Irony is Officially Dead

Ashton Carter, the Secretary of State, just issued the highest civilian award that the Pentagon can issue to a civilian to Henry Kissinger:

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter hosts an award ceremony honoring Dr. Henry A. Kissinger for his years of distinguished public service at 4 p.m. EDT, in the Pentagon.  Media interested in covering the ceremony should plan on meeting in Room 2D961 by 3:45 p.m. to be escorted to the ceremony.  Foreign journalists without a Pentagon building pass must plan on being escorted from the River Entrance Pedestrian Bridge only, or, if arriving at the Pentagon Metro Entrance Facility, must contact 703-697-5131 a minimum of one hour prior to arrival.  Please arrive no later than 45 minutes before the event if coming by Metro.  U.S. journalists without a Pentagon building pass will be picked up at the River Entrance Pedestrian Bridge or the Pentagon Metro Visitors Entrance only.  If arriving by Metro, please contact 703-697-5131 a minimum of one hour prior to arrival, and plan to arrive no later than 30 minutes before the event; have proof of affiliation and photo identification.  Please call 703-697-5131 for escort into the building.

If you are unaware of his record, here is a quick primer:

On Monday afternoon, at 4 pm Eastern, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter will host an awards ceremony at the Pentagon honoring one of the world's most notorious war criminals.

The criminal in question, Dr. Henry Kissinger, has never been charged. But the evidence that he aided and abetted war crimes during his time in the White House advising Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford is well-established and overwhelming.

While Kissinger deserves real credit for some of America's most important Cold War victories, including Nixon's diplomatic opening to China, he is also responsible for some of its worst atrocities. Carpet-bombing Cambodia, supporting Pakistan's genocide in Bangladesh, greenlighting the Argentinian dictatorship's murderous crackdown on dissidents — all of those were Kissinger initiatives, all pushed in the name of pursuing American national interests and fighting communism.
While the Obama administration might want to pretend that only the first half of his résumé exists, that doesn't change reality. The secretary of defense is handing an award to a man whose actions belie the values Obama administration claims to stand for. It's hardly alone in this: Kissinger has been treated as an elder statesman in polite Washington society for decades. But this is the most recent example, and one of the most high-profile, of polite Washington society rewriting Kissinger's legacy. Let's not forget what it really is.
 

………
 
Most infamously, Kissinger masterminded a Nixon-era plan to carpet-bomb Cambodia. Nominally, the bombing — which indiscriminately hit targets in civilian-populated areas — was supposed to destroy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong bases. In reality, it was designed to improve America's strategic position before a negotiated withdrawal.
 
………

American bombs killed between 150,000 and 500,000 people in Cambodia. That created a swell of public support for Pol Pot and his communist Khmer Rouge rebels, who exploited popular anger at the bombings to seize control of the government in 1975. The Khmer Rouge then slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and starved even more, ultimately killing at least a million people, about one-seventh of the country's population.
 
………
 
He pulled the US consul general in Dhaka, Archer Blood, from his post for questioning the policy, and blocked efforts to pressure Pakistan (a US ally) to end its slaughter. The killing only stopped after India intervened to stop it; estimates of the death toll range from 300,000 to 3 million.
 
………
 

In 2014, newly declassified documents suggested that in the 1970s, Kissinger signaled to Argentina's right-wing military leaders that the US would not object to its plans to launch a 1976 crackdown on dissent that became known as the Dirty War — which killed about 30,000 people.

He's kind of like Stalin, without the charm.

This is some unbelievably f%$#ed up sh%$.

Yeah, This Really Inspires Support for the TTIP

The US ambassador to Italy, a political appointee by Obama, is saying that the US and Europe need to approve the trade deal in order to prevent prosecution of the banksters at the mega-banks:

On May 7th, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or German Economic News, headlined, “USA planen mit TTIP Frontal-Angriff auf Gerichte in Europa” or “U.S. Plans Frontal Attack on Europe’s Courts via TTIP,” and reported that, “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.”

In this particular case, the megabank that’s being sued isn’t American but German, Deutsche Bank, which the U.S. Ambassador to Italy has cited as his example to defend, perhaps so as to appeal to Germans to protect their megabanks against lawsuits from foreign investors (such as Italians) who complain. In that case it was investors in the Italian city of Trani, population 53,000. The smallness of the city was an issue the Ambassador raised against the suit’s having been brought there.

Reuters headlined on May 6th, “Italian prosecutor investigates Deutsche Bank over 2011 bond sale”, and reported that, “An Italian prosecutor is investigating Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) over its sale of 7 billion euros ($8 billion) of Italian government bonds five years ago, an investigative source told Reuters. A prosecutor in Trani, a town in southern Italy, is investigating because Deutsche Bank allegedly told clients in a research note in early 2011 that Italy’s public debt was no cause for concern, and then sold almost 90 percent of its own holding of the country’s bonds.” The U.S. bond-rating agencies are also subjects in this suit, because Trani had relied upon their ratings of those bonds.

The Obama Administration (through its Italian Ambassador) seems thus to be saying, in effect, that unless TTIP is passed into law, Europe’s megabanks (and the U.S. bond-rating agencies, S&P, Moody’s and Fitch) will be able successfully to be sued by cheated investors, just as has been happening with such American banks as JPMorgan/Chase and Goldman Sachs in the United States, which — since TTIP hasn’t yet been in force anywhere, including in the U.S. — were forced to pay billions to cheated investors. Apparently, Obama would be happier if those suits had been impossible in the U.S. The argument here, though only implicitly, seems to be that TTIP is the way to protect megabanks and the bond-rating firms. It concerns specifically the selling of sophisticated derivative investments.

I didn't think that there was any bit of news that would make me more opposed to the TTIP or TPP.

I was misinformed.

Meet the Old Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Hillary is now actively courting Bush donors:

Hillary Clinton’s supporters in recent days have been making a furious round of calls to top Bush family donors to try to convince them that she represents their values better than Donald Trump, multiple sources in both parties told POLITICO.

The moves come as Clinton and the Democratic Party try to take advantage of deep unease among establishment Republicans on Wall Street and elsewhere with Trump’s emergence as the presumptive Republican nominee.

Top targets for the Clinton team include people like Woody Johnson, Jeb Bush’s former finance chair and the owner of the New York Jets. In recent days, Bush’s brother and father, former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, have said they plan to skip Trump’s nominating convention.

One person close to Clinton said supporters of the former secretary of state drew up a list of Wall Street donors who supported Jeb Bush and other unsuccessful Republican candidates months ago but wanted to wait until Trump locked down the nomination before beginning to make the calls.

Yeah, now THERE'S a staunch defender of the Democratic Party's liberal traditions, campaigning as the best Republican in the race.

At the rate that this is going, Jill Stein is going to qualify for federal matching funds.

What a Bunch of Hypocritical Pearl Clutching

Over at the former Kaplan Test Prep company, now a division of Amazon, Dana Milbank is having the vapors over Donald Trump's sometimes salty language.

This from the guy who joked about Hillary Clinton drinking Mad Bitch Beer.

