Jul 232019
 
 July 23, 2019  Posted by at 9:48 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Odilon Redon Sunset n.d.

 

US Justice Department Tells Mueller To Limit Congressional Testimony (R.)
What Goes Around (Kunstler)
A Non-Hack That Raised Hillary’s Hackles (Ray McGovern)/span>
Inequality is Destroying Democratic Capitalism (Deaton)
Who Was Jeffrey Epstein Calling? (NYMag)
Chelsea Clinton Denies Ties To Jeffrey Epstein’s Alleged ‘Madam’ (MN)
UK’s May Takes Parting Shot at Putin in Desperate Diversion From Failure (SCF)
Iran Warns West Against Starting Conflict (R.)
France To Shut Down Nuclear Plants Due To Heatwave (Montel)
Huge Swathes Of The Arctic On Fire, Satellite Images Show (Ind.)

 

 

He might as well stay home. Can’t talk about Concord, can’t talk about anything not in the report.

US Justice Department Tells Mueller To Limit Congressional Testimony (R.)

The U.S. Justice Department told former Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Monday he should limit his testimony before Congress this week to discussing his public report on the Russia probe. In a letter to Mueller, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer said his testimony set for Wednesday “must remain within the boundaries of your public report because matters within the scope of your investigation were covered by executive privilege.” The letter said “these privileges would include discussion about investigative steps or decisions made during your investigation not otherwise described in the public version of your report.”

Mueller completed in March his nearly two-year-long probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. The Justice Department released a redacted copy of his 448-page report in April. A spokesman for Mueller, Jim Popkin, said no one at the Justice Department, Congress or the White House would review Mueller’s statement before he delivers it on Wednesday. In back-to-back hearings before the House of Representatives Judiciary and Intelligence committees, Democrats are expected to try to get Mueller to focus his testimony on specific examples of Trump’s misconduct.

[..] Mueller has been using offices at his former law firm WilmerHale and working with a small team from the special counsel’s office to prepare for Wednesday’s hearings, Popkin said. “He will come well prepared,” Popkin said. “His team has been working on this for a while and they will be ready for whatever comes their way.”

Read more …

“is it possible that he’s just not very bright?”

What Goes Around (Kunstler)

The entrapment operation that was the Special Counsel’s covert mission has turned out to be Mr. Mueller own personal booby-trap, prompting the question: is it possible that he’s just not very bright? Though Mr. Mueller’s final report asserted that the Russian government interfered in “a sweeping and systemic fashion” to influence the 2016 election, the 450-page great tome contains zero evidence to support that claim, and the discrepancy was actually noticed by federal judge Dabney Friedrich who is presiding over the case against the alleged Russian Facebook trolls that was one of the two tent-poles in the RussiaGate fantasy. The case is now blowing up in Robert Mueller’s face.

In early 2018, Mr. Mueller sold a DC grand jury on producing indictments against a Russian outfit called the Internet Research Agency and its parent company Concord Management, owned by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin for the so-called election meddling. The indictment was celebrated as a huge coup at the time by the likes of CNN and The New York Times, styled as a silver bullet in the heart of the Trump presidency. But the indicted parties were all in Russia, and could not be extradited, and there was zero expectation that any actual trial would ever take place — leaving Mueller & Co. off-the-hook for proving their allegations.

To the great surprise of Mr. Mueller and his “team,” Mr. Prigozhin hired some American lawyers to defend his company in court. Smooth move. It automatically triggered the discovery process, by which the accused is entitled to see the evidence that prosecutors hold. It turned out that Mr. Mueller’s team had no evidence that the Russian government was involved with the Facebook pranks. This annoyed Judge Friedrich, who ordered Mr. Mueller and his lawyers to desist making public statements about Concord and IRA’s alleged “sweeping and systemic” collusion with Russia, and threatened legal sanctions if they did.

Read more …

Three years ago. That went by fast.

A Non-Hack That Raised Hillary’s Hackles (Ray McGovern)/span>

Three years ago Monday WikiLeaks published a trove of highly embarrassing emails that had been leaked from inside the Democratic National Committee. As has been the case with every leak revealed by WikiLeaks, the emails were authentic. These particular ones, however, could not have come at a worse time for top Democratic Party officials. The emails made it unmistakably clear that the DNC had tipped the scales sharply against Democratic insurgent Bernie Sanders, giving him a snowball’s chance in hell for the nomination. [..] A mere four days after the WikiLeaks release, a well orchestrated Democratic Convention nominated Clinton, while many Sanders supporters loudly objected.

