Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Last Chance To Save The World
HP | author | 11/30/15

Todays Headlines
CLIMATE SUMMIT PARIS... Demonstrations Around The World... Hundreds Arrested... Obama 'Optimistic'... Could Redefine 21st Century Economy... GOP Threatens To Derail... 2015 Already Set To Be The Hottest Year On Record... Catastrophic... Melting Glaciers... 'Major Cities Will Be Submerged'... Why Some Conservatives Can't Accept That Climate Change Is Real...

Right-Wing Hysteria Explodes as American Mosques Face Angry Protests and Hate Over Past Week
AlterNet | Zaid Jilani | 11/24/15

Since the attacks in Paris, Islamophobia has increased in the European Union, with a 300 percent increase in hate attacks against Muslims in the United Kingdom. But this wave of hate is also taking place on the other side of the Atlantic, in the U.S.

... In Virginia: In Fairfax County, a man left a hoax explosive device outside a mosque. And in Spotsylvania, local Muslims presenting a plan for a mosque were met with angry protests, including a muscular man who screamed at the presenters, telling them to shut up. “Every Muslim is a terrorist,” he frothed. ... Read more
WATCH: Virginia town hall meeting descends into chaos as anti-Muslim bigots scream insults (11/19/15) [0:25]

A Massive Climate Summit Is About to Happen in Paris. Here's What You Need to Know.
MotherJones | Tim McDonnell | 11/27/15

On Monday, roughly 40,000 heads of state, diplomats, scientists, activists, policy experts, and journalists will descend on an airport in the northern Paris suburbs for the biggest meeting on climate change since at least 2009—or maybe ever. The summit is organized by the United Nations and is primarily aimed at producing an agreement that will serve as the world's blueprint for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of global warming. This is a major milestone in the climate change saga, and it has been in the works for years. Here's what you need to know:

What's going on at this summit, exactly? At the heart of the summit are the core negotiations, which are off-limits to the public and journalists. Like any high-stakes diplomatic summit, representatives of national governments will sit in a big room and parse through pages of text, word by word. The final document will actually be a jigsaw puzzle of two separate pieces. The most important part is the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). These are commitments made individually by each country about how they plan to reduce their carbon footprints. The United States, for example, has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, mostly by going after carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Nearly every country on Earth has submitted an INDC, together covering about 95 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. (You can explore them in detail here.) The video above, from Climate Desk partner Grist, has a good rundown of how this all really works. ... Read more
A Massive Climate Summit Is About to Happen in Paris. Here's What You Need to Know.

Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It
NYTimes | Kamel Daoud | 11/20/15

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity's common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.

Wahhabism, a messianic radicalism that arose in the 18th century, hopes to restore a fantasized caliphate centered on a desert, a sacred book, and two holy sites, Mecca and Medina. Born in massacre and blood, it manifests itself in a surreal relationship with women, a prohibition against non-Muslims treading on sacred territory, and ferocious religious laws. That translates into an obsessive hatred of imagery and representation and therefore art, but also of the body, nakedness and freedom. Saudi Arabia is a Daesh that has made it.

The West's denial regarding Saudi Arabia is striking: It salutes the theocracy as its ally but pretends not to notice that it is the world's chief ideological sponsor of Islamist culture. The younger generations of radicals in the so-called Arab world were not born jihadists. They were suckled in the bosom of Fatwa Valley, a kind of Islamist Vatican with a vast industry that produces theologians, religious laws, books, and aggressive editorial policies and media campaigns. ... Read more

Stephen Colbert | The All-Seeing NostraDonald (11/25/15) [7:20]

Just Another Refugee Kid
HP | Paulina Porizkova | 11/25/15

The thin child with the big sad eyes and a braid hanging down her back, the one holding a bag containing all her worldly possessions with one hand, and with the other she clutches her baby brother: that refugee girl was once me.

It was 1973. We had fled communist Czechoslovakia for Sweden. Most people escaping communism really wanted to go to the great land of capitalism -- America -- but Sweden was at the time known as one of the most hospitable countries to refugees. (America was by then already pretty sick of the tired, poor and huddled masses.) The Swedish government would provide us with an apartment, my parents with jobs, and eventually the education to pull themselves up from the original menial crap jobs to highly paid and socially rewarding work. No one went hungry or sick or homeless in Sweden, even if you arrived that way. ... Read more

HBO | John Oliver: Reffugees (11/23/15) [7:02]

Analysts Accuse CENTCOM of Covering Up Cooked ISIS Intelligence
TheDailyBeast | author | 11/23/15

In July, a group of intelligence analysts at the U.S. military's Central Command accused their bosses of distorting and selectively editing intelligence reports about the fight against ISIS in order to portray that campaign as more successful than it really was. As a result of those complaints, the Pentagon's inspector general opened an investigation.

One U.S. official said the alleged activity could amount to obstruction and interference with the inspector general's investigation, which began last summer. He noted that files relevant to the investigation began to disappear from CENTCOM computers after the Pentagon watchdog's staff began their work. ... Read more

The Koch intelligence agency
Politico | Ken Vogel | 11/18/15

The political network helmed by Charles and David Koch has quietly built a secretive operation that conducts surveillance and intelligence gathering on its liberal opponents, viewing it as a key strategic tool in its efforts to reshape American public life. The operation, which is little-known even within the Koch network, gathers what Koch insiders refer to as "competitive intelligence" that is used to try to thwart liberal groups and activists, and to identify potential threats to the expansive network.

