North Slope Slush

Tillerson is viewed as an unconventional pick who would bring dealmaking skills to the job.

Certainly, You might also say

"...Exxon Mobil has operations in more than 50 countries and boasts that it explores for oil and natural gas on six continents. In 2011, Exxon Mobil signed a deal with Rosneft, Russia’s largest state-owned oil company, for joint oil exploration and production. Since then, the companies have formed 10 joint ventures for projects in Russia. In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Tillerson his nation’s Order of Friendship. But U.S. sanctions against Russia for its incursion into Crimea cost Exxon Mobil dearly, forcing it to scrap some projects and costing it at least $1 billion in losses. Tillerson has been a vocal critic of the sanctions."

Exxon first.

It's Morning in America

The Koch network, which says it spent about $250m this election cycle on politics and policy efforts, is comprised of several hundred donors who help underwrite numerous free market, small government advocacy groups.

You know. Like the John Birch Society.

The Reptilian Agenda:

"...The incoming vice-president, Mike Pence, has acknowledged the support of David Koch. Myron Ebell, the chair of the Koch-backed Cooler Heads Coalition, which questions “global warming alarmism”, will lead Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency. Another Trump appointment to that team, David Schnare, is a former member of the Heartland Institute, which denies the scientific evidence for man-made climate change and is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), another organisation funded by the Kochs.

Meanwhile Thomas Pyle, of the Koch-backed American Energy Alliance, is off to the energy department, while Doug Domenech of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has received millions in Koch funds, is joining the Department of the Interior..."

Framing the Answers

"...I think that perhaps what I’ve actually done is scraped the topsoil off the surface of 2016 and found one of the underground springs that has been quietly nurturing it. It’s been there all the time, of course. Just a few keystrokes away… on our laptops, our tablets, our phones. This isn’t a secret Nazi cell lurking in the shadows. It’s hiding in plain sight..."

Same Old Story

"... You cannot confront a power until you know what it is. Our first task in this struggle is to understand what we face. Only then can we work out what to do." The Left have a pretty good understanding, but only because we've heard these lies before."

a nod is as good as a wink to a Trojan horse

...Tucked inside is language that strips North Carolina workers of the ability to sue under a state anti-discrimination law, a right that has been upheld in court since 1985. “If you were fired because of your race, fired because of your gender, fired because of your religion,” said Allan Freyer, head of the Workers’ Rights Project at the N.C. Justice Center in Raleigh, “… you no longer have a basic remedy.”

“The LGBT issues were a Trojan horse,” added Erika Wilson, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who co-directs a legal clinic for low-income plaintiffs with job and housing discrimination claims. The broader change hasn’t received much attention, she said, because “people were so caught up in [the LGBT] part of the law that this snuck under the radar.”

Eye on the Catbird Seat

Hardly what you'd call disinterested observers.

All Coins Roll to the Iron Banks

What happens when their faceless men face off each other? They make a big deal of Putin and the Chinese hegemons in the current exposition, but Mossack-Fonseca is only the fourth largest of the offshore banks in the scrum. One wonders if the leakers work for one or more of the top three.

Natural $election

In a series of interviews with party insiders, operatives and elected officials, the party’s predicament is clear – Trump is on the verge of completing a hostile takeover – but as top Republican consultant John Brabender said: “Everybody may have a small piece of the answer, but I’m not sure if anyone has the answer.”

First, you have to be able to ask the question.

slippin' back to my same old used-to-be

Is is just me or is this $election starting to feel like deja vu all over again?

Except more interesting, in a pathological incitement to street violence kind of way.

I think it's time to brush off the old html-speak and start posting again.

Game of Phones

The funniest part of this story is the assertation that this is "...an unusual arrangement undercutting Keith Alexander’s assurances he will not profit from his connections to the secretive, technologically sophisticated agency."

It happens all the time in government, and is the main reason why "government" has no business with your business. Because it's not about national security, it's about people with power exploiting you for more power and money.

Lunatic fringe

hiding out in the open.

No Such Problem

The NSA does not ask Courts about data mining.



If there's a code, and they want it, these people will unscramble it or steal it. They will pretend to be locked out just for appearances. They don't call it the No Such Agency for nothing.

ask a silly question

He would answer these questions, but every time he pauses to reconsider escalation, the Secret Service "accidently" screws up again. It's enough to make you wonder if somebody's moonlighting for Raytheon, Lockheed, or General Dynamics. It's like whenever they need to sell the Pentagon another million dollar cruise missile, somebody stops watching the camera on the White House lawn.

The Prisoner

In order for evil to succeed, it is only needful for the right people to stand aside. For the right plausible deniability at the right time to get the right result for the right people that is.

Hugo Chavez would not be surprised at the priorities of a prisoner trying to appease his jailors.

Strategery

Strategy is figuring out a way for the private contractors that own the Pentagon to make a few billion more before Xmas.

bats in the belfry

"...current developments in biology may soon lead to the replacement of H sapiens by completely different beings, enjoying godlike qualities and abilities"..."

