Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says BBC
Kentucky Noah’s Ark Encounter opens amidst severe flooding Inhabitat (resilc)
Ashley Madison threatened to expose customers who disputed bills CNN
Brexit
British Politics Gives a Sense of Government by Old School Chums New York Times (Li)
Brexit: a coup by one set of public schoolboys against another Financial Times
Theresa May: Britain faces ‘tough times’ but can enjoy a ‘better, brighter future’ outside the EU Telegraph
#asamother Crooked Timber (Philip D). On Leadsom’s campaign, such as it is.
Andrea Leadsom is the leader of an am-dram peasants’ revolt Guardian (Philip D)
Brexit contagion fears stalk Europe banks Financial Times
Brexit Plows into British Consumers, Economy to Spiral Down Wolf Richter
Brexit Is a Mixed Bag for Russia National Interest (resilc)
Lagarde keeps up Beijing’s voice in IMF Financial Times
Imperial Collapse Watch
U.S. Air Force chief confident Boeing will fix KC-46A tanker issues Reuters (EM)
Nato summit: US says it will deploy 1,000 extra troops to Poland Guardian (resilc)
Trade Traitors
Uruguay Wins Its Tobacco Case Against Philip Morris International But PMI Accomplished Its Primary Goal ASH. I wonder if the panel, which is not bound by precedent and therefore does not have to worry about setting one, decided it would make for bad headlines to rule in favor of PMI when the TPP and TTIP are in play. Even though tobacco products are exempted from ISDS rules in one (both?) of these deals, it would still call attention to the power of ISDS rulings to undermine health regulations.
Clinton E-mail Tar Baby
Goose, Meet Gander:Marine Mired in Email Scandal Wants Same Deal as Clinton Sputnik News
Lack of Clinton charges sends dangerous message to intelligence professionals The Hill
The FBI did not ask us for copies of our upcoming Hillary Clinton leaks before concluding its investigation. Credible detective work! Not. @Wikileaks (Kevin F)
For Any ‘Reasonable’ Prosecutor, Damage to National Security Would Outweigh ‘Extremely Careless’ Hillary’s (Largely Irrelevant) Intent PJ Media (Sevla)
2016
Green Party’s Jill Stein Urges Bernie Sanders to Run Rogue for White House Sputnik News (Chuck L)
Email Issue Only Hardens Political Views in Philadelphia Suburbs New York Times (Li). Note not only the difficulty of winning “moderate Republicans” but also how a couple of Trump voters in the primary are hesitant about voting for him in the general.
Donald Trump Backs Off Muslim Ban, But It’s Already Way More Popular Than He Is Intercept
Sen. Pat Toomey Is Trying to Protect His Seat by Arming the Police Daily Beast (resilc)
It Is Not 1968 New York Magazine. Reslc: “He is writing this from the Hamptons.”
Military-Industrial Election American Conservative (margarita)
U.S. GMO food labeling bill passes Senate Reuters. EM: “Another ‘business-friendly’ triumph of bipartisanship!”
Black Injustice Tipping Point
After Dallas, We Don’t Need to Say ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Rolling Stone
Social Violence Networking Global Guerrillas (Chuck L)
I’m a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing Vox
Newt Gingrich: White People Don’t Know Discrimination Daily Beast (resilc)
The Police Are Killing People As Often As They Were Before Ferguson FiveThirtyEight
Dallas Shooting
What We Know About the Bomb Robot Used to Kill the Suspected Dallas Shooter Gizmodo (resilc)
Now isn’t the time for Dallas to divide: we must reach out to one another Guardian
Here Are the Deadliest Attacks on Cops in the Last 100 Years Vice (resilc)
Best-selling author’s tweet revives food safety concerns at Chipotle Reuters (EM)
Tech job postings are down 40% and nobody’s talking about it. Medium (Randy K). I am told office rents are cheaper in San Francisco, another indicator. The culling of the unicorns.
Investors Get Stung Twice by Executives’ Lavish Pay Packages Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times
Gold: It’s Still a Pet Rock Wall Street Journal
Class Warfare
Americans too poor to shop New York Post (Mark Twain)
Antidote du jour. From Saturday’s Tour de France stage might be infested with llamas SBNation (Chuck L):
Those are pictures taken on the Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees, one of the hardest and most famous climbs of the Tour de France. According to the man who took the photos, the llamas were purchased by a proprietor of a nearby campsite and let loose to graze the hillsides in the summer. On the particular day they were photographed, he wrote, they were likely lying down on the road to warm up from the cold mist.
Saturday morning, Tour de France riders will try to surmount the Col du Tourmalet as part of a ridiculously hard stage. They may have more than steep gradients to worry about.
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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An article I chanced on this morning which I think sums up a widespread reaction to Brexit, which has shocked me. I suppose it is similar to the apparent attitude shown by establishment democrats, to ordinary people who have elected to support Sanders & Trump. Although it would be a small sample, I have FB friends who before the event seemingly had very progressive views & would complain about Tory austerity policies & how they affected those at the bottom. This was soon replaced by the attitude that these same victims were now all stupid, ill informed & therefore their votes should be null & void, by people who now it seems have no real interest in & no experience of what it is actually like out there – anyhow this article sums it up much better than I could & what it describes will only lead to more resentment from those who chose to leave :
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-post-brexit-ugliness-of-the-left/18538#.V4DZRfkrK03
Thanks for the link. Very good read.
You are very welcome….I actually abstained as I basically could not bring myself to vote for either side. The above is the one article I have come across on the subject which in terms of the fallout from Brexit has surprised me most, not least because many of those who are accusing others of being ignorant on the issues, are for the most part, only slightly less ignorant themselves. Something else I noticed leading up to the vote, was that people & publications that would normally post articles critical of certain aspects of the EU, suddenly started preaching the gospel of the EU as being the land of sunshine & roses…..perhaps I should not be surprised by all of this.
Thx for the link!
I’d say the same thing is happening with the left in the U.S. The Professional Liberals are being exposed as the corrupt sycophants worshipping at the altar of Neoliberalism.
Perhaps there is a “lifestyle left”, and a “political economy left”; and never the twain shall meet . . . perhaps.
Nah…. I think there are at least three groups on the left: people who may be somewhat narcissistic but are mostly frightened (these are folks who perceive they have a significant amount to lose from any radical change); people who hold principled ideals and are actually willing to sacrifice something personally in pursuit of those ideals; and then those who simply have nothing left to lose and know it.
Nothing a little Moaist cultural revolution couldn’t cure.
Sometimes we have to roar to endure
Out of touch with reality
But i’ll catch ahold gradually
And my thoughts are bold naturally
Truth be told hate rattles me.
Its gettin old this jealousy
A dead end road with ice for street
My heart of gold is failin me
Just tryin to hold my sanity.
Positive thinking is altered and blocked
Got me damn near drinking water chase ciroc
Peoples attitudes stinking brain matter on pot
While a good mans blinking a hater will plot.
So i put on my armor and leave the shield
When cut by the drama my wounds will heal
Was taught by my mama to always stay real
They packin black llamas dont get yourself killed
I will not be bruised abused or mentally subdued
Ive tasted the fruits of langston hughes
I use broken tools and build castles laced with jewels
And feed off the fools who ridicule.
I admire breath and desire nothing less
And these issues i press i rarely regret.
So basically im just ponderin the possibility that to enlighten a mentality otherwise headed toward catastrophe versus watchin from the balcony while another dies tragically has no options just responsibilities
And if a few words whether pronouns or verbs can somehow secure another a few exhales more why wouldnt we aggressively roar to endure.
Sha’ntez Jefferson
Damn, 3rd read and still trying to breathe…topped meself with that Llama search.
Nice rap poetry
Some law professors analyzed the FBI recommendation to not charge Hillary and DOJ’s decision to not pursue charges and concluded they may be the right decisions http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/whitecollarcrime_blog/2016/07/guest-bloggers-ziran-zhang-eugene-gorokhov-the-law-behind-the-fbis-decision-to-recommend-no-charges-in-clinton-email-in.html
Narrow investigation into narrow scope with lots of cover for everyone including these “law professors.” The best course I had in law school was “The Legal Process,” which made it very clear that any set of facts and legal text can and will be managed to produce the “right” result. One course element was an article by Carl Lewellyn IIRC, a very noted “law professor,” that laid out just one mode of results manipulation: There are lots of legal “principles” of statutory construction, and he identified twenty or thirty “pairs” that any good lawyer would want to to have in his ammo box, to produce the result desired by his client and his ego. E.g., Laws in derogation of the common law should be strictly construed (grammatical exercise), but laws promoting the general welfare should be broadly construed (same latitude.) Clear conclusion that framing, as was done by the narrow question Comey and his writers (the announcement is of =course the result of a lot of very careful drafting and vetting and redrafting) actually supposedly explored via the narrow limited approach they took.
So Fokk a bunch of “law professors.” Searching their pronouncements for lay-down QED that “the right result” was reached is a fool’s errand, but one that the fools that matter, the ones who are killing the rest of us while they sup on the best food and wine, are pursuing with “vigor.” “The weight of authority,” my cynical but experienced a$$.
JTMcPhee
July 9, 2016 at 8:13 am
Thanks for those insights!
The FBI did not ask us for copies of our upcoming Hillary Clinton leaks before concluding its investigation. Credible detective work! Not. @Wikileaks (Kevin F)
Sooo…..what if it turns out that Hillary was emailing Putin and giving up our intelligence assets? Would it be double jeopardy to now charge her?
Would it be double jeopardy to now charge her
not found innocent in a prosecution..
No double jeopardy attaches until a juror is sworn. Not charging is a far cry from a trial.
Sleepy
IIRC an guilty/innocent verdict needs to be found, then a defendant has DJ protection, not when a juror (jury) is sworn. that is done before a verdict. In the case of a mistrial -with a sworn in jury – the prosecutor gets “do over” if desired.
Someone clarify if wrong?
She would have to have been put on trial first. So while prosecution is still unlikely, it is still possible.
I do have to wonder what they might have. Although Comey with his non answer in the hearing pretty much confirmed that Clinton Foundation investigation is happening and that might overlap with the Wikileaks stuff.
TComey clinton foundation doublespeak was to prevent foia lawsuits from being able to pry the facts loose before the coronation…
“pending potential criminal investigation” is “$tandard” method of operation when helping to cover up an obvious hand out to a “friendly” combatant…
Obviously there are many who wanted to “jump on” the “investigation over” statement to see why there was no “there” there…
Kissinger v reporters committee…1980 potus ruling…basically says if govt official has kept documents from govt, there is no private right of action…the key is obvious…scotus ruled one can keep dox from the govt with no criminal prosecution possible, and if the govt colluded with person…too bad amerikanski…
Look, the fight to keep $hillaryous from sitting in the oval office is over…the govt is openly hostile to the citizenry…but remember…our govt is available for purchase…lobbyists sitting in dc and the various $tate capital$ make that obvious…
And
So
You/we $hould buy back congre$$ and obtain the attention of the two private bu$ine$$ partnership$ commonly known as the the r & d party…
Not joking…every person who gave to sanders should openly and directly give twice as much for the coronation of the warmonger dowager empress…
Why you ask ??
Because the debbie w krew does not want you to…
Do you have any idea what type of panic would be caused by a disciplined protest donation movement
10 million people giving 3 dollars per week from now until $election day ??
The sales of adult diapers in dc would triple…the incompetent, impotent and incontinent of dc who have mismanaged our futures will be looking over their shoulders, terrified that the citizenry has figured out their Achilles heel…
ka$h…
$hillary is correct…$he is not for sale, and walking “foot patrol” is not something this junkie for power has to do…
But you can rent her lips for half an hour if you leave a big enuf deposit in her account…
Time to buy back america
…nothing scares the acela crowd more than a big chunk of cash they can’t control…
As long as Trump is running against Clinton in the general, the fight to keep Clinton out of the Oval Office is not over. Perhaps many people who do not like Trump “as such” might still vote for Trump by thinking of it as a Trumpexit from the current course.
Double jeopardy means being tried twice for the same offense.
Happens all the time now with parallel state and federal prosecutions, usually in notorious cases.
Dylann Roof, the Charleston church shooter, is an example. Preparations for his South Carolina state trial are underway … to be followed by a federal trial, as a different set of prosecutors take a second bite at the apple.
Roof is a wholly unsympathetic defendant — an ideal hobby horse for trampling the constitution.
well that’s been happening a long time, so called “separate sovereignties” . i dont know if the number of cases have increased.
