By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Readers, Trump, as Trump will do, consumed an inordinate amount of time. Updates to come.
TPP/TTIP/TISA
“US eyes quick post-Brexit trade deal with UK to get stalled TTIP moving” [Ars Technica]. “However, the UK could now sign up to a US investment treaty with significantly fewer protections than those offered by TTIP’s ICS system, which is what the EU is still pushing for. Instead of Brexit helping to protect the NHS, it may end up bringing in a system that protects it less than if the UK had stayed in the EU.” Out of the neoliberal frying pan into the neoliberal fire.
2016
Policy
“Social Security: If It Ain’t Broke … and It Ain’t, and It Never Will Be” [Mike Norman]. Sort of amazing to see an MMT-inflected post appear on the Yahoo front page.
“Since Pence took office in January 2013, Indiana taxpayers have provided $818.5 million in subsidies to companies.That is only about a tenth of the largesse that state and local taxpayers have given to corporations since 1991” [David Cay Johnston, The Daily Beast]. “The welfare collecting companies only had to invest $397.7 million. Indiana under Pence has been exceptionally generous with its better than $2-to-$1 match of taxpayer money to private investment. Just about anybody with the skill to run a business should get very rich if—for each buck of their money that they put up—they get two bucks, plus a nickel from the taxpayers.” And: “Before Pence took office, when Republican Mitch Daniels was Indiana’s governor, reporter Bob Segall of WTHR Channel 13 in Indianapolis took a film crew to locations where the state had handed out money either in grants, loans or tax abatements to create jobs. He found one taxpayer-subsidized job center was nothing but an empty field. And that was just one of many nonexistent job locations for which his investigative reporting won 13 awards.” If Pence’s program provides the precedent for Trump’s employment policies, that would be bad. Of course, there was no focus on this during Trump’s acceptance speech, because the political class hates working people.
“For much of modern American political history, there has been a dispute about how seriously to take the party platforms approved by Democrats and Republicans during presidential election years” [Market News]. “Should they be viewed as serious statements of intention, casual afterthoughts, or symbolic gestures that are offered to the party faithful and to key interest groups? There is no single answer to this question because platforms have been used for all of these purposes in the past. For many in Washington, the question of the day is how seriously to take the Republican platform’s call to reinstate Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law the divided commercial and investment banking.”
Conventions
Headlines on the newspaper rack when I went to get coffee this morning, both above the fold and spanning the page: “‘I am your voice.’ — Trump” (USA Today) and “‘I will fight for you’ — Trump” (Bangor Daily News). Smart speechwriting; 15 and 20 characters respectively, so the quotes are made for huuuge headline type. And call me crazy — I’ll get to the details below — but is it possible that there are voters who feel they have no voice, and that nobody’s fighting for them? I can’t think why, but the morning paper dropped outside every hotel room door in America seems to think so. As does my local paper.
Transcript of Trump’s acceptance speech as delivered [Vox]. I watched for deviations; there were few, and generally they improved the text. For example, Clinton’s legacy of (a) “death, destruction and weakness” in the written speech became (b) “death, destruction, terrorism, and weakness” as delivered. (Modulo “weakness,” since Clinton can’t really be held accountable for a process of imperial collapse, I hate it when Trump’s right). It’s funny to watch the quotes propagate through the press, since anybody using variant (a) is writing off the written transcript, and anybody using variant (b) is reporting in something closer to real time. Perhaps the variants are introduced for that purpose?
Transcript of Trump’s acceptance speech as written [Donald J. Trump]. Cheekily, there are 282 footnotes. This is actually both clever by the Trump campaign, and important as a yardstick for the allegiances of the political class. Why? Fact-checking. Here’s Vox: “Trump says: ‘Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement.’ In fact:… Ruling: Baseless” [Vox staff, Vox]. The wee problem here is that Trump backs up that claim with material at footnotes 19, 20, 21 and 22, and Vox doesn’t engage with the footnotes. So, despite the faux judiciousness of “Ruling,” the article doesn’t engage with Trump’s material at all. As one might expect, given this useful post by Corey Robin, the wonks at Vox are ritually enacting the forms of scholarship, whiile emptying them of content. (Troll prophylactic: I’m not saying Trump’s claim is correct; I’m saying that Vox makes its tendentiousness really obvious when it fails to engage with it.) I don’t have time to look at all the other fact checking out there — and I don’t expect anything either presumptive candidate says to survive a fact-checking process anyhow — but I would bet they, too, fail to engage with Trump’s footnotes.
“Word cloud analysis of Donald Trump’s acceptance speech” [Constitution Center].
“Trump’s speech was a significant moment for an impulsive entertainer and savvy media manipulator now striving to look presidential to a wide audience. He cleared the bar handily Thursday, showing the political force he could become when he reins in his most bombastic rhetoric and sticks to his populist-infused message” [US News].
Anyhow, I watched the speech. Key omissions: No assault on big banks, nothing on the minumum wage, nothing on Social Security. In other words, Trump is appealing the local oligarchs in his off-Beltway coalition, and not appealing to the (white) working class on economic grounds; neoliberalism wins with the Republicans, as with Democrats. (That is, liberals are correct to point to the dogwhistles, but evil to airbrush the policies they pursued, together with the Republicans, which present the working class with a Sophie’s Choice between rejecting “law and order” dogwhistles while also rejecting some minimal gestures toward their economic interests.) Here are some random — really random — screen shots, with commentary under this:
This is the stage, all Trumped up. Cult of personality in full swing, along with Gilded Age decor complete with digital gilding (I don’t think that’s physical signage). Sure, the burnished logo looks like something you’d see on the Las Vegas strip, but then an America run by the FIRE sector is a casino. And so the 2016 election brings another moment of bracing clarity.
This is the balloon drop, which was excellent — lots and lots of balloons, like bubbles in a really frothy glass of champers — proof that the Trump staff can actual deliver competent advance work, though whether the campaign can scale up to the full campaign trail is an open question. There were also fireworks outside. I would like to know who chose the closing music: “All Right Now” (Free
Bad Company) followed by “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (Rolling Stones). But you get what you need?
And this is a shot of Barron Trump not, apparently, getting what he needs. I’m including it because there wasn’t a moment he was on the stage when he didn’t look downcast, even when looking up at the balloons. A rarely human moment, contrasted with Melania Trump’s weaponized graciousness. Sad.
“In his most important speech ever, Trump echoes Richard Nixon” [Dan Balz, WaPo]. “In Nixon’s time, it was a call for the ‘Silent Majority’ to rise up and take back the country. Trump spoke to the “forgotten men and women” who he said no longer have a voice in a rigged political system run by ‘censors’ and ‘cynics.”
* * * UPDATE Lambert here: I rarely mention the F-word, if only because I don’t want to start a trash fire. That said — [throwing a flag at my own Godwin’s Law violation] — I’m going to go there. Here’s why I’m suspicious of liberal goodthinker claims that Trump is a fascist: I’m old enough to remember the Bush administration, when many of today’s young liberal wonks were just coming up, and the blogosphere developed a very detailed critique of the Bush administration’s fascist tendencies, based on his expansion of executive power under the doctrine of the unitary executive, and his destruction of the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law generally through his program of warrantless surveillance (“sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception”).
Well… As soon as Obama was elected, those same liberal wonks dropped the critique of fascist powers in the executive like the hot potato it was, even as Obama proceeded to rationalize and consolidate everything Bush did (and had signaled his intent to do so, in July 2008, by voting to give corporations retroactive immunity for Bush’s program of warrantless surveillance). These same wonks might also be usefully asked what sort of State adopts a “disposition matrix” and uses it to assassinate its own citizens, and what sort of State orchestrates a 17-city paramilitary crackdown on non-violent direct actions. Or what sort of State sets up Homan Center (for example).
Now, I know this reasoning exhibits the genetic fallacy, and the grim moral of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” is that sometimes the wolf is a wolf, but if there’s any serious analysis on this topic, I’d love to see it, because I trust the young and youngish wonks in the political class about as far as I can throw a piano. A concert grand piano.
Take for example youngish James Fallows (from April), on the unsavory history of “America First”:
But the term “America First” has a specific and nasty history, mainly because of the America First movement that essentially advocated accommodating Nazi interests on the eve of World War II. There’s a list of terms you’re wiser to avoid, no matter how deserving the underlying idea might be. “Separate but equal,” in the United States. “Cultural Revolution” or “Great Leap Forward” if you’re in China. “Final solution,” anywhere. In the realm of foreign policy, America First is one of these. You can make the point without using the phrase.
To begin with, never mind that Democrat Dick Gephardt — thanks for destroying Howard Dean in Iowa 2004, Dick! — ran for office in the 1980s using the same phrase; apparently, in Fallows mind, that’s not inoculation enough. The real issue — as once again Corey Robin points out — that Fallows is rather like a cargo cult historian: Invoking the form, while lacking the substance. That’s because — follow me closely here — this is not the 1940s. If fascism is “the merger of state and corporate power”, have not both Democrats and Repblicans already arrived at that point? Further, on what grounds are we to make the Sophie’s Choice between the merger of state and corporation at the national level, a la Trump (“Make America great again) and the surrender of national sovereignty to corporations at the international level, a la Clinton and Tim Kaine’s “gold standard” TPP and its ISDS system? This is 2016, not 1940.
I’d welcome reader thoughts and meditations on this topic. But I’m gonna be ruthless on drive-bys and me-toos.
* * * “What To Expect From Protests Outside And Inside The DNC In Philadelphia” [ShadowProof].
“Why you should converge on Philadelphia” [Socialist Worker]. Philly’s a wonderful city, even if humid in the summer, and I’m all for people visiting there. However, absent some cooperation between the 1900 Sanders delegates in the hall, and the protesters — please, no giant puppets — outside the hall, I think the sound and fury will signify nothing. Who knows, maybe Sanders will come out and somebody will hit him with a tomato! That would be a famous victory, spoken of round the campfire for generations…
The Trail
Clinton Veep to be Kaine? [Yahoo News]. Cue “mark of” jokes… Or “mark of Kaine process” jokes…
“Jill Harth, woman who sued Trump over alleged sexual assault, breaks silence” [Guardian]. Thing is, I trust the Guardian on Trump about as much as I trust the Guardian on Corbyn. And the game of planting stories in the British press so that “it’s out there” and becomes a story in the U.S. press is very old. Regardless of the merits, the tactic worked for the Republicans with Paula Jones, so why wouldn’t it work again?
Stats Watch
PMI Manufacturing Index Flash, July 2016: “New orders were the strength of yesterday’s Philly Fed report and are also the strength of the manufacturing PMI where the July flash is 1 point over expectations” [Econoday]. “The rise in orders is also the strongest in 9 months and came despite only marginal strength in export orders. Gains in output and employment are also positives this month for the PMI. But inventory management remains defensive with stocks of both inputs and finished goods both falling.”
Architectural Billings Index: “Design contracts index: 49.7” [Mosler Economics]. “Going nowhere.” You don’t need Rem Koolhaas to build a giant warehouse in New Jersey….
Employment Situation: “Explains some of the recent volatility in employment numbers?” [Mosler Economics].
Hospitality: “In year-over-year comparisons, the industry’s occupancy decreased 1.4% to 77.5%. However, ADR was up 3.4% to $128.12, and RevPAR increased 1.9% to $99.33” [Hotel News].
Shipping: “Rail Week Ending 16 July 2016: Still In Contraction But Short Term Trends Continue to Improve ” [Econintersect] .”The contraction began over one year ago, and now rail movements are being compared against weaker 2015 data – and this is the cause of the acceleration. Still, rail is weak to very week compared to previous years.” A new normal?
Shipping: “Truck shipments were reported down in June – even the BLS employment data was very weak” [Econintersect].
