playing the BIG boards. options included. making the profits with this volitality !
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it all makes perfect sense,...especially after the deliverer of these words takes a snort of coke.
how else would this incoherent gibberish make any logic much less sense. definitely experiencing an altered state,..and i don't think the vision of angels was part of altered state.
of course Larry knew. like Reagan didn't know about Ollie North's activities. r-i-g-h-t 8^)
something as obvious as a persons racial prejudices,...what kind of attorney is Larry if he says he wasn't aware.
sloppy, sloppy intel Larry.
Larry got caught,...it's time for another TRUMP LIE,... just making it up as he goes.
this is gonna be a wild,...Mueller has even more evidence to bring it all down,...seatbelts required for this ride.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached by the House on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
But Clinton was not accused of any underlying crimes as serious as those which Cohen suggests Trump may have committed.
you speak as if you are very, very confused. one thing has nothing to do with the other.
what Don/Con is worried about is Cohen flipping even more so and,... Manafort weighing his options and potentially flipping also. yea,...i get you don't like it,...but this is reality ! welcome !!
your perspectives are immature at best. like someone just starting civics class in junior high school. spewing out all the new things you've learned...'cept you haven't connected the dots.
deflecting ?,...LOL,...you are the one who stated that its the LEFT WING LIBERALS that murdered Mollie Tibbetts,...remember that ?
you were the one that posted the falsehood jumping to assumptions before you even fact checked.
then you started posting articles that did not even address the original thread. that is YOU DEFLECTING because you are not human enough to apologize.
now,...if your statement "LEFT WING LIBERALS that murdered Mollie Tibbetts",...
is strictly your point of view then back it up with some factual data. other than that your points are mute.
it's been you whom has deflected answering and apologizing for your faux paus.
i know this falls on deaf ears,....
Mollie Tibbetts is not dead because of this country's border policies.
No matter how many times Donald Trump makes that false claim attempting to sell it as true.
Mollie Tibbetts is dead because a man felt entitled to follow her, approach her and then assault and murder her when she did not return his advance.
This is about male violence against women – not immigration.
got it !
this is about a male that thinks he has the right to dominate women.
just like Don the Con,...grabbing pu**ies.
Don the Con IS the same as this illegal alien.
you still can't apologize about how wrong you are. are you human ? or are you a fake person ? FAKE,...just like your master Don the Con.
rotflmao,...nice side step and avoidance addressing how WRONG you are about the Tibbets murder.
YOUR PARTY HIRED THE ILLEGAL,...THEY KILLED MOLLIE TIBBETTS
you don't even have the decency to apologize for jumping to a conclusion that was totally UNTRUE.
this is the problem with you know-it-all GOP assholes. you put out a lie and then don't even apologize like any human being would do. and you wonder why many think the GOP are sub-human ??? you just proved it asshole.
more garbage,...
bye, bye little one.
you are soooooo out of contact with reality,...once again,...
THESE ARE THE FACTS you seem to like to exclude. stupid is a stupid does. and you done did stupid good.
Suspect in Mollie Tibbetts’ murder worked on farm owned by Iowa GOP family
https://nypost.com/2018/08/22/suspect-in-mollie-tibbetts-murder-worked-on-farm-owned-by-iowa-gop-family/
your words,...
Maybe the people who hire the illegal immigrants should be punished.
and how would you like to dispense this punishment to this Iowa GOP family?
Suspect in Mollie Tibbetts’ murder worked on farm owned by Iowa GOP family
yo Einstein,...do you even check your FACTS before you post a stupid perspective ????
you can apologize when you are comfortable to do so 8^)
Suspect in Mollie Tibbetts’ murder worked on farm owned by Iowa GOP family
By Joe Tacopino
August 22, 2018
The illegal immigrant who allegedly killed college student Mollie Tibbetts had worked for years at a farm owned by a prominent Iowa Republican family, a report said Tuesday night.
Cristhian Rivera — the 24-year-old man who is suspected of murdering Tibbetts while she was out jogging — was an “employee in good standing” at Yarrabee Farms, which is owned by the family of former Iowa official Craig Lang, according to the Des Moines Register.
https://nypost.com/2018/08/22/suspect-in-mollie-tibbetts-murder-worked-on-farm-owned-by-iowa-gop-family/
exactly Susie. IF the law was actually applied to the hiring of illegal aliens/immigrants there would be no problem.
the problem is the law IS NOT being applied to those business and corporations on an consistent basis.
having said that,...
It's About Time – Employer Hit by $96 Million Penalty for Hiring Illegal Aliens
By David North
September 29, 2017
Asplundh, the tree-trimming company, has been hit by a $96 million penalty for hiring (and rehiring) illegal alien workers. According to the federal prosecutors it is the largest payment ever levied in an immigration case.
https://cis.org/North/Its-About-Time-Employer-Hit-96-Million-Penalty-Hiring-Illegal-Aliens
~~~~~~~~~~~
What Are the Penalties for Hiring an Illegal Immigrant?
Hiring illegal immigrants can lead to many severe penalties, such as:
- Criminal and civil fines
- Loss of business licenses
- Most fines are broken down to the following:
First offenders can be fined $250-$2,000 per illegal employee.
For a second offense, the fine is $2,000-$5,000 per illegal employee.
Three or more offenses can cost an employer $3000-$10,000 per illegal employee. A pattern of knowingly employing illegal immigrants can mean extra fines and up to six months in jail for an employer.
This does not include “harboring” illegal immigrants, or employing ten or more illegal immigrants in one year. Harboring an illegal immigrant can lead to ten years of prison time.
https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/penalties-for-employers-hiring-illegal-immigrants.html
no,..you have your FACTS wrong !,...
the individual that did this to Mollie Tibbett has been arrested and will be on trial for 1st degree murder.
anything other than that FACT is your ILLUSION. and you are tripping on your self.
you might think that LEFT WING LIBERALS ARE RESPONSIBLE,...but there is NO EVIDENCE supporting that. just your rhetoric and dribble.
another desperate attempt to make with is true false.
ya must have taken a big gulp of Don/Con kool aid.
i hear it has the taste of iron,...as in prison bars 8^)
U.S. National Debt Now Equivalent To The Amount Of Money Missing From The Treasury
Isaac Davis, Staff Writer
Waking Times
August 14, 2018
In March of 2018, the U.S. national debt topped $21 trillion dollars, and now the average debt liability for an individual taxpayer is projected to be $161,022 by 2019. This means that every American taxpayer pretty much owes the government a house, when you consider that the median house price is around $200,000.
That’s right, even your happy, bubbly one-year-old future taxpayer, who is too new to the planet to have any idea what any of this means, will owe someone else a house by the time she’s old enough to get a job.
At present, even though the government is collecting record high individual income taxes, the debt continues to rise, as do taxes, fees, permits, regulations, and government sponsored extortion of citizens. This doesn’t bode well for the average American.
“With the debt per taxpayer as high as it is, if the government continues to raise taxes on middle income earners and above, it will become increasingly difficult for many of these individuals to preserve their standard of living. This will result in a reduction of wealth that spans the entire income spectrum, excluding perhaps the super-rich.” [Source]
Remarkably, at the same time the debt hit $21 trillion, others were noticing that the publicly available number of unaccounted for, or lost or stolen, taxpayer dollars is also now at $21 trillion. Most of this seems to have gone missing from the Pentagon.
Coincidence?
Forbes magazine published an article on this in December of 2017, noting how year after year the defense department’s annual financial reports include insane sums of money that goes unaccounted for in the form of unsubstantiated adjustments. That is, faulty reporting, something which would land an ordinary person in jail for tax evasion.
“..data used to prepare the year-end financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. The report indicates that just 170 transactions accounted for $2.1 trillion in year—end unsupported adjustments. No information is given about these 170 transactions. In addition many thousands of transactions with unsubstantiated adjustments were, according to the report, removed by the Army. There is no explanation concerning why they were removed nor their magnitude.” [Source]
Former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul recently posted about the missing money phenomenon, noting that most of this astronomical amount of money is the result of out of control military spending.
“Do you know how much the Pentagon spent between 1998 and 2015 that is “unaccounted for”?
TWENTY-ONE TRILLION DOLLARS
$21,000,000,000,000
Where did it go?
