Understanding US thread-III

[Mort Walker]

The difference apparently is that no Chinese is going to take MoonBeam seriously.

They'll con him and then cut another deal for more coal power with the Zee.

[Dipanker]

It is completely absurd to say that higher level of carbon PPM due to GHG pollution is not pollution when entire global environment treaties are about reducing the GHG pollution to arrest climate changes, unless of course one does not subscribe to the idea of global warming .

Only this Monday the Supreme court handed a big slap to the Republicans by ruling against them in North Carolina congressional district gerrymandering case, so it is incorrect to assume that SC always rules strictly on ideological basis.

Beside when it comes to Environmental standards, states enforcing stricter standards always win against the federal gov. States are within their rights to do so.

Gerry Brown by signing the agreement with Canada and Mexico has poked Zee and Pruit in the eyes and and there is not much they can do about it other than running to SC. Where judging by the existing examples, the stricter California laws are most likely to prevail. California per the NYT article, in preparation has already armed itself with an array of lawyers and ready to fight it out if it ever goes there.

[KLNMurthy]

It is completely absurd to say that higher level of carbon PPM due to GHG pollution is not pollution when entire global environment treaties are about reducing the GHG pollution to arrest climate changes, unless of course one does not subscribe to the idea of global warming .

Only this Monday the Supreme court handed a big slap to the Republicans by ruling against them in North Carolina congressional district gerrymandering case, so it is incorrect to assume that SC always rules strictly on ideological basis.

Beside when it comes to Environmental standards, states enforcing stricter standards always win against the federal gov. States are within their rights to do so.

Gerry Brown by signing the agreement with Canada and Mexico has poked Zee and Pruit in the eyes and and there is not much they can do about it other than running to SC. Where judging by the existing examples, the stricter California laws are most likely to prevail. California per the NYT article, in preparation has already armed itself with an array of lawyers and ready to fight it out if it ever goes there.

I fail to understand the level of contempt and hostility on this thread to California's clean energy agenda and its efforts to pursue it despite the apparent devotion of Trump and the Republicans to dirty energy and all sorts of other dirty things.

Are BRFites that much in favor of dirty things?

If nothing else, California being one of the highest energy-consuming states, it will get America that much freer of dependence on Saudi oil. So, unless there is some benefit I am not seeing in keeping Saudi Arabia powerful and wealthy, California's efforts should be applauded.

[Mort Walker]

It is completely absurd to say that higher level of carbon PPM due to GHG pollution is not pollution when entire global environment treaties are about reducing the GHG pollution to arrest climate changes, unless of course one does not subscribe to the idea of global warming .

Only this Monday the Supreme court handed a big slap to the Republicans by ruling against them in North Carolina congressional district gerrymandering case, so it is incorrect to assume that SC always rules strictly on ideological basis.

Beside when it comes to Environmental standards, states enforcing stricter standards always win against the federal gov. States are within their rights to do so.

Gerry Brown by signing the agreement with Canada and Mexico has poked Zee and Pruit in the eyes and and there is not much they can do about it other than running to SC. Where judging by the existing examples, the stricter California laws are most likely to prevail. California per the NYT article, in preparation has already armed itself with an array of lawyers and ready to fight it out if it ever goes there.

This is the fundamental mistake. California GHG are not due to auto CAFE standards, but increased energy use due to increased economic activity.

SCOTUS case in North Carolina was one where a state was clearly discriminating against blacks. In California we have the instance of a state discriminating against businesses in other states and interferes with interstate commerce. They will get slapped back. Up to now, no one wasted time in taking CA to court, but that may change. This administration is going to be taking many issues and states up to SCOTUS.

Again, Gov. Moon Beam can't do s**t about international treaties. He has ZERO authority to negotiate. Yes, the state can arm itself with lawyers and spend their money as they see fit. The voters may think differently.

[Mort Walker]

If nothing else, California being one of the highest energy-consuming states, it will get America that much freer of dependence on Saudi oil. So, unless there is some benefit I am not seeing in keeping Saudi Arabia powerful and wealthy, California's efforts should be applauded.

You're making the mistake of mixing up energy used for transportation and power consumption. California is one of the largest oil and gas producing states in the US. It doesn't need Saudi Oil. It can produce lots from shale and off-shore.