Crapification: “The surprising reason more cars broke down in 2015 than ever before” [Yahoo News]. Clickbait fail: There’s nothing surprising about crapification. More: “According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), more cars broke down on the side of the road in 2015 than in any other year. In fact, AAA says dead batteries, flat tires and key problems contributed to 32 million drivers needing to pull over and call for assistance. You might think your high-tech car is better than that old-school Honda sitting in your neighbor’s driveway, but a new AAA study reveals technology in newer cars is one of the main reasons why so many people are left stranded.” Who knew that simple, rugged, and proven technology would be more reliable than complex, fragile, and unproven technology? Remember when you could actually fix your car yourself, without some intellectual property owner’s proxy getting in the way? It’s not science fiction!
Crapification: “Verizon Communications Inc. is nearing a deal to buy Yahoo! Inc., beating out rival bidders for the iconic web pioneer, people familiar with the matter said” [Bloomberg]. Filing this under crapification for reasons I assume are obvious.
Political Risk: “What is becoming increasingly evident is that we need globally recognised and enforceable space legislation that ensures safe and responsible operations in space – specifically around the Earth. But Space Law is still in its infancy, as exemplified by the Outer Space and Moon Treaty. This was created in the 1960s but has still not been recognised by all states” [Econintersect]. Occasioned by the news that a Chinese space station might fall out of orbit (as have other, larger stations before).
Political Risk: “For me, global trade and free markets long ago slipped into the category of ‘fact.’ That ‘fact’ inevitably led to an expectation that over time trade would continue to become more integrated” [DC Velocity]. “Then the earth moved. Well, it hasn’t moved yet, but before an earthquake there are always tremors…. Brexit looms. Trump is promising tariffs, trade barriers, and a wall. Clinton turned against the transpacific partnership, after being for it. … ne blip is an aberration, two are a concern, and three make a trend. Trends have been disrupted. We all operate and trade internationally. It is inevitable that global movement and global trade will face increased friction. If you are a logistics leader, it’s time to create contingency plans.”
The Bezzle: On Musk’s now not-Secret Plan: “The most troubling thing about Musk’s new plan is that it ignores the most consistent criticisms of Tesla: that the company overpromises, underdelivers, lacks focus, and over-relies on Musk’s vision” [Bloomberg]. Oddly, or not, I searched that article for the word “subsidy,” and couldn’t find it. Grifters gotta grift…
The Bezzle: “The natural rate of interest is a guide for monetary navigators. By keying off the natural rate, ‘a central bank is essentially trying to mimic the ideal conditions of an economy,’ Jeffery Amato, an economist at the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland, wrote in a working paper in 2005. If it could be located with certainty, monetary policy would be simple. The problem: The rate is invisible and not directly measurable. Unlike the indexes for adjustable-rate mortgages, there is no Bloomberg function that describes the natural rate of interest, and there are no derivatives based on its value” [Bloomberg]. So, the “natural rate of interest” has the same conceptual status as Marx’s labor theory of value?
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 82, Extreme Greed (previous close: 86, Extreme Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 89 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jul 22 at 12:00pm. Oh, man. What the heck is wrong with you guys?
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“Activists Chained Themselves Together To Block CPD’s Notorious Homan Square” [Chicagoist]. “Activists used chains, tubes, bike locks and ladders to bind themselves together, blocking the entrance path. Other nearby protesters set up tents and a “Free Store” that offered provisions.” Creative tactics. A good sign! “Similar demonstrations—together dubbed #FreedomNow—took place in other parts of the country, including Detroit, New York City, Oakland and Washington DC.”
“About 50 protesters with Black Lives Matter DC and Black Youth Project 100 are protesting outside the legislative office of the National Fraternal Order of Police in Northeast, blocking traffic on Massachusetts Ave” [DCist]. We’ll see if that smokes out anything explicit from Trump.
Gaia
“Never before have vocalizations used as contact calls been observed in fish. While contact calls have been observed in many other animals, finding it in fish highlights that this is the oldest evolutionary group to employ this method of cohesion. This study shows a new way in which fish can utilize sounds cues, rather than finding a mate or defending territory: fish use sound to make sure their group stays together” [Ocean Bites].
Class Warfare
“How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology” [The Atlantic]. Love the smugly classist clickbait headline! A jobs guarantee should and would fund such research. I believe with all my heart (and with Thorstein Veblen) that a surgical removal of business facehuggers from the American body politic would unleash enormous industry, as here. There are a lot of “guys” in “trailer parks.” “Gals,” too. Dolts.
“This data sculpture depicts a map of housing prices in San Francisco. It’s a map of the city, torn at the seams” [Doug McCune].
News of the Wired
“One individual speculated that the reemergence of the company’s drinking culture was to blame for the uncomfortable environment. Under [deposed CEO Ellen] Pao’s reign, Reddit tried to eradicate the bro-like amount of alcohol consumption at the office, but that went right out the window following Pao’s departure in July 2015” [Reddit]. Not good. Nor is this: “As employees walked away from Reddit over the past six months, the company removed its team page that listed current and former employees. The page was removed from Reddit on March 2 and replaced with a generic “about” page that does not display profiles or Reddit usernames of any employees. Huffman, Reddit’s CEO, sent an email to the staff about the removal of the page, sources say, claiming that the page needed to be taken down to shield employees from the site’s users.”
“Pokemon Go‘s insane success throws that reality into stark relief: A free-to-play mobile game based on a franchise synonymous with Nintendo is by far the biggest Nintendo-related product of the decade” [Wired]. “Still, the game proves that the potential, untapped audience for Nintendo’s games is far bigger than anyone imagined. Pokemon Go isn’t a Nintendo game, but everyone playing it is a sleeper agent ready to buy Nintendo products. But where are the Nintendo products that fit into their lives?”
“National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has been working with prominent hardware hacker Andrew “Bunnie” Huang to solve this problem. The pair are developing a way for potentially imperiled smartphone users to monitor whether their devices are making any potentially compromising radio transmissions” [The Intercept]. That’s good work from Snowden. It doesn’t qualify him for a cabinet position, though.
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (AM):
AM writes: “From the Palazzo Pfanner in Lucca, Italy.” Lovely hydrangeas! But the chairs in the shade catch my eye. This looks like a lovely nook to sit down and just … sit.
Readers, if you want to send me some videos of plants in whole systems (bees and blossoms, for example, or running streams) — I can use them to practice with FFmpeg and hopefully post them. Because of download times, they’ll have to be measured in seconds, rather than minutes. Thank you! Adding, I got another one today! Please keep sending them; they will ultimately appear!
I have finally finished sending thank you notes to the people who helped out during the quick and successful Water Cooler Mini-Fundraiser by sending in checks. Thank you, readers! So, to my knowledge, all should have been thanked, and for those of you who used PayPal, if you have not been, and you have checked your spam folder, don’t hesitate to complain using my contact form.
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“Cult of personality in full swing, along with Gilded Age decor complete with digital gilding (that’s not physical signage). Sure, the burnished logo looks like something you’d see on the Las Vegas strip, but then an America run by the FIRE sector is a casino. And so the 2016 election brings another moment of bracing clarity.”
An utterly flawless assessment …
I wonder if US crime is actually “low now”, relative to other OECD nations. US crime has declined since 1991. However, I recall seeing the murders per capita stat, & the USA was a huge outlier among OECD nations. Presumably much of the huge murder rate has to do with the unique super-easy gun access in the US?
I wonder if the overall US crime index compares to say Canada or other OECD nations. I fear the USA is an high crime outlier on this metric as well.
De-criminalizing everything rich people do that was once against the law helps the stats in the same way Pharma profits help GDP.
Everything I know about crime I learned by watching The Wire, which argued that police are still the good guys if they use surveillance without a warrant, and crime stats are routinely manipulated to make politicians’ lives easier. Homicides can’t be “juiced” like other crime. While you can downgrade a felony to a misdemeanor, you can’t whitewash away a dead body. So I while my understanding is that crime has indeed decreased since 1991, I would pay more attention to the murder rate. And the US’ is far higher than other OECD nations.
> you can’t whitewash away a dead body.
Well, that depends!
“What do we learn, Palmer?” (Hat tip to the NC reader who supplied this clip.)
Murder is up big in the ATL this year. 57 murders by 4th of July 2016 vs 44 KIA by the same point last year. Low crime is so yesterday.
Why YES, here’s a link on that for the all linkpleasers.:
http://www.ajc.com/ap/ap/georgia/as-murder-rate-rises-atlanta-aims-to-get-guns-off-/nrrrj/
Atlanta aims -get it?- to get guns off the streets. LOL. Um yeah, from the cold clenched fingers of one dead perp at a time will do just nicely if it’s not too much bother, Mr. Mayor.
How much of the violent crime is a byproduct of economic insecurity?
By chance any new advice re Windows10: take the Win10 “free upgrade” vs. keep Windows7?
I got a M$oft notice stating “the free Win10 upgrade expires on Jul28”. I had figured I would keep Win7, which has “Extended Support” until 2020, given the negative attributes of Win10 I read here & elsewhere. I purchased my Win7 laptop new in 2014, so there is a chance the laptop may die anyways before this 2020 deadline.
But I was willing to reconsider this decision now, in the event the Win10 situation has changed. Thanks in advance for any reply! Cheers
I just had the drive replaced in my puter and as long as you have the original disk or number of the disk you can keep loading it in for a long as you want. Then according my computer person 10 is still a mess.
Good luck.
I had to buy a new computer to be able to keep using the remote interface “log-me-in.” The only program I use is Quick Books, so I called them and was basically told to use Windows 7 if I did not want trouble and I would need to upgrade my Quick Books. Basically system wide crapification, yet using the remote program does run a lot faster. Long story short: ask the developers of the software you use will support Win10.
Intuit are thieves. I has a perfectly good version of QB 2007, needed nothing more and the assholes turned off the connection between QB and my bank, and I had to buy QB 2010.
They referred me to a blank page on their web site for disclosure.
As you say support for W7 goes for awhile (security updates for example). Many of the initial W10 bugs have been fixed in updates, but there still might be ‘features’ you explicitly don’t want.
SO the question is do you want/need W10 features or to run other software right now? If yes then upgrade. If no, then wait it out. Even if you decide to purchase it in 2-3 years it should only set you back $100-$150 (if you are in the US). Thats….$5/month?…you need to save to pay for it. Keep an eye on Newegg and TigerDirect as you can often snag discounts on MS products.
/$0.02
Thank you, dear sweet laptop. Your processor is too old to handle Windows 10. A Win7 machine is your present — and your future.
Last week I pulled out a 5-year-old Win 7 laptop that I’d never used, to replace the 7-year old Win 7 laptop that I spilled coffee on. The ‘new’ one is essentially identical to the old one, only with the next-generation low-power Intel processor. Same 6 gigs of RAM in both.
Startlingly, the blank-slate 5-year-old machine runs about 3 times faster than the older one.
Just a theory, but my guess is that years and years of bloated Windows updates (both Win 7 and Office) fragmented the disk of the old laptop and slowed it down.
First thing I did with the new machine was turn off Windows updates. This non-updated vintage machine is a gem — runs like a supercomputer.
Windows updates are poison. Stay away from dodgy websites and unknown email attachments, and maybe you don’t need them. Win 10 will never touch my laptop. Nor will Microsoft tamper with its innards at 2 am every morning.
The most irritating thing about those updates is its timing – just when you are about ready to post a bot mot on your favorite website, suddenly, the machine has to take a rest to update itself.
Then, later, you can’t remember what you were going to say.
Don’t put up with that crap. That miserable slave life under the cruel whip of Microsoft is a distant memory now.
Disabling Windows Update provides the same mental health benefit as five years of daily meditation. Everything zen! :-)
And time to recall fondly those butterflies that have since then disappeared.
https://www.qubes-os.org/
Qubes is definitely part the future for anyone who is security conscious about their computing. It’s an OS that allows you to create VMs (virtual machines) to run other OSes while emulating various hardware configurations (to throw off the most modern forms of profile building and surveillance).