Legal scholars and professors are riddled with pride of knowing the state of art of the ass. They know only whats happened, not necessarily why, for they read an account by another third party, then derive yet a new opinion of the ass. They care not what changed, only that they address it to prove their knowledge. Their world is carefully ordered and altered only by the latest precedent.
It sounds much like our excuses for the purchase of air time for opinions about news by actors getting as far as they can in the guild, and learning there is a new stage, a large stage with international exposure. A stage where the drama is king, truth is nothing but clay. They read it, repeat it and beg us with their wiles to like them and ignore what they say, so that personality becomes the prime mover.
We have lost substance. We have courts packed with favors, public jobs traded for bribes and any new favor requested by their benefactor is reason enough to ignore law and repay the favor to earn a new one. We have watched as a special interest group changed the laws and removed 10’s of millions of people from their homes by state sanctioned theft. The laws didn’t really change, they were simply ignored to benefit the bezzle. We didn’t kill 1 million in the middle east, we stopped them making war on their neighbors. The new story is absurd, it won’t be questioned because the last story was absurd as well.
But when the journalism is gone for an ass, as is the law, what does it say about our ability to reason as a society?
Jonathan Swift reminded us that such deserve their own special title. And instead of remembering that it was an insult, we embrace the term. Perhaps we are all yahoo’s.
I wonder what a “legal scholar” does for a living these days? I mean the cognitive dissonance must be enough to fry their brains.
Dispassionate observers watching from the sidelines and hair-splitting over what “should be done” while the highest enforcer in the land ignores what they say?
Might as well be me on a Sunday, yelling at the 49’ers on TV about what play they should run next.
“…Director Comey’s primary reason for not recommending criminal charges in this case appears to be the lack of precedent for criminal charges in similar cases in the past….”
What cases are “similar”? This seems unprecedented, no?
Who exactly is responsible for ascertaining that similarity? An investigator or a prosecutor? Then, what is criteria for deciding what is similar?
If “lack of precedent” is the preponderance of the decision process in determining referral to the DOJ, how does a first case ever occur in order for a “precedent” to exist?
According to Director Comey, “[a]ll the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed…; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice.” Whereas “in similar circumstances,” “individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions”
….involved some combination of:
clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; (HRC/Clinton, Inc posture is case study mat’l, no?)
vast quantities of materials exposed; (define vast???? Either it’s classified or not, no?)
or efforts to obstruct justice; (again, HRC/Clinton, Inc posture is case study mat’l, no?)
okkkk,, isn’t this the legal equivalent of a Trifecta??
optimader
July 9, 2016 at 8:16 am
It is incredible that Comey can say with a straight face that Clintoon did not “INTEND” to not follow the law. Lying is defacto evidence that one is aware of what the law is, and that one was trying to evade it.
Now I will concede Clintoon was not trying to engage in espionage. But really, the “intent” of the statute is the proper protection of classified material.
Now I will concede Clintoon was not trying to engage in espionage.
Who knows what she has given to Israel with some level of plausible deniability? I may be way off base but the Clintons are not normal people, I trust them as far as I can throw them at this point.
There is all the incredibly despicable SoS ultraviolence history, but I have to concede, on a human litmus test level the Lolita Express thing just blew me away. It’s like water off the back of a duck
Are these Clintons real people?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2922773/Newly-released-flight-logs-reveal-time-trips-Bill-Clinton-Harvard-law-professor-Alan-Dershowitz-took-pedophile-Jeffrey-Epstein-s-Lolita-Express-private-jet-anonymous-women.html
The flight records, obtained by Gawker, also show former President Bill Clinton rode on Epstein’s jet at least 11 times, and often with two of Epstein’s female associates believed to have provided the dozens of underage girls to their boss and his well-connected friends.
If that plane was called the Monica Express, the Hillary for President campaign would be over. Lolita? There are too many people who don’t get the reference,
This scandal needs a different name.
Just in terms of the famly dynamics.
If these were normal people.. If bill clinton was your spouse or father, wouldnt a normal person feel incredible shame/embarrassment? Say nothing? Maintain a familial relationship? No less, allow such a person to represent you?
It is also a comment IMO what is now apparently considered acceptable behavior by our media as well in our society, or at least part of it . The de-sensitization of what is acceptable is pretty amazing to me at least.
Actually I think you’ve almost got it.. unfortunately, the answer is the reverse — when it comes to a “father” figure the natural reaction to anything bad is denial. And it is very hard to move people on from that first stage.
So I don’t think “de-senstizing” is really the right word.
Heck I myself haven’t been able to move past Anger when it comes to the Clintoons. Does seem like a lot of people did quickly get past it into Bargaining – looking at you, DailyKos – but Acceptance will only occur for anybody when they are both off the national stage.
Eyes wide shut….
“Lolita? There are too many people who don’t get the reference.”
One of them gourmet food trucks in L.A., ain’t it?
Lolita Express — best tacos in town.
Fish tacos, that is.
Jimmy! I never knew you had such a naughty side….
over the yrs i’ve noted his fearlessness in multiple areas…a natural stimulant
What if one called it The Pedophile Express?
She does not have give the Israelites anything. US intelligence professionals acknowledge those folks know pretty much everything.
http://www.haaretz.com/wwwMobileSite/israel-news/former-u-s-officials-say-cia-considers-israel-to-be-mideast-s-biggest-spy-threat-1.454189
http://www.newsweek.com/israel-flagged-top-spy-threat-us-new-snowdennsa-document-262991
And for more detail, https://theintercept.com/2015/03/25/netanyahus-spying-denial-directly-contradicted-secret-nsa-documents/
Old news. Nothing to see. Baked in. The market has already priced it.
Though of course she has already given Yahoo a seat in the Small Council meeting…
Bill took 22 flights on the Lolita Express according to paperwork filed with the FAA. On several, he ditched his Secret Service bodyguards.
Yes, those young ladies were on the flight logs, too – by first name only
And I don’t understand how it is possible that we are expected to believe that anyone else has ever stored their regular US Government correspondence (Government Documents, right?) in their basement? She was virtually (through her personal servers and devices) conducting US Government business out of her basement — wasn’t she?
Has this ever been done? I heard that Kissinger hauled all his stuff away in a semi when he left ( and there’s a role model) but it sounds like business was conducted from his office.
So can department heads now set up file rooms in their basements and send secretaries over to file paperwork there?
I am obviously misinterpreting something because I don’t get any of this.
Now, at least, we know why the F.B.I’ S final decision took so long to be announced. Certainly, they knew what the decision would be months ago. I can just imagine how the anxiety level within the department increased daily, the media and public growing more anxious by the day (“what could possibly be taking this long?”) on one hand, and, the army of F.B.I. legal/political professors trying to get the wording “just right” on the other.
What a great Minnie-Series,
The Decision….The F.B.I…..In The Bunker!
Some recent decisions
Clinton email – ‘extremely careless’ no charges
Stanford rape – swim team member ‘a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action’ sentenced to 6 months, will be out in 3
Affluenza teen – drunk driving, he killed four people, sentenced to rehab, no jail time until he skipped the country
And then there’s the predatory lending that cost people their homes….
There’s no shortage of cases. The priviledged don’t pay for their crimes.
PS the national crisis facing black Americans who are being gunned down just for being black and the lack of charges, especially against the police – yet another layering of privilege.
Someone once suggested that framing everything as “white privilege” risks destroying the basic concept of equal rights for everybody or even any rights for anybody.
Applying that general principle to this area of inquiry: if we view Blue on Black violence as anti-Black persecution, then people will see the issue as achieving Freedom from Blue on Black violence as the goal. Whereas if we view the Blue on Black violence epidemic as an example of White Privilege because there isn’t the same level of Blue on White violence, then the Police Community could simply raise the level of Blue on White violence to the same rate as Blue on Black violence is at now and . . . voila! No more White Privilege when it comes to Blue on Citizen violence. And presto, the problem is solved. If indeed “White Privilege” is the problem here. So . . . is “White Privilege” the problem here?
Here’s how the privileged pay for their crimes:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-07/moore-capital-s-barna-fired-following-hamptons-party-gone-awry
Don’t folk with property interests– might have to look for new job…
Don’t folk with property interests
More like, Don’t sully the reputation of Louis Bacon or his hedge fund
Probably the animal rescue that did it.
No hedge fund wants to be associated with kind deeds to animals. ; /
–Gaianne
5 Reasons The Comey Hearing Was The Worst Education In Criminal Justice The American Public Has Ever Had (HuffPost)
“…here are a few of the ways that America, particularly well-heeled white America, was ill-served by Director Comey’s testimony before Congress ― regardless of your position on whether Hillary Clinton being indicted for federal crimes would be, in general terms, a positive or negative thing for American politics.”
“ill-served”?
Man, Abramson is thorough. He makes the most detailed case yet that Comey was way out of line with respect to common legal practice.
Thanks for that link.
Abramson’s summation ties Hillary’s legal impunity to the impunity of violent cops:
Unless you have sat in a court and watched the powerless being crushed under the wheels of the conviction mill, you cannot fully appreciate Abramson’s utter astonishment at Comey’s claims. After seven years as a public defender, Abramson knows what a travesty of justice Hillary’s white-glove, benefit-of-the-doubt treatment was.
<no doubt on any of that but tbis didnt even make it to the cohrthouse steps.
I saw a good analysis that said that Comey did not feel he should be the one to personally decide the next president himself, if he recommended indictment he would have “prejudiced” the whole thing.
Instead he just gave the public what they needed to decide for themselves whether they really do want a congenital liar, influence peddler, and security leaker for president.
It was Scott “Dilbert” Adams who made that analysis.
I think that’s a ridiculous excuse. The Democrats could have chosen a different candidate at their convention — either Bernie or their preferred neoliberal.
The entire situation makes it clear that the public is not being allowed to decide for itself who to have as President. He facilitated this deeply corrupt, criminal process by refusing to uphold the law.
My impression from watching the first 3 hours of the committee was that Comely said there was not enough evidence to support a charge involving intent of mishandling. I’d like to know in which other cases the persons of interest were allowed to have a team of lawyers go through the defendant’s computers to remove files and destroying them before handing them over to the FBI to evaluate intent.
Sarbanes-Oxley created a new federal crime called “anticipatory obstruction of justice.” And it fits HRC perfectly:
This is arguably an unconstitutional Thoughtcrime statute, imposing retroactive guilt for failing to anticipate a “pending proceeding.”
But it specifies to a “T” what Hillary and her lawyers did, in obvious “contemplation” of a document submittal.
Hillary should be charged under § 1519, and her lawyer David Kendall should be at least disbarred, if not jointly charged.
Jim Haygood
July 9, 2016 at 11:57 am
Wow! Your insights are always appreciated. you must have one of those new fangled quantum brains…
No — several months ago I read about several “little people” who were actually charged and did time for anticipatory document destruction.
Can’t find the link now. But it surely happened. When little people are concerned, prosecutors take a zero-tolerance stance toward the slightest whiff of document destruction.
As a lawyer, Treas-weasel Comey knows this perfectly well. But if he can fool half the people, it don’t matter.
Including the famous fish case.
The Supreme Court got the boat captain off the hook,
but he almost had to walk the plank – it was a 5-4 vote.
As well he is not fulfilling his oath of office.
I think we’re being unduly harsh re: Comey.
Short of The President of the United States grabbing Comey by the neck, and, picking him up off his feet, while the Attorney General, Lynch, beats him with a bat, how could the message to Comey be any clearer? He’s the low man on the totem poll. I don’t know what “public servant” could stand up to that. Whether it was, a reward, or a threat that he received from on high, “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” I’m pretty sure he got the message.
I mean, when Obama goes on the campaign trail and tells the world that Hillary is the bestest, ever, and, no body, ever, ever, ever was, or could be better, why take the anger out on this lowly schmuck?
Obama’s call, Obama’s fault, Obama’s legacy should take the fall.
+100.
Clinton lawyers: Mission accomplished!
Q: What is the difference between “gross negligence” (chargeable offense) & “extreme carelessness” (apparently non-chargeable)?
A: It depends on what the meaning of “is” is…
Well, it sure would be neat if some of Comey’s Republan questioners in the House would ask Comey to define the difference between Gross Negligence and Extreme Carelessness.
And then ask him if Clinton’s actions could be called ” Gross Carelessness”?
And then ask him if Clinton’s actions could be called “Extreme Negligence”?
Where’s the grand jury? Present the case to a grand jury and let them decide whether or not there’s enough evidence.
