teri

 
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  • in reply to: Debt Rattle August 8 2020 #61927
    teri
    Participant

    Looks like the stimulus deal is ending up the way both parties wanted it to. Both parties get to blame one another, but both also get to make the claim to their respective bases that they have “maintained their integrity to their core principles”. Trump may write some executive orders and signal willingness to spend some money on the proles (he’s looking like the “good guy” in this interpretation), but will also demand the Big Kahuna – the P/R tax cut – via executive order. This actually gives the Republicans the win. They get to starve SS/Medicare through attrition; ending SS and Medicare has been their goal since its inception. Plus, Trump for shit-sure won’t help any states with funding or do anything about healthcare costs, PPE, or do anything about the now-expired PPP program. More wins for the Republicans. Okay, the PPP loans and grants turned out to be a boondoggle of giveaways to the big companies thanks to Mnuchin and Kushner, but the little guys need the program extended to stay in business for the rest of the year, and the Democrats had that in the bill the Senate refused to vote on.

    Once those “friendly” executive orders are written, they will get stuck in limbo while various entities sue over their constitutionality – and they will be correct in doing so (Trump looks like the totalitarian fascist pig in this interpretation). However, it means that, like as not, no actual money will head out to the commoners in the meantime. A win for both parties! They stuck to their principles, but didn’t have to spend any actual money, and no-one decisively takes the blame for any of it. Trump plays two roles at the same time depending on your view point, but he doesn’t really give a shit since it isn’t his money and he doesn’t care if any little people end up with any relief as long as his core base thinks he is Doing Something and votes for him. They, after all, won’t realize the hit to their retirement plans until long after he is out of office and it will take another couple of months until everyone realizes what a horrible problem letting the states go bankrupt will be. Austerity in your local area will be worse to you personally and in a much more immediate fashion than any theoretical threat of the federal “debt bomb”.

    Whole shindig looks like Disaster Capitalism in action to me. Both parties sure hustled their asses off to make sure the big companies got bailed out, didn’t they? And they even gave them some tax percs along the way. And let employers defer their part of the SS contribution until two years from now – a fine-print screwing of the SS fund that the media won’t talk about. Oh, and they gave roughly $8 trillion bucks to the big banks along the way.

    Mnuchin, Blackrock, and various oligarchs wreak havoc on the US. The war criminal Eliott Abrams still walks to and fro on the earth, now unleashed by Trump to do as much damage as he can to Iran, having finished with the program of starving Venezuela into a puddle of pain. Biden is seriously considering Susan Rice, she of the many color revolutions around the globe, as his VP. Sweet Jesus. No relief for anyone on the planet there, for those who think Pompeo is a hard-liner.

    And that’s all I have to say about all that. Aren’t y’all glad I don’t post very often?

    Oh, wait, I thought of one more thing. I just read this article about the Godzilla movies. You may think it’s a silly topic, but the article is really good and not at all what you might be expecting. This being the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is, in fact, a timely article.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/godzilla-was-metaphor-hiroshima-hollywood-whitewashed-it-n1236165

    in reply to: Debt Rattle August 7 2020 #61899
    teri
    Participant

    “No love lost for the NRA here, but c’mon, less than three months before the elction, the Democrat DA for New York squeezes Deutsche to fork over Trump’s tax records and the Democrat AG of New York all of a sudden goes after the NRA?! Both cases couldn’t have waited a few months? And nobody mentions election tampering?”

    Seriously, Ilargi? I mean this with all due respect. But, seriously, think about it.

    The NRA thing has nothing to do with the election. Trump’s taxes, yeah, well, so what? Comey didn’t hesitate to screw Clinton over (she sure deserved it, though), and no doubt there is some tit for tat going on. And….so what?

    In the meantime, Trump has repeatedly threatened to postpone the election, has repeatedly claimed the election results might not be valid, told the post office to slow down the mail (which I can tell you has happened for sure in my neck of the woods), has said that he has the unilateral right to stop any efforts to make mail-in voting easier, said he is going to sue the state of Nevada for sending mailed ballots to its residents, and has said that the only state that should be allowed to do mail-in voting is Florida (they have a great governor and their post office works better than the other states, he claims, although that would be the same frickin’ post office the rest of us use, too). He keeps spreading ridiculous lies about mail-in voting, trying to scare people into voting in person during covid.

    So who is election tampering here? Trump should have released his tax returns 4 years ago and gotten it over with; now there are a couple more years available which might make it obvious to even the blind just how much money the asshat is making off his position in office.

