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This is what work-life balance looks like at a company with 100% retention of moms Quartz (Dan K). And the worst is that this is not all that hard to do. I’ve long been gobsmacked as to why more companies, particularly ones on suburban campuses (ie, office space is not all that pricey) don’t have in-house child care. It pays for itself in less distracted parents as workers. And if you wanted to be Google-ish about it, you could keep a thin crew of child care people on until 8 PM for staffers who needed to or wanted to work late (as in project blew up, or wanted to clear the decks before a vacation). But you could disincentivize use by charging managers whose team members used the late child care shift regularly, as opposed to on an exception basis.
Stray cat patrol: Feral felines deployed in NYC war on rats Associated Press. We do have a lot of rats and they are big and brazen. I was on the end of a subway platform not long ago and a rat sauntered up, grabbed a piece of garbage (something in the bread category) and went on his way. Having said that, I can see them doing a service of sorts in the subways, which are full of litter, but elsewhere is another matter….
Scientists suggest new theory behind the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle Independent (David L)
Wonder Woman announced as UN ambassador amid staff protest Guardian. This is really embarrassing. Wonder Woman has boobs Hugh Hefner and Donald Trump would approve of and is always drawn in attire that makes them very prominent. She’s an athletic brunette Barbie. Help me. I suppose Jeanne d’Arc was out because she’s French and literally went down in flames…
World’s first tidal energy farm could power 175,000 homes in Scotland Business Insider (furzy)
Philippines
How the Trump of the Philippines Just Sold Out His Country to China Daily Beast. Resilc: “Like we haven’t sold out to the Al Sauds, China, Wall St, etc via K Street?” Moi: And Australia is doing in fits and starts right now?
EU-Canada trade deal in crisis as Canadian minister walks out Guardian. Phil U: “So sad to see a trade negotiator crying.” I’m sure he forgot the /sarc tag.
Wallonia resists EU, defends Justice and Democracy in all Europe Defend Democracy
Why sterling’s collapse is not good for the UK economy Guardian (Phil U)
Jeroen Dijsselbloem: why I disagree with Joseph Stiglitz European Council (Michael M. Thomas)
Ukraine/Russia
Vladimir Putin’s Third Way: As Seen Through the Nooscope Neo (Wat)
Syraquistan
Compare the coverage of Mosul and East Aleppo and it tells you a lot about the propaganda we consume Independent (YY)
The Dangers of ‘Centrist Internationalism’ American Conservative (resilc)
The Race for al-Bab – TTG Sic Semper Tyrannis. Resild: “‘I’m sure they realize shooting down Turkish planes, especially with U.S. advisors in the area could open up a whole new can of worms. However I think they mean it.’ We’ll see how big Clintoon’s cojones are very soon.”
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Hacked Cameras, DVRs Powered Today’s Massive Internet Outage Krebs on Security. Richard Smith: “‘It’s remarkable that virtually an entire company’s product line has just been turned into a botnet that is now attacking the United States.’ Remarkable is one word for it. Such is our globalised deregulated world.”
It probably wasn’t Russia who attacked the Internet today. That’s what’s scary. Washington Post (furzy). Um, scary is when someone takes the electrical grid down. Since when is losing access to Amazon “scary” to anyone other than Amazon execs and shareholders?
From Bill B via e-mail:
The whole breathless coverage of the DDoS attack against Dyn borders on comedy. But, hey, it’s great P.R. for the cyber expert crowd. I keep waiting for “hackers” to give ‘Merica a shove hard enough to knock it down but it never happens. Not that Twitter going down means squat to all those minimum wage slaves doing the Dollar Store shuffle.
Blame the Internet of Things for Destroying the Internet Today Motherboard. I remember when Michael Hawley of MIT was providing me support for my NeXT computer (yes, one of the virtues of having a NeXT was having access to top technologists). It was no doubt proof of my hopeless Luddite tendencies when he told me in 1991 of the coming IoT even before that was a term of art. He thought it was really cool that his belt buckle would be able to talk to his refrigerator. I didn’t see much upside and could envision lots of downside from having my devices able to have private conversations among themselves.
2016
Bernie Sanders Is Running a Shadow Campaign Bloomberg
Why Bernie Was Right Jacobin (Kevin C)
NSA Whistleblower: US Intelligence Worker Likely Behind DNC Leaks, Not Russia AntiMedia (RR). Quelle surprise!
Clinton oppo files portrayed Sanders as a failed lawmaker Politico
A WikiLeaks Lesson for Mrs. Clinton New York Times. >Bill B:
“….it’s impossible to say whether anything truly damaging to Mrs. Clinton will emerge” the editorial board claims… Then they turn around and say, “Oh, but look at all the corruption in China!”
Well, I got news for you: Communist Party official Bai Enpei (took $38 million in bribes) has got nothing on Hillary Clinton. She took well over $100 million. The difference is that Bai Enpei ends up in jail and Clinton ends up in the White House.
WikiLeaks Emails Show Hillary Clinton Made Deal With Morocco Atlantic (resilc)
Hillary Clinton’s Strategic Ambition in a Nutshell Counterpunch (resilc)
The Soul Of The Clinton Machine American Conservative (resilc)
If Only We Could Vote for Peace Instead of a ‘Commander-in-Chief’ Common Dreams
Trump outlines plan for first 100 days BBC. Lead story with a surprisingly neutral headline.
Trump flip-flops on “the wall” with Mexico: American taxpayers will now pay for it AmericaBlog (furzy). Did anyone really believe Mexico was gonna pony up? But yes, the original claim was a bluster too far.
Clinton Campaign Ponders ‘What If’ Trump Doesn’t Concede Bloomberg. Notice how this is inconsistent with the media messaging that Trump has pretty much no path to an electoral college victory. If this is true (say Hillary wins by even as little as 2 points nationally, and none of the swing state races are all that close, and so it’s a Obama/Romney electoral college split or even more pronounced), who cares? Trump would just look like a sore loser who wants media attention he doesn’t deserve. This story says either that the Clinton campaign is paranoid or that they think the polls are sufficiently unreliable that they are flying blinder than they like.
We Are Ignoring the Worst Dangers of Trumpism at Our Own Peril Alternet. More nuanced than the headline but you have to get pretty far into it to find that out.
Michael Moore to Trump Voters: ‘You’re Legal Terrorists’ Rolling Stone (furzy). Don’t the Dems get that attacking voters is no way to win them over???
Clinton Attacks Trump for Threatening to Sue Accusers Wall Street Journal
Daily dig: Richard Branson has Donald Trump in his sights BBC
You’re fired! Medium (sd) By a former Apprentice employee, and a woman to boot.
Republicans abandon Fox News: Roger Ailes has turned GOP voters from their favorite channel Salon (Dan K)
Major New Court Ruling Says “Even The President” Can’t Declare Torture Lawful Intercept. Resilc: “So where are the indictments?”
A Whistle Was Blown on ITT; 17 Years Later, It Collapsed Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times
AT&T CEO confident of approval for $84bn Time Warner buyout Financial Times. Ugh.
Regulators Get Out Their Microscopes New York Times. On AT&T-Time Warner.
Guillotine Watch
Super-size my superyacht: the quest for bigger boats and gadgets Financial Times
Class Warfare
Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses a decade after going to war Los Angeles Times. Resilc: “Thank you for your servicing.”
U.S. doesnt crack top 10 in list of countries ranked by youth development opportunities McClatchy (resilc)
Antidote du jour (Timotheus):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
231 comments
Comments are closed.
RE: CA soldiers forced to repay bonuses. I can’t believe it. If anybody should repay, it’s the state of CA that should repay to the Pentagon. I have to believe that a good lawyer can win this case for the soldiers.
Actually, it would require a good judge.
Well, there must be something I’m missing. There is a legal CONTRACT that is signed for these re-enlistment bonuses. The soldiers presumedly delivered THEIR end of the contract, so why do they have to give the money back? Not their mistake. Not their problem.
The article is slightly misleading.The gubmint screwed up their maths and overpaid the soldiers. Anyone dumb enough to join the military after consistent abuse both financially, and physically by the gubmint deserve whatever they get.
Given the fact that soldiers in the field risk their lives on a daily basis to protect a nation, its’ people, and its interests, I think they deserve all the care they can get from us. And you FIL, are doing us all a disservice to think otherwise.
However, one valid concern impacting us all, and that you FIL might take the time to actually think about instead, are the risks associated with the corporatization of the military.
Which ones in harms way are protecting the Nation?
Must be someone in The Coast Guard?
According to the story, in many cases the contract could not be found. That was one of the reasons listed for people having to repay the bonus.
While it does suck, I do have the feeling that if you were dumb enough to trust the government and then got burned it’s your own fault. I freely admit that I’ll be burned by the government too at some point, such as when it reneges on my Social Security payments if not before.
Deplorables.
I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that if there were overpayments due to mistakes by the California National Guard, then any repayment to the Pentagon should come from the budget of the California National Guard.
The CA NG made a statement that they would LIKE to pay it all back, but that’s against the law. Whaaaat?
I guess I’m just way too cynical…….
One wonders how “patriotic” and willing to “fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here” these guys would be WITHOUT giant retention bonuses.
Or the guy that gets a bonus because of his military specialty, then switches to another specialty that doesn’t rate the bonus. Or got a bonus they knew they weren’t supposed to get, but knowing how bad the Army is about keeping track of money, figured they would never be caught, or thought they would use the “blood from turnips” defense.
Working for the DOD (especially for specialists) pays a helluva lot better than 99.5% of the equivalent civilian jobs.
I can see their problem(s) with paying it back.
But, the reps should step in and fix it.
Given election time , wouldn’t it be the ultimate vote get?
When I was in the Army, I got overpaid a few months for my BAS (Basic Allowance for Subsistence- food allowance) back in 2012. You better believe the Army took it back by not paying me for the next couple paychecks.
Isn’t it fraud to pay someone to risk death and disability and then tell them the payment was fake?
After reading the article watch Cnn interview with Blankfein..that will get you boiling…then read the comments..
On GPS today at 10 am + 1 pm ET on CNN: Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein discusses U.S. economy, Wall Street regulation, Hillary Clinton
https://twitter.com/FareedZakaria/status/789946029969989636
In the CNN interview, Blankfein pitched his firm’s relationship with the Clintons as part of doing business. He pointed out that Clinton had been a New York senator and said Goldman regularly engages with a host of public officials in the state where it’s headquartered.
“I go out and I meet with editors of newspapers,” he said. “I meet with Republican leaders. It’s necessary for us to do that.”
He expressed confidence Clinton would win the election in November.
