Kakapow! Rare world’s fattest parrot has record breeding season Jakarta Post
Decades of Neglect Threatened Notre Dame, Well Before It Burned WSJ
‘The weakest link’: Why your house may burn while your neighbor’s survives the next wildfire Sacramento Bee
Brexit
How close are May and Corbyn to a Brexit deal? Institute for Government
Brexit: Nancy Pelosi steps up pressure on UK over Irish border BBC
What the Corn Laws tell us about Brexit Britain World Economic Forum
Britain is once again the sick man of Europe Martin Wolf, FT
Journalist shot dead during rioting in Derry RTE and Four ATMs stolen in Meath, Antrim and Armagh overnight RTE. “It brings to at least 15 the number of ATMs stolen on both sides of the border in recent months, five of those south of the border.” Hmm. A little self-financing?
There is No Alternativelessness n+1. On German domestic politics.
Syraqistan
International rivalries are driving Libya towards war, UN warns FT
The Ultra-Orthodox Will Determine Israel’s Political Future Foreign Policy. What could go wrong?
India
Elections 2019: Can turnout numbers tell us if the BJP is likely to be re-elected? Scroll
India voter ‘chops off finger’ after voting for wrong party BBC
Indonesia election: Widodo declares victory amid dispute BBC
Jung lovers: BTS delve into psychology on their album, Map Of The Soul BBC. I didn’t know Jessica Jung was a published author as well!
China?
Safety demonstration:
【一线工人的保险帽和领导的保险帽】
近日有大陆工地民工，拿前线工人和领导的保险帽作比较，结果显示两者质量简直差天共地。
有行内人士质疑，国家对安全帽的质量是有严格规定的，但问题是，负责的单位有没有切实执行。#特供#阶级 pic.twitter.com/jJ46hcjq39— 自由亚洲电台 (@RFA_Chinese) April 15, 2019
Supervisor: Red (!). Worker: Yellow.
Greenpeace Study Shines Light on China’s Polluted Soils Sixth Tone
Building China: Why Does Chinese Architecture Favor Enclosure Over Openness? Radii
Assange
Sell Out: How Corruption, Voter Fraud and a Neoliberal Turn Led Ecuador’s Lenin to Give Up Assange The Grayzone
Massive pro-Assange protest hits Ecuador’s capital Quito Daliy Sabah (zagonostra). From wire services. Not sure how “massive.”
RussiaGate
The Mueller probe Associated Press
Robert Mueller Did Not Merely Reject the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theories. He Obliterated Them Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept vs. Dear Democrats: Mueller Just Handed You a Road Map for Impeachment. Follow It. Mehdi Hassan, The Intercept
The Mueller report is the opposite of exoneration Editorial Board, WaPo and Mr. Mueller’s Indictment Editorial Board, NYT
First Thoughts On The Mueller Report Release Moon of Alabama
What Mueller Found on Russia and on Obstruction: A First Analysis LawFare
Mueller completely dropped the ball with obstruction punt Andrew McCarthy, NY Post. Block that metaphor!
Trump Induces Hysteria. It’s Worth Resisting. Zaid Jilani, Forward
Will the Mueller Report Make the New Cold War Even Worse? Stephen Cohen, The Nation. Worth reading the Mueller Report through this lens.
New Cold War
The Official Skripal Story is a Dead Duck Craig Murray
Russia seeks Chinese support in developing Arctic shipping routes, promising long-term gas supplies in return South China Morning Post
Bernie Steals the ‘No More Wars’ Issue From Trump Patrick Buchanan, The American Conservative
The Saker interviews Dmitry Orlov Vineyard of the Saker
The Persisting Relevance of Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” Los Angeles Review of Books
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Chicago is Tracking Kids With GPS Monitors That Can Call and Record Them Without Consent The Appeal (JBird4049).
Who’s using your face? The ugly truth about facial recognition FT
737 MAX
Bjorn’s Corner: MCAS fix on the way Leeham News
Boeing ‘shielded’ from 737 Max order cancellations MarketWatch
Health Care
Private equity infuses healthcare with $63B investment Modern Healthcare
In the Bronx, AOC Advocates for a ‘VA for All’ The Nation (MR).
Neoliberal Epidemics
The Depths of Despair Among US Adults Entering Midlife American Journal of Public Health. “Results suggest that generally rising despair among the young adult cohort now reaching midlife that cuts across racial/ethnic, educational, and geographic groups may presage rising midlife mortality for these subgroups in the next decade.”
As Syphilis Invades Rural America, A Fraying Health Safety Net Is Failing To Stop It KHN. Everything’s going according to plan!
Class Warfare
The Captain Swing Riots; Workers and Threshing Machines in the 1830s The Conversable Economist
Uber and Lyft drivers say apps are short-changing wages while raising fares Guardian (SlayTheSmaugs). A team of programmes wrote the code; the managers approved it; the executives pocketed the gains. Disruption! Innovation!
Selfie Deaths Are an Epidemic Outside (Re Silc).
Planet’s ocean-plastics problem detailed in 60-year data set Nature
Antidote du jour (CK):
CK writes: “Here’s another lovely creature from Patagonia. So beautifully camouflaged!”
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
301 comments
Comments are closed.
Yves, how’s your cat?
I lost 2 good pets at age 10 and still mourn them 50 years later. So if you need a listener please e-mail as I understand.
My cat is 35. But she doesn’t move very much…/s
Oh that is so kind!
Gabriel is still hanging in there….not eating much at all, incontinence getting worse but still doing cat things like getting out in the corridor and wanting to be petted and play.
Antidote du jour :
Took me more than a minute to see it. Is it a wolf ?
Looks more like a coyote to me.
Surely there are no wolves in Australia; isn’t that how marsupials took such hold there, no natural predators?
Still not sure I see it but something furry looks to be just right of the tree.
Oh jeez, Patagonia. And it’s curled up to the left of the tree. A little llama?
as to Patagonia…
Whitney Webb over at MintPressNews has been doing a series of investigative/research reports on the
network of Billionaires who are buying up Patagonia with intent to privatize and separate from the State of Argentina.
This is part two, it has a link to part one. Long and interesting reads.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-owner-the-rise-of-eduardo-elsztain-and-the-coming-end-of-argentinas-democracy/256959/
The impunity that they have in building their Galt’s Gulch was a real shock. I suppose it shouldn’t be at this point, but it was nevertheless. Thanks for the second installment.
The fantasy that one can escape a maelstrom approaching seldom works, but I remember this one tale of a German who saw the writing on the wall in the mid 30’s, and made good his escape to Switzerland-securing citizenship there, where he & his family rid out the hellscape surrounding them geographically in some semblance of normal.
Me, i’d pick the 3rd worldiest country to hide out in, a place where services were scant and the populace was used to having less, a lot less.
There’s the slight issue of a regular white guy fitting into their realm, along with the idea that I relish where i’m ensconced, so i’ll never leave.
As the German experience showed plainly, all the money in the world avails one naught when pure power is deployed against one.
Buying property is not the same as holding on to it during chaos and crisis.
At least the Sierras are a defensible position.
I’ve hiked the Dolomites, and when you think of the idea of what went on there in WW1, it’s really a shock, as forests and mountains are generally off-piste for pissed off combatants. (your Kashmir may vary)
The key to battle in the High Sierra would be proficiency in moving large groups of soldiers off-trail sometimes over passes where you go carefully one by one laden with heavy packs, which would take a lot of training beforehand to make them comfortable in their surroundings.
Proximity to water is practically a given, and there is the issue of being surrounded by oceans of granite once above say 10k, which would make for excellent ancillary shrapnel, were the other side to mortar you there. The forest for the trees isn’t much better, as it’d be the Hürtgen Forest all over again, with shell bursts splintering the scene of the clime.
Have no fear. The 10th Mountain Division based in upstate New York is supposed to be quite good at that sort of thing. As an added bonus, the 10th is also trained for “Crowd Control.” So, if SHTF brings hordes of impecunious urbanites to the heights, the 10th can be the 10 Percent’s Division of choice.
Realistically, the rusticality of the region is it’s best defense.
Don’t do like Duke Leto’s troops and get bottled up in caves. Mobility is key.
True story here. I believe that there was one guy who, before WW2, saw the chaos coming and so left Europe to go to the quietest place that he could find – a tropical paradise in fact with friendly natives. The name of this tropical paradise that he chose? Guadalcanal!
On moving to a third-world country, John Michael Greer, Archdruid emeritus, says foreigners will be held responsible when things go south. Who thought Equador would change so radically?
Its amazing how effective an unlimited USAID budget can be at changing things.
It even covers the “consulting fees” paid when the IMF commits billions of US $s.
Westerners will be the first on the dinner plate.
How best to be served?
al Don’te
How about al Dante? That has an euphonious ring to it.
“Abandon every hype, who enter here.”
They have pre-ordered their copies of ‘How To Serve Man’
Ray Bradbury wrote a short story about it; “And the Rock Cried Out.”
As with true visionaries everywhere, he anticipated the feel of the future.
I still can’t see the blasted thing! It’s like Rachel from Friends when she’s shown the ultrasound image of her baby.
No, it’s standing on the downed tree to the right of the main tree, looking over its shoulder. Something like a coyote.
Australia’s mammals evolved right alongside the placental mammals, not separately. The continents were once joined, even Oz, to a single continental land mass called Pangea…350 million years ago (?) but all the major groups of land animals had appeared by then, including birds. Australia had plenty of predators, they just weren’t wolves or lions like the mammals in the rest of the world. The extinct Tasmanian Tiger is an example.
We were @ a hut on the Rees-Dart track in NZ (…a stunning walk combined with a side trip to Cascade Saddle, wow-wow-wow) and the backcountry huts are a wonderful way to meet the world, as typically Kiwis make up only 15% of the occupants and everybody else is on neutral ground…
There were Aussie & Kiwi brother-in-laws there, and it doesn’t take much to get somebody from the Lucky Country to get into a litany of lethal living things there that’ll set you six feet under, and another Aussie chimed in as well, it’s what they do.
Meanwhile the Kiwi bro in law was quiet as a clam, for aside from sandflies that’ll put the hurt on you (tip: buy ‘anthisan cream’ @ a chemist in NZ and apply to bites toot suite) there is nothing that can harm you in the land of the long white cloud.
There is a spider.
And watch out for stingrays.
