Unravelling the riddle of the Kurds' Iraqi pipedream

Asia Times:

Wily clannish capo Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has announced that “Yes” won Monday’s non-binding independence referendum. Now that index fingers in indelible indigo ink are out of the way, the real battle between the KRG and Baghdad begins. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the Iraqi Supreme Court have denounced the referendum as “unconstitutional.”

Kurds comprise roughly 22% of an Iraqi population of 32 million. They are mostly Sunni and speak an Indo-European language close to Farsi. Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed significant autonomy since Daddy Bush installed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq, post-Desert Storm, in 1991. They were instrumental in helping Shock and Awe in 2003, and the Peshmerga (Iraqi Kurdistan’s standing force) are de facto US allies, fighting Islamic State – with US air cover – after the collapse of the Iraqi Army and the phony Caliphate’s conquest of Mosul in 2014. Their dreams of secession from Iraq have been paramount for almost three decades.

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No Accountability for Saudi War Crimes in Yemen

The American Conservative:

The latest effort at the U.N. to establish an independent investigation into war crimes committed in Yemen by all sides has failed:

The Netherlands and several Western allies have dropped their call for an international Commission of Inquiry to monitor human rights violations in war-torn Yemen.

A revision to a Dutch- and Canadian-led resolution Thursday at the Human Rights Council signaled the diplomatic heft of Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations who have helped fight rebels in Yemen and oppose any such commission.

The United States, France and Britain, key arms suppliers to the Saudis, showed little appetite.

The threats that the Saudis made against supporters of an international inquiry appear to have worked. The Saudi-led coalition and all other parties to the conflict have been able to act with impunity in the absence of any means to hold them accountable for their abuses and violations of international law. The Saudis and their Western backers, including the U.S., have stymied every attempt to remedy that problem, because they know that an independent investigation would present more damning evidence of flagrant disregard for civilian life by coalition forces. The “international community” has once again failed to do even the bare minimum for the people of Yemen, and war criminals on all sides of the conflict can continue to act with impunity. It has been clear for years that many Western governments are more concerned with keeping the Saudis and their allies happy than they are with protecting the lives of civilians in Yemen, and this latest failure at the U.N. just confirms that.

Divided We Fall: America's Massive Humility Crisis

Town Hall - Michael Anthony:

Does kneeling during our national anthem make one a son of a perverse and immoral woman, deserving to be fired, as President Trump suggested Friday night? Does standing during the anthem prove one’s patriotism? We can talk about the symptoms of America’s woes all we want, but only when we get honest with ourselves and each other will we have a prayer of dealing with the real root of what ails us: America is in the thick of a massive, and growing, humility crisis. North Korea aside, the pandemic of arrogance in our nation has festered into the number one threat against our very existence. If we don’t reverse this trend, it won’t be a nuclear bomb that melts us. 



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3D Printing Our Way to Individual, Free Association Power, and the Threat to Market Empires

The Daily Sheeple:

ING, a self-described global financial institution, recently conducted an analysis of the emerging technology of 3D printing in manufacturing. The title of the study says it all – 3D Printing: A Threat to Global Trade. You can read their full report here.

Right on the first page, the study reveals its crucial finding – that 3D Printing will cut global trade by 40%. To be precise, they refer to 3D printing as “local printed goods,” a phrase that I am inclined to embrace with enthusiasm.

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Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet?

The Intercept:

LAST FRIDAY, most major media outlets touted a major story about Russian attempts to hack into U.S. voting systems, based exclusively on claims made by the Department of Homeland Security. “Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states in the run-up to last year’s presidential election, officials said Friday,” began the USA Today story, similar to how most other outlets presented this extraordinary claim.



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Eve of the Vote: Mish Reader on Vacation Sends Video of Barcelona Counter Protest

Mish Talk:

Reader David is on vacation in on vacation Catalonia. He is now in Barcelona and will go fly fishing in the Pyrenees. He sent videos that he took of a peaceful anti-independence protest in Barcelona.

David Writes …

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We Need Fewer World Leaders, And More Good Neighbors

The American Conservative:

“Learning made a boy leave the farm to live in the city—to consider himself better than his father.”

