Chimp study shows how hanging out with friends makes life less stressful The Conversation
11 incredible facts about lemurs Mother Nature Network
Sing to Me Real Life. Now we know who’s to blame for karaoke.
Putting Wheat in Its Place, Or Why the Green Revolution Wasn’t Quite What It’s Made Out to Be The Wire
Ride-Hailing Apps Have a Racism Problem MIT Technology Review
Health Care
Ex-journalist leads state’s effort to flee Obamacare in favor of single-payer Columbia Journalism Review
To fight childhood obesity, task force recommends screening all kids starting at age 6 LA Times. Screen them early, so as to start them all the sooner on long-term drug regimens.
Too Smug to Jail Rollin Stone. Matt Taibbi back on form.
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
New leak may show if you were hacked by the NSA Ars Technica
Oil drilling caused killer earthquake in boomtime California, scientists suspect Guardian
Study: Next U.S. president faces Colorado River problem The Journal
Clinton Email Tar Baby
Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run The Guardian. I know Lambert linked to this in yesterday’s Water Cooler, but I’m including it here for those who missed it. Thomas Frank gets it.
How To Dupe Clinton/Weiner/Abedin Emails….By Tomorrow Another Word for It
Influence peddling, acting for Putin’s ally, hiding classified secrets and sexting – how FIVE separate FBI cases are probing virtually every one of Clinton’s inner circle and their families Okay, it’s the Daily Mail. But still…
Hillary, Not Comey, Casts Cloud Over Election Michael Shedlock (EM)
Former DNC chair Ed Rendell: Clinton campaign is making a mistake by attacking FBI director CNN
FBI releases files on Clinton pardon of Marc Rich Marketwatch. Impeccable timing here.
After another release of documents, FBI finds itself caught in a partisan fray WaPo
The Indictment That Made Bill Clinton President The American Conservative. Some history worth remembering.
Aeon Row strives to close the loop on fashion Treehugger
Australia curbs flow of disgruntled UK junior doctors
FT
The people of South Yorkshire deserve the truth about Orgreave Guardian. Yes, they do. And they’ve waited more than 30 years to hear it.
Brexit
Britain losing the financial passport will affect so much more than banking Business Insider. Includes a link to a list of the 13,500 companies that make use of financial passporting in some form.
Britain will discover that distance still matters in trade FT
Pope says he believes ban on female priests is forever Reuters
A Visit From the SEC? Doesn’t Happen for Thousands of Money Managers WSJ
Trump Fan Peter Thiel Says “Single-Digit Millionaires” Have “No Effective Access to Our Legal System” The Intercept
Hong Kong money laundering and terrorism financing reports hit record high SCMP
How a Pillar of German Banking Lost Its Way Der Spiegel
Tom Hayden and the Vocation of Politics The Baffler
SINO-INDIA RELATIONS THE BRITISH FORGERY AT THE HEART OF INDIA AND CHINA’S TIBETAN BORDER DISPUTE SCMP. Yet another well-considered US diplomatic initiative.
As China Battles Corruption, Glaxo Lands in the Cross Hairs NYT. Long, but worth it.
2016
Election Update: Yes, Donald Trump Has A Path To Victory FiveThirtyEight. Fodder for the poll-obsessed.
Tighter Presidential Race Brings a Shift in Tactics WSJ.
Financial markets jolted as US election polls tighten FT
Democratic Voters Are to Blame for Hillary Clinton’s Headaches The New Republic. So, it’s all the fault of voters, for not bothering to vote in 2014. Which raises the obvious question: If the DNC ran better candidates, would voters perhaps be inspired to turn out? Or, to push the point a bit further, as Brecht expressed it:
Some party hack decreed that the people
had lost the government’s confidence
and could only regain it with redoubled effort.
If that is the case, would it not be simpler,
If the government simply dissolved the people
And elected another?Calling Trump a liar sets a thorny precedent Columbia Journalism Review
Hillary Clinton should use her appointments to build up her party Vox. Memo to Matty: Perhaps it’s a wee bit early to be selecting the new White House drapes?
Trump or Clinton? What India Really Wants From the US Election The Wire
Hundreds of prominent economists just denounced Donald Trump in an open letter to voters Business Insider. By all means, pile on chaps, but I’m not sure that being denounced by economists won’t have the opposite effect from that intended.
The shadowy Russian émigré touting Trump FT. I’m shocked, simply shocked, to see the FT featuring reporting of this sort.
Clinton Plugs Another Weak Story About Trump’s Ties to Putin Bloomberg. Media getting fed up with being played?
Election maps are telling you big lies about small things WaPo. More fodder for poll nerds.
Rise of the Alt-Right The American Conservative
Time Bandits The Baffler
Turkey’s PM rejects EU criticism on media freedom Al Jazeera
Class Warfare
Twenty-First Century Victorians Jacobin
Antidote du Jour
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
292 comments
Comments are closed.
LA Times poll shows Trump with 5.4% lead over Clinton.
This poll is averaged cover a week, producing a lag effect. A couple of pre-Comey announcement values are still included in the weekly average. By Friday it’ll be all post-Comey data.
Despite the preposterous lies of Izvestia on the Hudson, Air Hilda is en route to a CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain). Mind the fireball.
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/the-2016-election-model-8-pre-election-polls/
THE 2016 ELECTION MODEL (8 PRE-ELECTION POLLS)
Richard Charnin
77 Billion to One: 2016 Election Fraud
Matrix of Deceit: Forcing Pre-election and Exit Polls to Match Fraudulent Vote Counts
Proving Election Fraud: Phantom Voters, Uncounted Votes and the National Poll
This is the ONLY model which compares pre-election vote shares and corresponding Electoral votes to the adjusted Gallup affiliation survey (40 Ind-32 Dem-28 Rep).It will be updated as often as possible.
View the model: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sGxtIofohrj3POpwq-85Id2_fYKgvgoWbPZacZw0XlY/edit#gid=1739803045
2016 4-way ELECTION MODEL
…….
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2016/10/15/the-new-scanning-systems-fraction-magic-and-humboldt-cty-ca/
The New Scanning Systems, FRACTION MAGIC and Humboldt Cty, CA
Richard Charnin
………
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2016/10/19/pre-election-presidential-polls-preparing-for-a-stolen-election/
Pre-election Presidential polls: preparing for a stolen election
Richard Charnin
…….
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2016/10/07/77-billion-to-one-2016-election-fraud/
77 Billion to One: 2016 Election Fraud
Richard Charnin
The 2016 Democratic primaries have finally awakened the public to Election Fraud. Millions of voters who were unaware or in denial came to realize that our election system was rigged and that the mainstream media is complicit in covering up Election Fraud.
The media and its cadre of exit poll naysayers in the corporate media don’t dare mention the third-rail of American politics – election fraud. The media pundits remain silent on electronic vote rigging. They maintain that the exit polls are inaccurate and call truth-seeking activists conspiracy buffs.
The media is silent on the 2015 Year in Elections report, an independent research project by 2,000 elections experts from Harvard University and the University of Sydney. The report ranked the United States dead last in electoral integrity among established Western democracies in evaluating the integrity of 180 national parliamentary and presidential contests held July 1, 2012 to December 31, 2015 in 139 countries worldwide.
………
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2016/09/18/is-the-corporate-media-reporting-jill-steins-true-polling-numbers/
Is the corporate media reporting Jill Stein’s true polling numbers?
Richard Charnin
……..
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2016/06/28/response-to-nate-cohn-of-the-ny-times/
Response to Nate Cohn of the NY Times
Richard Charnin
……
http://trustvote.org/latest-updates/the-solution-to-vote-fractionalizing/
The Solution to Vote Fractionalizing
Help Make Our Elections Worthy of Our Trust! A Brilliant, New, Inexpensive Way to Create Trackable, Publicly Verifiable Elections Results!
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!
…….
https://twitter.com/GreenPartyUS
Green Party US Retweeted
Ajamu Baraka @ajamubaraka 20h20 hours ago
Americans do not want “hope” & “change,” it is power–an actual decision in how our society functions–that people have been demanding.
Green Party US @GreenPartyUS 4h4 hours ago
Trump is in no way anti-establishment. He is a product of the political elite who elevated him to scare you into voting for the status quo.
https://twitter.com/DrJillStein
http://www.jill2016.com/votingproblems
Voting Problems
We want to hear your stories and will do our best to help (see form below) but for immediate assistance please call one of the numbers below:
Call 866-OUR-VOTE for assistance led by Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Call 888-Ve-Y-Vota for bilingual assistance (English/Spanish) hosted by NALEO Educational fund
Call 888-API-VOTE for assistance in English Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and Tagalog through partner hotline hosted by APIAVote and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC.
Call 844-418-1682 for bilingual (English/Arabic) assistance through the Arab American Institute’s #YallaVote hotline
….
http://www.jill2016.com/rigged_full
Stein/Baraka Say US Elections May Be Rigged – But Not How Trump Thinks
As President, first of all, I will propose federal legislation providing for universal national voter registration and election procedures.
As a presidential candidate, I call for immediate measures to help protect the vote on November 8.
• Electronic voting machines must have an auditable paper-based ballot trail.
• Immediately post-election, there must be a mandatory random audit of three percent of all ballots.
• Open source code must be used to verify the vote count in states that use secret proprietary software. Systems like this, such as the Trachtenberg system, exist and are already in use.
• All election jurisdictions with electronic ballot imaging technology and audit features must turn both these features on during the elections, and make ballot images and audit logs available as public records.
It is vital to the integrity of our elections and our democracy that every vote be counted. We call on all parties and presidential campaigns to join our call for verified election results today.
Thank you for this. There is so little coverage of this, and it’s the single most consequential issue of the day. No election is valid as long as we don’t address this.
FWIW, I’ve been following the various polls pretty assiduously for the last few months and have found that the LA Times has consistently reported better results for Trump vs, the other. Not saying they’re biased, hopefully they’re just more accurate.
We’ll know for certain in another few days.
Some other data I have been following, well I am an Aussie, are the betting odds. Source sportsbet.com.au
For some time, the Donald has been paying 3.50 or 5 to 2. Hillary has been 1.20 or 5 to 1 odds on.
This morning I checked and he is 3.20 or 11 to 5, Hillary 1.36 (whatever that calculates to??)
Time to find some money while Trump’s odds are still ok…
“The Catholic Church teaches that women cannot be ordained priests because Jesus willingly chose only men as his apostles. Those calling for women priests say he was only following the norms of his time.” — Reuters article
Sad how far Christianity backslid from cosmopolitan Greek mythology, with its colorful panoply of gods, goddeses, heroes and heroines. But then Judea was a dusty backwater during Roman times.
Why the cultural standards of that distant era should continue to rule contemporary institutions is an enduring mystery. The Bible helpfully provides extensive guidelines for managing your slaves. Land ‘o Jordan, Land o’ Cotton … yowza!
You’ll get that when you mix and match the regional offspring of PIE Jim… too condition the chattel…
Lest we forget the panoply of gods and goddesses were political tents for their benefactors and a good cash cow for the more popular ones… different day same fill in the blank thingy….
“Why the cultural standards of that distant era should continue to rule contemporary institutions is an enduring mystery.”
Dishevled Marsupial…. I wholeheartedly agree… why do some demand that we are bound by 16th to 18th century poppycock…. especially with the known knowns that confront our species….
I know Francis is fighting enough fronts trying to wrest power from the Catholic Church’s version of neoconservatives/neoliberals to take on their over millennium long misogyny. Still I am always amazed how easy they find it to ignore that the humblest and most loyal supporters of Jesus were women in even their carefully edited version of the gospels.
And it ought to be obvious that in that culture it would have been impossible for Mary to live and travel about with twelve men. That is no evidence at all that she wasn’t thought worthy.