“If the worst thing was that we have a history of having engaged positively with Hillary Clinton, that’s not going to annoy me,” Blankfein said.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/23/investing/goldman-sachs-hillary-clinton/
In the course of interview Blankfein states they were investigated very thoroughly..no criminal behavior….which parallels with the Clintons….and white washes all wrongs in the long run and sets a precedent for the future…Winning!….
Isn’t it fraud to pay someone to risk death and disability and then tell them the payment was fake?
Rex non potest peccare.
The forced repayment by veterans of their enlistment bonuses to the government a decade after they were given the bonuses to re-enlist is unconscionable. They kept their part of the contract. A local pizza place has set aside a room for military veterans where they come to meet and socialize in the early evenings. All are relatively young, some are paraplegic, some in wheelchairs with breathing apparatus as a result of the injuries they sustained in the elite’s wars of choice, while others’ injuries are not visible.
As a veteran of an earlier era it made me angry to read this piece, particularly when I contrasted it with the linked article titled “The Soul(lessnesss) of the Clinton Machine” and the statement by Charles Krauthammer at the top of that article explaining why he’s not voting for either Trump or Clinton.
Who Would You Clawback?
Consider the following scenarios where people received bonuses as a result of fraud:
1) Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war. Audits reveal widespread bonus overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars. Investigations determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets. Army Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, the California Guard’s incentive manager, pleaded guilty in 2011 to filing false claims of $15.2 million and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. Three officers also pleaded guilty to fraud and were put on probation after paying restitution. (source: Los Angeles Times)
2) For years, mortgage giant Fannie Mae has produced smoothly growing earnings. And for years, observers have wondered how Fannie could manage its inherently risky portfolio without a whiff of volatility. Now, thanks to Fannie’s regulator, we know the answer. The company was cooking the books. Big time. Fannie set aside an artificially large cash reserve. And — presto — in any quarter its managers could reach into that jar to compensate for poor results or add to it to dampen good ones. This ploy, according to Ofheo, gave Fannie “inordinate flexibility” in reporting the amount of income or expenses over reporting periods. This flexibility also gave Fannie the ability to manipulate earnings to hit — within pennies — target numbers for executive bonuses. In one particularly volatile year target EPS for maximum payout was $3.23 and Fannie reported exactly . . . $3.2309. This bull’s-eye was worth $1.932 million to then-CEO James Johnson, $1.19 million to then-CEO-designate Franklin Raines, and $779,625 to then-Vice Chairman Jamie Gorelick. (source: Wall Street Journal)
Here’s what our government did.
The government let Johnson, Donilon and Gorelick keep every penny of their fraudulent gains. That same government is going after 10,000 soldiers who received re-enlistment bonuses as a result of Pentagon incompetence or malfeasance:
Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses — and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars last decade.
Roughly 9,700 current and retired soldiers have been told by the California Guard to repay some or all of their bonuses and the recoupment effort has recovered more than $22 million so far.
There are two systems of justice in our country.
Rules for the politically connected, the “Just Us” crew, are far different from those for common folk.
The soldier bonus clawback is but one example.
http://peureport.blogspot.com/2016/10/who-would-you-clawback.html
I would think it would be a very good stance politically for Jerry Brown and the CA legislature to just pass an appropriation real quick and reimburse the Pentagon. Or the US House. Where’s Bernie, who supposedly helps the veterans?
This will not help enlistment.
“This will not help enlistment…,”
Perhaps that’s the point. How else to fight back from politicians sending volunteer soldiers to a vanity war with Russia?
I walk two miles everyday and on my route I pass by a California National Guard facility. It used to make me angry – I was a young kid when I saw what happened at Kent State University in Ohio and it marked me for life – but this story has changed my outlook considerably. These young men and women have earned their bonuses and the damned Pentagon could and should step up and make this right. File this one under Guillotine Watch. Talk about “deplorable!!” Hillary, for whom I will not vote, should at least make this a priority in her bid for POTUS.
I contrasted this with the article a couple of weeks ago on how the Pentagon can’t actually account for a gigantic amount of money spent. Revealing.
Funny isn’t it? The Pentagon loses track of billions each year – they can’t track where vast quantities of money went to – yet somehow they can figure out to the dollar what some soldiers got paid as enlistment bonuses and claw it back because a decade later they figure out they overpaid them.
Before getting bogged down in too many details, let’s look at the Pentagons’ intention behind the paying of these bonuses. That there could well be the major hook that hangs from the ceiling. It raises more questions than answers. And is only one example in an interesting list of allegedly questionable moves made by the Pentagon’s bookkeepers.
For example, why should reenlistment have special value as opposed to initial enlistment? What precisely justifies the difference here? Is the bonus itself the ‘Powder of Sympathy’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_of_sympathy ) but mutually beneficial to both the Pentagon and soldiers in this particular case?!
One could even argue the money itself has been transformed into a perverse symbol of not just what human life is like, but the kinds of demands it regrettably make on us all. It’s almost as if essentially, for all of us, human life is able to grasp the stripes of the American flag, but rarely ever the stars.
Re-enlistment bonuses have been a fact of the volunteer army for decades. It’s the only way they can keep soldiers, especially in combat MOS’s. In these particular cases in CA, the recruiting people were the ones that stole the federal money, and some of them went to prison. The soldiers didn’t do anything wrong.
Culpability ultimately resides with those who are unwilling or incapable of using real diplomacy to prevent conflict or war in the first place, and to steer us all instead, towards a path of peace. That would be progress. And, for the majority of us all, priceless.
Through the looking glass:
Mightn’t this be a whiff off Brazil?
To better understand and avoid misinterpretation, could some shape to your assessment be applied?
Don’t mind misinterpretation, as it’d only be a judgement call on my part.
Somethink lige
Contracts — maybe? And political elections following The Faith in The People? Pulling on chains? Cashing in on the *rule* of law? I’d like to get some intrepretation on that.
…no satisfaction, I can’t get no…
Well, whatever the rascals have gone and done under the sheriff’s watchful eye…
I agree, Emma, with the ethos.
but
Because part of Hill’s mind has the alienated spawn of real politics implanted courtesy Herr Kissinger,
The Peacefulness we imagine
has been quite tainted.
We soldier on.
“We soldier on.”
Indeed. But Chris Hedges thinks rebellion is a moral imperative!
See here: http://kuow.org/post/you-say-you-want-revolution-chris-hedges-has-his-eye-radical-change
AND
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKOjzg_2ShM
I enjoyed the perspective of Adam Curtis new doco ‘HyperNormalisation’ and its handling of our currant political apparatus as an appendage of something much bigger and much less understood.
With that observation… that both Hilary and Trump are probably better described as social interface holograms – provided by – the reality this “Thingy” than determinant of it.
Disheveled Marsupial…. if such is true…. this would invalidate a huge amount of human agency moving forward… and necessitate a whole new line of thinking to address the fundamental problem e.g. politics might have moved past its use by date…
Skippy,
A point I keep making; When you are talking 100’s of millions of people, it’s more physics, than politics, as all the complexity starts to cancel out. Think basic waves through a complex medium, or one level up, thermodynamic cycles of expansion and contraction.
As such, Clump is not so much the ‘decider,’ as the crest of a wave. One created by debt, as it washes through the system and leaving a significant trough in its wake. We are not even picking a third string quarterback, but a punter, at this point.
The power of this thing called “money” is that it functions as quantified hope for the individual and politicians rise and fall on how much “hope” they can give out.
The problem is that money is not a commodity that can be mined, like gold, or manufactured, like bitcoin, but a contract. To be an asset, it has to be backed by an obligation. Therefore the need for enormous amounts of public debt. In fact, according to an article on WolfStreet, some weeks back, the Federal gov has borrowed over 4 trillion more in the last 13 years, than can be accounted for in its spending. The gov doesn’t even try to budget. It’s just a free for all to find ways to write up bills to spend money. Just think, those “safe and secure US saving bonds” are used to blow up other countries. Try collecting interest on that.
As a medium of exchange, money is like blood in the body, but trying to save enormous amounts of what amounts to vouchers, is like saving fat in the circulation system. So it is ‘saved” by being borrowed out and spent on whatever toys the boys want.
When this wave crashes will be the time to reverse disaster capitalism and push for a financial exchange mechanism that works like a large social contract. Just like roads. We don’t personally own the section of road we are on. As George Carlin said of beer, we only rent it. Then people would have to save value as a community function, aka, the commons, not just strip it out to stuff their personal bank accounts, which further atomizes society.
Cut the rant off here….
@John Merryman…
I disagree with your premise of mixing up physics with a human – machine nexus, its a large factor in establishing the “thingy” to start with. Now I’m familiar with many of the events the Curtis doco uses, exposed to a few new ones w/ some inter connectivity or associations with correlating events.
I suggest you view it before responding to my exceedingly simplistic summery, then see how your comment above applies or not.
As some are want to say…. information or the control of information and the perspectives projected on it seem to have more influence then this thing we call money.
Just the observation of BlackRocks computational asset and its programing using stuff like rational agent models thus creating a huge perspective in the market is something with profound implications.
Disheveled Marsupial…. why do I get the strange mental picture of the bomb in the movie classic ‘Dark Star’…. whispering in our ear without…. us knowing it….. and then misplacing a huge quantity of agency operating in our individual and shared perception of reality…..
Here’s a good link – https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/?lang=en
So you don’t think we are gradually and now rapidly, spinning into a vortex, as the energy sustaining our forward and upward momentum fades and all the little pieces rapidly coalesce into harder, littler pieces and fall inward?
That after evolving for billions of years in a thermodynamic environment, we haven’t ingrained the feedback loops into every fiber of our being?
Looks interesting.
Sorry John…. but that is some authentic frontier gibberish of epic proportions.
Actually it sounds like something the “thingy” would pop out like the psychological software noted in the doco…. answering humans statements imputed as a question redirected at them and the people become mesmerized… or BlackRocks little home base in a apple orchard town where almost everyone is on prozac… where people ask themselves is this what reality is like vs pre prozac… or as the girl state everyone is caught in a positive emotive feed back loop – your looking better today – ends up after a few cycles…. were all looking better today…
Disheveled Marsupial… I extend my recommendation again, watch and then reconcile your first comment. Not much point in just responding to my original comment without context…. it just ends up drifting into the void of what ifs et al…..
Skippy,
Watching it is taking time. Though it does seem to describe what happens when a wave of debt is used to push a faltering system a few more decades further into the future…….Foam and bubbles, but an equally large trough follows it.
Carter said put on a sweater. Reagan said put it on the credit cards.