Yes, spider!…but: During my only ever international vacation, in New Zealand, one of our many lovely B&B type hosts went into his storage shed for some scrap lumber for a project while we were staying with them, and he was bitten by a spider. Over the next several hours his hand swelled up like a grapefruit and he could do nothing but rock back and forth, softly moaning in pain. He said “we never used to have anything like this here, they recently came over from Australia”.
Sandflies in NZ, yeah. As I remember it, they wouldn’t bite as long as one was moving a bit, which made for some pretty funny human behavior. Man, I hated those things.
Looks like an Ent.
Yes, that is a murky wood, a proper haunt for ‘fangorlins.’
Maybe a Geoffroy’s cat?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffroy%27s_cat
A fox?
That would be my guess, as well. A fox, judging by the tail & proportion of it to its body.
Cool.
Darius, you’re correct. We came across 2 foxes that day, and they were none too shy.
Andean fox (zorro culpeo), perhaps?
I’m not very good at these things, I think I see something like a bear on the right of the tree, center frame…?
Take a look to the right of the tree. There is a tree lying on the ground in the background. The fox-like animal is standing on top of it and is framed by the first two moss covered trees. It is grey in colour so is hard to pick out at first. Hope this helps.
That image could have been plucked straight out of the lot immediately behind our house .. until the city, in it’s un-wisdom gave the go-ahead for the new property owner to completely log it off — all for a fist full of revenue $$ ..then .. to add insult to injury, new ferengi, er, owner .. proceded to log-n-scrape the lot in front of our propery, across the street ! … the same city whose council just last year pushed to reinstate national recognition as a Arbor Day City !!
Heavens to Murgatroid ..The Irony–it .. uh .. burns biggly !
I really miss those 2 × 2 blocks of forest ..
yes, thanks
Yes, fox. Thanks for the directions – don’t think I’d ever have spotted it otherwise.
I see a bear or somthing like it to the left of the tree.
The article on Embedded Internationalism (Open Democracy) ran also on NC yesterday.
A glitch in the matrix. I wanted to run that link about lethal selfies anyhow!
What do you think is the most common words uttered mid-fall from the last selfie?
“Goooooooot it!”
Jeff Foxworthy has a joke back in the 90’s that is similar and went, “What are the most common last words of a redneck? ‘Hey guys, watch this!’”
“Hold my beer.”
Geo,
Another, is “Here, hold my beer.”
The comments on GG are mostly scathing on his claim of obliterated. I was surprised. I really have no use for Medhi Hassan, cheerleading for impeachment.
The Intercept is turning into a bit of an odd duck. Still like Scahill’s podcast though.
The Intercept is frequently mainstream liberal in its bias. On Syria, for instance, while I agree that the Syrian government did terrible things, I would have expected a dissident lefty set of journalists to have covered our attempt at regime change much more critically than they did.
Th Intercept has some good pieces, but then, so does the NYT. I don’t expect much from either one even if the Intercept is better.
As for Russiagate, facts don’t matter. People who have invested three years in believing the most melodramatic spy novel stories about how Trump is Putin’s puppet aren’t going to be swayed by facts, including the fact that Trump’s foreign policy is not in alignment with Russia’s.
Even if Trump’s foreign policy is, as you say, “not in alignment with Russia’s” that doesn’t prove the Russians’ weren’t happy to help put him in power.
“that doesn’t prove the Russians’ weren’t happy to help put him in power.”
They obviously preferred Trump to Clinton. I am neutral on what they did, , but taking Russiagate claims at face value, it doesn’t justify the hysteria.. The social media material was a trivial drop in the ocean of nonsense Americans put out on political matters.
Now if the Russians did hack the emails, that mattered, but it mattered because the emails contained a large amount of newsworthy material about the cynicism of the Democratic Party. Mondoweiss just carried a piece about what we learned just on the subject of Israel.
If people really care about unsavory foreign influence on our politics, there would be investigations into how Israel and the Saudis and others influence both parties. Trump is obviously in the pocket of Netanyahu and Bonesaw. But hysteria over evil Russians is useful for justifying our Empire and nobody cares about anti Russian bigotry.
The Mondoweiss article I mentioned—
https://mondoweiss.net/2019/04/occasions-revelations-relationship/
Notice that in the hysteria about the dastardly Russians and the evil Assange we no longer hear anyone in the mainstream talk about what the stolen emails revealed. I noticed that back in 2016. There was a brief attempt at claiming they were fraudulent, but then it pivoted to how it was bad to use the material and then, soon after that, we only heard about how evil it was that the Russians had stolen the documents and interfered with our election, but people stopped talking about what was in the documents.
“I am neutral on what they did, “
I mean that I am uncertain about what is true and what isn’t true regarding what the Russians supposedly did. The intelligence summary that came out in early 2017 was a bad joke. Much of it was about the malign influence of Russia Today. If that was a fair sample of our intelligence community’s analytic capabilities then that should be a scandal in itself.
In theory there’s a vast expanse btwn Reagan and Carter, btwn Clinton and Bush, btwn Obama & Trump but in practice I’m having trouble seeing, feeling, or living it, I can’t imaging for the life of me the Russians would waste much effort on who the particular US president is.
Long time ago I read somewhere that for the USA the USSR serves the same role as The Devil did in the Holy Roman Empire. Perestroika/Glasnost proved a problem, but they got The Devil back. This is fun, if you’ll pardon a digression:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8XQbqZUkms
the russians likely preferred the guy who said there was an inordinate fear of communism in the united states to the alzheimer’s victim who joked about nuking the russians or planned for a survivable nuclear war “with enough dirt”.
The Russians, which is used as shorthand for very wealthy and hideously corrupt ruling class of the former soviet union, including Putin, are vaguely Fossil Fuel Oligarchs.
The Republican party is extremely pro Fossil Fuel and pro Oligarch.
That is entirely enough to explain their preference.
Democratic Party leaders simply cannot or will not admit that millions of Americans – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – simply hated HRC’s guts with the fire of 10,000 suns.
Regular NC readers know all the reasons. It still surprises me (after 35 years as a registered Democrat – last three as a Berniecrat though) how thoroughly the DNC and their minions have avoided this plain fact despite mountains of evidence.
Almost as surprising as Trump’s support among evangelical Christians and just as reasonable!
Re: DNC blindness
“None so blind as those who will not see”
Or maybe just that failing to sign on to the HRC gravy train meant being shut out from the anticipated post-election flow of Benjamins.
Plus, Clinton literally owned DNC at time. The DNC was bankrupt and Clinton financed their continued operation.
Cui bono or “follow the money” my standard advice to any and all questions about politics or power.
Lifelong habit of reading ancient Roman history reveals there is seldom anything new under the sun; watching America devour itself is, kinda, because as a nation and culture we’re still fairly young. O tempora! O mores!
Trump’s a family man. He’s proven that at least 3 times.
One must consider the potential Evangelical (Male) support for polygamy, based on the Bible’s teachings.
This is silly. There are people for whom outlawing abortion is a key issue, nearly all of them evangelical Christians, and Trump (with his Federalist Society advisors) has delivered for them; another Catholic conservative on the Court.
I don’t disagree. I voted against her in the primary vs obama in significant part because i knew a few boring ordinary people who literally started to salivate with hatred whenever they spoke about her. It was not smart to walk into that. (didn’t end up voting in her next primary, due to a move).
Sanders, however, was an equally problematic candidate in the democratic primary. Years refusing to join the party, far NE corner of one of the whitest bits of the US. Maybe Democrats more to the left could have been a bit more strategic there eh?
I’m still trying to find a valid criticism of Sanders in there.
Thank you.
> Maybe Democrats more to the left could have been a bit more strategic there eh
Presumably you would be able to come up with such a strategy? If so, what is it?
Clinton practically installed Yeltsin. A huge CIA operation.
Some say Clinton worked for the KGB. In that case, did it install Yeltsin, first, then, Putin later?
I myself doubt the Clinton-KGB link.
Clinton was working for the Chinese Communist Party.
I worked directly for Clinton at that time, more like a DNC op, not CIA. Money to be made after all.
Your point doesn’t prove anything. Are you on board for hand marked paper ballots?
What about getting rid of Pelosi who ignored the need to reauthorize the voting rights act during her first stint as Speaker despite GOP efforts to limit voting among minorities and the poor? Don’t you agree we need effective leadership in these perilous times?
Your refusal to call for such pressing changes leads me to conclude you’ve had too much vodka this morning, comrade.
Again, you know nothing about what I believe. I’m certainly not a Pelosi supporter.
Below I said I was for paper ballots.
You are just looking for a fight while hurtling insults that are absurd.
Pathetic.
Though its a bit mean spirited, Ivan, I’m making fun of your lack of reasoning and logic. Perhaps, its lost in translation from English to Russian?
> help
“Help” is doing a lot of work there, isn’t it? Here is the Internet Research Agency* meme that “helped” Trump by inducing me to join the Sanders cult:
That material like this is taken seriously, let alone as a casus belli for war with a nuclear power, shows that our foreign policy elites have lost their minds.
NOTE * Clearly in the clickbait business, not in the NGO “meddling” space at all.
The Intercept’s owner, Pierre Omidyar (owner of First Look Media), is a NeoCon who helped fund the US-supported if not US-engineered Ukraine putsch.
Which is why Glenn Greenwald’s “journalism” and Snowdon’s entrusting them with the NSA documents he stole is highly suspicious.
Also:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/fbi-whistleblower-on-pierre-omidyar-campaign-to-neuter-wikileaks/236414/
John, do you know the difference between “suspicion” and “facts”?
What “facts” can we really know with a 50 billion dollar a year secret national security state determined to keep everything from us,
Timmy?
So why did that organization miss the Russian interference?
Why aren’t James Clapper and John Brennan being investigated? If there was Russian interference, it seems like they dropped the ball. Or are you protecting KGB moles?
Your comment makes no sense.
But continue on with your nonsense.
Obviously you get a kick out of calling people who know nothing about traitors.
His comment makes complete sense (and in the context of the McCarthyite hysteria generated by liberal Democrats, so does the (ironic) question “Are you protecting KGB moles?”)
And if Obama knew “Russian meddling” was real, why the heck did he downplay it? Was he controlled by Putin too?
I thought Glenn Greenwald’s piece on the Mueller report was very good. The more I read, the more the pieces started fitting, clearing up a lot of my confusion on the subject. It was very well structured, proceeding from the core Russiagate allegations to the larger picture regarding the issues and players involved. Nothing seemed a stretch, but rather each point led logically to the next. Must read
The baseline, as we have forgotten in the ensuing uproar, was set by Clinton herself: She claimed, in debate, before millions of people, that Trump was, quote, a “Russian” “puppet.”
