cali
cali's JournalOnly one candidate for Governor has a Hollywood biopic about him coming out this summer
Bill 'Spaceman' Lee Wants to Turn Vermont Into a Sheep-Shearing, Baseball Bat-Making Paradise
Bill "Spaceman" Lee may have been the most colorful character the game of baseball has ever seen. Known for taking the mound for the Boston Red Sox throughout the '70s, the left-hander never shied away from offering controversial political views, championing environmental issues and challenging management. A notorious drug user throughout his career, he claimed to sprinkle marijuana on his pancakes in the morning as a way to combat bus fumes on his way to Fenway Park, a routine dramatized in the upcoming biopic Spaceman, which stars Josh Duhamel and chronicles the end of Lee's career with the Montreal Expos.
Not much has changed since Lee played his last Major league game. Now 69 years old, he lives a blissful existence in Vermont. Kind of. “I’m living in the back of a 1997 Buick Ultra with Vermont plates, going between Montreal and Cuba, and I’m running kids back and forth across the Canadian border playing baseball and doing humanitarian efforts, trying to get baseball back in the mainstream in the United States and Canada.”
Lee's house is in Vermont, though, which is important because in addition to his role as baseball's Johnny Appleseed, he is currently running for governor as the candidate of the Liberty Union Party. He doesn't seem too concerned about it. When I talk to him, the day of Vermont's gubernatorial primary, he's in New York City doing press for Spaceman, which premieres in theaters August 19. In a few hours he will head up to Boston to "throw out the first beer bottle" at the soon-to-be-retired Alex Rodriguez, and he's still fuming about losing a softball game to High Times magazine the day before. "I had them beat, and then they scored four unearned runs off me and beat me 5-4," he says.
Lee was hesitant when the Liberty Union Party, which Bernie Sanders was once the chairman of, reached out to him about running for governor earlier this year. "They came to me and they said, 'Bill, we need you to run for governor,'" he remembers. "I didn't want to accept, but I read Plato's Republic again and there is a young Plato sitting on Socrates's lap and he tells him basically that if you deny your constituents your voice, then you're doing them a disservice. So Socrates said I had to run, and when he speaks, I listen."
<snip>
http://europe.newsweek.com/bill-lee-still-crazy-after-all-these-years-489815
Trailer:
Is Trump's letter from his doctor about his superman health a fake? It may well be:
A fake in the sense that Trump wrote it and his sycophant doc signed it:
<snip>
On December 4, 2015, the Trump campaign released…something.
It purports to be a medical letter, but it is one of the most ridiculous documents ever to emerge in any political campaign. First, the letterhead is in the same font as the letter, which appears to have been created using Microsoft Word. The signature from the doctor is several inches past the signature line—the result you might get if the document had been signed as a blank and filled in later. The letterhead includes a Gmail address—something doctors tell me is extremely unusual, since doctors do not want patients contacting them directly by email as a substitute for scheduling an appointment.
There is also a website listed, but if you follow the URL (haroldbornsteinmd.com), it takes you to cdn.freefarcy.com, a blank page that asks if you want to upload an update to a Flash program onto your computer (the domain name, freefarcy.com, is still for sale. No, I can’t explain that.) If you decline, it does so anyway and, based on the response of the security system on my computer, the “program” on the doctor’s supposed website is a virus.
Then, there is the doctor who allegedly signed this document. His name is Harold N. Bornstein, and he is a gastroenterologist. This kind of physician is a specialist who treats the digestive tract. This is not an internist, who is trained specifically in providing full histories and physicals of patients. The letter signed by Dr. Bornstein, who did not return an email from Newsweek seeking comment, says that he has treated Trump since 1980. However, it mentions no history of the gastrointestinal problem that led the Republican candidate for president to seek out his help. In fact, the letter says Trump has had no significant medical problems. So why has he been seeing a gastroenterologist for over 35 years?
<snip>
read:http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-health-doctor-490836
George Schultz (yes, he's still alive-95) on the prospects of a Trump Presidency: "God help us"
George Shultz, who served as secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan, is not on board with Donald Trump.