Sorry again, I missed the part in the doco about debt.
Disheveled Marsupial…. your wandering…
Since I just started it, currently between work projects, it is the first part. The debt NYC got into in the 70’s, then goes into Patti Smith, etc and the downward spiral of the 60’s Woodstock generation, into individualistic hedonism, as the financial interests took over…..
Firstly the debt is not the drama, its the demographics of the tax base moving away [facilitated by banks and developers] and then the not showing up at the bond sale in a very deliberate and calculated maneuver.
Left devolves into art movement.
Hair shirts for everyone, further eroding the tax base and social function.
Distressed assets are cheap, enter El’ Trumpo to flush out the down trodden so gleaming towers of wealth and prestige can arise [financial sector is taking wing].
Enter computational power and its dead head acid trips with a fee – rentier – information function in the kernel.
I’ll stop right there, the debt did not do it, that was the result of other agency[s. Just like hyperinflation is a result of other factors like trade shocks… but yeah… some people only see debt.
Diseveled Marsupial…. if that’s the amount of intellectual grunt were going to apply to analytical retrospection we might as well say Beelzebub does it – every – time…. eh
Been a long day and planning on further watching, but not tonight. It looks interesting.
Though as pretty much the money center of the world, there has been a lot of juice flowing through NYC these last few decades. Skimming off the circulation.
Money center is the world bank and IMF….
Pre this thread, it seems some people are in need of some basics and then research the NC archives for a more nuanced view wrt finance and current mechanics.
Disheveled Marsupial… common sense and popular opinion can make a dogs breakfast of it…. that is one thing that the doco should impart on people…
Link to the documentary
link is not working
Thanks Bev, this link works.
This link worked for me: https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/
Hillary’s staff already moving into the whitehouse…
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Rigged-Elections-Are-An-Am-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-Election_Polls_Rigged-Elections_Theft-161021-537.html
Rigged Elections Are An American Tradition
By Paul Craig Roberts
Do Americans have a memory? I sometimes wonder.
It is an obvious fact that the oligarchic One Percent have anointed Hillary, despite her myriad problems, to be President of the US. There are reports that her staff are already moving into their White House offices. This much confidence before the vote does suggest that the skids have been greased.
The current cause celebre against Trump is his conditional statement that he might not accept the election results if they appear to have been rigged. The presstitutes immediately jumped on him for “discrediting American democracy” and for “breaking American tradition of accepting the people’s will.”
What nonsense!
……..
Then what’s the risk for voting Jill Stein as the New York Times says:
Election Forecast: Hillary Clinton has a 93% chance of winning.
via: https://twitter.com/DrJillStein
Dr. Jill Stein Retweeted Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden Verified account @Snowden
There may never be a safer election in which to vote for a third option.
Jill Stein: Coincidentally, there may never be an election where it’s so dangerous to vote for either establishment party. #BreakThe2PartyTrap
All the attempts to discredit “rigged elections” with so much evidence past and present.
Al Gore was called a sore loser when he actually won. Trump’s unfavorability is even higher than the high dislike for Clinton. So, I don’t see him winning, or making a real case when he loses. This has been a tag team all along.
I don’t see Hillary winning legitimately as already demonstrated by the stolen primary. However, Trump will not bring up real evidence of rigging. He was trying to support scrubbing voter rolls of real voters by calling them illegal voters.
His message and this story may be the establishment trying to fend off citizen’s efforts to recover Democracy. Since Clinton is preemptively blaming Russia for any election hacking, and Trump is saying a Rigged Election is possible, then they both should openly call for following solution:
http://trustvote.org/latest-updates/the-solution-to-vote-fractionalizing/
A few days ago, we told you about the problem of fractionalizing votes. I mentioned that we would be sending you a letter with a really good solution that has worked once before and could work again. Although votes can be fractionalized while adding them up, the ballot images (pictures taken of the ballots) can not be reduced to fractions. The solution is to issue temporary restraining orders in swing state counties so that the ballot images can be preserved. The act of issuing TRO’s will also be a deterrent in itself to fractionalizing votes in an effort to steal the election. This process could apply to all elections, presidential, state and county elections as well as bond issues and propositions.
If you are interested in getting involved in making this happen, if you are a lawyer and if you know a lawyer or lawyers who might also be interested in preserving ballot images using TRO’s, please contact us at TrustVote.org as soon as possible, as we will need to issue these TRO’s for the most part BEFORE the election. And, as you might expect, organizing this effort will require money. So please DONATE WHATEVER YOU CAN to support to fight election fraud in our country.
THANK YOU SO MUCH on behalf of TrustVote and our challenged democracy!
Some good news–Bev Harris will be coming out late tonight with a 5-min. film excerpt about Fraction Magic. It shows the hacking process. It will be on http://www.blackboxvoting.org and on YouTube.
The longer film will be out soon, too.
Thanks to TheCatSaid from The Dog Barked…The GREEN DOG!
BLUE DOGS AND YELLOW DOGS are a distorted history and criminal enterprises as policy exemplified by the theft of Democracy through the computer code to steal elections that Bev Harris found.
I look forward to seeing Bev Harris’s film.
Jill Stein needs to see this too.
In light of the recent DDoS attack, the notion that HyperNormalisation brought to light brings to mind the somewhat terrifying thought that absent Twitter or Facebook feeds, there must be a lot of people in a granfalloon that associate almost solely via the Internet. Deprived for long of their “bubbles” what would these humans revert to?
Best be setting up a bunch more DNS sites.
It is insane to have this much concentration.
That’s exactly the opposite of the original.
I expect we will find out within the next few months.
It will be important to know your actual physical neighbors (as opposed to your virtual community). I’ve started working on this the last few months. Building community cohesion on whatever scale is what will give resilience.
isn’t nc a granfalloon, too?
an excellent one though, like the detroit symphony or iceland. plus, i’m sure it’s quite probable that other members of one’s karass are to be found here.
Having now watched it, I see it as effective BBC propaganda. Interesting information at times–but the themes running through are to paint Iran, Assads, Syria, Russia, Putin, Trump, Hamas and Hezbollah in a bad light, and connect them all together. Briton & the current USA establishment (Obama, Clintons and earlier) all get a pass. The catastrophic events described omit the US/UK role behind the scenes, and trace the source of current Syrian/ME crisis back to Khomeni inventing suicide bombing (purportedly) and Hafez al Assad taking up that tactic. All the middle east problems nowadays are linked back to that. That’s how the BBC wants people to understand current events, including the current US election. Wow.
Naturally there’s nothing mentioned about the US role in events that preceded Khomeni.
The documentary frames itself as being about how we’re set up to be manipulated by various social/political constructs, then it proceeds to do that very thing.
Well, then. That just saved me some reading.
As with all things one has to observe it with the appropriate caveats.
Agree that the ME ingratiation is poorly fleshed out tho that does not invalidate the majority of its thrust, the machinations of all the actors at play. Additionally I cant see how you arrive at your conclusions with board sweeping brush strokes. Curtis in no way gives the ME or East vs the West a Halo black and white pass, in fact he pretty much damns all of them.
He directly draws a parallel with the US and Putin in utilizing the THINGY and the whole Khomeni part is about how the West concocted up story’s to cover the reality, and how Khomeni attempt to leverage it for street cred or did you miss the part about burnishing his international reputation as international intellectual [FFS they had him sitting next to a 3rd way bloke] PR management exercise, and then when the spring revolts took a nasty turn and disestablished Lybia they abandoned him.
Good Grief…. there is so much more on the US, England, et al that has nothing to do with the ME or Putin and yet you can only misconstrue even that part. Its not even the base theme of the Doco, which is about reality perception and the tools used, by design or by providence.
Disheveled Marsupial…. worst part is you accuse Curtis of intentionally screwing with perspective and I can only ascribe that activity to you thecatsaid…. Seriously I don’t know what doco you watched being so detached from any semblance of the actual one.
PS. craazyboy you’re no better… you just automatically take TCS opinion as truth sight unseen…. or is ZH day at NC…. wheeeeeee
Oops – Khomeni – is Gaddafi my bad, but, the interpretation of Islamic scripture too enable at first, military outcomes and then evolve in the pressure cooker that is the ME is not propaganda to let the west off the hook.
I think you projecting way too much here, due to some bias affiliated with the BBC or ilk and not of Curtis himself. Curtis is at the end of the day a social democrat.
Disheveled Marsupial…. I think you’re falling in to a trap of your own making TCS…..
– The catastrophic events described omit the US/UK role behind the scenes
Um, I glanced at my notes and it took less than two seconds to find ‘Reagan face to Kissinger legacy,’ which was Kissingers betrayal of Assad that was never forgiven.
If Curtis is yanking any particular ideology, it’s that hedonism is a withdrawal from the world, as if the self-expression axis of the World Values Survey is a useless equivalent to an Islamic ‘dream of transcending the corruptions of the world.’ It fits with the manipulated id-wants that he explored in ‘Century of the Self,’ but it is an odd perspective for an artist to take.
@TheCatSAaid… I agree with your propaganda take relative to Obama/Clinton and the history of the U.S. in Iran prior to Khomeni. It’s all Khomeni and Assad’s Fault and playing down, if not almost ignoring, the West’s part in Syria didn’t really strike a chord with me either, although that time period was definitely the beginning of the modern religious-justified Suicide Bombing era. He did briefly skim over Kissinger’s major part in this debacle, and then never mentioned it again.
On the other hand, he couldn’t cover everybody :-)
Personally I thing the summary of the film at thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/ pretty much covered what he wanted to say; “…weaves these historical narratives … to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created and is sustained”. I think he did an excellent job of that throughout, and using politicians’ perception management techniques and the manipulation of Khadafi’s appearance to the world at every turn was one of the excellent background themes he used. I’m sure Clinton and the DNC wishes it would work with Putin, too, but as Curtis points out, these routines have been used so often that no one believes anything or anybody anymore (maybe not even him :)
I like his films and I think he lets the viewer make his/her own decisions about what to think about his presentations, as long as that viewer has at least some knowledge and experience of the recent history he chooses in his narratives. When I choose to watch one I know I have to set a side a few hours. He covers a lot and it definitely helps to know some of the recent history he uses to make his points. I often catch him presenting it in a little bit of a revisionist history manner, but it still doesn’t take away from the big points… in my opinion anyway.
Yes, I take your point and also Skippy’s comments. What strongly influenced my interpretation–or rather, why the things I commented on above bothered me as much as they did–was TIMING. Why is the BBC putting this out now? I highlighted Syria, Iran, ME and Trump because these are major events playing out NOW. It was odd how Trump was introduced about 4 times in the narrative.
