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Kid Berwyn
Kid Berwyn's Journal
Kid Berwyn's Journal
October 1, 2019

Pablo Casals: In the confusion that afflicts the world today, I see a disrespect for the very values of life. Beauty is all about us, but how many are blind to it! They look at the wonder of this earth and seem to see nothing. People move hectically but give little thought to where they are going
Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two makes four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you. And look at your body what a wonder it is! Your legs, your arms, your cunning fingers, the way you move! You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work we all must work to make this world worthy of its children.
Source: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/10/pablo-casals-joys-and-sorrows-jfk/
What the cellist said...

Pablo Casals: In the confusion that afflicts the world today, I see a disrespect for the very values of life. Beauty is all about us, but how many are blind to it! They look at the wonder of this earth and seem to see nothing. People move hectically but give little thought to where they are going
Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two makes four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you. And look at your body what a wonder it is! Your legs, your arms, your cunning fingers, the way you move! You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work we all must work to make this world worthy of its children.
Source: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/10/pablo-casals-joys-and-sorrows-jfk/
September 29, 2019
Wall Street Democratic donors warn the party: Well sit out, or back Trump, if you nominate Elizabeth Warren
Sept. 26, 2019, CNBC.com
Democratic donors on Wall Street and in big business are preparing to sit out the presidential campaign fundraising cycle or even back President Donald Trump if Sen. Elizabeth Warren wins the partys nomination.
In recent interviews of several big-money Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community, CNBC has found that this opinion is becoming widely shared as Warren surges against Joe Biden.
Warren is a critic of big banks and corporations, and has called for a wealth tax.
In recent weeks, CNBC spoke to several high-dollar Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community and found that this opinion was becoming widely shared as Warren, an outspoken critic of big banks and corporations, gains momentum against Joe Biden in the 2020 race.
Youre in a box because youre a Democrat and youre thinking, I want to help the party, but shes going to hurt me, so Im going to help President Trump, said a senior private equity executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity in fear of retribution by party leaders. The executive said this Wednesday, a day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.
Continues...
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/wall-street-democratic-donors-may-back-trump-if-warren-is-nominated.html
The 99% deserve a break ASAFP.
WALL STREET Dem donors: "We'll sit out or back Trump if you nominate WARREN."
Thats all right with me.
Wall Street screws 99% of the country.
For all they can.
All day.
Every day.
Wall Street Democratic donors warn the party: Well sit out, or back Trump, if you nominate Elizabeth Warren
Sept. 26, 2019, CNBC.com
Democratic donors on Wall Street and in big business are preparing to sit out the presidential campaign fundraising cycle or even back President Donald Trump if Sen. Elizabeth Warren wins the partys nomination.
In recent interviews of several big-money Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community, CNBC has found that this opinion is becoming widely shared as Warren surges against Joe Biden.
Warren is a critic of big banks and corporations, and has called for a wealth tax.
In recent weeks, CNBC spoke to several high-dollar Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community and found that this opinion was becoming widely shared as Warren, an outspoken critic of big banks and corporations, gains momentum against Joe Biden in the 2020 race.
Youre in a box because youre a Democrat and youre thinking, I want to help the party, but shes going to hurt me, so Im going to help President Trump, said a senior private equity executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity in fear of retribution by party leaders. The executive said this Wednesday, a day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.
Continues...
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/wall-street-democratic-donors-may-back-trump-if-warren-is-nominated.html
The 99% deserve a break ASAFP.
September 25, 2019
The Department of Just Us
Unless hes the whistleblower, Barr is looking at a long stretch in the pen.
September 21, 2019
Trump's Got Talent
September 20, 2019
It must really make her mad to be repeatedly asked!
Not that theres a reason for it.
September 20, 2019
By Emily Stewart
Vox.com, Sep 20, 2019, 8:30am EDT
Sen. Elizabeth Warrens unofficial campaign slogan is shes got a plan for that. The reality is, she has just one.
She wants to finish what she started when she first came to Washington. And she will bring with her a cadre of energetic, ideologically committed regulators who will go after the bad guys of corporate America who she believes have crippled the national economy.
