The Jerusalem Post has the story Geologists claim stats, science prove Jesus buried in Jerusalem with wife and supposed son.
I have no idea why I post this article here, except that here might be a use for it someday.
The Friends Of Bernie have posted this on their Facebook page.
He has brief discussions on some important issues. I liked almost all his answers. And to think, the guy has a sense of humor, too.
The New York Times has the story Lincoln Chafee Hits Hillary Clinton on Foundation Donations.
Mr. Chafee said his disagreements with Mrs. Clinton were largely about foreign policy issues rather than domestic. He said he recognized that fund-raising would be a challenge if he decided to run, but that he planned to travel to Iowa, New Hampshire and other primary states to drum up support.
Well, I don’t like her foreign policy, but her Wall Street oriented domestic policy is awful. How could Lincoln Chafee miss that?
Mr. Chafee was a Republican when in the Senate from 1999 to 2007 and later served one term as governor as an independent. He became a Democrat in 2013.
Now I get it.
USA Today has the story Iran: Lift sanctions immediately or no final nuke deal.
In a televised address Thursday at a ceremony marking Iran’s nuclear technology day, President Hassan Rouhani appeared to rule out a gradual removal of the sanctions, which have hit the nation’s energy and financial sectors hard — and devastated its economy.
“We will not sign any agreement, unless all economic sanctions are totally lifted on the first day of the implementation of the deal,” he said. “We want a win-win deal for all parties involved in the nuclear talks.”
“The Iranian nation has been and will be the victor in the negotiations,” he added.
It all sounded pretty reasonable until that last sentence. Perhaps something got lost in translation. It wouldn’t be the first time.
The article shows a tweet from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
All #sanctions should be removed just when the deal is reached. If sanctions removal depends on another process then why we started to talk?
That’s something I have been wondering myself.
As for the negotiations final outcome, I will have to defer to Yogi Berra, who once said “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
I have been thinking of skipping my 50th reunion at MIT since it became KIT (The Koch Institute of Technology). I was wavering though, because it would be nice to visit with some of my old classmates.
Well, KIT managed to settle it for me with the following flyer they sent to me in email. Notice one of the featured presentations.
- Faculty presentations from the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
The UK Telegraph has the story Alexis Tsipras risks fresh schism with Europe after warning of new Cold War with Putin.
Mr Tsipras also risked opening up a new schism with the European Union, repeating his claim that economic warfare would not resolve Europe’s simmering security problems with its eastern giant, and could presage a new “Cold War in Europe”.
Ahead of the visit, EU officials warned Greece of undermining the continent’s unity over economic sanctions imposed on Moscow in the wake of the Ukraine crisis.
The Kremlin has been courting Greek political support against its Western-backed sanctions, threatening a fresh rupture between the debtor state and the EU.
.
.
.
“If one of the Europe’s leaders acts according to his national interests then it is perceived as a violation of the principle of solidarity – as if the principle of solidarity, as it might seem, was invented only in order to support the Russophobic minority in the European Union,” said Mr Lavrov.Russian companies would also look to take part in the tenders for planned privatisations of Greece’s strategic assets – including its ports, airports and energy grids. The likes of state-backed Gazprom have already been invited to take part in the exploration of oil and natural gas off Greece’s eastern shore.
I tried to string enough excerpts together to justify my opinion. I am not sure it completely conveys how I got to the conclusion that I did.
The western oligarchs are trying to rape Greece, but they want Greece to maintain its solidarity with them. They want to drive Greece into a privatization of its assets at fire-sale prices to the western oligarchs, but Greece may sell them to the Russian oligarchs.
The western oligarchs want to maintain sanctions on Russia so that they can force the Ukraine to take the same deal and eventual rape that they are offering Greece. Greece may have found an alternative path that frustrates both aims of the western oligarchs.
As they say in this country, “Payback is a bitch.” Maybe I should have said itch in my comment on the Telegraph web site.
Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by Telegraph.
With the notorious nudes they have on page three of some of their newspapers, I didn’t think they would be so sensitive. Must just be a cultural misunderstanding.