"God help us," he said at a Hoover Institution event in Palo Alto, California, on Monday when asked about the possibility of Trump becoming president, according to the Washington Post.
He said that the United States political system "has gone off the rails," according to the Post.
As Trump continues to be unwilling to change his campaign style, more prominent Republicans have openly said they cannot support the presidential nominee. A few have even said they plan on voting for Hillary Clinton.
Shultz also criticized Senate Republicans for blocking President Obama's nominees.
<snip>
read:http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/george-shultz-trump-god-help-us
Oh Donny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone, and your campaign is dying
It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.
But don't come ye back when summer's in the meadow.
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow.
I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow.
But you, it's you who now must go.
Oh, Donny boy, oh, Donny boy, I loath you so.
But come again you never will
Though some may mourn ye still,
I'm thrilled to see you go.
Oh, Donny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
The summer's gone, and I'm rejoicing
In your falling in the polls.
What I Believe: Trump must be crushed. Not just beaten, broken.
He needs to lose in a landslide.
Trump isn't just mentally unstable. He's not just an epic egoist. He's not merely a narcissist.
Donald Trump is a classic "strong man"
He would, as President, attempt to operate as he does now and how he always has- as a brutish dictator, who believes only in his own supremacy.
He has already done incalculable damage. I mean that literally. We cannot, as of yet, fully calculate the damage he's incurred.
I don't know what kind of damage he could do as President, how far he could take it, how much he could get away with, but I don't want to find out.
As a nation, we need to repudiate Trump and those who follow him as completely as possible.
That's why I'll phone bank for HRC.
She'll win, but he needs to be crushed. The republican party needs to be crushed and put together again- hopefully by people with some degree sanity and integrity.
Donald Trump is toxic. His followers beliefs are toxic. It's difficult to find any humanity in Trump. Nothing beyond "I want..., me, me, me".
Trump is toxic in a way that far exceeds Bush or Reagan. I believe he'd actually try to use nuclear weapons.
Mentally unstable combined with a lack of humanity is about as dangerous a combination as can be imagined.
Like a grotesque Pandora, he has further opened a box that was cracked open by President Obama daring to President while black. And that's just one box.
Force and violence are unpleasant realities, but when they are in the forefront, we lose everything- to paraphrase E.M. Forster.
Donald Trump embodies force and violence, brutish power and precious little else.
Trump, the MSM pile on and "Great Men"
There is a certain amount of rather amusing handwringing going on amongst some journos. They don't want to appear as if they aren't "evenhanded" in covering him. It's amusing because, as Chris Como admitted, they built him up during the primary.
Yes, the MSM is piling on and good say I. Damn right they should be covering him accurately instead of playing the crowd along the procession of the naked king flaunting his invisible attire.
Trump is a strong man. He's unhinged. He's devoid of empathy and compassion. He isn't just flawed; he's dangerously flawed.
He's been exposing himself; and the MSM and everyone else damned well should be helping him along with that- exposing him for the threat he is to the world.
E.M. Forster- who as many here know, is one of my heroes, wrote about the strong man; he called this creature the "great man".
<snip>
In search of a refuge, we may perhaps turn to hero-worship.
But here we shall get no help, in my opinion. Hero-worship is a
dangerous vice, and one of the minor merits of a democracy is
that it does not encourage it, or produce that unmanageable type
of citizen known as the Great Man. It produces instead different
kinds of small men - a much finer achievement. But people who
cannot get interested in the variety of life, and cannot make up
their own minds, get discontented over this, and they long for a
hero to bow down before and to follow blindly. It is significant
that a hero is an integral part of the authoritarian stock-in-trade
today. An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes
stuck about it to carry off the dullness - much as plums have to
be put into a bad pudding to make it palatable. One hero at the
top and a smaller one each side of him is a favourite arrangement,
and the timid and the bored are comforted by the trinity, and,
bowing down, feel exalted and strengthened.