[Gus]

I fail to understand the level of contempt and hostility on this thread to California's clean energy agenda and its efforts to pursue it despite the apparent devotion of Trump and the Republicans to dirty energy and all sorts of other dirty things.

hasn't california always been at the forefront / being aggressive on these sort of regulations

only now it is colored as a political defiance to trump

[KLNMurthy]

...



Again, Gov. Moon Beam can't do s**t about international treaties. He has ZERO authority to negotiate. Yes, the state can arm itself with lawyers and spend their money as they see fit. The voters may think differently.

‘Moonbeam’ nickname given by Royko stuck, now embraced by Brown

"Gov Moonbeam" was a colorful epithet coined by the late Chicago columnist Mike Royko waaaay back in the late 70s or so, when there were still hippies, and the idea of a politician spending time in a monastery or working with Mother Teresa, as Brown did, got him labeled as someone weird. It was during the 1980 presidential campaign when Brown ran in the Dem primaries against Carter.

It was 1976 and Brown was seeking his party’s presidential nomination and Mike wrote that the governor was attracting “the moonbeam vote.”

The thing that all you Trump-loving manly studs are missing is that Royko himself was as liberal as they come, and wielded a muscular and brilliant pen.

Here is the Bee article quote on what Royko himself said about the Moonbeam nickname:

The truth is he really liked Brown, and at the 1980 Democratic National Convention he wrote these words of praise:

“The more I see of Brown, the more I am convinced that he has been the only Democrat in this year’s politics who understands what this country will be up against.” And then he did a mea culpa for the Moonbeam nickname. He declared it “idiotic” and asked others to stop using it.

But as we know, Brown didn’t shed it, he redefined it as “creative and not hidebound to the status quo. It also stands for not being the insider, but standing apart and marching to my own drummer.”

That description would also fit Royko.

In reality, even in his first innings back in the day, and definitely now, Jerry Brown is a fiscal conservative, even a notoriously tightfisted guy when it comes to vetoing "liberal" spending bills. As to all the derision being heaped on him for "signing treaties" with foreign countries, I suggest you make the effort to actually learn what the agreements actually are. Unless you want to claim that Sacramento is run by a bunch of demented apes who don't understand anything about legality or prudent governance. That sort of thing seems more characteristic of how the federal government in DC is being run, the same Trump-led Republican administration that is inspiring so much knee-jerk bhakti among so many posters here.

Jerry Brown is a very brainy, middle-of-the-road guy who brought California from deficit to surplus, with a decent-sized rainy-day fund, and if he signs agreements with any entity on behalf of California, they would surely pass the test of fiscal and legal prudence.

Oh, and California voters overwhelmingly like Jerry Brown. He is their Modi, so to speak, so no worries there.

[Mort Walker]

Who cares about Brown and who named him? The label sticks and that's it.
Moon Beam is certainly better than others and has gotten CA out of trouble, but on this issue he is out of the water. State laws and policies can not supersede federal regulations no matter how en vogue they are.

[KLNMurthy]

If nothing else, California being one of the highest energy-consuming states, it will get America that much freer of dependence on Saudi oil. So, unless there is some benefit I am not seeing in keeping Saudi Arabia powerful and wealthy, California's efforts should be applauded.

You're making the mistake of mixing up energy used for transportation and power consumption. California is one of the largest oil and gas producing states in the US. It doesn't need Saudi Oil. It can produce lots from shale and off-shore.

If California has a surplus of oil due to its own shift to non-petroleum energy, then wouldn't the California surplus oil help to reduce dependency on Saudi oil for the rest of the country?

[KLNMurthy]

Who cares about Brown and who named him? The label sticks and that's it.
Moon Beam is certainly better than others and has gotten CA out of trouble, but on this issue he is out of the water. State laws and policies can not supersede federal regulations no matter how en vogue they are.

We'll see. Federal regulations are challenged all the time. It's for a judge to decide. I am not one, and perhaps you are not one either.

[Mort Walker]

I fail to understand the level of contempt and hostility on this thread to California's clean energy agenda and its efforts to pursue it despite the apparent devotion of Trump and the Republicans to dirty energy and all sorts of other dirty things.

hasn't california always been at the forefront / being aggressive on these sort of regulations

only now it is colored as a political defiance to trump

Southern CA had a real problem with leaded gas and air pollution from the 1950s-1980s when population exploded there. They needed clean air desperately much like Delhi/NCR today. In fact, car makers had versions of the same car sold in CA which was different than the rest of the US to comply with CA air pollution rules all the way in to the early 1990s. The problem which comes up today is one created by Reagan in the late 1980s when he gave amnesty to illegals in the US. They became solid Democratic Party vote banks in the heavily populated counties of CA. This in turn shifted the state from solid Republican after 1992. From then on even the most extreme left wing nuts have disproportionately changed state policy.

