Oct 102019
 
 October 10, 2019  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Salvador Dali Grandmother Ana sewing 1920

 

Inside Hunter Biden’s Dealings With Shadowy Foreign Firms (ZH)
Joe Biden ‘Personally Paid $900,000 By Burisma’ – Ukrainian MP (ZH)
An Insult To Real Whistleblowers- Kiriakou (RCP)
Shell To Offset Carbon Emissions For British Fuel Buyers (R.)
Federal Reserve Policymakers Increasingly Divided On Way Ahead (R.)
US Tariffs On China Are Working – Wilbur Ross (R.)
Nearly All Goods Traded By US And China Will Have Tariffs By December 15 (R.)
Chinese Consumers Are On A Worrying Staycation (Lam)
California Set To End Private Prisons And Immigrant Detention Camps (R.)
Owner Of Spanish Security Company That Spied On Assange Arrested (El Pais)
PG&E Power Outage: Lines For Gas, Batteries, Groceries And Generators (LAT)
Seven Latam Nations Suggest Maduro Behind Unrest In Ecuador (R.)
For The First Time Ever, Greece Issues Negative Yielding Debt (ZH)

 

 

I’ve been in a Not The Onion mode all day. It started off with reading that Shell is paying to offset its UK customers’ carbon emissions. For blunt stupidity, that’s hard to beat. That Johnson and Johnson was “ordered to pay $8 billion (!!!) after drug causes man to grow breasts” already seemed more logical after that. That Joe Biden made even more money off Burisma than Hunter did, then seemed perfectly normal. It was all uphill from there.

Inside Hunter Biden’s Dealings With Shadowy Foreign Firms (ZH)

According to the FT, Biden’s business interests “often show up in unexpected places.” While Democrats obviously prefer to focus on their impeachment investigation, there’s no denying that Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere clearly raise questions about potential conflicts that existed while his father was in office. Joe Biden has denied wrongdoing, but questions linger over his role in the ouster of a top Ukrainian prosecutor, which some have suggested was done to help protect Hunter. When Hunter joined the Navy Reserves in May 2013, he required several waivers (at 42, he was above the age of enlistment, and there was an unspecified ‘drug-related’ incident that also would have disqualified him).

Despite his apparent eagerness to join, Biden was discharged from the Navy the following year after testing positive for cocaine. Soon after, his more successful older brother, Beau, passed away, and his wife Kathleen filed for divorce, citing Hunter’s “spending extravagantly on his own interests including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations.” Next, he started dating his brother’s widow. But in between trips to rehab and legendary drug benders. In 2016, shortly after he started dating Hallie Biden, Beau’s widow, Hunter made plans to stay at a detox center in Arizona. But he somehow got sidetracked during a stopover in Los Angeles, and ended up missing the next wing of his flight. Instead, he traveled to Skid Row, where he was reportedly held up at gun point, but nevertheless apparently succeeded in buying and using crack, causing him to return several times over the following days.

Eventually, Hunter Biden took a Hertz rental car to his treatment center in Arizona, but workers at the Hertz office called the police after finding a crack pipe and baggie of crack, along with Biden’s license and a badge from Beau’s time as Delaware AG. Prosecutors declined to pursue the case, claiming a lack of evidence, but it definitely wasn’t a good look for Hunter. More recently, Hunter has been in the headlines for his whirlwind marriage to a South African Instagram model, and for a paternity suit brought by a woman claiming Hunter is the father of her newborn son. Of course, none of these transgressions have stopped Biden from earning millions of dollars off his family name and connections. In Wednesday’s issue, the FT published a breakdown of Biden’s foreign business interests.

Read more …

As I said, perfectly normal.

Joe Biden ‘Personally Paid $900,000 By Burisma’ – Ukrainian MP (ZH)

Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach revealed on Wednesday that former Vice President Joe Biden received $900,000 from Burisma Group for lobbying activities, citing materials related to an investigation. Via Interfax: “Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden received $900,000 for lobbying activities from Burisma Group, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada member Andriy Derkach said citing investigation materials. Derkach publicized documents which, as he said, “describe the mechanism of getting money by Biden Sr.” at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine’s press center in Kyiv on Wednesday”. -Interfax. “This was the transfer of Burisma Group’s funds for lobbying activities, as investigators believe, personally to Joe Biden through a lobbying company.”


