Monday, August 10, 2015

SAR #15222


What you find depends on what you are willing to find.

Canary/Coal Mine: So cheap energy and cheaper commodities are supposed to somehow generate growth? Not so. They are cheap because no one wants them. No one wants them because economies all around the world are stuck. Stagnant. This is not good, and the future seen in these falling prices should be far more of a concern to the Fed than a minuscule uptick in wages.

Betrayal: After a clash with ISIS in Kobane, Syria last month, six wounded Kurdish fighters were taken across the border to Turkey for treatment. The Turks spirited them out of the hospital and handed them over to an al-Qaeda group in Syria. Last week, as soon as a group of US-trained Syrian rebels crossed into Syria, the Turkish government betrayed them to al-Qaida, which promptly attacked and captured all of them. Turkey is on “our side”, whatever the hell that might mean.

True Love: “...while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals.” 
 
A Real Meth: The measurements that reassured us that natural gas fracking was a low-emission solution to our energy needs turn out to have understated the amounts of methane leaked into the atmosphere by fracking by as much as 500%. In that methane is far more effective at promoting global warming than CO2, it probably does away with whatever environmental advantage natural gas was thought to have over coal.

Platformed: Mike Huckabee wants fetuses to be accorded the right of “due process” and envisions using US troops as “one of the ways” to enforce those rights. 
 
Into The Valley Of Death: There is nothing the necons and the far right treasure more than the idea that the US can bomb (and now drone) various parts of the Middle East into becoming prosperous democracies. Diplomacy is for weaklings, Americans dictate the terms by which others must live or face destruction from the skies. It hasn't worked, and won't. But that won't stop them – or US – from trying.

Line Forms On The Left: For the top 20% or so of Americans life is pretty darn good. But at the base, 40% of us are broke, spending more than we make, more than we have, year after year. It's called debt slavery.

Field Testing: Sweden, one of those socialist countries with a superb educational record, undertook a massive experiment with publicly financed, privately managed schools. all it the Bush model. About 25% of Swedish students now attend these charter schools, and have been for long enough for testing to show that they are a disaster. The testing of charter school students showed “a dramatic decline” on internationally standardized tests. Just a curiosity - it won't slow down the rush to drain US public schools of taxpayer dollars. Much like those Swedish kids, we won't learn. 
 
Porn O'Graph: “Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!” The Donald. And Jeb, Scott, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and so on and so forth.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Charles
I do love your daily updates, combining wit with links to important stories.
But I must say that an analogy that compares how the bottom 40% in the US are now living as debt serfs with ACTUAL slavery is pretty offensive. And I am not PC and don't get offended easily, if ever.
The "original version" you mention is a grotesque slice of American history. And real slavery STILL exists around the world today, in living conditions that the poorest of Americans can hardly fathom - absolute loss of freedom and rights. For real.
While yes, our inequality issues are real and important and we must address them, but hyperbole like this makes no points and actually is counterproductive in my opinion.

Thanks for your daily work. I really do enjoy.
S

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

S - You are right. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Of course, we've sold allies and former allies in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, down the stream so many times, they think its perfectly good modeling of USA standards of behavior. We've sold the Kurds down the river so many times, that they probably suspect it's actually the USA behind how the Turks are selling them out. How many times did we, via the CIA, help Saddam improve the accuracy of his gas attacks on the Kurds while publicly decrying him and Chemical Ali?

Anonymous said...

The NYT op-ed is a joke. A wealthy Ad-Exec (read liar) with his oligarch crony are begging for business tax breaks so they can pay employees a fair share.

Jesse said...

"There is a way to start. Government can provide tax incentives to business to pay more to employees making $80,000 or less. The program would exist for three to five years and then be evaluated for effectiveness."

When I linked to this NYT Op-Ed I gave it the title "Plutocrats Not Too Worried to Demand More Subsidies."

As I recall, wages are tax deductible already as expenses. And so now they would like to have even more incentives to pay a living wage? Really?

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

For clarification - I was citing the disease, not endorsing the proposed cure.