    Both sides do this shit. Trump wanted to play with the oligarchs and now he is. Until we get rid of the grifters and monied elite running things, this is just how they do business. I feel no sorrier for Trump and his family than I do for Biden and his stupid son – the only who took that job with Burisma. The House Democrats already passed a bill that would give some money to the states to help them secure their election processes and expand mail-in voting. The Senate Republicans’ bill (negotiated with the White House) does not include any money for election security.

    But then, Democrats rigged the 2016 primary to get rid of Sanders and there was certainly something odd about Biden’s sudden rise this year, the Republicans gerrymander like they are on a mission from God and take careful aim at whom they will disenfranchise from voting at all, both sides shut down polling places and seem to have trouble counting ballots.

    Point is, there is no need to reflexively defend Trump here. He’s doing more than his fair share of election tampering of his own. Some of what Trump gets, he deserves.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle July 28 2020 #61562
    teri
    Participant

    The GOP bill apparently does NOT mention evictions or a continuation of the evictions moratorium at all.

    Also, no relief for small landlords, who are trying to maintain properties without any rental income for the last several months. Now they can evict, but good luck finding new tenants when there are no jobs for anyone who might be otherwise interested in renting. The major landlords, who hold thousands of rental units apiece, however, and who are mostly affiliated with hedge funds and big banks, have made a killing on covid relief funds. The big banks alone have gotten over $8 trillion during this timeframe.

    Also, no-one has brought up home foreclosures, which I find odd. There is little or no data available because no-one is looking at it, but one should wonder how many people are now facing foreclosure on homes they own because they cannot make mortgage payments.

    Good opportunity for Blackrock (now in charge of the coronavirus SBA and PPP relief funds) to take over a whole bunch more of the rental units in the US. Good opportunity for the big banks to take back a lot of homes through foreclosure, and then be made whole via the Fed buying all the bad paper, which just makes sure the banks suffer no loss.

    Of course, these results are obviously intended. This is shock doctrine/disaster capitalism being carried out on the US population.

    What the GOP proposal also does not include:
    any money to help state governments with their shortfalls
    any increase in food stamp funding
    any expansion of Medicaid funding

    What the GOP proposal does include:
    $16 billion for increased Covid testing (Trump objects to that – he wanted no new funding for testing and tracing)
    $2 billion for F-35s
    $1.75 billion for an FBI building
    $1 billion for surveillance planes
    $375 million for armored vehicles
    $360 million for missile defense
    $283 million for Apache helicopters
    $20 billion for farmers (yeah, more farm bailout for the farmers who have been bailed out 3 times already thanks to Trump’s tariff wars – how much have they gotten already? Somewhere north of $75 billion is the number to date, if I recall correctly, not including this latest tranche.)
    $30 billion to the Pentagon (to help US military contractors “retain key skilled workers”, as though the contractors haven’t been grossly overpaid for the past 30 years). This additional money to Pentagon funding comes just a week after Congress voted to fund the Pentagon to the tune of 3/4 of a trillion bucks for next year.
    Also included: a business tax deduction – at 100% deductibility – for business meals. Because what is a Congressional bill without some egregious tax cut for big business?

    Now the two parties of both houses will work together – in a bipartisan effort, natch – to come up with a bill that does as little as possible to help anyone who isn’t already independently wealthy. The Democrats like to take their constituents out to a nice little movie first (preferably a romantic comedy with no bad words in it) and at the end of the date, they rape you. The Republicans don’t want to spring for a movie and popcorn – they just hit you over the head and rape you with no foreplay.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle July 6 2020 #60872
    teri
    Participant

    Ilargi,

    “And miss out on Kim Kardashian as First Lady? Oh ye of little faith….”

    Hey, we already got a nudie cutie as First Lady. Two hot buns bunnies in a row? A little excessive, even for the US. Although, if you can’t find a First Man to vote for….

    in reply to: Debt Rattle July 6 2020 #60871
    teri
    Participant

    Yeah, the Tom Cruise video is well-done in a cute way. My kids saw “The Last Samurai” when they were teens. When they got home, I asked how it was. They shrugged. “It was Tom Cruise. Dressed up like a samurai.” They were not impressed. And he is a Scientologist, which is not a plus, but surely not too far afield from the belief systems expressed by the other contenders.

    But at least he can remember his lines well enough, so there’s that.

