Jul 302019
 
 July 30, 2019  Posted by at 9:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,


Odilon Redon The winged man (The fallen angel) 1880

 

Pound Worth Just 85 Euro Cents At UK Airports (Ind.)
Boris Johnson Refuses To Meet EU Leaders Unless They Scrap Backstop (G.)
EU Rejects Dominic Raab’s ‘Easier’ No-Deal Brexit Claim (G.)
Boris Johnson’s New Brexit Chief Wants To Scrap Workers’ Rights (Ind.)
Things to Come (Kunstler)
Fake Cash, Fake Accounting: China Regulators Halt 46 IPOs, Bond Offerings (WS)
US Firms See Little Clarity On Huawei As US-China Talks Resume (R.)
Capital One: Information Of Over 100 Million People In US, Canada Hacked (R.)
The World is Not Enough (Statista)
Lost Cities and Climate Change (SciAm)

 

 

In currency markets, sterling is still worth 10% more than the euro, not 15% less. Three years ago it was worth 25% more. Scary to think what a no-deal Brexit could do. Well, unless you’re a short seller.

Pound Worth Just 85 Euro Cents At UK Airports (Ind.)

The pound has sunk well below €1 at Britain’s biggest airports – while the dollar is at parity. At the ICE desk at Heathrow airport on Tuesday morning, The Independent was quoted £117 for buying €100 – making each pound worth just 85 euro cents. At Gatwick airport on Monday night, the rate was £1 = €0.90. With commission added to a €100 transaction, the cost in sterling was £116. The interbank rate at 7am sank below £1 = €1.09, as the downward pressure on the pound continued. The currency market has marked down sterling as the prospect of a no-deal Brexit appears increasingly likely. At the peak of the holiday season, prices for British travellers will be at a two-year high.


The best rates for the euro found by The Independent were for “click and collect” transactions at London bureaux de change: €1.08 at branches of Thomas Exchange Global or ICE at Waterloo station. The interbank rate for dollars was £1 = $1.21, but Moneycorp at Gatwick airport was quoting parity: £1 = $1. Anyone changing £1,000 into the US currency and immediately back to sterling would lose over one-third of their money, receiving just £648.

Read more …

I don’t see how they could scrap the backstop, Brussels must stand up for its member state, Ireland. No choice. For Brussels, Ireland is a full-fledged nation. For London, it still doesn’t appear to be.

Boris Johnson Refuses To Meet EU Leaders Unless They Scrap Backstop (G.)

Boris Johnson is refusing to sit down for talks with EU leaders until they agree to ditch the Irish backstop from the Brexit withdrawal agreement, despite invitations to meetings from the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron. His official spokeswoman said the prime minister had made clear that he wanted to strike a deal, but that there was no point in holding face-to-face talks unless the EU agreed to reopen the agreement. But on a visit to the Trident nuclear base at Faslane in Scotland on Monday, Johnson painted a more optimistic picture of the prospects for talks, telling reporters there was “ample scope” to achieve a new deal.

He said: “We are not aiming for a no-deal Brexit at all. What we want is to get a deal and I’ve had some interesting conversations with our European partners. I’ve talked to [the European commission president] Jean-Claude [Juncker] and Angela Merkel and we’re reaching out today to [the Irish prime minister] Leo Varadkar. The feeling is, yes there’s no change in their position, but it’s very, very positive.” But he added: “They all know where we are: we can’t accept the backstop, it was thrown out three times, the withdrawal agreement as it stands is dead and everybody gets that. But there is ample scope to do a new deal and a better deal.”

While Johnson has spoken to Merkel and Macron, there are no plans to accept their invitations to visit without a change in their position on the backstop. Irish officials are understood to view the delay in contacting Varadkar as indicative of an unwillingness to enter serious talks. Varadkar is adamant that the backstop must stay to prevent a return to a hard border on the island of Ireland and preserve the integrity of the single market.

Read more …

Blame Games ‘R’ Us.

