Thursday, August 01, 2019

MPC: Build-It + Retring Boomers Might Buy It > A Seller's Market

Where To Retire Magazine has published what they call "The Short List" for Retirement Re-Location.
The selected master-planned communities included in the list were chosen based on first-person testimonials.
If you can believe that "first-person testimonials" are in any way reliable and objective and unbiased, then the list is exactly what you need. Here's the source:
https://www.wheretoretire.com/50Best.cfm 
The East Coast states of North Carolina, Florida, South Carolina and Georgia
at

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Straight Out of Central Casting: Trump's New Apprentice John Ratcliffe

The stakes are getting higher in Trump's 'House of Cards' current gambling concession in the back rooms inside the White House. There's a new hand-selected nominee named to fill the post for the Director of National Intelligence. The choice of a congressman from Texas is no doubt the most dangerous choice the president could make - it insults the intelligence of the American people.
WHAT'S IN A NAME: Ratcliffe
"On Sunday, just hours before Trump announced his nomination, Ratcliffe declared a political victory for the president, and defeat for the Democrats, who he said “overplayed their hand.”
Who is John Ratcliffe?
Washington Post
Who is John Ratcliffe?
New DNI pick made his name as a Trump loyalist.
FACTOID: "Ratcliffe has not denied that Russians interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. And before Trump came along, he, too, was allied with more classic Republican conservatives, serving as an aide to former presidential candidate and current Senator Mitt Romney (Utah) during his presidential campaign, helping scout potential Cabinet picks."
SHUFFLING THE DECK: ". . . Last year, Ratcliffe’s name was floated as a possible replacement for former attorney general Jeff Sessions, whom Trump replaced with William P. Barr.
Ratcliffe, who briefly served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas under President George W. Bush and worked as the office’s chief of anti-terrorism and national security, was at the time involved in the GOP-led congressional investigations of the FBI’s Trump and Clinton inquiries as a member of the Judiciary Committee.
He joined the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year, where he has been considered the GOP’s replacement for former congressman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), an accomplished prosecutor skilled in executing detailed, stinging examinations of witnesses in closed-door interviews and from the dais. . . "
_________________________________________________________________________
The Danger of John Ratcliffe WIRED OPINION
by Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) is a contributing editor for WIRED who covers national security.
His next book, The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, will be published in September. He can be reached at garrett.graff@gmail.com.
"The president’s intent to nominate Robert Mueller’s chief Capitol Hill inquisitor to head the nation’s intelligence community might just be the Trump administration’s most alarming personnel decision yet—even in an administration whose list of departed, disgraced, and indicted former top officials reads like a casualty list from Game of Thrones.
The news Sunday that Trump planned to tap representative John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) as director of national intelligence, replacing former senator Dan Coats, left many even on Capitol Hill scratching their heads: Who?
. . . Indeed, very few Americans had ever heard of the congressman from Texas’s fourth district until last Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, when Ratcliffe lambasted former special counsel Robert Mueller about “not exonerating” Donald Trump. Watching the hearing on TV with a group of journalists, I turned to my colleagues and said, “He’s auditioning to be DNI.”
Days later, Axios scooped the news of Ratcliffe’s impending nomination, saying Trump was “thrilled” by the congressman’s performance at the Mueller hearing.
That the administration is so predictable in its terrible choices should not make those terrible choices any less troubling. . . "
MORE QUESTIONS THAT NEED TO GET ASKED:
Did John Ratcliffe Misrepresent Role in Anti-Terrorism Case?
at

Trump Terminates Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty > New Arms Race