You could have Win 7 and Win 10 on your machine, going back and forth between the two. Plus various flavors of Linux.
That fact is that if you are concerned about internet surveillance, you should realize that you are already compromised in many ways that you may not realize. This comment isn’t probably all that helpful for your current predicament, so I apologize for not addressing that directly. I do hope by sharing this info, that you may consider it a possibility in the future.
Whaddaya know, it works on some MacBooks!
It can be a problem to set up on a laptop…but bootable USB will let you see…
Not all laptops are compatible with Win 10. Check with your manufacturer. As a tech geek, and a fan of civil liberties incl. privacy, I will wait a good long time before I ever use Win 10. I expect that whenever I’m forced to upgrade (probably for PC gaming) there will be much better 3rd party tools available to block Microsoft’s built-in spyware.
Fan of privacy? Then stay away from corporate OSes…
PND you are right. Just forget about W10 until you have new hardware that comes with it. And that someone else has tested with it! The 2020 sunset is gracious compared with smartphone obsolescence.
It gets worse. The ad for Windows 10, disguised as an update, was getting really annoying, so our computer tech (our son) tried to change settings to get rid of it. That blew up the operating system – black screen of death. He’s still trying to fix it. If he has to reinstall the OS when we can’t operate the computer, we lose all the data on it – and it’s the backup for the others.
Looks like Microsoft put a bomb in that upgrade. Anyone know of a mass-action lawsuit based on it? Because it’s got to be illegal. It’s outright sabotage. Oh, yeah: don’t try to kill that ad unless you truly know what you’re doing.
Big thx to all NCers with the informative replies on Win10 v Win7! Enjoy your weekend, & cheers!
I have read that if you install Win 10 it does not use a Product Key but rather installs a file on your hard drive. Then if you revert to Win 7 (which I did) the data file stays there, and you can install Win 10 later, even after the end date has passed. You might want to do some googling to verify that, but it sounded plausible to me. Win 10 breaks Total War: Medieval for the non-Steam version, and I am not going to install Steam. That game, and to some extent Total War: Rome is the only reason for me to use Windows. I can’t make them run on Linux, even in a virtual machine running Windows 7. If I reach a point where I can’t run those games I have no reason to not just go with Linux (Ubuntu is ridiculously easy to work with). Windows 10 is much too intrusive and is ugly. There are 3rd party apps that can change the appearance so it looks and works like Windows 7, but that’s just putting lipstick on a pig.
I can’t for the life me figure why there no security on this computers. Hillabllie &dnc emails.
https://www.rt.com/usa/352710-wikileaks-dnc-hillary-email/
Just in time for demodogs dog and phony show.
Snowden
“That’s good work from Snowden. It doesn’t qualify him for a cabinet position, though.”
Then there’s the idea he has actual done something other than live off taxpayers like Amerikas cabinet members and most had no idea what they were to do and only really did what k-street told them.
I thought this one they shared was particularly fun: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11508
Subject line: “No Shit” I still wish their organization was a bit better on the site. Anyways, I love the typos from these clowns;
“It might may no difference…” and the winner. “It’s these Jesus thing.”
Too which the reply is, Amen (I’d like to see the rest of this chain). Are these people dumb or talking in code? Anyways, more proof the DNC had it out for Bernie (if your one who insists on hard, physical stuff).
Wikileaks today released their first tranche in what promises to be a series of Hillary-related emails. Today’s 20,000 emails are from and to officers of the Democratic National Committee. It will take time, of course, for people to analyze all that’s there, and the first story I’ve seen is from The Intercept. The DNC not only was conspiring against Sanders, it was conspiring to violate the U.S. Constitution by manufacturing a religious test for him. Will this get as much attention as Trump’s trumped-up “Star of David” story.
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/22/new-leak-top-dnc-official-wanted-to-use-bernie-sanderss-religious-beliefs-against-him/
Notice the preposterous lie e-mailer Brad Marshall resorts to in the update. But when the top of the ticket is the last word in professional liar, every Democrat will be working over time to cover her/their tracks.
I think the Sanders campaign deserves a lot of credit for not playing the identity politics card: “Anybody who doesn’t support Sanders hates Jews,” or maybe #ItsTheirTurn.
That said, I’d things that the DNC actually did more interesting than what some DNC officials might have “wanted” to do; I mean, it’s not news that the DNC is nefarious.
Indeed, the DNC did bad things, most lethally for Sanders’s prospects in two respects: (1) They were able to control news stories through collusion with a partisan mainstream press, and (2) they controlled much of the actual machinery of the primary elections, leading to now familiar questions about the fairness of same. To the former point, here is Debbie Wasserman Schultz demanding that Chuck Todd somehow stop Mika Brzezinski at MSNBC from calling her (DWS) out.
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/4025
To the latter point, this exchange begins (at the bottom) with DNC Regional Press Secretary Eric Walker worrying about how to explain the closing of polling stations in Rhode Island:
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/12204
(I don’t have time to personally pore over 20,000 emails, but an army of readers is doing exactly that at various reddit sites and that’s how I’m keeping up on at least some of the breaking news from these emails.)
This sub reddit has the most in depth analysis of the release I’ve found so far.
https://m.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4u2khq/wikileaks_are_you_ready_for_hillary_we_begin_our/
My favorite DNC email so far, not for the first complaint here about the Democrats’ (read Hillary Clinton’s) path forward as of April 24, 2016 — having to pay to push back online against Sanders supporters (Correct the Record has already been well publicized) — but the second complaint — Hillary’s having to appeal to young liberals instead of getting down to business and “pivoting back to the center.” It’s such a drag lying all the time.
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8351
Yes. The gems just keep on roll in. Fingers crossed tomorrow or Sundays releases document undeniably illegal activities. Then the real fun starts.
That’s the ticket. Thanks!
The one thing that is abundantly clear from the dnc emails so far is that the MSM was an extension of the hillary campaign, and campaign finance laws may have been broken by hillary for victory fund(?)
Surprisingly or not surprisingly the Trump subreddit is pulling some good info as well the two sub reddits (sander and trump) seem to be pulling whatever good info they find from eachother.
https://m.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4twty8/wikileaks_dispenses_23000_hillary_emails_marked_c/
Reddit email link above
DNC Trying to use religion against sanders.
“It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
Reddit
Is this attempted insider trading?
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/1144
Marshall: “Who do we know at ARDENT FOX? NYC?”
Kaplan: “We are striking out knowing anyone. There is one dem there named hunter carter but no relationship.”
Marshall: “Good to know. Thanks. They are suing the ID Theft Co I invested in. It seems it’s a R firm.”
Kaplan: “Fuckers”
Another gem in reference to obama. Full Email has more info.
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/3317
“[Obama] is going to get paid (well deserved). I hope he invites Bernie to his Goldman speech.”
[Obama] is going to get paid
But how much he’s going to get paid depends on whether he can deliver the TPP for his overlords. Hence the heavy TPP pimpin’.
Here is the full rundown of the worst shit found so far from the release, enjoy.
/u/POLMemeMagic has put together a great, detailed list of a lot of the stuff in this leak. If you don’t know much about the leak, check out this post:
/r/The_Donald/comments/4u367e/wikileaks_release_19252_from_the_dnc_start/d5mflj8
This post will be updated. For bios on some of the people mentioned in these emails, please see /u/MrLinderman’s awesome post below.
If you have one to add, either message me or post below. Contributors so far have been credited. I appreciate their help.
Regarding Trump
Holy shit lol. They made Craigslist posts on fake Trump jobs talking about women needing to be hot for the job and “maintain hotness” https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/12803
DNC’s Trump narrative https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/1041
“The digital internet team is continuing the push to show people how dangerous Trump is.” https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/10744
Regarding Bernie
Want to know why Morning Joe suddenly did a 180? DWS to Chuck Todd. Topic is about them calling for DWS to step down. “This must stop.” https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/10945
“Hey Josh, since the Sanders camp keeps pushing stories about the money laundering, we’re prepping a Medium post from either our CFO or our CEO we want to run by you. It will sharply state that the criticisms are wrong, etc.. basically our talking points in a Medium post format with some extra detail.” https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/4091
“Making a Bernie narrative” https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11056
“If she outperforms this polling, the Bernie camp will go nuts and allege misconduct. They’ll probably complain regardless, actually.” https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/13098
“missed this… Sanders complaining about underfunded state parties, LOL”. Thanks /u/mportz https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/6530
DWS private email saying Bernie’s idea to change DNC is silly and won’t be president https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/9999
DNC and Hillary moles inside the Bernie campaign https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/4776
Trying to get someone to ask about religion at one of Bernie’s events. Trying to get him to say he’s Atheist https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11508
DNC flagging Bernie Democrats or things that threaten HRC. Thanks /u/Yo5yoman2 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/6191
DWS on Bernie staying in the race in April: “Spoken like someone who has never been a member of the Democratic Party and has no understanding of what to do” https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/5477)
Calling someone a Bernie Bro for wanting to interview DWS about money laundering, which they call “a shit topic”. Asks for an interview next week on another topic. https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/13319
Media Collaboration
“I think the best reporter to give the news to ahead of time is Greg Sargent at the Washington Post. But, the specific reporter is not as important as getting it to an outlet before the news breaks so we can help control the narrative on the front” https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11242
CNN collaboration https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/4077
More media collusion (Politico) “Vogel gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it. Let me know if you see anything that’s missing and I’ll push back.” Thanks to /u/PM_ME_OR_PM_ME
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/10808
Jake Tapper responds to collaboration: https://sli.mg/rOlZ6y Thanks /u/tsdouglas
Planting stories in the Washington Post https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8157
DNC wanting to promote pro-Hillary news during primary, discussion of “quietly sharing”. (Thanks /u/PM_ME_OR_PM_ME) https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8744
GENERAL
Asking to commit FEC violation https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/25
MONEY LAUNDERING. From Weaver. https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/6230 More on laundering https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/6697
DNC calling O’Malley a joke. Thanks /u/mportz https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/13711
“– Last night, Hillary attended two high-dollar fundraisers in New York City. The first, from 6:15 p.m. to 7:45 p.m., was at the home of Maureen White and Steven Rattner. Approximately 15 attendees contributed $100,000+ to attend. Then, from 8:15 p.m. to 9:45 p.m., she went to the home of Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Another 15 people ponied up more than 100K to attend.” https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/1238
Money from DNC donation funneled to Clinton campaign https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/6697
Correct the Record’s executive director https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/4690
“less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers, according to a POLITICO analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission filing” https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/1724
To meet Clinton at the convention is $1.7 million to $300k https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/fileid/22280/9807
Asking Burger King to form a PAC https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/999
Targeting Wall Street donors. Thanks /u/Cygnus_X https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/998 More info: “One big Clinton donor on Wall Street said that Bush donors are prime targets and that ‘we’re a big tent.’ Potential sources of support for Clinton could include people like Jack Oliver, who also served as a top fundraiser for Jeb Bush. Both Johnson and Oliver did not respond to requests for comment.The race for Wall Street cash will be intense.”- /u/Cygnus_X
Trading favors with superdelegates. (Thanks /u/PM_ME_OR_PM_ME) https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/234
Working with Deray, figurehead of BLM. Thanks /u/MyAmazingNewAcct https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/1196
DNC members “If he’s a good gay, he’ll love that this pic is with Kathy griffin.” Thanks /u/mportz https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/1042
Huge list of donors https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/fileid/20749/9434
Personal note: honestly this feels like browsing a bunch of high school girls’ emails. “Is there a fuck you emoji”, “bahahaha”, someone links to round of applause by lady gaga.
Tons of media manipulation.
Also, kinda feel bad for Bernie supporters now. The system, like trump mentioned in his speech, was against you completely.
