Lauren Singer runs a company with one business goal: Go out of business. Medium (Chuck L)
Pressure Mounts to Reform Our Throw-Away Clothing Culture Yale Environment 360 (resilc)
We’re trashing the oceans — and they’re returning the favor by making us sick Washington Post (resilc)
30 Years After The Disaster: Ukraine Plans Huge Solar Farm In Chernobyl OilPrice
Why the Modern Nuclear Project Will Persist: At Least Until We Focus Action On Why It Is Persisting CounterCurrents
How a happy moment for neuroscience is a sad moment for science Medium (Chuck L)
Teaching kids empathy: In Danish schools, it’s … well, it’s a piece of cake Salon
Tsipras debt comments hint at shift in position ekathirmerini (Catherine A)
Female CEOs, Still a Rarity, Face Extra Pressures Wall Street Journal. Reader L notes, “Our theory proven”:
Indeed, research suggests that women tend to be picked for top roles when a company is in turmoil, a phenomenon known as the ‘glass cliff.’ Researchers from Germany and the U.S. found 62% of participants in an experiment chose a man to head a company that was performing well, while 69% chose a female candidate when the company was in crisis.
Brexit
Brexit: Two-track trade talks are best for UK Financial Times. Mind you, this is supposedly expert commentary:
The other track is for Britain to revert to its individual World Trade Organisation membership augmented by whatever bilateral free-trade agreements it might negotiate with like-minded countries not in the EU.
As we’ve said repeatedly, quoting the Director General of the WTO, who apparently has yet to get the attention of anyone responsible in the UK. there is no default to the WTO. A WTO deal will have to be negotiated just like any other deal. And the Director General also warned that cutting and pasting in text from the deal the UK currently has via the EU won’t work either.
BREXIT FALLOUT: City jobs tumble 12% in July Business Insider. We pointed out that firms in the City are not going to sit pat as the UK dithers over Brexit They are hedging their bets by getting more EU licenses and looking into office space in places like Dublin (which has hardly any of the sort they need, the locals reportedly don’t expect Dublin to become London West) and Amsterdam.
12 reasons not to panic about Brexit – and why we probably won’t leave the EU after all Independent
Telephone conversation with British Prime Minister Theresa May President of Russia
Jeremy Corbyn copies the Bernie Sanders playbook Politico
Bernie Sanders Denounces Brazil’s Impeachment as Undemocratic, Calls for New Elections Intercept (Phil U)
Ukraine/Russia
Russia Masses Troops on Crimea Border; Ukraine Warns Russian Invasion Possible “At Any Minute” Michael Shedlock. EM: “Headline flunks the ‘Ukraine says!’ filter, and it’s clear the western media love to dutifully parrot Kiev/US-neocon propaganda, so Mish is right to seek alternative sources.”
Syraqistan
Google Maps no longer lists Palestine, only labeling land as Israel McClatchy (resilc)
In Syria, US should be “killing Russians and killing Iranians covertly,” says former CIA acting director Morell. pic.twitter.com/SUOkssjkRy @samueloakford (guurst)
The US is hiring military contractors for operations in Syria Business Insider (Phil U)
Turkey
The Turkey-Russia reset Politico
Putin and Erdogan vow to restore links and economic ties Financial Times
Erdogan finally turns to Putin probably because he sees Hillary coming failed evolution
Imperial Collapse Watch
Kissinger hindered US effort to end mass killings in Argentina according to files Guardian
2016
Killing the Messenger Common Dreams. Hillary supporters hippie-punching Common Dreams for having provided sympathetic coverage of the Sanders campaign. So the same veal pen approach described by Jane Hamsher, where non-complaint progressive organizations would have their institutional funding yanked has moved down the food chain. While this is probably working towards the Fuhrer, many of the notes Common Dreams displayed have a non-organic feel, although that may reflect the degree to which Hillary loyalists have internalized campaign messaging.It’s hard to imagine Hillary backers defunding any conservative sites. I made a donation, and if you are flush this month, consider making a contribution. And if you use PayPal, they allow you to add a note, so please say NC sent you.
Of Course Clinton Will Be Very Hawkish as President American Conservative (resilc)
Viewpoint: Clinton’s speech a missed opportunity BBC. Phil : “OK story about Clinton ignoring POC better video with a title that is the opposite what it should be ‘The hackers backing Hillary Clinton.'”
Black Pastors Speak Out in Support of Hillary Clinton From the Pulpit Atlantic (Chuck L)
Many Obama donors have yet to join Clinton Financial Times
Hillary Clinton’s Turn to McCarthyism Consortiumnews (Chuck L)
Clinton Leads Trump by 11 Points in Pennsylvania, Gains in Ohiom Wall Street Journal
A Whole Lot of Millennials See No Difference Between Clinton and Trump Mother Jones. Contrary to The Mighty Wurlitzer until a few days ago.
Jill Stein Is Outspending Donald Trump on Campaign Ads New York Magazine (reslc)
Strange Days Eschaton (Doug S). From over the weekend, still gername.
Trump wrongly says nation is short of coal FederalNewsRadio
Trump raises Second Amendment as option to block Clinton justices Financial Times
Trump lacks experience but his detractors lack common sense: Spengler Asia Times (steve h)
Putin Calls Out Rigged US Democracy: ‘You Actually Believe US Elections Are Democratic?’ Waking Times (Judy B)
Americans of both major parties say infrastructure has worsened; want more spending: poll Reuters (EM)
Colorado anti-fracking initiatives hit signature target Reuters
Black Kentucky judge suspended after racially tinged remarks Reuters (EM)
Black Injustice Tipping Point
‘Do Something, or Arrest Us’: NAACP Demands Restoration of Voting Rights Act NBC (Phil U)
NAACP leaders arrested during voting rights protest in Virginia Reuters (EM)
What Happened on Wall St. Ahead of the Crisis? We May Yet Find Out New York Times. Lordie. Even if these suits do expose more, it would be the equivalent of informational bread crumbs.
M.I.T., N.Y.U. and Yale Are Sued Over Retirement Plan Fees New York Times
Thomas Friedman Goes to the Wall Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone (Baby Gerald)
US foreclosures hit record low as borrowers’ performance picks up Financial Times. Note this is mainly a function of low homeownership rates and much more stringent lending post crisis, and a huge reduction in predatory practices, as opposed to robust consumer finances.
Class Warfare
U.S. judge dismisses challenge to Seattle’s Uber, Lyft union law Reuters
Some Small-Business Owners Trim Expansion Plans, Cite New Labor Law Wall Street Journal
‘Granny flats’ – a solution to housing crunch – come under fire Christian Science Monitor (furzy)
I could only afford to live in a truck. But I still wasn’t eligible for food stamps Guardian (resilc)
Pocketbook Theory – Mish vs. Wall Street Journal Michael Shedlock (EM). This deserved its own post:
I bring this up because of two lines buried in today’s report on Productivity and Costs, Second Quarter 2016 by the BLS.
Due to a 4.7-percentage point downward revision to first-quarter hourly compensation, unit labor costs decreased 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2016, rather than increasing 4.5 percent as reported June 7. Real hourly compensation decreased 0.4 percent after revision, rather than the previously-published increase of 4.2 percent.
Real hourly compensation declined 0.4% instead of rising 4.2% as originally posted!
Coop Profile: People’s Ride Democracy at Work. Martha r: “Ridesharing organized as workers’ coop. Grand Rapids, MI.”
The Shell Game of the Economic Elite’s Hamilton Project Truthdig (margarita, Steve C)
Antidote du jour (furzy):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
244 comments
Comments are closed.
I wouldn’t take anything Denis MacShane (born Josef Denis Matyjaszek) says (12 reasons not to panic…) even with a pinch of salt.
He was always one of the slimiest of the blairites.
He’s certainly not one to panic about things, admitting to be “guilty of doing too little” to investigate the extent of the sex crimes being committed in his Rotherham constituency (discussed in yesterday’s links) before being chucked into the grey bar hotel for fiddling his parliamentary expenses.
Google rules the world: Palestine has been deleted from its world maps, with the entire Occupied Territories assigned to Israel, only a faint dotted line marking the division between them. Wow, who needs the UN and International Law when you have the Internet Gang making the calls? Can we boycott Google? Fat chance. That’s tantamount to asking, ‘Can we boycott the Clinton Dynasty?’
from WP: “This isn’t the only disputed region that Google has had to contend with. In May, I wrote about some of the discrepancies in the search engine’s Knowledge Boxes, where Taiwan is described as an independent country, and Ireland’s fourth-largest city is referred to by its nationalist name. Jerusalem, which is claimed by both Israel and Palestine, is listed as Israel’s capital alone. And Crimea, which is likewise claimed by both Russia and the Ukraine, is mapped differently depending on which country you’re searching from.”
GoogleMaps is set up to be our warlords GodSpoke
Sounds like Google is coming out in favor of the One State Solution. We will be eagerly awaiting news of Israel granting full citizenship rights to their millions of new citizens.
Maybe Google does rule the world but I’ve found it to be less useful and getting worse almost daily. Google search no longer just works and google maps is a dumpster fire. I’m wondering if its deliberate.