John Steinbeck wrote these words 65 years ago, in his classic work East of Eden. Even then, he sensed the deep schism growing between rural America and the elite, urban enclaves that housed many of the nation’s universities and colleges.

But if such things were true in Steinbeck’s day, they are only more common now. Our nation’s top universities have embraced a detached, globalized approach to education—one in which youths are unlikely to be sent home, and rather encouraged to join a larger sphere of success and influence.

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Humor is Where You Find It

Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC:

Football is a tedious game that fills three-and-a-half hours of airtime with 30 minutes of action, commercials, commentary, instant replays, more instant replays, closeups of pretty cheerleaders, and halftime pageantry. The players are paid great gobs of money but run the risk of rendering themselves concussive basket cases. The super rich owners hold up municipalities for taxpayer-funded stadiums while keeping the TV, ticket, merchandising, and concessions revenues. They’ve also climbed into bed with the federal government, accepting taxpayer money for promoting patriotism. Among other things, this requires players, who until 2009 could stay in the locker room while the National Anthem was played, to be on the field, presumably standing at respectful attention.

Presumably—aye, there’s the rub. Last season, quarterback Colin Kaepernick expressed his disagreement with certain governmental policies and practices by kneeling during the Star Spangled Banner. Since then, other players have done the same, to the consternation of many fans, including President Trump. Ratings and attendance are tanking and the crony socialist owners are caught between the rock of their payrolls’ politics and the hard place of their fans’ disgust. To borrow from Oscar Wilde, one must have a heart of stone to ponder their plight without laughing. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of guys and gals.

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Gov. Cuomo's Transgender Travel Ban Forces U-Albany Football to Sleep 70 Miles Away from its Opponent

Town Hall - Timothy Meads:

New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive order banning non-essential travel by state employees to North Carolina in response to the state's stance on transgender issues has forced the University of Albany’s varsity football team to sleep over 70 miles out of the state prior to its Saturday game, reports the Times Union.

On Saturday, the U-Albany Great Danes are ranked 19th in Division 1 FCS and are playing the 23rd ranked Elon Phoenix football team of Elon, North Carolina. As if a game on the road against a conference opponent was not challenging enough, the Danes are forced to sleep outside of the state of North Carolina because of the state’s former stance against transgender individual’s using the bathroom of their choice.

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It Begins . . .

EP autos - Libertarian Car Talk:

I expected it to happen, but not this quickly.

California officials are, apparently, “mulling” a ban on cars with internal combustion engines, according to an article in the industry trade publication, Automotive News. If they more than mull and pass a ban, CA would be the first American state to do so – following the example set by several European states, including most recently the UK.

Part of the reason it is happening so quickly is because of amen-corner support from American publications like Automotive News.

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Judge Moore & God's Law

Patrick J. Buchanan:

When elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000, Judge Roy Moore installed in his courthouse a monument with the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai carved into it.

Told by a federal court his monument violated the separation of church and state, Moore refused to remove it and was suspended — to become famous as “The Ten Commandments Judge.”

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Escalating Tensions Over Kurdish Referendum

The American Conservative:

Tensions continue to rise following the independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan:

Iraqi Kurds overwhelmingly voted in favor of independence in a referendum on Monday, which Mr. Ali said obliges Mr. Barzani to negotiate independence from the rest of Iraq. Baghdad has refused to enter such negotiations, and Mr. Ali said that if it maintained that attitude, Kurdistan would be forced to unilaterally declare independence.

A unilateral declaration of independence won’t be accepted by any of the surrounding states, and very few other governments would recognize the new state because of the manner of its separation. Turkey, Iran, and the Iraqi government were already ratcheting up economic pressure on the region because of the vote, but a declaration of independence would likely trigger immediate military responses from one or more of them. The situation has quickly escalated to a point where none of the governments involved is willing to back down or compromise, and that makes it much harder to avoid the worst-case scenario of a major armed conflict breaking out. Both Turkey and Iran fear the creation of a Kurdish state because of the possible implications for the aspirations of their own Kurdish minorities. Ariane Tabatabai explained the Iranian government’s view earlier this week:

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Hmm: Here's What the NBA is Telling Its Players About Anthem Protests

Town Hall - Guy Benson:

Given the immediate, undeniable, polarizing and still-unfolding fallout suffered by the NFL over the anthem protests controversy, other professional sports leagues are weighing how to handle the issue.  One of the most prominent African Americans in the the National Hockey League's -- and there aren't many -- has announced his stance on the controversy, amid speculation that he may have been considering taking a knee on the ice prior to his games as a member of the San Jose Sharks.  He will not:



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Black America blames white America

Washington Times:

I know of no white person alive today in the United States who has ever legally owned a black slave, or any slave for that matter. Almost 700,000 mostly white men died 160 years ago to end slavery. Jim Crow ended generations ago. Yet black America, for the most part, is still locked in inner-city gang violence and economic hardship. Why?

Is it because America is racist?  Is it because of some overhanging white supremacy?  Is it because of the Illuminati?

No, unfortunately, it is because of black culture and the adoption of Democratic Party government dependency.  

We have just had eight years of the first black president.  Black athletes, and entertainers, routinely earn multi-million dollar incomes.  I can easily name several black billionaires without even trying too hard. A large percentage of black America is very successful. But, it is not enough. Too many black youth are being left behind.

And it is no one but black America’s fault.  



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Lawmakers Exploit Tragedy to Demand Defense Dollars

The American Conservative:

Every time a military tragedy occurs, a politician will inevitably rush to blame it on the “gutted” Pentagon budget. After 15 Marines were seriously injured when an Assault Amphibious Vehicle (AAV) burst into flames on September 13, it was only a matter of time before someone attempted to capitalize on the tragedy by screaming for more defense dollars.

For those keeping score, it took less than 48 hours for Representative Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to issue a press statement linking the incident to other “accidents related to readiness challenges.”

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New Fed Playbook? Yellen Out? Warsh In?

Mish Talk:

In July, rumor had it that National Economic Council director Gary Cohn was a shoo-in to replace Yellen.

That belief vanished when Cohn criticized Trump’s response to racial violence in Charlottesville.

The smart money now believes former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh is the favorite. Warsh met with Trump today.

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Patriotism Is A Two-Edged Sword

Paul Craig Roberts.org:

I sometimes wonder if America’s greatest threat is the population’s hyper-patriotism. The bulk of the population is now at work shutting down the NFL players’ First Amendment rights, and none of the incensed censors are capable of understanding that it is they, and not the NFL players, who are attacking the U.S. Constitution. We have been through all this flag business before, and federal courts have ruled for the protesters who burnt flags, wore them on their clothes, whatever. Yet, here we go again.

Hardwick Clothes CEO pulls the company’s advertising from NFL games. Insofar as advertising helps Hardwick’s shareholders, CEO Allan Jones is hurting his own shareholders in order to protest the NFL players’ protests, a thought that probably never occurred to him. http://ijr.com/the-declaration/2017/09/984704-first-ceo-hits-nfl-right-wallet-unpatriotic-national-anthem-protests/

According to this report — http://www.dcclothesline.com/2017/09/26/americans-nationwide-burn-nfl-tickets-shirts-in-solidarity-with-trump/ — white people across the country are burning their NFL shirts and their expensive tickets for which they paid hundreds of dollars.  

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College Professor: Believing in Hard Work is White Ideology

Town Hall - Timothy Meads:

Pennsylvania State University-Brandywine professor Angela Putman recently asserted in an academic paper that the notion “if I work hard, I can be successful” is merely a product of white ideology, reports Campus Reform.

Angela Putman conducted a study to critique and examine “ideologies within college students’ discourse that are foundational to whiteness.” Her resulting conclusion published on Thursday was that “meritocracy”, or the belief that people should rise based on the fruits of their own labor, is a "white ideology." In her mind, this "white ideology" is unfortunately widely accepted in academia.

But, Professor Putman argues that professors can change this "ideology" by teaching students “how racism and whiteness function in various contexts, the powerful influence of systems and institutions, and the pervasiveness of whiteness ideologies within the United States.”