Thus, she began her campaign under a cloud, and as more and more Americans learned of the fraud that oozed through the DNC email correspondence — including the rigging of the Democratic primaries — the cloud grew larger and darker. On June 12, 2016, six weeks before the convention, WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange had announced in an interview on British TV, “We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton … We have emails pending publication.” Independent forensic investigations demonstrated two years ago that the DNC emails were not hacked over the Internet, but had been copied onto an external storage device — probably a thumb drive. Additional work over recent months has yielded more evidence that the intrusion into the DNC computers was a copy, not a hack, and that it took place on May 23 and 25, 2016.

No one knew how soon WikiLeaks would publish the emails, but the DNC offense/defense would surely have to be put in place before the convention scheduled to begin on July 25. That meant there were, at most, six weeks to react. But it only took two days. As early as July 24, about 48 hours after the leaks were published, and a day before the convention, the DNC first blamed Russia for hacking their emails and giving them to WikiLeaks to sabotage Clinton. Granted, it was a stretch — and the DNC would have to hire a pliable cybersecurity firm to back up their claim. But they had good reason to believe that CrowdStrike would perform that service. It was the best Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook and associates could apparently come up with.

If they hurried, there would be just enough time to prepare a PR campaign before the convention and, best of all, there was little doubt that the media could be counted on to support the effort full bore. [..] It pretty much worked like a charm. The late Senator John McCain and others were quick to call the Russian “hack” an “an act of war.” Evidence? None. For icing on the cake, then-FBI Director James Comey decided not to seize and inspect the DNC computers. Nor, as we now know, did Comey even require a final report from CrowdStrike.

Read more …

Not sure having it discussed by well-paid economists is all that useful.

Inequality is Destroying Democratic Capitalism (Deaton)

At the risk of grandiosity, I think that today’s inequalities are signs that democratic capitalism is under threat, not only in the US, where the storm clouds are darkest, but in much of the rich world, where one or more of politics, economics, and health are changing in worrisome ways. I do not believe that democratic capitalism is beyond repair nor that it should be replaced; I am a great believer in what capitalism has done, not only to the oft-cited billions who have been pulled out of poverty in the last half-century, but to all the rest of us who have also escaped poverty and deprivation over the last two and a half centuries. It also provides our jobs and the cornucopia of goods and services that we take for granted.

And Milton Friedman, whose starry-eyed view of capitalism has much to answer for, was not entirely wrong when he extolled the freedom that free markets can bring. Though history has not been kind to his view that equality would be guaranteed by using markets to pursue freedom. But we need to think about repairs for democratic capitalism, either by fixing what is broken, or by making changes to head off the threats; indeed, I believe that those of us who believe in social democratic capitalism should be leading the charge to make repairs.

As it is, capitalism is not delivering to large fractions of the population; in the US, where the inequalities are clearest, real wages for men without a four-year college degree have fallen for half a century, even at a time when per capita GDP has robustly risen. Mortality rates are rising for the less-educated group at ages 25 through 64, and by enough that life expectancy for the entire population has fallen for three years in a row, the first time such a reversal has happened since the end of the first world war and the great influenza epidemic. Less educated Americans are dying by their own hands, from suicide, from alcoholic liver disease, and from overdoses of drugs. Morbidity is rising too, and they are also suffering from an epidemic of chronic pain that, for many, makes a misery of daily life.

Read more …

“If you watch Fox News, you will believe Bill Clinton was Epstein’s No. 1 pal and enabler. If you watch MSNBC, this scandal is usually all about Donald Trump. ”

Who Was Jeffrey Epstein Calling? (NYMag)

Perhaps, at long last, a serial rapist and pedophile may be brought to justice, more than a dozen years after he was first charged with crimes that have brutalized countless girls and women. But what won’t change is this: the cesspool of elites, many of them in New York, who allowed Jeffrey Epstein to flourish with impunity. For decades, important, influential, “serious” people attended Epstein’s dinner parties, rode his private jet, and furthered the fiction that he was some kind of genius hedge-fund billionaire. How do we explain why they looked the other way, or flattered Epstein, even as they must have noticed he was often in the company of a young harem?

