Month: February 2017

A smart party would have found someone not connected to the past primary war.  Instead the DNC fight was a bit of a replay of the primary fight.  I have pretty firm reasons for preferring Ellison and reasons for suspicion of Perez.

But Perez is an impressive guy, and the policy disagreements aren’t hugely important with a DNC Chair.

Larger picture though, from a Sanders perspective it really wasn’t the most important fight yesterday.
Barack Obama instituted a ban on taking money from lobbyists. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz lifted the ban, and I saw the lobbyists return when I was at the Convention in Philadelphia.  I was at one event where Pharma lobbyists were out in force. The very good food and drink was on them.  

From the Huffington Post:

Democratic National Committee members on Saturday voted down a resolution that would have reinstated former President Barack Obama’s ban on corporate political action committee donations to the party.
Resolution 33, introduced by DNC Vice Chair Christine Pelosi, would also have forbidden “registered, federal corporate lobbyists” from serving as “DNC chair-appointed, at-large members.”

Lobbyists have only one purpose in life: corruption. They use money and influence to bend an organization in their direction.  The cost of this influence to the country can be seen in countless ways.

More broadly though is the mindset that says take the money.  This mindset puts money above all else.  Money buys advertising after all.  In this mindset campaigns are all about advertising: it is all that matters.
What it tells me is the mindset that has led to the destruction of Democratic influence in this country has not changed.  Hillary Clinton outspent Donald Trump by many multiples.  There are others ways to build organizations, and to raise money.
 
I want to build a party that is built on the grass-roots, raises money  based on grass-roots activism, and puts faith in field organizations.

Part of the reason I think this is important is because I have seen the cost of doing it the other way.  We don’t tend to win anyway, and when we do it distorts policy (see financial de-regulation) in ways that impose enormous costs on the public.

The vote yesterday makes me question whether that view is really shared at the top of the Party.  In fact, I don’t think it does.  It is all window dressing.

In a comment on my recent post Perez now chairman of DNC. Oh Well…There Goes THAT Idea!!!…the subject of which was the regrettable Perez win by the Schumer/Pelosi forces in the latest DNC chairman sweepstakes…karl pearson wrote:

If the Dem elites don’t change soon, this will be my epitaph: “Born an FDR Democrat, but the Party left her.” Just sad.

Here is my reply.

Read on.
I feel your pain.

I really do.

My grandfather… the man whose name I honor by using it here…radicalized me when I was in grammar school. Well…”radicalized” is a relative word. He was a staunch FDR Dem. He lived through the Great Depression and was  a Democrat by heredity…the son of a NYC Irish immigrant mayor.. He was not a “radical,” he was simply a mainstream Democrat during the McCarthy years, and he was madder than hell about what was happening.

The thing is, FDR’s democratic socialism…and that’s what it really was, even if that label was not used…is now radical when compared to what comes from the machinations of the DNC. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are really mainstream, FDR Democrats…maybe not even as “radical” as was FDR when you get right down to it. The U.S. was falling apart after the Great Crash, and FDR’s WPA plus many other socialist actions and programs helped the country to lift itself by its own bootstraps out of the Big Money-caused Depression pit into which it had fallen.

Now?

Phfffft…

The Dems are all talk, no walk.

All front men and frontwomen, no action.

All compromise behind its big talk.

And it has lost the working class as a result.

Trump’s win is as simple as that. The working classes of this country…and by that I mean the people who get out of bed each day and either go to work or stay home and raise children, people of all economic levels and all races…are not very politically involved or sophisticated. They basically want to be left alone to live their lives in relative peace. That means they want to make a living wage; they want to be able to provide for themselves and their children on all important levels…health, shelter, food and education being the most important of those levels…and they want to be able to continue to live after they are no longer able to perform hard work on a daily level.

That’s about it. That’s all most of them really want.

And neither party has been able to provide them with those basic needs, because both parties are now owned lock, stock and barrel by corporate interests whose only real “morality” is the morality of the bottom line. They are essentially artificial intelligences themselves, these interests. If the quarterly books do not show a good profit, they are basically programmed to do whatever is within their power to rectify that bottom line problem, and soon, because if they don’t the corporate entity will fire them and get someone who can do that. End of story.

These interests need to be controlled, but instead they are now the controllers. They own the whole political process…including the media that publicizes it…and as a result the U.S. has been bottom-lined right into a near crisis state. The infrastructure is in almost total disrepair…hell, I can’t even trust the subways of NYC to get me to work anymore. The most important subway in NYC as far as I am concerned (the west side IRT line’s #1 local train ) is closed for repairs this entire weekend!!! I have lived here all of my adult life and I have never seen this happen.