“Funds in the amount of $900,000 were transferred to the U.S.-based company Rosemont Seneca Partners, which according to open sources, in particular, the New York Times, is affiliated with Biden. The payment reference was payment for consultative services,” said Derkach. Derkach also puiblicized sums of money transferred to Burisma Group representatives – including Joe Biden’s son Hunter. “According to the documents, Burisma paid no less than $16.5 million to [former Polish President, who became an independent director at Burisma Holdings in 2014] Aleksander Kwasniewski, [chairman of the Burisma board of independent directors] Alan Apter, [Burisma independent director] Devon Archer and Hunter Biden [who joined the Burisma board of directors in 2014],” Derkach added.

Read more …

“If you are represented by Mark Zaid and you’re claiming to be a whistleblower, you are not…”

An Insult To Real Whistleblowers- Kiriakou (RCP)

Former CIA official and whistleblower John Kiriakou weighed in on Ukraine whistleblower being celebrated by the media. Kiriakou called the person a “so-called whistleblower” that is acting anonymously even though they have no undercover position at the CIA, likely an analyst. “I don’t think this is a whistleblower, not at all,” Kiriakou told FNC’s Tucker Carlson. “I think this is an anonymous source for the Democratic staff in the House of Representatives.” “You can’t hide this person’s identity just to save him from embarrassment or trouble of being recognized,” Kiriakou said. “It’s just not appropriate. If this is a whistleblower, he needs to come forward in public, testify in open session and blow that whistle.”


“Even his attorney, Mark Zaid, is one of these CIA insiders. He’s attached at the hip with the CIA. He’s represented dozens of CIA people. He has a CIA security clearance. If you are represented by Mark Zaid and you’re claiming to be a whistleblower, you are not,” Kiriakou said Wednesday.

Read more …

Yup, the British are funny.

Shell To Offset Carbon Emissions For British Fuel Buyers (R.)

Royal Dutch Shell said on Thursday it would offset the carbon dioxide emissions of around 1.5 million road users in Britain starting later this month under a loyalty scheme. Shell, like other oil companies, has come under pressure from shareholders to show how it plans to reduce its carbon footprint and help cut greenhouse gas emissions, a major cause of global warming. Britons are increasingly concerned about their environmental impact, with thousands of students striking earlier this year and green group Extinction Rebellion carrying out civil disobedience to push for more ambition on climate change.


Sinead Lynch, Shell UK country chair, said the best way for people to cut their road emissions was to use electric vehicles, supplied with renewable power. “But today the majority of people still use petrol and diesel. We can help them address the impact of their emissions by offsetting their fuel purchases,” she said in a statement. From Oct. 17, emissions relating to fuel purchased by customers with the Shell Go+ app or card will be offset for free until September 2020. Shell said about 20% of its customers were registered with the loyalty scheme. It expects the program to cost roughly 10 million pounds ($12.2 million) and offset emissions from around 1.5 million cars.

Read more …

It’s too late to repair their nonsense.

Federal Reserve Policymakers Increasingly Divided On Way Ahead (R.)

Most Federal Reserve policymakers supported the need for an interest rate cut in September, minutes of the central bank’s last policy meeting showed, but they remained divided on the path ahead for monetary policy. The readout of the meeting, released on Wednesday, also showed that the Fed agreed it would soon need to discuss increasing the size of its balance sheet following ructions in short-term money markets. Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced an imminent expansion of the central bank’s assets on Tuesday. Fed policymakers at the Sept. 17-18 meeting decided, in a 7-3 vote, to lower the benchmark overnight lending rate by a quarter percentage point to between 1.75% and 2%.


“Most participants believed that a reduction of 25 basis points in the target range for the federal funds rate would be appropriate,” the Fed said in the minutes. The U.S. central bank has lowered borrowing costs twice this year after having raised interest rates nine times since 2015. But what remains unclear from the minutes is how a softening in economic data since that meeting will affect viewpoints on the need for further rate cuts, if at all. In projections that accompanied the September statement, seven of the Fed’s 17 policymakers indicated they forecast one more rate cut this year. Five policymakers did not see any more cuts needed and the other five projected a rate rise by the end of 2019. Investors overwhelmingly expect another rate cut at the next meeting on Oct. 29-30.

Read more …

Working? You sure that’s the right term?

US Tariffs On China Are Working – Wilbur Ross (R.)