Yes, circa 2000 google search was great and now it’s garbage. duckduckgo is better but not as good as google of the past, but worlds better than google of the present
Focus on pure profit ruins many business why not Google? Their precious academic algorithm has been supplanted by a compromised filthy lucre algorithm, probably the plan from the beginning – take the money and run. An other plug for duckduckgo.
is there a better browser than mozilla, for pc users?
I use Pale Moon its a fork off firefox before it began to totally suck
thanks, i had been using google as a browser too, switched to duck duck go as a search engine.
I use Opera.
thanks, i saw some lists in tech magazines, but cynic that i am, i wonder if there is some product payola.
Yes, there’s at least two places for payola in your browser’s toolbar. The search engines are one. The other is the padlock.
I use Chromium for a lot of things, and have been slowly migrating off of Firefox as it steadily yields to neoliberal values.
I’ve been flailing away at Google trying to find the first mention of the “white working class.” Best I can do so far is an article by Joel Rogers and Ruy Teixeira that appeared in The Atlantic in June 2000, “America’s Forgotten Majority.”
My interest is not in class, but when white people became “ethnic.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but my sense is that for most of American history, “working class” meant white working class. Sort of the American default identity. When did that change?
Oh, and the concluding paragraph from the article (again, we’re talking June 2000) shows how little the nature of political discourse has changed:
“The insecurities of the new economy cannot be remedied without effort; the need to confront them politically is inescapable. Whichever party acknowledges this first, together with the need to overcome the new austerity (the bipartisan consensus that paying down the national debt is far more important than spending money on new programs), will reap the electoral rewards.
Until then, neither party is capable of implementing a serious program to address America’s problems at scale, since the opposing party can effectively veto it. We are left instead with a politics of small gestures and incremental changes, fueled by intense partisan conflict. This makes for profoundly ineffective governance, especially when measured against the challenges of a new century.”
or you could reverse the question, and ask when certain ethnic groups became socially accepted as being, for want of a better word, “white”.
Also, Google is burying Seth Rich in their search results.
And Shawn Lucas.
Julian Assange asserted in a TV interview that Wikileaks sources face risks with the same potential consequences that met Seth Rich.
While Assange refused to confirm or deny that Rich was the source of the DNC leak, Wikileaks has posted a $20,000 reward for info leading to the conviction of his killer.
Was “the Russians did it” an alibi for the murder of an insider leaker?
That part of the interview is really fascinating, just as an exercise in observing human intelligence labor away under its own weight. Having explained that Wikileaks offered the $20,000 reward out of a sense of responsibility to its sources, Assange becomes uncomfortable when the interviewer immediately draws the reasonable conclusion, that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks source, Assange seemingly embarrassed to discover that his explanation had not been quite oblique enough. Of course he knew what he was saying, and yet once it got out of his mouth the truth is too awkward, or dangerous (to Wikileaks as a protector of sources), to acknowledge. But, then, how to plausibly explain the reward offer without implicating Rich as a source?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJtZcFmUtvo
Good analysis and having seen that footage on TV I totally agree.
Does Seth Rich have Russian descendants? Hahaha.
descendantsheritageWaiting for Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s vow to track down “the real killer.”
Where was Debbie on the night of July 8th?
“He leaked, we saw, he died.”
[sound of sociopathic laughter, followed by a coughing fit]
WIKI LEAKS ATTORNEY dead on railway tracks….
not a peep since it happened in April…
Assange offers reward for Seth Rich murderer
throws down on Clinton Murder Machine.
If you consider the seemingly similar circumstances between Seth Rich and Mike Connell, it appears that there is an organization controlling, or attempting to control, elections and doesn’t appreciate being exposed. Clintons are just players, not the coach? Or maybe it’s all just conjecture.
Oh, lordy. I tried to confirm that Rich was murdered on July 8 — and discovered that the news stories range from July 8 to July 11.
The actual police incident report, viewable in this account, gives the incident time as 4:20 a.m. on July 10, 2016 (a Sunday). There’s other useful info in the piece.
http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/seth-rich-dnc-voter-election-fraud-democratic-national-committee-wikileaks-murdered-shot-conspiracy-washington-clinton-data-analyst-emails/
It was bad enough when Wikipedia started getting hacked by the Reich wing. I suppose that next they buy up all the dictionaries, and it’ll be on to Newspeak. I heard that someone had already hacked the word “fascism” in this manner, eliminating the word “corporation” from its definition. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Incumbents thwart challengers in VT.
“Three members of the Upper Valley Young Liberals group who challenged incumbent Democrats in the Vermont House fell short in primary day voting on Tuesday, and a former state Senate aide also was running behind in a four-way Democratic primary for Windsor County’s three seats in the Vermont Senate.”
david zuckerman, the only candidate bernie endorsed at statewide level, won the race against the state house speaker and another state legislator for lieutenant gov. he is a VT Progressive Party member who ran as a dem. this is a significant win.
Emails Renew Questions About Clinton Foundation and State Dept. Overlap [NYT]
Drip, drip, drip …
New allegations today about the source of the DNC email leak.
Drip, drip, drip….indeed!
Ok, I’ll bite;
It is becoming more and more clear that the Clinton Foundation resembles nothing so much as an drug-resistant infection.
And then there are Hillary’s health issues. Which are becoming more obvious by the day. Drip, drip, drip …
It’s MRSA, Bob: Mendacious Reptiles Selling Advantages.
Could you add a little Fentanyl to my drip? Much obliged …
My money is on the press covering this but not pushing it which seams to be the MO for all Clinton scandals. And all the Hill Bots will keep ‘lalala 1st woman lalala’ -ing along. Her boycott of press conferences will be in effect till november.
I wonder how big of a bomb it would take to get her to drop out though? If she did would we get Sanders, or Kaine?
How big of a bomb? How about something related to her health?
That would do it, obviously. I think this catching steam has a better chance. With all the talk or rigged systems.
We might get Kaine. We would NOT get Sanders.
I seriously loathe Hillary, but let’s not forget Bill and Chelsea. Clearly they all work their own angles to further their stupid, shameless, and subhuman agenda. Chelsea seems to sidestep a lot of criticism, journalism and speech giving skills aside, yet her position at the Clinton Foundation and her marriage to a Wall Streeter makes it pretty clear she is in on it all.
Robert Reich apparently needs a visit from Captain Obvious.
From his FB page:
Really, he actually has to ask “why?” Why does he think she didn’t turn them over? [crickets on that one]
You know what’s really going to make people’s heads explode? When it’s Hillary who has to drop out because the DOJ tells her it’s either quit, or come get fitted for your and Bill’s matching orange jumpsuits – and Trump just carries on, once again defying the dreck that passes for conventional wisdom that hasn’t once been right since this shitshow started.
This is not going to end well, not for us, anyway.
i highly doubt the DOJ are ever going to tell her that.
they’ve had and have ample opportunity to bring her to justice and have not.
the clintons have shown that they own lynch and comey, who will do their bidding.
we’ve witnessed lynch and comey doing it.
if you have a theory of why/how the DOJ will change their mind about including the clintons in their stay-out-of-jail-free program for high level beneficiaries of powerful neoliberal interests, please enlighten us.
I guess I was having a wishful-thinking moment…sorry for getting carried away.
What I do believe is that this Clinton Foundation/pay-to-play scheme is not going to go away; it is going to fester and ooze and drip. And even if she should manage to win, I do not see any scenario where articles of impeachment are not voted 10 minutes into the new session of Congress. And then what? If she would be convicted, it’s President Kaine. Oh, frabjous day!
So, where does that leave us? With two major-party candidates who suck, and two VPs that could ultimately end up being way more dangerous than the presidents under whom they would serve. Oh, golly, I can hardly wait.
Is is better for Clinton to have a medical reason to get out now, so we can carry on with either Kaine or Biden (because you know it won’t be Sanders – and who would their VP picks be? I shudder to think), or for her to hang in there and count on the media to assist her into the WH so we can be embroiled in hearings and investigations orders of magnitude worse than Benghazi And the E-Mails?
Do we really have to have an election? Because I think by November the number of people actually voting FOR someone will be small enough to fit on the head of a pin. A small pin.
I have seen suggestions (don’t know how serious) that she selected Kaine as anit-impeachment insurance.
Brexit Fallout:
I can confirm that here in Dublin there is a certain cooling towards the idea of large scale transfers of jobs from London. Logistically, the city just can’t handle it – there is insufficient good quality office space available (although quite a lot is under construction at the moment) and there is a major shortage of residential space right now due to the damage caused by the collapse in the property market in 2008. Rents are shooting up and nobody wants to add a few thousand Londoners to the mix (apart from landlords of course). The lead in times for developing the scale of offices required are just too long for the Brexit timetable.
The Irish government is actively looking to poach banking operations for Dublin, but out of necessity it is likely to target selective high value small operations rather than large scale back office operations. If the latter show an interest in Ireland, they will be steered to other towns/cities, although I doubt that many will be interested.
Without wanting to be cruel, isn’t dublin a bit too much of a dump for the city boys and girls?
How does the swiss finance sector get on as a single market paticipant, but non EA/EU member?
I know quite a few people in the company relocation game and they all say that Dublin is one of the easiest sells of all for US/UK companies. Its mostly about language and culture – they just feel its easier to move to and fit in, especially with families and kids involved. And the legal system (not just for work, things like buying a home) is very similar. And if you have money, there are plenty of nice suburbs and rambling old country piles to feed your aristocratic fantasies. For many UK companies, Dublin is a far more attractive sell than the north of England or *shudder* the Midlands. US companies find Ireland an easier sell to their important staff for relocation than continental Europe.
