Thursday, September 17, 2015
The Great Con -- the "Debate"
The Republican “Debate” - Do NOT be Conned!
Republicans ALL are utterly awful. They may have different ways of saying it but they ALL say mostly the same thing in different styles. The ONLY thing, the one and ONLY thing on which I agree with Trump is that the top has to be taxed more and the middle class has to be relieved of its burden. Those who can afford it most must and SHOULD, as the Christians they SAY they are, assume greater responsibility instead of the opposite – giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.
I thought we just went through the GREAT recession during Bush’s murderous administration. Even Alan Greenspan said before Congress that they with their Ayn Randian laissez-faire economic fallacy erred – trickle-down economics failed because Reaganesque economics does NOT trickle down it trickles up and jobs for the middle class are eradicated because unmonitored and unregulated Wall Street got away with literally murder. The accrued profits by those at the top went to their yachts and not to jobs for the middle class. Even trade policy was fixed by lobbyists for the very rich. Suicides and deaths resulted because people lost jobs and the money that comes from jobs to sustain their health and their life. Many lost it all and some ended up on the street. The banksters who perpetrated the fraud and trade policy fixed by the very rich created the Great Recession. The 1% had jobs alas they walked away with even more millions, hundreds of millions and the middle class got stuck with the bill!
RepubliCONS are CONS for the 1% and if people fall for the lies they peddle then they have themselves to blame when RepubliCONS take us backwards into a 19th century world!
ALL of the Republicon “debaters” would be a nightmare. They care more about fetuses than they do about living breathing fully human women! All are simply terrible. Trump connecting vaccines to Autism sells fallacy and even death as people eschew vaccines that have been scientifically proven over decades to prevent diseases that can kill. There has been NO absolutely NO proven scientific correlation between vaccines and autism but hey RepubliCONS do not believe in science now do they?
Evolution will wipe out those who do not accept its science instead of touting fantasy beliefs that have no proof and will probably take those of us who revere science with them IF they gain power. Do NOT be conned!
I WILL SAY IT AGAIN AND AGAIN, WORK FOR DEMOCRATS. THE LIFE YOU SAVE WILL BE YOUR OWN!
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Who By Bullet: Rabbi Meszler's High Holy Day Message
A Rabbi's New Year Message beautifully written. Tears roll down my face!
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Hostile BBC Interview of a Saudi Loyalist Shows Prime Journalistic Duty: Scrutiny of One’s Own Side
By Glenn Greenwald
The ongoing atrocities by Saudi Arabia and its “coalition partners” in Yemen reflect powerfully — and horribly — on both the U.S. and U.K. That’s true not only because those two countries in general are among the closest allies of the Saudi regime, but also because they are specifically lavishing Saudi despots with the very arms and intelligence being used to kill large numbers of Yemeni civilians.
Photo: Gerald Herbert/AP
The American and British governments have long been overflowing with loyalists to the Saudi regime (recall how President Obama literally terminated a state visit to India [where he ironically spent his time “lecturing India on religious tolerance and women’s rights”] in order to fly to Riyadh to pay homage to the Saudi King upon his death, along with top officials from both parties).
One of those many Saudi regime loyalists, conservative British MP Daniel Kawczynski, appeared on BBC’s Newsnight program on Friday night and was mercilessly grilled by host James O’Brien about support for the Saudi war in Yemen by both the British government and the country’s private-sector weapons manufacturers.
The BBC deserves all sorts of criticisms, but this interview was a master class in how journalists should interview politicians and others who wield power. The whole interview (video below) is well worth watching, as O’Brien repeatedly demands that Kawczynski address the war crimes being committed by the Saudi regime he supports. But I want to focus on one point in particular.
BBC Newsnight screen grab
Video here or below.
Each time he’s confronted with questions about the war crimes committed by the side his own government arms and supports, Kawczynski ignores the topic and instead demands to know why the BBC isn’t focused instead on the bad acts of the Houthis, the rebel group the Saudis are fighting, which the Saudis (dubiously) claim is controlled by Iran. Over and over, when O’Brien asks about the role the U.K. Government is playing in Saudi war crimes, Kawczynski tries to change the topic by demanding that the BBC instead talk about Iran and the Houthis: “You have an agenda at Newsnight and you don’t want anyone to dispute the way in which you are covering this war. You have an agenda against the Gulf States coalition. … Why haven’t you shown any coverage of the massacres … by the Houthi tribes?”
After noting that the BBC has reported on Houthi violence, O’Brien explains this crucial point about his focus on Saudi crimes:
Because the investigation is into whether or not weapons sold by British companies have been used in the commission of war crimes possibly committed by Saudi Arabia. … The Houthis are not our allies and are not our customers. Therefore, the public interest of British journalism is not served at this point by investigating what they have or have not been doing. We sell weapons to Saudi Arabia.
Embedded in O’Brien’s explanation is a vital point: The primary role of journalists is to expose and thus check abuses committed by their own nation and its allies. As O’Brien notes, “the public interest” is served far more by focusing on the bad acts of one’s own government than on the acts of foreign governments for which one is not responsible and over which one has little or no control.
This ought to be so obvious as to be axiomatic. But the opposite is true: The vast, vast majority of media coverage in the West — and of foreign policy discourse generally in the U.S. — is devoted to some formulation of “ hey, look at all the bad things that our enemy tribe, the one way over there, is doing.” It’s impossible to quantify with precision, but as someone who pays a great deal of attention to American media and “foreign policy expert” discussion in the U.S., I’d estimate that 95 percent of that discourse is devoted to the supposed bad acts of adversaries of the U.S., with maybe 5 percent devoted to the bad acts of the U.S. itself and its closest allies. It’s exactly the opposite of the “public interest” standard O’Brien accurately defends.
I first noticed this on a visceral level when there was a huge outpouring of protest and anger from American journalists over the Iranian government’s three-month detention of the American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi (until she was ordered released by an Iranian appellate court). What was notable wasn’t the anger itself: It’s natural, and noble, for journalists to defend free press rights of their fellow journalists. What was so notable was that their own country’s government — the United States — had imprisoned journalists for years without charges of any kind, including an Al Jazeera journalist for almost seven years at Guantanamo, and most of them said absolutely nothing about this. All of that was barely reported. How can you be an American journalist and focus extensively on Iran’s abuse of journalists while completely ignoring your own government’s?
That event for me demonstrated a critical point: It’s so fun — and so easy — to highlight and protest the bad acts done by the countries declared to be the Bad Ones by your own government. It’s not quite as fun or easy to highlight and protest the bad acts done by your own government itself or its closest allies. Yet as O’Brien pointed out, journalism is far more valuable, and the public interest served far more, by doing the latter rather than the former.
That’s true because journalists can serve as a watchdog over their government far more effectively than over the governments of faraway adversary countries. But even more so, there’s never any shortage of light being shined on the bad acts of adversary governments: Exploiting the bad acts of adversary governments in order to disparage, discredit and thus weaken them is something virtually all governments do. It’s called propaganda. Citizens in most countries hear a great deal about the bad things done by adversary governments. What they hear far too little of are the bad acts done by their own government, which is why journalism is most valuable when it shines light on that. That’s when journalism is informing rather than amplifying tribal propaganda.
There are lots of reasons why people prefer to focus on the bad acts of the Enemy Tribe rather than one’s own. A big factor is strategic: When the focus of Americans is on the bad acts of Putin or North Korea or Iran or whatever Villain of the Moment is being featured or on the injustice of those places, their focus is not on the things they can actually do something about: the bad acts of their own government and the injustices in their own society.
Constantly directing people’s attention to bad things being done by other tribes is simultaneously distracting and distorting: It creates the impression that Bad Things (imprisoning journalists) are only done by Them, not by Us.
But at least as big a factor is a psychological one: Humans intrinsically feel better when we are condemning others rather than ourselves. That’s why bitter, judgmental gossip has long been a favorite pastime: It’s self-soothing to sit in critical judgment of others. There’s a reason the Gospels have to remind human beings to “first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye”: It’s precisely because the universal temptation is to ignore our own flaws since that’s so much more self-flattering and pleasing.
None of these are absolute rules; some caveats are needed. There’s a benefit from knowing about the acts of adversary governments. We want reporting on those countries as well, and journalists assigned to those countries do their job by highlighting the conduct of those governments. Nor should the bad acts of adversary governments be expressly denied or actively minimized, as that becomes its own form of deceit and propaganda. And then there are times when the bad conduct of other governments produces such great human suffering that collective action becomes both possible and justified, in which case focusing on it can be justified.
