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I first got lassoed in while I was in my 20s. Still young, in pretty good shape, and adventuresome enough that I wanted out of my little town, though I’d been an OTR truck driver for a few years already.
A fiery redhead from the Southeast promised some good times, so I loaded up my old rustbucket Chevy and chugged across a thousand miles or so, figuring on finding a cheap place to live if we didn’t hit it off.
Well… I wouldn’t call it “hit it off”, but I got a decent job at a regional trucking company and split the rent with her. She eventually got canned from her job, as since I moved in, she was spending more time going into the city to shop and hang out with her friends. A silent plea led me to marry her out of pity.
We never really had sex. She put on a hyper-religious front any time the subject came up, but the promised nookie after marriage never really happened. I got depressed, obese, and started noticing that our bills weren’t getting paid, even though I made plenty for our single-wide six-pack lifestyle.
I won’t go into where the money went… maybe in another post.
So… no kids, no happy, no money… one argument (well, screaming session… usually from her) that ended in “Don’t you LOVE ME???” I replied, “I don’t even like you.”
I loaded up my old pickup and left. A friend’s parents let me stay cheap in a house they’d bought for the surrounding acreage, and I started making a life again. Money started accumulating in my checking account (created one for myself as soon as I left, and took my name off the joint account). I bought a van, old enough that it was easy to work on and cheap to insure and register, and after a year or so, loaded everything I could into it, sold-gave away-or burned everything else, and left the state. She couldn’t make rent, so became a one-woman swarm of locusts, making her rounds amongst old friends, staying with them until well past her welcome. She did eventually file for divorce, apparently so she could rope in another victim. Otherwise I never heard from her… for which I guess I’m pretty lucky.I rode a bicycle everywhere in my new town, joining a bike club and hitting the gym several times a week. Got a job, still driving for the most part, but with a lot of physical labor thrown in. For the first time in years, I was really living for myself, and on my ‘extra’ bike rides by the river, could smile and bask in the freedom I was experiencing. I dated a few women, made friends with a few, and overall had a pretty good time.
I’ve always been a fan of living well within my means, so even though I wasn’t making gobs of cash, I never wanted for anything and had a little set aside for emergencies. Though I kept my van insured and registered, I only drove it maybe once or twice a month. I was in fabulous shape, and my bicycle was my chariot to anywhere I cared to go.Then I met her… on the trail. She was walking and I was riding. We got into a conversation, had our first date at a pizza place right by the trail.
Had to be right, a physical woman, intelligent and interesting… and interested in what I had to say???
We rode together a lot at first, and riding to her apartment in the hills put me in better shape than I was in before. She made a lot more than I did, and I didn’t want that to be an issue, and wasn’t for me anyway. I still paid for meals together because I figured it was my role as the man in the relationship. She did occasionally toss that up and covered the check.
I followed her to a bigger city, where she’d been offered a better paying job, and tried to ride like I had, but gave up and bought a car. I still worked for the same company, as they had a terminal there too, so I hadn’t given much up in that area… even made a couple extra bucks an hour.
By the time we moved back (she was offered a supervisory position at her old workplace) we both had suffered a bit in the cycling department, now unable to keep up with our old riding club. I got depressed again, and started just playing the role of Husband, as she wasn’t comfortable with long-term “shacking up”… so I caved.
I did get a job in trucking safety, after a short stint at working on airplanes, and I was making more than I ever had, though still about half what she was making. We had a daughter, and decided that with her higher salary and benefits (including hospital-employee health insurance) I would quit my job and stay home to take care of our little girl.
…which I did for 4 years. I did work part-time at a local airport FBO just to maintain my sanity (and to be around the airplanes) and took some college courses… partially to show that I wasn’t just a bonbon popping mousewife, but also because it seemed to bring her pleasure to think that I was bettering myself.We moved again… back to where I left the Starter Wife (no contact, haven’t seen her since I left her), and I eventually found a job in the I.T. industry doing support work. At this point, she was making about 4x what I make, and our daughter was now going to school.
It was becoming clear-ish that she was having some emotional difficulty with our relationship, and one time when I pressed her, she finally came out with the “not the man I married” line. I’ll admit… once again I’d gotten fat and inactive. The sex had fallen off from good’n’frequent to maybe quarterly if I was lucky. The first time she brought up the word “separation”, I talked her back down… but only realize in retrospect that she’d, if only subconsciously, planned that all along. She just wanted me to Change. I did, some. I started projecting more affection… but wasn’t really getting much in return. All the physical contact is pretty much up to me. Sex has gone the way of the dodo, so all we’re left with is a dry peck on the lips in the morning… and one in the evening.
I know what I was when we met. I was Adonis. I was lean, muscular, and could ride my bike indefinitely. I was Free, and carried myself as such. Not so much anymore.
Now, at 350 lbs (I’m 6’4″), most of my bikes stay hanging in the basement for fear that I’ll break them. I buy useless toys in vain attempts at a minute of happiness. I dream sometimes of building a stout enough bike to carry me back into fitness, but then a voice in the back of my head convinces me that it’s too much work, it’ll feel horrible, and why bother anyway?Intellectually, I see all this, and know what’s going on. I’ve let myself be claimed, and don’t “feel” I have a claim to myself, or to happiness if my family isn’t happy first. The other side of my brain knows this is B.S.
Anyway… Hi! Glad to have found this group… and please be gentle. I don’t know where on the scale of “pathetic” I fall compared to others here, but I figure that, to myself… it’s pretty bad.
The US Social Security Crisis is Worse than People Think [1]
Lance Roberts
RealInvestmentAdvice
April 26, 2018[Y: In keeping with my last post on “Who will buy US Treasuries when Social Security stops buying them?” [10], the conditions of pensions was briefly discussed. However this is an important topic and to do it justice we need to understand it a bit more and why it has failed. Y]
Lance Roberts has more than 25 years in private banking, investment management and private and venture capital. He is the Chief Editor of the Real Investment Report, a weekly subscriber based-newsletter that is distributed nationwide.