No, I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity
around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a
little man's pleasure when they come a cropper. Every now and
then one reads in the newspapers some such statement as: "The
coup d'etat appears to have failed, and Admiral Toma's where-
abouts is at present unknown." Admiral Toma had probably
every qualification for being a Great Man - an iron will, personal
magnetism, dash, flair, sexlessness - but fate was against him, so
he retires to unknown whereabouts instead of parading history
with his peers. He fails with a completeness which no artist and
no lover can experience, because with them the process of crea-
tion is itself an achievement, whereas with him the only possible
achievement is success.
<snip>
http://spichtinger.net/otexts/believe.html
This essay, "What I Believe", is a treasure and I guarantee you won't regret reading it.
It appears the NSA may have been hacked: NSA hacked? Top cyber weapons allegedly go up for auction
The hackers have offered sample files, which some security researchers say appear to contain legitimate exploits
An anonymous group claims to have stolen hacking tools that might belong to the National Security Agency and is auctioning them off to the highest bidder.
It’s a pretty bold claim, but the hackers have offered sample files, and some security researchers say they appear to contain legitimate exploits.
The files were allegedly stolen from the Equation Group, a top cyberespionage team that may have links to the NSA.
The Equation Group is known to use some of the most advanced malware and probably helped develop the infamous Stuxnet computer worm, according to security firm Kaspersky Lab.
Over the weekend, hackers known as the Shadow Brokers claimed to have stolen the very cyber weapons the group has used.
<snip>
read:http://www.pcworld.com/article/3107949/nsa-hacked-top-cyber-weapons-allegedly-go-up-for-auction.html
https://www.wired.com/2016/08/hackers-claim-auction-data-stolen-nsa-linked-spies/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/08/15/nsa-hacked-shadow-brokers-equation-group-leak/#6bdfbd8677f9
Fuck the Cubs: Cubs Apologize After Playing ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ for Accused Domestic Abuser
Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. Apology not accepted and not enough. Now donate the proceeds from a game to domestic abuse shelters and organizations and cut this abuser from the roster (never happen, I know)
Back in March, Aroldis Chapman, who was then playing for the Yankees, was suspended for 30 games after he allegedly choked his girlfriend and shoved her against a wall (police reports also state that he fired eight shots into the wall). Since then, he’s been traded to the Cubs, who had the brilliant idea of playing the Prodigy song “Smack My Bitch Up” as he closed out the ninth inning of Sunday night’s game against the Cardinals.
For some reason, playing a song in which 50 percent of the lyrics are the exact phrase “smack my bitch up” for an accused domestic abuser didn’t quite sit right with people, leading the Cubs to issue the following formal apology:
The selection of this track showed a lack of judgment and sensitivity to an important issue. We have terminated our relationship with the employee responsible for making the selection and will be implementing stronger controls to review and approve music before public broadcast during our games.
<snip>
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/08/cubs-play-smack-my-bitch-up-for-aroldis-chapman-domestic-abuse.html
The Chicago Cubs acquiring Yankees pitcher Aroldis Chapman — a player with a history of domestic violence — was deemed a controversial trade for some following the team's announcement Monday.
Chapman was never arrested, but was accused of firing eight gunshots in his garage and choking his girlfriend during an October 2015 argument near Miami, Fla.
Sharmili Majmudar, executive director of Rape Victim Advocates, a Chicago-based organization that helps victims of gender-based violence, said the news of the trade was "disappointing."
"It of course is concerning that someone who has been recently suspended for 30 games related to their behavior is then signed up by the Chicago Cubs," she said.
Following news of his trade, Chapman said he had "regret," though in May had chalked the incident up to "just an argument."
<snip>
https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160725/wrigleyville/aroldis-chapmans-signing-by-cubs-disappointing-victim-advocate
Biden: If Trump had been prez, I would have thrown my body in front of him to keep him from going
“I was proud, my son Beau served for a year in Iraq, came back a highly decorated soldier,” the vice president said. “I must tell you, had Donald Trump been president I would have thrown my body in front of him. No, I really mean it, to keep him from going if the judgment was based on Trump's decision
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/joe-biden-trump-stalin-227017#ixzz4HTwkruTE
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
Paul Manafort. They just don't come any slimier than this character. (excepting his boss)
From the minute he first oozed across my screen, my creep-o-meter shot far into the red zone. There is something ineffably slimy about him, matched only by his boss.