"We are fast approaching the date of official termination of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty on Friday 02 August. The loss of INF, which for more than 30 years served as a core element of European security, throws the precarious state of nuclear arms control into sharp relief.
There will be significant international attention paid to the demise of this landmark treaty, . . and the future of international arms control writ large. . . "
That's the warning just two hours ago from the European Leadership Network
“We should all be aware that if the INF treaty collapses and the US and Russia allow the current political tension to undermine the possibility of extending new START—which must be agreed before February 2021— the US and Russia will return to an unregulated nuclear arms competition that has not been seen since the early days of the Cold War”
________________________________________________________________
Thanks to Trump the INF Treaty terminates in two days - 02 August.
Billions have been approved for a new war planned by The Pentagon.
It's time for everyone to "Re-Nuclearize".
North Korea's Little Rocket Man has been testing and launching intermediate-range ballistic missiles in response to threats posed by Trump and the positioning of THAAD American-made missiles in South Korea.
American armed forces are planning $58,000,000,000 in new contracts for an Ground-Based Deterrent System.
Both China and Russia have developed new hypersonic weapons for defense. . . it's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world.
Here's a flash-back to 1964 and The Cold War:
16 January 2018
Dr. Strangelove: Psychotic Thriller By Stanley Kubrick
https://mesazona.blogspot.com
Visions of future past flash back to haunt us from this comedy produced in 1964.
At that point-in-time your MesaZona blogger's past life part-time job while in high school was as an usher at a college movie theater, earning $1.25 per hour. 
One of the benefits in that position was the opportunity to watch every movie appearing in the big screen - at a tender young age this was an eye-opening introduction to the genius of Stanley Kubrick . . .  and now some 50+ years on it serves as a visual reminder of some current "news" in the first year of fear and chaos here in the United States circa 2017-2018
Vera Lynn - We'll Meet Again (Dr. Strangelove Ending Updated)
Published on Apr 14, 2017
Here's an updated version of the ending to Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) to the song "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn. It features declassified HD film footage of some of the 331 atmospheric nuclear tests conducted by the United States between 1945 and 1962. Vera Lynn is still alive and turned 100 last month


 
at

Media Matters: What is Evan McMullin Doing To Muddle-In-The-Middle of Mitch McConnell's Motions To Change Election Laws?

The media got a new tag last week "Moscow Mitch" to hit on the Republican-controlled Speaker of the U.S. Senate in Congress, Mitch McConnell. He could get un-seated
Political divisions are getting deeper than ever with more name-calling per usual Washington power-ploys magnified more in the aftermath of Mueller's reluctant appearance in public. It's the latest rising firestorm to blow-up in the heat of the new 2020 election campaigns.
Republican Party loyalties are getting called into question and challenged. Mitch McConnell is vulnerable in Kentucky
Some people want to get back in the media spotlight - one of the talking-heads appearing is a guy from Utah who says he's trying to save democracy. . . or is it a new opportunity?
Perhaps like many others, Evan McMullin, a former CIA operative and failed Presidential candidate in 2018, might be on a new mission to unseat both the President and The Speaker of The Senate.
The features editor of The New Yorker published an interview in 2017 when Evan McMullin seemed to offer himself as a bipartisan symbol of opposition—and he was saying all the right things as "an unlikely civic superego for the Age of Trump".
(BLOGGER NOTE: Please scroll down farther to read extracts from David Haglund's piece)
_________________________________________________________________________

All the talking-points rolled-out in this Opinion Piece in The Washington Post
Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset
By Dana Milbank Op-ed columnist covering national politics Bio Follow  

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) attempted to move a bill that would require campaigns to report to the FBI contributions by foreign nationals.
>“I object,” said Hyde-Smith.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tried to force action on bipartisan legislation, written with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and supported by Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), protecting lawmakers from foreign cyberattacks. “The majority leader, our colleague from Kentucky, must stop blocking this common-sense legislation and allow this body to better defend itself against foreign hackers,” he said.
>“I object,” repeated Hyde-Smith.
The next day, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the minority leader, asked for the Senate to pass the Securing America’s Federal Elections Act, already passed by the House, that would direct $600 million in election assistance to states and require backup paper ballots.
McConnell himself responded this time, reading from a statement, his chin melting into his chest, his trademark thin smile on his lips. “It’s just a highly partisan bill from the same folks who spent two years hyping up a conspiracy theory about President Trump and Russia,” he said.
“Therefore, I object.”
McConnell also objected to another attempt by Blumenthal to pass his bill . . .
But McConnell has blocked all such attempts, including:
  • A bipartisan bill requiring Facebook, Google and other Internet companies to disclose purchasers of political ads, to identify foreign influence.
  • A bipartisan bill to ease cooperation between state election officials and federal intelligence agencies.
  • A bipartisan bill imposing sanctions on any entity that attacks a U.S. election.
  • A bipartisan bill with severe new sanctions on Russia for its cybercrimes.
> This year, National Intelligence Director Daniel Coats — Trump’s intelligence director — told the Senate Intelligence Committee that “foreign actors will view the 2020 U.S. elections as an opportunity to advance their interests. We expect them to refine their capabilities and add new tactics.” .  .
"But one man blocks it all — while offering no alternative of his own.
Presumably he thinks whatever influence Russia exerts over U.S. elections will benefit him (he's up for reelection in 2020) and his party.
. . . McConnell has no shame.

