Month: September 2016

Corrupt as Hell, but Completely Legal

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I have made mention of Connecticut Governor Mike Malloy’s unseemly closeness to Cigna and Anthem while his administration was reviewing a merger between the two insurance behemoths, appointing an insurance company lobbyist to review their merger.

Well, this story just got even more brazenly corrupt:

Facing criticism over his decision to appoint a former Cigna lobbyist to a position regulating Cigna’s controversial merger, Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy has sought to distance himself from the merger review. The regulator in question, Katharine Wade, has said she followed all applicable conflict-of-interest rules. But newly unearthed documents detail Malloy’s meetings with company officials and with Wade — and also raise new questions about Wade’s financial connections to Cigna.

The emails were released to International Business Times in response to a series of open records requests amid a state ethics probe that has helped throw the colossal Cigna-Anthem deal into turmoil. Connecticut has been leading the multistate regulatory review of the deal, which physicians and consumer groups say could raise healthcare premiums for up to 53 million Americans across the country. Soon after the launch of the ethics probe about whether Wade must recuse herself from the regulatory review, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking the transaction. Connecticut’s ethics office is expected to rule on the Wade controversy in the coming weeks.

Malloy has maintained that his state’s merger approval is “an independent decision” by his insurance department and that he has not been involved in the merger review. The documents, though, shed new light on his contacts with the companies and his regulator while that review was proceeding.

One set of documents shows that the governor met with Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish on August 28, 2015. That was two days after Anthem and Cigna executives met with Wade’s agency specifically about Connecticut’s merger review, and the same day Anthem donated $25,000 to the Democratic Governors Association, which backed Malloy’s closely contested election campaigns. At the time, Malloy was already gearing up to lead the DGA in 2016.

Emails previously obtained by IBT show that Malloy spoke with Swedish and Cigna CEO David Cordani the night before the merger was announced. They also show that Malloy’s top economic development official told Cordani the governor’s administration would help Cigna if the company pursued the merger. Calendar items just obtained by IBT show Malloy later met with Cordani in the governor’s office in June of 2016 — three days after Connecticut Common Cause called for the ethics probe of Wade over her ties to Cigna.

………

Another set of documents shows that Malloy met with Wade a few weeks after Anthem announced its bid to merge with Cigna and just days before the transaction was cemented. Malloy met with Wade two more times as the merger progressed. Immediately after one such meeting, Insurance Department visitor logs show Wade met with Amy Lazzaro — Cigna’s lobbyist in Hartford who had previously served as the Connecticut Insurance Department’s chief of staff.

………

Connecticut has suspended its review of the merger, pending the outcome of the federal lawsuit against Cigna and Anthem. But because that case could be settled and the merger could still go forward, ethics regulators decided to continue their review of Wade: She is a former Cigna vice president whose husband works at the company and whose father-in-law has been listed as a company attorney. Emails obtained by IBT suggest that their inquiry into whether Wade must recuse herself from the merger review is focusing specifically on her own agency’s strict conflict-of-interest rules.

The depressing thing is that with recent court rulings on corruption prosecutions, this is all completely legal.

Hoo Boy!

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After experiencing significant distress at a 9/11 memorial service, her doctor is saying that she was suffering from both the heat and pneumonia.

Given the regular rumors about her health, we know what the coverage is going to be for the next week:

Hillary Clinton is being treated for pneumonia and dehydration, her doctor said on Sunday, hours after she abruptly left a ceremony in New York honoring the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and had to be helped into a van by Secret Service agents.

The incident, which occurred after months of questions about her health from her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, and his campaign, is likely to increase pressure on Mrs. Clinton to address the issue and release detailed medical records, which she has so far declined to do.

Mrs. Clinton was taken from the morning event at ground zero to the Manhattan apartment of her daughter, Chelsea. About 90 minutes after arriving there, Mrs. Clinton emerged from the apartment in New York’s Flatiron district. She waved to onlookers and posed for pictures with a little girl on the sidewalk.