He writes the Real Investment Daily blog which is read by thousands nationwide from individuals to professionals, and his opinions are frequently sought after by major media sources.
His writings and research have also been featured on several of the nation’s biggest financial blog sites such as the Pragmatic Capitalist, Credit Writedowns, The Daily Beast, Zero Hedge and Seeking Alpha
Last year I penned an article discussing the “Unavoidable Pension Crisis:” [2]
- “Currently, many pension funds, like the one in Houston, are scrambling to slightly lower return rates, issue debt, raise taxes or increase contribution limits to fill some of the gaping holes of underfunded liabilities in their plans. The hope is such measures combined with an ongoing bull market, and increased participant contributions, will heal the plans in the future.
- This is not likely to be the case.
- This problem is not something born of the last ‘financial crisis,’ but rather the culmination of 20-plus years of financial mismanagement.
- An April 2016 Moody’s analysis [3] pegged the total 75-year unfunded liability for all state and local pension plans at $3.5 trillion. That’s the amount not covered by current fund assets, future expected contributions, and investment returns at assumed rates ranging from 3.7% to 4.1%. Another calculation [4] from the American Enterprise Institute comes up with $5.2 trillion, presuming that long-term bond yields average 2.6%.
- With employee contribution requirements extremely low, averaging about 15% of payroll, the need to stretch for higher rates of return have put pensions in a precarious position and increases the underfunded status of pensions.”
Larger Picture: http://realinvestmentadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/pension-funding-contributions-040517.pngBut it is actually worse than we originally thought as Aaron Brown recently penned [5] :
- Today, the hard stop is five to 10 years away, within the career plans of current officials. In the next decade, and probably within five years, some large states are going to face insolvency due to pensions, absent major changes.
- If we extrapolate from the past, rather than use promises in the state budget, current employees plus the state will contribute about $25 billion over those seven years, which could provide another few years before the till is empty. But it will also add around $60 billion of future liabilities to current employees.
- The system probably breaks down before the pension fund gets to zero, for example if assets were to fall below $30 billion while projected future liabilities exceeded $300 billion. Even the most optimistic people would have to admit the situation is unsustainable. This could happen in three years in a bad stock market, or perhaps 10 with good stock returns. But fund assets are so low relative to payouts that good returns aren’t that helpful.
- The next phase of public pension reform will likely be touched off by a stock market decline that creates the real possibility of at least one state fund running out of cash within a couple of years. The math says that tax increases and spending cuts cannot do much.“
But the problem is not just in the United States, but the mismanagement of assets combined with irrational and flawed return expectations has spread globally. Visual Capitalist [6] recently took a look at the global pension problem stating:
- “According to an analysis by the World Economic Forum (WEF), there was a combined retirement savings gap in excess of $70 trillion in 2015, spread between eight major economies…
- The WEF says the deficit is growing by $28 billion every 24 hours – and if nothing is done to slow the growth rate, the deficit will reach $400 trillion by 2050, or about five times the size of the global economy today.”
Larger picture: https://realinvestmentadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/VC-Pension-Crisis-042318-1024×955.png- “The graphic illuminates a growing problem attached to an aging population (and those that will be supporting it).
- Since social security programs were initially developed, the circumstances around work and retirement have shifted considerably. Life expectancy has risen by three years per decade since the 1940s, and older people are having increasingly long life spans. With the retirement age hardly changing in most economies, this longevity means that people are spending longer not working without the savings to justify it.
- This problem is amplified by the size of generations and fertility rates. The population of retirees globally is expected to grow from 1.5 billion to 2.1 billion between 2017-2050, while the number of workers for each retiree is expected to halve from eight to four over the same timeframe.
- The WEF has made clear that the situation is not trivial, likening the scenario to ‘financial climate change.’
- Like climate change, some of the early signs of this retirement savings gap can be ‘sandbagged for the time being – but if not handled properly in the medium and long-term, the adverse effects could be overwhelming”
While we all want to ignore the problem, it is isn’t going away. More importantly, there is nothing that can, or will, change the two primary problems fueling the crisis.
Problem #1: DemographicsWith pension funds already wrestling with largely underfunded liabilities, the shifting demographics are further complicating funding problems.
One of the primary problems continues to be the decline in the ratio of workers per retiree as retirees are living longer (increasing the relative number of retirees), and lower birth rates (decreasing the relative number of workers.)
However, this “support ratio” is not only declining in the U.S. but also in much of the developed world. This is due to two demographic factors: increased life expectancy coupled with a fixed retirement age, and a decrease in the fertility rate.
In 1950, there were 7.2 people aged 20–64 for every person of 65 or over in the OECD countries. By 1980, the support ratio dropped to 5.1 and by 2010 it was 4.1. It is projected to reach just 2.1 by 2050.
Of course, as I have discussed previously [7], the problem is that while the “baby boom” generation may be heading towards retirement years, there is little indication a large majority of them will be actually retiring. As Richard Eisenberg recently noted [8].
- “The dark, depressing and sometimes physically painful life of a tribe of men and women in their 50s and 60s who are surviving America in the twenty-first century. Not quite homeless, they are ‘houseless,’ living in secondhand RVs, trailers and vans and driving from one location to another to pick up seasonal low-wage jobs, if they can get them, with little or no benefits.
- The ‘workamper’ jobs range from helping harvest sugar beets to flipping burgers at baseball spring training games to Amazon’s “CamperForce,” seasonal employees who can walk the equivalent of 15 miles a day during Christmas season pulling items off warehouse shelves and then returning to frigid campgrounds at night. Living on less than $1,000 a month, in certain cases, some have no hot showers.
- Many saw their savings wiped out during the Great Recession or were foreclosure victims and, felt they’d spent too long losing a rigged game. Some were laid off from high-paying professional jobs. Few have chosen this life. Few think they can find a way out of it. They’re downwardly mobile older Americans in mobile homes.”
