Elizabeth Warren has posted this on her Facebook page.

Five years ago today, we lost our champion Senator Ted Kennedy. Not a day goes by that we don’t miss his passion, his enthusiasm, and – most of all – his commitment to working families. A few months ago, I told the story of the day I met Senator Kennedy back in the 1990s during our fight against a bad bankruptcy bill. Take a look.

These are the kinds of things that made me think Elizabeth Warren might be a different kind of politician.

Ready For Elizabeth Warren for President 2016.

Network World has the article Is massive DNS hack responsible for Charter Internet outage?

On DownDetector as well as on Reddit, some customers said that changing the DNS servers to Google’s public DNS IP addresses of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for IPv4, or 2001:4860:4860::8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844 for IPv6 fixed their problems. Some people claimed that didn’t work, but most comments claim that changing the DNS restored their Internet. People who are not fans of Google reportedly changed their DNS to OpenDNS IPs of 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 to restore service.

As I was experiencing the outage last night, I experimented with what I could and couldn’t reach on the internet. Because of those experiments, I suspected it was a DNS problem. However, since I couldn’t reach very much on the Internet, I couldn’t find instructions on changing my DNS settings.

I have followed the link above to OpenDNS IPs. At first, I set up DNS on one Windows-7 machine. Then I found the instructions to set up the DNS on my router, so I set that too. Now, all three wired connections and any wireless connections will use the OpenDNS IPs for its Dynamic Name Servers.

I supposed I could use a DNS from my web server host company to get some diversity of servers. I’ll do that if OpenDNS doesn’t prove to be extremely reliable.

The Real News Network has the interview The Powers Behind The Islamic State.

AHMED: On the one hand, I think the first thing is, do we–in terms of–like, we need to cut off the source. So there’s been a lot of press reports about the Islamic State have basically got in and they’ve looted cities and they’ve got loads of money and they’re kind of self funding, and I’ve got no doubt that they were looting cities and they’ve boosted their economic power. But the fact is is that what’s been kind of suppressed by that kind of what–I would say kind of somewhat banal reporting, which actually has relied on some questionable anonymous sources, what they’ve not looked at is that money trail which is coming from the Gulf states. We have abundant evidence, the U.S. military has abundant evidence–the State Department’s been tracking this for years, so has the FBI–we know very well where the funding is coming from. That funding is coming from the Gulf states. We have not moved to stop that funding. Since 9/11, there have been political obstacles, bureaucratic obstacles, and intelligence officials, very sincere guys who’ve been tracking this have been complaining that we’ve been blocking that for political reasons, blocking real action to cut that down. So the regulatory mechanisms to sort that out have been–they’re not being pursued. And that’s on the British scene, on the American scene, on the European scene. So that needs to be done. Where’s the will to stop that? And why has it not being stopped? If we don’t stop these guys, why are we not doing that? So that raises a fundamental question: if we’re not willing to cut off the source of funding for these kind of movements, that raises questions about what we’re doing. So that would be the first step, I would say.

I would be very wary of the propaganda coming from our own government, right and left, trying to drum up the reasons for going to war against the forces that we have been arming and funding. All that talk of refusal to back the opposition to Asad in Syria by Obama, and the counter story from Clinton, may very well be a complete smokescreen. The money and support may not be flowing directly from us, but it seems we have been facilitating it all along.

Talking Points Memo published the article New Video Shows Immediate Aftermath Of Michael Brown Shooting on August 18.

Here is the video in question as shown by CNN.

At the time I saw this, I didn’t know that there was going to be a claim that the officer had been seriously injured in the alleged tussle with Michael Brown. I had to search Google to find this video that seemed to cast doubt on the story reported by Faux Noise.

The Boston Globe has the article Afghanistan orders expulsion of New York Times correspondent.

KABUL — The attorney general of Afghanistan on Wednesday ordered the expulsion of an American correspondent for The New York Times, Matthew Rosenberg, and banned him from re-entering the country.

Where do you suppose The Boston Globe got this article? “By Rod Nordland | New York Times   August 21, 2014”  This ought to be rich.