The early church did better. There were women in positions of some authority, even acknowledged by Paul the misogynist. It is a pity Francis is being so adamant. Even if he cannot make a change, he need not assert that it will never happen.
Like Hillary on national universal health care? At least in reference to single payer? ” Not going to happen, ever.”
These assertions of “not ever” (And Hillary srceamed hers) seem to come from their understanding that the entire power structure must fall first (along with their place within it).
2,000 year old institutions move slowly vs. the human lifespan.
This is said to be a plan with multiple stages.
No women priests forever? Possibly, but stay tuned…
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31875507
Francis got some more pushback from the Vatican in recent news – so maybe he is cooling things down bec. this doesn’t sound like him at all. He seems to be open to all good changes. Can’t someone use the occasion to point out that the protocols of Catholicism weren’t fabricated until c. 500 ad and were construed by a bunch of proto-oligarchs who were out to conquer the world in their own little way… of course women couldn’t be trusted to remain virtual slaves for the next 1500 years. get real.
They came with a Bible and their religion- stole our land, crushed our spirit… and now tell us we should be thankful to the ‘Lord’ for being saved.
“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
Desmond Tutu
So quipped the Archbishop
Oh, c’mon — It is written that the Meek shall inherit what’s left of the Earth, right? And we are comforted to know that it is easier for a camel to pass through the Eye of the Needle than for a rich man to pass into Heaven.
Oh come on JT its long been known the correct translation from Aramaic is `Geek’ & it looks like we’re almost there.
You are making a reference to Palestine, right? /sarc/
I didn’t understand this just recently, but there is something to be said for traditions and rituals no matter how ridiculous, backwards, and unfair they appear to outsiders. It turns out that group identity and social cohesion are far more beneficial to long term survival than living a strictly rational reductionist materialistic life, a lesson we’ve spurned in our worship of progress and Mammon.
Pat Robertson fan – ????
More like Emil Durkheim and functionalism: if a social custom or prohibition exists it must serve a morally rooted function to society. But from a conflict perspective barring women from the priesthood indeed does promotes collective identity and social cohesion among the Church’s male hierarchy -at the expense of stigmatized women as profane and incomplete males. It’s a tradition of oppression that’s being upheld.
No. This is an extremely difficult concept to get across, especially for someone indictrinated from youth in Western culture, but often there are extremely deep and vital reasons for traditions and taboos that are not readily apparent to scientific rationalist who only see immediate cause and effect with their atomistic models and then blithely assume that they understand everything, while those who haven’t yet attained their enlightened and progressive understanding are ignorant, backwards and evil.
I will give an example. Christianity used to have a prohibition against usury, while Islam still does have a prohibition against usury. Usury is correctly defined as lending money at interest, and the prescribed punishment for anyone caught lending money at interest is of course execution. Being enlightened rational progressives we ignored this antiquated tradition and created a society that entirely revolves around interest and financial debt. If we had stuck with the religious teachings, nonsensical seeming as they are on the surface, this wouldn’t have had to happen, but as things stand now we are pretty close to wiping out all life on earth with our debt based economic system. Think about it: would we have nuclear weapons and global warming if our species had continued to do the right thing by executing anyone caught trying to lend money at intetest all along? Probably not.
I have a good story to illustrate your point.
So I have a business associate who inherited a vineyard. Every year the wine he made from his grapes was thinner, weaker and generally worse. He asked the local vineyard workers what he needed to do to improve his wine, and they said “you need to stuff pruning waste from last year’s crop into ram’s horns and bury them on the south side of your vineyard on the winter equinox. My friend nodded condescendingly, laughing inside at their superstition, and instead he went out and hired vineyard experts trained at UC Davis. They told him his soil was infected with harmful bugs and he needed to use X, Y and Z pesticides. His wines got even worse.
Years later, however, I happened to try one of his wines and it was excellent– I mean phenomenal structure, body, complexity. So I called him up to congratulate him, and asked him what the trick was. Turns out he had gotten into organic growing and then into biodynamics, which involves recycling a vineyard’s resources and planting based on moon cycles. And therein lies the irony: after all the dumb pesticides and crap, he ended up basically following the locals’ advice, but now with a fancy name, biodynamics.
The moral of the story is that, as jgordan says, there is a lot of wisdom in ancient practises, but you usually don’t understand what is wise about them until you implement them yourself and live them. I believe this is even true about judaeo-christian, hindu, shinto, etc. rituals, if they are performed properly with the correct, humble mindset.
I suspect he didn’t use any ram’s horns. And the winter equinox is completely unrelated to the lunar cycle.
Actually the winter equinox is completely unrelated to reality: it doesn’t exist. There is a winter solstice,autumnal and vernal equinoxes. But I have sometimes written the wrong word when I knew better, and anyway I like RabidGandhi’s parable.
And, if it needs saying, the tradition I favor in this case is that of the early church, with its active women.
I thought it was a reference to the March event, which can be considered either winter or spring. But I acknowledge that your usage is preferable.
FWIW, there are many extremely fine wine producers (especially in France) who are practicing biodynamic viticulture. It is influenced by the writings of Rudolf Steiner and does indeed involve lunar cycles, burying dung in horns, homeopathic like treatment and other various woo. But it also includes a hands-on, organic approach to viticulture and I think that is where the quality comes from.
If it’s UC Davis advising the volume producers in CA, then they have failed us terribly. It used to be you could buy a bottle of Gallo and say, “Ok table wine, for the price.” Lately I bought a bottle and almost spit out the first mouthful.
Then I prayed to the Beer Goddess for forgiveness, and vowed to never wander astray again.
I am not rejecting cultural relativism or implying the superiority of Western ethnocentrism. I am talking about how Durkheim’s insights into the functions of rituals and customs can be hijacked for reasons of domination, political and material gain, and exclusion. Excuse me, but you seem to be displaying rigid categorical thinking; further, you are assuming your recent discovery of the functions of traditions and ritual is unknown to me (I’m a sociologist who writes ethnography BTW). Your example of usury diverts us from the topic under consideration. So let me ask you directly: do you really believe the Catholic Church’s position on women in the priesthood contributes to collective identity and group solidarity? If so, whose? And at what costs to women? And men, for that matter if their identity is partially rooted in the Church’s stigmatization of women. Or am I being ethnocentric to ask these questions? I almost don’t want to write this but I will: please read Pierre Bourdieu on domination and Erving Goffman on stigma.
I’m not going to validate your value system. What I believe is that you and I both do not have the omniscience required to understand whether these are good or bad practices, and that if we are not members of their group we should not be sticking our noses into their business and self righteously lecturing them on the right way to live.
To your question: there is not a single part of me that gives a crap about what they do because it has nothing to do with me. Their businesses is theirs. If their internal group members feel that they are being treated badly then they should either wirk internally to change the group or leave the group. No one is twisting the arms of these women behind their backs and forcing them to be Catholics.
As a sociologists you are hopefully aware of the fact that Western civilization, particularly America, is on its last legs and primed for collapse. As members of a failed society with values that obviously didn’t work out too well for the long term, is it really a good idea for us to be judging anyone about anything?
so if keeping slaves drawn from outside our value system or executing aboriginals from out side our value system so another group with different value systems can their land, then we’ve got no right to stick our noses into their business?
Do you think you would be typing at a keyboard expressing you thoughts if the concept of interest didnt exist?
“…The evils emanating from this attitude can never be curbed unless humanity submits to divine authority and obeys its commandments in any case and at every price.
This is exactly what Islam does. After recognising private ownership, profit motive and market forces, Islam has put certain divine restrictions on economic activities. These restrictions being imposed by Allah Almighty, Whose knowledge has no limits, cannot be removed by any human authority. All these prohibitions combined together have a cumulative effect of maintaining balance, distributive justice and equality of opportunity…””
Yes well, as “imposed” by Allah — and adjudicated by a Chief Mufti — forgot that the last bit! Need the priest instead of the lender.
I like the equality part of the fantasy.
Tools misused are not intrinsically bad tools are they?
Do you think you would be typing at a keyboard expressing you thoughts if the concept of interest didnt exist?
1) Lending does not require interest since the loans can be over-collateralized.
2) Interest in the Bible is permitted but only from foreigners.
3) Deficit spending can drive economic growth too and deficit spending does not require positive interest.
4) Private money can be issued in the form of shares and those don’t require interest either.
Anyway, there’s certainly no longer any excuse for government subsidies for usury and private debt creation. Those may have “worked” to some degree in the past but no longer since labor is increasingly not even needed.
How long can one borrow without interest?
Can I borrow your house interest free for the next 30 years? What about wear and tear or depreciation?
Maybe we call interest rent.
Then, no one can charge rent, because rent is interest.
One way it would work is someone lends you $100,000 for a $150,000 house, interest free. If you make the payments for 30 years then you get to keep the house and all the lender gets is his $100,000 back for no profit; if not the lender gets the house plus any payments you’ve made plus any net appreciation in value.
And no, rent is not interest since interest must be the same kinda of thing as the thing lent*; that’s apparently where Calvin screwed up.
*e.g. If someone lends you 10 cows, if you repaid 11 cows then 1 of the cows would be interest. Otoh, if you simply returned the 10 cows plus some money, the money would be rent, not interest.
So, instead of interest money, the banker can now justifiably ask for one’s first born (not the same kind as the thing lent) for that $100,000 you would like to borrow.
“Let me borrow your body for an hour to clean my kitchen. I will pay money interest.” – that’s also OK. Actually already OK.
Well, interest is allowed from foreigners and based on your beliefs a Hebrew might well consider you one? Same as they were allowed to collect interest from Christians?
“Let me borrow your body for an hour to clean my kitchen. I will pay money interest.” – that’s also OK.
That would be rent, not interest. Interest would be if you cleaned his kitchen for an hour and, say, 10 minutes – the extra 10 minutes would be interest.
Well, I neglected that in the Bible, debts were to be forgiven every seven years so there’d be no such thing as 30 year loans – except to foreigners.
Historically, 30 years loans for a house are ludicrous anyway, at least in the US.
Debts rest on the 7th year?
Muslims find ways to get around charging interest that end up being equivalent to interest. One method that I read about (sorry, I don’t have a link) is for the borrower to sell his collateral to the lender. The borrower then buys it back at a higher price (either by installments or all at once at the end of the term of the loan). The difference between the prices is effectively the same as interest.
Big banks do it too. They write a loan contract for $100 million, you sign it (you typically being a foreign guv), then they transfer $70 million to your account, per the contract. So far, the contracts have interest too, but that’s so the bank can sell it off and “manage” their risk.
But for small savers, there is no money market fund or ETF like this.
And if I didn’t what would it matter? Oh, right, the definition of correctness is whatever the bourgeoisie are thinking and doing at this instant. And multiple invention doesn’t happen. And the first appearance of some technology in the West is the only one that should be spoken of. Etc. etc.
So you got a bunch of suckers to work cheap and subordinate themselves to you, just so that we can have this broken privatized Internet. And I paid more than you did for it.
You and me need to have a chit-chat about reparations to be paid by the bourgeoisie.
Thanx both for making us neo-Luddites proud.
“We know tomorrow’s scientific explanation will be better than today’s. And that of the day after will be even better than tomorrow’s. In the meanwhile, let’s interfere and go about re-arranging nature with knowledge we know to be inadequate or will be be soon.”
“We will never fully understand everything, so let’s all just go back to our caves!”
Says someone whose great-grandparents didn’t die from Spanish Flu because of a vaccination. I’m well aware of the problems of modern society and cultures, and that we’re careening headlong toward a cliff. But I’m not inclined to engage in Rousseauian fetishization of the past and traditions, either. The past sucked. It’s just that it sucked for different reasons than the present.
Thus, neo-Luddites, and not cave dwelling, though some have found ways to update it so it’s comfortable and green.
We seek to stop the fetishiization of everything technological, but to be cautious and at least in the beginning, skeptical.