Here is a condensed rundown of all the shady dealings found so far from the Trump subreddit.
https://m.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4u367e/wikileaks_release_19252_from_the_dnc_start/d5mflj8
Hillary just announced Tim Kaine as VP now the MSM can ignore these releases.
Two more days of releases, I’m looking forward to day 3, it’s hard to imagine they could get any more odious but tomorrows will, be worse and Sunday will bring my disgust of the DNC and hillary to previously unimaginable levels.
[UPDATE at 1:03 p.m. ET: Marshall emails to say “I do not recall this. I can say it would not have been Sanders. It would probably be about a surrogate.” We have asked him who that surrogate could possibly be.]
B.S.!
Hilarity ensues, as West Virginia KKK-ers gather round the burning cross: “The country’s gonna keep going to Hell until we get that Socialist Jew running the country….”
I did not think about it at the time… but B.S. has two meanings there haha. One being the initials of who the email was obviously about, though not the one I intended.
Bernie was described as a old Jewish landlord especially in the South.
Link? Especially in the Wikileaks material?
I meant it was in the stories about the trail especially around South Carolina. Given the Clinton behavior in other elections, it would take surprise me if they pushed it.
Atlantic Magazine luvs me some lichenologists: The Ex-Anarchist Construction Worker Who Became a World Renowned Scientist
This guy is Kerry Knudsen.
“Say his or her name” applies everywhere, doesn’t it?
Corey Robin on Reagan’s laziness
Or as Alex Cockburn used to say, if you lived under the Roman Empire would you cheer them on to become more efficient at conquering and enslaving? Trump’s indifference to foreign policy orthodoxy should be taken as a plus. In what sane world are we going to go to war over Lithuania?
I think it’s a plus that the national security class is clutching its pearls. Two lost ground wars, the Libyan debacle, squillion-dollar planes that catch on fire, corruption like there’s no tomorrow…
As with Obama, we’ll have to see who gets all the plum jobs in the Military/Intel/Security sector before we know where Trump’s really going, and by then it will be too late. And a bored, ignorant and impulsive C-in-C may turn out to be as dangerous as a gung-ho ultra like Clinton. We simply cannot know in an age when Trump and Clinton are both playing to the cheap seats and have both been known to change their positions and/or wriggle out of “contracts”. We can forget how many nice squawks Obama made and how he used reformist surrogates to signal that he was “our kinda guy”.
And then he took office.
So one destination is known: more war, theft, and lies. The second destination is unknown and may be more war, theft, and lies, but it may be less war, theft, and lies. I’ll take my chances with the second destination.
Well, if I were clairvoyant I’d know for sure, but how about these: more attacks on women’s reproductive rights, more egregious give-aways to the rich and corporations in the tax code, more “law and order” (code for smack down the blacks), more attacks on those nasty regulations and regulators, more privatization of schools and the commons (hey. Trump wants to privatize the national parks!), and more lies and denial about climate change under Trump and the Republicans than under Clinton. Watching the Republicans in action since 1981 gives me a pretty solid benchmark for what’s coming. You can try and simplify this all you want, and make absolute statements of the Nostradamus type about how “we’re all gonna dieeeeeeeee!” if Clinton is elected, but it’s more complicated than that.
But your hate feels really good, now, doesn’t it?
> But your hate feels really good, now, doesn’t it?
Hmm…
Adding… Being against “hate” seems to be today’s Democrat form of virtue signaling, so I imagine some Brock ‘droid has inserted a new drip feed into the media bloodstream.
Somewhere Shaw says: “When you beat your child, be sure you do it in anger.” For myself, I have doubts about the moral superiority of those who char brown bodies out of calculated policy vs. even those who char brown bodies out of hate. Just to work in the “you’re a racist” angle, along with the “you’re a hater” angle. Same with “bully,” where apparently a form of micro-aggression is the ultimate, and unforgiveable sin, but threatening nuclear war over Latvia is jake with the angels. It’s a funny old world.
Evidence that he wants to privatize the National Parks? I posted a link yesterday that said just the opposite based on two separate interviews, one in January and the other in March. The GOP platform favors this but then they have favored it at least since Gingrich and the early 90s.It was considered wacky then and would also be so considered now. The Gingrich crew even talked about selling off Corps of Engineer lakes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cramer-trump-public-lands_us_57910d96e4b0bdddc4d393b3
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-dont-hand-federal-lands-to-states/
But let’s say that Trump and some in a Repub controlled congress did propose such a thing. The main result would be that the Congressional Dems would finally have to develop some stones and represent what they are supposed to represent. The only way to bring back the Democratic party, if in fact that is possible, is probably by having a Republican president. The first Clinton presidency did profound harm to the Democrats. A second would probably finish them off. Arguably the Dems would have been a lot better off if Bush senior had won reelection. The result would have been: no Clintons, no Gingrich (quite possibly), no Dubya. Lesser evilism is destroying us.
Indeed.
Voting for the lesser evil, is the greater evil. (c)
Four years of harsh medicine may cure the disease. Or it may not, but if the medicine isn’t administered the disease continues unmitigated.
It’s convenient to put Trump in the “Republican” bucket with your benchmarks but a few facts would seem to get in the way of that formulation, not the least of which is the concerted effort by the entire Repub establishment to thwart him at virtually any cost. If you add in his avowed policy departures from long-held received Republican wisdom on everything from NATO to trade to bank break-up to questioning Iraq to actually stating he’d prefer a conversation with Putin over insane confrontations and provocations. And since we have to take our clues where we can find them you could add wonderful characters like Koch, Kissinger, and Rupert siding with Hilary as additional signposts. On the flip side, lining up Hilary with supposed “traditional Dem” policies from the 60’s and 70’s is equally bogus as the last 8 years and these pages have so abundantly demonstrated.
And for the record, I don’t “hate”, I “love”. I love my country and can’t stand when we bomb wounded children in MSF hospitals. I love my country and can’t stand when we let banking criminals and email leakers/liars off the hook. I love my country but can’t stand it when millions lose their livelihoods so three offshore billionaires can ship their factories overseas. And I love my country but can’t stand it when the Clinton oligarchy/Dem Party/MSM team up to install the president of their choice.
If you are a clintonite, why not come out and say so?
He’s not. He has said repeatedly here that he is voting Green. But he ( incorrectly in my view) thinks HRC is less bonkers than Trump.
This whole excessively drawn out and mostly trivial debate would go a lot smoother if we all make a concerted effort not to misrepresent each others’ opinions.
“But your hate feels really good, now, doesn’t it?” is the giveaway. “Hate” is a recurring Clinton meme. I will bet that when JL gets into the privacy of the voting booth, he will be voting for Hillary. That is just my sense from reading his thoughts over the years
I think both candidates are bonkers, but Trump strikes me as one who would be a lazy executive who would end up delegating much of the policy making to Pence, an uber uber conservative, who, with a republican majority congress, would potentially put far more bonkier domestic and foreign policies into action.
IMO, Trump, as far as the Presidency is concerned, is much more into the ego trip of being the President, and would gladly carry out the ceremonial functions of his office. However, he would be one who would rarely deal with the day to day drudgery of the position.
Huh? Vice presidents go to funerals a lot. They aren’t a power center. Even with Reagan having pretty serious Alzheimers, it was Cabinet members, not Bush to be the First, who stepped into the vacuum.
Trump’s son tried to sell Kasich on VP: “the job has 2 tasks: domestic policy, & foreign policy”.
Apparently Trump does want to be a figurehead, & delegate the actual “Presidentin’ (c) Bush43” work off to his VP, as opposed to say his Cabinet
That’s what I was saying–Trump just wants the title, but not the heavy lifting and the ultra right elites that Pence would be in service to would potentially hold sway over policy–did not mean to imply that Pence is a power center in and of himself.
Please file another round of applause in your cabinet, R.G. The ability to disagree in relative, respectful terms here (& a few other places) is worth holding onto because so much else calls for furious, intransigent cursing. The fury is the first thing trivialized if that difference is missed.
I’m astonished how the NYT and others are suddenly so afraid that Russia is about to invade the Baltics… what on earth gives them that idea? Why would Putin want to do such a thing?
Of course Krugman in today’s column managed to re-write recent history a bit, so perhaps it’s something in the water over there:
Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate
“After Russia invaded Ukraine”? That’s a bit of a stretch, and conveniently ignores the fact that the US helped instigate a coup against an elected Ukrainian leader.
Hmm… and can we think of any other recent leader who “doesn’t worry about little things like international law when he decides to invade a country”? Bueller? …Anyone?
Or a current presidential candidate who voted to support such an invasion?
The brazen hypocrisy and disingenuousness displayed by these people just astonishes me.
NPR talked about Trump’s blaming Clinton for worsening conditions in Syria, Libya, and rise of ISIS, and asked a guest to rate it’s accuracy. She (don’t recall her name) said it wasn’t fair because ISIS was caused by 2004 Iraq war which also caused the choas in the other places Trump blames on Hillary. And she said Trump attacking NATO is wrong because it protects America and Europe (from what?) and has been around a long time (well ok then). Mumbo jumbo like that just makes you switch NPR off. The part about ISIS being created by GWB with Iraq war is so bad that you can beat it on its own false narrative by saying “But Hillary voted for GWB’s Iraq war”
False flag attacks on Trump only make him stronger.
Could it be that NPR is actually working for the Republicans?
False attacks on Trump also make him stronger
Can we please use “false flag” where it applies, instead of a sort of condiment to be slathered onto whatever’s on the plate? Thanks.
WTF are you talking about: Hillary “caused ISIS? That’s your contention? It’s all her fault.
You people are fucking delusional.
She got my daughter pregnant too!
Yep. Seems to be a bit of Hillary Derangement Syndrome building in the comments section of this site.
It’s like no one recalls the role of Camp Bucca in the rise of ISIS (back in the mid 2000’s…when HRC was just a Senator from NY — and GWB was still occupying the White House):
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story
Yes, Hilary was “just a senator”. Who loudly approved and supported the policy that by the account above created ISIS. Then when it was her turn, she and her boss doubled down on that policy, so now we have the lovely state of play where State funds one terror group and the CIA funds another that made the news this week for beheading sick children. That unbelievable manifestation of the worst form of evil mankind could ever devise was greeted by State, who said they “may consider” a “pause” in their support of that group. Let’s not forget Hilary’s Benghazi “footsie” with Islamic terror, and the wonderful outcome of her policies there for the people of Libya. Before: no ISIS, After: Plenty of ISIS.
So yes, for all practical intents and purposes, Hilary = ISIS. I’m prepared to be shown how “delusional” that view may be but please start with a refuting of the above.
Thank you. Better said than I. It appears any “Hillary derangement syndrome” is entirely on the other side.
something else she stole from the republicans. remember “bush derangement syndrome”, invented by the noted psychiatrist charles krauthammer. i vaguely recall krauthammer saying something about supporting her in this election.
What better way for the wise men in Baghdad and Washington to shape Iraq’s guaranteed dismemberment via rampaging violence and systematic brutality than to bring together all the potential ‘leaders’ of any Iraqi anti-invasion struggle and have them put together their organization and plans for Iraq et al formulated right then and there in jail, where each and every word said was heard and speaker watched, or move made was recorded and tracked. The budget for achieving little pathetic ‘victories’ like this is not much – and the money available for fools and monsters to spend on total mayhem is enormous.
Yes Hillary helped create ISIS I’m surprised you don’t know that. The US is funding arming and training ISIS & Co because regimen change in Syria, under Obama & Hillary, both directly and thru Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others. And Hillary’s emails would likely show her approving all those arms sales to Saudi Arabia to be funneled to ISIS in return for donation to Clinton Foundation.
Tsk. Tsk. Those are personal emails doncha know. Just a little email banter between friends and family.
Please don’t create straw men; that’s not what he said.