The Daily Kos has the article Sen. Schumer and 7 other Democrats are making a terrible choice siding with GOP on Iran bill.
Chuck Schumer, the expected replacement as top Senate Democrat when Harry Reid retires at the end of his term, has made a big splash in the past few days by saying he supports a bill designed to give Congress the clout to wreck a deal with Iran. He is not, of course, the only Democrat backing the Corker-Menendez bill, S. 615, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. Since March 26, when Schumer quietly signed on as the latest of eight Democratic co-sponsors of the bill, it’s had 21 co-sponsors, including one independent, Sen. Angus King of Maine.
But given his clout, Schumer could be key to making it okay for other Democrats to support the bill, giving it the 67 votes it would need to override the veto that President Obama has vowed to impose.
I always knew there were reasons why I thought Chuck Schumer was a jerk. This is one of the reasons besides his being the Senator from Wall Street. I shudder to think what he might say about Elizabeth Warren if only his Wall Street friends were listening. Is he also the Senator from the military/industrial complex. He is certainly no friend of Israel in taking this stance.
I hope we can muster enough outcry to prevent Shumer from replacing Harry Reid. If he did replace Harry Reid, Elizabeth Warren might have less reason to want to stay in the Senate and more reason to want to run for President. That could be a good thing. Maybe there really is a silver lining in every cloud.
The article The “Special Snowflake” Syndrome of American Conservatives has been posted on The DailyKos.
In other words, people still haven’t lost sight of the only sensible view of religious liberty there is: we should all be free to live according to our consciences, up until the moment that those consciences drive us to impose our beliefs on another person. In a world full of competing, often contradictory ideas, this is the only view of religious liberty that is feasible, or could possibly be evenly applied.
This “commonsense” attitude is eloquently explained in this article in a way that might make it more common.
I just received an email from Mark Crain, MoceOn.org Political Action.
Every interview she does, everywhere she speaks, Elizabeth Warren hears the same question: Are you running for President of the United States?
.
.
.
So we put together this tongue-in-cheek site that’s a one stop shop for anyone wondering: Is Elizabeth Warren running?This humorous website is the kind of thing people might email to friends or share on Facebook. And, as you’ll see, it helps tell a broader story about how well-positioned she is to run and what real-world results this campaign urging her to run has already achieved.
I have turned my focus to a candidate who says he would run if he felt he could mount a serious campaign. That other candidate is Bernie Sanders. I don’t want to spend all my efforts on trying to draft someone who says she does not want to run.
I wouldn’t mind if they both ran for the nomination. I could accept either one as the eventual nominee.
I missed this interview on TV last night.
Elizabeth Warren posted on Facebook about her interview.
Last night, Conan O’Brien and I talked about how we’re demanding some real accountability from the big banks that broke our economy.
This is actually part 2 of the interview. Part 1 is also interesting.
What is in part 2 is a very valuable part of the discussion, but I wouldn’t want you to listen to both parts without understanding what I have to say below.
At the beginning of Part 2, Conan O’Brien starts off with the comment:
I studied history, I studied literature, I never studied economics and I regret it because there is so much now that I feel I would have a better understanding of, but … .
As I heard him say this, I was thinking economics is not what you want to ask Elizabeth Warren about. She has many of the same misconceptions about the topic that Republicans (and some other Democrats) have.
In part 1 of the interview, they start a discussion about student loans. Elizabeth Warren talks about the $66 billion dollars in profit that the government makes on student loans. Her bill would eliminate that profit. Conan O’Brien then says about the $66 billion that the government should not be making in profit “Obviuosly the money has to come from somewhere” and they get into discussion of her plan to “pay for it”.
This is where they descend into the weeds of both of them misunderstanding economics, or at least misunderstanding money and government budgets. It is not at all “obvious” that the money has to come from where they think it does.
They both could stand to have read two recent posts out of the many that I have written on the subject. The two recent ones are The Fed Could Have Also Helped Main Street Instead of Just Wall Street and When Will the White House and OMB Ever Learn About Sector Financial Balances?. I hope that if I keep pressing this issue, eventually this knowledge will seep into the minds of the public. Then the public will force the politicians to learn about this, too.