Tariffs are forcing China to pay attention to U.S. concerns, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in Sydney on Thursday. Ross said the United States would have preferred not to implement tariffs against Chinese goods more than a year ago, but added that it has forced Beijing into action. The trade war has weighed on global growth and roiled financial markets. “We do not love tariffs, in fact we would prefer not to use them, but after years of discussions and no action, tariffs are finally forcing China to pay attention to our concerns,” Ross told a business function held by the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia. “We could have had a deal two-and-a-half years ago without going through the whole tit-for-tat on tariffs that we have.”


Top U.S. and Chinese trade and economic officials will meet in Washington on Thursday and Friday to try to end the escalating dispute. Without a significant breakthrough, Washington is set to hike the tariff rate on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods to 30% from 25% next Tuesday. Negotiators had made no progress in deputy-level trade talks held on Monday and Tuesday in Washington, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) said, citing unidentified sources with knowledge of the meetings. The two sides have been at loggerheads over U.S. demands that China improve protections of American intellectual property, end cyber theft and the forced transfer of technology to Chinese firms, curb industrial subsidies and increase U.S. companies’ access to largely closed Chinese markets.

Read more …

Let’s call it a draw?

Nearly All Goods Traded By US And China Will Have Tariffs By December 15 (R.)

U.S. and Chinese negotiators meet in Washington on Thursday and Friday to try, once again, to defuse a trade war that has roiled markets and triggered tit-for-tat tariffs on hundreds of billions of goods traded between the world’s largest economies. The meetings come days after the U.S. Department of Commerce blacklisted 28 Chinese companies, and China and the U.S. started reciprocal visa bans. Chinese officials say they have little expectation of significant progress. If negotiators cannot come to an agreement, a new set of punitive U.S. tariffs kicks in on Oct. 15 on about $250 billion of Chinese goods, and then both countries put tariffs on billions of dollars more of each others’ goods on Dec. 15. Here is what is set to take effect in the next few weeks:

U.S. OCT. 15 INCREASE A proposed Oct. 15 tariff rate boosts to 30% a duty of 25% already in place on at least $250 billion worth of Chinese imports. Set to take effect on Oct. 1, the higher tariff was delayed late in September by Trump “as a gesture of good will.” The 25% tariffs were adopted over nearly a year, from an initial tranche of largely non-consumer goods in July and August 2018, including machinery and electronic components such as semiconductors and printed circuit boards and many chemicals. Later the U.S. added consumer goods and building products, including furniture, vacuum cleaners, lighting fixtures, handbags and vinyl flooring.

U.S. DEC. 15 TARIFF INCREASE Two months later, the U.S. plans to target an additional tariff of 15% at about $300 billion in imports from China. These had already been hit with a tariff of 15% on Sept. 1, in a list mostly of consumer products, based on a Reuters analysis of 2018 U.S. Census Bureau data. It includes flat panel television sets, flash memory devices, power tools, cotton sweaters, bed linens, multifunction printers and some footwear. The largest category of targeted products covers smart watches, smart speakers, Bluetooth headphones and other internet-connected devices spared in a prior round of tariffs, with Chinese imports estimated at $17.9 billion annually by the Consumer Technology Association.

Read more …

The numbers are not that impressive, but the trends are clear.

Chinese Consumers Are On A Worrying Staycation (Lam)

China is shopping, just not quite enough. Official numbers after a week-long National Day break showed revenue from domestic tourism climbed 8.5% compared to 2018, the slowest pace in at least 17 years. Retail and dining numbers also failed to dazzle. Beijing wants consumers to help revive a flagging economy, but a weak yuan and the fading impact of tax cuts will keep purse strings tight. Golden Week, which began on Oct. 1, has long offered a snapshot of Chinese consumption. This year, the picture is less than shiny. Spending on retail and dining was up 8.5% compared to a 9.5% increase last year according to Citi, and well below double-digit increases a decade ago. Growth in domestic travel cooled too.

Some 7 million Chinese still ventured overseas, a measure of the country’s increasing wealth, but the number of outbound travellers in the first six days of October fell 15% compared to a year ago. In part that was due to China’s anniversary celebrations, and Hong Kong hardly helped: anti-government protests there have prompted numbers coming over the border to fall precipitously. But it measures wider household concerns. Instead, it was the small luxuries that did well, like trips to the movies. Patriotic flicks including ‘My People, My Country’ – stories inspired by China’s history – drew record box office revenue and over 100 million viewers during the holiday, according to Xinhua.

