Friday, March 31, 2017

Real Objectives

Plotting for Petroleum,

"Kurdistan" is staged to get carved out of Syria and Iraq (NOT Turkey), and not with Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian, Lebanese, etc. agreement. Turkey and the US have the carving knives, and have been creating a "global coalition" that excludes Syria, Russia and Iran, the countries that really matter the most. They are not working for the US/Saudi/Qatari pipeline through Syria, to Turkey, though. Notice that Kurdistan is blocked from the sea. Kurdistans route to the sea is blocked where the pipeline needs to go. This will keep the Kurds under pressure, and keep the pressure on Syria and Turkey to control this critical region. US/Israel sow chaos.

Specific US boots-on-ground operations in Syria block Syrian government forces from complete liberation of areas from ISIS.
"Incredible, isn't it? A foreign army that is illegally operating in a sovereign nation can just march in and cut off the legitimate army of said sovereign nation from liberating its own city from terrorists."

Israel really, really wants to permanently and officially own the part of Syria it overran in it's 1967 war, the Golan Heights. There's a lot of oil down there.
"Yuval Bartov, chief geologist from Genie Energy’s Israeli subsidiary, Afek Oil & Gas, told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that his company had found a major oil reservoir on the Golan Heights: “We’ve found an oil stratum 350 meters thick in the southern Golan Heights. On average worldwide, strata are 20 to 30 meters thick, and this is 10 times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities.”
http://journal-neo.org/2017/03/30/golan-heights-israel-oil-and-trump/

Israel begins extensive military drills (and provocations) in the Golan Heights, pretext for another "final solution"...

A Russian general observes that US bombing "against ISIS" seems to just destroy critical Syrian infrastructure of bridges, dams, power plants and water treatment plants that are necessary to support people, leaving the areas ruined for the people who keep trying to live their lives there, "scorched earth".

EU President, Donald Tusk states firmly that the UK will have to completely capitulate on all points before any negotiations can begin, a position which assumes holding all the cards in this game. How will this look in the fall? The UK wants to begin parallel negotiations on all points, in order to craft a comprehensive new framework of relationships, the obvious path...

European leaders will formally reject British demands to hold trade talks at the same time as negotiating the terms of the UK’s "divorce" from the EU, leaving both sides heading for an early stand-off in the Brexit talks.  (Hardball; it's officially hardball.)

Brexit models (It's really complicated like a thicket of brambles.):
Leaving the Health Club costs UK 65.1 billion Euros
Divorce costs UK 25.4 Euros

Large, long, complex tunnels in South and Central America were dug at least 8000 years ago, before humans from Eurasia found the giant sloths and giant armadillos which could have dug them... and dined upon them, of course. These are impressive.

Malaria and Lyme disease are early winners. "This mass movement of species is the biggest for about 25,000 years, the peak of the last ice age, say the scientists, who represent more than 40 institutions around the world... “Land-based species are moving polewards by an average of 17km per decade, and marine species by 72km per decade” said Prof Gretta Pecl at the University of Tasmania.

"Growth leads us, we don’t lead it. Next question then: if growth stops, what will lead us?" 
Ilargi looks at the blind-growth of our bubble economy, it's financial and thermodynamic limits, and ponders our next moves, as each of us should. It's up to each of us to create the next human political economy It's not made yet. 

Medicare for All bill now has 80 co-sponsors. (That will be useful in the next financial systemic reset, when we really have to start making sense. Legalizing pot will be simpler, so probably come sooner, but I could be wrong on the timing...)

Cheap-Health Research Solicited Here: "Medical care only contributes 15-20% to health outcomes", yet America funnels 18% of GDP into this vast, sprawling economic-bubble, while eating Cheetos and Diet Coke and watching Netflix, which make up parts of the other 82% of economy. 

The Vegetable Technology Gap” by Helena Bottemiller Evich, points out that, between 2008 and 2012, a mere 0.5 percent of USDA subsidies went toward vegetable, fruit, and nut growers. A whopping 80 percent, by contrast, went to corn, soy, grain, and other oil crops, and the rest to livestock, dairy, cotton, and tobacco... The USDA persists in referring to vegetables and fruits as “specialty crops.” 

Westinghouse goes bankrupt with 4 nuclear reactor projects in progress, and now in question. Toshiba bought Westinghouse for too much a decade ago, planning to expand nuclear power in Japan, but that got interrupted...

