About that Swamp

Trump’s Tax Plan Leaves the Swamp Untouched

Who really expected a bunch of alligators to clean out the swamp?

Apartheid

Israel Imposes Closure on West Bank and Gaza Ahead of Memorial Day

The Israel Defense Forces have announced that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be put on closure from midnight Saturday until midnight Tuesday, ahead of Israel's Memorial Day and Independence Day. The closure was implemented on the orders of Israel's government.

The closure will include the entire West Bank and will also see the crossings connecting the Gaza Strip to Israel closed. Movement by Palestinians into Israel will be permitted only in the case of a humanitarian emergency. The closure will be lifted at midnight Tuesday "in accordance with a situation assessment," the army said in a statement.

General closure is usually imposed ahead of major Jewish holidays, mainly during Yom Kippur and Passover, as well as the secular Memorial Day and Independence Day. However, a closure was also put in effect during Purim in the last two years.

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.786382

Trump

Yeah, Trump is an idiot and shouldn't be there but HRC was terrible too.

Some times things have to get worse before they get better.


100 days of gibberish – Trump has weaponised nonsense | Lindy West | Opinion | The Guardian:

and

Hullabaloo:

"But, from a political perspective, Trump has given members of Congress another reason not to trust his word. He promised a health-care bill that would cover everyone, settled for one that would have kicked twenty-four million people off insurance, and then watched helplessly as the bill floundered. He promised a trillion-dollar infrastructure package that hasn’t materialized. And now the wall, Trump’s signature proposal on the campaign, has been shelved"

and

Maybe America Wasn’t Crazy to Elect Donald Trump

All the right’s political power, we can now see, depended on being in permanent opposition, and never having to actually implement something. Their tax cuts for the very wealthy are tone-deaf; their resuscitation of the Laffer curve surreal. They’ve got nothing on health care but a return to the highly unpopular status quo ante. And they are caught between Trump’s desire to borrow even more to finance his tax cuts and the GOP’s resolute insistence throughout the Obama years that the debt was an existential threat. It’s quite amazing to watch this unfold and unravel in real time.

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Draining the Swamp

Trump’s tax plan is a bold step toward draining the swamp | TheHill:

I'd have to say "Jenny Beth Martin" is an idiot.

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Rs and Ds...

.. not much different between the two. A good reason to not vote for either party.

All 100 U.S. Senators demand UN take action against 'anti-Israel agenda' - U.S. News - Haaretz.com:

The letter stated that "although as Republicans and Democrats we disagree on many things, we are united in our desire to see the United Nations improve its treatment of Israel." 

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.786229

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American Corrupitalism - part 2

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer runs company into the ground, walks away with millions.

Rentiers vs. Capitalists, Yahoo CEO Edition


  

American Corrupitalism

Four good, related posts touching on where we are, how we got here and what the future might hold.

STAGNANT WAGES AND SLOW PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH

But I think the problem is .... The economic orthodoxy is that capital is always efficient, while labor is always bloated, lazy, indifferent, greedy, demanding, corrupt and insufferable. That was and is the rallying cry of the union-busters, and you can hear it today. That is a perfect description of the capitalists of today. they don’t want to take risks. They want protected markets, special tax treatment, immunity from criminal prosecution and civil suits, and they have the money to pay off politicians to get that and more. They want all the money. They don’t want to pay their share. They want the right to wreck the economy with impunity. They want the right to screw consumers into the ground. They want the right to destroy the environment. And they want to make all the decisions about the future

Wall Street's grousing about American Airlines' worker raises shows what's wrong with Wall Street

“This is frustrating,” Kevin Crissey, an airlines analyst for Citigroup, bellyached to clients after the announcement. “Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers.” 

One doesn’t know what to say to this, except: Is he kidding? From 2014 through 2016, American Airlines authorized $9 billion in share buybacks, money that went directly into shareholders’ pockets. The company also paid out 40 cents per share in shareholder dividends in both years. By contrast, the pay raises will cost American $1 billion over three years. Pilots will get 8% and flight attendants 5% through the end of the current contract.

