policy with universal coverage Boston Globe (furzy)
Good idea, but not at the state level. States need to tax to fund programs. Fed taxes, which could be better designed to tax rent rather than production, give value to money and create a unit of account.
But they have the right idea. “”I think insurance is one of the biggest jokes and crooks””
There’s a group in CA working on single payer too: http://californiaonecare.org/
Hopefully these grassroots efforts will percolate up to the national level.
I think this will be helped as people get a better understanding of our public money and that it can have other uses than bailing out banks.
Sure, the Devil’s bad. But sheesh. Give the guy a break. He’s no Ted Cruz.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/satanists-are-furious-that-boehner-compared-ted-cruz-to-the-dark-lord/
“Cruz’s failures of reason, compassion, decency, and humanity are products of his Christian pandering, if not an actual Christian faith,” Greaves responded. “It grows tedious when pedophile priests and loathsome politicians are conveniently dismissed as Satanic, even as they spew biblical verse and prostrate themselves before the cross, recruiting the Christian faithful. Satanists will have nothing to do with any of them.”
==============================================================
It’s like the spokesperson for the Satanists is implying Satan is angry for being besmirched as being as bad as Ted Cruz – that’s NOT IT!!! The devil is PO’ed because he has been surpassed by his acolyte, Cruz!
From the Book of the Dead:
When Hell fills up, the damned will run in the republican presidential primary.
Obviously, Hades has filled up…
Hillary used to have a close personal relationship with Mr. D.
But it’s fraying under the strain of her presidential campaign. See for yourself:
Dude. I LOL’d for *hours* this AM after seeing that article. Shared it with everyone.
Re the Laurits piece: I have been seeing these figures on the Sanders Facebook page for a while now. The general consensus is that it will be a contested convention, as are the points he makes about superdelegates having to consider losing a great deal of the vote when Indies, etc. walk away.
It really boils down to losing the election with Hillary or winning with Sanders. The Iron Law of Institutions may apply, but a lot of those superdelegates aren’t really a part of the institution in the sense that they don’t really gain any of the benefits that the institution provides to nearly the same degree as others. Those who are low on the totem pole should be easy pickings.
Pretty sure they would still prefer losing with Hillary though right? Sanders endangers too many rice bowls by just being nominated. Right?
They expect Hillary to win a general. When Hillary starts to declare her Intent to bomb everything, she will lose Sanders voters and more importantly volunteers. David Brock won’t do GOTV, and resources will be put into protecting Hillary not supporting the party. Congressmen in tough races in safe blue states will be tossed first.
If Hillary is indicted by the FBI it sure should be Bernies turn. But it won´t. Biden will descend from heaven blessed by Obama…
Wait a minute, we’ve got a president who said “there’s classified, and then there’s classified,” with respect to her email issues. We’ve got a media that willfully suppressed nearly all of the positive information about Sanders, in a primary season where one of top reasons Sanders didn’t do well was name recognition. We’ve got enough powerful people in the game that voting machines can’t be trusted…and you think she’s going to lose? She won’t have won by any honest or correct metric, but the chances of her losing seem slight at this point.
She will lose. And she’ll deserve it. And the party will deserve it.
And we’ll all suffer for it.
Tribalism and identity politics above all, I suppose.
I was reading that on the ride to work this morning. It’s true, she can’t win before the convention, but not really a big revelation. Sanders’ campaign has been talking about how it’s close enough that it’s up to the super-delegates to make the final decision. Right now, it’s basically 55%-45% in her favor on the pledged delegates. To win BEFORE the convention, a candidate has to get 59% of pledged delegates, which is hard to do at this point with only around 1/4 of the pledged delegates still up for grabs. She wants him to drop out so that the convention becomes a coronation. As long as he stays in…..it’s still possible to swing super delegates back his way. If he keeps strengthening in the polls and she keeps weakening and he crushes CA by more than, say, 10%, it becomes a more complicated decision for the supers to make, doesn’t it? Gaius Publius made this point the other day, too.
On a side-note, It’s worth talking about how the Sanders campaign made a strategic mistake by fighting too hard in NY (Yes, I’m Monday morning QB-ing here, I know). But the writing was on the wall regarding turnout and his rallies and ads were spent on motivating people who were already destined to be shut out of the voting.
I think he spent too much time/money there in an effort to turn it into some kind of symbolic Stalingard-type loss for her where she was damaged beyond repair. He couldn’t recreate the conditions of the MI primary in NY with the kind of suppression and restrictions that were already baked in the cake ahead of time. I think he should have tried to limit the damage in NY, and spent more time on PA and MD and Indiana looks like he could really do damage there, too.