If Warren wins the presidency, she, like any Democrat, will face steep odds of getting an ambitious legislative agenda through Congress. The real action in any administration is executive in nature: knowing what regulatory buttons to push, which enforcers can really go foor blood, who to put where, and how to manage them.
Snip...
Warren saw Geithner and other key members of Obamas team such as National Economic Council Director Larry Summers (and by extension Obama himself) as too soft on Wall Street and too compromised by ties to the business world. These days, Siewert runs global corporate communications for Goldman Sachs, Geithner is president of the investment bank Warburg Pincus, and Summers has moonlighted as an adviser to Citigroup and D.E. Shaw while teaching at Harvard and taking shots at Warrens wealth tax.
I spoke with 30 current and former government officials and employees, lobbyists, industry insiders, consumer advocates, and members of Warrens inner circle to understand who Warren really is, not only as a policymaker but also as an executive, a decisionmaker, and a leader. Her supporters and detractors describe her as ruthlessly committed to her ideals and ruthlessly effective at making them real.
Continues...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/20/20867899/elizabeth-warren-cfpb-founding-plans-obama-president
Elizabeth Warren has just one plan
A detailed look at Warrens successes and failures at the start of the CFPB and what they tell us about how she might govern.By Emily Stewart
Vox.com, Sep 20, 2019, 8:30am EDT
Sen. Elizabeth Warrens unofficial campaign slogan is shes got a plan for that. The reality is, she has just one.
She wants to finish what she started when she first came to Washington. And she will bring with her a cadre of energetic, ideologically committed regulators who will go after the bad guys of corporate America who she believes have crippled the national economy.
If Warren wins the presidency, she, like any Democrat, will face steep odds of getting an ambitious legislative agenda through Congress. The real action in any administration is executive in nature: knowing what regulatory buttons to push, which enforcers can really go foor blood, who to put where, and how to manage them.
Snip...
Warren saw Geithner and other key members of Obamas team such as National Economic Council Director Larry Summers (and by extension Obama himself) as too soft on Wall Street and too compromised by ties to the business world. These days, Siewert runs global corporate communications for Goldman Sachs, Geithner is president of the investment bank Warburg Pincus, and Summers has moonlighted as an adviser to Citigroup and D.E. Shaw while teaching at Harvard and taking shots at Warrens wealth tax.
I spoke with 30 current and former government officials and employees, lobbyists, industry insiders, consumer advocates, and members of Warrens inner circle to understand who Warren really is, not only as a policymaker but also as an executive, a decisionmaker, and a leader. Her supporters and detractors describe her as ruthlessly committed to her ideals and ruthlessly effective at making them real.
Continues...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/20/20867899/elizabeth-warren-cfpb-founding-plans-obama-president
September 18, 2019
Bill Barr: The Cover-Up General
"At the center of the criticism is the chief articulator of Bush's imperial presidency," we reported in 1992, "the man who wrote the legal rationale for the Gulf War, the Panama invasion, and the officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad"
by FRANK SNEPP
The Village Voice, APRIL 18, 2019
Snip...
For the next two years, as chief of the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel, Barr played a key role in shaping Richard Thornburghs stormy tenure as attorney general. In a job that was essentially political, he helped maintain the administrations ideological purity by screening out judicial candidates who werent conservative enough. He also drafted two key documents rationalizing the U.S. invasion of Panama and the seizure of General Manuel Noriega.
Snip...
In mid 1990, as Thornburghs own problems with Congress deepened, Barr was tapped to run interference, and was named deputy attorney general. The appointment came just in time for him to draft another landmark tract for the administration, the legal pretext for the undeclared war against Iraq. It would have made any Nixonite proud. Explaining it later to Congress, Barr said he believed there was a gray zone between a declared offensive war and an emergency defensive action where there is latitude for the president, if he believes that the vital interests of the United States are threatened by foreign military attack, there is room for him to respond.
Barr did not make clear how the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait equaled an attack on vital American interests, but to his credit, at the moment of decision itself, he did counsel the president to soften the impact of his unilateral rush to war by seeking a declaration of congressional support. That piece of advice, much akin to Johnsons leveraging of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, helped to keep the naysayers at bay.