Seriously? If there is anyone in the Washington commentariat who is less well qualified to talk about misogyny and profanity, I haven't read them yet:

Here’s a serious question for Republican officeholders: WTF?

Now that Trump has a lock on the presidential nomination, many top Republicans — too many — are moving to embrace this vulgar man for the sake of party unity. It is a real [expletive] show.

The man who would be the Grand Old Party’s standard-bearer has said the following things (among many others) in front of thousands of men, women and children (and millions more via the media):

On U.S. companies relocating overseas: “You can tell them to go f--- themselves.”

On China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea: “They’re ripping the sh-- out of the sea.”

On the Islamic State? “I would bomb the sh-- out of ISIS.”

Earlier, on dealing with China: “Listen, you motherf---ers, we’re going to tax you 25 percent.”

And on climate change: “This very expensive global warming bullsh-- has got to stop.”

Republicans: This vulgarian speaks for you?

Seriously Dana, go Cheney yourself.

And Jeff (Bezos) make Dana do some useful work for his paycheck.

Yep, A Hoax, I But Still Smell the Crazy

Labor leader Hertzog denies to me unsane websites' reports that he had said that Panama Papers would reveal Bibi got money from Saudi King

— Yossi Melman (@yossi_melman) May 9, 2016

It was clearly a hoax, but still I believed enough to Google it, and to post about my reaction..

Another Bag Full of Cats on the World Stage

This time, it's Brazil:

The Brazilian Senate has vowed to vote on the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff despite a ruling that a vote in the lower house was flawed.

Senate Speaker Renan Calheiros rejected the attempt by Waldir Maranhao, the lower house's acting speaker, to halt the process.

Mr Maranhao had called for a new vote in the lower house.

But to boos and cheers in the Senate, Speaker Renan Calheiros called that decision illegal.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on Wednesday on whether to start an impeachment trial.

The president of the Senate impeachment commission also said the vote would take place as scheduled.

If Ms Rousseff loses, she will be suspended from office, pending a trial that could last six months. She faces allegations that her government violated fiscal rules.

In his decision, Mr Maranhao said there had been irregularities during the lower house session in which its members overwhelmingly voted in favour of the impeachment process going ahead.

He said members of the lower house should not have publicly announced what their position was prior to the vote, and that it had been wrong of party leaders to instruct their members how to vote.

Mr Maranhao called for a new vote in the lower house.

………


Mr Maranhao, who opposed the impeachment process in the 17 April vote, only took over as the speaker of the lower house last week, after the previous speaker, Eduardo Cunha, was suspended.

Mr Cunha, an outspoken critic of President Rousseff, led the impeachment drive against her.

The level of dysfunction here makes makes the Lewinski affair look like a Schoolhouse Rock episode.

Linkage

Cracker Jack's Prize In The Box Will Now Be Digitized : The Two-Way : NPR (NPR) This sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.
US Prosecutors Consider More Charges Against Ex-CEO Shkreli (Reader Supported News) I'd rather see them spending this resources going after Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon.
Nine years of censorship (Nature) Trudeau is reversing Harper's muzzling of Canadian scientists.
Andrew Sullivan Is to Blame for Donald Trump (Gawker) Great hed. The thesis is that people like Andrew Sullivan, who have aggressively supported impoverishing of the masses,(He wrote glowingly of Margaret Thatcher) have created the toxic politics that gave us the Donald.
Study Shows How Abstinence Pledges Increase Risk of Pregnancy and STDs (The Atlantic) Not a surprise. Studies have shown this for years. For an anecdote, see Palin, Bristol.
Atlanta Mayor’s Column Ripping Bernie Sanders Drafted by Lobbyist, Emails Show (The Intercept) It really is remarkable how brazen the Democratic Party establishment is about its corruption.
In 1983 Clinton teamed with Walmart to attack public education (Liberation News) The past is prelude.
Who Shot First, According To The Guy Who Played Greedo (Cinema Blend) Han shot first.
Psychiatric hospitals filling up with time travellers sent back to kill Donald Trump (News Thump) This is not a surprise.

This is just too awesome for words:



H/t Atomic Samba.

They Finally Lost One

The City Council of Austin passed regulations on ride sharing services, and Uber and Lyft spent millions in an attempt to override the vote through a plebiscite, and lost:

Uber and Lyft spent nearly $9 million on a May 7 special election in Austin, Texas. They offered free rides to the polls, and texted users asking for their support. They pulled out all the stops in a political playbook that has worked in almost every other city in the US.

For once, it wasn’t enough.

Voters in the Texan capital came out against Proposition 1, upholding ride-hailing regulations that the city council passed in December. The rules are stricter than ones that Uber and Lyft face in other jurisdictions: They require drivers for the services to pass fingerprint-based background checks, to identify their cars with company emblems, and to avoid picking up and dropping off passengers in certain lanes.

That is to say, exactly the same requirements as exist for the taxis.

………

Uber, I think decided, they were going to make Austin an example to the nation,” said David Butts, a local political consultant who helped coordinate the campaign against Proposition 1, according to a report in the Austin American-Statesman. “And Austin made Uber an example to the nation.”

Ahead of the vote, both Uber and Lyft had threatened to leave Austin should the proposition fail. Austin mayor Steve Adler invited them to stay despite the election results.

………

The nay vote on Proposition 1 is all the more crushing for Uber and Lyft considering the lopsided amount of money they spent in favor of it. The companies invested a combined $8.7 million to support the proposition via their lobbying committee, Ridesharing Works for Austin, an unprecedented sum in Austin local politics. That dwarfed the $132,000 that Proposition 1’s opponents strung together from about 500 individual contributions, according to campaign finance filings.

………

Uber and Lyft have cultivated the impression that their services are indispensable to cities. But Uber in particular has also spun itself as politically unbeatable. It has the money; it has the policy talent; it has the app that makes reaching potential voters as simple as sending a text or push notification to their phones.

………

That’s a potent narrative. With the loss in Austin, it’s starting to come undone.

The myth of inevitability and invincibility is central to Uber's and Lyft'ssuccess.

It is what allows them to move into new markets, break the law, cheat their employees, place their customers at risk, and create a multi-billion dollar stock valuation.

It may not be the beginning of the end for the lawless players in the "sharing economy", but it might be the end of the beginning.

I'm Calling Bullsh%$

Al-Masdar news is reporting that the Panama Papers reveal that King Salman of the House of Saud laundered money which was donated to the Netanyahu campaign:

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.

There are no other sources for this.

The only other reports on the internet all link back to this source, and I have no information at all about tits reliability.

I am not citing this to suggest that it is true. I am citing this because my initial reaction was credulous, for about 45 seconds.

This post is not about the report, but about my initial reaction.

I wondered why my initial response was to believe.

I believe that this is because what the Middle East is, a bag full of cats that you can smell crazy on, to paraphrase a popular movie from a few years back.

Donald Trump at Least Recognizes That Our Nomenklatura Is Incompetent

Say what you will about Donald Trump, but he recognizes that our foreign policy establishment is incompetent and corrupt: (And Yes, the source is suspect, but it's a "Stopped Clock Being Right Twice a Day" thing.)