In practice, grand juries are nothing but cat’s-paws for prosecutors and should be abolished.
In principle, they have considerable power; they might be useful if given more independence – for instance, the power of subpoena and the power to release their own findings.
Did the law professors analyze the prosecution of the Marine who is asking the same standards used on Hillary be applied to him?
If not, then it could be said the professors by not looking at the Marine’s case in this way yet feel a need to do so for Hillary is in itself a statement of preferential treatment, a double standard.
Maybe they can get an amicus curiae legal memo from John Yoo? He’s a law professor, isn’t he?
“What do you want the result to be?”
Is it just me, or is there a lot more day to day illegality apparent, in spaces like our streets and highways? Rolling stop signs, lane encroachment, etc.? Of course the Fokkers in tha “cars of privilege,” have just ratcheted up the obnoxious droits de seigneur a notch or two. And there seems to be more good reasons, if one is brave enough, to ask the cop why he didn’t stop the other guy or gal that blew past you through the speed trap or crossed three lanes right across the cruiser’s nose…
Throw a coin to the bereaved father after the gilded carriage wheels have crushed the child into the road… That should do it.
“I say, driver … what was that unpleasant bump?”
http://tinyurl.com/gq4xv7v
The question is whether it would even be possible to hold a trial for her without it becoming political, even assuming the best conduct by all parties. I think the answer is no, which says the matter should be handed over to the House (and potentially the Senate) for review and possible impeachment. Unlike the circus that Bill was put through, I think this would be a proper use of the impeachment process (if deemed appropriate).
The Kentucky Noah’s Ark thing is a well known hoax…
It exists, what it purports to represent has the hoaxy problem.
And hey! If global warming really takes off…
I saw construction photos: the Ark is waterproofed with Tyvek. That boat won’t float!
I was wondering about that too. Whether the thing can even float. There aren’t any life boats and it doesn’t seem to have a motor.
This boat probably shouldn’t go near an ocean. Or a lake. But if they put in windows maybe than can turn it into condominiums.
I think life preservers would work better. Hand them out at a zoo and if it starts raining really really hard it could be every animal for itself
Noah is probably shaking his head frowning right about now.
Look at it on google msps , just sw of the city. Looks like a mall parially covered on cedar siding.
Turun it into a Ttump casino?
Its very existence has caused flooding.
A self-fulfilling business plan.
Maybe God is laughing so hard tears are running down his face, and then falling out of the sky.
She peed her pants….
40 BLM protesters arrested in NYC on Thursday, one arm broken.
74 BLM protesters arrested in Rochester, NY, on Friday.
Neither makes it into the NYT. Go figure.
250 protest in NYC on Friday, a stringer gets a 30 second video which fits into their online strategy,
so NYT finally deigns to notice.
If black lives really mattered, we wouldn’t be destroying our industrial base, creating structural unemployment and dependency, and inflating away what is left of the poor’s limited income.
Donald, you get this one for free.
Probably also we wouldn’t badmouth government jobs as they have always been a lifeline for blacks.
Then too, if white lives really mattered, we wouldn’t be destroying our industrial base, creating structural unemployment and dependency, and inflating away what is left of the poor’s limited income.
After all, while the black poor out-percent the white poor, the white poor outnumber the black poor by the gross overall numbers.
The “better classes” of people see people as either rich cash, or poor trash. One wonders if the lower class Black and White respective majorities of their respective races could bring themselves to work together on political warfare projects without having to pretend to like eachother culturally or personally. If that level of dispassionate maturity can be reached, might they form a Trash of All Races United? ( TAR United).
Re: Stein urges Sanders to run rogue
So 40% of Sandernistas will vote for either Trump or the Libertarian? What does that say about Sanders’ supporters?
If they’re looking for an alternative to Killary then Stein is a much better choice than either Trump or Johnson.
What does that say about Sanders’ supporters?
It says that they hate Hillary.
BTW, The support for Johnson’s Libertarian run are a little overstated. Stein does not appear on the ballot in all 50 states so at least one of the one poll did not include her as an option. The people who responded that they would vote for a “third party” were listed as Johnson supporters. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Also, if they are looking for a VIABLE alternative to Hillary, their actions are rather rational since Stein is anything but.
Is there something specifically about Stein you find not rational or is it an ad hominem comment?
I’m sure that edmondo can respond for himself, but in support of his view I’ll give you my reasons Stein isn’t worthy of my vote: She and the Green Party are dilettantes. They don’t do any party building in the non-election years. They don’t actively campaign in election years. They announce their candidacy, go on a few talk shows like Democracy Now, and consider that “campaigning”. Bullshit.
And don’t tell me that it takes money. I’ve worked on many successful local elections and ballot measure campaigns where we raised and spent very modest amounts. It can be done…if you really want to campaign.
Agree! what a waste not schmoozing with the wealthy dilettantes. …a mother, physician and longtime teacher of internal medicine. Also the co-author of two major environmental reports — In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging — she has dedicated years of public service as an environmental-health advocate. She has testified before numerous legislative panels as well as local and state governmental bodies, playing a key role in the effort to get the Massachusetts fish advisories to better protect women and children from mercury contamination. Her first foray into politics was in 2002, when she ran for Governor of Massachusetts.
Based on what? Given the resources available to them and the lack of media coverage they do plenty. I get regular e-mails about down-ballot candidates they’re running and yes, even in non-Presidential election years.
Well, you’re right – your first sentence is BULLSHIT!!!! Stein does plenty of campaigning. Just because you and the media choose not to pay attention doesn’t mean its not happening. They are conducting a nationwide fight for ballot access, holding events around the country, appearing in the media – is that not campaigning? Stein was willing to get arrested protesting the Keystone Pipeline and lack of access to the Presidential Debates in 2012 – is that dilettantism? You know who are dilettante s- self-serving, establishment toadies like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (only appears in front of friendly, hand-picked crowds just like GWB) and frauds like Donald Trump. Would any of those ass clowns get arrested to protest against something they sincerely oppose (well, Clinton obviously couldn’t get arrested if she tried)?
I don’t give a rats ass how many campaigns you’ve worked on. You are obviously speaking out of personal bias and ignorance of the facts.
So don’t vote for Stein – I’m sure she’d rather not have the vote of your like anyway.
Thanks, voting for Stein myself and as you pointed out I get plenty of updates from the Greens.
+100
HERE HERE!
Vote Green!
FUCK THE ESTABLISHMENT!
That’s a direct attack.
It’s DNC propaganda. Of course we do “party building” in off years, at least where there’s an active party. It’s just that you aren’t paying attention then.
Neither is anyone else; presidential years are when ALL parties put out their full effort, because the public is paying attention.
“at least where there’s an active party” is question-begging on a Democrat scale.
I read that as “Also, if they are looking for a VIABLE alternative to Hillary, their actions are rather rational since Stein is anything but VIABLE.”
A remark noting Stein’s viability problem — i.e. the GP not being on the ballot in all states.
Currently on the ballot in 23 states and waging ballot access fights nationwide. You might pitch in and help rather than just dismiss Stein because of unreasonable barriers set up by functionaries of the duopoly who erect unreasonable barriers to ballot access for any candidate lacking an R or a D after their name.
Stein is currently somewhere between 5 and 7 % in nationwide polls which is a huge improvement from the 2012 election results. And this in spite of a virtual blackout in the national media (which is beginning to lift as the polls improve).
And “viability” is not just about winning this election which Stein surely won’t. Its about qualifying for federal matching funds, removing barrier to ballot access, gaining access to the debates. At her current poll numbers Stein is probably not a big enough threat to the Clinton machine but a lot can still happen between now and then. At 10-12%, which is not out of reach, the Dems will have to take notice since the vast majority of Stein supporters will be defecting Dems or independents whose votes they would expect to capture.
Well thank you for that reminder you condescending little prick. I’ll especially remember it with respect any thing you post.
Spoken like a true ignoramus. Have you actually read anything about Stein and the Green party’s platform or is that just your juvenile, uninformed opinion?
You were the one attacking Bernie supporters for voting to keep Hillary out of the Oval Office. Sometimes we just can’t afford the greater evil
And thank you for your juvenile, uninformed opinion. As my grandfather once told me, “Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one and they all stink.”
They’re personal economists, voting their economic self-interest. Screw posterity (they can’t afford any) and screw the planet.
This, incidentally, is why the Greens are so ineffectual. They don’t promise enough of that money stuff that everybody wants.
I happen to think it’s because their signature issue (global warming) is a net vote loser, for the same reason you cite: that money stuff.
Even people who see we urgently need to take action (most don’t) are afraid of how much disruption and cost that might mean to their own little slices of cheese.
You’re left with the true believers…the rest of people think that later (much later) we can just move up to the second story when Manhattan is under 6 feet of water.
Stein can’t win, period. My personal goal is to keep HRC and her machine out of the White House, and the only way to do that is vote for Mr. You’re Fired. If Bernie came in at the top of the Green ticket I’d like to think he’d have a decent shot at the presidency, and I would support that instead.
Remember Ross Perot? He didn’t have the slightest interest in running as a D or an R. But there he was, running for president in 1992 and 1996. Why didn’t Bernie do something like that?
Ross Perot was getting Trump levels of free publicity — he didn’t need party machinery. But even in the midst of a heavily contested primary, Bernie’s campaign wasn’t covered in mainstream news.
If it happened that way, where would his Independent campaign be now?
Nowhere. He would have had no impact on the election.
No, that was not the reason. Perot was a real billionaire when that was a lot more $ and Presidential campaigns were way less costly to run than now. He self financed his bid.
Trump is almost certainly vastly less wealthy than he claims to be and not very liquid at all. $300 million max in liquid or near liquid assets, and may be as little as $70 million as of when he started his campaign.
Hillary/Trump Dem/Rep Frying Pan/Fire. All no win scenarios.
Get out of their criminal box… otherwise you and others are playing right into their hands.
It’s time to change the game… insisting upon multiple parties is an essential part of that..as much as making the one/two major parties irrelevant.
If Sanders is not on the ballot, there are 4 choices.
1. Clinton
2. Trump
3. Vote third party
4. No vote
Choices 3 and 4 are a vote for whoever is leading in the polls. None of these are good choices. But these are the choices we have.
This is just wrong. Reminds me of the that Stanford prisoner experiment. First, all you have to do is get up and walk out of your self-imprisoned door. It’s wide open… quit falsely blaming folk like me for doing so while you remain locked up by your own myopia.
If I never voted for Obama (or whomever) then I am certainly not responsible for their taking office.
As a citizen, yes you do bare some responsibility for #4 (in a democracy, not our current oligarchy). If you did not vote, you as an informed citizen just removed one (albeit very tiny) barrier to the election of said individual and or the empowerment of a third party or other, and should acknowledge your responsibility (however minor) for making it one discarded vote easier for said candidate to enter office, again this is in a democracy not our current oligarchy, in which election fraud and corruption are the norm.
You assert, correctly imo, we do not have a democracy… then blame people like me for voting otherwise or not voting at all under the auspice that we do.
You lessor evil voters can blame the majority collectively who do not vote or vote outside of the duopoly all you want… but it is you who should look in the foggy cracked mirror for poignant shards of responsibility… the massive criminality, toxic blue marble and rivers of blood.
One of my favorite lambertisms –
Delegitimization.
It’s the least I can do. Voting to legitimate those who would represent most of my beliefs (Green in this case) is the most I can do.
Everyone I know hates the two choices we have for this elections. She spouts whatever she thinks liberals want but no one can believe anything she says. She is a well trained lawyer but not a good one. Her lying is not subtle. He is a thoughtless, uneducated spoiled brat.
Now Stein has said she would be glad to see Bernie run at the top of her ticket. She is smart. She knows that we need a third party in this country and he could be the ticket. She is making a decision for the good of the country not herself.