I know quite a few people in the company relocation game and they all say that Dublin is one of the easiest sells of all for US/UK companies. Its mostly about language and culture – they just feel its easier to move to and fit in, especially with families and kids involved. And the legal system (not just for work, things like buying a home) is very similar. And if you have money, there are plenty of nice suburbs and rambling old country piles to feed your aristocratic fantasies. For many UK companies, Dublin is a far more attractive sell than the north of England or *shudder* the Midlands. US companies find Ireland an easier sell to their important staff for relocation than continental Europe.
I suppose anywhere’s nice if you’ve got a few bob.
Bearing in mind that I know sweet FA about high finance, as they used to call it,I would have thought it would be easier to set up a letterbox in ireland and ‘outsource’ everything back to that London.
It’s got all that nice ‘lifestyle infrastructure’ that requires so much blood and treasure to gain critical mass.
After all Apple isn’t really based in Ireland anymore than Amazon is based in Luxembourg.
Of all things Brexit, I think both sides are going to work very hard to accommodate each other in this particular sector.
Everyone else can drop dead.
You need far more than a ‘letterbox’ to passport a bank or financial services company within the EU. The substantive amount of work has to be done within their EU base. This is why identifying sufficient office space is key to whether they can move within the time frame, otherwise it would be a very simple process.
Apple’s European HQ is in Ireland – it employs nearly 5000 people in Cork. Apples manufacturing base in Ireland actually long pre-dates its use of Ireland as a tax dodge (the first Apple plant in Ireland opened in 1980). It is actually one of the very few direct manufacturing plants that they own and operate. Back in the late 1980’s most Macs were manufactured in Ireland. Its not an exaggeration to say that Ireland is Apples second home after Cupertino. This is not to justify their tax dodges, but it is a very different situation from Amazons use of Dutch and Luxembourg copper plate addresses to avoid taxes.
5000 jobs is most welcome for Cork, but that covers Europe, Mid east and Africa. (Bar their showroom employments).
Seems a good deal to have access to the european market.
Its still a branch office.
I can’t imagine any significant decisions happen there, but that’s transnational corporate capitalism these days.
Like I said, my knowledge is limited (which is why I’m here) and I see Switzerland passports stuff through London, so that’s another tickle they might be losing.
If not Dublin, I wonder where would have the capacity or desire to absorb that square mile?
Switzerland is not an option for any of the banks or other financial institutions because of uncertainty over its own relationship with the EU.
There would be no question of even a large chunk of the Square Mile moving to the EU – but a significant number of operations would have to move if they are to maintain favourable status under EU Regulations (I’m no expert on the passporting issue, but I think the most likely to leave are US and Asian companies with major regional bases in London).
The major issue is the sheer logistics of shifting major operations. Its not like moving a factory – its far easier to move plant than it is to move people. I doubt any city has the available office space, but obviously big cities like Paris or Berlin have an advantage in that regard. But in terms of historic links to banking, then its really Dublin, Amsterdam and Vienna, and maybe Paris and Stuttgart that would be in the running. If you assume that all those cities can put together packages in terms of office space, then you face the HR issue of persuading staff to leave and recruiting new staff. Dublin has a major advantage of this for language, legal and cultural issues. Quite simply, if a company wants to shift its top staff, it has to provide schooling and support for spouses too, and this is easier in an English speaking country. There is a myth around that Ireland has attracted so many US companies to set up European HQ’s for tax reasons – plenty of other countries offer similar tax deals. In truth, its simply because many companies find it easier to set up in English speaking common law countries with a good supply of young workers, its not much more complicated than that.
Although major financial companies much prefer to cluster with other such countries (which is why everything ends up in a handful of cities anyway), I suspect the logistical issues will ensure that they will spread quite evenly, at least initially. If Brexit goes through, it will likely to be many years before any major shift in axis in financial poles become obvious.
Read a survey couple of months ago that concluded Amsterdam is destination of choice for a large scale movement.
Amsterdam is one of the major alternatives, but it suffers from plenty of disadvantages too – it does not have much suitable office space available either and its legal/planning system is notoriously slow when it comes to facilitating change (even change as simple as adding a lot of office space quickly). The disadvantage of being a very organised, structured and democratic society is that they tend not to be good at changing direction very fast to take advantage of new situations.
Is Hong Kong feasible?
That EU application might take a few years….
It’s always the details…
They could develop near the airport, but that takes time…
Okay, I’ll be the dummy seeking enlightenment. Can someone please explain how BLS could have been off by over four percentage points in its original report? Is this logistical? Do they publish before all the data are in? Or…?
ahhh the revisions. the gaps are widening…shows desperate measures applied to the volatile market manipulations. the real horrors for the day of reckonings…
The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in. Henry Green
I commented on this issue of government stats a few days ago but reading your post triggered a thought about a possible new factor that I hadn’t considered before: the whole notion that we are awash in information may trick people into thinking that the computers and the search engines can do the job for them. Gathering excellent data used to be an arduous skill that demanded a lot of experience and critical thinking. Today, I’m not sure if that is the case. We have so much data that I don’t think we question it in the same way, as it seems to go from computer to computer without many people asking, as it used to when it went from person to person, key questions about reliability and motivation. The less data you have, the more you tend to scrutinize it. When you are swamped with data, I’m not sure that you don’t just take it at face value and move on to the next pile of data.
This is, of course, only one factor: the needs of PR, the way the politicians have been fiddling with the definitions since the Thatcher/Reagan era (I read somewhere that since 1979 there have been something like 19 separate tweaks in the way the British government measures unemployment, all designed to make it look lower than it really is), and the loss of quality personnel in the various agencies charged with collecting, collating, and interpreting data. When there were only a small number of people earning advanced degrees in math and physics 70 years ago but even fewer jobs a post at the Bureau of Standards was a plum appointment. When Richard Feynman’s dad asked at MIT what his son, then thinking of studying mathematics, could do with the degree he was told he could become an actuary, work for the government, or teach high school. Now, it would be considered an academic come-down not to get an academic job and since most community colleges, forget about universities, want a Ph.D. to run their Math or Physical Science departments, no one who could get any other job is likely to try to get one in the Bureau of Standards or the Patent Office.
Just saw Jurassic Park yesterday, and Jeff Golblum, among his other great one-liners says, “God help us, we’re in the hands of engineers”.
I think we’re now at, “God help us, we’re in the hands of analysts.” The beast of Big Data grows and grows. No one data set will ever satiate its appetite. 538 and others use the data, lose the data, and nothing gets any more efficient.
http://careers.uspto.gov/Pages/WhyWork/Benefits.aspx
I sgree with your specilation on the lack of fidelity on data. Why should the BLS scribes really take care on statisticsl statemrnts if they can just repose layer with extravagant corrections ?
On the academic professionsl atherosclerosis, A HS pal, one of the smartest ppl iI know did the Chemistry BS, ChemE MS worked in industry for his first decade or so, then retolled with the warton mba in finance and ran out a very successful, highly respected career. Now retired earyish he decided to give back and float out his resume to several domestic Universities to teach finance. Not only did he not get rejections, he did not even receive responses!
Why ever would the US University system want someone that spent a successful career in the private sector when they have PHD professors that spent their carreers wading in academic theory?
So the irony is the only Universities that enthusiastically recruited him were the two big ones in China. So he decided WTF, why not and teaches a few months a year. His student love high and the University hosts him like a king.
The Department of Justice issues its (163-page) report on the Baltimore Police Department; here is the conclusion:
Lots of work ahead, for sure.
Anne
August 10, 2016 at 8:19 am
thanks for that!
“there is reasonable cause to believe that BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution…”
I would change that to delete “reasonable cause to believe” and just state that BPD DOES violate the constitution. It is a strange thing in American jurisprudence that breaking the “supreme” law of the land has such toothless consequences…
It is just normal American hypocrisy that those who yelp the most about the constitution – a document that is about constraining and protecting citizens from government abuse, are the very people who believe the police can do no wrong. It very much reminds me of the Samuel Johnson quote
Samuel Johnson: “Why Do We Hear the Loudest Yelps for Liberty from the Drivers of Negroes?”
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2011/07/samuel-johnson-why-do-we-hear-the-loudest-yelps-for-liberty-from-the-masters-of-negroes-department.html
Not news but thorough documentation, for which DOJ is to be commended.
DOJ Criminal Division has the power to prosecute civil rights violations by police, as some of the recent items in their “Criminal Section News” make clear:
In Baltimore, despite finding violations of the constitution and federal law, they “look forward to working with the Department.”
Any questions?
In 702 shootings by Chicago police, zero federal civil rights charges filed [Chicago Tribune]
Of course if the local prosecutors are unwilling or incompetent, you’re SOL.
This is known as the Corzine clause: “I never intended to break any rules.”
But it only works as a “get out of jail free” card if you wear a badge, or have a hundred mil to your name.