“I’m feeling great,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It’s a beautiful day in New York.”

Mrs. Clinton left in her motorcade without the group of reporters that is designated to travel with her in public. A campaign spokesman, Nick Merrill, indicated that she had returned to her Chappaqua, N.Y., residence sometime after 1 p.m., and Mrs. Clinton was not seen publicly the rest of the day.

Mr. Merrill initially described Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, as feeling “overheated” at the commemoration ceremony.

But just after 5 p.m., a campaign official said Mrs. Clinton’s physician, Dr. Lisa R. Bardack, had examined the candidate at her home in Chappaqua, and Dr. Bardack said in a statement that Mrs. Clinton was “rehydrated and recovering nicely.”

“Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies,” Dr. Bardack’s statement said, adding that on Friday morning, after a prolonged cough, Mrs. Clinton was given a diagnosis of pneumonia.

Cue the wanktastic explosion of hysterical punditry.

LCS is Raison d’Etre Abandoned, Ships Will Still Be Bought

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At the core of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) design was the idea that they would have combat modules that could be swapped out to convert the ships between surface warefare (SuW), mine counter-measures (MCM), and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) versions on the fly.

This was why the US Navy bought them, even though there were much larger, and more expensive, but no more heavily armed than existing corvettes.

In fact, they are the size of frigates, about 3000 tons, but carry a 57mm gun equivalent to the armament of a corvette, which typically displaces around 1500 tons.

There were a number of problems with this, among them the fact that there was no way to make the logistics work without the ship having to return to the United States to make the swap.

So you ended up with a bloated and overpriced ship, and now the USN has admitted that swapping mission modules is never going to happen, but (surprise) they will continue to buy more of these warships:

When the first Littoral Combat Ship launched a decade ago this month, the U.S. Navy expected it to herald a new class of inexpensive, agile fighting ships with a radically new “modular” design — allowing them to swap out bundles of weapons, sensors and crews for different missions.

So if the LCS needed to fight other warships, hunt submarines or search for mines, sailors could quickly install distinct modules for each mission, although only one at a time. Don’t worry, the Navy promised, it’ll work.

It didn’t.

On Sept. 8, the Navy announced that it is effectively abandoning the LCS’ modular concept for 24 of the ships in both the Freedom and Independence-class variants. The initial four ships — which are already in service — will become testing vessels.

………

That means these new, multi-purpose vessels will become … single-purpose vessels.

………

In reality, costs ballooned to more than $500 million per ship — twice the original estimate. They are fast. However, the modules don’t work. Instead of taking a few days at most to replace them, it takes weeks without extremely precise planning. That’s far from assured in peacetime, let alone during a major war.

The 3,000-ton LCS is heavier than first planned — and it’s poorly armed and vulnerable to anti-ship missiles. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s director of operational testing and evaluation, described the LCS in 2013 as “not expected to be survivable” in combat.

But the Navy is still going to buy as many as 40 of theses ships.

Your tax dollars at work.

Why Putin Favors an Orange Clown

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Clinton Ehrlich, the, “Sole Western researcher at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Moscow State Institute of International Relations,” observes that the Russian political establishment honestly believes that Hillary Clinton wants to start a war with Russia.

I don’t have the direct exposure to the Russian foreign policy establishment, but his assessment of their position rings true to me, not the least because I see Clinton’s foreign policy record as showing her to be bellicose in general,  and implacably hostile to Russia specifically:

If Hillary Clinton is elected president, the world will remember Aug. 25 as the day she began the Second Cold War.

In a speech last month nominally about Donald Trump, Clinton called Russian President Vladimir Putin the godfather of right-wing, extreme nationalism. To Kremlin-watchers, those were not random epithets. Two years earlier, in the most famous address of his career, Putin accused the West of backing an armed seizure of power in Ukraine by “extremists, nationalists, and right-wingers.” Clinton had not merely insulted Russia’s president: She had done so in his own words.