The public school systems are a mess; the whole charter school thing is just a monetized ripoff even if there are a few good schools within it; the healthcare system ranks below many third world countries on any number of levels; the food supply is full of poisons of all kinds; we cannot really trust our drinking water and inflation is eating almost every dollar we make before we can manage to spend it on necessities.

How did Trump win?

He demonized the mainstream parties and their media, that’s how. It was a cinch to do that, because they suck!!!

And…despite ample evidence that he is a total huckster…enough working people bought his line to get him elected.

Duh!!!

They felt like they had no other choice.

And they didn’t.

The DNC made damned sure that they didn’t by effective backroom hustling against Bernie Sanders. Of course…they were just doing their own job. And what is that job. exactly? It is to continue to  make sure that the bottom-liners come out on top no matter which party wins.

The “choice” of of Perez for DNC chairman simply proves that nothing has changed. The bipartisan RatDemlican party and their allied media will work very hard to get rid of Trump because he threatens their plutocractic owners, and then they will cooperate in the business-as-usual hustle that follows his fall.

It is increasingly clear that only a third party will be able to stop this game. But where will it come from? Who will volunteer to be the crystal that starts its formation?

Damned if I know.

Sanders?

Warren?

Maybe.

Somebody else?

Who?

Let us pray.

ASG

WAPO:

Thomas Perez elected the first Latino leader of Democratic Party

Way to spin, WAPO!!!

“Latino leader” is supposed to equal “LIBERAL LEADER!!!’ to all the squares in the audience…that is, 99.99% of the media-reading, only-headline-ingesting sheeple.

                          Sheese, Mabel!!!

Maybe now we’ve got a chance to fight that awful Trump character!!!

                      After all…Perez is Latino!!!

Riiiiiight…

Not so fast, sheepleheads!!!

This is a victory for the Pelosi/Schumer PermaGov/centrist axis of the Democratic Party, and a serious loss for the Sanders/Warren wing.

I wrote here recently:

I’m telling you…if the Civil War were to be fought right now, the north would lose and it would lose badly.

Tiime to wake up, Dem folks.

If you do not absolutely revolutionize the party…and soon…so that it reaches many, many more voters south of the Manson-Nixon line…of all races…the RatPub coup de grace is headed your way in about two years. Getting rid of Trump won’t stop it; only a reasoned appeal to the economic realities that are facing the people in the red states will do the trick. Trump will just be replaced by someone…smoother…if he is impeached. Same messages, better tone of voice.

Another centrist DNC won’t do it, either. People north and south of that line will take one look at these two ugly, superannuated faces and head for either the hills or their local Republican ballot box.

It doesn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to know that their bread it buttered on the other side of the fence.

On the other side of everybody’s fence except their own.

Pelosi comes from a racist, mobbed-up Baltimore political dynasty and Schumer is the Senator from the great states of AIPAC and Wall Street.

Great.

Just what Joe Cowboy, Jane Farmer and Mr. and Mrs. Worker want to hear.

It’s do or die time, folks.

Be as bold as Trump…only honest…and you can still win.

Don’t?

Play it safe?

We all in deep shit.

Bet on it.

Watch

Where is the new party coming from?

And when, fer Chrissake!!!

Because this old one ain’t worth shit!!!

AG

Covering one’s tracks, pointing fingers towards the East, gullible readers …

Revealed: how US billionaire helped to back Brexit | The Guardian |

The US billionaire who helped bankroll Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency played a key role in the campaign for Britain to leave the EU, the Observer has learned.

It has emerged that Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund billionaire, who helped to finance the Trump campaign and who was revealed this weekend as one of the owners of the rightwing Breitbart News Network, is a long-time friend of Nigel Farage. He directed his data analytics firm to provide expert advice to the Leave campaign on how to target swing voters via Facebook – a donation of services that was not declared to the electoral commission.