If it wasn't for Gov. Moon Beam, more companies would have left CA for other parts of the US. This is something which will happen when the next Dumbocrat gets elected there.

[Mort Walker]

Who cares about Brown and who named him? The label sticks and that's it.
Moon Beam is certainly better than others and has gotten CA out of trouble, but on this issue he is out of the water. State laws and policies can not supersede federal regulations no matter how en vogue they are.

We'll see. Federal regulations are challenged all the time. It's for a judge to decide. I am not one, and perhaps you are not one either.

None of us are. It is a matter of time before they get challenged in court.

[ramana]

One travesty was no one asked Brennan if there were Russian contacts with DNC also?

Brennan looked very political in his statements.

[shyam]

California's climate initiatives are loaded with hypocrisy and is a money making business for many. Methane is far more dangerous than carbon dioxide (of the order of 100:1). There was a major methane leak in LA and none of the climate warriors are making CA government accountable for negligence.

Los Angeles methane leak was officially the worst in U.S. history, study says

[Mort Walker]

If California has a surplus of oil due to its own shift to non-petroleum energy, then wouldn't the California surplus oil help to reduce dependency on Saudi oil for the rest of the country?

Oil is used for transportation, shifting to non-petroleum energy for transportation has not happened yet and there is still a long way to go since the energy density per unit weight & volume is still better with oil. CA being as big as it is also uses other energy sources for power production. How much ME oil is used on the west coast of the US, I am not aware of, but is small in relation.

Most US imports come from Canada and Central/South America. US Petroleum Imports

[ramana]

California's climate initiatives are loaded with hypocrisy and is a money making business for many. Methane is far more dangerous than carbon dioxide (of the order of 100:1). There was a major methane leak in LA and none of the climate warriors are making CA government accountable for negligence.

Los Angeles methane leak was officially the worst in U.S. history, study says

Very true. It was one of the worst leaks and all climate warriors gave a free pass.

[Dipanker]

Fundamental mistake is to ignore the increased GHG due to lowering of emission standard since vehicular emission is very significant part of it, and essential component to overall strategy of fighting global warming.

Vehicular emission in US contribute 20% of the total GHG. Burning just 1 gallon of gas contributes ~20 lbs of CO2 to atmosphere directly and ~24 lbs indirectly, it all adds up to billions of metric tons of carbon in atmosphere.

States have prevailed over the federal gov. when enforcing higher standards, I don't see why outcome will be different this time, assuming it goes that far in the first place. Gerry Brown is on the right side of this issue in this case.

[Dipanker]

California's climate initiatives are loaded with hypocrisy and is a money making business for many. Methane is far more dangerous than carbon dioxide (of the order of 100:1). There was a major methane leak in LA and none of the climate warriors are making CA government accountable for negligence.

Los Angeles methane leak was officially the worst in U.S. history, study says

Overall Methane is only ~9% of GHG, bulk ( ~75%) is CO2.

[KLNMurthy]

California's climate initiatives are loaded with hypocrisy and is a money making business for many. Methane is far more dangerous than carbon dioxide (of the order of 100:1). There was a major methane leak in LA and none of the climate warriors are making CA government accountable for negligence.

Los Angeles methane leak was officially the worst in U.S. history, study says

Very true. It was one of the worst leaks and all climate warriors gave a free pass.

I don't know what you mean by free pass. There was a lot of noise made about it, gas company was forced to pay up and remedy the problem. Residents were paid the expenses for relocating while the leak was remediated. Gas co. have an ongoing financial liability and are required to make infrastructure upgrades and procedural changes.

Are you saying that somehow there was a double standard in dealing with the gas leak in L.A.? If so, what was the double standard?

What do you think should have been done that was not done?

[KLNMurthy]

California's climate initiatives are loaded with hypocrisy and is a money making business for many. Methane is far more dangerous than carbon dioxide (of the order of 100:1). There was a major methane leak in LA and none of the climate warriors are making CA government accountable for negligence.

