According to a wide assortment of bankers and hedge-fund managers I spoke to for this article, Clinton’s rock-solid support on Wall Street is not anything that can be dislodged based on a few seemingly off-the-cuff comments in Boston calculated to protect her left flank. (For the record, she quickly walked them back, saying she had “short-handed” her comments about the failures of trickle-down economics by suggesting, absurdly, that corporations don’t create jobs.) “I think people are very excited about Hillary,” says one Wall Street investment professional with close ties to Washington. “Most people in New York on the finance side view her as being very pragmatic. I think they have confidence that she understands how things work and that she’s not a populist.”
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Politics
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The Clintons Really Are Out Of Our League.
A good look at Hillary and her penchant for carrying the water of the financial services and defense industries.
It is reasonable to infer from Head’s relatively straightforward article, which succeeds in collecting in one place a great deal of information that has been reported elsewhere, that anyone running against Hillary Clinton is also, in a manner of speaking, running against the richest and most powerful corporations in the world, the entire US defense and financial services industry, and even the interests of foreign billionaires and governments. The question is if she is elected, would ordinary Americans be competing against similar odds.
I worked on Wall Street. I am skeptical Hillary Clinton will rein it in | Chris Arnade | Opinion | The Guardian
I owe almost my entire Wall Street career to the Clintons. I am not alone; most bankers owe their careers, and their wealth, to them. Over the last 25 years they – with the Clintons it is never just Bill or Hillary – implemented policies that placed Wall Street at the center of the Democratic economic agenda, turning it from a party against Wall Street to a party of Wall Street.
That is why when I recently went to see Hillary Clinton campaign for president and speak about reforming Wall Street I was skeptical. What I heard hasn’t changed that skepticism. The policies she offers are mid-course corrections. In the Clintons’ world, Wall Street stays at the center, economically and politically. Given Wall Street’s power and influence, that is a dangerous place to leave them.
Both Hillary and Bernie Will Struggle to Push Their Agendas as President if Republicans Hold the House
And I don’t necessarily disagree with any of these arguments. It would be a long pull up a dirt road for Sanders to get anything done along the lines he proposes in his campaign. This is why, at every stop, he reminds people that he can’t do it alone. That is what his whole “political revolution” riff is about.
And here’s the thing he doesn’t mention: It is unlikely that President Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to get much of what she wants, either.
Iran’s return of American sailors
Riverine Command Boat (RCB)
Let me start off by saying that last week wasn’t my Navy’s finest hour. When news came in Thursday night that ten U.S. Navy sailors had “drifted into Iran territorial waters” and had been detained, there was a sense of deja-vu. I thought about the collision in 2001 between a reckless Chinese fighter pilot and a Navy EP-3 surveillance plane. Known as the Hainan Island Incident, 24 sailors were detained for eleven days, interrogated at all times of day and night. The incident was George W. Bush’s first international crisis and it wasn’t clear things would be resolved amicably.
The Navy tends to avoid entering unfriendly waters (well … most of the time!). The Persian Gulf (or Arabian Gulf as the USN refers to it) is tiny as far as bodies of water go. Our sailors are well aware of who occupies the eastern shore of the Gulf and know to steer clear of it. That doesn’t mean that encounters between Iranians and Americans don’t still take place. I vividly recall how surreal it was to lock eyes with curious Iranian ferry passengers as they motored slowly by my ship once in the Gulf. It was clear at that moment how ridiculous the bluster of our respective governments was.
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How U.S. gun ownership became a ‘right,’ and why it isn’t – The Globe and Mail
Here’s a great commentary on what a fiction it is that Americans have a right to own guns.
‘That,” we tell ourselves, “is just the way the Americans are.” We say it every time some firearms horror strikes a movie theatre or school or workplace. We say it when the U.S. President, reduced to tears, tries to use his limited powers to make minimal changes to laws that allow almost anyone to purchase and use an assault rifle.
After all, hasn’t it always been this way? Americans have always believed that they have a right to own and carry guns, we think. Strict gun control has never been an American option. That’s just the way they are.
Except that it isn’t. The American gun crisis, and the attitudes and laws that make it possible, are very new. The broad idea of a right to own firearms, along with the phenomenon of mass shootings, did not exist a generation ago; the legal basis for this right did not exist a decade ago.
Source: How U.S. gun ownership became a ‘right,’ and why it isn’t – The Globe and Mail
Steve Israel: Confessions of a Congressman – The New York Times
Congressman Steve Israel will miss many things about Congress. The constant need to raise money won’t be one of them.
This is why we can’t have democracy, America.
In the days after my first election to Congress, in 2000, I attended several orientation sessions in Washington, eager to absorb the lessons of history. I wanted to learn what Congressman Abraham Lincoln had learned, to hear the wisdom of predecessors like John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster and Joseph Gurney Cannon. The romance was crushed by lesson No. 1: Get re-elected. A fund-raising consultant advised that if I didn’t raise at least $10,000 a week (in pre-Citizens United dollars), I wouldn’t be back.