As I said, it’s not that there’s an absence of value, but what is the purpose behind BBC making this documentary at this particular point in time?
(It reminds me of when Al Jazeera put out a really interesting documentary about Marco Polo made by a Chinese documentary maker, so of course it ended up being about how much more advanced China was compared to Europe–which had truth to it, of course–but this film was released so that the last episode was a week or two before AliBaba’s big stock market flotation. Hence my emphasis on TIMING in understanding the purpose buried within things that come out, particularly by powerful media.)
Whenever I watch documentaries like this (same for blockbuster films or TV) I pay particular attention to considering why TPTB would want this presented at all, and particularly WHY NOW. I saw the thread running through as “Fear” connected to “Certain countries and leaders are BAD” and “Trump is a bad guy” (so don’t vote for him becuz Russia).
TCS….
“Whenever I watch documentaries like this (same for blockbuster films or TV) I pay particular attention to considering why TPTB would want this presented at all”
Sorry mate that’s some industrial grade Hayekian paranoia filter to pass – everything – through. I mean do you expect Curtis to start at say the ottoman empire and move forward just so its accurately depicted in granularity, did he have time to unpack decades of events leading up to Khomeni rise and if not Khomeni someone else. I mean come on its a doco for a wider audience that might not have – all – the information, its unrealistic to demand it just for your consumption.
As far as El Trumpo goes, can you find fault in the depiction and if you think Hillary gets off Scott free because she is not mention, the trust of the doco implicates the entire political spectrum and for some time.
And as far as country’s I don’t share your perspective, the West [and Israel] actually came off the worst out of all of it.
Disheveled Marsupial…. still can’t accept cracking a fat over one aspect and then have it bleed all the way through the entire doco, then bring in outside paranoia about TPTB timing everything….
It’s only my personal reaction. I don’t claim to be “right”, whatever that is. The societal manipulation aspects are old hat to me at this point, perhaps why I particularly interested in other messages.
Also–I may have more personal experience and insider awareness of the BBC than you do. I understand how propagandistic they are; a friend who works there and has a degree of profile has spoken candidly about the rule by fear, no one dares to step outside the line, what they can and cannot mention (whether in news or other features) is very strictly confined, one false step and you are out.
They are as much an organ of propaganda as Fox News–just a different personality, all the more so because of the sheen of elite respectability, properness and truthiness.
When Curtis does something for BBC he is not a free agent. He can still get some useful messages out, but he does so from within the heart of a major societal propaganda organ. My wondering what the BBC’s agenda is does not seem over the top–it’s realistic from my perspective and first-hand experience.
By your methodology anytime Yves has been on MSM in print or broadcast it automatically brings into question her veracity or free agent status.
That aside I think you need to deal with the doco in its entirety without using the BBC as your only means of evaluation. So far that has amounted to a complaint about Khomeni and the BBC affiliation.
Lets back track – “”Having now watched it, I see it as effective BBC propaganda” – TCS
That’s your opening salvo, which has absolutely no means to evaluate its T or F state except your good work, epistemic closure by opinion only, that TCS is perception management 101.
The rest is a rolling non sequitur based on your emphatic opening assertion in post hoc ergo propter hoc proforma.
Unlike Curtis you give no means to evaluate your perspective besides personal opinion and assurances, something that carries zero gravitas in my view. Its a hack job, which you now attempt to validate with more of the same.
Look make an argument and substantiate it, without all the heavy jargon and signaling. If you remember I was in the ME and Stans way back, members of my unit we in the Iran rescue debacle and I don’t share any delusions about that or other things. BUT for FFS make a case with more than what flows through you mental spleen of collective biases.
Disheveled Marsupial…. till then…
I’ve shared the impressions I had. If I ever watch it again I might have more to add. I was surprised how Kissinger was presented; it was more positive (i.e., less negative) than I would have expected–both visually and ideologically.
Opinions vs prejudices–a distinction worth examining–is anyone exempt? A work in progress. We all swim in a sea of unseen prejudices– societal and familial thought-forms and judgments that with luck we can become more aware of.
Walk back…
Look don’t go popping off with broad brush accusations without any means to quantify them and then when you get challenged on them… retreat in the rhetorical void.
It diminishes the blog and can influence other readers without due cause. I think we have enough dramas with information as it is, no need to compound the issue.
Disheveled Marsupial… its not personal, but I do get prickly when jerked around or put on the marry go round. Ta.
Michael Moore: He begins by pointing out that fear rhetoric is dangerous even if his side does it. Then he goes on to wet his pants over irrational fears right in the RS interview. Now I see why conservatives pan him so, he is a liberal sell out. Next he’ll be joining with Ezra Klein to do $100k speaking tours.
He has lost all relevance. The man who made Roger & Me and bookended with his next best film, Where to Invade Next, is gone. All for a three decades long obsession over the woman he wishes Clinton was. He fought against Bush’s war crimes tooth and nail, now he is licking the feet of Bush’s accomplice and successor. What a ride…
Correction: that is a two decade obsession, at least counting by the earliest admission I know of.
Michael Moore, the only person who’s ever made me feel bad for Charelton Heston. I appreciate a lot of the work he’s done over the years, but he’s also a pretty big (no pun intended) d-hole.
Anybody who tells you that people who don’t vote for the same candidate as you do are “evil” or “the enemy” or “terrorists” is not your friend, and should be ridiculed out of the public arena. There is such a beast as lefty-Authoritarianism, and Moore is a pretty good example, imho.
Right on re Bowling for Columbine. I’ve never cared for Michael Moore since. He’s the original “virtue signaller.”
You’ll note he’s abandoned Flint faster than GM now that he’s got his. It’s not like he’ll call out the big D political machine for running the city into the dirt.
I hope his next film is called ‘Trump Supporters Explained: The Dying Voters of America.”
Flint, DC, Chicago, California, Libya, Syria. Everywhere Democrats are in charge of policy turns into a hellhole.
They talk a lot about enlightened progressive values, but they are really only incompetent grifters who only know how to steal. Hell, if I were stealing that much I’d want to confiscate all the weapons of my victims as well.
uh lets not leave out the republican governor and his manager either while we’re at it.
or the republican governor and that bizarre program of czars or whatever they call them, that helped bankrupt detroit and ruin flint’s water.
Doonesbury today, too. If it looks like a duck, and burrows like I duck, then I know damned well it’s a duck.
Sheesh, Gary. Sociopaths do not rant. Sociopaths are smooth. You’ll truly respect sociopaths for every second that they care about your opinion. Though if we parse it carefully, that doesn’t contradict the text of what Mike said.
Election’s a team sport, and they’re all playing their assigned positions.
I’ll tell you what is a duck: The Clinton Foundation.
Watch the film “Clinton Cash” sometime. The scale of the corruption and the absolute reality-bending lies by the two of them is breathtaking. She had the unbelievable soulless gall to talk about the “good works” in the last debate.
Ask the Haitian people what they think of the Clintons and their “good works”. They asked the Haitian president “what is your worst fear after the recent hurricane?” and the answer was “that the Clintons come back”. The “Foundation” raised $15B for Haiti and they managed to: build a luxury hotel in the north of Haiti where there was no earthquake damage: give Bill’s friend in Arkansas a contract for rice deliveries when the locals were begging to supply it; and gave Hilary’s brother a lucrative mining concession.
Rinse and repeat the story across the globe. Rwanda, where Bill’s pal got a mining concession, the first national one ever issued, and inside of 3 months he sold it for a profit in excess of $1.5B.
This will go down in the annals of crime on a scale that takes the breath away because the Mafia in this case has a complete stranglehold on the law enforcement apparatus. When you have the DOJ and the FBI on your team you can steal as big as you want, and the Clintons did not hesitate.
It is sad how many formerly admirable people, at least in part, have debased themselves in their need to support Clinton. Gloria Steinem, Krugman, now Michael Moore, among others. I’m also sorry to say that many of my friends and acquaintances have revealed unpleasant parts of themselves during this election, formerly for Bernie then, after Clinton’s nomination, seemingly forgetting all their ideals in their campaign “to fight Trump.” I am not young at all, and this is the first presidential election that has dismayed me to such an extent. The total collusion of the mainstream media with the Clinton and DNC has been a great disappointment as well. But thanks to this site, I do not feel totally alone in many of my feelings.
Without this site, do people wonder to themselves, “Am I a right winger? Why am I so against Hillary?”
Perhaps some are clear thinking and can un-delude themselves without this site.
The same has happened to me. It is sad to see friends whose values I thought were more than skin deep show their true colors. If the vote for Hillary was reluctant I could understand better, but to treat Hil as a savior is more than I can bear.
Many in the younger cohort of Bernie supporters seem to think that they have more depth but I don’t see that since they have not been tested yet with all the reasons boomers have failed to continue the anti-war, anti-poverty, anti-trust, anti-corruption, pro civil liberties values positions once taken to ensure our freedoms. Leaves me feeling isolated until I come here.
These party hacks including Bernie don’t have any principles. They’re getting on the bandwagon to share in the loot. The ones who got on late including the Repigs will get nothing. When Bush invaded Iraq, they were up in arms about it; but when their boy O expanded war in the ME, nary a peep.
During the Bush years there was an anti-war demonstration every Friday at 12noon at the busiest intersection in town. After Obama took office the demonstrations stopped.
Sorry, Bernie is NOT a party hack nor interested in “sharing in loot”. His strategy may be right or mistaken (he may well get shut out and stiffed), but he’s doing his best by his lights and is anything BUT a party hack.
Faith can see things invisible to reason alone.
Same here. You’re definitely not alone in that respect. I have posted article after article, jumped into discussions, the works. It’s like they are not registering anything-by choice. Close your eyes, la la la. The blind following is impressive in its way. The former hardcore Bernie supporters ignore what has been released about what was done during primary season. They have now gone crazily gung-ho for HC. As long as it’s Team D doing it, it’s perfectly acceptable. These are the same people that were yelling bloody murder back when the R’s were running things. I can’t figure out if people are either unwilling or incapable of stepping back and thinking, or if it’s a combination of both. If what she does and stands for is what they endorse and think is okay, no thanks. I have become a pariah for speaking up and saying what must not be said. You’d think I had killed someone or done some unspeakable thing. It’s been interesting. However, better this than be one of them. Cheers.
very much agree with your perceptions and feelings. maybe the nixon mcgovern campaign, or possibly lbj goldwater. but honestly the press seems even more in the tank on this one.
Yes, because we are much more an oligarchy now than in the Goldwater days.