What the Mueller Report does show — subsequent watering down and walking back to “collusion” notwithstanding — is that Clinton’s baseline claim was false. More pointedly, Clinton’s claim was CT, which she and her supporters than amplified, damaging a very large number of liberal Democrat brains. Permanently damaging.* Even worse than that, she made a nuclear war with Russia more likely.
NOTE * Permanent in the sense that the brain damage is now a political reality, or to put it another way, a political asset class. Which Warren, to her shame, is now trying to leverage. (“Shame” because anybody who thinks we have the rule of law in the country — or would have it were Trump to be impeached — is living on Earth 2.)
Even if I have guessed wrong about the identity, Wikipedia says that the South American gray fox does an unlikely service to nature. It eats fruits and thus disperses their seeds.
I can see a standing coyote-type creature, a curled up cat, a lizard going up the right side of the tree, numerous insects here and there and if I stare long enough, I can see many, many other insects.
When I wave my hand, I see trails. No, not really, not even a flashback.
> When I wave my hand, I see trails
I hope they’re well-marked…
I had convinced myself that the camouflaged wildlife was Alien (right hand side of the tree, bang in the middle, browny-red skull).
‘The weakest link’: Why your house may burn while your neighbor’s survives the next wildfire Sacramento Bee
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ran up against the great paywall of Sacramento, so I couldn’t find out who the weakest link was, boo hiss.
Another fine winter-spring of clearing dead wood from the ground and on trees in apple-lachia, and lit around the 50th burn pile yesterday, with a few more to go before i’ll call it quits until next December. Everything is so verdant, green everywhere, it’d be nearly impossible to start a wildfire, but ask me again in August, when the surroundings become a ticking time bomb, only in need of a spark to light the fuse.
Here in the land of little rain after April, we may not get more than a scintillas worth until late October after a good drenching thus far, and 3-4 foot high wild grasses and wildflower leftovers all die back, as is their custom.
There being so much snow this year in the High Sierra, the combination of lots of it, and dangerous creek crossings as a result of meltoff, will not allow passage by foot above say 9,000 feet, until later in July.
Such a contrast to the worst drought winter, when in late January 2015 we did an overnight backpack to Alta Meadow, and then up to Alta Peak (11,204 ft) and back to our car. The view from up top was stunning, hell just being there @ that time, when there should’ve been a dozen feet of snow in our way and a dearth of dirt, made it memorable.
https://modernhiker.com/hike/hike-alta-peak-and-alta-meadow-in-sequoia-national-park/
Got it, a nothingburger of an article…
Giant Sequoia trees tended to shatter internally upon falling when they were logged circa 1900, so usage was limited to grape stakes, fence posts and the best use of all-roof shingles.
Sequoia wood doesn’t burn well, naturally fire resistant.
There’s a 6,500 sq ft mansion in Mineral King (7th photo down in the link) built in the late 1930’s that comes with it’s own Sequoia grove, and is powered by state of the art 1939 hydro from the river nearby. The design was inspired by the Ahwannee in Yosemite NP. All of the shingles came from a fallen Sequoia, where one fellow cut them all over the course of a summer.
http://aandeferry.blogspot.com/2008/08/kaweah-han-photos.html
FTA:
A landmark 2008 building code designed for California’s fire-prone regions — requiring fire-resistant roofs, siding and other safeguards — appears to have protected the Carrells’ home and dozens of others like it from the Camp Fire. That year marks a pivotal moment in the state’s deadly and expensive history of destructive natural disasters.
All told, about 51 percent of the 350 single-family homes built after 2008 in the path of the Camp Fire were undamaged, according to McClatchy’s analysis of Cal Fire data and Butte County property records. By contrast, only 18 percent of the 12,100 homes built prior to 2008 escaped damage. Those figures don’t include mobile homes, which burned in nearly equal measure regardless of age.
Camouflage is really more a trick of light and shadow in this case. Didn’t take me long to spot it.
Lambert is right. Stephen Cohen asks many of the most important questions concerning the Mueller report and Russiagate. As with other skeptics, his commentary is getting sharper over time. Now we have some of the answers — and we know by the reaction to the report’s release that nothing is likely to change.
Professor Cohen asks a rhetorical question…
Will the Mueller Report Make the New Cold War Even Worse?
The Report exonerates on collusion, leaves the door ajar on obstruction, confirms all of the Russia Russia Russia, Putin Putin Putin bullshit that Ms Maddow has built her career on and the MSM has been hyping nonstop for nearly three years.
And here we are:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/18/rumors-war-washington-is-looking-for-fight.html
These rapture-ready people are certifable .. why they’ve not been commandeered and placed into padded rooms is beyond me !
Polecat, just to point out that mentioned senators or representatives are not all rapture-ready people. War hawks, yes. Follow the money.
The only country which is actively seeking to destabilize world order is the US
Wish it weren’t so. I’d rather holiday in Russia
Projection much, right? But seriously, I think these people believe that no matter how provoked, Putin will blink rather than risk war. A conventional war with Russia, they figure, the U.S., with all its allies, will win. And they believe that we (the U.S.) can accomplish regime change before that even happens and/or Russia goes nuclear. We may soon see, unfortunately, if they are right.
I periodically quote this:
The US military is capable of destroying a civil society (that may even be its prime function). However, as far as taking and holding ground, the US military has lost in Vietnam, lost in Iraq, lost in Afghanistan, lost in Syria, and seemingly can’t even invade Venezuela, on the Caribbean, an American lake. Russia is not Panama or Domenica or even Libya. If we went to war with Russia, and managed to keep the war conventional, I wouldn’t be surprised if we lost. I wouldn’t even be surprised if we lost a proxy war. Because that’s what happens to imperial powers in decline.
Where’s the answer to this question Mueller?
What information was being sent back and forth between a server in Trump Tower belonging to the Trump organization and Alfa Bank in Russia?
https://teapainusa.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/major-alfa-bank-trump-tower-breakthrough/
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
I thought that that server was connecting with the ones that had Podesta’s emails on them. You know. The ones that the Democrats refused to let the FBI inspect to see what was really going on. Or maybe it was just talking to that server in a basement in in Chappaqua, New York. It all gets so confusing.
This has nothing to do with the Podesta emails.
Please read the articles if you want to know what this is about.
That story is years old. Don’t you think that if there was something to it, that the Democrats and the FBI would be nailing Trump’s hide to the barn door over it. Wouldn’t you be hearing about it these years? Wouldn’t there be a place earmarked at the Smithsonian for that particular server? Yes, there was treason involved but it wasn’t Trump. It is members of the intelligence community, the FBI, Democrat operatives, members of the media and a host of others. Pushing the US to get into a conflict with a nuclear power just because their ‘choice’ did not win in 2016 is out and out treason and they should be clearing out a wing at Leavenworth for them.
Many of his crimes are years and even decades old. So? That means they didn’t occur?
He’s managed to evade all of his crimes so far. So I don’t see how what you say means it was investigated thoroughly and then prosecuted if it was a crime.
Look, let’s cut to the chase before we go on and on about this. Donald Trump is President of the United States. He will be in the job until at least the 20th January 2021. Get over it. If people choose to chase after him about these stupid conspiracy theories and not after the stupid laws that he has been passing and the cretins that he appoints into power, then you will help him be in office until 20th January 2025. It is that simple.
I think the kids call that a “sick burn”.
Sums it all up.
More like refusing to see the facts as plain as the nose on your face.
What exactly did the Russians do? Some Twitter memes? Clickbait to drive traffic? That failed as a commercial proposition?
I confess to not having enough interest in the Mueller report to read the coverage. What with all the other stuff going on. US interference, to put it mildly, in Venezuela, to name just one example among legions.
I did read Moon of Alabama. Good rundown.
so “buff bernie” swayed the election, when david brock couldn’t? maybe clinton should have hired putin instead of brock, i guess. jesus, i remember when democrats at least nominally supported investigating and regulating the intel community, and didn’t worship propagandists like mueller.
David Brock worked against the Clintons in the 90’s and failed. He saw the light and began working for the Clintons leading the Clintons to two defeats.
These are facts. The only conclusion is David Brock is the handler for all Russian operations in the United States. “john” by referencing “nose” is clearly leading a code hidden in plain sight to alert other Russian agents he is one of them by listing the famed short story “The Nose” written by a Russian.
Or David Brock is a GOP mole.
There is also the observation of this identity:
The D party = the R party.
And there is not a genuine second party at this time.
In that case, he is also a D mole.
Thank you, Rev.
+1
Democrats know that if they don’t talk about anything of substance then once Trump is gone they can keep all his policies (just like with “W”) and still claim to be “resisting”
I’ve seen this movie before.
There was absolutely no crime involved in what you are linking to. It is absolute nonsense and was debunked a long time ago. You are the one who is refusing the recognize facts here.
That server pinging the Russian bank was from a marketing firm once hired by Trump: https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/411209-move-over-grassy-knoll-the-trump-russia-bank-tale-joins-unproven
Can John see the nose on his own face?
Not without a mirror. But as we know, self-reflective liberal Democrats are thin on the ground.
> He’s managed to evade all of his crimes so far.
Lol. (I find myself using “lol” a lot these days, for some reason. I enjoyed this comment at the FT:
NC, and the NC commentariat, do not look kindly on commenters who drop a few old links and say “Go read these links! Refute what is in them, if you can!” State your claims and back them with evidence if you don’t want to look like a troll (or an operative).
My tin foil hat leads me to believe Bush loyalists wanted Jeb? and tried to find something on his opponent(s) knowing Republicans are almost certain to have committed numerous felonies. They couldn’t simply spy on Trump because they wanted to but had to have reasons. Clinton loyalists naturally glommed onto the excuse for the perceived Clinton victory but by small margins. Obama’s reluctance during the matter because even he could deduce this whole thing was out of control. Then of course with Hillary’s loss, the excuse for looking for dirt on Trump just gave everyone an excuse especially an excuse that would play with low information donors and committee people who might stop being low info voters and reexamine the state of Team Blue.
The tone of your comment is quite ‘off’ from what I believe is appropriate to this forum. Are you some variety of troll — or did you just get up on the wrong side today?
Yes. I personally don’t mind legitimate questions from different perspectives. But insisting on “evidence” that was debunked *in the mainstream media* long ago arouses suspicion.
