KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban attacked a second Afghan city in as many days on Sunday, an official said, even as Washington’s peace envoy said the U.S. and the militant group are “at the threshold of an agreement” to end America’s longest war.The entire generation of Taliban resulted in them getting bombed, the power taking turns. It is Iran's turn, and the Taliban will do some stupid and get bombed by Iran. Eventually India and China will bomb them, they have no other cultural aim.
The attack on the capital of Baghlan province came hours after U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said he warned the Taliban during talks in Qatar that “violence like this must stop.” But he appeared determined to move forward on a deal that plans the withdrawal of some 14,000 remaining U.S. troops in exchange for Taliban guarantees that Afghanistan will not be used as a launch pad for global attacks.
Khalilzad was visiting Kabul on Sunday to brief the Afghan government on a deal that is not yet final. Both he and the Taliban confirmed the latest round of talks had ended.
The attacks are seen as strengthening the negotiating position of the Taliban, who control or hold sway over roughly half of Afghanistan and are at their strongest since their 2001 defeat by a U.S.-led invasion. Some critics have warned that the Taliban are merely waiting out the U.S. and that another U.S. goal in the talks, a cease-fire, likely will not happen as foreign troops leave.
A U.S.–Taliban deal will leave many American troops in Afghanistan. "Under the proposed deal, the initial withdrawal would include roughly 5,000 of the 14,000 U.S. troops in the country," The Washington Post reported Thursday.
"We're going to keep a presence there," Trump told Fox News' Brian Kilmeade yesterday. "We're reducing that presence very substantially. We're not fighting a war over there. We're just policemen."
But this comes after an announcement from Trump last December that the U.S. would be withdrawing 7,000 from Afghanistan within weeks. That didn't pan out. The new plan is the latest in what's becoming a Trumpian habit: promising a different path than his predecessors in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, only to cave to the more militaristic forces in his party and in the broader media/corporate/political establishment.
In this case, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) has been one of the harshest critics of Trump's impulses to pull back the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and the Middle East. "Graham, one of Trump's closest allies on Capitol Hill, has repeatedly warned the president not to trust the Taliban to control al-Qaeda and other militant groups in Afghanistan," notes the Post.
Through it all, the American people were told by their leadership that progress was just around the corner. The senior officers in charge of implementing a failed strategy refused to level with Americans about just how difficult the circumstances were.Most of us knew that Afghanistan would return to the same nutty place it has always been. They live way up in the center of nowhere, completely isolated, stuck with a stone age philosophy. They are frigged, soon Iran will be bombing them, they are simply nuts.
The Taliban’s resurgence is the inevitable outcome of an inadequate organizational structure and an ineffective strategy. The Taliban in 2001 consisted of large units organized under a tribal military chain of command driven by a religious ideology. The U.S. won by March 2002, but instead of recognizing victory and departing, Washington took on greater responsibility by building political and security organizations that would lead to a Taliban resurgence, unparalleled corruption across the political system and an 18-plus-year conflict. By 2004, the Taliban took advantage of a sanctuary in Pakistan to reorganize, recruit and fundraise while co-opting village elders across the border. By 2005, the Taliban and other insurgent organizations had a foothold across Afghanistan.
Missouri Rep. William Lacy Clay claims we’ve reached a “tipping point” on gun control, and is hoping that means we’ll see new gun control laws passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump. We recently discussed the congressman’s new bill that would gut firearms preemption laws across the nation and allow for cities to pass sweeping gun bans, institute gun licensing and firearms registration laws, as well as impose onerous taxes on firearms and ammunition and other measures that would eviscerate the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding AmericansIt is in the Second, actual words. If the Supremes decide something else, then we can change the court because the words remain.
Catherine "Cate" O'Leary (nee Donegan; March 1827 – 3 July 1895) was an Irish immigrant living in Chicago, Illinois who became infamous when it was alleged that an accident involving her cow had started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Born Catherine Donegan, she and her husband Patrick O'Leary had three children, one of whom, James Patrick O'Leary, ran a well-known Chicago saloon and gambling hall.
