Luzinski's Gut wrote:Kaplan was outstanding in the 90s when no one really knew who he was. He was one of the first to identify that world peace wasn't coming now that the Soviet Union was gone. He understood the cultural, social and tribal desire for independence, and how that was going to really going to create some major problems under the Pax Americana.

Then the fame caught up with him, he wrote some atrocious books with major neocon slants, and he's been generally terrible since then. He's living off past glories, and it's not been going too well for him.

Werthless wrote:random thought: I can't wait for the primary debates. It should spice up this thread a bit.

If 99 percent of all the new income goes to the top 1 percent, you could triple it, it wouldn't matter much to the average middle class person. The whole size of the economy and the GDP doesn't matter if people continue to work longer hours for low wages and you have 45 million people living in poverty. You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.

“It [the NY Times] is giving orders to the US and other [countries'] forces. You are a newspaper and you will know your place. You will say there is pressure in Erdoğan's Turkey and you want American intervention in this. You are interfering in Turkey by running this story and going outside the boundaries of your freedom,” Erdoğan declared during a speech at a panel by the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) in İstanbul on Monday.

In an editorial titled "Dark clouds Over Turkey," the newspaper last weekend pointed to critics' fear that a new crackdown is starting to ensure that Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AK Party) wins in upcoming parliamentary elections slated for June 7. Erdoğan has not made it a secret that he wants to see the ruling AK Party win the necessary number of seats so that he can expand his presidential powers.

The newspaper said Erdoğan has a long history of intimidating and co-opting the Turkish media, but "new alarms were set off" this week when the Hürriyet daily's editors faced criminal complaints after Erdoğan described a news report headline as "a threat to his life."

The headline, which reported on the death sentence given to former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, allegedly sent a subtle signal that the Turkish president may face a similar fate.

"Not only is the accusation distorted and absurd; it is a slap at the idea that Turkey is still a democracy," the newspaper editorial stated.

The assault on the Hürriyet daily is not the only troubling development in the Turkish media sphere in the past week. A prosecutor in Ankara also called for a ban on several media outlets, including the Samanyolu and Bugün TV stations, for "promoting terrorism." The editorial mentioned the fact that Zaman daily Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı was among 16 journalists arrested last December. It noted that some journalists fear the government plans to use anti-terrorism laws to shut down the parent companies and the dailies Hürriyet and Zaman -- the two main independent media sources -- ahead of the election and confiscate their assets.

Lynch warned that inaction from the Senate would cause "a serious lapse" in the government's ability to protect Americans.
A day earlier, Obama urged Congress "to work through this recess and identify a way to get this done."

"This needs to get done," he said during an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

The National Security Agency's bulk metadata collection program, which has allowed the NSA to collect and store phone data on millions of Americans, will sunset on Monday unless Congress passes legislation by midnight on Sunday.

Obama and Lynch have endorsed the USA Freedom Act, the bill to make changes to the Patriot Act that overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives but came three votes shy of passage in the Senate this weekend. Obama said Tuesday that bill "strikes an appropriate balance; our intelligence communities are confident that they can work with the authorities that are provided in that act."
Under that plan, phone companies would store their customers' metadata and the NSA would need to obtain a specific, targeted warrant to get a customer's data.

jerseyhoya wrote:

If 99 percent of all the new income goes to the top 1 percent, you could triple it, it wouldn't matter much to the average middle class person. The whole size of the economy and the GDP doesn't matter if people continue to work longer hours for low wages and you have 45 million people living in poverty. You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.

Sorry Bernie Sanders, Deodorant Isn't Starving America's Children

Gotta love the progressive impulse to restrict choice on everything other than abortion as a solution to problems.

jerseyhoya wrote:

If 99 percent of all the new income goes to the top 1 percent, you could triple it, it wouldn't matter much to the average middle class person. The whole size of the economy and the GDP doesn't matter if people continue to work longer hours for low wages and you have 45 million people living in poverty. You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.

Sorry Bernie Sanders, Deodorant Isn't Starving America's Children

Gotta love the progressive impulse to restrict choice on everything other than abortion as a solution to problems.

jerseyhoya wrote:Our priorities would seem to be on feeding children. The federal government spends tens of billions of dollars every year on programs feeding children, and no money diversifying Old Spice's offerings.

He seems to be suggesting that there's a relationship of some sort between this proliferation of choice in a segment of products he deems less important and the availability of food for young people. If he doesn't think they're related, why mention them together? Just let the planners plan, and everything will be sorted out, I suppose.

Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces.

The push to include an exception to the mandated wage increase for companies that let their employees collectively bargain was the latest unexpected detour as the city nears approval of its landmark legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020.

For much of the past eight months, labor activists have argued against special considerations for business owners, such as restaurateurs, who said they would have trouble complying with the mandated pay increase.

But Rusty Hicks, who heads the county Federation of Labor and helps lead the Raise the Wage coalition, said Tuesday night that companies with workers represented by unions should have leeway to negotiate a wage below that mandated by the law.

"With a collective bargaining agreement, a business owner and the employees negotiate an agreement that works for them both. The agreement allows each party to prioritize what is important to them," Hicks said in a statement. "This provision gives the parties the option, the freedom, to negotiate that agreement. And that is a good thing."

jerseyhoya wrote:Our priorities would seem to be on feeding children. The federal government spends tens of billions of dollars every year on programs feeding children, and no money diversifying Old Spice's offerings.

He seems to be suggesting that there's a relationship of some sort between this proliferation of choice in a segment of products he deems less important and the availability of food for young people. If he doesn't think they're related, why mention them together? Just let the planners plan, and everything will be sorted out, I suppose.