Trump had an Account at the bank, anticipating The Trump Moscow Hotel?
What manner of connection? Direct phone line, or Internet connection?
If internet how does one distinguish between connection capability (and account at the Bank), used intermittently, and a 7×24 connection?
Your potential accusation lacks substance and detailed facts.
Dont feed the trolls
The FBI looked into it in late 2016:
Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia NYT
If the FBI had found something nefarious, they would have shouted about it from the rooftops.
The above-linked article is actually quite interesting from the perspective of it having been published one week before the election. Obama was still president, serious people were convinced that Clinton would win, Comey was the FBI Director, and Strzock and Page were having an affair and sending each other texts about an “insurance policy”. Seems like it was a lifetime ago.
I thought that it turned out to likely be a spam email marketing server.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-the-story-connecting-russia-to-donald-trumps-email-server/
Yes, that’s what it was. /s
Actually, the FBI “spent weeks examining computer data” from the server, discovered that Trump and a Russian bank were engaged in a nefarious election-related scheme, and then decided to cover it all up. Comey, Strzock, McCabe, Page, and others in leadership positions at the FBI were so enamored with the idea of Trump becoming president that they just couldn’t bring themselves to do anything that would harm his chances of winning the election. Lol.
Link
I don’t want to pile on here, but the word “Link” is not sufficient to create a link. You must also provide a URL.
Russiagate really does make people stupid. How many of your braincells has it killed?
Name calling without producing any evidence of your stance makes you look like your two brains cells aren’t rubbing together too well.
Like that reply? Because that’s all your reply was.
If you kids don’t stop fighting, i’m going to stop this blog*, and pull over until you settle down.
* remember how an hour in the car seemed like 6 when you were 7, and now 6 hours on the internet feels like 1?
Buddy, any number of people (including myself in a comment that hasn’t appeared yet), have pointed out that there is nothing whatsoever to the links you provided, and you continue to offhandedly dismiss them without providing any further evidence of your own other than the unfounded claims you posted to begin.
Trump does lots of bad s*%t. Point that out rather than concentrating on completely unfounded conspiracy theories promoted by some of the absolute worst people on the planet. Problem is the establishment agrees with all lot of the bad stuff Trump does and would like to get credit for it themselves. If they impeached or imprisoned Trump for his actual crimes they whole lot of them would be going down with him.
So just as vapid and void as anything you’ve posted then?
If you were arguing in good faith you’d support your assertion with evidence or sources of your own. But we all know that’s not what’s going on here. You’re not persuading anyone, you’re poisoning the discourse. Which is common among Russiagaters, who think all they have to do is repeat themselves louder for others to buy their nonsense.
That doesn’t work among thoughtful people.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-the-story-connecting-russia-to-donald-trumps-email-server/
“These DNS records alone simply cannot prove that any specific messages were sent at those times. In fact, they can’t really prove anything at all, and certainly not “communication” between Trump and Alfa. This cannot be overstated: No one, not Tea Leaves, not his academic peers, and not Franklin Foer, can show that a single message was exchanged between Trump and Alfa.”
Hillary Clinton operatives pushed now-debunked Trump-Alfa server conspiracy, testimony reveals
Whoa, Associated Press. Everybody knows they’re Kremlin-adjacent.
Help me. It isn’t against the law to do business in Russia or to communicate with Russians, even before you get to the fact that this was merely the Trump Organization having been spammed.
Better trolls, please.
We don’t know. Maybe that is part of the counter-intelligence investigation? Would love to know.
Re: Mueller report
I kindof liked yesterday’s headlines on politico etc, “Mueller can’t prove that no obstruction took place”.
Nice standard of evidence that can apply to all conspiracy theories.
Russiagater’s seem totally unfazed tho.
I must say, all that has gone on shows that Chris Mooney’s “The Republican Brain” was one mistaken brain fart. “The Reality Based Community” on which the contrast turned turns out to have existed merely in Chris’ reductionistic-fevered brain.
re: In the Bronx, AOC…
Ocasio-Cortez is the most effective communicator on the progressive side–certainly among those in Congress. She knows how to use language that is easy to understand and quickly cuts to the heart of an issue:
—“On Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez broke from party orthodoxy. She offered a full-throated defense of the agency and made clear whom lawmakers are really serving with the new legislation: “They are trying to fix the VA for pharmaceutical companies, they are trying to fix the VA for insurance corporations and, ultimately, they are trying to fix the VA for a for-profit health-care industry that does not put people or veterans first.”
“If we really want to fix the VA so badly, let’s start hiring, and fill up some of those 49,000 [staff] vacancies,” Ocasio-Cortez continued, as nurses in scarlet scrubs and veterans roared back in agreement.”—
OAC narrates a Green New Deal video 7.5 minutes great artwork, compelling narrative. We live in the era of Narratives…
https://theintercept.com/2019/04/17/green-new-deal-short-film-alexandria-ocasio-cortez/?utm_source=The+Intercept+Newsletter&utm_campaign=dc60b6ce22-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_04_17_GND&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e00a5122d3-dc60b6ce22-122112921
Are all narratives evil?
Jefemt, we watched that Green New Deal video yesterday on Democracy Now! Narratives are evocative and powerful ways to communicate ideas. It is great and masterfully created. The artist is interviewed.
Personally, I think the artwork is lovely. Clearly, its aspirational, and tuned to the Sunrise Movement demographic. I don’t take it seriously as a policy document; rather, it’s a rarefied form of political ad (like “morning again in America”). Technically, it’s very interesting, and I wonder if we’ll see more such narratives.
“the most effective communicator on the progressive side”
Yes. Which is why she (with Omar, Sanders and Warren not far behind) is being so
relentlessly targeted by right-wing and corporate friendly media. Check out
https://nypost.com/search/AOC/ and
https://www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?q=AOC
I don’t know if she did (but hope so) mention the a smaller military would allow for fewer veterans in the future*.
Then, we would not need that many nurses either.
*and fewer ventures.
Maybe there wouldn’t be a need to wait, to then hurry-up and bury a loved one in a military cemetery, either.
I received a phone call today from a friend saying another friend’s husband had passed following a long illness.
She had to make an appt at the military cemetery for his burial at least nine days after his death.
She will then be allowed only15 minutes for the actual burial. It seems they’re backed-up.
She was happy to find a nice coffin at Costco(!) for only $1,000, at least.
I had no idea they apparently offer quite a collection of them.
What a sad world we now live in, as I often feel I was born in the wrong century…
As a long time America watcher (50+ years), I am amused and bemused by Russiagate. First of all, given US interference with elections abroad, it is no surprise that any foreign power would take advantage of US openness to return the favour. Second, if a foreign power understands the American electorate better than its oldest political party, someone in America should be worried. Third, given that there has never been the slightest variation between the Democrats and the Republicans in US foreign policy since the loss of the Vietnam War, why would any foreign power care about which party actually won the White House?
And then there is the logic: if the Russians truly interfered, why would they have waited until the Democrat party selected the most disliked nominee in its (recent) history? Logic suggests that Hillary’s selection was also orchestrated by outside powers, perhaps to the same degree as Trump’s. At the very least, the question must be asked.
Finally, there is the question of qui bono. As I see it, the Trump presidency has been the gift that keeps on giving — for all 10%ers, but especially Democrat donors, politicians and insiders. They get their wish list (tax cuts, giveaways, the appointment of horrible judges, and “austerity”) AND surging donations to keep the party apparatchiks fully employed and well-off enough to do anything to keep the income stream going.
Everything is going according to plan.
Our most important policy with regard to a fossil fuel oligarch is our energy policy and climate change denial. The second most important policy is probably ensuring that international financial regulation is loose enough for their looting.
I’m sure what is usually thought of as foreign policy is a factor, but what is really primary is keeping the world as hooked on oil and gas as possible.
You capture much of my own amazement at Russiagate’s long-legs.
In retrospect I have been similarly stumped by the Bill Clinton impeachment proceedings. He gave the the 10%ers all they could hope for in his Presidency..
The yellow hard hats were made in China, but where are the red ones from?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjPau5QYtYs
I used to work in a motorcycle shop, we sold inexpensive polycarbonate helmets that didn’t fracture and expensive fiberglass helmets that did. The explanation was that by absorbing the impact (and breaking in the process) the fiberglass helmet did a much better job protecting your head. The polycarbonate helmets passed most of the energy of the impact right on through.
So I’m not sure which helmet, red or yellow, is actually the safest.
Are we saying that not all plastics are bad?
What natural materials would work better?
Steel? Wood? Cardboard? Cork?
The latter is likely to be more shock absorbing.
That video from China was very revealing, & excellent. Wow. ‘A picture is worth…’
If only they had a union & safety regulations…
Proof, perhaps, that the more we think we’re different, the more we realize we’re the same? (as in being nothing more than a producer of products with little regard for worker safety, while those profiting from the laborers have all the protection).
The maddening thing about a race to the bottom, is there is no acknowledged finish line.
i think the finish line is when the coyote finally hits the canyon floor, and then the acme locomotive falls on him.
The trick is to be able to hold one’s breath and to exhale at the correct rate when reascending. No mean feat.
But there is a finish line in the race to the bottom is…Death.
As the Church preached “You will get your reward in the afterlife,” and we, the Church, know this because we’ve never had a complaint.
Why have the Republicans refused to renew election security funding in the face of Russians hacking into 39 states’ election systems?
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-election-security-funding-russian-meddling-20180718-story.html
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/13/15791744/russia-election-39-states-hack-putin-trump-sessions
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/russian-breach-of-39-states-threatens-future-u-s-elections
The DNC has you working overtime.
The pertinent questions is why haven’t Democrats demanded clear hand marked paper ballots. Especially since the same clowns lost to Shrub in 2000 because of election irregularities, one would think Democrats might want unhackable solutions that can be observed. Unless of course, this is about deflection from the same pack of lovers who lose to dimwitted Republicans.
Absent calling for hand marked paper ballots, you really leave an election open to tampering and any reforms prior to 2020 would be handled by Trump as the President. If you thought Trump was a plant, why would you want him to be the guy in charge of reforms that aren’t secure?
John or should I say Ivan, are you a Russian plant trying to prevent sensible election reforms?
I have been pretty happy with the voting machines that we use in our county in NYS. You handmark a paper ballot, put it into an optical scanner that electronically tabulates the results, and then stores the paper ballot inside it. The paper ballots are available for a hand recount. Election results always seem to be able to be tabulated within a couple of hours after the polls close. The ballots are pretty clear (although too many party lines) and I can’t recall anything remotely like Broward County shenanigans.