    Dr. D.,

    Why would masks not work if the virus is airborne? Seems to me that’s why they would prove the most efficacious in closed spaces like stores, etc. And I don’t think you know what the word “socialism” actually means. And Martin Armstrong is a total nut job. But you pays your money and you takes your chances.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle July 2 2020 #60751
    teri
    Participant

    Ok, I have to ask: Is “Dr. D” really a medical doctor? I frankly find that hard to believe.

    So, are you a doctor, Dr. D, or that just a nickname you picked up along the way? If you are not, please do not allow people on this forum to continue carrying on with this assumption based on a screen name.

    If you are…well, dear god.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle July 2 2020 #60741
    teri
    Participant

    Excess deaths year-over-year in US:

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/01/official-us-coronavirus-death-toll-is-a-substantial-undercount-of-actual-tally-new-yale-study-finds.html

    And I must add, screw Trump. No matter what else he is accused of (whether or not the accusations are true or false and no matter who has uttered them – forget all that other BS), the truth about Covid19 is that he has totally fucked up the response to it and a LOT of people died who otherwise would still be alive. A lot more will lose their lives because of this administration. We could have starved the virus of hosts with a strict couple of months on lockdown, followed by testing and tracing.

    This country that, during WW2, went through 6 years of food shortages, gas and food rationing, women suddenly leaving the home to work, kids entering daycare when such was unheard of before, teenagers replacing men at work and at home as the men were off to war, etc., couldn’t suck it up for a couple of months to stop the virus. Now we have a president who says we won’t shut down again (as if what we did was a proper “shutdown”) and who simply doesn’t care how many of us die.

    Lots and lots of information coming out about the long term health effects of Covid. Life expectancy in the US will be plummeting for the foreseeable future. No-one has written an article about this as yet that I have seen, but I expect there will eventually be studies that show how many years the average lifespan has decreased thanks to this disease. No doubt some politicians will see this as an answer to the so-called social security shortfall.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle June 8 2020 #59702
    teri
    Participant

    By the way, thank you for explaining your intro to that article to me yesterday, Ilargi. I had not understood what you were saying at all. Your reply to my comment totally cleared it up for me.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle June 8 2020 #59701
    teri
    Participant

    Rosenstein, Comey, Trump, Obama, Clinton, Flynn, Page, Manafort…..dear God, it’s like reading an endless gossip column about the in-fighting amongst Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting.

    They’re all lying, they are all corrupt, the media just picks its side based on the political leanings of its editorial staff and then presents its lies about all of it, too. Who can possibly give a shit about any of it?

    Now, this sort of thing (below) bothers me, and seems important in the long run:

    Trump just signed an executive order using emergency powers to gut the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, waiving the requirement for environmental review for construction projects. 

    https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/501258-trump-signs-order-removing-environmental-review-for-major-projects

    in reply to: Debt Rattle June 7 2020 #59661
    teri
    Participant

    Ilargi, your intro to an article about the jobs numbers reads: “Trump is so eager to praise the headline numbers that he forgets they are nonsense, and misses the opportunity to tell people to try harder.”

    Tell which people to try harder? The people who need jobs? The people who made the numbers up? I don’t get what you mean here.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle April 16 2020 #57343
    teri
    Participant

    Bosco,

    You have used the acronym “CIC” a couple of times here. What does CIC stand for?

    in reply to: Debt Rattle March 25 2020 #55998
    teri
    Participant

    Ilargi,
    You did not ask me, you asked John. However, I will put in my thoughts re: chloroquine. It is the only thing on which I have reached a personal conclusion in the whole coronavirus drama. I will not take it, should I get covid19. I have told my children this, and hope that they remember should the need arise and I can’t speak for myself.

    My conclusion is based on reading quite a number of articles about it in the past couple of weeks. The Chinese tried it for awhile with some initial success, but as time went on found it problematic and strictly reduced its usage for Covid19. Chloroquine has serious side effects which ought to be considered before the patient accepts the drug. For me, with my existing eye problems, age, and history of drug sensitivity, it is simply not worth the risks. I can only recommend that everyone do some serious research on their own and decide for themselves.

    Here are some paragraphs from an article that is a fairly good summary of all the info I have discovered about this medication. Please also do note, as pointed out in this article, that Chloroquine is not to be used in conjunction with antibiotics such as azithromycin [Zpak, it’s called in the US]; I am not sure why Trump and others keep blabbing about using the two together as a treatment.

