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By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Readers, this is a bit light, because when I get started on Clinton, it always takes me longer than I think. I’m going to beef up the stats section shortly.
TPP/TTIP/TISA
UPDATE “TISA TALKS MOVE AHEAD: Lead negotiators for the Trade in Services Agreement are set to meet today and tomorrow in Washington in an attempt to bring talks closer to conclusion, but don’t expect the European Union to propose a revised market access offer quite yet. The EU’s revised offer, which the U.S. is hoping will be dramatically improved, probably won’t come until Friday — the deadline for the 23 participating governments to propose revised market access offers, according to a European Commission source. The next full round of talks is scheduled for Nov. 2-10, and ministers are aiming for a Dec. 5-6 meeting as the finish line for the talks” [Politico]. I suppose all it would take to destroy our national sovereignty would be one of these deals?
UPDATE “EXCLUSIVE/ The European Commission faces an EU court battle to keep secret its lawyers’ analysis on whether the controversial investor-state-dispute (ISDS) clause in draft trade deals with the USA and Canada is illegal” [Euractiv]. “Were the Commission to be ultimately forced to publish analysis that found ISDS was incompatible with EU law, it could call the much-debated TTIP deal into question.”
2016
Days until: 21
Here are the RealClearPolitics polling averages from last week, compared to this week.
| This week:10/17/2016 | Last week:10/10/2016 |
|
 |
Now let’s return to the fun Times interactive, “The 1,024 Ways Clinton or Trump Can Win the Election”; it shows the “paths to victory” in tree form. Try it yourself! [New York Times]. Here’s some data I put together to play with in the form of a table of swing states:
| Swing State | Leader | Polling Margin | SoS Party | A.G. Party | Electoral Votes |
| OH | C | 0.2 | R | R | 18 |
| NV | C | 2.5 | R | R | 6 |
| FL | C | 3.5 | R | R | 29 |
| CO | C | 9.0 | R | R | 9 |
| NC | C | 2.7 | D | D | 15 |
| IA | T | 3.7 | R | D | 6 |
| NH | C | 3.6 | D | D | 4 |
| WI | C | 6.7 | D | R | 10 |
| VA | C | 8.7 | D | D | 13 |
| PA | C | 7.0 | D | D | 20 |
Legend: Leader and polling margin from RealClearPolitics. SoS’s party from WikiPedia. A.G’s party from Ballotpedia.
Unfortunately for Trump, there’s no path to victory for him for now, based on the above polls (assuming he defines victory as winning the Presidency). In a close race, the party Establishment might help him steal the election (that’s what the Secretary of State and Attorney General columns are for) but even assuming the Establishment wanted to, it might not be close enough.The remaining hope for the Republican Party is split ticket voting, along with retention of the House:
And maybe the Senate:
The Voters
“What Are the New Battleground States?” [New York Times]. “The Clinton campaign calculates that its candidate is likelier to prevail by “disqualifying” Mr. Trump — using ads to make the idea of voting for him socially unacceptable in professional suburbs — among additional well-educated voters (in states like North Carolina) than by holding on to working-class voters tempted by Mr. Trump’s populism (in states like Ohio).” To be fair, in addition to “calculation,” visceral hatred.
“Win or Lose—Hillary Clinton’s Troubles in Ohio Should Worry Democrats” [The Nation]. ” And if they don’t? I spent a week driving from Cleveland in the northeast to Cincinnati in the southwest, talking to activists, party officials, Trump and Clinton volunteers, and swing voters. I learned two things: Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama. And her troubles in Ohio are not exclusive to her—or to the state. … Ohio isn’t the only state where Clinton is facing a close race. Of the 14 battleground states tracked by RealClearPolitics, the candidates are within five points of each other in eight. In the wake of Trump’s leaked tape, and his disastrous performance in the second debate, Clinton seems—for the moment at least—to have caught up in Ohio, with the latest polls showing her slightly ahead of Trump there for the first time since August. But winning any of these states in November means maximizing turnout, which requires enthusiasm and energy and hope. All of which appear to be in short supply—and not just in Ohio.”
UPDATE “Early voting reveals warning signs for Trump” [Politico]. “In two must-win states for Trump, North Carolina and Florida, Republicans are clinging to narrow leads in the total number of mail-in ballots requested. Yet in both states, Clinton is ahead of President Barack Obama’s pace four years earlier — and the GOP trails Mitt Romney’s clip.”
“Democrats are ramping up their efforts to tie Republicans to Donald Trump’s flagging campaign, hoping to boost their chances of retaking control of the Senate. But so far there’s little evidence that Republicans are being dragged down by their controversial nominee” [RealClearPolitics].
“22 toxic days for Hillary Clinton” [Politico]. Oh, this is only the beginning… Anyhow: “‘This is making me tear up, it’s so infuriating and disgusting,’ a Clinton aide wrote in an email halfway through the St. Louis debate, arguably the low-water point of a general election that has had few high-tide moments. ‘This is not our country.’ No. It’s not “your country.” The smugness makes me crazy.
Stats Watch
Industrial Production, September 2016: “Flat is the best word to describe the factory sector right now” [Econoday]. And: “[B]elow expectations of a 0.2% increase” [Calculated Risk]. “Year-on-year, industrial production is down 1.0 percent with manufacturing dead even at zero percent. The 2014 collapse in oil prices and its hit on demand for energy equipment pulled the factory sector into low single digit contraction, which is where it continues to struggle.” And: “This sector remains slightly in a recession. Capacity utilization also is contracting year-over-year but in the New Normal – it seems meaningless” [Econintersect]. But: “[D]epressed by a weather-related fall in utility usage” [Across the Curve].
Empire State Mfg Survey, October 2016: “The first indication on October’s factory conditions is negative” [Econoday]. And: “below the consensus forecast of 1.0” [Calcuated Risk]. “[T]he details are almost entirely negative. But there are positive signs including life for prices. Input costs rose…” And: “I am not a fan of surveys, but the continued weakness in this survey is not foretelling a recovery in manufacturing” [Econintersect].
UPDATE Real Estate: “At the low end, homeowners are even more leveraged than they were during the bubble” [MarketWatch]. “In fact, owners of entry-level homes, those in the $150,000 to $300,000 range — have more debt and less equity now than they did in 2005, at the height of mortgage mania…. ‘At some level, we’re sort of running out of customers’” [Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at data provider CoreLogic] said.
UPDATE Shipping: “J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. reported a dip in third-quarter earnings, as the freight trucking company faced lower customer rates and weak demand” [Wall Street Journal, “J.B. Hunt Earnings Fall Amid Weak Demand”]. “The trucking industry has struggled for months as excess capacity has pressured pricing. Additionally, the Arkansas-based transportation company said bottom-line growth was weighed down by increased driver wages and recruitment costs.”
UPDATE Shipping: “Shifting Chinese trade patterns will reduce the transport market share of container lines’ long-haul services, thus cutting new demand for mega containerships, according to Seabury Consulting director of maritime Michel Looten” [Lloyd’s List]. Wish I could get behind the pay wall on that one. Surely not the Silk Road?
UPDATE Shipping: “Halliburton, U.S. Silica set frac sand unit-train record” [Progressive Railroading]. “The train, which carried nearly 19,000 tons of U.S. Silica’s sand, was the largest frac sand unit train to date in North America, officials from both companies said in a joint press release.”
UPDATE Supply Chain: “Indonesia may have the bigger foothold in the smartphone supply chain it’s been looking for. BlackBerry Ltd. ’s decision to license software and outsource handset production globally represents a win for Indonesia, which is also the biggest market for the Canadian company’s handheld devices” [Wall Street Journal]. “The plan helps Blackberry meet Jakarta’s rules for local content and to focus on its plan to focus on software rather than making smartphones. Indonesia has loosened those rules somewhat, and Blackberry’s decision suggests other smartphone companies and their critical components makers may find the country a more attractive node in electronics manufacturing and distribution channels.”