Look, Plenue, stop dragging in philosophers you don’t seem to know. Read Discourse on Inequality, and then come back and fix things up.
Are you claiming Rousseau didn’t idealize and wax poetic about some invented pre-historic human way of life?
It’s a crucial concept. Culture and traditions can be assets and they can also be liabilities! (One of the island nations they worked with came to the realization that they had too many festivals.)
I’m constantly appreciative of what I learned about Integral Accounting from the folks at M-CAM. They share a way of looking at things that uses 6 perspectives: Commodity, Culture, Money, Knowledge, Technology and Well-Being.
Anything can potentially be + or a -, depending on the situation.
Thanks for the reminder… I’ll still suggest women (and children) were valued by Jesus himself and the early church far beyond the rights and privileges granted by the ruling patriarchy of the time. Patriarchy controlled the writing and assembly of documents into the Biblical canon, though…
If you’re interested in biodynamics, the agricultural practices of Leviticus require leaving some land un-plowed, and un-harvested (so the poor could glean). Another example, with usury and debt jubilees, of the practices that were Biblical that worked.
Religions have writings against usury.
Societies develop policies against usury.
Religion oppresses women.
Societies oppress women.
Because someone agrees there are legitimate reasons to reduce usury, there must be legitimate reasons to oppress women.
this made my brain spin out. custom justifies itself. this thread is biblical, no? my brain spun out because this is a parable of the weakest among us – when all else fails, just burden women and kids and poor, honest men. i would guess that no poor, honest men ever manage to be priests either – they just become lunatics preaching on a big rock. like jesus.
It may or may not have anything to do with oppression of a certain class, but these people are members of a cohesive and powerful social group that knows how to organize and push back whe threatened.
Look at us with our enlightened, atomized lifestyle and progressive values: as soon as anyone, foreign powers, corporations, government, whoever, with the slightest inclination decides to sheer us like sheep us all we can do is bend over and let it happen.
Their group dynamics may not be ideal, but at the very least they’re better than ours.
I don’t understand. Better than ours in that they survive? Their outcome isn’t better economically and I would argue politically also except when politicians use religious arguments as a tool of manipulation to get the economic outcomes they desire.
I’m defining a good outcome as first long term sustainability, and secondly overall psychological and sociological health of the group.
For all our alleged prosperity and enlightened values American are in general a fragile and suffering lot of people.
I have no doubt that if you surveyed the most patriarchal and materially poor Islamic tribal village in the backwoods of Pakistan the people there–both men and women–would feel far happier and more valued than the average “wealthy” but miserable American.
Especially, when the skirts remain relegated to the back seat, amirite?
Call me when the powerful subordinate themselves to the powerless. Until then STFU.
STFU???
Is this how it is on NC now? Yeah, we are allowed much freedom here in the comments but then perhaps it’s because we aren’t going off saying STFU?
You had me until STFU, you lost me with STFU.
i liked it; no problem here laura
+1 laura. Kevin Hall, the bourgeoisie choose not to hear any other answers. Good to see you’re listening. Perhaps you should treat the caviling and moral indignation posturing as exactly what is being responded to there.
You had me, especially with STFU.
So, the best way to defeat an overbearing violent Patriarchial group is by becoming overbearingly, violently Feminarchial? I’m questioning the methods, not the cause.
Since they went there I guess it is misogyny = bad (I agree)
misandry = just fine (it’s not).
The point being I thought we were more adult here at NC, forgive my naivety.
We are more adult usually. Sometimes we go a little off the rails concerning issues that affect us personally. I’m no better than the rest.
Sometimes the pain is so intense the only way one can think of to defuse it is to make it diffuse. Spread it around. There’s more where that came from.
Group identity and social cohesion, very important, perhaps moreso today than ever in recent history.
But unless the traditions have some well-understood function, valuable to the group (the whole group), the group identity and social cohesion are suspect.
Unilaterally cutting women out of responsible and nurturing roles is useful, how, exactly? And to whom?
If one can’t explain something to an outsider, that might be a clue.
“well undersood” — That’s hubris. Our ability to understand things is a lot less than we think it is. At best, we know we are ignorant; at worst we imagine that we aren’t ignorant.
Our ability to understand ourselves is perfectly fine when there are no leaders to steer us toward their own personal interests.
Methinks you’ve been listening to too much Jeremy Belknap.
I usually disagree with you jg, but here I’m with you. While I respect people having intellectual arguments against particular religious beliefs or practices, I find it strange that so many smart people grow so incurious and even hostile when it comes to asking WHY homo sapiens in every culture do this stuff (unless they are actively taught not to). Religion works on many levels, social and psychological, that are quite hard to conceptualize within the terms of the disembodied rationalism and individualism our society has valued so highly since the Enlightenment.
For those looking for an in-depth discussion of how Western society and concepts of the self evolved in such a way as to make religion look strange to many, I highly recommend Charles Taylor’s 800+ page book A Secular Age.
Meanwhile, here’s a Van Morrison song that I think gets the feel of the spiritual emptiness of the neoliberal world quite well.
“If in money we trust”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am8SbwxFaMY
I have an extremely good understanding of how science works and a fairly decent biology, ecology and botany.
I was first clued in to this line of thinking when I started studying permaculture and I found myself collaborating with a bunch hippies and mystics who had all kinds of bizarre ideas about how nature and the world works. The thing is, though their explanations about how things worked were quite and fanciful and improbable, the end result was that they weren’t wrong.
A lttle extrapolation lead me to my current view on these matters: it’s incredibly arrogant and foolish to try to judge other people based on your standards, no matter how “right” they seem.
Idem.
This is what the Outis Philalithopoulos series seems to be getting toward, but in an extremely roundabout way (will it ever get there?).
No matter which incarnation Western intellectual culture takes (liberalism, modernism, post-modernism…) it can never seem to grasp the very basic principle it just took you a mere 3 paragraphs to summarise. Stop being arrogant, stop judging, stop assuming you’re right, lose the hubris. These basic principles of humanity are in all cultures’ moral systems, but Academia has spent the last few centuries running around in circles trying to figure it out. They might try burying a few rams horns on the winter equinox.
‘Contemporary Institutions’? I thought this was about the Catholic Church
I would argue that the contemporaneity of an institution is related to it’s power and degree of influence in the present. The Roman Catholic Church has both to a significant degree.
Power and influence not are required. It is in the time, which is all contemporary means. Without explicit reference, the time is implicitly the present; if some other era is under discussion, contemporary refers to that era.
I will concede your point but suggest that there is a sub-text of “influence” in the usage.
“Hundreds of prominent economists just denounced Donald Trump in an open letter to voters” has company:
US Nobel Laureates for Hillary Clinton (apologies if this has already been linked to).
Strangely, Paul Krugman didn’t sign the letter – maybe it wasn’t sufficiently glowing.
Or he’s hedging his bets.
Missing from their letter is any reference to corruption.
This may be because their field of economics is affected by its own corrupt blind spot — the massive role of unproductive military spending in corroding US standards of living.
Cringing courtiers bearing differential equations … as Queen Victoria said, “We are not amused.”
Perhaps these PhDs will be rusticated to dig the border wall with their bare hands, as German shepherds on short leashes snarl and lunge to encourage them to dig faster, though their hands bleed.
PhD….sometimes means “Piled higher & Deeper.” /s
PhD….Phony Doctor
I’ll add that to my list of why I am voting for Trump. Thank you.
I see voting for Trump not as voting for Trump, but voting to make sure Hillary doesn’t move into the White House.
Someone has to sit on the throne. Powers will be exercised in the next 4 years. Based on her private positions, one decides whether to do nothing about opposing them, or do something.
Since people are talking about how they are going to vote and why . . .
I was actually too emotionally tired to want to read politics for news of the world today, but checked out my favorite poli site (that would be here) today just for help making up my mind, since I wanted to FINALLY fill out my ballot later today. I hope I am not violating any rules here with this comment, and I apologize in advance if I am, but if any of you want to make your case to that rare, late-stage, undecided presidential voter, here’s your chance.
I was all set to vote to Green, imperfections and all, but now Bernie & Tulsi are an official write-in vote in Cali that at least supposedly will be counted. Greens look unlikely to get that 5% nationally anyway. Bernie & Tulsi is my dream ticket.
I haven’t completely ruled out a strategic Trump vote either, but since he’s almost as unlikely to win Cali as Jill or the Bernie/Tulsi write-in, I’m not sure what the point would be.
You may not be wasting your time, if you care how I vote, making arguments for any of those three choices. I’m not going to vote for Hillary or Johnson, I mean, I really don’t see the possible universe where this happens, but life has been uber-stressful and I’ve not kept up as well as usual the last little bit, so what the heck. Maybe I missed something. But really, it’s prolly gonna be Green or Bernie/Tulsi. (yes, I’m voting on all the props & downballot too but those are easier)
It’s important people vote, and just as important your vote should be counted. And if you share it publicly, respected.
I agree w/you re: the importance of voting, at least if it’s counted accurately, but I’m getting skeptical of the accurate counting. If someone goes all in for the handcounted paper ballots next time around, at ANY level of office, that might be as important as ideology in getting me to vote for them. It worked for Debra Bowen in a landslide, so it can be a winning issue (for those not in Cali or wondering what happened, she either developed severe clinical depression after winning, or her pre-existing severe clinical depression became too much for her, so those never became a thing here, otherwise I’m absolutely certain Bernie would have won Cali bigtime and the world would be a different place).
And thanks for not laughing at me for spending so much time on deciding between 2 candidates who almost certainly aren’t going to win (looking around a bit, I’ve seen a couple of hopefuls Bernie can win Cali as a write-in, which I will believe when I see).
FWIW, further thought has me leaning heavily towards Bernie/Tulsi write-in.
If I were in your place I would write in Bernie Sanders. He was the only candidate with the vision, capacity and decency to truly lead the USA to a better place in an inclusive manner. Whatever happens in the next few days that possibility of vision, capacity and decency has to be kept alive.
A fool is bound to win in the next few days and that is a seriously distasteful and dangerous outcome for Americans. The next presidential election may be better but this downward spiral needs to be reversed.
The penultimate Gradual Student!
Everyones gotta eat… that might be from Tammany Hall back in the day
Poppycock. Surely we can find a way to provision them with teaspoons…
‘Plastic Sporks’ ……’:]
Those ‘economists’ are not worth their metal ..!
Jim try reading – Science Mart – or – Merchants of Doubt – wrt the crapification of PhDs…….
Disheveled Marsupial…. seems it has something to do with turning the system into to a profit driven and not knowlage driven enterprise…
+ infinity for invoking unproductive military spending
So 370 economists, including a handful of Nobel laureates, warn do not vote for Trump?
I had held off for so long – but I don’t see how I can possibly resist the urge now.
Thanks a lot, economists. Way to go.
I have had two large jars set up for months. Each time a journalist, paper, or academic specialist endorsed a candidate I put a jelly bean in a jar, two for Nobel laureates. With this letter the Hillary Clinton jar is now full and spilling over and I now know who to vote for. I was so worried we wouldn’t get a clear decision in time!
I didn’t know we had that many economists against trickle down, supply side, and deregulation.
it’s amazing
Because the ‘issue a dire warning from the élites’ strategy worked so well in Brexit.
Well, there’s still time to get some serious Hollywood talent on board.
Are you going to ignore direct instructions from DiCaprio, Katzenberg and Kardashian?
Good point, and those 3 are better economists than Krugman, Yglesias and Summers.
Sarah Silverman is continuing to lecture people from what I can see. The thing that amuses me about that is now she is considered someone worth listening to by the very people who would have turned up their noses at her a few years ago. But even the Kardashians are pillars now…
The K girls are the ‘butt’resses holding up virtue for the betterment of society …..
Oh, come on polecat. It’s fundamental after all.
