Some Kind Of Fake Reality

Weirded-Out,

"Clinton's Allies Nudge Sanders Towards Reality", as Bernie completely fails to see how badly embarrassed he is by tying and winning another two primaries. 

"C'mon Bernie, we've humored you long enough. I'm your friend. You are pissing into the wind. Don't keep getting humiliated this way. Bow out gracefully and you'll get something good, I promise."  

[This guy just does not get it. He's pretty old; I wonder how his health is...]

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/hillary-clinton-allies-bernie-sanders-drop-out-223362

Hillary Clinton reveals to CNN interviewer that the votes of Californians and citizens of 23 other states, waiting to vote in primaries, are completely pointless. She OWNS the Democratic nomination.

CLINTON: "I will be the nominee for my party, Chris. That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/clinton-to-californians-y_b_10053848.html   

New polls put Trump ahead of Clinton, with a fair number of people wanting somebody else. (What happened to all the polls that showed Sanders with the biggest lead against Trump? It almost seems like we are being shoved down a cattle-chute here, doesn't it?)

http://www.inquisitr.com/3111861/trump-leads-clinton-by-five-in-new-poll-but-large-number-would-prefer-a-third-candidate/http://www.inquisitr.com/3111861/trump-leads-clinton-by-five-in-new-poll-but-large-number-would-prefer-a-third-candidate/

Clinton Cash, or how to go from 0 to $150 million, while squandering every step of the way, if you're Secretary of State, or married to same.

http://nypost.com/2016/05/17/first-look-at-explosive-hillary-documentary-clinton-cash/

Eleni sends this article from Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism about the thuggish (Al Capone style) railroading of the Nevada Democratic convention by party-insiders-for-Clinton, which would never be complete without blaming the victims.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/democratic-establishments-thuggish-power-grab-at-nevada-convention.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

"Nobody rings a bell at the top of the credit supercycle, to misuse an old adage. Except that this time somebody very powerful in China has done exactly that... Most think the author was either President Xi Jinping himself, or his right-hand man Liu He." 

Ambrose Evans Pritchard looks at China's impending debt-bubble collapse, and the mysterious warning of the "Authoritative Person".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/18/chinas-communist-party-goes-way-of-qing-dynasty-as-debt-hits-lim/

US imposition of 522% import duty on Chinese steel is taken as economic form of nuclear-war in China. 

(Yes, China has been massively dumping steel at ridiculously low prices across the world, putting British steel into the dustbin of history, so it was already WAR, just not nuclear, or whatever...)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-19/china-furious-after-us-launches-trade-war-nuke-522-duty

Congress agrees on framework for Puerto Rico to go into bankruptcy and debt restructuring proceedings. Bondholders demand more austerity for Puerto-Ricans first, but apparently don't get it.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-19/republicans-democrats-agree-bill-bailout-puerto-ricohttp://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-19/republicans-democrats-agree-bill-bailout-puerto-rico

The real economy is in recession. (Ssshhh! It's a secret until after the November elections, but yeah, it started in early 2015.)

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/undeniable-evidence-that-the-real-economy-is-already-in-recession-mode

Ilargi explains why we are so bad at solving global scale problems. That was never our evolutionary job, since we operated in small groups to survive.

"We evolve the way Stephen Jay Gould described evolution: through punctuated equilibrium. That is, we pass through bottlenecks, forced upon us by the circumstances of nature, only in the case of the present global issues we are nature itself. And there’s nothing we can do about it. If we don’t manage to understand this dynamic, and very soon, those bottlenecks will become awfully narrow passages, with room for ever fewer of us to pass through. As individuals we need to drastically reduce our dependence on the runaway big systems, banking, the grid, transport etc., that we ourselves built like so many sorcerers apprentices, because as societies we can’t fix the runaway problems with those systems, and they are certain to drag us down with them if we let them."  /http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/05/why-we-are-so-bad-at-solving-problems/

In Too Deep

Abrupt Change

Misrepresented,

Bernie Sanders win in West Virginia was by a wide margin, and in a state that Hillary Clinton won in the 2008 primary. Scott Creighton looks at the "rancor" rising among working people against the insulated patrician elites, like Hillary Clinton. Thanks Tom.

https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/bernie-wins-west-virginia-as-rancor-for-the-proletariat-builds/

"TRICKLE-DOWN FEMINISM"

Yves Smith, at Naked Capitalism, who is always very careful with her facts and homework, observes the horrific slaughter visited upon women and children by the policies driven by Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. 