Clinton is certainly responsible for her vote, in her role as a Senator, for the AUMF and the Iraq war that followed. ISIS is part of the blowback from that debacle.
However, to be fair, the debacle Clinton is personally responsible for is Libya, where she tipped the balance in favor of war.
Hillary’s in favor of an “active” foreign policy. Neo-con warmonger Robert Kagan (married to Democrat warmonger Victoria Nuland) recently held a fundraiser for Clinton.
It’s perfectly fair to tag Clinton as a warmonger, based on her record.
And was the lady not pushing the paper tiger in the White House to g’wan and shoot up “Syria” or some part of it, when Obama was planning to use chemical weapon attacks of questionable origin as the excuse to ignore international law (HAHAHAHAHAHA) once again and “bomb Syria and all that”? http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-backs-syria-strikes-president-obama/story?id=20145882. Not that in this world of false flags and sneaky Petes and spy-vs-spy and the rest that anyone, in all the Byzantine complexity and corruption, has even the ghost of a chance of really weeing, let alone understanding or trying to “put right,” all the deadly, destructive, extractive, dead-end sh&t that is convoluting and coruscating across this once fairly hospitable planet…
Credit where credit is due. It wasn’t just Libya. Ukraine, and Honduras, and a bunch of other places. Driving NATO like a truck bomb toward “confronting the Russian bear.”
Oh, who cares? Seems the species has a death wish.
Syria’s such a cluster I didn’t even want to go into it. The Libya case is a clear example of Clinton’s personal intervention tipping the scales for war, and a war that turned out to be a debacle, and charred a lot of brown people, but they’re far away, so that’s not racist.
She’s a warmonger, sure. Ok. Tell me this though: when has the war stopped rolling forward in recent history, regardless of who’s been president?
Obama didn’t invade Syria when the whole world expected it to happen.
There’s one.
Gee, I recall the Russians had a lot to do with that “reticence” by our Great Leader the Chess Player: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/09/09/russia-syria/2785703/
Who are the grownups, again? And a lot of grownups (by age, at least) do, you know, stupid stuff. Libya, Ukraine, all those little countries in the Monroe Doctrine orbit…
“nothing but a racket…”
No vitriol, eh Mr. Levy?
Krugman ….uhg!
…isn’t there some far away space rock we (mr. musk or maybe even the russians….ha!) could transport the k-man to?
I’d even chip in for the cost of freight…..
Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic just put this article out: “It’s Official: Hillary Clinton Is Running Against Vladimir Putin”. From here: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/clinton-trump-putin-nato/492332/
Neocons are going all out to derail Trump. If the neocons are against him, Trump is doing something right. Here are a couple choice extracts from the article:
Concluding paragraph:
Well, that’s unhinged.
Well, at least completely stupid and wrong-headed. But plenty of people think Hillary Clinton is the antichrist, so nuttiness abounds these days.
Well, that’s not the same thing. “The haters” seems to be the meme of the day, so I imagine some Brock ‘droid has inserted a new drip feed into the media bloodstream.
Somewhere Shaw says: “When you beat your child, be sure you do it in anger.” For myself, I have doubts about the moral superiority of those who char brown bodies out of calculated policy vs. even those who char brown bodies out of hate. Just to work in the “you’re a racist” angle, along with the “you’re a hater” angle. Same with “bully,” where apparently a form of micro-aggression is the ultimate, and unforgiveable sin, but threatening nuclear war over Latvia is jake with the angels. It’s a funny old world.
The Cory Robin post is excellent. As an added bonus it has the 1964 anti-Goldwater “Daisy” commercial.
Although I would expect most NC readers to be familiar with it, if you’ve never seen it, or it’s been a long time since you’ve seen it, give it a watch.
Actually, I’ve been hoping someone would drag “Daisy” out of mothballs – it would be a delicious irony if Trump would bring it back for use against a certain former Goldwater girl.
Now that is a truly ingenious idea…
substitute the image of clinton for the little girl.
Use grown up Monique Corzilius
Wow, I had never heard of or seen this ad, it is a good piece of campaign propaganda.
Yes, it would be extremely ironic if it was used against the hillary/nuland combo. But also (unsurprisingly) closer to the potential reality of what her foreign policy could likely lead to, than the FP pundits would ever admit.
Also see this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWusOhZpq7w
Which never actually aired.
Wow, thanks for sharing. To think one of the candidates was an ardent goldwater girl. Prescient.
> I had never heard of or seen this ad
One of the things about being an old codger is that (speaking for myself only) we remember a lot stuff and we remember places we’ve been before (at least while we can).
I’ve started to link to the more famous pieces of old-time political trivia, and “for those of you who came in late,” be sure to insist on having references unpacked that you don’t understand. Because the pros know these references and many more, as part of their stock in trade.
Thanks. Will do. I always find historic, content, facts, parallels (or mirrors) of the present, fascinating.
In a ‘sane world’ people would realize that there is no way we are going to war for Lithuania or Poland or Latvia etc., because Russia has not the least interest in invading any of them. The default mainstream position in Poland and the Baltics is anti-Russian bordering on hysteria. Some members of the current Polish government actually believe that the Russians created artificial fog to cause the crash of the plane containing the Polish president and other ranking members of the armed forces.
In a sane world, the Washington and Brussels would encourage mending relations between Russia and the smaller countries on its borders. But we don’t live in a sane world. Washington is exploiting the situation to drum up more fear and hysteria – and defense contracts.
Similar things could be said about the issues in the south China Sea.
“no way we are going to war for Lithuania or Poland or Latvia”
Yes but what about Freedonia?
Gareth
July 22, 2016 at 4:59 pm
Uh, congress doesn’t declare war anymore…..and I’m pretty sure we have a base, landing rights, and a drone station in Freedonia….which we pay 1.7 billion per year – we will pay any price, bear any burden, blah, blah, blah to prevent Sylvanian encroachment into the territories of the freedom loving Freedonians…..
I sure wish they would bring back Freedonia fries…..
I think it’s beachfront property. It’s always about beachfront property.
Also, it’s been known since the 50s that Russia has been working on a weather control machine. I believe it was Senator McCarthy that divulged this piece of intel. Some well placed intel people think Russians have advanced this technology to the point where they can make global temperatures increase. This will cause drought in the Western hemisphere and a collapse in agriculture and our food supply. Bad Weather ruining our harvest and livestock! How ironic the Russians finally figured out how to give us bad weather.
However, things work out much better for Russia. Siberia warms up and melts exposing rich farmlands. CIA intel indicates Putin has been working thru his Swiss banking contacts to arrange a deal with Nestle to bottle the Siberian ice melt and sell it to the West. Price? An outrageous American Eagle coin per 24 bottle case! That’s $50 a bottle, depending on the market price of gold – and Russia is one of the few places you can mine gold anymore, so who knows how long that price is good. They really got us by the short ones there.
Somebody has to do something about Putin and his Russians before they destroy America, the American way of life, and the American dream, which are values held dear by Americans everywhere. From the borders of Crimea westward all the way to the International Pacific Waters 8 miles off the coast of Siberia – Americans everywhere are calling for action! This threat must be taken seriously.
“natural rate of interest”
So….the central banks search for this after buying 20 trillion in long term sovereign bonds???
After another $20 trillion, they will find time (right now, too busy buying, hand over fist, to follow up) to ask that same question.
Good read except for the bits about how the poor should vote democrat because it is somehow ‘in their interests’
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism
Supposedly Clinton is announcing her uninspiring VP today… via text?
Really now? Her goal should be transparency and radical (virtual) door knocking. She needs to change people’s opinion fast if she expects to win. Her presence needs to be all over… but instead she is giving out her info early… to people who already follow her. Fits the pattern of obliviousness though.
(I write generally here, personally I hope she picks someone atrocious like Kaine, I hope she loses-come what may but Democrat validation is the last thing we need, and I cannot wait for the Trump debates).
She’s a loser. She won only the senator slot that was given to her on a silver platter. She lost to an upstart dude from Illinois. Now, she will lose to The Donald.
She lucked out back in 2000.
Remember that senatorial campaign? Her original opponent was Giuliani. And then Rudy was diagnosed with cancer and had to leave the race.
The replacement was Rick Lazio, and beating him was a no-brainer.
I don’t know if anyone has seen the ad for Hillary’s America, (I assume it’s play or a movie), but she looks like the hilltop savior statue in Rio.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/hillarys-prayer-hillary-clintons-religion-and-politics
She probably believes it too.
And here I thought Ted Cruz lost the bid for the presidency. Is Ted Cruz in drag really what anyone wants?
Given the extremely odd video of Hillary circulating today perhaps it is desired to keep her off camera until whatever triggered that episode can be put to bed.
Her health and the cause of that indecent seem like a very taboo subject.
Wait what happened today?
One thing I honestly don’t get: if literally *any* Democrat except Hillary were running against Trump, it wouldn’t even be close. Biden? Elizabeth Warren? Sanders? – Take your pick. Hillary has outspent Trump something like 15:1 with little to show for it.
So here’s the question: what is it about Hillary that makes her a ‘must have’? Is she *that* good?
You’re assuming the Dem machine wants to win, but they know the flow of $ to their constituencies (the MIC, the Surveillance-industrial complex, Big Insurance, Big Pharma, bank criminals, offshore hedge fund billionaires) will continue no matter who “wins”. Why get all of the headaches of governing when you can spend a few billion ad agency dollars and get your cheese in the end either way?
You’re right. It’s just the Clinton machine metastatizing everywhere. 45 Democratic senators and they picked the one who is already intensely disliked by a large percentage of the population.
The Klintonite Krime Konspirators are strong in the Force. Clinton is the preferred “Obama 2.0” Presidential candidate of OverClass members everywhere.
Celebrity. Hillary can command command phalanx of loyal supporters and can avoid answering questions. Can you imagine Kaine know the trail in NH with his record? I worked for his 05 campaign. He could run as a good candidate because he was just mayor and lt governor behind Warner who was was a good governor. The first thing he did was cut taxes on the wealthy. There is no way he is reelected in 2018 as Senator. Hillary was an embarrassment when she was faced with questions because of her record. Obama’s rallies protected him.
I went to Edwards, Biden, Richards, and Kucinich events at different points in 2007, and the questions they received were tougher than the ones lobbed by the media to Clinton and Obama. None of these Democrats will have that protection in the early states.
She’s the banks’ fav. If she’s good enough for banks, she’s good enough for all dem elites.
Nuff said.
Bought an actual hard copy of the NY Times today (on holiday) and David Sanger’s “analysis” of a Trump foreign policy made my brain explode in the final ‘graf:
[My emphasis]
Envisioning Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy: The U.S. Steps Back
Does Sanger live in some parallel universe in which the Obama administration (and its predecessors for, oh, the last 50 years or so) hasn’t given “a free pass” to e.g. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Israel, and others despite a long long list of human rights violations?
Frankly (as others have noted), Trump’s non-interventionism, if he actually stuck to it, would be the best thing to come out of the election. (Second would be the cancelling of TPP, if he stuck to that. Contrast his opposition to “free trade” [sic] treaties with Hillary’s apparent choice of pro-TPP Kaine.)
Jeffrey St Clair at Counterpunch had some interesting musings on Trump’s speech, worth a read. Sampling:
Late Night, Wine-Soaked Thoughts on Trump’s Jeremiad
I wish we could have the apparently caring, uber-progressive Trump painted by Ivanka, he seems like a pretty good guy–cares about women, minorities, the working class. Overall, though I thought Trump did pretty well, and there are definitely people who will respond to his themes. The MSM is painting it like some sort of Mussolini or Hitler speech this morning… the powers that be must be scared…
From the St Clair link, for which thanks:
Trump did, and I saw that, but wanted to move on to the fascism mini-essay. Thanks for pointing it out.