The optical scanner is the weak link in that method. Anything using electronics is capable of being hacked. Straight hand handling is the only fully transparent method. All sides involved can have observers watching every single step of the process. Unless, of course, we define a pair of human eyeballs as ‘optical scanners.’ Then we only have to worry about the ‘tabulators’ involved.
IMO optically scanned hand marked ballots are good enough. They can be recounted by hand. And both random and anomaly targeted hand checks could be used to verify that the machines are functioning correctly.
I do believe that hand verification is usually not done, however.
Hand count is also a good method.
They aren’t good enough because its about stealing close elections too.
Oh well, they can check it later. That’s nice, but what is the pragmatism of maintaining an observed chain of custody for two months when you really just need one day? Are campaigns going to keep people on top of these ballots for two months or are they going to wind up in a closet with a key held by that woman denying marriage certificates to gay couples? The answer is the latter.
No, you don’t check later. You check during the machine count so that you can react to a problem. Statistics tell you how much hand verification you need.
With that I believe the weakest links are elsewhere.
So if you are checking during the machine count, why bother with the optical scanner at all?
It just seems like an additional cost at that point.
You are assuming that a 100% hand count is cheaper than a machine count with what? Maybe 5% hand verified.
I’m not willing to make that assumption. But I don’t think its implausible.
So we need “the cheapest” voting count available? With that set of priorities, I’d forget about the democracy bit.
Ballots in the UK counted entirely by volunteers. So why should there be a cost?
> IMO optically scanned
No, they aren’t. Digital must be removed from the equation entirely. What is to stop the scanner from sending one set of figures to its counter, and another to the printer?
Bingo. But the chain of ballot control can be observed and campaigns can dispatch monitors, and with cameras on our phones, monitoring is so easy. If it’s an expected close election or the polling is flawed, stealing 5% might not produce irregularities sufficient enough to be examined.
I’ve always believed claims about Rove trying to hack the 2008 election. It’s just he couldn’t steal enough. I’ll note the #resistance has conveniently forgotten the efforts of Jeb, Rove, and Harris. Shrub then declared Putin had a good heart. The leading Russian-gate thought leaders include stalwart Bush or should I say Putin loyalists.
funny I vote the same way in CA and election results seem to take a long time to be tabulated, it’s never until the next day and if close, sometimes it’s a month, sometimes not at all.
My city does the same and I have participated in a recount of ballots like this, personally counting them by hand.
What we discovered is that the hand count showed more votes than the optical scan count because human beings are better able to infer a voter’s intent than the machines are. For example the machine would not count an oval with an ‘x’ through it as valid because the oval was not completely filled, but a human being would.
In a democracy everyone deserves to have their vote counted and machines simply do not do that, even the best ones.
absolutely. Hand marked paper ballots publicly counted is the way to go. You’re on board for this, right?
I absolutely am.
Paper ballots. Counted by hand. In public.
Period.
Or the American people have no way of knowing at this point if our elections are not stolen
Vote-by-mail, archivable paper ballots, able to sustain more than one round of recounts…WA State has had it right for years, full stop. Election for Gov. in 2004 went through two automated (machine) recounts, then a third manual tally, with the winner – Christine Gregoire – decided by 129 votes out of ca. 2.7 million ballots cast. Try that in Florida…ROTFLOL!
Sadly, hand marked ballots counted in public are highly flammable:
Iraq election ballot warehouse catches fire in Baghdad ahead of recount [ABC]
Not to mention that the Brooks Brothers riot was a proof of concept for shutting down any recount.
Hand marked ballots counted in public may be necessary, but they’re not sufficient for honest elections.
Oh for Gaia’s Sake ! .. What’s wrong with you people –it’s hand marked Fired CLAY Tablets !!
Reliable for millenia …. If it worked for Hammurabi, then it should work for us, no ?
I know that you were only kidding but you are not far off the mark in reality. The ancient Athenians used broken pottery fragments of people that they wanted ostracized and many of them still survive-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracon
The Ostracons, the shadowy judicial branch of the Transformer’s society.
Really though, I suspect that ostracons are the genesis of the poetically descriptive phrase; “Feats of Clay.”
They’ve had hand marked paper ballots in the UK forevah and I don’t recall this problem ever occurring. You need to watch vids of UK elections. The ballots go into secure boxes which are in public view, are transported to a public station in public view (the whole thing is regularly videoed), carried to the counting place, which is usually a public school gym, where the ballots are opened and counted with officials of the various parties hovering right over the people handling the ballots.
And how would there be a need for a recount with independent people closely supervised making a count? The only time I could see anyone asking for a recount would be if the result was extremely close and you’d expect the recount to occur immediately.
Hmmm, there is a vast cultural difference between the US and the UK. Rudyard Kipling pointed it out in a succinct manner.
And the UK is no bastion of democracy, because votes in the Commons are not well reported to constituencies, that is accountability is weak.
The best model I’v e read about appears to be the Swiss.
Oh, come on. Totally irrelevant to the point being made. This is about ballot counting methods, not about the entire friggin’ political system. Shifting the grounds of argument is bad faith.
Yves’ description is exactly how it’s done in Italy, once you experience it you see it’s brilliant, it’s like watching some long lost antique craft producing something better than anything made today. Nothing’s foolproof but it’s way more robust and reassuring than digital, and cheap to boot, but you do lose the lucrative contracts and kickbacks to Diebold. What amazed me as a techno-indoctrinated American is how fast the counting goes, Italy has the national results up on TV in a few hours after the pols close, exactly the same as the USA with all its mega buck techno wizardry. As for difference btwn EU and USA, we must have used paper ballots for most of our history?
Ah, but the ballots were essentially punched for that Brooks Brothers ‘riot’ aka bull shit PR for stopping the count.
So here’s the response to anyone bringing up that: “no one is looking for hanging chads anymore, and this way no machine can change a human’s vote, something there are multiple reports of happening.”
I was the Democratic nominee for Congress in Kentucky’s 2nd District last year, planning on running again. Last weekend I was visiting my 32 year old nephew, discussing elections, and his girlfriend said that young people would all vote if it were by a secure app on their phones. Another friend agreed, saying his biggest issue in voting is choosing the time to vote, between his schedule and the crowds at the polls.
Hmmmm. Most of us do banking on phone apps. Why not voting?
Best…H
The easier it is to vote the more people will vote. The more people that vote the harder it is to control the outcome.
Difficult to design a system that simultaneously
a) ensures the person voting is in fact the actual person
b) ensures that the vote remains anonymous to the public (also ensuring that a “fixer” cannot watch over the shoulder as their “mark” votes (a throwback to the good old days of Party Bosses)
Designing a fair tamper-proof voting system is complicated.
Mandatory, paid national holiday, except for poll workers who get paid double-time (or some equivalent), if we truly consider voting to be important.
How much?
Human nature is such that the bigger the pay*, the higher the turnout.
*Winning poltiicians get paid (losing ones too, in not a few cases). So, why not the judges (or voters)? Money makes the world go round.
a mandatory paid holiday that actually applies to everyone would literally be the first of it’s kind, because such doesn’t exist even for xmas and the 4th of july at present (ask contractors if they get paid for those days off).
You do know about the content of the Assange and Snowdon releases of the national security state right?
Secure app is funny. Even when I type it.
Shouldn’t we have a national holiday to allow people to vote in person on hand marked paper ballots? Bernie has advocated for a national holiday to encourage citizens to vote. https://www.businessinsider.com/is-election-day-a-national-holiday-2016-11
They shouldn’t be banking on their phone. Voting is even more important than banking.
Agreed. This whole train of thought is more of the cult of disruption by sillycon valley.
Just pay us, we’ll figure it all out after the IPO.
Banking has an entire built in error protecting and reversible bureaucracy that is used millions if not billions of times each day.
Voting is done once a year. To expect that county boards of election and their *massive* budgets can even come close to the same security is just dumb.
It took banks 10 years of daily use to perfect atm’s to the point where they could be used outside of banks.
But phones, with their massive privacy and security issues will be AOK. There’s an app for that.
Plus the security issues in banking are completely different than in Internet voting. All you need to do with banking is authenticate (is this person allowed to access this account?) With Internet voting, you need to make sure the person who votes is entitled to vote and votes only once. With banking, you can be pretty sure no one might give their credentials to a third party. Some people don’t value their vote much and might be happy to give or sell their vote to someone else. Now that can happen with polling station voting too, but making it easier and anonymous facilitates fraud of all sorts.
Because some of us A) value our privacy and B) don’t trust our “smart” phones.
Hand marked paper ballots.
Publicly counted paper ballots and a paid holiday on election day. The day should be 24 hours, say midnight to midnight GMT,.
Were you paid to write this tripe?????
We’ve posted on Internet voting ad nauseum in the context of CalPERS. It’s terrible. ~99% if the security experts in the world who’ve looked at it deem it to be unacceptable for reasons I’m not going to waste my time repeating (go read our posts!!!) and the only reason it isn’t 100% is that the other 1% is trying to make a buck from it.
Oregon’s mail-in ballots make it very easy, and in fact have raised participation. They also encourage thoughtful voting, since it’s done at leisure at home. Personally, I drop our ballots in a box at the courthouse, rather than mail them in.
Provides hand-marked paper ballots that are stored for 5 years, in case questions come up. The counting depends on the county, but it is in public and at a central location – no precincts wiring in numbers.
I can see potential security issues, notably if the ballots are mailed, but so far only one case of cheating (by filling in unvoted lines – for Republicans, as it happens) has been caught. It’s a great system, and very voter-friendly. Security might be more of an issue in some states.
From Bloomberg:
Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.
Who are these “people?”
I despise Trump, but this Russian BS has been nothing but the weakest of sauces from the outset.
Reality Winner was sent to prison by the Trump regime for 5 years for leaking an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Tell her how weak it is.
I have a lot of sympathy for Winner, but that report was a nothingburger. The most crucial information – whether or not the GRU was responsible for the spear-phishing attacks in question – was cited as an “analyst judgement”, while other information in the report received the “confirmed information” designation. In other words, the NSA could not, and the report did not, confirm that the GRU was responsible. Anyway, true believers gonna true believe, so please carry on Russiagatin’.
Why would you change anything if the current way of doing business has brought you great success?
Well the Republican governor of Florida did remove Broward County election supervisor Brenda Snipes.