I was going to reply to your comment, but decided to bite my tongue …..
and now it’s bleeding … ‘:\
Ouch! I hadn’t suspected you to be into the rough trade.
Q: Why is hedge fund econometrics like a good birching?
A: Both have a fat tail risk.
Even economist Robert Merton, of almost blow up the world economy Long Term Capital Management, signed the letter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management
And the “in memory of Alfred Nobel” laureate who made a name for discussing bankruptcy/looting of corporations, George Akerlof, did not sign the letter.
Perhaps the economists who were asked and did not sign the letter is the real story that we cannot know.
Desperation perhaps, as HRC and the DNC are down to “will you write a good reference for me for the new job I’m seeking?”
Akerlof is the husband of Chairwoman Yellen, so it wouldn’t look good for him to endorse.
“Economists”, that’s a laugh, talk about a “profession” seriously in search of any shred of credibility whatsoever.
After 2009 the Queen of England sent a letter to the top 100 of these fine fellows asking “WTF just happened?”. Their considered reply? “We don’t know”.
Trying to explain the behavior of an infinitely complex machine with a myriad of constantly changing and indefinable inputs…I mean pleeeease.
And when they remove all meaning from the central unit this system operates with – money – it’s even more laughable. Q: can time preference go below zero? (NIRP). What happens when the “central bank” decides it must own equities and real estate, should we still call it a “bank”? Or call it what it is: an infinitely-leveraged hedge fund.
Hello Larry S? Paul K? Reality is calling, on line 2.
Making the most of its 15 minutes of fame, BleachBit mocks the Hildabeest with a $3 microfiber “Cloth or Something” to wipe your server.
An autographed version (by “Andrew, creator of BleachBit,” not the ‘beest) is $5.
I’ll hold out for a shot at buying “the most interesting laptop in the world,” that blew up a presidential race.
CBS just noted that the Clinton campaign has started running ads in four states they supposedly have and have even scheduled a visit in Michigan.
Oh and they also showed Clinton going off on a protester by condemning the divisive and hateful actions of Trump voters. Apparently awareness of the problem of calling voters deplorable has not made it to the top of the ticket.
FB was quiet yesterday for me. Except for comments from two black friends:
“again, i know who threatens me…when african americans are saying that the left is being condescending, and the response is “no they’re not” that is the inherent problem…
everyone is trying to tell the “african american” demographic how we should think and vote, and it is not being received well”
and
“But Hillary and her campaign have a basket of flaws that she and all her people need to own especially if she loses.”
I asked and that “basket of” was a “Totally deliberate choice.” She is a highly aware black woman and is sensitive to the method of othering.
I know that phrase brought me up short as I was reading your comment. Nicely done.
While I agree about needing to own the flaws I wonder if your friend gives that happening the same low odds I do. But I see a whole lot of finger pointing and denial in our future.
There are also insinuations already being circulated (I saw one in TNR and another in Slate) that given how African American voting is “down,” that black people might just become the go to blame demo if Clinton loses.
At no point, however, has anyone in the D party considered that nominating the candidate who suggested young black men were superpredators might not have gone over very well…
In one of her speeches she said “it’s a good thing the Chinese are suppressing global wages” as she heaped adulation on her billionaire corporate paymasters. I know Americans are susceptible to being played as complete naive fools but this election takes the cake.
It was fine in the primary, we had the most civil rights friendly candidate ever and 90% of the black vote or something went to Shillary.
That spiteful rant was truly terrifying, provided you see the angle where you can see her face. That was the real Clinton, the one who will push the button and make terrible decisions.
Like Bilbo wanting one last touch of the ‘precious’ ……
look like too little butter being scraped across toast ….
fallen buttered-side down into ….
a waiting van …
More like Gollum you meant?
my feeble attempt at Hillary hiku ……
Together forward,
Perilously,
Bicoastal fly overs.
Polecat… wow! Exactly like that, great simile. Just imagining the Jackson films, in Rivendell when Bilbo goes nuts on Frodo…
Hillary is rumored to throw books upon hearing bad news.
Inexcusable. Paperweights are one thing, but books deserve more consideration.
pulpy fictives ??
As in, there are books and books? It’s a point. We don’t know what she throws, if she does.
But, WHO/what does she throw books at?
(I heard, secret service)
How appropriate; the very people dismally tasked with protecting her sorry butt.
Heard she threw a tome at Donna ….
That must of left a bruise or three !
could be copies of her books that were remaindered.
I saw that video. Not a good look.
Fun Thomas Frank interview on This is Hell Podcast.
https://soundcloud.com/this-is-hell/924thomasfrank
Listening now… thanks!
The “This is Hell” podcast, despite the offputting name, is just terrific. Lots and lots of really good stuff there, over a long time.
Pope, believes, ban on women, forever
particularly because of the shortage of priests around the world.
The Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC), “Patriarchy Will Not Have the Last Word”.…supply n demand baby
IN KEEPING WITH TRADITION
**Woman is a temple built over a sewer. –Tertullian, “the father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225)
**[Women’s] very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame.–Saint Clement of Alexandria, Christian theologian (c150-215): Pedagogues II, 33, 2
**In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die… Woman, you are the gate to hell. –Tertullian, “the father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225): On the Apparel of Women, chapter 1
**Woman does not possess the image of God in herself but only when taken together
with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But
when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her
alone, then she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he
is by himself alone the image of God just as fully and completely as when he and
the woman are joined together into one. –Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius (354-430)
**Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one’s guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. … Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good. –Saint Albertus Magnus, Dominican theologian, 13th century: Quaestiones super de animalibus XV q. 11
CAN’T LEAVE OUT THE PROTESTANTS
**The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes. –Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546), Works 12.94
**Do not any longer contend for mastery, for power, money, or praise. Be content to be a private, insignificant person, known and loved by God and me. . . . of what importance is your character to mankind, if you was buried just now Or if you had never lived, what loss would it be to the cause of God. –John Wesley, founder of Methodist movement (1703-1791): letter to his wife, July 15, 1774
**Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts, and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children. –Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546), Table Talk
BRING ON THE PURITANS
**Even as the church must fear Christ Jesus, so must the wives also fear their husbands. And this inward fear must be shewed by an outward meekness and lowliness in her speeches and carriage to her husband. . . . For if there be not fear and reverence in the inferior, there can be no sound nor constant honor yielded to the superior. –John Dod: A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandements, Puritan guidebook first published in 1603
**Women are made to be led, and counseled, and directed. . . . And if I am not a good man, I have no just right in this Church to a wife or wives, or the power to propagate my species. What then should be done with me? Make a eunuch of me, and stop my propagation. –Heber C. Kimball, venerated early LDS apostle (1801-1868): JD 5:29
**The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. — Pat Robertson, Southern Baptist leader (1930-): fundraising letter July 1992
**The Holiness of God is not evidenced in women when they are brash, brassy, boisterous, brazen, head-strong, strong-willed, loud-mouthed, overly-talkative, having to have the last word, challenging, controlling, manipulative, critical, conceited, arrogant, aggressive, assertive, strident, interruptive, undisciplined, insubordinate, disruptive, dominating, domineering, or clamoring for power. Rather, women accept God’s holy order and character by being humbly and unobtrusively respectful and receptive in functional subordination to God, church leadership, and husbands. –James Fowler: Women in the Church, 1999.
WELL FANCY MY de BEERS FINGER WITH A VIRGINIA SLIMS
Gee, it’s almost like Christianity is one giant hateful farce wrapped up in the language of love and acceptance, or something.
Not that the whole New Republic article wasn’t tripe, especially with regard to saying that Hillary and everyone around her should be above the law because she is running for office, but the author got a few things nearly right.
If we substitute D voters punishing Rs with the D Party supporting, better, populist candidates the rest of the story would almost be useful. D voters won’t punish Rs when there’s no differentiation between the choices except their team jersey. But then the now neoliberal rag known as “The New Republic” might have to move back where is used to be editorially. Avoiding impeachment, though, would still be close to impossible because lying and corruption don’t go away.
temporal
November 2, 2016 at 8:01 am
So you peaked my curiosity – ugh, I couldn’t get past the first two paragraphs:
We’ve seen FBI Director James Comey—seeking perhaps to head off Republican criticism and more-damaging leaks by partisan agents hoping to influence the election—intrude outrageously into the presidential campaign with innuendo about Clinton’s emails that, intentionally or otherwise, created an unwarranted atmosphere of criminality around the Democratic Party’s nominee.
And now, we’re seeing leaks to news outlets from FBI officials that reflect generously on Donald Trump and negatively on Clinton. The New York Times’ FBI sources, for instance, are at pains to insulate Trump from politically damaging evidence that he and Russian intelligence and propaganda outlets are operating symbiotically. And this Wall Street Journal article details an intense appetite, in FBI field offices across the country, for pursuing every possible investigative avenue related to Clinton, no matter how attenuated.
====================================
I would say there is 0 innuendo with regard to Hillary’s emails – one can argue if the issue should be revisisted (if top secret laws mean ANYTHING it seems difficult to me to ignore potential TOP SECRET stuff on a serial sexter’s computer…)
On the other hand, the idea that Trump is a commie…well, I knew this day would come. The “Liberals” hasve decided to be as bat-sh*t crazy as FOX. The MSNBC group tried to maintain the semblance of probity and calm discourse. Now we have the full inversion of history – “lefties” as red-baiters.
Soon enough hippie republicans will thwart Hillary’s plan for Syrian “pacification”
I expect the cast of Dr. Strangelove to appear on MSNBC anytime now with a serious discussion of “precious bodily fluids” being imperiled by Russia and why first strike is our best option…
The Putin/Russia Thing is so far past its sell-by date it stinks to high heaven and should be buried already.
It’s well beyond Strangelovian at this point.
The fact that so many of our opinion leaders and members of the ruling class continue to fluff this nonsense reflects very badly on them, but they don’t seem to care, do they? As long as they have demons to flay, they’re happy.
As for Huma’s email trove (what the holy fark is she doing archiving all this stuff for anyway?) we have no clue how “top secret” any of it is, thanks to Comey’s calculated vagueness. And anyway, what’s labeled “top secret” is rarely worth the classification bother…
Putin said it best in a speech a few days ago re the silly allegations.
“What are you anyway (the USA) , a Banana Republic?”
In the “FBI vault” publication of the files from the recent Hilary Clinton investigation, it is shown that Huma testified that she was aware of a laptop containing the full email archive. She opined that it’s purpose was for historical information that may me useful writing HRC memoirs. However, she could not recall where it was located.
Perhaps this is the same machine?
Seems preposterous… And yet it would ideally be a machine not owned by any hill associate, yet readily available…
And they rarely used pros to set things up because of trust, better to not worry about hacks…
Maybe it goes back years and she forgot? Somebody said an incredible 650k emails… Or maybe she remembered but deemed risk low and hill needs records for memoirs? Plus Fbi was under control… But then he sexted, laptop seized…
Exactly why Nixon taped, and reluctant to burn them up to and past the last minute… The feeling you’re untouchable…
I disagree that there is an inversion of history, as the liberal Democrats have a long history of red baiting. Here’s Howard Zinn on H. Humphrey’s role in the HUAC:
This is not to mention Woodrow Wilson’s Red Scare, JFK’s “Red Menace” or the cold war hysteria of LBJ and Carter.
Give HRC credit for keeping in line with Democrat Party tradition.
But that all happened back in the Leave It To Beaver Era. Playing the patriotic card was a clear winner back then. More of a challenge for the Ds these days, methinks.
The people are Patriotic war tired out. Bush ran it into the ground. We know Patriotic War Pt II is going on with Obama but have tuned out. Pt III ain’t working the charm for Hillary with new and improved, bigger weapons, Red Putin Scare.
The people can still become more patriotic.
It just takes more work, more education. Be more patriotic, but foreigners are humans as well (they are).
