Hello again! Here's today's! I'm still not LoneStarMike, LieparDestin, or Don midwest!

Enjoy!

Posted by LoneStarMike

Current Facebook stats as of 5:00 a.m.

Bernie2016/Hillary2016/Senator Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders 3,876,001 Presidential Campaign Page

Hillary Clinton 3,159,197 Presidential Campaign Page

Bernie Sanders 3,754,385 U. S. Senatorial Page

Tuesday, Bernie had more 713,523 likes than Sec. Clinton

Today, Bernie has 716,804 more likes than Sec. Clinton

(The gap widens — and yes — it’s the biggest it’s ever been)

Re: Jeff Merkley Endorsement

I just heard the alert on the DNC Emergency Broadcasting System

Why super-delegates should support Sanders

The Olympian LTE — Olympia, Washington

If our Democrats’ super-delegates believe in representative democracy and value the future of our country, it’s time for them to change their support to Bernie Sanders.

I understand how in the beginning, the seemingly obvious choice for the Democratic nomination was Hillary Clinton. Four months ago, she seemed the only viable candidate.

Things have changed since then. Bernie has exceeded the expectations of everyone except perhaps himself, and the fever is spreading. With nearly 73 percent of Washington Democrats supporting Bernie Sanders (in caucuses), it is disrespectful to Washington voters for all of our super-delegates to vote for Hillary.

And nationwide, the pledged super delegates, 469 for Clinton and 29 for Sanders, are out of step with the current desires of the American people. They can help shift the imbalance by changing their support to Bernie.

In addition to all the great things that Bernie stands for and we all believe in, Bernie is now the politically savvy vote.

National polls show that in a head-to-head contest, the race between Clinton and Trump is too close for comfort. Sanders, on the other hand, leads Trump by a comfortable 16.5 percent spread in the latest Real Clear Politics average of recent polls

Thirty percent of Sanders supporters say they would not vote for Clinton for president. Virtually all Clinton supporters would vote for Sanders.

Super-delegates should do the right and courageous thing for the sake of representative democracy, the Democratic Party, and the future of our country.

Today’s Graphic:

A mess? Feel the Bern

Lafayette Journal & Courier LTE — Lafayette, Indiana

My letter to the editor refers to another recent letter to the editor, “Nightmare of an election.” It deserves a massive response objecting to calling Bernie Sanders “a lazy congressman for 23 years.”

Sure, print such things in a democracy. Like Thomas Jefferson said: he’d rather live with no government and lots of newspapers, than with lots of government and no newspapers.

But in due course, I hope soon, please endorse Bernie Sanders for the nomination. I don’t think this is a nightmare of an election at all. The mess that Bernie will clean up with limitations on further corporate government — that is the mess that is the nightmare, not this election which is the result of and response to the original mess from three decades of growing corporate strangulation of good government. Hillary Clinton brings her problems; Bernie brings solutions.

In fact, the Republicans clearly need all of the journalistic and editorial page guidance you care to give them.

Stephen Fox

Santa Fe, N.M.

Note: I’m guessing someone from New Mexico’s LTE was reprinted in this newspaper because it’s part of the USA Today network.

Sanders' Wall St. tax would promote investment

The Express Times LTE — Easton, Pennsylvania

Bernie Sanders is talking about reinstating the securities turnover excise tax (STET), an idea that isn't new. We've done it before. It's a small tax on on the trading of stock (or a credit swap or a derivative, or any other activity of that sort). We did it from 1914 to 1966, and before that to finance the Spanish American War and the Civil War).

If we were to levy a 0.25 percent tax on every stock, swap, derivative or other trade today, it would produce, in its first year, about $150 billion in revenue. Wall Street would be generating the money to fund the start of Sander's proposed college tuition package. It would also tamp down toxic speculation while encouraging healthy investment.

When there's no cost to trading, there's no cost to gambling. Without costs to the transaction, people of large means are encouraged to speculate — for example, buy a million shares of a particular stock over a day or two purely with the goal of driving up the stock's price (everybody else sees the buying activity and thinks they should jump onto the bandwagon) so three days later they can sell all their stock at a profit and get out before it goes back down.

Some very high-powered computer programs do huge transactions like these in seconds, generating revenue at very little cost. Investment, on the other hand, is what happens when people buy stock because they believe the company has an underlying value and the stocks aren't churned every few seconds but kept as a long-term investment.

