May 10, 2016

For all the Hillary fans who love to talk about "the math"

May 6, 2016

O'Donnell on MSNBC: "Once Trump is GOP nominee, he starts getting National Intelligence Briefings"

This is getting scary faster than I bargained for.

May 6, 2016

Game Changer? "FBI Confirms They Will Question Hillary Clinton"

FBI Confirms They Will Question Hillary Clinton
by Tom Cahill * May 5, 2016 * US Uncut

FBI officials have confirmed that Hillary Clinton will be interviewed about her use of a private email server, possibly before the California primary.

CNN reported Thursday evening that the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed top Clinton aide Huma Abedin over the server, along with other senior aides, some more than once. While investigators confirmed that Clinton herself would be interviewed, no official date has been announced.

Bryan Pagliano, who originally built Clinton’s private server, has agreed to provide testimony to the Department of Justice in exchange for legal immunity. FBI officials stated they had yet to procure sufficient evidence that any laws were willfully broken, though the investigation is still ongoing.

As of May 5, the investigation is still limited to Clinton’s handling of classified information on her private email server, and the security of the server itself. While the former Secretary of State has cooperated with federal authorities in making thousands of emails public, 22 of the emails in her private server were classified as “top secret” and deemed too sensitive to national security to release to the general public.

http://usuncut.com/politics/fbi-question-hillary-clinton-email/

May 5, 2016

Hillary Clinton and Wall Street’s Neoliberal War on Latin America

Wow! This is a longish read, but exceedingly informative, connecting so many dots -- including the social upheavals and economic turmoil in many Latin American nations -- it makes ones head swim (at least if does mine). And you guessed it, Hillary and Goldman Sachs are heavily involved, and not in a good way.


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Hillary Clinton and Wall Street’s Neoliberal War on Latin America
MAY 4, 2016 * by ERIC DRAGSTER * Counterpunch

By now it is old news that there is a coup afoot in Brazil and that the right-wing is using extraordinary political measures to overthrow of Dilma Rousseff.

What is little discussed amid all the talk of impeachment and corruption in Brazil is the larger context: how international finance capital is working with Hillary Clinton and other U.S. political elites to reassert the Washington Consensus in Latin America; how the right wing throughout the region is collaborating in this project; and how this is manifesting in the targeted countries. Though the pieces of this puzzle may be partially concealed, it is time to put them all together to see the big picture. ...snip...

There is no doubt that one of the targets in Latin America remains raw materials and commodities: both Brazil and Argentina are recognized as major sources for energy and other commodities, while Venezuela remains one of the world’s leading oil producers. So from that perspective alone, these countries are obviously highly prized by the Wall Street jackals. But it goes much deeper than that as Latin America is now seen as a focal point of the broader drive to extend U.S.-Wall Street-London hegemony both economically and politically.

Perhaps the centerpieces of this push are the much-discussed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which would create a corporate supranational trade infrastructure that would essentially subordinate individual nations to the hegemony of corporations and capital. Naturally, the left-progressive forces in Latin America, and their allies, have been the major stumbling block to implementing the TPP and TTIP. But that is now set to change.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/04/hillary-clinton-and-wall-streets-neoliberal-war-on-latin-america/

May 3, 2016

An Australian POV: "What So Many Americans Can’t Grasp About Bernie Sanders"

From abroad, the USA looks as stupid as a bag of rocks.

Here’s the Thing So Many Americans Can’t Grasp About Bernie Sanders
The U.S. likes to brand itself 'the land of opportunity'—yet our poster boys for innovation go to Harvard
By Pete Ross * 04/25/16 * The Observer

Watching this year’s presidential nomination process from Australia has been a very interesting affair. I can’t say I’ve followed every single speech or piece of news, but I’ve certainly kept abreast of what is going on and have seen plenty of articles and commentary from people on my feed putting their opinions forward. What interests me the most are the people and media pundits who emphatically denounce Bernie Sanders and his supporters. The reasons all generally boil down to the fact that he is the reincarnation of Karl Marx and he wants to turn the U.S. into a communist state. That he is so far left of centre that he’s basically off the chart.