Yes, that also goes towards the outrage at Sanders’ explicit self-description as a “democratic socialist“. That was just too in-your-face for any loyal Dem; the wrong kind of DINO.
Intellectual rigor and steadfast loyalty are incompatible. And loyalty is the coin of the realm in D.C.
Only is modern Russia in any way, shape, or form communist? That is if it ever was of course even when it was the USSR, but at least it was nominally Communist then.
Red baiting without the red.
The “Liberals” have decided to be as bat-sh*t crazy as FOX.
———————–
Been thinking the same thing. First they have totally satisfied their “Carl Rove Envy” this campaign, altho not so successfully, it appears.
Next, there are those crusty, old, retired, unhinged, fossilized, warmonger, armchair generals that FOX likes to showcase. The DNC rises to the challenge.
… kind of a partisan doppler shift, with an added phase change …..
And partially explains why I kept finding myself going to Fox for Bernie coverage during the primaries.
As John Lennon said…Strange days indeed.
“Everybody’s talking and no one says a word”
And my personal favorite, “everybody’s smoking and no one’s getting high”
The red-baiting Democratic establishment is not filled with “lefties.” They’re liberals.
The Indictment That Made Bill Clinton President The American Conservative. Some history worth remembering.
In the wake of FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reopen the Hillary Clinton email probe, there has been an explosion of Clinton and media criticism alleging that the investigation could influence the outcome of the election. And at a rally in Florida on Saturday, Secretary Clinton emphatically charged that Comey’s action was “unprecedented.”
Contrary to her claim, she herself contributed to an even bigger influence on an election: the October surprise four days before Election Day in 1992 that helped then-Gov. Bill Clinton defeat then-President George H.W. Bush. This event was the last-minute indictment of Caspar Weinberger, which the Clintons and the press turned into an indictment of Bush. (The prosecutor himself later claimed credit for having affected the outcome of the election.)
==========================================================
Not to Mention Alaskan senator Stevens. I believe there have been a few others
One of the problems with having shills like Donna Brazile doing the “news” is that such statements -unprecedented – get made all the time by people who are either ignorant at best, or far more likely rewriting history for their own partisan purpose.
As much as I have contempt for FOX, when I don’t see ANY newsreaders on the other stations mentioning that it is NOT unprecedented for indictments/investigations to occur near elections when this OBVIOUS talking point comes up…..well, its hard for me to believe that they really are “reality” based…
Is this Karma at work?
Arguably a nothing-burger, but at least morbidly fascinating:
Trump encourages early voting Clinton supporters to switch their votes
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/01/politics/donald-trump-iowa-vote-switching/
It’s actually possible in some states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, or Wisconsin; not Iowa even though it’s in the url), by casting a further ballot on election day.
1 thing i dont understand: if mr. comeys re-opening the investigation of ms. clinton is considered “interfering with the election”, then wouldnt mr. comeys refraining from re-opening the investigation also be “interfering with the election”?
either speaking up or remaining silent could be deemed to be interference when one has knowledge of possible intent to subvert the law.
Doing more or doing less is interference.
Doing what is one’s job, for what is needed for the situation is not.
At this point I’m having some difficulty telling whether Comey is doing simply what is his job. I was ready to believe he might be in telling Congress he was reopening the email investigation, but what on earth is the basis for releasing the files on the Mark Rich pardon at this juncture? I find that much harder to see as justifiable. Does anyone here have more insight?
That one is puzzling.
Luckily for the Clinton team, it’s being buried by the media. I just googled ‘news,’ and it was among the top 3. Nothing on the Marketwatch front page at this time either.
Suggestions that the release is maybe not Comey, but the rank and file.
NYT headline: ‘Hillary Clinton, Moving Past [i.e., not attacking] F.B.I. Review, Turns Focus to Attacks on Donald Trump’
Mission accomplished?
Not at Marketwatch. They are not moving on.
There is, currently, an opinion piece about Comey having a sinister history as a political and corporate fixer.
I don’t know what Comey’s justification would be (if he is the one repsonsible for releasing the Mark Rich files), but the files apparently (weasel wording because I haven’t looked myself) contain more evidence of Peter Kadzik’s conflict of interest, as someone involved in the investigation of Hillary’s emails.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/boom-documents-show-kadzik-podesta-clinton-got-mark-rich-pardoned/
I thought the Hatch Act referred to campaigning etc. The DOJ set up the 60 days from elections. There was a generic release that they make foia’s public once they have 3 requests. I wasn’t aware that there were also restrictions that FOIA’s couldn’t be released within 60 days before elections.
I read the Mark Rich release as the establishment in the FBI saying loud and unmistakably clear that; they are in charge now! and Comey can administer what he must but they call the shots. It is extraordinary, but was almost inevitable that Comey was going to be kneecapped for cowering to the Clintons.
It is tidy too, as no one has to leak anything. All this information is released strictly in accordance with FOI requests for public documents to be retained and available. Contrast that with Hellary’s desperate attempts to hide and erase anything she can. Poked in the eye with a blunt stick, comes to mind.
From the relatively sane USA Today:
And:
I’m not sure this is exculpatory (as it were) because the timing is so bad. But the story is also meta: The mere fact of the release itself, since apparently there’s no data in the release, because the FBI (did the Clintons a favor when they?) redacted everything!
1) Power struggle inside the FBI moves the release date for the FOIA up, and the compromise is that no damage will be done?
2) FBI sending a message to the Clintons for after the election? I.e., here’s what we could do, if we weren’t nice, and didn’t redact everything?
I’m just not sure, given the redactions, that:
3) FBI openly siding with (Russian agent) Trump because he and (Russian agent) Comey are working together
really works.
I agree with those who think — if this isn’t simple coincidence, and I don’t believe it is — that this was done to connect the dots re: Kadzik’s role in the Rich case, as a way of signaling what it means that Kadzik has been put in charge of the Abedin laptop review.
Given that the Vince Foster death files were dumped today, including reminders that the bullet that killed him didn’t come from his gun and wasn’t found at the scene, and his prints weren’t on the gun, either, these two dumps seem to fit together nicely.
I really do not want to contemplate the possibility that the President and the First Lady had their lawyer murdered. I had assumed for years it was just a matter of his being depressed, Hillary loathing any display of weakness, her bullying exacerbated his depression, and then they moved the body because they wanted to get rid of other evidence — say, files he was working with. That’s not good, obviously, but it’s not murder. But it doesn’t sound like he could have fired the gun. If this was an episode of Law & Order…
Ugh. Can’t they just go live in Qatar or something?
The problem – or one of them, anyway – is not whether he is or isn’t opening or revisiting an investigation, it is that whatever he is doing is being done in an overly-public manner. Further, as his letter to the Congress and the internal memo that followed indicate, all they knew was that there were e-mails; they didn’t know what was in them, and they certainly had no knowledge of anything involving intent to subvert the law.
The problem is that having made such a public announcement, he has managed to plant in people’s minds (with some help from the Trump campaign and its surrogates) that there was something there, that there was intent to subvert the law, and that maybe they were re-thinking the whole no-indictment decision.
That’s a whole lot of “something” to get out of a letter that said a whole lot of nothing.
Our system of justice is still supposed to be based on an innocent-until-proven-guilty metric; this is infinitely harder to maintain when agencies such as the FBI make public not just that someone or something is under investigation, but make public details of that investigation. The fact that the people involved in this particular investigation are public figures does not exempt them from a presumption of innocence, and dumping all kinds of information into the public square does little but weaken that presumption. It also doesn’t change just because Clinton brought this on herself – we don’t give up our rights just because we do something stupid.
The Congress is not an impartial judicial body; separate and apart from the fact that Comey should have declined to make the public statement he did in July, out of a responsibility to maintain at least the appearance of impartiality of a system that respects and adheres to long-standing principles regarding innocence or guilt, he should also have declined to appear before Congress to discuss the investigation and answer pointed questions about what people did and did not say.
That this all may have been the result of problems within the FBI, exacerbated by the enormously stupid decision of the attorney general to have a little chat with Bill Clinton just days before Comey made his no-indictment public statement, whatever problems existed within public agencies should not become the problems of citizens whose lives turn on decisions made in and by these agencies. Not because it may have afforded Clinton more protection than people felt she deserved, or because it whitewashed what people perceived as serious problems with her judgment, but because if we’re presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, then blurring the lines in the way Comey has ultimately serves no one, least of all justice.
I say all of this as someone who is supremely hacked off that Clinton is even running; as someone who sees Clinton’s decisions as driving us to the brink of the hell we had hoped to avoid. I say it as someone who feels in my bones, principles of justice notwithstanding, that she has exhibited qualities that should disqualify her from running for, much less winning, the presidency.
Thanks in large part to Clinton and her I-can-do-what-I-want attitude, and Trump’s floridly narcissistic personality, we have spent months getting absolutely nowhere on issues of real substance, that will affect millions of people around the world.
Concerning Trump’s part on not moving the national conversation forward, wouldn’t this be true of any Republican? I guess McCain’s “Maverick is the new crazy” campaign was unique, but I don’t remember a substantive Republican candidate. “Restoring honor to the White House.”
I don’t know, with someone like a Ron or to a lesser extent Rand Paul you’d have decent discussion of foreign policy and civil liberties (truthfully not for the most part issues on which the voter is likely to have much say, as the foreign policy establishment and the intelligence agencies would oppose, except maybe some civil liberties issues). But yes, for the most part the Rs aren’t helpful in adding to the conversation.
Thank you Anne. Best post of the day for me. I’m always amazed, or dismayed, by how people are so willing to trample others rights. We certainly weaken our own right when we fail to protect others rights. No Clinton fan here, not by any measure.
james brown, why are you standing up for the rights of the ruling class that tramples our rights with impunity? Please, try self-awareness. It’s refreshing. Enough of imaginary friends and burghers’ fever dreams enforcing their fever dreams and moldy rye bread as “ruling ideas”.
” just because Clinton brought this on herself – we don’t give up our rights just because we do something stupid.”
live by the sword, die by the sword…they’re entitled to dishonesty? …no.
of necessity one surrenders some privacy when running for public office, and the product of public office is public property, hence the nefarious FOIA
the problem of too big to be held accountable has been discussed here ad nauseum.
sorry but me and the rest of the deplorable bernie bros are currently feeling more than a little fleeting self satisfaction but as yet I still think the ‘beest (h/t jh) will manage to win, at which point we’ll go back to a sense of helpless anomic ennui waiting for the inevitable denouement.
“Thanks in large part to Clinton and her I-can-do-what-I-want attitude, and Trump’s floridly narcissistic personality, we have spent months getting absolutely nowhere on issues of real substance, that will affect millions of people around the world”.
I can’t rule out the possibility that this is a feature, not a bug…
The feature-not-a-bug thing is maybe the most depressing and infuriating thing about this – but it’s also just the continuation of many years, really, of selective investigations/indictments/prosecutions – or perhaps I should say, the lack of them. It still boggles my mind that almost no one – at least no one near the top – has been held to account for the mortgage mess, for the near-collapse of the economy, etc. And big fking deal that the head of Wells Fargo has stepped down – he did so with millions in severance, so nothing to see here, let’s just move forward, shall we?
In a perfect world, or at least one that’s got its priorities in better shape than the one we’re living in now – people would be accountable for their actions in some kind of substantive way that goes beyond saying they’re sorry, and it doesn’t seem as if Clinton will be. Losing the election won’t really be “accountability,” not least because we know, don’t we, that she will just find ways to make more money than ever off this tragic event in HER life. She may be personally humiliated – which I admit has a certain amount of satisfaction associated with it – but I don’t know that she’s ever going to really understand the deep level of anger and disgust people feel toward her, not just for putting us all through this torture because of her own sense of entitlement, but because of how much further she has lowered the bar.