With the campaign laying off staff, it looks like they themselves don’t think they can win anymore. They could have hung in there a little longer with the ground game if they didn’t blow all that money in NY on advertising. He’s still primed to have a pretty good rally in the month of May. The calendar swings his way again. It could be a clean sweep.
Her people usually yell the loudest at him to get out when he’s about to go on a big run. Remember the noise they made after 3/15 before he went on a big hot streak?
Exit poll data showed a 52-48 election. Sanders did not make a mistake by challenging Clinton in New York. His mistake is not challenging the results.
Clinton did not “win” Pennsylvania. She was expected by many in the party to win 60-40. Sanders was not expected to hit anywhere close to 45% in this election.
John Fetterman, Braddock Mayor running for the Senate in Pa was not expected to get out of single digits. Sanders big mistake here was not campaigning with Fetterman. A lot his supporters probably went with McGinty who was supported by Obama and the Democratic Party. McGinty is a corporate “whore” who was a Trojan horse in the EPA. She like so many before her has the resume but what she has done is work towards enhancing corporate power with in Pennsylvania. Toomey will likely crush her and I will certainly not vote for her in the general election. If the Greens do not run a candidate then I’ll either right in Fetterman or not vote.
Sanders also had NO chance in Maryland. He was only working towards closing the gap but Maryland has a very large percentage of black voters. I have not looked at the breakdown but I suspect that a large proportion of black Maryland voters are older women. They will never leave Clinton land.
I’d love to see an analysis of black voters that are disenfranchised based on their criminal records. They are likely younger black men (40 and under) who are supporting Sanders at higher rates than older black voters. This is an election that is defined by age not race.
That last paragraph makes an excellent point.
Indies walk way.
If I understand how each state is allocated its number of delegates correctly, if Democrats walk away from Clinton (should she clinched the nomination), that state will be punished with fewer delegates in the next election.
So, all those states that Sanders won, if his voters walk away, those states become even less relevant in the future.
Eventually, it will Hillary’s states, her supporters, that will dominate the D party.
One more reason to leave.
The future elites at Harvard can down here to Memphis and get some measles too.
“I am partway through a good book on the Fed” can we please get the title? I would like to add it to this weekend’s reading.
The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve, Peter Conti-Brown. Deep dive into the history.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2016/04/23/lost-dream-90-of-americans-are-worse-off-today-than-they-were-in-the-early-1970s/#3cfdd5425dde
For the vast majority of Americans, their nation’s economy is in a prolonged stagnation, far worse than that of Japan. When it comes to real income that is–income adjusted for inflation.
90 percent of Americans earns roughly the same real income today as they earned back in the early 1970s, according to a recent study released by The Levy Economic Institute (Figure 6).
====================================================
When you’ve lost Forbes, you’ve lost the nation….
Just another in a long, long, long list of reports documenting that the 40 year experiment in “free trade” and neo-liberlism makes MOST people worse off.
Yet, on any given day you can find editorials in Bloomberg, Washington Post, NYT about how globalization isn’t/shouldn’t go away – because GDP!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They say “we just CAN’T go back!” as if it were a law of nature instead of rules written by men and implemented by governments. The elites/Davos man believes in it, and no amount of facts will dissuade them, and no amount of resistance by the populace. Really incredible how despite the overwhelming evidence how harmful the policies are to the vast majority, the obstinate refusal to admit error and try something else. There has been a coup, and Wall street has taken over the government…
I used to think the elites were just slow – now I think it is becoming obvious that it is just self serving greed….
The somewhat surprising Forbes transition over the past few years away from cheerleading could be due to a change in editor and/or the sale of an interest to investors. The magazine also added Steve Keen as a columnist so the shift further away from pure orthodoxy is a benefit. In any event, more objective reporting is welcomed wherever it may occur.
“I used to think the elites were just slow – now I think it is becoming obvious that it is just self serving greed….”
They take care to make sure we think they’re oblivious and incompetent rather than evil, to be laughed at rather than hated. “Oh, look what a klutz I am, I accidentally knocked a whole bunch of money out of all your pockets right into mine–aren’t I silly!” and we laugh or shake our heads and they keep the money. Every time.
It tells you *everything* that the entire program over a period of many decades makes 90% poorer. Soon it will be 95%. Then 99.9%. At some point there will be one guy left with 99.999% of all the wealth. Then we strangle him in the bathtub and reset.
Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist resigns
Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith resigned from the paper on Tuesday, after the paper prevented him from writing about casino owners Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson, whose family owns the Review-Journal.
“In Las Vegas, a quintessential company town, it’s the blowhard billionaires and their political toadies who are worth punching. And if you don’t have the freedom to call the community’s heavyweights to account, then that ‘commentary’ tag isn’t worth the paper on which it’s printed,” he wrote in a letter to colleagues, which he printed out and left around the newsroom.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2016/04/8597612/las-vegas-review-journal-columnist-resigns
jesus adelson sued him into bankruptcy over a book he wrote, even though smith technically “won” by getting the suit dismissed. thank god for our “fair” legal system–see, adelson could get an unjustified libel suit dismissed too!–and those ferocious watchdogs the mainstream media.
Re: Trumps gender attacks
Oh, you mean “Not going to happen” single payer and “$15/hr is too high” minimum wage? She’s a Feminist In Name Only, paying lip service to the issues while courting the idea of female exceptionalism for votes. Seriously, a hot pink credit card?!? Mind the gender stereotyping there, Hills. Can’t wait until Trump rolls out her statement about women suffering more during war. You don’t get to be CiC while thinking the people you are sending into harms way aren’t suffering.
12 years as first lady of Arkansas.
8 years as “co-president” (two for one) of the united states.
8 years as senator from new york.
4 years as secretary of state.
She’s been “dealt in.” Over and over again. She’s had a seat at the poker table for over 30 years. And she “folded” every time.
Uh you do realize that many women get sent into “harm’s way” right?
Women in harm’s way? Well, that goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War. Remember the story of Molly Pitcher?
I in no way meant to disrespect the efforts of the women who have died in service. I failed to clarify that I was mostly referring to the infantry (the people with the overwhelmingly highest casualty rates – the ones sent into harms way) and other frontline positions which have been denied to women for nearly the entire existence of this nation until, IIRC, a few months ago? In Iraq and Afghanistan:
So, again, not to disqualify the sacrifices given but I fail to see how the suffering of less than 3% outweighs the suffering of the greater than 97% without sexism’s thumb on the scale. Personally, I can’t wait to see greater integration. Most women I know shoot better than most men I know. Plenty of armed services have integrated and I think they are better for it. Ironically, one of those who promoted women’s rights (at least some) in the desert (literally and metaphorically) of chauvinism was Mr Wecamewesawhedied, whose whole elite bodyguard was female.
Trump is going to joust with a straw-woman feminist.
Will this set the feminist movement back?
http://www.wkyt.com/content/news/Clinton-sheriff-took-his-10-year-old-son-to-work-let-him-sign-jail-paperwork-377491201.html
I enjoy naked Capitalism.
Re: Banks raise prospect of court action over Fed dividend cuts
Yves, can you tell us the title of the book, assuming you recommend it?
It’s somewhat Fed sympathetic, but not so much that you can’t make use of its considerable historical detail and legal analysis. The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve, Peter Conti-Brown.
Democrats and classic Roman clientelism. I am wondering it clientelism is the way to interpret the Democrats at this stage of their decadence. They have no policies. They have no foreign policy. But they insist that their upper-middle-class elites can bestow some stuff on the hangers-on. It is the party of immature dependence. The comment about black churchladies and their continuing support makes me wonder about unhealthy internal dynamics there.
[That written, we may have to interpret the Republicans as the Rampant Id and Flaming Comment Sections institutionalized. With a dash of Carly Fiorina!]
Flaming Comment Sections Institutionalized, lol, love it.
Excellent insight, DJG, and is the best explanation for certain Democrat loyalties that I’ve read to date.
The New Yorker article “Why Digital Money Hasn’t Killed Cash” misses one of the main problems:
Electronic points of sale are not just points of sale for the business. They are also points of sale for Visa, Mastercard, Wells Fargo, what have you.
I live in a rural area, only an hour outside a major metro area. Lots of small businesses. It’s already hard to get reliable equipment out here, let alone afford to give a middleman money. Plus with the under-the-table transactions and the underground cash economies, people just aren’t going to stop using cash.
But when negative interest rates come, whether that’s in ten or twenty years, there’s going to be a push to ban cash, and these rural areas are going to again get shafted by the central banking powers that be.
In the meantime, CASH IS KING.
Yes, the roll out of technology is starting to run up against lack of infrastructure investment. And once everything is computerized, when the power goes out the entire system goes out with it.
