Steve's Politics Blog

YouTube has the video Donna Brazile on The Young Turks with Nomiki Konst.

Nomiki Konst interviews Donna Brazile, former interim chairperson for the Democratic National Committee and author of Hacks. Brazile explores what went down during the 2016 Presidential elections in her controversial new book, Hacks.

I think this is a very worthwhile interview to see. Apparently therre is a controversy over this interview. If you don;t watch this now, I will next post Nomiki Konst’s commentary on the controversy. After you see that, you might want to come back here to see the controversial interview.

The Young Turks Network has the article MSNBC Fires Sam Seder Over Alt-Right Smear Job.

This was the quickest way for me to learn what this is all about.

If twitter would have given him the space, Sam Seder should have used my technique. I now use <sarcasm></sarcasm> flags around all my posted sarcastic remarks so that nobody can misconstrue them.

<sarcasm>

</sarcasm>

In plain text, it would have looked like the following:

<sarcasm>Dont care re Polanski, but i hope if my daughter is ever raped it is by an older truly talented man w/ a great sense of mise en scene</sarcasm>

Lobe Log has the article Let the Record Show: Negotiations with North Korea Work.

For those seeking to prevent a war that could result in millions of casualties on the Korean Peninsula, there are no military options. But for many Democrats, promoting diplomacy runs the risk of signaling weakness. Unsurprisingly, economic measures that straddle the line between being punitive and not-quite-war receive the widest bipartisan support.
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Both the United States and North Korea played a part in the Agreed Framework’s collapse, but the assertion that North Korea cheated obscures that fact. Soon after the Clinton administration brokered the deal, Republicans gained control of Congress, resulting in “a lack of political will,” according to chief negotiator Robert Gallucci, and led to significant delays in the delivery of US obligations.

I knew about the initial deal worked out during the Clinton administration. I wasn’t aware of all the details assembled in this article about what happened since the Clinton administration. I probably wasn’t aware because this is not information you are going to see prominently displayed in the corporate media’s fake news stories.

YouTube has the video Black America Will be Hit Hard by Tax Reform Changes.

Attorney Antonio Moore and Political Commentator Yvette Carnell explain the tax reform bill, and what its particularly devastating impact will be on Black America. The two use a combination of data, and opinion to explain the ways the policy change will affect black families across the nation. From deduction change, to budget cuts to programs this reform is all encompassing, and takes further than even Reaganomics.

This is a great video to help “white” people understand some aspects of the tax scam as it affects Black America in ways you might not have imagined. Some of the penalties are indirect, but perhaps even more substantial than the direct penalties.

NPR has the fascinating story Episode 489: The Invisible Plumbing Of Our Economy.

We just need Amazon’s bank to send money electronically to a checking account at Chase bank. It’s just information traveling over wires. How long could it take: A minute? An hour?

It took five days.

On today’s show: Why the invisible pipes that move money around America are so slow. (And why the ones in England are so much faster.)

Naked Capitalism has the article The Web Began Dying in 2014 – Here’s How.

Because of this market demand, ISPs will likely provide cheap plans with access to GOOG-FB-AMZN, while offering more expensive plans with full internet access. It is already a reality in Portugal.

In the days of AOL dominance, I stayed away from AOL because I didn’t want their interference with my access to the rest of the internet. In the future, I may have to pay dearly to get the kind of access that I have now.

YouTube has the video MEME Theory: How Donald Trump used Memes to Become President.

Politicians HATE Him! Find out how this guy became President of the United States using this One Weird Trick!

This explains it all better than any expert explanation that I have seen. No professional politician, except for perhaps Bernie Sanders, gets this.

If there were more substance to it, I might become a Meme Theory devotee as much as I am a Modern Money Theory (MMT) devotee.

The American Conservative has published the Gareth Porter article Translated Doc Debunks Narrative of Al Qaeda-Iran ‘Alliance’.

What it shows is that the Al Qaeda operatives were led to believe Iran was friendly to their cause and were quite taken by surprise when their people were arrested in two waves in late 2002. It suggests that Iran had played them, gaining the fighters’ trust while maximizing intelligence regarding Al Qaeda’s presence in Iran.

Although this was published by The American Conservative, the author, Gareth Porter, is often featured in progressive media as well. Actually, having this published by a conservative medium might give it added credibility. You can’t blame it on the liberal apologists who dislike American foreign policy.

As you know, the current FCC net neutrality rules do not allow for high speed internet lanes and lower speed internet lanes.

In my location my independent service provider (ISP) Charter Spectrum internet offers Internet Plus at 60 mbps for $54.99/month and Internet Ultra 100 mbps for $94.99/month.

What will change when the FCC does away with net neutrality so that ISP’s can charge different rates for different speeds?

aim4truth has the article Absolute Proof: Obama Rigged Elections. I certainly can’t vouch for anything in this article, but there was a YouTube video that I found interesting – Introducing the U.S. Digital Service. White House, Aug. 20, 2014.

I said at the time that the healthcare.gov fiasco was a management problem more than anything else. Reading, at the time, about how it was managed and comparing it to my own experience in the software engineering business, I never would have allowed this process to occur in any project that I managed. Mikey Dickerson, Administrator, U.S. Digital Service confirms my thinking by briefly mentioning how he came in to rescue the failure of healthcare.gov.

How Mikey Dickerson fits in with the main story of the original article is interesting to contemplate.