(Those savage terrors are not over.)  Thanks, Eleni.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/clinton-policies-have-hurt-women.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

FBI Director, James Comey, disagrees with Hillary Clinton's characterization of current FBI investigation as "routine security inquiry".

“We’re conducting an investigation ... That’s what we do,” he said.

"We want to do it well and we want to do it promptly. I feel pressure to do both of those things," Comey said. "As between the two things, we will always choose 'well.' "

Clinton herself is expected to answer questions from FBI investigators and federal prosecutors in coming days or weeks.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/279552-fbi-head-challenges-clinton-on-email-probe

Chelsae Clinton's husband closes hedge fund after losing 90% of investors' money.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/11/chelsea-clintons-husband-closing-hedge-fund-after-losing-90-percent-of-its-money/

Paul Ryan announces he and Donald Trump are "totally committed to working together". 

(Some deal made between Donald, the Koch brothers and Wall Street, then?)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-12/donald-trump-arrives-showdown-paul-ryan-washington

David Stockman looks at that, too, saying that "General" Paul Ryan will meet with the presidential hopefuls to tell them how things are going to be. 

Stockman says the Wall Street frog will be left to boil this time. Take losses. No bailout. "X marks the spot", same as 2007-2008.

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/the-frogs-are-boiling-again-why-wall-street-stays-in-the-pot/

Amber and Jim Day graduate college today, Mathematics and Engineering. Tomorrow after work, I start driving the U-Haul to Rochester New York for Amber's Grad School, which starts Monday Afternoon.

Communication may be spotty.

Turning on a Dime

Prepare For Impact

Hearing Voices,

Anonymous Authority Speaks in China. "Reset time again":

http://www.pandahedge.com/?p=149

 

"Welcome to a currency war in which victory depends on your perspective."

Charles Hugh Smith believes that global central banking coordination has reached the end of it's capacity, and currency wars will begin.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay16/CB-war5-16.html

Shell realizes that drilling for Arctic oil is a losing proposition, and takes $2.5 billion loss on drilling rights.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-10/big-oil-abandons-2-5-billion-in-u-s-arctic-drilling-rights

71 year old Greek shopkeeper, crushed again by newest round of austerity, is betrayed and seeks any recourse. Grexit? Drachma?

“My income tax has just gone up to 29%, my social security payments have gone up 20%, my pension has been cut by 50 euros; they are taxing coffee, fuel, the internet, tavernas, ferries, everything they can, and then there’s Enfia [the country’s much-loathed property levy]. Now that makes me mad. They said they would take that away!”

After nine months of wrangling with the international creditors keeping the country afloat, Athens must apply policies that until now had been abstract concepts for a populace who have suffered as unemployment and poverty rates have soared.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/10/greece-austerity-grexit-drachma

As it happened many times in Greece for six years since the explosion of the financial crisis, the European Financial Dictatorship (EFD) seeks to bypass democratic processes in order to impose the "Greek model" throughout eurozone.