    From article:

    The drug touted by the U.S. President Donald Trump as a possible line of treatment against the coronavirus comes with severe warnings in China and can kill in dosages as little as two grams.
    China, where the deadly pathogen first emerged in December, recommended the decades-old malaria drug chloroquine to treat infected patients in guidelines issued in February after seeing encouraging results in clinical trials. But within days, it cautioned doctors and health officials about the drug’s lethal side effects and rolled back its usage.
    This came after local media reported that a Wuhan Institute of Virology study found that the drug can kill an adult just dosed at twice the daily amount recommended for treatment, which is one gram.
    As the drug hasn’t been approved by the U.S. Food And Drug Administration to treat the disease known as Covid-19, the Chinese experience may be useful as the American regulator studies the medication which has been endorsed by Trump as well as Tesla Inc. chief executive officer Elon Musk.[…]
    Chloroquine was among the first group of therapies Chinese scientists identified as being effective in curbing the new coronavirus. Clinical trials on about 130 patients demonstrated the drug’s ability to reduce the severity of the illness and speed up virus clearance, according to China’s Ministry of Sciences and Technology.
    Chroloquine phosphate was officially recommended on Feb. 19 in the Covid-19 treatment guidelines published by China’s National Health Commission, along with a few other drugs such as AbbVie Inc.’s Kaletra and flu drug arbidol as antiviral treatments for patients. The commission recommended no more than a 10-day course of chloroquine for adult patients at 500mg — half a gram — twice a day.[…]
    China’s recommendation to use chloroquine in treatment was quickly followed by a warning.
    Two days after the treatment guideline update, health authorities in Hubei province — China’s worst-hit region where the outbreak started and which accounted for majority of its over 80,000 patients — asked hospitals to closely watch for, and immediately report, any adverse side effects of chloroquine phosphate, according to a report in local media outlet The Paper.
    The drug is known to have short-term side effects such as nausea, diarrhea and tinnitus while long-term use can irreversibly impair eyesight. It’s forbidden for pregnant women as it can cause congenital defects in babies.
    China Health Commission revised the dosage in a Feb. 29 notice tightening chloroquine use. The drug cannot be given to pregnant women, those with heart disease, terminal liver and renal disease, retina and hearing loss and patients on antibiotics such as azithromycin and steroid.
    It can now be given only to patients between 18 to 65 years of age for a seven-day treatment course. Patients weighing over 50 kilograms (110 pounds) can take 500mg twice a day — the usual dose — while those weighing less will be administered the drug just once a day after two days of use, according to the latest guidelines.
    A woman in Wuhan proved how lethal chloroquine can be when it’s taken beyond the recommended dose. On Feb. 25, Shanghai-based The Paper reported that she took 1.8 grams of the drug she ordered online after suspecting she had the coronavirus. She did not, but the drug caused her to develop malignant cardiac arrhythmic, which can cause sudden death, and she was admitted to the intensive care unit.

    Virus drug touted by President Trump, Elon Musk can kill with just two gram dose

    The entire article is not very long, and I have not excised much of it.

    Best,Teri

    in reply to: Debt Rattle March 13 2020 #55227
    teri
    Participant

    World meter now showing US has 1762 confirmed cases.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle March 12 2020 #55216
    teri
    Participant

    Just read this article, which was published in 2015 in “Nature”, which is a highly respected scientific journal.  Interesting, to say the least. It is likely this virus was created by US labs.

    Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research 
    Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.
    Declan Butler
    12 November 2015

    https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews

    Also, Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, and who drafted the U.S. domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, says he believes the infectious disease did escape from the BSL-4 lab in Wuhan – that the virus is dual-use biowarfare weapons agent genetically modified with gain-of-function properties, and was purchased from the BSL-4 lab at the University of North Carolina, where it originated.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle January 14 2020 #52702
    teri
    Participant

    With a heavy sigh and a sense of impending regret, I decided nonetheless to log in and leave a comment. I just can’t stand it any more. This is about Jim Kunstler (“Jim does a lot of reading into the topic. He’s becoming an expert.”)

    I used to read Kunstler for his intelligent and informative articles about the environment, fossil fuels, the commons, and other related topics. But for the past 3 years, he has only posted 2 articles, to the best of my recollection, that were not about the ‘horrible Democrats’ and the ‘besieged Trump’ – whom he always hastily reassures us he doesn’t like or support.