UPDATE The Bezzle: “Apple Inc. has drastically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a new direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car, according to people familiar with the project” [Bloomberg]. Well, well.
UPDATE The Bezzle: “The Bay Area is now seeing that the pool of lemmings is drying up” [Dr. Housing Bubble]. “It should come as no surprise that home sales are the leading indicator for future price action. First home sales dip, then prices if the dip is significant. This is typical in markets where home prices get out of control and enter into bubble like territory. Just because people are paying cash or are going with decent down payments doesn’t mean prices can’t correct.”
UPDATE Mr. Market: “[N]ot all is well in the breadth department. One ominous signal that marked trading in 2015 has begun to reassert itself, a pattern in which the benchmark index hovers near a 52-week high while the proportion of stocks that are similarly elevated dwindles” [Across the Curve].
UPDATE Mr. Market: “Predatory Trading in Treasury Market” [Across the Curve (citing Bloomberg)]. “David Rutter, the former head of the biggest electronic venue for Treasuries, says his startup will launch a new trading platform called LiquidityEdge Select this week. According to Rutter, a big draw is that it will enable clients to shut off bids and offers from firms they suspect are using hair-trigger algorithms to trade against their orders. He’s enlisted Cantor Fitzgerald to backstop the transactions and signed up about 90 clients, including most of the Treasury market’s 23 primary dealers and several high-speed trading firms. …Success is far from guaranteed and there’s considerable debate over whether high-frequency traders, or HFTs, actually do more harm than good. But one thing is undeniable: technological advances and post-crisis bank regulations designed to limit risk-taking are transforming the inner workings of trading U.S. government debt and creating a sense of disorder among the more traditional players in the world’s most important bond market.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 33, Fear (previous close: 40, Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 55 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 17 at 12:53pm. Mr. Market drags himself in after an excessive session at the nineteenth hole on Sunday, and slumps at his desk. Another big swing to fear. However, the swings in this index don’t seem to be reflected in VIX. Readers, is there a reason for that?
Health Care
“Two-Thirds of Providers Aren’t At Listed Locations, CMS FindsTwo-Thirds of Providers Aren’t At Listed Locations, CMS Finds” [AIS Health]. “The first phase of a new provider directory accuracy pilot conducted by CMS’s Medicare Drug & Health Plan Contract Administration Group (MCAG) has turned up some concerning findings, namely the “excessive number” of providers listed in online directories that aren’t at those location” So you can’t find your doctor when you need them. And we saw in this morning’s links that CMS can’t tell you whether your policy has a narrow network or not. Go shopping! In a minefield!
“The Delayed Gratification of Obamacare” [The Atlantic]. Maybe because you can’t find your doctor when you need them and CMS can’t tell you whether your policy has a narrow network or not?
Water
“North Carolina flooding devastates ‘poorest of the poor'” [USA Today]. “‘Sadly, the poorest of the poor in North Carolina are the ones who are being hurt the most by these floods,’ Gov. Pat McCrory said Thursday. ‘Some of these people have nothing. They are sitting in high school gyms with their whole families.'”
“Subsidizing Disaster” [The American Conservative]. “[S]torms are doing more damage not because they are more powerful but because more people are living in storm-prone areas. Fortunately, there’s something policymakers can do to reduce the damage: they can stop subsidizing population growth in high-risk areas.”
“An ancient drought-friendly farming process could become the next organics” [Quartz]. “But as California settles into a drought-stricken future and the price of water soars, more farmers and winemakers are looking to dry farming techniques to reduce the amount of water they use.”
Guillotine Watch
UPDATE “Our curiosity about a pricey artificial Christmas tree led us to the Vickerman website where we found a 14-foot flocked white spruce with 3,600 pre-strung lights for a tidy $3,941.99. This one comes with an extra strand of 50 lights in case 3,600 is not enough” [24/7 Wall Street].
Class Warfare
“All Low- and Moderate-Income Areas Are Not Created Equal” [Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis]. “The example above is played out across 200-plus MSAs for which data is available. Boulder, Colo., is on one end of the spectrum, with 35.9 percent of the population in LMI neighborhoods credit constrained, defined as having poor/fair or no credit history. On the other end is Memphis, Tenn., where 77.4 percent of the population in LMI neighborhoods (nearly eight out of every 10 people) are credit constrained.”
News of the Wired
UPDATE “A Model Railway Journey” [Cabinet Magazine]. Hamburg’s most popular tourist attraction (and the first subhead is a Wittgenstein reference).
“10 years ago today, Dennis Green unleashed one of the NFL’s most famous rants” [Fox]. The article shows there’s more to the man than the rant. But here is the rant:
They are who we thought they were!
UPDATE And speaking of “they are who we thought they were,” don’t use Google’s AMP! It’s a scam! “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic” [Alex Kras]. “By hijacking the mobile traffic and keeping users from leaving their site, Google gets to benefit from somebody else’s content while at the same time displaying their ads. This cuts further into already narrow margins of independent publishers.” Those Silicon Valley guys are so “smart”!
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (jsn):
170 comments
Comments are closed.
Any advice on a voter info website to answer a policy questionaire, & it will note how the politicians policies for Pres/Senate/House/State Legislature compare to my policies?
It appears http://votesmart.org is 1 such option. My mailed ballot arrived, I might as well “do my homework” & research some of these non-Pres offices I have no clue about.
Interesting link. Both Clinton and Johnson scored at a 60% similar for me. But I thought Bernie said they were different?
I am also wary of this sort of tool because people might just make decisions based on whose name and picture it showed the biggest after they answered the questions.
It asks some very misleading questions. For example:
Yes, as long as it’s replaced by Medicare For All. But that’s not a possible answer.
See what they did there? They proceed from the false assumption that balancing the federal budget is necessary. It is not. However the premise is that you’ll balance the budget with tax increases, budget cuts, or a combination of the two.
Not really helpful.
Anyways, I get 87% Stein; 71% Clinton
Yeah, but that’s based on 71% of what Clinton SAYS she will do, which we all know bears no relationship to what she will do in reality.
We could have the same situation with Jill Stein, I suppose, but there’s no reason to think so.
With Hillary, there’s EVERY reason to know so.
Those of us who have followed Mrs. Clinton since 2006 know full well
what she will, and has to do. If I have to go down the tubes, I prefer to
be in Jill Stein’s company.
ISideWith.com is a much better quiz, not nearly as econ focused as I’d like but it lets you dissagree on both sides of things like obamacare. It doesn’t have senate or house candidates though.
https://ballotpedia.org/ usually will have score cards from various groups for most incumbent candidates and other resources for challengers.
P N D:
I like Ballot Ready, which is a local (Chicago) project going national. Plenty of details about Illinois politics, including local offices and judgeships. Several other states are now in their fold, too:
https://www.ballotready.org
I profess I’m a little terrified by the cyber warfare nonsense. In the past few weeks:
* Kaine suggests an “intelligence surge”
* A few days ago, Biden warns of cyber retaliation against Russia
* Today, Julian Assange’s internet cut off
* Today, Bank accounts of RT UK cut off
* Today, Wikileaks releases crypto information on twitter
I am very concerned about a cyber war. The fact of the matter is that we have no idea about the capabilities any of the various parties, USA, China, Russia, or other actors. Given that the internet is so critical to the comings and goings of Americans — that most Americans could not prove how much money is in their 401k without going onto the internet — do we have any idea what an all-out cyber war could do to internet infrastructure?
A 48 hour outage for even 10% of the country, or a major metro area, would be devastating. A more widespread outage could cause an immediate economic recession. IMO, these chest-thumping idiots are playing with fire. This is the equivalent of playing with atomics before understanding radiation poisoning.