Callahan, the author of Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America (2010), created Inside Philanthropy in 2013 to help fill this gap. (The Chronicle of Philanthropy is another valuable resource.) The site offers a rich storehouse of information about the causes to which the wealthy give. An entry on Robert Mercer, for instance, notes that he is the co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies (a hedge fund) and a leading contributor to Super PACs, and that his family foundation backs a sprawling array of conservative institutions, including the Media Research Center, which scans the media for liberal bias; the George W. Bush Foundation, which supports the Bush library and museum; and the Heartland Institute, a leading promoter of climate-change denial.
[Source: How to Cover the One Percent | NY Books | ]

Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of a British company, SCL Group, which has 25 years’ experience in military disinformation campaigns and “election management”, claims to use cutting-edge technology to build intimate psychometric profiles of voters to find and target their emotional triggers. Trump’s team paid the firm more than $6m (£4.8m) to target swing voters, and it has now emerged that Mercer also introduced the firm – in which he has a major stake – to Farage.

 « click for more info
The UK Brexit gang behind Nigel Farage ... and Donald Trump (Photo: Daily Mail)

The communications director of Leave.eu, Andy Wigmore, told the Observer that the longstanding friendship between Nigel Farage and the Mercer family led Mercer to offer his help – free – to the Brexit campaign because of their shared goals.

One really doesn’t read the future using an orbuculum or Crystal Ball …

Trump on Brexit: America is next | CNN News – June 25, 2016 |

British voters just shattered political convention in a stunning repudiation of the ruling establishment. Donald Trump is betting America is about to do the same.

Voters in the UK did more than reject the European Union and topple their pro-EU Prime Minister David Cameron in a referendum Thursday.

They also set off a cascade of events that could spark global economic chaos, remake the Western world, reverberate through November’s presidential election and challenge U.S. security for years to come.
At Trump news conference, it’s all about him

The referendum campaign — just like the U.S. election — has boiled with populist anger, fear-mongering by politicians, hostility towards distant political elites and resurgent nationalism, and exposed a visceral feeling in the electorate that ordinary voters have lost control of the politics that shape their own lives. Its success raises the question of whether those forces will exert a similar influence in America in November.  

From Robert Mercer and Ted Cruz is such a small step to Chris Steele of MI6 infamy … spooks and British oligarchs! Nothin here to see … ask Rupert Murdoch or Robert Maxwell. Does Unit 8200 mean anything to you? Ask Iran about cyber warfare and Stuxnet, or building the largest NSA center in Idaho, a piece of the Egyptian Arab Spring anyone (?) or perhaps pointing fingers after the Ghouta false flag attack near Damascus. Netanyahu did like Mitt Romney and our 11 moves chess player didn’t like Bibi and Sara very much in the 2015 Israeli general election. Some tit for tat anyone? Yeah, looking towards the Kremlin … Bibi holding hands with Vladimir. Clear joined interests, or not! Clearly improving results in 2016 over 2012.

OK I agree, put blame on Glenn Greenwald for Snowden being stranded in Moscow. No right-wing conspiracy here to see after all. Did Israel’s military whizz kids play a role in Georgia, Saakashvili, South Ossetia or the Rose Revolution?

Throwing off the blood hounds, a bit more faked news and leading on to Putin’s Russia …

Will Donald Trump’s Data-Analytics Company Allow Russia to Access Research on U.S. Citizens? | The Tablet Magazine |

The Trump campaign has hired Ted Cruz’s former data-analysis firm, Cambridge Analytica–and in doing so, it has connected itself with a British property tycoon, Vincent Tchenguiz, and through him with the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, a business associate of Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who resigned last week. It would be hard to find a better example of why the ownership of the companies that collect data on the American electorate matters.

What Cambridge does is what marketers have done for some time now: segment potential customers (in this case, voters) by their buying habits, lifestyle, and psychology. It most famously worked on the “Leave.” campaign during Brexit voting in the United Kingdom.

 « click for more info
Collage of the bad guys linked in an evil network (Credit: TabletMag)

Cambridge Analytica’s British parent company, SCL, has attracted criticism for some unusual strategies, such as trying to persuade opposition supporters not to vote in a Nigerian election, using the influence of “local religious figures.”

Booman wrote a post today titled The Russia Investigation. It basically assumes that the Republicans will fight against negatively involving Trump in the outcome; the Democrats will actively seek to take Trump down and there are some so-called “moderates” on the Republican side who might ally themselves with the Democrats.

In point of fact, I think that most people will be taking a wrong position on this development…a position that assumes disagreement between the parties, a position that so far has been fed to them by the interested Deep State-controlled and allied media.

I believe that both parties…in a Permanent Government/Deep State sense…want to get rid of Trump as fast as they can possibly do so without immense negative repercussions, and I further believe that this congressional investigation is the beginning of an endgame towards which the intelligence people have been working since it became even possible that Trump might win the presidency.

He’s going down, one way or another.

Now it’s only a matter of how and when.