Ah, the old God obsessions and fears. Frankly, I intend to use my powers to create a Federation of Planets and ultimately a Culture to protect the galaxy. Because the old gods are still out there, and as far as I can tell the only thing they've ever been concerned about is lounging on Olympus and treating the world like a brothel.

it ain't over until the last Tartan unravels

So many irons in this fire.

I am sure the Russians are totally disinterested electoral monitors.

I am sure the Queen really loves her some single malt Tartan. And not just for all that oil under their North Sea either. Because, you know, unlike what the Yes rabble believes, the British government line is there isn't any to speak of, which is why they are breathing easier now, since their entire economy is based on that oil which they want the Scots to think is gone already.

Which is why Russia was so interested, why there were North Korean levels of electoral turnout, and why the "No" results are said to be Unequivocal. It's as plain and honest as an election in Ohio.

And as settled as the ghost of William Wallace.

Revisionist CounterIntuitive Climatology

I wonder if said Yale professor has a nice grant from the Koch brothers or a subsidiary?

...Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. The assumption is that planting trees and avoiding further deforestation provides a convenient carbon capture and storage facility on the land.

That is the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is wrong.

In reality, the cycling of carbon, energy and water between the land and the atmosphere is much more complex. Considering all the interactions, large-scale increases in forest cover can actually make global warming worse.

Of course, this is counterintuitive. We all learn in school how trees effortlessly perform the marvel of photosynthesis: They take up carbon dioxide from the air and make oxygen. This process provides us with life, food, water, shelter, fiber and soil. The earth’s forests generously mop up about a quarter of the world’s fossil-fuel carbon emissions every year.

So it’s understandable that we’d expect trees to save us from rising temperatures, but climate science tells a different story. Besides the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, another important switch on the planetary thermostat is how much of the sun’s energy is taken up by the earth’s surface, compared to how much is reflected back to space. The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun’s energy and raise the planet’s surface temperature...

Which climate scientists are we talking about? The ones supported by British Petroleum?

maybe just a little peek now and then

I'm sure.

...you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again...

A decade? More likely the next century will be wasted, and the whole eastern coastal plain will be underwater before you know it. The actual problem is scarcity-based economics. Turning towards sustainable energy would completely disrupt the current austerity-based econmics the wealthy use to game the system and control everyone. A "free market" is the joke of the century, because a market that is not allowed to evolve and manipulated to maintain a class structure is nothing like free.

Better Together

What could go wrong?

And they captured them, I'm sure. It says so, right there on the label.

Confidence Men

Why would they lie to you?

...ahead of an impending clash with the Senate intelligence committee, which is due to release a public version of a report into CIA torture in the coming weeks, Brennan rejected “the narratives I see floating around the media.”

Brennan has been locked in a heated dispute with his Senate overseers that escalated dramatically after agency officials breached a network firewall set up to allow committee investigators access to CIA documents relevant to their inquiry. The committee chairwoman, Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California, said on the Senate floor on 11 March that the CIA “just went and searched the committee’s computers.”

After initially denying the breach during a public appearance that day at the Council on Foreign Relations, Brennan apologized for it in July once the CIA’s inspector general determined CIA officials had improperly accessed Senate staffer emails and conducted keyword searches on some of them...

Why, if the Company does it, it must have been proper, and for a good reason, and not wrong. The CIA, right there with their NSA buddies winning confidence one wiretap at a time, and carefully noting who you are (and who your friends are, and their friends, and their family) if you don't.

What's Oil Got to Do WIth It?

A lot, more or less.

But if it does, don't look for the referendum in Scotland to resolve anything. Because somebody will want what they don't have, and cloak it in British patriotism or Scottish nationalism.

stealin' back to my same old used to be

...The international coalition that Mr. Obama says is crucial to his plan is just being formed. While there have been positive steps toward a new government in Iraq, the positions of defense and interiors ministers remain unfilled as politicians continue to fight for power. Meanwhile, American-led training of forces in Iraq and Syria (the so-called moderate opposition) that are supposed to be central to the military campaign will take months, and congressional approval of the $500 million that Mr. Obama has requested for training and equipping Syrian rebels is far from certain...

I would call it about the only certainty of the entire situation. After all, you can't fight a war if the other side doesn't have the cash to keep their tanks running, can you?

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Strange

Certainly we should all support brave freedom fighters, where ever their funding derives from.

And if there are facts you really want to discredit, why, just make sure they show up at a website devoted to conspiracy theory.