NOTE They don’t intersect because they’re siloed, and they’re siloed because that’s how both the Democrat Party and their liberal funders would like them to be.
When Chris Matthews is your best insight to the working class, that’s scary. (But better class than race – CM’s chat with Michael Che and Colin Jost the other night was awful.) I noticed they gave Chris Hayes the week off. I presume he still works there.
Justin Raimondo, a NY born San Franciscan, says that Trump’s hyperbolic way of speaking is New Yorkese and shouldn’t necessarily be taken as some sort of window into the soul. Also I read an article that suggested everything Trump knows about politics came from his association with the World Wrestling Federation and therefore his campaign rhetoric is more sports style trash talk than anything else. I do believe many liberals freak out over the hyperbolic rhetoric without conceding that much of it may just be an act. After all if Trump did start acting like Mussolini what would that seemingly sweet daughter of his say?
In an article linked here, Dilbert’s Scot Adams pointed out that Trump has a history in deed if not word of being very cautious. All his marriages had pre-nups, many of his projects are just licensed branding with no financial risk, his biography shows no record of his ever even getting into a physical fight.
But for sure, there’s no certainty in what he might do if president….all tea leaves.
> All his marriages had pre-nups, many of his projects are just licensed branding with no financial risk, his biography shows no record of his ever even getting into a physical fight.
Indeed, he sounds like your standard wealthy cowardly jerk, which places him dead center in the middle of everyone who’s ruled our country for the last 30 years. Which hasn’t turned out all that well if you’re not in the 1%.
Doing projects with no (personal) financial risk — only smart business people do that. Your average self-employed workers take risks.
But for politicians, that’s a standard operating procedure.
So compare that with bush or shill… Wouldn’t you say they are both risk takers that gambled with ME adventures that lost? And I mean lost on every possible parameter, whether thinking of oil and profits, standing in ME, terrorists, etc?
So what exactly is wrong with somebody that tries to avoid or minimize risk?
Pavel
July 22, 2016 at 3:31 pm
I entirely agree with your analysis of Sanger’s piece – the “meritorious” club has a dogma that makes the 14 century Catholic church look like Burning Man…
Thanks fresno dan
and thanks for the smile engendered by the Burning Man reference!
Quick correction: “All Right Now” was not recorded by Bad Company, but rather by, for my money, the greatest rock and roll band of all time–Free.
It’s an easy mistake to make as Paul Rodgers sang for both groups. Bad Company was essentially he and Simon Kirke taking the Free formula and replacing astronomically talented members Paul Kossoff (who had dependency issues) and Andy Fraser (who consistently clashed with Paul Rodgers) with veterans Mick Ralphs (Mott the Hoople) and Boz Burrell (King Crimson) to create a stadium-ready supergroup.
While the move was a success commercially, the Free magic was never quite duplicated.
Thanks. I relied on a lyrics search.
Good interview: “Robert Scheer: Neofascist Trump or Corporate Hawk Clinton Are No Choice at All”
Is he saying Hillary is not a neo-fascist but a traditional fascist?
I’m waiting for someone in the press to say, “Now that we got rid of Bernie, we have two crappy choices.”
Followed up with, “Water is wet! News at 10.”
Scheer is great, but notice how Jay’s questions and follow-ups often don’t quite align with Scheer….
Jay’s steering the interview away from the discussion just when you wanted the current topic fleshed out is often annoying but I do appreciate his historical perspective/agenda.
Ha. Well I just saw a car with a hillary 2016 sticker pasted directly above a “war is not the answer” one. I think it sums up the cognitive dissonance that is rampant on the pseudo left perfectly. And I got a good chuckle out of it.
i think i’ve seen one clinton car sticker the last couple of days, and no trumps.
Still a bunch of Bernie signs in yards here (MN). Which is nice to see.
There is a very persistent collection of Bernie yard signs in central Tucson.
Mine went into the trash on the day he endorsed you-know-who.
Can you guess at the proportion of signs that are now up versus signs that were up?
My sign was stolen out of my yard in the middle of the night , likely by one of my CRUZ! or TRUMP! neighbors when Bernie was doing really well. Made me buy a surveillance camera setup. And more ammo.
Anyone thinking of voting for Trump might want to read this:
Jane Mayer’s piece on Trump. She interviewed Tony Schwartz, the co-author (real author) of “the Art of the Deal”… which he now regrets and is doing everything he can to expose Trump…
Most of the piece is about Schwartz’s regret that he wrote the book at all and pumped up this carnival barker. sounds like Drumpf has ADD or ADHD. Nothing holds his attention beyond a trivial amount of time.
We have some terrifying candidates running for CiC
It’s like the Oscars.
Every year, you must have a best actress.
The throne has to be occupied by someone.
Perfect? No.
How imperfect?
ADD or ADHD imperfect?
Carnival barker imperfect?
Hiring a ghost writer imperfect?
I am perfect sure there is more there to judge how much a sociopath, assuming none of us is infallible. No saints, goddesses walking among us today.
Well, you might think of this as the Oscars but I don’t… perhaps I should b/c it’s surely a sh*t show. I won’t be voting for either of the main ‘contenders’… both are equally terrifying, though differently
It’s not a perfect analogy and I don’t watch that show, have not for, I don’t know, 30 years?
But someone has to occupy the office.
And someone will.
Well, if I had to draw a distinction with regard to who is worse, I would say
Trump is analogous to Mussolini – loud, flamboyant, braggadocio, lazy, incompetent, dictatorial.
Hillary is analogous to the H guy – not nearly as smart as she thinks she is, but she very much has plans for the world, and controls a party apparatus….which is the problem
To quote Ted Cruz, people will have to vote their conscience….
Some one is going to decide the fate of the country.
To sign or not sign TPP?
Who is to carry the nuclear launch code?
The office will be open for business.
Some one will sit there.
The problem is that we have not one but two sociopaths running for president this year. Hillary seems completely oblivious or uncaring about the hundreds of thousands of innocents killed by the various wars she has supported (Iraq) or helped start (Libya), and indeed revels in the extrajudicial killing of Qaddafi: “We came, we saw, he died [laughs]”…
Trump’s sociopathy thus far has resulted in a few bankruptcies, many lawsuits and con jobs (Trump U), and assorted acts of narcissism. HRC’s on the other hand has caused death and destruction and chaos across the Mideast, north Africa, and an migrant crisis in Europe, to name just a few.
Agreed. Both are sociopaths. I think they are both incredibly dangerous… tho differently. And perhaps the reason that Trump hasn’t caused the spectacular amount of mayhem that $hillary has caused is b/c though famous, loud and celeb, he’s not had that kind of power. I have no idea what he’d do w a lot of power. But he scares the sh*t out of me… not enough to vote for $hillary. That’s for sure.
Two sociopaths for the price of one, when it comes to the wife-and-husband team.
She is one sale…50% off… buy one and get another free.
Good point. That is exactly why the argument that Hillary has indirectly and directly caused the deaths of more innocent people compared to Trump doesn’t fly very far. Guaranteed if we put Trump in the Oval Office for 4 years, he (or his staff) will cause the indirect and/or direct deaths of many innocent people too.
it could have been even worse, cruz clinton.
Essential reading. Yves linked to it a few days ago. Some things bear repeating.
Both Trump and Clinton are sociopaths. Neither belongs near the presidency. Given that, pragmatically, the best election outcome is Clinton in the White House with a fiercely Republican Congress, itself preferably hamstrung by a Tea Party insurgency. Let the branches cancel out. They’ll cause less mischief while gridlocked. If optimistic, hope for a Clinton impeachment, particularly around influence peddling, which might shake the Democratic Party to its foundations and render it vulnerable to the Sanders of 2020.
Whatever you think of Trump, if he comes to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Republicans will control the entire federal government. That is not a prospect to look upon with indifference. Already reports are emerging that Trump principally wants to play president on TV, delegating the boring stuff, like domestic and foreign policy, to others. I dislike the Clintons as much as anyone, but it’s a mistake to let a passionate contempt for Hillary induce political myopia. In the context of a Republican Congress, she’d be, if I may borrow from Glen Ford over at BAR, the less effective evil.
You do seem, however, to be indifferent to all the people who will be at the wrong end of the bombs and missiles she’ll quite likely be launching. Also your assumption that Hillary would be more at odds with a Republican congress seems strange given that the Kochs are strongly thinking of coming out for Hillary and most of the Republican establishment despises Trump. And your comment is salted with typical assumptions that have yet to be proven. For example “reports are emerging” that Trump will be hands off therefore it must be true. “Trump is a sociopath” because….everybody says so.
The reality is we know what Hillary is and if given the reins of US foreign policy she’ll be happy to show us yet again. And domestically it’s a safe bet that her first official act will be signing TPP. Anyone who claims to “know” what Trump might do is just blowing smoke.
You’re right. Let us stream forth from our voting booths in small-d democratic welcome for the peaceable kingdom surely in store under a unitary Republican government. No bombs and missiles from them. And now with respect for LGBTQ rights too!
Really, if you can’t see narcissistic sociopathy in Trump, ain’t much to say.
it’s just that we see it, in a more dangerous form, in clinton, too. trump might divert funds to carving his likeness on mt rushmore, clinton wants to carve out a greater american empire.
i think she would go along with the republicans, or vice versa, on crucial issues like support for more wars, fracking, inequality, and the tpp. i don’t k now what trump will do, but the fact so many neocons are campaigning against him encourages me.
“i think she would go along with the [R]epublicans, or vice versa, on crucial issues”
The point is, they won’t go along with her. The pattern of the past 6 years — when Republican “legislators” cock blocked Obama at every turn — will continue with a Hillary Clinton Presidency. While traditional Beltway insider Republicans dislike Trump, they are unlikely to thwart him as publicly and continuously as they would a Democrat. Especially Hillary.
yeah they will. they will go along with neocon adventures, they’re republicans. they will go along with the tpp, just as they have been doing all along. she is a republican on foreign policy.
they will go along with her in continuing to dismantle the remnants of the new deal. they will go along with not prosecuting bankers, and rattling sabers at russia and china. as someone pointed out, look at how much bill clinton accomplished working with the republicans to screw the middle class.
Recall the McConnell strategy: Give Obama nothing. It brought a party moribund after W. back to life. And the Turtle isn’t a Tea Partier. Expect more of same and then some with Crooked Hillary.
About The Art of the Trade Deal. What, exactly, does Don J. expect to get from Mexico, Canada, China? He’s a mite vague on the details. That’s because his shtick is to bellow “You’re fired!” He did it to the Republican Party. It got him the nomination and his name in huge capital letters over the convention Jumbotron. But if he turns around and signs a “better” TPP, which his VP and party are all in for, will anyone truly be surprised? It’s not as if he’s ever gone back on his word. It’s his bond. He’s said so.
I think Trump’s only real interest is in winning. But there’s something to his claim that, being rich already, he doesn’t need to grift in the same way the Clintons do. So if he achieves his goal and wins then why should he stab his voters in the back and sign some modified TPP? He does care about his reputation which is why he plasters his name on everything.
It’s true that Trump as president may just be a big stalemate with little happening but is that so bad? Obama’s signature accomplishment–the ACA–is a boondoggle and we’d be better off if he had done nothing. The Dems’ game is to keep the balls in the air whereas the country needs for the extending and pretending to come to a halt. Neither candidate is likely to solve the domestic mess in any case. The only place the president has real power is in foreign policy which is why Hillary should be feared.
Actually, everything with the Trump brand on it is a potential target if people get, er, upset, so Trump is vulnerable to retaliation in a distributed way, which neither the Clintons as individuals or the office of the Presidency are.
Hmm.
