Monday, January 25, 2016

SAR #16025


I've come to understand my confusion.
Stumped: Hillary simply cackles maniacally when asked about all the money Goldman Sachs has given her (Wall Street's paid the Clintons over $125 million since 2001) as her military-industrial complex entangled 'experts' up the volume of their McCarthyite attacks on Sanders. Krugman continues to say that the best way to reign in Wall Street and get us a single payer healthcare system is not to try, especially if it would harm the profits of the rich. Funny, taxing the rich used to be a core Democratic Party value, now they call it socialism.
Just Say No: As the mosquito-borne Zika virus spreads towards the United States, El Salvador asks women not to get pregnant until 2018.
They're Back: Insured (by you, the US taxpayer) commercial banks and savings associations are exposed to $274 trillion in notional (face amount) derivatives, and five banks hold 93% of that amount: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley. Just one of these behemoths, Morgan Stanley, only survived the 2007 crash with a $10 billion injection of funds from US, along with over $2 trillion in below-market-rate loans. [And we know about this only because of Bloomberg and Senator Bernie Sanders.]
Quoted: “Consumers just don't seem to be showing up...”
Culture File: While The Donald jokes (?) that he “could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters”, A man in NC shot and killed a man who came thorough the blizzard to help him and a man in Arkansas shot and killed a firefighter who was trying to help him. 'Cause guns make us free.
More of the Same: The exploiters, the extractors, the developers have discovered “a billion dollar ocean” - the Arctic is open for business. What could possibly go right?
Pax Americana: As the Republicans get ready to carpet bomb any Muslim that gets restive, let us keep in mind just how peaceful are the places we've introduced to democracy in the last decade or so: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine come quickly to mind. But our efforts maintain peace and freedom in the US, where most of us spend 40 years working off our debt to the banks for cars, houses, healthcare, and education. Sure we work longer hours for less pay than most other developed nations and send more of our fellow citizens to jail (and to death), but we're patriots; we accept defeat as victory, debt-slavery as freedom... Sorry, Orwell was a bit more succinct.
Answered: Bloomberg asks, “Are we headed for a recession?” Headed?
Head Fake: The National Security Agency is siding with those who do not want 'back doors' built into their electronic communications. No, they're not advocating privacy, they are simply sure they can break whatever encryption you have access to and want to fool you into thinking you've got some privacy. You don't.
Fairly Tale: Commentators are beginning to suspect that herding is at play in the stock markets. Really.
Porn O'Graph: To the tune of...
The Parting Shot:
 

9 comments:

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

hillary clinton's laugh expresses the contempt she feels for us, the little people

the daily mail has run a couple of stories that have, for me, the ring of truth about hillary's character, both based on books about her

one article, published aug. 25, 2015, summarizes Hillary Clinton on the Couch, a book by psychoanalyst alma h. bond, ph.d.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3209152/Hillary-lonely-trouble-expressing-feelings-yearns-intimate-relationship-powerful-woman-claims-noted-shrink-puts-presidential-hopeful-couch.html

it is a speculative analysis of how hillary's early life shaped her - the daily mail's bullet points are

Dr. Alma Bond says Hillary's oppressive upbringing by her father Hugh Rodham made her ambivalent towards men

It also caused her to be tolerant of her cheating husband, claims Dr. Bond in a new book

When Hillary's mom threatened to leave her father the broad-shouldered man bellowed: 'Don't let the doorknob hit you in the a** on your way out.'

Author suggests that Rodham's stinginess and anxiety about money contributed to Hillary's need to accumulate great wealth

Hillary accepts that her loneliness is the price she has to pay to be at the top

Huma Abedin does not fill the intimacy vacuum in Hillary's life


dr. bond puts hillary "on the couch" metaphorically - that is, she imagines what hillary might say, based on what she has learned about her from a distance

a fuller picture of hillary can be seen by including the account of marla crider, a rival for bill's affections at a time prior to hillary and bill's marriage - from the daily mail of 19 january 2016

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3396589/Anonymous-phone-calls-fears-stalking-veiled-threats-power-hungry-Hillary-torpedoed-torrid-affair-Bill-Clinton-21-year-old-campaign-worker-threatened-destroy-master-plan-president.html

EXCLUSIVE: Anonymous phone calls, fears of stalking and veiled threats: How power-hungry Hillary torpedoed the torrid affair between Bill Clinton and 21-year-old campaign worker that threatened to destroy her master plan to become president