Source: Steve Israel: Confessions of a Congressman – The New York Times
Oil, money, politics and evil: Our leading Middle East ally is the worst country imaginable – Salon.com
A great read on how America’s support for the Saudis is not always reciprocated.
American foreign policy is full of things we can’t see and things we don’t talk about. The drone war of the Obama years; the “extraordinary rendition” and “enhanced interrogation” of the George W. Bush years. Nixon and Kissinger’s secret bombing campaign in Cambodia. The overthrow of democratic governments we didn’t like: Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1961, Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Once you get started with this stuff it’s hard to stop, and pretty soon your friends are giving you that look, like they’re wondering at what point you’ll start talking about your stormy personal relationship with Richard Helms, or the microchips implanted in your dental work.
But even by those standards, the case of Saudi Arabia is special. We love Saudi Arabia so much! The Bush family loves Saudi Arabia; the Clinton family loves Saudi Arabia. You and I are frequently told that we love Saudi Arabia, even if we aren’t exactly sure why. We write mash notes in Saudi Arabia’s yearbook, in pink Magic Marker with lots of hearts: BE-HEDDING ALL THOSE PPL! U R SO SEXY!!! We have never overthrown a democratic government in Saudi Arabia. It would admittedly be difficult to do so, since Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that has never had a democratic government and never will. Our tax dollars and Saudi oil dollars flow back and forth between Washington and Riyadh in a bewildering matrix understood by no one, ending up along the way in the handbags of hookers in Vegas and the tip baskets of croupiers in Macau.
Surrendering to shootings
I watched a training video explaining what to do during an active shooter event. This is more of a “how to stay alive” video rather than any suggestion that Joe Citizen could or should take any active role against such a shooter.
I remember cringing the last time I saw this video. It depicts a horrible scene: an actor is depicting killing several people with a shotgun. The second viewing didn’t make it any easier.
As horrific as the video was, it pales in comparison to the video parents were shown by our kids’ principal during a PTA meeting last year. This video was one used by school administrators to depict how school staff would react during a shooting incident. Shots fired. Cowering teachers. Crying kids. Absolute nightmare stuff.
My jaw dropped. Is everyone actually fine with this? And … I’m expected to be fine with it, too?
While many people might just nod their heads and accept the responsibility for protecting themselves during events like these, the sheer fucking madness of it all wouldn’t let me.
No. I reject that people should accept being shotgun fodder.
I reject that the fear of being shot needs be instilled in young kids.
I reject the notion that more guns will somehow save us.
I reject that a bullet flying through the air has more rights than I do!
How can America just give up and accepts this kind of violence? How is the right answer “well, we’re all just going to have to live in fear” or “obviously we need more guns?” How did we arrive at the madness?
Is this the best we can do? Do we simply surrender to the fear? Can we as Americans admit that America has a problem and that whatever it is that we’re currently doing isn’t working?
Lawmakers in Utah introduced a bill to train middle school students in gun safety and what to do in case of an active shooter incident. Said bill sponsor, Woods Cross Republican Sen. Todd Weiler:
“I think it’s always helpful for children and adults to think through what you would do in a situation before you encounter it. Unfortunately, it is probably a necessary reality in the society we live in these days.”
Oh well, we certainly can’t do anything about our gun problem so we’ll just have to train everyone in how not to be a target.
This is bullshit. If we accept that mass shootings are now part of life then America has utterly failed as a society. We should just wave the white flag as we cower under the bed. It is failure. It is madness. America is toast, and we did ourselves in.
We did it to ourselves.
I’ve long been supportive of a citizen’s right to own guns but it’s not a blank check. It’s time to tighten the regulation of these killing machines. It’s past time that we talk about the “well-regulated” part of a well-regulated militia.
This is no way to live, folks. The madness has to stop.
Highlights of 2015: Dix Park, part II
Dix Park proponents at May 2015 Council of State meeting. L-R, Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, City Manager Ruffin Hall, City Councilor Kay Crowder, Friends of Dix Park member Jay Spain, City Councilor Russ Stephenson
2015 was the year that the City of Raleigh finally got the prize it had long sought from the state: the deed to the Dorothea Dix property. In February, the city and state worked out a deal for Raleigh to purchase the property for $53 million dollars. This is far more than the original lease terms (under the first deal that was subsequently torn up by a spiteful General Assembly) and also far more than most state property that gets transferred to local entities. Apparently, Republican leaders in the Gereral Assembly have no problem with burdening people with taxes as long as the urban folk who have to pay.
Anyway, this time the deal got negotiated and signed behind the scenes. The group on whose board I sit, Friends of Dorothea Dix Park (FDDP), was largely kept in the dark about negotiations (though I knew talks were underway). It’s all the same now that the park has been secured, though. I did get to attend the following Council of State meeting on May 5th where the rest of state leaders signed off on the deal. This is my photo of city and Dix Visionaries leaders after the historic event.
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