The competitive intelligence team has a staff of 25, including one former CIA analyst, and operates from one of the non-descript Koch network offices clustered near the Courthouse metro stop in suburban Arlington, Va. It has provided network officials with documents detailing confidential voter-mobilization plans by major Democrat-aligned groups. ... Read more

"We're Now Just One Big Shock Away From A Global Downturn"
ZeroHedge | author | 11/24/15

The financial news continues to confound and confuse investors. The Fed is telling one story. The world economy is telling another. ... Read more

These 18 Photos of Grizzly Bears Will Make You Want to Get in Your Car and Drive to Yellowstone Right Now
MotherJones | Luke Whelan | 11/21/15

By the end of the year, the federal government will likely propose taking the grizzly bear off the endangered species list. To some, this would mark an unprecedented victory: the resuscitation of perhaps the most iconic large mammal on the continent. In 1975, when it first gained endangered species protection, the grizzly bear population in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of the few areas grizzly bears still exist in the continental United States, dwindled to 130. Today, the population stands at around 750. But despite this resurgence, many scientists, conservationists, and indigenous people say taking away its protection could spell disaster for the species. ... Read more

WEATHER DISASTERS ALMOST DAILY
HP | Tom Miles | 11/23/15

UN: Weather-Related Disasters Occur Almost Daily
The United Nations report, called "The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters," found there were an average of 335 weather-related disasters annually between 2005 and August this year, up 14 percent from 1995-2004 and almost twice as many as in the years from 1985 to 1994.

Weather-related disasters such as floods and heatwaves have occurred almost daily in the past decade, almost twice as often as two decades ago, with Asia being the hardest hit region, a U.N. report said on Monday.
While the report authors could not pin the increase wholly on climate change, they did say that the upward trend was likely to continue as extreme weather events increased.
Since 1995, weather disasters have killed 606,000 people, left 4.1 billion injured, homeless or in need of aid, and accounted for 90 percent of all disasters, it said.
A recent peak year was 2002, when drought in India hit 200 million and a sandstorm in China affected 100 million. But the standout mega-disaster was Cyclone Nargis, which killed 138,000 in Myanmar in 2008. ... Read more

Bernie Sanders: "Call Me A Democratic Socialist"!
HP | author | 11/23/15

Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders is running for president, but what does that even mean? Sanders breaks it all down.
Bernie Sanders Meet The Press FULL interview with Chuck Todd HD (11/11/15) [24:46]

Bernie Sanders: "Call Me A Democratic Socialist"! () [6:32]

Saudi Arabia Sentences Poet To Death For "Renouncing Islam"
ZeroHedge | author | 11/23/15

If ISIS had sentenced an internationally renowned poet to death on trumped up charges of “renouncing Islam,” it would be highlighted endlessly across Western media until the public was sufficiently salivating for war against the latest CIA-invented enemy. When one of America’s closest allies does it…not so much. ... Read more

What You Need to Know About the Ongoing Lockdown in Brussels
MotherJones | Inae Oh | 11/23/15

Brussels remains under lockdown for the third straight day as authorities continue to hunt down suspects in connection with the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris. As of Monday morning, a spokesman for the chief Belgian prosecutor said 21 people have been arrested in a series of anti-terror raids since Sunday.

But police officers are still searching for the primary target of these raids--Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old suspect believed to have taken part in the Paris attacks. Officials say Abdeslam's brother detonated himself in the Paris attacks. ... Read more

Bernie Sanders Channels FDR To Explain What 'Democratic Socialism' Means To Him
HP | Samantha Lachman | 11/19/15

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders sought to contextualize his self-described "democratic socialism" on Thursday by pointing out that many of the programs Americans use today -- such as unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare -- were considered radical when they were introduced decades ago.

... Sanders' speech invoked Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union address, in which the president described "a second Bill of Rights" to provide more economic security for the American people. Sanders quoted Roosevelt, who said that "true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men." ... ... "In other words, real freedom must include economic security," Sanders said. ... Read more

Ex-Drone Operator Says Program Is 'Good At Killing People, Just Not The Right Ones'
HP | Dana Liebelson | 11/19/15

Former U.S. drone operators and technicians spoke out on Thursday about the extensive problems with the Obama administration's lethal program in the Middle East, shedding light on civilian deaths, the callousness of the culture, and the heavy weight of responsibility. The ex-drone program participants outlined their experiences at an event held in New York that was organized to promote the new documentary Drone.

Michael Haas, who is a former senior airman with the U.S. air force and helped guide missiles to their targets, according to the Guardian, discussed his experience serving under the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which included working as an instructor. He said over time the quality of personnel rapidly declined, and the mentality under the Obama administration shifted to where, "a meritorious thing to do was to fire a shot, circumstances be damned." ... Read more

The Hunger Game
MotherJones | Shane Bauer | older 12/00/14

When Waed and Hassan fell in love, they were students in a neighborhood of internet cafes and all-night parties. Then the Assad regime turned their world into a medieval hellscape.

... There were many sounds: children playing soccer in the alleys, men advertising the watermelons they pushed around on wooden carts, stereo-projected voices calling the devout to prayer. In between the honking of horns and vrooming of motorcycles there were the coos of pigeons, the dings of bicycle bells, the gossip of neighbors.

The scent of food always beckoned on Yarmouk Street: warm, cheese-filled pastries dripping with sugary syrup; the best falafel in Damascus; pizzalike things called fata'ir that came in 10 different varieties and cast tantalizing scents a block away. People were poor in Yarmouk, more so than in most of Damascus, but there was always much food. Many had large bellies.

Who then could conceive that imams would one day announce it was no longer religiously taboo to eat cats or donkeys? Women and children couldn't yet dream they would soon be sifting through the grass for edible weeds. No one could imagine that on a street outside some apartments, there would be a little pile of cat heads next to men and children flaying the mangy animals and boiling them in a pot. ... Read more

Real American History Neither Ted Cruz Nor the New York Times Will Tell You
AlterNet | Ben Norton | 11/20/15

We talk democracy, then overthrow elected governments and prop up awful regimes. Let's discuss the actual history.