    Yes, he is becoming an expert on the matters of Russiagate, Impeachmentgate, and Ukrainegate. He has become unbearably, tediously, thoroughly, monotonous on these subjects. In the process, he has completely relinquished his position as an expert on the environment, even though under Trump there are an endless supply of blog-worthy articles to be written on the topic.

    I always check his Monday and Friday blog hoping for a return of the “old Jim” and his informative, witty writing; but after reading the opening sentence I inevitably abandon the article without going further. Because why read the same old shit again? If I want more dumb trivia about the silly shenanigans going on with the royal court and the ladies-in-waiting, I’ll watch CNN or Fox news. That’s all they cover, too.

    (Plus, it turns out that when he is talking about society, as opposed to the great outdoors, Kunstler has a tendency toward a wee bit of racism and homophobia, which surprised and disappointed me. Ah, well, now I know.)

    in reply to: Debt Rattle January 9 2020 #52604
    teri
    Participant

    Um, this “War Powers Resolution” of which they speak? Not one damn article has actually quoted the wording of the resolution. All this legislation does is limit Trump to 30 days of whatever action he might deem necessary against Iran, after which time he would have to come to Congress for approval of further action. It is basically what is in the Constitution already, further bolstered by the War Powers Act of more recent years, which state that the president can, in emergency situations, conduct war for a month and then has to come to Congress.

    What this “new” resolution offers to Trump is: if he decides he needs to bomb Iran, he can start doing so at any time, continue doing so for 30 days, and only then has to come to Congress and ask them to vote on whether he can continue doing so beyond the initial 30 days. The “new” part is that this piece of legislation takes out the “in an emergency” wording specifically in regards to Iran only.

    It’s a typical Democratic BS maneuver – throwing a fake-out bit of advertising to the voters about what they are doing to prove they stand for something, when the legislation in question doesn’t do anything like what they say it does. Actually, no, it’s worse than that, because under the Constitution Trump normally could not start a war by himself; Congress would have to declare war. With this law, Congress is saying, “If you are going to bomb Iran, we are giving you a pass on the ’emergency’ shit in the Constitution. You don’t have to tell us about it first – do whatever you want and clue us in after your initial month-long rampage.”

    Tramp can bomb Iran for 30 days, at will, with no interference from Congress, who are giving away their constitutional powers and duties with this bit of junk. It took Bush, Jr. just a couple of hours to utterly ruin Baghdad back in ’03, and that was with conventional weapons. Within days, several major cities in Iraq were razed to the ground. Now Congress is allowing Trump free rein to start with his new mini-nukes and other assorted weapons of mass destruction – imagine the speed with which he can destroy most of Iran.

    This isn’t Pelosi attempting to rewrite the Constitution (heaven forfend!) to limit a president. It is actually allowing the President more leniency in war-making decisions, as applied to Iran.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle January 4 2020 #52500
    teri
    Participant

    Look at the Democrats crying that Trump was supposed to come to Congress for authorization on the Soleimani assassination. What a joke. They already gave him authorization; they just passed, in the last week or so, the latest Pentagon budget and NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] which still contains the clause that allows the sitting president the absolute right to assassinate anyone he deems as a “terrorist”. He can kill the so-designated party anywhere in the world by any means he sees fit.

    Remember Obama and “Terror Tuesdays”? Remember the “kill list”? Remember when Obama used the NDAA clause to kill the American, Anwar al-Awlaki, and his teen-aged son? The kill list still exists and the authority to use it still exists. There were people who warned what would happen if we had a president who would use it to kill foreign leaders or to start a new war, but Congress did not ever get rid of this astonishingly unconstitutional power. Trump can fucking kill you if he decides you are a terrorist, and you won’t get an arrest warrant or a trial first.

    You hear Pompeo and Trump repeatedly referring to Soleimani as a “terrorist” now. This is because that will be their defense against the accusations that he needed Congressional approval.

    In April of 2019 (i.e., 9 months ago), Trump had the State Dept. designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Quds Force as “foreign terrorist organizations”. No doubt he did this with some nudging from Pompeo, who is rabidly unhinged about Iran. This was the first time that the US has designated another country’s military to be a terrorist group.

    Nobody in Congress made objections to this action, as far as I can recall, although one should consider that it was basically a declaration of war against Iran.

    Now Trump is using his Congressionally-granted powers to kill people he has decided are terrorists – and it just so happens that he already declared months ago that Iran’s military forces IN ITS ENTIRETY was a terrorist organization and so can be assassinated one by one or as a group without further approval needed by anyone.

    And Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, et al had nothing to say about it then and can’t really do jack-shit about it now.