The last time we had a Clinton in the White House and a GOP Congress, we got lower taxes, welfare reform, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
Yes, the Rich got extremely low tax rates, which Obama extended. The more effective evil has been the Democrats, both Clintons and Obama. Welfare reform ended welfare, thanks to Bill. The end of Glass Steagall(Bill, once again) gave us the Crash. while Obama gave more money to Wall St. Nor will anyone go to jail for theft, fraud or even sneezing wrong. Things are going exceptionally well for the Rich, but the poor whites work don’t have a living wage in a long time, jobs move to China/Mexico.
Really good times for some, indeed. More “Grand Bargains!” Or TPP, NAFTA, thanks to Bill once again.
a
Are you suggesting the repeal of Glass-Steagall was a good thing?
I don’t understand your point (assuming you have one).
My point is that the last Clinton presidency rubber-stamped pretty much everything the GOP Congress wanted, with disastrous results.
Re: Trump
There seems to be a lot more going on compared to the last election or maybe it’s just that I’m paying more attention now. Having seen the speech on TV, it was interesting to see how good it ended up being. Was it on the level of MLK? Nope, but interesting nonetheless. I don’t know if it was correctly-timed oppo or not, but there was a moment in the speech where he states “I will not stand for injustice!” and a protester showed up, which CNN didn’t show, but in standard Trump rally fashion, the crowd started to chant until the protestor left.
Then, on CNN right after, Ana Navarro (sp?) flipped her lid over having Sheriff Joe Arpaio be one of the speakers. It makes me wonder if she would have flipped if there was a Hispanic speaker on the last night as opposed to the first night.
Finally, regarding Pokemon Go and the question quoted above, there was talk of Nintendo making health monitors/entering the health business, which could be the perfect transition for Pokemon Go, so there’s that.
Bullshit. The phone make compromising transmissions when it connects to the cell network, It identifies you (IMEI) and your position (Cell Tower Triangulation) BY DESIGN.
Not while in airplane mode, BY DESIGN… unless the device has been compromised. Please read bunniestudios for accurate information.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/22/officials-put-second-north-miami-police-officer-on-leave-for-conflicting-statements-about-shooting-of-unarmed-man/?utm_term=.8ee2a9204e4d
A day before Aledda was named, a police union official said that the officer had actually been aiming for the man with autism, rather than Kinsey, when he opened fire.
John Rivera, president of the Miami-Dade County Police Benevolent Association, called the shooting an accident and said Aledda thought that the man with the toy had a gun.
“Fearing for Mr. Kinsey’s life, [Aledda] discharged his firearm,” Rivera said during a news conference Thursday. “In trying to save Mr. Kinsey’s life, he missed and accidentally struck Mr. Kinsey.”
========================================
I told ya so……In a post yesterday, I said I suspected that the police might use the excuse that they were actually trying to hit the autism patient…..
AND that is wrong for any number of reasons – the least being that it is an unobstructed view in broad daylight. I mean, even from a newspaper photo it doesn’t appear to be a gun. If this is SWAT, don’t they have scopes on the rifle?
Man, this is reminds me of the old Vietnam adage, we had to destroy the village to save the village.
Because trying to shoot a stationary, relatively calm mentally challenged person is such a better explanation…
Thank the officer’s lucky stars there was a scapegoat around.
I’m just going to say it. Every time I see Trump equated with fascism I immediately translate it into “vote Hillary or else.” It should not be seen as a coincidence that the same media outlets who were so slanted against Sanders are suddenly pushing this narrative so hard. I’m a little shocked at how well it worked. Timed perfectly with Sanders capitulation, it’s there primarily so people who supported him are too scared to vote 3rd party.
You attack him with justification, you succeed.
With false attacks, he wins.
This guide works with all candidates.
I read earlier this morning, can’t remember where now, that at first they played George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” and the Harrison Foundation immediately called to tell them to stop playing it.
“If fascism is “the merger of state and corporate power”, have not both Democrats and Repblicans already arrived at that point? Further, on what grounds are we to make the Sophie’s Choice between the merger of state and corporation at the national level, a la Trump (“Make America great again) and the surrender of national sovereignty to corporations at the international level, a la Clinton and Tim Kaine’s “gold standard” TPP and its ISDS system?”
Either way, we’re screwed. Trump says he’s against TPP, Pence is a long-time advocate for it. Hillary (a long-time advocate for it) says she’s against it while Tim Kaine, the presumptive VP pick?, has said he’s for it.
I’m with Robert Scheer: there’s no choice. And maybe I will vote for Jill Stein but, honestly, she’s completely inadequate and so is the Green Party.
Trump speech: a lot of red meat thrown everywhere but nothing on the dinner plate to eat.
Having a child strongly encourages one to better one’s “maturity” level, it is said. I believe that would apply to the Green Party as well, and even if not, who cares, as long as the other two are put on notice that their mandate is a joke and everyone knows it?
trumps son said dad will make Amerika great again and pence is going to run domestic and foreign policy.
Goes with a comment yesterday trump will give the wh to pence a buy something near by.
Sounds like fun:-(
Transcript of Trump’s acceptance speech as written [Donald J. Trump]. Cheekily, there are 282 footnotes. This is actually both clever by the Trump campaign, and important as a yardstick for the allegiances of the political class. Why? Fact-checking. Here’s Vox: “Trump says: ‘Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement.’ In fact:… Ruling: Baseless” [Vox staff, Vox].
======================
UH, its better than that – hmmmmm, or do I mean its WORSE than that???? Apparently, VOX doesn’t READ VOX, or VOX doesn’t believe VOX….
==========================
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/8/9273139/murder-rates-rising-sharply
“A new report from the FBI comes with a troubling finding: In the first six months of 2015, the total number of violent crimes rose across the country by 1.7 percent and murders by 6.2 percent compared to the first six months of 2014.”
Who will guard the guards?
Who will fact-check the fact-checkers?
Granted the NBA is not in season now (there is a men’s Basketball team for the Olympics made up of mostly league players making the rounds, however), but if they did this, it would be all over the news. In any event the WNBA players, which is made up of over 70% African American women and does not pay well, speaking out: http://fusion.net/story/328651/wnba-media-boycott/
and it doesn’t sound like they are going to stop advocating any time soon.
Good for them and right they don’t pay well most players have to have a job in the off season. I had season tickets to the first women league in San Jose, Calif. Great BB and players were paid well but nba was able to crush them because of teeebeee rights.
The ABA, which was part player owned -much better league. The WNBA pays so little it often loses some of the best players because their overseas team will pay them not to play in the summer season. Personally, i think the NBA wants this league to stagnate; it certainly does not want it in any way to challenge their men’s league for viewers which could be conceivable in some markets if promoted better. (The Houston Comets had so many sellouts back in the Cooper/Swoopes days.) The elite women’s college game IMO is much better promoted.
It sounds like the ladies are trying to involve the men’s league more, which is a possibility. They share the same Union, which is led by a brilliant African American female lawyer. And certainly some of the NBA “stars” have been giving signals that they are itching to become more involved as community leaders. And I’m wondering about what sort of statements may be made by Olympic athletes this summer.
Statements? As in John Carlos and Tommie Smith in 1968?
I don’t know but i do know some very vocal and well known African American athletes are competing, such as both of the Williams sisters, so possibly some will use that “patriotic” stage and their representation of the States, plus the recent death of Ali, to make some public points about our ongoing racism in this country.
IIRC, Sererna Williams already has, during a pressie after winning the Wimbledon singles title.
From a Union and labor empowerment perspective some here might be interested in reading about Michele A. Roberts, the NBPA president: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/outside-shooter/
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/outside-shooter/389549/
Rauner publicly apologizes for calling half of CPS teachers ‘virtually illiterate’
In Rauner’s defense, he didn’t put anything into that email that Rahm Emanuel, Arne Duncan and other Dem `reformers’ don’t say behind closed doors. He should have used Snapchat.
Don’t forget Penny Pritzker.
By the way, Lambert’s comments and bon mots in the links section today were not only outstanding as usual, but particularly informative, interesting, and insightful.
And my waders took longer to empty out than usual, believe me. Thank you!
Had to get out the power washer, eh? Wait’ll the next convention! Hehe. Thank you, though!
Scott Adams on Trump’s nomination-acceptance speech last night:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/147798324931/my-opinion-of-trumps-convention-speech
This is interesting
Well now if that don’t raise an eyebrow around here, then I suppose nothing will.
Re Trump and how his campaign evolved.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/how-the-haters-made-trump?utm_term=.vnY9pqXoP#.utJ72Vd4W
Like I said. “Haters” now in the Brock drip feed…
I’m quite certain they’ve been observed for a long while now….by the fish themselves. The human-centric tunnel vision of our species boggles the mind. It spells our well-deserved doom. But also the unearned doom of members of many other species who have as much claim to this planet as we ever had.
To hell with us.
“Let me repeat again, stay away from Fukushima. What’s that, you can’t hear my vocalization? There must be a container ship heading towards the Panama Canal above us now.”
Virginia court invalidates Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s order restoring felon voting rights
Democrats play to fund raise and list build; Republicans play to win.
How’s that demographic destiny working for you, DNC?
democrats are good at losing democratic votes too, almost 100k in brooklyn.
They don’t care about winning, their only concern is to keep the K Street/ Wall Street money spigot flowing!
Re: Vox analysis of Trump’s acceptance speech:
“The wee problem here is that Trump backs up that claim with material at footnotes 19, 20, 21 and 22, and Vox doesn’t engage with the footnotes”
The Vox article, IMO, does address the claim that “decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement.” And their conclusion that it’s “baseless” is likely correct in that the footnoted articles Team Trump uses to “back up” their claim don’t actually appear to indicate that the Obama administration’s supposed “rollback of criminal enforcement” is the cause of the observed reversal. So, while the crime statistics are not in question, Trump’s stated cause is, IMO, highly speculative — and, according to the Vox analysis, “unlikely”:
In fact, footnotes 24 and 26 reference a WaPo article from January titled, “More People Were Murdered Last Year Than In 2014, And No One’s Sure Why”. Similarly, footnote 22 references a Washington Times article from May: “Police Grasp For Answers As Homicides, Violent Crimes Spike In U.S. Cities.”
Seems fair to say that there’s no definitive evidence to indicate WHY violent crime rates in a number of cities has spiked recently (hence the “No One’s Sure Why” and “Police Grasp for Answers”).
Now, I guess it’s possible that Trump (and Trump alone!) knows the reason why…but I doubt it. If the police themselves are still “grasping for answers”, it seems entirely appropriate to label Trump’s charge that it’s Obama’s fault as “baseless.”
Right! And so my question becomes, if an NC commenter can engage directly with the material, why cannot Vox, which IIRC got a $250 million infusion of venture capital?
No Clinton VP announcement yet heading into Friday evening AP
I read on CNN that it was “postponed” due to the cross optics with the Germany shooting. They did not want to appear insensitive and like they didn’t have a handle on forgein affairs, it related.
To me it looks like they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. The world is never static and shouldn’t our leaders’ job be to think well and swiftly?
It’s Kaine. So awesome.
But people ought to be proud to be Democrats right now. You know, we’re a happy warrior party. And this Congress has every reason to be very, very proud of the heavy lifting that they have done. TK
Just heard on msnbs: If the clinton/kaine ticket is a winner, governor terry mccauliffe will appoint the next senator from Virginia.
mccauliffe can even appoint himself if he wants to. Another clinton debt paid.
Clinton McKaine 2016!
… plus he’s a Hahhhhvid lawyer — perfect match for a Yale lawyer.
If the ticket is not a winner? Will see a Kaine Mutiny?
Ha! Yes! What a “fantastic” choice!
His best line? “Rose…b..ud…”
interesting coincidence, if I recall correctly, that Trump had to postpone his VP announcement due to another tragedy.
It was reported that he spent that time regretting his decision.
Kaine’s sole redeeming feature is that he’s not Mark Warner.
Can Hillary and Kaine reconcile their (ostensible) differences over TPP?
Yes. Hillary will be getting back on board with TPP soon enough. Problem solved.