No one knows…it’s “unaccounted for”.” ~Ron Paul
Looking at this situation in layman’s terms, there’s a criminal on the block, one that everyone knows but is afraid to confront, who steals from everyone in the neighborhood again and again. And it’s gotten to the point where the criminal is free to act with impunity, stealing ever greater amounts from his neighbors.
There is no one who can help. The police won’t do anything because they are paid off by the criminal. The criminal is well-armed because he doesn’t follow the same gun laws that the neighbors have to adhere to. He regularly flaunts his weapons and threatens anyone who looks at him wrong.
There is nothing the neighbors can do about it, and the criminal knows this and becomes more and more brazen as time goes by. And the criminal lives a life of luxury and ease, while the neighbors have to work harder and harder to recover from their ever-increasing losses.
The neighborhood has become a sort of feudal preying ground for the criminal, and the neighbor’s futures look more and more bleak with each passing year. They have become, in effect, slave workers for the criminal, and the situation holds no promise of improving any time soon.
While the neighbors are all honest, good, hard-working people, desperation is slowly sinking in and in time the situation will become volatile and very dangerous.
Final Thoughts
In other news, the IRS has recently been granted the power to withhold passports from citizens who owe back taxes in the amount of $50,000 or more. This could be some 362,000 people, according to Time magazine, who face the prospect of internal imprisonment for doing something the government itself does, but at a tiny fraction of the scope.
“The State Department says that violators who do not resolve their tax issues before applying for a passport will have their application delayed or denied. Meanwhile, people with seriously delinquent tax payments who have already applied for a new U.S. passport will not have a new passport issued to them until they have resolved their tax issues with the IRS.” [Source]
This is something that doesn’t seem to register on the public mind, and as long as Americans are more interested in allowing themselves to be divided and conquered by the media, we can only expect for the national debt crime to exacerbate.
https://www.wakingtimes.com/2018/08/14/u-s-national-debt-now-equivalent-to-the-amount-of-money-missing-from-the-treasury/
CANCER LINK CONFIRMED IN LARGEST EVER CELL TOWER RADIATION STUDY
Alex Pietrowski, Staff Writer
WakingTimes.com
August 21, 2018
from the Ramazzini Study;
“All of the exposures used in the Ramazzini study were below the US FCC limits. These are permissible exposures according the FCC. In other words, a person can legally be exposed to this level of radiation. Yet cancers occurred in these animals at these legally permitted levels. The Ramazzini findings are consistent with the NTP study demonstrating these effects are a reproducible finding.”
“The evidence indicating wireless is carcinogenic has increased and can no longer be ignored,”
https://ehtrust.org/worlds-largest-animal-study-on-cell-tower-radiation-confirms-cancer-link/ ,
As the rollout of the nationwide 5G cell network moves forward, many concerned scientists and public health experts are raising the alarm about the potential harms of bathing the environment in high frequency electromagnetic energy. This new technology would add another layer of electromagnetic radiation to an already dangerously inundated environment.
Cell phone manufacturers downplay the potential risks as well as studies that link them to the formation of brain cancer, and in 2017, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) issued new guidelines aiming to help people reduce their exposure to the risks involved in using cell phones.
5G is already known to cause unused health disturbances and while many are working to derail this massive project, new research gives us extraordinary insight into the effects that cell tower radiation is already having on our health. This technology is far from benign, and while scientists from both sides debate the potential for harm, more evidence continues to mount, suggesting we would be wise to reconsider our dependence on cell technology and upcoming 5G.
“Firefighters from San Francisco say that they began experiencing an array of unusual side effects — after 5G equipment was installed in and around their firehouses. Symptoms reportedly included memory problems and confusion. The firefighters say the symptoms only stopped after they relocated to different fire stations without 5G devices nearby.
It’s not just the firefighters, either. In Gateshead, England, scientist Mark Steele says that there’s been an uptick in reproductive issues and other health problems since the city’s new wireless streetlights were installed. Miscarriages, still births, nosebleeds and insomnia are among the consequences he’s reportedly observed in the community.
“We are seeing babies dying in the womb as these transmitters are situated outside people’s bedroom windows. It’s a humanitarian crisis,” Steele contended.” [Source]
Further evidence suggesting harm comes from the recent Ramazzini study, in which researchers have confirmed what many have suspected to be the case: ambient cell tower radiation do have serious biological effects. The study looked at test rats who were placed in close proximity to cell towers, ultimately establishing a credible link to cancer.
“Researchers with the renowned Ramazzini Institute (RI) in Italy announced that a large-scale lifetime study of lab animals exposed to environmental levels of cell tower radiation developed cancer. A $25 million study of much higher levels of cell phone radiofrequency (RF) radiation, from the US National Toxicology Program (NTP), has also reported finding the same unusual cancer called Schwannoma of the heart in male rats treated at the highest dose. In addition, the RI study of cell tower radiation also found increases in malignant brain (glial) tumors in female rats and precancerous conditions including Schwann cells hyperplasia in both male and female rats.” [Source]
According to the study, the type of malignant cancers seen in rats are similar to the type observed in those attributed to cell phone use.
“These tumors are of the same histotype of those observed in some epidemiological studies on cell phone users. These experimental studies provide sufficient evidence to call for the re-evaluation of IARC conclusions regarding the carcinogenic potential of RFR in humans.” [Source]
At issue for some naysayers are the levels of safe radiation issued by the FCC, and whether or not cancers can actually occur when a person is exposed to levels which do not exceed these recommendations, but other researchers point out that the current cell tower system already exceeds these limits.
Furthermore, as stated above, the nationwide rollout of 5G is well underway, and this technology would drastically increase our exposure to cellular radiation, which would put children and pregnant women at even greater risk than they already are.
“This study raises concerns that simply living close to a cell tower will pose threats to human health. Governments need to take measures to reduce exposures from cell tower emissions. Cell towers should not be near schools, hospitals or people’s homes. Public health agencies need to educate the public on how to reduce exposure from all sources of wireless radiofrequency radiation—be it from cell towers or cell phones or Wi-Fi in schools,” stated David O. Carpenter MD, former Dean of the School of Public Health at the University at Albany. “This is particularly urgent because of current plans to place small 5G cell towers about every 300 meters in every street across the country. These 5G ‘small cell’ antennas will result in continuous exposure to everyone living nearby and everyone walking down the street. The increased exposures will increase risk of cancer and other diseases such as electro-hypersensitivity.”
For a more comprehensive review of the study, see Ramazzini Study On Radiofrequency Cell Phone Radiation: The World’s Largest Animal Study On Cell Tower Radiation Confirms Cancer Link https://ehtrust.org/worlds-largest-animal-study-on-cell-tower-radiation-confirms-cancer-link/ ,
and a presentation of the study’s findings can be watched below:
What does Michael Cohen’s plea deal mean for Trump? I asked 13 legal experts.
The president “is all but an unindicted co-conspirator.”
By Sean Illing
Aug 21, 2018
President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has surrendered to federal authorities in New York.
Cohen has pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, two of which are related to his payment of hush money to women with whom Trump had affairs, including porn actress Stormy Daniels. And he has reportedly admitted that the payment was made “at the discretion of the candidate,” which in this case almost certainly means Trump.
The big question now is, what sort of legal jeopardy does this place Trump in?
And perhaps more importantly, what does this mean for special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe?
To get some answers, I reached out to 13 legal experts. Their full responses, lightly edited for clarity, are below.
Lisa Kern Griffin, law professor, Duke University
The president’s personal attorney has given sworn testimony in open court that he committed campaign finance violations in coordination with and at the direction of the president. Although the president is not named in the charges, he is all but an unindicted co-conspirator.
This turn in the president’s fortunes is dramatic and damaging, and it should have political repercussions even if it does not have immediate legal ones. All of this is occurring in the Southern District of New York and involves wrongdoing in addition to the campaign activities that are the focus of the special counsel’s investigation.
Jens David Ohlin, law professor, Cornell University
Trump is clearly guilty of violating campaign finance laws and also guilty of federal conspiracy as well (because he agreed with Cohen, and possibly others, on a plan to violate federal law). Normally he would be indicted right away. But that won’t happen only because he’s the president. But I suspect he’ll be named as an unindicted co-conspirator and also there’ll be a separate section of the Mueller report titled “Conspiracy to Violate Campaign Finance Laws” or something like that.