Bernies imminent endorsement of H makes me sad. Either he is tired, phony, or someone in his family is under threat. If he runs with Stein and he should announce it at the end of a speech at the Dem convention on national TV and tie it to a fund raising appeal pandemonium would break out. He can say I can no longer vote for the lesser evil. I have been offered a place to run for president with the Green Party and I am going to accept it. I am going to stay true to my principles which include not serving Wall Street but serving Main Street. I don`t have a multi billion dollar foundation. The Hillary handlers will scream that he is handing the election to Trump etc. etc. But his response should be that the primaries were laced with fraud and that he has the poll numbers to prove he will win. Then move on. He can raise money….he got plenty of mine first round. He got plenty from my friends. It is strategic triangulation. If Hillary is so afraid of Trump she can get out of the race. If she does not that tells us exactly how afraid of Trump she is. Does anyone believe the Clintons are not tighter with Trump than the man on the street? Does anyone believe that the elite supporters she has would rather Trump than Bernie? Does anyone believe the 30,000 erased Emails had nothing to do with favors for cash to the Clinton foundation? Does anyone believe the Clintons are altruistic or do they believe in pay to play? In a three way race Bernie will prevail. There is no way he won`t prevail and the US will have a third party. A third party will be in the debates. Potentially an ethical female physician who does not use politics to support herself could be our first female president in four or eight years. This is a once in a lifetime chance to permanently modify our ossified electoral politics win, lose or draw. How Bernie can`t see this is beyond me. He has the integrity and dynamism and following to do it and yet he is going to throw it away. Does he really want to sit in the back benches of the senate for a few more years and fade into nothingness? If anyone reading NC has a connection to the Bernie campaign explain this to someone who could get to him. It is simple chess. She cannot win and Trump can`t either and all it takes is a little courage. If he is deathly afraid of the supreme court nominations he needs to remember the senate can hold it up, Our electoral system is a bigger threat than our legal system. Economic equality is a much bigger problem than anything the supreme court is going to decide. There is a lot of hullabalu about Roe vs. Wade. Ultimately rationality will win out no matter who is on the supreme court. I work in a fairly right wing place that one would think would go for Trump. They will…..but very reluctantly……and amazingly they would go for Sanders really not because they love all his policies…… many are convinced (by Hillary`s ads) that he will spend the US into oblivion…..but because they are yearning for some candidate that just might represent all Americans rather than the wing tipped Ivy League lawyer lobbyists and financiers running the show. A candidate that has not made public service self service. At age 74 this is the perfect battle for him and he was impressive indeed. He can create a legacy that will help the nation. Can any NC reader call someone in his retinue that can explain to Bernie that he needs to buck up and kick some ass? Nobody gives a shit about the platform……One thing I have to say about the Clintons….they are ambitious, power hungry, calculating, money hungry and go for the throat……Bernie needs to stand up for all of us and if he does not he will be permanently diminished in all of our eyes and fade into nothingness.
> “Either he is tired, phony, or someone in his family is under threat”
Sanders is doing what he promised he would. Keeping one’s word is a good thing in my book. Your mileage may vary, and apparently does; it’s really telling that for a lot of The Flounce Off brigade, keeping one’s word simply doesn’t matter; I see it over and over again in comments like this one. Noted.
Concept: developing circumstance
“Keeping his word” smacks of “staying the course”
Is their a legitimate threshold to “keeping his word”? I think yes. Personal thresholds may vary
I wonder if Sanders had an expectation of good faith and honest dealing from the DNC when he promised that he would endorse the final democratic nominee so he could primary under their tent?
This site does a tremendous job of documenting the unctuous ways the DNC hindered, impeded, cheated, smeared and generally undermined his primary campaign.
So if we assume honest dealing from the DNC was Bernie’s apriori expectation, it appears to this reader that the facts substantially changed since that promise was made.
Wasn’t it Keynes who said something along the lines that when the facts change, sir, I change my mind. What do you do?
Your position appears to be that Sanders *must* endorse Clinton because that was “the deal” up front.
I would propose that Sanders has an *option* to endorse Clinton (since “the deal” was never executed in good faith) and in practicality could justify not endorsing her if he chose not to do it.
This interpretation of Bernie’s choice may or may not impact his actions in practice (as a possible Trump presidency seems to be the larger motivation for him at this point). But every time you say he needs to keep his side of “the deal” despite all the sleaze he endured, you portray Bernie as a Stockholm syndrome victim in my mind.
If I promise to give you a ride home after work but you punch me in the face, steal my wallet and slash my tires….well, I’m not gonna pick you up. Find your own damn way home.
We don’t know what will play out before any potential endorsement but at this point that endorsement is not going to play out as some steadfast sacrifice for the true good of the people, it’s good to look like typical politics to the average person. It is a promise to the people or one to Clinton and the corrupt establishment. The superficial keeping of ones word is hardly relevant. What is important is how his choice will reflect on the people and right now, they need a guide.
Maybe he has more going on but his recent praise for her flawed proposals is weakening the poisoned challis angle and it will hurt him (and the movement that will be chiefly attributed to him) when none of this platform comes close to being enacted.
Felix,
Read your Durverger, winner take all election systems devolve into two parties. The last time a new party came to power in the USA the result was civil war. Theodore Roosevelt, arguably a much bigger political figure than Bernie, ran as a progressive in the 1912 election and got 27% of the popular vote and 20% of the electoral votes and the Bull Moose Party then faded into obscurity. My point being is that to have a third party (or 4th, 5th or 6th) is to put your efforts into changing the way votes are apportioned. Maine has an initiative Maine has a Ranked Choice Vote initiative this November which should be supported vigorously.
I agree with Lambert that Bernie gave his word and battled to try and take over the leadership of the Democratic Party. If you read Stein’s comment in the Guardian, she only sent an email to Bernie seeking a negotiation to which she received no response. There was no face to face conversation. This indicates a huge gulf between the two camps.
For the record, I was defeated in the IL primary to run as the Green Party candidate in the US 5th Congressional District. I helped gather 50K petition signatures to successfully get Stein and a Green Party slate on the November ballot in Illinois and am committed to voting for Stein in November. I do not do this because I think that the Green Party has the ability to govern based on performance (which it does not) or that I am protesting against the status quo (which could readily be inferred.) I do this to signal to others that I find in the protests of climate change, war, inequality and injustice a cacophony of words which needs to be brought into a symphony of determined political rhetoric which matches the needs of the commonwealth and leads to human flourishing.
At this time, the platform of the United States Green Party maps onto my opinions regarding policies to “improve” the world much more closely -not perfectly- than the other offerings.
I am voting Green but I think you underestimate the anger of the American voter. If bernie keeps his word, which we should all value…..I assume we will get more of the same……should one always keep one`s word? Obviously philosophers much smarter than me have addressed that. I skipped philosophy and focused on physics. But the poker strategy, should Bernie choose it…..would have a very high chance of succeeding.
Grizziz…teddy Roosevelt didn’t win because he was shot a few weeks before the election and back then people died slowly from certain bullet wounds…so folks were not too happy with his vp choice…at least not the southern pacific railroad folks…and spent energy to prevent tr and hiram johnson from getting to the oval office…and later, the huntingtons ran their neighbor..a certain california real estate guy…against johnson….
now what was that guy’s name…
patterson ??…no…
hutton ??…hmmm…
oh yeah George patton senior…
he had some kid…
didnt amount to much that kid…
luckily he died on his way home from some skirmishes and the world ended up with richard Nixon…
see how the little things matter….
What is it that world famous philosopher from up in them there northern parts keeps reminding us…
Details…
and events my boy…
http://mentalfloss.com/article/12789/time-teddy-roosevelt-got-shot-chest-gave-speech-anyway
Sanders has been around for decades. He is very consistent in his support for the two party system and the Ds and very proud of the numbers he got to register. He was never going to run third party and never would. Sanders is focused on incremental change to the left within the D party.
Sanders in not an ignorant person. His concern is saving the system not reforming it. The ‘revolution’ is merely to register D and vote D no matter what and over time that will influence the party platform.
I agree Sanders would have the best chance we will see in my lifetime to prevail if he ran third party. You are like me and see the necessity of additional parties to create policy change in this country but Sanders does not share that. I voted for Sanders knowing it was a one shot deal for the primary.
I disagree that there is no Sanders self interest to being an elected official. The system is his work like, his social life and his income.
Very well said! The problem for Bernie now is that, in spite of his playing by the rules, the other side clearly cheated to win the nomination process. Even Elizabeth Warren sold him out!
Now what to do? I think Bernie feels he has accomplished something by waking up millions to the absolute corruption of our system.
We can’t expect him, who has spent most of his life in the Sisyphean task of promoting incremental change from within the system, to suddenly become something he is not. He is a reformer, not a revolutionary.
What we Bernie supporters should expect from ourselves is to transfer our energy from the nomination struggle into extra-party movements. Movements that can work towards overthrowing the illegitimate transnational kleptocratic regime under which we all currently languish.
Right now, I would submit that supporting the worldwide struggle to block implementation of the TPP/TTIP/TISA regime (especially in the lame duck!) should be our highest priority.
@ Waldenpond
Sanders consistently highlighted his independent status outside of the two party system. (that is not to say that he has not had to navigate it and deal with it).
Of course he is proud of the numbers he got to register! He has clearly stated he wants more political participation. (fwiw – many have been switching and will continue to switch to be independents after the Dem convention)
He reportedly deliberatedly long and hard about an independent presidential run and in the end concluded that with a Democratic Party run his message would reach more voters. This was a simple utilitarian decision.
Depends on what you meant by “the system”, but I think it is safe to say that his rhetoric and actions thus far have been in favour of shaking up the system and reforming it as much as possible through the electoral system.
I think he has sown seeds of political awareness and engagement that will grow for a generation to come, regardless of party affiliations.
Sanders is already past retirement age, he owns his own house, his kids are grown up and employed. The idea of his having financial self-interest in his continued political career is not credible.
Let’s be realistic, at the start of his run he didn’t envisage he could be president or start a third party. This was/is about spreading his political message and reforming/revitalising (read revolution) politics.
I agree it’s a shame he didn’t want to start a 3rd party after he saw the response to his message.
Ass.ass.in.nation is the reason why Bernie won’t go there.
By whom, exactly? And would they be safe in the aftermath? If nothing else they’d be a few million short on land improvements.
Not that i think Sanders won’t run as a third party candidate because he fears assassination, the people who would arrange for it would be much safer than Paul Wellstone was.
Certainly. Doesn’t mean they’re not going to live out their lives with their bodies and minds intact, even if the perps don’t have the witnesses taken out. Scots-Irish are vindictive mofos and any persons or organizations seen as even peripherally involved are probably going to take some kinetic losses from Bernie’s right flank of supporters. And they will have earned all of that and more.
No one is stopping anyone from voting third party. However, it is extremely naive to pretend any vote is simply a vote of conscience. Voting is strategic and tactical. It’s choosing which organized coup to back or to oppose. Equating it to some sort of lesser evilism is an easy cop out from acknowledging what’s going on.
I voted third party in the last presidential election with my eyes wide open and I voted my conscience. This is a different election with different candidates and different stakes.
Voting isn’t even by any possible argument strategic or tactical for the vast majority of the population that lives in uncontested states.
Reminds me of a story Hunter Thompson once told, he had been pulled over by a policeman and had several outstanding infractions that meant he would go to jail if the cop identified him. He could hand over his license, and go to jail; or not hand over his license and go to jail. He conceived Option #3: he blew his nose onto his license, handed it over, and the cop just proceeded to hand it back to him.
@Eureka 11:39
You did not read my post I ONLY said in a democracy you would bare some responsibility if you Did Not vote at all!
Not once did I place that same burden of responsibility on those that vote third party.
While I myself will vote lesser evilism (trump) this election because Clinton (through action) has shown to be so odious and dangerous I personally see no other choice. I would however vote third party in other less dire cases.
I agree the duopoly needs to be dismantled, and my comment made it abundantly clear that I do not “blame” those who make a third party vote, I only assigned responsibility to those that do not exercise their right to vote!
I sincerely hope you just misread my comment and did not intentionally misrepresent it.
Because, of course, it is essential that we vote for any ruler, some ruler, in order that your incumbent interests can be protected? Perfume it up all you want… you’re voting to be ruled. Those who do not consent to a ruler-based system simply have nothing to vote for, aside from referenda.
There may be something to the strategy of voting only for questions of policy and voting for absolutely no officials.
Someone will lead in this policy vote only system you describe, you may not like the idea of being ruled but it will end up happening nonetheless, unless you find a stretch of wilderness and live in a true libertarian paradise (not a universal option), someone will take the reigns.
Humanity has worked for centuries to gain some modicum of control over who rules them (although this has been severely eroded), your recommendation is to give up this control earned over centuries and let the most powerful or ruthless rule, which is what will happen (to a much greater degree than it already is)if those being ruled give up their small semblance of control.
Your dream of a rulerless society would require a massive shift in the fundamental (probably neurological) makeup of the human species and fundamental group dynamics . A ruler or ruling group will always emerge, either we keep and claw back more of our ability to choose or we accept whomever seizes rule.