Sure, but not till late January.
Let the beat sweetening commence:
Tim Kaine: A Self-Effacing Senator in a Sharp-Elbows Era [NYT]
You can see why a Goldwater Girl would go for him.
“Your mission: get that TTP thread through the eye of the needle without alienating those pesky progressives.”
We feel better already knowing we will not be alienated.
Plus, if anything happens to Hillary, he’ll be our Decision Maker in the most powerful job on the planet, or even known universe, if Kodos continues to disappoint me and not show up for this election.
As governor Kaine had a horrible record on abortion rights. In 2007 NARAL gave him an F.
I believe he has “evolved.”
Gerry Connolly, Terry Mac, Ralph North am, Dick Cranwell, Harris Miller, Dick Saslaw.
Virginia has some pretty horrific Democrats.
Warner was a much better governor. Kaine really was atrocious.
I think you’re mistaking “Youngish Wonks” for “DNC Surrogates” in your narrative above.
Re. Hill-Veepstakes, just announced: It’s Kaine as rumored. Hitting the “pudgy pink politician” demographic … not sure how big of a panderer he is, but feel free to add to the alliteration if true.
MSM touting the “foreign policy experience, service on the Senate Armed Services Committee” – so he’s on board with the ME-regime-hope-and-changey program, and knew all about the Benghazi gun-running operation, then?
He also supported Virginia’s right-to-work law and the TPP. As a FB friend from the old FDL community wrote, wonder how the AFL-CIO is gonna spin that one.
They’ll get over their butt hurt and learn to love getting screwed! It’s the new winning narrative from team Hillary.
Eat your heart out, Cory Booker! Too bad for you, Latin@s! And a special dollop of schadenfreude for Elizabeth Warren, who not only ruined her brand by auditioning as Clinton’s attack dog, but allowed Clinton to use her as Clinton head-faked left to Sanders supporters.
Drinks all round. On the house!
+++
If she was going to punk us, she should have waited until after the election, like they usually do; she’s clearly given up on the Sanders voters and must be convinced she’ll do better with the moderate, NeverTrump crowd.
Tim Kaine…ugh; I guess Mitt was unavailable.
Kaine on Sanders: Sanders is ‘an incredibly risky bet’ for commander in chief.
And that Clinton is going after the moderate Republican vote, and kicking the left, couldn’t be more clear. Bustle:
It might seem so, but not to Clinton.
If they can continue the rigging of the system, and do a good job of it, this will not hurt a bit.
That will work, until it doesn’t.
When I grew up in the Midwest, the Mississippi or the Ohio flooding was a periodic story. There’s a huge volume of water way upstream now, gathering force, and no way to divert it. I would say… go long sandbags. At the very least. That is what this year feels like to me.
I feel similarly.
What happens to a nightmare prolonged?
Yes, I think so. There was no “Sanders’ movement”. There are a lot of people who thought Sanders spoke for them and so supported him. It was never about Sanders, it was about the issues. So Sanders endorsing Clinton, as he said he would in the necessity, will have little effect on the vote of those who voted for him in the primaries.
After the ridiculous Republican convention, I almost thought that I would hold my nose and pull the handle for Hillary. Now I am not sure. Vote for Trump or not vote? I guess I will fall back on my initial inclination and write in Bernie.
Depending on where you live, a vote for Trump might actually have an impact on the outcome. And why vote for Bernie at all? Bernie supports Hillary and doesn’t want your vote. Go ahead and ask him; he’ll tell you to vote for Hillary. They’re two pees in a pod now.
Jill Stein
Even Moulitsas is less than happy…
“…My problem with Kaine is that the Clinton campaign, rather than use this pick to excite the party and truly bring it together, now has to deal with new discontent and anger, and will waste how many weeks convincing people that Kaine isn’t all that bad—weeks that could’ve been spent unified and singularly focused on Trump. It is absolutely a wasted opportunity and a self-inflicted wound. I’d garner that it’s downright idiotic.
Any number of candidates could’ve had us here celebrating tonight, instead we’re relitigating the primary wars, and really, who the fuck had the energy to do that? Remember, there were two big objections to Clinton—Wall Street and Trade. Kaine is great on all those other things except … Wall Street and Trade. Clinton literally just reinforced and validated the primary arguments against her. So yeah, here were are, in discord, on the eve of our convention…”
Kaine is bad on many issues, not just Wall Street and trade.
-crime
-tax cuts for the wealthy
-party organizing
-abortion
-Taliban Bob his republican successor worked very hard to change the voting restoration process for felons In Virginia to remove the responsibility from the governor in case there was another Kaine who simply didn’t do it.
-mountain top removal Kaine and Governor Koal are his nicknames
-abdication of his job as governor to mug for Obama, and Virginia had momentum to upgrade transportation Infrastructure
-public private partnerships
-slavish devotion to tobacco, honest to god tobacco
Kaine is a vile miscreant, but he is friendly in person.
im just beside myself with excitement, we’re all kainiacs now.
Hillary’s raising Kaine.
Why would anybody waste their time comparing Trump to a fascist?
All fascists are nationalists, but not all nationalists are fascists. It’s easy to see why an anti-national globalist neoliberal would deliberately wish to confuse these things. But why should anybody else do so?
It is not hard to find, in the modern history of the English-speaking countries, a much closer and more interesting object of comparison.
Yesterday I thought about Joseph Chamberlain. He was a British business tycoon and populist orator who campaigned against free trade around the turn of the 20th century. He straddled the boundary between liberals and conservatives on many other issues.
Needless to say, Joseph Chamberlain was no fascist. Of course, neither is Donald Trump.e
Trump is labeled a fascist because it is an accurate description of his campaign. I don’t think Roger Griffin or Umberto Eco are “young liberal wonks”. Here are their (abbreviated for space) descriptions of fascism (as taken from Wikipedia)
Eco – “The Cult of Tradition”, “The Rejection of modernism”, “The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake”, “Disagreement Is Treason”, “Fear of Difference”, “Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class”, “Obsession with a Plot” (the hyping-up of an enemy threat), Depicting enemies as simultaneously”too strong and too weak”,”Contempt for the Weak”, “Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero”,”Machismo”, “Selective Populism” and “Newspeak”.
And Griffin, “Fascism is a political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism.” (With palingentic, punning aside, meaning the notion of national rebirth.)
Clinton, by way of contrast, would be a cheerleader for inverted totalitarianism.
I distrust checklists (partly because with a little effort I could put plenty of Clintonian material under the same headings. It’s clear as day, for example, that the Democrat nomenklatura has “fear of difference” for the working class, especially the white working class; see Thomas Frank). Ditto “contempt for the weak”; notice how those harmed by globalism are categorized consistently as “losers.” Ditto “ultra-nationalism.” It’s not at all clear to me how that’s to be distinguished from American exceptionalism, which has been an ultra enough ideology to enable us to conquer a continent and acquire an empire.
That’s why I prefer a structural approach, as with the corporation and the state. (Though I need to think about that; Gramsci said the state and civil society were to be distinguished as objects of study.)
PPACA is packing it in, what will come after it?
Jon Stewart remembers and forgets
Further to Lambert’s pointing out what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander — For a NYC’r Jon has Hollywood scale ability to forget his own history.
Thanks for the link. Say, that reminds me: Will Adverse Selection Force ObamaCare into a Death Spiral? Naked Capitalism, 2015-10-28.
Not to break an arm patting myself on the back — but this 2015 post focused on North Carolina, just like that Politico piece does, because of material sent to us by alert reader Jason.
The conclusion of the 2015 post:
We have our answer: They’ll try to revive the so-called public option; that was what Obama was doing with his so-called “special communication” in JAMA, flagged in Water Cooler four days ago.
Retailers offer a special when no one is buying a product.
If Trump is a fascist, then where has he advocated compulsory mass organizations?
German and Italian fascist parties put occupations, culture, sports, and just about any other group of people into party-controlled compulsory organizations, or took control of existing associations. The entire body of society was to be dominated through these organizations — which is why fascism is called a corporatistpolitical philosophy (not because of the role of business corporations in the State). That tying together of the many pieces of society by the State into a stronger whole is made explicit in the Italian fascist symbol: the fasces bound together. Trump isn’t a fascist.
Slavery and totalitarianism might just be too expensive for our 21st century handlers — you have to feed and house slaves at your expense, and all those camps are pretty expensive too. They have to figure out how to get the same effect at a lower cost — remember, they do love to think of themselves as innovators. We need to figure out a more accurate name for it than fascism.
.
Mish has not only jumped over the shark, but now he’s crossed the line with his latest post on “Second Thoughts?”.
Can you elaborate? Do you find Germany and France’s immigration program a success?
Now that the details have come out, what it appears to be is a deranged teenager who was born in Germany of Iranian parents who had a mass-shooting fixation-and curiously enough, this took place on the anniversary of the Utoya massacre.
Philadelphia welcomes the Clinton-Kaine Democratic Ticket for the White House.
In the Bible, the first man and woman, Adam and Eve had 2 sons. Abel and Cain. The first children, brothers. Abel was murdered by his brother. From the album: “Darkness at the Edge of Town” ADAM RAISED A CAIN by B. Springsteen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqHxZZ0RqFs
And I welcome you all to the streets of Philadelphia. In honor of Kiyoshi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2DtNW79sQ
warning richard wolffe in full sycophant mode. maybe that goes without saying.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/22/hillary-clinton-tim-kaine-vice-president-pick
Maybe crapification, maybe just bad luck on my part: Yesterday my Macbook (the cheapest model when I bought it and still available as the cheapest model now) died. Fortunately I had been keeping Time Machine backups on an external drive. The last time I replaced my laptop – water damage – I just had to select the “restore from Time Machine” option, connect the drive and in a couple of hours the new computer was set up just like the old, all the settings, files, email just as before. I had been considering moving to Linux when I got a new laptop but I really needed to get up and working again so I went once again with the cheapest Macbook Pro. Tried to restore from Time Machine… nothing. it won’t even see the drive via Disk utility. I know the drive is fine because I went over to my parent’s place and plugged into their Mac Mini and it worked there. As far as I can tell, the problem is that my old laptop was running Yosemite (because I had some problems when I tried El Capitan – daft name too) and a Mac running El Capitan, as the new one does CAN’T SEE A TIME MACHINE BACKUP DRIVE CREATED BY AN OLDER VERSION OF THE OS!
Would have been nice if I had known that. I could have at least stopped wasting my time running backups! Now I’m in for hours of slowly and methodically transferring files from the backup drive to the new machine via my parent’s computer and a second external hard drive. Don’t let this happen to you.
P.S.: Typing this on a home assembled Windows 7 desktop.
Latest out of Munich from Die Welt – shooting suspect, an 18-year-old German-Iranian man, was apparently fired on and hit at a police checkpoint set up shortly after the incident, found dead some time later about 1 km from the shopping center. Current toll is 10 dead, 18 wounded. Feed link to Google Translate for a rough-n-ready translation:
http://www.welt.de/politik/article157239226/Was-wir-ueber-den-Schuetzen-von-Muenchen-wissen.html
[Re. my post above]. Sorry, 9 dead, 16 wounded. Also had a look at the GT-rendered english version, mostly OK, but 2 compound words it choked on: Tatvideo = incident video, Amoklage = state of chaos.
I hope in our eagerness to express our disgust with Hillary Clinton and the neoliberal hacks in the Democratic Party, we do not feel obliged to whitewash or ignore Trump’s equally vicious and also (to me, with a brown husband) terrifying “law and order” attacks on mostly helpless illegal immigrants and his implication that they are all vicious murderers and also hit-and-run drivers. The only difference between Melania/Ivania and an illegal immigrant is money and place of birth. Trump’s rhetoric has already stimulated brutal attacks on immigrants and his national stage will only make that worse. He should be vigorously called out and criticized on Naked Capitalism.