There is too much randomness in Trump’s management of the presidency to make persuasive predictions. He will surely try to stick to his public narrative, which has worked so well for so long. But a severe recession may be his undoing. And even before economic catastrophe strikes, the public may begin paying more attention to his aberrations – and to contagious new counter narratives that crowd out his own.This is the conclusion of the article, the the content itself had absolutely nothing to do with how and why we will get a recession. Robert has not been in the news lately since housing is not yet leading the bust this time around. So he does the usual horse shit one does with a bunch of leftwards, he makes the usual psychological fantasy about Trump's style causing recessions.
In a big win for employers, the National Labor Relations Board has adopted a broad definition to distinguish independent contractors from employees, making it difficult for contractors to form or join a union.The bold is a statement from a clueless lawyer. The truth:
Its decision in SuperShuttle DFW Inc., emphasized that contractors retain great flexibility to control their work, set their own schedules and use their own equipment. That means, the NLRB ruled, they are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act.
The decision will make it much harder for gig economy workers to seek union representation. It “throws a roadblock into unionization efforts involving such workers, as federal law does not permit independent contractors to unionize,” said a statement from the Fisher Phillips law firm.
As an independent contractor, the terms and conditions of the work you perform are set out in a contract between you and the employer. Even though you are not considered an “employee” under federal labor law, you may still join a union. However, you should keep in mind that a unit of independent contractors is not subject to the same privileges and protections as a regular union bargaining unit. For example, an employer is not under the same obligation to bargain with a union regarding contract terms for an independent contractor that it is to bargain over issues affecting its regular employees. Also, an independent contractor who went on strike would not be protected from employer reprisals under the National Labor Relations Act.
Let’s do some science fiction today. Recently both Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk’s have announced that they’re building tech to read your mind.I know this stuff, they propose the impossible, they will need to detect out emotional state, and there is no way they can read the state of that hormone release deep in the brain center. Ghos neuronal firings in the cortex decay over one or two mylen sheaths before anyone can read the electrosatics. The whole idea is horseshit.
Now, as most 2020 contenders are set to skip what is billed as the largest annual gathering of Muslims in the country this weekend, they’re growing increasingly fearful that Democrats may miss an opportunity to mobilize their community against President Donald Trump next year.
Milton Friedman famously observed that "nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." The rare demise of a government program, it seems, is temporary too.Sandra O'Connor considers them illegal:
But former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's dissent encapsulated the evils of the redevelopment process in a way that we should all keep in mind, as state lawmakers try to bring these agencies back to life. "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process," while the "victims" will be those "with fewer resources."Who got the bribe?
Legislators have revived different elements of redevelopment, through various programs such as "infrastructure finance districts." These have been more limited than the original redevelopment concept, but state Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) this year pushed a bill that would have brought back full-scale redevelopment.last time is was the guy from Salinas. Construction contractors shop their bribes around.
The incident came the same week that The New York Times reported a cyberattack carried out by U.S. Cyber Command in June severely limited Iran’s ability to target oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.And many small towns in Texas are struggling to get their servers back on line after Iran retaliated. The CIA and NSA are engaging in a game that harms our national security, we have no real defense against cyber attacks as long as the NSA blocks secure ID.
While Iran denied in June that the cyberattack had been successful, the country is still working to get all its servers back online and recover data that was lost, the Times reported.
The cyberattack took place the same day Trump called off a military attack on Iran amid tensions between the two nations after Tehran shot down an American surveillance drone.
The United States also reportedly carried out a cyberattack in June disabling Iranian computer systems that controlled its rocket and missile launchers.
Up until a couple of months or so ago, the U.S. was actively considering a full-scale military operation against Iran and was “98 per cent ready” for such an all-out attack, according to senior political sources in Washington and London spoken to by OilPrice.com last week. “The remaining two percent involved the final movement of men and materiel into attack positions and finalising the technology and software involved,” said one. “At that point, [John] Bolton [U.S. National Security Advisor] was the dominant voice in [U.S. President Donald] Trump’s ear, and this meant moving at least 120,000 troops into position to augment the [U.S.S Abraham Lincoln aircraft] carrier group that was already in place.”Bolton and Trump are a couple of flounders.