Nothing like running an unbiased news story about an expulsion of a reporter from the very organization that published the original story in question.  “The article was based on high-ranking Afghan government sources…”  It should have read “The article was allegedly based on …”

“Rosenberg declined to name them and noted that editors at the Times have internal  checks on the use of sources…”  Was it just the fact that the news didn’t fit that the story omitted any mention of the notorious cases where these checks failed.  As a matter of fact, the whole invasion of Iraq was fostered by such false stories in The New York Times.  To refresh your memory, The New York Times published stories about the Iraqi threat to the U.S.  from high ranking, anonymous sources in the US Government.  Dick Cheney used these reports to bolster his claims, but failed to mention that he was the source of the stories in the first place.

When I didn’t find my comics section in the paper today, I thought it was an omission.  I didn’t realize that the humor had been moved to the news pages.

The Daily Kos has an article “I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me” that quotes a Los Angeles police officer.

Regardless of what happened with Mike Brown, in the overwhelming majority of cases it is not the cops, but the people they stop, who can prevent detentions from turning into tragedies. […]

Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

The article then invites a discussion. Here is what I contributed.

To understand this issue from all sides you have to imagine yourself in the other person’s shoes. There are a wide variety of shoes you have to consider.

As a white male who gets stopped by the police once every 5 or 1o years, I have no problem giving utmost deference to the police officer (who has a gun) and showing that officer every respect whether he or she deserves it or not. As a result, almost every interaction I have had with a policeman has ended quite well for me and for the policeman.

The other set of shoes I can imagine is that of a black man who may get stopped for similar reasons that I get stopped every 5 or 10 years, but it happens maybe several times a year, or a month, or a week, or even a day. I know, and he probably knows what the right way to handle the situation would be, but can we expect him to have the saintly control to keep his emotions in check? Of course the other advantage that this black man may not have is that I can expect the police officer to treat me civilly if I show the proper deference. It works nearly 100% of the time for me. I doubt a black man could get that percentage of success. Also I have never had to contemplate the loss of a job because I was delayed by an unwarranted police stop, nor the issue of protecting my family from the results of such a stop. If a person is faced with that situation, their ability to control themselves might get compromised.

Putting myself in the shoes of the policeman or woman, I can see that he or she is dealing with a different population of people than I have to regularly deal with. I can tolerate a lot of disrespect, because I am pretty sure of myself and my own value as a human being. One would hope a policeman could also tolerate that disrespect. As a parent, I can tolerate some angry words from my child, because I know that things can get said that are not really meant in the heat of an argument. Apparently some police officers cannot even tolerate that in their own families. On the other hand, I don’t have to tolerate the constant level of disrespect that some officers might face depending on the particular job they find themselves in. The odds of the dangers for me of allowing disrespect may be a lot lower than what a police officers faces.

So, in the face of all of what we have learned by standing in different sets of shoes, we need to figure out what set of standards we want to set for both the police and the public.

Let me add that there are probably many police officers who get the respect they want because they show respect to the people they deal with. There are also police officers who get some disrespect because they show disrespect.

I am also reminded that for most of my working life I got the proper respect on the job from my peers and from my bosses. When I didn’t, I had the option (and I took it) of getting another job. Not everyone finds themselves in such a lucky situation, and therefore can afford a higher tolerance level for disrespect in a few other situations.

Naked Capitalism has the article Regulators Punting on “Too Big to Fail” Problem of Repo, Looking to Install Yet Another Bailout Vehicle.

The post-crisis era is rife with band-aid-over-gunshot-wound approaches to deep-seated weakness in the financial system. Perversely, because the authorities were able to keep the system from falling apart, albeit via a raft of overt and covert subsidies to the perps, they’ve reacted as if all that needs to be done is a series of fixes rather than more fundamental interventions. One glaring example is a critically important funding mechanism, repo, for firms that hold large inventories of securities and/or enter into derivative positions, such as major capital markets firms like Goldman, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays, as well as hedge funds. Here, the authorities have been giving way to industry demands that will assure that repo, which was bailed out in the crisis, will be bailed out again.

