Guaido's High-Risk Gamble Flops as Maduro Keeps Grip on Military
Trump is advised by the notoriously dumb. Now the voters of Venezuelans have something, other than themselves, for their predicament. Stupid,stupid,stupid.
The Democratic leaders and the president agreed to pursue a $2 trillion plan — but they haven’t worked out how to pay for it.We still have to do teachers and moms and apple pie.
Buttigieg (D)(2): “Pete Buttigieg Stuns Campaign Crowd By Speaking To Manufacturing Robots In Fluent Binary” [The Onion]. “‘…01000001 01101101 01100101 01110010 01101001 01100011 01100001 01101110 01110011 00101110 00100000,’ said the 37-year-old South Bend, IN mayor to the awe-struck machines, delivering the message by emitting a series of high-pitched tones and beeps with a perfect accent. ‘To all of you, I say 01100001 01110011 00100000 01110000 01110010 01100101 01110011…'” • I can’t believe The Onion did that! (There are a lot more zeroes and ones in the original….).Really, -- --- .-. ... . .. ... ...--- -- ..- -.-. .... . .- ... .. . .-.
O’Rourke (D)(1): “Beto O’Rourke opens his California campaign Saturday in Los Angeles” [Los Angeles Times].Beto in Texas and California seems to enjoy the camptown scene. Nancy used to hang around So Cal border for camptown time. I think camptown is a new venue, here to stay, it has economies of scale.
Millennial incomes are no lower than previous generations. Nor, generally speaking, are millennials more in debt, less likely to own a home, or less likely to spend money. You can pick out a few small differences depending on how you cherry pick years and which generations you compare to, but millennials right now are roughly as well off as young people in previous generations and their spending habits are pretty similar too.I have a chart, it tell me what proportion of out income pays for Kevin Drum's boomer debt:
Paul Krugman: The Great Republican Abdication: "The modern G.O.P. is perfectly willing to sell out America if that’s what it takes to get tax cuts for the wealthy...Both Republicans and Democrats; selling our American birth right for a nice price.
This is the argument Duke political scientist Ashley Jardina makes in her book White Identity Politics. Drawing on a decade of data from American National Election Studies surveys, Jardina claims that white Americans — roughly 30 to 40 percent of them — now identify with their whiteness in a politically meaningful way. Importantly, this racial solidarity doesn’t always overlap with racism, but it does mean that racial identity is becoming a more salient force in American politics.
Last week, a restaurant in the Canadian city of Winnipeg was allegedly defaced by racist graffiti and swastikas. News outlets described it as one of the "most brazen" attacks on the Jewish community in recent memory. A prayer vigil was planned for today.That event has been cancelled amidst revelations that the Winnipeg police now believe the hate crime was a hoax staged by the Jewish owners of the BerMax Caffe. All three were arrested and charged with "public mischief," which is the Canadian equivalent of misleading police investigators.And in addition, Conspiracy to Fake Hate Things Crime Crime. "Me and my pal, busted for the old CFHTCC".
A hail of assault rifle gunshots rang out at an apartment complex overnight Saturday, killing two parents of young children and ending what Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer described as “a very violent night in our city.” At a news conference on Sunday, Dyer said four shootings occurred in the city Saturday night into Sunday morning. No arrests had been made any of the cases as of Sunday afternoon.
Two people were shot and killed around 2:22 a.m. Sunday near Ashlan and Fruit avenues that left three children without parents. Five people, including three adult siblings and two teens, were parked in a car inside the Parks at Fig Garden apartment complex when several males walked up to the car and asked what they were doing there, Dyer told reporters Sunday. The people inside the car did not provoke the incident in any way and were there visiting a friend Dyer said. The group of men told the people in the car to leave. According to Dyer, two of the men pulled out guns as the car was leaving — one had an assault rifle, the other a handgun — and fired 26 shots at the car.
Eight people were shot, leaving one dead, in West Baltimore Sunday evening as police say a man opened fire on a cookout.The mayor has run off, hiding from bribery charges. White Man's burden, no doubt. We need better affirmative action, can't we find someone other than the Old White Man?
Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said the gunman approached two cookouts at the corner of Edmondson and Whitmore avenues and began firing indiscriminately into the crowd, striking several men and women. Officers were called to the scene at 5:03 p.m., the department wrote in a news release.