Probably for the same reason that the dominant Democrat faction doesn’t support hand-marked paper ballots, hand-counted in public.
Control of the ballot (who’s on it, and how it’s counted) is the sine qua non of any political party, and controlling the count can be done far more easily digitally than on paper.
I wonder if this bank robbery to-go thing in Ireland might catch on elsewhere?
“You can’t rob a bank on charm and personality.” Willie Sutton
“you can get further with a kind word and a gun, than just a kind word” attributed to al capone.
Think a new version of the Robin Hood narrative is coming soon. Perfect timing .
To be less oblique, I assumed militant factions were raising money to buy arms, explosives (and cops). That’s what I mean by the “self-financing” joke.
“The Captain Swing Riots; Workers and Threshing Machines in the 1830s”: ‘The Captain Swing riots are thus one more example, an especially vivid one, that new technologies which cause a lot of people to lose a way of earning income can be highly disruptive.’
That term – “highly disruptive” – sounds so innocuous. The reality was very much different. For centuries men had been earning money threshing to get them through the bitter winter with and when these threshing machines were introduced, they had nothing to earn money for rent or even food. Worse if they had family to support. Workhouses did not exist as such yet so these men would have been forced to ask for parish relief. As it was often landowners and the like who ran things and did not want to see expenses rising, the inclination was to try to refuse such charity applications. But wait – there’s more.
There were a surplus of agricultural workers in England at the time while there was a dire shortage of the same in the Colony of New South Wales. So, Special Commissions were sent out to convict who the could and before long, nearly 500 workers were aboard three separate ships taking them to the ‘far ends of the world’ and most of whom would never return. The reason that I happen to know any of this? Because one of those 500 men was a 20 year-old from Wilton, Wiltshire who had been caught up in the rioting, was convicted by a Special Commission, and was to spend the rest of his life in the Colonies. And he is one of my ancestors.
That was the same period when the Irish were being starved, many of whom ended up in North America. And England is baffled about why the Irish descendants in America are not necessarily on their side in the Brexit discussions over the Irish border and other issues.
From the Orlov interview…
I had a bunch of errands to run in Visalia, the nearest big city of 136k, and in a couple hours time, I saw 43 homeless people milling about with the usual shopping cart, ersatz backpack or wheeled cart with all of their belongings in tow, a few on bicycle. They’re easy to spot, as all of them save one, had such a deep tan from being outside all day in the California sun, George Hamilton would be envious.
1 black male, 39 white males and 3 white females was the score.
You’ll rarely see a Mexican homeless person on the street…
Strikes “Visit Visalia” off of bucket list.
Instead of ‘VA for all,’ perhaps we can have ‘Shelter for all.’
Or perhahps, in addition to (rather than ‘instead of.’)
Do we not hear this more often because the idea is not politically advantageous? I hope not.
My observation, too. More extended family is my guess. There is a Hispanic family in our neighborhood with a matriarch and one child and spouse – and a revolving cast of characters I can never keep straight. Grandchildren going through crises, recovering medical patients, various great-grands. They manage.
probably more family safety net, but white people’s families don’t necessarily provide that safety net, they NEED a social safety net, a real one.
Noone can actually make it all the time all on their lonesome or even in nuclear families (they can if things go well, but when they don’t …). Some cultures may preach such, but it doesn’t really work.
Now if only people would vote for a real safety net!
Estimated number of homeless people in the United States in 2018, by race Statista
The Mueller report indicates that the problem of a completely different level of proof for indicting people who wear ties compared to people who don’t exists. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/mueller-report-confirms-don-jr-too-stupid-to-collude-with-russia
If the standard of “willful” and “value exceeded threshold of criminal violation” were played out regularly for non-white collar crimes, we would be able to turn many jails and prisons into hotel compexes.
The inability to prosecute white collar people for breaking laws because they are stupid or ignorant is intolerable, especially when these people are university graduates.Our prisons are filled with people who are actually stupid and ignorant without the benefit of an education whose “crimes” are often of little value but run afoul of draconian standards of proof and minimum sentencing laws.
Thank you. This needs to be repeated often.
The Ivy League scandal is a perfect example when compared with all the inner city Atlanta teachers who went to prison for cheating on tests for their students to protect their school from funding cuts.
That’s what I find so grating about Warren supporting Trump’s impeachment by pointing to the importance of the “rule of law.” I mean, come on.
The power of Washington depends on the existence of external enemies. I believe we are in a neo-Orwellian society. All factions within Washington need a credible enemy the “terrorists” (which were often funded and associated with the National Security State and its allies, particularly the Saudis) just weren’t strong enough “enemies” to galvanize the public. But the fear of Russia, as an existential threat is a much more potent technique to use to cow the public particularly, it seems, the upper-middle class professionals that make up the mainstream Democratic Party whose class interest lies in no change of the status-quo who instinctively love the idea of social cohesion based on the neo-conservative dream of America, i.e., a country motivated by its “role” in the world as a bringer of rule-of-law, peace and democracy. As one foreign policy professionals I spoke to some time ago said “it’s either us or the Chinese that run the world, for the sake of mankind, it better be us.” This would not be an illogical statement if the US hierarchy actually believed in that mission–but there is no evidence that the current career of the National Security State has any good results other than chaos, war, destruction and so on. The other side of the neo-con dream was that they believed that without a common purpose (served by war) the US would descend into hedonism, tribalism and regionalism. Their analysis was correct in the 90s but had the neocons not been such moral monsters they would have chosen a common purpose in making sure the Earth systems required for a healthy life would have been saved and improved. We can still make the saving our environment our common goal–that goal is achievable but, sadly, it features no explosions, torn bodies, and boyish fantasies of world-domination.
The Russiagate tragedy/con is our test–will we don’t have to fall for the Orwellian conclusions that the Imperial Court are imposing on us. Hopefully the people who , rightly, ignore the media and the official narratives of politics will be there to save us.
From above, relating to your comment about this being our test:
Will any courageous D candidate step forward to pass the test and stop potential wars?
My guess is that Washington will avoid direct war and engage in indirect/covert war. War and threats thereof are just about the military industry at this point. I think candidates on the left like Sanders will genuflect in the direction of the military and just change the subject to domestic issues.
No one is passing that test then?
What have the candidates like Gabbard, Warren, Sanders, and other leading voices like AOC, Omar said so far about this latest Russiagate development?
Chris, we have failed. Time to move on.
Bankrupt mall, billionaire owner, nearing default on its financing, recipient of hundreds of millions in taxpayer money, not paying any local property tax to a nearly bankrupt, poverty-stricken city of Syracuse. What else is new?
Inside Destiny USA’s mortgage emergency: Crisis or hardball bargaining?
“Under an agreement with the city, Destiny USA does not have to pay property taxes for 30 years, a benefit that will save Pyramid literally hundreds of millions of dollars during that time.
In addition, Pyramid is collecting $112 million from the state under New York’s much-criticized Empire Zone economic development program and has received $69 million from the state under the equally criticized Brownfield Cleanup Program.”
But the mall is GREEN™.
LEED certified and green bond approved.
Who on earth let that f’ing mall be mortgaged for 430 million dollars? I’d bet thats close to, if not more than the value of all other commercial property in the city of syracuse combined.
Congel did build a nice house with the money. 430 million still seems steep, even including the Skaneateles Lake waterfront next to The Club.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/42°55'45.0“N+76°25’48.5″W/@42.929179,-76.4322524,17z
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/washington/04clinton.html
http://swampland.time.com/2009/01/05/hillary-clinton-haunted-by-her-tax-break-pork/
From Michael Scherer:
“The inestimable Charlie Savage, now of the New York Times, had a story yesterday laying out the case.
‘An upstate New York developer donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton’s foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman’s mall project. Mrs. Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert J. Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse. Mrs. Clinton also helped secure a provision in a highway bill that set aside $5 million for Destiny USA roadway construction. The bill with the tax-free bonds provision became law in October 2004, weeks before the donation, and the highway bill with the set-aside became law in August 2005, about nine months after the donation.’
I have a vivid memory of the Destiny USA issue from back in 2004 and 2005, when I was reporting a story about all the waste and earmarks in Washington. It was not hard to figure out that the whole “Green Bonds” program pushed by Clinton for Destiny was bad policy. It cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and subsidized the construction of about four shopping malls in the name of the environment. That’s right: shopping malls to save the environment. At the time, as Savage notes, Clinton bragged about her efforts to send federal money to get a new New York mall. “I worked successfully to get the green bonds passed,” she crowed. “I think it would be a big shot in the arm.”
Now we know that at the same time Clinton was working to funnel millions of dollars in tax breaks to Congel, Congel was writing a $100,000 check to Bill Clinton’s foundation, a contribution that has been shrouded in secrecy for four years…”
Reading about all those Hillary stories is like submitting to a death of a thousand cuts or a water torture. At some point the voters, er, victims, want the damage to communities around the country to stop. When will it be Her Turn in the barrel?
Reminiscent of the native Americans in the deep south that wanted to develop their natural resources after a bit of tiff with an Energy Corp. Seems the EC went the political route, thinking the solution was with a sympathetic ear in Bill they tried the same. Sadly after making it to the end of the gate keepers they were asked by the last how much money did they give to Bills cause.
Still remember DIA and how that worked out for some.
Look at the IRS ruling on the tax free green bonds. All they had to do to qualify for tax free status was to include some things in some plans that might in some way be considered green. They did not have to include them in the mall, just tell us a story…
The USGBC and LEED are from syracuse, funny how that works.
LEED certified mall, without even the slightest hint of anything green but the massive piles of money.
Plantidote: NTBG Researchers Rediscover ‘Extinct’ Native Plant Using a Drone [NTBG]
How long before the first Darwin Award-ready Instagram influencer shows up for a selfie with H. woodii?
Wouldn’t they be hangin 10 from a .. drone
.. if they were smart ..
oh, wait ..
Strunk and White would not approve of the headline “…plant using a drone”.
“Britain is once again the sick man of Europe”: ‘If treachery becomes part of the debate, there can only be total victory or total defeat’.
What is that Dune quote that Lambert puts int each day’s Water Cooler? Oh, yes-
“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune
What the Corn Laws tell us about Brexit Britain
Is it the author’s intent to gloss over the irony that the Corn Laws were enacted to protect wealthy British landowners, while Brexit was most vigorously supported by the literal descendants of the people who suffered most under the Corn Laws?
History does rhyme at times, and so does journalism in the service of the elite.