Concerning “Banned pesticides ‘not equally harmful’ to bees BBC (David L). ”
It is called the cocktail effect. A researcher at the Agricultural University here in Denmark. Analysed the effect of combining different toxic substances together.
She started out be 4 substances, each well below their threshold level, and examined if they had an effect on rats –> no effect then she combines them and applies the cocktail the a new set of rats –> the rats go haywire.
She has has reproduced this general concept with many other substances.
The issue of course is that no regulatory agency tests and monitors this cocktail effect
The Harvard article states that the mumps vaccine only works 88% of the time, but I wonder how many of the affected students never were vaccinated. It would be quite typical of the
entitledelites I’ve known to rely on herd immunity to “protect” their precious offspring.All of them were vaccinated. Because Harvard requires it. 12% of 21,000 is 2,520. There’s room for this to run a little (lot) hotter.
Well, at least there will be fewer “legacies” in the next generation.
RE: Neonicotinoides article,
The study was carried out with funding from the “Insect Pollinators Initiative”, sounds noble.
That is in turn funded by the BBSRC, tagline “Building the Bioeconomy”, their mission statement:
To advance knowledge and technology (including the promotion and support of the exploitation of research outcomes), and provide trained scientists and engineers, which meet the needs of users and beneficiaries (including the agriculture, bioprocessing, chemical, food, healthcare, pharmaceutical and other biotechnological related industries), thereby contributing to the economic competitiveness of the United Kingdom and the quality of life[…]
Indeed.
Hillary playing the woman card and the bloodthirsty foreign policy hawk card on the same day is a fruitful combination. In effect she’s claiming to be the Lady MacBeth of the Obama administration.
‘Murdering ministers’, ‘fell purpose’, indeed.
Thanks for that, always a joy to read.
+++!
Startling apropos
The degree of co-option in the MSM, the voting process, the damned voting software itself, the machinery of the two parties; it’s like trying to grasp the scope of climate change. Every time you can’t avoid looking, it exceeds all expectations; in two words, utterly frightening. Yet it’s biggest trick of all is to convince so many it doesn’t exist. And to think they say the same thing about the devil…
Considering that force, I would be cautious in blaming the “dumb” voters, frustrating as the situation is.
I agree. Blaming voters is just more Divide Et Impera for the Elites. It doesnt improve anything, ever.
New York Times boss sued over alleged ageist, racist and sexist hiring practices
Laurits’ convention math ultimately rests on a political argument.
Those earth-shaking, thunderous chants of Sanders! Sanders!? When they reach about 66 dB they will draw FBI air surveillance, militarized Philly cops in tanks, FBI provocateurs, mass disappearances in corrections buses, public police torture, decapitation killing by nickel rides and ‘nonlethal’ head shots, and kettling.
You are trying to obstruct the appointment of a top-level CIA cadre. The Clinton family earned this post by importing drugs through Mena Airport and sitting on their thumbs while Andreas Straßmeier and Ali Mohamed went home after jobs well done. If you get in the way, CIA will mobilize its domestic cutouts and kill you.
Clean energy article.
I’m all for solar panels and wind turbines but they aren’t really clean energy. Currently “100% carbon free energy” does not exist if you include all the externalities, and likely never will in a capitalist system (its hard to extract rent from an energy source that doesn’t require continual inputs or some kind, people don’t like to pay for “free energy”).
Solar Panels have just recently reached a point where their carbon intensive manufacturing footprint is offset by the energy they produce over their lifetime, and this ignores the environmental effects of the caustic chemical byproducts that aren’t properly reclaimed, and the carbon footprint of those reclaimed. They have an average life of 20 years, then more carbon is needed to produce more panels.
Wind turbines fall into the same category, with much larger externalities being completely ignored (there is some data but the sources show such contradictory results I don’t trust any of it). The carbon footprint for mining the base metals for their construction likely offsets any carbon savings but once you include the production process it certainly is unlikely to provide carbon savings, if it does the savings are likely close to nil. They have an average life of 30 years.
Externalities are everything, if you don’t include them results are bound to disappoint.
The only externality that really matters though is population. More people, more energy, more carbon. It’s been said before, you cannot have infinite growth in a closed system.
HBE – Thanks for the sober assessment of “renweables”. I usually get panned for pointing this out.
I have lived “off the grid” for the last 14 years. Few people understand the economics and the complete costs. My solar generated power costs $1-2/kwh simply for the cost of the battery bank and its replacement at about a 5 year interval. I have no illusions about “saving the planet”.
And, yes. No amount of “green energy” can offset the tripling of the world’s population in my lifetime.