There is something about him that comes across as wholly amoral.
Manafort seized every opportunity he could from the cold war, working for and lobbying for, a cavalcade of dictators and strong men with heinous human rights records.
For example:
Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga[a] (/məˈbuːtuː ˈsɛseɪ ˈsɛkoʊ/; born Joseph-Desiré Mobutu; 14 October 1930 – 7 September 1997) was the military dictator and President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which Mobutu renamed Zaire in 1971) from 1965 to 1997. He also served as Chairperson of the Organisation of African Unity in 1967–1968.
Once in power, Mobutu formed an authoritarian regime, amassed vast personal wealth, and attempted to purge the country of all colonial cultural influence, while enjoying considerable support from the United States due to his anti-communist stance.
During the Congo Crisis, Belgian forces helped Mobutu in a coup against the nationalist government of Patrice Lumumba in 1960 to rule the government. Lumumba was the first leader in the country to be democratically elected, but he was subsequently deposed in a coup d'état organised by Colonel Mobutu and executed by a Katangese firing squad led by Julien Gat, a Belgian mercenary.[1] Mobutu then assumed the role of army chief of staff,[2] before taking power directly in a second coup in 1965. As part of his program of "national authenticity," Mobutu changed the Congo's name to Zaire in 1971 and his own name to Mobutu Sese Seko in 1972.
Mobutu established a one-party state in which all power was concentrated in his hands. He also became the object of a pervasive cult of personality.[2] During his reign, Mobutu built a highly centralised state and amassed a large personal fortune through economic exploitation and corruption, leading some to call his rule a "kleptocracy."[3][4] The nation suffered from uncontrolled inflation, a large debt, and massive currency devaluations. By 1991, economic deterioration and unrest led him to agree to share power with opposition leaders, but he used the army to thwart change until May 1997, when rebel forces led by Laurent Kabila expelled him from the country. Already suffering from advanced prostate cancer, he died three months later in Morocco.
Mobutu became notorious for corruption, nepotism, and the embezzlement of between US$4 billion and $15 billion during his reign, as well as extravagances such as Concorde-flown shopping trips to Paris.[5] Mobutu presided over the country for over three decades, a period of widespread human rights violations. He has been described as the "archetypal African dictator."[5]
<snip>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu_Sese_Seko
<snip>
Association with Jonas Savimbi[edit]
In 1985, Manafort's firm, BMSK, signed a $600,000 contract with Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, to refurbish Savimbi's image in Washington and secure financial support on the basis of his anti-communism. BMSK arranged for Savimbi to attend events at the American Enterprise Institute (where Jeane Kirkpatrick gave him a laudatory introduction), the Heritage Foundation, and Freedom House; in the wake of the campaign Congress approved hundreds of millions of dollars in covert American aid to Savimbi's group.[15] Allegedly, Manafort's continuing lobbying efforts helped preserve the flow of money to Savimbi several years after the Soviet Union ceased its involvement in the Angolan conflict, forestalling peace talks.[15]
Lobbying for other foreign leaders[edit]
Manafort's firm, BMSK, accepted $950,000 yearly to lobby for Ferdinand Marcos.[16][17] He was also involved in lobbying for Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre and attempted to recruit Siad Barre of Somalia as a client.[18] His firm also lobbied on behalf of the governments of the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya (earning between $660,000 and $750,000 each year between 1991 and 1993), and Nigeria ($1 million in 1991). These activities led Manafort's firm to be listed amongst the top five lobbying firms receiving money from human-rights abusing regimes in the Center for Public Integrity report "The Torturer's Lobby".[19]
Involvement in the Karachi Affair[edit]
Manafort wrote the campaign strategy for Edouard Balladur in the 1995 elections, and admitted to having been paid [20] (at least $200,000). The money was transferred to him through his friend, Lebanese arms-dealer Abdul Rahman al-Assir, from middle-men fees paid for arranging the sale of three French Agosta-class submarines to Pakistan, in a scandal known as the Karachi Affair.[15]