This is the neatest, cleanest, least dangerous solution. The old wet work days are far behind us…or so I hope.

Now we have informational assassinations.

Virtual assassinations.

Is all of the “information” necessarily true?

I doubt it.

What we laughingly call “facts” are no longer necessarily true or false. Not on this level.

Why?

How?

Because no one but the spooks and the hackers…if those two groups are not themselves basically identical at some level…are in any position to even begin to verify them.

And life goes on in the digital age.

As it must.

Read on for more.
Karl Rove pinned this system in his little speech to Ron Suskind back in 2002:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

The basics of the currently quite effective information/disinformation/misinformation system were well in place fifteen years ago!!!

They’ve only gotten better at it now.

They got caught by a perfect storm with the Trump/Clinton campaign…”The Campaign Of The Deplorables”, I’m calling it. The one who best messaged those “deplorables” that HRC so self-defeatingly mentioned in a public speech got to take home all of the marbles.

Now?

Now the Deep State is in the process of rebuilding its damaged structures.

Watch.

AG

P.S. Remember the totally jive Warren Commission?

Like that, only better.

P.S.S. Can the power of the presidency stand against this kind of bipartisan, collective attack?

It couldn’t in 1974.

Why would one believe that it can do so in 2017?

Trump only has one trump card to play…a sudden “disaster” of some sort, one that requires massive executive action. He cannot create one without the help of the spooks, and the various U.S. spookdoms appear to be totally allied against his presidency. That leaves only the outside chances that:

1- Other spooks will find it in their interest to create such a disaster. Russians, Israelis, the various radical Islamic interests, etc.

or

2-What we also laughingly call “An Act of God” will throw a monkey wrench into the Deep State’s machinations.

Either possibility…or both…could happen.

Watch.

AG

I’m relieved and modestly reassured that at least some important quarters in the CIA look back at Team B as a case study in how not to do intelligence analysis.

Also, too, Douglas Fucking Feith.

I’m not going to be dishonest and tell you that I have faith that the congressional Intelligence committees, which are both controlled by the Republicans, are going to do an honest investigation of Trump’s ties to the Russians. At the same time, though, it’s going to be tricky for them to handle if they unearth troubling information.

There are a few advantages to doing this in the Intelligence committees rather than a special select investigatory body or through a special prosecutor. On the plus side, the Intelligence committee members and their staffs already have the clearances they need and some basic familiarity with the issues and sensitivities involved. The committees are partisan, but less so than any other committees. They can get started quicker and have a better chance of working with some common purpose than we’d likely see with the alternative scenarios.

On the minus side, most Intelligence hearings are closed to the public, and it’s easier to arrange things so the Democrats feel constrained by the rules of classification against speaking about what they learn. It should be easier to limit the scope of the investigation without inviting outrage.

The Democrats’ main leverage is that it won’t be worth much if the committees issue a final report that they don’t support. The Republicans will try, if possible, to run things in a way that doesn’t immediately alienate the Democratic members and their staff.

There are some signs that it won’t be possible to keep things tightly under wraps.

Moderate Republican Susan Collins, who sits on the Intelligence panel, told Maine Public Wednesday that she wants Flynn to testify. With an 8-7 split between Republicans and Democrats, her vote could be pivotal. She even sounded open to the possibility of looking at Trump’s tax returns as part of the probe…

…”We will get to the bottom of this,” Collins told Maine Public. “I will encourage that there’ll be some public hearings as well as the closed hearings that we’re doing now, and that we issue a report.”

“We’re not,” she added, ”going to exclude anyone from our review.”

The Bloomberg article I’m referencing here mentions that Sens. Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio are taking a tough line on Russia, but I don’t see them as likely problems for the administration. They may want to use the hearings to influence policy, but they won’t want to take the administration down entirely. I believe Susan Collins is a potential headache for them because she’s probably half-considering bolting the GOP as it stands, and she carries a swing-vote that can determine whether the Democrats are empowered or neutered. If the GOP leans too hard on her, she could fall right in Chuck Schumer’s lap.

These are some of the reasons why I think the Senate investigation is more dangerous than the House one.

Overall, this is a shitty way to investigate these issues and I fully expect a whitewash. If there is any hope, it’s that the lead Democrat on the Senate panel, Mark Warner of Virginia, says that this investigation will be the most important thing he’s ever done in the Senate. If he’s that motivated, he’ll be a more powerful force than people might expect. He’s basically the Intelligence Community’s senator, as most of them live in his state, and he’ll be hard to keep in the dark.