Beijing, which usually leans on infrastructure to stimulate the economy, has increasingly turned to consumers too. Stimulus measures, including a personal income tax unveiled late last year, did help lift disposable incomes by 8.8% in the first half. That would have been 7.2% without the boost, reckons analyst Ernan Cui of Gavekal Dragonomics. Unfortunately, that’s not feeding into shopping baskets fast enough, given it impacted wealthier households more.

Read more …

The very idea of “privately outsourced incarceration” is so insane we should never even consider it.

California Set To End Private Prisons And Immigrant Detention Camps (R.)

America’s largest state prison system is moving to quit the practice of farming out inmates to lockups run under contract by private companies, following a nationwide decline in the for-profit incarceration business. California Governor Gavin Newsom is expected to sign legislation this week designed to effectively ban private, for-profit corporations from running prisons or immigration detention facilities. Sponsors of the measure say it will end a brief but hapless experiment in privately outsourced incarceration begun as a means to ease overcrowding – an endeavor Newsom branded an outrage when he took office in January.


Bill supporters say private prisons, driven to maximize shareholder profits, lack proper oversight or incentives to rehabilitate inmates, and have contributed to a culture of mass incarceration by making it cheaper to lock up people. They point to research cited in a 2016 U.S. Justice Department Office of Inspector General report that found private prisons spend less on personnel, and are less safe, than public institutions. “This is a total and complete failure, and it’s hurting and abusing Californians,” said state Assemblyman Rob Bonta, a chief author of the bill.

Read more …

Yeah, well, the horse and the barn.

Owner Of Spanish Security Company That Spied On Assange Arrested (El Pais)

David Morales, the owner of the Spanish security company that was in charge of protecting the Ecuadorian embassy in London while Julian Assange was living there, has been arrested and released on bail, judicial sources have told EL PAÍS. The director of UC Global S. L. is being investigated by Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, after allegedly ordering the private conversations of the WikiLeaks founder to be spied on, as well as supposedly passing the information collected to the United States’ intelligence services. Morales’ arrest took place on September 17 in the southern Spanish city of Jerez de la Frontera, which is where the security firm is based. The information had not come to light until now given that the investigation is under seal.


Police officers searched the company’s offices and also seized hard disks and documents, all of which are now being analyzed by the judge in charge of the case, José de la Mata. According to judicial sources, two firearms with their serial numbers erased were found in Morales’ home, as well as €20,000 in cash. Morales was taken to Madrid were he was questioned at the High Court before being released on bail. His passport was taken from him and his bank accounts frozen. He currently has to check in at the High Court every two weeks. [..] After the revelations were published by EL PAÍS, Assange’s defense team filed a criminal complaint against Morales, in which he is accused of alleged privacy offenses as well as the violation of attorney-client privilege, misappropriation of funds, bribery and money laundering.

Read more …

A glimpse of your future.

PG&E Power Outage: Lines For Gas, Batteries, Groceries And Generators (LAT)

The massive blackouts imposed across Northern California on Wednesday led to a run on gasoline, portable generators and other supplies while retailers struggled to serve customers. Millions were expected to lose power as Pacific Gas & Electric shut down service in a bid to avoid wind-driven fires caused by downed power lines. Angie Sheets of El Dorado Hills outside Sacramento noticed that generators were flying off the shelves at the local Costco as she shopped for groceries earlier in the week. Considering the nearly $1,000 worth of food she planned to purchase and the imminent power outage, Sheets said she called her husband to talk about buying a generator for their home. “By the time I had done that, the last big generator was gone off the shelves,” she said. Her husband, a law enforcement officer, later found a generator at a Costco in Rancho Cordova.

Read more …

You sure it wasn’t Putin? How about Ukraine?

Seven Latam Nations Suggest Maduro Behind Unrest In Ecuador (R.)

Seven Latin American countries reject any attempt by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to destabilize democracies in the region and back Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno as he tries to calm unrest, Peru’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday, speaking on behalf of the group. A statement from the Peru’s foreign ministry said that it as well as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Paraguay all expressed their “firm backing for actions taken by President Lenin Moreno” and “reject any action aimed at destabilizing our democracies by the regime of Nicolas Maduro.”