This certainly won’t lead to the positive ruler free society you have in mind.
I also just removed one chunk of the legitimacy of the question being asked. Seems that those who dictate that we must not abstain are simply invested in us (not themselves, usually) being ruled.
Not every contest needs to be fought. Not every disagreement needs to be resolved and imposed. Discretion is the better part of valor, they say.
Not voting deprives politicians of claiming a “mandate.”
Bill Clinton’s win in 1992 with 43% of the popular vote has been cited ever since. He didn’t even win a majority of voters. He received the votes of perhaps 20% of the adult public.
Chop those percentages in half with wider spread nonvoting, and Depublicrat elections would be seen for the illegitimate farce they are.
You are completely wrong. Ferguson, Missouri, is a clear counterexample. The voting turnout there has averaged well under 20%. In 2015, a voter turnout of 29% was hailed as a “success”. Meanwhile, little has changed.
Nobody in power will care if elections are seen as an illegitimate farce. Nobody voted for kings and queens, and that didn’t stop them from governing.
If you like the status quo, there’s no need to vote. If you want change, pick the candidates who are most likely to help achieve your goals, and vote for them. Over intellectualizing what can be “accomplished” by not voting is naive and futile.
As a counterexample, eastern Europe’s pre-1990 dictatorships were not overturned by voting.
They were overturned by delegitimization. What sham elections existed in those countries were irrelevant to the velvet revolution.
You’re joking, right? The Soviet voters had the right to vote for or against the unopposed candidate of the Communist party. That’s not an election; it’s not even a sham election.
Weren’t they overturned mostly because the Soviet system had decayed and rotted?
Clinton’s election theft process required low voting participation. You are playing right into her hands.
G.W. Bush was outright handed the Presidency illegitimately. No mandate. That did not stop him for one minute. If anything, it might have fueled his desire to trump up a war to gain support and the veneer of legitimacy.
Clinton is a criminal and probably a sociopath. The ruling elite is not going to care if the people see it as illegitimate. It has created an ideology that scorns and dismisses anyone outside the circle of its likeminded brethren. That is their tribe, and they are damned tribal. The people are an inconvenience to be exploited and discarded — the way many humans view livestock.
It’s hard to believe that people can’t think of this strategically. Voting isn’t the end-all-be-all, but if it wasn’t important in the least there wouldn’t be so much effort put in by TPTB to control them precisely because there is enough power, when enough good actors are voted in, to create change. The bad actors have shown how much destruction can be caused.
This is just one tool in the tool kit, and like all tools it should be used when it is needed.
*unless the vote counts are rigged beyond all hope.
In the absence of a coherent broad-based movement for change, or even a set of narrower-focused but mutually supportive organizing and activist movements, not voting seems more likely to be taken as a free pass by the ptb, presented as such in the media, and conducive to apathy.
A third party vote gives a public reason for not voting mainstream. That seems more delegitimizing of policy, though it accepts the electoral process as minimally valid. Maybe it also helps build what can potentially be the electoral arm of a broader movement, representing real constituencies within that movement. If there ever is a broader movement – a different discussion about party and movement building and who is willing and able to do what beyond voting or not voting.
Im sorry jim but ive got to believe winning is all that mattered to clinton. A mandate might be quaint and perhaps even a convienince for benefit enabling, but other than that So what
I don’t think it’s all that open, things could be done to make 3rd parties have a better chance without people acting in ways they are not going to act such as mass voting for 3rd parties (it’s not that I wouldn’t LIKE them to act that way, but there is no evidence they do). Real desires to make things open involve changing the voting system. But meanwhile pretending one’s not participating in a system that is so obviously rigged to leave us only bad choices is actually voting for anything is ridiculous.
Death by hanging versus death by bullet to the head may not be good choices but it’s the choices we have. Yea and the “get out the vote” folks would apparently blame someone for not even bothering to choose then. Whatever. They might be more guilty at that point by pretending “oh goody I have a choice between hanging and bullet to the head, that makes things much better!”
It’s not quite whom you vote for.
The bottom line is who gets elected, via (the fractional contribution – to the total – of) your vote (directly or indirectly).
Three or five moves down the line…
The Butterfly effect…
The bottom line…
The end result…
Who gets actually ‘elected’ is a whole ‘nother issue. Paper ballots would certainly go along way in helping count the votes.
5. Write-in (in some states)
6. Ballot mutilation (as by tearing, scratching out, etc.) I’ve heard these get counted, so this would be the equivalent of None of the above.”
5. ‘Write in’ is a limited option. 35 states require registration in order to be a write in candidate. 7 states do not allow,write ins. The remaining 8 states allow write ins with no restriction. Many of the filing deadlines are fast approaching in August and require thousands of signatures.
https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates#cite_note-votesmart-1
6. Ballot mutilation – wouldn’t it be more effective to return a blank ballot (in effect, the not vote choice) so that it is guaranteed to be recorded?
+++++++
An update on the DNC platform trench warfare:
Pragmatic incrementalism!
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. From an article this morning in Common Dreams about the platform:
The Dems are beyond hopeless. For those interested in the technicalities of how the Dem party is structured, and why starting a third party is essential, there is an excellent, somewhat lengthy piece in the Alabama political blog, thesouthlawn.org.
The amazing thing is that this big FU to Sanders supporters is before an endorsement.
Or for that matter, before the convention.
Or for that matter, before the election.
MyThird Way or the highway.Agree. I’m waiting for the platform committee to deep-six Bernie’s TPP proposal. When that happens, if Bernie endorses, IMO, he will lose all potential leverage he might have from a future role in the Senate. His supporters are among the most politically attuned–they’ve had to be, since the propaganda press has refused to cover his campaign–and they will simply move on from Bernie to start a new party.
I am expecting Sanders endorsement to sound something like this: “I campaigned as a member of the Democratic Party. And as such, I have a responsibility to endorse the Democratic Party candidate.”
“The Democratic Party candidate whose name is…. Hmm, let me see…. I know I’ve got it written down somewhere.”
OTOH, Sanders is a pretty good politician. So we can expect him to forgo cheap shots of any kind unless they advance his larger agenda. I’m happy with the way he’s going on TPP.
“The Democratic Party candidate whose name is…. Hmm, let me see…. I know I’ve got it written down somewhere.”
“…Now where the heck did I put my glasses???
oh hell, you read it…I must have set a drink on this napkin last night..”
what does Trump always say the candidates name is, it always helps me remember it when I have to, it is very catchy … crooked something, oh yea that’s right crooked Hillary. I endorse Hillary for President of the United States!
A reasonable alternative
I expect it to read something like this- I believe ANY Democratic candidate will be better than Donald Trump.
Sanders for lesser evilism!
No, he gains leverage. His supporters see that he’s doing the right thing, and the Democrat Establishment the wrong. It, as it were, sharpens the contradictions, and at one of the most vulnerable points the Democrats have on policy.
The AP is tying itself into knots on whether or not Sanders has leverage:
Influence, no influence, influence, no influence …
For some reason this reminds me of that scene in Chinatown.
Really don’t see how endorsing her now that her platform committee has refused all of his positions gains any leverage, unless you mean otherwise he loses his senate position.
Or if the endorsement is something like ‘I support all candidates against trump, including her’.
The dems refuse to move away from all corporate, all the time, support white collar criminals, and nothing will change unless she (and they) loses in a landslide. Her winning snuffs out Bernie’s movement.
Nader was Imo a spoiler, he had no chance of winning. There are a large number of disaffected dems and reps today, conceivable he could win… And certainly he might win some states, a great start for a progressive movement. more than this, green is a perfect fit for progressives with global warming in our face.
Endorsing is a no win position:
A) she wins, dems continue to believe progressives will always fall in line on account of lesser evil.
B) she loses, progressives are blamed as always.
I’m sure he’s tired, but I say he should grab the nettle, take over the greens and also campaign for progressive dems.
bernie running independent would split the disaffected vote, and clinton could squeak it out. If she has to run on merit she loses.
yes
106 to 74 against adding language opposing the TPP. You can watch it on https://twitter.com/hashtag/DemPlatform?src=hash
I watch and it’s not a matter of not voting for the D for president, I can’t imagine voting for down tickets either. They just don’t represent me.
In some jurisdictions, there will be third party candidates running for some of the down ticket positions, so vote for them, if they’re on the ballot.
Also, many Democratic members of Congress voted against fast track trade promotion authority. This has been posted many times before, and it has some value for determining who the worst Democratic politicians are:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/democrats-who-voted-for-fast-track
Note that most Republicans voted in favor of fast track, which is about the same as supporting the TPP. But some Republicans did oppose it. For the full House roll call vote list, where Democrats are in italics, and Republicans are in regular font:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2015/roll374.xml
Here’s the Senate roll call vote, where it’s easier to distinguish Democrats (“D”) from Republicans (“R”):
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=114&session=1&vote=00219
The TPP is hardly the only issue this year, but it is important, so these lists can be useful for deciding how to vote in November.
And there is no way Bernie would not win in a three way race. The Dem establishment has outbluffed him. He needs to man up and run with the Greens. I would love to have Bernie as president and I would love to play poker with him. I can`t see him taking the pot. I suspect Bill Clinton would be a pretty good poker player but we don`t need that mentality running the country and solving our problems.
Best chance for a third party candidate in a century given the main candidate unfavorables, trump will drive hers higher.
175 ev’ in tossup states, 130 in soft blue/red states. More than enough, he just needs 40% dems plus 30% reps.
Certainly he would win some states, and this would be the best possible start for a progressive movement.
Well, you can’t appeal to moderate Republicans without kicking the left, which is good clean fun anyhow. C’mon, let’s be reasonable.
That $250,000 income cap on Social Security tax is a diversionary tactic.
If 62 richest people are as wealthy as half of the world people (I think this headline that I just googled is wrong – they mean half of the world’s population COMBINED – you can’t have King Midas as rich as the police chief of a big city in America or a guy who owns two fast food franchises), the way to go is to tax wealth.
You slap 50% on those 62 guys’ wealth and equally spread it among those half, the latter is instantly 50% richer.
Maybe they don’t care to step into the Bottomless Tar Pit of Unfillable Need which the preening dilettante Green Party is.
And perhaps such psychological-blackmail insults as the just-above will confirm us in our judgement on that point.
The pricing of gold I will defer to others for salient insight. The behavior of UST bond yields seem to imply strongly that inflation expectations are not to the high side.
The 30yr UST, not certain where it closed but the yields are crazy low. 10yr under 1.50 as well.
Well, since real wages have been falling since the first Clinton coronation, inflation expectations are probably right.
On the other hand, UST are a perfect place to park your money if one is in say, Great Britain, where the pound has fallen more than 8 percent in two weeks and expected to fall another 20 percent or so within the next year. Getting a 20+ percent return on one’s investment by buying 1% USTs is not a bad deal..
That reminds me of a recent article. Something Huge is Coming From Japan.
Pretend, for a minute, that your country responds to the bursting of a credit bubble by borrowing unprecedented amounts of money and using it to prop up banks and construction companies. This doesn’t work, so you create record amounts of new money and push interest rates into negative territory in an attempt to devalue your currency. But this — amazingly — doesn’t work either. Your currency soars and the inflation you’d hoped to generate never materializes.
. . . . .
What we’re witnessing, in short, is a catastrophic loss in the currency war. Contrary to every mainstream economic theory, debt monetization and full-throttle currency creation have resulted in a rising yen and falling prices. . . .
. . . . .
Plunging US rates. Eventually, hundreds of trillions of yen will have to find a new home with more hospitable returns. And 30-year Treasuries yielding 2% will look pretty tasty in a relative if not absolute sense. Rising foreign demand will push down Treasury yields, killing off numerous US banks, pension funds and insurance companies but giving the remaining solvent Americans a chance to refinance their mortgages at 1%.
Governments become the biggest stock market players. This is already happening, as Japan, China and (probably) the US buy equities and ETFs to blunt natural corrections in share prices. But with nothing else left to try, expect these programs to be ramped up virtually everywhere. This will prop up stock prices until it doesn’t, and then look out below.
How far into NIRP do we go before the system collapses? We are on a forced march to find out.
1 2 3 4, I declare currency wars.
All disturbing and all possible. Maybe it’ll be a rather slow march as opposed to rapidity.
Probably Hemingway… ‘How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.’
Intuitively, I also a falling yen as well.
What went wrong there?