But as a general proposition, the duties of journalism, and for that matter citizenship, are fulfilled by having one’s primary focus be on the bad acts of one’s own side, not those of the Others. As always, this quote from Noam Chomsky — who has spent decades being told that he spends too much time talking about the bad acts of his own government and society — most concisely explains the point:
“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence.
“But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”
It’s not only “easy” to “denounce the atrocities of someone else.” It’s also profitable: strategically, propagandistically, psychologically and emotionally. That’s why it’s such a popular thing to do. It’s been true for decades in the U.S. and still is: Write or talk about the invasions, bombings, tyrant-support and torture by your own government and you’ll immediately face demands from nationalists that you focus instead on Russia, upon pain of being accused of being a secret Kremlin agent if you don’t. That is what also explains the obsession among some Westerners to depict Islam, rather than their own governments, as the Prime Force of Violence and Aggression. It’s also what drives the tactic of minimizing your own country’s sins by pointing to someone who is doing worse.
It’s just pure tribalism in its most classic and primitive form: It’s the Other Side that is always the Bad One. Journalistically, that behavior is as cowardly as it is inconsequential: Americans and other Westerners have been inundated for decades with demonizing language about U.S. adversaries from Russia to China to Iran to Muslim extremists. There’s very little valuable, and nothing particularly courageous or interesting, about sitting in the U.S. echoing those self-serving, self-pleasing and already widely accepted narratives. What Americans have lacked, woefully, is a journalistic focus on the bad acts done by their own government, a direct challenge to the propagandistic banalities they’ve been fed to glorify their own side.
This superb interview by this BBC host is an excellent illustration of the virtues of adversarial journalism. Even more significantly, it demonstrates why journalism is most valuable when it is devoted to what is most difficult: namely, focusing on the bad acts of one’s own side, holding accountable those who wield power in one’s own country and those of its closest allies, challenging the orthodoxies most cherished and venerated by one’s own society.
* * * * *
The British MP who was interviewed by Newsnight, Daniel Kawczynski, is now threatening to sue the BBC and its producer, Ian Katz, over the interview. He’s particularly upset that after the interview, Katz posted the documents showing that Kawczynski received a “donation” from the Saudi Foreign Ministry to visit. As is so often the case, the most vocal tough-guy-warriors are such delicate flowers.
https://theintercept.com/2015/09/15/great-bbc-interview-british-loyalist-saudi-regime-shows-journalists-first-duty/
The ongoing atrocities by Saudi Arabia and its “coalition partners” in Yemen reflect powerfully — and horribly — on both the U.S. and U.K. That’s true not only because those two countries in general are among the closest allies of the Saudi regime, but also because they are specifically lavishing Saudi despots with the very arms and intelligence being used to kill large numbers of Yemeni civilians.
Photo: Gerald Herbert/AP
The American and British governments have long been overflowing with loyalists to the Saudi regime (recall how President Obama literally terminated a state visit to India [where he ironically spent his time “lecturing India on religious tolerance and women’s rights”] in order to fly to Riyadh to pay homage to the Saudi King upon his death, along with top officials from both parties).
One of those many Saudi regime loyalists, conservative British MP Daniel Kawczynski, appeared on BBC’s Newsnight program on Friday night and was mercilessly grilled by host James O’Brien about support for the Saudi war in Yemen by both the British government and the country’s private-sector weapons manufacturers.
The BBC deserves all sorts of criticisms, but this interview was a master class in how journalists should interview politicians and others who wield power. The whole interview (video below) is well worth watching, as O’Brien repeatedly demands that Kawczynski address the war crimes being committed by the Saudi regime he supports. But I want to focus on one point in particular.
BBC Newsnight screen grab
Video here or below.
Each time he’s confronted with questions about the war crimes committed by the side his own government arms and supports, Kawczynski ignores the topic and instead demands to know why the BBC isn’t focused instead on the bad acts of the Houthis, the rebel group the Saudis are fighting, which the Saudis (dubiously) claim is controlled by Iran. Over and over, when O’Brien asks about the role the U.K. Government is playing in Saudi war crimes, Kawczynski tries to change the topic by demanding that the BBC instead talk about Iran and the Houthis: “You have an agenda at Newsnight and you don’t want anyone to dispute the way in which you are covering this war. You have an agenda against the Gulf States coalition. … Why haven’t you shown any coverage of the massacres … by the Houthi tribes?”
After noting that the BBC has reported on Houthi violence, O’Brien explains this crucial point about his focus on Saudi crimes:
Because the investigation is into whether or not weapons sold by British companies have been used in the commission of war crimes possibly committed by Saudi Arabia. … The Houthis are not our allies and are not our customers. Therefore, the public interest of British journalism is not served at this point by investigating what they have or have not been doing. We sell weapons to Saudi Arabia.
Embedded in O’Brien’s explanation is a vital point: The primary role of journalists is to expose and thus check abuses committed by their own nation and its allies. As O’Brien notes, “the public interest” is served far more by focusing on the bad acts of one’s own government than on the acts of foreign governments for which one is not responsible and over which one has little or no control.
This ought to be so obvious as to be axiomatic. But the opposite is true: The vast, vast majority of media coverage in the West — and of foreign policy discourse generally in the U.S. — is devoted to some formulation of “ hey, look at all the bad things that our enemy tribe, the one way over there, is doing.” It’s impossible to quantify with precision, but as someone who pays a great deal of attention to American media and “foreign policy expert” discussion in the U.S., I’d estimate that 95 percent of that discourse is devoted to the supposed bad acts of adversaries of the U.S., with maybe 5 percent devoted to the bad acts of the U.S. itself and its closest allies. It’s exactly the opposite of the “public interest” standard O’Brien accurately defends.
I first noticed this on a visceral level when there was a huge outpouring of protest and anger from American journalists over the Iranian government’s three-month detention of the American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi (until she was ordered released by an Iranian appellate court). What was notable wasn’t the anger itself: It’s natural, and noble, for journalists to defend free press rights of their fellow journalists. What was so notable was that their own country’s government — the United States — had imprisoned journalists for years without charges of any kind, including an Al Jazeera journalist for almost seven years at Guantanamo, and most of them said absolutely nothing about this. All of that was barely reported. How can you be an American journalist and focus extensively on Iran’s abuse of journalists while completely ignoring your own government’s?
That event for me demonstrated a critical point: It’s so fun — and so easy — to highlight and protest the bad acts done by the countries declared to be the Bad Ones by your own government. It’s not quite as fun or easy to highlight and protest the bad acts done by your own government itself or its closest allies. Yet as O’Brien pointed out, journalism is far more valuable, and the public interest served far more, by doing the latter rather than the former.
That’s true because journalists can serve as a watchdog over their government far more effectively than over the governments of faraway adversary countries. But even more so, there’s never any shortage of light being shined on the bad acts of adversary governments: Exploiting the bad acts of adversary governments in order to disparage, discredit and thus weaken them is something virtually all governments do. It’s called propaganda. Citizens in most countries hear a great deal about the bad things done by adversary governments. What they hear far too little of are the bad acts done by their own government, which is why journalism is most valuable when it shines light on that. That’s when journalism is informing rather than amplifying tribal propaganda.
There are lots of reasons why people prefer to focus on the bad acts of the Enemy Tribe rather than one’s own. A big factor is strategic: When the focus of Americans is on the bad acts of Putin or North Korea or Iran or whatever Villain of the Moment is being featured or on the injustice of those places, their focus is not on the things they can actually do something about: the bad acts of their own government and the injustices in their own society.
Constantly directing people’s attention to bad things being done by other tribes is simultaneously distracting and distorting: It creates the impression that Bad Things (imprisoning journalists) are only done by Them, not by Us.
But at least as big a factor is a psychological one: Humans intrinsically feel better when we are condemning others rather than ourselves. That’s why bitter, judgmental gossip has long been a favorite pastime: It’s self-soothing to sit in critical judgment of others. There’s a reason the Gospels have to remind human beings to “first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye”: It’s precisely because the universal temptation is to ignore our own flaws since that’s so much more self-flattering and pleasing.
None of these are absolute rules; some caveats are needed. There’s a benefit from knowing about the acts of adversary governments. We want reporting on those countries as well, and journalists assigned to those countries do their job by highlighting the conduct of those governments. Nor should the bad acts of adversary governments be expressly denied or actively minimized, as that becomes its own form of deceit and propaganda. And then there are times when the bad conduct of other governments produces such great human suffering that collective action becomes both possible and justified, in which case focusing on it can be justified.