The National Interest, which is a (Possibly THE) seriously Neocon organization, is trying to explain why it hosted a Trump foreign policy speech, and is not endorsing Trump's analysis:

………

As the hosts, we are ill suited to evaluate Mr. Trump’s speech; some may find criticism ungracious or, conversely, see praise as unpersuasive. That said, we heard enough from Mr. Trump to feel that while his approach to foreign and security policy is not yet fully developed and remains a work in progress, it is quite different from the existing semi-consensus among America’s foreign-policy elites. His remarks outlined a fundamental break with post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy and offered an alternative vision with considerable appeal to a frustrated public, if less to the elites who have defined, articulated and implemented policy through three administrations run by both major political parties.

I, however, do agree with Trump's assessment regarding the general uselessness of our foreign establishment, even while eschewing his nonsensical solutions

………

For much of the post–Cold War era, experts both inside and outside the government have faced informal but powerful pressure to share in existing interventionist orthodoxies if they seek top positions requiring Senate confirmation or even regular appearances in mainstream media. From this perspective, it is predictable that an avowedly antiestablishment candidate should provoke ferocious rhetoric from not only the political establishment, but also the foreign-policy establishment (perhaps even more bitterly).

Pledging that he would not surround himself “with those who have perfect resumes but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war” has surely fueled establishment fear of Mr. Trump. This statement—the functional equivalent of his signature line “you’re fired” directed at a number of former senior and mid-level officials—ensured that not only many Democrats, but also a number of Republicans in Washington’s foreign-policy community would race to the barricades. Some self-serving Trump-haters may well see this as the greatest danger he poses; ending the dominance of today’s foreign policy nomenklatura could directly threaten their careers. He provokes similar reactions among the transnational Davos elites by insisting “the nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.”

In America, this Soviet-style foreign-policy nomenklatura system has helped the post–Cold War foreign-policy elites in the Republican and Democratic parties to develop a sense of entitlement wholly disproportionate to their accomplishments. How difficult was it to run America’s foreign policy during an era of virtually unquestioned dominance? Why—with so many advantages—have our elites produced so many failed policies? And why do they feel no shame? No matter how many individual positions he changes, Mr. Trump will never satisfy the architects of these massive mistakes or, for that matter, their ardent supporters on editorial boards and television screens. To be clear, it is entirely appropriate to criticize Mr. Trump’s views or, for that matter, his temper. Both have long been important components in our electoral politics. What is not appropriate is to attempt to shut down public discussion of critical national issues.

Our current foreign policy establishment, what I refer to as the Council on Foreign Relations crowd, has squandered blood and treasure, all while making us less secure and insuring that our influence will be diminished in the future.

Heck of a job, Brownie.

It Would Be My Concern Too

The source of the Panama Papers leak has offered to aid prosecutors, but is demanding that he not be thrown in jail:

The anonymous source behind the huge leak of documents known as the Panama Papers has offered to aid law enforcement officials in prosecutions related to offshore money laundering and tax evasion, but only if assured of protection from punishment.

“Legitimate whistle-blowers who expose unquestionable wrongdoing, whether insiders or outsiders, deserve immunity from government retribution,” the source, who has still not revealed a name or nationality, said in a statement issued Thursday night.

The documents, which list the true owners of thousands of companies created to hide the people behind them, expose the holdings of current and former world leaders and other prominent figures. The source, who uses the pseudonym John Doe but whose gender is not known, said that the papers could spur thousands of prosecutions, “if only law enforcement could access and evaluate the actual documents.”

John Doe noted that journalists who have viewed the papers have said they will not turn over the full archive of 11.5 million documents. “I, however, would be willing to cooperate with law enforcement to the extent that I am able,” the source wrote.

The statement, which was issued Thursday night under the condition that it not be reported until Friday morning, gave some hints about John Doe’s political views and concerns. They include income inequality, the American campaign finance system and the “revolving door” of United States officials who take jobs at banks or other companies they once regulated.

………

In the statement, the source denied being a government official or contractor, now or in the past. The confidential source was also extremely critical of the news media, suggesting that certain unnamed news organizations had declined initial offers to take and report on the documents.

I can understand "John Doe's" concern.  There have been numerous cases where whistle blowers have been typically been sentenced to more jail time than the folks actually breaking the laws.

What's more, when one looks at those prosecutions, and the the sentences, it becomes pretty clear that this is a feature of the American criminal justice system, and not a bug.

Prosecutors seem intent on punishing people who whistle blow on members of our plutocracy.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!

We have the 3^rd bank failure of the year First CornerStone Bank of King of Prussia, PA.

It's not a whole bunch of bank failures, but it is two in the past 2 weeks.

Odd.

See the Full FDIC list.

Ez a Mechayeh!

In July, Microflaccid's offer for a free upgrade to Windows 10 expires, and it means that those f%$#ing pop up windows will be going away:

There was one issue that went unspoken in Microsoft’s announcement on Thursday that the free Windows 10 upgrade offer would end on July 29. What would the company do about all those annoying, almost malware-like, pop-up notifications to upgrade to Windows 10 that appeared on the PCs of Windows 7 and 8.1 users? The answer is they will disappear.

“Details are still being finalized, but on July 29th the Get Windows 10 app...will be disabled and eventually removed from PCs worldwide,” Microsoft told WinBeta in a written statement.

Hallelujah

The company warned that it may take some time to disable the upgrade pop-ups on computers worldwide.

Hallelujah is right.

I am sick to death of Microsoft's nags to install its f%$#ing spyware.

^*It's Yiddish, "איז אַ מחיה," and it means that it is a great joy.

Time for a Massive Campaign of Civil Disobedience

The elitists at the UK's Natural Environment Research Council have decided to ignore the will of the people and name their new research vessel after naturalist and documentarian Sir David Attenborough, though they did throw a bone to the general public:

The UK's new £200 million polar research ship will not be called Boaty McBoatface. The decision was announced early on Friday morning by the UK science minister, Jo Johnson. Instead, the new ship will be called the RRS (Royal Research Ship) Sir David Attenborough—a name that also picked up a few votes in the same poll that saw Boaty McBoatface come out way on top.

Showing at least a little bit of political savvy, Jo Johnson didn't completely discard the people's choice: RRS Sir David Attenborough will be outfitted with a number of remotely operated underwater vehicles (see gallery above), and one of those will be called Boaty McBoatface. Hopefully they'll paint a dorky face on the front of its torpedo-like frame.

………

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) had originally planned to name the new ship via an online poll. Shortly after the poll began in March, James Hand, a former BBC radio presenter, proposed the name Boaty McBoatface. The name went viral and quickly picked up tens of thousands more votes than any other. The final tally was 124,109 votes for Boaty McBoatface, 34,371 for Poppy-Mai, and then a handful of others at around 10,000 (Sir David Attenborough picked up 10,284 votes).

………

Yesterday, following the naming debacle surrounding the ship, the UK's parliamentary science and technology committee began an investigation into "science communication" and NERC's approach to naming the ship.