EU Rejects Dominic Raab’s ‘Easier’ No-Deal Brexit Claim (G.)

European Union officials have rejected Dominic Raab’s claim that negotiating a free-trade deal would be “much easier” after a no-deal Brexit. While the foreign secretary contends that leaving the EU without an agreement would ease the way to solving the disputed Irish border question, European sources fear a no-deal Brexit would trigger an acrimonious blame game. “It would mean the complete breakdown of political relations and I don’t think there would be much trust on the EU side with the Tories, or with the prime minister,” a senior diplomat said. “Eventually we would get around it because we are pragmatic, but this would be really, really bad, because of all the rhetoric around blaming.”


A second diplomat, speaking before Raab’s intervention, argued that all contact would cease after a no-deal Brexit. “Our phones will not be connected at that time … I don’t think they will be connected to someone who has reneged on their obligations,” they said. European officials agree that a precondition of talks would be a British pledge to honour the three core parts of the withdrawal agreement – citizens’ rights, the Irish border and the financial settlement. At the weekend, the EU budget commissioner, Günther Oettinger, told Der Tagesspiegel the UK’s credit rating would be hit if Boris Johnson carried out his threat not to honour payments promised to the EU. Tanja Fajon, the Social Democrat member of the European parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said: “To negotiate a free trade agreement usually takes years and I believe the UK doesn’t have that time after a no-deal Brexit.”

Read more …

The UK has been instrumental in defining EU law for 40 years. Now they want to cherry-pick? That would put any future trade deals at risk. Unfair competition.

Boris Johnson’s New Brexit Chief Wants To Scrap Workers’ Rights (Ind.)

Boris Johnson’s new Brexit chief wants to scrap Theresa May’s commitment to protect British workers’ rights, and has suggested Brexit is an opportunity to escape the EU’s “heavy labour market regulation”, The Independent can reveal. Just two months ago David Frost said he was opposed to the approach advocated “by the leaders of both major political parties”, and argued that EU rights should not automatically be written into law after Brexit. Mr Frost, former chief executive of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, was appointed last week by Mr Johnson to replace Olly Robbins as Downing Street’s EU chief, a role that will see him leading any future talks with Brussels.

“Business organisations have often in the past criticised the EU’s drift towards heavy labour market regulation,” Mr Frost said in May 2019 in an article reproduced on the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry website. “So I will take some persuading it will be a good outcome if the EU is able to set new UK labour market rules without any UK say – as currently seems to be envisaged by the leaders of both major political parties.” Theresa May committed the government to maintaining the current level of European Union workers rights, and also went even further, legislating for parliament to automatically be given votes on staying aligned with the bloc’s rules when future legislation emerges.

The “dynamic alignment” plans were unveiled by the government in a failed bid to get Labour MPs to back the withdrawal agreement. Additionally, during the transition period included in the withdrawal agreement, the UK would have to accept rights with no say at all, as rejected by Mr Frost. Brussels has also suggested the UK would have to stay aligned with future EU workers’ rights, as well as environmental and social legislation, past the end of the transition period – if it wants a trade agreement. Chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said the bloc would seek non-regression clauses to ensure Britain does not backslide on rules and try to undercut its neighbours.

Read more …

“Now, there is just suspicion that we’ve reached the limits of borrowing. Soon it will be a fact and that fact will upend everything we’ve been doing. ”

Things to Come (Kunstler)

The economic contraction ahead will put this borderline psychotic country through some interesting ch-ch-ch-changes. Mr. Trump now fully owns the Potemkin status quo of record stock markets poised against a withering rot of human capital at the core of an industrial society in sunset mode. Leadership at every corner of American life — politics, business, media — expects an ever-higher tech magical updraft of fortune from an increasingly holographic economy of mere fugitive appearances in which everybody can get more of something for nothing. The disappointment over how all this works out will be epic.