But as a general proposition, the duties of journalism, and for that matter citizenship, are fulfilled by having one’s primary focus be on the bad acts of one’s own side, not those of the Others. As always, this quote from Noam Chomsky — who has spent decades being told that he spends too much time talking about the bad acts of his own government and society — most concisely explains the point:
“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence.
“But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”
It’s not only “easy” to “denounce the atrocities of someone else.” It’s also profitable: strategically, propagandistically, psychologically and emotionally. That’s why it’s such a popular thing to do. It’s been true for decades in the U.S. and still is: Write or talk about the invasions, bombings, tyrant-support and torture by your own government and you’ll immediately face demands from nationalists that you focus instead on Russia, upon pain of being accused of being a secret Kremlin agent if you don’t. That is what also explains the obsession among some Westerners to depict Islam, rather than their own governments, as the Prime Force of Violence and Aggression. It’s also what drives the tactic of minimizing your own country’s sins by pointing to someone who is doing worse.
It’s just pure tribalism in its most classic and primitive form: It’s the Other Side that is always the Bad One. Journalistically, that behavior is as cowardly as it is inconsequential: Americans and other Westerners have been inundated for decades with demonizing language about U.S. adversaries from Russia to China to Iran to Muslim extremists. There’s very little valuable, and nothing particularly courageous or interesting, about sitting in the U.S. echoing those self-serving, self-pleasing and already widely accepted narratives. What Americans have lacked, woefully, is a journalistic focus on the bad acts done by their own government, a direct challenge to the propagandistic banalities they’ve been fed to glorify their own side.
This superb interview by this BBC host is an excellent illustration of the virtues of adversarial journalism. Even more significantly, it demonstrates why journalism is most valuable when it is devoted to what is most difficult: namely, focusing on the bad acts of one’s own side, holding accountable those who wield power in one’s own country and those of its closest allies, challenging the orthodoxies most cherished and venerated by one’s own society.
* * * * *
The British MP who was interviewed by Newsnight, Daniel Kawczynski, is now threatening to sue the BBC and its producer, Ian Katz, over the interview. He’s particularly upset that after the interview, Katz posted the documents showing that Kawczynski received a “donation” from the Saudi Foreign Ministry to visit. As is so often the case, the most vocal tough-guy-warriors are such delicate flowers.
https://theintercept.com/2015/09/15/great-bbc-interview-british-loyalist-saudi-regime-shows-journalists-first-duty/
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Randy Rainbow gay rendition of Chicago's -- "She Had it comin!"
BRILLIANT! and clever here or below. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14C3TZg6NQM
How much clearer could it be for the mandate of Democrats to win office EVERYWHERE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14C3TZg6NQM
How much clearer could it be for the mandate of Democrats to win office EVERYWHERE!
Saturday, September 12, 2015
9/11 and the Belligerant Empire
You
may not agree with this documentary (linked below) but you should when a nation's
power structure wants to take you to war and death ask the question why
and who does it benefit! Howard Zinn
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14709
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14709
Friday, September 11, 2015
9/11 Remembered – 14 years later
I am a glutton for depression. I have been watching MSNBC’s three hour tape of the nation’s 9/11 tragedy that was visited upon us 14 years ago today. That bright crystal clear blue-sky gorgeous day in Boston betrayed the dark events which enveloped us and the world and, to this day, still do.
Two events in my life’s historical memory have synaptic connections that are, I hope, as strong as iron. The first is the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the second is 9/11. Through
the diminishment of memory by age and through the onslaught of physical
impairment by time, those events, for me cannot be erased. They are seared into my soul never to be forgotten. To my last breath I will remember them.
The
Holocaust which, thank fate, I did not personally witness but the
assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attack on the World Trade
Towers with all the events surrounding 9/11 I did. I can remember the details of both events like none else in my life. I remember the time, I remember where I was, I remember who was with me and I remember a
flood of other minutiae of memory one might forget but for the
catastrophic nature of those events that were visited upon our nation
and the world at that time.
I have watched endless documentaries explaining it all. Many
do not understand why I watch these again and again which remind me of
those perilous, sad days and provoke not only a feeling of depressive
powerlessness but also evoke the lingering question I have always asked
with respect to man’s inhumanity to man – Why?
The
only way I can, as a person who does not set policy, but who still is
able to raise a voice in objection to the nasty and the brutish Hobbsian
characterization of life is to remember, historically, what has happened.
The better angels of our nature must prevail and decry senseless violence that begets only more violence. We must remember those most impactful events which sear our collective souls and instruct us to find a better way.
We must listen, we must talk, we must try to understand those who oppose us and engage in discourse to try to understand why.
We must remember the words of those whom
I think said it better than I ever could -- John Kennedy: “Our most
basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the
same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”
The US should strive by always remembering these historically horrific events and those who died in them so that, as Abraham Lincoln memorialized in the Gettysburg Address masterpiece “we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain.” We must remember so that the proverbial admonition by Edmund Burke that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it, does not, again, ring true.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Trump insults Fiorina 'Look at that face!' -- I ask ARE WE KIDDING?
The Trumpet regurgitates another nauseating comment this time against Republican candidate Carly Fiorina's looks. I am no fan of Carly Fiorina but the class and articulate ability that woman has in her fingernail Trumpet does not have in his entire body. I do not care if he has 100 trillion bucks would YOU want to live with Trump's face not to mention his insulting mouth?
The Quote:
Rolling Stone -- According to writer Paul Solotaroff, who was sitting with Trump watching a newscast when a video clip zoomed in on Fiorina. Trump said:
"Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?" Trump said to
Solotaroff. "Can you imagine that, the face of our next president."
Trump added, "I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not s'posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?"
NOW WORK AND VOTE FOR A DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE WHO CAN WIN!
Wednesday, September 09, 2015
Hillary's email to me and MY email back
If you want to read Hillary's email she sent to me
and many like me who are strong Democrats and a supporter of her scroll
below my response.
I support you, Hillary, but there is SO much at stake. The very life of our country and the human rights of all human beings insist that a Democrat and ONLY a Democrat occupy the most powerful and sometimes threatening-to-millions office of the presidency.
We have committed many egregious sins not the least of them since WWII spewing lies taking a people to war, bombing countries it was not out business to bomb, killing hundreds of thousands, making millions refugees, plundering and strafe bombing the innocent in nations plunging the world into the darkness we see it in today.
There can be NO alternative to Democrats HOLDING the presidency and if possible retaking the Senate. There is too much at stake. I only hope the American people choose rationality, logic and science over ignorance, stupidity and hate.
I still support you with the hope that time will erase this controversy from the public's concern. I care ONLY about keeping Democrats in office. As you present a more authentic, honest and candid view of yourself I will hope that works as I WANT to vote for you and certainly will if I see you can electorally win the day!
I support you, Hillary, but there is SO much at stake. The very life of our country and the human rights of all human beings insist that a Democrat and ONLY a Democrat occupy the most powerful and sometimes threatening-to-millions office of the presidency.
We have committed many egregious sins not the least of them since WWII spewing lies taking a people to war, bombing countries it was not out business to bomb, killing hundreds of thousands, making millions refugees, plundering and strafe bombing the innocent in nations plunging the world into the darkness we see it in today.
There can be NO alternative to Democrats HOLDING the presidency and if possible retaking the Senate. There is too much at stake. I only hope the American people choose rationality, logic and science over ignorance, stupidity and hate.
I still support you with the hope that time will erase this controversy from the public's concern. I care ONLY about keeping Democrats in office. As you present a more authentic, honest and candid view of yourself I will hope that works as I WANT to vote for you and certainly will if I see you can electorally win the day!
From: Hillary Clinton <info@hillaryclinton.com>
To: natalierosen <natalierosen@aol.com>
Sent: Tue, Sep 8, 2015 11:09 pm
Subject: My email
Natalie --
I wanted you to hear this directly from me:
Yes, I should have used two email addresses, one for personal matters and one for my work at the State Department. Not doing so was a mistake. I'm sorry about it, and I take full responsibility.
It's important for you to know a few key facts. My use of a personal email account was aboveboard and allowed under the State Department's rules. Everyone I communicated with in government was aware of it. And nothing I ever sent or received was marked classified at the time.
As this process proceeds, I want to be as transparent as possible. That's why I've provided all of my work emails to the government to be released to the public, and why I'll be testifying in public in front of the Benghazi Committee later next month.
