Democracy now has two related videos.  Will Hillary Clinton Flip-Flop Again on TPP After Election Day? We Ask Her Adviser Joseph Stiglitz,  and Why Did Clinton Just Tap a Pro-TPP, Pro-KXL, Pro-Fracking Politician to Head Her Transition Team?

I am going to present them to you in the order in which they were recorded.

It was so difficult to watch an economist that I had respected prostitute himself in this way, that I just could not finish watching his degradation any further. Maybe you have the fortitude to watch it all.

Watching Joe Stiglitz embarrass himself in the above video was doubly hard because I had seen the video below first. Watching a demonstration of the naivete or the strong desire to convince himself of the unconvinceable is enough to make you want to mourn for Stiglitz. Perhaps viewing the videos in this order will make what Stiglitz had to say just a tad less embarrassing.

Alternet has the interesting article Teaching Kids Empathy: In Danish Schools, It’s … Well, It’s a Piece of Cake.

“Our job as the teacher is to make sure that the children understand how the other feels, and see why the other feels as they do. This way, we come up with a solution together based on real listening and real understanding.”

This is what is missing in our culture and our politics.   We cannot work together if we don’t give a damn about how the other person feels. This is exactly what I found missing in Ayn Rand’s books when I finally learned some empathy as a Sophomore in college.  This is exactly what is missing in Libertarian philosophy.

The purpose of the standouts in the next few weeks is to give Jill Stein more name recognition. I am preparing a few signs to hold up.

Politifact has the article What we know about Russia’s role in the DNC email leak.

“The consensus that Russia hacked the DNC is at this point very strong, albeit not unanimous,” said cybersecurity consultant Matt Tait, who has been critical of Clinton’s email practices. “The consensus that Russia hacked the DNC in support of Trump is, by contrast, plausible, but something for which the jury at this stage is very much still out.”

The following plays a small part in the overall picture presented in the article.

As of yet, there’s no evidence anyone other than Russia breached the DNC. So unless someone hacked the Russian agencies, the Russian government is likely WikiLeaks’ source, Hennessey said. Additionally, Assange and the Russian government have a well-documented relationship, for example the fact that Assange has hosted a television show on RT, a state-owned network.

The connection of Julian Assange to Russia because of his appearance on RT is overblown as evidence of anything. The only place where American dissenters can have a voice seems to be on RT. No doubt that our government would want to discredit RT.

YouTube has the video Chris Hedges and Cornel West in Conversation – Wages of Rebellion | The New School.

Sponsored by The Nation Institute and The New School (http://www.newschool.edu), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and acclaimed author Chris Hedges sits down for a one-to-one interview with public intellectual, academic and activist Cornel West.

We are riding the crest of a revolutionary epic: from the historic referendum against austerity in Greece to #BlackLivesMatter and the Fight for $15. In his new book, Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges—who has long chronicled the malaise of a society in moral decline — investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance. In what will be a timely and thought-provoking conversation, Cornel West will engage Hedges’ on his message that popular uprisings in the United States and around the world are inevitable in the face of environmental destruction and wealth polarization and together discuss the moral imperative of revolt.

One of the most profound 90 minutes I have spent. If you want to understand why we would support a person who hasn’t much chance of “winning” the election, I think this is the deepest answer you are likely to get.

Norton has posted this video on YouTube.

Norton explores the secret world of bulletproof hosting that’s hidden deep in underground bunkers, isolated at sea, and spread across the Web. Uncover the threats that lie within these services, such as botnets, malware, ransomware, and the black market, and learn how to protect yourself in “The Most Dangerous Town on the Internet – Where Cybercrime Goes to Hide”

I found this documentary to be very entertaining, but I am not sure what value this information is to me. It doesn’t hurt to be aware.

New Economic Perspectives has the post An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton about Pragmatism in 2016.

Here is a woman that presents a great understanding of what ails the country and the world, but is so dedicated to Hillary Clinton that she cannot see the Clinton’s roll in all of this. She is also blind to the facts that Bernie Sanders (and Jill Stein) do see the issues in the same terms that she does.

And in spite of the fact that I have supported Hillary for the last thirty years (since I was thrilled to discover that someone who had worked for the Children’s Defense Fund was running for Yale Alumni Trustee) and went out of my way to stick up for her over Bernie Sanders in the Minnesota caucuses, I still have no idea whether she sees the issues – the defining issues of our day – in the same terms that I do.

Here is one example of Carbone’s understanding of the issues.

While Hillary gets most of this right, she still pays lip service to the importance of balancing the federal budget.  In fact, as Paul Krugman points out at least once a weak (sic) that conviction is in the same league with denying the reality that humans are causing climate change.  Democrats once embraced the notion that a principal purpose of monetary and fiscal policy ought to be a full employment economy and that infrastructure spending and, yes, deficits, are necessary to that end.

Here is an example of Carbone’s blindness.

I have more optimism that Hillary fully gets the third piece – the need for a political realignment in the United States and the defeat of what she termed the “vast right wing conspiracy” that has plagued her for her entire public career.

Perhaps the right wing conspiracy has plagued Hillary Clinton, but Clinton is still a corporatist who has made over 100 million dollars from the very forces that she needs to rein in.   I wish I could be plagued to the tune of millions of dollars in speaking fees.

The Berkshire Eagle has an op-ed Rinaldo Del Gallo, III: The race’s true progressive Also posted one Facebook.

I think it is a great explanation of his campaign, but I find a troubling theme that runs through it. Here is an example of what bothers me.

Many do not know that higher education at state schools was once quite affordable because government had the revenue to pay most of the tab.

It is kind of complicated, but if you talk about this in terms of revenue, then people are led to many false assumptions. In the 50’s and 60’s the idea of revenue might have been more appropriate because we were still on the gold standard back then. Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1972.

The real reason to have higher taxes is to stop inflation. Since the FED creates money at will, there is no such thing as “we don’t have the money”. However, if there is too much money so that the private sector can employ a large percentage of the economy’s capacity, and the government sector also tries to employ some of this capacity, then there will be inflation. For the government to use the part of the economy’s capacity for investment in the country, then we have to make sure the private sector only has the funds to use the available part of the economy’s capacity that is left.