Worse, they were words originally directed at neo-Nazis. In Moscow, this was seen as a reprise of Clinton’s comments comparing Putin to Hitler. It injected an element of personal animus into an already strained relationship — but, more importantly, it set up Putin as the representative of an ideology that is fundamentally opposed to the United States.

………

I have been hard-pressed to offer a more comforting explanation for Clinton’s behavior — a task that has fallen to me as the sole Western researcher at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Better known by its native acronym, MGIMO, the institute is the crown jewel of Russia’s national-security brain trust, which Henry Kissinger dubbed the “Harvard of Russia.”

………

Let’s not mince words: Moscow perceives the former secretary of state as an existential threat. The Russian foreign-policy experts I consulted did not harbor even grudging respect for Clinton. The most damaging chapter of her tenure was the NATO intervention in Libya, which Russia could have prevented with its veto in the U.N. Security Council. Moscow allowed the mission to go forward only because Clinton had promised that a no-fly zone would not be used as cover for regime change.

Russia’s leaders were understandably furious when, not only was former Libyan President Muammar al-Qaddafi ousted, but a cellphone recording of his last moments showed U.S.-backed rebels sodomizing him with a bayonet. They were even more enraged by Clinton’s videotaped response to the same news: “We came, we saw, he died,” the secretary of state quipped before bursting into laughter, cementing her reputation in Moscow as a duplicitous warmonger.

As a candidate, Clinton has given Moscow déjà vu by once again demanding a humanitarian no-fly zone in the Middle East — this time in Syria. Russian analysts universally believe that this is another pretext for regime change. Putin is determined to prevent Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from meeting the same fate as Qaddafi — which is why he has deployed Russia’s air force, navy, and special operations forces to eliminate the anti-Assad insurgents, many of whom have received U.S. training and equipment.

………

Another factor that disturbs Russian analysts is the fact that, unlike prior hawks such as John McCain, Clinton is a Democrat. This has allowed her to mute the West’s normal anti-interventionist voices, even as Iraq-war architect Robert Kagan boasts that Clinton will pursue a neocon foreign policy by another name. Currently, the only voice for rapprochement with Russia is Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump. If she vanquishes him, she will have a free hand to take the aggressive action against Russia that Republican hawks have traditionally favored.

Moscow prefers Trump not because it sees him as easily manipulated, but because his “America First” agenda coincides with its view of international relations. Russia seeks a return to classical international law, in which states negotiate with one another based on mutually understood self-interests untainted by ideology. To Moscow, only the predictability of realpolitik can provide the coherence and stability necessary for a durable peace.

………

In Clinton, it sees the polar opposite — a progressive ideologue who will stubbornly adhere to moral postures regardless of their consequences. Clinton also has financial ties to George Soros, whose Open Society Foundations are considered the foremost threat to Russia’s internal stability, based on their alleged involvement in Eastern Europe’s prior “Color Revolutions.”

Russia’s security apparatus is certain that Soros aspires to overthrow Putin’s government using the same methods that felled President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine: covertly orchestrated mass protests concealing armed provocateurs. The Kremlin’s only question is whether Clinton is reckless enough to back those plans.

I have one difference with this analysis:  The evidence shows that the coup in the Ukraine was more directly funded by the CIA (and its front the National Endowment for Democracy) and the State Department, not Soros.

Corrupt, But Off the Hook

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Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell will not be recharged for corruption:

U.S. prosecutors on Thursday dropped corruption charges against former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and his wife, bringing to a close a case that had tarnished the once-rising star of the Republican Party.

“After carefully considering the Supreme Court’s recent decision and the principles of federal prosecution, we have made the decision not to pursue the case further,” the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out McDonnell’s bribery convictions in a ruling that could make it tougher to prosecute politicians for corruption.

The eight justices, liberals and conservatives alike, overturned McDonnell’s 2014 conviction, saying that his conduct fell short of a “official act” in exchange for a bribe as required for conviction under federal bribery law.

This for nearly $200K of gifts.

McDonnell sold his office, and sold his influence, but that is no longer a crime in the United States.

The old adage that the real scandal is not what is legal, but what is legal, applies here.