“Where is our oil? We won’t accept after today to transport our wealth outside our areas,” said a banner held by demonstrators in the village of Al-Shanan, pictures of which were sent by residents to Reuters and published on social media.
Residents, protesters and tribal chiefs said convoys of tankers from the nearby oil field of al Omar, the largest under YPG control in Syria, had been turned back by local mobs angered by what they see as theft of oil from their region.“No to Kurdish occupation,” chanted protesters in Husayn, one of the towns witnessing large protests.Spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, the SDF has been the main US partner in Syria and has driven Daesh out of a swathe of the country’s north and east over the last four years.The YPG has formally declined comment on the unrest but two officials privately told Reuters they had begun talks with tribal elders over demands from local residents that include ending arbitrary arrests.The SDF has continued to sell oil to the Syrian government in Damascus despite US misgivings. It has increased shipments in recent weeks to ease acute fuel shortages caused partly by US sanctions on Iran, a main financial supporter of the Syrian government, which are hurting the Syrian economy.By ousting Daesh from Deir Ezzor, the YPG laid its hands on some of Syria’s biggest oil fields, beating the Syrian army and its Russian backers to the prize.
Consider the agility of the drug trade. Mexicans have supplied the U.S. with illegal substances for more than a century—beginning with marijuana and heroin between the world wars, then Colombian cocaine in the 1980s, methamphetamines a decade later, and now fentanyl, by way of China. What began as a small, locally controlled business has evolved into a multibillion-dollar industry dominated by large networks that clash and collude with one another and with the state. Violence intensified after the PRI’s defeat in 2000 scattered power among competing factions. It grew still worse after 9/11 prompted the U.S. to harden the border.City Journal has much more on what is happening in Mexico. What we see is a mix, the interaction of Mexico and California, like two galaxies colliding. The narrative driven by the cartel funded non-profits, the same groups organizing the caravans.
Flynn also agreed that he lied about his lobbying activities in federal filings related to work on behalf of the Republic of Turkey throughout the 2016 campaign.And, like Cohen, Flynn had no dealings with emails or Russians. He was double dipping like everyone does back there. This whole Mueller fiasco was all about Hillary going hysterical and taking the down party with her.
DOJ emails show Nellie Ohr on May 30, 2016, directly alerted her husband and two DOJ prosecutors specializing in international crimes to the discovery of the “black ledger” documents that led to Manafort’s prosecution.
As nurses, we have both spent our careers dealing with issues that impact the well-being of individuals and the larger community. We witness hunger and homelessness as both urgent local and global problems that require a collective spirit aimed at rectifying these problems.
And while we are not global policy experts, as nurses we are committed to helping people realize their fullest health potential. Hunger and homeless are barriers to achieving this goal and demands that we use our voices and collective advocacy to eliminate hunger and homelessness.
Since my April student loan payment to the U.S. Department of Education was processed, I now have about $15,575 remaining on my balance for Denver’s Regis University, from which I graduated in 2011. Earlier on, as I paid back much of my debt mountain, I took out a few forbearances.In other words, I know what it’s like to feel the strain of student debt. But hardship and costliness are not enough to justify forcing taxpayers to pay my bills for me, or anyone else’s.The poster graduated in 2011, voted once and now owes $100,000 for federal stuff he never voted for. There is a transition point, now, where he and his parents are not sure who voted for all this. The issue is, how is he going to vote next time. A wrong vote and suddenly he has no claim come the moment of MMT.
The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterward — to realize the Americans’ objectives included two politically hot investigations: one that touched Vice President Joe Biden’s family and one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump. -The Hill
In 2013, Romanian hacker Marcel Lehel Lazăr (aka "Guccifer") distributed private memos from Sidney Blumenthal to Clinton on events in Libya.
According to security researchers at Secureworks the email leak was caused by Threat Group-4127 (TG-4127),
“The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”Sanders Dec 2015:
Sanders apologizes to Clinton directly for staffers who accessed private voter data belonging to his rival’s campaign.Emails, hacking and data theft all the rage for over a year. Now we get the Trump collusion:
Cyber attacks that successfully penetrated the DNC computing system began in 2015. Attacks by "Cozy Bear" began in the summer of 2015. Attacks by "Fancy Bear" began in April 2016. It was after the "Fancy Bear" group began their activities that the compromised system became apparent.Apr 15 2016 Papa hears 'email', third hand
DOJ emails show Nellie Ohr on May 30, 2016, directly alerted her husband and two DOJ prosecutors specializing in international crimes to the discovery of the “black ledger” documents that led to Manafort’s prosecution.