Association with Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Agency[edit]
Manafort received $700,000 from the Kashmiri American Council between 1990 and 1994, supposedly to promote the plight of the Kashmiri people. However, an FBI investigation revealed the money was actually from Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency as part of a disinformation operation to divert attention from terrorism. A former Pakistani ISI official claimed Manafort was aware of the nature of the operation.[21] While producing a documentary as part of the deal, Manafort interviewed several Indian officials while pretending to be a CNN reporter.[22]
HUD scandal[edit]
In the late 1980s, Manafort was criticized for using his connections at HUD to ensure funding for a $43 million rehabilitation of dilapidated housing in Seabrook, N.J.[23] Manafort's firm received a $326,000 fee for its work in getting HUD approval of the grant largely through personal influence with Deborah Gore Dean, an executive assistant to former HUD Secretary Samuel R. Pierce, Jr.[24]
<snip>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort
And this doesn't even touch on his association with former Ukraine President Yanukovych and his now defunct Party of Regions.
5 Things You Need to Know About Paul Manafort
<snip>
So who is Paul Manafort? Put simply, he straddles two worlds. One, as the ultimate U.S. political insider and tireless promoter who’s secured giant packages of aid from Congress. Second, as a political strategist who has polished reputations for a roster of some of the most infamous leaders on the planet.
<snip>
Promoting the World’s Dictators
In 1980. Manafort co-founded Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMSK), a powerhouse beltway lobbying firm alongside partners Stone, a longtime Trump confidante, and Charles Black, a leading strategist in the John Kasich campaign. One of its most lucrative clients was Jonas Savimbi, leader of UNITA, the pro-Western rebel army fighting the Communist government in Angola. Manafort helped make Savimbi a heroic figure among conservative Washington think-tanks, and aided him in securing hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from the Reagan and Bush Administrations, money that never brought victory.
In the mid-1980s, the regime of Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator of the Philippines, paid BMSK $950,000 a year to lobby for funding, as well as polish his blackened reputation among lawmakers, with Manafort serving as his chief advocate. Another top client was Mobutu Seko of Zaire, renowned as the quintessential corrupt African dictator. Manafort even sought to recruit Siad Barre, the strongman of Somalia. In her book “Choosing the Hero,” Riva Levinson recalls that Manafort asked her assistance in luring Barre. When she objected on ethical grounds, the boss explained: “We all know he’s a bad guy, but he’s our bad guy!”
Levinson goes on to say that a running joke at BMSK held that its work was “like playing one big game of Stratego: building armies and scheming to take over the world. That is exactly what it feels like working with Manafort. In fact, at times, that’s exactly what is going on.” The plotting inside Trump Tower might reveal similar ambitions.
One of his most unusual assignments came in the heart of Old Europe. In 1995, Manafort was paid $90,000 by a Lebanese-born arms merchant to advise veteran finance official Edouard Balladur in what became an unsuccessful bid for the presidency of France. An investigation revealed that those funds were illegally funneled from the kickbacks and commissions collected from the sale of French submarines to Pakistan. What became known as the Karachi affair became an énorme scandale in France, damaging the reputations of the politicians involved, though they escaped prosecution.
<snip>
read:http://fortune.com/2016/08/15/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-paul-manafort/
Paul Manafort Questioned by Cayman Islands Court About His Fund With a Russian Billionaire
http://heatst.com/politics/paul-manafort-questioned-by-cayman-islands-court-about-his-fund-with-a-russian-billionaire/
Corruption writ large- and very profitably.
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHometown: born is LA, grew up there and in New Canaan CT
Home country: USA
Current location: East Hardwick, Vermont
Member since: Wed Sep 29, 2004, 03:28 PM
Number of posts: 114,904