You have to hand it to the science minister: if you're going to take a huge political hit by ignoring the public's choice, naming the ship after one of the few universally loved Britons is really quite smart. No one's going to complain about a ship being named after Sir David—and it's his 90th birthday this weekend. Damn you, Jo Johnson, damn you!

This is an outrage, and clearly it must not be allowed to stand.

Linkage

• Biotech firm creates fake rhino horn to reduce poaching (Digital Journal) Ebay did this to people who stole from archeological sites. There was a flood of counterfeits, and prices dropped, and the numbewr of counterfeits skyrocketed, and people got out of the business.
• Barack Obama Readies For Final TPP Push, Which Could Benefit Presidential Library Donors (International Business Times) Much like his policies, Obama's corruption is pedestrian and incrementalist.
• Luxembourg Puts Journalist and Whistleblowers On Trial for Ruining Its “Magical Fairyland” of Tax Avoidance (The Intercept) Luxemburg's only real industry is money laundering, so they are trying to throw people who reveal this fact in jail.
• Microsoft Windows 95 on Apple Watch (Business Insider) The award for the person having too much free time award goes to………
• Cracker Jack's Prize In The Box Will Now Be Digitized : The Two-Way (NPR)This sucks wet farts from dead pigeons
• How Big Data Harms Poor Communities (The Atlantic)  Big data is the surveillance state privatized, and the surveillance state is about keeping down the poor and minorities. QED.
• Paul Ryan Wants To Kill Me (Cognitive Dissidence) Author is in treatment for cancer, and notes that Ryan's desire to return to the bad old days of pre-existing conditions would have him dead.
• Wifi hotspot with 'threatening name' grounds flight in Australia (The Independent) Naming your WiFi network to tether your laptop to your phone, "Mobile Detonation Device," is not a smart thing if you intend to use it while at the airport.
• I tried Go Cubes chewable coffee, and I'm pretty sure this is what cocaine feels like (The Next Web) This will not end well .

This is still the creepiest music video that I've ever seen:

How Evocative

Last night said that he had mixed emotions about Ted Cruz leaving the race, because it cleared the decks for Trump:

Is this a yay? I'm so conflicted. I mean, Ted Cruz lost, but it's because Donald Trump won. It's like finding out your herpes is gone but it's because your dick fell off.

This is an almost perfect metaphor for the campaign season.

The Only Opinion that Matters ……… Except Maybe his Own

Stephen Colbert just gave major props to Larry Wilmore for his White House Correspondents Dinner speech:

………

Last night Stephen Colbert opened his monologue with that 'phone call.'

"Now personally, I thought Larry gave a great speech, that did not let the President or the press off the hook, And I am confident that Larry will receive the ultimate recognition for his work — never being invited back."

He also addressed the end of Larry's speech, which if you have ever watched The Nightly Show you know was not a racial slur or insult. But leave it to Colbert to put it in perspective.

"There was a little controversy, a moment at the end where Larry said the n-word. It was shocking, but it did lay the groundwork for President Trump to say it next year.”

That sound you hear is a mic dropping.

I Hate it When the Donald Says Something Sane

He just continued low interest rates and a weak dollar.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Thursday positioned himself on the far left of the political spectrum on fiscal issues, coming out for low interest rates, against a strong dollar and a more aggressive managing of U.S. debt.

………
“She [Fed Chair Yellen] is a low interest rate person, she’s always been a low-interest-rate person, and let’s be honest, I’m a low-interest-rate person,” Trump added.

Trump shifted to a discussion of the impact that higher rates has on the dollar, and on the impact a rising dollar has on U.S. business.

“If we raise interest rates and if the dollar starts getting too strong, we’ll have some very major problems.”

“I love the concept of a strong dollar, but when you look at the havoc that a strong dollar causes ... it sounds better to have a strong dollar than it actually is.”

………

One thing Trump advocated that the U.S. Treasury has resisted is a more active management of the debt. The U.S. Treasury hasn’t taken advantage of current low interest rates to issue more longer-term debt.

“I think there are times for us to refinance debt with longer term, we owe so much money,” Trump said.

While at times Trump seemed to link a conversation of refinancing with a situation where “the bubble popped” — at one point even suggesting a buyback of U.S. debt — he also made clear that he wanted to refinance now, to rebuild infrastructure.

This is a coherent and thoughtful, if someone iconoclastic, view of the economy, budget, and monetary policy.

It is also a refreshing departure from the conventional fetish about deficits that tends to promulgate austerity.

The economy remains depressed, interest rates are at historical lows, and it's time borrow cheap and long term and spend on decaying infrastructure and create jobs.

I've said before that Donald Trump was the best Republican in the race,^* and this reinforces my initial impression.

^*Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play.

Quote of the Day

There is one aspect, however, in which Game of Thrones has a claim to being the most realistic show on television. Despite the wizards, the wights and the way every character manages to maintain perfect hair even when they’re being pointlessly tortured to death, there is something horribly relatable about Martin’s world of Westeros, whose characters have now become part of public myth. What sets it apart is not the monsters, the nudity or the festering gallons of gratuitous gore, but the overwhelming sense that the plot got run off the rails three books ago and is being steered towards a terrible precipice by a bunch of bickering, power-mad maniacs. This, coincidentally, happens to be the plot of the entire 21st century so far.

—Laurie Penny

As an aside, I probably should to watch a few episodes this show eventually, if just to understand the Obama/Anger Translator Luther "Khaleesi is coming to Westeros" reference.

Tweet of the Day

Ted Cruz kept saying God wanted him to be President, and this is what happened. So either there is no God, or he reeeeally doesn't like Ted.

— Craig Mazin (@clmazin) May 3, 2016

Craig Mazin Ted Cruz's roomate from his freshman year, who has made it know that he hates Cruz on a basic human level, and he is doing his happy dance.

H/t Raw Story.

And Hillary Clinton Acolytes Continue to Ruin the World

In this case, it's Victoria "F%$# the EU" Nuland, who is attempting to coerce the government of Cyprus to cut ties with Russia and accept the continuing occupation of the northern portion of the island nation by the Turks:

The US is intensifying the pressure on Cyprus to accept a secret NATO plan to keep Turkish forces on the island.

Victoria Nuland, the State Department official in charge of regime change in Russia and Ukraine, met for talks last week with the President of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, and with Turkish Cypriot figures. The State Department and US Embassy in Nicosia have kept silent on what was said. A well-informed Cypriot source reports Nuland “was in Cyprus to pre-empt any likelihood of future deepening in relations with Russia. Anastasiades may not want to, but he may have no other option.” A second Cypriot political source said: “[Nuland] will try to blackmail him. I’m not sure how he will react.”

Andros Kyprianou, head of AKEL, the Cyprus Communist Party running strongly against Anastasiades’s party in next month’s parliamentary election, issued an unusual warning against the Nuland plan. “For us”, Kyprianou (right) said, there is only one acceptable outcome to negotiations between the Greek and Turkish communities for the reunification of the island. This is a “solution that ends the occupation and colonization, restoring the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and unity of the Republic, based on UN resolutions, the High Level Agreements, International and European Law. The solution is to demilitarize Cyprus and excludes any guarantee and intervention rights in the internal affairs of the country by foreign forces.”