Linkage

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An interesting history of the failed Russian N-1 Moon Rocket

Please Don’t Throw Me into the Briar Patch*

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A Mexican senator is proposing that they should pull out of their treaties with the United States if Donald Trump is elected.

This is arguably the best argument I’ve heard this far for voting for the Republican Nominee, though I would still never vote for him:

A Mexican senator is proposing legislation to empower the government to retaliate if a U.S. administration led by Donald Trump inflicts expropriations or economic losses on his country to make it pay for a border wall.

Republican presidential nominee Trump has vowed to have Mexico fund the planned wall to keep out illegal immigrants if he is elected, and threatened to fund it by blocking remittances sent home by Mexicans living in the United States.

Armando Rios Piter, an opposition senator for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), will next week present the initiative he hopes will protect Mexicans, and highlight the risks of targeting them economically.

The plan offers a taste of the kind of tit-for-tat measures that could gain traction between the two heavily-integrated economies if Trump wins the presidency at the Nov. 8 election.

In a preliminary summary of the proposal, which also foresees giving the Senate the power to disavow international treaties when the interests of Mexico or its companies are threatened by other signatories, it states:

“In cases where the property/assets of (our) fellow citizens or companies are affected by a foreign government, as Donald Trump has threatened, the Mexican government should proportionally expropriate assets and properties of foreigners from that country on our territory.”

The only way for this law to work is if Mexico pulls out of NAFTA.

I consider this a win for everyone, except perhaps for the abusive maquiladoras, big pharma, Wall Street, and subsidized US corn.

I can live with that.

*By this, I mean, please do this.  This is a reference to the story of how the trickster Brer Rabbit got out of a sticky situation by convincing Brer Fox that he was afraid of being thrown the place where he would be safe.  See also Tar Baby. 

Yet Another Artifact of Failed US Policy

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Pyongyang has detonated another nuclear warhead, and it appears to be the largest yet tested, and it also appears that it was a test of further warhead miniaturization:

North Korea said it conducted a “higher level” nuclear test explosion on Friday that will allow it to finally build “at will” an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It was the North’s fifth atomic test and the second in eight months.

 South Korea’s president called the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North’s biggest-ever in explosive yield, an act of “fanatic recklessness.” Japan called North Korea an “outlaw nation.”

 North Korea’s boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defied both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that North Korea has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the U.S. mainland.

 ………

 Hours after South Korea noted unusual seismic activity near North Korea’s northeastern nuclear test site, the North said in its state-run media that a test had “finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of (a) nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets.”

 ………

 South Korea’s weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80 percent of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The North’s fourth test was an estimated six kilotons.

 ………

 North Korean leader Kim has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them — submarines and mobile launchers — giving the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

Here is what I think is the most critical bit of the story:

Diplomacy has so far failed. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.

 The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Technically, the US and the ROK are still at war with the DPRK.

What’s more the diplomatic conflict is primarily between the DPRK and the US, and the US refuses one-on-one negotiations, because our foreign policy establishment sees any negotiations as a reward.

This is really pretty simple.

Pyongyang is convinced that the US intends to launch a surprise decapitation strike on them, and this is what drives their military and diplomatic activities.

The refusal of the US to engage them directly, or to exchange ambassadors, which was agreed to* in 1994, reinforces their belief, and provides much of the impetus for their bellicose behavior.

*Also the supply of a proliferation resistant light reactor, food aid, and a dropping of sanctions.

This is Not a Gaffe, This is Walking the Walk

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I am not a fan of the Green Party, I think that they play politics to lose, as a way to assauge liberal white guilty.

I am also not a fan of their current Presidential candidate, Jill Stein, who is winking and nodding at some of the more unsavory aspects of her base, most notably anti-vaxxers.

That being said, the fact that Stein has been charged as a result of her role in the protest against the Dakota access pipeline, which is demolishing holy Indian burial sites, is a plus in my book:

Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate, is facing misdemeanor criminal charges in North Dakota after she spray-painted a bulldozer at a rally protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, law enforcement officials said on Wednesday.

