Tag Archives: alternative

Hillary Clinton Is Fundamentally Honest and Trustworthy.

by Sherri0253 Posted on March 28, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

As we all know, millennials don’t care much for Hillary Clinton. That’s OK. I’m on the other side of that particular fence, but there’s plenty of room for honest differences about her views and whether they’re right for the country—differences that I don’t think are fundamentally rooted in age.

But there’s one issue where I suspect that age really does trip up millennials: the widespread belief that Hillary isn’t trustworthy. It’s easy to understand why they might think this. After all, Hillary has been surrounded by a miasma of scandal for decades—and even if you vaguely know that a lot of the allegations against her weren’t fair, well, where there’s smoke there’s fire. So if you’re familiar with the buzzwords—Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, the Rose law firm, Troopergate, Ken Starr, Benghazi, Emailgate—but not much else, it’s only human to figure that maybe there really is something fishy in Hillary’s past.

But many of us who lived through this stuff have exactly the opposite view. Not only do we know there’s almost literally nothing to any of these “scandals,” we also know exactly how they were deliberately and cynically manufactured at every step along the way. We were there, watching it happen in real time. So not only do we believe Hillary is basically honest, but the buzzwords actively piss us off. Every time we hear a young progressive kinda sorta suggest that Hillary can’t be trusted, we want to strangle someone. It’s the ultimate proof of how the right wing’s big lie about the Clintons has successfully poisoned not just the electorate in general, but even the progressive movement itself.

I bring this up because I had to blink twice to make sure my eyes weren’t fooling me this morning. Jill Abramson has followed Bill and Hillary Clinton for more than two decades, first in the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal, then at the New York Times, where she eventually became Washington bureau chief (and even later, executive editor). Her perch gave her an unrivaled view into Hillary’s actions. Here’s what she had to say today in the Guardian:

I would be “dead rich”, to adapt an infamous Clinton phrase, if I could bill for all the hours I’ve spent covering just about every “scandal” that has enveloped the Clintons. As an editor I’ve launched investigations into her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising.

Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.

….Many investigative articles about Clinton end up “raising serious questions” about “potential” conflicts of interest or lapses in her judgment. Of course, she should be held accountable. It was bad judgment, as she has said, to use a private email server. It was colossally stupid to take those hefty speaking fees, but not corrupt. There are no instances I know of where Clinton was doing the bidding of a donor or benefactor.

….I can see why so many voters believe Clinton is hiding something because her instinct is to withhold….Clinton distrusts the press more than any politician I have covered. In her view, journalists breach the perimeter and echo scurrilous claims about her circulated by unreliable rightwing foes.

As Abramson suggests, there are times when Hillary is her own worst enemy. The decades of attacks have made her insular and distrustful, and this often produces a lawyerly demeanor that makes her sound guilty even when she isn’t. As a result, the belief in Hillary’s slipperiness is now such conventional wisdom that it’s almost impossible to dislodge. I just checked Memeorandum to see if anyone was discussing Abramson’s piece, and I was unsurprised to find that it’s gone almost entirely unnoticed.

But the truth is that regardless of how she sometimes sounds, her record is pretty clear: Hillary Clinton really is fundamentally honest and trustworthy. Don’t let the conservative noise machine persuade you otherwise.

Continue at source:  

Hillary Clinton Is Fundamentally Honest and Trustworthy.

Posted in Abrams, alo, alternative energy, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hillary Clinton Is Fundamentally Honest and Trustworthy.

Is Russia About to Shoot Its Future in the Foot?

by StellaAudet Posted on March 26, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A few days ago I read a piece about a proposed new oil tax in Russia, and it sounded vaguely important. But other stuff happened and I never wrote about it. Max Fisher says that was a mistake:

The most consequential development in international affairs this week may have come, believe it or not, in a proposed change to Russian tax policy….When oil was selling for $100 a barrel, about $74 of that went to the state in taxes…leaving oil companies with about $11 a barrel in profit….Now, oil is selling at $35 a barrel, and taxes only take $17 a barrel….Oil companies only take $3 a barrel in profit.

….While we think of oil companies as taking profits just to shower on themselves — and indeed, there is some of that — they also spend heavily on finding and developing new oil sources….The new tax would make it much harder for Russian oil firms to develop new oil sources. Over time, as current oil wells dry up, new ones would not come online to replace them….Even if oil prices go back up, Russian oil output will decline so drastically that its economy might never recover.

….The potential consequences here — of Russia so cannibalizing its own oil industry that its current economic decline becomes more or less permanent — are really difficult to overstate. Sooner or later, the Kremlin would have to do one of two things (or even both): cutting back the Russian military, which is wildly expensive but gives Moscow the geopolitical muscle it believes is so crucial, or cutting back already weak social services, which does risk political instability.