Jim Haygood
August 10, 2016 at 11:04 am
I’m positive you know, but for those who might believe the dems are much better than repubs on civil rights:
http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=ijlse
Beyond these areas, the Obama administration’s civil rights record has been
remarkably thin. In the first four years, the administration did not file a single major
employment discrimination, housing, or education case, which are three traditional
areas of civil rights enforcement. Additionally, in all of these areas, the number of
cases filed appears to be either at the same level as the George W. Bush administration
or down significantly from the prior administration
At the least, the BPD can look forward to getting a Federal Monitor and hopefully some far reaching changes and reforms that have supposedly helped in L.A.
Anyone thinking this action will lead to serious reform is invited to do a remedial viewing of “The Wire”. If the fundamental, built-in incentives to “juke the stats” are not somehow dismantled, nothing of great consequence will change.
Earlier today I saw (on the news highlights in Aus.) the claim that the Trump had threatened to have Clinton assasinated! Has anyone else heard anything about this? They, the DNC or CIA or whatever they are calling themselves, are really panicking hahaha. Idiots. Considering their general tactic of inverting the truth, if I were Trump I would watch my back. Of course they could also be considering “sacrificing” Clinton and trying to pin it on Trump, allowing their ridiculous CIA candidate to win the election. These people are seriously deranged.
the guardian has a bullshit article up about that. i think it’s in their headline section. i didn’t bother reading it.
Don’t read the article–listen to what Trump said. It was way too easy to interpret as a Palin “second Amendment solution” statement, and both stupid and inflammatory.
Perhaps Trump is smarter than he’s given credit for and says suggestive yet ambiguous things because he knows the media will go hyperbolic and discredit themselves, making him look good in the eyes of corporate media wary people, a cohort that is seemingly growing larger by the day. It wouldn’t be the worst way to play the game, imo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcyLeOm6yGc
This is a clip from 2008 presidential primary.
As bad as Trump?
If not, why not?
Hahaha Biden is a fool, just like the rest of them. He can stick his beretta where the sun don’t shine. He was in Australia recently trying to drum up support for the stupid South China Sea thing. Didn’t work. Never occurs to these types that if they weren’t hellbent on causing chaos around the globe then other countries might not feel the need to take these defensive measures. What a bunch of idiots.
Doubt it.
Like others, I had hopes of Trump zeroing in on the Big Three: Clinton/Obama trade deals killing jobs, Wars making us less safe, and Clinton Foundation/State Dept corruption.
He’s not doing this. Had he, I could have tolerated his negatives. If he continues on his present course, he will lose IMO. It’s not too late to change course, but at present I see no indication he has plans to emphasize these 3 issues which would not only draw Sanders voters (and others) w/o Trump ever having to ask for their votes, but seem to be the issues many here give reason for saying Trump is the lessor evil vs Clinton.
If Trump does not hammer on these issues, I’ll vote Green or anyone but Hillary.
Yeah, I’m not claiming to know Trump’s intentions. Clinton is fucking crazy though, so from the perspective of relativity, Trump looks ok to me.
Her likely CIA director is calling for acts of war against Iran and Russia because they are our enemies or something. These are dangerous people.
My guess is no longer having a manned space operation must really eat at the fp establishment and the size of the prison population. They can’t be smug around Russians anymore. The U.S. went to the moon in 1969. Many of the movers and shakers were in high school or younger.
he’s supposedly auditioning for the job, and it’s telling that this is how he does it. usa!!
“have you now, or have you ever, advocated peace with russia?
Sounds reasonable, and this would suggest the possibility that the latency in the decline of a once great nation (still full of lots of, or at least some, great people though, as NC makes clear) has turned out one or more generations of establishment types for whom Dunning Kruger is in full effect. I mean this in the sense that all the work was done before they arrived on the scene, yet they have convinced themselves that they deserve the credit due to their personal “greatness”. Hahaha.
Made myself watch the interview NC linked yesterday. Been awhile since I’ve seen such absolute slime—maybe Lanny Breuer….I can understand why people with heavily metaphorical and binary mental constructs would announce devil- or alien-possession. Sheesh!
I had a similar response yesterday. We will never move forward as a society with primeval thinking from sickening people like him influencing policies, especially foreign.
I’d tell you what I think of the guy, but my comment from early this am is still in moderation.
But did you dig the polyester hair?
Only an amphibian would prefer plastic hair to human?
He has a mania for attention as one might expect from someone who puts his name on the side of his plane in six foot high letters. Trump’s motto: made you look.
But he also says things that make a lot of sense and things that don’t. The other option is someone thinks she has all the answers. Her form of vanity may be far more dangerous.
I checked out the alexa ratings on huff puff the other day. It has plummeted like a rock in a pond since last summer. I can’t even read it anymore. They run about 14 negative Trump stories and refuse to cover any Clinton malfeasance.
Yes. Huffpoop has really gone over the edge. It’s all Trump all the time.
If you want to defeat Trump (or any opponent), you have to strike decisively to take him or her out (oops, the ‘take him out’ of the game will be twisted into calling for violence, when is used to mean ‘to beat’ him..wait, to beat, like in physically beating someone…OK, make that ‘to defeat’ him…maybe this will work?).
All the weak charges will only strengthen him.
“This is what I believe he meant when he said that….” – that’s weak, really weak.
Perhaps people in the main stream media who cover this nonstop are disciples of PT Barnum, regarding the intelligence of the American people, but some of us might ask, “Maybe you don’t really have a solid case. If you do, stick with the one convincing charge,”
AND repeat it as often as possible.
That’s called ‘Keep it Simple, Smartie”…or KISS.
so this is the likes of what she’s doing with the July fund raising of 90fuckingmilliondollars
One of the problems with one candidate being wildly overfunded is that the money starts looking for excuses to be spent. (Like $1 million for trolling Sanders.) Clinton passed this point a long time ago, and yet as we hear, she is prepping for a weeklong swing through the money dripping Hamptons.
The good part about this is that a lot of the stuff that money gets spent on ends up being quite childish, and reflects (properly) badly on the candidate. The bad part is that the MSM, recipient of a lot of this, will never report on it because of that.
Bernie Sanders really, really wants your help. To defeat Democrats. [Bezos Neoconlib Daily]
The true awfulness of this steaming heap of agenda-driven, lazy`journalism’ should be savored slowly.
Or maybe I should say, `needs to be savored slowly’.
That district looks like a really tough mountain to climb. It’s an ironclad solid dem district that’s pretty wealthy. I’d expect debbie to hang on but if canova can win, that’s a monster of a statement. It really shouldn’t even be as close as that poll suggests.
Bezos can pound sand on Debbie Does Democrat. DWS has already been found out taking DNC funds and giving them to several Florida Republicans running against viable Democrats. Her ass should have been canned a long time ago.
Debbie has been around long enough to know where some of the “bodies are buried.”
I predict a sudden, perhaps terminal ailment for Debbie in the near future. The Clinton posse is capable of anything. (This election cycle is ‘socializing’ me into ever more cynical world views.)
Let me correct that headline:
Tim Canova, Pramila Jayapal, and Zephyr Teachout are all Democrats whom he is supporting.
It’s actually the Bezos Neolibcon Daily.
I watched the Charlie Rose interview with Mike Morell the other night.
It was horrifying.
As closely as I have thought I was paying attention, I was unaware that the psychopathic rot had reached quite this level of saturation.
It’s now clear that the only reason HRC can claim to exhibit any evidence of sanity is the fact that her working environment is a sea of bat-shit crazy assholes.
I used to think I was enduring Charlie’s show so as to understand the opposition, but Mike Morell does not represent the opposition, he represents the enemy, he represents a clear and present danger, and BTW, it appears that we’ve reached the point where the roaches no longer run when the lights are turned on.
Re Putin’s comments on the nature of our ‘democracy‘.
Seems I remember being taught that one of the sure signs of the illegitimacy of the Soviet government was the fact that the communist party tightly controlled who the people were allowed to vote for.
Seems obvious to me that we’ve reached that point ourselves.
So bernie stands with brazil’s first woman president, excellent!
Clinton, what’s up? Where’s that sisterhood solidarity for the president who’s been unjustly ejected by the rotten old boys club? How about you #standwithher?
As usual, the silence is defeaning.
Solidarity? You’re expecting solidarity to come from the likes of Clinton? Dream on. She is as much of a narcissist as Trump.
“There’s a place in hell…”
Paging Madeleine Albright…
quite 17 years old but still valuable
http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/08/putin-predicts-islamic-state-1999-video.html
Loved the story about People’s Ride. This is the kind of ride sharing that we need.
While in Austin at the Worker Co-op National Conference, I made use of Arcade City, which is a ridesharing Facebook group. Post your request and half a dozen people respond almost instantly. You can screen drivers/riders through their Faceborg pages, if you so choose. Rides are on a “pay-what-you-will” basis, officially, and once you’ve connected with a driver, you don’t need to go through Faceborg anymore. Simple, yet effective. Every town needs one.
http://eepurl.com/caii7X
Every town needs one independent of “F”book.
On the Brexit twin track negociations article in the FT,the Centre for Open Europe reckons at least six sets of interlocking negociations will be needed to sort out the exit and realignment;
http://www.cer.org.uk/insights/theresa-may-and-her-six-pack-difficult-deals
Re: Pressure Mounts to Reform Our Throw-Away Clothing Culture
______________________________
Currently on RabidGandhi’s strapping bod:
All of the above are used clothes imported from the US, purchased in clothing fairs in North Argentina. These fairs are prominent here in the north, and they are the cheapest way to get quality clothing here. I am not 100% clear on the whole dynamics of how it gets here, but when you go through the clothes a lot of them have tags from Goodwill or Salvation Army (it’s actually pretty annoying when something has a $1 tag from a thrift store and they want to charge you the equivalent of $3). Someone is bringing it down here in bulk, and it obviously goes through several stages of wholesalers, with everyone taking their cut.