When do we get replaced by autonomous motor vehicles? Companies with projects to do that give their various timelines, and various definitions of "being on the road". Elon Musk says coast-to-coast autonomous vehicle jaunt in 2017.

"Pedestrian Deaths Spiked in 2016, Due to Driver Distraction" 
Tell me about it. I look around at stoplights and half the faces are staring into smartphones held in both hands. A big white Escalade turned right in front of me to get to a gas station yesterday afternoon, as I rode home. It had just passed me in my bike lane, and it would have clocked me if I hadn't been alert, swerved to the left into it's lane, and around it. I shouted "HELLO", but saw no adjustment to it's casual trajectory at any point in that process.

"We don't need no stinkin' Internet Privacy", says US Congress. (Will the President veto this?)

Wikileaks reveals "Marble", proof that the CIA disguises their hacks as coming from Russia, China, Arabs, etc. (False-flag cyberwarfare, y'all...)

Overheard at Trump inauguration, war criminal and former President George W Bush intimates, "That was some weird shit."
‘Some weird sh*t’ : George W Bush baffled by Trump’s inauguration speech

Dilbert creator, Scott Adams: "With the failure of the Ryan healthcare bill, the illusion of Trump-is-Hitler has been fully replaced with Trump-is-incompetent meme. Look for the new meme to dominate the news, probably through the summer... He got promoted from Hitler to incompetent. And that promotion effectively defused the Hitler-hallucination bomb... The Trump-is-Hitler illusion was the biggest problem in the country, and maybe the world. It was scaring people to the point of bad health. It made any kind of political conversation impossible."

Probably not Hitler

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Refugees, Citizens And Rentier-Monopolists

Citizens,

What should happen to the 16 year old Gambian youth, found clinging to debris, after the boat sank and 146 people died? Is he an object? An object of pity, of fear, of scorn?
Dozens of people are feared to have drowned after a rubber boat carrying migrants and refugees from Libya sank in the Mediterranean. The sole survivor – a 16-year-old Gambian boy – told rescuers that 146 other people were on board when the boat sank.

This article by a conservative Briton, a Member of European Parliament for the next almost-two years, walks a fine line of shading in many ways, but is also excellently written and with broad insights into just what is going on with populism/democracy-vs-oligarchy/globalism. Here's one:
"I spent part of last summer volunteering in a hostel for underage migrants in the south of Italy. The boys staying there had come mainly from West Africa, and some had undertaken truly Odyssean journeys across first the Sahara and then the Mediterranean. They were courageous, resourceful, optimistic lads, and the more time I spent with them, the more convinced I became that, in their position, I’d have done exactly as they had... When we met people being landed by the Italian coastguard, their first question was often “Where can I get Wi-Fi?” I don’t mean to suggest that, because they had smartphones, they weren’t in need. On the contrary, the phone was often their only possession of value. Smartphones are the key to the whole migratory phenomenon, making possible the transfers of credit and information that allow young people to move from Nigeria or Eritrea through Sicily or Greece into Northern Europe. To their grandparents, living on subsistence agriculture, such a trek would have been unthinkable."
(Do you think they want to tell their parents and grandparents that they are alive? I'm crying...)

What is the starting point for Brexit negotiation? Is it "You pay 60 billion Euros, then we talk", or is it "We'll talk about whether we have enough shared interests to come to an agreement"? Mish Shedlock makes the case that partners are equal here, and that Britain is better leaving with no deal than agreeing to  60 billion Euro debt at the outset, much better. It's what Theresa May said. It has been widely decried, but it's likely correct.

Each of the EU 27 (new name for EU minus UK) countries has specific national interests going into negotiation. They are detailed in this very useful rundown, country by country. All countries are interested in citizens at home and in other countries being well treated. Nobody wants sudden displacements, so that seems like something which might be agreed amicably. (I read that 86% of Britons want the rights of guest-workers in the UK respected, too.) The next issue is that Brexit happens in Spring 2019, but the current EU budget runs through 2020, and the UK is a substantial net-payer into a budget which is already committed. This can screw everybody, one way or another, big-time. The other net-paying countries really can't afford more. Sweden clearly states this. The net recipient countries, like Slovenia, will default on railroads being built without those funds. It looks to me like there will have to be some kind of transition through the 2020 budget period, not a hard 2 year cutoff. What do you think? There are a lot of specific national interests in play, which are divergent from EU 27 interests, and would tend to take precedence if the EU 27 looked likely to dissolve. Britain, itself could devolve if Ireland re-unified, which is an open option, which nobody wants to deny to the Irish. What about Scotland? Better vote again, quick, Scotland!