Easy: They got something in exchange from him, whether it was a free ride on that airborne “Lolita Express,” some other form of monetary largesse, entrée into the extravagant celebrity soirées he hosted at his townhouse, or, possibly and harrowingly, a pound or two of female flesh. If you watch Fox News, you will believe Bill Clinton was Epstein’s No. 1 pal and enabler. If you watch MSNBC, this scandal is usually all about Donald Trump. In fact, both presidents are guilty (at the very least) of giving Epstein cover and credibility.

There are so many unanswered questions about Epstein, but one that looms over all of them is whether the bipartisan crowd who cleared a path for him will cover its tracks before we can get answers — not just Clinton and Trump and all those who drank at Epstein’s trough but also (among others) institutions like Harvard, Dalton, and the Council on Foreign Relations, or lawyers like the New York prosecutor Cy Vance Jr., whose office tried to downgrade Epstein’s sex-offender status; Kenneth Starr, who tried to pressure Republican Justice Department officials to keep the Epstein case from ever being prosecuted; and Alan Dershowitz, who tried to pressure the Pulitzer Prizes to shut out the Miami Herald for its epic investigative reporting that cracked open the case anew.

Read more …

People are going to start talking soon, if only to protect themselves. But why hasn’t Maxwell been arrested yet?

Chelsea Clinton Denies Ties To Jeffrey Epstein’s Alleged ‘Madam’ (MN)

Since Jeffrey Epstein’s latest arrest on sex trafficking charges, a who’s who of the rich and powerful — notably Donald Trump, Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton — have rushed to downplay their associations with the financier who is accused of abusing underaged girls. Now Chelsea Clinton has joined her ex-president father on this who’s who list. Her representative issued a statement to Politico over the weekend denying reports that the former First Daughter was close friends with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and the alleged “madam” who has been accused of helping him procure underaged girls for sex.

Politico’s report on Maxwell, 57, focuses on how the daughter of the late British publishing mogul Robert Maxwell helped Epstein, the Brooklyn-born son of a New York City parks groundskeeper, gain access to social circles that allowed him to become friendly with two U.S. presidents, billionaire business moguls, America’s media elite and at least one member of the British royal family. Maxwell has not been criminally charged, but has settled two lawsuits filed by women who say she participated in Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking, the New York Times reported last week. She has denied any wrongdoing. Politico said Maxwell first grew close to the Clinton family after former president Bill Clinton left office, and eventually became friends with Chelsea Clinton, vice chair of the Clinton Foundation.

According to the news outlet, the two women vacationed together on a yacht in 2009, and Maxwell attended Chelsea’s wedding to Marc Mezvinsky in 2010, Politico reported. A photo of Maxwell at the wedding has circulated online. Maxwell also participated in the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative as recently as 2013, through The TerraMar Project, an oceanic non-profit she founded, according to the Initiative’s website. The contacts between Chelsea Clinton and Maxwell appear to have occurred after Maxwell’s name first emerged in accounts of Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse. “Ghislaine was the contact between Epstein and Clinton,” a person familiar with the relationship told Politico. “She ended up being close to the family because she and Chelsea ended up becoming close.”

Read more …

May goes away in July. Bye.

UK’s May Takes Parting Shot at Putin in Desperate Diversion From Failure (SCF)

In what was billed as her last major speech before quitting Downing Street, Britain’s outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May focused her concerns on Russian President Vladimir Putin, lashing out at his “cynical falsehoods” and admonishing her successor “to stand up to” the Russian leader. Given her ignominious failure as premier over the Brexit fiasco, it seemed a strange choice of topic as she addressed the Chatham House think tank in London this past week. Her speech dealt with the wider theme of rising “populist politics” in the US and Europe. And she sought to portray Putin as an archetypal sinister figure fomenting populist threat to the “liberal” democratic order.

At one point, May claimed: “No one comparing the quality of life or economic success of liberal democracies like the UK, France and Germany to the Russian Federation would conclude that our system is obsolete.” This was supposed to be a riposte to an interview given by Putin to the Financial Times last month ahead of the G20 summit in Japan. During a lengthy interview on a wide range of issues, the Russian president was quoted as saying: “The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.”

Putin was apparently explaining a fairly straightforward and, to many observers, valid assessment of international politics. Namely, that Western establishments and institutions, including the mainstream media, are experiencing a crisis in authority. That crisis has arisen over several years due to popular perception that the governance of the political class is not delivering on democratic demands of accountability and economic progress. That in turn has led people to seek alternatives from the established parties, a movement in the US and Europe which is denigrated by the establishment as “populist” or rabble rousing.