Read more …

Still bankrupt though.

For The First Time Ever, Greece Issues Negative Yielding Debt (ZH)

As armies of fixed income strategists battle over whether US Treasuries are facing higher or lower yields, Greece has no such qualms and in a historic shift today, the former bond market pariah and Eurozone’s most indebted nation, joined the exclusive club of negative-yielding European nations when bond investors lined up to pay the nation that was at the heart of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. A sale of €487.5 million of 13-week bills on Wednesday drew Greece’s first-ever negative yield of minus 0.02% as investors now pay Athens for the privilege of lending it cash, as Bloomberg first reported. Greece joins the likes of Ireland, Italy and Spain – not to mention virtually all core Eurozone nations – which benefit from the ECB’s insane monetary policy and deepening fears of a global recession.


It’s been an unprecedented turnaround for twice bankrupt Eurozone member, whose bondholders suffered massive losses back in March 2012 when the country was forced to accept the biggest bond restructuring in history, bringing the Eurozone to the verge of collapse. Just a few years and several trillions in bond purchases by the ECB later, the region is grappling with an altogether different problem – the spread of negative yields, which reduces borrowing costs for governments in a form of soft default, one which is crushing savers, pension funds and insurers, and which has prompted some of the most respected names in finance to shriek in terror as the cost of money in even Europe’s most insolvent nations is now negative.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle October 10 2019

Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
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  • #50503

    Salvador Dali Grandmother Ana sewing 1920   • Inside Hunter Biden’s Dealings With Shadowy Foreign Firms (ZH) • Joe Biden ‘Personally Paid $900,00
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle October 10 2019]

    #50504
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Salvador Dali Grandmother Ana sewing 1920

    That is just gold, thru and thru!
    Dali at his best………………

    #50505

    He was 15-16 years old

    #50506
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    UKRAINEGATE

    If the Democrats did not have a press which is willing to push any story the Democrats want even though there is no actual evidence to support it the ‘impeachment’ would already be over.

    They are holding a private impeachment where the only evidence, the transcript, is totally ignored and relying on ‘chinese whispers’ style ‘whistleblowers’. Really bizarre!

    It did cross my mind as to whether Biden was the intended target all along. His previous actions were a ‘sleeping dog’ which has been woken up, and is beginning to bark. The US press can ignore this for only so long.

    #50508
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    He was 15-16 years old

    Again, I forgot his age, born 1904…
    But it doesn’t seem to matter; good is good… 😉

    #50509
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Yes he is the target going back months. I feel they staged the phone call for this plan.

    Shell UK country chair, said the best way for people to cut their road emissions was to use electric vehicles, supplied with renewable power.
    Fires

    Go green!

    And this is before it catches on fire and completely destroys all that hard-won, CO2-wasting, environment-destroying lithium mining. Okay, herr Doctor, be helpful. Here’s an environmental car:
    TT-Top

    –Insert 1923 Model T Ford Truck–

    Light, quiet, hearty, minimalistic, 40mpg, cheap, very economical use of resources, easily fixed at home indefinitely with simple tools, still on the road. The imbedded energy has long since been amortized. Saw one on the road just the other day.

    …Unless you think we NEED to go 130kph, and 100k/day commute. If so, there’s nothing that can make your lifestyle environmental. But invading Afghanistan for lithium so you can be charged on a brown coal/nuclear plant at 3 Mile and waste 20% in transmission is certainly not the solution.

    “We do not love tariffs, in fact we would prefer not to use them, but after years of discussions and no action, tariffs are finally forcing China to pay attention to our concerns…We could have had a deal two-and-a-half years ago without going through the whole tit-for-tat on tariffs that we have.”

    Don’t know what to add to this. Stop stealing stuff, pay IP rights, whatever. We’re not asking the world, they signed that deal with Clinton in WTO ’99 but just lied and cheated for 20 years. They’re clearly cracking pretty hard, and the supply chain is already being moved (unf to Vietnam and Thailand) , but like I said last week this takes years of planning and effort. Again, in any conflict, it’s not cost-free; it’s always whether they hurt MORE than you. You’re never going to lift or win anything without effort/pain on yourself. To think otherwise is to lie on your back and give up on the world.

    “Chinese officials say they have little expectation of significant progress.”