I suggest that, quarterly or more often, NC readers print off statements from their various accounts. Request printed statements from all your financial institutions instead of emailed. If the internet turned off tomorrow and you have no paper record, you have no way of demonstrating your assets. Don’t trust that HRC or Biden or one of these others idiots will be able to turn things back on again.
Someone should ask the Republicans whose side they are on. The Russians only attacked the Democrats!
Or the GOP are just better at remembering to buy a lock and lock their doors.
John Podesta had his iPhone wiped because his iCloud password/user info (“Runner4456” iirc) was in the wikileaks dump—and Podesta didn’t bother to change his password in the interim.
And as a warning to any potential whistleblowers:
Former Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman to plead to false statements in classified leak, court files show [WaPo]
He should just say he didn’t intend to break the law. Duh.
Eight years ago, I bought into the Obama fakery. I thought his election partly reflected America rejecting the Iraq War and militarism. IMO that is what many who voted for Obama in 2008 wanted, and still do, and those voters have been joined by younger newer voters too.
But those same and like minded voters – instead of being welcomed by Democrats – have been called deplorable uniformed irredeemable Bernie-bro sexist racist basement dwellers to be ridiculed and not wanted and pushed aside and discounted, as the Democrats become the war party and Clinton does with Putin and Russia what Republicans and George Bush did to Saddam and Iraq. The 46% or whatever who voted Bernie are invisible to Dems and the MSM. They are not to be considered they are unimportant.
It’s been a fast eight year fall into really bad political situation for America. I’m really very amazed how this turned out. It doesn’t make sense to me. This just is NOT what people I know care about. Why is totally dominating the MSM media and campaign?
Eight years ago, I bought into the Obama fakery. I thought his election partly reflected America rejecting the Iraq War and militarism. IMO that is what many who voted for Obama in 2008 wanted, and still do, and those voters have since been joined by younger newer voters too.
But those same and like minded voters – instead of being welcomed by Democrats – have been called deplorable uniformed irredeemable Bernie-bro sexist racist basement dwellers to be ridiculed and not wanted and pushed aside and discounted, as the Democrats become the war party and Clinton does with Putin and Russia what Republicans and George Bush did to Saddam and Iraq. The 46% or whatever who voted Bernie are invisible to Dems and the MSM. They are not to be considered they are unimportant.
It’s been a fast eight year fall into really bad political situation for America. I’m really very amazed how this turned out. It does’nt make sense to me. This just is NOT what people I know care about so why is it totally dominating the MSM media and campaign?
me 2.
here’s a harper’s piece by Thomas Frank on the media’s swatting of Sanders: http://harpers.org/archive/2016/11/swat-team-2/
This will partially explain the media’s ignoring us and the 46% of Bernie supporters plus some Trump supporters.
Cool! What’s the uniform look like? I need to get one!
err…uninformed. But uniformed is ok too!
DISTURBED
Deplorable Irredeemable Sexist Totalitarian Uninformed Racist Bernie-bro Excavated-place Dwellers
I’m good at Scrabble which seems to come in handy this election season.
don’t forget “Millenial” & “white priviledged”!
Again I note, HClinton (ala Trump & Mint RawMoney) divides factions of the 99% against each other, doesn’t criticize the 1% like 2B2F Bank$tas & MIC warmongerers.
In contrast Sanders, Stein, & Occupy unite the 99% & criticize the Real Deplorable 1% criminals like 2B2F Bank$tas.
don’t forget wet blanket wearing, idealistic, scandinavia (whatever that is) loving.
But oh, it’s absolutely vital that you vote for our candidate, otherwise it’s exactly the same as voting for the other party and you are terrible for doing that. Or would be if you did that. Or something. Our candidate is by far the best and is sure to win by a landslide, but every single vote is essential, otherwise the other side’s victory is assured and we will be in the wilderness for forty years.
As much as I love trees, I resist the “Go Paperless” solicitations from various institutions.
I am currently in a dispute with two of them in which health insurance costs and benefits as stated on paper and on their respective websites differ significantly. The amount of money involved is significant to me but not large enough to make hiring an attorney feasible. The institutions in question have provided a number of absurd and and/or contradictory explanations for the discrepancy all ending up with me having to paying the higher amount. I am considering initiating a complaint with the appropriate governmental agency but prior experience has me thinking my time would be better spent going fishing or taking a nap.
I hear you on not wanting to bother with the captured regulatory agencies. Almost makes you want to pay what you want to pay, then tell them to put the rest to collections, devil may care. If you don’t need a line of credit anytime soon, why bother?
Regarding trees, I actually wonder about going paperless and conservation. Has anyone run any figures on how much electricity a server farm for a typical institution needs, versus the amount of paper it consumes? How about water cooling that equipment? And then the actual fiber optics to various parts of the building?
I think that the conservation isn’t in the paper production, in being green, but instead in my bank not having to pay postage to tell me how much money I have in my account.
‘but instead in my bank not having to pay postage to tell me how much in rents & fees they’re going to continue to extract from my account !’
FIFY
Lee, I am sorry to hear about you getting ripped off by your health insurer.
It feels like some types of thefts by corporations are legal, either de jure, or de facto – it is impossible or not worth the time to enforce your health insurance contract. Furthermore, health insurance in particular enforces absurd time costs & stress, as Lambert has noted.
If you refuse to pay the extortionate amount & instead pay just the amount you owe, this could hurt your credit rating. Even for a person who has no debt whatsoever, the credit rating can still hurt, for instance it can drive up auto insurance costs.
In contrast, the 1% or 0.01% like Donald Trump can seemingly get away with another form of theft, refusing to pay people like small business contractors, yet they do not suffer. But if you pay just the amount you owe & not the extortionate extra amount, it might jack your auto insurance rate.
The CFPB or whichever Gov agency has a long ways to go to remedy this bogus unfair status quo for the 99%.
Generally refuse to “go paperless.” Paper records are forever, electronics not so much. $0.47 to the US Postal Service is money well spent. Appeals to “save trees” from giant corporations make me want to show up at their headquarters with a chain saw (lumberjack!)
Stop sending me junk with the bill if you want to save trees. The worst I get has 2 “cover pages” of ad copy BS before you can even see a date at the top of the 3rd page.
“go paperless!” Nope.
Sending it through the mail also includes extra protections. Bank statements, mailed, are legal documents. In 2008 there were several reminders issued to keep your bank statements- worst came to worst, you’d have to produce them, if you wanted any money back from the FDIC, after the bank imploded.
That would be an excellent post if I had more data.
But look. I can’t imagine this would be prevalent. Why would the insurance companies want to game the system by lowballing their prices on the website and then charging you higher prices in the paper documentation that nobody reads? It just doesn’t make sense!
I download all my account statements on a monthly basis and save them to my hard drive as well as a backed up external drive. As needed, I would be able to print off my account history if necessary.
I think that everyone should do so — as a matter of routine — in anticipation of exactly the disruption of data and access that is premised by NC commenter “cocomaan” above.
When the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme imploded, I recall the Trustee requested claimants to submit evidence for their claims in the form of account statements, et cetera. Which caused a lot of stress and heartache for claimants who could provide no (or insufficient) paper trails.
I’m certainly not saying that one will recover assets quickly or fully just because one can provide a paper trail of account statements and other records. But I have to imagine that the ability to provide an evidentiary paper trail won’t hurt, and might provide a relative advantage in a claims process.
“We have mentally ill people we pay to start sh*t.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY
Apparently the Clinton campaign has been hiring people to provoke violence in Trump rallies.