They, of course, are part of a large majority of individuals being dependent on the various pension systems in retirement, and the ultimate burden will fall on those next in line.
Problem #2: Markets Don’t Compound
The biggest problem, however, is the continually perpetrated “lie” that markets compound over time. Pension computations are performed by actuaries using assumptions regarding current and future demographics, life expectancy, investment returns, levels of contributions or taxation, and payouts to beneficiaries, among other variables. The biggest problem, following two major bear markets, and sub-par annualized returns since the turn of the century, is the expected investment return rate.
Using faulty assumptions is the linchpin to the inability to meet future obligations. By over-estimating returns, it has artificially inflated future pension values and reduced the required contribution amounts by individuals and governments paying into the pension system.
It is the same problem for the average American who plans on getting 6-8% return a year on their 401k plan, so why save money? Which explains why 8-out-of-10 American’s are woefully underfunded for retirement.
As shown in the long-term, total return, inflation-adjusted chart of the S&P 5oo below, the difference between actual and compounded (7% average annual rate) returns are two very different things. The market does NOT return an AVERAGE rate each year and one negative return compounds the future shortfall.
This is the problem that pension funds have run into and refuse to understand.
Pensions STILL have annual investment return assumptions ranging between 7–8% even after years of underperformance.
However, the reason assumptions remain high is simple. If these rates were lowered 1–2 percentage points, the required pension contributions from salaries, or via taxation, would increase dramatically. For each point reduction in the assumed rate of return would require roughly a 10% increase in contributions.
For example, if a pension program reduced its investment return rate assumption from 8% to 7%, a person contributing $100 per month to their pension would be required to contribute $110. Since, for many plan participants, particularly unionized workers, increases in contributions are a hard thing to obtain. Therefore, pension managers are pushed to sustain better-than-market return assumptions which requires them to take on more risk.
But therein lies the problem.
The chart below is the S&P 500 TOTAL return from 1995 to present. I have then projected for using variable rates of market returns with cycling bull and bear markets, out to 2060.
I have then run projections of 8%, 7%, 6%, 5% and 4% average rates of return from 1995 out to 2060. (I have made some estimates for slightly lower forward returns due to demographic issues.)
Larger Figure: http://realinvestmentadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Pension-Problems-Returns-040417-3.pngGiven real-world return assumptions, pension funds SHOULD lower their return estimates to roughly 3-4% in order to potentially meet future obligations and maintain some solvency.
They won’t make such reforms because “plan participants” won’t let them. Why? Because:
1. It would require a 40% increase in contributions by plan participants which they simply can not afford.
2. Given that many plan participants will retire LONG before 2060 there simply isn’t enough time to solve the issues, and;
3. The next bear market, as shown, will devastate the plans abilities to meet future obligations without massive reforms immediately.
In a recent note by my friend John Mauldin [9], he discussed an email Rob Arnott, of Research Affiliates, sent regarding this specific issue:
If our logic is sound, we earn 0.8% from our bonds (40% allocation x 2% return) and 2% to 3.2% from our stocks (60% x 3.3%, or 60% x 5.4%). Add up the return from stocks and the return from bonds, and we get 2.8% to 4% from our balanced portfolio.
Bottom line … US public service pensions are toast. One of three constituencies gets nailed:
1. The taxpayer (keeping in mind that the affluent are mobile!),
2. The current and/or future pensioners (keep in mind that private-sector pensions are now far less generous than public pensions … there’s an inequity here!), or
3. The public services that are on offer to our citizenry, net of sunk costs from servicing past generations.Most likely, it’ll be a blend of the three.”
Exactly right, and the chart above of projected stock market returns agrees with that assumption
We Are Out Of Time
Currently, 75.4 million Baby Boomers in America—about 26% of the U.S. population—have reached or will reach retirement age between 2011 and 2030. And many of them are public-sector employees. In a 2015 study of public-sector organizations, nearly half of the responding organizations stated that they could lose 20% or more of their employees to retirement within the next five years. Local governments are particularly vulnerable: a full 37% of local-government employees were at least 50 years of age in 2015.
It is no surprise that public pension funds are completely overwhelmed, but they still have not come to the realization that markets do not compound at an annual return of 8% annually. This has led to a continued degradation of funding levels as liabilities continue to pile up.
If the numbers above are right, the unfunded obligations of approximately $4-$5.6 trillion, depending on the estimates, would have to be set aside today such that the principal and interest would cover the program’s shortfall between tax revenues and payouts over the next 75 years.
That isn’t going to happen.With rates pushing higher, economic growth slowing and Central Banks extracting liquidity, we are already closer to the next major bear market than not.
The next crisis won’t be secluded to just sub-prime auto loans, student loans, and commercial real estate. It will be fueled by the “run on pensions” when “fear” prevails benefits will be lost entirely.
It’s an unsolvable problem. It will happen. And it will devastate many Americans. It is just a function of time.
Whatever amount you are saving for retirement is probably not enough
Lance Roberts
RealInvestmentBlog[Y: A few additional comments to this post.
The reasons for the real interest rate achieved rather than the expected have not been expanded on.
The expected interest figure usually quoted by hedge funds is a lie. Nominal interest achieved cannot be greater than the Fed Funds Rate for Treasuries. Real Interest is (Nominal Interest – Inflation).
Inflation in this case is not the standard CPI value used by consumers – but the rate needed to service outstanding public and non-public debt. This value can be checked at Shadowstats.com.
It is very unlikely the real interest rate exceeds 3%. During Paul Volker’s tenure as Fed Chairman during the 2008 debt crisis, real rates were negative since ZIRP was in effect. Only after 2014 did the nominal rates finally start to rise.
Take a look at this chart again on the servicing of debt needed before any interest is paid to hedge funds.