    They’re counting on the election, but I don’t think they’re going to win that. Prices aren’t rising here that I can tell, so double tariffs again. Surely we’re not doing enough unless it bites a little on our side, see above. If we don’t feel the burn, we’re not playing hard enough. I’d do that just because China seems to be commanding all our corporations and sports teams right now, running our censorship and we need to say, “Bad dog. That’s not yours.”

    But I guess free speech, western values, and all our property rights are what we are surrendering today. It’s okay if you take our Bill of Rights, we weren’t using it anyway.

    “California Set to End Private Prisons and Immigrant Detention Camps (R.)”

    There are only a few things government SHOULD do: shouldn’t the criminal justice system be one of them?

    “PG&E Power Outage: Lines for Gas, Batteries, Groceries and Generators (LAT)”

    So, top for VD, top for human feces, top for prostitution, drug use, homelessness, spraying the streets with bleach for Hep C, running typhus, starting with medieval diseases like plague and leprosy, high taxes, crushing taxes, fleeing population. And now regular power outages. Yup, socialism at work, like every other time in human history.

    It’s more than rolling power outages or brownouts, though. In those, power is off for 2 hours, 4 hours, and they swap parts of the city. This is important as some work can still get done although you savage business. If you drop power for longer, in this case 48 hours, every cooler in San Francisco goes warm and by law every ounce of food must be thrown away. Every medical device, oxygen and CPAP machine goes down. Every air conditioner shuts off. To backstop this, 800,000 gas generators are started up in a smog area, whose white-hot mufflers start fires anyway. A couple people are killed by carbon monoxide. …So you end up killing 300 people anyway, but it’s “not your fault.” Welcome to socialism and the third world. As apparently people forgot, THIS IS WHY we have “modern infrastructure.” We already did those things and a central always-on grid worked better, polluted less, and killed far less people. But they want a utopia on earth that kills NO people, ever. Kind of like withdrawing from war. It’s okay to break international law and have wars that kill a few hundred a year forever, but it’s NOT okay to OBEY international law and LEAVE war if even one child dies. ‘Cause that’s logic! #AntiLogos

    “For The First Time Ever, Greece Issues Negative Yielding Debt (ZH)”

    No money problem here! Money is beyond free when they want it to be; but only for insiders but not for people. However, money is a mental construct, a call on real goods. Whenever you have socialism, there is a shortage of goods, and political favoritism decides who gets the ‘money’, the ‘call’ on them. Not Nick in Thessaloniki. Franz in Frankfurt was given the calls on real Greek goods, and he sold them to Young in Shenzhen. This is what happens when you’re not allowed to own the fruits of your labors, but “share” and “redistribute.” And it always works just as well as we see in California this afternoon.

    But not them only. Worst city in the nation, Gary Indiana: https://www.theorganicprepper.com/50-miserable-cities/

    Now why don’t they want to sit there and take it happily while Wall St prospers and the richest 10 zip codes are in D.C.? I don’t understand.

    Perhaps we’ve gone wrong somewhere? Perhaps we should backtrack to things that worked? Never! It is never a time for #Logos. We are the rebellious one(s).

    #50510
    Dr. D
    Participant

    See? will not allow two img postings. Let’s try on a second post, yet often the whole second post will then be erased:

    ModelTFord

    #50511
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Yup.

    #50512
    zerosum
    Participant

    Before the web …. I read science fiction …. now ….
    I read science fiction in the news ….
    The science fiction that is presented in the new is parallel universe …. (for the initiates, that means pretending by doing “what if” and projecting those timelines)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem
    The three-body problem is a special case of the n-body problem. Unlike two-body problems, no closed-form solution exists for all sets of initial conditions, and numerical methods are generally required.

    Historically, the first specific three-body problem to receive extended study was the one involving the Moon, the Earth, and the Sun.[2] In an extended modern sense, a three-body problem is any problem in classical mechanics or quantum mechanics that models the motion of three particles.

    #50513
    zerosum
    Participant

    “So, top for VD, top for human feces, top for prostitution, drug use, homelessness, spraying the streets with bleach for Hep C, running typhus, starting with medieval diseases like plague and leprosy, high taxes, crushing taxes, fleeing population. And now regular power outages. Yup, socialism at work, like every other time in human history.”