 Brazil Paralyzed by Nationwide Strike, Driven by a Familiar Global Dynamic of Elite Corruption and Impunity

In other words, Brazilian elites – having plundered the country to the point where it was close to collapse – decided that the only viable solution was to force the country’s already-suffering population of workers and the unemployed poor to suffer further, by taking from them the meager protections and safety net they enjoyed.

and

 What’s most baffling about all of this is that no matter how many times global elites see the rotted fruit of their piggish behavior – instability, extremism and collective rejection of their own authority – they continue to pursue it, seemingly inured to the consequences. Brazil is just the latest example, but it should be a familiar one to people across the planet.

Trump and the Trumpists

Trumpism is, after all, an expression of the crisis, not its solution. 

or....

When capital uses its government to work together for the benefit of both capital and labor, good things happen,

When capital uses its government solely for its own benefit, not so good things happen.

Capital needs to be reminded of this from time to time.

Now seems to be the time.

tnb

Loud-Mouths

This is about a Trump Tweet but it's basically what Right-Wing media has been doing for the last 30 years.

".. pronouncements that act like blaring, garish roadside billboards. Unrelenting in telling his own story, he has defined himself as a success no matter what — by talking the loudest and the longest, and by insisting on having the first word and also the last. And it’s worked. " 

Six different ways of looking at a Trump tweet - The Washington Post: 

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Fox Propaganda

SO WHY DOES FOX NEWS HAVE OFFICIAL FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PRESS CREDENTIALS?

"Fox's alleged independence from the Republican Party has been a myth the political world has agreed to live by for years, even though the notion is preposterous. And now top people at Fox give regular advice to the president.  

Fox is not a news organization. It's part of the GOP, and it should be treated that way."

Fox New is why I'm no longer a Republican. They had always made shit up to support R's. O'Rielly and Hannity were always assholes. Others like Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter were just fucking nuts. The morning show has said some of the dumbest things I've ever heard on TV. Multiple attempts to hide R wrongdoing by labeling the offender as "D" in their graphics. Their attempt to convince me that Sarah Palin was qualified to be the VP was the last straw.

Any group that expects me to believe shit that I can see is obviously false won't get my vote.

Fuck Fox and the R's.

Also, Fuck the Clintons and the D establishment.

Government is the Problem? - 2

A good post here including...

 Donald Trump: Ruling Class President

 On one hand, victorious candidates have to win enough popular votes to prevail in elections. They can hardly do that by proclaiming their commitment to the rule of the wealthy capitalist Few.  On the other hand, they cannot garner the resources to win elections and govern effectively without the backing and cooperation of the investor/capitalist class, whose control of money and the means of production is critical to political power and policymaking.

and

“U.S. corporations exercised power over communities, much like Kings do over feudal serfs, by exercising ownership over the means of production in the U.S. economy. They command worker loyalty due to their ability to hire and fire Americans and provide basic benefits such as health care or 401k and pension benefits. But corporations also possess the power to destroy people’s lives via capital flight. Simply by threatening to leave a community and move factories abroad in pursuit of higher profits and weaker environmental regulations, corporations hold citizens hostage…The marketplace is a prison, Lindblom warned, because these corporations ultimately control the levers of the U.S. economy, and control the life outcomes of American workers.”

link:Ditching the “Deep State”: The Rise of a New Conspiracy Theory in American Politics 

and

 “Both sides of the political spectrum are manipulated by the same forces. If you’re some right-wing Christian zealot in Georgia, then it’s homosexuals and abortion and all these, you know, wedge issues that are used to whip you up emotionally. If you are a liberal in Manhattan, it’s – you know, they’ll be teaching creationism in your schools or whatever…Yet in fact it’s just a game, because whether it’s Bush or whether it’s Obama, Goldman Sachs always wins. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs.

link: "America is a Tinderbox" - Chris Hedges on Reality Asserts Itself pt4