I just watched Part 1 of this series and I gotta tell you, I know it’s the Project Veritas gang, but they catch a whole bunch of Democratic operatives and consultants admitting — if not boasting — about manipulating events at Trump rallies to incite violence in order to get it all covered by national media. And also admitting to communicating/coordinating daily with the DNC and Hillary’s PAC in “endless text messages”. The cancelled Trump rally in Chicago was apparently one of their real ‘coups’. I don’t know if this is just a case of getting a good look at how the sausage is made, or if these guys have been caught in some real crimes. I want to see Part 2, for sure.
Thanks for clarifying. When it’s somebody other than O’Keefe, I’ll look at it.
I never look at YouTubes where the commenter doesn’t document the sourcing. For one thing, I don’t have time. For another thing, it demonstrates the attitude that “There’s a video, so it’s true.” If I want that level of quality, I can read Facebook.
Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut. If the people on tape are who it is claimed they are, which should be easy enough to verify, then there are definitely some explosive revelations. I can’t see how O’Keefe could have fabricated the footage, though I wouldn’t put anything past him. While there is nothing that would shock a cynic like myself, the cavalier admission or collusion with the campaign and PACs, and boasting of dirty tricks could really be damaging.
The groups exposed have already fired the perps on camera, so the allegations are probably true.
The first sentence of the article on Obamacare “delayed gratification” contains another answer to he question Lambert already answeres.
Because “insurance” is meaningless. It is affordable care that matters and Obamacare has made that impossible to find. Obamacare’s “triumphs are strictly Orwellian newspeak-“insurance is care” . What a farce.
Or, as I kept thinking while reading the article, having health insurance is no guarantee of having affordable health care.
All those deductibles, co-pays, gotchas….
Has obomba been delayed of ANY gratification when it comes to tooling around on the links ……. whilst ordering a ‘pink mist cocktail’ ???
I thought not !
Newly Released FBI Notes Confirm “Quid Pro Quo” Arrangement Between State And FBI
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-17/newly-released-fbi-notes-confirm-quid-pro-quo-arrangement-between-state-and-fbi
Full release of FBI notes: https://ia801507.us.archive.org/32/items/HillaryClintonFBI/Hillary%20Clinton.pdf
There really is no recourse for this, is there? Of course FBI gets a kick back for not pursuing charges, what would we expect? I am really starting to hate this country.
Maybe it is not our country;it is those running it and the organized agnotology/media/academic bias/propaganda.
Maybe it is our country, and maybe it’s just fashionable and emotionally satisfying to pretend that it’s “fallen” like some crappy ancient Greek city in some crappy ancient Greek dra(ch)ma to supply some opportunity for us to “be seen as part of” something that, while invariably portrayed as an action to further some bourgeois utopia for all, just as invariably serves only to perpetuate the game into triple unpaid overtime (see also the Shirky Principle, and watch as it is given life and breath by he after whom it is named).
A system’s purpose is what it does. If this system weren’t designed to do exactly what it were doing, it’d have no people to give that imaginary hulk the force of “reality”. What with all the scholarship of the Founders and their interests, high school civics and government ought to be ignored as the manipulative fraud it is.
Maybe I’m really dumb, but I have no idea what you are trying to say.
Maybe I’m just on the spectrum and launch on tangents like sparks off a grinding wheel. Well, no maybe about that, but in any case the first paragraph might have been confusing.
Anyway. Point 1 is that the “we’ve lost the blessings of heaven and we need to set it right” narrative is rarely deployed where any such condition has ever been had, let alone lost. In fact, that narrative is a reliable siren of speakers looking to protect a status quo that preferentially serves their own interests. Point 2 is that, if this system were not designed to preserve and enforce the self-righteous inequities favored by aristocrats of the late 18th c., it wouldn’t do so.
In other words; If the government is theoretically meant to ensure a prosperous society if it ever achieved that goal it would render itself pointless. Hence the half assed trying. Setting high hopes and no achievements.
It’s an interesting concept and it might be applicable on smaller scales, through various bureaucracies in government, but I don’t think that even if government were able to achieve utopia that people would say ok good pack it up, I’m sure utopia is a steady state solution your services are no longer required.
There’s the dog catching the car problem at sub-total scales, yes, but what I’m getting at is that the actions and features of a system speak to its intent louder than words. The claim is sometimes made that the US has fallen from righteousness and needs to be set right, when I contest that it was never thus and intended never to be thus, or it would have been built differently, with features that could possibly deliver the outcomes we expect from it.
Maybe its humanity for letting it get this bad. I don’t understand how so many people can be so naive and easily manipulated. I don’t understand how people can rationalize their ruthlessness. Economies, on a most basic level, only work when people work together. You earn when I buy something from you. We all do better when we all do better.
I got in a twitter fight with someone the other day. She was going off on how much better Hillary’s college plan was because she had to pay for her college so why should we make it free for everyone else? After explaining to her that the cost of college has increased by 300% every 20 years because states used to subsidize college, so no she didn’t pay for it all her self, and that college wasn’t just good for the student that graduated but that it made our whole economy stronger and more competitive she actually came around.
The fact that I had to explain all of that to her is just sad though. Everyone is in this mindset of ‘screw you, why should I help you?’ The greed and divisiveness is poison to the economy.
I just want to make that a campaign slogan or something.:
“We all do better, when we all do better.” – Nina Turner 2020.
If there is still life on the planet in 2020, that is.
PhilU, one simply needs to believe that one’s individual self is of more general value than that of another member of one’s collective. Such beliefs are not hard to come by in competitive societies.
Which is why the only winner of any competition is the group staging it, and people who support competition and competitiveness as social goods should be treated as the mendacious parasitic traitors they are.
Start in the mid-80s with the think-tank report that US schools were failing, thus opening the door for business to step in and show those silly educators how things ought to be done. Once No Child Left Behind set the agenda, the privatization of free public education became a matter of time as “accountability” became the basic rule, and accountability was conflated with making high scores on standardized tests in math and language.
Since jobs and, indeed, schools’ very existence currently depend on those scores, which have been shown over and over to be useless for anything except furthering the “reform” agenda and putting lots of money into private pockets, teaching to the test is now all but a survival process. As a result, other subjects—history, science, civics—have either been watered down (and in some cases bowdlerized to suit the neoliberal narrative) or eliminated altogether. Especially civics.
Unfortunately, even those of us who are old enough to have had a relatively decent education failed in our duty. We were busy and, yes, distracted by all the pretties. We were taught we lived in a democracy where our vote mattered, and we belonged to parties that, for the most part, actually did represent us. So, we were too comfortable and didn’t pay enough attention. We can complain about the PTBs all we like, but at bottom it’s our fault for forgetting we’re all part of one big network and allowing the poisonous spiders to take over the web.
Yeah, the faux meritocratic society definitely had a hand. Which I suppose is rooted in the fairytale of the American Dream that rich people tell themselves to justify the misery they inflict on the poor.
Obamacare uses these same scores to reimburse or penalize doctors and hospitals. Gov sets rate or penalty based on scores and amount of penalty increases yearly.
+2
one for “Nina Turner” and one for “2020”
the campaign slogan itself is awesome as well, +3!
Turner/Teachout 2020.
That’s a ticket I’d vote for.
+1
https://youtu.be/FGRDOihApmY
and a very candid interview NT and Jordan Charleston… touch on her possible future career.
https://youtu.be/Fi6zLDTgr3g
As a side note if she does run for OH gov in 18 I told her I’d move it OH and campaign.
I really, really want Nina to run. My kid went to a Zephyr event and was so inspired she got in a van and went doorknocking for her. Given how completely cynical and alienated the primary made her, I was amazed. But I want to imagine something feasible, which means a guy as VP. (I personally would be happy with either of them on top of the ticket, but Turner’s got a bunch of advantages for 2020 as a practical matter.) It needs to be someone with a safe seat, I presume, since we’re not looking to weaken the Congress Obama stylz. The Democratic bench is so depleted, and the progressive wing so shriveled, I’m struggling to think of someone. My general impression of Martin O’Malley is negative, but I quite loved how he blew off Podesta in the leaked emails. Everybody’s redeemable, right? He’d be a better VP than the last few.