Michael Kang, law professor, Northwestern University
Michael Cohen’s guilty plea to campaign finance violations has important implications for President Trump. Cohen reportedly admitted that the payments he arranged for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal on Trump’s behalf were campaign related, not personal expenditures, and were made with the coordination and at the direction of a federal candidate.
Assuming he or prosecutors can substantiate this claim, the payments were illegal campaign contributions that exceeded the applicable limits and needed to be reported. What’s more, if Trump knew the payments were campaign related and directed them, as Cohen alleges, then Trump too violated campaign finance law.
Diane Marie Amann, law professor, University of Georgia
The president’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, has just pleaded guilty to violating federal tax, banking, and campaign finance laws. The big question, of course, is the extent to which the case against Cohen involves others. If the Cohen investigation unearthed evidence implicating the President in the crimes of conviction — whether through statements by Cohen or through documents seized from him — that is very good news for Mueller and very bad news for Trump.
Joshua Dressler, law professor, Ohio State University
Cohen’s admission that the hush money that constituted 2 felony convictions, was done at the direction of a candidate for federal office, clearly implicates the President in those campaign violations. Essentially, Cohen, under oath, in a federal court, has alleged that the President of the United States conspired to violate federal law.
If he were not a sitting president this would constitute grounds for indictment on those charges. As a sitting president this constitutes, if Congress wishes to do so, impeachable offenses. But, as we know, impeachment is a political rather than a legal concept, and it would seem pretty clear that nothing will occur with the current Congress.
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, law professor, Stetson University
Two counts that Michael Cohen plead guilty were for campaign finance violations: (a) for causing an illegal corporate contribution and (b) for an excessive personal campaign contribution for his payments to two women during the 2016 campaign.
United States campaign finance laws have been watered down by the Roberts Supreme Court since 2006, but there are a few pillars of campaign finance law that the Supreme Court has upheld again and again: (1) bans on corporations’ giving directly to federal candidates, (2) bans on foreigners’ spending in US elections, (3) the lawfulness of contribution limits and (4) the requirement that money going into and going out of federal campaign be fully disclosed.
Another fundamental requirement of campaign finance law is that campaign funds be used for legitimate campaign expenditures and not for personal use. The Cohen pleas on counts 7 and 8 appear to acknowledge his working with candidate Trump to violate federal campaign finance laws by violating two of those pillars (the corporate ban and the contribution limits), which aim to prevent corruption of the American political process.
Asha Rangappa, former FBI agent and senior lecturer, Yale University
It remains to be seen whether or not Michael Cohen has any valuable information to offer to prosecutors that may be able to reduce his sentence for the charges he is now pleading guilty to. Most of the focus has been on the information he could potentially provide to Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller in the Russia probe.
But a potentially bigger threat to President Trump is what Cohen could provide to the Southern District of New York about potential crimes committed by Trump or members of his family that are unrelated to the Russia probe. Michael Cohen, as Trump’s longtime “fixer” knows where the proverbial bodies are buried when it comes to the Trump Organization and particularly its finances going back many, many years.
If Cohen provided information on potentially criminal activities to the Southern District and it opened an investigation into them, it would place the President in a double bind: First, since it would be an investigation separate and apart from the Mueller probe, he wouldn’t be able to argue that the Special Counsel exceeded his mandate or crossed a “red line” — after all, any U.S. Attorney’s office is legally authorized (and duty-bound) to investigate any violations of federal law it learns about.
More importantly, such an investigation would be completely insulated from any steps Trump might take to fire Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, or even Attorney General Jeff Sessions (especially since his interim pick to head the Southern District who recused himself from overseeing the Cohen investigation, would undoubtedly recuse himself from any other Trump-related investigation as well). So Trump has much more to fear from Cohen than just what he knows about Russia-related matters.
Christopher Slobogin, law professor, Vanderbilt University
If Cohen pleads guilty to violating campaign finance law by making payments to Daniels, and it can be proven that Trump sought, or encouraged him to make, the payments, Trump would be guilty of conspiring to commit a federal crime.
His defense might be that he did not know the payments would violate campaign finance law, but ignorance of the law is typically not an excuse. Whether that type of crime is an impeachable offense, however, is up to Congress.
Ric Simmons, law professor, Ohio State University
The fact that Cohen implicated President Trump in his plea allocation is extremely significant, since it ties Trump directly to illegal campaign activity. Although the plea agreement does not mention cooperation with the special prosecutor’s office, Cohen’s willingness to speak out against Trump now implies he will cooperate with the special counsel moving forward, perhaps in the hopes of obtaining a lower sentence.
Also newsworthy is the fact that last week the special master in the case finished her review of the documents seized from Cohen’s office and determined that almost none of the documents are protected by attorney-client privilege. Judge Wood formally adopted that finding on Monday. This means that almost all of these documents will be available to prosecutors investigating the Trump campaign. Given Cohen’s admissions today, these documents from his office may prove to be very valuable to the special prosecutor’s office.
Andrew Wright, law professor, Savannah Law School
If Michael Cohen engaged in federal crimes at the direction of Donald Trump, then Trump will likely be guilty of those crimes on some combination of solicitation, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy. This is not the Mueller investigation, and it is not obstruction of justice inquiry in which the Trump legal team can assert some theory of executive power impossibility for obstruction crimes grounded in his official acts. If Donald Trump conspired with to commit felonies as a candidate, the only thing that might protect him is the question of whether he couldn’t be indicted for the duration of his tenure in office.
Douglas Spencer, law professor, University of Connecticut
While Cohen’s guilty plea has no bearing on the question whether the Mueller investigation was properly instigated, claims that the Mueller investigation is a “witch hunt” will be further undermined as yet another individual connected to the Trump campaign admits that he broke the law.
Substantively, while Michael Cohen never held an official position on the campaign team, his guilty plea reportedly says he acted at the direction of a candidate (presumably Donald Trump) with the purpose of influencing the election. President Trump admitted via tweet on May 3 that he reimbursed Cohen for his (now admittedly illegal) payment to Stormy Daniels, so Cohen’s guilty plea will certainly implicate President Trump.
The media is reporting that Cohen will not cooperate with Mueller. But he may not have to. Rudy Giuliani drew the dots and Cohen’s admission now arguably connects them.
Victoria Nourse, law professor, Georgetown University
This was a sad day for America, but a spectacular day for the Mueller investigation. Cohen’s New York plea was not handled by Mueller’s office, but it told the same story as the jury verdict obtained by Mueller in the Manafort trial in Virginia. We now know that the president claimed to unearth the swamp, but he hired it.
Federal law calls what Cohen and Manafort did by the simple name of fraud — lying when you have a legal obligation to tell the truth. If Cohen is correct that he aided the President in a crime, the President’s only defense is to diminish the seriousness of the violation to the public or insist that Cohen lied.
Aiding a crime is a crime in America — if you authorize a murder, even if you authorize your lawyer to commit a murder, you are guilty of a crime, and one would hope so. Attention will now shift from foreign threats to our nation’s electoral system to porn star hush money. As I said, it’s a sad day for America.
Paul Butler, law professor, Georgetown University
There are two ways that convicted felons Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen avoid spending many years in one of those wretched places. One is to be pardoned by the president of the United States. The second is to deliver up Donald Trump to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Trump said, after the Manafort and Cohen convictions, that he “feels badly” for both. Manafort’s pardon seems virtually a done deal. But Michael Cohen has already implicated Trump as his co-conspirator to violate federal campaign financing laws. Providing more evidence to Mueller would be any lawyer’s recommendation to Cohen, to reduce his time in the pen.
But even if Trump pardons Cohen, it would have the same effect as immunizing him, meaning Cohen could be forced to testify about everything Trump has ever done. The president has no good options — Tuesday August 21 marks the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, and possibly his freedom.
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/21/17765566/michael-cohen-plea-deal-trump-mueller
Think Rivers Are Dangerous Now? Just Wait.
A new study offers grim projections.
Matt Simon
AUG. 22, 2018 6:00 AM
A river is a mercurial thing, running deep and fast in the rainy season, and low and slow when the rains fade. It can dry up completely one year, then turn into a raging flood the next. Every so often, a river disappears entirely, bringing down the communities it once nourished.