> Jung lovers: BTS delve into psychology on their album, Map Of The Soul BBC.
OK I never heard of them before but I had to read the wikipedia page first paragraph. They were the most retwitted group on twitter for 2017 and 2018. I do not know how many of them there are (5-9, I estimate 7) but I can tell you this for sure: there is no way every single person in that group has read any book by C. G. Jung cover to cover unless there is something about Korea I don’t know like they assign Memories Dreams Reflections as required reading to get out of high school.
I actually can listen to all of this although when I read some of the band were into Jung I immediately clicked onto a different web page:
Tool Ænema
I couldn’t help myself and went a little further. The leader of the most retwitted pop act graduated college and is enrolled in graduate school.
From the Jin page:
studies other than music! :)
…we eat our Jung
(Arche)typical.
You’re only Jung once but you can be immature forever…
I fear that we all suffer from a bit of “Unconscious Racial-ism.”
However, the main complaint of those afflicted with the pernicious effects of the “Cult of the Jung” is that they have been ‘De-Freuded.” Those same afflictees also are conflicted about their enjoyment of the psychological voyeurism called by the Teutons “schaden-freud.”
Ah well, time to self medicate.
Craig H. Love that Tool song….Learn to swim learn to swim learn to swim’
The Ultra-Orthodox Will Determine Israel’s Political Future
Netanyahu’s embrace and the left’s hostility have made the fast-growing Haredi Jewish population the right’s most reliable constituency.
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Just gonna be funner and funner going forward, for everyone! First piece is from today. Then see the second piece, far below, also from the (beleaguered) Jewish Telegraph, from October 2018.
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https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/liberal-streams-adl-not-on-white-house-list-for-pertinent-meeting-with-jewish-leaders
Non-Orthodox movements left out of Trump’s meeting with Jewish leaders
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The leaders of three of the four major Jewish religious streams were not invited to a White House briefing on issues “impacting the community,” nor was the Jewish community’s leading civil rights advocacy group.
Officials of three Orthodox umbrella groups — Orthodox Union, Agudath Israel, and America Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) — confirmed their leaders had been invited to the meeting, which is to take place Tuesday.
Officials of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements, meantime, said the movements were not invited. A Washington D.C.-area Conservative rabbi, Stuart Weinblatt, was invited.
“On Tuesday, April 16, the White House will host more than 80 Jewish non-profit leaders, business leaders, and Rabbis,” a White House official told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, asked about the omission of the groups. “This is part of our regular ongoing engagement with various faith-community and business leaders.”
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https://www.jta.org/2010/10/18/israel/sephardi-leader-yosef-non-jews-exist-to-serve-jews
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Sephardic leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in his weekly Saturday night sermon said that non-Jews exist to serve Jews.
“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel,” he said during a public discussion of what kind of work non-Jews are allowed to perform on Shabbat.
“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat,” he said to some laughter.
Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas Party and the former chief Sephardi rabbi of Israel, also said that the lives of non-Jews are protected in order to prevent financial loss to Jews.
“With gentiles, it will be like any person: They need to die, but God will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant. That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew,” said the rabbi, who recently turned 90.
An audio recording of some of the rabbi’s remarks was broadcast on Israel’s Channel 10.
The American Jewish Committee condemned the rabbi’s remarks in a statement issued Monday.
“Rabbi Yosef’s remarks — suggesting outrageously that Jewish scripture asserts non-Jews exist to serve Jews — are abhorrent and an offense to human dignity and human equality,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris. “Judaism first taught the world that all individuals are created in the divine image, which helped form the basis of our moral code. A rabbi should be the first, not the last, to reflect that bedrock teaching of our tradition.”
Thanks.
I wonder if AIPAC is more an organization of Isreal’s right, and not so much of their left, or if it’s of both.
This arrogant diatribe by the rabbi reminds of a statement made by a Jewish professor of history I had in college. He said “there is nothing more anti-Semitic than a right wing Jew.” They absolutely hate the “outsider”, adopt the most extreme exploitation philosophies found in Western thought, constantly scream “victim”, and in the process of all this totally degrade Jewish spiritual culture.
No wonder that the ultras in Israel got on so splendidly with the Apartheid Blanks of the old South Africa.
Would you believe that the Chief Rabbi for the Israeli Army is on record as saying that rape of gentile women is OK if they feel the need in wartime? And would you further believe that when a delegation of black South Africans visited Israel after Mandela came in and saw how they were treating the Palestinians, that things grew very, very uncomfortable for them as it all looked so…familiar.
Jewish supremacist Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s hate speech is nothing but vile anti-nonsemitism.
I just got 3 gift subscriptions for Matt Taibbi’s new online book Hate Inc.
Leave a reply comment if you want one. First come first served.
Yo. May I get one please? merelyfearless7 “at” gmail
Expat2uruguay — done.
I will send in the names later today. I expect you will get an automated email back from Tiabbi soon after that.
That’s amazing! If you have any left I’d be happy to have one. Love Taibbi.
Geoff (at) sporkproductions (dot) com
I see two comments only. If I’m in time I’d love to snap up the third! wthiemov att gmx dott comm – thanks!
Geo and anon — sorry, the free subscriptions to Hate Inc are gone.
Unfortunate because Taibbi is in great form.
Heres a good review
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/04/matt-taibbis-hate-inc-is-a-mostly-brilliant-indict.html
Brexit:
>> You are on a horse, galloping at a constant speed.
>>
>> On your right side is a sharp drop-off…………….
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>> On your left side is an elephant traveling at the same speed as you.
>>
>> Directly in front of you is a galloping kangaroo and your horse is unable to overtake it…………………..
>>
>> Behind you is a lion running at the same speed as you and the kangaroo……………..
>>
>> What must you do to get out of this highly dangerous situation?
>>
>>
>>
>> see below
>> …………
>> ↓
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Get off the merry-go-round and go home you old fart,
>> you’ve had enough excitement at the fun fair for one day!
A clear sign I must stop reading NC this AM and get to the days work!
Today’s must read: There is No Alternativelessness
After WWII Henry Morgenthau drafted a plan to deindustrialize Germany, split it up and make the remainder an agricultural and pastoral state. This would eliminate Germany’s ability to again wage war. Apparently, Churchill supported this plan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan
That reminds of the Roman response after capturing Carthage: they did or did not plough over the city and sow salt into the soil.
A century later, Julius Caesar discovered rebuillding it to be useful.
Will the US ever allow another statesman like George Marshall (who opposed the Morgenthau Plan) to rise to influential positions? One of my favorite parts of history is the efforts of Marshall, John Dill and Alan Brooke to ride herd on Churchill and all of his bad ideas. Knowing what these men went through makes me question the mental state and motivations of anyone that admires Churchill.
NC readers may enjoy “Harold Nicolson Diaries 1907-64”. It gives a ‘you are there’ feel to the proceedings of the inner circle of UK in the midst of the war and the years before and after.
Totally agree! Thanks Lambert for the link!
Since, to my knowledge, Denmark has not started 2 World Wars and sounds like a very nice place to live, maybe that (Morgenthau’s) wasn’t such a bad plan. If it worked, that is.
Something similar could be done for the US – there are proposals, like JM Greer’s.
Or “Ecotopia,” by Ernest Callenbach.
Chicago is Tracking Kids With GPS Monitors That Can Call and Record Them Without Consent The Appeal (JBird4049).
In a word . . . good! I trust those who read this realize the author is writing about a mug (the one with the GPS anklet and complaining about privacy) who is charged with ARMED ROBBERY. And how wearing this thing is in lieu of sitting in jail awaiting trial. Jeez, and they have the balls to complain!
Okay, I guess having a GPS bracelet that not only tracks you whatever you go and can listen to whatever you say to whom ever you are talking too at anytime without the wearer as well his family, friends, doctors, therapists, lawyers, acquaintances, and strangers being able to know when or by whom; this being done as general policy with juveniles merely accused, not convicted, of any crimes? Either they should be released on recognizance or remain in jail, not this nonsense mobile panopticon.
Might I also add that in addition the Chicago police is known to be extremely… proactive in seeking arrests and convictions for crimes with blacks and the poor being the preferred targets?
As far as I know, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights apply to everyone including the unsympathetic especially as they were deliberately written to protect everyone, including you and me, from abuse from the government and even other powerful people.
Might I also add that in addition the Chicago police is known to be extremely… proactive in seeking arrests and convictions for crimes with blacks and the poor being the preferred targets?
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Cite some data, please. “Known” is a term used too often in journalism in lieu of facts.
In the meantime, here are some alternative facts:
Chicago is approximately 1/3 black, 1/3 brown, and 1/3 white. Chicago’s police department is about 20% black. Getting young black men to show up to take the entrance exam is a problem. The commander quoted in the article below, Barbara West, is a black woman.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-chicago-police-hiring-20180503-story.html
Approximately 75% of Chicago homicide victims are black.
Nearly all of that happens in neighborhoods considered black, especially Englewood and Chatham on the south side and Austin, the Garfields, and the Lawndale areas on the west side.
Violent crime in Chicago occurs most often in its poorest neighborhoods (see above).
Approximately 4,300 Chicagoans have been murdered in the 8 years of Rahm Emmanuel’s administration. Approximately 100 Chicagoans have been killed by police in that time, nearly all without post hoc doubt about whether they were shot in flagrante delicto.
Chicago and Cook County, in which it sits, now by policy release arrested criminals on their own recognizance or de minimis bails (ie, $100), sometimes even after repeated arrests for violent crime.
This is the policy of State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, the SA who recently abruptly dropped all charges against the celebrity hate-crime faker, Jussie Smollet. …and then could not find one example in her historical files where an SA had dropped all charges for so many felony counts.
The Superintendent of Chicago Police is Eddie Johnson, a black man. He and all other police command staff signed off on the Laquan McDonald shooting when they saw the videotape (he was not Superintendent at that time).
The new mayor-elect of Chicago is Lori Lightfoot, a black woman. She won the majority vote in all 50 wards of the city. She won a higher percentage of votes in the far southwest and northwest wards, where police and fire and emt workers tend to live most often. She won, but did the worst in the wards where Bobby Rush (former gangbanger and now Congressman), Chance the Rapper, and Jessie Jackson campaigned on behalf of her (black) opponent, Toni Preckwinkle.