Why we need to feel the Bern

South Jersey Times LTE — Southern New Jersey

The upcoming presidential election has revealed many truths about the state of the American consciousness. And it's not pretty.

The fundamental reality is that there are vast numbers of individuals who base their political support on emotion or lack critical thinking skills, or are so insulated in their own bubble that they fail to see or acknowledge anything outside of said bubble.

Many people have "unplugged" as a statement against corporate-controlled media, but this has only deepened suspicion and conspiracy theories or has allowed people to shut down and ignore the political process completely. Many cling to their independent status like a badge of honor, even if it means they cannot participate in the actual candidate selection process.

Many rely on biased mainstream media or talk radio, or the Bible for their information and beliefs. And many prefer the status quo because change is difficult and uncertain and frightening.

But there is a real choice: an old fashioned, real, true public servant; a man whose policies and positions are based on principle, foresight and empathy; a man who has not sold out and who does not give us enemies to hate, but a future to believe in.

He's not perfect. No one is. But he is selling us a dream of what once was and what could be again, if we really want it.

Bernie Sanders for president – because he really is our only hope.

Bernie Sanders New TV Spot Highlights Sanders’ New York Roots as Race Tightens — Duration 0:30

All great progress came about Bernie's way

Staten Island Advance LTE — Staten Island, New York (only posting last half of LTE because it’s a bit long)

When it comes to negotiations, you start high. You come to the table demanding 110 percent, as Bernie Sanders would do, and then negotiate down from there to achieve any "incremental" change at all. You don't give up the fight for bold progress before it's even begun by conceding it will never happen. You don't start at the negotiating table proposing 40 percent that you assume the Republicans as rational actors would accept and then be forced to negotiate down from there.

Less than a decade ago, same-sex marriage was considered an outlandish unthinkable goal for progressives. We'll have to settle for "incremental" civil unions. But by setting our sights high, now marriage equality is the law of the land.

Putting an end to centuries of institutionalized racism codified in the law did not come about as a result of "incremental change". It took thousands of people marching in the streets to achieve the radical civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal transforming America from an unfettered capitalist society where the elderly literally were left to die into a regulated social welfare state was considered so "socialist" and radical that it nearly led to a fascist coup to overthrow FDR engineered by corporate industrialists.

All great social progress in American history began as "idealistic, naïve" dreams. But it took bold leaders to promise and deliver radical change. Bernie Sanders carries on the bold FDR tradition. Hillary Clinton represents surrender to the status quo.

More at the link

The Bernie Sanders Grassroots Movement -Duration 2:36

Posted by Don midwest

Arab Youth view ISIL major problem

Juan Cole’s column today on a recent extensive poll of Arab youth.

Juan’s book on came out 2 years ago

The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East

And just at the time that ISIL/Daesh/ISIS was going big time but Juan thinks it is a minor issue compared to how the youth is already shaping the future of the middle east.

The single biggest obstacle these youth see to a more successful Middle East is Daesh (ISIS, ISIL)! Indeed, nearly 4 in 5 said that they were concerned about its rise. Not only does the phony caliphate attract almost no support but 80% said they wouldn’t favor it even if it gave up its violence and gory spectacles. In accordance with this negative attitude toward Daesh, a plurality of the youth identified terrorism as the second biggest obstacle the region faces.

My book was widely and very positively reviewed. But one downside of coming out in July, 2014, three weeks after the fall of Mosul to Daesh, was that reviewers wanted to know why there was nothing about Daesh in it. But it was about secular-minded youth in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and that was before Daesh got a toehold in Sirte and before some radicals in the Sinai franchised themselves as Daesh. The New York Review of Books actually put a picture of Daesh fighter on the page where my book was discussed. My book was about liberal and leftist youth in a different part of the Middle East.

Arab Youth view ISIL as major Mideast Obstacle, want less Religion

The devil ISIL fits perfectly with the need for larger budgets for the military and a source of generating fear in the US and Europe.

How a US president and JP Morgan made Panama: and turned it into a tax haven In 1903 the US bullied Colombia into giving up the province that became Panama. The plan was to create a nation to serve the interests of Wall Street

Corruption is more out on the surface these days, but there has been movement toward the corporate coup d’etat for over 100 years

This goes back a long way. The Panamanian state was originally created to function on behalf of the rich and self-seeking of this world – or rather their antecedents in America – when the 20th century was barely born.