Read the whole thing for more details. This is still just a proposal, and even if it goes through it might well get modified before it does serious damage. Still, much of Russia’s foreign policy is driven by the brutal fact that it has an economy about the size of Italy’s and demographic problems even worse than Italy’s, but still wants to be thought of as a great world power. As this becomes ever harder to pull off, Russia’s leaders may feel the need to somehow prove that they still matter. This would be bad.

This tax may or may not go anywhere, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

Excerpt from: 

Is Russia About to Shoot Its Future in the Foot?

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is Russia About to Shoot Its Future in the Foot?

Let’s Spend a Day on the Campaign Trail With Our Presidential Candidates

by HarleyShapcott Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Just for the record, here’s what Hillary Clinton was doing today in the wake of the Brussels bombings: talking about combating terrorism at a roundtable in Los Angeles.

And here’s what our Republican presidential hopefuls were doing: in between panicked demands for surveilling Muslim neighborhoods that even the NYPD rolled its collective eyes at, Donald Trump was lobbing juvenile insults at Ted Cruz’s wife and Cruz was calling Trump a “sniveling coward.”

Remind me again: which party is it that takes national security seriously?

Read original article:  

Let’s Spend a Day on the Campaign Trail With Our Presidential Candidates

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Let’s Spend a Day on the Campaign Trail With Our Presidential Candidates

Marriage Is Declining Because Men Are Pigs

by debbiemurch611 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Over at the Washington Monthly, Anne Kim muses on the spectacular decline in marriage over the past few decades:

The seeming decline of marriage includes one major caveat: educated elites. When it comes to marriage, divorce, and single motherhood, the 1950s never ended for college-educated Americans, and for college-educated women in particular….The share of young college-graduate white women who were married in 2010 was a little over 70 percent—almost exactly the same as it was in 1950.

….It’s also seemingly only Americans with four-year degrees or better who appear immune to the broader cultural and social forces eroding marriage. In 1950, white women with “some college,” such as an associate’s degree, were actually more likely to be married than their better-educated sisters. Today, it’s the opposite. Though women with a high school diploma or less have seen the sharpest drop in marriage rates, the decline has been almost as severe—and ongoing—for women just one short rung down the education ladder, regardless of race.

Why has marriage declined in America? Here’s my dorm room bull theory: it’s because men are pigs.

I know, I know: #NotAllMen blah blah blah. That said, let’s expand this a bit. Basically, an awful lot of men are—and always have been—volatile and unreliable. They drink, they get abusive, and they do stupid stuff. They’re bad with money, they don’t help with the kids, and they don’t help around the house. They demand subservience. They demand sex. And even on the one dimension they’re supposedly good for—being breadwinners—they frequently tend to screw up and get fired.

In other words, marriage has been a bad deal for women pretty much forever. But they’ve been forced into it by cultural mores and economic imperatives, and that’s the only reason it’s been nearly universal in the past.

Nothing has changed much about that. It’s still a bad deal for most women, but cultural mores and economic imperatives have changed, and that means more women can afford to do what’s right for themselves and stay unmarried these days.

But there’s one exception to this: the college educated. Well-educated men are fairly reliable; they have good earning power; they generally aren’t abusive; and they’ve been willing—slowly but steadily—to change their habits and help out with kids and housework. For college-educated women, then, marriage is a relatively good deal. For everyone else, not so much.

And that’s why marriage is declining among all groups except the college educated. For an awful lot of women, it’s just a lousy deal. They’re tired of putting up with all the crap they get from men, and so they’re opting out. They’ll opt back in when men start to pull their own weight. There’s no telling when that’s going to start happening.

More: 

Marriage Is Declining Because Men Are Pigs

Posted in alternative energy, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Marriage Is Declining Because Men Are Pigs

Trump Protesters Don’t Have Much Public Support

by AlbertHeap570 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A few days ago I suggested that a key question about the protests at Trump rallies was who the public blamed for the violence. Well, Vox conducted a survey recently asking exactly that, and it turns out that Trump is winning that contest too. Overall, respondents thought that protesters were responsible for the violence in Chicago by a margin of 54-28 percent.

That’s a pretty big margin. The crosstabs show that the biggest differences are by partisan leaning and age: Romney voters and senior citizens overwhelming think the protesters were responsible. Obama voters and the young think protesters weren’t responsible—though not by huge margins. Interestingly, responses were about the same between blue-collar and white-collar workers; between all education and income levels; and between workers and the unemployed. There was no regional variation at all, nor was there any difference between tea partiers and mainstream Republicans.

Bottom line: Only committed partisans and (barely) young voters are taking the protesters’ side on this. Seems like maybe they need a new strategy..