You hear a lot about how climate change is fueling the rise of our seas, but not so much about how it will transform our rivers, the flooding of which currently affects almost 60 million people a year. An ambitious new study in Nature Climate Change, though, takes on the task of modeling rivers’ reactions to a warming world. With their projections of flooding severity, the researchers were able to quantify possible losses of both property and human life. As with any climate model, the researchers are making assumptions to present just one possible future scenario—but even in the best case, things don’t look pretty.
Seemingly against reason, climate models have projected that on a warmer planet, storms will dump more water. Why? “The warmer the air, the more moisture it can hold,” says climate scientist Judah Cohen, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It’s just like you build a bigger pool—it can hold more water.”
In general, when that water dumps, it dumps hard, swelling rivers and causing flooding. “It then gets much more complicated,” Cohen says. “Warming could maybe change the dynamics of the atmosphere, so that you’re getting fewer and fewer storms.” In Southern California, for instance, climate models predict that storms will be more intense, but also less frequent.
For this new model, the researchers looked at worldwide impacts of fiercer storms by marrying climate models and models of river flows. “The output of the climate model may be rainfall, for example, and that’s the input for the river flow models,” says climate scientist Richard Betts, of the University of Exeter, coauthor on the new paper. “That then calculates the water flow down river channels in all the major basins around the world.” The researchers further modified those outcomes based on different global temperature projections: a 1.5 degree C increase (the idealistic goal of the Paris Climate Agreement), 2 degrees, and 3 degrees.
“What we did is take those outcomes and then look at what the maximum river flows meant in terms of flooding impacts,” says Betts. By looking at population and development data, they could project that forward to predict how many people and how much property would be at risk as climate change periodically swells the rivers of Earth.
The projections are not encouraging. If humanity can hold global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C—and many climate scientists think it may already be too late for that—loss of life from river flooding could go up as much as 83 percent from the current yearly average of 5,700. For 2 degrees, that jumps to as much as 134 percent; 3 degrees, 265 percent.
As for damages, the global average from river flooding is currently about $110 billion a year. With a 1.5 degree rise, the models predict that could jump 240 percent; for 2 degrees it’s 520 percent, and for 3 degrees it’s a stunning 1,000 percent increase, or a new total of $1.25 trillion a year. Under a slightly more optimistic scenario, which projects slower economic growth, those figures would be lower by about a third. Still, not a good outlook.
This does not mean, though, that every region will fare equally. The developing world, where infrastructure isn’t as strong, is more at risk. Population growth is also a factor, as crowding exposes more people to flooding. That’s more intense in South Asia than North America, for example. On the other hand, the models show that a region like Eastern Europe may see a decrease in maximum river water flow.
“In other places, Brazil for example,” says Betts, “parts of the country are projected to see an increase in flooding risk. But Brazil is a huge country, and they tend not to be the places where there’s so many people.” The models also assume certain population and development projections will hold.
They also assume that humans won’t take steps to mitigate the risks of flooding. “There’s an important point here, that you’re assuming that these things don’t change in the future, which in reality they probably would as part of adaptation,” says Betts. Maybe river populations will build out better infrastructure and warning systems to protect themselves.
But that introduces a whole new set of uncertainties—financial and political ones. “Anything about the future is uncertain, but I think with this kind of river flooding, there’s even more challenges to it,” says Cohen. “They’re taking both the meteorological aspect of it, which I think has a lot of uncertainty, and then multiplying that by the economic uncertainty.”
Scientists scrutinize the past and present and extrapolate that forward as best they can. And from the looks of this new study, humanity would do well to prepare itself both for higher seas and angrier rivers. In these times of uncertainty, it certainly wouldn’t hurt.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/08/think-rivers-are-dangerous-now-just-wait/
GOP fears Cohen set road to impeachment
axios.com
Aug. 21, 2018
Impeachment proceedings against President Trump went from a theoretical danger to a vivid reality with yesterday's guilty plea by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, sources close to the White House tell Axios.
The big picture:
Cohen's guilty plea (with the president identified as "Individual-1") said Trump directed him to arrange hush money during the 2016 campaign to keep women from speaking out about affairs — so Cohen was accusing Trump of pushing him to commit a crime. Look for Cohen’s statement to form the basis of a 2019 impeachment attempt if Democrats win control of the House in November.
The plea by Cohen, paired in a split screen with the near-simultaneous conviction of Paul Manafort, is what Trump’s aides feared all along:
The Mueller investigation would lead these hardened investigators down rabbit holes that only Trump and his murky associates knew about.
The crimes detailed yesterday have nothing to do with colluding with Putin to throw an election — but are felonies, nonetheless.
And, in a stunning twist, the president’s former attorney — the guy who would yell obscenities at reporters and threaten them in the obsequious, unquestioningly loyal service of his boss — is now the greatest known threat to the Trump presidency.
Trump friends say for the first time that they're worried about the president:
A source close to Trump said: "I must admit a bit of concern about what he [Trump] would do fully backed into a corner."
"By striking a deal with Mr. Cohen that includes prison time," the N.Y.
Times reports, "federal authorities were aware of the risk that the president might pardon him."
Maggie Haberman tweeted: "Trump folks are worried about impeachment more than before. ... Does not mean it will happen, but this has moved to a different stage in their minds."
Presidential historian Jon Meacham brings in the orchestra, telling MSNBC:
"This is rather like the third week of June, 1973, when [former White House counsel] John Dean went to the Senate and began his testimony" before the Watergate committee.
"It's not unlike ... the second week in July in the same year, when [former Nixon White House aide] Alexander Butterfield revealedthat there was a White House taping system."
"It's the kind of moment that you can begin to see a genuine inflection point."
A few hours before the verdict, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told me from Scotland, where he's attending a wedding with his son, Andrew, who has golfed with the president, that Trump has remained gregarious:
"It's certainly not affecting his golf game, or his negotiations about North Korea. ... He feels that people are finally getting to see his accomplishments. And public opinion each month — the whole thing has switched when it was originally very much in Mueller's favor, it's now somewhat against him."
Be smart ... A usually buoyant outside West Wing adviser suddenly sees darkness:
"Booming economy, robust bull market, troops in harm’s way but not in a large scale war. And yet the President is enmeshed in a series of scandals and controversies."
"And that is before the Dems in House start with the investigations" if they take the majority.
Go deeper:
Everyone caught up in the Trump investigations
https://www.axios.com/tracking-russia-investigation-mueller-trump-718bc918-984b-4df1-b1a0-5dafff0347b3.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sendto_newslettertest&stream=top
All the president's guilty men
https://www.axios.com/trump-mueller-investigation-paul-manafort-michael-cohen-196685de-dda3-4903-a08f-0aeda74ad419.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sendto_newslettertest&stream=top
https://www.axios.com/michael-cohen-donald-trump-impeachment-republicans-25abc8cc-6eec-421d-8da6-b9da482c3bf0.html
your post reverberates why i hang here. truth from every angle. i didn't have the pleasure to hang at Tornado Alley much less when Mark was the head mod.
like attracts like. Mark's standards might have been high but that is what a leader does,...points the direction and the participant makes the walk.
i surely don't mean to assume anything especially not associating with Mark/Tornado Alley,...but from the eloquence that some speak of Mark i can positively get the picture of the human being Mark was/is.
and,...i can most definitely be thankful that the quality of the people posting here is beyond superb.
thanks all.
Jung says it better than i,...
http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/unconscious-direct-your-life-jung-quote.jpg
LOL,..undoubtedly JL doesn't comprehend the implications of being put on IGNORE !
i placed Jim Lur, conix and rooster are ALL ON IGNORE last week.
less garbage to read.
thanks for keeping this forum top notch fuagf !
Paul Manafort will face Second Trial next month and Prosecutors Have Double The Evidence
Christal Hayes, USA TODAY
Aug. 19, 2018
A jury is still deliberating Paul Manafort's future, but even if he's acquitted, his legal battle will be only halfway over.
The former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump is due back in court in Washington next month for a second trial centered on allegations of lying to the FBI, money laundering and foreign lobbying.
This time prosecutors say they have even more evidence – more than double the amount they showed jurors in Virginia.