Warrants charging Ms. Stein, 66, and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, with criminal trespass and criminal mischief were issued after several Caterpillar bulldozers were found to have been defaced at the protest, which was held on Tuesday, according to an affidavit prepared by the Morton County Sheriff’s Department.

“Officers were alerted to video that displayed presidential candidate Jill Stein painting the front of one of the Caterpillars with the message ‘I approve this message,’ ” the affidavit said.

The warrants are valid only in North Dakota, said Rob Keller, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, adding that Ms. Stein and Mr. Baraka would be arrested only if they returned to the state.

………

The pipeline project has met with resistance from many who say that it will destroy sacred Native American sites and potentially threaten the quality of the drinking water at a nearby reservation.

I still ain’t gonna vote for her, but my disdain for her, and her campaign, is no longer complete.

This is Beautiful

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Shorter Matt Yglesias

If that’s what Matt stays up at night worrying about, he might need a more news-appropriate hobby, like alcoholism.

—Matt Taibbi on Matt Yglesias

Matt Yglesias, who hasn’t been on my blogroll for some time (with good reason), suggested that reporters should not try to get official emails from politicians, because ……… really, because Donald Trump ……… we need to leave Hillary alone:

You may never see a worse case of media Stockholm Syndrome than a recent column by Matt Yglesias at Vox, entitled, “Against Transparency.”

 Subheaded “Government officials’ email should be private, just like their phone calls,” the Yglesias piece basically argues that emails shouldn’t be covered by laws like the Freedom of Information Act because it’s the 2010s, and it’s just too darn hard to use the phone if you want to keep something secret while you’re on the public payroll.

 I’m sure there’s no shortage of reporters lining up to take a whack at Yglesias and his treasonous column this week, so I’ll keep this short:

 ………

 I get that Yglesias thinks that the Clinton email/Clinton Foundation business isn’t a story. But whoever heard of a reporter begging for less access? We’re all losing our minds.

It is a beautiful, and well deserved, Fisking.

Read the whole thing.

Oh, You Delicate Flower, You

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It appears that the parasitic finance class are very upset that Elizabeth Warren does not kiss their ass:

In just three and a half years in the U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren has become one of the most polarizing figures in Congress and among the legislators most hated by members of the financial services industry.

An early proponent of creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — even before she was elected to the Senate — the 67-year-old former Harvard professor also has emerged as one of the most ardent champions of the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule for retirement accounts. She has been a pit bull at congressional hearings, taking on Wall Street interests at every turn, and has had public run-ins with former Finra chief Richard Ketchum and SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White.

“It is perfectly legal for some brokers and financial advisers to take kickbacks, prizes or even vacations for selling lousy products to unsuspecting customers,” Ms. Warren said at a congressional forum in March 2015, shortly before the DOL proposed rule was released. 

That’s the kind of rhetoric Robert Braglia, president of American Financial & Tax Strategies Inc., a registered investment adviser, rejects.

“She’s more anti-business than she is pro-consumer,” he said. “She’s coming from a place that all “fill-in-the-blank” are bad. Every industry she goes after, she paints with the same broad brush, which is unfair.”

………

“I live here [in Boston] and can’t name a single human being in my immediate or extended social circles that likes her, has or would vote for her, or who can even say that they don’t loathe her,” Jeremy Cohen, a broker with the Independent Financial Group, wrote in the comments section of an InvestmentNews story the day Ms.Warren took on Mr. Ketchum in a congressional hearing.

………

“She’s the bane of most brokers,” said Paul Auslander, director of financial planning at ProVise Management Group. “Most RIAs I talk to … have disdain for Elizabeth Warren, but they find it hard to argue with the fact that she’s been a champion of this [fiduciary-duty] effort.”

………

“If you only see the bad, you’re going to think that all [advisers] are bad,” said Eric Bishoff, chief executive of Bishoff Financial Group. “To the people in the industry, that’s insulting.”