Thousands took to the streets of major French cities, after the Socialist government bypassed a parliamentary vote on a controversial labor reform and approved it with an edict.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/05/alert-european-financial-dictatorship.html

NATO is Much Worse than a Cold War Relic (It's a voracious global war machine. JFK wanted to negotiate peace with the USSR, but "died funny".) , from David Stockman's blog:

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/actually-nato-is-much-worse-than-a-cold-war-relic/

‘The United States considers the Golan Heights to be Syrian territory held under Israeli occupation subject to negotiation and Israeli withdrawal. The United States considers the application of Israeli law to the Golan Heights to be a violation of international law, both the 4th Geneva Convention’s prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and United Nations Security Council Resolution 242’

The potential production of newly discovered oil deposits in the Golan may reach billions of barrels, while Israel consumes 270,000 barrels per day, it currently imports up to three quarters of its oil from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq. (Thanks Eleni)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-rape-of-golan-heights-is-also-netanyahus-settlement-plan-for-the-west-bank-jerusalem-and-gaza/5524163

Yes, today's New York Post cover:

Organized Complexity, how to engage in the process of thought about cities and other human social arrangements. A good article pointing out basic methods.

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/5/4/organized-complexity

Moving from a cohousing community to a farm, an older and experienced couple, and a young and motivated couple with children, work out a shared vision pretty smoothly.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-05-11/one-family-s-move-from-cohousing-to-a-smaller-tighter-community

Sharing Purpose

Cup Running Over

Sloshing a Bit,

The Pentagon has so many tanks and armored personnel carriers that local police forces can't take it all, so Homeland Security gets the full upgrade to occupation-force specifications. It's for use against illegal immigrants, the people who build our roads and houses and cook our food.
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/troubling-development-pentagon-allowed-supply-military-gear-directly-homeland

"Isaac Herzog, member of the Knesset and Chairman of the Israeli Labor party, revealed that Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz financed the election campaign of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu."

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/panama-papers-data-leak-king-saudi-arabia-sponsored-netanyahus-campaign/ | Al-Masdar News

Bernie Sanders beats not-a-coal-miner's-daughter, Hillary Clinton, in West Virginia.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-10/bernie-beats-hillary-again-west-virginia

Hmmm, Turkey might get even more authoritarian, now that Erdogan got rid of Davutoglu.
https://globalvoices.org/2016/05/10/turkey-erdogan-davutoglu-foreign-policy-eu-kurdish-issue-human-rights/

Stuck in limbo on a Greek island. (This isn't a bug, it's a feature. The destruction of Greece forms a barrier to keep the less talented and poorer war refugees out of Europe.)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-greece-idUSKCN0Y012D

EU plan-b is to just convert Greek islands into vast(er) internment camps if the Turkey deal doesn't work out.

http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160510/1039347243/turkey-eu-migrant-greek-islands.html

The Telegraph (UK) says Greece will be a failed state without debt relief, which is what financial bloggers have been saying for at least 5 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/09/greece-will-be-failed-state-without-debt-relief/

Paul Mason of The Guardian, has a more nuanced view. This can be EU-splitting.
Citizens everywhere will be forced to face their massive losses, as the cookie-jar IOUs are completely inedible.
The EU has to give debt relief, or realize losses in Greek default. The fiction is unsustainable. It's unraveling...
"Those applying the force were the German elite and a collection of east European countries who have in common weak democratic traditions, mafia-infested economies and rightwing electorates still traumatised by the Soviet era. Then, in a second act of force, by overturning the Dublin Treaty and letting nearly a million refugees come to Germany, Angela Merkel destroyed the coalition that had imposed the defeat on Greece. Eastern Europe has defied Merkel’s call for refugee quotas and answered her appeal for humanitarianism by putting razor wire at every border choke-point."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/09/the-choice-for-europe-rescue-greece-or-create-a-failed-state

Just-call-me-Dave Cameron, (of pig-necrophilia fame) says that Europe might descend into war if the UK pulls out of the EU. (He does not say that this is already planned in any event.)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/08/cameron-brexit-will-increase-risk-of-europe-descending-into-war/

Trump said the US could print it's way out of debt, and that's right. It's been doing just that.
" It’s generally the case that whatever profit a central bank makes at the end of the year, it hands to the treasury. So when the central banks bought the government debt, they became the recipients of the government’s debt repayments, and those payments were returned to the treasury at the end of the year, effectively cancelling the interest on the government’s loans. Between 2008 and 2014, the Federal Reserve effectively cancelled $500 billion in government debt. All of this printing dramatically increased the size of the money supply post-2008."
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/05/09/donald-trump-gets-something-right-the-us-can-avoid-defaults-by-printing-money/