In a court filing Thursday, Manafort's attorney said special counsel Robert Mueller's office has supplied "well over 1,000" exhibits for the trial. In the Virginia case, his office had about 400 exhibits.
The trial is set to begin in front of U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Sept. 17.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/08/19/paul-manafort-second-trial-mueller/1034142002/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mueller's team has 3 times the evidence for Paul Manafort's next trial than his current trial
By Katelyn Polantz, CNN
Aug 20, 2018
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/16/app-politics-section/mueller-manafort-evidence-next-trial/index.html
Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort found guilty of bank and tax fraud
- President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Tuesday was found guilty of eight criminal counts.
- They include five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to file foreign bank account reports.
- In a note to U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis, the jurors said they had not reached a consensus on the 10 remaining counts in the bank fraud and tax crimes trial. Ellis, in turn, declared a mistrial on those 10 counts.
President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Tuesday was found guilty of eight criminal counts, including five counts of tax fraud.
Manafort was also found guilty of two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to file foreign bank account reports.
In a note to U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis, the jurors said they had not reached a consensus on the 10 remaining counts in the bank fraud and tax crimes trial. Ellis, in turn, declared a mistrial on those 10 counts.
Manafort, 69, faces another federal trial next month in Washington, D.C., which also stems from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.
Mueller's prosecutors called 27 witnesses to testify against Manafort, and submitted more than 350 exhibits.
Manafort's defense team, in contrast, called no witnesses at the trial and introduced just 12 exhibits into evidence.
The jury's verdict in the Alexandria, Virginia criminal trial arrived after four days of deliberation.
Among the prosecution's witnesses was Manafort's former business associate, Rick Gates, who also had worked on the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2016.
Gates pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy and making false statements. He has not yet been sentenced.
The charges against Manafort and Gates were connected to their consulting work for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine, and not to their work on the Trump campaign.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/21/paul-manafort-verdict.html
How to Beat a Manipulator
By Caitlin Johnstone
August 17, 2018
Humans are hackable. Ask any conman. Our desire to think we have control over our lives often hides this from ourselves, but most of us are highly suggestible and hypnotizable. If you think you’re not, you’re in more danger of being hacked than someone who has humbled themselves enough to see how this works in them.
There’s no need to be ashamed of being conned. Realizing that you’ve been, or are being, conned will naturally bring up feelings of embarrassment, but it’s never your fault that someone’s taken you for a ride. Get clear: conning someone is the crime; being conned is being a victim of that crime. That’s how the law sees it in fraud cases. Manipulators would love you to think that it’s your fault for allowing yourself to be manipulated, but that’s just another manipulation isn’t it?
Manipulators use one of our most astounding, useful, and beautiful human characteristics when they con us—empathy. Our innately trusting nature is the reason why we’ve been able to collaborate on large scales to create and innovate in extraordinary ways unseen anywhere else in the animal kingdom. Because we learn by modeling, and we are shaped by the group we inhabit and our urge to create harmony will make life viscerally uncomfortable until we are back in alignment with our tribe. We are the peacemakers; we seek alignment, which is how we are paced by manipulators into aligning with their sick agendas. How gross is it then that our ability to empathize and relate to each other is one manipulators use to control us?
Because of the reach of mass media, every single one of us is in an abusive relationship with plutocratic manipulators. Many of us are in personal relationships with manipulators too. Conveniently, the strategies for dealing with sociopathic manipulators are the exact same, from plutocrats to your live-in partner.
Get Clear on Your Own Will
You are easy prey if you don’t know what you want and you leave it up to others to decide for you. If you don’t have a sense of who you are and what you stand for, anyone can come in and co-opt that for their own sick agendas. Sit down, get quiet, and make an inventory of who you are and what you need. Don’t be squeamish about adding things that you don’t have yet. That’s the point. Make a list of what you need not just to survive, but to thrive. Apply the live-and-let-live rule to every one of your wants, and if you’re confident that nothing you want will hurt or interfere in anyone else’s will, then the list is good. You can stand by it unequivocally, and you should do so with as much strength and confidence as you can muster. Grow to its size and advocate loudly for it.
Watch Where the Resources Go
How do you really know if you’re being manipulated? Well, what manipulators understand that the rest of us don’t is that there are real life resources like sex, money, work, gold, oil, land, water, food, people, air, etc; and there are good feelings. They will always try to get you to swap real things for good feelings. If you don’t have empathy, you see the whole world in a completely different way. Most people are trying to get what they need without hurting anyone, because hurting someone hurts them too. Manipulators don’t experience that, so they just get what they need by telling their victim that they’ll hurt someone if they don’t hand it over.
Zoom out and take an inventory of who’s got all the stuff. Which way are the scales tipped? Good manipulators try to shift the ground underneath us to funnel the real wealth into their coffers, while placating us with good feelings about how blessed our hard work is and all that, and how selfish it would be to demand healthcare when there’s people in Syria who need to be bombed for their freedom. Leave all that behind and zoom and out and see who’s got all the stuff. Who has all the power, all the wealth, all the real stuff that you can really use in the real world, and who is barely existing but has hope for a better tomorrow?
Same in a marriage. Who has all the wealth, power, kudos, retirement savings, and who just has a story about what a good person they are? Religion has primed us for manipulation, and that was by design. Over millennia, we have been taught to value fealty, piety, hard work, submission, and to leave judgement and reward til after we die. This creates the perfect environment for manipulators who can see very clearly what the valuable real-world things are, and what are creations woven of fairytales. Work out what’s real in the here and now, and see who is in control of what should be your stuff. Is it you? If it’s not, you’re being manipulated out of it.
Watch Their Actions, Not Their Words
Manipulators only have words. They can’t just walk up to you and say “Give me your life savings,” they have to weave a complex story that makes you feel like it’s the right thing to do. A good conman will never ask for anything if they can get away with it. Ideally, they want you to make the offer. That’s the best kind of con, the one where the victim thinks it was their idea in the first place. A great conman will have you begging him to take the thing that he wanted all along, so then he can even get your gratitude for it.
By zooming out and seeing what they’re doing, rather than listening to what they’re saying, you can get a much better idea of what’s actually happening.If, for example, they’re saying they support single-payer healthcare while voting against it, sabotaging any efforts in any direction, taking money from donors who oppose it, and generally running interference on it, then those actions tell the real story. If the offer is not what you asked for but you are so desperate, so far down the line with them, so invested, and so cut off from any alternate solutions that you’ll take anything, then the con is complete.
Think about it from their point of view.
Ideally, they want to be the ones you go to for the thing they don’t want you to have. They want to be the ones you place your hope and energy with so you don’t go to someone who will actually help them, but they also need to string you along for as long as possible, doing as little as possible, while taking as much energy as they can from you without arousing suspicion. They sing the song of inertia, of incrementalism, of “Not now, but soon.” That’s how they keep you trapped. If you zoom out and watch what they’re actually doing, rather than what they’re saying, you will know when it’s time to say bye Felicia and seek out an actual solution.
Don’t Try to Out-Manipulate Them
Once you’ve figured out you’re being manipulated, the knee-jerk reaction is to try and manipulate them back. Dude. Don’t even. Do you know how beautiful and precious you are to even think that that’s possible? These people have had no empathy for all their lives, and without all that emotional noise clouding their decisions, they have been playing every single person in their life like a game of chess. They are masters. They are five moves ahead of you already, and you’re just learning what a rook is. They have a whole lifetime of manipulating under their belt, and you are a total noob. You will lose that game. Don’t play it.
Instead, go with your strengths. Demand what you want and stick to that, loudly and unapologetically. Keep asking for what you want in the most direct way possible. Remember, a manipulator aims to take your will from you. Take it back. Many of us have been so manipulated for so long, we don’t even know what we want anymore. Make your inventory, keep it simple, keep it to what you know you need to thrive, and then plant your feet and demand it.
Meanwhile, keep pointing out the weird things they do to try and avoid giving you what they said they would. Shout it from the rooftops when they do something sly. They’ve used your politeness and goodwill to hide their little indiscretions. Don’t let them anymore. If they’re being creepy, say it. Don’t be manipulated into tacit consent by your politeness.