Los Angeles methane leak was officially the worst in U.S. history, study says

Overall Methane is only ~9% of GHG, bulk ( ~75%) is CO2.

Is there something wrong with someone having a business that makes money from clean air technology? And creating jobs?

You can't have it both ways--climate initiative as being bad for business, and climate initiative being a "money maker", that is, a business opportunity which will create jobs.

[ramana]

http://www.npr.org/2017/05/23/529598301 ... tion-meddl

Updated at 3:38 p.m. ET

Former CIA Director John Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday that Russia "brazenly interfered in the 2016 election process," despite U.S. efforts to warn it off. Brennan testified in an open session of the committee, one of a handful of congressional committees now investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Brennan said he told his Russian counterpart, the head of Russia's FSB, last August that if Russia pursued its efforts to interfere, "it would destroy any near-term prospect for improvement in relations" between the two countries. He said Russia denied any attempts to interfere.

In his opening statement, Brennan also recounted how he had briefed congressional leaders in August of last year, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees about the "full details" of what he knew of Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Brennan said he became convinced last summer that Russia was trying to interfere in the campaign, saying "they were very aggressive."

Brennan said he is "aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign." Brennan said that concerned him, "because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals," and that it raised questions about whether or not the Russians "were able to gain the cooperation of those individuals." Brennan added he didn't know if "collusion existed" between the Russians and those he identified as involved in the Trump campaign.

{When such a nexus is revealed, did he inform FBI which is in charge of counter-espionage in the US? Or did he just feel only Congressional committees need to be informed? In August 2016, President Obama was still in power. So what was Brennan doing?}

While Brennan would not specifically identify any individuals associated with the Trump campaign who had contacts with Russian officials and would not opine as to whether there was any collusion or collaboration, he did tell lawmakers why he was concerned about the contacts occurring against the general background of Russian efforts to meddle in the election. Brennan said he's studied Russian intelligence activities over the years, and how Russian intelligence services have been able to get people to betray their country. "Frequently, individuals on a treasonous path do not even realize they're on that path until it gets to be too late," he said.

{So what exactly was the meddling he is concerned about? He states there was no collusion, no single individuals named, and he did not inform the FBI about counter espionage. To me if any of this is true he is guilty of gross negligence.}

Brennan said Russia was motivated to back Donald Trump in the presidential election because of a "traditional animus" between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He told committee members there had not been a good relationship between Putin and the Clintons over the years. What's more, Brennan said Putin blamed Hillary Clinton's actions as secretary of state during the Obama administration for domestic disturbances inside Russia. He said Putin was concerned Clinton would be more "rigid" on issues such as human rights if elected president.

{Now above is conjecture and not facts. On the contrary if Russia thought Clinton was going to be President, logic tells they would be more zealous to penetrate her campaign then a potential losing candidate.}


But Brennan told the committee he believed that Russia anticipated that Clinton would be the likely winner of the presidential race, and that Russia tried to "damage and bloody" her before Election Day. Had she won, Brennan said, Russia would have continued to attempt to "denigrate her and hurt her" during her presidency. If Russia had collected more information about Clinton that they did not use against her during the campaign, Brennan said they were likely "husbanding it for another day."


{Now this is pure speculation!!!}


On another question, Brennan criticized President Trump's reported sharing of classified intelligence with Russia officials. Brennan said if reports were accurate, Trump violated "protocols" by sharing the information with Russia's foreign minister and ambassador to the U.S.

Brennan also said he was "very concerned" by the release of what he said appears to be classified information from the Trump administration. He said there appear to be "very, very damaging leaks, and I find them appalling and they need to be tracked down."

{Yet Brennan is not concerned with actual release of classified materials in Hillary Clinton server nor her aide Huma Abedin with a compromised husband who has access to that server!!!}

Reacting to Brennan's testimony, a White House spokesman said "This morning's hearings back up what we've been saying all along: that despite a year of investigation, there is still no evidence of any Russia-Trump campaign collusion, that the President never jeopardized intelligence sources or sharing, and that even Obama's CIA Director believes the leaks of classified information are 'appalling' and the culprits must be 'tracked down.'"


Under questioning from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., Brennan said the Russians have been trying to disrupt Western elections since the 1960s, and that they've quickly adapted to the times. Brennan pointed to the ease with which Russia was able to hack Democratic operatives' emails, which were then published on WikiLeaks.