Capitalist China managed to ignite a massive commodity-bubble-frenzy, which is now going the way of the tulip-frenzy in Holland. (Do they have just one more massive bubble to keep the game in play?)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-09/iron-ore-rebar-crash-bear-market-baltic-dry-dead-cat-bounce-dies

Wes Jackson explains his last 40 years of work with perennial food plant breeding, to create a stable prairie of food, without tillage and erosion. Agriculture led us to the age of fossil fuels, and must again lead us out of it.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-05-04/nature-s-way-a-path-to-ecological-agriculture

Weeding Cornucopia

Winter Work

Spring Returns

Cthulhu Speaks

Not Mincing Words,

If we end up with Killary, neither the US nor the world will survive the mistake. She will be the last American president.

Killary is compromised with secret agendas, and secret agendas lead to conflict and war. With a crazed President Killary who declared Russian Presient Vladimir Putin, the world’s leading peacemaker, to be “the new Hitler,” with crazed American generals who declare Russia to be “an existential threat to the United States,” and with the insane neoconservatives back in the saddle determined to impose American hegemony on the rest of the world, Killary’s election will terminate life on earth.

Paul Craig Roberts, Thanks Wigs'

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/05/07/a-dire-future-paul-craig-roberts/

Barack Obama has one big job left to do before he retires to those generous speaking fees and maybe the UN Secretary-Generalship...

“America’s urgency to sign TTIP with Europe has solid reason: Megabanks must protect themselves from claims by European investors who allege that they were cheated during the debt crisis. … The U.S. Ambassador to Italy has now let the cat out of the bag on this — probably unintentionally.”

Under TTIP, a megabank fined this way might in turn sue the nation’s taxpayers to restore the megabank’s ensuing loss of profits. If the cheated investors win, taxpayers might thus end up bearing the cheated investors’ losses.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/05/obama-ttip-necessary-protect-megabanks-prosecution.html

Poland rejects EU refugee quotas and fines. Poland will not accept refugees, nor pay 250,000 Euros per quota-refusal. Poland is a sovereign state, as is Hungary. Eastern European countries are really not welcoming this flashback to their treatment as vassals of the Soviet Union.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-09/poland-refuses-accept-any-refugees-they-pose-threat-security-will-not-comply-europea

Bernie Sanders says that improvement in US-Israeli relations depends upon Israeli improvement in treatment of Palestinians.

http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/u-s-election-2016/1.712778

Charles Hugh Smith looks at how retirement systems devised when there were 7 workers per retiree are faltering now that there are fewer than 2, and they don't get much pay.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay16/overhaul5-16.html

Oh No! New study shows that fracking contaminates water wells with carcinogens. Totally unexpected.

''In our most recent study, we found that as more unconventional wells were drilled and stimulated, more drilling-related contaminants were found in the groundwater.'' study author Zacariah L. Hildenbrand

http://thetyee.ca/News/2016/05/07/Contamination-Fracking-Changes-Study/

The Archdruid looks at The Cthulucene:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-05-05/the-dawn-of-the-cthulhucene-a-retrospective

Squandering Your Stuff

When They Killed JFK...

One story from Paul Craig Roberts today. This is the world of lies we have inhabited since Dad came home early from work and just sat by the radio with Mom. Thanks Wigs.

May 7, 2016 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

When They Killed JFK They Killed America

Paul Craig Roberts

In the JFK administration I was a White House Fellow. In those days it was a much larger program than the small insider program it later became. President Kennedy’s intention was to involve many young Americans in government in order to keep idealism alive as a counter to the material interests of lobby groups. I don’t know if the program still exists. If it does, the idealism that was its purpose is long gone.

President John F. Kennedy was a classy president. In my lifetime there has not been another like him. Indeed, today he would be impossible.