Globalism is wobbling badly. It was never what it was cracked up to be: a permanent new plateau of exquisitely-tuned international economic cooperation engineered to perfection. It was just a set of provisional relations based on transient advantage. As it turned out, every move that advantaged US-based corporations blew back ferociously on the American public and the long-term integrity of the social order. Sinister as it seems, the process was simply emergent: a self-organizing evolution of forces previously set in motion. And, like a lot of things in history, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Off-shoring” US industry jacked up corporate profits while it decimated working class livelihoods. In return, that large demographic got “bargain shopping” at Walmart, a life of ever-upward revolving debt, and dead downtowns. The country got gigantic trade deficits and government debt loads. In effect, globalism compelled America to borrow as much as possible from the future to keep running things the way they were set up to run. Now, there is just suspicion that we’ve reached the limits of borrowing. Soon it will be a fact and that fact will upend everything we’ve been doing.

Read more …

What is real in China?

Fake Cash, Fake Accounting: China Regulators Halt 46 IPOs, Bond Offerings (WS)

On Monday, Jinhe Biotechnology and Liande Automatic Equipment disclosed in filings that they had been ordered by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to suspend their plans to sell bonds. On Sunday night, four companies — Hunan Baili Engineering Sci&Tech, Jiaao Enprotech Stock, MLS Co., and Woer Heat-Shrinkable Material Co. – disclosed in filings that they had been ordered by the CSRC to suspend their IPOs in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Regulators also stopped four IPOs on Shanghai’s Star Market, which itself debuted just last week with great fanfare. The 25 stocks listed on it gained 140% on the very first day, followed by steep declines the second day.


[..] On Sunday, two companies disclosed that their bond offerings were stopped by regulators, according to Yicai. On Friday, seven companies disclosed that their bond offerings have been halted. In total, regulators suspended 46 IPOs and bond offerings, based on filings made at the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, including Shanghai’s Star Market, as of Monday, according to the South China Morning Post. The reason: these companies had chosen Ruihua Certified Public Accountants as their auditors. Ruihua, the second largest audit firm in China, has been embroiled in scandals involving large amounts of fake data, including fake cash, on its clients’ books. The fakeness of this cash became obvious when these companies defaulted on debt that they could have easily serviced with the cash they claimed to have on their books but didn’t. And Ruihua had just signed off on those fake books.

Read more …

“..the department has yet to respond to any of a total of around 50 license requests from about 35 companies..”

US Firms See Little Clarity On Huawei As US-China Talks Resume (R.)

A month after President Donald Trump said he would allow U.S. companies to resume selling to blacklisted Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei HWT.UL, his administration has done little to clarify what sales will be permitted. The lack of clarity on what U.S. firms can supply to the world’s top producer of telecommunications equipment as long as it’s on a so-called “entity list” is likely to cast a shadow over this week’s U.S.-China trade negotiations in Shanghai. Trump had pledged to allow the sales as a goodwill gesture to President Xi Jinping when the two met last month and agreed to restart talks to try to resolve their year-long trade war.


China, for its part, agreed to restart large-scale agricultural purchases. U.S. chipmakers cheered Trump’s announcement, which administration officials clarified afterwards meant the government would issue export licenses in cases where there is no national security risk and where the items are “non-sensitive” and readily replaced by rivals. But the department has yet to respond to any of a total of around 50 license requests from about 35 companies, sowing uncertainty in the industry and in Beijing. “At this stage, there is mass confusion,” said William Reinsch, a former Commerce official, adding that the plan for case-by-case decisions “maximizes the uncertainty.”

Read more …

No information is safe.

Capital One: Information Of Over 100 Million People In US, Canada Hacked (R.)

Capital One Financial Corp said on Monday that personal information including names and addresses of about 100 million individuals in the United States and 6 million people in Canada were obtained by a hacker who has been arrested. The suspect, a 33-year-old former Seattle technology company software engineer identified as Paige Thompson, made her initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s office said. According to a complaint filed in the District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle, Thompson posted information from her hack, which occurred between March 12 and July 17, on coding platform GitHub. Another user saw the post and notified Capital One of the breach.