It is clear that Hedge Funds are therefore a Ponzi scheme, as alluded by Lance Roberts at the start of the article. The only (unfortunate) problem with Madoff is that he did not work for Wall Street. Y]
Citations
[1] https://realinvestmentadvice.com/the-pension-crisis-is-worse-than-you-think/
[2] https://realinvestmentadvice.com/the-unavoidable-pension-crisis/
[3] https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-US-government-pension-shortfall-overshadowed-by-Social-Security-Medicare–PR_346878
[4] https://www.aei.org/publication/are-state-and-local-government-pensions-underfunded-by-5-trillion/
[5] https://www.fa-mag.com/news/the-collapse-of-public-pension-funds-is-no-longer-a-distant-prospect-38190.html?section=40&utm_source=FA+Subscribers&utm_campaign=488478ed74-FAN_FA_News_Franklin_Temp_SecAmerica_041818&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6bebc79291-488478ed74-234730909
[6] http://www.visualcapitalist.com/pension-time-bomb-400-trillion-2050/
[7] http://realinvestmentadvice.com/dont-blame-baby-boomers-for-not-retiring/
[8] https://www.market~~~ch.com/story/many-older-americans-are-living-a-desperate-nomadic-life-2017-11-06?mod=mw_share_twitter
[9] http://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/promises-promises-pension-promises
[10] /forums/topic/who-will-buy-treasuries-when-social-security-stops-buying-them/Ummmm.. I did it for about a year in California. I worked at night. Most of the time I would park at the VA, or find a spot wherever.
Course, I never slept much. It was always working a lot of places late night.
THE COPS were my BIGGEST PROBLEM.
I laid down in the back if I needed to. But most of the time, I would just sit back and relax in my drivers chair. Have my laptop sitting on my steering wheel, and use my hot spot or wifi.
NEVER POOPED IN MY CAR OMG!. HELL NO!. Or used it as a bathrOOM. F~~~ NO!
Course, I did not really do it like most people. I had money. So, just leaving the car running when I needed heat was just fine. Course I had an electric blanket.. But I also had heated seats.. So no problem there.
Having 4 large Group 27 batteries in my car made it so that I never had to worry about my car going dead even after 8 hours. Even had an auxiliary battery starter unit to just in case.
I’m not a very good homeless person. I had a Projector to watch movies on, and I just kind of worked on my car a lot. Since I worked nights, I would sleep at the junkyard during the day. And get a free sun tan most days.
Now, I did not do it like most people. I had to be the only guy that ate at the Nordstrom’s Cafe, and slept in my car in California
There was this great place out by the rest stop I would stay at where I would see all the stars at night. And I would just leave in the early mornings. There was a Construction site there so no one bothered me.
I liked to stay up at night and catch up on school work, make videos etc. And finish my documentary work while I was there.
But as I type this. I am in my car right now. Mind you, I have a house to SLEEP IN. Sad really. I just kind of like being in my car.
Also, I only had ONE time some Bumb tried to break into my car. My windows were down and there was some hand coming in. SHOULD OF Beat that crack head up. But did not. Oh well.
Like I said. THE COPS ARE THE PART THAT SUCK. I chose to drive out of town and be in the less Busy parts of towns there while I use to stay in the Bay Area.
Sad thing is, I never slept for more then a few hours anyways, so I never had any problems staying at walmarts etc.
Gas stations were pretty cool to. Course, I would always get coffee, and tip the staff.
I never really let anyone KNOW I was homeless. I mean, if I did not smoke, my car would not even smell bad.
I did have a one of those Bathroom Ionic Breezes in my car that would always be left plugged in.
I would leave my running lights on and chill in most places.
When it came to dirty clothes, Most of the time, I would just buy new ones and throw out the old ones. Minus my work clothes. I also bought the electric shaver to clean up each day and a 120V Mini shop vac to keep the car clean.
Always had Oysters, and water in the car, but most of the time, It was coffee.
I think the best part was that I could drive to all the places I worked at, then visit the sites around. The Hills are really fun to drive in out there, so I did a TON of that.
I also became kind of well known around the Junkyards since I would always clean up the parking lot. And I came in often. Mainly just to by speakers. And Man I met some great people.
The late night parties and Drift comps at the parking lots were amazing.
Like I said, I could have stayed at my uncles place, or even out at his Hotel he purchased. But I just wanted to be alone.
All the money I saved, I paid for GOOD FOR NOTHING POS LAWYER. Should of just saved that money.
But really, the coolest thing was that in my car, I would go to the college campus, and upload things at 60Meg upload, and do a ton of my videos there. THE COPS FINALLY stopped bothering me when I GOT SICK AND TIRED OF THEIR S~~~. Gave them my lawyers card and they never f~~~ed with me again after that.
Tickets for BULLS~~~ are going to be your biggest problem. So make sure you have some kind of attorney you can call if you have any issues.
Bottom line, if your not sleeping, YOU SHOULD BE WORKING AT ALL TIMES. Save up that cash, and LEARN TO WORK ON YOUR CAR AND GET PARTS THAT YOU NEED!
Also AMAZON lockers are your BEST FRIEND! Everything I needed I just ordered.
One time I even ordered food to my car at the COllege Campus from Amazon NOW. LOL.
Like I said. I was NOT a very good homeless person.
OH and BEACHES. I would fall asleep in my car with very short shorts, and no shirt and get sun tans while I slept during the day. Or right after work.
Showers were at the COllege most days, or YMCA.
If you need more then 4 hours of sleep, I don’t recommend the lifestyle bro. Or if you plan on not working your ass off a ton.
A lot of the times, I would have people drive up and watch the movies I was projecting.
Or just YouTube Videos.
Again. I did not live the homeless lifestyle. When I wanted to relax, it was a hotel, or AirBnB.
Oh, and since I was a vet, I would go to VA centers at most collges and do work their if I needed to. or needed to upload large files and get some cheap eats too.
Now, if you want to do this, your going to have to do a few things that will make this kind of lifestyle “Clean”.