{Podesta email server was wide open. It was an invitation to any interested hacker to come and hack it. That is how they got the emails. And as for choosing Wikileaks, NYT wouldn't publish them unlike in Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers case. even now all media except Fox acts as the opposition media. So how can anyone give them whistle blower emails?

By saying since 1960s is Brennan trying to bring into question all elections since John F Kennedy to Obama in 2012? This beats all conspiracy theories to date and gets tin foil hat award of the century.}


"The cyber-environment now really provides so much more opportunity for troublemaking and the Russians take advantage of it," he said. Brennan said the use of spear phishing, and "whatever else so that they can then gain access to people's emails, computer systems networks," is something that the Russians are adept at.

{I}{Hello the Podesta server password did not need any such things. may be NSA needs such tools but not for Podesta email server.}[/I]

He said Russia used WikiLeaks as a "cut-out," or go-between, and that protests by WikiLeaks that it is not working with Russia and Russia's claims it is not working with WikiLeaks are "disingenuous."

{So far Seth Rogers the murdered DNC staffer is known to be the source. Why not investigate that than make political hack statements?}
.....

[ramana]

KLNM, The subject is till sub-judice. Lets wait for the fines to be levied and paid.

[shyam]

There are two parts. One, compensation for local residents and for other local issues. Other is to make climate champion government accountable for gross negligence to act immediately when highly potent GHG was emitted. Since it anyway emitted methane, California should lose equivalent carbon credits it has. Any talk about that?

[A_Gupta]

^^^^
http://abcnews.go.com/US/russian-hacker ... d=42435822
This is from Sept 29, 2016: "Russian Hackers Targeted Nearly Half of States' Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrated 4"
It is in part based on FBI testimony to Congress.

PS: Did Brennan tell the FBI?
{When such a nexus is revealed, did he inform FBI which is in charge of counter-espionage in the US? Or did he just feel only Congressional committees need to be informed? In August 2016, President Obama was still in power. So what was Brennan doing?}
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... 38ff8d871a

...The CIA alerted the FBI to a troubling pattern of contacts between Russian officials and associates of the Trump campaign last year, former agency director John Brennan

{So what exactly was the meddling he is concerned about? He states there was no collusion, no single individuals named, and he did not inform the FBI about counter espionage. To me if any of this is true he is guilty of gross negligence.}

First: "{Brennan} would not opine as to whether there was any collusion or collaboration" - i.e., he would not say there was collusion but nor would he say there was no collusion.

Second: The FBI was informed. See above.


Third: No individuals will be named unless there is sufficient evidence for prosecution. One must remember that evidence for prosecution will need to reach a level of "beyond a reasonable doubt", and the chain of custody of evidence will be important. For intelligence purposes, a much lower standard of proof is needed.

{Podesta email server was wide open. It was an invitation to any interested hacker to come and hack it. That is how they got the emails.}

They cracked the email account via a phishing attack. Podesta's email server was gmail, Google's email system, and so it was as "wide open" as any other gmail user's email account.

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity ... email-hack

Last March, Podesta received an email purportedly from Google saying hackers had tried to infiltrate his Gmail account. When an aide emailed the campaign’s IT staff to ask if the notice was real, Clinton campaign aide Charles Delavan replied that it was “a legitimate email" and that Podesta should “change his password immediately.”

Instead of telling the aide that the email was a threat and that a good response would be to change his password directly through Google’s website, he had inadvertently told the aide to click on the fraudulent email and give the attackers access to the account.

Delavan told the Times he had intended to type "illegitimate,” a typo he still has not forgiven himself for making.

The email was a phishing scam that ultimately revealed Podesta’s password to hackers. Soon after, WikiLeaks began releasing 10 years of his emails.

The private company SecureWorks investigated the phishing attack, and claims that it is Russian:
https://www.secureworks.com/research/ir ... e-measures

{And as for choosing Wikileaks, NYT wouldn't publish them unlike in Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers case. even now all media except Fox acts as the opposition media. So how can anyone give them whistle blower emails?}

Back in 2010, the US State Department diplomatic cables leaked to Wikileaks were published by the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world ... rnote.html

{By saying since 1960s is Brennan trying to bring into question all elections since John F Kennedy to Obama in 2012? This beats all conspiracy theories to date and gets tin foil hat award of the century.}

Here's former CIA director James Woolsey talking to Brietbart news (December 12, 2016):
http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/12/ ... s-century/

“In the first place, the Russians using propaganda, or various other means of that sort, have been on their neighbors and other countries’ cases now since at least the 1940s, and possibly going back into the 30s,” Woolsey pointed out.

