...This noble experiment we call America simply cannot long survive unless we restore true democracy and economic opportunity for all.
...Our political system has been corrupted and perverted by the influence of money, especially the donor class. There is an old saying that “he who has the gold rules.” That is precisely where we are today. Unless and until we remove the big money influence from our political system, we will continue in the direction of a two-class society — the haves and the have-nots. If that happens, America will come apart at the seams.
The riots of the ’60s and ’70s will look like minor disturbances if the imbalances within our society remain and gain even more momentum.
...Wall Street...nearly bankrupted our nation in 2008 with their greed.
...I will close by asking you to consider whether anybody in the 1950s could have conceived the changes brought forth by Rev. King and his followers.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/bernie-sanders-a-higher-loyalty/article_ca6fa501-eead-5ed9-a9ef-8d6ec640834f.html
Trump has ‘doubled down and reversed the dynamic’ against critics
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/335413-trump-protests-chicago-rally/
For Donald Trump, protests create a short-term benefit and a long-term threat
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-donald-trump-analysis-20160313-story.html
First, we did ignore him—as a buffoon who wouldn’t survive past the summer. Then, we laughed at him—as a buffoon who wouldn’t survive through fall. Eventually, Republicans began to fight him, terrified of his traction with voters.
...Wages for working-class Americans have long been stagnant, and the collapse of job opportunities for workers without a college degree was apparent in the 1990s, long before the Great Recession.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/03/how_donald_trump_happened_racism_against_barack_obama.html
...no matter whose team you are on, you should be outraged that a political rally was canceled -- and you should be outraged at those who celebrate that fact.
...Whether police thugs pepper spray nonviolent Occupy protesters or otherwise-right-thinking-people attack the KKK, any American should look at the scene, and forget about what message either side was hoping to convey.
...If you want to convey racial tolerance, the last way you should be doing it is with violence or intimidation. We should set aside our political beliefs and stand with the side who gets attacked -- even if that means defending the free speech rights of the KKK.
It is a fair opinion to think Trump's speech is offensive, problematic, or hateful. But, the First Amendment requires neither tact nor politeness. It requires that we permit all views to set up stalls in the marketplace of ideas, and we let that marketplace decide which ideas prevail. That is why it is called "the marketplace of ideas," not "the marketplace of gangs beating each other up."
...If you don't stand up for Trump's liberty today, someone may come for yours tomorrow.
...The richest Wall Street banker must side with Occupy when the cops attack them. Parents of mixed-race children must side with the KKK when they are attacked. Even Illinois Nazis should stand up for Jews if someone tries to silence them with violence. Dammit, this is the United States of America, and there is room for the entire spectrum of political discourse.
And no matter how right you think you are, you are never so clearly right, never so without fault, never so pure, that you have any moral authority to shut down the other side with violence. When you do that, the eventual result is that he who brings the bigger guns will win the debate.
That is not what America is all about.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/12/opinions/defend-trump-free-speech-opinion-randazza/
Why Protesters Help Donald Trump
http://time.com/4256684/donald-trump-protests-help/
"The *establishment* composed of journos, BS-Vending talking heads with well-formulated verbs, bureaucrato-cronies, lobbyists-in training, New Yorker-reading semi-intellectuals, image-conscious empty suits, Washington rent-seekers and other "well thinking" members of the vocal elites are not getting the point about what is happening and the sterility of their arguments."
"People are not voting for Trump (or Sanders). People are just voting, finally, to destroy the establishment."
https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10153654273663375
For the first time since 1932, an American Presidential campaign presents an opportunity for the public to overthrow the aristocracy.
And, for the first time in U.S. history, a realistic possibility exists that the voters’ choice between the two Parties’ Presidential nominees might turn out to be between two enemies of the aristocracy...
...this is the first Presidential contest since 1932 in which the interests of the aristocracy versus the interests of the public will be presented to the voters, for them to decide which of the two sides they’re actually on.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-12/election-biggest-threat-us-aristocracy-biggest-opportunity-voters-least-1932
The whole shebang is rigged and rotten – including the financial system. The typical voter doesn’t understand why or how. Who does? But he feels it. Something is wrong; he knows it. And more and more, he wants to say so.