Jeff Merkley, OR
What do you know.. there are consequences.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/chaffetz-nunes-statement-new-fbi-files-clinton-investigation/
“Williams and Connolly originally suggested that they had 14 boxes of Clinton emails, but only 12 were picked up, and no one knows what happened to the other two.”
What a happy coincidence for Hillary.
And she learns so quickly…
“Even after the FBI took possession of jump drives and one laptop of Secretary Clinton’s emails from her attorneys on August 6, 2015, the attorneys retained six additional laptops until August 17. One of the laptops was repeatedly used to access the internet even after Secretary Clinton’s emails were on the computer – including the classified ones.”
Maybe those two boxes will suddenly turn up in a White House room with Hillary’s fingerprints on them, just as happened with those Whitewater files decades ago.
Now that would truly be a happy coincidence. Especially if they turned up right in front of some bitter little republican.
Judge refuses to sign off on charges against journalist Amy Goodman
“A judge at Morton County Courthouse has declined to sign off on the complaint against Democracy Now journalist Amy Goodman, who reported on a clash between pipeline protesters and private security in September.”
thanks, some sanity. you go, Amy! I found her in the 90s and she has kept me going.
I hope she sues for harassment and wins.
I just read a headline on Alternet, though I won’t provide a link because it’s what they want and I might accidentally read some more PK text.
“Paul Krugman Exposes the Real Reason Trump (and Ryan) Are Trash-Talking America”
When what used to be referred to as liberals, pointed out injustice and social inequality in the past it was to seek redress. Those days are gone like the wind. Now whoever says there are problems does so because they haven’t gotten with the program. We especially need to understand that we live in a country that has no problems related to people in either party attempting to manipulate election results and that’s that.
Now saying that things need to be fixed is just trash talking the most wonderfulest country. Ever. The only problems left are the self-centered complainers who force other people to think bad things because they can’t see the big picture.
Oh, and Hillary just sent me (me! how very personal) an email telling me she needs me to prove I’m on her side by sending her a couple of bucks. Because she’s near dead broke again I guess. What is it with these mega-rich panhandlers anyway?
Tell her to talk to the Rothschilds about more money.
Re: politico article above
“Prove your love to me”, wheedled every teenage boy ever.
Good analogy, and the old folksong is applicable (parodists, have fun):
They say young men are bold and free,
Beware, oh take care!
They’ll tell you they’re friends, but they’re liars you see,
Beware, oh take care!
Beware young ladies, they’re fooling you,
Trust them not, they’re fooling you,
Beware young ladies, they’re fooling you,
Beware, oh take care!
Bill Still is hardly a partisan Hack… he’s from the Paul Harvey School of Journalism and ethics…. his latest youtube discovery tells us why the MSM went after Matt Lauer after the Town Hall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NfFAaPZqs8
Lauer broke with the ‘agreement’ wherein H was given the questions in advance. According to NBC staff who were onhand, Clinton’s tirade after the townhall was vile, vicious, out of control. She threw a whole glass of water in the face of an AID, and ordered calls to NYT, Huffpo, WAPO and others, saying Lauer was finished.
Then she started in berating Brazile for what happened. NBC exec said it was racist, and said this woman should never see the inside of the White House.
As I said, Bill Still is hardly a fringe journalist, with credentials that go back decades.
I never seem to pass muster on your boards, but I thought maybe, NC readers were ready for another dose of truth about the Clintons and their machine.
Vote Stein – get matching funding
From the inimitable cartoonist Pat Oliphant, 2008:
http://www.gocomics.com/patoliphant/2008/03/25
link appreciated
@GMoore: Yeah, vote Stein — get matching funding! My thinking exactly.
There are a couple videos there, plus stein saying hill is the greater on account of war with Russia… Plus trump favorable polls. Worth your time.
Is that a Rantidote?
“It is what I thought it was!”
hahahahahahahaha
I’m pretty sure that Jesus would be all in with a $4,000 Christmas tree with 3,600 lights.
re water: scroll down for individual cities
http://www.plantmaps.com/interactive-vermont-drought-monitor-map.php
I know several people who have no water now–their springs have dried up. A lot of people have gravity-fed wells which are failing.
the only MSM I hear from is that the ski resorts in NH will be ready in spite of the drought
Thanks to gov. Brown, it’s OK to have ‘brown’ lawns (some CA cities fined owners of brown lawns).
But brown is not green – natural living grass lawns make oxygen through photosynthesis, especially helpful if we mow less frequently, use less fertilizer and water less often.
So, a green Brown would ban fracking and let people keep their lawns (in a responsible way).
Oh, frikkin HeyZeus on a stick ! ….. There are much, MUCH better plantings to consider than LAWNS !!!
………Really ….
Lawns are dead zones. So many more interesting ways to create art if that’s what someone is into besides a trimmed, edged block of green or brown lawn. Undulating ribbons of shrubs such as lavendar, santolina etc. Or low maintainance…plant tall wild flowers in a lawn and mow it once or twice a year. The bees and butterflies will like it and if it’s allowed to go to seed, the birds will come. Added benefit of watching the garden change from year to year as some plants die off and others take seed.
Or food. Like this guy in Tempe, Arizona.
Thanks for posting that – his edible garden. I just moved down here – Scottsdale in the Sonoran Desert – and I have never seen such natural beauty. Rocks/stones for lawns with flowering bushes and cacti everywhere. And lots of citrus trees to boot. Lawns are so yesterday –
Socal has this totally covered. They just paint their lawns green. No, I am not kidding, I’ve seen it.
> natural living grass lawns
No such thing! The “lawn” is a completely artificial construct.
I read somewhere that early settlers used to rip out invasive grass to make more room for their dandelions.
Had a visit from a California cousin this summer.
Cousin: OMG it’s so humid.
Me: you know nothing about humidity.
Me: OMG we’re having a drought.
Cousin: you know nothing about drought.
Re: Politico article on Clinton campaign worries
So now they are “woe is me” because heaven forbid they are actually held accountable for anything in the Beltway?
The real laugh out loud moment was their insider gripes about the Rothschild donor. They’re about a few hundred years late with those gripes.
Lambert, re “And here’s today’s plant (jsn):” — no plantidote can I see? I can send you some plant pics so you have spares.
Perhaps it was already a victim of drought?
Or maybe it’s an air fern–of the variety that is like an ‘air guitar’?
Just trying to find some levity today since the humor and LOL moments of the campaign have long worn off as the reality sets in that this ‘election’ is actually gonna take place.
So glad someone else feels a loss at the lack of a plantidote!
Oops!
Must have had some sort of time slippage. As you can see, I put in the credit, and my next step is to put in the image. Not sure what happened there.
Now it is up, thank you!
(But if you would send me the pix, yes, that would be great!)
A new Adam Curtis documentary is available but only on the BBC iplayer
Hypernormalisation
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-hypernormalisation
We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion. Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random bomb attacks. And those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed – they have no idea what to do.
This film is the epic story of how we got to this strange place. It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening – but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them.
It shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West – not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves – have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us we accept it as normal.
But there is another world outside. Forces that politicians tried to forget and bury forty years ago – that then festered and mutated – but which are now turning on us with a vengeful fury. Piercing though the wall of our fake world.
Great documentary, you can see it from anywhere just here.
Value added, thank you.
However, I started it and almost immediately got fed these absolutes:
: and no one has any idea of a different, or a better, kind of future.
: all of us went along with it
which in point of fact are false. Irritating.
Finished. Curtis is a brilliant manipulator of pop culture images with documentary footage. He is presenting a perspective, but here it’s fully meta (not-/s) by its closing focus on Trump and Sarkov taking Rove’s “we create our own reality” to individualistic “I create a reality facts cannot dislodge.”