Barrs service to the administration, however, wasnt limited simply to such flashes of political savvy. In 1991 he became active in stone-walling the Iraqgate and the BCCI investigations and further gratified conservatives by keeping up the tattoo on their favorite hot-button issues. Embracing immigration policy as his own, he helped craft an exception rule that automatically barred HIV-positive sufferers from entering the country. Civil libertarians charged illegal discrimination and even racism, since many of those excluded were black Haitians. Barr assured Congress that the policy was meant only to keep out people who might be thrown back on public welfare.
Flogging another conservative hobbyhorse, Barr fought hard as deputy AG to keep federal courts from expanding their right to review state criminal convictions on writs of habeas corpus. As a devout Catholic, he also pandered to the antiabortion crowd, even torquing the law in August 1991 to advance their crusade. The challenge came when a federal judge in Wichita issued an order barring anti-abortion demonstrators from blocking access to a clinic. The Justice Department intervened to try to force a lifting of the ban. Later asked about this by Congress, Barr gave an exquisitely technical rationale, asserting that though the demonstrators were lawbreakers . . . treading on other peoples rights, they should be dealt with in state court, not federal court thus the federal judges order was unenforceable.
Continues...
https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/04/18/attorney-general-william-barr-is-the-best-reason-to-vote-for-clinton/
Barr is the rock which covers all manner of the vilest treasons.
Bill Barr, secret policeman for the deep state
This is why we cant have nice things.
Bill Barr: The Cover-Up General
"At the center of the criticism is the chief articulator of Bush's imperial presidency," we reported in 1992, "the man who wrote the legal rationale for the Gulf War, the Panama invasion, and the officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad"
by FRANK SNEPP
The Village Voice, APRIL 18, 2019
Snip...
For the next two years, as chief of the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel, Barr played a key role in shaping Richard Thornburghs stormy tenure as attorney general. In a job that was essentially political, he helped maintain the administrations ideological purity by screening out judicial candidates who werent conservative enough. He also drafted two key documents rationalizing the U.S. invasion of Panama and the seizure of General Manuel Noriega.
Snip...
In mid 1990, as Thornburghs own problems with Congress deepened, Barr was tapped to run interference, and was named deputy attorney general. The appointment came just in time for him to draft another landmark tract for the administration, the legal pretext for the undeclared war against Iraq. It would have made any Nixonite proud. Explaining it later to Congress, Barr said he believed there was a gray zone between a declared offensive war and an emergency defensive action where there is latitude for the president, if he believes that the vital interests of the United States are threatened by foreign military attack, there is room for him to respond.
Barr did not make clear how the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait equaled an attack on vital American interests, but to his credit, at the moment of decision itself, he did counsel the president to soften the impact of his unilateral rush to war by seeking a declaration of congressional support. That piece of advice, much akin to Johnsons leveraging of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, helped to keep the naysayers at bay.
Barrs service to the administration, however, wasnt limited simply to such flashes of political savvy. In 1991 he became active in stone-walling the Iraqgate and the BCCI investigations and further gratified conservatives by keeping up the tattoo on their favorite hot-button issues. Embracing immigration policy as his own, he helped craft an exception rule that automatically barred HIV-positive sufferers from entering the country. Civil libertarians charged illegal discrimination and even racism, since many of those excluded were black Haitians. Barr assured Congress that the policy was meant only to keep out people who might be thrown back on public welfare.
Flogging another conservative hobbyhorse, Barr fought hard as deputy AG to keep federal courts from expanding their right to review state criminal convictions on writs of habeas corpus. As a devout Catholic, he also pandered to the antiabortion crowd, even torquing the law in August 1991 to advance their crusade. The challenge came when a federal judge in Wichita issued an order barring anti-abortion demonstrators from blocking access to a clinic. The Justice Department intervened to try to force a lifting of the ban. Later asked about this by Congress, Barr gave an exquisitely technical rationale, asserting that though the demonstrators were lawbreakers . . . treading on other peoples rights, they should be dealt with in state court, not federal court thus the federal judges order was unenforceable.
Continues...
https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/04/18/attorney-general-william-barr-is-the-best-reason-to-vote-for-clinton/
Barr is the rock which covers all manner of the vilest treasons.