For those people, here’s a reality check.

Around the rest of the world, Mr. Sanders represents a point on the political spectrum that is mildly left of centre. His “wacky” ideas of free (and we’ll get to that term a bit later) education, free healthcare, regulating banks and corporations and so on are all actually staple ideas of many of the happiest and most prosperous countries in the world. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the happiest countries in the world index for 2016. The U.S. doesn’t make the top 10—but almost every single country that does has the kind of policies Mr. Sanders is promoting at some level. Looking at the other candidates, Hillary Clinton would in most countries be considered right of centre, not left. Donald and Ted? Man, those guys are so far right of centre you couldn’t plot where they exist—they’re pretty much off the spectrum.

But back to Bernie. Throughout the nomination process, Bernie’s critics always seem to be asking the wrong questions. The most common one I see is “how is he going to pay for all of this?” This question misses the point entirely. Even if economists say that he can’t, does that really invalidate everything he’s aiming to achieve? If he can’t pay for all of it and the only thing that actually gets passed is universal college education and a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, is that such a horrible thing? Why does it have to be so all or nothing? That’s why it also baffles me when people say that they don’t want the kind of revolution Mr. Sanders is pushing—the reality is that even if he is swept to victory, the amount of change he’ll actually be able to implement won’t be half of what he wants to do.

No wonder Gallup polling shows over 85 percent of you are disengaged and miserable at your jobs.

The other elephant in the room is that the current political status quo is to spend over half a trillion dollars per year on the military. So you’re against universal health care or college education because you don’t think it can be paid for, but you’re happy for your government to spend that amount of money on your military when the last time you actually had to defend yourselves was over two centuries ago? When you’re willing to sacrifice so many of the best parts of a socialist democracy in order to fund a military juggernaut that has to go out looking for things to shoot, your priorities are ridiculously lopsided. The War on Terror started with over 3,000 people being killed in a terrorist attack on your own soil. It has since cost the U.S. over 5 trillion dollars—money that could have been used to save far more lives than were lost in the first place, if they had been provided with adequate health care.

http://observer.com/2016/04/heres-the-thing-so-many-americans-cant-grasp-about-bernie-sanders/

May 1, 2016

To me "Bernie or Bust" means two things

1) The Primary is NOT over, Bernie's still in it, and in it to WIN. I find the whole question of who I'll vote for if Bernie loses to be an insulting distraction from the fact that the Primary is not over until the moment the nominee is decided conclusively, and not a minute before.

2) IF when it's over Berine does not win, it's none of anyone's damnd business who I will vote for, i;e; I'm not much onto Loyalty Oaths, never have been. That's why we have a secret ballot in this nation. Besides, If ever there was a Primary season that is volatile and totally unpredictable it is this one; so it's presumptuous and totally premature to even ask who I'dl vote for should Bernie not be the nominee.

April 16, 2016

Release of Clinton’s Wall Street Speeches Could End Her Candidacy for President

Release of Clinton’s Wall Street Speeches Could End Her Candidacy for President
04/15/2016 * by Seth Abrasion * HuffPo

The reason you and I will never see the transcripts of Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street fat-cats — and the reason she’s established a nonsensical condition for their release, that being an agreement by members of another party, involved in a separate primary, to do the same — is that if she were ever to release those transcripts, it could end her candidacy for president.

Please don’t take my word for it, though.

Nor even that of the many neutral observers in the media who are deeply troubled by Clinton’s lack of transparency as to these well-compensated closed-door events — a lack of transparency that has actually been a hallmark of her career in politics.

Nor do we even need to take Clinton’s word for it — as we could certainly argue that her insistence that none of these transcripts ever be seen by the public is itself a confession that her words would cause significant trauma to her presidential bid.