FBI director James Comey recommends no criminal charges against Clintonfor her handling of classified information while she was secretary of state but rebukes her for being “extremely careless”.FBI director Comey knew about the Crowd Strike report for nearly a year.
The Trump campaign knew of Russia’s efforts, and in certain instances even welcomed them. The report makes it shockingly clear that there was a convergence of interests between the two.
"I think the Fed is moving toward rate cuts," Kudlow said. "That is my view. It's true in the open market, the funds rate has traded a bit high, but I think they're moving toward rate cuts."
Soros has an algebra of the crowd. I have some details.
Financial markets, far from accurately reflecting all the available knowledge, always provide a distorted view of reality. This is the principle of fallibility. The degree of distortion may vary from time to time. Sometimes it’s quite insignificant, at other times it is quite pronounced.
Every bubble has two components: an underlying trend that prevails in reality and a misconception relating to that trend. When a positive feedback develops between the trend and the misconception, a boom-bust process is set in motion. The process is liable to be tested by negative feedback along the way, and if it is strong enough to survive these tests, both the trend and the misconception will be reinforced.
But the effort appears to be getting little traction so far, in part because some Democrats are insisting that any debt ceiling deal come as part of a package of changes that raises spending levels after October. The White House has sent mixed signals as to whether it would support raising spending caps, and Democrats have asked for firm commitments before they will proceed.
City Hall will cut about 29 jobs and save $17 million in spending by mid-2021 to prepare for coming financial shortfalls as it pays down its $448 million unfunded pension liability over the next 13 years.Santa Monica is a bell weather for me. The city leaders always put union first, always insured good pensions. That was three years ago, now they change their tune.
Even with an accelerated payment plan for the pension liability that will save $106 million in interest and fewer employees and services, the City of Santa Monica’s General Fund will still be at least $15 million in the red in eight years. The fund, which comprises 60 percent of the City budget and collects revenue primarily from property, sales and hotel taxes, business licenses and parking fees, currently has a $7.1 million surplus.
While General Fund revenues are slowing or declining as more people shop online and fewer use parking lots, pension costs are the main driver of the City’s projected shortfall. The state pension system that covers City employees fell into crisis after the Great Recession and retroactively increased retirement benefits a decade before that. Cities around California now have to make up the lost pension funds and higher costs.
Judiciary Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham said Pelosi’s request to postpone the State of The Union was inappropriate but so is Trump’s decision to cancel her trip to Brussels, Egypt and Afghanistan at the last minute.So Lindsey is the usual clueless Republican Communist, advanced thought never entering the brain.
Where is Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh? It’s the question buzzing around the city as the FBI and IRS raid Pugh’s home, City Hall and several other locations tied to her Thursday. But, no one has seen the mayor and her own spokesperson doesn’t know where she is even though she’s supposed to be recovering from pneumonia.Pugh’s spokesman, James Bentley, told The Associated Press Thursday that he hadn’t spoken with the mayor and doesn’t know where she is. Her defense attorney, Steve Silverman, did not immediately return calls; his office routed calls to an answering machine.However, a source tells WJZ however Pugh was at her home when the raid began, but has since left the state.
Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump -- from asking former Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland to write an untruthful letter about the reason for Flynn's chat with Kislyak, to asking Corey Lewandowski and then-former White House Counse lDon McGahn to fire Mueller and McGahn to lie about it, to firing Comey to impede the FBI's investigations, to dangling a pardon in front of Michael Cohen to stay silent, to ordering his aides to hide and delete records.
The essence of obstruction is deception or diversion -- to prevent the government from finding the truth. To Mueller, the issue was not if Trump committed crimes of obstruction. Rather, it was if Trump could be charged successfully with those crimes.
As the maladies of modern capitalism have multiplied, fundamental questions about the future of the world’s dominant economic model have become impossible to ignore. But in the absence of viable alternatives, the question is how to reform a system that is increasingly at odds with democracy.And you and I be doing it again, a second time.