“At about the same point, though, some of the President’s very close longstanding personal advisers and very senior CIA figures persuaded him that it would be an utter disaster, both militarily and economically, given the scale of the Iranian military and the terrain involved, its ability to launch guerrilla warfare anywhere in the world through its military proxies Hezbollah and Hamas and others, and its ability to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz,” one of the sources added. “In short, it was put to him that such a [full scale] military attack on Iran would lead to consequences potentially of a least the same length as the Afghanistan conflict and of at least the severity of Islamic State’s peak power,” he added.
Dovish comments from the European Central Bank’s next chief suggest the bank could present a major stimulus package in September, according to a prominent currency analyst.Right on time. Accommodative means help Club Med increase debt ratios. This is leading to a long term deflation, like Japan.
Christine Lagarde, the former head of the International Monetary Fund who has been nominated for ECB President, told the European Parliament in written comments that the central bank has room to cut policy rates. It is “clear that monetary policy needs to remain highly accommodative for the foreseeable future,” she wrote.
"We must immediately get to work and draw up a budget to avert the VAT hike, protects savers and offers solid prospects for economic growth and social development..."The mere fact that he had to mouth the impossible shows are far into delusion are the Italian voters.
“May Issue” in New Jersey is, in practice, “no issue.” The legislature helped solidify this by passing a series of gun control bills last year. One, in particular, added to the statute a definition of “Justifiable Need.” In plain English, a law-abiding citizen, regular Joe, will not be able to get a permit to carry in NJ unless they are able to show they have been previously attacked, multiple times, or there have been multiple previous specific threats to the person. Therefore, New Jersey is a “no issue” state, unless perhaps you’re politically connected or know the right people.This is gun control, and New Jersey law enforces the right to a regulated militia. In plain English, if conditions warrant a regulated militia, the we are guaranteed that right, private and public.
The British university sector has recently endured numerous regrettable American imports, from “safe spaces” and the campus culture wars to bans on non-woke food. Now we have been blessed with a new gift: the reparations debate.
To atone for its past sins, Glasgow will spend its reparations money on . . . itself.
KABUL - The Taliban said on Wednesday it was close to an agreement with U.S. officials on a deal that would see U.S. forces withdraw from Afghanistan in exchange for a Taliban promise that the country would not become a haven for international militants.Taliban is back into nutty rule.
Negotiations over how to end the 18-year war in Afghanistan have been held in Doha, capital of Qatar, since late last year. The ninth round of talks began last week.
An audit has found nearly 60 former Sacramento, California, city employees, including 18 former police officers, continued to use their city IDs to get free gasoline after leaving city employment. All told, they took some 10,000 gallons of fuel. Records show that the fleet management division was informed the employees had retired, resigned or been fired but did not revoke their access to city fuel pumps. Officials say they are taking steps to stop this from happening again, including installing surveillance cameras. No word on whether the former employees who took the gas will face charges or whether the employees who didn't revoked their pump access will face any punishment.Waddya know, they use CO2 taxes to promote more CO2 pollution that otherwise would have been. Thus, the 500 economists who signed the CO2 tax proposal all know this! That is why they signed, in an effort to increase CO2 pollution for their pals on government check.
A telling anecdote involves a dinner that Ms. Warren had with Lawrence H. Summers, then the director of the National Economic Council and a top economic adviser to President Obama. The dinner took place in the spring of 2009, after the oversight panel had produced its third report, concluding that American taxpayers were at far greater risk to losses in TARP than the Treasury had let on.I is actually worse.
After dinner, “Larry leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice,” Ms. Warren writes. “I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.
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| https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-27/bill-dudley-shocker-ex-ny-fed-president-urges-feds-powell-prevent-trump-re-election |
The Justice Department has submitted a brief to the Supreme Court arguing that federal civil rights laws do not protect workers against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.Hence the problem, is there a line and where is it drawn.
After Japan introduced a negative policy interest rate in 2016, market expectations for inflation over the medium term fell immediately. This can be seen by assessing how prices for Japanese bonds with embedded deflation protection responded to the policy announcement. The reaction stresses the uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of negative policy rates as expansionary tools when inflation expectations are anchored at low levels. Japan’s experience also illustrates the desirability of taking preemptive steps to avoid the zero interest rate bound
Because of the long period of low inflation in Japan, its experience provides an interesting example of the impact of negative monetary policy rates when inflation expectations are well-anchored at very low levels. We examine movements in yields on inflation-indexed and deflation-protected Japanese government bonds to gauge changes in the market’s inflation expectations from the BOJ moving to negative policy rates. Our results suggest that this movement resulted in decreased, rather than increased, immediate and medium-term expected inflation. This therefore suggests using caution when considering the efficacy of negative rates as expansionary policy tools under well-anchored inflation expectations.