I know this is a complex story. I could have -- and should have -- done a better job answering questions earlier. I'm grateful for your support, and I'm not taking anything for granted.
I understand that you may have more questions, and I am going to work to keep answering them. If you want to read more, including my emails themselves, please go here:
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/emails/
Thank you,
Hillary
I wanted you to hear this directly from me:
Yes, I should have used two email addresses, one for personal matters and one for my work at the State Department. Not doing so was a mistake. I'm sorry about it, and I take full responsibility.
It's important for you to know a few key facts. My use of a personal email account was aboveboard and allowed under the State Department's rules. Everyone I communicated with in government was aware of it. And nothing I ever sent or received was marked classified at the time.
As this process proceeds, I want to be as transparent as possible. That's why I've provided all of my work emails to the government to be released to the public, and why I'll be testifying in public in front of the Benghazi Committee later next month.
I know this is a complex story. I could have -- and should have -- done a better job answering questions earlier. I'm grateful for your support, and I'm not taking anything for granted.
I understand that you may have more questions, and I am going to work to keep answering them. If you want to read more, including my emails themselves, please go here:
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/emails/
Thank you,
Hillary
Tuesday, September 08, 2015
From My Mouth into God's Ears
42 Democrats Back Iran Deal. Do you realize how great this Deal linked here
and below with Iran is? Do you realize that this among so many other
things the Obama administration has done is one of the momentous things
that the administration has completed in the history of this nation and
did so overcoming great odds?
This administration with Republicans dedicated to the eradication of every single effort the Obama administration wanted passed has overcome so many many times odds that were Herculean. Instead of the minority Democratic Party being powerless in the face of Republican majorities in both houses they used their minority status to jet propel success in so many venues of the Obama presidency.
My prediction which I hope I live to see is that this administration historically will go down as one of the most brilliant and strategically savvy administrations historically ever.
In essence this Deal could and should negate Iran's having a nuclear weapon in perpetuity that means forever! The bestial Republican opposition has been defeated yet again. Oh, by the way the US still has nuclear weapons galore to destroy the earth 10 times over and has been the only nation on the planet to have used them probably to instill fear for the then WWII Soviet perceived "menace." Iran sees the illegal US war making efforts through lies used time and again yet still they wanted the deal with an aggressive and often war like "exceptional" nation. And oh yes, by the way Israel, even though it will never admit it, has many nuclear weapons but hey we won't talk about that.
Netanyahu certainly has worked his magic on me, a once unequivocally ardent supporter of the Jewish state. Israel lost a great deal of my support when it sent Netanyahu to speak in front of Republicans ensuring Jews like I give our unqualified support of the Jewish state another look.
Republicans deserve with their government shutting down proclivities and other hateful policy to lose elections in perpetuity. That means forever and with Trump's anti Hispanic rhetoric he should ensure just that.
The Republican Party is a doomed party of old, religionist, anti-science, white, racist, mean men and they know it because the demographics say it. I predict an ushering in of A NEW ERA (that is what the next Democratic administration should call itself) where science rules, logic and rational thought prevail and the forces of darkness and hate are diminished. As the saying goes: From my mouth into God's ears!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/here-are-the-democrats-still-holding-out-on-the-iran-deal_55eee113e4b03784e2765f8c
This administration with Republicans dedicated to the eradication of every single effort the Obama administration wanted passed has overcome so many many times odds that were Herculean. Instead of the minority Democratic Party being powerless in the face of Republican majorities in both houses they used their minority status to jet propel success in so many venues of the Obama presidency.
My prediction which I hope I live to see is that this administration historically will go down as one of the most brilliant and strategically savvy administrations historically ever.
In essence this Deal could and should negate Iran's having a nuclear weapon in perpetuity that means forever! The bestial Republican opposition has been defeated yet again. Oh, by the way the US still has nuclear weapons galore to destroy the earth 10 times over and has been the only nation on the planet to have used them probably to instill fear for the then WWII Soviet perceived "menace." Iran sees the illegal US war making efforts through lies used time and again yet still they wanted the deal with an aggressive and often war like "exceptional" nation. And oh yes, by the way Israel, even though it will never admit it, has many nuclear weapons but hey we won't talk about that.
Netanyahu certainly has worked his magic on me, a once unequivocally ardent supporter of the Jewish state. Israel lost a great deal of my support when it sent Netanyahu to speak in front of Republicans ensuring Jews like I give our unqualified support of the Jewish state another look.
Republicans deserve with their government shutting down proclivities and other hateful policy to lose elections in perpetuity. That means forever and with Trump's anti Hispanic rhetoric he should ensure just that.
The Republican Party is a doomed party of old, religionist, anti-science, white, racist, mean men and they know it because the demographics say it. I predict an ushering in of A NEW ERA (that is what the next Democratic administration should call itself) where science rules, logic and rational thought prevail and the forces of darkness and hate are diminished. As the saying goes: From my mouth into God's ears!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/here-are-the-democrats-still-holding-out-on-the-iran-deal_55eee113e4b03784e2765f8c
Refugee crisis--IMPORTANT you should read
I send this article here or below because it is important. I do not agree with all of it but I do agree with most of it that the reason behind the millions of refugees heading for western Europe is a direct result of miserable and noxious western and NATO policy in the Middle East over decades destabilizing an entire already unstable swath of the globe. The Iraq War and many other present-day Middle East interventions are the most recent horrific consequence.
As I have so often said that you reap what you sow and because electorates remove themselves from the decision making processes of their governments and remain ignorant swallowing propaganda of the corporate media millions suffer and in the end it is deposited on our doorstep.
"Be kind to the stranger because you were once strangers in a strange land." Leviticus 19:34.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Refugee-Crisis-and-the-by-Kieran-Kelly-Bombing_Empire_Genocide_Genocide-150907-524.html
WORK FOR PEACE THROUGH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AS THE ONLY PARTY THAT CAN CREATE HUMANE POLICY CHANGE
As I have so often said that you reap what you sow and because electorates remove themselves from the decision making processes of their governments and remain ignorant swallowing propaganda of the corporate media millions suffer and in the end it is deposited on our doorstep.
"Be kind to the stranger because you were once strangers in a strange land." Leviticus 19:34.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Refugee-Crisis-and-the-by-Kieran-Kelly-Bombing_Empire_Genocide_Genocide-150907-524.html
WORK FOR PEACE THROUGH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AS THE ONLY PARTY THAT CAN CREATE HUMANE POLICY CHANGE
Monday, September 07, 2015
Bill Moyers: The Secret Government
Yet another tidbit of history here or below that shows your government running rough shod over nations that cannot fight against it. It is done in your name and mine and against you if you dare to challenge it. Howard Zinn's mantra to me: In war always ask who benefits and why. Millions of lives are at stake and millions more have already been lost. It is the moral obligation of our time to do so before our time runs out.
This Youtube was shown in 1987. It applies two fold to our time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28K2CO-khdY
If you think Donald Trump is the answer to our corrupted government think again. He will, if god forbid he wins, be the same as usual except on steroids!
EMPIRE
An
Interesting take on Empire to which many in this nation turn a blind
eye. In the Middle East we have reaped what we have sown! Enough is
enough. A nation has the right to defend itself but it dos not have the
right to the evisceration of the earth!
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14663
YET ANOTHER REASON TO ELECT DEMOCRATS AS IF WE NEEDED ANY MORE!
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14663
YET ANOTHER REASON TO ELECT DEMOCRATS AS IF WE NEEDED ANY MORE!
Thursday, September 03, 2015
The Final Answer
A town clerk in Kentucky is challenging, yet again, our political system's division of powers and the obligation of a nation to follow the edicts of its highest court in the land. Since 1803 in Marbury v. Madison, the power of the Supreme Court to make decisions relating to federal law was affirmed. The nation's highest Court has been working from this precedent ever since. The Court has the power to oversee and rule on Constitutional often extremely contentious issues and the Court's decision is final until another court overturns it.
The Supreme Court has been challenged throughout the nation’s history from the 1857 Dred Scott decision -- perhaps the worst decision issued by the Taney Court— affirming slavery to the 1954 decision of Brown v. the Board of Education calling dejure school segregation separate, unequal and therefore illegal. Its decision stands and the people must obey it.
In many other divisive national issues the Court has been the final arbitrator and this is no less true for gay marriage. It is now settled law and it will be so for this know nothing Kentucky town clerk who is denying marriage licenses to couples heterosexual and homosexuals alike claiming religious freedom. Ultimately, marriage licenses WILL be issued to both. Public entities are paid for by the people –ALL the people -- and the people have a right to use them. The Hobby Lobby decision establishing a religious freedom right (to which I disagree) applied to a private business, women’s health and insurance not to a public entity and marriage licenses.