    In my parallel universe, capitalism is the culprit.
    In reality, its a three-body problem with no causes or solutions. Getting rid of socialism or capitalism will not result in a uthopia.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia
    an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens

    #50514
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Painting lost, so the only record of it is B&W photo?
    “Renewable power”, same mind set as “Meat and produce comes from supermarket” or “Money grows on trees”.
    Site of wind turbines at the overpass leading to the Palm Springs, CA is something to behold. Alas, I do not think there is technological know-how to (economically or otherwise) harness the energy of a entire field to produce single wind blade. Mining, transport, smelting, transport, manufacturing, transport, install.

    #50516
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Turns out I miss you guys too much, especially Dr. D., who I joust with out of respect: I take his analyses very seriously, and poke at where I see holes… because I have confidence that he will not swat them aside if there’s any merit to them.

    Here is the essence of what has been my position on Trump since, after the phenom first happened in 2015, I had, by mid-2016, done enough research and analysis to feel I’d reached a fundamentally nodal perspective on him. For the record, I’d’ve voted for some indy on either side of the spectrum had I not been homeless in the Colville National Forest at the time beginning in Sept. ’16.

    Man o de Woodz

    Also for the record, I’d predicted the rise of someone like Trump back in 2013, although I’d put my marker on Cruz , Man of a 1000 Faces, so I could claim bragging rights.

    Even I wasn’t crazy enough to appreciate how crazy America was, that Trump would be elected. Trumped again! (I am truly sorry for that. It’s like Tourette’s.)

    That said, crazy of itself isn’t necessarily bad:

    A Few Words on Trump

    #50518
    PlanetaryCitizen
    Participant

    So let’s see if I have this logic right. Socialism is the bane of human existence and the quintessence of the anti-logos. California is socialist (as claimed by the Logos, feel free to correct me if I got that wrong) and therefore incapable of keeping the electricity on. Never mind that they do every other day when the wind isn’t extreme and the power lines aren’t laying on the ground sparking fires in dry tinder and forests that burn down whole towns. Saving towns (anti-logos) and socialism at work. I suppose hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, snow storms, and the resultant loss of electricity is caused by socialism also. California is a shit hole because it is socialist and 10 of the most miserable cities are there, also the largest state by population, 12%. Nine of the worst cities are in NJ. Socialist state for sure, 2.9% of US population. Midwest has 12 of the most miserable cities. Population, you do the math. The south has 19 of the most miserable cities in the country. Definitely a socialist swamp if I ever saw one, your math to do also….as per The Organic Prepper. Socialism equals misery! The Logos surely agrees, no?

    DC is the center of capitalism. At least that is where a very large share of capital goes as proffer for its, capitalism’s, maintenance and abuses like monopolization, wealth aggregation, tax loop holes, limits to regulation, ability to pollute the commons, externalization of costs onto the public, repeal of net neutrality etc, it’s a long long list. Wall Street being its home away from home. 10 richest zip codes sounds like a center of capitalism to me, ain’t no shit holes in those zip codes.

    Examples of socialism: laws, courts, police, fire departments, highways, public utilities, schools, social security, insurance, FEMA, workman’s comp, medicare, VA healthcare, labor standards, the list goes on. Societies, laws, (socialism) limit the abuses of unfettered capitalism. People organizing to determine the course of their society…socialism, also known as participatory government. Perhaps you are thinking of something besides socialism.

    #50519
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Tulsi Gabbard on the betrayal of the Kurds:

    Donald Trump isn’t removing our troops from Syria. He’s just moving them from the northern Syrian border, allowing Turkey to invade Syria & slaughter the Kurds. Trump lied to the Kurds, promising them our support while simultaneously preventing them from reconciling with the Syrian government and coordinating a common defense against Turkish invasion. The impending slaughter & ethnic cleansing of the Syrian by Turkey is happening because Trump refuses to end our efforts to overthrow the Syrian government.

    The Kurds are just another casualty of this regime change war which is supported by war-mongering Republicans, Democrats, and corporate media. The hypocrisy of war-mongers like Nikki Haley, Senator Graham & others who have demanded that we continue our regime change war in Syria, who are now crying crocodile tears for the Kurds, is nauseating.

    Starving the Syrian people through draconian sanctions, strengthening terrorists like AQ and ISIS, wasting billions of dollars, creating a refugee crisis, & now this impending genocide & ethnic cleansing of the Kurds — the warmongers consider these costs to be a small price to pay in their effort to change the Syrian regime.

    https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1181984547963101189

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