Something else would have causeg the yen to fall even more, but the loose monetary policy has resulted in a still falling yen, but just not as much?
Jason Zweig’s pet rock has worked wonders for the Craazyman Fund.
Since March 2nd inception, it’s up 9.51%, with gains of 9.40% in junk bonds; 9.27% in emerging markets stocks; and 10.11% in the pet rock.
By comparison, a 50-50 benchmark portfolio returned 6.14%, with gains of 7.97% in SPY and 4.30% in AGG.
Gold is a hedge against monetary instability. Not that we’ve got any of that! /sarc Zweig is a guy who probably refuses to wear a life preserver on a white water rafting trip.
Jared Dillian on deficit politics:
[no link — from an email]
“We will get inflation eventually”
Have many years have you types been fear-mongering about this?
And do we really have to explain, yet again, that the ‘debt’ isn’t money owed to anyone?
Gold is a luxury asset, like paintings or diamonds. It’ll go up right until it goes down dramatically, like it did a few years ago. There are plenty of far more useful things you could choose to invest in if you really feel like it.
LOL “there’s no inflation” LOL
Ask anyone anywhere (I mean actual people, not protected class ivory tower “economists” and government shills) whether they would be thrilled, THRILLED, to pay five-year-ago prices for EVERYTHING.
Our “hedonically-adjusted” CPI numbers are not just bogus, the organizations that create them openly admit they’re bogus.
Try this for a dose of reality:
http://www.chapwoodindex.com/
There’s 40,000 million $ sequestered on the Fed’s balance sheet, once the Fed and the BOJ start with unsterilized “helicopter money” (and they will, it’s their only option) then the real fun will start.
Since Dec 31, 1980 (that is, intentionally excluding gold’s big runup in the 1970s, and beginning with a long dull period), my momentum model has held gold 36.1% of the time.
During that 36.1% of the time, gold appreciated at a respectable 11.43% rate, in line with the return on stocks. For the balance of the 35.5 year period, gold fell at a minus 3.38% annual rate.
The monthly gold model turned bullish on Mar 31, 2016. Craazyman Fund anticipated the formal signal, buying gold on Mar 2, 2016.
Empirical testing and modeling is a rather different approach than rhetorical economics. The philosophical question of whether debt is “owed to anyone” is outside the scope of empirical inquiry. In plain words, it don’t make me any money.
This just in folks: MMT isn’t empirical.
Gun manufactures have left GLD in the dust, so its just another fear based asset allocation, at least the weapon in physical form offers a few solutions to said fear… where GLD just sits there like some eye candy or mental talisman…
The weapon can be used to ward off others, shoot them, or yourself, depending on mood… I guess one could bludgeon themselves to death with a large enough lump of GLD as the thief’s come to steal their GOD… oops…. GLD…
Anywho… Plenue is correct that the whole hyperinflation posses howling was conditioning and not based on granular analysis or observed reality. So now it must quietly switch gears and bang on about deflation. Which is really funny because in the decades run up to events we had the Monetarists screwing with the money system [Friedman’s English bet was 6000% wrong] and then followed by the quasi Monetarists… But like BOE head Carney stated recently… the liquidity injection is just for the payment system and nothing else e.g. the political system has to step in or don’t expect free market unicorns to ride over the hill…
Disheveled Marsupial… Might be important Jim to point out in the last 100 years GLD has crashed hard… epicly right after a short, but intense price increase at least 7 times in the last hundred years… remember specufuokulators its just price until its taken…. then your right back out in the market again…. chortle
Smith snd wesso is something like $2.50 in 2011 to $28.50 in 2016 after the dallas affair. Don hold me to the parity, but thats the deal
Bags of beans and rice spring to mind.
As long as I’m going with the depressing thought that the economy is going to crash and its going to be doomsday, perishables you can eat seems to be a smarter option than a shiny member of the elemental table.
Started doing that years ago, mainly to save money; food is cheaper in bag quantities, and our co-op encourages bulk orders. We have beans, rice, and oatmeal stored in the pump house (this requires some space), staples for maybe a year. Nuts, too, but we grew those.
Not really a big investment – maybe $100 bucks. Nothing like an ounce of the shiny stuff.
I recall your portfolio recommending those allocations. Should have heeded those instructions !!
Batchelor & Cohen on Obama’s Proposal to Putin
Libya disarmed and was attacked. Even a “Trust but verify” approach would simply be foolishness on the part of Putin or anyone else at this point.
A genuine offer from Obama of real genuine value would involve Obama’s offer to restrain Turkey and the Sunni-Salafi petro-Gulfies from supporting the cannibal liver-eater “opposition” in return for which . . . the R + 6 will have 6 months of Obama non-opposition to an R + 6 effort to get the “opposition” so nearly exterminated in the next 6 months that there is not a damn thing Clinton can do to revive the Cannibal Liver-Eating “moderate oppostion” no matter how hard she tries.
Perhaps Obama understands just what an utterly destructive mass-homicidal maniac a Clinton Unbound would be . .. and how bad it would be for America’s own “post-superpower” survival.
Interesting if true, I am leaning towards true, that idiotic “dissent” memo came out of nowhere and the timing seemed weird with the information of events about what was going on at the time (Russia had been there for months and daesh years by that time, why not make a statement earlier?).
“One side thinks we should push further against Russia and the other thinks it has gone too far. With each deployment of troops and weapons in eastern Europe the danger of incidents and a hot war between nuclear powers increases and the same is true in Syria.”
Based on past actions, statements and nuland, it seems clear Clinton is itching to further escalate with Russia. While obama was/is absolutely horrible (bush 2.0) it seems he has some basic sense of national self preservation when it comes to avoiding a hot war with Russia, hillary by comparison is unhinged and delusional (uber cheney 2.0).
If there is one overriding reason hillary must not gain the presidency this is it. A hot war with Russia is utter insanity, that politicians and dimwitted generals (a la. Breedlove) actually entertain this thought is the perfect illustration of complete elite disconnect from reality in some groups.
American “exceptionalism” is a disease that breeds stupidity and delusion.
Obama sending 1k soldiers to Poland defies Cohens assertions.
And some.
not so sure
My understanding is that the Obama may be open to working with Russia in Syria against some of the terrorist factions – in order to protect the ‘moderate opposition’. That sounds plausible. But the Obama regime will continue to escalate its anti-Russian provocations in other spheres, eastern Europe and the Ukraine.
Of course any cooperation is a welcome development, but Putin and Russia should remain really skeptical.
Killer Mike on an anti-apartheid style boycott as a remedy for police brutality. Also confirms corporate media censored Bernie Sanders coverage. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pCBKmE81XII
Very interesting, the FT article.
I’m a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing Vox
===========================
And no matter what an officer has done to a black person, that officer can always cover himself in the running narrative of heroism, risk, and sacrifice that is available to a uniformed police officer by virtue of simply reporting for duty. Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo was acquitted of all charges against him in the shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, both black and unarmed. Thirteen Cleveland police officers fired 137 shots at them. Brelo, having reloaded at some point during the shooting, fired 49 of the 137 shots. He took his final 15 shots at them after all the other officers stopped firing (122 shots at that point) and, “fearing for his life,”*** he jumped onto the hood of the car and shot 15 times through the windshield.
….
Not only was this excessive, it was tactically asinine if Brelo believed they were armed and firing. But they weren’t armed, and they weren’t firing. Judge John O’Donnell acquitted Brelo under the rationale that because he couldn’t determine which shots actually killed Russell and Williams, no one is guilty. Let’s be clear: this is part of what the Department of Justice means when it describes a “pattern of unconstitutional policing and excessive force.”
Nevertheless, many Americans believe that police officers are generally good, noble heroes. A Gallup poll from 2014 asked Americans to rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in various fields: police officers ranked in the top five, just above members of the clergy. The profession — the endeavor — is noble. But this myth about the general goodness of cops obscures the truth of what needs to be done to fix the system. It makes it look like all we need to do is hire good people, rather than fix the entire system. Institutional racism runs throughout our criminal justice system. Its presence in police culture, though often flatly denied by the many police apologists that appear in the media now, has been central to the breakdown in police-community relationships for decades in spite of good people doing police work.
================================
It seems to me that we have the de rigueur narrative of police for one of the reasons we have Trump as a presidential candidate – it is the conventional narrative that assures the most eyeballs and therefore the most profits…
But it is also a long crafted propaganda stream from the government – the same people who call soldiers “warriors” and tells every ground pounder that they are the “tip of the spear” (they may be the tip, but they’re getting the shaft). A nice method of “manufacturing control” – – your so wonderful because you follow orders without question. Only “we” can know the truth of what we do…
And if we make them “nobel” heroes, than surely that means every thing the soldier or cop is doing is…noble? Right??? A noble soldier would never fight in an unjust war??? Surely a brave noble cop can never be racist, or cowardly, or lie, or anything bad….
When I lived in “liberal” (i.e., neoliberal) Montgomery county, MD, it was discovered that the private police message board contained the most coarse, vile, inflammatory racial remarks imaginable. But if police are “perfect” heroes, than there is no reason to ever doubt their version of events. Or the laws they enforce…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/03/23/officers-site-sinks-into-outlet-for-attacks-span-classbankheadtopics-of-race-sex-permeate-montgomery-police-union-message-boardspan/2c09c683-c057-4742-8dff-3dde48848107/
Of course, FAUX news, by the questions they ask, make it appear that every cop is totally honest and noble. Any critique of the police, according to FAUX, is the third column rantings of Bolsheviks… But of course, its not JUST Fox – nothing that imperils the status control can be spoken of. Of course, FAUX also believes that every IRS agent, who is also a GOVERNMENT employee exercising duly passed government laws, is an evil minion of a totalitarian, evil Washington DC bureaucracy —
(if the Russians have already taken over the US government….shouldn’t we overthrow the government, and aren’t the police the agents of the evil governments control???)
— which can never penetrate the mind of someone in the FAUX.
Thank you, Dan. More testimony, less “data” and less stratospheric “overviews and analysis.” Plans for action, maybe? How the hekk do ordinary people develop an organizing principle (eg, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you, eat only to your hunger and drink only to your thirst, starve the Beasts that rule us”) and resist the ever present temptations to become rulers and vast consumers themselves? How to elevate what mopes agree are “our better natures” over the fundamental elements (see Clintons) of Fokking and killing…
Being advised and aware of all the bad sh!t, wholesale and retail, that’s happened, happening and likely going to happen (from the perspective of us mopes) is just an invitation to futility and despair and then as ever more apparent, anomie and dissociation and all that.
Word of the day from the Guardian’s article on Andrea Leadsom
psephology
noun pse·phol·o·gy \sē-ˈfä-lə-jē\
Popularity: Bottom 40% of words
Definition of psephology
: the scientific study of elections
psephological play \ˌsē-fə-ˈlä-ji-kəl\ adjective
Note to food purveyors. We will boycott any food that has GMOs in it.
Any package that requires bar codes to be scanned with a smartphone, thus requiring not only a smart phone to begin with, but a willingness to surrender privacy rights to government, marketers and communication companies, will be assumed to have GMOs and will be boycotted, as will all other products sold by that company.
The simplest solution to the lack of transparency in GMO content and the biggest rebuke to factory food producers and their gamesmanship is to eat a 100% organic diet produced by the smallest, most local, high quality farmers and purchased from independent stores.
Who is “we?” Billions of people who have to eat, large numbers completely unaware of “GMO.” Applause, hahaha, that more and more of us have “smart phones.” Tthat is one huge mass of humans that just goes on momentum, habit, day to day… Which ADM and Fokksanto and their lawyers and marketeers and the demons that inhabit the C-suites are relying on. They can do their point attack and get their sh!t made “legal,” and the ordinary person cannot begin to track all the invasive and extractive sh!t that is being done to them. Let alone, in the increasingly difficult task of keeping body and soul together, being able to make the bigger things better ( from the mope point of view…)
Boycotts seem to be under-utilized more than ever.
They are the demand-side equivalents of worker strikes (on supply side).
No TV for a few days.
Don’t visit this or that monopoly website for another few days or weeks.
Etc.
Hear, hear!
The resistance to GMO foods *and* the demolition of privacy and anonymity is growing. It may be a small movement right now but thankfully with the internet the movement can grow and become more powerful.
If profit margins are low for agri-bulk mass-commodity GMO sh*tfood, then perhaps only a permanent boycott by a few tens of millions of people will be enough torture some of the mainstream food suppliers into providing Zero GMO food. One need not recruit every last food buyer on earth. Just enough millions of food buyers in the discretionary-income countries.