The fact that he’s been more cooperative with Trump, on confirmations for example, than most Democrats will give him added credibility and make his complaints resonate a little better.

I guess the GOP’s biggest problem is that the Intelligence Community is rife with people who do not like Trump and do not trust his staff. They’re going to make it very hard to stifle this investigation.

So, the setup here is far from ideal and basically designed to coverup more than it reveals. But things could get interesting nonetheless.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the Cold Spring, NY scene.  The photo that I’m using is seen directly below.  I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have continued to add prelimary layers of paint to the various elements of the painting. The house now has lit and shaded surfaces.  A second layer of paint has been added to the sky.  Next week I’ll have something a bit more opaque than these early splashes of paint.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

London City: Children of poorest families are paying the price. No scbolar needed, on my visit to London I was astonished on what I saw in the area of new developed Canary Wharf and the surrounding burroughs … for a person living in The Netherlands just uninmaginable. A wealthy nation with the arrogance of an authoritarian state. Both PM David Cameron and Theresa May want to “save” the UK from jurisdiction of the European Courts of Justice and Human Rights …

Revealed: thousands of children at London schools breathe toxic air

Exclusive: 802 schools, nurseries and colleges are in areas where levels of nitrogen dioxide breach EU legal limits

Tens of thousands of children at more than 800 schools, nurseries and colleges in London are being exposed to illegal levels of air pollution that risk causing lifelong health problems, the Guardian can disclose.

A study identifies 802 educational institutions where pupils as young as three are being exposed to levels of nitrogen dioxide that breach EU legal limits and which the government accepts are harmful to health.

The research, commissioned by the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, suggests thousands more children and young people are at risk from toxic air than previously thought.

Khan said the results were devastating and warned that it was the capital’s poorest children who were bearing the brunt of the air pollution crisis.

…
The results show nearly double the number of educational institutions than previously highlighted are affected by illegal levels of toxic air. A report that was kept secret by former mayor Boris Johnson revealed last year 433 primaries were exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution. [The hidden report of Tory mayor Boris Johnson was already revealed in reports over a year ago … what’s The Guardian’s “exclusivity”? – Oui]

The new data shows 802 out of 3261 nurseries, primary and secondary schools and higher education colleges, are within 150 metres of nitrogen dioxide pollution levels that exceed the EU legal limit of 40µg/m3 (40 micrograms per cubic metre of air).

A third of state nursery schools in the capital (27), nearly 20% of primaries (360) and 18% of secondary schools (79) are in areas where toxic levels of nitrogen dioxide threaten children’s health.

 « click for more info
Air pollution in London, as seen from Hackney. April 2015. [David Holt/Flickr]  

From my visit to London as written in my diary …

UK Brexit Problem: Migration not Immigration

On recent visits to London I was astonished about bureaucracy (as I knew it before Thatcher), inefficient organisation at the local level, overcrowded primary schools, many expanded with temporary units, massive poverty and inequality, delapited infrastructure of highways throughout Greater London, smog and high levels of pollution in urban housing areas. In the rush hour of pedestrians moving towards Canary Wharf, 90% were well dressed young people (age 25-35) all connected to smartphones and talking, large majority speaking a foreign language (Asian and East-European), no interaction with surroundings, quite ambitious which is as it should be. Beggars were stationed on a number of places, sitting on newspapers to protect themselves somewhat from the cold. The NHS is coming under attack for years now.

○ Read: European Court of Justice rules UK must clean up air pollution

Unlike the smoky pollution of the past, NO2 is a hidden killer . “These days you can’t see pollution, you can’t smell it or taste it, so you’d be forgiven for thinking there was no pollution – but there certainly is,” says Monsour.

His next stop is a primary school in Poplar, one of the 1,000 schools in London sitting just 150 metres or less from roads on which at least 10,000 vehicles go past. This school is just 10m or so from the roaring A12, where more than 100,000 HGVs, coaches, construction trucks and cars roar past, while others queue for the nearby exit to the equally busy A13.
[Source: EurActiv]

This is going to really harsh the buzz of Gary Johnson supporters:

“When you see something like the opioid addiction crisis blossoming in so many states around this country, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people,” Spicer said. “There is still a federal law that we need to abide by when it comes to recreational marijuana and drugs of that nature.”

“This aggression will not stand man” – The Big Lebowski.

In all seriousness it shows state right arguments are a bunch of crap.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/23/politics/white-house-marijuana-donald-trump-pot/