I would really like nothing more than to see the Clintons fade into the obscurity their egos would whither and die from, rather than have them both thinking they can push the envelope even farther, and continue to do as they please, regardless of the law/rules/protocols. The kind of power that will reside in Clinton as president is so much bigger than what she’s already had a taste of that I shudder to think what it will mean. Maybe her hubris finally does her in, but I have every reason to believe the system will conspire to protect her at all costs.
I’m going to vote this afternoon – and I will not be voting for her, or for Trump; I just can’t do it.
Anne, I understand your problems with this. I do. I suppose my problem is that our system is so obviously broken that is just one more problem on top of a whole lot of others, first and foremost for me being that our system is no longer blind. One of the reasons we are seeing this happen is that our political class knows that the system is not going to treat them the same as the hapless average guy, so there is no problem with nominating someone who is under investigation whether the public knows it or not because they do not have to worry about a possible indictment REGARDLESS of guilt or innocence.
And for the record that presumption of innocence thing has been selective for decades.
Pat, it really is just so broken, with so many not being held to account in any way, and others suffering punishment out of proportion to the crime.
I think people’s trust in the integrity of the system has been severely compromised, and I think it is going to take something major, across many aspects of the system, to restore it.
At 63, I doubt very much it will happen in my lifetime.
Anne, it’s unusual for him to make these public statements, sure. Thus when he publicly exonerated Clinton, Warren challenged him on why he was being so candid about that but not giving explanations to the press for not getting banksters prosecuted.
To be consistent, reopening the investigation should also be public. One suggestion was that others within the FBI were going to leak this out of anger about Clinton wiping the emails to avoid a subpoena the first time, and ensure she didn’t get away with anything this time around. In which case Comey’s hand was forced — he apparently wrote to Congress the day after he was told of the Abedin thing.
Maybe no new emails are on the laptop, but it justifies reopening the case, which justifies being public about it in turn, because he has already been public. For which Dems praised him, last time.
Furthermore Clinton is publicly claiming Trump is acting for Putin! The FBI have found nothing on Trump and Russia, but she brings it up again and again.
Plus, the FBI has been investigating the Foundation for months and Cmey hasn’t brought it up in public. And he is of course an Obama appointee.
Australia curbs flow of disgruntled UK junior doctors
FT
=========================
Well, I’m too lazy to try and get past the pay wall. But I know what the article will say – Australia is trying to keep wages -WHOOPS – they’e professions, so its “FEES” – from being reduced. And unlike with any other job, somehow the government knows how to do it – PREVENT COMPETING WORKERS I.E. DOCTORS) FROM ENTERING THE COUNTRY.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-doctors-in-other-countries-make/?_r=0
Where are all the economists yammering about reducing barriers to physician entrance? Mere coincidence that “free trade” that benefits the rich is the “free trade” that we get, and any “free trade” that would benefit the poor is the kind we don’t get….funny how it that way.
Until people understand WHO writes the rules determines WHO gets the goodies….
Time Bandits The Baffler
I want to scream, like some cosmic Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall: Your praise just proves you don’t understand my work at all!
AND
The ignorant are easiest to write about—people like pundit John Heilemann, who cohosts With All Due Respect, a nightly news roundup on Bloomberg TV, reportedly for a seven-figure salary. (If your gift is reducing America’s rich pageant to a cartoon fit for ten-year-olds, of course you’ll be lavishly rewarded.)
uh …you forgot the ‘r’ in gift …
small quibble, i know ….
Thought experiment: If Trump does win, is Obama actually going to let him walk into the WH? All the chatter about Russians, including today’s breathless announcement about Microsoft and russian hackers, somehow shoehorning in the election, makes me wonder whether the crazy people I talk to swearing there will be an Obama third term are actually right.
Would Obama do such a thing when he has a legacy to worry about? Is all the talk about Dangerous Donald enough to keep the man out? How would MSM spin a constitutional crisis? Would they tow the line?
0bama is a great admirer of the Adams family tradition:
Probably 0bama will mark Jan 20th by playing a game of golf in Hawaii.
Narcissism means not showing you care.
If by some ‘accident’ the Orange Menace actually wins, the current hysteria about Russia rigging the US elections will provide the perfect excuse for Clintonistas to challenge the results.
I’m not so sure about that. It doesn’t fit with their ‘above it all’ meme. More like an obligatory appearance at the swearing in and on the complimentary not Air Force 1 flight out before Trump or Clinton is out of the limo. I do think that he is going to be pissed that he didn’t push the envelope and work as hard as Bush did to saturate all the departments with bureaucrats who will kneecap those that come after. But that would have meant getting into the nuts and bolts of all this. And once again I think that regardless of who gets elected. I’m not a huge fan of the man, but I do think both he and Michelle know there is no good outcome for them and their “legacy”.
Obama needed to start day one, and he saved Lieberman’s committee chair over DHS where the bulk of Shrub’s meddling was done. Then there were the attorneys he didn’t replace.
Obama would have had to have wanted that ‘change’ he ran on. I would say that his foreign policy under Clinton, his economic policy under Geithner, and his Justice policy under Holder make it absolutely clear he had no interest in change at all. When you realize that he passed a Republican and insurance lobbyist dream of health ‘reform’, a tax cut heavy version of stimulus, that his ‘bailout’ of the auto industry paved the way for more foreign built “American” autos AND then pivoted to the deficit with a big emphasis on ‘entitlement’ reform I think most people not in denial might actually begin to realize that he wasn’t blocked by Republicans as much as using their ‘obstruction’ to disguise he was one.
But the problem with that is that he is going to be succeeded by one of two narcissists who both make his narcissism look downright mild and normal. And even if they do not ‘pivot’ from his policies he will be derided in the need to paste their names on any program that might remotely succeed just to see their names in caps and neon three stories high.
Hope floats …right into the gutter !
‘Here in D.C. we float ….. we ALL float down here !’ **
fucking clowns!
“sigh”
0Bomba did not really need to stuff the bureaucracy with fellow travelers — since his reign has been Bush II, and the stuffing and regulatory capture and kneecapping starting with that Fokker Reagan has been steadily carried forward by every imperial administration since then. His payday is well assured, as is the idiot momentum of adoration and adulation that will follow him as it even follows Bush II to this day…
Realty is Obama and Trump are playing a national unity round of golf in Hawaii on Jan 20. Neither could get excited by that as by a round of golf together.
If Trump does win–and I’m not nearly so confident of that as you–then the O man’s exploding head could make such speculation moot. Some have suggested that the only reason Trump is even running is that Obama made fun of him at that correspondent’s dinner. The two of them onstage at the inaugural would make for an interesting spectacle indeed. When narcissists collide….
The Presidents Adams deserve criticism for some things, such as the Alien and Sedition Acts during the first one’s administration. But they deserve great admiration for their anti-slavery position long before the Civil War. Andrew Jackson deserves double blame as a slave owner and as a practitioner of ethnic cleansing against American Indians.
John Quincy Adams, to his credit, was perhaps the first in the political class to publicly acknowledge the native genocide that he and others were committing:
Source: William Earl Weeks, John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire p. 193.
On a somewhat related note, IIRC Jefferson repealed (or allowed them to expire) Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts in pretty short order after being inaugurated but not before putting one of Adams’ backers on trial under the Acts. I don’t believe they convicted the guy or even tried very hard, it was more of a ‘hoist on their own petard’ type of deal to send a message.
I’m guessing Trump could think of something equally amusing if he manages to get elected and Barry is a no-show.
Any ideas?
If Trump wins be prepared for the Liberal “dogs” to be the real base that becomes crazy and rabid. After all of Clinton’s talk I do not see her conceding lightly.
Which adds to the excitement. What will the establishment grifters do? Hopefully we get to find out.
The really sad thing is an Obama 3rd term is sounding good at this point …
Not to me. He’s been revealed as complicit in pretty much all of Clinton’s crimes, which means he’s an accomplice to those, while committing his very own war crimes.
Other than being more discreet than Clinton, how is he better?
I just finished reading the New Republic “Article”.
That’s near the top of the list of partisan hack jobs I have encountered in my 63 years, including a lot of early 19th century pieces.
It does not bode well for the post election period.
The partisan hysteria in the haute newsmedia has been utterly 19th century recently and they’ve grown more and more febrile over the past ~16 months. My main source is the New York Times online Opinion pages – I’ve read them on and off for decades. The opinion-makers there were calmly smug for years, but they took 2 well-deserved hits this season. First from Sanders, then from Trump. Both men attacked from what was for them unexpected angles. And both men garnered impressive, possibly game-changing levels of popular support for doing so. (Sanders’ support came notably from the best and brightest of the next generation, a particular startling scare for those who view themselves as the present day best and brightest).
Donnie is a shitheel. But, I sure wish I could have brought myself to vote for him.
The Clinton Machine is out in force today, with 23 events nationwide.
Hillary, “Bill,” Chelsea, 0bama, Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Anne Holton (whoever that is) — they’re all out there from coast to coast, haranguing the jaded, apathetic masses.
Didn’t see anything about free beer, so I’m not going. :-(
Don’t they have to work or is today a holiday for them?
Most people don’t even get Nov. 8 off.
It doesn’t need to be a National holiday. They probably all work at state & city jobs, so any day can be a holiday, especially if it’s an important day. Fridays are important days here.
But even if these events are BYOB, still could be worth going for just for the entertainment. Like watching the crowd rapture when Hillary announces her resolve to bring codename Agent Orange to justice!
Bernie Sanders was back in Tucson a few weeks ago. Compared to when he was campaigning for his own candidacy, his attendance was way down.
And, no, I didn’t go.
Not even any Hopium left from the last party.
I wonder if combined they’ll get as much attendance as one pre-convention Sanders rally or any Trump rally.
Bernie was in town stumping for Killary yesterday and drew about 1000 people at a high school gym, a far cry from the arena he filled with his own rally in Sep 2015. IIRC the estimate was around 9,000 for that one.
Looks like it might be coming in on the low side, huh Bernie?
Election Maps, from Wapo:
As someone who owns some land and lives in a place that turns Republican pretty often, I’ll rephrase this from the perspective of people who I live around:
To me and those around me, population density isn’t a strength or a virtue to a place. It’s actually a deficit.
Maybe I’m too much a student of urban history, agrarianism, and Thomas Jefferson, but there’s a reason medievalists like Khaldun thought corruption and decadence came from urban centers and purity came from the rural.
There is something about density that changes human dynamics. The county I’m in is on the fringes of Cincinnati, partially inside the 275 loop and partially outside- though even taking the suburbs into account population densities are around 400 per square mile in the county. Manhattan’s density is around 72k per square mile. I told my girl to imagine that for every person we saw there were 182 others and that is what such a place would be like- her eyes bulged a bit. We don’t really care much for large crowds, you see.
I might be a northerner but I kind’ve understand the states rights arguments now and the importance of federalism. We need a weaker central government so that peoples of disparate interests can better manage their affairs in ways which suit their own needs and desires. A gun law that makes sense in a place with 72,000 people living in a human hive hardly makes sense in a place where law enforcement responses would be delayed- and the desires of such a people on a host of other issues may be anathema to another community.
I saw more than one Trump costumed kid on Halloween and it wasn’t out of sneering hipster irony. Trump seems less a candidate and more a totem of an avenging divinity round’ here. These people would agree with those around you, though, concerning urban decadence.
When you put it that way, with the stark difference in numbers, I can see why her eyes went wide. I still get the heebie jeebies walking among skyscrapers.
Ownership of something tangible, like land, or even just a home, really does something to the psyche.
It’s one person one vote, not one acre one vote. I see nothing wrong with representing that visually when the subject under consideration is votes.
I suppose my point is that those maps project density of votes as a certain type of power and neglect another type of power. A far older power, antiquated sometimes, but still one with cache. I think that neglect is purposeful.
