Some News this Sunday - October 5, 2019

The Plot

"A second whistleblower is now considering filing a complaint about President Donald Trump’s conduct regarding Ukraine, the New York Times reported Friday.

This whistleblower has “more direct information about the events than the first whistle-blower,” according to the Times. It’s a claim that, if true, could bolster the credibility of the initial complaint that triggered the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into whether Trump solicited election interference from Ukraine.

The first whistleblower’s complaint, which was released in redacted form to the public in late September, alleged that on a July 25 phone call Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to push for investigations into potential 2020 rival Joe Biden."  Vox

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The lawyer representing this person states that he has "multiple whistleblowers" as clients.  Ah! How clever!  Are all these public spirited citizens career employees of the CIA?  Little birds still twittering in the trees in my back garden tell me they are.  This sounds like a CIA conspiracy designed to force Trump from office.  The WH and NSC staffs are peopled by some political appointees and a horde of career people detailed from various departments of the Executive Branch; CIA, Defense, State, Justice , Treasury, etc.  The lending agency selects the people who are lent.  The opportunity for someone like Brennan who still has a lot of faithful followers at CIA to plant a group of informants and operatives in Trump's WH has been evident and remains so.

My instincts and the application of Occam's Razor lead me to the conclusion that there is an "operations room" somewhere that is coordinating the efforts to remove Trump from office in what does amount to a "soft coup d'etat."  A fair minded person looking back over Trump's term will see that the attempts to undermine and bring him down began the day after his inauguration and have continued ever since in wave after wave of accusations and press induced frenzies.  This cannot be accidental and it will continue through his second term if he has one.  Trump is leader of a counter-revolution of the Deplorables.  From the point of view of the Globalist Left Trump must be removed and prevented from doing things like packing the federal judiciary with pro-Deplorable judges.  Stay tuned. PL

https://www.vox.com/2019/10/5/20900088/trump-ukraine-impeachment-second-whistleblower

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Married Priests

The Vatican conference supposedly focused on the ecology of the Amazon River basin opens this week.  The shortage of priests in that region has led the conference to raise the subject of ordaining married men as priests.  The "old guard" of ancients who supposedly spent their lives in celibacy and chastity (doubtful in many cases) are in an uproar about it.  The Catholic Church in spite of being an absolute monarchy in structure in fact functions most of the time on the basis of consensus among the "good old boys" at the top of the pile of black, purple and red robed old men.  If Francis wishes to make a change that big he will have to act like the successor of Peter in fact, as well as in title.  pl

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pope-opens-debate-on-celibacy-requirement-for-catholic-priests-11570352167

The Wealth Tax Proposals

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have the same two outside advisers to thank for shaping their wealth tax proposals: University of California, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

Each Democratic presidential candidate wants to tackle wealth inequality by raising trillions of dollars in revenue from taxing the wealth — in addition to the income — of millionaires and billionaires, an idea that is backed up by research from Saez and Zucman.

There are competing explanations for the rise in inequality. Those on one side argue that wealth concentration is natural as a result of globalization, technology gains, and economic growth, which give enormous rewards to the smartest, innovative, and most hardworking people. Drastically increasing tax rates, they say, would discourage innovation and hurt the economy.

The other camp sees rising inequality as unfair, immoral, and a threat to society.

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Say what?  A couple of imported lefty French professors are the gurus on which Sanders and Warren base their insistence that one's possessions be confiscated as well as one's income?   One of them is 35 years old.  Well, pilgrims, this may be thought of as a grand idea in Europe but it will not sell well in the US.  Americans like the idea of BECOMING rich.   Most people want that rather than re-distribution of other peoples' money.  A smart Trump would want to run against the Confiscators rather than against Biden, someone who IMO wants to be really rich.  If that is what Trump wants he is quite perceptive of the realities of the 2020 election.  pl

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/the-berkeley-economists-advising-both-warren-and-sanders-on-their-groundbreaking-wealth-tax-proposals

Comments

[semiconscious]

thanks! was going to post this link myself. taibbi is on the money: the msm's insistence on referring to this individual as a 'whistleblower' is a grievous insult to every genuine whistleblower there's ever been...

[catherine]

''Where do Libertarians draw the line?''

I find the libertarians extremely simple minded.