Conservatives and Republicans did not like him, because he was thoughtful. Their favorite weapon against him was their account of his love life, which according to them involved Mafia molls and Marilyn Monroe. They must have worked themselves into fits of envy over Marilyn Monroe, the hottest woman of her time.

Unlike most presidents, Kennedy was able to break with the conventional thinking of the time.
From his experience with the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Joint Chiefs’ “Operaton Northwoods,” Kennedy concluded that CIA Director Allen Dulles and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Lemnitzer were both crazed by anti-communism and were a danger to Americans and the world.

Kennedy removed Dulles as CIA director, and he removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, thus setting in motion his own assassination. The CIA, the Joint Chiefs, and the Secret Service concluded that JFK was “soft on communism.” So did the Bill Buckley conservatives.

JFK was assassinated because of anti-communist hysteria in the military and security agencies.
The Warren Commission was well aware of this. The coverup was necessary because America was locked into a Cold War with the Soviet Union. To put US military, CIA, and Secret Service personnel on trial for murdering the President of the United States would have shaken the confidence of the American people in their own government.

Oswald had nothing whatsoever to do with JFK’s assassination. That is why Oswald was himself assassinated inside the Dallas jail before he could be questioned.

For those of you too young to have experienced John Kennedy and those of you who have forgot his greatness, do yourselves a favor and listen to this 5 minute, 23 second speech. Try
to imagine anyone among the current dolts giving a speech like this. Look how much is said so well in less than 5 and one-half minutes.

Kennedy intended to pull the US out of Vietnam once he was reelected. He intended to break up the CIA “into one thousand pieces” and curtail the military-security complex that was exploiting the US budget.

And that is why he was murdered. The evil that resides in Washington does not only kill foreign leaders who try to do the right thing, but also its own.

Here is JFK’s speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YafZkjiMpjU

Mother's Day Garden and Boy

Amber Waves Of History

Historically Influenced,


Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries industrialized human economy used machines of steel, powered by coal and oil, to chew into old growth forests, get all of the easiest coal and oil and iron and copper, tap the lakes of water under California to grow veggies in the desert, and to make tanks, bombers, aircraft carriers and battleships to destroy what was made, and the people who made it.
As a species, we are now a much older population, expecting comfortable retirements, but with fewer young workers to support us, and with all the depleted resources now costly to obtain and use. Our wealthy masters have also put IOUs in our retirement cookie jars, and taken all the cookies. 

Don't look!

If you feel like you have just been getting poorer your whole adult life, you're probably right, at least in a relative sense, but likely in absolute terms, too, and there are fees and charges everywhere... Charles Hugh Smith shows the peak year for wages as a percent of GDP was 1970. (The most egalitarian year for US paychecks was 1976.)
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay16/wages-GDP5-16.html
 

"Free Trade" vs actual free trade.
This is the regime of lies used to spread modern financial and military imperialism at home and abroad. Thanks Wigs. Lots of enlightening points here.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/05/05/free-trade-vs-actual-free-trade/
 

Is America's War on ISIS Illegal? (well, duh?)
This NYT piece from Cat is rather stuffy, and doesn't look at paying to secretly create enemies to attack in countries where there's oil and gas. It looks at constitutional law and the War Powers Act of 1973. There has been continuous undeclared war since the 1990s (pick your timeline) and Congress has not approved any war in a long time. An American Army Captain, sworn to defend the constitution, brings a case to investigate the constitutional legality of his orders, without disobeying them. This is a really strong case. Hope it moves up through the courts, but that would disrupt "vested interests".
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/opinion/is-americas-war-on-isis-illegal.html?emc=edit_th_20160505&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=63905770&_r=0
 

There is a lot going on between Europe and North Africa now, with the "deal" made by Turkish PM Davutoglu always in question, and now more in question, since he is resigning. Europe was supposed to accept all Turks without passports, and Turkey would surely ship out 5 million Kurdish-Turks on whatever pretext, who would claim asylum, and claim it justly. Turkey just can't abide by some of the human rights legalities that would really open this floodgate, which negates the whole deal.