Virtual Priorities

Why will any real progressive movement sputter and fade periodically? Randy Newman said it best in pure poetry:

Of all of the people that I used to know
Most never adjusted to the great big world
I see them lurking in book stores
Working for the Public Radio
Carrying their babies around in a sack on their back
Moving careful and slow

All of these people are much brighter than I
In any fair system they would flourish and thrive
But they barely survive
They eke out a living and they barely survive

When I was a young boy, maybe thirteen
I took a hard look around me and asked what does it mean?
So I talked to my father, and he didn’t know
And I talked to my friend and he didn’t know
And I talked to my brother and he didn’t know
And I talked to everybody that I knew

Then I talked to a man lived up on the county line
I was washing his car with a friend of mine
He was a little fat guy in a red jumpsuit
I said “You look kind of funny”
He said “I know that I do”
“But I got a great big house on the hill here
And a great big blonde wife inside it
And a great big pool in my backyard and another great big pool
beside it
Sonny it’s money that matters, hear what I say
It’s money that matters in the USA
It’s money that matters
Now you know that it’s true
It’s money that matters whatever you do”


Me? I say that money is a fiction. But most of us worship old gods of the night.


Double posted in reply to the existential angst at Ian's place, with thanks to Lady Avedon.

they let it happen on purpose

Every person in Congress who votes for and profits from a default should face criminal prosecution. The RICO Act should be invoked, and this should extend to the people who bankroll the Tea Party, if they profit from the default they precipitate. This isn't just political conspiracy, it's racketeering in the guise of ideology.

it rhymes

"Obama is a nice guy. David Cameron is a nice social Democrat. About three hours from London in Greece there are some very nasty political parties. What there is is the infrastructure for total surveillance. In history, all the precedents are unhappy,"  says the master of the obvious.

Meanwhile, in Greece, the elements of the police state are being investigated. By the police, of course, who will doubtless arrest anyone who is not following orders.

just like a civil war

You have to remember it's supposed to be like this here.


Sergio Leone would understand perfectly.

meanwhile back on the plantation

Not surprising, it has never really been in the interest of the strongest supporters of the Confederacy to support it. It is a sad measure of the degree of mind control the wealthiest have on everyone else.

a new business at the mall

But I am sure this has absolutely nothing with all the money and munitions the CIA has been pouring into Al-Qaeda in Syria the last few years.

"Upscale" shopping centers would fit right into the local economy, wouldn't they?

short circuiting the technology police

This sounds like something the Pentagon would really rather have seen kept secret.

A directed EMP weapon that could stop a car in its tracks could also knock an airplane out of the sky or trash a computer communications hub from a distance.

jumping the Syrian shark

Contrary to the opinion of many, there is no such thing as a "progressive" war. Kerry and Obama seriously jumped the shark on this one. The MoveOn crew is not very happy with the attempt of the military industrial complex to stage a hostile takeover of the progressive movement.

because...

"i's a moral imperative"

the wrath of the righteous

The thing about Obama is that he actually believes what he's saying. LBJ thought he had all the facts about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, too.

they don't make Sith Lords like they used to anymore

It's so hard to get a fearless Dear Leader these days.

Someone should arrest that man for war crimes against humanity, but one guesses they only arrest human beings. Perhaps a tranquilizer dart and a nice zoo display with soundproofing, bars, and a very deep moat will protect the viewing public from the poison. One doubts it, though.

moral relativity

The faster you go, the shorter you get in the direction you're traveling.


Or something like that.

implausible deniability

If the United States has responsibility, it is because the CIA used Al Qaeda operatives to take advantage of the Arab spring movement. 

The covert branches of the US and Saudi governemtn are doing everything to stoke up a war with Syria that can conflagrate into a war with Iraq. In fact, Donald Rumsfeld himself initiated rebel action against Assad during the Iraq war. See http://www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2008/nov/10/usa-terrorism 

Obama, like LBJ, has done great things for civil rights, but like LBJ, he is totally owned by the military industrial complex.

that was then, this is now

Known knowns in 1987:




Known knowns now:

Magical Thinking

Exactly who is going to be able to bell the cat, much less even design a collar for it?

The internet was designed by DARPA. The national security apparatus has a vested interest in maintaining control of it. Even if the industry could find independent scientists that could design code the NSA couldn't crack, don't you think the spooks would buy, blacmail, or backdoor their way into it?

The Republican's aren't the only ones with a problem in reality-based thinking.

Bipartisan Adventure!

It's odd how both John McCain and Barack Obama don't see any possible way fighting a war with these would present a problem.

 

 

the Professionals

One of the remarkable things about the Obama administration that those of us on the alledged fringe left have noticed is its continuity with the policies of the Cheney administration in matters of foreign policy and national security.

There've even been moments when big time Dick himself has shown his bitter crooked smile on things the Obama camp has done.

It should probably come as no surprise then, that from mass-murdering drone warfare, to the Justice department covertly wiretapping newspapers, to secret squirrel spywork in Russia, to the IRS targeting mom and pop Tea party operations rather than the Rove-Bush machine or the Goldman-Sachs Obama bankroll connections,  madness is emergent in Washington this spring right along with the cherry blossoms.

There's a difference this year. and it will get more hysterical every year right on up to 2016. Just like the Carter administration, or the last two years of the Clinton administration, there's a professional class in Washington that sees one of its own awaiting the next Presidential coronation- Jebbie Bush.

The difference between the Clintons and Obama is that the Clintons had Carter's lesson at heart: they expected duplicity in their government and expecting it were prepared to deal with it.