Parent company of firm selected to supply NYPD body cameras sold defective vests for years [NYDN]
Sort of like Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, but with a happy ending.
I look ahead to sending my cable payments to Skynet. The future is bright indeed. Is this passing for CEO vision & corporate “bhag” ?
/sarc/
Re Bernie’s shadow campaign: so he and his Colorado supporters are working for single payer while simultaneously working for the woman who will do everything in her power to stop single payer. Is there any plan here at all? Perhaps they believe that once Clinton is in office they will “make her do it” but we heard that one eight years ago.
Of course there is no clear path out of our current mess but the left could at least avoid making things worse by helping Clinton. Personally I’m voting for Stein. When she says Clinton is more dangerous than Trump she at least tells the truth.
With Trump campaigning in Pennsylvania (demonstrating that his consultants think it competitive), there may be only clear path for Hillary: in Shakespearean terms, exuent William.
After all, there’s only a week to organize an appropriately solemn and grandiose state funeral (featuring lingering telephoto cameos of the grieving widow behind her gauzy veil) without conflicting with the immovable deadline of Nov 8th.
Her own consultants doubtless will inform the ‘beest that the “Kill Bill” option carries a risk. Namely, the VRWC (Vast Right Wing Conspiracy) surely would crank the rumor mill to 11, claiming that the great man had been Vince Fosterized (or Foss Vinceterized, as Hillary is wont to say when her eyes cross, her brain short circuits, and her shoe falls off).
How to decide? Flip a coin: heads we win, tails she loses.
Plus she could blame it on Putin. Win win.
Exuent?! How many of him are there? Hope you’re right that they’ll all leave at once.
Term of art.
Definition of exeunt
—used as a stage direction to specify that all or certain named characters leave the stage
The singular, of course, is exit, sometimes augmented with additional direction, as in my all-time Shakespearean favorite, Exit, pursued by a bear.
HERE HERE!
third person, plural, active…
Misconjugated and misspelled – you’re two for one today, Jim.
Based on what she did at the State Department, I believe she would be even more powerful. and achieve more, if somehow we fail to stop her march to the White House.
Not at all sure what that (“make her do it”) refers to in the reality I have experienced.
His initial intuition may be correct at all – you can’t fight the D party from outside (third party, independent, etc).
You have to take the inside route – let Hillary lose and seize the machine.
Which means that one does not just take one’s one vote away from Clinton, but one adds one’s one vote to the candidate most likely to stop her.
It’s mostly eyewash on the part of Sanders. He’s great in campaigns that go nowhere. While I support ColoradoCare, I think Bernie’s support is the kiss of death.
He used to get massive crowds, this one 2500. Hopefully most not coming are not coming because they can’t stomach his support for Clinton.
If you accept stein’s position that trump is the lesser, note trump if in a swing state, vote stein otherwise.
Here’s a quite well-made 45m compilation of a number of presentations/talks given by David Harvey aptly called “Limits to Growth, Limits to Gentrification” [and how the two intertwine], with examples and data from different sources in support of his overall argument spliced in. It fits together quite nicely with a remark made by Mark Blyth in this talk, in which Blyth notes that the big problem for investment banking is that their business model is ‘bust’, and that the RE crazes that have been occurring are in many ways their last play — which is a point Harvey also makes, though he gets at it in a different manner. Well worth people’s time, I think.
Foppe, thanks for that link. It is, indeed, well worth the time spent. We people are going to have a big struggle in the future to get rid of capitalism.
That, to be sure. But as it stands, we’re still in the phase of coming to understand the modern-day dynamics; and on that front, Harvey and Blyth both are quite good.
Special thanks today for the antidote du jour. I’ve never seen a frog smile before, not even Kermit.
It is charming.
“the last thing the fly saw”
The antidote is a finalist in a funny wildlife photo contest. The others are worth a look. http://www.boredpanda.com/comedy-wildlife-photography-awards-shortlist-2016/
Couldn’t decide which one I liked best, so I downloaded all of them.
Thank you for the link, it was the best moments of my day.
I don’t get this. The DNC has it’s own brown shirts, I mean agitators, on its payroll yet somehow Trump and his followers are fascists?
Trumps followers are the ones carrying guns.
Caesar was stopped with knives.
And there was the Night of Long Knives.
Proving that there are many ways to use force.
Now that the DNC is “Gay Friendly,” Ernst Rohm and his Brownshirts would fit quite nicely into American politics. Look for a department identified as the “DNC-SA.” Too many people make the mistake of assuming that all LGBT people are prissy nancy-boys etc. I once met a very ‘queer’ man who played for an NFL team. Stereotypes are so passe.
Another mistake in thinking is to assume that any particular ‘group’ “follows” a particular candidate. Having a community of interests is a generally more accurate way to describe these political alliances of convenience.
Finally, if one was to include the U.S. military into the mix, whoever is the preferred candidate of the MIC could be considered to be possessing an armed auxiliary.
Factionalism does not imply any sort of genuine ideological conflict.
Trump’s followers are the ones who show they are carrying guns,
some of clinton’s followers start wars. which also involve guns.
Plus agitating violence at Trump events, as per the recent Project Veritas video documenting the Clinton campaign illegal sabotage and illegal campaign connections.
Stronger Together
Up is Down
The Village is Hillary
Great is good.
2020 campaign slogan “Change is hope you can believe that you re stronger together”
Both are fascists. Only Trump and his followers are honest about it.
We can distinguish at least 3 types.
1. Those who bark, but don’t bite.
2. Those who bark and bite.
3. Those who don’t bark (in public and with the help of those who are with her or them in media) but do bite.
add to no. 3 “…and cause rabies”
Also, 4. Those who just slobber contagiously.
In reply to Scott 2
I think the term “brown skirts” might be more fitting —
nope , has to be brown blouse.
the hillbots are triggered by skirts!
trump’s aggressors over there !!!!!!!!!!!
I’d suggest a brown hoop skirt. That should keep the goodies safe.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=hoop+skirt&qpvt=hoop+skirt&qpvt=hoop+skirt&qpvt=hoop+skirt&FORM=IGRE
For those of you who know who William Saroyan was, I ran across his mom’s house while house hunting, a designated historical site is up for sale. That Spanish grocery store across the street used to be a safeway, and I remember walking to it when I was a child.
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/3204-E-El-Monte-Way_Fresno_CA_93702_M14289-25532
And speaking of Armenians, this is the Armenian church I lived across from when I was a child
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Fresno,+CA/@36.731896,-119.7825023,3a,60y,207.35h,69.09t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKHT7zpZj2TvH7jcKjUUNXw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x80945de1549e4e9d:0x7b12406449a3b811!8m2!3d36.7468422!4d-119.7725868
Not a bad little house for anywhere in the state of CA for 150 grand.
“Why would you want to buy a used house” – quote from a co-worker when we were house-hunting in the Central Valley.
Nice old house in an immigrant neighborhood. Hence the low price.
These old early 20th century houses were well-built – you cannot buy lumber like what it was made of today, all old growth – I suspect the ticky-tack houses thrown up en masse in the 1990’s and 2000’s will not be standing in 20 years, let alone 80. General crapification, presented as gentrification.
My father (who would have been 100 by now) said that back then they would not use a board with a knot in it on a barn.
I earned expense-and-fun-money during grad school doing carpentry and general maintenance for a local property manager. Always enjoyed finding old-style rough-sawn wall studs after busting through plaster lath. When 2 x 4s really were 2 x 4, not the crapified 3-1/2 x 1-5/8 ones (30% less lumber, free!!) sold today.
A Craftsman Bungalow style too. Those types of house we have seen here Down South have been generally very well built and stylish. In contrast, the modern stuff all looks the same, and is cheaply built to boot.
Scrolling down the link provides, I noticed where some of the dwellings pictured had the dreaded ‘bars’ over the windows; a sure sign of burglaries being a problem. The lots were small as well, the sign of an older inner ring suburb.
What amazes me is that people are assuming that buyers can afford $100 a square foot price tags. Are basic wages in California as far above national averages as their house prices seem to be?
Nope. But sell one overpriced house in the neighborhood, and everybody’s house price goes up.
Demonizing Trump Supporters as Terrorist
You’ll keep seeing a lot of this sort of talk because the oligarchy would like to incite half the labour base to start treating the other half like domestic terrorist. After all, look the genocide of native Americans and internment of Japanese Americans — that requires regular application of friction to putting callouses on the soul.
Legal terrorists.
Either he means that they are all lawyers, or Moore is saying (and he’s wrong here) some terrorists are legal.
if you think wonder woman is bad, check out isis*:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3hoZZ4csX0
*no, not those guys.
Sure Wonder Woman has huge breasts and the rest of the female Super Hero physicality. I’d counter that male superheroes are outsized physical fantasies as well, but regardless, Wonder Woman is one of the most, if not THE most, powerful superheroes in the entire pantheon. Her backstory, strength and special powers are second to none. Even Superman himself cannot overpower her. So that’s cool.
Male superheroes are male power fantasies: the majority of the audience wants to be them. Female superheroes are T&A that the audience fantasizes bending over a cabinet. This has long been a problem in comics. In addition to always running around in a ludicrous skimpy thing Wonder Woman herself had an inordinate number of stories that involved her getting tied up in various fetishistic ways in the early decades of her existence. Things have improved from that low point, but the norm for super heroines is still that they be pure cheesecake, usually posed in various ridiculous stripper poses on the cover. There may often be genuine character development and nuance underneath that, but it all comes secondary to, let’s not put too fine a point on it, masturbation material.
They’ve redesigned Wonder Woman a couple times in recent years. And each time they didn’t do what they should have, which is give her some kind of Greek Hoplite getup. That would even be more thematically appropriate.
When Wonder Woman believes in climate change and global warming, that’ll make her super hot…………though it’s sure to give some men testicular turmoil…….
By “Wonder Woman” I thought you might be referring to Maria Bartiromo, who was sitting just over the speaker’s right shoulder at the Al Smith dinner, with her gaudy earrings and her girls almost popping out of her bright red dress.
According to a knowledgeable friend, she used to be on CNBC as a financial reporter/editor (one of the first women in television business news), then moved to Fox Business News. Her nickname at CNBC was “the Money Honey”, which she then trademarked and used in various ways.
Well, in Maria’s defense I think she’s much smarter than the average dumb bunny type they have on TV.
From Snopes: An image of reporter Maria Bartiromo holding a phone decorated with a “Trump/Pence” sticker at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner is fake. The video at the tail end is good, too…
And, she’s a vicious ideologue who enjoys saying, “oh, come on,” to those she disagrees with.
