An air of unreality pervades much of the debate on the agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program.
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
An air of unreality pervades much of the debate on the agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program.
A recent visit to a federal penitentiary by President Obama has prompted the United Nations to give another shot at seeking permission to visit the U.S. prison system.
This happened in Louisiana
This type of gun massacre happens every damn day in this country.
Maybe I think it would be better if my son and his wife and his kiddies all had guns
I get so damned mad.
.
This little take with Jon Stewart with the President of the United States of America just got to me.
It is a day late.
Hell I am usually a day late. Hell, a week late. hahahahhahy
This is the President I admire more than any President I have witnessed over the last half century.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/821470
Sometimes the link does not work, so now I add duplication.
Stewart is going to be fine.
I like the guy.
Have I agreed with everything Jon has ever said? No.
But goddamn he got the President of the United States of America to come onto his show.
This is a gooooooooooood thing.
I love my President.
I love Jon.
the end
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders planned to attend a public sit-down interview with journalist Jose Antonio Vargas in front of a left-leaning crowd here at the annual Netroots Nation conference, a gathering of progressives, when the tone of the program shifted just a few minutes into the event.
[rewrite, original lost to unfortunate back-key]
As part of the 70th commemoration of the end of WWII, went to an exhibit of the Auschwitz Album. While movie directors have done an amazing job re-creating these awful scenes throughout the years, the actual photos of unphotogenic, unmadeup distressed masses being herded around as they struggle to manage their few belongings along with their friends & relatives is heartbreaking.
What's more astounding is this seminal horrific event came this close to having 0 photographic evidence even at this late date in the history of photography - only by accident did one of the inmates stumble across this unauthorized photo album a few hundred miles away. Otherwise, poof, gone, vanished - only to be debated as a less certain he-said-she-said occurrence to be misused by the weak-memoried and the sinister propagandist - in some ways as distant as Waterloo. We live in a spoiled time with our smartphones to document altercations and large events, and the idea that there was no camera around will come to seem stranger and stranger.
Additionally, the tales by survivors from the photos that accompany the exhibit are also mind-bending - holding hands at the triage point was a sure path to death for both hand-holders (e.g. mother and child); a father they catch glimpse of to great relief being saved from the death line to work as a nurse the rest of the war, only to be executed as the Nazis pulled out a year later; a boy who has a dream they're all on their way to their deaths and breaks the silence, leaving his train in implacable panic. This is the oral tradition that can't be replaced by film or image.
Besides a memory of the outrages of Auschwitz and other camps, the Auschwitz album is a testament to all the other atrocities that were never documented, that passed with hardly a trace, much less a vivid memorial. We know these have occurred from Cambodia to Rwanda to Guatemala to countless other locations and times, but without the benefit of seeing-is-believing, blindness is all too easy a respite.
The economy has been in disarray. People have been out of work for years. The banks have been running out of money. It sounds a lot like the Great Depression in the United States. But it is Greece – and in some ways, the situation is worse.
“Greece is in its own Great Depression. But unlike the United States, it won't be able to get back on its feet as quickly,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. Greece “is shackled by onerous rules and regulations, an aging population and a dysfunctional domestic political system,”
A standoff was under way between government forces and members of thefar-Right paramilitary group Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) on Sunday after the militia reportedly launched a gun and grenade attack in a westernUkrainian town and later demanded the resignation of the country's interior minister.
With Greece on the edge of financial and social implosion, eurozone finance ministers met to decide on the country’s fate and on what to do about its debt crisis, after experts from the troika of creditors said that new fiscal rigour proposals from Athens were good enough to form “the basis for negotiations”.
But the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, dismissed that view, supported by a number of northern and eastern European states. “These proposals cannot build the basis for a completely new, three-year [bailout] programme, as requested by Greece,” said a German finance ministry paper. It called for Greece to be expelled from the eurozone for a minimum of five years and demanded that the Greek government transfer €50bn of state assets to an outside agency for sell-off.
I have read for the last few months that Greece has a national oil company that investors have been wanting to get their hands on in a fire sale. They can also take private savings accounts from Greek banks too. They just close the banks and keep the money. Sounds like rape and pillage time.
This is a big F'ing deal if you are a young women working for Hobby Lobby and any other far right religious owners of a company.
Under the new rule, a closely held for-profit company that objects to covering contraception in its health plan can write a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services stating its objection. HHS will then notify a third-party insurer of the company's objection, and the insurer will provide birth control coverage to the company's female employees at no additional cost to the company.
I think this ties in nicely with what Dr. Cleveland said about having a good lame duck term. He signed the new rules today. Thank you Mr. President.
You can find more detail here.
Germany is at last bowing to pressure as a chorus of countries and key institutions demand debt relief for Greece, a shift that could break the five-month stalemate and avert a potentially disastrous rupture of monetary union at this Sunday’s last-ditch summit.
In a highly significant move, the European Council has called on both sides to make major concessions, insisting that the creditor powers must do their part as the radical Syriza government puts forward a new raft of proposals on economic reforms before a deadline expires tonight.
This drama still could end well.
It don't look like the central banks of the world can always manage to keep thing under control.
For a world so confident that central banks can solve almost all economic ills, the dramas unfolding in Greece and China are sobering.
"Whatever it takes," Mario Draghi's 2012 assertion about what the ECB would do to save the euro, best captures the all-powerful, self-aware central bank activism that's cosseted world markets since the banking and credit collapse hit eight years ago.
From the United States to Europe and Asia, financial markets have been cowed, then calmed and are now coddled by the limitless power of central banks to print new money to ward off systemic shocks and deflation.
This is a very bleak look at the over burdened Central banks and monetary policies..