I helped a friend who tends to call herself an idiot make a reflexive mantra: You misplaced my priorities. Blame helps take an internal state and project it into a world where one has agency. While rightly challenging a world of such contingencies that support such an internal state.
That coheres with what Curtis appears to be doing with his art.
Thanks for the link, but not buying the “whocouldanode” claim implied by “It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening – but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them”. “Our politicians,” in grandly bipartisan fashion, have been entirely complicit in the neoliberal looting and neocon warmongering which explain most if not all of the terrifying “randomness” Curtis describes. “Paralysed”, my ass – that’s just our dear ruling elite attempting to mask their complicity with learned helplessness.
Re: Election watch – I have two family members living in northwestern PA. I spoke to one of them yesterday; he is still trying to convince me to vote for Clinton. A local daily paper interviewed 20 young people in the area; all were concerned, half weren’t voting, the other half weren’t voting for Clinton.
I asked about political signage. At first he refused to say, then blurted out its about ’20 to 1′, meaning Trump:Clinton signs. Some lawns have 3 signs – I asked if this was about down-ballot races. He said no, there are three Trump/Pence signs on each lawn.
FYI.
Most of my friends are Yankee doodle dandy my country right or wrong democrats. PU. They don’t seem to acknowledge women can be evil too. Drusilla comes to mind.
I live in a very blue midsize southern city. It’s usually an ocean of campaign signs for the democratic presidential candidate. There are about an equal number of trump, sanders, and Clinton signs around. Not a good sign for the dem, unless something really unusual is going on out there.
on youtube and periscope you can see the crowds and lines for the PA Trump rallies. Insane. You’d think it was 2008 and his name was Barack.
Well then there’s this Project Include ditches Y Combinator after Peter Thiel gives $1.25m to Trump New blood for Trump?
What’s Thiel need another bourgeois Protestant scold like Tipper Pao for when /pol/ is like unto his soda fountain.
I had an epiphany yesterday.
“The Good Cop, Bad Cop Routine”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_cop/bad_cop
I have been conned for my entire adult life. Silly, naive me. The “(false) conviction” that I had embraced an opposing view of the World. (I was alternative, a rebel!) When Matt Taibbi (Good Cop) wrote about the Vampire Squid, I read and reread, my alternative heart stirring.
Or watching Jon Stewart (Good Cop) hammering the Bushes (Bad Cops). Or Noam Chomsky, Elizabeth Warren… (Good Cops) giving The Bankers (Bad Cops) a broadside.
We have been living inside of a media constructed Soap Opera, while all that is precious (FREEDOM) is slipping through our fingers.
Sorry, perhaps you should have chosen the blue pill?
that’s why we’re called ‘marks’, ‘suckers’, ‘dupes’, ‘deplorables’, ‘unpatriotic’, ‘muggs’, ‘muppets’, ‘rubes’, ‘dreamers’, ‘unrealistic’, ‘lazy’, ‘patsies’, and on, and on, and on !!
it’s despicable ……
While that is demonstrably true now, up to a point, I don’t think it’s been true all along. People like Matt Taibbi live in a simmering propaganda stew, and their own comfort depends on drinking it. That’s why media consolidation was a necessary (although obviously not sufficient) condition to get us where we are today. It’s also interesting how class-signaling vulgarity makes people lose their minds. I think that’s also going to be worse in this environment, because the intense (and fully justified) economic anxiety makes the terror of sinking in class even worse. In that regard, Trump aligned with the declasse in the scorned hinterlands is a concentrated punch of I Don’t Want To Be Like Them, making the Clintonians’ task of herding recalcitrants in the media and public intellectual class (such as it is, in its malnourished condition) much easier. Jon Stewart quit the Daily Show right before the campaign launched, and there are some indications it’s because he knew what was coming.
You can loop back through previous decades and see this going on, but it wasn’t quite as comprehensive in its impact. The ruling class always tries to execute this. They just have more capacity to control and punish now, and the stakes are very high for them. They can’t have someone get into power that might claw back NAFTA, TPP, et al. If I understand what Yves has been teaching me about globalization, we — unlike the UK — could get out without massively ramping up citizen suffering. Had Jeb had gotten the Republican nod, as was planned, Matt Taibbi would have had more latitude to continue to write and think as he did before.
Is it still Good Cop Bad Cop if the Good Cop and Bad Cop don’t realize theyre playing those roles?
From our point of view, yes.
Yes. We shouldn’t have to be telepaths…
This getting play in Russia & the UK: ‘This is another step towards war’: Russian citizens react with fear to reports that Moscow has ordered officials to fly home all relatives
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3835942/This-step-war-Russian-citizens-react-fear-reports-Moscow-ordered-officials-fly-home-relatives.html
OK, it’s the Daily Mail, but still…
Well it was the Daily Mail. I should have known better: http://www.snopes.com/2016/10/12/putin-urging-russian-officials-to-return/
At least you can rely on The Hate Mail for great weather stories (“Hazlemere Colder than Reykjavik as Arctic Blast to Bring Half Term MISERY for Millions of Staycation Brits”)
Dreary Mail Scottish weather reporting isn’t better. Just before the harvest season last year in Scotland, the paper had a front page headline stating that the forthcoming weather (fall 2015) would ruin the grain harvest and if the dreadful Scots had voted to leave the glorious UK, they would have starved.
Turns out to have been the best harvest weather in decades. Double digit celcius weather right into December and dry. (Better than the summer weather.)
But, hey, de Mail doesn’t report the news. It is the news. But then reality always seems to spoil their propaganda parties.
22 toxic days for Clinton: She will become POTUS by hook or crook, but she will be as divisive as Dubya was and maybe more so because of her Cheneyesque personality. Stick a fork in us because with her as president, we’re done. Don’t even get me started on her campaign’s “Putin and Russia did it,” meme. Gawd, but the thought of her cabinet choices make me cringe.
Well, good. It’s time to stop honoring the dead and insane by continuing to pretend to want to wear the hairshirts they have bequeathed us and to suffer the complex rituals and a priori causality that puts infants and game-players in charge over the useful.
I’m with Carl Beijer. It’s time to rethink the structure, to stop pretending that our interests are automatically subordinate to those of games that we can stop. Remember, no matter how bloody an elite mind may be, they’re as easy to twist-off the neck as ours.
And some good news: Judge rejects riot charges for journalist Amy Goodman after oil pipeline protest
Are you following the James O’Keefe undercover video? I personally hate the guy for his ACORN shenanigans, but this stuff looks devastating to the DNC and Clinton campaign. Assuming the people in the video were telling the truth and it hasn’t been selectively edited, Clinton SuperPACs hired agents provocateurs to incite violence at Trump rallies. They were behind the Chicago protests that resulted in injuries to several people and law enforcement officers. Actors, employed by pro-Clinton and DNC agents, were sent in with Bernie campaign signs in an effort to make both camps look bad.
Too late to edit. I should mention one of the men caught on tape is Aaron Minter, aka Aaron Black, who was accused of infiltrating Occupy Wall Street.
The Clinton/DNC allies pulled out a playbook straight from the Pullman strikes.
and don’t forget the MSM allegations that it was Bernie supporters behind the violence.
as you mentioned some people justifiably have hostility towards O’Keefe, but don’t shoot the messenger, friends.
When the messenger is James O’Keefe, yes it’s best to shoot him.
Thanks for the LOL this afternoon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY
Rigging the Election – Video I: Clinton Campaign and DNC Incite Violence at Trump Rallies
“I mean honestly, it’s not hard to get some of these *******s (Trump supporters) to pop off. It’s a matter of showing up, to want to get into the rally, in a Planned Parenthood t-shirt. Or, Trump is a Nazi, you know. You can message to draw them out, and draw them to punch you.”