Read more …

Boris is capable of doing very stupid things.

Iran Warns West Against Starting Conflict (R.)

Iran’s foreign minister warned the West on Monday against “starting a conflict,” saying it was not seeking confrontation after its military seized the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero in the Strait of Hormuz last week. London described the seizure of the Stena Impero as “state piracy” and on Monday called for a European-led naval mission to ensure safe shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Speaking in Nicaragua, Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif said Iran had taken measures against the ship to implement international law, not in retaliation for the British capture of an Iranian tanker two weeks earlier in Gibraltar.


“Starting a conflict is easy, ending it would be impossible,” Zarif told reporters after meeting his Nicaraguan counterpart. “It’s important for everybody to realize, it’s important for Boris Johnson to understand, that Iran does not seek confrontation,” he said, referring to the front-runner to become Britain’s new prime minister. “Iran wants to have normal relations based on mutual respect,” he added. Zarif said Iran acted when it observed that the UK ship did not follow regulations. “The UK ship had turned down its signal for more time than it was allowed to (and) was passing through the wrong channel, endangering the safety and security of shipping and navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, for which we are responsible,” Zarif said.

Read more …

France imports UK wind energy.

France To Shut Down Nuclear Plants Due To Heatwave (Montel)

French weather service Meteo France issued a 40C heatwave warning on Monday for 21 regions across France, while utility EDF will shut down nearly 3 GW of nuclear capacity this week amid cooling water issues. Golfech 2 (1.3 GW) on the Garonne river would be stopped from Tuesday at 23:00 until 29 July at 23:59, while Golfech 1 (1.3 GW) would be halted from Wednesday at 02:00 until 29 July at 23:59. Low river flows and high water temperatures can force operators to cut output if it breaches environmental limits. Flows on key French rivers had “significantly” weakened over the last two weeks amid persistent hot and dry weather, the ministry of energy told Montel recently.


The St Alban 1 and 2 (2.6 GW) reactors, meanwhile, saw their output cut over the weekend, and though both reactors are now back online, EDF warned last week it could curb output at its nuclear plants located along the river Rhone – which also included Bugey (3.7 GW) – due to declining flows amid the hot weather. The temperature of the Rhone around St Alban and Tricast in was currently 26C, while it was 23.4C at Bugey, estimates from Montel’s Energy Quantified showed, with 28C deemed unsafe. French TSO RTE expected power demand to peak at 59.4 GW on Thursday and 58.6 GW on Friday, with a surge expected due to an increase in need for cooling.

Read more …

Ugly. Peat fires are impossible to control.

Huge Swathes Of The Arctic On Fire, Satellite Images Show (Ind.)

Vast swathes of the Arctic are suffering from “unprecedented” wildfires, new satellite images have revealed. North of the Arctic circle, the high temperatures are facilitating enormous wildfires which are wreaking ecological destruction on a colossal scale. It comes after the world’s hottest June on record which has been followed by a devastating heatwave in the US, with Europe forecast for the same treatment later this week. Satellite images reveal fires across Greenland, Siberia and Alaska, with warm dry conditions following ice melt on the enormous Greenland icesheet commencing a month earlier than average.

Pierre Markuse, a satellite photography expert, posted images showing smoke billowing across massive areas of uninhabited and wild land. The pictures show forest fires and burning peat. They also reveal the extent of the damage the fires leave behind. In Alaska wildfires have already burned more than 1.6 million acres of land. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast, said the amount of CO2 emitted by Arctic wildfires between 1 June and 21 July 2019 is around 100 megatonnes and is approaching the entire 2017 fossil fuel CO2 emissions of Belgium.