I keep trying to figure out they’re going to put the bar code on the green beans. Will each bean have a little sticker?
What needs changing is the culture. By all means, use the boycott to withhold your support for evil corporations, but a larger commitment is needed to change the overall direction of society. The lazy must be lead to a different view of the world and that takes commitment and work. It will require a form of evangelism to bring people around. Apathy and the desire for convenience are powerful mechanisms that prevent change to the current system. The desire must be present to bring along a larger following.
Leadership is taking an active role in changing peoples minds and habits, and building a following. Its the building a following that the left has failed at, probably because at core they are still enamored with the power and rights of the individual over group identity.
Conservatives manipulate the power of the many to enhance the power of the few. They use the emotive response to Nation and Race to support the few. The left, while focused on individual rights, is never able to muster the inherent power of the masses to support the masses. They always stumble on the question of individual rights.
The needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few or the one.
Sigh, another liberal crusader who doesn’t understand that evangelism is offensive no matter what the content. And don’t EVER call liberals “left” again. This is a self-serving, pompous, content-free lie. This makes you a component of the problem.
I was using evangelism in the sense of the dedicated dissemination of a vision or ideology.
How can the zealots of neoliberalism be defeated? It must be in the form of a counter zealotry.
The Vox article in links above concerning the observations of a black ex-cop touches on my thinking. He mentions the theory of K.L. Williams, a 15%/ 15%/ 70% theory. 15% of cops will do the right thing in every circumstance, 15% will abuse their power always, and 70% will go either way depending on who they are working with. I see this breakdown everywhere I look, and in most professions. Small groups of dedicated people determine the true outcomes of organizations. It is that influence of the 70% that is the deciding factor- and the opportunity to influence them in the first place
If you control no business or have no authority over an organization of people, you loose a critical means to influence outcomes. . In a way, you have no influence. This sums up the theory of crapification. The good is driven out of the system.
Another deciding factor is the energy needed to maintain the system. It is a fact that it is easier to destroy instead of create or build. If the trend is to support corruption, and succumb to the worst that is in human nature, then greater effort is needed by the 15% supporting good to overcome.
Maybe the answer is that humans are not meant to live in such large groups. The natural equilibrium between good and evil can only be successfully achieved in small groups.
The struggle is for control of that 70%.
Lazy is a counter productive formulation.
People are resources efficient and have to be taught through sustained negative reinforcement to give up their agency.
If you want them to engage, you need to understand how they learned not to (our “educational” system has been central to this) and creat a program to convince them that despite that experience they still can.
Yes, I agree. I use the lazy term meaning the majority have accepted their fate in society and are adjusting their lifestyles accordingly. The new normal is real and progressing apace. The choice is not to work toward something better, but to accept the path of least resistance and accept ones lot in life. Lazy is a matter of perspective. Lazy represents an equilibrium state. That is the danger of a jobs or income guarantee without the proper ideology attached to it. Without a higher value system guiding actions, debauchery will probably prevail.
As an individual, I can only express my views and by my daily actions, live out my values. whether this influences people is beyond my control.
The larger culture war is the battle between the ideology of cooperation and competition. All other culture issues are subordinate and are granted acceptance only in the manner they reinforce the notion of competition. Competition justifies the existence of winners and losers. Being incompatible forces, only one ideology can direct policy for the whole.
Agency can only be fostered by the daily renewal through work and community. We are left to build them from scratch or support existing ones the best we can. Small cooperative networks seem the only hope for humankind. People either buy into that vision or not. Mostly, I see not, and that is depressing.
some canned food for emergencies, bags of brown rice, beans, whole wheat flour and pretty much everything else from scratch – cook on the weekend. mmm.
Newt Gingrich on white America. Let’s be clear, he’s talking about white male America.
The Guardian, in an article touting Angela Eagle to oppose Jeremy Corbyn,
refers to social benefits as `handouts’. Then, after having been called out for having used
Thatcheresque language, changes the text of the article without indicating it’s done so.
Original version:
Cleaned up version:
File under: Our Famously Free Press, Even the Liberal Guardian Edition.
This hapless character is the best they can come up with. Barring Jeremy standing down, she doesn’t have a chance.
All the chicken coup has acheived is make Jeremy look better to everyone outside the PLP and the media.
The welfare reform act is one of the most odious peices of legislation ever passed. The blairites, pearl clutching ninnies that they are, ran and hid rather than organise to defeat it (which was possible).
No doubt they will race into westminster to vote for the renewal of trident in the next fortnight.
Fuck the red tories.
The Guardian is NOL liberal anymore. This needs to be blasted from the roof tops. It has been taken over by global /American organisations that push Neo Liberal economic and Neo con foreign policy. It’s Clinton / Blair clap trap.
It’s little slip with “hand outs” is not surprising. That is how they see welfare for the poor. If it’s hand outs for corporations then they will be in favour. Corporate welfare is the only welfare that is seen as good.
This attempt to oust Corbyn is right up there with the most pathetic things I’ve ever seen in politics. I recently saw an interview with a pro-Corbyn MP outside Westminster (on BBC news) where an anti-Corbyn MP literally barged into the interview and proceeded to talk over the original interviewee at every opportunity. Disgraceful. Clearly the self-interested anti-Corbyn faction have nothing to offer and are desperate.
From Trump Sounding Presidential:
It depends on the goal of the BLM.
Yesterday, some mentioned the strategy of 19th century anarchists to accent injustice, highlight inequality and sharpen contradictions by provoking backlash from the Czar.
If so, then, that’s Trump praising them for a job well done.
Internally, they might be patting each other’s back.
Is that a good strategy today (we know such a strategy has been deployed before in history) – I guess that’s the question then.
A better strategy might be to not just celebrate internally, but to also outwardly claim Trump’s intolerance and bigotry – that is something ueber-menschen do (for if that is the strategy you believe in, you go all the way); for those who are not super men, they would simply try to provoke backlash and avoid the topic publicly.
If that’s their goal – and I have no idea if it is or, as mentioned above, its effectiveness.
Looking for trouble is precisely BLM’s job – or any protest movement.
The question is, does Donald know that?
Probably not. Daddy gave him a “small” million dollar loan to start his business. My guess is that most activism that Donald participated in was done solely because it would benefit him rather than because it might provide benefits for others.
I also doubt Donald has ever lived a life where he would be “troubled” by a police force that assumed he was a criminal simply because he was there. His life and the lives of the BLM activists are radically different(which isn’t to say that BLM activists might not find similarities with someone like me in the Appalachian region where the assumption is that everyone is buying or selling drugs. *to be fair to law enforcement we have huge problems in this region with opiates and meth labs. I moved from our mobile home park hoping to escape it only to encounter THIS http://nrvnews.com/crimewatch/christiansburg-drug-bust-nets-3-arrests/ )
Guardian: Now isn’t the time for Dallas to divide: we must reach out to one another
The “we need to come together” narrative every time a tragedy happens is a tiring, trite line. I’m not even sure it’s said with real meaning. Most everyone I know spends every day treating people well, no matter who they are. I rarely see true hate.
So the admonitions feel disingenuous. It feels like the bloggers and opinion-ators are feeling guilty about their role in fostering a dearth of real understanding as they write clickbait news.
Watch for the next tragedy. An opinion rag writer will write a thousand words about how you need to come together with others because “we” run into ideological corners.
True hate happens when constituents ask their elected leaders to protect them from the fallout from the financial crimes. When you threaten their income stream, things get ugly.
This^^^
Talk is cheap. Its time to change laws.
Hold the police to the same standards as everyone else. Hurting someone is assault unless it’s self defense. Killing someone is murder unless it’s self defense. Knowing a colleague hurt someone and not reporting it is abetting. Turning off a body cam or a dash cam is obstruction of justice. When these rules of common decency are applied to the people we privilege with the authority to forcibly arrest, the beatings and killings will stop.
Angela Eagle to announce Labour party leadership bid on Monday
http://tinyurl.com/hsvhm9n
I wonder if it’s a case of we started this so better finish it (save face) as the majority of the membership and local parties seem to be pro Corbyn.
I can see Owen Smith joining in to split some of Corbyn’s vote but I doubt any challenge will succeed unless back room deals have been cut.
Or the Labour grass roots will blow up the building and along with it, the back room.
It’s possible that they have found a way to get Corbyn off the ballot which will blow up the party……hummm I may spend the next few days reading Lovecraft, block out the noise and tune in to the signal
;-)
Gala day boost for Corbyn as Angela Eagle announces Labour leadership challenge
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/14609336.Gala_day_boost_for_Corbyn_as_Angela_Eagle_announces_Labour_leadership_challenge/
Corbyn quote “I was today asked how I cope with the pressure. There is no pressure on me. None whatsoever. Real pressure is not having enough money to feed your kids.”
The only hope either of them has is for Corbyn, through shady machinations involving the executive committee, not to appear on the ballot. Eagle voted for the Iraq war and against the inquiry, and Smith is basically an unknown entity. He couldn’t even manage to scrounge up enough support to appear on the 2015 leadership ballot, when half a dozen candidates were put forward.
I suspect Jez feels comfortable being so brazenly defiant, because he knows that he’s a lock in the event of a fair ballot and that, should the PLP pull off some sort of rule based block, the grass roots will no longer play nice and simply transform the party from below. Either way, he wins.
Why can’t Dems do that?
Because they don’t report to us, as the PLP reports[oversimplification] to the CLP.
Hunker is right, the LP has many levels going all the way down to the constituency, each with its own democratic or quasi-democratic process. As a result, most of the controls over things like how internal elections are run, who gets to vote in them, etc. are in the hands of committees that more and less reflect the membership. MPs may have control over who gets to run for the leadership, but the constituencies have control over who gets to be an MP, since, unlike the US, Members do not necessarily come from the locale they represent, though quite often do.
Also, the Labour Party has a long standing relationship with affiliated trade unions, who influence party affairs to a large extent, both in terms of leadership elections and the day to day functioning of the party apparatus. In fact, the influence of the unions is so great, that the Blairites actually tried to undermine it with the 3 pound “registered supporters,” whom they assumed would balance things out in favor of the neoliberals, an assumption which blew up in their collective faces in the most recent leadership election.
With the Dems, who controls what and how is largely opaque and thoroughly undemocratic, so it doesn’t have to be responsible to people’s wishes.
http://priceonomics.com/the-fining-of-black-america/
In March 2010, years before Ferguson, Missouri, became known for sparking the Black Lives Matter movement, the city’s Finance Director contacted the Chief of Police with a solution to the city’s budget problems.
The Finance Director wanted the police to generate more revenues from fines — money paid for infractions like traffic violations and missing court appointments.
The Justice Department concluded that the mistrust between the police and the community primarily resulted from excessive fining. “Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs,” the report read. The use of fines to fund the government undermined “law enforcement legitimacy among African Americans in particular.”
Using the U.S. Census’s Survey of Local and State Finances, we investigated the proportion of revenues that cities typically receive from fines, as well as the characteristics of cities that rely on fines the most. What are these cities like? Are they rich or poor? In certain parts of the country? Heavily Black or White?
We found one demographic that was most characteristic of cities that levy large amounts of fines on their citizens: a large African American population. Among the fifty cities with the highest proportion of revenues from fines, the median size of the African American population—on a percentage basis—is more than five times greater than the national median.
Surprisingly, we found that income had very little connection to cities’ reliance on fines as a revenue source. Municipalities that are overwhelming White and non-Hispanic do not exhibit as much excessive fining, even if they are poor.
Our analysis indicates that the use of fines as a source of revenue is not a socioeconomic problem, but a racial one. The cities most likely to exploit residents for fine revenue are those with the most African Americans.
==========================================
“Our analysis indicates that the use of fines as a source of revenue is not a socioeconomic problem, but a racial one.”
Now a cynic might think there was something else going on other than the mere collection of revenue…but that would be cynical…
The Bahamas’ new U.S. travel advisory: Use ‘extreme caution’ around police.
Driving while black can be a serious offense in many U.S. jurisdictions.
Based on his recent response to Clinton’s means tested and bankerly approach to college tuition and debt, and this, Sanders is now undoing the good he did by raising and reframing issues in terms of the common good instead of neoliberal divisive and rent-collecting fake incrementalism.
Sanders praises Clinton health care plan
Community health centers? Again? Wasn’t it funding for community health centers that got Sanders to cave in and vote for the ACA in the first place?