    Sure, it is illegal by international standards, immoral, stupid, misguided, and may start another new war, but they gave away the high ground a long time ago. Like, when the first NDAA that included the “kill list” clause was approved by them, and again each time they renewed it, and when they remained silent as the buffoon (Trump) and his snarling guide dog (Pompeo) took the first steps to make this particular assassination, and the ones that will surely follow it, “legal” by naming a foreign power’s military branch a terrorist organization.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle October 25 2019 #50833
    teri
    Participant

    Eh, Trump is just as good at setting everyone up with “fake news” as anyone else is. The whole shebang is just BS now. I’m not wasting a second feeling sorry for the head dumbass in office.

    “Trump Pressed Ukraine’s President to Act Out a Fake News Script, Live on CNN”

    https://theintercept.com/2019/10/23/trump-bill-taylor-ukraine-president-cnn/

    in reply to: Debt Rattle October 9 2019 #50486
    teri
    Participant

    Jerome Powell: “This is not QE. In no sense is this QE.”

    I had a vision of Powell doing his best Jedi mind-bending trick, wiggling his fingers and repeating this phrase in a sonorous voice over and over, “This is not the quantitative easing you think you are seeing,” as he attempts to hypnotize the entire US.

    I actually laughed out loud and startled the cat when I read his how he had answered a question about it. God, they aren’t even trying any more.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle Bastille Day 2019 #48544
    teri
    Participant

    RE: rents and house prices.

    The graphs in that article only go to 2017, but we know home prices keep going up, new starts are down, rents are unaffordable, etc. continuing to the present day.

    Trump imposed lumber tariffs on Canada in 2017, which raised the price of housing at a time when people were already facing affordability problems. US lumber prices went up at the same time, because that’s what capitalism does: if the competition raises prices, it’s just an opportunity to raise your own prices to match and make a bundle.

    Those tariffs are still in place. The Trump tariffs in general are equivalent to one of the biggest tax increases in decades on the average wage-earner.

    And now Trump wants the Fed to lower interest rates and talks about deliberately weakening the dollar. This is called “unfair currency manipulation” when China does it to their currency, and the US – including Trump – insists that China must be punished for doing so, for those keeping track at home.

    Michael Hudson has a great new article out about this topic. The article is in the form of an interview transcript. it’s fairly dense, but really worth the reading, which is always true of Hudson’s work. I thought some of you might be interested in it.

    De-Dollarizing the American Financial Empire

    in reply to: Debt Rattle July 10 2019 #48484
    teri
    Participant

    Hey, I have a question here in the back of the room: How is it that the White House is allowed to design the census questions (or interfere with the wording of the questions), when the constitution clearly states that the entirety of handling the census falls to the House of Representatives?

    Serious question; how did Trump even get involved and why isn’t the House simply putting a stop to this sort of nonsense?

    in reply to: Debt Rattle July 10 2019 #48483
    teri
    Participant

    Yeah, if Trump can’t block twitter users, neither can AOC because both are using their twitter feed as part of their political office communications to the public.

    And Trump can’t have it both ways, either. In today’s article, the argument is that “[…] The Justice Department argued in March that the President wasn’t ‘wielding the power’ of the federal government when he blocked certain individuals from his personal Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, because while the President sends tweets in his official capacity, he blocks users as a personal matter.”

    Huh. That’s funny, because in Nov, 2017, the DoJ argued that Trump’s tweets were official statements, period. Which means there is no allowance for blocking “protesters” out of personal animosity to their viewpoints.

    From a Nov 2017 article:
    “The Department of Justice is treating President Trump’s frequent Twitter posts as official statements, attorneys for the government wrote in a new federal court filing.
    “Justice Department lawyers qualified the president’s tweets in an eight-page submission entered in D.C. federal court Monday after U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta asked the government earlier this month for clarification concerning Mr. Trump’s Twitter musings.
    “ ‘The Court has asked, broadly, about the official status of the President’s tweets … asking the parties to ‘provide insight on … the President’s tweets and what they are, how official they are, are they statements of the White House and the President,’ Justice Department attorneys wrote Monday citing a Nov. 2 status conference hearing.
    “ ‘In answer to the Court’s question, the government is treating the President’s statements to which plaintiffs point — whether by tweet, speech or interview — as official statements of the President of the United States,’ the Justice Department responded.”
    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/14/doj-donald-trump-tweets-are-official-statements-of/

    in reply to: Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran #48119
    teri
    Participant

    I read your post a couple of times, Dr. D, and for the life of me I don’t understand what you are talking about, although it seems to have something to do with drug trade and secret cabals.