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The Trump Administration’s Uninformed Hostility to the Nuclear Deal

The American Conservative:

Nick Wadhams reports on how administration officials have been displaying ignorance and confusion about the contents of the nuclear deal during their efforts to undermine it:

One of the proponents’ frustrations is the amount of time they’ve spent educating U.S. officials on what the deal does and doesn’t do. Officials with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based body charged with verifying Iranian compliance, had to walk U.S. counterparts through the basics, according to three senior diplomats with close contact to the agency. Yukiya Amano, head of the IAEA, had to explain that agency monitoring doesn’t cover Iranian support for Hezbollah and meddling in the region [bold mine-DL].

It isn’t surprising that the administration officials in question don’t understand something as basic as what the IAEA does, but it should remind us how ill-informed and baseless their opposition to the deal is. The two top U.S. officials involved in public criticism of the deal, Tillerson and Haley, have no real foreign policy experience between them worth mentioning, and their arguments against the nuclear deal have been based on false assumptions and bogus claims. Administration officials are in such a hurry to find some pretext for reneging on the deal that they aren’t going to bother understanding it.

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Melania Trump Responds To Librarian Who Rejected A Gift Of Books As ‘Racist Propaganda’

The Daily Sheeple:

Melania Trump has responded to the absurd actions from a Massachusetts elementary school librarian who rejected her gift of Dr. Seuss books claiming they are “steeped in racist propaganda.”

The first lady donated a collection of 10 Dr. Seuss books to one school in all 50 states to celebrate “National Read a Book Day,” but one of those generous gifts was rejected, Fox News reports.

Liz Phipps Soeiro, a librarian at a public school in Cambridge, rejected Trump’s gift and sent her a letter explaining that “Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.”

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Not So Merry Men

EP autos - Libertarian Car Talk:

Robin Hood may have been a fictional character, but the thing that drove him and his “Merry Men” to become outlaws was real enough:



Oppressive laws.



Specifically, oppressive taxes.



At every turn, the Sheriff of Nottingham and his not-so-merry men would demand their pound of flesh. The only way Robin and his men could survive was to forget the law – and live outside the law.



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It's About Time Someone In The US Government Cracked Down On Private Jet Abuse

Free Market Shooter:

Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price has been making headlines recently, and for all the wrong reasons:



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Wow: Watch What These College Students Have to Say About Their Female Conservative Classmates

Town Hall - Christine Rousselle:

Our friends over at Campus Reform and Network of enlightened Women released a video on Friday featuring college students giving their candid opinion about how they feel about conservative women. The video was filmed at George Washington University. 

Spoiler alert: people did not have the kindest thoughts. While some people seemed to empathize with the plight of conservative women on campus, saying that they basically were forced into silence, others said that they viewed conservative women as "anti-women" and "not educated." Another said that she felt as though women had to be liberal, as there's still not equality in the world. 

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How a Dubious CIA Document Is Fueling Tensions in Catalonia

The Intercept:

TENSIONS ARE RUNNING high in Barcelona. Last month saw a terrorist attack on one of the city’s main thoroughfares, Las Ramblas, which killed a dozen people and injured more than 100. At the same time, Barcelona and the greater region of Catalonia are a day away from an independence referendum that has pitted the Catalan and Spanish governments against each other in a way unseen since the fall of Franco’s military dictatorship in the 1970s.

The central government in Madrid is bent on preventing the Oct. 1 referendum: in the last week, Spanish military police have shut down multiple websites associated with the referendum, and raided newspaper offices, TV stations and print shops in search of the ballots and ballot-boxes to be used in the vote. The Spanish interior minister has attempted to seize control of the Catalan police. Meanwhile, two ferries docked in Barcelona’s port are housing thousands of riot police that Madrid has said it plans on using to physically stop the vote. Spanish police have arrested at least a dozen members of the Catalan autonomous regional government and others involved with the independence movement, threatening charges of “sedition“ and “rebellion.“

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House Bill Would End U.S. Role in War on Yemen

The American Conservative:

Four House members are sponsoring a bill that would end U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war on Yemen:

Four lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill that would halt U.S. military assistance to the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen on grounds that Congress has never approved the American role in the war.