Now for me, I ate at whole foods just about each day. (LOVE THE SALAD BARS IN CALIFORNA)
OH and the Ferrari MEET up was AMAZING! Weird to was that I would be drinking it up with the car folks, and then Bamn, Want to come over to my house and work on my car? SURE! I would just tell them I was staying with my uncle in San Francisco. (that was the truth, but I just never wanted to stay there.
Again, I loved staying at Airports. I know. 22 bucks a day. Whatever. I got to watch the planes as they landed it was cool.
Again for me. I had problems sleeping man. I still do. But my van was my Happy place. Its the last place where I saw my son. And in spirit, he was always sitting next to me.
I was offered a place at a shelter. But never staid in there. (A story for another day)
But one of my FIRST videos on this site and posts was me from my car. I was there at that time for about 3 months at that point.
At the time, I was so angry. So helpless I could do nothing. And I would still do it that way if I went back.
Again. The worst parts was the police. Its something I don’t want to get into.
Now let me tell you something. I don’t know how PEOPLE POOP AND PEE IN THEIR CARS IF THEY ARE WOMEN. OMG.. WTF.
There was this one woman that did not believe that I had a home. Holy crap man. I went on dates.. Of course, I would always pay for everthing. Just my way. But yea, GETTING PUSSY was EASY if I wanted that s~~~. But NOPE.
There was this one time, I was at a job, and this woman said she was low on money, and I said I would pay her to stay at her place since I was out of town for work like an Air bnb.
That night, I ended up taking her out, and had to push her off my c~~~.
I did a ton of work for my Documentary that way. I would keep people warm in my car, and film interviews. Often while in San Franscico, I would buy food and give it to the homeless people down there.
One time I just got back from a job, and got some pizza to give away.. And that is when I saw the BIGGEST PAIR OF BING BONG BOOBIES I have ever seen. HOLY S~~~. I made it amazing. But that’s just me. I don’t fit norms.
I saw and found out what this under lifestyle was for most people . Drugs. Drinking. etc.
I was filming where the Homeless VA drug addicts would get their drugs at. That’s when I found out they were getting them AT THE VA? (Hence hence he Big VA drug bust, the cops were in on it)
Again. For me, it was enjoyable. Also as a contractor, you can stave away any Child Support or alimony payments. I wrote a thing about it how to make money and not get into a bind.
I never really had to Cook food, or anything. But I did have Beef Stew alot. The kind in that bag. I would set it on my intake and warm it up to a toasy 190′ and eat it in my car out of the bag.
For snacks, ALL THE MAN ESSENTIALS!
OYSTER! GET THEM AT WALMART!
German style Mustard.
TABASCO OF COURSE!
TURMERIC! EAT THAT S~~~!
Non SOY protein shakes etc.
Tons of supplmets.
And just stuff that was easy and healthy. Etc.I had one glass bowel, that had a rubber lid on it I would clean out with hot water at the VA center or at the College.
I would always have Bottle of water in the car. If I need to warm it up, It was put under the hood.
Also, I would use this Everyone Hand sanitizer spray that I would use each time I went to the bathroom. Or needed to keep my hands clean. Also LOTS OF WIPES! I got them at Walmart and the better ones at Whole foods.
Again, I use to wear sandals most of the time, so my feet would not smell. And socks were brought about every week and were a throw away item.
Laundry when I had some was either dry cleaning or I would just drop it off and have them do it. I would get these nice folded clothes back I could neatly put in my Rubbermaid Containers in the car. After doing laundry ONCE. I said F~~~ THAT!
My clothes were always perfect. Smelled great, and dried all the way when I had them do it.It saved me time. I did not have to spend it at the laundry mat with the c~~~s there.
It also helps if you have a Leather Interior. But I would clean my van out so much, it was just normal for me.
CONT> In next post.
You are all alone. If you have been falsely accused of RAPE, DV, PLEASE let all men know about the people who did this. http://register-her.net/web/guest/home
Topic: small victories…
‘Got a visit recently from my 80+ year old mother. We talked for some time about my life and how it’s turned out. She was once worried about that when I was a kid, but I never really was. Somehow I knew I’d be ok. She said she was a little disappointed (for me) that I had not ‘found someone’ and had a family. She wasn’t critical, just sort of concerned. She is from a different time, and from a generation that’s got few remaining survivors. She knows the world has changed, but is not connected enough to know the full extent of it.
I thought it was time to drop some truth bombs. I reminded her of some of the women in my life over the years. She’d met a few of them, and knew about a few more. The alcoholic, the gold digger, the anorexic, the anger management problem, the threats… I reminded her that I hadn’t really had much from women to work with, so I’d stopped trying. I reminded her of a relative who tried over and over again: married 4 times, taken to the cleaners financially by gold diggers, women with cocaine problems, immaturity problems, etc.
Then, I asked her if she’d like to watch a movie. I downloaded the documentary “Divorce Corp”, that I first learned about on this site. She watched it all the way through, shaking her head a couple times along the way. When it was over, I explained that I know that everyone sees me as this successful (eligible) bachelor and that there were probably rumors going around about me hating women, or fearing them as explanations about why I am not married. I explained to her that I had once liked women just fine, but that I had decided a long time ago that I was not signing up for that bulls~~~, (motioning toward the screen where the credits were rolling). I explained to her that women today used terms like “starter husband”, “trophy husband” and “retirement husband”, and that I didn’t intend to volunteer to be any of them.
She got quiet for a minute while it all sank in. For someone from her era who’s been isolated from most of what’s happened since, it was a lot of truth at one time. She got married as a teenager, and stayed married for 40+ years until my father died. Richer, poorer, sickness, health, better worse… we had all that s~~~ when I was a kid, but she never left. Finally, she said, “In my day, if a woman couldn’t stay married, she was seen as a failure and it was assumed that there was something wrong with her. And, she was treated accordingly. These women today are an embarrassment to us…”.