Satellite image processed by Pierre Markuse showing numerous wildfires burning in Russia just south of the Arctic Circle (Pierre Markuse/Creative Commons)

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle July 23 2019

Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
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  • #48727

    Odilon Redon Sunset n.d.   • US Justice Department Tells Mueller To Limit Congressional Testimony (R.) • What Goes Around (Kunstler) • A Non-Hack
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle July 23 2019]

    #48728
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Odilon Redon Sunset n.d.
    Outstanding! One of the myriad, gorgeous, sunsets I missed.
    But, one I didn’t miss, standing on the stern of my 9 meter Dutch built sloop Discovery, looking out over the Columbia River bar, was the Green Flash.
    People who have been at sea their whole lives have never seen this visual wonder; never to be forgotten by those who have…

    #48729
    koso_man
    Participant

    Regarding the article on Carter yestetday Dr. D wrote: Yes, and all those things are illegal in all “Christian” nations, but are legal in many Muslim nations. Nowhere in the West, at all – and especially among Southern Baptists – are any of these things true, most not for centuries. Yes, thankfully, at last! Carter is going to boycott the Baptists who are A G A I N S T all these things, in order to show those predominantly Muslim nations who are actually FOR them, what-for. Because abandoning the Christianity — one of the ONLY things that has historically stopped these things — is the way to shore up their defense and move forward. By retreating and surrendering, of course! It is tolerance to HATE Christianity for one views, but LOVE other religions for a different view, ones that by his own accounting is about nine times worse. Logic!

    I don’t know. Is this an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good? Or is it an ideological purity test where everyone who falls short of God must be banished and purged? Since he spends a lot of time in Africa, among many Muslim nations who do these things (and pushing the subsequent cultural imperialism instead of leaving them alone), shouldn’t he himself be the first one to ostricized and removed from society? I think his own logic says yes. What is wrong with the thinking these days?

    Just as i think it would be unfair to blame Christianity for the the Transantlatic Slave Trade, even though the Bible was used to justify it, I think to blame Islam for the dismally low levels of education amongst women in the muslim world today would be equally unfair.

    Just as the Bible was used to justify the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the Bible was also used by many Abolitionists in their fight against Slavery. Similarly, amongst some muslims, the Quran and the Hadiths of the Holy Prophet (Peace be upon him) are being used to stop girls from being educated. However, historically and also presently, those same source have been and are being used to enable and encourage females to become educated.

    The first ever university in human history was founded by a muslim women, and if im not incorrect so was the second. Interestingly, this was around the same time that the Bishops held a council in which one of the main points of discussion was whether women had a soul or not. Thankfully, the Bishops had come to a concensus that yes, women did indeed have souls.

    By the way, that discussion was never held in Islam, and just by looking at the sheer amount of female scholars that Islam has produced its 1400+ year history (in comparison to many Christian societies that did not even allow women to read or write), I think its fair to say that Islamic civilisations history of how it viewed and treated women is much more admirable than Christian civilisation..

    #48730
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    koso_man

    Thank you for that informative post. Some of it I knew; much I didn’t…
    Good stuff…

    #48731
    NooBoob
    Participant

    George Bush was the best Alred E. Newman

    #48732
    NooBoob
    Participant

    10,000 years ago, humans and livestock were 0.03% of land vertebrate biomass, today we are 98%. Humans and livestock caused 80% of species extinction during the Holocene, most of it in the last 60 years.

    http://www.futureearth.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_blog_image/public/articles/great-acceleration.jpg?itok=-11Nrb2U

    The oceans are acidifying 10X faster than in all earth’s history, and when they reach a “critical threshold”, ocean acidification will explode 100X faster than now, killing all sea shell creatures in its wake. These micro-shelled creatures form the basis for food on earth. Life on land depends on life in the ocean. Ocean acidification makes it harder for phytoplankton to absorb nutrients. We need phytoplankton to breathe.

    http://news.mit.edu/2019/carbon-threshold-mass-extinction-0708

    Ocean Acidification Is Toxifying Phytoplankton

    Micro-plastics in the ocean are killing the plankton that produce 10% of earth’s oxygen.

    https://futurism.com/the-byte/plastic-killing-bacteria-oxygen

    And that’s just the oceans. On land we have destroyed 98% of the mega-fauna on earth and replaced them with cows. There are 25 billion chickens on earth.

    Germany’s green energy miracle is so completely fraudulent as to defy description. Here’s just one example: They burn over 60% of their recycling refuse. They lie about car emissions. Their forests are dying, and they’re moving whole villages to get at some the dirtiest coal in the world.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/germany-recycling-reality_n_5d30fccbe4b004b6adad52f8

    The Insurance Journal recently said we have to cut emissions 50% in 10 yrs to avoid 3° C by 2100. Claire Fyson of Climate Analytics says the same thing. Stefan Rahmstorf says we have to cut emissions 100% in 20 years to avoid 2° C.

