Thursday, April 30, 2015
SAR #15120
Happy Face: The Good News is that the US economy didn't quite grind to a halt in 1Q2015; it grew (if that's the word) 0.2%. That's down a tad from the 2.2% annualized GDP growth rate at the end of 2014. Bet they blame it on the weather; it was winter. What they won't talk much about is the $121.9 billion increase in inventories, the largest inventory build in history, without which we're in negative territory.
They're Everywhere: It's not just in America, the ten richest Africans own as much as the poorest half of the continent's population.
First Things: The people of Baltimore (and lots of other places, big and small) are frustrated and desperate. Their frustrations and desperation are based in the great and growing disparity between the rich and the rest. All of us should pay attention, else we will pay a great deal more.
Gag Me: Those who want to profit from privatizing public schools claim that the Baltimore riots could have been prevented by more charter schools. Details to follow.
Whitish Lies: Seems that the Germans spied on the French and on EU officials for the US, and lied to their parliament over performing economic espionage for the NSA. Interesting, that bit about the NSA engaging in economic espionage. Makes you wonder who their customers are.
Asked And Answered: A reporter asked Senator Feinstein why she believed the CIA would lie to her about torturing detainees but not about drone stikes. After a pause she said, “That’s a good question, actually.”
Diagnosis: Representative Bill Flores (R-TX) has identified the root cause of the riots in Baltimore. No,it is not poverty, not inequality, not police brutality, it's “because of too many gay marriages.”
Assigned Reading: “The Police State is already here .”
Evolution: The US has promoted assassination from a rarely used and never discussed Last Resort to routinely employed tactic. How's that been working?
The Future Is Now: A Texas A&M Business School professor flunked his entire strategic management class for cheating and “ridiculous behavior”. Tomorrows masters of the universe, no doubt.
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5 comments:
Senator Feinstein why she believed the CIA would lie to her about torturing detainees but not about drone stikes. After a pause she said, “That’s a good question, actually.” ....
"Now excuse me, I have to help my husband sell some post offices, and some bio-fuel to the Navy at a 2000% mark up.
Seriously, how can you expect me to think about questions at this time. Money in the bank is no question, it is a certainty, that is if we bail them out"; she said.
Note that Senator Feinstein didn't answer the question either. "There will be hell to pay" if the CIA lies to Feinstein. Yeah right, I'm sure the CIA is shivering in their black boots. Posturing, bait and switch tactics, or bald-faced fabrications and lies - all part of the game most of "leaders" (in both parties) are engaged in these days with comments intended for public consumption.
Re "Diagnosis": Overheard at the coffee shop this morning. . . "wouldn't be any race riots if we didn't have f*%$!# welfare". Until the bile rose in my throat and I had to leave, I heard enough to gather that this particular old, fat, white guy thinks welfare subsidizes race riots. I'm an old, fat, white guy and I'm still amazed at the novel, if pathologically twisted, "logic" my peers never cease to demonstrate.
i started working at the big box hardware store , and the discussions in the break room concerning baltimore bounce around between fox news inspired rumors, and thinly disguised authoritarian racism, pathetic but highly predictable
Charles,
You inquire: "Interesting, that bit about the NSA engaging in economic espionage. Makes you wonder who their customers are."
Back in the 1990s NSA had a program called Echelon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON . This was written up in James Bamford's "Body of Secrets" http://tinyurl.com/npzk4b9 Bamford wrote that the Clinton White House used the commercial intelligence gathered on European corporation by Echelon to feather Clinton's bed by giving away the the intel to U.S. competitors. A good example would be Echelon stealing Airbus's negotiating strategies and gifting this info to Boeing, for one example. There were other examples cited, with much of the military contractor community in the U.S. being the beneficiaries of the spying.
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