Angela Merkel warns of a return to nationalism (that's all the barbed wire, folks) if the EU doesn't close it's external borders. (What can this mean, but Greece as vast human concentration-camp?)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/merkel-warns-return-nationalism-unless-eu-borders-protected-143545881.html
 

Almost a quarter of the 368,000 pediatric refugees who went to Europe last year, went without their parents, effectively orphans. A lot of them are teenage boys.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/datablog/2016/may/05/quarter-of-child-refugees-eu-without-parents-unaccompanied
 

Elliot Coleman writes an essay about the wonderful scientific agriculture of the pre green-revolution era in the west. There was abundant wisdom and insight, the product of scientific analysis of eons of empiric farming practice of building and maintaining soils and growing-ecosystems, like the intensive market gardens of Paris.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-05-04/my-agricultural-grandparents

Ageing Gardener

Presenting The Case

Trying to Believe,

President Obama drinks a glass of water from Flint Michigan and declares it "drinkable". He goes on to say that some children may not be harmed from their having drunk Flint water. He does not go on to say that his glass of Flint water had been filtered. (Guess he forgot...)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-04/obama-drinks-glass-flint-water-says-it-drinkable

Over half of Americans believe that the voting system is rigged (Other half believes TV.)
http://theantimedia.org/half-believe-voting-system-rigged/

Paul Craig Robert (thanks, Wigs):
"Greenpeace has done that part of the world whose representatives are so corrupt or so stupid as to sign on to the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic “partnerships” a great service. Greenpeace secured and leaked the secret TTIP documents that Washington and global corporations are pushing on Europe. The official documents prove that my description of these “partnerships” when they first appeared in the news is totally correct."
 http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/05/03/ttip-american-economic-imperialism-paul-craig-roberts/

Daniel Ellsberg to Ed Snowden (really) "I've been waiting 40 years for someone like you"
https://theintercept.com/2016/05/03/edward-snowden-whistleblowing-is-not-just-leaking-its-an-act-of-political-resistance/

Michael Hudson Interview about Wall Street and Politics is excellent. Thanks Jada:

"The key is that if you’re a really smart criminal, you have to plan to get caught. The plan is how to beat the rap. On Wall Street, if you buy garbage assets, how do you make the government bail you out? That was what the president of the United States is for, whether it was Obama or whether it would have been John McCain …'

"He interviews someone on Wall Street, and asks why they’re so hostile to Obama when he’s so protective of Wall Street. And the answer is, because if we keep being publicly hostile, he can always do what we want."

http://michael-hudson.com/2016/03/traumatized-worker-syndrome/

FBI interviews Clinton's top personal aid. (Will we be getting an indictment?)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-05/fbi-interviews-clintons-top-personal-aide-email-investigation-heats

Presenting Evidence

Saying Things

 Misspeaking,

Bill Black looks at a recent interview with the "misunderstood" President Obama, who "had to take" "measures that work" in 2008, but which made him "look like they were in bed with the banks", because of all those confusing elite-bailouts and huge bonuses and so on. They were working so fast that they just didn't have time to explain thing so the American people could understand. It looked almost like conspiring with (YUCK!) "criminals"...Thanks Eleni.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/05/obamas-great-lie-whats-good-wall-street-felons-good-america.html

Donald Trump treads on political thin ice again, pointing to the story that the mysterious man in the picture with Lee Oswald in Miami in 1963, handing out Castro pamphlets, was Rafael Cruz, Ted's dad, who recently said this:

“I implore, I exhort every member of the body of Christ to vote according to the word of God and vote for the candidate that stands on the word of God and on the Constitution of the United States of America,” Rafael Cruz said in a video clip aired by Fox News. “And I am convinced that man is my son, Ted Cruz. The alternative could be the destruction of America.”  Thanks, Tom.