    I know the money Obama sent Iran was money the US illegally confiscated and held for decades, so that has nothing to do with anything. It was their money and we should never have stolen it in the first place.

    I also know the sanctions are real, the ones on Iran and the ones on Venezuela, N Korea, etc. (Who isn’t the US sanctioning at this point?) And those sanctions affect a country’s ability to buy and sell, import and export. They affect the lives of everyday citizens in the sanctioned countries. People die from the strictures thus placed on foods, medicines, and money. The use of sanctions are a form of warfare. Trump doesn’t give a shit about 150 dead people or a million dead people. He could not care less about world peace. He is just as bullying and sadistic as any US president ever was. He brought in Bolton and Pompeo – 2 of the nuttiest, scorched-earth sadists on the planet – and he brought them in on purpose, of his own volition.

    Why the hell try to ruin Venezuela? Is that some secret and oh-so-very clever maneuver against international drug trafficking, too? No, there is no US military war in Venezuela right now. Maduro has had to go around the US to try and find recourse and a peaceful solution (which hasn’t actually happened yet, BTW) for a problem that was not a problem until Trump declared that the elected president in a foreign nation was not the elected president and that the US would only recognize some CIA-trained dude that nobody in Venezuela even seems to know. In the meantime, Venezuelans are still suffering from our extraordinarily harsh sanctions. Is this something that is being done to force them to “negotiate”? Negotiate what, exactly? We weren’t in negotiations with Venezuela over anything. Venezuela wasn’t hurting anyone. They weren’t doing anything but minding their own business and suddenly, boom, Trump jumps in their shit. Having caused a problem for them, you think the fact that he hasn’t actually bombed them yet means he is succeeding at ….well, something. And the Neocons, who “all look like idiots, revealing their dirty tricks and tricksters”, as you say, are in this particular case the neocons that Trump himself brought into the room.

    And in the meantime, the sanctions remain and people are still dying in Venezuela. I am at a loss to comprehend how you can praise Trump for “bringing them to the negotiating table”, when what Maduro is having to negotiate with some countries, notably none of which are named “Venezuela”, is his right to stay in his office, to which the Venezuelans elected him.

    Somehow, you are suggesting Trump is for peace and at the same time you yourself point out he doesn’t mind killing people. Sounds kinda like “bombing for Jesus”. And he is a great negotiator, although everything he is negotiating wasn’t a problem until he made it one. I don’t get it. So we are (as usual) wrecking parts of the world and causing death and mayhem, but this time, by golly, it has something to do with uncovering who is against Trump’s peace agenda and outing international drug lords. Sounds like QAnon theory to me.

    But then I am a simple person.

    in reply to: Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran #48102
    teri
    Participant

    “You don’t kill 150 people because someone destroyed a piece of machinery, he got that right.”

    Trump told Chuck Todd that he decided not to bomb Iran because to do so might kill 150 Iranians.

    Then he sent out a series of tweets to explain it, starting with a tweet about how we were “cocked and loaded” (the expression is “locked and loaded”, but hey, this is the Trump version of colloquialisms here).

    “We were cocked [sic] & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights [sic] when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD! President Obama made a desperate and terrible deal with Iran – Gave them 150 Billion Dollars plus I.8 Billion Dollars in CASH! Iran was in big trouble and he bailed them out. Gave them a free path to Nuclear Weapons, and SOON. Instead of saying thank you, Iran yelled Death to America. I terminated deal, which was not even ratified by Congress, and imposed strong sanctions. They are a much weakened nation today than at the beginning of my Presidency, when they were causing major problems throughout the Middle East. Now they are Bust!….” – Trump’s tweets.

    Remember the Skripal case, where Trump was persuaded to expel 60 Russian diplomats because Gina Haspel showed him pictures of some dead ducks and sick children alleged to have been inadvertently poisoned with the Russian’s Novichok nerve agent at the same time the Skripals were? Haspel made it up, of course; no ducks died nor did any children get sickened by any Russian poisons.

    So killing 150 people over a drone is too much. Imaginary dead ducks are too much. Won’t be tolerated.

