- ...people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy...
If true, this is way more fucked than anyone has reported so far. I hope it isn't.
WSJ says the online Russian troll contingent attempted influence. Obviously not the same as directly "asking" Trump through "unspecified channels". Unspecified channels, you say? Burn in hell, Erik Prince! :D Edit: Problem is, if they were "trying to set up a back channel" in Seychelles, they would have already had to have one for Putin/Russia to coax Trump into picking Tillerson over Romney. I dunno.
"Intervened" and "attempted influence" (especially via bot/troll armies) are not even in the same galaxy. And so far many of Steele's claims have proven to be accurate, while none has been disproved. I think the media aren't taking this serious enough. It's almost as if to admit that the wildest claims about Trump (that he's a money launderer for Russian and other former Soviet mobsters) are too toxic to even touch. The New Yorker seems to be the only print pub willing to touch this stuff. I'm vaguely aware that MSNBC has covered it too, because of my Twitter feed, but cable news doesn't have the credibility that print has. I'm two inches away from cancelling my NYT subscription. If I have to see one more story about the "real America" it may put me over the edge. People need to keep their focus on the fact that the White House in turning into the criminal organization that the Kremlin is. If anyone cared, Erik Prince would already be facing contempt or perjury charges. Instead he's hosting a fundraiser for uberrussiacongresscomrade Dana Rohrbacher (or howeverthefuck you spell his name; won't give it the courtesy of a google).
To me, the question now is what will be the oval office tapes of our time? It took the tapes to finally convince the GOP that Nixon was done. They're still doing their best to cast Steele as a partisan hack (as if a British intelligence officer give a fuck about republican vs. democratic politics), but that veneer is thinning by the day. Also, will Mitt Romney rescind his acceptance of Trump's endorsement that he vowed never to accept in the first place? Joking aside, everyone who is a Trump supporter should go fuck themselves at this point. I've tried so hard to separate the supporters from the man himself, but we're beyond the point of no return. I assume you've seen the report that Rex has spent 0 of the $120 million allocated to him to combat Russia's electioneering?
I hadn't seen that report, no, but I can't say I'm surprised. He's an oil man. His interests are oil and people involved with oil. Russia has oil. Where you see "russia" he sees "gazprom." I honestly don't know which is more virtuous at this point: resigning, knowing you don't know diplomacy but also knowing the next guy will be worse than you... or focus on what you know and get the fuckin' oil. I'm hopeful that the Nixon Tapes of the modern era will be a 2018 bloodbath. Everyone's all atwitter over the Italian elections because the "center-left" got their ass kicked without noticing that the guys who took the vote are most closely aligned with nihilism. That's what got Trump elected: anger, dissatisfaction and a desire to fuck shit up. From any reasonable perspective, "center left" is right-fuckin'-wing these days and without an actual leftist perspective to counteract the globalists it's no surprise that the winning political vote these days is "none of the above."
2018 will be a bloodbath, no doubt. GOP has been routed in heavily GOP districts all over the map recently. However, I'm unsure that's going to sway anyone, and indeed might solidify their belief that the left wing media's grip on America is ironclad. I base this on a conversation that I had with my uncle the other day (all of my mom's five brothers--well to do, educated, white septuagenarians to a man--fall all over each other to see who can be the biggest right wing moron), in which he described to me a report to he saw about "the leader of the Me Too movement" who has been caught sexually harassing men. And he said it with a lot of conviction. And he didn't get the joke when I asked him if he had to translate the article from Russian himself, or if it was already in English. My point being that we apparently live in different worlds, one in which reporters report facts, and the other in which the world is a giant conspiracy aimed at harming the poor, white millionaire. That's why the tapes were so damning. It was right from the Devil's mouth that he was, in fact, a crook.
Grab 'em by the pussy, dude. He could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and retain all his supporters. At this point the peepee tape might knock a few percentage points off his approval rating. But. Millennials now outnumber 'boomers. The life expectancy of non-college educated whites over 50 is declining. If we can outvote them into the land of marginalization we win. They can have their different world so long as they stay the fuck out of my way.