Anyhoo, here’s an article on the phenomenon of the Used Clothes Fairs. (Sorry no time to translate it today but if you have any questions I’ll try to answer). Of note it says that the exported used clothes industry is a USD $4.5bn business worldwide. All the white dress shirts go to lawyers in Pakistan. And Evo Morales refuses entry of the clothes, because Bolivia is “not a dump for the US’s garbage” (although protecting domestic textile might be more of a motivator there).
When I was a child, my step father worked at a second hand store (AmVet) and clothes that were deemed not sale-able for the American market (the clientele in the Fresno store were actually mostly mostly Mexican farm workers, so we are talking a very low standard of “fashion” and quality to begin with) was baled (i.e., put in an actual manual hay baling machine – some of the work my step father did) and these bales of clothing were shipped off to Korea (bear in mind this was circa 1965)
If the Salvation Army was Walmart, than AmVets was the Dollar store – to give some idea of how low priced the clothing was in this place
I just share because it brings back memories of my childhood…
AmVets and Junior League Thrift stores… I still own some nice Pendleton wool shirts purchased at the local Junior League thrift store over 25 years ago and still in good enough shape for casual wear…$5.00 apiece vs over $100.00, new, today.
When we were kids in high school, these were the places to go to find cool duds like “out of fashion” ties and jackets, Navy Pea coats and other rugged military camping/cold weather gear, etc.
Today I often use the local D.A.R.T. store as an adjunct to my local Library, returning the books as a donation when I’ve finished them.
Many of these thrift stores are a great community resource.
Yeah the original article mentioned most of the clothes ending up in landfills. I’m curious as to what gets categorised for “baling”/discarding and what gets categorised as shipable to the 3rd world. The AmVets I used to go to had a colour code system on the clothes’ tags, based on the dates the clothes were received. As stock got older, you got more of a discount. I assume at some point, old stuff that isn’t selling eventually gets put into discount bins and then marked for discard. But do they donate the stuff in bulk or sell it? If it’s donated, at what point does it become for-profit again on its way down here?
Off topic but since you like figs
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/love-the-fig
And on topic, I believe used cars, obsolete movie theater equipment, many other of our US discards get shipped off to South America and Third World countries. We also export our environmental hazards as with old computer equipment to China.
You forgot the #1 US rubbish export here: discredited economics theories.
Uh, if said theories are truly discredited, they should be destroyed utterly. Somehow, the term ‘rubbish’ implies some residual value. How about “negative value item export” as a descriptor. Communicants could include Military Industrial Complex items in that category. So, either the export of said hapless hypothesis is a form of economic warfare, or the exporters have a ‘different’ concept of what constitutes perceptible “reality.”
As a youngster I built several ten speed bicycles from parts gleaned from the City Dump. Now it’s a crime to even enter the dump, much less recycle items. That appears to be nothing less than teaching the destruction of ‘good character.’ In this I’m with Shakespeare: “Hang all the lawyers.”
Maybe the dump’s contents have become toxic and could harm anyone outside the dump.
Mr Trump, build that wall!
I’ll go all ‘prepper’ on you and suggest this is another way of diminishing self reliance and creating a society based on clientelism.
The only toxicity I can think of is to the profits of multinationals.
Awesome, thanks! Looks like I’ll be on fig wasp watch this Spring.
If only more fashion models and celebrities would wear.
That, plus a good brainwashing, sorry, educational campaign, kids young and old here in a country that will be great again will all start wearing them, instead of shipping to landfills.
The new 2016 Fall collection – the Landfill style.
It’s actually rather odd but we are approaching a point where you can almost buy something new(shirts on sale for $3) for what you’d pay for it at a thrift store(I still use the thrift stores though because sometimes the quality is better than some of the newer stuff today.) The story also seems to leave out consignment shops which are also a fairly decent industry, at least in my region(we have a once upon a child for childrens clothing and platos closet for teens in addition to Nicky’s which sells gently used women’s clothing.)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a store advertising bringing back your clothing for store credit and while I do remember Levis putting out the word they would take your used jeans I don’t recall them doing it in a way that wouldn’t cost the consumer money(as in you couldn’t take your old jeans to Walmart and get a credit. You would need to mail the jeans into Levis)I’m pretty sure if they made it easy and beneficial to consumers then a larger portion of the population probably WOULD return used clothing to stores. They don’t make it easy though and most people have become accustomed to either, if it is in good shape taking it to a thrift store for a tax deduction and consignment shops where you get credit with your third option being toss it.
Here in Denver, one can shop at GoodWill stores (and I do) but the really knowledgeable shop at on of the two GoodWill warehouses. Here, cloth goods, clothing, bedding and table linens that did not sell at the GW stores, are dumped into huge rollie bins and you just dive in and pull out the good stuff.
Grab a shopping cart, pull on your rubber gloves, and start diving. Goods are sold by weight, and the more you buy, the cheaper the per pound price. So bring a friend or two and combine your purchases. I have found amazing things here: a full length new down-filled robe, a hand-knit Peruvian sweater, silk scarves, woolen blankets.
From the GW warehouse, the next stop is straight to you in North Argentina, RabidGandhi. Or to those white-shirted lawyers in Pakistan. Sorry I took the down-filled robe.
ok im wearing about 80 bucks, but that includes shoes. can i use current market value for the shoes? i guess that would be cheating.
Once upon a time I was a sponsored skateboarder and had new clothes coming out of my ass. I gave most of them to friends and charities. Then I got tired of logos. Now I don’t care about clothes (still hate logos, though I am guilty of liking Adidas shoes, though owning one pair at a time is enough for me) and I’ve noticed that as long as one is confident and has some sort of aesthetic sensibility it really doesn’t matter what you wear. Worthwhile people respond to the person not the clothes.
Where do you find them? (I mean the people, not the dress.)
Underwear optional, apparently…there are some things one maybe wouldn’t want to buy used.
:)
Very astute Anne. Note socks are not mentioned either, nor are my Bear Claw Jumbo Slippers :)
My favorite topic! I can afford to buy any clothing I want, but I shop only at thrift stores for shirts, pants and coats. It’s a way to thumb your nose at the establishment and to be environmental.
Absolutely beautiful pin point cotton made in Singapore or Hong Kong shirts can be had for $4. Shirts, not as well made can be had at Nordstroms for $80 plus tax.
British made toggle coat for 10$ on half off day.
Have been roundly criticized by European friends: “How dare you buy things there, that’s for poor people!” My reply, “Poor people wear t-shirts and ball caps, not button down shirts.”
Advantage, you don’t look like every other guy with the same line of clothing as you see on the people too lazy to shop used.
If you are worried about lice in used clothing, throw it in the dryer for an hour. Nothing will survive. You can also use the microwave for 20 seconds, IF there is not metal in the garment like staples holding tags on or zippers etc.
Check your local area for used building material places. That’s where you can really lower your environmental footprint, through purchases and tax deductible donations of stuff that just sitting around in your basement, storage shed etc.
Figure out how much you are paying per month per square foot of your home in rent or mortgage. Add up the square footage occupied by stuff you “might use someday”. That’s the price you are paying to store it. Just donate it, get the writeoff and you can buy back whatever you probably will never need at the charity.
Bonus, Used stuff paid for in cash does not show up on GDP figures, nor that of credit card purchases, so it doesn’t validate the Lie of the Economy.
Forgot to add this.
Rich women hereabouts are spending upwards of $300, I checked the prices, on denim pants that have lots of razor cuts done to them to make them look old and worn out.
However when I wear a pair of used thrift store dockers with frayed cuffs with threads hanging down, I have been advised by the same women that the pants make me look like I were poor or something.
Pocketbook Theory – Mish vs. Wall Street Journal Michael Shedlock (EM). This deserved its own post:
I bring this up because of two lines buried in today’s report on Productivity and Costs, Second Quarter 2016 by the BLS.
Due to a 4.7-percentage point downward revision to first-quarter hourly compensation, unit labor costs decreased 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2016, rather than increasing 4.5 percent as reported June 7. Real hourly compensation decreased 0.4 percent after revision, rather than the previously-published increase of 4.2 percent.
Real hourly compensation declined 0.4% instead of rising 4.2% as originally posted!
============================================
It seems to me the initial data from the government is ALWAYS revised. If it is ALWAYS wrong, what exactly is the POINT of posting it???
I suspect it is almost ALWAYS too optimistic (“almost” so as not to make it TOO obvious), and that both parties find this conducive to maintaining the status quo. How many articles will point out how WRONG, WRONG, WRONG the initial data was – will it come even close in number or in prominence to correcting the initial reporting??? Pardon my cynicism but I suspect not.
Does anyone know of any studies on the wrongness of BLS data and if it has an optimistic bent???
there is John Williams of shadowstats.com He covers employment almost exclusively. It has been 22% unemployment in the US since circa 2008, and I do not know which historic norms he uses, or what year they were created. The employment indicators have been changed (every year?) to make it appear more are working by ignoring the 90 million that aren’t working but would like to very much.