Law enforcement officials were able to track Thompson down as the page she posted on contained her full name as part of its digital address, the complaint said. Capital One said it identified the hack on July 19. A representative for the U.S. Attorney’s office said it was not immediately clear what the suspect’s motive was. The incident is expected to cost between $100 million and $150 million in 2019, mainly because of customer notifications, credit monitoring and legal support, Capital One said. The hacker did not gain access to credit card account numbers, but about 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 linked bank account numbers were compromised, Capital One said. Other personal information accessed included phone numbers and credit scores.

Read more …

Are we immune to this yet?

The World is Not Enough (Statista)

Earth Overshoot Day came on July 29 this year. This is the second time the day, which marks the time at which humanity has used up its allotment of natural planetary resources for the year, occurred in the month. It had occurred in August between 2010 and 2017. The day, whose existence is highlighted by the NGO Global Footprint Network, means that all humans on Earth for this year have already used up more natural resources than mother nature can reproduce annually. Emissions, but also of resources like wood or fish and the use of land for crops, are among the things counted in when calculating Earth Overshoot Day.


Industrialized nations have the biggest share in pushing its date forward, as seen in the organization’s country profiles. The U.S. is the biggest offender. If all nations lived like U.S. residents, the resources of five Earths would be needed each year in order for the natural environment to regenerate. The U.S. overshoot day is therefore on March 15. Australia, which had been ahead of the U.S. for some years, now had its overshoot day on March 31, with 4.1 “Earths” used annually. India was among the countries whose style of living would use up less than a whole Earth each year if practiced globally, which also has to do with poverty still being widespread in the country.

Read more …

“The scariest thing about climate change is what it will make us do to each other.”

Lost Cities and Climate Change (SciAm)

Not far from my grandmother’s house is a ghost city. At Angel Mounds on the Ohio river about eight miles west of Evansville, there are a few visible earthworks and a reconstructed wattle-and-daub barrier. There is almost nothing left of the people who build these mounds; in a final insulting erasure, the site is now named after the white settler family who most recently farmed the land. There are traces of other dead villages along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, mounds scattered from present-day Indiana to Arkansas and Alabama. In southern Illinois, a few miles from the Missouri border, hidden among empty corn and soy fields, is the center of that dead civilization’s gravity: the lost city of Cahokia.

Cahokia was larger than London, centrally planned, the Manhattan of its day. Most people there would have come from somewhere else. There were defensive foundations, playing fields, and a magnificent temple. There would have been sacred ceremonies and salacious gossip. It must have been a very exciting place to live. And then, relatively abruptly, it ceased to exist. We know of the city only because of the physical traces left behind. Few stories of Cahokia have survived; it disappeared from oral tradition, as if whatever happened to it is best forgotten. The archaeological record shows traces of the desperation and bloodshed that almost always accompany great upheavals: skeletons with bound hands, pits full of strangled young women.

The North American Drought Atlas, a historical record of climate conditions pieced together from the rings of old trees, provides a hint of what might have happened. The tenth century CE, when the Cahokia civilization would have developed, marked a distinct shift in the regional climate from persistent drought to rainier conditions more suitable for agriculture, centralization, and civilization. But the good times were not to last. In the middle of the fourteenth century, the climate swung back toward drought. This shift was likely associated with shifting temperature patterns in the ocean that affected the jet stream, pulling cool air down from the Arctic and displacing rainfall patterns.