The disant Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has a long and iniquitous history of overthrowing democratically elected leftist governments and propping up right-wing dictators in their place.

In the second Democratic presidential debate, however, candidate Bernie Sanders condemned a long-standing government policy his peers rarely admit exists. "I think we have a disagreement," Sanders said of fellow presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. "And the disagreement is that not only did I vote against the war in Iraq. If you look at history, you will find that regime change -- whether it was in the early '50s in Iran, whether it was toppling Salvador Allende in Chile, or whether it was overthrowing the government of Guatemala way back when -- these invasions, these toppling of governments, regime changes have unintended consequences. I would say that on this issue I'm a little bit more conservative than the secretary." ... Read more

U.S. Investigators Struggle to Track Homegrown ISIS Suspects
NYTimes | Michael S. Schmidt | 11/19/15

This year, American counterterrorism officials began focusing their resources on these Americans -- known as homegrown violent extremists -- after the Islamic State altered its tactics. After months of trying to persuade Americans to travel to join it in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, began using social media to urge its sympathizers in the United States to stay put and plot violence here.

... Despite the Islamic State's urging of its followers to stay here, senior counterterrorism officials have so far identified roughly four dozen Americans who have evaded the authorities and traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State since the conflict began there in 2011, about twice the number that officials have said previously. Some of them are known to have died on the battlefield. A small number have returned to the United States but have lost interest in the cause, the officials say. ... Read more

*DN | Desperate Journey: Shocking Video Shows Risks Refugee Families Take to Reach Europe Safely (11/19/15) [9:00]

The Fed-Induced Farce
ZeroHedge | author | 11/19/15

The Fed has created a dead end street for everyone not in their .1% clientele. They have kept rates too low for far too long and with the 99.9% already experiencing a recession, their desire to raise rates will hit a brick wall of reality. Their easy money schemes to enrich their owners has resulted in the issuance of trillions more in debt by the government, corporations and consumers. The $60 trillion of total credit market debt will implode if rates go up by even 1% or 2%. The corporate titans are now facing huge headwinds, as consumers have nothing left to spend, the strengthening dollar is sapping their profits, and higher interest rates will put an end to the faux housing recovery.

The Fed has destroyed the finances of senior citizens, savers and the pension plans of corporations and local governments with their 0% interest rates. The Wall Street bankers and their Fed puppets can surely see the writing on the wall. They will drive stocks as high as possible so they can cash out before the next collapse. They don't care about their clients, the middle class, or the future of the country.

We're all muppets to the banking cabal running this morally and financially bankrupt military empire of debt. ... Read more

This Chart Is The Perfect Rebuttal To Governors Who Won't Take In Syrian Refugees
ThinkProgress.org | Dylan Petrohilos | 11/17/15

Governors from more than half of country are attempting to block refugees fleeing conflict in Syria from being settled in their states citing concerns that they might carry out terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Experts familiar with the issue say their fears are largely unfounded.

Evidence collected so far suggests that refugees were not involved in carrying out the gun and bomb attacks on the French capital. While hundreds of thousands of migrants have turned up on European shores in the last several months seeking asylum, the U.S. refugee resettlement program vets each person it admits through rigorous background checks that have a nearly flawless record at keeping terrorists out. ... Read more

Weapons Companies' Stocks Surge After Paris Attacks
MotherJones | author | date

When the New York Stock Exchange opened Monday morning, less than three days after Islamic State terrorists attacked in Paris, five leading American weapons manufacturers saw their stock prices jump. Fox Business attributed the bump to a "reaction to the attacks in France." Over the weekend, French President Francois Hollande had announced that his country would "lead a war which will be pitiless" against ISIS and launched a "massive" airstrike on its stronghold in Syria.

Shares of Lockheed Martin, known for its Hellfire missiles and its lead role in the troubled $1.5-trillion F-35 project, jumped 3.5 percent. Raytheon, manufacturer of Tomahawk missiles used in air strikes against ISIS, climbed 4.1 percent. Northrop Grumman, which in October landed a $55 billion deal to build the next stealth bomber, saw a 4.4 percent rise. Both General Dynamics, maker of F-16s, and Boeing, whose Small Diameter Bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munitions have been used in the air campaign against ISIS, ended the day with increases of 1.9 and 1.3 percent, respectively. ... Read more
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The GOP Clown Car Rolls On
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 11/17/15

Not one of them can win, but one must. That's the paradox of the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, fast becoming the signature event in the history of black comedy.

Conventional wisdom says that with the primaries and caucuses rapidly approaching, front-running nuts Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson must soon give way to the "real" candidates. But behind Trump and Carson is just more abyss. As I found out on a recent trip to New Hampshire, the rest of the field is either just as crazy or as dangerous as the current poll leaders, or too bumbling to win.

... Instead, HashtagClownCar will almost certainly continue to be the most darkly ridiculous political story since Henry II of Champagne, the 12th-century king of Jerusalem, plunged to his death after falling out of a window with a dwarf. ... Read more

Economic Theory Meets Main Street Reality
ZeroHedge | author | 11/17/15

Since the end of the financial crisis, there has been an ongoing debate about the economy. However, the debate I am speaking of is not between investors and Wall Street, but rather between economic theory and "Main Street" reality.

Over the last few months, in particular, economic and media "experts" have become more vocal about the ongoing detachment between economic theory and actual economic activity. The ongoing hope, as point out by Myles Udland recently, is "this time is different:" ... Read more
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Mothers of ISIS
HP | Julia Ioffe | 11/17/15

In Calgary, between the soccer practices and the hours at her accounting job and the potlucks with the neighbors, Christianne Boudreau spent every spare minute watching Islamic State videos, her nose pressed up against the computer screen.