Keep telling the truth to yourself at least, even when it doesn’t tally with your worldview. Remain as intellectually honest with yourself as possible about what the knowable facts are, and what is conjecture or wishful thinking. Verify everything as much as you can so you know you’re standing on solid, factual ground. Manipulators love to keep people as confused as possible. Get as many quantifiable, verified, real-world facts as you can underneath you and build your worldview on them. And when you’re sure of yourself, say it like it’s true, because you know it is. Be unequivocal with the things you know. When you’re sure, don’t let anyone get in any wriggle room. Approach your private research with curiosity, objectivity and a light hand, but once the work is done, plant your feet in its truth and don’t let them be uprooted.
Don’t fall for it. Even if it’s a known unknown.
And lastly, don’t play by the rules, play by what is right. Manipulators love rules because they love to strategize about how to bend them, and how to bend you with them. Think of the worst kind of lawyers and you’ll know exactly what I mean. If you’re a deeply good person like you know you are, and you are always trying to point yourself at the highest interest, you know deep down if you’re doing the right thing. Trust your guts and forge ahead. Keep doing the right thing, even if it breaks a rule.
Apply The Manipulator’s Rules In Reverse
There’s something in psychology called “projection”, and anyone who has done a good deal of inner work will tell you that it’s a handy self-enquiry tool to see if what you hate in others, you can find in yourself. In order not to deal with our guilt, we tend to project the things we don’t like on to other people to hide the shame of it from ourselves. Bringing it out into the light can often result in some healthy forgiveness of both ourselves and our perception of others.
That’s great, but what the sages neglect to tell you is that people are also projecting all the time on to you. If you’re suggestible and good-hearted enough to not want to harm anyone, you can take everyone’s projections on to you as truth without even realizing it. Unless you develop a strong, conscious, healthy sense of who you are as a person, you can be gaslit into thinking that you’re any amount of the horrible things people project on to you, and that can easily grind you to a confused and babbling halt. Again, take an inventory of who you are and what you want, and grow in size until you can stand in that truth and defend it. Find your will and take it back.
Manipulators particularly use projection as a tactic to hide what they’re doing to you in plain sight. A manipulator can have you chasing your tail by simply suggesting that you or others are doing what you are seeing them doing with your own eyes. DNC caught rigging the election? Oh no, it was actually Russia who rigged the election by catching the DNC rigging the election. See what I did there? It’s so dumb, but it works.
Here’s the key: simply reverse the pronouns. When faced with a manipulator, everything he says about you, he is saying about himself, and everything he says about himself, is what he thinks of you. If he’s telling you you’re duplicitous and you’re a liar and you’re trying to take him for all he’s got, he’s actually saying he’s duplicitous and he’s a liar and he’s trying to take you for all you’ve got. If you have good grounds to believe you are being manipulated by someone, reverse the pronouns in your mind and let them tell you who they are. It works from personal relationships right up to the grand manipulators employed by the plutocrats.
Bring as much awareness as possible to all the ways you’re being manipulated, and all the ways you’ve been inadvertently manipulating. Make it as conscious in yourself as possible so we can all add to the sum of human knowledge as to how to transcend the manipulations. Once we draw back and fill out to our own individual sovereign boundaries, we will be able to trust ourselves to stand in our truth. We will also be able to see who we can trust so much more easily, and once you know you can trust someone, you can collaborate with them. These newly-conscious and divine collaborations will create the very things we need to solve the real world problems we face as a species and take the will of the planet from the sociopaths and return it to the will of the people.
And that’s really all it will take. A tipping point of un-manipulatable and awake people collaborating to create new systems that will surpass the old is all it will take to wrest power from the manipulators who only have the old Biblical tools of fear, guilt and shame to work with. This is doable, and it only needs you.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/08/17/how-to-beat-a-manipulator/
ditto DaleC. i'm in the exact scenario. i only pay for the electricity to operate the pump. i had to recently replace the pump,..it was 13 years old. i wouldn't have it any other way.
i live in an equestrian area and the roads are unpaved,...of course, the main streets are paved and i have all the amenities, shopping and services of a big city just a 20 minute drive.
i agree with you Peg. lets see by Rome/Vatican/CC actions how serious they are to clean this up.
like your article displayed,..many Theologians are !!!!
you are sooooo right on target,...
we think Wash DC is political? - meet Rome!
there is hope !!! wouldn't that be an incredible event to actually have all US bishops resign.
only pressure, sustained pressure will accomplish this feat.
bottom line to me is,..IF the bishops don't decide on their own,...they will be relieved of their duty.
thanks for posting this and keeping the forum up to date in the current status of this blight.
"I'm not so sure about that"...i'm so hoping you are correct Peg and finally, finally people are waking up and realizing that these priests and bishops and pope,...the entire CC have been feeding off them for decades+.
your links are a fantastic start.
IRELAND VOTES TO END ABORTION BAN, IN REBUKE TO CATHOLIC CONSERVATISM
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/26/world/europe/ireland-abortion-yes.html
Latin America was once 90% Catholic, but not anymore...
LATIN AMERICA IS LOSING ITS CATHOLIC IDENTITY
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/.../latin-america-is-losing-its-catholic-identity.html
no matter if its government or religion one axiom rules,...
FOLLOW THE MONEY
How Much Money Does the Vatican Have:
What We Do Know. We know:
The Vatican Bank manages $64 billion of assets on behalf of its 17,400 customers, according to a Dec. 5, 2014, article in International Business Times. The bank owns $764 million in equity.
The Economist calculated that the Catholic church in America alone had a $170 billion annual operating budget. Globally, the figure is much larger.
additionally,...
Pope Francis Net Worth is $2 million USD and earns an annual income of $250,000 dollars. Pope Francis is the 266th and current Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, a title he holds ex officio as Bishop of Rome, and sovereign of Vatican City.
even if a multitude of parishioners leave the church is won't affect it one bit. they'll just wait for a new group of fools to believe their BS rhetoric.
fuagf,...well, this male dominated government hasn't been working for decades. maybe some female energy will assist in getting things right for ALL people in this country.
that does not mean that there are also some nasty, evil, calculating, bought and paid for women in government. there are.
but at least the female energy is more even and balanced as a whole.
time will tell.
but the mere fact that the 'powers that be' are attempting to shut down several voting precincts in predominately african-american counties is a tell as to the level of concern and fear the GOP has.
i've read quite a bit of the popes recent letter addressing the sexual abuse blight,...
what a bunch of crap !
"we failed the little ones."
DUH !!! ya think. this jerk recites the obvious.
"No effort must be spared"
,...like you are telling the truth,..NOT ! just more BS from the head of the BS,..pope Francis.
unfortunately not one iota of justice will come from this,...nothing. just more word service.
the church protects it's own,....and NEWS FLASH,...the parishioners are not part of that inner loop.
pope francis,...head pimp !
Three Antiwar Congress Members
by David Swanson
August 18, 2018
washingtonsblog.com
Rashida Tlaib has nothing about war or peace on her website. And she’s going to be elected to the seat held by Congressman John Conyers, famous for giving speeches for things like impeaching George W. Bush while telling reporters and colleagues that impeaching Bush needed to be avoided. So, take statements for what they’re worth (very little until followed by action). But action rarely follows silence, and Tlaib just said this:
“I don’t support military operations. If you go to the Department of Defense website, every day, Monday through Friday, there is an area called ‘contracts.’ Go there. You want to pay for college? Medicare for All? Pay to take care of Americans dying from famine to basic human rights abuses? Look at those contracts. I’m floored at how much money [they’re spending].”
When asked “Do you want to divert the DOD budget into social services?” Tlaib replied:
“Yes. We can build safer and more vibrant communities. I am tired of the earmarks for corporations. They aren’t going to Americans. They’re going to private companies. Not only have we made prisons into private corporations, wars are a for-profit industry. The [DoD is] a cesspool for corporations to make money.”
Those in the pay or hoping to be in the pay of the war profiteers don’t talk like this. This is socialism with seriousness, not the nonsense shell game where you claim you’ll provide decent services but refuse to mention the place where all the money is. (I’m looking at you, Senator Sanders.)
Congress members do not talk like Rashida Tlaib, or Ilhan Omar, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Omar’s predecessor never talked this way. Even John Conyers never talked this way, with or without meaning it. Yet these three are very likely to be in Congress, and if they at all act on their professed positions, we need to demand that their colleagues join them.