………

US military commanders and political leaders have never advocated Turkish withdrawal from the island, or compliance with the UN resolutions. Instead, they have recommended incorporating both parts of Cyprus into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The political and military commands in Ankara have been reluctant to accept a NATO solution for Cyprus because they object to what they regard as “dilution” of their army on the island. The Nuland plan is the latest attempt to give Ankara what it wants, and override Greek Cypriot objections. Nuland has also told Anastasiades she wants to accelerate agreement on the terms of settlement before the US presidential election in November.

Anastasiades has already declared himself in favour of joining NATO by signing the preliminary Partnership for Peace programme, but AKEL has been able to block it. For the time being, Cyprus is not a NATO member, and cannot accept another NATO base on its territory. “How can Nuland now push through a Turkish base on the island”, a well-known Cypriot strategist asks – “that isn’t a Turkish base and isn’t a NATO base either, but meets Ankara’s demand for a military ‘guarantee’, and will be accepted by Anastasiades?”

………

For weeks now in Moscow, there have been public hints that Nuland has resuscitated the scheme for withdrawing Turkish forces under the Turkish flag, then returning them under a NATO flag. In Nicosia in December, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that such a scheme would be unacceptable to Russia. “The sides should reach agreements that would provide these security guarantees on a fundamentally new basis,” Lavrov said, “which will be acceptable to both Cypriot communities…This role should be primarily played by the UN Security Council.” For more details, read this.

In February, Lavrov’s spokesman at the ministry in Moscow attacked statements by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his “calls on the Cypriot Turks to take a tough, uncompromising stance in the ongoing intercommunal talks in Cyprus, including on territorial delimitation, a very sensitive issue. This is in stark contrast to Ankara’s statements on its commitment to facilitating a peaceful settlement on the island in the near future. It is obvious that by addressing such calls to one of the parties to the inter-Cypriot dialogue, Turkey’s leaders are rudely interfering in the negotiation process with a view of promoting their own interests.”

 This Neocon bullsh%$ is getting really old.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

Cue the Queen Song, and I Don't Mean Bohemian Rhapsody

Yesterday, Cruz dropped out, and today, Kasich threw in the towel:

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a moderate voice who tried to portray himself as the adult in the Republican primary field but failed to win any state but his own, ended his long-shot quest for the presidency on Wednesday, cementing Donald J. Trump’s grip on the presidential nomination.

Mr. Kasich’s departure, a day after Mr. Trump’s victory in the Indiana primary, leaves Mr. Trump as the only candidate remaining in the Republican race. His closest challenger, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, dropped out Tuesday night.

The Republicans have a nominee, and I am tremendously amused.

Then I remember who is leading in the Democratic primary, and I haz a sad.

Today's Must Read

Edward Snowden has an essay in The Intercept on on the nature whistle-blowing that you really need to read:

………

If harmfulness and authorization make no difference, what explains the distinction between the permissible and the impermissible disclosure?

The answer is control. A leak is acceptable if it’s not seen as a threat, as a challenge to the prerogatives of the institution. But if all of the disparate components of the institution — not just its head but its hands and feet, every part of its body — must be assumed to have the same power to discuss matters of concern, that is an existential threat to the modern political monopoly of information control, particularly if we’re talking about disclosures of serious wrongdoing, fraudulent activity, unlawful activities. If you can’t guarantee that you alone can exploit the flow of controlled information, then the aggregation of all the world’s unmentionables — including your own — begins to look more like a liability than an asset.

Read the rest.

I Know That It's Not Good to See the Sausage Made, but We Should Know When It Is a Sh%$ Sandwich

Greenpeace has published leaked documents detailing the negotiations between the US and EU over the TTIP, and it is worse than previously thought:

Bernd Lange, the chairman of the European Parliament's important trade committee, has indicated that he now expects the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations will probably fail, following a major leak of confidential documents from the talks.

Greenpeace Netherlands has released half of the entire TTIP draft text as of April 2016, prior to the start of the 13th round of TTIP negotiations between the EU and the US, which reveal US demands in detail for the first time.

Although the EU has improved transparency recently, and routinely publishes its offers for each TTIP chapter, the US has consistently refused to do so. Even MEPs and MPs have faced extreme restrictions on what they are allowed to look at, copy, or even say when it comes to the US position. The new leak by an unknown whistleblower represents a major blow to US attempts to keep its negotiating demands confidential, and provides important information to the both the EU and US public for the first time.


………

As Ars noted last September, in the face of massive public concerns about ISDS, the European Commission is proposing a modified approach, the Investment Court System (ICS), which it claims addresses the problems of ISDS. However, even though the ICS idea was formally presented to the US last year, one of the TTIP leaks shows that it was not even discussed during the 12th round, something that the European Commission's public report on the negotiations omitted to mention. This confirms earlier indications that the US is not interested in ICS, and will insist on including standard ISDS in TTIP, regardless of EU worries.

A leaked chapter on "Regulatory coherence, transparency and other good regulatory practices" indicates that the US wants all regulations, even those concerning health and safety or environmental issues, to be judged by the yardstick of their effects on trade: "When developing a regulation, a regulatory authority of a Party shall evaluate any information provided in comments by the other Party or a person of the other Party regarding the potential trade effects of the regulation that it receives during the comment period."

n practice, this means that companies will be able to challenge any new EU and US regulations that might have an adverse effect on their profits, as is often the case when new environment regulations are brought in. It is likely to make it much harder to strengthen laws that might disadvantage business but protect public health and safety.

………

The key sentence comes in the particularly sensitive document entitled "Tactical State of Play of the TTIP Negotiations." This is essentially the European Commision's frank evaluation of where things stand in the TTIP talks. Here's what it has to say on the US demand: "progress on motor vehicle-related parts would only be possible if the EU showed progress in the discussion on agricultural tariffs." In other words, if the EU doesn't open up its markets to agricultural products from the US—which means things like beef treated with hormones, and maybe even chlorine chickens—there will be no improved access for EU car manufacturers.

………

It is also concerned that the EU's "precautionary principle," which requires that products should be shown to be safe before they can be put on the market is being replaced by the US "risk-based" approach, which allows products to be sold until it is proved that they are dangerous.

………

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, public support for TTIP was already plummeting, even before this leak appeared. It seems unlikely that the information it reveals about US demands will assuage any European fears.

Looking at the positions that have been taken by  the US in these negotiations, I can only say that, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

The worst parts of the trade deals that the US have negotiated over the past few decades is not that reality, and our partners, require compromises.

The worst parts of the trade deals that the US have negotiated over the past few decades come from a foreign trade establishment who follows the most extreme and destructive philosophy.

Here is hoping that the free market market mousketeers who have been driving foreign trade deals get a job flipping burgers, because their death toll is beginning to rival that of Josef Stalin.