"What Working People Want, as Article 50 is Triggered" (Hey, she says what I said.)
"We want the negotiations to deal swiftly and fairly with the terrible uncertainty facing EU citizens living and working in the UK – making a valuable contribution to society and the economy, keeping the health and social care system going and paying their taxes – as well as UK citizens in the rest of Europe... And finally, we want an early recognition that negotiating a new relationship between the UK and the EU might take longer than two years, so a transitional period will be needed, with the current arrangements over workplace rights, single market membership and the role of the ECJ in place until the final deal is implemented."

US Federal Reserve graph and comment are presented here without further reflections.

Hidden Monopolies Raise Drug Prices: Important article about why drugs costs so much and pharmacists are getting screwed. Secretive, middle-man monopolies have taken over the payments for prescriptions, and nobody can tell what they are skimming. Pharmacists get paid less than their cost on many prescriptions, regularly, and can't tell what they will get paid until the computer spits it out, different each time. It's monopolies at work raising-rents again, and appears to be getting worse. North Dakota doesn't allow it, and North Dakota is doing great. (Outlaw North Dakota!)

Democrats Against Single Payer: Yeah, I need that explained to me again, too. Why are Democratic politicians closing ranks against something that most of their constituents want? Yeah, of course, "dance with who brung ya", and it isn't the "untouchables", er "detestables", um "human hairballs", or whatever it was that Hillary Clinton said.

Trojan Whores

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Dying From Solutions

Resourceful Innovators,

Charles Hugh Smith lays out the life cycle of solutions, which really do begin well...
The cold truth is all these institutional-state-cartel "solutions" serve the few at the expense of the many. This is not a side-effect; it is the intended output of these "solutions." In other words, these "solutions" work great for the parasitic few at the top skimming all the wealth, power and income, at the expense of the exploited many and the stability of the system as a whole.

Turning off Obamacare's IV drip. Without federal billions to provide profits to insurance companies, it collapses.
Trump figures he can do business with Democrats when Obamacare implodes, which is easy to arrange, and helps balance the federal budget.
I figure we need a national healthcare model, with single payer, and regional flexibility, "Medicaid-for-all"? Cheap and dirty. Gotta be cheap...

Brexit article 50 trigger begins 2 year clock ticking to March 29. 2019. There's the beginning of the end to that elitist solution. 
No EU by then? Plausible. If something bears that name, it won't be the same thing, will it?

Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing! 
Markets do not react to what everyone knows. Markets react to surprises. And the surprise today is that the Trump administration will not be able to implement rapid reform.

Odds of US government shutdown on April 28 are up to 40%. (There is more than one way to bet on this...)

"A World Without Retirement" looks at the unique postwar influences which made government retirement programs attractive to ruling elites, and easy to pull off back then. It's not the retirees who are bleeding the economy dry. It's just painted that way. You know why. Article is a bit too long, and wanders through the garden without directly addressing collapse and reset at all. Make your own plans...

"A Nation of Landowners, But For How Long", looks at how rentier capitalists have used title to property over the recent centuries, in order to capture ownership of all the production gains of workers and governments. It's about to go through another change.

Kaspersky Labs provides software to protect industrial computing in Russia. They say 40% of industrial computing systems in Russia came under cyberattack in the second half of 2016.

Central European governments declare that they will not accept bottled-up refugees, no matter the financial threats from the EU.

Turkey carried out extensive spying in Germany, then asked the German government to help them deal with some of the spying targets and got... Firm German refusal, and German warning of all targets. This had to be expected, right? It's going back to the old days of Ottomans against Northern European kings and armies.

Who took down General Flynn, and why? Moon of Alabama has a scoop. It's plausible.
An Israeli company (or whoever is behind it) wants a gas pipeline to Turkey. It hires Flynn and Alptekin to arrange a positive climate for the Leviathan pipeline within the Turkish government. It offers Flynn more than half a million for a little (4-month long) influence work. His job is to create a "friendly atmosphere" for the deal by using his influence in the U.S. to accommodate Erdogan. A major point that is expected from Flynn is to arrange the handover of Gülen, by whatever means, from the U.S. to Erdogan...
The projects which Flynn is involved in, especially removing Gülen, are against the long term interests of the (neoconservative-driven) CIA. Selected tapes of his talks are transcribed and distributed within the anti-Trump campaign. This is the origin of the "wiretapping" of the Trump Tower the U.S. president lamented about. The stuff the CIA dug up about Flynn's dealing was and is used against Trump.