    Here’s the problem, 2° C on earth is the equivalent of the critical threshold danger for our oceans. Hitting 2° C will trigger five major feedbacks, which will trigger 8 other major feedbacks, leading to runaway mass extinction and runaway hothouse climate catastrophe.

    Here’s the really, really bad news: even if we managed to increase our carbon budget 50%, we would only gain 10 years to cut emissions. But there’s a flip side to this because arctic methane emissions are not modelled, and will likely cut our carbon budget by up to 50%, meaning we will have 10 years less to cut emissions. Arctic methane from sub-sea clathrate and tundra thermaklasts will combine with unreported human methane emissions and sink the boat

    But it gets worse still, because we are slamming headlong into runaway mass extinction *ahead* of runaway hothouse climate change. Both runaway hothouse earth and runaway mass extinction cannot be stopped or reversed once they tip past that critical threshold. There’s no guarantee earth will recover. But it gets worse.

    We have to cut emissions 50% in 10 years to save the planet, otherwise ocean acidification will go into overdrive and reach mass extinction escape velocity, but China will not even begin to **significantly** reduce emissions until 2030 at the earliest. But it gets worse. Emissions have to go down **significantly** now, not 10 years from now. China has recently cut solar production 40%.

    https://lokisrevengeblog.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/fuel.jpg?w=696

    **If the IT sector were a country, it would rank 3rd in energy use, after China and the USA**

    The 4 main sub-sectors to IT are: 1. devices 2. networks 3. data centers 4. manufacturing.

    Data Centers: Used 21% of total IT energy use in 2017.

    – Google uses 16 data centers to run 40,000 searches/second.

    – Data centers used 320 Terra Watt Hours (TWHs) of energy/yr in 2012.

    – 320 TWHs of data center energy use was 2% of total energy use in 2012.

    – Streaming video is projected to increase data center energy use from 2% up to 13% of total energy use.

    Networks: Used 29% of total IT energy use in 2017.

    – Network energy use increased from 219 TWHs, in 2007, to 354 TWHs in 2012.

    – 354 TWHs could power 32 million US homes for 1 year.

    – Network energy use is growing 10% / yr.

    – Steaming will grow to 80% of internet traffic by 2020.

    Devices: Used 34% of total IT energy use in 2017.

    Manufacturing: Used 16% of total IT energy use in 2017.

    IOT devices marry micro-plastics with metals. They flood the air with toxic radiation. If you want overwhelming evidence about how toxic our world is, click here. We are headed into food shortages, while we flood the world with toxic IOT bugs.

    The Withering Bones of Humanity

    **The Potsdam Institute on the IPCC Special Report:**

    https://youtu.be/poHNsxbgHig

    To stay below 1.5 C we have to cut emissions 100% by 2050.

    To stay below 1.5 C we can only emit 420 gtons C02 total.

    Even if we managed to change the 420 gton budget by 50% up, or by 50% down, we only get 10 years more, or 10 years less time to cut emissions 100%.

    If methane emissions increase enough to shrink our carbon budget to 220 gtons, then we have to cut emissions 100% by 2040 they say.

    Mass extinction not included.

    I think this means if we don’t cut emissions 50% in 10 years, we’ll never make it.

    Emissions will go up between 10-15% in the next 10 years.

    If you are 15 years old, emissions went up 30% in your lifetime.

    If you are 30 years old, emissions went up 60% in your lifetime.

    After 30 years trying, solar and wind are < 3% of total world energy use.

    Just think of the last 10 years. since 2009, emissions went up some 15%.

    Can you take 10 more years of the same old bullshit, I know I can’t.

    #48733
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Oh sure, quite so. Both Christianity and Islam, and indeed all religions — even Buddhism, but especially the new Scientific Materialism/Aetheism — have a record of both great success and terrible injustices rising and falling on the wheel of time. That’s exactly the point: these things are in the hearts of MEN, his heart as well as mine, and also the heart of the Southern Baptists. They were in the European slaverunners (250 years or 13 generations ago) but also in the hearts of the African Muslims who beat up their neighbors and sold them off when slavery was legal there under Islam too. Now oh-so enlightened and scientific NeoLiberalism supports slavery in Libya and in Apple/Nike factories in Asia, and also somewhere on planet earth since Christ was a Corporal. In any case, both of us are cherry-picking time; you for a long-historical Islam of 1,000 years ago but now in crisis, and me for a Western “Christianity” gone for 50 or 100 years that we essentially no longer have and indeed are violently attacking/rejecting.