My post was about expressing skepticism. We always hear big promises from rightward-leaning economists about the growth-enhancing powers of tax cuts and deregulation, but these policies often fail to deliver.Noah Smith takes this line, Cochrane says no. How do we calculate the lost GDP from government activities?
JERUSALEM/DAMASCUS, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft on Saturday struck Iranian forces near Damascus that had been planning to launch "killer drones" at targets in Israel, an Israeli military spokesman said.
"The strike targeted Iranian Quds Force operatives and Shiite militias which were preparing to advance attack plans targeting sites in Israel from within Syria over the last number of days," the military said in a statement.
The elite Quds Force is the overseas arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters the forces on Thursday had been preparing to launch "killer drones" armed with explosives at northern Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military had thwarted the planned Iranian attack. "Iran has no immunity anywhere. Our forces operate in every sector against the Iranian aggression," he said on Twitter.
BEIRUT (AP) — Two Israeli drones crashed in a Hezbollah stronghold in the Lebanese capital overnight without the militants firing on them, a spokesman for the group said Sunday, saying the first fell on the roof of a building housing Hezbollah’s media office while the second landed in a plot behind it.
The drones crashed amid heightened tensions between neighboring Israel and Iran, which backs Hezbollah, and shortly after Israeli warplanes attacked targets near the Syrian capital, Damascus. Israeli aircraft buzzed over Beirut on Sunday, hours after the drones crashed, raising fears of a wider conflict.
Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif said a small, unmanned reconnaissance drone fell on a building housing Hezbollah’s media office in the Moawwad neighborhood in Dahyeh, the group’s stronghold in southern Beirut.
California’s authoritarian governor, Gavin Newsom, blamed the state of Texas for California’s homeless crisis. Rather than put the blame directly on the policies California has instituted that stifle free enterprise and punish heavily those who produce, Newsom said it’s the fault of Texas.He was the daring of San Francisco rich, liberals. Had great parties, dated teenagers, was just a cool dude. Reality never played a part.
Newsom said many homeless people on the streets of San Francisco are from Texas. in an attempt to shift the blame from himself and the polices of socialists (who get rich peddling socialism to the masses as everyone else becomes impoverished.)
Former California assemblyman turned Texas resident Chuck DeVore reacted to Newsom pushing the blame onto others. The vice president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Chuck DeVore, said Wednesday that Gavin Newsom is “responsible for the policies that have created California’s homeless crisis,” in the wake of the governor blaming Texas for San Francisco’s homeless crisis. “What you’re seeing here are the words of a desperate man that we should almost feel sorry for,” DeVore, who served as a California assemblyman for six years, told “Fox & Friends.”
“Governor Gavin Newsom has been in office now for 22 straight years, starting at the San Francisco board of supervisors,” DeVore added. Homelessness has been rampant across the state of California in the past few years and merchants and homeowners have become increasingly vocal and incredibly irate at how things are going in the socialist dystopia.
Quite the turn around from the protests of years ago. But they will not remember the cycle, they will forget and when the next police shooting happens, protests and crime restart. They wash, rinse and repeat.Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young asked Hogan for more state police deployments in the city, more staff for parole and probation in Baltimore and the release of $7 million in funding for technology upgrades in the Baltimore Police Department.***Nearly 700 people have been shot this year in Baltimore, a 27 percent increase from the same time last year.***Hogan said he believed the state would be able to fund “a lot” of Young’s requests. The Republican governor said he “gave them some input and some advice about how to improve the working relationship between the state and the city.”***Young’s office said, he asked for more “crime suppression traffic stops” by Maryland State Police and Maryland Transportation Authority Police; more parole and probation officers in each Baltimore police district to better monitor repeat offenders, including a unit focused on the “top 25 most violent offenders”; more state staffing of Central Booking and Juvenile Booking to free city officers for police work; state reimbursement for overtime for Baltimore officers who work stadium events, allowing city overtime spending to be used on crime-fighting; release of the $7 million Hogan is withholding for Baltimore police technology amid a budget dispute with General Assembly Democrats; $2.4 million relocate the Baltimore police academy; and $1.5 million for a new records management system, among other requests.