Lunatic

Monday, March 27, 2017

Can't Eat Money

Cabbages and Kings,

Jenny N. sends this article about yard farming in Port Richey Florida. The city passed some reasonable laws, and it's seen as a good thing. Veggies are for sale, too.
Jim Kovaleski, 55, a self-proclaimed urban farmer, harvests fresh produce from his mother’s front yard recently in New Port Richey.

The "Great American Desert" became the "Midwest corn belt" in the 20th century, with wells to the Ogallala Aquifer, tractors and nitrogen fertilizer. The aquifer is pumped dry in some places, threatened in many others. Much of this corn feeds cattle in feedlots. Some makes ethanol. Some make high fructose corn syrup. Some goes to Mexico, where local farmers have been put out of business. What happens when the water goes away? People mostly leave.

Deaths from Diabetes, stroke and heart disease are linked about half the time to a few foods. 
I'm looking at you, Bacon, Soda and Hot Dogs! There are a few others, and some good foods like (I am what I eat) nuts, fruits and veggies.

Eleni sent this. The Pentagon can't say where $10 Trillion got spent. (Oh it's all so confusing and we keep such poor records at every level to begin with.)

This problem is nothing new. Donald Rumsfeld announced $2.3 trillion unaccounted-for on September 10 2011. The Pentagon had a crack team working on all the data. They got it all together in one place, but sadly, they all got killed the next day, when a plane or a cruise-missile, or something hit exactly where they were working and killed them all, destroying all their hard work.
"Just prior to September 11, 2001, a congressional committee was investigating unaccounted funds at the DoD. The section of the Pentagon destroyed is said to have housed records of DoD spending and the personnel for monitoring that spending."

Beyond mere conspiracy theories, leaked e-mails made available by Wikileaks from 2008 - one month before President Barack Obama won the 2008 election - reveal how Citibank's Michael Froman provided a list to John Podesta laying out virtually the entire cabinet of the soon-to-be president. The New Republic's October 2016 article, "The Most Important WikiLeaks Revelation Isn’t About Hillary Clinton," would report (emphasis added): The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner.  [Thanks Charles]

Look how well stocks are doing (But, hey, if their prices dropped by 50%, they would still be above historical price;earnings ratios. GULP!)

Russian banking has a SWIFT type electronic funds transfer system fully operational, in case it is ever needed (so that threat is no good any more).

Marine Le Pen is still expected to win the first round of French presidential elections and lose the second round (pretty sure of that...) "The European Union will die because the people do not want it anymore ... arrogant and hegemonic empires are destined to perish," Le Pen said to loud cheers and applause.  "The time has come to defeat globalists," she said, accusing her main rivals, centrist Emmanuel Macron and conservative Francois Fillon, of "treason" for their pro-EU, pro-market policies.

Greece can't (really can not) accept refugees back from EU countries, under the Dublin Accord, which says "tag-you're-it" to whichever country they first showed up in. Greece officially states this as policy. The rest of the EU seems to want the Dublin Accord enforced again, now.

Populism, the answer to decades of "Unpopulism" (catchy term explained here)

Ryan and Trump are in disagreement about tax cuts. They both like cuts for the top 5%, but Ryan wants to increase taxes on the top 40% of incomes, minus the top 5%. Make-the-middle-class-pay-for-it is the strategy again. How's that look to you?

Targeted Demographic

Sunday, March 26, 2017

Despair

Ghosts Who Walk,

I felt despair all afternoon, and I wasn't expecting it. There was a wake after meditation practice, for the husband of a member of our Sangha. I had gotten lettuce, broccoli and sugar snap peas from the garden this morning, washed, composed a nice big salad, with some black olives and colorful cherry tomatoes and packed it along, even though I'd been told it wasn't pot luck. Id never been to the house, so I followed in our little convoy, mile after mile, out to Lakeway, mansion after mansion after acre of mansions, turn after turn into the vast exurban world of lake houses. I used to ride my bike out on what was a 2 lane country road in the 1980s. We parked at the end of a street full of luxury SUVs, and signed the book at the greeting table, and the chef let me put my big salad bowl in the appropriate place, on the table for that sort of thing, which was already full. He was very nice. Everybody was nice, and polite, and mostly overweight, and mostly wealthy. there we all were on the lovely, manicured grounds, shaded by a stand of live oak trees, with the sound system thoughtfully managed by a fellow playing the favorite songs of the accomplished and respected gentleman. I felt a deep, and broad, and tragic emptiness in that good company. 
I was able to hug and speak to the widow, before I quietly left my salad to be enjoyed when that part of the program came up. I'd just had no idea what I was going to. 
I have been uncaring in my feelings for the 1%, for the people I stood among today, polite people, doing what is expected of them. Their sterile mansions and grounds completely cover mile after mile after square mile, half an hour of steady driving. All of this depends every moment on electricity, city water, gas, gasoline, vast retail support networks, all the malls and businesses that line the 6 lane highway, which used to be a 2 lane country road, where I took long, quiet bike rides in the 1980s.
I felt the emptiness in that gentle gathering, premonitory despair for what is coming to that vast, unsupportable bastion of privilege. 