    The problem was, after 90 years in Christianity, Carter SUDDENLY NOTICED that Christians have biblical views. Really, Jim? Worse, he then attributed VERY SPECIFIC problems, which at the moment are illustrated largely by (Sunni) Muslim Fundamentalists, as being the reason he can’t support who could even be described as their primary political enemy: American Southern Christians, disproportionately in the U.S. military. …And believe me, I’ll be happy to take up their Christian support of aggressive war and murder of possibly 6M mostly Muslims into its own article. But that’s moving away from Carter’s jaw-dropping nonsense of fighting the enemy of his enemy and attributing the actions of his enemy to his friend. “A house divided” and all that.

    For: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” … Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

    Instead, the refrain is, “My side, right or wrong.” And if opposed, they will destroy you by any means, but especially with lies, as for them there is no truth but power, a new fake scandal, story, or accusation daily. There is no #Logos, (in Greek, the “way, the truth, and the light” but also the “logic”) instead there is only #ME, a thing a certain famous angel once said. Have these people no self-awareness or humility? Unlike me, they not only know what THEY should do, as they feel themselves already perfect, they’ll tell everybody ELSE what to do…or else. And as possibly a guy in “Koso” or Kosovo” you may know more about that than I ever wish to. Believing, knowing in your heart you’re a sinner who mostly falls short is a Christian value, although there may be a parallel in Islam and everywhere. This lack of awareness, WHILE HE GOES AROUND THE WORLD TELLING FUNDAMENTAL MUSLIMS THEY’RE BAD AND WRONG, then ATTACKS THE VERY PEOPLE WHO AGREE IT’S WRONG, is a great example of not being Christian, so maybe it’s better he does remove himself from Baptists before he spreads his bad name. My point would be: “That’s their way, in their land. I may disagree with it, but who am I to say?” And thank God I only have to deal with my own town, state, and nation, because that’s about 1,000x more than I can get to in one lifetime, coming from a nation where raping kids may be a blood sport of the rich.

    But hey, Socialists: A religious belief in telling everybody how to live and what to do, right down to the shoes they can buy and the words they can use. And so Carter, too, makes the turn to the left, away from #Logos and #Logic and into “there is no truth any more: only power.” He’ll have a lot of company where he’s going, but I don’t intend to follow: that way there be monsters: madness, despair, and war, the wages of #Antilogos.

    #48734
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Nooboob: thankfully, science has basically been wrong about everything since Malthus in 1798, so I figure we’ll muddle through yet.

    Just today: DON’T take aspirin for your heart, after selling 20 years of product unsafely. Really? You can’t tell even this one simple thing honestly and safely? And you think they can tell the actual “tipping point”? If Chaos theory defines anything it defines why that is specifically unknowable, but who follows science and math, right? We follow #Antiscience and #Antimath. Whatever gets #MoreCashToMe.

    #48735
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “A mere four days after the WikiLeaks release, a well orchestrated Democratic Convention nominated Clinton, while many Sanders supporters loudly objected.”

    And thus assuring a margin of Bernie voters would stay home, and they would lose. It wasn’t the Russians that made them cheat, right after being caught cheating with Donna Brazile, and they’re not making the DNC cut Yang’s mic and deep fake a pimple on Tulsi’s face. (What are we, 6 years old here?) Oh, P.S. assuring they will lose 2020 at current projections, where a Tulsi would have a fair chance of winning. That ain’t race, and that ain’t gender. That’s being crooked, and it drives me crazy because the last thing we need is one-party rule. The MIC would like it though.

    “Inequality is Destroying Democratic Capitalism (Deaton)”

    I’d say absence of the rule of law is destroying it. How does inequality matter if no one’s taking bribes and cases all are equally prosecuted? Instead, they’re all taking bribes, they are reported every day, and no one has been prosecuted in decades. It’s not even a scandal, as the only scandal is when you attempt to tamper with the mass-bribe/kickback industry. But if the people aren’t moral, and have no scandal left in them, how will “government” help? “Government” is drawn from the (lowest) body of the people and a people cannot be more moral than themselves, only less.

    “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams

    The other way to limit corruption is to limit power. That is, the government is of no use to capture if it weren’t already (illegally and unconstitutionally) regulating everything and therefore able to carve out special favors and exceptions, pick winners and losers. You do this by pushing power as far down to the ground, to the people, as is possible. Since this is the written authoritative law, you’d think this would be easy, but you’d be wrong. We haven’t followed the law or our principles for 100 years and JP Morgan and Halliburton aren’t going to start now.