Their criticism of the electoral maps doesn’t acknowledge why those wide open swathes of land arrange themselves in these ways politically.
The Wire article about the so-called green revolution and wheat-growing in India is absolutely spectacular. Thank you JLS! It’s a must-read for anyone interested in food, agriculture or water.
Totally agreed, a must read. My complaint with today’s links is there were too many good, interesting articles (Indian wheat, Caspar Weinberger, Nepal border, XXIst Cent. Victorians…).
I have noticed that on days that are thin on links, I get more work done. Funny that.
agree, the links were good today
If you want to continue reading about that, Raj Patel is a good place to start (http://rajpatel.org/)
From the Prop 69 in Colorado link…
“…And even more progressive residents who believe people need health insurance may not support Prop 69. Ellen Daehnick, who owns a small business in Denver and is a former board member of the board of Colorado’s Obamacare exchange, says she is skeptical of the numbers and won’t support the measure.”
Enough said. Shut up and eat your Bronze Plans. And short of a serious existential threat to D Party rice bowls I don’t think working within that structure is going to change anything.
I’m sure she wasn’t asked the obvious follow up question of ‘since it is clear to anyone who examines both the exchange policies and costs that they deliver little or no health care not to mention not being remotely affordable for most of the citizens, how would you suggest we get universal health care in Colorado?
And if you disagree with that assessment of ACA please explain in detail how the small networks, unavailable doctors, large deductibles and balance billing of exchange plans are affordable and usable by families making the median wage in Colorado AND lead to a healthy Colorado?’
But that is just me.
probably punt on a fantasy like national health care that is nowhere in the foreseeable future, rather than you know have a real effect on things by directly voting when they can.
Nice armchair cynicism. So it needs some tweaking. And the threat is you and me getting up the will to contribute those $
Perhaps while you have the luxury of waiting for the “tweaking” I’m paying a premium for bull-sh*t exchange-purchased insurance with an insurmountable deductible attached. How is that armchair cynicism?
It’s because I have no such luxury that I think it so important to DO something, not just gripe.
ChiGal in Cali, no, no, “doesn’t have the numbers” is meant to signal and enforce fraud, not reflect reality.
Article about 1933 earthquake in CA linked above
My parents were in Jr. High in Long Beach. The earthquake was after 5 PM. The school’s wall were hollow tiles – a version of cement blocks today. Before the earthquake, the school was 2 stories. After the earthquake, one could stand outside and see across the rubble. If it would have been during school, they would have perished and I would not be here.
Growing up in LB CA, we knew about subsidence from oil drilling off the coast. In fact, LB was for a time called the Subsidence City.
Just looked it up and injection wells of salt water are keeping the land up. Articles also describe subsidence from drilling of aquifers for agriculture.
From an article at the end
According to Nathan Halverson, writing for Reveal and the Center for Investigative Reporting,
No agency is tracking the sinking statewide, little public money has been put toward studying it and California allows agriculture businesses to keep crucial parts of their operations secret. … The last comprehensive survey of sinking was in the 1970s, and a publicly funded monitoring system fell into disrepair the following decade. Even the government’s scientists are in the dark.
But Devin Galloway, a scientist with the (US) geological survey, sees devastation of a historic proportion returning to California. He says that even if farmers stopped pumping groundwater immediately, the damage already done to aquifers now drained to record-low levels will trigger sinking that will last for years, even decades.
“This could be a very long process. Even if the water levels recover, things could continue to subside,” he said. “This is a consequence of the overuse of groundwater.”
Incredibly Sinking State: The Lowdown on Subsidence
…but of course the consequences will be dumped on future generations, the “Chinatown” sh!ts that are still doing their thing will have died in massive comfort at the end of lives of massive pleasure, with nurses and doctors sworn and bred to provide loving care to them, wiping their butts and the drool off their chins, seeing to their medications and every comfort… And after these parasites and pathogens are dead and gone, what can be done to get any restitution, let alone retribution?
Subsidence? Know all about it. I’m a native of western PA.
Matter of fact, the school where I attended half of first grade is no longer there. Why? Mine subsidence beneath the building. It had to be torn down.
I suspect that the school district powers-that-be knew this, because a new K-12 school complex was built a few miles away. I spent the second half of first grade there.
Was the new site immune from mine subsidence? I kind of doubt it.
Why? Because one of my friends lived about a mile south of there. During the 1990s, she told me that mine subsidence had affected her house to the point where it was on the edge of being uninhabitable.
Here’s a wild notion to try on for size — namely, that Anthony Weiner wasn’t a lone wolf predator of underage girls.
Rather, that his laptop files document the membership of an extensive child trafficking ring, involving prominent people. *cough cough*
This may be total fantasy. But it’s no more implausible than hysterical claims that the Russians have taken over and are running/ruining everything now.
And it is one possible explanation for the FBI’s stiffened spine. A sufficiently lurid scandal would silence the FBI’s critics instantly.
We already have Epstein filling that eco-niche in the political environment.
It’s a sensitive subject, especially since the notorious procuress Ghislaine Maxwell was invited to Chelsea’s wedding in 2010.
Check out the 0:41 video of a red-faced Hillary ranting and shaking an index finger at her tormentor.
It was certainly more passionate than her stump speech declaration that she wanted all the ‘girls in America’ to know they were worthy of respect and to beat up on Trump.
Several traditional media sources reported on Sep 22 and 23rd that the NYPD special victims unit and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office are investigating Weiner.
It appears that they are focusing on the sex offense allegations and evidence, while the FBI handles the national security aspects.
Some of the rumors are on sites that are best not linked here. But they are quite specific.
Nothing makes me so angry as people being angry. If they weren’t angry about what they feel they’ve lost, through the efforts of people like me, I’d be the cutest, most nicest person around. People would swoon over my warn, supportive personality. The fact that my husband has a few issues should matter to nobody.
Remember pay-to-play always ends with play!
That ought to bring the deplorables around. Finally, a convincing strategy.
Web wags at work:
C: “Anyone who thinks she’s going to prison is delusional.”
S: “I think you’re correct. At worst she’ll end up as provost at some college.”
What would happen to a heckler shouting “Trump is a rapist” at one of his rallies? Trump losing his cool would be the least of the problems facing the crackpot.
The next video in that stream is about the Ms Bum-Bum contest in Brazil – the DNC making complete arses of themselves.
Shorter Hillary: stop all this dark divisiveness. Oh and Putin is Hitler and Trump his Manchurian Candidate.
She really does seem to be almost insane. It goes beyond the usual Dem hypocrisy. So the burning question is how did a woman with these views and this temperament come so close to being the most powerful person in the world.
Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has revealed that pedophilia is one of the things used to keep top elected and appointed officials in line (with threatened exposure ensuring they will not expose other crimes such as bribery, helping foreign agents, corruption, etc.). For example, Denis Hastert’s illegal sexual activities and other serious crimes were revealed, then investigators negotiated a plea deal charged him only with minor financial indiscretions for a slap on the wrist penalty. No one was willing to touch the sexual predation crimes–too many people in high places would be impacted if anyone were to start pulling any of those threads in a court of law.
Cynthia McKinney wrote an article about this, saying towards the end:
Edmonds participates in a hard-hitting roundtable discussion entitled “Pedophiles Run the Government and No One Gives a Damn”
Ah, now that you mention it, that smells about right. I’m stocking up on popcorn.
Obama was quick to affirm his confidence in Comey but the $hillary and friends just put the boot in. Then the FBI released the Mark Rich FOI stuff about Comey investigating Bill Clinton way back then. There is no mystery in that release, more like a warning shot. There will be some chastened souls about over the next few weeks.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/02/libertarian_vp_candidate_weld_im_here_vouching_for_mrs_clinton_and_i_think_its_high_time_somebody_did.html
I know we all want 3rd parties in this country, but my goodness, the ones we have are such disasters! Weld is practically endorsing Clinton at this point! Have some pride!
kadzik
abedin
palmieri
clinton
lynch
brazile
podesta
tanden
golly, america really is a melting pot.
I know that you are a subversive Canadian, but that’s no excuse to omit 0bama from your list :)
it’s not a list, it’s a stew.
“it’s not a list, it’s a stew.”
… and one that has gone waaaaaay beyond it’s ‘sell-by’ date !
yuck! … throw it in the wiki-dumpster ..
will it blend?*
* “don’t try this one at home (server)!”
A veritable witches’ stew…
Thanks for linking to this, J-L. And if you’d like to contribute you still can. Bernie is soliciting $25 donations:
Ex-journalist leads state’s effort to flee Obamacare in favor of single-payer
T.R. Reid…30-year veteran of the [Washington ] Post…is now the unpaid chairman of the Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care, and the public face and advocate for Proposition 69 on the Nov. 8 ballot.
…despite a meager budget for the campaign of about $800,000, most of which has come in the form of 4,000 donations averaging $160. That compares to the $4.5 million budget for the opposition, Coloradans for Coloradans. Some of the country’s biggest insurers, Anthem, UnitedHealthcare, and Kaiser Permanente, which have the most to lose if the measure succeeds, have given $2 million. Hospitals, PhRMA, and Cigna also contributed, according to CleanSlateNow.org
It’s not clear whether Reid’s group will prevail on Election Day. On a good day, state Senator Irene Aguilar thinks his side can win by 50.5 percent. On a bad day “we may break 40 percent.” Constant advertising reminding voters of the $25 billion tax increase is hard to fight, especially with little money.
But even if the campaign loses, it has softened the ground for another assault. Reid says for the next round—should they lose—he’d change the plan design…above all, the campaign won’t start until there’s $150,000 in the bank. “We started with no money. It’s amazing what we’ve accomplished. I wanted Colorado to be first.” But if Michigan, Oregon, Minnesota, or Washington, where there are serious ongoing discussions of ballot initiatives for single-payer plans, manages to pass something first, Reid is okay with that. “Obamacare is not the answer,” he tells me. “The answer will come from the states.”
Oops, ran out of edit time. Meant to thank Jeri-Lynn for the link.
Repeating for emphasis:
the answer will come from the states
If Colorado this round, maybe your state next?
Partying like it’s Moscow, 1937:
China’s Xi condemns ‘cliques’ and ‘conspiracies’ within party [Reuters]
Or Washington, 2016.
It’s wild over there.
Back in July, there was a story about coal mining so extensively that a village (in Anhui province) of 1,000 families (or residents, I can’t recall) mostly subsided, turning into a lake of (roughly) the size of the famed West Lake of Hangzhou, and was projected to increase 100 fold by 2020.
Washington 2016? Hardly. Can you seriously imagine an article that reads:
Na ga happen, because corruption is something that happens in third world countries, not in the pristine Acela Corridor.
Wouldn’t it be funny to see America through the eyes of third world visitors? There is this famous travelogue by a 19th century Bulgarian author, who traveled to the World Fair in Chicago. Naturally for those times, him and his BG companions first landed in NY city, where they chanced upon a Serbian who had immigrated some two decades earlier. So they start talking, with the Bulgarian (a self-admitted idealist) expressing his admiration for the American system of governance. The Serbian-American pours cold water on the author’s idealism and naivete, telling him that America has “the greatest corruption” and that “money is king.” The Serbian-American then proceeds to offer to exchange Grover Cleveland for Stambolov, the BG prime-minister at the time. Sadly, not much has changed in America more than a century later. Living in Chicago makes good, old-fashioned Balkan corruption seem quaint in comparison. Corruption in the US has been legalized, institutionalized, and has grown to be incredibly sophisticated and all-encompassing. USA! USA!
Indeed. I recently asked Bev Harris when the election fraud with voting machines started. She said, “always”. Out of curiosity she looked into election fraud with the mechanical level machines, and discovered convictions for election fraud connected to the machines “everywhere” going back as far as she looked–she started her investigation with the 1880s!