"We've known how to stop the 'deaths of despair' Crisis gripping America's white working class for 120 years" (Business Insider, article, but still good)

"Trump is Obama's Legacy. Will this break up the Democratic Party? Michael Hudson is good, as always, and long again. Barack Obama, coming after George W Bush, with majorities in House and Senate, completely turned his vast electoral accomplishments over to predatory neoliberal capitalists, which had caused the 2008 financial crisis, and the military industrial complex and all it's wars of chaos. He blew it all, because that's who he really was. Now we get Donald Trump and a maxed out credit card, and promises that are not plausible at all, so what's really going to happen? Will the unrepentant Democratic party just go away? We're not ready for creative destruction yet, just destructive destruction. Hudson says what I've been feeling. Maybe Donald Trump's greatest and real service to all of us is just to help our whole imperial economic system crash a little bit sooner. Thanks Donald, Really. I don't know what else anybody can do now. Thanks for sending this Eleni.

"The Deep State's Dominant Narratives and Authority are Crumbling", says Charles Hugh Smith. Suddenly everybody is Googleing "deep state", too. Finally catching on...

NSA Whistleblower says the NSA spies on everybody, always, and has an entire section of specialists spying on congress, generals, senators, presidents and candidates, always. Nobody gets the raw-data, though, just the NSA interpretation and advice on what they should do, so it's all ok...

Former House Intel Chair explains how the surveillance program works, and who can order it, the standard procedures to follow, what the stuff above is supposed to be.

US confirms airstrikes in Mosul may have killed 240 civilians, many of them refugee families sheltering in a school.

250 humans are thought to have drowned to death on one black-day in the Mediterranean...Thursday, March 23, 2017.

Do Republican lawmakers have a $1 trillion or a $2.2 trillion revenue-hole? Just askin'. Something has to be done, now. Grace period is over. Less money, not more, lots less.

Waking up Homeless

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Actual Workings Of Empire

Unbaffled,

Eleni sends this clear and cogent essay about the "actual workings of empire" which was lifted off the comments section of Moon of Alabama, back at the dawn of the Obama administration, and is still right-on. The empire is not inept or incompetent. All those "mistakes" inexorably turn to the benefit of the long term goals of the empire. They don't always align with "stated objectives". No surprise. We're not sure who wrote this essay...

The CIA started infiltrating media with Operation Mockingbird, soon after Harry Truman created the Agency in 1947— and the infiltration has continued to this day. The crossover point occurred about five minutes after President Truman launched the Agency. The CIA’s mandate was: collect information about what was going on around the world, so it could advise the president. Why just collect information? Why not invent endless enemies who needed to be conquered?

Wikileaks releases file of CIA hacking techniques for Apple products.

Ukraine is breaking up. 
Ukrainazis blockaded the separatist east, Donbass, and successfully kept necessary coal out of the rest of the country, causing power outages. Poroshenko doesn't rule...
https://sputniknews.com/europe/201703221051832560-ukraine-poroshenko-radicals/
A Ukrainian munitions depot got sabotaged and a Russia-criticizing, former Russian politician got killed the same day. Obviously Russia's fault. Thanks Ray.

Refugees in Greece have now been stripped of their rights to any hearing. They just get shipped back to Turkey. No questions asked. (Hands on ears: "I can't hear you! BLAH,Blah,blah,bla...") Thanks Eleni.

Republicans failed to replace Obamacare with their own version of TrumpRyancare, which would just shift the costs around, while keeping the same format. 
It sucked too bad to get enough Republican votes. It's over. Next step: Titanic/Obamacare sinks to bottom of cold north Atlantic. Fair enough. This is a Democratic "victory" we can all feel numb about. Next stop: Briny-Deep. Next-next stop, Medicare for all. Trump says Obamacare will "blow up"; I say "implode".