I told her that if I ever found a woman worthy of it, and a way to have a relationship without participating in the corrupted sewer that is family court, I would not pass it up. (I know the odds of that are essentially ZERO, but no point in disappointing an old lady anymore than she already is). I also reminded her that without one, my life does not suck. She looked around at my paid off house, toys etc and thought for a minute and then smiled and said, “I wouldn’t risk it either…”
Most parents assume that they know more than their kids, and when we are kids, that’s usually true. At some point, we become adults, but our parents don’t let go of that assumption easily. Mine once thought I was broken. She didn’t say it, but she knows now that I’ve known exactly what I was doing for a very long time. The way she talks to me is already different…
Small victories.
Look, it's not my fault that tornado dropped a house on your sister. Now get back on your broom and get your ass out of here... and take your monkeys with you
Topic: Death Statistics (USA)
The CDC/National Center for Health Statistics has some interesting information about life expectancy and the leading causes of death in the USA.
Here are the leading causes of death in 2015:
Heart disease: 633,842
Cancer: 595,930
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 155,041
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 146,571
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 140,323
Alzheimer’s disease: 110,561
Diabetes: 79,535
Influenza and Pneumonia: 57,062
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 49,959
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 44,193What alarms me is the number of people who die from accidents. Surely these deaths can be avoided with careful planning or increased awareness.
Another alarming statistic is the growing number of drug overdoses. Many Americans die from the misuse of prescription drugs as well as street drugs—which may have contents that are questionable. People are essentially buying poison from drug dealers.
If Americans want to live longer, I think we, as a nation, should think about changing our habits (reduce junk food, alcohol, cigarettes). And we should fund government programs to deal with mental health issues that lead to violence and suicide.
Perhaps eliminating too much stress from our lives is the answer since many people use alcohol, tobacco products, and drugs as a way to cope with stress. I think a healthy diet, exercise, promoting safety/accident awareness, and providing affordable mental health counseling (to prevent social conflicts and suicide) would dramatically increase the life expectancy of the average American.
If we are aware that our habits and our lifestyle will lead us to an early grave, how many of us are willing to change our ways?
Sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/health/drug-overdoses-2016-final-numbers/index.html
"I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win-and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was ‘No.’" (Atlas Shrugged)
Topic: Greetings
Hi, I’m Matt, I’d been reading these forums and website for awhile and decided to subscribe so I could add my inane comments. I was a bit over zealous and went straight in to the “relations~~~s” section with the story of my last horror story of a relationship and was told it might be better off here. I hope you’re all well. So here it is, a long and confusing read…
I don’t really know where to begin with what happened with my last girlfriend, only that it left my life in complete mess and 18 months on after she limply discarded me nothing still makes any sense and I need a little help sifting through the rubble and getting my life back.
I’m a sound engineer, specifically a monitor engineer, I do sound for the singer or band so they can hear themselves and stay in time and tune, it’s a very hard job with alot of pressure and responsibility, I was working on a tour with a well known “artist” from 2012, she thought I was cool and appreciated me so her minions started to notice me and her make up artist who I’d chatted to a couple of times took a shine to me, to be honest I thought she’d be quite a bit older than me and I never would’ve got involved with someone like her in a million years just because you know straight off the bat anyone working in fashion or that world is going to be a certain way. We had a night off in Paris one one tour in 2013 and I was walking back to the hotel with the make up artist who never came out with the scummy roadies and she’d just been there to see me, she told me her friends family were staying in her room and asked if she could stay with me, I said yes because I thought she was cute and I was drunk so whatever. Anyway we had a bit of a kiss and stuff and thats where it all began and the day I monumentally f~~~ed my life up.
The day after that I texted her and asked if she wanted to go for dinner, we had a nice night and ended up having full blown sex and were basically a couple from that point on. The only problem was she was moving from the UK to New York in a few months so I backed off a bit, she hated that and It got intense very quickly. Apparently she hadn’t been in a relationship for 6 years, something I now know is a lie, she told me she loved me within days, how could I let someone who felt that strongly about me leave? It was bollocks though, she was just scared of moving abroad on her own and saw me as someone who would protect her and someone who had their s~~~ together. I didn’t see that, I was blind to the reality of the whole thing. A couple of weeks after we got together I got offered a tour that would have seen me set for life, I turned it down to be with her and so it began.
It was win win for her, she hated being on tour so she got someone to hang out with and have sex with and kept her from being bored (seeing as she only works about 30 minutes a day) and it was good for me too at the start but then I couldn’t escape, I was expected to be there at her beck and call whenever she needed me. A few months later on the last show before she was going to move to New York we were in Chicago, I was very confused about what we were doing and went AWOL to avoid her, very grown up but I figured she’d get the message I wasn’t going to carry on as she was moving countries. She didn’t let me get away with that. She found me in the hotel and I’d got her a vitamix for a house warming/good luck/good bye present. She basically persuaded me to come with her and that was that. A 6 month tour romance and I was upping sticks and moving to New York from England, somewhere I never had any intention of moving, I was going to buy a house and live a quiet life but because I’d never been in a decent relationship I felt I had to, for her as well as myself and a few days later I was helping her move into an apartment in Brooklyn.
I’d never lived with a woman so at first it was great, I fell totally in love with her but it was hard, I moved back into my parents house in England and went back and forward to New York to be with her whenever I wasn’t away working. I decided to move there with her and started doing an 01 visa so I could live and work there. Thats when it started to get stressful and I realised what a huge undertaking this was. The visa itself cost about 10,000 dollars, so I was already resentful about that, we’d start arguing because I felt the relationship was one sided, it was me doing all the work, she just got someone to look after her for a few weeks at a time then I’d go home and work and she’d be needy and depressed so I was being pulled all over the place. I knew it wasn’t right but I loved her so I kept going, I thought it would be worth the sacrifice and that we’d be together forever.