“Try some real money for a change,” they would have said. “And, oh yes, balance the budget, too.”
But today’s Republicans are usually part of the problem, not the solution. They have been bought by the Deep State. Now, they offer much the same nonsense as the Democrats: tax, spend, borrow, regulate, bomb, imprison. In that regard, the last Bush administration was probably the worst in modern U.S. history.
The GOP is in disarray. It doesn’t believe its own core ideas. Neither does its standard bearer, Trump, or the voters.
http://www.acting-man.com/?p=43779
America Just Blocked a Massive Solar Project in India
http://theantimedia.org/preview-of-the-tpp-america-just-blocked-a-massive-solar-project-in-india/
If an outsider like Trump imperils that control, democracy be damned. The elites will come together to bring him down, because, behind party ties, they are soul brothers in the pursuit of power.
a deeply embedded corruption that permeates this capital city.
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a 501(c)(3) under IRS rules, an organization exempt from U.S. taxation.
Million-dollar corporate contributions to AEI are tax-deductible.
it would not be extreme to say this was a conspiracy of oligarchs, War Party neocons, and face-card Republicans to reverse the results of the primaries and impose upon the party, against its expressed will, a nominee responsive to the elites’ agenda.
And this taxpayer-subsidized “Dump Trump” camarilla raises even larger issues.
How many are like AEI, scheming to predetermine the outcome of presidential elections while enjoying tax exemptions and posturing as benign assemblages of disinterested scholars and seekers of truth?
How many of these tax-exempt think tanks are fronts and propaganda organs of transnational corporations that are sustained with tax-deductible dollars, until their “resident scholars” can move into government offices and do the work for which they have been paid handsomely in advance?
How many of these think tanks take foreign money to advance the interests of foreign regimes in America’s capital?
http://buchanan.org/blog/sea-island-conspiracy-124936
27 Companies That Paid No Taxes
http://ritholtz.com/2016/03/27-companies-that-paid-no-taxes/
This technology is going to cut through the global economy like a hot knife through butter. It learns fast and largely on its own. It's widely applicable. It doesn't only master what it has seen, it can innovate. For example: some of the unheard of moves made by AlphaGo were considered "beautiful" by the Grandmaster it beat.
Limited AGI (deep learning in particular) will have the ability to do nearly any job currently being done by human beings -- from lawyers to judges, nurses to doctors, driving to construction -- potentially at a grandmaster's level of capability. This makes it a buzzsaw.
Very few people (and I mean very few) will be able to stay ahead of the limited AGI buzzsaw. It learns so quickly, the fate of people stranded in former factory towns gutted by "free trade" is likely to be the fate of the highest paid technorati. They simply don't have the capacity to learn fast enough or be creative enough to stay ahead of it.
PS: Isn't it ironic (or not) that at the very moment in history when we demonstrate a limited AGI (potentially, a tsunami of technological change) the western industrial bureaucratic political system starts to implode due to an inability to deal with the globalization (economic, finance and communications) enabled by the last wave of technological change?
PPS: This has huge implications for warfare.
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2016/03/game-on-the-end-of-the-old-economic-system-is-in-sight.html
The Fed caused 93% of the entire stock market's move since 2008: Analysis
As the financial crisis reached a fevered pitch in 2008, the Federal Reserve took to flooding the financial market with dollars by buying up bonds. Simultaneously, interest rates fell dramatically, as bond yields move in the opposite direction of bond prices. Barnier sees the Fed as responsible for over 93% of the market from the start of QE until today. During the first half of 2013, the Fed caused the entire market’s growth, he said.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-fed-caused-93--of-the-entire-stock-market-s-move-since-2008--analysis-194426366.html
U.S. Dead Last of 18 Countries on Skills Test
http://mishtalk.com/2016/03/10/u-s-dead-last-of-18-countries-on-skills-test-dead-last-the-norm-in-chicago/