If there's a silver lining to the Parkland shooting, hopefully it's that it motivates young people to vote. I saw recently that in the 2014 midterms that only 16% of 18-30 year olds voted, while the number is close to 60% for boomers. Not blaming young people for our problems, as they're the least responsible, but there has to be a way to get them to vote in larger numbers (chicken or egg possibly--pols won't talk about issues important to young people because they don't vote, and they don't vote, because pols don't speak to their issues). I have a one month old, so I was recently looking at the projected price of college in 2034, and fuckin a if it won't make you choke. Some courageous candidate starts talking serious higher ed policy and just maybe kids start paying attention.
There are two reasons I support Weed legalization. One, young people go vote for that shit, and young people tend to vote left which helps the candidates I like and support. Two, once the shit is legal the drug war ends and we can work on repairing the damage that 40 years of blanket incarceration has done, save some money, rebuild inner cities, lower crime, rainbows and fluffy kittens. We also get the bonus of having this shit legal so the edgelords stop circle-jerking about weed. (Hey, a man can dream) I do not think an anti-war candidate will win in a primary as there is too much money floating around to keep the gravy boat rolling along. But I've been wrong before and I hope I am wrong again this time.If there's a silver lining to the Parkland shooting, hopefully it's that it motivates young people to vote.
Yeah. My wife's doctorate cost $130k. She had a full ride to undergrad, as did I, so that's all the debt we got. Putting it on deferral for 12 months pushed it to $220k. So that's $100k in debt the "government" (more on that if asked) earned just by letting us get on our feet. We consolidated into an income matching program, the payments of which do not keep up with interest. By the time we hit Payment 360, at which point it all gets forgiven, our initial $130k debt will have ballooned to $2,600,000. But fuck you, we will have paid $163k. Fortunately she's in an "essential profession" which means that 360 payments gets cut to 120 payments half of which we've made. Here's the funny thing: the financial institutions we bank with consider that $2.6m income for purposes of banking. And I doubt we're the only ones. We've still got a house with renters in it up in Seattle. We refinanced from a 30 to a 15 and managed to keep the payments nearly the same - win/win. It's gonna be near-pure income right about the time my daughter starts looking for colleges. So we run some calcs to see how much 4.5 years of private school education is expected to cost when she's ready, and how much we need to set aside right now to get her there. The answer? "$2 million dollars" and "$1200 a month." Now, maybe there will be an education worth $2m in 2030. I doubt it. Even if there was, I'd be a lot more likely to buy my daughter a half-dozen Starbucks franchises and say "follow your bliss." And I can't be the only one looking at those numbers and deciding the system isn't sustainable. I think as they stop being kids they start looking around and realize just how badly they've been scammed. A 24-year-old kid living with his parents? He's startin' out. A 30-year-old kid still living with his parents and making 10% more than he made at 24? That kid's got a reason to be angry. I have a one month old, so I was recently looking at the projected price of college in 2034, and fuckin a if it won't make you choke.
nd the school thing can't continue. For one thing, Obama poked a big fucking hole in it through debt forgiveness. Some fun facts from my own life, excuse me for oversharing:
That "kid" ends up in Charlotte with a tiki torch because, why not? Not like there is any other way out, and blaming "the other" works short term until the war you start goes south and you end up in Nuremberg on the end of a rope. Anyone who has ever read a history book is having a bit of a panic when they see shit like this.That kid's got a reason to be angry.
You're not wrong. However, I'd argue he ends up with a tiki torch in Charlotte because once the Berniecrats got demobilized they got disenfranchised. The Right sure as hell knows how to recruit Nazis. If the Left had better things to do than whine about safe spaces imagine what they could do.
Having been first introduced to the concept of safe spaces on Reddit, I find myself now wondering if it was encouraged and spread by Russia.If the Left had better things to do than whine about safe spaces imagine what they could do.