From the Asia Times article
That’s a pretty good summary of what some of us would like to believe and perhaps explains why Trump continues to have popular support despite the ceaseless pummeling in the media. In other words he’s being attacked by people with no credibility whatsoever.
Still, he may just be a boob.
My favorite, albeit somewhat redundant, sentence from the article:
Today’s guardians of the sacred flame of the sacred conservative flame are to the manure born.
Had to read it twice.
And sometimes we wish they’d be to the manure borne!
After all, they are to the manner born.
A Regency “Comedy of Manors?”
As Gore Vidal quipped: “America has one political party, the Property Party.”
But perhaps, this is what now goes by the name of “shovel ready public project.”
Lately, politics has become mere “Sturm und Dung.”
ambrit
August 10, 2016 at 12:49 pm
Got repairs to my living room done and am looking forward to popping into the old dvd player:
https://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Best-of-Enemies/80038199?trkid=201886046
The Vidal – Buckley debates
I saw Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia a couple of months ago and the only question is: did I learn 100X or a 1000X more REAL US history than my entire US education from watching that video???
Oh boy! Back when politics had more reality than a tv show.
Remember the War On Drugs is Lost issue of National Revue?
Buckley being a real Conservative: http://www.newschool.edu/wpi/globalrights/usa/1996-0212-NR-drugwar.html
Room realignments can be fun. Put in the Conversation/Mosh Pit next.
It breaks my heart to see NC fall into Karpman’s Drama Triangle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle
In the traditional narrative, TRUMP is the Perpetrator, and HRC is the hero. In the NC narrative, the roles are reversed. In both cases, we are the victims.
Escape the game. Both are utterly evil. The only winning move is not to play.
“Utterly evil”…. no stereotyping there.
Thanx for your sophisticated analysis.
This would be true if both outcomes were the same. The fact is that Trump is considered a boob, and winning the election will not change that. He will always be powerless, and that means gridlock, the preferred outcome when any advances are in the wrong directions.
I’ve been thinking about this term “gridlock” and I’ll ask, what kind of gridlock? The word is too vague…
Trillions will keep flowing among the rich and big corps, MIC and spooks will keep destroying, rule of law will continue to be rule of slaw, the neocons, FIRE and the top percentile with thier owned duopoly win either way. Might be different levels of wining but they certainly won’t be challenged on any of 90% real needs.
At first blush I also thouight a Trump win will cause more gridlock and that would be better evil worth chadding for. And I could and still do think it would be better than Clinton. But once again I would rather vote for the kind of action I actually want with the Green party platform. Goddess forbid, Stein wins and keeps the Sanderesque, even better Green issues alive from the bully pulpit while mired in that kind of gridlock.
clinton voted to destroy Iraq, a nation of over 33 million people.
clinton single-handedly destroyed Libya, a nation of over 6 million people.
clinton is salivating to destroy Syria, a nation of nearly 23 million people.
Trump built and then “destroyed” a casino in Atlantic City, an outcome that many, I’m sure, would consider the best possible.
There is nothing equivalent, “utterly” or otherwise, about these two “evils.”
As for “we” being the “victims,” the idiocy of that statement should be self-explanatory.
That was my point — that we are playing the part of the victims. We think we’re sophisticated for switching the Hero and the Savior, but we’re just playing the game still.
Whaddaya mean, “we”?
Hi5 Kat. We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run. And someday we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up.
Fahrenheit 451
Gunther Anders wrote this variation on the Noah story:
Soon a small crowd of curious people had gathered around him. They asked him questions. They asked if someone had died, and who the dead person was. Noah replied to them that many had died, and then, to the great amusement of his listeners, said that they themselves were the dead of whom he spoke. When he was asked when this catastrophe had taken place, he replied to them: “Tomorrow.” Profiting from their attention and confusion, Noah drew himself up to his full height and said these words: “The day after tomorrow, the flood will be something that will have been. And when the flood will have been, everything that is will never have existed. When the flood will have carried off everything that is, everything that will have been, it will be too late to remember, for there will no longer be anyone alive. And so there will no longer be any difference between the dead and those who mourn them. If I have come before you, it is in order to reverse time, to mourn tomorrow’s dead today. The day after tomorrow it will be too late.” With this he went back whence he had come, took off the sackcloth [that he wore], cleaned his face of the ashes that covered it, and went to his workshop. That evening a carpenter knocked on his door and said to him: “Let me help you build the ark, so that it may become false.” Later a roofer joined them, saying: “It is raining over the mountains, let me help you, so that it may become false.” (1)
How can the winning move be not to play, when someone must take control of the running away bus, full of passengers, amidst freeway traffic, if the only option is to make the best of the situation?
I’ll restate what I have often said: We voters don’t have a qualified candidate for President, and I hope that either of the two likely winners is crippled. I don’t see how those views fit into your frame. I can’t speak for Yves, but I’d be very surprised if she felt differently.
So, if you’re really heartbroken, there’s little reason for it. Thanks for sharing your concern.
The disingenuous use of “we” (“we think we’re sophisticated”) is sort of a tell that he’s not on the level, imo. Clearly HE doesn’t believe that.
They send the “smart” ones to NC, but I’m guessing they are starting to understand that it is an impenetrable fortress of rationality.
“Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the
editorial ‘we.’ ” — Mark Twin
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++!!!
Whatever good sense I have, I owe all to my parasites.
“Embrace the piercing and sucking !”
OK Class….Which parasitic entity is credited with uttering the above quote ?
1.) the Marquis De Sade
2.) A. Sassin Bug
3.) Nancy ‘Scumsucking’ Pelosi
I suspect the esteemed Mr. Clemens would consider reviewing that in light of the ubiquity of gut flora.
The human body is a collection of various autonomous or semi-autonomous parts.
Definitely we.
“My heart says this, my brain, that.”
On the Russia-Ukraine-Crimea thing.
The FSB has just issued a press release (on fsb.ru) which boils down to the following:
– On August 6-7, FSB agents tried to apprehend a group of men near the Ukraine-Crimea border carrying weapons and explosives. There was a firefight, one FSB agent was killed, 40 kilos of explosives were captured. [Presumably it is at this juncture that the army was called in.]
– At that point the FSB launched an operation to “liquidate the network of Ukrainian agents” on the peninsula. One of those detained (a man named Panov) is allegedly a staffer of Ukraine Ministry of Defense “and has made a confession to the investigators”.
– On August 7-8, two more groups attempted to cross the border from the Ukrainian side, per the FSB, “assisted by mass fire and armored vehicles” from the Ukrainians. The army stopped this, but one soldier was killed, which makes for 2 KIA in total. The government is increasing security at various locations and at the border.
That’s the official press release from the Russian side. Believe what you will, although the Panov angle suggests that more public hilarity is forthcoming. The Ukrainian press, as is its habit, is flogging the “Russian invasion” dead horse, and if Panov is ever produced he will undoubtedly be labeled a “Russian agent” of some sort. You’ve read it here first.
I wonder if the Ukrainians are filming the re-make of the movie, The Gleiwitz Case?
I just gave a donation to Common Dreams, thank you NC for the suggestion, I hope others can do the same.
x2. Done. The pettiness and vindictiveness of the center-
leftright knows no bounds.they know their real enemy.
Because I can’t just leave this here often enough:
I pulled it up on the Yootoob to see the lyrics and this updated version was in the related videos list. It’s not bad!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqNxne97ubc
Poor little Goldwater gyrl…how is that hippie punching gonna work out when real old hippies have a pension/social security check coming in and can no longer be fired or evicted ???
86 is the new 50…
Dear $hi££@ry…
welcome to interesting times…
Oh…and better read the fine print on the warranties from the huntsville/paperclip/A-O crew on that military rocket technology stuff they brought over from peenemunde…
turns out mort sohl is right…
“sometimes” they hit london”…seems most of the time they hit antwerp instead…
Good luck with those wars of yours…
Sanders buys $600K summer home
Ugh… not sure what to think. The first thought is, “really dude? Is this the best time to be doing this?” Followed by wondering how he could afford it based on the combined income in 2014 figures.
Edit:
A comment relates additional information that they sold an old, unused family property in Maine to support this purchase.
A more comprehensive story than The Hill here: Bernie Sanders Buys a Summer Home in North Hero
Edit: (Not working)
A comment relates additional information that they sold an old, unused family property in Maine to support this purchase.
A more comprehensive story that The Hill here: Bernie Sanders Buys a Summer Home in North Hero
30 pieces of silver
Read the comments–they eviscerate The Hill for not mentioning that Jane Sanders inherited a summer home that wasn’t close enough for Bernie’s family to use. The inherited house was sold and the proceeds used to purchase the Vermont home.
Lots of hate in the comments of the second article.
I would point out that as well as selling the family property, everyone is making the assumption that it was a cash purchase. There is no reason that there couldn’t be a mortgage. He has a good job with a good retirement, they would have had a decent down payment from the sale and despite his age, Jane would have a decent survivor package. Especially if they are debt free everywhere else.
Definitely. My thought was meant as “how can he afford this mortgage”. Supplementing it with a property sale makes much more sense.
Good retirement.
Perhaps it’s time for Medicare-for-all and Social-Security-for-all.
One single payer for health care, and one single payer for retirement.
There, we can have politicians who are like us.