Two House Republicans and two Democrats submitted the bill on Wednesday evening, but other lawmakers have already conveyed their support for the measure, congressional aides told Foreign Policy.

The bill requires “the removal” of U.S. forces from the war in Yemen unless and until Congress votes to authorize the American assistance. For more than two years, the United States military has provided aerial refueling tankers and intelligence to the Saudi-led coalition waging war against Houthi rebels backed by Iran.

Democratic Reps. Khanna and Pocan and Republican Reps. Massie and Jones are the co-sponsors of the bill, and they deserve a lot of credit for working on this and bringing attention to a conflict and our government’s role in it. The U.S. role in supporting the war should receive much more scrutiny than it has, and this bill provides members of Congress with the opportunity to debate the indefensible policy that has implicated the U.S. in the crimes of the Saudis and their allies. One of the reasons that U.S. support for the war has gone on for so long with so little opposition is that Congress has failed to challenge the Obama and Trump administrations’ decisions to back the coalition. This bill offers the chance to do what Congress should have been doing for the last two years.

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Hooray for Catalonia! Despite Police Action, Vote Will Take Place, Tractors Roll In

Mish Talk:

Despite ballot box confiscation and thousands of police sent by Madrid to stop the independence vote, Catalonia will defy prime minister Mariano Rajoy and the Spanish court.

Catalans have occupied polling stations and tractors have rolled into Barcelona to support the vote.

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The US Economy Is Failing

Paul Craig Roberts:

Do the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editors read their own newspaper?

The frontpage headline story for the Labor Day weekend was “Low Wage Growth Challenges Fed.” Despite an alleged 4.4% unemployment rate, which is full employment, there is no real growth in wages. The front page story pointed out correctly that an economy alleged to be expanding at full employment, but absent any wage growth or inflation, is “a puzzle that complicates Federal Reserve policy decisions.”

On the editorial page itself, under “letters to the editor,” Professor Tony Lima of California State University points out what I have stressed for years: “The labor-force participation rate remains at historic lows. Much of the decrease is in the 18-34 age group, while participation rates have increased for those 55 and older.” Professor Lima points out that more evidence that the American worker is not in good shape comes from the rising number of Americans who can only find part-time work, which leaves them with truncated incomes and no fringe benefits, such as health care.

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Che Guevara T-Shirt on West Point Cadet—So What’s the Big Deal?

Town Hall - Humberto Fontova:

I’m trying to be rational here: if Che Guevara idolatry is good enough for the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces-- then why not for a West Point cadet?



In brief: West Point graduate and commissioned 2nd Lieut. Spenser Rapone is under investigation by the U.S. Army for promoting communism on social media. One of these pro-communist stunts involved Rapone flaunting a Che Guevara T-shirt under his cadet uniform.



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Shock Report: NFL's Oakland Raiders Threw Game After White QB Refused To Kneel For National Anthem

The Daily Sheeple:

A new report from The Armstrong and Getty Radio Show has sent shockwaves throughout the sports world after it was claimed that members of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders may have purposefully allowed their star quarterback to get sacked multiple times after he refused to kneel during the National Anthem.

If true, this would essentially mean that an NFL football game was illegally thrown over anger that one of the teams star white players did not believe that kneeling during the nation’s anthem was the correct way to protest supposed racial injustice in America.

In other words, an epic level scandal.

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The Media Wall

The Z Blog:

The “fake news” phenomenon could turn out to be the most important turn of events in the Trump era. The simple reason is it has awoken millions of normies to the realities of mass media in America. Most white conservatives accepted that the news was real, but biased in favor of one side, the Progressive side. They never stopped to think that maybe the news was not even real, that the Prog news outlets were making stuff up. Now, most white conservatives assume the news is fake.

That’s a positive development, one that our side can certainly exploit. It’s a handy tool for whenever the megaphones start blasting the latest propaganda from our rulers. Simply yelling “fake news” has become a useful way to prevent the Progs from framing the debate, at least with regards to politics. The other aspect of the fake news stuff that is useful is that the mass media is no longer capable of doing real news. Mass media is no longer a feedback loop for the ruling class. It’s just agit-prop.