She sat in the basement of her middle-class home in her middle-class suburb, a bare room that once belonged to her eldest son, Damian, and watched men posturing with big guns like teenagers. She watched firefights. She watched executions. But Boudreau barely registered any of the bloodshed. She was focused on the faces behind the balaclavas, trying to spot her son's eyes. ... Read more
Mothers of ISIS (11/17/15) [7:23]

Look At These Photos Before You Say We Can't Take In Syrian Refugees
HP | Nick Wing | 11/16/15

French authorities are still piecing together information about the terrorist operation that killed at least 129 and wounded hundreds more in Paris last week, but on Monday, a number of American politicians said they'd heard enough to make one immediate conclusion: There's no place for Syrian refugees in the U.S.

The Islamic State claimed credit for the Friday attacks, and a Syrian passport found near one of the suicide bombers sparked concern that the group might be exploiting the migrant crisis to sneak extremists into Western countries. It's still not clear if the document legitimately belonged to the attacker, was stolen or was forged, but conservative politicians in both Europe and the U.S. were quick to push the idea that accepting more Syrian refugees would serve as an invitation to Islamic militants. ... Read more

Democratic Candidates All Want to Destroy ISIS, But Mostly Debate Domestic Issues
AlterNet | Steven Rosenfeld | 11/15/15

A day after the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, the three Democratic presidential candidates told a national audience that America must be part of an international coalition that uses military force and other tools to destroy ISIS, but gave little insight into their thinking about how they would confront the threat in an increasingly volatile world.

Compared to remarks by the Republican candidates on Saturday (Donald Trump said France's gun control laws worsened the carnage while others said President Obama created ISIS by bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq), the Democratic candidates were less inflammatory, more nuanced and projected some understanding of the region's complexity.

"We have to look at ISIS as the leading threat of an international terror network," former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. "It cannot be contained, it must be defeated.... But it cannot be an American fight. And I think what the president has consistently said, which I agree with, is that we will support those who take the fight to ISIS." ... Read more
CBS News | Democratic Presidential Debate -(full) 11/14/15 [1:39:21]

Why A Backlash Against Refugees Only Helps ISIS
HP | Robins Early | 11/15/15

Almost immediately after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for killing at least 129 and wounding hundreds more in a series of terror attacks in Paris on Friday night, a number of conservative groups tied European immigration policies to the attacks. But some experts warn that anti-immigration rhetoric could play into the hands of extremists.

The criticism of immigration intensified after French authorities revealed that a Syrian passport was found near the body of one of the attackers. It is currently unclear how the passport got there, and there is mounting evidence it is a fake, as well as the possibility it was stolen. However, someone carrying the document did travel from Turkey, through Greece and the Balkans, to Western Europe. ... Read more

You Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia
HP | author | date

Abd al-Wahhab argued that all Muslims must individually pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader (a Caliph, if there were one). Those who would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated, he wrote.

The dramatic arrival of Da'ish (ISIS) on the stage of Iraq has shocked many in the West. Many have been perplexed -- and horrified -- by its violence and its evident magnetism for Sunni youth. But more than this, they find Saudi Arabia's ambivalence in the face of this manifestation both troubling and inexplicable, wondering, "Don't the Saudis understand that ISIS threatens them, too?"

It appears -- even now -- that Saudi Arabia's ruling elite is divided. Some applaud that ISIS is fighting Iranian Shiite "fire" with Sunni "fire"; that a new Sunni state is taking shape at the very heart of what they regard as a historical Sunni patrimony; and they are drawn by Da'ish's strict Salafist ideology. ... Read more

WaPo: GOP In Panic Mode Over Carson, Trump ...
HP | author | 11/13/15

Less than three months before the kick-off Iowa caucuses, there is growing anxiety bordering on panic among Republican elites about the dominance and durability of Donald Trump and Ben Carson and widespread bewilderment over how to defeat them. ... Read more

The American Way of War in the Twenty-First Century (It's a $cam!)
TomDispatch.com | Tom Engelhardt | 11/12/15

Let's begin with the $12 billion in shrink-wrapped $100 bills, Iraqi oil money held in the U.S. The Bush administration began flying it into Baghdad on C-130s soon after U.S. troops entered that city in April 2003. Essentially dumped into the void that had once been the Iraqi state, at least $1.2 to $1.6 billion of it was stolen and ended up years later in a mysterious bunker in Lebanon. And that's just what happened as the starting gun went off.

It's never ended. In 2011, the final report of the congressionally mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting estimated that somewhere between $31 billion and $60 billion taxpayer dollars had been lost to fraud and waste in the American "reconstruction" of Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, for instance, there was that $75 million police academy, initially hailed "as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security." It was, however, so poorly constructed that it proved a health hazard. In 2006, "feces and urine rained from the ceilings in [its] student barracks" and that was only the beginning of its problems. ... Read more

We have an outrageous National Debt, but is because of our excessive spending on our domestic population? No. Look closely at the trillions of dollars the Military squanders on waste and fraud and the Federal Reserve on its Quatitative Easing that it has enslaves us with.

Pentagon

**Daily Ticker | Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For (2014) [5:32]

RT | Black Budget: US govt clueless about missing Pentagon $8.5 trillions (12/21/13) [4:46]

Federal Reserve

Who Owns our National Debt (Sept 2014)

1. Foreign - $6.013 trillion (mostly China and Japan)
2. Federal Reserve - $2.461 trillion
3. Mutual Funds - $1.033 trillion
4. State and Local Government, including their pension funds - $818 billion
5. Private Pension Funds - $506 billion
6. Banks - $407 billion
7. Insurance Companies - $269 billion
8. U.S. Savings Bonds - $177 billion
9. Other - individuals, government-sponsored enterprises, brokers and dealers, bank personal trusts and estates, corporate and non-corporate businesses, and other investors - $1.115 billion.

