“Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property” is considered a Grave Breach of the Geneva Convention.
If we invaded Iraq under the pretense of preventing the use of weapons of mass destruction, which as we all know now did not exist, and ended up taking its oil as Donald Trump says we should have done, at the very least, then the United States of America could have been tried in an International Criminal Court.
At the present time, we are the most threatening power on the planet. We should not be throwing our weight around to take another country’s property.
That’s not what we’re about, Donald.
Bad!
Update: I heard a general for Trump (there’s a club that I wouldn’t want membership in) say that Donald didn’t mean that we should steal the oil. No, he meant we should have left forces there to prevent the oil from falling into ISIS’s hands.
And that would almost make sense if Trump hadn’t said, “To the victor goes the spoils”. Sooo, there’s that.
Sounds like it could be the motto of his presidency. If he’s the victor, what is going to stop him from taking all the spoils of power?
1.) The other day, I was looking for something in my secretary and found an old iPhone. I don’t even know how old it is. It’s probably been in that drawer since before I moved out of NJ to PA three years ago. There’s also an iPhone 5 in the bottom of my bag that I take to work with me. I haven’t used this since March but for some reason can’t bring myself to get rid of an expensive piece of equipment even though it’s unusable. (It’s broken).
The point is, we all have gadgets we haven’t used in awhile. We shouldn’t be surprised that Hillary went through a bunch of Blackberries. In fact, Blackberry always had a kludgy OS. My daughter had one for awhile. I never liked it. Too many screens, too many layers of stuff to go through to get to what you want. But I’m sure you can make it work for you if you have a few hours to play with your gadget. If you’re Secretary of State, you probably don’t have that luxury. Instead, you might go through a few phones until you find the one that works for you and when they upgrade the OS, you have to relearn everything. In that case, 13 might make sense.
Some of them are probably in the bottom of Huda’s bag.
2.) OooooOOOoooo! Donald is now being asked about his birther history. He doesn’t want to talk about it. His surrogates are being asked about the pay-for-play deal he had with the AG of Florida Pam Bondi. But they don’t want to talk about it. One of his surrogates was pinned down on MSNBC and forced to talk about Donald’s taxes. They always start off talking to the host like they are sharing insider jokes about Hillary. I guess the media was all too willing to play along with that for most of the last two years. But some media types were shamed in the last week to be more critical of Donald. After all, there’s only so much traction you can get out of an email “scandal”.
Michelle Goldberg gave an interview to TrumpCast yesterday where she finally acknowledges that Hillary’s indiscretions pale in comparison to the avalanche of bad juju in Trump’s biography. It probably won’t last but I’ll take it. Maybe Schlafly dying and Roger Ailes being exposed and Fox News imploding has something to do with it. We shall see.
3.) I’m really beginning to despise Adam Davidson. Not only did he intentionally and aggressively go after Elizabeth Warren in 2008 with one of the most ridiculous arguments in favor of the banks after the financial disaster, he seems to be behind the curve on jumping on the “we all hate Hillary, let’s not invite her to sit at our lunch table” bandwagon. His “insider” story about the Clinton Global Initiative completely misses the point of having a president demanding large sums of money from rich people in order to get their pictures taken with him. Only Bill Clinton could sweet talk someone like Exxon to fork over money for a climate change initiative. (I have no idea if this is an actual case but you get the point).
Adam kind of reminds me of one of those ratings agency employees in The Big Short who gave glowing reviews to the banks on their securities and funds because they were hoping to move up to Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch someday. Adam has the aroma of public radio all over him.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it doesn’t exactly scream success in the Uber-capitalism American ideal sense of the word where you have to be an entrepreneur making bucket loads of cash on what is essentially ad based software or capturing the last full time gig with bennies at the New York Times.
Anyway, Adam’s not as bright as he thinks and his timing is off.
Phyllis Schlafly died yesterday. To her family, condolences. I’m sure she will be missed as a private person.
As a public person, I can’t think of a single person who has had such a negative effect on the progress of American women and gay people. This lawyer and working wife hypocritically set the clock back for other professional women and wives. She convinced a generation of women who were born too soon for the cultural changes of the 60s and 70s to drag their daughters back to 1950’s fantasyland. She helped block the Equal Rights Amendment. She helped concretize implicit bias in our public lives.
Want to know why Hillary Clinton has faced so much resistance and sexism on the road to the White House? Phyllis Schlafly.
I’m sure she still has her fan base. Public figures like Sarah Palin will sanctify her. There’s another woman who wanted to play it both ways, having power and convincing other women to give theirs up.
We probably shouldn’t celebrate the deaths of anyone but Hitler type malefactors. Schlafly probably didn’t kill anyone (that we know of). But she may have been complicit in the deaths of domestic violence victims, the coming deaths of women who self-abort in states like Indiana, the deaths of careers and the deaths of dreams for women and gay people all around the country.
She overstayed her welcome. She finally left the party.
Happy Labor Day to everyone taking the day off. This year, it’s a paid holiday for me. Last year, it wasn’t. I paid for this day off out of my own pocket. That’s the price you sometimes pay as a contractor. There are a lot more contractors since 2008. The number one problem with this economy as I see it is income instability. That’s when you can’t count on your hours, that the site will stay open, that your start-up might close, that your second job is shopping yourself for the next gig. That’s what’s undermining the middle class. You can’t buy a house, buy a car, have a family, save, take a vacation or keep our consumer based economy going strong when you’re always looking over your shoulder for the guy who is going to lay you off.