It has been pointed out this brazen, stupid, challenge to the Court is done so by a hypocrite. This woman has been divorced three times and married four times, gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband, they were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second husband if you can follow the convolution of that. She now, has the nerve to deny others their right to happiness but flouts the concept of marriage herself while having children out of wedlock to boot. Further, Jesus, allegedly her Lord and Savior, had nothing to say about homosexuality but had everything to say about divorce. He was against it.
The ACLU is suing her and they will win because the Supreme Court, no matter if one agrees or disagrees, has, in law, the final answer.
One can see how low the Democratic opposition can go. This is yet another reason to keep the presidency in Democratic hands as well as the Senate. The president has to power to shape the court and this aging court will see the president appoint at least two if not three Supreme Court Justices and the Senate affirm his choice.
The Supreme Court has been challenged throughout the nation’s history from the 1857 Dred Scott decision -- perhaps the worst decision issued by the Taney Court— affirming slavery to the 1954 decision of Brown v. the Board of Education calling dejure school segregation separate, unequal and therefore illegal. Its decision stands and the people must obey it.
In many other divisive national issues the Court has been the final arbitrator and this is no less true for gay marriage. It is now settled law and it will be so for this know nothing Kentucky town clerk who is denying marriage licenses to couples heterosexual and homosexuals alike claiming religious freedom. Ultimately, marriage licenses WILL be issued to both. Public entities are paid for by the people –ALL the people -- and the people have a right to use them. The Hobby Lobby decision establishing a religious freedom right (to which I disagree) applied to a private business, women’s health and insurance not to a public entity and marriage licenses.
It has been pointed out this brazen, stupid, challenge to the Court is done so by a hypocrite. This woman has been divorced three times and married four times, gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband, they were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second husband if you can follow the convolution of that. She now, has the nerve to deny others their right to happiness but flouts the concept of marriage herself while having children out of wedlock to boot. Further, Jesus, allegedly her Lord and Savior, had nothing to say about homosexuality but had everything to say about divorce. He was against it.
The ACLU is suing her and they will win because the Supreme Court, no matter if one agrees or disagrees, has, in law, the final answer.
One can see how low the Democratic opposition can go. This is yet another reason to keep the presidency in Democratic hands as well as the Senate. The president has to power to shape the court and this aging court will see the president appoint at least two if not three Supreme Court Justices and the Senate affirm his choice.
An Explanation of the Deal
Here is a good article in "Forbes" no less and was written in 2013 in favor of the Deal. I think it still applies: The Iranian Nuclear Deal Is A Good One even this Forbes writer James Conca thought so too and gives very specific reasons why. You should read it and know about this important Deal that the Republicans want to subvert the president from obtaining -- big surprise. So what else is new? NOW GO OUT AND WORK FOR DEMOCRATS TO RETAIN THE PRESIDENCY. TAKING THE CONGRESS BACK SURELY WOULD HELP!
"The Iranian Nuclear Deal is a Good One "![]()
By James Conca -- "Forbes"
Key nuclear facilities in Iran, most of which are impacted by their latest deal with the six superpowers. After the International Institute of Strategic Studies ( http://www.iiss.org/)
This Thanksgiving had an extra reason to be thankful – the new deal between Iran and six superpowers. Last week, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China (the P5+1 group) reached an interim deal with Iran to stop their nuclear weapons program. Four key provisions were obtained in this deal:
1) no enrichment of U above 5% U-235, and all highly-enriched materials, some as high as 20% U-235, must be blended down to less than 5% or altered to a form not usable for weapons.
2) no additional centrifuges are to be installed or produced, and three-fourths of the centrifuges at Fordow and half of the centrifuges at Natanz will be inoperable,
3) stop all work on the heavy-water reactor at Arak, provide design details on the reactor (which could be used to produce Pu for the other types of atomic weapons) and do not develop the reprocessing facilities needed to separate Pu from used fuel,
4) full access by IAEA inspectors to all nuclear facilities, including daily visitation to Natanz and Fordow, and continuous camera surveillance of key sites.
Despite all the rhetoric of horror and claims that this deal is a mistake, this deal is just what we all hoped for as the first step to resolving the Iranian nuclear weapons issue, the structure of which we’ve been proposing for years. It is the first step to bringing Iran into the world’s nuclear community as a partner instead of an adversary, making Iran a compliant signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. While this may make some of its neighbors nervous, there is no real alternative that does not involve lots of destruction and death.
Old orders are falling in the Middle East. The region is in upheaval, Shia and Sunni are as far apart as ever, and Iran’s theocracy, embodied by their new President Hassan Rouhani, has decided that the cost/benefit of maintaining an expensive, useless nuclear program that is still a long way from producing a reliable weapon, while being starved by a barrage of sanctions, on the heels of a global economic meltdown, has now gone into the too-much-cost-and-not-enough-benefit category.
Thus, there is now an opening to change the game.
This deal is not about trust, as the last point above about access addresses. No one trusts governments, even supposedly good ones. There must be unfettered access to verify that the nuclear facilities are not being used to produce weapons and that is what this deal allows, and it will be easy to determine when (and if) Iran breaks this deal ( The Economist; The Guardian; Fox News).
But the facilities can, and will, be used to support nuclear power, as was the original purpose of Iran’s nuclear program when the United States set it up under the Shah in the 1960s, and that is the actual end point of this whole deal. Not the end of Iran’s nuclear program or the destruction of their facilities, their country or their people.
I’m not sure what the naysayers of this deal think the sanctions were suppose to do. The purpose of sanctions is to get a specific party to the negotiating table. Sanctions are not meant to destroy a nation, cause widespread poverty of its people and destruction of their economy, or topple governments. The fear of these happening, not the reality of them, is what gets a government to the table.
As much as some leaders in Israel and Saudi Arabia want to use the U.S. to decapitate their nemesis, this is not the point of these talks. And what happens here goes far beyond just Iran. We need nuclear energy to spread around the world without proliferating weapons. How we handle Iran will determine the future of nuclear energy in many countries outside of the developed world, and we better get it right. There will always be pressures to develop weapons and we need strategies and experience in diverting these programs away from weapons.
Besides, the art of diplomacy is the art of finding a win-win for all parties. It’s significant that the Obama Administration knows how to use diplomacy the way only the U.S. can. It is in both our and the world’s best interest, to find a solution that allows Iran nuclear energy without weapons.
All other rhetoric is posturing. Isolation is the worst strategy for bringing a country into the civil world’s fold. Just look at North Korea. Rouhani has to move forward in a way that does not shame Iran. The celebration in Iran over this deal is a strong indication of the win-win nature of this deal, not the ridiculous charge of the opposition that the U.S. was taken for a ride. Iran wants to, and according to international law can, have a nuclear energy program, including enrichment and production, as long as it falls under the appropriate international controls and is not producing weapons.
It is no wonder that Iran wants this deal as badly as it seems. It is a way out of a very tricky and dangerous situation. Countries having the bomb never seem to get attacked, but those that give up their nuclear programs completely tend to end badly. Just ask Iraq and Libya. To avoid this fate, Iran has to back away from nuclear weapons while retaining a nuclear energy program.
The U.S. understands that this deal is a good step toward that end. A final deal will include a structure that precludes the ability to make a weapon, such as abandoning or altering the reactor at Arak, and closing the Fordow enrichment facility because it is basically immune from attack being under a mountain. But the whole deal doesn’t have to be done all at once.
All things considered, this deal with Iran is a good one for the world.
Technical Endnotes – Just a few technical clarifications since science rarely enters media coverage of nuclear issues, yet is extremely important. The original level of U-235 in the uranium ore, that is mined like any other ore, is 0.7% U-235. 5% U-235 is the level of enrichment for nuclear fuel for power reactors. Although some reactor designs can use anything from natural uranium to highly-enriched material, most power reactor fuel is between 3% and 5% enriched as is used in Iran’s Bushehr reactor, a reactor no one cares much about for this reason. You can’t make a bomb out of these materials. This is the basis for the first key provision of the deal.
And while discussions focus on 20% U-235 as sufficiently enriched to make an atomic weapon, that is only theoretically correct. No one has made a weapon from such lowly-enriched materials and no one ever will.