Panama was created by the United States for purely selfish commercial reasons, right on that historical hinge between the imminent demise of Britain as the great global empire, and the rise of the new American imperium.

The writer Ken Silverstein put it with estimable simplicity in an article for Vice magazine two years ago: “In 1903, the administration of Theodore Roosevelt created the country after bullying Colombia into handing over what was then the province of Panama. Roosevelt acted at the behest of various banking groups, among them JP Morgan & Co, which was appointed as the country’s ‘fiscal agent’ in charge of managing $10m in aid that the US had rushed down to the new nation.”

The reason, of course, was to gain access to, and control of, the canal across the Panamanian isthmus that would open in 1914 to connect the world’s two great oceans, and the commerce that sailed them.

The Panamanian elite had learned early that their future lay more lucratively in accommodating the far-off rich than in being part of South America. Annuities paid by the Panama Railroad Company sent more into the Colombian exchequer than Panama ever got back from Bogotá, and it is likely that the province would have seceded anyway – had not a treaty been signed in September 1902 for the Americans to construct a canal under terms that, as the country’s leading historian in English, David Bushnell, writes, “accurately reflected the weak bargaining position of the Colombian negotiator”.

Confessions of a Panama Papers Hit Man

Article by John Perkins who risked his life a few years ago to write “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.” An exposure of how the oligarch are using international finance and international power to get what they want which is often resources, and to control governments so they don’t act against the interest of the Western and local oligarchs.

The Panama Papers should be no surprise. I was there in the 1970s, when the system they’ve exposed was set in motion. As an Economic Hit Man (an EHM), I helped forge this global economy that is based on legalized crimes. It’s a system in which 62 individuals have as much wealth as half the world’s population, and a handful of the super-rich control governments around the globe. Big corporations benefit from infrastructure and social services without having to foot the bill. Instead, average U.S. citizens pay for it with their hard-earned tax dollars, while the very rich and their corporations shelter their incomes in tax havens like Panama.

The foundations for Panama as a tax shelter go back to 1903, when President Theodore Roosevelt fomented a rebellion to wrest Panama from Colombia so the U.S. could build the Panama Canal. J.P. Morgan and Company became the new country’s official fiscal agent. Soon Panama passed laws allowing John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company to register its ships there, avoiding U.S. taxes and regulations — and Panamanian tax shelters were born.

I was sent to Panama to convince then-head of state Omar Torrijos to stop insisting the U.S. turn canal ownership over to Panama, and to soften his support for Latin America’s nationalistic movements. Torrijos would not yield on the canal. But he did let his country become a tax haven for international corporations. He told me, "If your country is determined to exploit mine, the least I can do is help your corporations avoid paying taxes that support the CIA and Pentagon!"

Widely suspected that CIA behind plane crash leading to death of Torrijos.

Despite Panama Papers, EU Pitching Another Tax Evasion 'Smokescreen' 'The Commission has once more taken the side of tax dodging multinationals against the European public.'

The corruption is everywhere

I am on the Kill List. This is what it feels like to be hunted by drones Friends decline my invitations and I have taken to sleeping outside under the trees, to avoid becoming a magnet of death for my family

I am in the strange position of knowing that I am on the ‘Kill List’. I know this because I have been told, and I know because I have been targeted for death over and over again. Four times missiles have been fired at me. I am extraordinarily fortunate to be alive.

I don’t want to end up a “Bugsplat” – the ugly word that is used for what remains of a human being after being blown up by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone. More importantly, I don’t want my family to become victims, or even to live with the droning engines overhead, knowing that at any moment they could be vaporized.

I am in England this week because I decided that if Westerners wanted to kill me without bothering to come to speak with me first, perhaps I should come to speak to them instead. I’ll tell my story so that you can judge for yourselves whether I am the kind of person you want to be murdered.

I am from Waziristan, the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I am one of the leaders of the North Waziristan Peace Committee (NWPC), which is a body of local Maliks (or community leaders) that is devoted to trying to keep the peace in our region. We are sanctioned by the Pakistan government, and our main mission is to try to prevent violence between the local Taliban and the authorities.