Visit site – 

Trump Protesters Don’t Have Much Public Support

Posted in alternative energy, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump Protesters Don’t Have Much Public Support

Donald Trump’s Greatest Hits With the WaPo Editorial Board

by KrisRowexbbf Posted on March 23, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I’ve had Donald Trump’s interview with the Washington Post editorial board open in a tab for several days now, and I suppose I should either close it or do something with it. The key takeaway from this exercise in freestyle presidential rapping is just how incoherent Trump was. “It literally makes Sarah Palin seem like an intellectual,” a friend remarked. But that’s hard to capture unless you bite the bullet and read the whole thing. Instead, here are a few greatest hits. And now the tab gets closed. Enjoy.

On how he would have negotiated with the Iranians:

We should have had our prisoners before the negotiations started. We should have doubled up the sanctions. We should have gone in and said, ‘release our prisoners,’ they would have said ‘no,’ and we would have said, ‘double up the sanctions,’ and within a short period of time we would have had our prisoners back.

On whether there are racial disparities in law enforcement:

I’ve read where there are and I’ve read where there aren’t. I mean, I’ve read both. And, you know, I have no opinion on that.

On racial disparities in incarceration:

That would concern me, Ruth. It would concern me.

On how he’d address racial problems:

There’s a racial division that’s incredible actually in the country….And you know there’s a lack of spirit. I actually think I’d be a great cheerleader — beyond other things, the other things that I’d do — I actually think I’d be a great cheerleader for the country.

On South Korea not paying its fair share of defense costs:

You know, South Korea is very rich. Great industrial country. And yet we’re not reimbursed fairly for what we do. We’re constantly, you know, sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games, doing other. We’re reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing.

I think this is on public record, it’s basically 50 percent of the non-personnel cost is paid by South Korea and Japan.

50 percent?

Yeah.

Why isn’t it 100 percent?

On what he means when he says the Ricketts family in Chicago had “better watch out”:

Well, it means that I’ll start spending on them. I’ll start taking ads telling them all what a rotten job they’re doing with the Chicago Cubs. I mean, they are spending on me. I mean, so am I allowed to say that? I’ll start doing ads about their baseball team. That it’s not properly run or that they haven’t done a good job in the brokerage business lately.

On his hands:

This was Rubio that said, “He has small hands and you know what that means.” Okay? So, he started it….I had fifty people … Is that a correct statement? I mean people were writing, “How are Mr. Trump’s hands?” My hands are fine. You know, my hands are normal. Slightly large, actually. In fact, I buy a slightly smaller than large glove, okay? No, but I did this because everybody was saying to me, “Oh, your hands are very nice. They are normal.” So Rubio, in a debate, said, because he had nothing else to say … now I was hitting him pretty hard. He wanted to do his Don Rickles stuff and it didn’t work out. Obviously, it didn’t work too well. But one of the things he said was “He has small hands and therefore, you know what that means, he has small something else.” You can look it up. I didn’t say it.

….I don’t want people to go around thinking that I have a problem. I’m telling you, Ruth, I had so many people. I would say 25, 30 people would tell me … every time I’d shake people’s hand, “Oh, you have nice hands.” Why shouldn’t I? … I even held up my hands, and said, “Look, take a look at that hand.”…And by saying that, I solved the problem. Nobody questions. Everyone held my hand. I said look. Take a look at that hand.

On using nukes against ISIS:

I don’t want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one thing that everybody has said, I’m a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me….

This is about ISIS. You would not use a tactical nuclear weapon against ISIS?

I’ll tell you one thing, this is a very good looking group of people here. Could I just go around so I know who the hell I’m talking to?

On intelligence, winning, and the war in Iraq:

Right now, look, you know, I went to a great school, I was a good student and all. I am an intelligent person. My uncle, I would say my uncle was one of the brilliant people. He was at MIT for 35 years. As a great scientist and engineer, actually more than anything else. Dr. John Trump, a great guy.

I’m an intelligent person. I understand what is going on. Right now, I had 17 people who started out. They are almost all gone. If I were going to do that in a different fashion I think I probably wouldn’t be sitting here. You would be interviewing somebody else. But it is hard to act presidential when you are being … I mean, actually I think it is presidential because it is winning. And winning is a pretty good thing for this country because we don’t win any more. And I say it all the time. We do not win any more. This country doesn’t win. We don’t win with trade. We don’t win with … We can’t even beat ISIS.

And by the way, just to answer the rest of that question, I would knock the hell out of ISIS in some form. I would rather not do it with our troops, you understand that. Very important. Because I think saying that is very important because I was against the war in Iraq, although they found a clip talking to Howard Stern, I said, “Well…” It was very unenthusiastic. Before they want in, I was totally against the war. I was against it for years. I actually had a delegation sent from the White House to talk to me because I guess I get a disproportionate amount of publicity. I was just against the war. I thought it would destabilize the Middle East, and it did. But we have to knock out ISIS. We are living like in medieval times. Who ever heard of the heads chopped off?