FBI investigators say the Norwalk Police Department received a tip about Wagshol’s activity from a concerned citizen. The joint investigation began after the FBI received a tip that Wagshol was trying to buy high capacity magazines from out of state.Police say all the weapons recovered from the home are legally owned and registered to Wagshol’s father, but that the 22-year-old had access to them. Investigators also recovered body armor with a titanium plate, camouflage shirt, pant and belt, ballistic helmet, tactical gloves, camouflage bag and computers. (source)
That’s right. The confiscated guns belong to his father. The son “had access” to them by living in the same house, but they are his father’s property. His father didn’t do anything wrong, but his property has been seized nonetheless.The father violated my rights to a regulated militia. The ignorant ass let his son have access to the weapons without militia command and control. The father is unqualified to own guns and the guns need be taken away until father and son get some clues about regulated militia. The two boneheads are NRA castratti, dead enders, candidates for evolutionary removal.
Then along came former Goldman banker and current (outgoing) BOE governor, Mark Carney, who in his lunchtime address laid out a shocking, radical proposal - perhaps the most stunning thing to ever be unveiled at Jackson Hole - urging to replace the US Dollar with a "Libra-like" reserve currency in a dramatic revamp of the global monetary, financial and economic order.
It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne resigned yesterday after writing about the “deep state” and his personal knowledge of its operations. In two interviews, on Fox and CNN, Byrne then alleged that the FBI made him an operative — and that James Comey had directed him to “rekindle a romantic relationship” with Russian spy Maria Butina.
The United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia, the keeper of Islam’s Two Holy Cities, are banding together to roll back the tide of Iranian expansionism set loose by Barack Obama, John Kerry and the other American apologists who crafted the ruinous Iranian nuclear deal.Sorry, but it was this same deal that got us bombed in 2001. This whole mess is a Bolton disaser, untold expenses and we will lose anyway.
The United States has maintained a robust military presence in the Middle East for a generation. That presence — not only carrier battle groups and special operations forces, but also fixed bases in Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar — is being significantly enhanced, and one of the most dramatic signs of that enhancement involves the expansion of an American operating base in Saudi Arabia.
Several hundred US Air Force personnel are already on the ground in Saudi Arabia working on enlarging facilities at Prince Sultan Air Base that will house fighter planes and Patriot missiles. American forces left this facility 15 years ago in the face of tensions caused by radical Islamic forces. The threat of Iranian expansionism and the new, more moderate regime in Riyadh has brought them back.
But the argument for relying primarily on financial incentives has historically not been very persuasive. Democracies tend to adopt policies that yield benefits concentrated among the few and spread costs among the many. Thus we see income or electricity being taxed in many jurisdictions to subsidize renewables, rather than the more economically efficient approach of using taxes on greenhouse emissions to offset reductions in other distorting taxes (like the payroll tax). In addition, of course, many politicians around the world simply distrust markets.
Even in California and the European Union, where cap-and-trade systems for CO₂ have been established, so-called “ancillary” or “belt-and-suspenders” policies that target particular sectors or sources have also been deployed. Both jurisdictions subsidize renewables: the EU subsidizes energy efficiency, while California has a low-carbon fuel standard. To the extent that such policies affect behavior, they distort the patterns of investment and emissions abatement and so raise the total cost of abatement. Moreover, they reduce the carbon price implicit in the cap and trade systems, and thereby discourage productive investment and innovation in abatement technologies.If it persists, this neither-fish-nor-fowl policy architecture will make the path to net-zero both longer and more expensive. A clear focus on incentives will not be easy to obtain as a political matter, but if the heavy lifting is left to the future, it will only become more difficult to achieve.
Pay me now or...The more costly it is, economically and politically, to get to net-zero, the less likely the world will manage the feat in time to avoid unacceptably large permanent damage. Because policy choices in the near term can have an appreciable impact on those costs, it is in the nation’s interest (as well as the world’s) for policymakers to play the long game. But stating the obvious, alas, doesn’t make it much easier to get from here to there.
