Thursday, September 10, 2015

SAR #15253


Anyone who speaks for God, lies.
Rose Colored Glasses: More than 50 DIA intelligence analysts working for Central Command have formally complained that senior officers have changed reports to show that the US is winning the battle against ISIS when in fact it is not.
Rhymes: Jeb's plan to “unleash 4% growth” in American isn't exactly the same as his brother's failed attempt, but it seems reminiscent: cut taxes on the rich and corporations and let the good times roll. Plus a war or two. And starve the poor, that's always the key, starve the poor.
Succinctly: Goldman beats another fraud rap.
Confirmation: God bless bureaucracy. British government clerks carefully recorded meetings and communications between the Blair government and oil giants BP and Shell as they clamored for their place at the trough – the trough being Iraqi oil fields. More than a year before Blair agreed with Bush to annex Iraq, and in direct contravention of the Blair government's dissembling, the UK agreed to seek significant access to Iraqi oilfields after the US/UK invasion. In the event, the Blair government told the US that it was “anxious that political deals should not deny [BP and Shell] the opportunity" to loot Iraq. The 20-year contracts Iraq was forced to sign are the largest ever negotiated, covering half of Iraq's petroleum reserves. Just what China did to earn the huge contracts the China National Petroleum Company received is still a secret.
Furiously Fast: DEA agents pretending to be from the Texas Medical Board are plowing through hundreds of private medical records in search of Texas doctors to prosecute for... for whatever they can scrape up. No warrants were harmed in this blatantly illegal fishing expedition.
Silent Treatment: Israel's President Rivlin says he and PM Netanyahu have not spoken in over three months and “have said everything that can be said.”
Just Say No: A Bush-era federal judge has said Republican's in Congress can sue to stop the government from paying ACA health insurance subsidies, wrest the money (and insurance) from those who have benefited, and essentially kill medical insurance for several million poor people. It was unclear if those who had been helped would have to go back to being sick.
Clip and Save: Adjusted for demographic factors – another way of saying we're all getting older – there has been no “skyrocketing increase” in disability claims. They've gone from just below 4% of workers to just over 4% of workers. It's not fraud, it's the damned pain in my knees...
Warm And Fuzzy: Kindly Warren Buffett explains the gap between the have and the have-nots this way: “You want everybody educated to their potential. You want people to reach their potential. … There's just some people don't fit well into a highly skilled market-based economy. They're perfectly decent citizens. We'll send them off to Afghanistan, but they are not going to command a big price."
Progress Report: Harvard University notes that 37.9% of its incoming freshman are atheists or agnostics. They accept only the brightest of the bright.
Door Number Three: To the threat of intolerable global warming and massive flooding from melting ice caps, add this: There are giant viruses in the frozen wastelands of Siberia just waiting to be thawed out and set free. Worse than Children of the Corn.
Enigma: Since equipping their police with body cameras, Birmingham, AL has seen a 71% drop in citizen complaints and a 38% drop in use of force by officers. Protecting and serving.
Pocket Lint: For every ounce of physical gold available on the Comex gold exchange, 207 people have paper claims to it. Think of it a musical chairs and wait for the music to stop.
Porn O'Graph: It's oily days.

7 comments:

McMike said...

re ISIS. Yeah, but are we winning hearts and minds? And are there any unsaved villages left to be destroyed?

re Buffet. Actually kind of refreshing - acknowledging the 500 pound gorilla in all that free market labor force rhetoric - some people will be pushed off the back of the wagon. Now we need to ask: what do we do with them?

re disability crisis. File that with the fake Social Security crisis.

re musical chairs. So, have the smart kids started getting ready, and keeping their rear ends closer to a seat at all times?

re oil price. Volatility is assured, because volatility benefits Wall Street. So it will happen.

Anonymous said...

I think you mean Iraqi oilfields, not Iranian.

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Bless you, anony 8.27. You are right, it was Iraq's oil last time. Iran's is next time.

McMike said...

re Iran next time. Raises an interesting question, what did the Obama admin trade to get the nuke deal? (I mean, what did they really trade? Where are the pallets of cash?).

Viewed as a play to get first in line for Iranian oil. The big question becomes: will China/Russia take this lying down?

As the GOP kvetches miserably about the nuke deal, they may be missing (or ignoring) the larger point that this is a jab in the eye of the Russians, and the opening salvo in the looming great power conflict - access to the oil and profits, and money denomination over the trade.

kwark said...

RE "Just Say No": Simply more of The Standard Republican Gambit for the last two decades (at least). When you loose in court or can't muster enough political support to eliminate something outright, simply throw sand in the gears. A waste of taxpayer's money? Yes, but that's never really been their concern.

RE "Porn O'Graph": One has to wonder if the Y axis should be "effective price". If we're entering a deflationary environment the denominated price of oil may actually go down but folks still won't be able to afford the stuff.

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Quite so, kwark. Prices are relative. All the while we thought $110 a barrel oil would be unaffordable, not realizing that as the common economy dies $40 a barrel would be out of reach of many.

Does it rally matter how much a yacht costs if you can't pay for one? Or loaves of bread...

Anonymous said...

McMike: The pallets of money never leave the warehouse, their ownership is traded by Swiss wire. Seriously, Obama isn't being paid by the Iranians, but by US & International Corporations who now can more easily transact business with Iran, and in greater volume as they can sell oil more openly for imports/services.

Hence the leaps in the value of Bill & Hillary's trust and Barry O's Library fund & trust over the last few months.