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Trump’s Bungled Response to Puerto Rico’s Disaster

The American Conservative:

The Post reports on the days that Trump and his top officials wasted in the wake of Hurricane Maria:

But then for four days after that — as storm-ravaged Puerto Rico struggled for food and water amid the darkness of power outages — Trump and his top aides effectively went dark themselves.

Trump jetted to New Jersey that Thursday night to spend a long weekend at his private golf club there, save for a quick trip to Alabama for a political rally. Neither Trump nor any of his senior White House aides said a word publicly about the unfolding crisis.

Trump did hold a meeting at his golf club that Friday with half a dozen Cabinet officials — including acting Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke, who oversees disaster response — but the gathering was to discuss his new travel ban, not the hurricane [bold mine-DL]. Duke and Trump spoke briefly about Puerto Rico but did not talk again until Tuesday, an administration official said.

The White House’s response to the crisis in Puerto Rico is widely perceived as being too slow and unacceptably negligent of the needs of the people suffering in the aftermath of the hurricane. This report supports that impression, and shows that the president and top administration officials were to a large extent simply ignoring the dire situation on the island. If Trump was keen not to be seen repeating Bush’s Katrina errors following Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, there was none of the same urgency or interest on display in the first week after Maria. Trump wasn’t just failing to address the crisis publicly, but was paying scant attention to it for days on end while he feuded with football players and instituted his ridiculous travel ban. The fact that a policy as absurd as the travel ban apparently took precedence over managing the response to a major disaster affecting millions of Americans may be the most damning detail in the entire story. Faced with one of the largest disasters in U.S. history, Trump was preoccupied with a piece of security theater instead of the security and well-being of millions of citizens in desperate straits. So much for putting Americans first. Fortunately, it seems that the sustained criticism of the White House’s lacking response has jolted them into taking the crisis more seriously, but the president and his officials still frittered away the better part of a week when they should have been intensely focused on increasing and improving the federal government’s response.

Update: Trump is now feuding with the mayor of San Juan, who recently criticized remarks by the acting Secretary of Homeland Security and expressed her frustration with what she considered an inadequate federal response. Perhaps other Puerto Rican officials should follow her example, since petty feuds with people that criticize him at least hold the president’s attention for a while.

Bogus Stoned Driving Arrests Highlight Dubious Methods of 'Drug Recognition Experts' - Hit & Run

Reason.com:

To the untrained eye, Katelyn Ebner seems completely sober during her 28-minute roadside encounter with Cobb County, Georgia, police officer Tracy Carroll, who has pulled the 23-year-old waitress over for ailing to maintain her lane as she made a left turn. But Carroll, who was designated a "drug recognition expert" (DRE) after undergoing 160 hours of special training, perceives "numerous indicators" that Ebner is under the influence of marijuana. Ebner repeatedly assures him she does not "smoke weed" or "do any of that stuff" and volunteers to prove it by taking a drug test. "You're going to jail, ma'am," he replies. "I don't have a magical drug test that I can give you right now."



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A Crash Course on the True Causes of “Anti-Semitism”

The Unz Review:

This is a topic which has had so much written about it that you could fill an entire city library with books entirely dedicated to this topic. Marx took a shot at it. As did Sartre. There were, of course, also plenty of good books written on this topic, but rather than list them all, I want to suggest a few simple common sense points and then go to what I consider an authoritative explanation of this thing we call “antisemitism” and which, of course, has nothing to do with Semites.



So first, let’s dump this silly term and replace it by a simple and straightforward one: judeophobia. Just like any other phobia (say, for example, russophobia) the phobia of X is the 1) fear and/or hatred of X. Some people hate Jews, others fear them (think of the “fear of the Jews” in the Scripture), some do both. So judeophobia seems both logical and uncontroversial to me.



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Sex, Hefner, and Hookup Culture

Town Hall - Kathryn Lopez:

"Sex for me is ... perhaps the single greatest humanizing force on this earth," Hugh Hefner said during a 1974 interview with CBS, sitting alongside Protestant theologian Harvey Cox. "It would be a rather sad planet if there weren't two sexes. And I think that we've managed to use and abuse and misunderstand our sexuality."