The financial services industry is designed to reward deception and self dealing.

Its denizens see themselves as Galtian ubermenschen who defend capitalism against moochers.

They are the moochers, and they need to get over themselves.

Bigger Third Party Candidate Fail

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Proving, as Charles Pierce says, that the Libertarians put the wrong guy at the top of the ticket, Presidential candidate Gary Johnson, drew a blank on what the f%$# Aleppo was:

The Libertarian’s ‘what is Aleppo’ flub comes at a particularly inopportune time for the long-shot candidate.

 In a make-or-break moment, Gary Johnson broke.

 During an interview in which Johnson would later say he mentally “blanked,” the Libertarian Party presidential nominee on Thursday flubbed a question on the Syrian civil war, asking, “What is Aleppo?”

 His fellow MSNBC panelists were agape, as Johnson had just claimed unfamiliarity with a city at the heart of Syria’s ongoing civil war and humanitarian crisis. Johnson spent the rest of the morning on a self-flagellating apology tour, including a brief follow-up interview with Mark Halperin in which Johnson admitted frustration at his answer, an appearance on The View, and a statement of public mea culpa.

Yeah, a mea culpa on The View is going to make this all better.

You have the Green Party candidate with an arrest warrant out against her for vandalism,* this guy, and I’ve seen over a dozen Clinton ads this week, and they all talk more about Trump than her.

I have never seen more bizarrely self-destructive Presidential campaigns in my lifetime.

*Actually, the arrest warrant is for a protest against a pipeline company that is going straight through a sacred Indian burial ground, which is kind of cool.

Third Party Candidate Fail

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Evan McMullin, the great white hope of the anti-Trump wing of the Republican party, filed for Presidential elections ballots with a place holder VP who is now his official running mate:

Evan McMullin is running as an independent conservative alternative to Donald Trump. Who McMullin is running with, however, is a bit of a mystery.

In all nine states where he has officially qualified to appear on the presidential ballot, McMullin has listed a “Nathan Johnson” as his vice presidential nominee. McMullin’s campaign won’t provide any more information about Johnson — including which of the thousands of people named Nathan Johnson the campaign is referring to — saying he is only a placeholder until McMullin names an actual running mate.

But in eight of the nine states, top election officials say McMullin’s campaign can’t pull Johnson’s name off the ballot, and that it’s “Nathan Johnson” — not whomever McMullin eventually names as his pick for vice president — that will appear on the ballot.

Yet another Republican who cannot find his ass with both hands.

Linkage

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H/T DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for this hilarious take-down of hipsters:

Syria Just Got Worse

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Turkey is now looking to seize territory in Syria and call it a buffer zone:

As Turkey marches forward in its invasion of Syrian territory, the true purpose for the initial invasion is becoming more and more clear. While some commentators maintain that Turkey’s recent military adventure is actually coordinated with the Russians and the Syrians, the fruit of Turkey’s labor tells a different story.

For instance, on Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan announced his intention and desire for the creation of a “buffer zone” in Northern Syria that spans over the territory recently seized by Turkish forces and, interestingly enough, also spans the same dimensions of a “buffer zone” called for by numerous military industrial complex firms, “strategy” organizations, and “think tanks” angling for the destruction of the Syrian government.

………

The Turkish invasion is predicated on the basis of “fighting ISIS,” a wholly unbelievable goal since Turkey itself has been supporting, training, and facilitating ISIS since day one. Not only that, but Turkey is arriving in Syria with terrorists in tow since, as the BBC reported, “Between nine and 12 tanks crossed the frontier, followed by pick-up trucks believed to be carrying hundreds of fighters from Turkish-backed factions of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA).” If Turkey was interested in stopping terrorism, why would they lead the charges for more terrorists to enter Syria? Indeed, if stopping terrorism was truly Turkey’s goal, it is capable of sealing the border from its own side without any need for invasion so why the war the party?