These changes are attributable to some combination of natural internal climate variability and externally forced changes from solar activity and increased volcanic eruptions. Their effects were profound. In Europe around the same time, a confluence of natural factors perhaps related and perhaps separate from the forces drying out the Mississippi Valley caused it to rain heavily in the summer of 1314. The rains continued into the winter, and then into the next year, and then the next. Crops rotted in the fields, and the entire continent went hungry. Contemporaneous historical records complain of rain and famine, villages forced to eat dogs and cats, the dead, and even each other.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle July 30 2019

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  • #48877

    Odilon Redon The winged man (The fallen angel) 1880   • Pound Worth Just 85 Euro Cents At UK Airports (Ind.) • Boris Johnson Refuses To Meet EU L
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle July 30 2019]

    #48880
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Odilon Redon The winged man (The fallen angel) 1880; can’t hold a candle to Odilon Redon’s charcoal, Fallen angel 1872, IMO.
    An absolute genius use of charcoal and paper; again, in my opinion.
    I came back again and again to see it…

    #48881
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Sammy

    #48883
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “It would mean the complete breakdown of political relations”

    Oh, stuff and nonsense. Nations are essentially immortal. What’s the EU going to do? Sulk forever? They won’t even be around as they presently exist in 10 years, maybe 3. They are THE major British trading partner, both directions. So VW is going to stop selling cars to their major market and Siemens is going to stop selling Euro-standard electric grid, collapsing the EU in spite? NO. WAY. These guys had a world war that ended in nukes and the invasion of the entire eastern bloc and were still talking to each other just a year or two later. The British royalty had THEIR OWN COUSINS EXECUTED, like what, three times, including exterminating every Romanov who had any remaining claims to Russian gold held in London and they’re still talking. Oh but if one trade deal gets rough, they’re going to erect a 1,000 foot wall in the English (now ‘Le Pond’ aka the non-English) Channel? Baloney. Does anyone read history and engage? Get a grip.

    “Boris Johnson’s new Brexit chief wants to scrap Theresa May’s commitment to protect British workers’ rights, and has suggested Brexit is an opportunity to escape the EU’s “heavy labour market regulation”,

    If I’m not mistaken, that is his political right, for which he will have to get Parliamentary support. Absolutely normal stuff, happens every time there is a leadership change. The real Trojan Horse is to create 100,000 regulations a year, mostly non-British, because you can’t undo them fast enough, or at all. We still have laws about horses in the streets and subsidies for the use of oak barrels. The government makes – intentionally – winners and losers to the highest bidder. That’s the whole point, or rather side-effect of government: they win, we lose. Now everyone who paid their Minister to (illegally) win is going to fight tooth and nail to hold their (illegal, socialist) advantage. Thus there are always MORE laws and never less, and like Tainter’s ever-increasing investment in complex bankrupting infrastructure, government has to collapse before the tired, old, useless, obstructing laws get swept away. Why? Because you won’t let Johnson do it the easy way. Instead Britain loses their world empire one idiotic rule at a time and is still getting ever-smaller and poorer to this very day. Congratulations, you’ve struck gold. More government, more regulation, more helping until we all die of help.

    “Now, there is just suspicion that we’ve reached the limits of borrowing”

    We have, but foreign government have been rejecting our bond auctions for years, and they’re just printing $21 Trillion in the back door “Exchange Stabilization Fund” and buying it. Totally legal, totally legal to hide it under FASAB elimination. That’s why it requires the currency to be rejected, and therefore the SWIFT system to be evaded and destroyed, all of which happens more each day. Doesn’t matter though. We were never going to pay it. Ever. Not since 1978. We were always going to default and we’re going to default now. So “Print all you want! We’ll spend more.” Remember “Welcome to the New World Currency: 2018” Economist, 1989? They had the exit completely planned by then, exactly on date, 40 years, and we’ve just borrowed time the last year, as well-known. The world is converting, just like they have to, just like they should, just like they planned, and if they’re too slow, just like we’ll MAKE them with embargoes and offronts.

    Yes, limits of borrowing. What limits? In time, maybe, but not in price. It could reach $40 or $100 Trillion and probably will, because we’re not leaving this ship until there’s a new one to go to.

    “Fake Cash, Fake Accounting: China Regulators Halt 46 IPOs, Bond Offerings (WS)”

    For a change, the opposite of us. When Arthur Andersen accounted Enron CORRECTLY, Boy Scout Mr. Mueller shut them down and bankrupted them for daring. Later, when S&P attempted the same thing with USTreasury ratings, they were warned and backed off immediately. We don’t do truth here; you could end up locked in an embassy or something.