“They call it dezinformatsiya, ‘disinformation,’ otherwise known as lying,” he explained. “Thousands of people are involved in producing fake newspapers, fake frontispieces for books, on and on and on. They go after the institutions that they believe can help hold the West together, and push the West towards its culture and history. They go after the Catholic Church. They go after Jews. They go after democratic political parties in Europe. They’ve been doing this for three-quarters of a century.”

“So hacking is not new; it’s just carried out with different mechanical devices than back in the 1930s. They’re never not causing trouble. I think one starts from the proposition that if something has gone haywire, and it looks like there’s some institution somewhere – hard to tell exactly where – that is causing trouble for us, Russia kind of steps front and center in the list of suspects, said Woolsey.

{So far Seth Rogers the murdered DNC staffer is known to be the source. Why not investigate that than make political hack statements?}

Fox News withdrew that story.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/05 ... ation.html

On May 16, a story was posted on the Fox News website on the investigation into the 2016 murder of DNC Staffer Seth Rich. The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting. Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed.

We will continue to investigate this story and will provide updates as warranted.

---
As long as you rely on Murdoch media and such, you will likely be misinformed.

[Dipanker]

In the meantime even a conservative publication like National Review lambasts Sean Hannity for peddling Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory.

The Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory Is Shameful Nonsense

This is absolutely insane, but faithfuls are still willing to fall for it hook, line, and sinker.

[ramana]

Wow so it's all true.

[Dipanker]

Another debunking of Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory, this time from WaPo.

The life and death of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory

[Gus]

Murdoch media is so passé and lame stream. Get with the program and get your news directly from notHilary telegrams and breitbart and infowars.

[Lalmohan]

^^^ to be honest, you dont really need news do you? just wait for your opinions to be provided by the ministry of peace, there... nothing to worry about any more

[Dipanker]

Welcome To The Brave New Post-Truth World!

[A_Gupta]

Wheels within wheels?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thi ... stonishing

[Gus]

people have built a bubble with specific input and output feeds and a closed loop system and won't even bother examining a counter pov, no matter how well argued and well referenced it is..it can be easily dismissed with a quip such as "FAKE NEWS"..

Seth Rich was murdered. It must be so. lalalalalalala...

[Dipanker]

Appeals Court Will Not Reinstate Trump’s Revised Travel Ban

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court refused Thursday to reinstate President Trump’s revised travel ban, saying it “drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination.”

The decision, from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., was a fresh setback for the administration’s efforts to limit travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the administration would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

[UlanBatori]

These ppl are so corrupt - the spend all their time poring through emails wondering who of their superiors have GUBOed to whom. If Comey were honest, all he had to do is pick up the phone and ask the AG whether they had promised to not pursue the HiC case.
If you want to see something that DOES have the Putin stamp, look at this item.
I think there is a 50% chance that it was someone pretending to be FBI Sources that scammed the NYT into publishing this. Now Trump has a nice stick to whack the intel agencies. Timing is way too coincidental.
Watch "Absence of Malice" starring Paul Newman for how it is done.

[Yagnasri]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 850546.cms

MSM now given a Daamad Alert in US and even we are reporting it.

[Lalmohan]

Dear Mr Ulanbatori - am struggling to keep up with your logic. could you kindly elaborate for us lesser intellectual types what you mean?

[Dipanker]

With Zee's reverse Robinhood budget proposal this can only get worse:

The Assault on Colleges — and the American Dream

The country’s most powerful engine of upward mobility is under assault.

Public colleges have an unmatched record of lofting their students into the middle class and beyond. For decades, they have enrolled teenagers and adults from modest backgrounds, people who are often the first member of their family to attend college, and changed their trajectories.

Over the last several years, however, most states have cut their spending on higher education, some drastically. Many public universities have responded by enrolling fewer poor and middle-class students — and replacing them with affluent students who can afford the tuition.

[Mort Walker]

Dear Mr Ulanbatori - am struggling to keep up with your logic. could you kindly elaborate for us lesser intellectual types what you mean?

Try to keep up dear.