Yikes. With “thought – leaders” like Jeffrey Sachs, who needs a planet? Same goes for the CRISPR Cas9 people. Where are they learning that every problem has a solution that must be avoided until all the more assinine avenues have been explored?
El-Erian on the CB’s problem: he notes we need a rebalancing of aggregate demand.
Dear Lord, I think he almost wrote redistribution!
Yes, this artificial separation of the central bank and government is very problematic. The central bank can funnel tons of money to private banks (by backing this money) which is then only available by borrowing. Meanwhile it limits its funneling of money to government (semantics because again it is the government which is backing this money) which can spend the money on various social functions and forces it into an unnecessary austerity.
“”While central bank support for the banking sector met with very little public comment or criticism, the position is very different for governments.”” from Mary Mellor in ‘Debt or Democracy: Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice’
IMHO, the culpability is largely in the lap of Congress, which could at any time have decided to engage in expansionary fiscal policy, or enact a living wage mandate, or enact a major tax overhaul and redistribution downward, etc. Congress did not do this because i) our elites were not sufficiently scared, and ii) it would make the oligarchs relatively poorer versus the plebs. Of course the Fed has been hugely complicit by their hyperactivity, which is an obvious truth they resolutely refuse to see.
I do find it interesting that a Wall Street creature of El-Erian’s stature is calling for redistribution, in substance. He’s right. But how many others on Wall St. dare to say it?
semantics!!!!
If that is how I have to say it, than that is how I will say it.
I’m guessing rebalancing gets the imprimatur at Allianz, where redistribution does certainly not!
Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge, Wall Street’s Renegade Blog
The veil is lifted on a secretive website
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-29/unmasking-the-men-behind-zero-hedge-wall-street-s-renegade-blog
Lol. Have you read ZH’s rebuttal to the allegations?
I just saw it now. Thanks for pointing it out.
Comment section is on fire! There are some crazy commenters, very entertaining!
ZH always reminds me of this libertarian bitcoin site circa 2012…
How Libertarianism was created by big business lobbyists – Ames
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=126721.0%3Ball
Skippy…. the pund’ents response to historical accuracy is to call it an ad hominem and intellectually wanting, no true Scotsman et al…. completely unaware they are all the punch line to a L. Ron Hubbard like joke…
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-there-are-declining-numbers-of-black-mlb-players-2016-4
As they say, you get more of what you subsidize (aka support). And a good microcosm of meritocracy and money, i.e., if you don’t have the money, you don’t have the merit… And finally, like a lot of things, what is really going on is often invisible. Every day in every way, in invisible ways, who benefits from how the economy is structured is decided by men in 5,000$ suits wearing 2,000$ shoes, and you can bet your as*, they’re making sure you get less so that they can get more.
The view from inside the bubble:
Nitpicking.
Re Vermont’s automatic voter registration: fantastic. Someone has to take the first step, and these types of proposals have been put forth in several states if I’m not mistaken.
Also, here is the link to a recent discussion between Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky – easily worth an hour and a half of your time. Yanis’s stories about the behind the scenes of the “bailout” negotiations are nothing short of fascinating (not to mention eerie) . A direct quote from Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble at a Eurogroup meeting: “Elections must not stand in the way of economic policy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szIGZVrSAyc
Oh, how I miss Oliphant’s editorial cartoons.
From 2008: http://www.gocomics.com/patoliphant/2008/01/15
From 2013: http://www.gocomics.com/patoliphant/2013/06/20
The second one, from 3 years ago, is just astounding. Nothing more needs to be said about Hillary’s run for POTUS.
[The] “immense popularity of one of the most beloved public figures in America, Carly Fiorina”
Except among those voters who have an H.P. printer, had a Compaq or H.P. Pavilion computer, or were an H.P. employee dumped by her downsizing as she strip-mined the company of wealth:
http://wolfstreet.com/2015/10/08/how-corporate-execs-monsanto-strip-mine-america-with-stock-buybacks-while-we-sleep/
“Share buybacks are one part of the triangle trade that transfers vast fortunes from shareholders to senior executives using stock options:
executives exercise their options when shares rise (i.e., the company sells shares to executives at a discount to current prices), the executive sells those shares to the public, the company buys back those shares from the public.
Net result: the company has less money, their executives have more, the share count is unchanged.