The word internationalist has an interesting history. In the postwar US it originally referred to people who believe in rule of law. The Birchers’ arch-enemies were the ‘Eastern seaboard internationalists.’ Internationalists were CIA’s enemies too because rule of law cramps CIA’s statutory impunity: Dulles framed Alger Hiss and blew Dag Hammarskjöld out of the sky. But that kind of internationalism was so popular and so prestigious that blood-dripping Washington assholes appropriated it.
They hit a snag when an actual Eastern seaboard internationalist, Robert Taft, became the presumptive nominee for president. To shoehorn Ike in there, Dulles’ henchmen tarred Taft as an isolationist. Isolationist originally referred to people who avoided entangling alliances of any sort, but henceforth it would mean you don’t want to blow shit up.
So get it straight. In US Ingsoc, internationalist: blow shit up. Isolationist: won’t blow shit up. In the language of sane countries, internationalist means you know the UN Charter is the law.
The Race for al-Bab – TTG Sic Semper Tyrannis. Resild: “‘I’m sure they realize shooting down Turkish planes, especially with U.S. advisors in the area could open up a whole new can of worms. However I think they mean it.’ We’ll see how big Clintoon’s cojones are very soon.”
First sentence in article: “Turkish air strikes pounded a group of Kurdish fighters allied to a U.S.-backed militia in northern Syria overnight, highlighting the conflicting agendas of NATO members Ankara and Washington in an increasingly complex battlefield.”
Makes you wanna just jump in with a U.S. no-fly zone on top of the (evolving) nuclear armed Russian no-fly zone followed with “advisors” (boots on the ground) because this is a simple 2 dimensional John Wayne Good-Guy vs Bad-Guy conflict and America is exceptional, right?
Let’s hope the grunts don’t come to see thru the B.S. to figure out that their fighting for the profits of the Clinton’s ultra rich friend’s gas line thru Syria so they can be more ultra-rich. Or as the Archidruid Report put it “what happens when the grunts feel they’re being told to fight a war for the Clinton Foundation instead of America?”
……..“what happens when the grunts feel they’re being told to fight a war for the Clinton Foundation instead of America?”
And then, having done so, are “ordered” to pay back the money “illegally” offered by their country to “incentivize” them to do so. With penalties and interest. (LA Times link.)
And they call Donald Trump a “con man.” I wish I could say things couldn’t get any more pathetic, but I can’t.
Indeed. Does Hillary not notice that in attempting to create a quagmire for Putin in Syria, she is creating one for herself, and for the neocon cause? The USA has been quagmired in Afghanistan for fifteen years now, and has accomplished nothing. Voters notice that sort of thing, ya know. Makes ’em lose all interest in who’s fighting who in Syria and just want us out of Notagainistan.
Besides which, Russia stands with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as does China, and so will more and more Asian and East European nations who want in on a better trade deal than propping up the corrupt American bankers. Even if Putin chooses to leave politics, retire, or is hit by a bus, he has prepared and trained his successors. In short, a change of the top leadership in Russia is an empty political goal. Russia won’t become the prostrate, shattered economy it was under Yeltsin. They will elect strong leaders who will protect them from the West as if their nation’s survival depended on it. Because voters over there know it does.
“and has accomplished nothing”
Well, for 15 years the US has controlled the largest source of heroin on the planet; the better for the CIA to fund black ops and bribe politicians. Shame they took down all the photos of US military guarding the fields. And where are the photo ops of napalming the poppy fields like we did in Vietnam to deny the VC food crops, forgetting that the civilians needed to eat?
That’s falsely assuming the neocons want to *win* any of these pet wars of choice. Permawar is good for business, whether one is CEO of a MIC-contracting business, a member of the ever-expanding surveillance/Heimatabwehr complex, an MSM publisher or pundit, or a soap-box-loving politician.
Identifying the players without a program is getting damn near impossible. Sorta like the old “Who’s on Third” bit.
“So, these guys are the enemy…..unless those guys get involved, who then become the bigger enemy, in which case our former enemy is now “aligned” with us, but not an “ally”. While our former ally is having cluster bombs dropped on them, because the fence sitters gave money to the Clinton Foundation, and our former allies stood on principle and refused to “donate”……in the meantime, the Russians who are basically defending their interests as they perceive them to be, are the enemy, because they are dropping bombs on our enemy. but who is soon going to morph into an ally……..”
I’m just hoping all the commercial airlines make Syria a no fly zone, this time.
Does someone need to tell them?
The guy who runs the shop where I get my old car repaired used to be an officer in the Army and served in our second Great War in Iraq. He definitely understands how he was used and he doesn’t seem forgiving — and no he wasn’t injured in any way visible or any way he’s told me of.
today’s antidote:
“O to be a frog, my lads, and live aloof from care!
He needs no drawer to his drink; ’tis plenty everywhere.”
Theocritus, Poems
What a wonderful bird the frog are!
When he stand he sit almost.
When he hop he fly almost.
He ain’t got no sense hardly.
He ain’t got no tail hardly either.
When he sit he sit on what he ain’t got almost.
Anonymous, quoted by Willard Espy in Almanac of Words at Play
The frog
Jumps into the old pond.
Plop!
This translation by R.H. Blyth of Basho’s haiku is purported to record a satori event wherein a deep intuitive existential comprehension is triggered by a quotidian event.
Yes.
Haiku is deep
As pond.
Frog, psychedelic.
lick the toady, dude.
still, shallow waters invite
swim with snail and leech.
Trump supporters crowd-sourcing the wikileak #16 release. (they’re crowd-sourced #1 – #15)
if you can get past that it’s Trump supporters, they’re digging up a lot of good info.
(I don’t see an equivalent page of Sanders/Stein supporters crowd-sourcing the wikileaks)
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/58yhpe/new_wikileaks_podesta_emails_part_16_email_id/
Here is a good one about poll collusion.
INFLUENCING THE POLLS
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/26551#efmANYARq
“Hey, when can we meet? I also want to get your Atlas folks to recommend oversamples for our polling before we start in February. By market, regions, etc. I want to get this all compiled into one set of recommendations so we can maximize what we get out of our media polling.”
First, you help with the questions before the debates.
And you help some more by staying after to work on polling.
“We are all with her. When you stop her, you stop us – those of us in her Holograph Machine.”
Oversampling is a standard polling technique:
Oversampling
For some surveys, it is important to ensure that there are enough members of a certain subgroup in the population so that more reliable estimates can be reported for that group. To do this, we oversample members of the subgroup by selecting more people from this group than would typically be done if everyone in the sample had an equal chance of being selected. Because the margin of sampling error is related to the size of the sample, increasing the sample size for a particular subgroup through the use of oversampling allows for estimates to be made with a smaller margin of error. A survey that includes an oversample weights the results so that members in the oversampled group are weighted to their actual proportion in the population; this allows for the overall survey results to represent both the national population and the oversampled subgroup.
http://www.pewresearch.org/methodology/u-s-survey-research/sampling/#oversampling
The trick is then, to oversample, but don’t not let them be weighted.
Or just to oversample those who (big groups) merit no eversampling.
Note that in declaring torture illegal, and in correctly affirming that nothing and no one can justify torture, nobody cited any law that makes torture illegal. That’s because torture is illegal in international law but it’s Okey-dokey in US law. Even though international law (the Convention Against Torture) requires the USG to criminalize torture in domestic law, the government won’t do it.
The USA would collapse without torture as a tool for cops and screws and Stasi. CIA made Congress change the War Crimes Act to retroactively authorize CIA’s favorite torture tricks, outrages on human dignity and coerced confessions in denial of the rights of trial. But judges got put away at Nuremberg, and US judicial placemen can’t forget it. Even that greasy pig Scalia was afraid of the peremptory norm forbidding torture. He tried to protect himself by claiming the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction.
This is how the noose tightens. Sabrina de Souza is locked up, and she’s gonna sing like a canary. Robert Lady gets locked up whenever he comes out from under his rock. Italian courts know how to roll up a mafia: snag the small fry, keep them safe, and let them get it off their chest.
Stray Cat Patrol
Most feral cats are no match for the rats. In the excellent book Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores, he states that there are over 5,000 coyotes living “underground” in NY City that do a much better job of rat patrol.
We had a rat infestation over a two year period. My female pit bull dispatched over a dozen of them fearlessly and ferociously. They were big and fought back. OTOH, my Airedale, a dog bred to hunt badgers and other larger game, could only muster the courage to flush them out and drive them toward her. I can’t imagine most cats taking on such rats.
I’ve had plenty of cats catch full grown rats.
One cat even was declawed (not by us). Admittedly, she only caught one rat, but she also was an indoor cat.
I stand corrected and admit to being biased in favor of canines.
Even if they can’t get adult rats (which I agree are pretty big), they can get rat babies and adolescents.
One of the true heroes of journalism has died. Why is he getting no coverage in US media?
https://www.rt.com/usa/363793-gavin-macfadyen-dies-wikileaks/
RIP. I read the same article; coverage does appear to be sparse, but it looks like it’s still early. I’ve also been concerned about the silence about Wikileaks (excluding the actual em releases) since 10/17 when Assange was cut off. But it’s hard to post links to websites you’ve been unable to find. McFayden’s passing is a story to watch.
Supersizing one’s yacht.
I hope there is money left for that condo on Mars.
Between the two, I rather waste it on the latter.
The Medium article “You’re Fired!” will probably appeal to most NC readers – a non-partisan rant about both major candidates. One good clear-eyed snippet:
“…Under a Clinton presidency, we’re going to war.”
If you skipped over it, you might want to go back & read it
…or this
“Yes, I wish I could ask every single one of my staunch pro-Clinton friends if they are pro-war, pro-fracking, pro-TPP, pro-DAPL, pro-Citizens United, pro-super PACs, pro-proxy wars, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-militarism as the primary tactic, pro-Military Industrial Complex, pro-$30+ billion in aid to our primary ally over the next 10 years, pro-denial, pro-public/private positions by candidates, pro-animosity, pro-shrugging your shoulders with a simple “These are our options, aw shucks” when lives are at stake. Your life is at stake. Think about it.”
Rouhani’s question used by The Guardian as a headline sums up my feelings pretty well:
Iran president on US candidates: ‘Should I prefer bad to worse or worse to bad?’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/23/trump-clinton-iran-us-presidential-election-hassan-rouhani
I can’t in good conscience vote for either, and whatever the outcome I expect to be kept busy with opposition to bad ideas, though I hope also advocacy for good ones.
“Stray cat patrol: Feral felines deployed in NYC war on rats Associated Press. ”
I think we should bring back goats as our garbage disposal as they used to do in Saudi Arabia before the the Economic Hitmen took over (as reported in John Perkins’ book).