They proclaim they want "Liberty" which mean total liberty' and total 'moral liberty and the poor things think this no government or hardly any government interference in their 'individual choices ' would result in spontaneous 'forms of order' that frees them from being slaves of a government.

Too bad there isn't a time machine that can send them back to the Wild Wild West.

[JamesT]

Fred

Do you have any idea what Operation PBSUCCESS was and how its "so called success" is responsible for a large percentage of the illegals currently flooding into the US?

[Jack]

“...none of the parties come out of this looking good at all.”

Corruption in high office has become endemic in many parts of the world including here in the US. It seems most politicians and top government officials threw honor and pride by the wayside some decades back and have focused on power, massive personal wealth and celebrity. The Clintons and Obamas are excellent examples of those who spent their careers in political office and then became centi-millionaires in an amazingly short period of time with influence peddling. The revolving door of top officials and general officers with lucrative contracts with companies generating big bucks from government contracts.

This corruption can be seen all the way from municipal government to the federal government and both parties are equally corrupt.

[Terence Gore]

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/07/house-speaker-nancy-pelosi-rules-for-impeachment-116th-congress-full-pdf/#more-173125

coincidence i think not meme..

[Fred]

James,

That was 70 years ago and Guatemala does not account for the majority of immigrants to the US. Nice try though. If only people in Latin America had agency to create a society worth living in. Maybe they should fight for their own country's freedom and we should shut down the human trafficking NGOs that undermine all those societies.

[guidoamm]

@Jack

Indeed, those are all ramifications of deficit spending.

Perpetual deficit spending requires the issuance of debt.

Paying interest on debt, means that the trend is exponential (i.e. not linear).

Thus, deficit spending begets debt which begets more deficit spending.

As the above dynamic develops, the state must increase fiscal income.

Fiscal policy is brought to bear through legislation.

Hence, deficit spending begets more legislation which results in an increase in the size of government.

As increasing fiscal pressure is brought to bear upon the economy, the cost of living and the cost of doing business increase.

Somewhere along the line, the state begins to pick champions that are the beneficiaries of free money and special status.

Hence off shoring, hence stifling new company creation thereby reducing disposable income whilst increasing the debt burden of individuals.

g

[JamesT]

Fred

I wrote "large percentage" not "majority". I just think it is worth looking at the blowback from these regime change operations/wars, as Tulsi relentlessly advocates for. Iran and the US could be best friends today if it wasn't for Operation Ajax. Instead, we are allied with the untrustworthy and incompetent MBS against the highly competent (and by the standards of the region) trustworthy Hassan Nasrallah. Terrific.

[Jack]

Total credit market debt grew $3 trillion in the past 12 months. Federal government debt grew a trillion. So it’s a third of the debt growth. Corporate debt grew from $4.9 trillion in 2017 to $9.1 trillion halfway through 2018. Much of it for financial engineering like stock buybacks. Federal government deficits and debt financing are all part and parcel of the financialization of the economy and not the cause. Note that systemic leverage has grown all over the world with China, Japan and EU pushing the envelope. Now none of these debt numbers take into account the unfunded liabilities of pensions and government entitlement programs. GE just froze the pensions of 20,000 former workers. The tip of the iceberg.

[oldman22]

I did not vote for Trump, or for Hillary, but I firmly agree with analysis of Bacevich here:

> Honest people may differ on whether to attribute the Iraq War to outright lies or monumental hubris. When it comes to tallying up the consequences, however, the intentions of those who sold the war don’t particularly matter. The results include thousands of Americans killed; tens of thousands wounded, many grievously, or left to struggle with the effects of PTSD; hundreds of thousands of non-Americans killed or injured; millions displaced; trillions of dollars expended; radical groups like ISIS empowered (and in its case even formed inside a US prison in Iraq); and the Persian Gulf region plunged into turmoil from which it has yet to recover. How do Trump’s crimes stack up against these?
> The Great Recession stemmed directly from economic policies implemented during the administration of President Bill Clinton and continued by his successor. Deregulating the banking sector was projected to produce a bonanza in which all would share. Yet, as a direct result of the ensuing chicanery, nearly 9 million Americans lost their jobs, while overall unemployment shot up to 10 percent. Roughly 4 million Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. The stock market cratered and millions saw their life savings evaporate. Again, the question must be asked: How do these results compare to Trump’s dubious dealings with Ukraine?

https://outline.com/x8vgFL