    “Capital One: Information of Over 100 Million People in US, Canada Hacked (R.)”

    But I’ve got an answer! MORE governments, MORE computers! And definitely, DEFINITELY more monopolies that pay 5% fines on their crimes like Facebook did.

    “India was among the countries whose style of living would use up less than a whole Earth each year if practiced globally, which also has to do with [massive, widespread] poverty”

    I’m sure everyone will go for that! Especially the Greenies. They can, and few even have, attempting living small, and they bailed out of the commune back-to-the-land life and go back to the city in just a year or two, 1,000x faster than the rural folks who grew up with it. But it’s okay, they’re going to stay in San Francisco and command all the poverty they don’t like for themselves onto those non-humans in Flyoverland! Because that’s love and caring! About the planet, and animals ‘natch, not the humans who are beneath animals and must be killed for the love and goodness of all.

    Non-cynical point: Waste = GDP. Non-waste = Non-GDP, and worldwide economic and social collapse, which will immediately include starvation and war. And you ain’t seen nothin’ for environmental destruction until you try (force) that.

    Syr

    This the environment you’re looking for? This is the earth winning and humans losing! Please discuss how you will transition while keeping GDP/Debt in mind.

    “The scariest thing about climate change is what it will make us do to each other.”

    We know absolutely nothing about what happened to the Mound Builders, or to some extent, the Mayan/Incans. Essentially, they walked away from civilization and back into the mountains, much as the Romans did, and are still there today. Would that be bad? Why? Because you’re a bunch of journalists and scholars who prefer and defend the injustices and environmental devastation of cities? Why don’t YOU leave then? An off-grid cotter in Wales is just over the hill. St. Kilda is still there. When the height of the Mound builders and Aztecs were bloodthirsty mass-child-murderers, much as we are today, why would you mourn their complete destruction back to the sense and order of the Shawnee?

    “The archaeological record shows traces of the desperation and bloodshed: skeletons with bound hands, pits full of strangled young women…. It must have been a very exciting place to live.”

    Indeed.

    “desperation and bloodshed that almost always accompany great upheavals”

    Except the Aztecs and several meso-Americans did this all day long without any upheaval. Europe did this just 70 years ago without any climate change, actually for no plausible reason at all. The Zeta cartel is doing this today just for business profits. Care to modify your premises?

    “This shift was likely associated with shifting temperature patterns in the ocean that affected the jet stream, pulling cool air down from the Arctic and displacing rainfall patterns.”

    The guys who can’t make an accurate climate model given 30 years and 1,000 supercomputers claim to know how the jet stream moved in 1400. They don’t know what the jet stream will do next week. You know what really destroyed the Ohio? Hubris. And unfounded belief in their own era’s priests of science. Why not? Isn’t that what kills all cultures?

    P.S., if they hadn’t noticed, the Ohio is a R I V E R, one of the largest in the United States, and is a place that rains all the time on the finest farmland on earth. Dry in Ohio would be comfortably wet anywhere else. Other places worldwide indeed chose to irrigate, which was another option, so I’m going to be skeptical of this essentially unfounded claim for which we have virtually no evidence, just like everything else about the Mound Builders. How about this: The Mound priests of Mound science and the Mound News Network were completely discredited and Jeffrey Mound was found to have been killing thousands of women and children with their hands bound all protected and participated in by the Mound Ruling Class. The people tied them to trees and walked away, lighting a match and let the civilization collapse behind them as all it deserved, going back to living in huts and finally becoming “civilized”: civil, orderly, non-murdering men. Just men without high-rises and digital watches. Why not? About as much evidence for my story as for theirs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_Builders

    “The various cultures collectively termed “Mound Builders” were inhabitants of North America who, during a 5,000-year period…” AYFKM. 5,000 years and 2,000 miles apart and we call them the same people? Yes, those city-building Babylonian peoples from Copenhagen… In addition, the plausible culture and habits of mound building still existed in 1600 when the Spanish visited. They were still there, still doing the same thing. So when did they collapse, exactly? They’re still here today.