I am paying attention to that and yes indeed even though it’s O’Keefe, that’s lookin’ pretty gnarly. Infuriating and despicable Ratf*ckery.
I agree — this time it looks like O’Keefe actually is on to something. Looks like there were carefully planned instances of purposely instigated violence at Trump rallies, collusion and coordination between the Democratic election consultants who hired/managed the goons and the DNC and Hillary’s PAC. Names are named, incriminating quotes are captured on hidden video, the works. I will watch Part 2, for sure.
No, absent external verification of O’Keefe’s videos. I mean, I’m not following Judy Miller on Iraq, either. I don’t follow sources with a known history of faked evidence.
Shorter: Keep that crap out of the NC comments section.
I still think it’s newsworthy. Aaron’s former employerAjmericans United for Change threw him under the bus already. Reddit has found people in the video at different protests using obvious police diversionary techniques while pretending to be bystanders caught up in the protest. They also found names on the campaign payroll. This is your blog, but I think this is a legitimate story. At the time, it seemed the protestors were not actually Bernie supporters when they were interviewed by the media because they knew basically nothing about the candidate or his positions.
Slim checking in from Tucson. Where our local fishwrap brings these tidings:
Bernie Sanders to campaign in Tucson on Tuesday
I’ve attended a speech at the Arizona State Museum auditorium. Speaker was Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Laureate. Topic: Simplicity and complexity in ancient Arizona pottery, and what it said about the state of those civilization. (According to Gell-Mann, simplicity implied that the civilization was under stress.)
The ASM seats, oh, a few hundred people. Nowhere near the 13,000 that Sanders attracted to Reid Park on October 9, 2015, or the 7,000 who came to hear him on March 18, 2016. I was at both events, and let’s just say that the atmosphere was electric.
Methinks that tomorrow evening’s event will be a good bit more low key.
He came through Minneapolis last week and I couldn’t bring myself to hear him shill for Hillary. The local media said after the fact that when he goes stumping without her right there she is like an afterthought and it was still a good speech. But yes, much smaller crowds. paper said 300-400. He got something like 30k when I saw him a few weeks before super Tuesday.
He got booed in Seattle on Saturday when he mentioned Hillary. He was here stumping for Pramila Jayapal, the progressive candidate who beat McDermott’s chosen heir to win the Democratic nomination. The theater seats 1,500, and I don’t think it filled up. In fairness, many folks, myself included, stayed home due to a severe weather warning (fortunately it fizzled).
In Town for Pramila Jayapal, Bernie Sanders Booed at Mentions of Hillary
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/10/16/24623921/in-town-for-pramila-jayapal-bernie-sanders-booed-at-mentions-of-hillary
[Gotta love that headline. Would that it were so.]
My precinct went pretty much as the state did in the caucus — 70-30 for Bernie. So far I’ve seen two signs for Hillary, sort of tucked into the bushes a few feet back from the street. Anyone who wanted to steal or deface them would have to step onto private property. LOTS of signs for Pramila, displayed openly, right on the shoulder.
AFAIK, neither the Clinton campaign nor the DNC have endorsed Jayapal, even though she endorsed Hillary. About that special place in hell…
30K to 300. Telling.
In Minneapolis, I still haven’t seen a single sign for anyone but Bernie….
Don’t use Google AMP: I thought that by now all and sundry knew that we had been warned by Edward Snowden not to use Google’s AMP. So, don’t use the damned thing, already!
That would be allo…
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PARLIAMENT OF WALLONIA AND BELGIAN VOTERS ON THE PROPOSED CETA AND ITS FOREIGN INVESTOR PROTECTION SYSTEM 17 October 2016
the introduction:
“We are Canadian academics with extensive collective expertise in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) and related issues under Canada’s trade and investment agreements. We are also among a small group of Canadian experts in this field who do not work in law firms or government as ISDS lawyers/ arbitrators.
We write after reading news reports this past weekend about the scare tactics employed by Canadian politicians and business representatives in an effort to influence your legislative and government processes. We do not think that these voices represent accurately Canada’s experience under the foreign investor protection system that the CETA would expand. We are aware that many Canadians have expressed deep concern about this foreign investor protection system due to Canada’s experience with a similar system under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in debates about the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA), among other agreements.
While we focus here on adverse consequences of the foreign investor protections in the CETA, we are also aware that the agreement will impose new constraints in many other areas of public policy beyond what we discuss. They include but are not limited to pharmaceutical regulation, public health, agriculture, government procurement, public services, labour rights, and market access. We note that other academics have raised significant concerns about the CETA in these areas.”
The Legacy of Veblen in the Age of Post-Industrial Capitalism
by MICHAEL HUDSON – AHMET ÖNCÜ
“The policy conclusion of this classical approach was that material wealth adding to overall well-being could be augmented only by productive investment. By the same token, a subset of unproductive rentier property and financial claims was extractive rather than productive – and hence, was a form of economic overhead, not real wealth. This was the essential theme of classical rent theory, which Veblen continued at a time when the economics mainstream was denying the distinction between rent extractors and industrial investors.”
: reflect with Soddy:
“In future, if any class in the community desires to live upon interest, it must encourage and not discourage the production of consumable wealth, and discourage the production of capital except as required to produce perishable wealth.”
John Oliver says Jill Stein doesn’t understand her own student debt plan
Self-driving cars: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
“Apple Inc. has drastically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a new direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car, according to people familiar with the project.”
I’ll take notice of self driving cars when they show me one that can follow the directions of the loading crew on Washington State Ferries (our wonderful “socialized” ferry service).
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just give the loaders laser pointers to tell the cars where to go? Liberal societies have such trouble with interspecies communication because they can’t distinguish between a message being sent and a message being received.
Cue the “English is the Official Language” crew in 3… 2… 1…
And have cats driving the cars!
iToonces!
I don’t think anybody would want to ride around in a car shaped like an apple.
That would be a really bad business idea. It’s hard to believe they put any money into it at all.
Prolly the tell is it was a “Titanic” plan. They still have to figure out how to get their new flying saucer off of the ground down there in Cupertino, too, also.
That’s the worst flying saucer I’ve ever seen. They must have put the jet engines way down in the basement?
I think Jobs was into anti gravity. Sort of explains his career.
Maybe now Apple will get back to making reliable Mac hardware and software… something they haven’t been doing for the last 3 or 4 or 5 years.
Maybe they’d put the Apple Watch team in charge of the Apple Car….
This is ZeroHedge but looks like it could be very interesting: Dramatic Undercover Footage Shows Clinton Operatives Admit To Inciting “Anarchy” At Trump Rallies
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-17/caught-tape-clinton-funded-democrat-operatives-inciting-anarchy-trump-rallies
Jeez, does anyone even own a dictionary anymore? I am an anarchist, and we *don’t* *do* *that*. What they are doing is hooliganism.
It’s O’Keefe and company again, but this time it looks like they might have caught Democratic ratf*ckers in full-on ratf*cking mode — with a money trail leading right back to Hillary’s PAC.
More O’Keefe crap. Assume it’s false, absent proof of provenance and independent confirmation.
Please don’t crap up the NC comments section with this stuff.
I am not at all familiar with O’Keefe.
Just following up on Bill Clinton’s stop at Dartmouth College earlier today. As I said this morning, I was unable to go due to having to work. This is from the Burlington station. Nothing in our local newspaper yet. Will post again in the morning if I can find any new articles.
Just watched the Trump rally in Wisconsin. Loud, raucous, ‘great energy’ for true. What I saw of that Burlington station, Willy could have been all by himself. Not even close.