In fact, it appears they’d cause enough trauma that Clinton would rather publicly stonewall — to the point of being conspicuously, uncomfortably evasive — in public debate after public debate, to endure damning editorial after damning editorial, and to leave thousands and thousands of voters further doubting her honesty and integrity, all to ensure that no one outside Goldman Sachs, and certainly no voter who wasn’t privy to those closed-door speeches, ever hears a word of what she said in them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/release-of-clintons-wall-street-speeches_b_9698632.html

April 14, 2016

I have a conscience': the Wall Streeters fighting for Bernie Sanders in New York

'I have a conscience': the Wall Streeters fighting for Bernie Sanders in New York
The financial industry looms large in the coming primary – and some bankers say they’ll push for the Vermont senator even if his policies could hurt their careers
Ed Pilkington in New York * April 1,2016 * The Guardian

A few months ago, Democratic party leaders attended a meeting in New York with some of the titans of Wall Street, among them heads of brand-name hedge funds and top private equity firms. The gathering was billed not as the usual high-dollar fundraiser but as a bridge-building exercise in which powerful financiers could vent their opinions privately to Democratic bosses.

Money influences everybody. That includes Hillary Clinton
Two US senators who formed part of the Democratic delegation kicked off the meeting by inviting the financiers to air their concerns about party policy. One of the big name Wall Street figures stood up, proclaimed grandly that he was speaking on behalf of every financial person in the room, and then slammed into the Democratic lawmakers for having had the audacity even to consider disbanding a low-tax arrangement popular with hedge fund managers known as “carried interest”.

“That was startling to me,” said one of the other financiers present in the room that day. “Here was a gathering of Wall Street’s greatest minds and what were we discussing? Not how to generate more jobs or create an economy that works for everyone, but how to protect our vested interests and tax advantages.”

Let’s call the financier speaking here by the false name Frank. He is one of a rare and fascinating breed which Politico has dubbed Bankers for Bernie – high-profile Wall Street figures who, unlike most of their peers, are prepared to abandon pure self-interest and embrace the radical financial reforms espoused by Bernie Sanders.

Even Asher Edelman, one of the real-life templates for Gordon “greed is good” Gekko of the 1987 movie Wall Street, has joined the club, writing in the Guardian that only Sanders is “committed to honest solutions” to the crisis of income inequality.

The fact that Frank – a prominent New York hedge fund manager – is only willing to talk to the Guardian anonymously itself tells a story. It’s not that he’s ashamed about his backing for Bernie – quite the contrary: he has openly canvassed for Sanders in Iowa and frequently goes out leafleting for him in New York City. Rather, Frank’s desire to keep his name out of the news was a reflection, he said, of the stultifying consensus within the New York financial world that Sanders’ proposals to rein in Wall Street and prevent another Great Recession are dangerous and must be rebuffed. He looks at his fellow hedge fund folk, and thinks to himself that “they have made so much money, yet all they want to do is preserve what they’ve got. It’s got so out of whack that virtually nobody is willing to think about the basic unfairness of income inequality or how to improve the economy.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/14/new-york-primary-bernie-sanders-wall-street

April 8, 2016

There are FACTS, and then there is SPIN.

April 4, 2016

Why is Hillary Clinton taking credit for the Fight for $15.?

Hillary Clinton will be joining New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday for a rally in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center at 11 a.m. to celebrate the historic $15/hour minimum wage legislation. Speaking as someone who worked for the Fight for $15 from the very first action in NYC, let me explain why this is an appalling betrayal of workers.

Fast-food workers marched in the streets and shut down stores for years, while an army of online supporters shared viral photos, memes, and news. And we did it again and again. Despite all odds and haters telling us that a $15 minimum wage would never happen — and still telling us that we should be “realistic” — we started winning and never looked back.

Fight for $15 is arguably the greatest union victory in decades, perhaps even the greatest victory of the progressive movement in recent history. One of those victories came eight months ago, when the Democratic Party adopted a $15/hour minimum wage in the official party platform, weeks after Bernie Sanders introduced legislation in Congress.



By contrast, Hillary Clinton is the only prominent Democrat who refused to endorse $15/hour. Bernie Sanders won’t remind people of this, so I will: He was in the streets with fast-food workers every time. There’s photos of him marching with workers in the pouring fucking rain, and he’s the one who pushed Democrats to adopt it. Yet, Hillary Clinton will be on the stage tomorrow for the victory moment.

http://usuncut.com/politics/hillary-15-hour-minimum-wage/