You may wish to take some time to familiarize yourself with these local websites to get some facts not often “known” by reading only the national media, including the Chicago Tribune.
https://heyjackass.com/
http://www.cwbchicago.com/
And here, below, is a very recent example of what police in all Cook County towns now deal with since Ms. Foxx’s arrival as SA. RIver Forest is a suburb of Chicago, in Cook County and therefore her jurisdiction for charging decisions.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wd3_AMiPwJQ/XLUp1K8oMyI/AAAAAAAAHLY/qqW521xOMpUFUisFoutS0PI1j7RWZR80QCLcBGAs/s1600/kim%2Bfoxxx-page-001.jpg
So yes, Chicago police now have their hands full. Recidivists are put right back on the street in the name of “social justice”, the police are now under orders not to chase offenders (!), and national media happily paint them as the bad guys — when most of what they now do is show up after the crime and sadly take a report from the victims, who are most often black.
Good points all, but I did not say that black Chicagoans are all innocent victims of the big bad police department. When I said that they were proactive (and probably should have used a different word) I was thinking of things like Homan Square, Laquan McDonald, false confessions often obtained by torture, criminal drug and gang task forces, and I can go on, but I will not.
Chicago has a serious problem with very bad policing and it has a serious problem with crime by the general public. Apparently part of the solution was thought to be installing mobile panopticons on the accused while allowing most of the police officers to turn off, lose, or just destroy their cameras.
Congressman Rush is not a former gangbanger.
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/rush-bobby-l-1946/
He was a Black Panther which to some makes him a gangbanger. For many Americans the Black Panthers was just one of those criminal gangs like the Crips, Bloods, and MS-13; that they were a political party and community group that was destroyed by the FBI and local police using illegal methods because they advocated reforms is unimportant.
“Some” are wrong and should not say wrong things on a public forum.
Congressman Rush has been a responsible, respectable person who got an education (three degrees); is an ordained minister; and served in the military, as an actual community activist,
and as a politician (from my link above).
The Black Panther Party in Chicago was the antithesis of gangbangers.
The Panthers and the Patriots
From the Bullet to the Ballot
The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago
The leadership was murdered by forces of the state. Rush was only by chance not in the apartment the night this took place.
None of this is secret information, and the author of the “gangbanger” accusation appears to have the ability to search for information from multiple sources.
Regarding the “Deaths from Despair” – I know this has gained a lot of traction in the past few years, however… was Gen-X ever really that happy? I say that as someone born in ‘70 so slightly older than the group in the study but pretty solidly X. A review of Gen-X produced culture does not reveal a lot of happiness, even if we go back to the early 90s heyday. Alice In Chains, Nirvana, NIN, Pearl Jam, STP, even RHCP a band that was know early on for Uplift Mofo Party Plan were all, even in ‘92, lyrically not a bunch of happy people. Every single one of those bands was touched by deaths from despair, either via a slow suicide of drugs or a more direct one.
It’s not just music either, unhappiness and despair play a central theme in great swathes of Gen-X produced culture. Enough that if I wasn’t just an IT guy now I could get a decent research paper out of it.
I guess what I’m trying to say is; It took this long for anyone to notice?
Despair was an honest reaction to the psychic situation that cohort was facing. Young people today tend to be into escape. Either way artists and the sensitive and empathic people react most intensely to the collective unconscious’ descent into a particularly nasty darkness that became clear in the eighties. I’m not sure we can go any lower so I’m hoping for a revival of our culture.
That contrasts with the repressive (some say, those Eisenhower years) 50’s.
One of the cultural phenomena from then was the TV show, Leave It To Beaver. In one of the earliest episodes, the Beaver was denied a chancee to make money (in order to buy a team uniform). He got his revenge though, when he found out the neighborhood was going to be without water for a while. Then, he got into the business of ‘monetizing water.’ And he became the richest kid around. He even agreed to lend money to buy candles, when they next found out that they were going to be without power that evening.
Incredibly, that particular episode presaged or conditioned many kids (then) a few of our problems today.
There has always been despair and as a teen in the 90’s northwest scene it was definitely embraced as a badge of Honor at the time. Economically, that area wasn’t in a good place – and the weather didn’t help.
But, having been around it a lot then it was just as much about youthful discontent and social psychology as it was about larger economic forces. Nothing we faced then was anything compared to what’s millenials faced: DotCom bust, 9/11, eternal wars, Wall Street crash, social media… what did we have? Desert Storm? Waco? Iran Contras?
I’m struggling to make ends meet now days but I wouldn’t trade my 90’s youth and early adulthood for their 00’s in any way.
I lost my very first real job in the dot.com bust (it has shaped my ENTIRE attitude toward the job market – always wary, always trying to be prepared for the next bout of unemployment and job seeking, until attempts at this too often fail, and fatalism just takes over in middle age, and it increasingly does). I’m not a millennial. Millenials are more like Great Recession etc.. Dot com was Gen X.
True. Entering the job market for the first time in the late 90’s was a walk in the park. After the Dot Com bust its been a slog ever since – and only seems to be getting harder. Dot Com was sort of the end of the Golden Age (end of the myth?). For us it hit us as we were getting established, for Millenials though it salted the earth before they even planted seeds.
Wow. We had very different experiences entering the job market then.
I didn’t land my first “real” job until 2000 when I was 30. And that was after completely switching what I wanted to do and piling up a huge amount of debt for network classes and certification testing. Got the job in IT for Wall St just in time for the dot com bust.
I can’t tell you the number of friends who couldn’t find a job in the mid 90s and doubled down and went to grad school and piled on debt or enlisted.
But back to the point of my original post. I didn’t intend this to be a comparison between X and Millenials. I have no doubt Millenials are in a very difficult position and don’t intend to obfuscate that.
My point was; Almost from the get go Gen-X produced culture has been saying how unhappy it was, it then takes 20-25 years until Case-Deaton before media/academia notices suicide/drug death rates and says “Hey, Gen-X isn’t very happy”
> I lost my very first real job in the dot.com bust (it has shaped my ENTIRE attitude toward the job market
Yep. I thought I was getting raise after raise and moving up because my skills and expertise. Turned out it was a bubble that was carrying me. Oops.
> Every single one of those bands was touched by deaths from despair, either via a slow suicide of drugs or a more direct one.
Well, my favorite band before The Clash and the Wailers came along was “The Grateful Dead,” so…
“Journalist shot dead during rioting in Derry RTE and Four ATMs stolen in Meath, Antrim and Armagh overnight RTE. “It brings to at least 15 the number of ATMs stolen on both sides of the border in recent months, five of those south of the border.” Hmm. A little self-financing?”
It’s likely that much of their financing comes from the US; it certainly did last time. This time presumably the EU is chipping in too.
How likely is that? Evidence? Please don’t cite the UK press.
Despair was an honest reaction to the psychic situation that cohort was facing. Young people today tend to be into escape. Either way artists and the sensitive and empathic people react most intensely to the collective unconscious’ descent into a particularly nasty darkness that became clear in the eighties. I’m not sure we can go any lower so I’m hoping for a revival of our culture.
Off topic but Jonathan Pie on the Extinction Rebellion is a classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obFNcN0Zc7k
Greenwald: “The result of all of that was that not a single American – whether with the Trump campaign or otherwise – was charged or indicted on the core question of whether there was any conspiracy or coordination with Russia over the election.”
This evidence of superb Russian tradecraft is surely proof positive of Trump’s collusion with Putin.
Similarly Hellary’s antics with the home-brew server is just proof that she’s too stupid to be a Russian agent. We can be confident that she’s a pillar of rectitude.
One question we can ask is this: What is the cost (for the D’s) of pursuing this particular course of action?
If it costs nothing*, they will persist.
*Perhaps those who can exact a price are not doing it, or the cost has been…well, eternalized.
I often wonder how much arm-punching and outright high-pitched squee-ing must have gone on at intelligence services around the world when each one first realized the US Secretary of State was directing all official correspondence through some GoDaddy account.
Exceptional is one word for it.
> This evidence of superb Russian tradecraft is surely proof positive of Trump’s collusion with Putin.
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” –Donald Rumsfeld, epistemologist and military genius
o “Uber and Lyft drivers say apps are short-changing wages while raising fares Guardian (SlayTheSmaugs)” — Gosh, whodathunk that opaque algo-driven money flows might serve as a vehicle for embezzlement? Shocking!
o Re. camouflage – would any readers here happen to have a cached copy of the leopard-beneath-snowfield photo that featured in this recently-linked Twitter post? Because the link now gives “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” Maybe the snow leopard was filmed in Russia, so the Twitteroids had to kibosh the post to prevent it from influencing the 2020 election.
They don’t count it as embezzlement when the owners of the means of production take everything they can. They call it “the reward for taking risks”. Marxists call it “alienation of labor”.
Not that I have much sympathy for the lumpen blacklegs quoted in the article. When you cross a picket line crying “hey boss! I’ll do that guy’s job for less!”, don’t complain when the boss takes you at your word.
https://10daily.com.au/shows/theproject/exclusive/v190418wba/did-the-government-waste-80-million-buying-water-20190418
Some good hallmarks behind the people involved … Rhodes scholars, Mackenzie Associates, Tax havens, et al ….
Probably should have added: The Government’s been buying up water at record prices, leading to millions of dollars flowing to offshore tax havens. But now, two of our top pollies are facing questions over just who is making a fortune off our water.
From Wolf Street. NC has covered this.
“Retail’s Existential Threat? Private Equity Firms.”
How do the private equiteers do it? Simple, the leveraged buyout. The LBO is the financial world’s pick and roll, that is, a highly effective play that is difficult to counter, especially if the PE firm takes the prudent first step of bribing its intended victim’s CEO into going along with their acquisition.
In short, the PE firm pays top dollar for a given retailer, often even overpaying, but using as little equity and as much debt as it possibly can. It then improves the company’s profitability by cost-cutting beyond prudence and, as with Debenhams, says, “What a good boy am I,” rewarding itself with a major dividend, often recovering not only its entire initial investment, but a substantial profit to boot.
https://wolfstreet.com/2019/04/19/retails-existential-threat-is-private-equity/
I realize we’re talking about landlubbers here, but ‘pirate equity’ seems more apt for these scalawags of the high seize.
Elizabeth Warren is getting ready to say that she just can’t deal with things like comforting disaster victims, sitting all night at the Kennedy Center, and breaking bread with dictators and various other psychopaths. So her vice president will do all that, and that person will be George Clooney.
If that is so, then she can’t go far wrong with Brad Pitt for Director of HUD. Seriously. He has experience and a moral compass.