Plan-B: Russia prepares for a split with the international banking system.

When CVS stopped selling cigarettes, some people quite smoking, and US cigarette sales dropped 1%. (Tobacco addiction is a spectrum of desperation. Desperate addicts can't quite. People who just buy a pack because it's right there when they pick up their birth control pills or Viagra, might quite.)

"How do we really deal with climate crisis?" Joe Brewer  (Yeah, that was the 1973 question or something. "How do I live through the next 20 years", is a more personally useful question. Joe gets it.)

Climate Changeling

Thursday, March 23, 2017

I Spy

Surveilled,

BREAKING NEWS:
Here is the whistleblower source of US-Intel. illegal spying allegations:
Montgomery, Klayman said, has information “that the spy agencies were engaged for years in systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans.” During Montgomery’s interview with FBI General Counsel James Baker, under grants of immunity, he “laid out how persons like then businessman Donald Trump were illegally spied upon by Clapper, Brennan, and the spy agencies of the Obama administration.” “He even claimed that these spy agencies had manipulated voting in Florida during the 2008 presidential election, where illegal tampering resulted in helping Obama to win the White House.” But that interview, “conducted and videotaped by Special FBI Agents Walter Giardina and William Barnett, occurred almost two years ago, and nothing that I know of has happened since.”
http://www.wnd.com/2017/03/whistleblowers-lawyer-comey-falsely-denied-evidence-of-surveillance/#eFwKS33OX5szxDsH.99

House Select Committee Chair, Devin Nunes says the FBI has not responded to a 2 week old request for information about how information was collected on Trump and transition team members, since it was widely disseminated and leaked. The FBI has not responded (at all). Somebody within the US Intel world is cooperating with the Committee, so it's not a "leak". Nunes has gotten a lot of information, and it is that "foreigners" were getting spied on (That's OK), and all this other information about Trump and Transition Team just fell into our laps accidentally (So that's OK, too, right?). None of the foreigners getting spied-on seems to have been Russian...

Representatives Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi say Representative Nunes is a wing-nut-partisan-loose-cannon-and-stuff:
After briefing The White House on the fact that Trump was "incidentally surveilled" along with his team - somewhat vindicating the President's tweets - the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that he has "grave concerns" over Nunes 'impartiality" and Democratic leader Pelosi exclaimed his comments were an "act of desperation and diversion"


Update: House Intel Chairman Nunes spoke to reporters when he left the briefing at The White House and had some more stunning things to say:

  • *NUNES: BRIEFED PRESIDENT ON CONCERNS OVER INCIDENTAL COLLECTION
  • *NUNES: `PRESIDENT NEEDS TO KNOW' THESE INTEL REPORTS EXIST
  • *NUNES: SOME OF WHAT I'VE SEEN SEEMS TO BE `INAPPROPRIATE'
  • *NUNES: TRUMP, OTHERS IN TRANSITION PUT INTO INTELLIGENCE REPORT
  • *NUNES: QUESTION IS IF TRUMP SHOULD BE IN THESE `NORMAL' REPORTS

And the punchline: there are "multiple FISA warrants outstanding against Trump" Nunes also told reporters


Dianne Feinstein suggested the President would quit before he was potentially forced out of office after anti-Trump protesters in Los Angeles demanded to know why more wasn’t being done by Congress to remove him from office. Hinting she might know more than she is able to let on, Ms Feinstein, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, replied: “We have a lot of people looking into this. I think he’s going to get himself out.”  

Foreign Policy journal article breaks ranks with Putin-is-Satan groupthink, and publishes scholarly article advocating "give peace a chance" with Russia.

Thursday's Defining Moment: Defeat Obamacare Lite Or Be Buried By The Welfare State, David Stockman's Contra Corner (Paywalled, but I think I get the gist of it)  

Obamacare Replacement Bill is In Jeopardy! (Can't agree how to cut the pie, which will delay tax cuts for the rich and crash the stock market. OH NO!)

Dear America, Better read the fine print on your credit card statement. Charles Hugh Smith looks at the impossibility of the current financial system construction going forward. Preparing for inevitable reset seems reasonable, doesn't it?

Ancient Israelite Cosmology and the Birth of Judaism, is a really engaging view of what was happening in the middle of the world, the Mediterranean several thousand years ago, as the Bronze Age Collapsed, and civilizations reformed.   https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/ancient-israelite-cosmology-812dd7addba5#.yxltos8zq

Lens of History