CNBC | The Size of the Bank Bailout: $29 Trillion (12/14/11) (article)

$29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the Fed's Bailout by Funding Facility and Recipient (pdf)

There have been a number of estimates of the total amount of funding provided by the Federal Reserve to bail out the financial system. For example, Bloomberg recently claimed that the cumulative commitment by the Fed (this includes asset purchases plus lending) was $7.77 trillion. As part of the Ford Foundation project "A Research and Policy Dialogue Project on Improving Governance of the Government Safety Net in Financial Crisis," Nicola Matthews and James Felkerson have undertaken an examination of the data on the Fed's bailout of the financial system--the most comprehensive investigation of the raw data to date. This working paper is the first in a series that will report the results of this investigation.

Additional charts that show other problems that have contributed to the National Debt.

Donald Trump's New Book To Debut Behind Ben Carson's On New York Times Bestseller List
BuzzFeed | McKay Coppins | 11/12/15

Trump's new book, Crippled America, will debut on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list at #5 -- one spot below Carson's book, A More Perfect Union. The yet-to-be-released list was sent to BuzzFeed News by a publishing industry source, and will appear in the Nov. 22 edition of the New York Times Book Review.

As BuzzFeed News recently reported, the celebrity billionaire's proposal was passed over earlier this year by some publishers, who were skeptical of his staying power in the 2016 race, and then came to regret their decision. ... Read more

Something Very Strange Is Taking Place Off The Coast Of Galveston, TX
ZeroHedge | author | 11/12/15

Having exposed the world yesterday to the 2-mile long line of tankers-full'o'crude heading from Iraq to the US, several weeks after reporting that China has run out of oil storage space we can now confirm that the global crude "in transit" glut is becoming gargantuan and is starting to have adverse consequences on the price of oil.

While the crude oil tanker backlog in Houston reaches an almost unprecedented 39 (with combined capacity of 28.4 million barrels), as The FT reports that from China to the Gulf of Mexico, the growing flotilla of stationary supertankers is evidence that the oil price crash may still have further to run, as more than 100m barrels of crude oil and heavy fuels are being held on ships at sea (as the year-long supply glut fills up available storage on land). The storage problems are so severe in fact, that traders asking ships to go slow, and that is where we see something very strange occurring off the coast near Galveston, TX. ... Read more

There's a Horrifying Pork Factory Video Going Around. The Story Behind It Is Even Worse.
MotherJones | Ted Genoways | 11/11/15

Earlier today, animal rights organization Compassion Over Killing released a new undercover video shot at the Quality Pork Processors (QPP) plant in Austin, Minnesota. That cut-and-kill operation is part of the Hormel Foods Corporation's flagship complex.

QPP processes between 19,000 and 22,000 hogs per day depending on demand, making it one of the most productive facilities in the country. But the video also suggests that the volume and speed of processing results in shocking mistreatment of animals. Downed hogs are shown being kicked and dragged toward the slaughter area. Some conscious hogs are shown shackled to the conveyor chain, while others, still alive, have their throats slit and are sent to the scalding tank. The video also documents hogs with pus-filled abscesses and what appears to be fecal contamination being processed for food--as well as an employee who seems to be nodding off at his workstation. ... Read more

Sociopaths who once ran the country (mind boggling).

PBS Frontline: The Warning, The Financial Collapse - Brooksley Born [56:17]

Brooksley Born was one of the few that spoke up before 2007 to say that we were heading toward a train wreck. Look at the video and see who was on the other side.

Apple Has Enough Money to Buy Every Major Sports Team in the World
AlterNet | Kali Holloway | 11/12/15

Earlier this year, Apple had the best earnings quarter in history. That means it outdid every company, revenue and profit-wise, ever. It just bested that report last week, when it announced that in the last quarter, revenue hit $51.5 billion and profits rose to $11.1 billion. Obviously, even for the most successful company of all time, that's a pretty good haul. But as BGR notes, Apple is even richer than you probably think. In fact, the company has so much money, it could purchase every major sports team in the world. As of the end of October, Apple's coffers held $206 billion.

The closest competitor to Apple, by the way? That would be Microsoft, which according to Forbes holds a paltry $108 billion. ... Read more

Republicans Debated For 2 Hours And We’re No Closer To A Nominee
HP | Scot Conroy | 11/11/15

Winners and losers were hard to find, as the defining feature of Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate was its lack of definition.

In stark contrast to the first three GOP face-offs, each of which carved an underlying narrative that drove subsequent news coverage, Tuesday's forum had many moments that stuck out, but few that appeared likely to have a lasting effect on the contours of the wide-open race. Any Republicans who had hoped that the Fox Business Network debate might thin the still-sprawling GOP field will leave Milwaukee disappointed. All eight competitors on the main stage had their moments -- and so did the four who faced off in the undercard debate beforehand. ... Read more
4th Republican GOP Debate in Milwaukee (full) (11/10/15) [1:54:51]

Everything You Need To Know About The Republican Candidates' Tax Plans
HP | Zach Carter | 11/10/15

The tax proposals from the Republican presidential hopefuls all have two things in common: They would balloon the deficit and shower the wealthy with lots of money. The various candidates' plans all have different details. Some would eliminate all taxes on stock trades and real estate investments, which would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, while others would repeal the estate tax, which literally only affects the heirs of millionaires. But the proposals all employ the same broad strategy: Give a small number of very wealthy people massive, hulking piles of money, while giving everyone else much tinier piles. In other words, they're newer, bigger versions of President George W. Bush's tax cuts.