NY’s pension fund criticized by state agency [D&C]
No deficit hawk here, but I do believe one should use non-bullshit numbers when discussing such things in the “government needs to spend more to stimulate the economy” context popular around here. So the latest headline should be:
USGov debt increased by $1.4 Tln in Latest FY
I dug out the numbers on reading Mish’s latest, “US Deficit at $590 Billion but Debt Up $1.2 trillion: Sleight of Hand Magic” [ mishtalk dot com slash 2016 slash 10 slash 17 slash us-deficit-up-590-billion-but-debt-up-1-2-trillion-sleight-of-hand-magic ]
Mish uses YoY numbers based on June 30 – if we use the actual USGov fiscal year which ends on September 30, Treasury’s own “debt to the penny” webpage [ www dot treasurydirect dot gov slash NP slash debt slash current ] shows debt rising from (I round to nearest $10 Bln) $18.15 Tln on 9/30/2015 to $19.57 Tln on 9/30/2016, for a net increase of $1.42 Tln. {I see toward end of the piece that another reader alerted Mish to this, but headline still reflects 6/30-based numbers.]
apparently ecuador shut off assange’s internet access. i strongly suspect u.s. pressure, but no confirming evidence yet.
I’ve been waiting for something bad to happen to Ecuador.
Just saw this article from Reuters. As a side note, apparently the Russians are so in the tank for the Donald that….. they are touting Correa’s support for Clinton on their quasi-state media:
“Correa, whose term will end next year, has said he is behind Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, who he says he knows personally, in the U.S. presidential election.
“For the good of the United States and the world … I would like Hillary to win,” Correa told broadcaster Russia Today last month.”
MMT meme’s lmao
https://www.facebook.com/DeficitOwls/posts/681244095356627
http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6632.html
I like this piece trying to make some sense out of this election year and put it into context. I don’t agree with all of it, but I think it is well worth a read.
Apparently the state department had the full 55k emails.
https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/12539#searchresult
Chelsea pointing out how employees of the foundation are using it to steal cars and what not….
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/12401#efmAXHAZp
I thought she was referring to padding expense reports when she said “cars.”
But Chelsea does accuse Justin Cooper of having put spyware on Bill Clinton’s computer and blackberry…and of reading all BC’s emails. That kinda blew my mind. I didn’t know who Justin Cooper was…name didn’t ring a bell. A quick internet search made my eyes bug out. What a snakes nest of interconnected conniving they had — shit, have! — over at CGI.
I have to say, and I’m rather reluctant — from what I’ve seen of these emails and unless this is some elaborate kayfabe (hurts my brain!) — Chelsea Clinton seems like she has a functional moral compass. May it be so & Good on her.
Yeah, you are probably right about the car upon re reading it. But any way you cut it that is a damning email.
I also agree Chelsea does seam to still somehow have a sole.
You know she runs the cesspit, right?
At the very least she doesn’t seam to have any tolerance for corruption when presented to her at face value. Remember her emails from Haiti? It’s debatable wither that is a larger see no evil policy.
If she had a functioning moral compass, she would have undermined her mother’s presidential run. After all, Chelsea doesn’t care about money. Even if she has closed her eyes to her mother’s criminality, she knows perfectly well that her mother is very ill. She couldn’t have done anything publicly, but some timely leaks would have been nice.
Instead, she happily went out on the campaign trail and told outrageous lies, that she must know are lies, given her graduate degrees in public health. So, no, Chelsea isn’t any better. She just hasn’t had to get her hands dirty like Mom and Dad.
Chelsea is probably just protecting her looting parents interests, more for them means more for her.
Some debate humor, IMNSHO better than the SNL sketch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBcYU5ZcAXw
I was yelling many of the same things at the TV until I couldn’t take any more and hit the mute button. .
FBI Records – The Vault It’s difficult to read due to all the redacted portions, but it gets interesting around page 44 of the document. Instead of sensationalist books written by those who were part of HRC’s Secret Service Team, it’s an interview of a member of the team interviewed by the FBI concerning the problems and issues those that were assigned to her faced on a daily basis.
Apparently she does not have a very pleasant personality and personnel turnover was pretty high. And, as expected, she breaks every rule and regulation on the books because she is HRC, and as we all know, in her case the rules just do not apply.
p. 56: “The Shadow Government.”
Here is Glenn Thrush, the White House political correspondent and senior staff writer at Politico, double checking with Podesta that nothing in his vanilla piece on Clinton fundraising strategies was too offensive.
https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/12681
Be sure to note, in addition, his faux-friendly servile manner when addressing Podesta–“Hey sir–sorry to bother–but….”–and when referring to himself–“hack,” “fucked up,” etc. He later asks Podesta, “Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this.”
Why would Thrush make this request of his “source,” if he merely wanted Podesta to fact-check his piece?
Thrush’s tone in the correspondence varies between the unctuous Malvolio and the shameless Gloucester. Hard to tell which is dominant; both are unsightly.
out of curiosity, I read @realdonaldtrump ‘s tweets since Fri Oct 7, since the Podesta Wikileaks was announced that weekend.
The Podesta Wikileaks reveals HClinton saying she “has a public position & a private position”, & her presumably authentic “private position” often contradicts her 2016 campaign “public position” as well as the 2016 D Platform she agreed to. Perhaps most importantly, HClinton’s private position is pro-TPP & pro-Simpson Bowles-style “Grand Bargain” Ripoff of SS & MC cuts.
Trump, like HClinton, has claimed in the campaign to be anti-SS/MC cuts & anti-TPP. I read @realdonaldtrump tweets to see of he mentions HClinton’s private position is pro-SS/MC cuts & pro-TPP.
Trump does have some Podesta Wikileaks criticism, but NONE of it is on policy. Trump criticizes
1 how HClinton election rigged the primary election from Sanders
2 campaign communicated w DOJ, & State Dept’s Patrick Kennedy communicated FBI to discuss/tamper with email investigation
3 Politco journalist has HClinton campaign edit his article
I would conclude that either
1 Trump was always like HClinton in the aspect of his “private position” is pro-TPP, & pro-SS/MC cuts. The fact that Trump himself in his own mfg goods business (e.g. ties) offshore outsourced to low wage nations, would further indicate Trump is likely to be pro-TPP.
2 Trump after becoming the R nominee was pressured by the R Establishment, including Paul Ryan & BigDonor/Owners to become quietly pro-TPP & pro-SS/MC cuts & not mention these topics in the general election campaign
3 Trump & his campaign team have Sarah Palin-level low IQ to not realize to bring up HClinton’s pro-TPP & pro-SS/MC cuts positions. Thus even if Trump were elected & were genuinely anti-TPP & anti-SS/MC cuts, he would be ineffective in stopping these policies.
Furthermore, although it doesn’t contradict the 2016 D Platform, Podesta/Wikileaks shows HClinton’s stupid bizarre incoherent Syria policy of wanting to regime-change Assad & attack 1SIS simultaneously, even though she acknowledges it would kill many civilians, & maintains friendship with her Saudi royal owners/Clinton Foundation funders despite acknowledging they fund 1SIS.
I read some commenters here writing they will Lesser Evil Vote for Trump on the grounds of Trump being anti-TPP or anti-Syria & Russia WW3 war. Based on Trump’s lack of mentioning these issues post-Podesta Wikileaks, I am not sure if he is actually meaningfully different than HClinton on these issues.
I suppose Trump LE voters have the general notion that he is anti-establishment & has some nonzero chance of ending the 35+ yr neoliberal Reganomics Establishment era, where HClinton is extremely unlikely to do so.
I am a safe state & am voting for Jill Stein. I have empathy for swing state voters who feel compelled into LEV, IMHO it is difficult to distinguish who actually is the LE among the duopolist Clumps.
—
PS, in a stopped clock moment, I’ll give 1 prop (not “props” in the plural sense) to this Trump cartoon ad on HClinton’s Clinton Foundation as bribe pay-to-play corruption
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/788150475258343424