Sounds like the locals are looking forward to having the Sanders family on their island. (Says Slim, who ardently wishes for neighbors like the Sanders clan.)
Agreed. I’d also like the one woman quoted at the end saying he fit right in because he’s ornery as one as well as the Sanders.
That’s what, 3 Goldman Speeches?
With a meager 75k in pocket change left over. Life must be hard on the professional politician speech circuit.
—Sanders buys $600K summer home—
Hillary could buy that with 2 speeches and a 20 minute conversation. Chump change when you are in demand.
Wall Street’s Dream Senator
— How the lobbyists are angling to get Evan Bayh on the Banking Committee.
https://newrepublic.com/article/135942/wall-streets-dream-senator
Some Hoosiers and Streeters said buy Bayh, outmaneuvering those who wanted to say bye bye.
Put that man on the Democrat Dream Team!
I saw the interview of former CIA acting director and Hillary endorser Morell by Charlie Rose. Blithely talking about all the people who should be pink misted. The retweets call him a psychopath. An insult to psychopaths. My wife had to turn off the TV because I was talking back too much. The guy thinks it’s in the US interest to go to war with Russia over Crimea, for just one of the outrages he blandly peddled. Just shows you aren’t taken seriously in Washington unless you are demonstrably wrong.
Steve C
August 10, 2016 at 10:55 am
I linked to that yesterday, than saw him on Charlie Rose….for a few minutes. I turned it off because I was about to explode …..
You know, listen to this guy, what he is really saying, and the big words, the soft spokenness, the calmness, the pseudo intellectualism, the confidence….yet the man is a loon. And he is THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST….
AND
https://theintercept.com/2016/08/09/ex-cia-chief-who-endorsed-clinton-calls-for-killing-iranians-and-russians-in-syria/
After leaving the CIA in 2013, Morell authored a memoir entitled “The Great War of Our Time.” The book was widely criticized for defending detainee torture in the post-9/11 era. Morell was also a co-author of a “rebuttal” to the Senate Intelligence Committee torture report.
Last week, CBS announced that Morell had left his role as a network news analyst so that he could begin publicly supporting Clinton’s run. During his interview with Rose, Morell continued to heap praise on Clinton’s perspective on U.S. relations with Syria, Russia and Iran.
=================================================
Is it any wonder the news we are fed as “reality”????
Can this be due in part to the cheaply made (though not necessarily cheap in price) clothes falling apart after minimal use? In recent years I’ve tried to buy only US made clothes. They’re way better made than the flimsy “imports” I see in stores, but nothing close to clothing that used to last long enough to be passed down to several kids in a family or jeans that were seemingly indestructible.
Yes. A steady decline in quality of both fabrics and construction since at least the early seventies. Even among the majority of “designer label” stuff. However by the 80’s things fell apart completely. Crapification is the new – 35 year old norm.
I owned mid to high end vintage clothing and furniture shops from Haight Ashbury to Little Rock back in the day. Got out because quality hit about .01 percent at best. Used to joke if I could go back in time for amazing quality I would go to J C Penny’s or Sears in the 30’s thru 50’s. Haven’t been to either in decades now.
Just like American garage sales… second hand wal mart which is the vast majority isn’t worth the trouble of selling or buying. Don’t fret about dumping true garbge, quit making/buying it to begin with.
I have been really lucky shopping at K-Mart and buying their store brands. Having worn out or destroyed much of my earlier clothing, and getting a part time job with color restrictions meant I had to replace over the last couple of years. I’m not buying corporate clothing as I do not need that, but this is day in day out casual wear that I wash regularly. I am hard on clothes but this stuff is holding up quite well, certainly better than more expensive stuff I bought a decade ago of the same type styles. I have only had to replace one thing due to shrinkage, and a couple of others because they got stained too badly.
I no longer have anything worth donating for wearing, that time is long past, but am looking for things beyond rags and rag rugs. At one point one of the greenmarkets had a donation slot for clothing to be recycled. Unfortunately it wasn’t there the last couple of times I went. But I do have a bag for them, when I can ever find them to get a schedule. Even for things like insulation or producing more yarn, this stuff could have a use.
When my clothes fell apart, I thought perhaps it was due to the new wash machine being too strong.
I recently replaced my washer, and wouldn’t discount that factor. Thanks for the reminder to try using the gentle cycle instead – at least before the crapification cycle kicks in and this machine needs to be replaced too.
We just had to replace our 7-yr old front-loading washer because the bearing assembly failed, and the resulting damage meant it would cost $1,700 to repair. We laughed in the guy’s face and told him, for that amount, we could buy three washing machines.
Anyway, in looking at new ones, I noticed that you can’t find machines with the central agitator. My son-in-law says he feels that the lack of an agitator means the drum has to move more violently, and this is harder on the clothes, so their approach is to wash most of their things on a short, “quick-wash” cycle, which seems to be working well.
Our eye-wateringly expensive 4 year old front load washer died a couple of years ago. We were broke at the time after having bought a new house so we replaced it with the cheapest new unit we could find – a top load Roper, the bargain brand of the Whirlpool family. Probably not much different than something my mom would have bought back in the ’70s.
It cleans better. It’s easier on clothes. It’s quieter. There’s no mildew buildup like the front loader had. It was made in the USA.
I’m hoping it will last forever, since I don’t see similar units for sale at the appliance stores anymore.
We have a Speed Queen. I got it after two lemon Kenmores (and my neighbor’s Fischer and Paykel broke almost instantly, and her Maytag clothes apart). Speed Queens are manufactured in Wisconsin, and they are not expensive, and they are rock solid (they are the old laundromat machine company). We got ours through Amazon; it did take a month to get to us (maybe a local appliance store would have been faster), but it has been worth it. The only disadvantage is that I am guessing it is not as water thrifty as some types of machines, but I just couldn’t get another piece of junk.
It has a central agitator.
We got used a Maytag from the appliance store. They are easy for my husband to fix and the parts are cheap. They clean very well.
Have the new Maytags been crapified?
I don’t know …. We have never had a new one. The $150 from the appliance store is so tempting….
Just recently parted with a Maytag washer/dryer set that I bought new in 1979.
Dryer drum stopped turning 3 years ago, and I called Maytag repair. Guy walks in, does a double take, and bursts out laughing: “You can’t get parts for that antique anymore.”
The drive belt it needed cost $8.29 on the internet.
Also hang dry clothes when time allows. Every time you empty the lint trap in the dryer, you are throwing part of that shirt away. I stopped drying my clothes in a dryer in the 70s and even cheap tee-shirts last years and years. … If I don’t stain them :)
so that’s where all those individual socks disappeared to over the years. i thought it was a gap in the space time continuum.
I got tired of disappearing socks and now pin my socks together with safety pins before they go into the clothes hamper. No more missing individual socks.
Anything paired such as gloves, etc, get pinned together now.
makes sense. (shakes fist at lint collectors and inconvenient holes in the continuum).
The newer High Efficiency machines use less water and different, concentrated soap, but may leave the clothes and towels smelling bad. That requires more time and effort to find ways to eliminate the smells (vinegar, specialty product?) and then to dry the items without more smells. The washer is a lot heavier that previous models as the spin cycle is quite vigorous. I miss the older ways.
The decline in clothing quality coincides directly with the rise to power of Vladimir Putin.
Just sayin’.
more of my socks have been disappearing too, i suspect. siberia?
Actually that might be Assange looking to replace his “filthy white socks“.
Either way, Assange, Putin, Son of Sam, George Lucas, Steve Bartman… theyre all in it together.
It’s probably Ikea’s fault because there are no drawers to put the clothes in:
https://www.rt.com/viral/355416-couple-assemble-ikea-acid-lsd/
The US is hiring military contractors for operations in Syria
———
When war is business, then the doctrine of maximizing shareholders value requires perpetual war. “War peace”, war is prosperity, war is eternity.
Biz is good in the Homeland, too:
Saudi Arabia donates $25 million to the Bill, Chelsea and Piglary Swineton Foundation, and State signs off on arming one of the world’s worst human rights violators.
oink OINK OINK …
To make business even gooder, Mericans can have 1/4 of the world’s population get controlled i mean slaughtered. It’s good for the environment too.
I still won’t vote for an angry / bully. An analysis of tweets: http://varianceexplained.org/r/trump-tweets/
I really hate the “bully” trope. It’s infantizing.
Very good point, but I’m having a very hard time getting mes enfants in my limited social circle to see this.
Life must be difficult and intimidating when one is so sensitive to words. Especially considering that so few people know what they are talking about hahaha.
My advice: pay more attention to what people do than what they say.
how about an analysis of why so many neocons support clinton?
Adding, I ran onto that link on the Twitter, and wanted to put it in Water Cooler but ran out of runway. It’s actually quite good:
See the contrast between deploying the “bully” trope and adding real value to readers?
NOTE Just for grins, let’s try not to confuse being “angry” and even “negative” with being a “bully.” Given the atmosphere of sycophancy that prevails among liberal goodthinkers (see Thomas Frank), one can see how they’d wish to stigmatize anything that pops their bubble. But that’s no reason to adopt their unhelpful and reductive framing.