Quoth the bread book: All this may please those who like the theatre, but it is not revolution. Fast forward 120+ years and we've got a proud (only somewhat sarcastically) tradition of fucking up on that score. Mocking Trump and generating tones of internal noise is way easier than actually getting shit done. Mind you, a lot of the time we don't actually know how to get shit done even when we try. Coming together with diametrically opposed views, they are forced to form arbitrary alliances in order to create majorities that can but last a day. Wrangling, calling each other reactionaries, authoritarians, and rascals, incapable of coming to an understanding on any serious measure, dragged into discussions about trifles, producing nothing better than bombastic proclamations, yet taking themselves seriously, unwitting that the real strength of the movement is in the streets.
From MSU Monday. The ubermench cowering on the right is this guy. The right recruits nazis and the left recruits people to punch nazis. I'm not sure either is really benefiting from the situation, but somewhere along the way we started getting local news stories vaguely sympathetic to the kid on the left.
This one. This is the one. This guy came to discuss eugenics and crack skulls and he's all out of eugenics. Either that or catch the early show of Cabaret. You're right - it had not occurred to me that a battle between Oregon anarchists and the Alt-right would be impressively one-sided.
The right recruits nazis and the left recruits people to punch nazis.
This is playing a role in how I'm planning for the eventuality of college. I opened a 529, and am committing myself to a few hundred dollars a month for it, which at today's projections will not be enough even if it gets a 6% return over its 18 year life (which I think is overly optimistic). The alternative is to buy into the Michigan Education Trust, which will sell you a fully paid college tuition (128 credit hours to any Michigan public university) for something like $117,000, if I remember right). At 6% interest for 18 years that's around $350,000 depending how you compound. $350,000. For a middle of the road state school. And that's supposed to represent a significant savings over the actual cost (since you're buying now). So they're projecting that in the mid 2030s a college degree from a reputable-but-not-elite state school is going to be the price of a brand new 6 series every year. Considering the number of people who could afford that, I'm calling bullshit. For example, My wife and I both make very good salaries; our mortgage is $320,000, and I would be hesitant to go any higher. We've both been working in our industries for a long time, have built a good niche for ourselves, are close to free of other debts, and we wouldn't take on half a million in debt. These kids are supposed to do that with an entry level salary? I could barely afford my rent when I was just out of college. Give me a break. The way we fund education has to change. Not because it's the morally correct thing to do (and it is certainly that), but because the alternative is full blown Idiocracy. The people should riot if nothing changes. I'm very heartened by the WV teachers' strike, and there is talk that it could possibly lead to similar action in Oklahoma. Things are already so bad that there could be collective action in OK. Let that sink in. That is why I think the Michigan Education Trust is a bad bet. There's no way we're going to continue on this trajectory, because we will have crashed into the goddam mountain long before we arrive at our destination. Fuck you, GOP. Edit: Wait, also, Fuck you, democrats.I can't be the only one looking at those numbers and deciding the system isn't sustainable.
I talked you into reading Wrangham's Catching Fire. Even more vociferously, I recommend College (Un)Bound. Useful takeaways: - the market is converging on universally accepted standards and protocols for distance learning and online instruction that will likely reduce the cost of general requirements education substantially. - the more expensive the sticker price, the likelier everyone's on scholarship. As an example, 57% of Yale students are receiving an average of $37k a year. - Unless you're a foreigner, in which case you pay full sticker price, which is why there are so many foreign students in US universities - they're underwriting your kid. - College reports are pure bullshit and brazenly manipulated. A better metric (not the best metric) for determining the quality of education at an institution is to examine the size of its endowment. The more cash they have on hand, the less beholden they are to market forces, like the "build more fitness centers" plague of the '00s that didn't improve academics one iota. A financial planner would look at a $320k mortgage at what? 4%? and a $350k college education amortizing at 3% if you're lucky and say "pay the goddamn mortgage down." In 18 years your house will likely be worth a factor of two or three more than the college education even at worst-case $350k and a HELOC for half the value kicks the shit out of a house barely paid for and a crapton of student loans. I know that I looked at 529s and all that jazz and my daughter's allergy money is going into a Coverdell. There's far too much uncertainty about the education landscape 13 years from now and the ROI on 529s has been underwhelming.