Enrichment needs to be >90% to make a reliable weapon. Reliability in this case is not like having a reliable flashlight. Reliable in this case means the atomic weapon will work when you want it to. It’s why there’s so much testing associated with a weapons program. If you’re going to make the fatal decision to field a nuke, it better work, and everyone knows it has to be over 90% U-235 to be really useful.
Finally, an atomic weapon is fission-based such as U-235 and Pu-239 whose nuclei split to change a bit of matter into a huge amount of energy. These are what was dropped during WWII, what Iran was working towards with U, and what North Korea has developed with Pu. In contrast, a nuclear weapon is fusion-based such as a hydrogen bomb, whose nuclei fuse to change a bit of matter into even more energy.
"The Iranian Nuclear Deal is a Good One "
By James Conca -- "Forbes"
Key nuclear facilities in Iran, most of which are impacted by their latest deal with the six superpowers. After the International Institute of Strategic Studies ( http://www.iiss.org/)
This Thanksgiving had an extra reason to be thankful – the new deal between Iran and six superpowers. Last week, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China (the P5+1 group) reached an interim deal with Iran to stop their nuclear weapons program. Four key provisions were obtained in this deal:
1) no enrichment of U above 5% U-235, and all highly-enriched materials, some as high as 20% U-235, must be blended down to less than 5% or altered to a form not usable for weapons.
2) no additional centrifuges are to be installed or produced, and three-fourths of the centrifuges at Fordow and half of the centrifuges at Natanz will be inoperable,
3) stop all work on the heavy-water reactor at Arak, provide design details on the reactor (which could be used to produce Pu for the other types of atomic weapons) and do not develop the reprocessing facilities needed to separate Pu from used fuel,
4) full access by IAEA inspectors to all nuclear facilities, including daily visitation to Natanz and Fordow, and continuous camera surveillance of key sites.
Despite all the rhetoric of horror and claims that this deal is a mistake, this deal is just what we all hoped for as the first step to resolving the Iranian nuclear weapons issue, the structure of which we’ve been proposing for years. It is the first step to bringing Iran into the world’s nuclear community as a partner instead of an adversary, making Iran a compliant signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. While this may make some of its neighbors nervous, there is no real alternative that does not involve lots of destruction and death.
Old orders are falling in the Middle East. The region is in upheaval, Shia and Sunni are as far apart as ever, and Iran’s theocracy, embodied by their new President Hassan Rouhani, has decided that the cost/benefit of maintaining an expensive, useless nuclear program that is still a long way from producing a reliable weapon, while being starved by a barrage of sanctions, on the heels of a global economic meltdown, has now gone into the too-much-cost-and-not-enough-benefit category.
Thus, there is now an opening to change the game.
This deal is not about trust, as the last point above about access addresses. No one trusts governments, even supposedly good ones. There must be unfettered access to verify that the nuclear facilities are not being used to produce weapons and that is what this deal allows, and it will be easy to determine when (and if) Iran breaks this deal ( The Economist; The Guardian; Fox News).
But the facilities can, and will, be used to support nuclear power, as was the original purpose of Iran’s nuclear program when the United States set it up under the Shah in the 1960s, and that is the actual end point of this whole deal. Not the end of Iran’s nuclear program or the destruction of their facilities, their country or their people.
I’m not sure what the naysayers of this deal think the sanctions were suppose to do. The purpose of sanctions is to get a specific party to the negotiating table. Sanctions are not meant to destroy a nation, cause widespread poverty of its people and destruction of their economy, or topple governments. The fear of these happening, not the reality of them, is what gets a government to the table.
As much as some leaders in Israel and Saudi Arabia want to use the U.S. to decapitate their nemesis, this is not the point of these talks. And what happens here goes far beyond just Iran. We need nuclear energy to spread around the world without proliferating weapons. How we handle Iran will determine the future of nuclear energy in many countries outside of the developed world, and we better get it right. There will always be pressures to develop weapons and we need strategies and experience in diverting these programs away from weapons.
Besides, the art of diplomacy is the art of finding a win-win for all parties. It’s significant that the Obama Administration knows how to use diplomacy the way only the U.S. can. It is in both our and the world’s best interest, to find a solution that allows Iran nuclear energy without weapons.
All other rhetoric is posturing. Isolation is the worst strategy for bringing a country into the civil world’s fold. Just look at North Korea. Rouhani has to move forward in a way that does not shame Iran. The celebration in Iran over this deal is a strong indication of the win-win nature of this deal, not the ridiculous charge of the opposition that the U.S. was taken for a ride. Iran wants to, and according to international law can, have a nuclear energy program, including enrichment and production, as long as it falls under the appropriate international controls and is not producing weapons.
It is no wonder that Iran wants this deal as badly as it seems. It is a way out of a very tricky and dangerous situation. Countries having the bomb never seem to get attacked, but those that give up their nuclear programs completely tend to end badly. Just ask Iraq and Libya. To avoid this fate, Iran has to back away from nuclear weapons while retaining a nuclear energy program.
The U.S. understands that this deal is a good step toward that end. A final deal will include a structure that precludes the ability to make a weapon, such as abandoning or altering the reactor at Arak, and closing the Fordow enrichment facility because it is basically immune from attack being under a mountain. But the whole deal doesn’t have to be done all at once.
All things considered, this deal with Iran is a good one for the world.
Technical Endnotes – Just a few technical clarifications since science rarely enters media coverage of nuclear issues, yet is extremely important. The original level of U-235 in the uranium ore, that is mined like any other ore, is 0.7% U-235. 5% U-235 is the level of enrichment for nuclear fuel for power reactors. Although some reactor designs can use anything from natural uranium to highly-enriched material, most power reactor fuel is between 3% and 5% enriched as is used in Iran’s Bushehr reactor, a reactor no one cares much about for this reason. You can’t make a bomb out of these materials. This is the basis for the first key provision of the deal.
And while discussions focus on 20% U-235 as sufficiently enriched to make an atomic weapon, that is only theoretically correct. No one has made a weapon from such lowly-enriched materials and no one ever will.
Enrichment needs to be >90% to make a reliable weapon. Reliability in this case is not like having a reliable flashlight. Reliable in this case means the atomic weapon will work when you want it to. It’s why there’s so much testing associated with a weapons program. If you’re going to make the fatal decision to field a nuke, it better work, and everyone knows it has to be over 90% U-235 to be really useful.
Finally, an atomic weapon is fission-based such as U-235 and Pu-239 whose nuclei split to change a bit of matter into a huge amount of energy. These are what was dropped during WWII, what Iran was working towards with U, and what North Korea has developed with Pu. In contrast, a nuclear weapon is fusion-based such as a hydrogen bomb, whose nuclei fuse to change a bit of matter into even more energy.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Supreme Court Rules Against Kentucky Clerk in Gay Marriage Case
by Pete Williams
The U.S. Supreme Court late Monday rejected an appeal from a county clerk in Kentucky who said she could not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because of her religious objections.
Kim Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky, "holds an undisputed sincerely held religious belief that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, only," her lawyers said in asking the court to block a lower court order directing her to issue the licenses.
But the Supreme Court denied her request without explanation in a brief one-line order. No dissents were noted, and the court acted without seeking a response from the state.
It was the first legal skirmish to reach the Supreme Court since it declared on June 26th that the Constitution guarantees gay couples the right to get married.
Immediately after that ruling, Kentucky's governor, Steve Beshear, ordered all the state's county clerks to comply with the decision and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Saying she did not want to discriminate, Davis stopped issuing all marriage licenses — to both same-sex and opposite sex couples — in the days after the landmark decision. Two gay couples and two straight couples sued her, arguing that her duties as an elected official required her to act, despite her personal religious beliefs.
Rowan County Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis speaks to a gathering of supporters during a Religious Freedoms Rally on the steps of the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort Ky., Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015. Timothy D. Easley / AP
A federal judge ordered her to issue the licenses, and last week the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
"It cannot be defensibly argued that the holder of the Rowan County Clerk's office, apart from who personally occupies that office, may decline to act in conformity with the United States Constitution as interpreted by a dispositive holding of the United States Supreme Court," the appeals court said.
Davis' emergency request was directed to Justice Elena Kagan, who referred it to the full court for action.
"She's going to have to think and pray about her decision overnight. She certainly understands the consequences either way," Mat Staver, founder of the law firm representing Davis, told the Associated Press Monday, hours before a court-ordered delay in the case expired. "She'll report to work tomorrow, and face whatever she has to face."
p.s. Thousands more emails of HRC have been released and NONE, I repeat NONE were sent to her marked "classified!"