About a year later we did the same tour again together. I’d had other offers but because we’d been doing long distance she wanted me there with her so I did it even though I hated that tour, I was treated terribly. A couple of days before the tour started they told me they couldn’t pay me what they’d promised. I was fuming, I told her about it and she just shrugged it off, didn’t care, I disappeared and went and got blind drunk, I knew I’d made a mess of things, her reaction to that told me she wasn’t right for me, she only cared about herself. It was too Late for me to go back to the other tours I’d been offered and I ended up doing it. I needed the money to move to New York. Massive mistake. We didn’t speak for a few days, I was livid at her but of course it was me who had the problem, not her for not supporting me or having my back, and I grovelled and begged and brought her a f~~~ing 1500 dollar purse to say sorry, I hated her but I also loved her and had already committed so much with the visa and the relationship I just had together on with it. That tour was f~~~ing horrible, the work was s~~~ and we were arguing all the time. A few weeks in her Nan died and I felt awful for her so I dropped all the resentment and was just there for her completely. This went on for awhile and it was exhausting. I felt like I had two jobs, one my actual job and the other looking after her. I got to the point eventually I had to leave the tour, it was killing me and we wouldn’t have survived if I’d stayed so I told her I needed to get my head down and focus on work for a couple of days then I was going to leave. Her response. “I will get my attention elsewhere then”. I was f~~~ing livid, I was in such a state I could barely function but I got on with it the best I could, the show came around and someone said something very stupid and I lost it and walked out during the first song and the show came to a stop. I told my ex I never wanted to see her again. So what did she do. Ran after me. I was due to move to New York for real with her in a few months she couldn’t be there on her own. I f~~~ing hated her. I really did. But I’m an idiot and we spent the week together at my parents house, it was never spoken about again and it was me that ended up in therapy because of my reactions, not her.
So a few months later I got the visa and moved there with her, I was desperately hoping it wouldnt have been approved so I could put an end to the whole thing to be honest. The day after we moved into our new apartment she went away for 2 weeks working for the same person I’d had to walk out of and humiliate myself doing and the rot set in. We had good times but most of the time I was there on my own and we’d argue every time she’d go away and come back. I’d sacrificed my own career to be out there with her, was doing s~~~ty work in the city and she was going all round the world and flying, 18 months later I was flat broke and we ended it and I moved back home to start my life again. Only what f~~~ing happened, 2 weeks later she changed her mind, she missed me, didn’t want it to end, I missed her too but I didn’t want to get back together unless she was going to move back, she wasn’t, but idiot here got back with her, she came back to visit the week after I’d had a trial at a place that offered me a job, it was somewhere she never would’ve wanted to live so I turned it down, we broke up again because it was too hard trying to think for 2 people again, I just needed to be working again. A few weeks later same thing happened, work started picking up, I was planning on moving to a little city in England and things were looking up, only she reappeared with the same crap about missing me and I fell for it. My goals changed every time she’d come back but I still loved her and because she’d started talking about moving back to England I thought f~~~ it, I’m going to make this work so I got a killer tour and started raking in money to move us to London. It would be better there, we had friends and family, it wasn’t as expensive. Sorted. Only it wasn’t. She moved back to London on her own and once she had her friends and family she had no need for me anymore and she gave me a weekend away with her as “a last chance”.
The weekend was dreadful, we stayed in a country hotel in Richmond and she couldn’t have made it more obvious that she didn’t give a s~~~ so I was resigned to my fate but at least I had work and could get my life back on track. We got drunk and next day had stinking hangovers. She called me an “awful person” for yawning. I just walked out and left her. The next day hugged her goodbye, nothing was said and I was on my way. Telling myself it was for the best and I had to get on with my life now.
Only what f~~~ing happened. 6 hours later she changed her f~~~ing mind again. Finally I had the b~~~~ to say no, I didn’t feel the same anymore, she was messing me around and that was it. But she hated that and wouldnt let it go. I said fine but I needed some space to get through work which was hard, she didn’t say anything but I made it clear I wasn’t done with her I just needed to do this without arguments or confusion. By the time I came around and asked her how she was a few days later her response, BY TEXT, after nearly 4 years together, was “I’ll talk to you when I get back. I’m busy with work too”, i.e it’s over. I didn’t know what the hell was going on anymore but presumed it was over and let her get on with it, a couple of weeks later I asked how she was and she couldn’t have made it more obvious she was done so I did what most blokes would do and got blind drunk and slept with the production assistant on the tour who’d said she’d liked me for years and used to stalk me, idiot that I am fell for this, I liked her too but she was fresh out of a 10 year relationship, she said I had to sort out things with my ex and get all my stuff back from America because she wouldnt have slept with me if she didn’t want to be together. I couldn’t believe my luck. So I got home a few weeks later, and the production assistant sacked me off, said it was too soon, I really was a mess by this point, I’d had a job lined up in London for when I got back I’d only got for when my ex and me were going to move to London and I walked out after 3 hours and went to the pub. Told my ex (who hadn’t even bothered to contact me when I’dgot back) I’d been an idiot and slept with someone and I was sorry, what the f~~~ for I don’t know but her response was (as usual) “well I was having second thoughts about ending it but not now”.
I moved back into my parents at 34, I went into an absolute spiral of drink and drugs, stupid really but only a few weeks later I thought I’d be moving to London with the love of my life, had work and money and it all went to s~~~. I blamed myself for everything and tried to commit suicide. I’d phoned my ex in tears saying how sorry I was and she just told me to go away, lied that she was on a date and told me she wanted to “explore meeting other people”, I took an ungodly amount of drugs and whisky and ended up in hospital. She of course turned up with my sister and sat there on her phone and left a few hours later, told me we couldn’t be in contact for awhile and I was fine with that, I had a chance.