    Yet this is the same man who immediately after deciding to call off the strike sends out a series of tweets in which he brags about the destruction he is bringing to Iran via sanctions. Basically, everything they buy or sell is sanctioned. How many Iranian people are dying because of these sanctions? Having torn up the JCPOA, Trump is now trying to strangle every last Iranian to death with his sanctions in order to convince them to overthrow their own government and make the Iranian leadership stick to the terms of the deal he himself tossed out.

    Not only that, but look what his sanctions against Venezuela are doing to that country. How many tens of thousands Venezuelans are dead because of his sanctions, imposed because they elected the “wrong guy”? (Okay, it’s really to get their oil and to correct the Venezuelan thinking that they ought to be allowed to run their own society by an economic idea aside from unfettered capitalism, but let’s go with the story being used.)

    How can a guy who is loathe to kill 150 people by bombing them, in the one instance, be the same guy who doesn’t mind killing tens of thousands of people by other means? Either there is something off about the whole story, or Trump is as good at compartmentalizing his thinking as the “good Nazis” who spent their days gassing “undesirables” and their evenings playing with their children.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle January 5 2019 #44716
    teri
    Participant

    Dr. D,

    Well, people will start to notice the shutdown if it is still going on when they want to file their tax returns. The IRS only has 10 – 12% of its staff working (without pay), and those are the ones who are responsible for the internal IRS security.

    They haven’t finalized the tax forms for 2018, are not answering the phone lines, even the taxpayer help lines, and will not issue refunds during the shutdown.

    Not that anyone would get a refund since the damn forms aren’t finished yet. Companies like Turbotax will do their best for early filers, but will have to hold the returns in electronic limbo until 1) the forms are finalized and the returns can be checked against them, and 2) the IRS is open again and accepting returns.

    in reply to: Smear Slander Rinse and Repeat #44166
    teri
    Participant

    Moon Jae-In is the one responsible for bringing the Korean peninsula closer to peace than its been in decades. In fact, it’s been his desire and goal since he became an adult. He has been the one doing all the heavy lifting with North Korea, the one who has arranged all the meetings and brought about the only measurable achievements so far. Give credit where it’s due. And this one has all been due to the efforts of Moon Jae-In. Trump’s people go in and offend everyone – and do it every damn time they set foot there.

    I see a number of “liberal-leaning” writers now refusing to criticize Trump for the reasons you give: that the MSM goes too far in that direction and that, after all, he is “only doing what Obama did”. (This website, Kunstler, Peter Van Buren come to mind immediately.) However, none of you excused Obama and declined to call him out, although he was “only” building on what Bush did. You held Obama accountable for his actions. I find it bizarre that you won’t hold Trump responsible for his, even though he and his administration are going so far beyond Obama that we may not ever recover. I am thinking specifically of the damage to the environment, the number of far-rightwing judges placed in the courts, the on-going attempts to defund our education system, the huge expansion of wealth inequality brought on by the tax cut shit, the ending of the Iran nuclear agreement and subsequent reimposition of sanctions (which are harsher than any the US has ever placed on Iran), the increased use of drone-bombing on even more countries, the weaponization of space and ending the nuclear treaties, workplace deregulation, more taxpayer money going to the Pentagon than ever before… I could go on.

    If you don’t hold Trump accountable, things will continue to deteriorate, and it’s a real short step for the next guy to take us right back to the middle ages’ feudal system, in a country that has been turned into a toxic waste dump and where there is no funding at all allocated to the social commons.

    There is no reason to jump on the b.s. Russia thing or to give credence to all the dumb blather about the silly Mueller investigation, but seriously, why let Trump get away with the really bad stuff he actually is doing? This country is going to be in a very bad situation after two more years of the Trump/Republican dismantling. Are you going to just watch it happen and refuse to remark on it all because you have chosen to take the stance that criticizing Trump is “just jumping on the bandwagon”? The MSM is criticizing him for the WRONG reasons. You ought to go after him for the RIGHT reasons, not just let him get away with all this shit without comment.

    Frankly, I don’t get it. Trump is too stupid, venal and cruel to be the one president who gets a pass from writers who seemed to have cared about environmental and societal issues before he came into office.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle April 27 2018 #40311
    teri
    Participant

    Seriously, Ilargi, do you think Trump deserves a Nobel Prize? He has done nothing to encourage peace anywhere on the planet and has been threatening NK with nuclear annihilation since he took office. Any good that happens in the Korean peninsula comes despite Trump and the US. I cannot believe people are suggesting Trump deserves any credit at all, much less the peace prize.

    All credit must go to Moon Jae-In and his staff.

    Geez, the universe has gone mad.

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