I had a field mouse (rat) infestation once. I mean running across drapery rods and furniture right in front of me, digging through wooden doors, nests in the walls and cieling, you name it. I put out traps for them, but not a one. I guess they were smart too.
Anyways, I decided to put out food for the neighborhood feral cats, giving them the run of the house also. Took a week. That’s all. I never saw a mouse again. Don’t be took quick about getting rid or feral cats. You may be in for a rude surprise if you are.
I had an infestation of squirrels that gnawed through old redwood rain gutters and set up house in our walls. I got up in the attic dumped cayenne pepper between the wall studs and they moved back to the trees.
One of the commenters on the article “The Soul of the Clinton Machine” provided this link, a short interview with Michael Glennon:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/10/18/vote-all-you-want-the-secret-government-won-change/jVSkXrENQlu8vNcBfMn9sL/story.html
I’m assuming that Michael Glennon’s book (which I haven’t read), “National Security and Double Government”, is along the lines of Lofgren’s book (which I have read), “The Deep State”. I’ve tried to explain these positions to Dem and Repub “team member” friends of mine and have been told I’m cynical. Voting is important, they say, and usually with the subtext that voting for the winner is even more important.
Yet when I ask the same questions asked in the “You’re Fired!” article linked to above, eyes glaze over… “pervasive political ignorance” in action. Unfortunately Mr.Glennon’s statement is too accurate, “There is very little profit to be had in learning about, and being active about, problems that you can’t affect, policies that you can’t change.”, so people instead latch on to propaganda they can believe in.
Maybe, regarding my friends’ attitude towards my attitude, I am cynical. There may be little profit to be had in investigating and applying some critical thinking about the problems, but I’m a policy junkie and I find watching “history in the making” to be fascinating. And, I’m happy to say, NakedCapitalism (and other sites I discovered through reading here regularly) has assisted in keeping me on what I believe to be the right track.
With all that said, I actually believe that voting Third Party this time around is important. Since I can do next to nothing in changing U.S. policies regarding War, Wall St., etc. in general, at least I can express my concern by voting against the system as it exists today.
Not that it will do much good ;-).
Great quote, interesting link- thanks. There’s a rational evolutionary reason for every human behavior including ignorance. There’s also an important function to being contrarian, thoughtful, principled and willing to speak truth to power even when it is unpopular.
FYI, a PDF version of the Glennon book is freely available online at the Harvard National Security Journal website: http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf
Downloaded and added to the list of to-Reads.
I too will vote third party. I intend to vote Green and whenever I can I ask Blacks if they know who Baraka is. The answer is usually “No” and I leave it at that. I am still more than a little surprised that more Black voters aren’t aware of his run for Vice President.
I’m in with a donation.
Re Putin’s nooscope: There’s a tone to Putin’s speeches and stories from the Russian news orgs that’s different from the western MSM. Here, there’s a lot of rhetoric about bringing democracy by violently overthrowing evil dictators and bringing prosperity by enabling financial international activities of various types. But sadly, the message comes across either as touting how irresistably prosperous neoliberalism is making the west, or else laced liberally with threats, self-righteous chest thumping, and gott-mit-uns jingoism. In the Russian media, the tone, at least to my ears, appears to be more about constructive activities, like industrial and national infrastructure development, and how to pursue activities that are genuine improvements in the country for its people; oddly, even military developments are presented this way. Now, I have no illusions that both effects are laced heavily with inspirational propaganda, but what does strike me is the attitude. One is bombastic and powerful, the other is more respectful and thoughtful. Behind one lies destruction of some sort (sometimes “creative”), behind the other lies a sense of construction and rebirth.
Can this “new” notion of nooism be regarded simply the national cultural atmosphere engendered by each state’s propaganda? I wonder what kinds of nations these styles will engender?
It’s an interesting question. The European/Anglo-American societies look increasingly sick. It’s not just the government. It’s the fact that journalists have no awareness of the historical roles and duties of their professions; it’s the fact that academia has prostituted itself to conform to official government reality and abandoned critical thinking in the process, distorting history to maintain that the government never lies while ignoring taboo subjects which declassified documents prove have been of official interest for decades; the fact that even people who slid out from under religious upbringings can see that, everywhere, Mammon rules, etc. The ‘godless’ Russians of yore are lecturing the same Western establishment on spirituality and seem credible by comparison. How couldn’t they? The west is pervasively sick, it’s a cultural problem, corruption of every institution is the norm as the American people have not surprisingly lost faith in all of them.
All the corrupt oligarchies in the West can do is spew the same empty, vitriolic propaganda of transparent projection at the ‘corrupt oligrachy’ in Moscow. What a joke.
On Oct. 17, about 2,000 people — few of them older than 25 — gathered on a football field at the University of Colorado Boulder to hear Sanders make an impassioned plea for Amendment 69, which would move the state to a health care system much like the one in Germany, where I live.
Speaking as a long-time Boulder residentL The demographics of the rally probably had more to do with the fact that it simply wasn’t announced until the 16th, which made it difficult for anyone who might have other responsibilities (jobs/kids) to attend. I know that *my* precinct (composed almost entirely of older adults) went 80-20 for Bernie in the caucus. The Sanders campaign (contrary to DNC propaganda) was not solely a “youth movement”, at least in Colorado.
I know 69 got at least one vote, because I mailed that sucker off today.
A couple of stray thoughts on the noosphere:
Who’s to say it isn’t primary? I doubt the conventional assumption that matter is inanimate, or at least, question its legitimacy, and the corresponding assumption that there has been a progression from geosphere to noosphere, which seems characteristically anthropocentric.
The idea of using the noosphere has been implemented in the past by some cultures, notably I believe aboriginal tribes in Australia. The notion that it might be implemented mechanistically seems doubtful to me, but in any case the nooscope sounds more like a means of registering variations in it than of altering it. I would expect the latter to depend on the individual wills of those who are part of it.
Huh!!!!!????? What link did I miss?
The noosphere sounds very very negative. I think it needs to find a new name or at least add a “k” for us non-Greeks.
Is there any way to implement the noosphere digitally? That way it could take part in the singularity — maybe mellow it out a bit.
How do you imagine we can or might use the noosphere? What is a nooscope? It sound like a microscope where you remove the objective lens or a microscope you try to use in the dark.
I don’t intend to undermine your stray thoughts but I really really don’t understand what you are trying to communicate and I am willing to entertain many many new ideas and different ways of looking at things but find your comment frustrating toward that goal.
AND a warning label — I am a fussy old man — but please have patience with me.
It’s the article about Putin and a top-ranking staff member, Anton Vaino just hired as chief of staff. He has links to big data, and he’s written about the noosphere–which is apparently mass consciousness, and a word/concept introduced by Teilhard de Chardin. There are philosophical and spiritual implications. Interesting experiments have apparently been done to confirm that mass consciousness plays a significant role in individual decision-making.
“noosphere–which is apparently mass consciousness”
Oh, that’s what it’s supposed to be? I read that article and had literally no idea what the flying freak any of it was about.
As for ‘spiritual implications’, some quick googling reveals Pope Ratzinger is apparently big into Chardin. Sheesh, humanity just needs to grow up already. There is no God and ‘you’ will cease to exist at death. Accept that and move on. At the very least stop trying to redefine or rationalize your beliefs over time. If you call yourself a Christian then own up to your beliefs: a zombie Jew who was his own father sacrificed himself to himself to forgive the descendents of his creation who committed the sin of acting on the free-will their creator gave them. Exactly what it says on the tin. Noosphere ideas about merging into God or whatever other gibberish are just yet another repackaging of gnostic nonsense.
noosphere not an ap:
“Every advance in culture has been an advance in communications and has encouraged ever-larger organizations of the human beings who produced it. …Teilhard de Chardin writes in The Future of Man: ‘No one can deny that a network (a world network) of economic and psychic affinities is being woven at ever-increasing speed which envelops and constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every day that passes it becomes a little more impossible for us to act or think otherwise than collectively.’ ”
“Teilhard, who sees the process as a kind of continuous Revelation, argues that with the advent of mind there is ‘outside and above the biosphere … an added planetary layer, an envelope of thinking substance, to which … I have given the name of the noosphere.’ Eventually, he proposes, this ‘envelope’ will become a seamless web of relationships uniting all men in global communion. Its collective expression will be a human song responding to the inaudible music of the voice of God.”
O.B. Hardison, “Disappearing Through the Skylight”
And the worst is that this is not all that hard to do. I’ve long been gobsmacked as to why more companies, particularly ones on suburban campuses (ie, office space is not all that pricey) don’t have in-house child care. It pays for itself in less distracted parents as workers
All that’s true, but I submit that it’s largely invisible on a balance sheet. All that shows up there is the cost of those programs, not the benefits they produce – which is why public companies (particularly those with large institutional ownership) are reluctant to do things like that.
In most companies I’m aware of, middle management, like the rank and file, have been culled, and whoever remains gets to wear two or three hats.
Now you want me to run the day-care program? Can anyone think of a more thankless job, guaranteed to generate headaches and be the cause of your eventual termination, when the lawsuits start stacking up?
Are lawsuits really that prevalent? Most of the Corporate lawyers I’ve had the pleasure to deal with — arms length via phone and email — were extremely hesitant and very slow to act for agreeing to even relatively trivial non-compete agreements so I could load and run some proprietary software. I did carefully read what the firm was asked to agree to and it amounted to an agreement not to reverse engineer or copy the software. My firm didn’t write software as far as I could tell — at most we “tailored” purchased software.
Day care pays its employees embarrassing little — crap — even less then adjuncts if that’s possible — and costs the parents more than college tuition in some cases. Where does the money go? I’m shocked that more Corporations and firms aren’t adding childcare facilities and then charging for them. High profits, little risk, low overheads and a captive market — are they really capitalists?
True. If the few young MBAs I’ve encountered are any example; if the benefits of anything are not quantifiable on their reports to Corporate, those things do not get done, period. This is what we get once we separate business studies from the rest and elevate it’s status.
Those damned ‘externalities’ ……. always getting in the way of profit at all costs ! How dare the lowly worker bees for wanting safe and affordable child care ….. !!
From a few months ago, still germane:
‘A training in violence’: the connecting line between France’s ‘war on drugs’ and jihadism, by Johann Hari:
Are you saying the Jihadis don’t hate us for our freedom — they hate us for our War on Drugs?
Legalize and the world will be a better place.