Same as it Ever Was………

It looks like GSE Freddie Mac may need another baliout:

Freddie Mac is expected to report a loss when it announces first-quarter earnings before the bell on Tuesday. That’s bad news for any public company, but especially critical for the mortgage provider because of its tangled history with the federal government.

Freddie and its counterpart, Fannie Mae were put into conservatorship in 2008 as the mortgage meltdown ensnared the financial system. They have lingered as wards of the state ever since. The Treasury Department modified the deal in 2012, requiring Fannie and Freddie to send all quarterly profits to the government — and shrink their reserves to zero by 2018.

As Mel Watt, the chairman of Fannie and Freddie’s regulator, put it in a speech in February, Fannie and Freddie are quickly approaching the point where they won’t be able to weather quarterly losses without going back to the Treasury for taxpayer dollars.

………

Bank analyst Richard Bove speculated about the possibility of a first-quarter loss in a recent note. “It is impossible for an outsider to predict what this will do to Freddie Mac earnings but it is not unrealistic to assume a loss of $2 billion plus in derivatives (it could be as high as $4 billion or more). At the $2 billion plus level, Freddie Mac’s pretax earnings would be negative $749 million,” Bove, vice president of equity research at Rafferty Capital Markets, wrote.

Spokeswomen for Freddie and its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, declined to comment.

A Treasury draw is a possibility, Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi told MarketWatch, although he thinks the chance of one is “less than 50-50.”

The 10-year Treasury declined 49 basis points in the first quarter, far more than the 29-basis point drop that caused Freddie’s loss last year, noted Laurie Goodman, director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute. (A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.)

Time to party like it's late 2008, I guess.

Seriously, has there been a financial "Innovation" since the Automatic Teller Machine that has been about anything but ripping the rest of us off?

We are now in a never ending bust and bust cycle where the banksters get richer, and the rest of us get poorer.

Here Is the Latest Scare Story about a Brexit

It appears that a French economist with close ties to the government is makign dire predictions about what would happen if the UK votes to leave the euro:

Eurozone economies would gain at the expense of Britain if the UK voted to leave the EU, a leading French economist has predicted, with a relocation of financial activity out of London causing sterling to plummet.

Mathilde Lemoine, a prominent member of the French government’s budgetary watchdog and chief economist of the Edmond de Rothschild private bank, said sterling could rapidly fall 34 per cent against the euro.

The report by the private bank demonstrated how European finance houses could profit from Brexit if the Leave campaign wins the referendum on June 23.

Ms Lemoine, also a former adviser to the French prime minister, wrote that the rapid relocation of financial activity would add to the “brutal drop” in sterling she expects after a vote for Brexit.

Such a vote, she said, would “immediately” reopen the question of the location of clearing houses for eurozone business, which are mostly in London after the UK government won a case last year in the European Court of Justice. It ruled against the European Central Bank’s requirement that clearing houses of euro-denominated business between European banks had to be based in the eurozone and regulated by the ECB.

After a Brexit vote, “it is certain that the grounds for the European Court of Justice’s decision would no longer exist,” Ms Lemoine wrote. “As a result, the European Council could immediately require clearing houses handling euro transactions to be located in the eurozone. On our calculations, sterling would fall 34 per cent against the euro in the space of three months”.

It's enough to make one want to invoke the proverbial briar patch.

If  Lemoine's predictions are true, this win for the UK:

• Finance moves out
• Should reduce insane real estate prices in and around London.
• Restructuring of the economy from finance is better for 99+% of the people with less inequality, and more productive industry.
• The corruption influence of finance and other rent seeking industries on the political system is reduced.
• Intellectual capital that is otherwise wasted on finance and banking returns to productive pursuits.
• Pound falls.
• Trade balance improves, because imports are more expensive, and exports are cheaper.
• Inflation increases, which solves the UK's current disinflation, which will make recovery better, because people are less inclined to hoard money, and inflation devalues debts.

This horror story really isn't particularly horrible.

This Makes it Even Better

In news unrelated to the Presidential election, former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption:

Sheldon Silver was sentenced to 12 years in prison Tuesday, making the former New York Assembly speaker one of the most powerful politicians in the state to be given time behind bars.

U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni, who also ordered Mr. Silver to pay a fine of $1.75 million and forfeit about $5.3 million he reaped from the criminal schemes of which he was convicted, said she hoped the punishment would serve as a deterrent.

“I hope the sentence I impose on you will make other politicians think twice, until their better angels take over,” said Judge Caproni. “Or, if there are no better angels, perhaps the fear of living out ones golden years in an orange jumpsuit will keep them on the straight and narrow.”

In a brief statement before the sentence was announced, Mr. Silver, 72 years old, said he had let down his family, colleagues and constituents.

“I’m truly, truly sorry for that,” said Mr. Silver, who was found guilty in November of honest-services fraud, extortion, and money laundering.

………

Two of his former Albany colleagues are expected to be sentenced later this month.

Former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, who in December was found guilty of public-corruption charges including conspiracy, bribery and extortion, is scheduled to be sentenced on May 12. Former state Sen. John Sampson, who was found guilty in July of obstruction of justice and making false statements to investigators, is scheduled to be sentenced in Brooklyn federal court May 19.

I'm hoping that this puts enough of a fear of God into Skelos that he flips on Cuomo, because 14 years has gotta be scaring the hell out of him.

Buh Bye Teddie………

The Results are in from the Hoosier state, and Bernie won, and Cruz got beat so badly that he dropped out of the race:

Businessman and reality-TV star Donald Trump became the Republican party’s presumptive presidential nominee on Tuesday night, after Trump’s closest rival – Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) – withdrew from the race, following a crushing victory by Trump in the Indiana primary.

The GOP’s chairman, Reince Priebus, called Trump the “presumtive [sic] GOP nominee” in a Twitter message about 9 p.m., and added a plea that “we all need to unite and focus on defeating” Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

In the Democratic race in Indiana, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) was projected as the winner, taking an upset victory over Clinton. That victory will not allow Sanders to make up much ground in the race for Democratic delegates, but it will ensure that their race continues on -- creating a scenario few would have seen coming last summer, with Trump gaining a head start on the Democratic nominee.

Sanders won by about 5 points, and Trump by about 17 points.

This makes it a pretty good night.

Corruption, Baby, Corruption

And the Clinton Crime Family^™ continues apace.
You may recall that Hillary Clinton criticized Bernie Sanders for not raising money for the state parties while she did.

Not so much. It was money laundering:

In the days before Hillary Clinton launched an unprecedented big-money fundraising vehicle with state parties last summer, she vowed “to rebuild our party from the ground up,” proclaiming “when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen."

But less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers, according to a POLITICO analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission filings.

The venture, the Hillary Victory Fund, is a so-called joint fundraising committee comprised of Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees. The setup allows Clinton to solicit checks of $350,000 or more from her super-rich supporters at extravagant fundraisers including a dinner at George Clooney’s house and a concert at Radio City Music Hall featuring Katy Perry and Elton John.

The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88 percent) was quickly transferred to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, POLITICO’s analysis of the FEC records found.