To some extent, not entirely but to some small extent, I suspect that the blowback when these candidates say something honest or humane about Palestine is and will continue to be opposition to their entire antiwar position. Opposing Israeli wars is taboo in the United States, but so is opposing U.S. wars and U.S. preparations for more wars.
That position needs to be made acceptable. So, when three candidates for Congress who’ve won their primaries and are virtually guaranteed to join Congress speak up for peace, we need to celebrate it, make it more than just acceptable, make it enviable by other seekers of power.
http://washingtonsblog.com/2018/08/three-antiwar-congress-members.html
Meet Congress' potential history-makers in 2019
axios.com
Aug 21,2018
No matter what else happens in the November elections, the next Congress is virtually guaranteed to have a slate of House members who will make history because of who they are — and add diversity to a Congress that isn't exactly known for it.
Why it matters:
These candidates, all of whom won their nominations in safe districts, have a clear path to election — and their victories would help Congress look (a bit) more like America.
The "Class of 2019" Democrats:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at age 28, would be the youngest woman ever elected to Congress (though not the youngest House member in history). She'll also be one of the first sitting members of Congress who's a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Rashida Tlaib will be the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress. She won her primary for John Conyers' old House seat in Michigan, and she's running unopposed in the general.
Joe Neguse, whose parents are refugees from Eritrea, is the first Democratic African American nominee for national office in Colorado. He won his House primary for the state's 2nd district, a solidly blue district.
Ilhan Omar will be the first Somali-American woman to serve in Congress after she won her primary for Minnesota's 5th district. She'll also be only the second Muslim woman ever elected to Congress, next to Rashida Tlaib.
Debra Haaland will be the first Native American woman ever elected to Congress after winning her primary in New Mexico's 1st district.
Madeleine Dean will be the first woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress since 2014, breaking the state's current all-male delegation in Washington.
The "Class of 2019" Republicans:
Greg Pence, Vice President Mike Pence's brother, won his primary in Indiana's 6th district, which was the VP's former House seat.
Two other Republican candidates are running in more competitive races, so they're less sure to win, but their victories would be groundbreaking:
Young Kim, who won her House primary in California's 39th district, would be first female Korean-American ever elected to Congress.
Leah Vukmir, who won her primary for Senate, would be Wisconsin's first woman Republican senator in history.
By the numbers:
2018 will likely be the last year women make up only 20% of Congress. And while the current class was the most racially diverse in history, 2019 is on pace to set a new record.
For the first time since 1790, the Census Bureau showed "an absolute decline in the nation’s white population" of more than 40,000 whites between 2015 and 2017.
And we are now, for the first time, "on the cusp of seeing the first minority white generation, born in 2007 and later," per the Brookings Institution.
https://www.axios.com/class-of-2019-congress-diverse-candidates-df0aeda7-1ef2-4ec8-a731-83d1329cb0c4.html
thats great ! now,..what are YOU and your CHURCH doing to assist in preventing this sexual abuse of young children continuing in your CHURCH ?
are YOU and your CHURCH actively participating and taking a roll in this blight on ALL Catholics church to heal this sexual abuse,...
are YOU and your CHURCH just sitting in the pews claiming "I'm glad we're not involved?"
which one are YOU ?
a few priests have received sentences but no where close to the amount that needs to be thrown in the slammer with other jailed criminals. the kind of criminals that might steal you blind but would never hurt you, especially children. there's a special place in jail for these type.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Prevalence
In a statement read by Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi in September 2009, the Holy See stated, "We know now that in the last 50 years somewhere between 1.5% and 5% of the Catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases", adding that this figure was comparable to that of other groups and denominations.
A Perspective on Clergy Sexual Abuse by Catholic Dr. Thomas Plante of the Catholic Santa Clara University and volunteer clinical associate professor at Stanford University states that "approximately 4% of priests during the past half century (and mostly in the 1960s and 1970s) have had a sexual experience with a minor" which "is consistent with male clergy from other religious traditions and is significantly lower than the general adult male population which may double these numbers"[/color]. Plante's article was based on a study done by John Jay College. It was compiled solely from numbers provided by leaders of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which paid John Jay College to do the study. According to an article reported in Newsweek magazine, the figure for adult abuse of children in the Catholic Church is similar to that in the rest of the adult population.
After widespread publicity about the abuse, in 2013 Barbara Blaine, of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) stated, "We are confident that the ICC will see sufficient evidence that high ranking Catholic officials are still knowingly enabling predators to harm and endanger children across the world, while concealing these heinous crimes even more effectively." A group had filed charges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Catholic Church for what it said was crimes against humanity because of its policy on this issue.[9][10] The ICC refused to investigate. SNAP representatives note there most Catholics were found in the Third World, where child molestation is more easily concealed. They argued that it was necessary to guard against "the tempting assumption that the worst of this scandal is somehow behind us."[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sex_abuse_cases_by_country
the sickness feeds itself now. like a vampire. the lies and bullshit feed to parishioners of the CC is amazing. amazing that they believe it !
Jimmy Carter saying that has depth and weight to it.
“I think he’s a disaster,” Carter says. “In human rights and taking care of people and treating people equal.”
“The worst is that he is not telling the truth, and that just hurts everything,” Rosalynn says.
if the qualities and characteristics these two possess could be somehow transferred to a myriad of other people we'd be living in a totally different economic and political environment.
Trump Lied About His Intentions Toward Russia
Posted on August 20, 2018 by Eric Zuesse.
Eric Zuesse, originally published by The Saker
http://thesaker.is/trump-lied-about-his-intentions-toward-russia/
(active embedded links in original article, link below)
On August 20th, Gallup headlined “More in U.S. Favor Diplomacy Over Sanctions for Russia” and reported that, “Americans believe it is more important to try to continue efforts to improve relations between the countries (58%), rather than taking strong diplomatic and economic steps against Russia (36%).” And yet, all of the sanctions against Russia have passed in Congess by over 90% of Senators and Representatives voting for them — an extraordinarily strong and bipartisan favoring of anti-Russia sanctions, by America’s supposed “representatives” of the American people. What’s happening here, which explains such an enormous contradiction between America’s Government, on the one side, versus America’s people, on the other? Is a nation like this really a democracy at all?
Donald Trump understood this disjunction, when he was running for President, and he took advantage of the public side of it, in order to win, but, as soon as he won, he flipped to the opposite side, the side of America’s billionaires, who actually control the U.S. Government.
While he was campaigning for the U.S. Presidency, Donald Trump pretended to want to soften, not harden, America’s policies against Russia. He even gave hints that he wanted a redirection of U.S. Government expenditures away from the military, and toward America’s economic and domestic needs.
On 31 January 2016, Donald Trump — then one of many Republican candidates running for the Republican U.S. Presidential nomination — told a rally in Clinton Iowa, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia and China and all these countries?”
On 21 March 2016, he was published in the Washington Post as having told its editors, that “he advocates a light footprint in the world. In spite of unrest abroad, especially in the Middle East, Trump said the United States must look inward and steer its resources toward rebuilding domestic infrastructure. … ‘I do think it’s a different world today, and I don’t think we should be nation-building anymore,’ Trump said. ‘I think it’s proven not to work, and we have a different country than we did then. We have $19 trillion in debt. We’re sitting, probably, on a bubble. And it’s a bubble that if it breaks, it’s going to be very nasty. I just think we have to rebuild our country.’” On that same day, The Daily Beast’s Shane Harris wrote that:
Trump’s surprising new position [is] that the U.S. should rethink whether it needs to remain in the seven-decades-old NATO alliance with Europe.
Sounding more like a CFO than a commander-in-chief, Trump said of the alliance, “We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore,” adding, “NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money.”
U.S. officials, including former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have said that European allies have to shoulder a bigger burden of NATO’s cost. But calling for the possible U.S. withdrawal from the treaty is a radical departure for a presidential candidate — even a candidate who has been endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Withdrawing from NATO would leave European allies without a forceful deterrent to the Russian military, which invaded and annexed portions of Ukraine in 2014. That would arguably be a win for Putin but leave U.S. allies vulnerable.