This is an example of how America’s senior executives have learned to treat running companies — even running them into the ground, as Carly Fiorina did at HP — as a sideshow to their real job of financial engineering (for their personal profit). During their boom, the Japanese called these financial games zaitech (cursing it after their crash in 1989). Stock options, tax avoidance, earnings manipulation, mergers and acquisitions (almost all of which fail; see articles at CBS and HBR) — these are the paths to success for execs in New America.”
You seem to have missed that this is satire – look at the URL, clear from that alone. Another gem from Andy Borowitz, whose services are needed more than ever now that The Onion has been co-opted and bowdlerized.
“Clinton backers ‘feel the Bern’ of angry Sanders supporters”
Let’s all vote against, or at least not for, Hillary choosing superdelegates who are running for office nationwide.
Is there a reputable website that will list how delegates voted at the Democratic convention?
that would be a great help.
x2
We in California are voting for delegates for Bernie Sunday May 1, here’s a link for more info:
http://www.californiadelegatesforbernie.com/
i’m loving the love for icahn. he’s been my favorite capitalist for years.
why?….he pushed the leveraging of balance sheets for primary purpose of buybacks and dividends…which does nothing to make the economy stronger or the company stronger….then the layoffs…oops.
Bernie’s most formidable opponent has always been the little voice inside our head that says give up, we can’t do things like that in America.
+1
+ 1000
let me clarify this desperate messaging “Eurozone Economic Recovery Gathers Pace”
the EU and UK report quarterly growth, while the US reports quarterly growth at an annual rate…thus the 0.6% EU growth is roughtly 5 times the 0.5% growth rate we reported…if EU growth were reported in US terms, it would be at a 2.5% annual rate…better than US growth any year of our “recovery”
“What is with PG&E”?
Looting via executive management compensation and bonuses at the expense of maintenance and safety inspections of 50-75 year old infrastructure. This after “privatization” and spin-off of income-producing power generation by GOP governor and corrupt legislature 20 years ago.
What could possibly go wrong?
o Re. An outbreak of a highly contagious disease is sweeping through Harvard | Mic — Wait, don’t tell me, lemme guess … greed? Hubris? Elite vanity? Lust for power?
o Re. We Asked an Expert What We Actually Know About Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy | Vice — Headline as inanely blanketish as “we asked an expert about whether free trade is beneficial.” What kind of ‘expert’, pray tell? One from the Kissinger/Reagan/Wolfowitz/Cheney/Albright/Nuland/Hillary School of Democratic Regime Change™? A painful, ever-repeated, and just-as-quickly-forgotten lesson from history is that dogmaticism negates any so-called expertise in terms of policy evaluation. “What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.” Especially when we are well-rewarded for said not-learning.
o Re. The Line That May Have Won Hillary Clinton the Nomination | Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone — You can rest assured that whatever ‘line’ greased the skids for Hillary’s rise to power was spoken off the record, behind closed doors. Perchance something of the “I’ve always had the greatest admiration for Messrs. Rubin and Kissinger…” variety.
o Re. Cal Fire blames PG&E for Butte Fire, will seek $90 million | Sacramento Bee (martha r). What is with PG&E? — State-sponsored unaccountable monopoly, that’s what’s with PG&E.
o Re. Why Digital Money Hasn’t Killed Cash New Yorker — OK, time for me to ‘fess up here – It’s my fault. I take full responsibility. I won’t stop using cash until they pry the last penny jar from my copper-clad-zinc-stained hands.
Yves, you aren’t calling Dayton the big city you moved to when you were 6, are you?
No, but thanks for remembering that I did live in Dayton. I lived 9 places before I went to college.
The big city was Boston. I went to first and second grade in Newton Center.
Ukraine / Russia – more poking the Bear in his eye.
VVER-1000 is Russia’s Gen III+ PWR reactor. Note the location, Sweden. Belarus (and naturally Russia/China/Iran) are not going to be buying US/Japanese owned fuel. This has to aimed at Ukraine**, who hasn’t paid Russia for it’s fuel in years, (and isn’t going to pay Toshiba either) but rather give away more national assets to US (Biden Jr?) based firms. This also has to be a wealth transfer from the US tax base to Westinghouse/Toshiba which also servers to poke Russia in a sensitive area, and further entangles Sweden into an aggressive status, rather than it’s past flexible, neutralist leaning toward money traditional policy.
** Ukraine VVER-1000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmelnitskiy_Nuclear_Power_Plant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivne_Nuclear_Power_Plant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ukraine_Nuclear_Power_Plant
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temel%C3%ADn_Nuclear_Power_Station might be a potential customer, but with only two units and German pressure to shut down, it’s a side issue. Finland’s VVER is much older GII+)