It was hard for me to pick a short excerpt that would give you the gist of the problem. The above will have to do. I found the article quite fascinating.

To give you an idea of how seriously I treat this issue, I have decided that any large cash holdings in my investment portfolio will be in short term Treasuries rather than in Money Market funds. The interest is so low in either one of these vehicles, that the safety of Treasuries far outweighs any extra money (if there even is any) that I could earn in a money market fund.

This decision is not just hypothetical. Quite a while ago, I sold a stock position, and could not find a suitable stock investment to replace it. I put the money in Treasuries. About nine or so months later, I am still waiting for a stock investment that is worth the risk. What I don’t lose in the money held in Treasuries will more than make up for the dividends I didn’t earn from an investment in a stock.

The Real News Network has the interview Deconstructing Fed Vice Chair’s Grim Economic Forecast.

EPSTEIN: … Now, what he’s leaving out in these three factors are factors such as the distribution of income and wealth and the level of aggregate demand in the economy, as emphasized by John Maynard Keynes. So you can have a lot of growth in technology, you can have a lot of growth in population, but if you don’t have demand, nobody’s going to buy the products that these factories are producing. And if income distribution is tilted way towards the rich who don’t consume very much, you’re not going to have much demand.

I just do not understand why it is so hard for the main stream economists and the FED to understand what has been well known in economics since the 1930s. Why is this theory which fits the facts so well ignored in favor of a theory that just keeps failing to explain the solution to the problem? All the effort to apply the solutions from the wrong theory have produced anemic results, yet they cling to this theory which keeps failing to produce the results that it predicts that it should.

You’d think that eventually these people would wake up to the fact that it is the theory that is wrong, not the failure of the real world to behave according to the theory.

The Maura Healey Campaigb sent me the link to the discussion below.

I think we have two excellent candidates for the office of Attorney General. I know nothing about Warren Tolman’s executive ability to run the office of Attorney General. I think that Maura Healy has demonstrated that ability. Whether or not that should be a pivotal issue is something the voters will decide.

At least Tolman had a chance to clear up the issue of why he thinks the Attorney General has the authority to implement mandatory “smart gun” technology as he seems to claim in his political ad.

New Economic Perspectives has the article The Real Fiscal Responsibility Talk Show Pilot Project by Joe Firestone

The instant gratification gem of the article is the posting of the interview with Stephanie Kelton.

The interview gives a simple explanation of the following statements in the article by Joe Firestone:

Once people understand the expanded policy space implications of fiat currency systems they will know that any budget cuts or tax increases or rejections of new legislation on solvency or financial scarcity grounds alone are unjustified. And they will know that all the troubles caused by refusals to pass full employment, Medicare for All, new energy foundations, educational reform, infrastructure reinvention, extensions of the social safety net, and other highly desirable fiscal policies create gratuitous and cruel individual and societal hardships for most of us. All proposals to cut entitlements and the social safety net on grounds of cost or so-called future liabilities are equally unjustified, and certain to cause entirely unnecessary suffering.

These spending cuts on purely deficit reduction grounds harm America. They sell it short. They damage future generations. They prevent us from seriously considering new and innovative policy proposals which address a number of our problems simultaneously such as this one, and in so doing hurt our ability to adapt to change and challenge. They must be eliminated as a factor in politics once and for all if we are to progress as a nation.

One of the things that has to happen is that the MMT idea gets repeated as often (more often) as the false economic doctrine of balanced budgets and austerity. Stephanie Kelton and her fellow MMTers have to keep it up, and the rest of us have to multiply their voices.

Making that happen is what the article is really about. As Joe Firestone explains:

Our goal for this pilot project is to raise $30,000 to create the six programs. Please help us to meet this goal at our indiegogo site. If we can do it, and then get the program picked up, our voice may be the decisive one in defeating the austerians and their policies, and in opening the way to create the America of economic opportunity and social justice we all long for.

Helping to fund this project may be one of the best ways you can spend your money to try to turn this country around. Once we get the economy moving in the direction of working for everyone, this will diminish the problem of excess income inequality which in turn will lead to a better functioning economy for everyone – a positive feedback loop if you will.