Just how well the rich would make out, and how much the deficit would swell, depends on whether or not big tax cuts for the wealthy will significantly boost the broader economy. Recent history and traditional economic modeling suggest they will not. The Bush tax cuts dramatically boosted the take-home pay of the wealthiest Americans, but did not ultimately increase wages. The resulting inequality, meanwhile, may have exacerbated the housing bubble that consumed the economy and fueled the 2008 banking crash.

Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.)
According to Citizens for Tax Justice:
Rubio's plan would increase the national debt by $11.8 trillion over the next decade, the think tank finds. More than one-third of the plan's tax cuts would flow to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, who would see their incomes go up by an average of $223,783 per year.... Read more

Stunning Images From America's Wars [PHOTOS]
MotherJones | Mark Murrmann | older

Like many photographers, Peter van Agtmael rushed to cover the wars of his generation—in his case, Iraq and Afghanistan. And, like anyone who goes to war, he came back a different man, deeply affected by his experiences, by the events that took place before his camera and, especially, by the people he met in those countries. ... Read more

California Could Be the Next Saudi Arabia

MotherJones | Tom Philpott | 11/09/15

In the early 1980s, Saudi Arabia embarked upon a bold project: It began to transform large swaths of desert landscape into wheat farms. Now, "desert agriculture" isn't quite the oxymoron it might sound like. These arid zones offer ample sunlight and cool nights, and harbor few crop-chomping insects, fungal diseases, or weed species. As long as you can strategically add water and fertilizer, you'll generate bin-busting crops. And that's exactly what Saudi Arabia did. As this Bloomberg News piece shows, the oil-producing behemoth grew so much wheat for about two decades that "its exports could feed Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Yemen."

But starting in the mid-2000s, Saudi wheat production began to taper off. Soon after, it plunged. This year and from now on, the country will produce virtually no wheat, and instead rely on global markets for the staple grain. What happened? ... Read more

Obama Explains Why 'The Greatest Corporate Power Grab In History' Is "The Right Thing For America"
ZeroHedge | author | 11/10/15

While some have called The Trans-Pacific Partnership, "the most brazen corporate power grab in American history," President Obama tells Americans - in an Op-Ed released today - that "it’s the right thing to do for our economy, for working Americans and for our middle class" Despite indepedent analysis that appears to confirm the creeping corporate coup d’état along with the final evisceration of national sovereignty, President Obama explains - in simple words - ObamaTrade is "a trade deal that helps working families get ahead," due, inhis opinion, to the "toughest global labor laws" which will allow American workers to compete on a so-called "level playing field." ... Hey Right ... Read more

Global Stocks Fall For 5th Day On Disturbing Chinese Inflation Data; Renewed Rate Hike Fears; Copper At 6 Year Low
ZeroHedge | author | 11/10/15

The ongoing failure of China to achieve any stabilization in its economy, after already cutting interest rates six times in the past year, and the prospect of a U.S. interest rate hike in December, had made markets increasingly jittery and worried which is not only why the S&P 500 Index had its biggest drop in a month, but thanks to the soaring dollar emerging market stocks are falling for a fourth day - led by China - bringing their decline in that period to almost 4 percent, and the global stock index down for a 5th consecutive day. ... Read more

Noam Chomsky: America's Empire of Chaos

AlterNet | C.J. Polychroniou | 11/09/15

US foreign policy in the 21st century has little to offer other than massive military power. Indeed, gone are the days when military might was used in order to "recreate the world in America's image." In the post-Cold War era, US military interventions take place in the absence of an overall strategic vision and with ideological justifications lacking force and conviction even among the United States' traditional allies. Little wonder then that military interventions, always illegal and unjustifiable, end up accomplishing nothing more than the creation of black holes, while giving rise in turn to new and ever increasing violent terrorist organizations bent on spreading their own vision of social and political order.

In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Noam Chomsky reflects on the dynamics of US foreign policy in the 21st century and the implications of the policy of raining down destruction for world order. Chomsky also assesses the role of Russia's involvement in Syria, the rise of the Islamic State and the apparent attraction it holds for many young Muslims from Europe, and offers a grim view about the future of US foreign policy.... Read more

The Daily Show Nails Ben Carson's Latest Insanity
AlterNet | Adam Johnson | 11/10/15

As studiously documented on Saturday, Ben Carson's web of lies is quickly unraveling. He stabbed a guy, but his victim can't be found. He attended a Yale class that didn't exist. He was offered a scholarship to West Point that was never offered. The Daily Show, with an increasingly steady Trevor Noah, took note. ... Read more
CC | The Daily Show Nails Ben Carson's Latest Insanity (11/10/15) [7:15]

Krugman Doesn't Understand Why "Darkness Is Spreading Over Part Of Our Society"
ZeroHedge | author | 11/09/15

Yet there is a darkness spreading over part of our society. And we don't really understand why. There has been a lot of comment, and rightly so, over a new paper by the economists Angus Deaton (who just won a Nobel) and Anne Case, showing that mortality among middle-aged white Americans has been rising since 1999. This deterioration took place while death rates were falling steadily both in other countries and among other groups in our own nation.

Even more striking are the proximate causes of rising mortality. Basically, white Americans are, in increasing numbers, killing themselves, directly or indirectly. Suicide is way up, and so are deaths from drug poisoning and the chronic liver disease that excessive drinking can cause. We've seen this kind of thing in other times and places -- for example, in the plunging life expectancy that afflicted Russia after the fall of Communism. But it's a shock to see it, even in an attenuated form, in America. ... Read more

Greenhouse Gases Reached Record Highs In 2014
Reuters & HP | author | 11/09/15

Global CO2 levels are now 143 percent of pre-industrial levels.

Greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2014 as the relentless fueling of climate change makes the planet more dangerous for future generations, the World Meteorological Organization said on Monday.

Graphs issued by the United Nations agency showed levels of carbon dioxide, the maingreenhouse gas, climbing steadily towards the 400 parts per million (ppm) level, having hit a new record every year since reliable records began in 1984. ... Read more

World Bank Warns Of Mass Poverty If Climate Change Continues
HP | Laura Barron-Lopez | 11/08/15

100 Million More People Will Be In Poverty By 2030 Without Action On Climate, World Bank Says

If countries fail to sustain policies that combat the impacts of climate change while also providing safety nets for the world's poor, global warming will drive an additional 100 million people into poverty by 2030, a new World Bank report finds.

The report, titled "Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty," argues that climate change is a "significant obstacle" to the eradication of poverty. Poor people are more likely to be impacted by climate-related "shocks" such as flooding, drought, crop failure, spikes in food prices, waterborne disease and the long list of extreme weather patterns that scientists have said will increase due to climate change. ... Read more

The Plan to Save the World
MotherJones | Rebecca Leber | 11/09/15

What success at the Paris climate conference looks like.

Already, the effects of climate change are clear and significant. Last year was the hottest in recorded history, and it's all but certain that 2015 will set a new record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Wildfires in the West this year have consumed a massive eight million acres of land and counting, while superstorms like Katrina and Sandy are becoming stronger and more frequent. But that's just the beginning. By the end of the century, the planet will become unrecognizable. The western United States will face Dust Bowl-like conditions that will persist for more than 30 years. As the oceans rise, island nations like the Maldives could disappear completely, while millions of people in Miami, New York, and Bangladesh will be forced from their homes. Looking further out, over the next several hundred years, the melting ice caps could cause sea levels to surge up to 200 feet, high enough to sink a ten-story building. ... Read more

Shock Report: Doctors Shot Fleeing From Kunduz Hospital
HP | Alana Horowitz Satlin | 11/05/15

The medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders released its internal report on Thursday about the October attack on its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. At least 30 people were killed in the airstrikes, led by U.S. forces, the report said. "Patients burned in their beds," it added, and "medical staff were decapitated and lost limbs."

The organization found that "a patient in a wheelchair attempting to escape from the inpatient department ... was killed by shrapnel from a blast." The report also revealed that pilots shot at staff members fleeing the hospital. ... Read more

*Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency by Charlie Savage

Barack Obama campaigned on a promise of change from George W. Bush's "global war on terror." Yet from indefinite detention and drone strikes to surveillance and military tribunals, Obama ended up continuing-and in some cases expanding-many policies he inherited. What happened?

In Power Wars, Charlie Savage looks inside the Obama administration's national security legal and policy team in a way that no one has before. Based on exclusive interviews with more than 150 current and former officials and access to previously unreported documents, he lays bare their internal deliberations, including emotional debates over the fates of detainees held on torture-tainted evidence and acts of war that lacked congressional authorization. He tells the inside stories of how Obama came to order the killing of an American citizen, preside over an unprecedented crackdown on leaks, and keep a then-secret National Security Agency program that collected records of every American's phone calls.

George H. W. Bush Takes Unexpected Swipes At Cheney, Rumsfeld
Reuters & HP | author | 11/04/15

Former President George H.W. Bush takes some unexpected swipes at Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, key members of his son's administration, over their reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks, in a new biography of the 41st president, Fox News reported on Wednesday. In "Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey Of George Herbert Walker Bush," author Jon Meacham quotes Bush as saying that Cheney and Rumsfeld were too hawkish and that their harsh stance damaged the reputation of the United States, the cable news network said. Speaking of Cheney, who was vice president under President George W. Bush, the senior Bush said: "I don't know, he just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with," according to the report. ... Read more

*What to Look for When the Trans-Pacific Partnership Text Is Released
HP | Dave Johnson | 11/04/15

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been completed. The agreement is a big deal. It is said it writes the rules for doing business in the 21st century and covers 40 percent of the world's economy. The agreement will determine whether the giant corporations will increase their domination or if regular people will instead be able to fight back, restore self-governance, and make a decent living in good and safe working conditions.

Unfortunately, TPP was negotiated through a corporate-dominated process, with representatives of labor, environmental, consumer, human rights and other "stakeholder" groups largely kept away from the table. The negotiations were conducted in secret and the results have been kept secret. ... Read more

Saudis Bring Oil War To Europe With Largest Price Discount Since 2009
ZeroHedge | author | 11/05/15

With oil exports to Europe having slipped from 13% of Saudi's total to just 10% in the last six months, The FT reports, the de facto leader of OPEC has slashed its Official Selling Price (OSP) to Europe in an effort to regain market share. Saudi lowered its OSP for its Arab light crude grade in Europe by $1.30 a barrel for December, taking its discount to the weighted average of the North Sea Brent benchmark to $4.75 a barrel - the largest discount since February 2009... directly going after Russia's customer base. ... Read more

The Most Devious Liars In The Room
ZeroHedge | author | 11/05/15

There were a few different stories coming out over the last few days that reveal the true nature of government and the apparatchiks who use disinformation, devious machinations, fraudulent accounting, and taxpayer money to cover up their criminality, lies, and the true state of the American economy. The use of government accounting tricks to obscure the truth about our dire financial straits is designed to keep the masses sedated and confused. ... Read more

Elizabeth Warren Warns Democrats Against Wall Street Defections
HP | Zach Carter | 11/02/15

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Monday warned House Democrats to oppose a series of GOP-backed bills designed to roll back the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation.