………

But it is perhaps more notable that the arrangement has prompted concerns among some participating state party officials and their allies. They grumble privately that Clinton is merely using them to subsidize her own operation, while her allies overstate her support for their parties and knock Sanders for not doing enough to help the party.

“It’s a one-sided benefit,” said an official with one participating state party. The official, like those with several other state parties, declined to talk about the arrangement on the record for fear of drawing the ire of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

In fact, the DNC, which has pushed back aggressively on charges that it is boosting Clinton at the expense of other Democrats, has advised state party officials on how to answer media inquiries about the arrangement, multiple sources familiar with the interactions told POLITICO.

“The DNC has given us some guidance on what they’re saying, but it’s not clear what we should be saying,” said the official. “I don’t think anyone wants to get crosswise with the national party because we do need their resources. But everyone who entered into these agreements was doing it because they were asked to, not because there are immediately clear benefits.”

Some fundraisers who work for state parties predict that the arrangement could actually hurt participating state parties. They worry that participating states that aren’t presidential battlegrounds and lack competitive Senate races could see very little return investment from the DNC or Clinton’s campaign, and are essentially acting as money laundering conduits for them. And for party committees in contested states, there’s another risk: They might find themselves unable to accept cash from rich donors whose checks to the victory fund counted toward their $10,000 donation limit to the state party in question — even if that party never got to spend the cash because it was transferred to the DNC.

But it gets even better: It turns out that The Clinton Foundation set up a dummy corporation in Canada to conceal its finances:

Aides to former President Bill Clinton helped start a Canadian charity that effectively shielded the identities of donors who gave more than $33 million that went to his foundation, despite a pledge of transparency when Hillary Rodham Clinton became secretary of state.

The nonprofit, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada), operates in parallel to a Clinton Foundation project called the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which is expressly covered by an agreement Mrs. Clinton signed to make all donors public while she led the State Department. However, the foundation maintains that the Canadian partnership is not bound by that agreement and that under Canadian law contributors’ names cannot be made public.

The foundation cited that restriction last weekend in explaining why it did not disclose $2.35 million in donations from the chairman of Uranium One, the subject of an article in The New York Times last week. The article examined how company executives and shareholders had sold a majority stake in the company — and with it a significant portion of American uranium reserves — to an arm of the Russian government in a deal that required the approval of the United States government.

“This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency,” said Maura Pally, acting chief executive of the Clinton Foundation.

Instead, the foundation said that the partnership was created by the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra to allow Canadian donors to get a tax benefit for supporting his work with Mr. Clinton — a benefit that came with the price of respecting Canada’s privacy laws. On Wednesday, the partnership issued a statement citing a legal opinion that “charitable donors have an expectation and right of privacy.”

However, interviews with tax lawyers and officials in Canada cast doubt on assertions that the partnership was necessary to confer a tax benefit; an examination shows that for many donors it was not needed, and in any event, since 2010, Canadians could have donated to the foundation directly and received the same tax break. Also, it is not at all clear that privacy laws prohibit the partnership from disclosing its donors, the tax lawyers and officials in Canada said.

The partnership, established in 2007, effectively shielded the identities of its donors — and the amount they gave — by allowing them to bundle their money together in the offshoot Canadian partnership before it was passed along to Clinton Foundation programs. The foundation, in turn, names only the partnership as the source of those funds.

BTW, one of the things that this appears to have covered up is donations associated with a rather smelly deal involving Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, taking over a large Canadian uranium concern.

In addition to donations to the Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton got paid a lot to give a talk to Russia bankers as well.

OK, so they are money laundering. I get it. You could do this in Delaware, or Nevada, or Wyoming, or Panama, or the Seychelles, or the Bahamas, but Canada? Laundering money through Canada?

Seriously?

That is just perverse, or as Eric Oram said so famously, "Seriously, I don't even like working here. They are so weird."

If These Guys Hate Him, Trump Might Be Right

Over at FT, Edward Luce makes the obvious observation, that the foreign policy establishment who is having the vapors of Trump's foreign policy, Luce ironically calls them the. "best and brightest, have been wrong about everything all the time for decades:

Intellectuals crave doctrines. The tidier the formula, the easier it is to make sense of that messy world out there.

In the view of the US’s strategic elites, Donald Trump’s mind is recklessly untidy. Last week they poured scorn on his much-awaited foreign policy speech. Not only was it self-negating — Mr Trump vowed both to be predictable and unpredictable — but he has yet to hire an intellectually respected adviser. It is doubtful he has read a book on foreign policy. Is further proof needed? Mr Trump is not only a loose cannon. He is also ignorant of the canon. The man could not even pronounce Tanzania (his version rhymed with Romania).

All of which is true. But the critique suffers from two weaknesses. First, the people making it, which includes almost everyone, are throwing stones from glass houses. These include form­er Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, John McCain and Lindsey Graham and their galaxy of advisers — 121 of whom signed a letter condemning Mr Trump’s platform. It also includes the Democratic elites led by Hillary Clinton. They may differ in degree but they share a basic worldview. The US must uphold universal values with force if necessary. That is how things are done. In the words of Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, the US sees further than other nations because “it stands taller”.

All of which adds up. Yet, with one or two exceptions, these were the same people who brought you the US-led invasion of Iraq. Mr Trump plays loose with detail when he claims to have opposed the 2003 war (he said very little until the scale of the disaster had become obvious). But few outside Washington bother with such timelines. What they grasp is that Mr Trump has united the same elites against him who were so collectively wrong on Iraq. This is no minor detail. Washington’s biggest brains have a record of miscuing in unison on the biggest questions.

Think of the Vietnam war, which competes with Iraq as the largest foreign policy disaster in US history. That was famously orchestrated by “the best and the brightest”. Their doctrine was the domino theory — if one state fell to communism, its neighbours would follow. It was simple, logical and disastrous. George W Bush’s doctrine was that pre-emptive war would stave off bigger threats down the line. It was also easy to grasp and catastrophic. The Iraq war spawned the monster child of Isis. On a smaller scale, the same could be said of the 2011 US-backed overthrow of Libya’s Muammer Gaddafi. Libya is now a second base for Isis. Given the chance, might these same elites drag the US into a Syrian quagmire, or a military clash with Russian president Vladimir Putin over Ukraine? Could we rule out a conflict with China in the South China Sea?

I think that it is highly likely that Trump's foreign policy will batsh%$ insane.

It will be completely nuts.

That being said, there is a substantial possibility that this foreign policy will be saner and less destructive than the Council on Foreign Relations/Washington foreign policy consensus.

Guys Like this Need to Sell Cosmetics for a Living

Admiran (Ret) William McRaven, former head of JSOC, is ranting incoherently about the fact that civilian authority actually exerts authority over the military:

A long-percolating feud between Navy brass and the Senate has erupted into open conflict, with the retired admiral who oversaw the daring 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden publicly accusing lawmakers of harboring deep disrespect for military leaders.

In an unusually blunt column published Sunday in the Tampa Tribune, William H. McRaven, a retired four-star admiral, former Navy SEAL and former commander of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, blasted members of Congress for a “disturbing trend in how politicians abuse and denigrate military leadership, particularly the officer corps, to advance their political agendas.”