    But I’m sure Deaton will have a solution: more laws, more power, more government! I’ve got a simpler idea: enforce the laws we’ve had since 1700: fraud, graft, bribery, and murder, maybe by prosecuting a high-profile extortion ring, I dunno.

    Btw, if you click on the article, he’s apparently against meritocracy. Interesting position.

    Another quote? “The US has licensed pharma companies to sell opioids to the general public, including for chronic pain, which ignited an epidemic of addiction and death with a cumulative death toll larger than all Americans lost in both World Wars.”

    No one cares, because happily they are Red people in Flyoverland and deserve anything we can do to them, but especially to be exterminated like the vermin they are. …Or so I read every day, of these same people who voted for Obama. Twice. Being called Nazi racist scum after voting for a Black President twice may not exactly inspire their support in 2020.

    “If you watch Fox News, you will believe Bill Clinton was Epstein’s No. 1 pal and enabler. If you watch MSNBC, this scandal is usually all about Donald Trump.”

    Well that’s pretty easy: under whose administrations were his crimes overlooked? Got those three guys in mind? Okay, so you’re telling me Donald decided to prosecute and put it on the front page so he could arrest himself publically? That’s what CNN/NBC are saying. I’d say maybe not.

    “denying reports that the former First Daughter was close friends with Ghislaine Maxwell,”

    Well Maxwell was at their wedding, so I can only guess what that means. I mean, I always invite people I hate and don’t know to all my weddings. I’m guessing since they funded the original Clinton Foundation and Chelsea ran it, there will be more connections and knowledge, not less.

    “London described the seizure of the Stena Impero as “state piracy”

    Funny, that’s just what Iran said when you did the same thing. How about nobody steals anybody’s ships? Then nobody can go to war and we all spend the money at home.

    #48736
    zerosum
    Participant

    From one crisi to another ciisi
    We are still here.

    https://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2008/01/cds-report-what-we-saw-in-july-was-just.html

    Debt Rattle, January 22 2008

    #48737
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    V. Arnold, I’ve seen the Green Flash under certain conditions. Seems magical whenever it happens. Usually there’s too much haze or slight cloudiness at the horizon that prevents seeing it. The Green Flash had a role in one of the Pirates movies.

    Hector Barbossa: “Ever gazed upon the green flash, Master Gibbs?”

    Joshamee Gibbs: “I reckon I seen my fair share. Happens on rare occasion. The last glimpse of sunset, a green flash shoots up into the sky. Some go their whole lives without ever seeing it. Some claim to have seen it who ain’t. And some say-”

    Pintel: “It signals when a soul comes back to this world from the dead!”

    – Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

    #48738
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    INEQUALITY

    Economies are mostly driven by consumers. By effectively reducing wages buying power is reduced, damaging the economy. More pressure is put on wages and jobs ending in a down ward spiral. This also leads to what I think of as the ‘supermarket effect’, where people are always looking for ever cheaper goods, ignoring higher quality home-made goods and buying cheaper foreign produced goods, again damaging the economy.

    Lending/debt for the very rich is at very low interest rates, zero in some cases. The cost of debt for everyone else is very high, possibly 20% or higher. Again this damages the economy.

    The rich will often spend their money on property, land and shares, pumping up the costs while not actually producing anything. This has a ripple effect inflating all property prices; farmers can not afford to buy extra land or may sell up to conglomerates; pension funds will get lower returns on investments. All this is bad for the economy.

    The balance needs to be restored for a healthy economy.

    #48739
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Doc Robinson
    V. Arnold, I’ve seen the Green Flash under certain conditions. Seems magical whenever it happens. Usually there’s too much haze or slight cloudiness at the horizon that prevents seeing it.

    Congrats; you’re the first person I know of who has seen the green flash.
    There is absolutely no chance of mistaking the sight for anything else…

    #48740
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Both Christianity and Islam, and indeed all religions — even Buddhism,…

    Strictly speaking; Buddhism is not a religion. A deep study and understanding of the teaching (Dharma) supports the truth of that…
    Unfortunately humans have done a splendid job of making Buddhism into a religion; which is evident all across Asia.
    One has to seek out the forest monks to find the original teachings…
    The other option is to seek out translated ancient texts which are available.

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