Long before the 'bimbo eruptions' and Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton cheated on Hillary with university student Marla Crider

Crider worked on Bill's first political campaign in 1974 and they fell hard for each other

In an explosive interview, she told author Jerry Oppenheimer: 'Hillary was like a cat, marking her territory'

Bill was crazy about Crider, but told her '[Hillary] gets me started, kicks my butt, and makes me do the things I've got to do'

When Hillary learned of their affair things turned ugly

Crider saw a letter Hillary wrote to Bill saying: 'I know all your little girls are around there…if that's what it is, you will outgrow this'

Hillary and Bill had a 'secret pact' for their future that one day he, and later she, would be elected president



neither of these articles shows us a hillary beyond human sympathy - rather the reverse, i personally feel - but in my view she should not be president

McMike said...

Re consumers don't seem to be showing up. I have this mental image of commercial fishermen on a fleet of giant trawlers, armed with millions of candle power of day-lighting, sophisticated military-grade sonar and satellite imagery, on-board processing/canning factories, and deploy multi-mile long nets that sweep from the top down to scrape the bottom and scoop up everything indiscriminately, while disrupting every aspect of the life cycle.

They are all standing around on deck scratching their heads over the empty nets and wondering where the fish all went.

Gegner said...

If Bernie can avoid landing in a pool of his own blood ['Assassination' what the oligarchs do to people who threaten their stranglehold on our way of life.] He has the potential to rival Roosevelt in popularity, something that must have them shaking in their shoes.

Probably the only thing that will [partially] salvage the damaged reputation of electoral politics in this nation (but I doubt it will happen due to the risk a Sanders presidency presents to the oligarchs) is a 'truly popular' candidate attaining the Oval Office.

But if Bernie's candidacy is already 'sold out' then it will become apparent by what he does or doesn't accomplish in his firsst hundred days [that's when we all found out Obama was Wall Street's boy, he did nothing to prosecute the war criminals/profiteers or to roll back the Patriot Act.]

In a not necessarily unrelated sidebar, what did you make of last night's premere of the X-files?

Intriguing premise, it will be facinating to see where Mr. Carter is going with this...naturally it will take a mad turn just shy of the truth but still, he's always danced dangerously close to the edge.

McMike said...

re George A. I don't really agree with that assessment. Sanders, as much as I agree with him, is not the answer, but he may be a harbinger of the answer. No president can do it alone.

There will be no more FDR's (Steve Earle).... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmxEumswN1Q


As for prescient shows, I think Person of Interest nailed it: pervasive real time secret surveillance is achievable, is inherently anti-democratic, and WILL be misused.

PS. There was no surprise about Obama, his donor data was already available well before the election. It was effectively the same list as his GOP rivals, and as Hillary's.

Gegner said...

I concur! 'The answer' is far removed from the deeply flawed system we have now. Um, she controls the remote during primetime so I haven't seen anything that competes with 'The Voice' or 'the Bachelorette' or 'the Biggest Fatty'.

I was a first term Obama fan (moreso from an anti-Hillary perspective), I voted for the all-female ticket the second time around...(remember, the one who were arrested for attending the debates they weren't invited to, sets a bad example of who really runs this dump/ what a farce the whole process has become.)

Which is to agree, doesn't matter who you elect if they're going to take their marching orders from the same gang of hoodlums.

McMike said...

re Clinton cackle. Watch the SS goon to her left laser in on the guy when he hears the name Goldman Sachs. To their credit, once they decided he was not a threat, the bodyguards let it slide, but you can hear in the background a women handler come in whose job it must be to try and guide the rude guy away.

kwark said...

RE "Stumped" and comments. . . So is Hillary a borderline sociopath or just another women warped by intimate relationships with abusive males? Even if she is a sociopath she's in the minor leagues compared to the Big League sociopaths calling themselves Republican candidates for president. I'm still not sure if I'll be able to hold my nose and vote for her should it come down to it.

Anonymous said...

“I spoke to a wide array of groups who wanted to hear what I thought about the world coming off of my time as secretary of state,” Clinton said, defending her decision to make money from speaking fees. “I happen to think we need more conversation about what’s going on in the world.”

Sadly, for the electorate that may well choose her, she and quite a number of her supporters both believe it to a certain extent. Cognitive Dissonance is never pretty.

Anonymous said...

"And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!"

"We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas."

and my favorite line in the rant by Carlin...

"Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

"Plastic… asshole.”