(Speaking of "conspiracy theories", that lovely 1960s FBI term about the Kennedy assassination(s), I have got to wonder if Donald Trump knows who is he messing with, when he messes with the Bush-military-industrial-complex, by mouthing off about Geroge Bush and 9/11. Does he not know that Prescott Bush bought Richard Nixon his Senate seat, got him in as VP with Ike, where Nixon planned the CIA Bay of Pigs Operation and US invasion of Cuba, that JFK blocked. Does Trump not know that George HW Bush was in Dallas the day JFK was shot? GHW Bush claims he doesn't recall where he was that day. Does Trump not realize that the massive military-industrial-complex of 2001 was the only organizational consortium big enough and connected enough to drop the twin towers and mysterious  WTC#7 that evening, and destroy all the workers and documents in the Pentagon who were looking into the missing trillions of dollars that Rumsfeld announced 9/10/01? Does Trump feel safe?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/05/trump-ted-cruz-father-222730

Is the TTIP "doomed" in France? That would be appropriate.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-03/ttip-doomed-france-threatens-reject-obamas-huge-transatlantic-trade-deal

10 year unemployed Professor Norman Finkelstein talks about Bernie Sanders, the BDS movement to place economic pressure on Apartheid Israel, the First Intifada, and that 10 years without a job. Thanks Dan.
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/04/norman-finkelstein-on-sanders-the-first-intifada-bds-and-ten-years-of-unemployment/

Sanders wins Indiana, after it looked all-wrapped-up for Clinton, with that FBI thing permanently sidelined and the effective vote suppression in New York, Arizona, and so on.
Will this guy never stop? What's he think, he can be nominated just because people want him? What a nerd!
(I do think Sanders knows the danger of stirring up trouble with the military-industrial-complex, though. He's strictly non-confrontational with the empire; not like Bobby Kennedy.)
http://www.amny.com/opinion/columnists/mark-chiusano/what-does-bernie-sanders-indiana-win-mean-1.11759501

Still Talking

Future Options

Comparing Scenarios,

You are more likely to die in mass extinction than a car accident.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-human-extinction-isnt-that-unlikely/480444/

Why are we so unhealthy? Our entire economic and food system makes us sick and keeps us sick. Charles Hugh Smith comes to the same conclusions I do.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay16/makes-us-sick5-16.html

Donald edges ahead of Hillary for the first time in latest poll. 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-02/trump-leads-clinton-latest-poll-cruz-crashes

Seymour Hersh says Hillary Clinton approved supplying Syrian "rebels" (or "mercenaries", since 95% not Syrian) with Sarin nerve gas looted from Libya after destroying that country. There was that attempt to justify bombing Syria by blaming the nerve gas use on Assad, but that didn't quite fly, since it was chemically different, and it was being used against Assad's supporters, not "rebels".
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/04/28/seymour-hersh-hillary-approved-sending-libya-sarin-syrian-rebels.html

There is no place for climate protection in the leaked 248 pages of TTIP. Any national powers or EU powers to restrict any kind of trade or commerce to protect humans, animals or the environment would just go "poof".
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-02/ttip-leaked-documents-show-obama-demands-killing-paris-accord-against-climate-change

Britons are split on the Stay:Go question, 50:50.
If older voters turn out in droves, the vote will be to leave the EU.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-poll-shows-britain-split-5050-but-higher-turnout-among-older-voters-could-tip-country-a7007541.html

Swedes, personally experiencing the hot human wave of traumatized and very foreign Mideast war refugees might well follow the UK out of the EU to protect their borders. (Greece is the refugee tank in ALL of these plans. Have you noticed?) Thanks Eleni (in Athens).
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/23080-from-brexit-to-swexit-will-sweden-follow-if-britain-exits-eu

Debt, the Key Factor Connecting Energy and Economy: Gail Tverberg points out how both debt and oil are like magic for the economy, usually...
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/05/02/debt-the-key-factor-connecting-energy-and-the-economy/

Photosynthetic Investor