The Chines stock market is having a large correction. It fell 10% after it opened today before 1400 stocks was suspended from trading. This correction started in the middle of June and is still trending down.
China’s stock markets had previously been among the top-performing in the world, and had hit a seven-year peak in the middle of June. The Shanghai stock market had surged more than 150% in 12 months, but it has fallen 30% over the past three weeks – including a plunge of 12% last week.
Unlike most other stock markets, where investors are mostly institutional investors, in China, 80% of investors are small retail investors. This is a concern for the Chinese government because it causes a “political risk”, according to Balding. The losses on the stock markets are going to cause a lot of people to lose money causing the government to “worry about people protesting on the streets”, he said.
"Negotiated agreements contributed significantly to the fact that we survived and, indeed, won the Cold War without nuclear Armageddon."
This article is a good back ground as what lead to what is going on in the Euro. It is a very good read. There has been much going on that is not showing on the surface of this crisis. There is also a clear short history as to the rise of the current government.
Greece hit their breaking point a long time ago but now Germany has reached their breaking point.
The European creditors — specifically, the Germans, who have really been the ones controlling European negotiations with the Greeks — reached their own terminal point more recently. The Germans are powerful but fragile. They export about a quarter of their gross domestic product to the European free trade zone, and anything that threatens this trade threatens Germany's economy and social stability. Their goal has been to keep intact not only the euro, but also the free trade zone and Brussels' power over the European economy.
Germany has so far avoided an extreme crisis point by coming to an endless series of agreements with Greece that the Greeks couldn't keep and that no one expected them to keep, but which allowed Berlin to claim that the Greeks were capitulating to German demands for austerity. This alleged capitulation helped Germany keep other indebted European countries in line, as financially vulnerable nations witnessed the apparent folly of contemplating default, demanding debt restructuring and confronting rather than accommodating the European Union.
As I post this the Greeks are getting ready to vote. I mentioned in an other thread below that James Galbrath has been an informal adviser to Varoufakis. Here is an other article that came out at the end of the week by him. He politely calls them myths but they are really misinformation. It is a good read even if you disagree with him.
I have had a close view of the process, both from the U.S. and Athens, after working for the past four years with Yanis Varoufakis, now the Greek finance minister. I’ve come to realize that there are many myths in circulation about this crisis; here are nine that should be challenged.
Well, it is official. Jim Webb is running for President. He threw his hat into the ring.
Webb adds a decidedly more conservative option for Democratic voters in a field in which former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton has tacked to the left under criticism from liberal former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Now we have five to choose from in the primaries. He will make a good addition to the debates coming from the conservative side of the Democratic Party.
We don't often hear from James Kenneth Galbraith like we do with other economist. I read in the Boston Globe this morning that he has been in Europe as a informal consultant to the Finance Minister and Prime Minister of Greece.
This article is his inside look at what is going on and who to blame.
If the Greeks vote “yes,” on the other hand, the uncertainty is political. SYRIZA may split and its government may fall. What then? There is no credible alternative government in Greece. Moreover, it is hard to think that any government formed to accept the surrender and deepen the depression would last very long.
And it seems certain that after a “Yes,” a surrender, and a deeper depression, the official Opposition would no longer be the pro-European Left that is today's government in Greece. Europe will have destroyed that. The new Opposition, and someday the government, will be either a Left or a Right party opposed to the euro and to the Union. It could be Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party. The lesson of Greece also will not be lost on Oppositions elsewhere, including the rising far right in France.
The irony of the case is that the true hope—the only hope—for Europe lies in a “No” vote on Sunday, followed by renewed negotiations and a better deal. “Yes” is a vote for fear, against dignity and independence. Fear is powerful—but dignity and independence have a way of coming back.
My personal opinion is that the US needs to pledge their support for the Greek people. Their economy is not that large, about the size of the economy of the City of Boston, and can be fixed. We can do the same thing for Greece that we did for Argentina that put them back on their feet. This is much more preferred then letting the Golden Dawn rise into power.
Huffpo gives us this video of an Australian comic who just destroys the idiocy of the NRA.
It is well done.
Here is the link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-goldman/watch-a-comedian-mow-down_b_7701860.html
I have nothing to add.
Even the Supreme Court, the Great Panel that sent down a number of decisions today, questions Texas on the Abortion Issue.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/29/texas-abortion-restrictions_n_7690656.html
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/29/politics/texas-abortion-clinic-supreme-court/index.html
The Supremes did bad things today, but overall...I am still glad we have a Supreme Court under the Constitution and under the auspices of the ancient Chief Justice Marshall.
On the death penalty?
People who rape and kill young children should be hung.
But damn...
We hang black folks for the most part.
Anyway...
We lost on the death penalty....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/29/death-penalty-unconstitutional_n_7687830.html
We lost other issues.
Guns and money in elections and ...
http://theaquilareport.com/how-republicans-should-respond-to-a-supreme-court-marriage-ruling/
I just thought this Texas decision relevant.
By the morning of July 1, we should know whether President Barack Obama has achieved one of his presidency’s central foreign policy goals: an agreement to deal effectively with the Iranian nuclear program.
Now, pretend for a minute that you’re a 50-year old white man living somewhere in the Deep South. You cast your first vote for Ronald Reagan in 1984. As a kid, your favorite show was the Dukes of Hazzard, which featured a car called The General Lee. The backdrop to every party or prom you’ve ever attended was the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd (with lyrics like “In Birmingham they love the governor”).Today, your way of life is under attack -and this (by far) transcends the Confederate flag. You’re experiencing what feels like a radical cultural revolution.
Where do we go from here? After the last ten days or so, it's hard to imagine.