What he's saying is that info was leaked to NYT by Zee operatives so he could use it to beat back the various 16 intel agencies. Or the other half - it was leaked by intel agencies to NYT to make the Zee admin look bad. The net effect will be the same. Zee needs to clean house on the intel agencies including DoS.

[ramana]

And Trump already declared he will get to the bottom of the issue and take action. This one will be a national security violation with criminal charges.
Separately TV was reporting 3 WH staff were identified as source of newspaper leaks and will be fired.

[Ravi Karumanchiri]

I've seen several analyses that clearly demonstrate; of all the things governments spend money on to create domestic jobs, spending on military production creates the fewest jobs per dollar spent, as compared to spending on infrastructure (road building, construction, etc.), and social services (education, hospitals, health and sanitation, etc.). The 'RoI' on military expenditures is lowest, in terms of job creation.

I once saw an analysis - in Readers' Digest, so it must be 400% true - that men graduates of the U. California System had an average of 1.8 children, whereas women graduates had 1.7. Therefore, Men Have More Children Than Women.

Aerospace/defence jobs typically bring more money to the worker, because they employ people with specialized skills who can also get a security clearance. Direct employment is not as large in numbers as putting people to work breaking rocks into rubble for roadwork (I still remember the photos of old women doing that as part of Bihar Famine Relief) or flipping burgers, but there is a concept called turnover. Aerospace jobs typically generate a factor of 3 in economic turnover because the employees are better educated, shop for better products, get their children into all sorts of activities that employ more people (piano teachers, violin teachers, karate teachers, soccer coaches..).

The high profit margins are because not many can cross the high threshold to compete- even if they could get over the ITAR type obstacles. Also because these are highly innovative products.

***BUYING*** expensive weapons does not generate jobs except for the turnover of the bribes and black money - and eventually the millions of hours spent in Investigative Journalism, TV talking heads, Blue Ribbon Judicial Panels, etc etc. So yes, war machine-building is great for the economy. Besides, where do "consumer products" come from, other than from military programs?

Actually, UB, you're wrong, and not just because I said so; but because you obviously don't do the reading...

Suggest you refresh yourself on the works of Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman.....

Krugman: War Is BAD for the Economy

... it’s very hard to extract golden eggs from sophisticated economies without killing the goose in the process.

See also: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/opin ... egion&_r=1

Krugman wrote of another Nobel prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, who made similar observations, in his 2003 article "War Is Widely Thought To Be Linked To Economic Good Times … NONSENSE"....

War is widely thought to be linked to economic good times. The second world war is often said to have brought the world out of depression, and war has since enhanced its reputation as a spur to economic growth. Some even suggest that capitalism needs wars, that without them, recession would always lurk on the horizon.

Today, we know that this is nonsense. The 1990s boom showed that peace is economically far better than war. The Gulf war of 1991 demonstrated that wars can actually be bad for an economy.

See also: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... aq.economy


This is a topic that has been well covered, over and over, throughout many, many years of serious journalism.

Indeed, these days, in the news is the fact that of the 28 members of NATO, only five countries meet the 2% of GDP defense expenditure, that the NATO treaty requires. The other 23 countries each spend less than 2% of GDP on defense, whereas the UK, Poland, Estonia and Latvia spend their 2%, the Global "big spender", the USA, itself only spends 4% of GDP on defense. Do you think these minuscule numbers are owing to the fact that military expenditure is a job creator and boon to the economy? (Get real!)

Military spending is the weakest job creator!

Also read....

Is War Good for the Economy?

... <snip>... Military spending may at one time have been a genuine job creator when weapons were compatible with converted civilian production lines, but the days of Rosie the Riveter are long gone. Most weapons projects now require relatively little touch labor. Instead, a disproportionate share is siphoned into high-cost R&D (from which the civilian economy benefits little), exorbitant management expenditures, high overhead, and out-and-out padding, including money that flows back into political campaigns. A dollar appropriated for highway construction, health care, or education will likely create more jobs than a dollar for Pentagon weapons procurement. <snip> ....

A number of well-regarded Washington think tanks together with the University of Massachusetts have for years now, collaborated to produce the authoritative look at this topic, in the United States context.

The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities

The link immediately above is to a 16 page PDF file, on which page 4 includes the following summary paragraph...