He is aiding and abetting Putin’s dismantling of Americans’ self-governance. A leader who won’t protect our country from attack is no patriot."
________________________________________________________________________
TLDR > Too Long Didn't Read?? ....Try this
Why Is Mitch McConnell Blocking Bills To Protect U.S. Elections? | MSNBC
Published on Jul 26, 2019
Views: 362,204
Running time: 12:37
"Mitch McConnell ignores the warnings of Robert Mueller about the seriousness of Russian interference in our elections.
Evan McMullin and Michael Weiss explain why election security legislation is vital to the integrity of a free and fair election in 2020."

________________________________________________________________________________
In February 2017 Evan McMullin was "a person-of- interest" for David Haglund, the features editor of The New Yorker
Evan McMullin Is Trying to Save Democracy
"The former C.I.A. operative and failed Presidential candidate has become an unlikely civic superego for the age of Trump. McMullin seemed to offer himself as a bipartisan symbol of opposition—and he was saying all the right things.
SOME BACKGROUND:
"McMullin’s critique of Trump began quietly, when he was serving as the chief policy director for the House Republican Conference, in 2015.
Trump announced his candidacy that June, and right away, McMullin saw in Trump “telltale signs of authoritarianism,” he said. “Attacks on the press. Probably even before that, attacks on Hispanics and African-Americans. Those two things really concerned me.”
After Trump won the nomination, McMullin announced that he was running for President of the United States.
The bid was so quixotic that a handful of observers, some suspicious of McMullin’s C.I.A. background, wondered if someone was pulling the strings. “Who put him up?” Sean Hannity asked on his radio show in late October. “The Bush people? The Romney people?”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BLOGGER NOTE: Let's pause a moment and observe that here in Mesa, contemporaneous almost in time, two conservative Mesa Mormon Republicans were caught on open mic during a public meeting here when Mesa Mayor John Giles encouraged AZ Senator Jeff Flake to also run for President as 'a foil', not knowing the microphone was open and saying that Trump is a fool . . .
_________________________________________________________________________
BLOGGER NOTE: This was the strategy and the outcome:
"At the time Hannity was asking these questions, the polls had tightened in Utah, where McMullin, who’s Mormon, had based his campaign, with an eye on the one, exceedingly unlikely path he had to the White House:
 If the race were close, and he prevailed in a single state, he might prevent Trump and Hillary Clinton from attaining an Electoral College majority. In that case, the House of Representatives would decide the next President, and, who knows, maybe they would settle on him. . . .
He didn’t finish higher than third in any state.
But by then Trump had publicly complained about “that guy in Utah,” and when Trump went on his “victory tour,” in December, he blasted “McMuffin” repeatedly, boosting McMullin’s stature.
For those who aren’t conspiracy-minded, this is the more plausible doubt to harbor about McMullin: that taking a stand was also a way of kickstarting his career.
“Frankly, I think that’s a good question,” he said, when I asked whether he was opportunistic."
_________________________________________________________________________________
“And it goes back to my belief that influential institutions should have constant scrutiny. Well, so should people who seek to lead us.”
McMullin tends to talk this way, with an almost unrelenting high-mindedness.
He explained that the attention is simply a necessary vehicle for the work he’s trying to do:
> to encourage civic engagement
> to point out the early signs of authoritarianism
> and to demonstrate, by example, that it is still O.K. to vociferously criticize, and even to mock, our leaders."
__________________________________________________________
WHAT ELSE DID WE FIND OUT IN THE INTERVIEW?
> Stand Up Republic, a 501(c)4 nonprofit.
When we met, it was still in the planning stages. The goal, he said, “would be to engage people in defense of democracy and our Constitution, which means engaging with Congress and their leaders to advance things or to stop things, or whatever.”
> He said that they also wants to promote “truth and some democratic principles and you know, respect for the Constitution. I mean, broadly, I would think of it as digital media plus movement. Movement plus media.”
> . . . If McMullin’s lack of color was a handicap on the campaign trail—“When he talks about his personal story at rallies, it sounds mostly like a man quickly reciting his résumé,” a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune wrote in late October—it seems, in the early days of the Trump Administration, to be part of his appeal.
"As the President unleashes his id on the American people, McMullin is a kind of civic superego, a Constitution-minded Jiminy Cricket.
> Listening to him speak about responsibility and fundamental principles, it was not hard to conjure his years as a Boy Scout and, later, a Mormon missionary.
> I thought I also detected a trace of that Mormon upbringing, which I share, in his sense of vocation, of being called to things
> McMullin grew up in a working-class family in Auburn, Washington, the oldest of four siblings.
> His father worked for Boeing and then a power company, while his mother sold bulk goods out of their garage. (She now oversees economic development efforts in Everett.)
> One night when McMullin was in junior high, his father rented the political thriller “Three Days of the Condor,” from 1975, which stars Robert Redford as a C.I.A. analyst and Faye Dunaway as the beautiful woman pulled into his effort to thwart a complicated plot hatched by rogue operatives.
> McMullin served a two-year Mormon mission in Brazil, then went to Brigham Young University, in Utah, where he minored in Middle Eastern studies.
He wrote a couple of papers about counterterrorism, and he “had this sense that terrorism was going to be a big issue for the country, going forward,”