Putin Calls Out Rigged US Democracy: ‘You Actually Believe US Elections Are Democratic?’ Waking Times (Judy B)
In addition to the evidence contained in the WikiLeaks’ DNC email release, the organization Election Justice USA, a non-partisan organization advocating for voters’ rights and standing against election fraud and voter suppression in all forms, has released a damning report titled, Democracy Lost: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primary. The report highlighted the following phenomena indicative of widespread vote rigging:
Targeted voter suppression
Registration tampering
Illegal voter purges
Exit polling discrepancies
Evidence for voting machine tampering
The security (or lack thereof) of various voting machine type
Interestingly, Russian President Vladimir Putin preemptively addressed allegations of Russian interference in U.S. elections, and in turn, questioned the legitimacy of U.S. democracy during a panel discussion at the St Petersburg Economic Forum.
Putin was joined onstage by scholar, author and CNN foreign affairs correspondent, Fareed Zakaria, as well as Kazakhstan President, Nursultan Nazarbayev and by 41-year-old Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi.
CNN’s Zakaria is a renowned leftist-globalist, as well as a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and is known for his work as author of, ‘The Post-American World.’ He is considered gifted minded in many political circles but is the virtual embodiment of Western globalism underpinned by U.S. hegemonic imperialism.
After seeing Putin’s response to Zakaria’s disingenuous question it becomes crystal clear why U.S. mainstream media doesn’t often show Putin. His penchant for direct, honest, rational discourse clearly refutes the constant droning on by paid corporate media talking heads attempting to paint Putin as some aggressive and irrational nut. Hillary has gone so far as to equate Putin with Adolf Hitler, which flies in the face of reality. In fact, Putin strikes directly at the heart of the American government’s legitimacy to rule in his response to Zakaria’s question.
===============================================
Which is worse:
A: democracy truly reflected and fairly resulted in Clintoon and Trump
OR
B: the Plutarchy gave us Clintoon and Trump
I would say B is better…..
Zakaria’s demeanor is so smooth and seductive that if he isn’t a propagandist, he should be (but his phrasing of the question leaves no doubt). And yes, a few of Putin common-sense replies, delivered with biting, matter-of fact honesty, would upend everything.
Something like this is what first attracted me to Trump. No way that someone with Trump’s ill-considered and alarming appearance, mannerisms and wardrobe would be chosen to deliver any spin whatsoever. For me,it was love at first fright.
Interesting thing I’ve noticed in recent days. Hillary Clinton is advertising in NYC. Now these stations can be seen in NJ, and I’m not sure with cable how far upstate there would be exposure to these ads, but if common wisdom is to be believed there is not much value in these ads. Primetime during the Olympics, btw – not cheap.
(IF it is a national ad buy, to me that makes even less sense…)
For anyone interested it is the clip from the Letterman show of Letterman confronting Trump with his foreign made shirts and ties and Trump shrugging it off.
And the Trump campaign is still not buying ad time. (I have to wonder what clip or clips they might choose if they ever start advertising.)
Top possibilities in my mind: recent ones that question her health, ‘he died’ with information about how that went, TPP is the gold standard, I told Wall Street to cut it out with a list of her wall street donation numbers, just to start. Maybe that Rose interview about the state of her supporters even.
High end, quality shirts and ties have been always with the 1% here.
Italian or French silk ties, stuff like that. Likely no additional US jobs have been lost to those…not since, I don’w know, 1800’s?
His were really more mid range, being sold at Macys.
At one point in my lifetime you could get a good quality shirt or even silk tie manufactured in America, so much later than the 1800s. But certainly by the point Trump got into the business it wasn’t happening.
I wonder what Letterman was wearing?
Heck, stuff in Macy’s is foreign-made (I know Sears’ has been for decades.) Maybe L.L. Bean has enough “Made in USA” to outfit Trump. Conjures an interesting mental image.
Re: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-contractors-operations-syria-2016-8
Listed under Syraquistan.
Here’s a link to b’s take on the mercs the US is using to…do exactly what?
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/07/us-army-hires-abu-ghraib-torture-company-for-services-in-syria.html
And, just like the “moderate” terrorist “rebels,” these merc companies are constantly changing their company names…so as to avoid their past known evils.
Terror in the dark: Honduran land rights activist fears for her children but vows to fight on [Reuters]
Too bad about that HRC-enabled coup in 2009. But you can’t make a neoliberal omelette
without breaking some egg-headed troublemakers.
“I would suggest those kids should have a far more responsible mother.”
HRC is fairly likely to attempt regime change in Ecuador in reprisal for their harboring of Assange. She is not the type of person to forgive and forget, and she’s clearly not concerned with collateral damage. Her dinner conversations shall inexorably begin with “remember the Ecuadoreans” thrice-whispered into her ears by her faithful neocon handlers.
“Your OK…your ok”….”oh, and those filthy Ecuadorans need to be bombed back to the motherf*ckin stone-age”
downwithtyranny: Pelosi denied Cynthia McKinney her seniority when she returned to Congress in ’06 but Wall Street shill Schumer has big plans for Evan Bayh
Of course he does. And I’m sure that Bayh will have Schumer’s back when he runs for leader (minority or majority) – another atrocity. Sadly there are few options for NYers like myself who would like to see the guy ousted. (Another no real good choice election, try to contain the damage election in November for us.)
Good and bad news from Wisconsin:
http://www.wxow.com/story/32723316/2016/08/09/polls-closed-results-coming-soon
Russ Feingold won the Democratic Senate primary (I hope that’s good news — since Obama endorsed Feingold, it’s possible that Feingold’s win is tainted).
TPP Trade Traitor Ron Kind won his Democratic House primary, which is definitely bad news.
Time for a Craazyman Liquid Assets Fund?
Ferraris and Fine Wines Lure Investors Hit by Rate Ructions [Reuters via NYT]
I went to the NC party in New Yawk last week and not only did Yves ignore me completely but I didn’t get any hot stock tips. Everybody there was a progressive! They all seemed to be obsessing about politics and republicans. All I wanted was some moneymaking ideas. It’s hard to get a 10-bagger in general but it’s especially hard when your friends don’t help.
Once I went to an internet forum meetup in midtown. One of the attendees pulled a one-ounce gold coin — I think it was a Maple Leaf — out of his pocket and passed it around.
We all took turns reverently petting it, while making cooing noises. Then we got drunk, rushed out into the night, and dropped our drawers in front of the Nasdaq.
Bet ya didn’t meet any bugs at the NC do. ;-)
Did you bite it to make sure it was real, and not foil-wrapped chocolate?
Mother told me always to wear clean underwear, in case I got into an accident.
Do NC parties qualify?
I said hi to you as soon as you came in and you could see I was cornered! Sorry!
Yahoo headlines just now (at lunchtime):
Rather: “History is watching” Trump backers
What happens if a candidate – say Donald Trump – drops out of the presidential race
Trump:Rhetoric against Clinton wasn’t violent
No headlines about anything Clinton. If you scroll down you can find a headline about the dead DNC staffer maybe being Wikileaks source.
Fair and Balance
well, what would one expect of Yahoo……I mean…..they’re almost as bad as the Huffnpuffpost !
Re Granny flats
The article Should be entitled “The gig economy comes to your neighborhood.”
Just a random thought…. Could the agenda be to demonize Trump, persuading voters to hold their noses and elect Hillary…then next election, get a viable Republican candidate to beat her (who but Trump would lose to her now?)
Then we could really get some business done, right?
There is nothing she can’t do, no business she can’t handle.
Her supporters will not be happy to hear this.
Nurses prep for second strike vote after Allina won’t budge in negotiations
You have a picture of a pangolin not an armadillo. They look similar but are different species. I think its an example of convergent evolution.
Clinton e-mail controversy is back and will sink her presidency. I wonder what will happen when they wikileaks finally releases their next email batch.
Here is a video of Assange all but admitting that the murdered DNC employee, Seth Rich, was their source.
https://youtu.be/Kp7FkLBRpKg
O mommy! you feel so nice, hard, and scaly!!!
“Don’t slip Dear…”
From “Trump lacks experience but his detractors lack common sense: Spengler”
LOL David Goldman’s quote from this article is worth repetition:
“It isn’t just that the emperor has no clothes. The empire has no tailors.”
And the empress’s makeup is too much (or is that a mask?).
Re. BREXIT FALLOUT: City jobs tumble 12% in July Business Insider — Or, to put a slightly different spin on it, “City of London financial fraud tumbles 12% in July”.
I’m sceptical of a Turkey/Russia rapprochement.
The only way it would make sense would be if Erdogan had good reason to believe that the US Gov’t was behind the coup attempt.
My own opinion is that Erdogan is stringing Putin along, until Clinton wins the election. Then the Syrian War escalates with direct Turkish and possibly NATO intervention in 2017.
The recently released Clinton email shows plainly that HC is fully committed to overthrowing the Syrian Ba’ath, in order to preserve Israel’s ability to invade Lebanon at will.
Since Erdogan is also clearly committed to the downfall of the Syrian Ba’ath, I just don’t see why the USA would have been behind the coup attempt.
Would the USA quarrel with Turkey over the Kurds? Why? The USA are using and abusing the Kurds. The USA is fighting ISIS down to the last Kurd. The USA has already sold out the Kurds at least twice within the last 25 years. The Kurds are used by the USA whenever the USA wants to weaken one of the bigger nations in the region. USA’s exploitation of Kurdish nationalism has been textbook divide-and-rule imperial policy..