I’d prefer turning that around: We have wars on drugs, Prohibition, etc., because we hate being reminded of the fact that we’re excluding large swathes of the population because we worry what including them would do to our “status”. All the rest are symptoms.
If they were not trying so obviously to gin up a war with Russia (almost makes the run up to the Iraq war seem low key), I would say that that all the claims about interference with the election were entirely driven by panic.
Obviously it is two pronged.
However even the media is beginning to notice AND comment on the fact that Hillary has no answer to the items in the emails, that her only response is to pivot to Russia. I’m not sure how well that is going to work if the drip, drip, drip continues.
For some reason my mobile Opera browser keeps posting blurbs from more right wing sources than I normally view. Amid one was one I wish I had clicked on, or could remember the name of the election analyst who has not called an election wrong has come out and said there are real problems with the polls and that Trump is going to win. One because I wanted to know how long he has been doing this analysis, two because I wanted to know what problems he is seeing with the polls, and three so I would know who the hell it was.
Meanwhile, I would also love to hang out in the alternative universe(s) where Clinton was indicted as she should have been and/or Sanders was received his nomination. I’m betting this would be a walkaway, even with Bloomberg and his friends having tantrums all the way.
This guy?
http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/10/22/trump-will-win-election-professor-long-track-record-predicts
Very likely, like I said I didn’t remember much but the gist.
Didn’t watch the video, but the primary is probably not a good indicator in this case.
>How the Trump of the Philippines Just Sold Out His Country to China Daily Beast
Sold out? Last I checked China has never invaded the Philippines and murdered hundreds of thousands of its residents.
Hay its not as bad as seeing some expats call the arrest of some Casino staff and an Oz executive as “extraordinary rendition” by China…
http://thediplomat.com/2016/10/is-duterte-nation-building-in-the-philippines/
FWIW
One of my high school friends, a fellow Bernie supporter, a woman, a single mom with a daughter in high school, we are both Californianos, Facebook messaged me this:
So I have tried to stay out of politics on Facebook, but I’ve been wondering where you are these days in election matters? Sucks to see things come out about our adored Bernie in the emails, but I’m so terrified of Trump I have to go with her.
Here’s my response:
Well I’m probably not going to vote. I told Becky she was authorized to fill out my absentee ballot.
Here’s my objections to Hillary most of them based around the fact that she is basically a moderate Republican, a George HW Bush Republican, and that at this time in our history we need an activist government, a government that will trash neoliberal economics and start building things that provide good paying jobs:
– Economics,
— She’s a neoliberal, the free market is the solution to everything.
— She, like Obama, wants to cut social security, medicare, Medicaid, she’ll say, save social security but that just means cutting it.
— She wants to balance the budget. Balancing the budget is a canard, designed to protect people who hold dollars or who are owed dollars. The federal government never has to borrow money it owns the patent/copyright on dollars and can print as many as it wants whenever it wants.
— She’s against single payer, single payer is the only way to cut healthcare costs.
— She is going to sign TPP which allows corporations to sue countries including the U.S. If those countries pass laws which cause them to lose profits. It’s basically an end run around democracy by corporations. She may say she’s against it but what she’ll do is negotiate some minor change and then say it’s fixed now she can sign it.
— She will not hold large corporations responsible for stealing from the poor, widows and orphans, just like Obama. I think she believes what’s good for Goldman Sachs is good for America.
Foreign policy:
— I believe she is trying to get us into a shooting war with Russia.
— As Secretary of State she participated in the overthrow of the Democratically elected President of Honduras.
— As Secretary of State she was responsible for the total collapse of Libya, a country that has turned into a safe haven and breeding ground for ISIS
–As Secretary of State she is partially responsible for attempts to overthrow the government of Syria which has resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis, a possible military confrontation with Russia and the advancement of ISIS.
— She voted for the war in Iraq. You know my son is a Marine officer? There are literally thousands of boys, and those are just the Americans, and I mean boys, who’s lives, hopes, and dreams have been irrevocably wrecked by this one decision for which no one has ever been punished or even held responsible. For what? Why did we invade Iraq?
But Trump, why let him win?
– The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
As far as I’m concerned so may of the people who are endorsing her are the enemies of a good, kind and decent America. The bankers, the right wing warmongers, the free traders who put profit before the good of their neighbors, the national security state, the people who spy on us.
They’re all supporting her, they’re all against Trump and they’re the real enemies.
– To tell the elites that this is still a democracy, they don’t get to choose the president, they don’t get to cheat Bernie and then blow it all off with, ha ha, politics is a tough game.
– Only Nixon can go to China.
— In the current political atmosphere only a Republican can increase government spending, only a Republican can increase the deficit, which is what we need in order to get the economy growing at a good pace again.
— Only a Republican can moderate the free trade dogma that would see every single good paying job shipped overseas.
— Only a Republican can bring an end to 15 years of nonstop war making.
Anyway, that’s my take on it. Good luck.
– The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Nobody should let that pass.
Ask the Poles whom to prefer, Hitler or Stalin?
This non-truism was the faulty logic behind Bush-Cheney saying about Saddam and Al-Qaeda (“…they both hate us”) implying they must be allied against us.
i mostly agree, except i think clinton is closer to the chimp than his dad. i think she’s a neocon. she’s moved beyond being a goldwater girl, iirc goldwater was marginalized toward the end of his life, for being insufficiently warlike. as was buckley.
Did anyone here check out Adam Curtis’ latest work, ‘Hypernormalisation’? – http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-hypernormalisation
Lively comments about it above.
If the Russians are Really Meddling in Our Election via Wikileaks, Can They Please Keep It Up?
The Clinton camp despises transparency, and WikiLeaks are doing a major public service
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/10/if-the-russians-are-really-meddling-in-our-electio.html
Anybody else notice a general decline in The Intercept national-level reporting over past couple months or so? It has obviously been willing to cover the Wikileaks emails, of course, and Greenwald, with whom I have philosophical differences, remains more or less true to form. But there have been an increasing number of Trump-hysteria stories, including most of their debate synopses I’ve read, and today we have yet another Trump-hysteria story alongside a moving narrative piece on the “real” Syrian freedom fighters, many of whom have predictably and tragically died since 2011-12. But running a story on a few named dissidents and the university in Aleppo in the *present* context in which the state is trying to convince the populace that the city is filled with such activists waiting for our help against the evil Russian coalition, well, it just makes we wonder about the level of editorial independence over there and whether there might not have been some pressure applied from somewhere to offset what had been the tone of the site overall. But maybe my impressions are off, hence my interest in seeing them corrected, or modified, or even partially affirmed by readers here who also frequent The Intercept.Thanks!
No, believe your lyin’ eyes. The Intercept is heading along the Guardian’s lines, and fast. I suspect GG will leave soon.
I haven’t been back to the intercept since the height of the Ukraine crisis when they continually published “evil Russia” pieces and gave the neo-nazi coup government a pass (for the most part).
Prior to that I was already partially turned off by the way they used the Snowden docs as a revenue generator instead of a public service.
definitely, nc is the only reliable site i have left. i haven’t tried jacobin, and my experience with the off guardian is very limited.
found this at the off guardian. jessica valenti, a guardian columnist, coordinating with the clinton campaign.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/18566
Interesting about the Ukraine coverage, which I must have missed. I just glanced over some of it and I agree with your view. This is probably just a coincidence, but it is arresting that Russia (of all topics) is the link between the subtly tendentious coverage of Ukraine and (recently) Syria. Too bad. Not willing to give up on Intercept yet, though, as they often have great and detailed coverage of police matters (recent five part piece on Chicago PD whistleblowers being the latest example).
as long as they keep greenwald i will keep going there, much as i still go to the guardian for the posts on climate change (despite the politicitization of this topic as well).
Re: Scientists suggest new theory behind the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle
If a theory ignores data sets investigators find prima facie unpalatable, it is stillborn.
‘Claims of unusual and ‘paranormal’ occurances were made as far back as 1492, whoever, when Christopher Columbus reported seeing strange lights and compass readings.’
Neither of which are explained by clouds. Fail.
JSM,
I remember once long ago seeing a map of the part of the Atlantic Ocean that contains the Bermuda Triangle.
The map showed locations of ships (maybe planes too) reported as lost in the Triangle. None were within it. I’m not sure there’s a phenomenon to be explained.
Hawaiian animal defenders split by feral cat feces that kills endangered seals
On 100% retention of mom’s: My husband’s best friend and college roommate worked in the television and movie industry for decades as a tech crew member. He worked at Universal for a long time and when he was there, Spielberg was still there as well, with his own production company, Amblin. Back in the ’80’s Spielberg had opened an on-site daycare for his employees. They loved it and Universal employees were applying in droves to work for Spielberg, who seems to actually give two shits about his employees, their families and their well being. Strange it’s taken this long for employers to figure this out. Thanks for the article posted by you today.
Wells Fargo’s corporate responsibility chair resigns from private equity firm [Reuters]
Sgt. Schultz couldn’t have said it any better.
On Wonder Woman: The fact that an international body of “representatives” could choose a fictional cartoon character as an ambassador – to anything – is a mighty testament to the fact the United Nations, as an institution, has no relevance at all in being able to solve the serious and myriad problems that actual living people who inhabit the planet earth are facing. I’d have expected nothing less from them.
no Democratic candidate at any level has every promoted anything like this. Trump is horrible
The current Democratic candidate is not opposed to armed violence against political leaders.
On the Soulessness of Hillary’s Campaign: Mark these words because you’ll never hear me say them again, “I agree with Charles Krauthammer.” That Clinton wants her speechwriters to craft a “message” for her speaks volumes about who and what she stands for: absolutely nothing. Her craven reach for power, moar power and her sense of entitlement regarding that goal is, well, there are no descriptive adjectives that meet that test. On guillotine watch we may all want to note and ponder the fact that in the past thirty years we will have had 4 POTUS’ with the same last name and from the same immediate families. Might wanna look up that little tidbit in the U S history books. Just think about that before you go out to vote.
On Blame the Internet of Things: Anytime I have a tech problem/question I re-read an article from “Medium” which Yves was gracious enough to link several months ago: “Everything is Broken.” Remember the article, Yves? It was written by a software engineer – IIRC – who stated that you cannot trust any smartphone, computer or any other tech device unless and until that device is in the “off” position. I’ve bookmarked that article and quote it often to people, who most of the time, don’t listen to the advice. It’s hard to be a know-it-all!
Sorry about the above post. Forgot to turn off the italics.
‘Stray cat patrol: Feral felines deployed in NYC war on rats ‘
As any English horse stable owner can tell you, cats are good for mice, but not so much for rats. You need a rat terrier for that work.