But this conclusion raises an obvious question: do we create more jobs through these non-military spending targets simply by substituting we
ll-paying jobs associated with the military with poorly-paid jobs associated with the alternatives? In fact, spending on personal consumption does
produce a preponderance of poorly-paid jobs, such that the total compensation flowing to workers will be lower than through $1 billion going to the
military. However, the opposite is true with education as the spending target. Here, both the total number of jobs created as well as the average pay
are both higher than with the military. The situations with health care, mass transit and home weatherization/infrastructure construction are less clear-cut. More jobs will be created than with military spending, and the total compensation will also be significantly higher than with military spending.

But the average pay for a health-care worker or those engaged in mass transit or construction will be lower than with the military. After presenting these findings, we examine them in a broader context — i.e. assessing the overall welfare impacts of the alternative employment outcomes.
We conclude the study with a brief series of summary observations.

<BIG-SNIP>

Conclusion

The U.S. government now operates with a military budget of nearly $600 billion per year. This is a 66 percent increase (in real dollars) relative to the level of spending in 2000. It amounts to 4.4 percent of GDP. An expenditure level of this magnitude will necessarily have a major impact in
establishing the country’s policy priorities and overall economic trajectory.

We have shown what are the employment effects of spending on the military in contrast with five domestic spending categories. Specifically, we have shown that spending on personal consumption, health care, education, mass transit, and construction for home weatherization and
infrastructure repair all create more jobs per $1 billon in expenditures relative to military spending.

It is true that jobs generated by military spending tend to pay relatively well, which is part of the reason that fewer jobs are created per dollar of expenditure than through alternative spending targets. However, we have also seen that $1 billion in spending on education, on average, generates
more than twice the number of jobs as does military spending, and higher-paying jobs. Spending on health care, mass transit, and home weatherization/infrastructure creates jobs at a lower average level of pay than military spending. But these three spending targets do create substantially more jobs than military spending, with an overall level of pay, combining all workers’ paychecks and benefits, higher than the military. Moreover, a substantial majority of the jobs generated through a health care, mass transit or construction expansion pay more than $32,000 per year, our rough threshold for a minimally decent income level. The majority of jobs pay between $32,000 - $64,000, a rough middle-
income pay range. Health care, mass transit, weatherization, and infrastructure repair are all also high priority areas for social spending
. More spending in these areas could be combined with improving the average level of pay, while still creating more jobs per dollar of expenditure than the military.

Increased personal consumption resulting from tax cuts is the only alternative spending target that we examined that is inferior to military spending along two dimensions—both the average pay and the total amount of compensation per $1 billion in expenditures are lower. There is also no
reason why expanding personal consumption expenditures—particularly of the already affluent, whose level of expenditures have risen sharply since the early 1990s—should be considered as a primary focus of social policy.

Overall then, there is a great deal at stake as policy makers and voters establish public policy spending priorities. As we have seen, by addressing social needs in the areas of health care, education, education, mass transit, home weatherization and infrastructure repairs, we would also create more jobs and, depending on the specifics of how such a reallocation is pursued, both an overall higher level of compensation for working people in the U.S. and a better average quality of jobs.

There was also a 2011 update to the previously linked PDF file, which you can find here: http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf ... g_2011.pdf This update reached very much the same conclusions, except that it took a sharper focus on 'clean tech' payoffs. The ABSTRACT for the study reads as follows:

This study focuses on the employment effects of military spending versus alternative domestic spending health care and education. We first present some simple alternative spending scenarios, namely devoting $1 billion to the military versus the same amount of money spent on clean energy, health care, and education, as well as for tax cuts which produce increased levels of personal consumption. Our conclusion in assessing such relative employment impacts is straightforward: $1 billion spent on each of the domestic spending priorities will create substantially more jobs within the U.S. economy than would the same $1 billion spent on the military. We then examine the pay level of jobs created through these alternative spending priorities and assess the overall welfare impacts of the alternative employment outcomes. We show that investments in clean energy, health care and education create a much larger number of jobs across all pay ranges, including mid-range jobs (paying between $32,000 and $64,000) and high-paying jobs (paying over $64,000). Channeling funds into clean energy, health care and education in an effective way will therefore create significantly greater opportunities for decent employment throughout the U.S. economy than spending the same amount of funds with the military.

I also found a nice compendium of other works by actual economists and other bonafide experts who study this area for a living. You can read it here... Economists DESTROY the Myth that “War Is Good for the Economy