YET MORE REASONS TO GET OUT AND GET THE NATION TO VOTE DEMOCRATIC. WE WOULD HAVE NO PRO LGBT CASES DECIDED IN A CIVIL LIBERTARIAN FASHION IF IT WERE NOT FOR DEMOCRATS! A HUMANE NATION MEANS DEMOCRATS MUST HOLD POWER.
The U.S. Supreme Court late Monday rejected an appeal from a county clerk in Kentucky who said she could not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because of her religious objections.
Kim Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky, "holds an undisputed sincerely held religious belief that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, only," her lawyers said in asking the court to block a lower court order directing her to issue the licenses.
But the Supreme Court denied her request without explanation in a brief one-line order. No dissents were noted, and the court acted without seeking a response from the state.
It was the first legal skirmish to reach the Supreme Court since it declared on June 26th that the Constitution guarantees gay couples the right to get married.
Immediately after that ruling, Kentucky's governor, Steve Beshear, ordered all the state's county clerks to comply with the decision and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Saying she did not want to discriminate, Davis stopped issuing all marriage licenses — to both same-sex and opposite sex couples — in the days after the landmark decision. Two gay couples and two straight couples sued her, arguing that her duties as an elected official required her to act, despite her personal religious beliefs.
Rowan County Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis speaks to a gathering of supporters during a Religious Freedoms Rally on the steps of the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort Ky., Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015. Timothy D. Easley / AP
A federal judge ordered her to issue the licenses, and last week the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
"It cannot be defensibly argued that the holder of the Rowan County Clerk's office, apart from who personally occupies that office, may decline to act in conformity with the United States Constitution as interpreted by a dispositive holding of the United States Supreme Court," the appeals court said.
Davis' emergency request was directed to Justice Elena Kagan, who referred it to the full court for action.
"She's going to have to think and pray about her decision overnight. She certainly understands the consequences either way," Mat Staver, founder of the law firm representing Davis, told the Associated Press Monday, hours before a court-ordered delay in the case expired. "She'll report to work tomorrow, and face whatever she has to face."
p.s. Thousands more emails of HRC have been released and NONE, I repeat NONE were sent to her marked "classified!"
YET MORE REASONS TO GET OUT AND GET THE NATION TO VOTE DEMOCRATIC. WE WOULD HAVE NO PRO LGBT CASES DECIDED IN A CIVIL LIBERTARIAN FASHION IF IT WERE NOT FOR DEMOCRATS! A HUMANE NATION MEANS DEMOCRATS MUST HOLD POWER.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Parallel Universe
Like most I watched
the murder on TV of the young journalists of WDBJ7, Alison Parker and
Adam Ward, as they were gunned down by a former employee of the station
in the middle of filming a benign Chamber of Commerce interview. I was, like most everyone else, incredulous that one human being could commit such a heinous act to two innocents and ones who were at one time his co-workers. The
fact that Bryce Williams (the shooter) also seriously wounded a third
person who was the person being interviewed should not be lost.
We can strum and
drang all we like as we do after so many other bestial killings
testament to man’s inhumanity to man to which our nation has borne
witness or we can go deeper and try to figure out why our nation is
stuck on channel haywire or is it?
The science of theoretical physics entertains the notion of living in a parallel universe.
The dual natures within the universe of our nation has been evident to me for quite some time. I
grew up in the “Father Knows Best” and “Leave it to Beaver” nation,
gained maturity in “The Other America” and “The Autobiography of Malcom X
one. I further aged in “The
Arrogance of Power” and “Why We Are in Vietnam” one and even further
encountering Rachel Maddow’s book “Drift—The Unmooring of American
Military Power” an indictment of the inaction of the electorate and the
eventual thrust into permanent war fought technologically by just those
few who volunteer. Essentially the electorate has given war power over to few and the many who will never fight it acquiesce to its violence.
There are two national universes in my sight. One
kindly occupied by those who help elderly ladies across the street; the
kind and benevolent one whose tears flow easily at tragedy and whose
first impulse is to help. The one whose president John F. Kennedy said so eloquently “to whom much is given much is required.”
I come, though, to
the never ending violence in our land, violence in our films, violence
on our televisions, and violence in the plethora of war we see from the
comfort of our living rooms but most never have to fight. We
see the violence of a malevolent NRA which even in the face of the
murder of 26 CHILDREN fights hard for its almighty buck against even federal background checks as a prerequisite to owning a gun to stop at least some of the gun mayhem in our land of 310 million guns.
Finally, I see a Donald Trump whose mouth invites the forces of hate to align with him. He
insults continuously the most powerless among us and our news media
finds his spewing so much fun they cover him nearly 24/7 while the
violence in our land increases still. American
Nationalists of the most extreme right wing stripe including some hate
notables as former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and others gladly give
him their support Trump says he does not want but I have no doubt he
will take their vote. It shows one just who loves Donald Trump and finds a home in the Republican Party.
Something violent is wrong in our nation but not everyone is at fault. Let
us harness what is kind, right and good in our nation, help those who
cannot help themselves and defeat the powerful forces of violence and
hate that has occupied so much of our history while we still have a
remnant of democracy left. We should do it before the hour is too late.
"Enough Is Enough" -- NYT by Charles Blow
When Donald Trump’s security escorted the Univision anchor Jorge Ramos out of a news conference on Tuesday, I decided that I was officially done.
Maybe I should have been long before that.
Maybe I should have been done the one and only time I met Trump and his first words to me were a soliloquy about how black people loved him, and he was the most popular white man among black people.
Maybe I should have been done when Trump demanded to see the president's birth certificate.
Maybe I should have been done any number of times over the years when Trump made any number of racist, sexist comments.
Earlier this month, Politico rounded up 199 of his greatest — and vilest — hits. Here are just a few from the magazine:
9. “I have black guys counting my money. … I hate it. The only guys I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes all day.” (USA Today, May 20, 1991)
23. “Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, ‘Can you believe what I am getting?’ ” (“Think Big: Make it Happen in Business and Life,” 2008)
32. “… she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” (ABC’s “The View,” March 6, 2006)
35. “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” (Twitter, April 16, 2015)
117. “Rosie’s a person that’s very lucky to have her girlfriend. And she better be careful or I’ll send one of my friends over to pick up her girlfriend. Why would she stay with Rosie if she had another choice?” (“Entertainment Tonight,” Dec. 21, 2006)
121. Arianna Huffington is “a dog.” (Twitter, April 6, 2015)
Need I go on? (Thanks, Politico!)
Maybe I should have been done when Trump announced his candidacy this year with an attack on Mexican immigrants, saying:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best — they’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems … drugs … crime … rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
The Ramos episode wasn’t worse than these; it was just the last straw. A member of the media who dared to raise a truly substantive issue, even out of turn, was dismissed and removed. And yet the band played on. The live coverage continued. In that moment, I was disgusted at Trump’s contempt and the press’s complicity in the shallow farce that is his candidacy. Trump is addicted to press, but the press is also addicted to him, and the entire spectacle is wide and shallow.
(Ramos was allowed back in and permitted to ask his question. I had to see this later, because when he was ejected, I stopped watching.)
Yes, the Republican Party created this Frankenstein of hatred, hubris, narcissism and nativism, but the media is giving it life.
The never-ending, exhaustive, even breathless coverage of every outrage that issues forth from this man’s mouth is not news. Every offense and attack is not news.
Every morning that Trump rolls out of bed and calls in to a news show is not news.
Covering a political phenomenon as news is one thing. See the coverage of Bernie Sanders. Creating a political phenomenon and calling it news is quite another.
Trump's prominence is the direct result of the American media's obsession with the egotistical and bizarre personalities of our society.
If the "press" had a backbone, I would have expected all (or most) of them to have left the room along with Mr. Ramos in solidarity.
I reasoned in a 2010 column that Sarah Palin was no longer an elected official and wasn’t seeking elected office, and was therefore not worthy of constant attacks. But more important, the attacks were elevating her profile, not diminishing it. As I wrote:
“This is it. This is the last time I’m going to write the name Sarah Palin until she does something truly newsworthy, like declare herself a candidate for the presidency. Until then, I will no longer take part in the left’s obsessive-compulsive fascination with her, which is both unhealthy and counterproductive.”
I kept that promise. The only other time she appeared by name in one of my columns was in a passing reference to her speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2013. This column is only the second reference.
The same is true of Trump. The constant harping on him only helps him. He is different from Palin in 2010, however. He is not only running for office, he’s leading in the polls among Republican candidates. He can’t be ignored. But coverage is not the same as drooling over the daily shenanigans of a demagogue.