    #48885
    zerosum
    Participant

    Every artists who did a portrait of their versions of angels had a hard time with portraying sexuality.

    #48886
    zerosum
    Participant

    http://www.spaceweather.com/

    HOLES IN THE SUN’S ATMOSPHERE: Earth is about to be strobed by three streams of solar wind–each flowing from a hole the sun’s atmosphere. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the gaseous spigots on July 29th:

    These are “coronal holes”–places where the sun’s magnetic field peels back and allows solar wind to escape. Coronal holes look dark in extreme ultraviolet images of the sun because glowing-hot plasma normally contained there is missing.
    The first of the streams is expected to arrive on Aug 1st, followed by two more in rapid succession on Aug. 4th. Polar geomagnetic unrest and possibly some minor magnetic storms are possible on those dates. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras, especially in the southern hemisphere where winter darkness favors visibility.

    #48887

    I, for one, appreciate Dr. D.’s Red Bull ads.

    They should hire him.

    #48888

    No. 1 story on Zero Hedge is Paul Joseph Watson’s “Epstein In Danger Of Being Murdered By “Powerful People” Before His Trial”. And I’m thinking: didn’t I already write that almost two weeks ago? So what’s newsworthy about it? A victim’s lawyer saying it? Anybody at all could have said it from at least the moment he was arrested. So should I write the same story again, different words, slightly different angle? See, I think not. But it would be click bait…

    #48891
    John Day
    Participant

    http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/07/democrats-bust-loose.html
    I don’t have much for you. I think Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders respect each other and will be respectful, not divisive. Buttigieg may try to come up with something new. He’s pretty much a Ken Doll. Beto is an expired Ken Doll. Marianne Williamson is described in the second story as a potential left-wing Trump. I like that. I looked at about 15 minutes of her candidacy announcement. Not bad at all, but I don’t have a lot of time for videos. Anyway, I’m rooting for Williamson, who has a lot of snap in front of crowds, and has had the ability to impress and mentor a lot of rich, smart people, to do the Trump-of-Love thing and shake up the proceedings tonight.

    The line-up”
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2019/jul/30/democratic-debates-2019-live-news-tonight-bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-buttigieg-o-rourke-latest

    Closer zoom on Williamson and Love candidacy.
    https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/jul/30/marianne-williamson-can-love-beat-trump-in-the-2020-presidential-elections

    Caitlin Johnstone took a closer look at Williamson, since anybody who gets that much snide press must be worth hearing out.

    Eight Thoughts On Marianne Williamson

    Here is her announcement of candidacy for the presidency, all 43 minutes, of which the first 15 is ok by me,

    #48894
    John Day
    Participant

    OK, the last 16 minutes or so is what’s happenin’. It’s different. It’s disruptive of the politicl model, maybe even more than Trump. There is stuff that rubs me wrong, but the message of moral change being the core, and jumping past the current paradigms, as has been done several times in American history, and measuring up to our moral calling, is compelling. She goes populist demagogue in the last 10 minutes, and her voice cracks, and she just uses that to her advantage. She calls the baby boomers to their moment in history. Right-on! She’s got guts.
    I’d like to see her debate Kamala Harris, who is very tough, but shallower.

    #48895
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    John Day
    I listened to it; all of it…
    About half way through, Obama came to mind; my contempt for that SOB knows no bounds. And yes; that’s how bloody cynical I’ve become…
    The most I can muster at this point is: we’ll see…………
    Thanks for the video…

    #48903
    democritus
    Participant

    It isn’t normal to quote the exchange rate at an airport. But this is the
    Independent, a pro-remain campaign newsletter for the gullible and fearful.

    “Brussels must stand up for its member state, Ireland.”. Actually the UK is a
    member state too. And article 50 is EU law. Who does the EU represent? Well
    bankers, corporations, commissioners. I can’t think of anyone else.

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