Link: 

Donald Trump’s Greatest Hits With the WaPo Editorial Board

Posted in alternative energy, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Donald Trump’s Greatest Hits With the WaPo Editorial Board

There’s Still Slack in the Labor Market—But Not a Lot

by RudolfMazza Posted on March 22, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Brad DeLong looks at a chart showing the employment rate of prime-age workers (ages 25-54) compared to January 2000 and says:

Without nominal wage growth of 4%/year or significantly rising inflation, no way I am going to believe that the U.S. economy is in any sense at “full employment” with an essentially zero output gap right now.

It’s not that I disagree, but I think that choosing January 2000 stacks the deck. That’s the absolute peak of the dotcom boom, and there’s no reason to think we’re going to replicate that anytime soon. A better comparison would be the mid-90s, when the economy was strong and growing but not at the peak of a bubble. Here’s what that looks like:

We’re still not at full employment. But we’re getting there: the unemployment rate is low; the expanded unemployment rate is getting close to low; and wages are increasing a bit. Additional inflationary pressure would be yet another sign of a tight labor market, but we haven’t seen that yet.

We still have work to do to get to full employment—and it’s possible we’ll never get back to 1990s levels. That depends a lot on precisely who’s dropped out of the workforce and why. But we’re getting close.

From: 

There’s Still Slack in the Labor Market—But Not a Lot

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s Still Slack in the Labor Market—But Not a Lot

Ted Cruz Calls For Massive Police Presence in Muslim Neighborhoods

by MurrayQxbxwezgo Posted on March 22, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

One of the odd Republican obsessions of the moment is their outrage over liberal refusal to “call radical Islam by its name.” In the wake of today’s Brussels bombing, Ted Cruz naturally says this kind of namby-pamby political correctness is at an end. But that’s not all:

We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. “We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration.

“Patrol and secure.” That has an ominous sound to it, especially the “secure” part. Apparently Cruz is trying to out-Trump Trump before Trump even has a chance to say something stupid. This is some campaign these guys are running.

View post – 

Ted Cruz Calls For Massive Police Presence in Muslim Neighborhoods

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ted Cruz Calls For Massive Police Presence in Muslim Neighborhoods

Oh Wait—Donald Trump Decides He Has a Foreign Policy Team After All

by MargareHutchens Posted on March 21, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

After finally telling us that he didn’t need a foreign policy team because he was his own team, Donald Trump made yet another U-turn today and announced his foreign policy team. It’s enough to make you dizzy. I’ll let Robert Costa introduce them:

Keith Kellogg…executive vice president at CACI International, a Virginia-based intelligence and information technology consulting firm…. Joseph Schmitz….Blackwater Worldwide…. George Papadopoulos…international energy center at the London Center of International Law Practice…. Walid Phares…National Defense University and Daniel Morgan Academy in Washington…. Carter Page…managing partner of Global Energy Capital and longtime energy industry executive.

This is quite a team. Kellogg was COO of the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003-04 under Paul Bremer, and we all know how that turned out. Schmitz is the son of noted Southern California crackpot John Schmitz—which I suppose I can’t hold against him—and served as inspector general of the Defense Department under George Bush. He resigned in 2005 following charges that he “slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines.”

Papadopoulos is on his second presidential campaign this year, having previously found a home with Ben Carson. Phares is well known to all Fox News viewers for his regular appearances there—and for his background during the 80s as a “high ranking political official in a sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during Lebanon’s brutal, 15-year civil war.”

Page I don’t know much about. Apparently he’s the head of an investment fund “focused on energy investments worldwide,” and that’s good enough for Trump.

So….this is a helluva C-list crew Trump has assembled. A guy who worked for Paul Bremer; the son of John Schmitz; a former Ben Carson advisor; a Fox News talking head; and a guy who specializes in torts.

As for Trump’s actual foreign policy, apparently it’s the same as always: he’s super militaristic, but he doesn’t want to actually use the American military for much of anything. He’d like other countries to start taking care of Ukraine and NATO and the South China Sea—or, if they insist on America doing it, he’d like them to pay us for it. Apparently Trump’s ambition is to sit at the head of a vast American tribute empire.

View original post here – 

Oh Wait—Donald Trump Decides He Has a Foreign Policy Team After All

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Oh Wait—Donald Trump Decides He Has a Foreign Policy Team After All

Weekly Flint Water Report: March 12-18

by DonF985465 Posted on March 21, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Here is this week’s Flint water report. As usual, I’ve eliminated outlier readings above 2,000 parts per billion, since there are very few of them and they can affect the averages in misleading ways. The average for the past week was 10.81.

Link to article:

Weekly Flint Water Report: March 12-18

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Weekly Flint Water Report: March 12-18