"Sex is cheap," sociologist Mark Regnerus at the University of Texas at Austin, explains in his book, "Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage and Monogamy. "It is more widely available, at lower cost to all than ever before in human history. ... Cheap sex has been mass-produced with the help of two distinctive means that have little to do with each other -- the wide uptake of the Pill and mass-produced high-quality pornography -- and then made more efficient by communication technologies. They drive the cost of sex down, make real commitment more 'expensive' and challenging to navigate, ... put women's fertility at risk -- driving up demand for infertility treatments -- and have taken a toll on men's marriageability ... Cheap sex does not make marriage unappealing; it just makes marriage less urgent and more difficult to accomplish."



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Kurdistan- The final chapter of the Empire’s plot against the Middle East

The Vineyard of the Saker:

Last Sunday, the Kurdish regional authority defied the world and went forward with the scheduled independence referendum in Northern Iraq. With the definite result of the referendum not being official yet, there can be little doubt that an overwhelming majority of Kurds have voted Yes to independence. Despite Kurdish leaders announcing that the referendum is non-binding and that it is only the beginning of a negotiation with Baghdad on secession, Kurdish leaders hope that independence will be recognized by the central government sooner rather than later.

In the early stages of the Syrian conflict, and later during the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) many Western leaders claimed that the Middle East was facing changes. They were most likely referring to the establishment of an “Islamic emirate” in Eastern Syria and Western Iraq, which the Western powers helped to create. Today, the jihadist threat is on the verge of annihilation but peace still seems to be very far away from this conflict-ridden region. Why?

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Nestlé pays $200 a year to bottle water near Flint – where water is undrinkable

The Guardian:

Gina Luster bathed her child in lukewarm bottled water, emptied bottle by bottle into the tub, for months. It became a game for her seven-year-old daughter. Pop the top off a bottle, and pour it into the tub. It takes about 30 minutes for a child to fill a tub this way. Pop the top, pour it in; pop the top, pour it in. Maybe less if you can get gallon jugs.

Luster lives in Flint, Michigan, and here, residents believe tap water is good for one thing: to flush the toilet.

“I don’t even water my plants with it,” she said.

Flint became synonymous with lead-poisoned water after government officials, looking to save money, switched the city’s water supply from Detroit city water to water from the corrosive Flint river.

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Government Vs. NFL: Organization May Be Forced To Return Paid Patriotism Funds Again

The Daily Sheeple:

Amid the kneeling protest during the national anthem, the NFL may be forced to return taxpayers’ funds. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) on Tuesday called for an end to all federal government support of the NFL.

“I believe we ought to terminate all federal government support of the NFL,” Brooks told Breitbart News.

“That would include the termination of any and all advertising that is done on behalf of the federal government — military and nonmilitary — to the extent we do any.”

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Hello Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, USA Today, CNN, Washington Post, Slate: Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart

Mish Talk:

The biggest purveyors of  “fake news” and irresponsible journalism are the news media outlets complaining most about it.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is at the forefront of the latest fake news on Russia.

Cont....   

Trump’s Disgraceful Puerto Rico Attack

The American Conservative:

Trump’s attack on San Juan’s Mayor Yulin Cruz this morning included a broader insult to people in Puerto Rico:

At 7:09 a.m., Trump wrote: “The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.”

Seven minutes later, he wrote: “…Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They….”

“…want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort [bold mine-DL]. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.”

Attacking a local official who is pleading for help in the middle of a major disaster would be a cruel and politically inept thing to do in any case, but Trump manages to make it worse by casting blame on the overall local response in the wake of what is generally acknowledged to be the worst disaster in Puerto Rico’s history. He accuses leaders in Puerto Rico and the population more generally of wanting “everything to be done for them” because one of their politicians criticized the federal government for an inadequate response to the disaster. That’s a contemptible response to legitimate criticism, and a disgraceful way to treat Americans who are going through one of the biggest disasters on record. Trump cannot excuse the lacking federal response by pointing to the scale of the disaster and then fault local officials for not doing enough, and it is obnoxious to suggest that the “community effort” has been insufficient when this is a disaster that he very publicly neglected for most of the last week.

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