Yes, and in the context of the multi-layered farce and Democrat sell-out of the ACA process he did a good thing. But his campaign finally got a more widespread discussion going of the difference between neoliberalism and even a mild form of democratic, socialistic, publicly funded, publicly administered programs for the common good. Calling Clinton’s proposals progressive is regressive.
I would fully expect that if there’s any follow-up on these at all, the Medicare buy-in would be privatized Medicare Advantage, and the college application process would be replaced with an exchange where students can shop for the best deal in copays and deductibles (fees and access to campus amenities)
“I would fully expect that if there’s any follow-up on these at all, the Medicare buy-in would be privatized Medicare Advantage, and the college application process would be replaced with an exchange where students can shop for the best deal in copays and deductibles (fees and access to campus amenities)”
You missed your calling in life. You should have been a Dem hack corporatist shill lobbyist writing neoliberal DINO legislation. Right on target, and predictive in a way that makes me think maybe in a previous life you were the Oracle at Delphi.
But I still have problems with Bernie, Grayson, and the others who sold out on the ACA without the public option. (Even if the public option was a diversion from single payer, I think it would have proven to be better than what we got.) I know that Bernie promised to support the Dem nominee, and he has his committee assignment to worry about, but given how fraudulent the primary process was I will lose respect for him if he does, indeed, endorse the Hildabeast.
This (again) sounds like a huge nothing. What is a “community health center”? Why is he praising this?
There is no excuse for us not to have universal healthcare other than neoliberal, market based, cronyism in our politics. The insurance companies have more money than you. Sorry.
This chalice is not looking so poisoned.
A community health center used to be a free clinic that operated for those that had no insurance or way to afford insurance. These days it’s a clinic that helps enroll people in the health care pools and charges sliding scale for health care.
They’re actually way more effective than our broken for profit system.
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/06/gop-senators-support-sanders-obamacare-expansion/
[Enter sheepdog, stage left. MOANS heard.]
Sanders Team Loses Testy Fight on Trans-Pacific Pact at Platform Meeting [Bloomberg]
Game over. I will vote Putin-Xi before I vote for Clinton-anybody.
Per marym’s perceptive comments above with regard to healthcare and tuition, I await Mr. Sanders’ proclamation that the TPP plank represents great progress!
Alas, Putin-Xi have yet to make it on the ballot here in California.
Passing the TPP then makes other initiatives like de-privatizing health insurance (or anything else), negotiating prescription drug prices, banning fracking more difficult if that would interfere with corporate profits and they take it to ISDS. Probably just a coincidence, though, that Obama and Clinton have found a million excuses not to follow through on these initiatives, at the same time they were diligently working on the TPP.
I hope there’s a third party alternative to Putin and Xi in your state.
:-)
A few months ago, Xi Jinping demanded that reporters and editors must pledge absolute loyalty to the Chinese Communist party and closely follow its leadership in “thought, politics and action.” That seems pretty bad to me.
:-(
Universal health care just voted down. Mark Pryor? they must stand by Obama in arguing against MCR for all, universal care steps on Os ACA legacy.
After Dallas, We Don’t Need to Say ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Rolling Stone
By comparison, for example, Peter Liang was the first NYPD officer to be convicted for an on-duty killing in the last ten years. He shot unarmed black man Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn project housing stairwell, after he had his gun drawn because a stairwell light was out in the residential block he was patrolling. He had not been called to the scene of a crime. He won’t spend a day in jail; his manslaughter conviction was accorded a sentence of five years’ probation.
I’m not equating the intentional assassination of police officers with the (regular) killing of black people by cops. I don’t believe most cops are hunting down black people — but I also don’t believe murderous racist intention is necessary to make an execution a brutal, racist act. There are not very many people hunting down cops. Cops’ lives are already valorized; it costs everything to take one. For a cop to take a black life, in criminal-justice currency, costs nothing at all. This, again, is what mattering does and does not look like.
=====================================
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kelly_Thomas
A judge declined to dismiss the charges against the officers in January 2013, finding that “a reasonable person could infer that the use of force was excessive and unreasonable.”[10] An appeals court judge also denied a request to overturn the lower court’s decision.[11] On January 13, 2014, Ramos and Cicinelli were found not guilty of all charges,[12] while the trial for Wolfe was pending.[13] Following the verdict for the two officers, the district attorney’s office announced it would not pursue the case against Wolfe.[14] On January 17, 2014, charges against Wolfe were dropped.[2]
It is easy enough to look up and view the death of Kelly Thomas on Youtube – the people of the US accept that the police are immune from consequences of the most grievous acts
Friday, July 8, 2016
Goldman Hires Former EU President As Advisor
File under: High-level revolving door acts.
José Manuel Barroso, the former Portuguese prime minister and one-time head of the European commission, has been hired by Goldman Sachs.
Barroso, who was president of the European commission for 10 years until 2014, is becoming chairman of Goldman Sachs International – the bank’s UK and European operations – and will also be an adviser.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2016/07/goldman-hires-former-eu-president-as.html
score!
http://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/07/gretchen-carlson-roger-ailes-sexual-harassment/490196/
Gretchen Carlson’s website has the usual features you’d expect from the digital presence of a television anchor—a brief biography, photos galleries, videos, positive reviews about new memoirs. As of Wednesday, it has something new: a link to download the lawsuit Carlson filed this morning against her former boss, Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News.
Carlson alleges Ailes fired her from the network late last month because she refused his sexual advances, and because she complained to him about sexual harassment in the office.
=============================================
Is it wrong to not only have schadenfreude, but Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious schadenfreude?
Didn’t we have a discussion about Fox blondes in the links just a couple of days ago?
Dan
I got out venn diagram crayola box and for the life of me i couldnt get the Rodger Ailes and Sex circles to intersect
Object lesson for earning the face you deserve.. His presentation channels Elmer Fudd for me.My apologies to Elme
r.
Back outside for me. Absolutely beautiful day.
After a couple hot humid deluge rain days .. i can hear the garden growing
Optimader
July 9, 2016 at 4:13 pm
Wikipedia says the Ailes’ (or is it Ailes’s?) have a son. I don’t know if that has been confirmed by DNA…
“I got out venn diagram crayola box and for the life of me i couldnt get the Rodger Ailes and Sex circles to intersect”
You don’t need what most of us think of as “sex” – just some spermatozoa and a turkey baster….
Inexplicably….Ailes wife is blonde…(sarc)
http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/elizabeth-ailes-roger-fox-news-gretchen-carlson-sexual-harassment-wife-family-photos-kids/
In the one picture, she does seem to have that “I am being held against my will” look…
I may be in a slightly out of phase state of mind, but at this moment in time it make sense to me to re-apply the oft referenced Overton Window concept of political acceptance to being a socially acceptable behaviour metric, and one might then expect that after bill clintons repeatedly shoving himself through would “regauge” said window to allow the more diminutive , yet corpulent and compliant Rodger Ailes (sp) to fit through in a unscathed manner,
Isn’t he the MSM tv news puppet madter in the US, or is the king dead??
A perfect setup for graymail. That’s a nice network you have there.
It would be a shame if
anything happened to itall your female anchors were forced to make depositions under oath.
I’m guessing that Rupert makes this go away and Roger will be spending more time with his family.
I had to think of Jim Haygood’s comments here at Naked Capitalism in reading this delicious little piece by Maureen Dowd, “The Clinton Contamination.” Especially this point:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/the-clinton-contamination.html?_r=1
Great visualization of global bank footprints. Note where Goldman is outsized: Caymans, Mauritius, Ireland, New Zealand:
https://opencorporates.com/viz/financial/index.html#goldman
great visual… G Sucks and also MS just love vacationing in the Caymans…
The llamas remind me of the credits near the beginning of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. First the Møøses, and then the llamas.
Email tar baby after deconstructing Comey I thought of Dylan:
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People call say ‘beware doll, you’re bound to fall’
You thought they were all kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you talk so loud
Now you seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your FBI deal
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be without any integrity
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
Ahh you’ve gone to the finest schools, alright Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
Nobody’s ever taught you how to live without respect
And now you’re gonna have to get used to it
You say you always compromise
With the Wall Street gang, because your white
Theyre forever selling you alibis
And you stare into the vacuum of the FBI
And say to all do you want to make a deal?
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To have no integrity on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone
Ah you never turned around to see the frowns
On the people and the clowns when they all did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people take the rap for you
You used to ride on a SD horse with your diplomats
Who lie buried in Libya like a Benghazi rat
Ain’t it hard when you discovered that
You really wasn’t where it’s at
After you took from them everything you could steal
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To have no integrity on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
Ahh princess on a steeple and all the pretty wall street people
They’re all drinking, thinking that they’ve got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you better take your wall street ring, you better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Comey in rags and the language and laws he abused
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re incriminated now, you’ve got no integrity to conceal
How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To have no integrity on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
The Rs and Ds seem so bent on destroying themselves that a Sanders-Stein team might just be the ticket.
Please stop repeating this pet Green fantasy. Sanders is not interested and you Greens pushing it despite that is annoying the hell out of many Sanders supporters. If you want to make friends and win allies, this is the polar opposite of how to do it.
Lambert described how Kshama Sawant, at the conference that was just held in Chicago, made a huge negative impression by 1. Assuming everyone knew what a Socialist was (when many young people in America are so poorly educated that they don’t) and not bothering to explain what she had campaigned for and why her victory in Seattle was important and 2. Wasted her time pressing for Sanders to run on the Green ticket when he is clearly not going to do that. The indications are that it went as I predicted, it just alienated most of the audience for how presumptuous and off base it was.
Nowhere ONCE have I seen Greens give a single coherent reason as to why anyone should support them, except “We aren’t the Dems”. Sorry, that logic applies to the Libertarians and Trump and itty bitty fringe parties. It’s also as if you think you deserve the vote as a matter of right, that your superiority is obvious. It isn’t. The Greens are not a national party, in many (most) states they appear to be dysfunctional (Lambert can tell you long form re Maine and we have comments from politically savvy readers in other states). They rarely if every do the real blocking tackling you need to do to build a real party, the most important being canvassing (which then becomes a get-the-vote-out machine at election time).
If the Greens were serious about exercising power, as opposed to being about mere virtue-signalling, they’d be working on getting candidates into local and state offices so they’d be seasoned and credible and then work on getting seats in Congress, most important in the Senate, where one or two Green Senators could have huge influence by acting as swing votes on contested issues. Instead, they waste their energy by running well meaning but not at all credible candidates like Stein, who has never held an elected office and at most managed a handful of people, as President. I fail to see Greens present anything that recommend the Greens as a party, unless you want to brand yourself as a purist but also be able to say you vote.
The coherent reason to support the Greens is their party platform, which I can support, as opposed to that of the Libertarians and Trump, which I cannot. Since you bring it up, many people are voting “not the Dems”, so why not vote a party whose positions you support as opposed to one you don’t?
Good point. The Greens should run an experienced candidate with decades of experience, such as Senator Bernie Sanders. If he’s not interested, that’s his prerogative. But if he does do this, it could be huge.
Makes sense. Will you be voting for the Libertarian Gary Johnson, for Trump, or for a fringe candidate that nobody has heard of? I hope you won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton, the world’s greatest cattle futures trader.
Yves. I keep voting green in our state to keep the party alive and on the ballot. One can but hope some will step up and use it as a way to mess with the R+D.
That is is a legitimate reason. Perhaps the party will become more effective. But the fixation with the Presidency is like wanting to pole-vault before you can walk.
Bernie Sanders has enormous electoral support. His numbers are vastly more than the Greens could muster in ten more years. If Bernie and his supporters were inclined to run independent they would hugely outstrip the vote tally of the Greens. The constant calls by the Greens are spurious and ignore or deny his overwhelming vote for change.
Politics is about numbers and principles and it would be unprincipled for Bernie Sanders campaign to ask all those supporters to backflip to the Greens. The millions of people that have come out for Bernie came to a reformer of the Democrat Party: that was his call and that was their vote of confidence.
He cannot betray that by suddenly traipsing over to the Greens and it is disingenuous for the Greens to be “inviting” him to do so. The Greens need to run confidently on their own merit.
Bernie Sanders is clearly engaged in a serious arm wrestle with the Democrats and has every intention of having as much of his campaign agenda adopted to their national platform as he can. Over the next few years he and his vast supporter network will need to keep up the pace and keep the Democrats somewhat honest to their commitments while they work strenuously to reform the beast. There is a long way to go but the last six months has recovered decades of lost opportunity and it will be much easier to build on that now.