It also wasn’t clear how Trump’s arguably anti-interventionist position on the alliance squared with his choice of advisers. …
One other Trump adviser had previously been reported. Retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn had told The Daily Beast that he “met informally” with Trump. Flynn was pushed out of his post as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and has since spoken out publicly about the need for the U.S. to forge closer ties with Russia.
Five days later, on March 26th, the New York Times bannered, “Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views” and David Sanger and Maggie Haberman presented their discussion with Trump about this, where Trump said:
I have two problems with NATO. No. 1, it’s obsolete. When NATO was formed many decades ago we were a different country. There was a different threat. Soviet Union was, the Soviet Union, not Russia, which was much bigger than Russia, as you know. And, it was certainly much more powerful than even today’s Russia, although again you go back into the weaponry. But, but – I said, I think NATO is obsolete, and I think that – because I don’t think – right now we don’t have somebody looking at terror, and we should be looking at terror. And you may want to add and subtract from NATO in terms of countries. But we have to be looking at terror, because terror today is the big threat. Terror from all different parts. You know in the old days you’d have uniforms and you’d go to war and you’d see who your enemy was, and today we have no idea who the enemy is. …
I’ll tell you the problems I have with NATO. No. 1, we pay far too much. We are spending — you know, in fact, they’re even making it so the percentages are greater. NATO is unfair, economically, to us, to the United States. Because it really helps them more so than the United States, and we pay a disproportionate share. Now, I’m a person that — you notice I talk about economics quite a bit, in these military situations, because it is about economics, because we don’t have money anymore because we’ve been taking care of so many people in so many different forms that we don’t have money — and countries, and countries. So NATO is something that at the time was excellent. Today, it has to be changed. It has to be changed to include terror. It has to be changed from the standpoint of cost because the United States bears far too much of the cost of NATO. And one of the things that I hated seeing is Ukraine. Now I’m all for Ukraine, I have friends that live in Ukraine, but it didn’t seem to me, when the Ukrainian problem arose, you know, not so long ago, and we were, and Russia was getting very confrontational, it didn’t seem to me like anyone else cared other than us. And we are the least affected by what happens with Ukraine because we’re the farthest away. But even their neighbors didn’t seem to be talking about it. And, you know, you look at Germany, you look at other countries, and they didn’t seem to be very much involved. It was all about us and Russia. And I wondered, why is it that countries that are bordering the Ukraine and near the Ukraine – why is it that they’re not more involved? Why is it that they are not more involved? Why is it always the United States that gets right in the middle of things, with something that – you know, it affects us, but not nearly as much as it affects other countries. And then I say, and on top of everything else – and I think you understand that, David – because, if you look back, and if you study your reports and everybody else’s reports, how often do you see other countries saying “We must stop, we must stop.” They don’t do it! And, in fact, with the gas, you know, they wanted the oil, they wanted other things from Russia, and they were just keeping their mouths shut. And here the United States was going out and, you know, being fairly tough on the Ukraine. And I said to myself, isn’t that interesting? We’re fighting for the Ukraine, but nobody else is fighting for the Ukraine other than the Ukraine itself, of course, and I said, it doesn’t seem fair and it doesn’t seem logical.
The next day, March 27th, on ABC’s “The Week,” Trump said, “I think NATO’s obsolete. NATO was done at a time you had the Soviet Union, which was obviously larger, much larger than Russia is today. I’m not saying Russia’s not a threat. But we have other threats. We have the threat of terrorism and NATO doesn’t discuss terrorism, NATO’s not meant for terrorism. NATO doesn’t have the right countries in it for terrorism.”
It’s easy to see why Trump was opposed by not only Hillary Clinton and other Democratic Party neoconservatives, but also by all Republican Party neoconservatives. The main target of neoconservatives — ever since that movement (which only in the 1970s came to be called “neoconservatives”) was founded by Democratic U.S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson back in the 1950s — has been to conquer Russia. That’s the ultimate objective, toward which they all and always have striven.
Even Barack Obama, despite his pretenses for ‘a reset in U.S.-Russia relations’, had had actually the opposite of that pretension in mind — a doubling-down on the Cold War. And Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, doubles down on his predecessor’s double-down, there.
Of course, neocons aren’t only against Russia; they also are against any country that Israel and Saudi Arabia hate — and, of course, Israel and Saudi Arabia are large purchasers of American-made weapons, such as weapons from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. In fact: Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest purchaser (other than the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department itself) of their products and services. In fact, soon after coming into office, Trump achieved the all-time-world-record-largest international weapons-sale, of $350 billion to the Sauds, and it was quickly hiked yet another $50 billion to $400 billion. It’s, as of yet, his jobs-plan for the American people. Instead of Trump’s peaceing the American economy, he has warred it. Consequently, for example, the Koch brothers’ Doug Bandow, who represents his sponsors’ bet against neoconservativsm, headlined on 27 April 2017 “Donald Trump: The ‘Manchurian (Neoconservative) Candidate’?” and he itemized what a terrific Trojan Horse that Trump had turned out to be, for the war-lobby, the ‘neocons’, or, as Dwight Eisenhower had called them (but carefully and only after his Presidency was already over), “the military-industrial complex.” They’re all actually the same people; they serve the same billionaires, all of whom are heavily invested in these war-makers — all against two main targets: first, Russia (which America’s aristocracy hate the most); and, then, Iran (which Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s aristocracies hate the most). Any nation that’s friendly toward those, gets destroyed. Other people (the masses) fight, kill, die, get maimed, and are impoverished, while these few individuals at the very top in the U.S. profit, from those constant invasions, and military occupations — which Americans admire (their nation’s military, America’s invasion-forces) above all else.
On the Bill O’Reilly Show, 4 January 2016, Trump was asked to announce, before even the Presidential primaries, what would cause him as the U.S. President, to bomb Iran, and Trump then was panned everywhere for refusing to answer such an inappropriate question — to announce publicly what his strategy, as the U.S. President, would be in such a matter of foreign affairs (in which type of matter only the President himself should be privy to such information about himself, namely his strategy) — but Trump did reveal there his sympathy for the Sauds, and his extreme hostility toward Iran, a nation which is a bête noire to neocons:
I will say this about Iran. They’re looking to go into Saudi Arabia, they want the oil, they want the money, they want a lot of other things having to do…they took over Yemen, you look over that border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, that is one big border and they’re looking to do a number in Yemen. Frankly, the Saudis don’t survive without us, and at what point do we get involved? And how much will Saudi Arabia pay us to save them?
The Sauds have already answered that question, with their commitment to paying $400 billion, and they’re already using some of this purchased weaponry and training, to conquer Yemen. But who gets that money? It’s not the American people; it is only the stockholders in those American war-making corporations (and allied corporations) who receive the benefits.
And what’s this, from Trump, about “at what point do we get involved” if Saudi Arabia’s tyrants “don’t survive without us”? America is now supposed to be committed to keeping tyrannical hereditary monarchies in control over their countries? When did that start? Certainly not in 1776. Today’s America isn’t like the country, nor the culture, that America’s Founders created, but instead is more like the monarchy that they overthrew. This was supposed to be an anti-imperialist country. Today’s American rulers are traitors, against the nation that America’s Founders had created. These traitors, and their many agents, are sheer psychopaths. The American public are not their citizens, but their subjects — much like the colonists were, who overthrew the British King.
Donald Trump just wants for Europeans to increase military spending (to buy U.S.-made weapons) even more than the U.S. is doing against Russia, and for the Sauds and Israelis also to buy more of these weapons from America’s weapons-firms, to use against Iran and any nation friendly toward it. Meanwhile, America’s own military spending is already at world-record-high levels.
That’s Trump’s economic plan; that’s his jobs-plan; that’s his ‘national security’ plan. That is Trump’s Presidency.
He lied his way into office, just like his predecessors had been doing. This is what ‘democracy’ in America now consists of: lies — some colored “liberal”; some colored “conservative”; but all colored “profitable” (for the ‘right’ people); and another name for that, in foreign affairs, is “neoconservative.”
About Russia, he’s continuing Obama’s policies but even worse; and about Iran, he’s clearly even more of a neocon than was his predecessor. However, as a candidate, he had boldly criticized neoconservatism. Democracy cannot be based on lies, and led by liars.
http://washingtonsblog.com/2018/08/trump-lied-about-his-intentions-toward-russia.html