> Meanwhile, he was accepted into a C.I.A. program for college students; every other semester, he worked at Langley.
“I had to pinch myself. It was amazing what they allowed me to do and the kind of access they gave me.
I mean, I was reading intercepts of all kinds of crazy things happening around the world.”
> What got him excited watching “Three Days of the Condor” was “seeing people committed to serving their country.”
The Redford character in that movie isn’t James Bond; he’s a low-level analyst who just happens to get caught up in something much bigger than himself.
> McMullin was at Langley on September 11, 2001. I asked what he was doing that morning. “It wasn’t anything flashy or C.I.A.-ish,” he said. “It was just—candidly, I was doing an Excel class.”
> Eventually, McMullin, who had studied Arabic for a year after college and then worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in Jordan, served undercover in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
> “It’s not like I was going up to the local terror leader and saying, ‘Hey, I’d like to join your terror cell,’ ” he said. “It doesn’t work that way. Instead, you’re the spymaster, right? You’re recruiting and managing and directing a network of penetrations of terrorist groups and foreign governments, and you’re managing those people.”
> In 2009, McMullin went to business school at Wharton—“because one of my biggest professional deficiencies is that I had not acquired many analytical skills,” he explained.
>  Later, while working at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco, he volunteered for the Romney-Ryan Presidential campaign.
Like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, McMullin thinks
  • that the federal government is too large
  • if he were President, he “would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade,” he said.
  • He personally believes in “traditional marriage,” as he puts it, but he doesn’t think the government should make that decision for people.
> His parents divorced about a decade ago, and his mother, whom he called “one of the most amazing people I know on earth for a variety of reasons,” is now married to a woman. “Her partner, Michelle, is the kindest person you’ll ever meet,” he said.
When I asked if their relationship had informed his position on the issue, he said it hadn’t.
“I know there are a lot of politicians who—you know, they were opposed to gay marriage and then they find out their son’s gay and so then all of a sudden they’re changing their views.” He paused. “You know what, I’m not going to delegitimize or disrespect that. But I do think that there should be some principled view.”
at

Monday, July 29, 2019

JPMorgan, UBS Among Five Banks Facing $1 Billion FX-Rigging Lawsuit

Currency-rigging! Is this 12-Millionenth one or what? Covers the years 20017-2013 ..could go on unresolved for 5 years.
They say 'it's not a lot of money'
Published on Jul 29, 2019
Views: 136 at time of upload to this blog
Jul.29 -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS Group AG, Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc., and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc are the target of a class-action lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion over allegations of foreign-exchange rigging. Bloomberg's Sonali Basak and Sarah Ponczek report on "Bloomberg Daybreak: Americas."
at No comments:

Peter Thiel on "The Portal", Episode #001: "An Era of Stagnation & Unive...

Eric works for Peter . . .  
Billionaire Technologist and Investor Peter Thiel is the guest as he joins Eric Weinstein in the studio to Launch "The Portal": a new podcast and video channel dedicated to our search for a path to a more transcendent and transformative future together. Peter and Eric discuss the link between growth and violence and the need to rejoin the quest for a more energizing future for all levels of society.
at No comments:

New York -- before the City | Eric Sanderson

This story starts in 1609 and with a map made 150 years later from a British cartographer. It is remarkable - note the title of the project
Views: 809,652
400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Eric Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of Mannahatta's fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife -- accurate down to the block -- when Times Square was a wetland and you couldn't get delivery
at No comments:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)