I will cover Trump as he addresses issues with specific policy prescriptions and details, like answers to the question Ramos asked.
Until then, this man is not worthy of the attention he’s garnering. We in the media have to own our part in this. We can’t say he’s not serious and then cover him in a way that actually demonstrates that we are not serious.
Is he an easy target for righteous criticism? Of course he is. But is he aware that criticism from the mainstream media is invaluable among certain segments of the political right? Of course he is. Is he also aware that he’s getting more free publicity for being outrageous than he would ever be willing to buy? Of course he is.
The media is being trolled on a massive scale and we look naïve and silly to have fallen for it, even if he draws readers and viewers. When people refer to the press as the fourth estate, it shouldn’t be confused with a Trump property.
Allow me to share one more of Trump’s quotes from Politico:
89. “My brand became more famous as I became more famous, and more opportunities presented themselves.” (Amazon.com, 2007)
Maybe I should have been long before that.
Maybe I should have been done the one and only time I met Trump and his first words to me were a soliloquy about how black people loved him, and he was the most popular white man among black people.
Maybe I should have been done when Trump demanded to see the president's birth certificate.
Maybe I should have been done any number of times over the years when Trump made any number of racist, sexist comments.
Earlier this month, Politico rounded up 199 of his greatest — and vilest — hits. Here are just a few from the magazine:
9. “I have black guys counting my money. … I hate it. The only guys I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes all day.” (USA Today, May 20, 1991)
23. “Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, ‘Can you believe what I am getting?’ ” (“Think Big: Make it Happen in Business and Life,” 2008)
32. “… she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” (ABC’s “The View,” March 6, 2006)
35. “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” (Twitter, April 16, 2015)
117. “Rosie’s a person that’s very lucky to have her girlfriend. And she better be careful or I’ll send one of my friends over to pick up her girlfriend. Why would she stay with Rosie if she had another choice?” (“Entertainment Tonight,” Dec. 21, 2006)
121. Arianna Huffington is “a dog.” (Twitter, April 6, 2015)
Need I go on? (Thanks, Politico!)
Maybe I should have been done when Trump announced his candidacy this year with an attack on Mexican immigrants, saying:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best — they’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems … drugs … crime … rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
The Ramos episode wasn’t worse than these; it was just the last straw. A member of the media who dared to raise a truly substantive issue, even out of turn, was dismissed and removed. And yet the band played on. The live coverage continued. In that moment, I was disgusted at Trump’s contempt and the press’s complicity in the shallow farce that is his candidacy. Trump is addicted to press, but the press is also addicted to him, and the entire spectacle is wide and shallow.
(Ramos was allowed back in and permitted to ask his question. I had to see this later, because when he was ejected, I stopped watching.)
Yes, the Republican Party created this Frankenstein of hatred, hubris, narcissism and nativism, but the media is giving it life.
The never-ending, exhaustive, even breathless coverage of every outrage that issues forth from this man’s mouth is not news. Every offense and attack is not news.
Every morning that Trump rolls out of bed and calls in to a news show is not news.
Covering a political phenomenon as news is one thing. See the coverage of Bernie Sanders. Creating a political phenomenon and calling it news is quite another.
Trump's prominence is the direct result of the American media's obsession with the egotistical and bizarre personalities of our society.
If the "press" had a backbone, I would have expected all (or most) of them to have left the room along with Mr. Ramos in solidarity.
I reasoned in a 2010 column that Sarah Palin was no longer an elected official and wasn’t seeking elected office, and was therefore not worthy of constant attacks. But more important, the attacks were elevating her profile, not diminishing it. As I wrote:
“This is it. This is the last time I’m going to write the name Sarah Palin until she does something truly newsworthy, like declare herself a candidate for the presidency. Until then, I will no longer take part in the left’s obsessive-compulsive fascination with her, which is both unhealthy and counterproductive.”
I kept that promise. The only other time she appeared by name in one of my columns was in a passing reference to her speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2013. This column is only the second reference.
The same is true of Trump. The constant harping on him only helps him. He is different from Palin in 2010, however. He is not only running for office, he’s leading in the polls among Republican candidates. He can’t be ignored. But coverage is not the same as drooling over the daily shenanigans of a demagogue.
I will cover Trump as he addresses issues with specific policy prescriptions and details, like answers to the question Ramos asked.
Until then, this man is not worthy of the attention he’s garnering. We in the media have to own our part in this. We can’t say he’s not serious and then cover him in a way that actually demonstrates that we are not serious.
Is he an easy target for righteous criticism? Of course he is. But is he aware that criticism from the mainstream media is invaluable among certain segments of the political right? Of course he is. Is he also aware that he’s getting more free publicity for being outrageous than he would ever be willing to buy? Of course he is.
The media is being trolled on a massive scale and we look naïve and silly to have fallen for it, even if he draws readers and viewers. When people refer to the press as the fourth estate, it shouldn’t be confused with a Trump property.
Allow me to share one more of Trump’s quotes from Politico:
89. “My brand became more famous as I became more famous, and more opportunities presented themselves.” (Amazon.com, 2007)
Monday, August 24, 2015
"Irrational Man" -- A Woody Allen Film and Review
Okay, mea culpa, I love Woody Allen films especially his serious content ones. I just do and I am not going to let my moral indignation keep me from enjoying their content formed by a very brilliant man. Since morality is very much a part of this film I suppose comment on Allen's behavior is in order and what should be a penalty to him if any. I cannot say for sure that what is accused of Woody Allen with respect to molestation is true. I just do not know. What is true is that he left Mia for Sun Ye who was his wife's adopted daughter decades his junior. That screams out for moral indignation BUT is it worthy enough for me to stop what I enjoy -- his morality laced films. I'm going to compartmentalize my indictment of Allen and still view his films. As Pope Francis said "Who am I to judge?" I am not god.
This film has much and is now making me Google the existential philosophers I studied in college: Kant, Heidegger and Kierkegaard. What is life all about anyway Abe Lucas, an enigmatic to-say-the-least philosophy professor asks his students at Braylin College, a kind of Smith College or Mt. Holyoke clone. He is stuck in life in the quicksand of major doubt, depression, and alcoholism that seems somehow to make some women find him not only interesting but a sexually arousing challenge. My question is why?
What is the source of his lack of interest in life and what can pull him out of a morose philosophically tortured life mainly, it appears, of his own making. I suppose being a philosophy professor can do that as it lends itself to life's meaning inquiries. As one views life it does seem dark, nasty, brutish and short as Hobbs long ago said it was.
But is this the main reason for Abe's quagmire or is it something else that he needs to turn him on? To write too much about his philosophical and psychological mess and how the film resolves it would be to place too many spoilers in it.
I loved the acting and thought Emma Stone excellent as was Joachim Phoenix who plays brooding alcoholic characters so very well.
If you enjoy ruminating on the vicissitudes of life, the ability to create social change and your own psychological attitude affecting it all then this film should please. I gave it a 10 because I have thought about these questions of life all of my life. Abe attempting to find his purpose with answers to life's big questions and his own morality makes it so interesting to me. His resolution would not be my choice. Then again this film may not be everyone's choice either.
This film has much and is now making me Google the existential philosophers I studied in college: Kant, Heidegger and Kierkegaard. What is life all about anyway Abe Lucas, an enigmatic to-say-the-least philosophy professor asks his students at Braylin College, a kind of Smith College or Mt. Holyoke clone. He is stuck in life in the quicksand of major doubt, depression, and alcoholism that seems somehow to make some women find him not only interesting but a sexually arousing challenge. My question is why?
What is the source of his lack of interest in life and what can pull him out of a morose philosophically tortured life mainly, it appears, of his own making. I suppose being a philosophy professor can do that as it lends itself to life's meaning inquiries. As one views life it does seem dark, nasty, brutish and short as Hobbs long ago said it was.
But is this the main reason for Abe's quagmire or is it something else that he needs to turn him on? To write too much about his philosophical and psychological mess and how the film resolves it would be to place too many spoilers in it.
I loved the acting and thought Emma Stone excellent as was Joachim Phoenix who plays brooding alcoholic characters so very well.
If you enjoy ruminating on the vicissitudes of life, the ability to create social change and your own psychological attitude affecting it all then this film should please. I gave it a 10 because I have thought about these questions of life all of my life. Abe attempting to find his purpose with answers to life's big questions and his own morality makes it so interesting to me. His resolution would not be my choice. Then again this film may not be everyone's choice either.
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