Some billionaire entrepreneurs will tell you that fluid labor laws are essential to innovation and making piles of cash. This is not true. Piles of cash were still attainable when we were all gainfully employed in steady jobs.Maybe the piles weren’t quite so high but how many yachts do you need?
In any case, people need breaks or they burn themselves out. So, today, remember the union guys who picketed and stood their ground and gave us the weekend and Labor Day.
Joe Biden and Tim Kaine are in Pittsburgh for a speech and parade. I got up too late to attend but will try to follow up on this later today.
“Let’s fight the right wing, all workers unite”
Best way to fight: VOTE. Pennsylvania residents have until October 11 to register. Do it now.
1.) Today the press starts flying in the same plane as Hillary instead of trailing behind her jet. That should be fun. Her crew has probably thoughtfully replaced the flotation devices in their seat cushions with anchors and the oxygen with nitrous oxide. “Oh, yeah? Who’s laughing now, Andrea??” Maybe Bill will plan the in-flight meals. All vegan. But not the tasty vegan. More of the macrobiotic vegan from 30 years ago with nutritional yeast and bean sprouts. Yum.
2.) The New York Times seems to be going out of its way to Gore Hillary. I’m not linking to any of the articles because why give them clicks? But I will say that after registering voters in predominantly black neighborhoods for the past 6 weeks, I see no lack of enthusiasm for Hillary. The comments on the article were turned off so volunteers can’t give their point of view. Well, we don’t really count anyway, right?
3.) Speaking of getting Gored, the media went on the attack against Gore in 2000. It probably cost him the presidency. Sure, Naderites helped but it shouldn’t have been so close going into the final stretch. Same with Kerry. He was Swift-boated mercilessly and that really contributed to the closeness of the race. Now, it’s Hillary. It’s ALWAYS been Hillary.
I’m trying to find a good explanation why the media seems to be doubling down on her when the alternative is indisputably worse in every possible way. Simplest explanations tend to be the most accurate so I’m going to say that a very large part of it can be attributed to the fact that she is a woman. I say this because the drumbeat of negative coverage of her has been relentless since she went to Washington and from the very beginning defined herself as an atypical first lady. She was clearly feminist, intelligent and not about to let herself get relegated to teas and decorating. There was a cadre of women a little older than her who just missed the cultural revolution, the pill and feminism. And there were plenty of men who weren’t used to talking to a woman as an equal in the halls of power. They weren’t going to let her skirt their rigid rules of gender behavior and get away with it.
But you know, this has gone on for way too long now. Hillary has become a formidable politician in her own right, separate from her husband. It hasn’t stopped the attacks or the coverage of her using the Clinton Rules:
1) Everything, no matter how ludicrous-sounding, is worthy of a full investigation by federal agencies, Congress, the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” and mainstream media outlets
2) Every allegation, no matter how ludicrous, is believable until it can be proven completely and utterly false. And even then, it keeps a life of its own in the conservative media world.
3) The media assumes that Clinton is acting in bad faith until there’s hard evidence otherwise.
4) Everything is newsworthy because the Clintons are the equivalent of America’s royal family
5) Everything she does is fake and calculated for maximum political benefit
As we have seen, it’s not just the Clintons that get this kind of coverage. Gore and Kerry also got it, although Clinton’s seems to be an order of magnitude worse and this has been backed up with a Harvard study.
Curiously, Obama did not get this kind of coverage.
There could be several reasons for this. One is that racism was a shameful thing 8 years ago. Two is that it was a “change election”. Three is something a little less tangible and something I have been trying to explain for 8 years now: Obama is one of them. He is from their class. He’s the Harvard educated lawyer with a fondness for the conventional values and ambitions of the country club Republican class. Note that Michelle was not actively (or publicly) involved in creating policy. She’s the Stay At Home Mom with the garden. That was dog-whistling to the media that he wasn’t going to break any new ground culturally. He’s the guy the financiers love because he’s got status written all over him. He was their human shield against the rabble who wanted the bankers’ heads and higher taxes for the upper crust. Well, we couldn’t have that. They’ll never trust Hillary because they suspect she’s just a bit more liberal than they’re comfortable with.
Anyway, we’re all worse off because the media decided to jump on the bandwagon to gore Gore and Swift-boat Kerry. Hillary seems to be holding her own right now. Trump seems to have a ceiling because he’s only been able to capture the white male vote. There’s a good probability that Hillary is going to be president. But there’s still some volatility too. None of the volunteers I work with are taking this race casually. And we are still getting people who are volunteering voluntarily. I witnessed this yesterday when one of my young black female millenial volunteers registered another young, black millenial female who then OFFERED to volunteer for us.
Take that, New York Times.
I get the feeling that the media right now is reveling in the scads of money they are making off this election. Pumping up Trump and Sanders paid off big for them. It narrowed what should have been a blowout for Hillary. And they sort of have to keep the pressure up now because the candidates are so unequal in every way that to portray them accurately at this point would make it clear who the president should be. There really is no question. But the media needs a photo finish. I guess they think that even bad news is good and if the worst happens, they can always tell Trump that they made him and they can unmake him.
That’s a dangerous game because this guy will hold a grudge forever and use every trick in the book, which is formidable for a president, to take down his enemies. We aren’t talking about a Nixon here. Nixon was subtle compared to Trump. Letting this genie out of the bottle will backfire badly for the media. They need to think this over and decide if they can live with a Madame President who’s a feminazi libtard or a malignant narcissist with his own white nationalist militia and the power to make their lives a lot more miserable than alfalfa sprouts and squishy veggie burgers on Hill Force One.
The Confluence 