Democrats must stand strong and fight back Republican efforts to weaken oversight," Warren wrote. "Rolling back the rules on our largest and riskiest institutions is a terrible idea for just about everyone except a handful of well-connected financial firms -- and we weren't sent here to work for them." ... Read more

Ben Carson Leads 2016 Republicans In New National Poll
HP | Ariel Edwards-Levy| 11/02/15

Ben Carson leads the Republican presidential primary field in a survey released Monday night by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, marking the second time since October that the former neurosurgeon has polled ahead of Donald Trump.

The survey, conducted largely before last week's Republican debate, shows Carson with 29 percent, his best showing in any national poll to date. Trump takes second with 23 percent, followed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) at 11 percent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at 10 percent, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) at 8 percent. The remaining candidates each polled at 3 percent or less. ... Read more

How Much Is George W. Bush Responsible for 9/11?
HP | Elizabeth Drew | 11/02/15

Poor Jeb. Or I should say, Poor Jeb! It's unfathomable how he thought that he could run for the Republican nomination without having to wrestle with his brother's record as president. Soon enough, he was so entangled in the question of whether he would have gone into Iraq, knowing what we know now, that it took him four tries to come up with the currently politically acceptable answer: No. But while the war in Iraq is widely accepted to have been a disastrous mistake, another crucial event during the George W. Bush administration has long been considered unfit for political discussion: President Bush's conduct, in the face of numerous warnings of a major terrorist plot, in the months leading up to September 11, 2001.

The general consensus seems to have been that the 9/11 attacks were so horrible, so tragic, that to even suggest that the president at the time might bear any responsibility for not taking enough action to try to prevent them is to play "politics," and to upset the public. And so we had a bipartisan commission examine the event and write a report; we built memorials at the spots where the Twin Towers had come down and the Pentagon was attacked; and that was to be that. And then along came Donald Trump, to whom "political correctness" is a relic of an antiquated ... Read more

Iraqi Politician Who Was Leading Voice Behind 2003 Invasion Dies. Ahmed Chalabi Dies Of Heart Attack
Reuters & HP | author | 11/03/15

Ahmed Chalabi, the smooth-talking Iraqi politician who pushed Washington to invade Iraq in 2003 with discredited information on Saddam Hussein's military capabilities, died on Tuesday of an apparent heart attack.

A secular Shi'ite, Chalabi rose to prominence as leader of the then-exiled Iraqi National Congress, which played a major role in encouraging the U.S. administration of former President George W. Bush to invade Iraq and oust Saddam. ... Read more

Here's How Much QE Helped Wall Street Steamroll Main Street
Bloomberg | Simon Kennedy | 11/02/15

The wingnut myth that refuses to die: The one simple reason why there's no "liberal media conspiracy"
Salon | Conor Lynch | 11/02/15

During the third Republican debate, the winning strategy was not in attacking Hillary Clinton or calling out the absurd policy plans of Donald Trump and Ben Carson, but in slamming the mainstream media as a left wing mouthpiece of the Democratic party. And since the debate, the GOP has gone berserk over CNBC -- a business channel, mind you -- and it's supposed liberal bias. The Republican National Committee has even suspended its partnership with NBC News for its February debate, because, as RNC Chairman Reince Priebus writes, "CNBC's moderators engaged in a series of "gotcha" questions, petty and mean-spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates."

As Charles Pierce puts it in Esquire: I have come to the conclusion that it is very easy to be a Republican presidential candidate. First of all, to paraphrase J.R. Ewing, once you give up truth, the rest is a piece of cake. ... Read more

The Rigging of the American Market
HP | Robert Reich | 11/02/15

Much of the national debate about widening inequality focuses on whether and how much to tax the rich and redistribute their income downward. But this debate ignores the upward redistributions going on every day, from the rest of us to the rich. These redistributions are hidden inside the market.

... Add it up -- the extra money we're paying for pharmaceuticals, Internet communications, home mortgages, student loans, airline tickets, food, and health insurance -- and you get a hefty portion of the average family's budget. ... Read more

Stephen Cobert Asks Donald To Put His Millions Where His Mouth Is (10/30/15) [3:35]

The Curious Case of Ben Carson: How Did a Black Neurosurgeon Soar to the Top of the GOP Polls?
Salon & AlterNet | Chauncey DeVega | 11/01/15

While most campaign coverage has centered on Donald Trump, Carson's rise arguably says much more about the GOP.

In a primary season that has seen the most unlikely of candidates, Donald Trump, surge to the head of the GOP pack, perhaps the least surprising development is the ascendance of another political outsider: Dr. Ben Carson. But to understand why Carson's recent success in Republican polls makes so much sense, one must first take a closer look at the nature of the modern Republican Party.

In the Age of Obama, GOP elites routinely bloviate about their need to expand outreach to people of color, especially Hispanics and Latinos, given the United States' changing ethnic and racial demographics. Yet, the Party has consistently failed to leverage opportunities to that end. This could be a function of incompetence. Alternatively, such a lack of substantive efforts could simply be a reflection of a political party that is dedicated to white racial resentment and white identity politics -- and thus suppressing the votes of non-whites--as its primary electoral strategy. ... Read more

Is It Game Over for Jeb Bush?
AlterNet | Marty Kaplan | 10/31/15

It's the humane thing to do," said a participant following an emergency donor class conference call following the CNBC Republican debate in Boulder, Colo. "After Jeb criticized Rubio's attendance record, and Rubio broke his legs, you could just see it in his eyes," said the billionaire super PAC contributor, who did not want to be named because he never is named. "Poor Jeb's like a thoroughbred begging to be put out of his misery." ... Read more