Is it just me or have the articles written about the latest FBI investigation missed the greatest threat to Mrs. Clinton and her future aspirations? Which is Huma Abedin being indicted or convicted, right?
She knows where all the bodies are buried in the Campaign and during Clinton’s time as SOS. If things look bad for her, why won’t she agree to turn witness for the state against Clinton? If you look at it from that perspective it means there are 3 ways this could realistically play out given the current state of affairs:
1- Clinton is indicted, either before or after she is elected based on the new evidence. She is then forced to step down from whatever she’s doing and her ability to fund raise/accept bribes is destroyed.
2-Clinton is not indicted, and regardless of whether she is elected, her ability to fundraise/collect bribes is shattered because her backers perceive she has no leverage to accomplish any of their goals.
3-Huma is indicted or put in hot water, and decides the better route to life is to act as a witness against her long time mentor and write a tell all book about the entire sad affair. The chatter about the slate of investigations coming for her after that ca uses her to step down or resign from whatever she’s doing and her ability to fund raise/accept bribes is destroyed.
I don’t see this ending well for Mrs. Clinton no matter how this election turns out. But maybe I’m just seeing things through my biased lens and the situation is not that bad for Clinton inc.?
Anyone else have thoughts on where this goes after the Election win or lose for Clinton?
Hillary has the political pull to get a pardon from 0bama if need be.
Her exquisite dilemma is the timing. If the details of those 650,000 emails are not released by Jan 19th, it will be highly revealing if Hillary feels obliged to seek a pre-emptive pardon despite not knowing the evidence against her.
It looks much worse than pleading the Fifth.
But would he pardon her? He doesn’t like her at all. And he’s very protective of his legacy. He is also very popular right now. Wouldn’t pardoning Hillary screw all that up and reduce his ability to fund raise too?
Hard to say. But Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, despite it probably costing him re-election.
Lots of people have lots of chips to call in, including 0bama’s involvement in some unsecured correspondence with Hillary himself.
Most likely, 0bama will follow instructions, as he always has.
To this day, I think that Ford cut a deal with Nixon.
Why? Because back in the day, Nixon was feared the way the Clintons are now. I think that Ford was in a position similar to the one that Sanders may have been at the end of this year’s primaries. As in, Sanders (and Ford) were threatened.
Wouldn’t it be funny if he pardoned her, and then post presidency he was convicted of mishandling security material on the basis of whats in the emails?
hmm. The Law of the Elite – “Pardoned until proven guilty.” And afterwards too. It looks like a get out of jail free card!
If one is pardoned, can one be compelled to testify against others? You’d be in contempt if you refused, right?
I think it is more advantageous for Qbama to sink the entire Clinton apparatus. This easy step leaves room for him to recreate the Clinton business plan in his own image and without the faultlines in the Clinton Foundation/Global Initiative etc.
He could give a token pardon to the $hillary for public records preservation and leave her to swing for the rest. He does like to look good. Not totally corrupt that is.
You know the End Days are upon us when Clint Eastwood has something lucid to say: We’ll know the extent of Hillary’s health issues when she uses them to stay out of jail.
https://twitter.com/EastwoodUSA/status/793814061536378884
Huma commits suicide with three bullets to the head.
You need to watch “Weiner” the docudrama. I recommend it to everyone since the recent revelations of emails concern Huma Abedin.
More a “The Devil Wears Prada” role.
They would do that to roll up a crime ring. I don’t see an appetite to ‘get’ Hillary, despite the howls from the FBI rank and file. They might just take Huma and Weiner and call it a day.
Once she is in office, she can probably postpone any prosecution for her term, and impeachment would typically hang on crimes committed while in office.
Whatever became of Charles Ortel’s big series ofClinton Foundation exposes? I remember seeing the Exec Summary posted back in September with promises that the supporting documentation would follow shortly. It seemed like kind of a big deal at the time and there hasn’t been an update on his site since. A nothing-burger?
Yes, I’ve wondered about that, too. I remember his saying something about a piece of information becoming available that he needed to digest before publishing his findings, but that was a couple of months ago. It was my understanding that all of the “chapters” had been written, so that wasn’t the cause of any delay. Admittedly, I found it hard to believe that the Clinton mafia would allow his analysis to be published.
Well, thanks for the confirmation that it at least was not a figment of my imagination. He seems quite active on the twitter-verse, and is rather vocal in his derision of HRC, you’d think if he had some good dirt, he wouldn’t be sitting on it at this point. I’m not sure he’s widely read enough to do too much harm at the timescale we’re now operating on, but if his broader narrative had time to percolate through more widely read channels… who knows. Amy Sterling Casil’s posts about the Foundation and GCI on medium have good info but don’t seem to be gaining any traction. Ah well.
I think being on the receiving end of a Clinton ‘f*k you’ letter might have been the cause as he never published another word on his web page. Perhaps the message was chiseled in stone and would take some digesting. His silence was annoying at first and then I figured he had simply chosen a course of maximum survival. There are precedents for caution for people in his position.
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/793831278382428164
Peter Kadzik (Assistant Attorney General) notifies Podesta of specific testimony to the HJC and when to expect the emails will be published by State.
Alright, this is completely illegal right? How much longer do we have to do this? A compromised AG, Ast. AG, DNC head, DNC head again, campaign staff, Journos, pundits… my head hurts.
so will your wallet.
How big is the cabal?
How high up does it go?
Like I said ….. they ALL float in the gutter …
This rule is only a guideline, a policy directive, right? No prudent and reasonable prosecutor would ever bring charges, even if large “mistakes” were made. And certainly never against such distinguished and accomplished individuals.
It’s nothingburgers all the way down.
that Jacobin piece hit the nail on the head. it really put into words something that i have witnessed here in my wealthy DFW suburb. i couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
(and it made me think twice before putting on my yoga pants this morning!)
One wonders what will happen to the kiddies who get into those oh-so-competitive colleges. Especially when they get into The Real World and find that few people care about where they went to school. They’re more interested in what the precious snowflakes can actually DO.
The only thing about it that didn’t ring true to me is that in my experience its the ‘lower’ classes who use sportswear as a signifier (why else wear Nike and Adidas), not the ‘upper middle’ classes. Unless its to wear clothes that say ‘I do yoga, I definitely do not play basketball’.
I thought it was only Colorado.
My family grew up going for hikes in the mountains and parks back in the olden days(70’s). Jeans and good boots/shoes.
Now if I hike locally in above attire I’m judged a homeless person.
I will concede that when I was into riding a Mtn. bike, bike shorts were preferable to jeans for sure.
Clinton e-mail tarbaby addition 43150. I was wondering who from State was colluding with the Clintons. State knowing this e-mails was coming out and keeping Kadzik on staff is such an arrogant fu to the peasants.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/43150
[There is a HJC oversight hearing today where the head of our Civil Division
will testify. Likely to get questions on State Department emails. Another
filing in the FOIA case went in last night or will go in this am that
indicates it will be awhile (2016) before the State Department posts the
emails.]
Professional courtesy, DC style.
Without it, K Street wouldn’t exist.
The Clintons would be honestly shocked at someone thinking it’s unseemly.
Thanks, by the way, for the parrot! It reminded me of the one in Locke, which I must admit I’m frivolous enough to like better than anything else in the book.
Biden goes on record and starts peddling for post White House work. Screw the Secretary of State position, he is going to be a RayBan Model!
https://twitter.com/cspan/status/793851271199404032
One wonders of Comney put his hat in the ring for a higher post after his prior service and was rebuffed or feels he did not get his due.
i was thinking it was like a ddos attack to overwhelm the clinton campaign. incoming files, must scan and prepare responses. less time to deal with the fallout of the podesta emails and the huma problem. and speaking of fallout, one way to defeat an abm system is to confuse it with decoys.
How to DeDupe Hillary’s emails:
I’m pretty sure that when Hillary passed them on to the FBI she printed them rather than providing the actual eml emails. In the technical world this is called stonewalling. The Hillary printed emails cannot be tested against other emails, nor validated in any meaningful way. When she ordered the server wiped, it was to hobble the investigation by forcing them to be individually read and evaluated. The emails on Wiener’s laptop might be check-summed against the printed emails that are scanned into text files but there will be a lot of misses.
Probably better to focus on the trove that Wiener provided.
I wish I could believe that this actually had something to do with outing HRC but I feel fairly certain the FBI is going after the smallest fish they can find. The DoJ on the other hand simply wants their part of the vig. Payable in promotions.
Are you saying She is Too Big to Fail?
Too Big as in it involves a big group of people in the establishment, the status quo?
“If she is toppled, it will be the end of the world as we know it.”
Deep fried wiener being the special of the day.
Wiener is the weakest link.
IIRC, the FBI has the server(s) in it’s possession.
Chimp study…hanging with friends…life less stressful.
That’s why I donate to NC.
From the CNN article on Rendell:
So, observations (i.e. polls) do change those being observed.
“…all the news about the polls and stuff…”
You have to carpet bomb the beaches (not with biased polling there though) before landing on Normandy….soften up those dying Trump deplorable voters.
“Ride-Hailing Apps Have a Racism Problem MIT Technology Review”
again as the resident ex-uber/lyft jitney cab driver….duh.
The reality of the world is that if your app says that “Meghan” is requesting a ride, exceedingly good odds that she has different socioeconomic adjectives than “Jimena,” “Trayvon,” or “Jaydyn”
I picked up everyone, anywhere…cuz i try to be a bleeding heart, 18th century Enlightment-type and I needed the cash :)
ps, it was my experience that middle-aged white people had the greatest odds (say 5%) of having a pole stuck up their orifice. (black people = 0%; Hispanics = 0%)
…except Texans. Texan tourists–they were 100% awesome.
i heard some employees chatting at starbucks about uber and how well they were doing. i guess it could be true, or maybe being new at it they just aren’t factoring in wear and tear on the car and increased insurance, let alone if they get in a wreck that’s their fault, or with an uninsured driver. but from what i’ve read it’s pretty close to a minimum wage job when all the expenses are factored in, in most places.
“close to a minimum wage job when all the expenses are factored in, in most places.”
Ding, ding. Ask a random person to define depreciation.
possible to eek out a few more bucks by…
1—you use a reliable car w/ 100k+ miles on the odo—-minimizes depreciation expense, while you can use the IRS standard deduction.
2—you know enough about cars to internalize at least some of the costs of basic maintenance.
3—you have enough emotional intelligence to serve as a non-licensed therapist :) ..Seriously. I’ve gone through a lot of unsolicited emotionally heavy conversations. out of the blue.
If Donald Trump turned into a macaw, he would look like the antidote. Orange face, white around the eyes…
This just in: Iago from Disney’s Aladdin was Donald Trump in disguise
Re. Green Revolution — My longstanding take is that the chief ‘achievement’ of the GR was to give humankind a false sense of how many of us the planet can sustainably support, thus leading to billions more of us than would have been around otherwise, thus baking an even bigger catastrophe – both in overall-environmental and human-deaths terms – into the long-term outcomes cake. Am I off-base here with my Ehrlichean pessimism?
That wasn’t the impression I got from the article. Rather, it was set up as a masterful Rockefeller-spawned multiple profiteering game. What the article reveals is that when traditional farming methods were used in the post-colonial, pre-GR period, the land quickly increased its ability to produce. The nutritional shortages were not related to either growth in population. Rather they were connected to Colonial controls (including of land ownership), then in GR times there were financial and ecological constraints, among other things caused by the push to promote wheat at the expense of a range of various traditional crops, and the new wheat was only more productive when used with extensive irrigation and artificial fertilizers and large debt-financed farm machinery–all of which have caused fecundity problems and social unrest in the long term.
This is an inadequate summary–have a read and see if you retain your original theory.
The good news, if you will entertain the notion, is how quickly land productivity increases when traditional methods and crops are used again.