Although McRaven did not single out lawmakers by name, he made clear that he was angry at the Senate for its treatment of Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey, the commander in charge of the Navy’s elite SEAL teams and other commando units. Losey, who formerly served under McRaven, was denied promotion last month and is being forced to retire after several senators from both parties pressured the Navy to hold him accountable for retaliating against multiple whistleblowers.

Calling Losey’s fate a “miscarriage of justice,” McRaven called him “without a doubt one of the finest officers with whom I have ever served. Over the past 15 years no officer I know in the SEAL Teams has given more to this country than Brian.”

Speaking on the Senate floor April 6, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey was "an honored naval officer" but was "a serial retaliator" who deserved to be denied a promotion. (United States Senate)

………

McRaven’s description of Losey as an innocent victim is at odds with the findings of the Defense Department’s inspector general, which concluded that he had repeatedly violated whistleblower-protection laws.

The agency investigated Losey five times after subordinates complained that he had wrongly fired, demoted or punished them during a vengeful but fruitless hunt for a person who had anonymously reported him for a minor travel-policy infraction. After conducting separate investigations that involved more than 100 witnesses and 300,000 pages of emails, the inspector general upheld complaints from three of the five staffers and recommended that the Navy take action against him.

The Navy, however, dismissed the findings that Losey had violated the law and was poised to promote him last fall to become a two-star admiral until details of the case were revealed publicly for the first time in October by The Washington Post. That prompted several senators to object to the Navy’s plans. They turned up the pressure with a variety of legislative tactics until Navy Secretary Ray Mabus relented in March and announced that Losey’s promotion had been nixed. 

The travesty here is not Congress holding a corrupt general accountable.  It is the US Navy refusing to hold a corrupt general accountable.

These attitudes pervade the culture of the senior officer corps(e) in the US military. 

It is an entitled attitude that breeds corruption and incompetence.

Linkage

• Against Fortress Liberalism (Jacobin) Money quote: "For forty years, liberals have accepted defeat and called it “incremental progress."
• EU Files New Antitrust Charges Against Google Over Android Apps (NPR) All your base are belong to us.
• Panama Papers include top military contractor Triple Canopy (Fusion) Mercenaries laundering money? Least surprising news of the decade.
• Why Western Mass Doesn’t Have the Internet (Backchannel) This is what happens when you elect Republicans. Any attempts at benefiting the greater good through collective action is sabotaged. Rather ironically, Western Mass is the Republican part of the state.
• Google’s Remarkably Close Relationship With the Obama White House, in Two Charts (The Intercept)  Not surprising:  Both entities are opaque, secretive, paranoid, and dedicated to supporters of undermining our privacy.
• FBI informant who lived with 911 hijackers Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid AI-Mihdhar (28 Pages) (PDF) You can also read a summary here.
• When Media Shill For Saudi Money (Moon of Alabama)  A nice survey of lobbying by the House of Saud.
• Fantasy Math Is Helping Companies Spin Losses Into Profits (New York Times) They should call it fraud, but they don't.
• Radical Islamism Flops in Scotland (War Is Boring) Unlike most of the rest of Europe, the Scotts don't segregate and impoverish their Muslim immigrants.
• The web is DOOM'd: Average page now as big as id's DOS classic (The Register) Too much crap JavaScript out there.
• Fair use prevails as Supreme Court rejects Google Books copyright case (Ars Technica) The decision going the other way would result in lesser known works vanishing over the next few years.
• UK dead-set on 10-year sentences for P2P pirates (Ars Technica) Why file sharing is not a matter for private torts is beyond me, so I see 10 years as batsh%$ insane.

Here is a neat video of a model of a dam failure scale model doe by some school kids:

Larry Willmore Slayed at the White House Correspondents Dinner

Made Even Better by the Crowd Reaction

It is pretty clear that he looked at Colbert's now famous talk 10 years ago, and decided give me some more of that:

Comedian Larry Wilmore held no punches at the 2016 White House correspondents' dinner, taking aim at presidential candidates, reporters and Bill Cosby. (Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)

It’s always the big question after the White House correspondents’ dinner: Did the comedian flop?

Opinions vary wildly, but there’s no question some of Larry Wilmore’s jokes received a very frosty reaction inside the Washington Hilton on Saturday night.

………

But that was nothing compared to when he tried out his jokes about the media — to a crowd filled to the brim with journalists.

………

On TV, the reaction sounded like hushed murmurs. Our colleagues inside the dinner reported the line bombed. “Boo!” someone yelled. “Hiss!” yelled another.

Wilmore laughed nervously. “No — alright, fine, I like Wolf.” He was booed again when he took another shot at Wolf’s network: “I don’t know about you guys, but I cannot get enough of that CNN countdown clock. Now we can see exactly when they hit zero in the ratings.”

Another joke that didn’t go over so well? “A little bit about me, I am a black man who replaced a white man who pretended to be a TV newscaster,” Wilmore said. “So yeah, in that way Lester Holt and I have a lot in common.”

There were audible, very loud gasps at that joke that obviously called out Brian Williams, replaced by Holt on “NBC Nightly News” after it was discovered he exaggerated or misrepresented stories over the years.

………

Melissa Harris-Perry, whose messy departure with MSNBC was specifically referenced in the routine (Wilmore says MSNBC now stands for “Missing a Significant Number of Black Correspondents”), tweeted support for Wilmore, which is unsurprising:

It was a good talk, made even better by the frosty reception of the room, who are still as thin skinned as they always were.

The best line was not a dig at Fox, but by a line about MSNBC, "MSNBC got rid of so many black people I thought Boko Haram was running that network," though the best moment when Don Lemon flipped the bird in response to a dig at him.

He also dropped the N-bomb.

It was good, and he had to know that he would piss off most of the guys in the room.

Well played Mr. Wilmore.

Here is the complete transcript .

Not Enough Bullets

It appears that the banks are asserting that they have a constitutional right to dividends from the Federal Reserve:

A trade group for the nation’s largest banks has asserted a constitutional right to risk-free profit from the Federal Reserve.

Rob Nichols, the chief lobbyist for the American Bankers Association, argued in a comment letter Thursday that a recent federal law reducing the dividend on the stock that banks purchase as part of membership in the Federal Reserve system, violates the Fifth Amendment clause banning the uncompensated seizure of property.

Congress reduced the dividend as part of a deal to pay for transportation projects. Dividends for the stock, which cannot be bought or sold, had been set at 6 percent since the Federal Reserve’s inception in 1913. Banks cannot ever lose money on the stock; they’re even paid out if their regional Fed bank disbands. So the dividend represented a risk-free profit, earning back its investment in full every 17 years.

………

Given those facts, [American Bankers Association chief lobbyist Rob] Nichols’s argument amounts to saying that the 6 percent dividend rate itself is constitutionally protected, because it’s been around for a long time. Nichols effectively asserts that the risk-free dividend is bank property.

Seriously?

I cannot see how a government subsidy can be considered property, particularly not a dividend which, as anyone who knows anything about investments, knows is subject to change without warning.