Turkey’ interests do not lie in stopping terrorism. Far from it. Turkey’s foreign policy and military decision to invade Syria are based along three lines; its desire for more territory (which it believes was stolen from it long ago), its willingness to continue working with NATO in its attempt to destroy the secular government of Syria, and its concern over the Kurdish expansion.

………

Regardless of the fact that the Anglo-American empire may very well be risking a direct military confrontation with another nuclear power, the NATO forces are intent on moving forward in their attempt to destroy Syria and its government. The major victories by the Syrian military that have taken place in recent weeks as well as the inability of the West’s terrorists to roll back SAA gains have obviously convinced NATO that more drastic measures are needed and that proxies are simply not enough to defeat a committed military supported by its people. Thus, we now see the plan so heavily promoted by Western think tanks and military industrial complex firms being implemented.

Clearly, the Turkish agenda is not focused on combating ISIS. If it was, the Turks would have long ago sealed their borders with Syria as well as ceased their training and facilitation of terrorist groups flowing into Syria from Turkish territory.

………

Obviously, a “buffer zone” and/or a “no-fly zone,” of course, is tantamount to war and an open military assault against the sovereign secular government of Syria because the implementation of such a zone would require airstrikes against Assad’s air defense systems. With the establishment of this “buffer zone,” a new staging ground will be opened that allows terrorists such as ISIS and others the ability to conduct attacks even deeper inside Syria.

So, Erdogan wants to reconstitute a new Ottoman empire, and it looks like NATO is in for the ride.

Who Says that Irony is Dead?

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Banksy, the favorite socially-conscious graffiti artist of 15-year old redditors everywhere, does not hold a copyright to his work. That’s the unfortunate reality of working anonymously on street corners. His style is one of the most recognizable in the world, but anyone can reproduce his murals on shirts, mugs, hoodies, prints, and everything else offered at all your favorite CafePress stores. I guess you could consider that a micro-commentary on consumerist culture—if you were being particularly annoying.

………

So, Walmart is selling Banksy prints. Not one of those nice, pretty, abstract Banksy prints, either. We’re talking a straight-up DESTROY CAPITALISM joint. Also, in Banky’s usual, irritatingly straightforward symbolism, it’s clear that this piece parodies the marketability of chic socialist values.

That sound you hear is Karl Marx spinning in his grave with sufficient speed to exhibit relativistic effects.

Skewered on Morton’s Fork

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So the choice for people voting in swing states is to vote for an incoherent reality TV star who has declared bankruptcy numerous times, or vote for the candidate courting the endorsement of the worst American war criminal of the 20th century:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been seeking the endorsement of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and their efforts may pay off, as there are reports that he is expected soon, alongside former Secretary of State George Schultz, to issue a joint endorsement of Clinton.

While those inside the national security community in Washington, D.C., may applaud the endorsement, Kissinger’s legacy of war crimes — from complicity in the 1973 coup in Chile to spearheading the saturation bombing of Indochina — has made him far less popular among human rights observers.

Clinton is well aware of that legacy. As secretary of state, she traveled to areas of the world that were devastated by policies Kissinger crafted and implemented.

It’s like a choice between Caligula and Nero. 

Nero is the clear choice, but still ………

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

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Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and university president (technically a rector) has been denied entry into the United States:

I have been refused entry clearance to the USA to chair the presentation of the Sam Adams Award to CIA torture whistleblower John Kiriakou and to speak at the World Beyond War conference in Washington DC. Like millions of British passport holders I have frequently visited the USA before and never been refused entry clearance under the visa waiver programme.

I shall apply for a visa via the State Department as suggested but I must be on a list to be refused under the ESTA system, and in any event it is most unlikely to be completed before the conference.

It is worth noting that despite the highly critical things I have published about Putin, about civil liberties in Russia and the annexation of the Crimea, I have never been refused entry to Russia. The only two countries that have ever refused me entry clearance are Uzbekistan and the USA. What does that tell you?

This is profoundly and deeply wrong.

It is also profoundly typical.

There appears to be no end to the mischief and evil that the myth “American Exceptionalism” justifies.

God Bless America.