I kept myself to myself, started doing therapy, got in the gym and knew what I had to do. A month later she got in touch, saying she missed me, I was f~~~ing confused, what did it mean, if it didn’t mean anything why would she say it, so we met up, I had a nervous breakdown when it was obvious I’d been used the whole time and walked out. Same happened a month later and we met up again, I was even worse this time and had tried to hang myself after she texted me when I got back, said she missed me that it was lovely to see me blah blah blah but it was just ticking boxes it didn’t mean anything. Then she went to Hawaii for work for a few weeks, I was convinced she was seeing someone, still do but she didn’t admit it, it was around this time I properly lost my mind, was put on anti psychotics, was so drugged up I couldn’t work, I was officially mental, was in and out of hospital, got sectioned, multiple suicide attempts, the thought of her being with someone else after all that effort and money and love just to be discarded by text killed me, she told me I needed to sort myself out, it’s only now I realise how bulls~~~ that was, I was in this mess because of her but I did. I got asked to do the biggest tour of last year and I f~~~ing smashed it, only I was doing it to prove to her I could be the person she first met, and 10 months after we’d last seen each other, after the most awful year I could imagine, begging, pleading, etc I finally got to see her and I fell in love with her all over again. Only meeting her was the worst thing I could’ve done, it brought about a breakdown even worse than the first one, all the money I’d made that year either went to pay off debt from living in America or on therapy that did nothing. I was diagnosed with several mental illnesses which rather than fight I brought in to, I was nothing to anyone anymore, was such a liability I’d never work again. 6 months after we me met that time now I see her for what she really is, she’s narcissistic, arrogant, entitled but I still love her, I still wake up at 3am every single day talking to her in my head. I’ve done some stupid things, really stupid, things I am ashamed of. I sent a pathetic letter to 200 people calling her a narcissist and that I was emotionally abused and that I was sorry for being such a mess. I started an instagram page when I was drunk with pictures of us together and some of the stupid things she’d said to me as the captions. I know I’ll never see or talk to her again, part of me is glad I finally exposed her to people for what she is and not the little timid sweetheart she makes herself out to be, part of me also hasn’t given up which is ridiculous, she’ll certainly never turn around and say sorry or admit her part in things or take responsibility, I was just a stop gap for her, I was used and I highly doubt I’ll ever trust another woman again which is why I found myself here. Still living at my parents at 35 and only 5 years ago had the world at my feet, was and still am one of the best around at my job but no one will touch me with a barge pole, meanwhile she didnt look back once, got on with her life, got her own flat, seeing other men and I can barely leave the house, nearly two years later. I have no enjoyment for anything apart from drinking, nothing stops me thinking about me, even took up motorbikes and it always comes back to the the anger, resentment and bitterness and what I did for someone who never loved me or cared and just used me.
The CIA Takeover of the Democratic Party : Part 4 of 4 [1]
by Patrick Martin
March 9, 2018[Y – I am posting this series because the Congressional mid-terms this year will change the balance of power if Republicans do not come out in force to vote in their candidates.
The main reason for the CIA takeover is obvious – a majority to stonewall whatever is left of the Trump administration. I believe a real and present danger is also to be directed at the Second Amendment of the Constitution. The battle lines have been set and with continued false flags for gun ownership repeal – the end result is evident if Congress changes hands. Moreover a direct push for outright war in the Middle East with Russia if things currently do not go to plan
Patrick Martin researched and wrote an important series of articles on the crop of Democratic candidates for House races this year that I am reposting here ad-verbatim as Parts 2 to 4 of this series. His findings reveal a major shift “from being the party for the Pentagon and CIA to become the party of the Pentagon and CIA”.
Read on and come to your own conclusions. Again thanks for reading.
– Y]
Candidates from a military-intelligence background are seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 40 percent of the congressional districts targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2018 elections. They make up the largest single occupational group running in the Democratic primaries.
If the Democratic military-intelligence candidates won all 44 of the districts in which they are running—which is theoretically possible, if very unlikely—they would constitute, as a bloc, ten percent of the membership of the House of Representatives.
From The State Department To Capitol Hill
The final category of military-intelligence candidates consists of veterans of the US State Department during the Obama years, most of them former aides to Hillary Clinton.
These are among the best financed and most publicized of the likely Democratic nominees. In the event of a Democratic “wave” in November, most would find themselves with seats in Congress.
Tom Malinowski, a former congressional aide and Clinton administration official, headed the Washington office of Human Rights Watch for 13 years before joining the Obama administration under Secretary of State John Kerry as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. He is seeking the Democratic nomination in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Leonard Lance.
Lauren Baer was a legal adviser to both Secretaries Clinton and Kerry, as well as US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She is now seeking the Democratic nomination in the 18th District of Florida, where her principal opponent is Pam Keith, a former judge advocate general in the US Navy and now legal counsel to Florida Power & Light. Both women push additional buttons for identity politics, as Baer is openly gay and Keith is African-American.
Nancy Soderberg is a longtime US foreign policy figure going back to the Clinton administration, first at the National Security Council, then as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, then as an alternate US representative at the UN Security Council with the rank of ambassador.
She has spent much of her time since then heading private overseas operations like the International Crisis Group, while playing a prominent role in the Florida Democratic Party. She is effectively unchallenged for the Democratic nomination in Florida’s 6th Congressional District (Daytona Beach), where the incumbent Republican Ron DeSantis is running for governor.
Edward Meier was a senior adviser to the State Department. According to his campaign website, he “was responsible for coordinating the military-to-civilian transition in Iraq—ensuring our diplomats and aid workers would be safe and secure after the withdrawal of US troops. In this role, he traveled to Iraq on multiple official trips working closely with the US military and the Iraqi government. …”
He went on to be director of policy outreach for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Meier fell short Tuesday in his bid for the Democratic nomination in the 32nd District of Texas, finishing fourth out of five Democrats running against incumbent Republican Pete Sessions in a suburban Dallas district Clinton carried over Donald Trump, even though he spent the most money.
Sara Jacobs is another State Department official turned Clinton campaign aide, working on “conflict zones in East and West Africa,” particularly the campaign against Boko Haram in Nigeria, and helping to “spearhead President Obama’s efforts to improve governance in the security sector of our counterterrorism partners,” according to her campaign website. She was a foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign and is now seeking the Democratic nomination in California’s 49th District, where incumbent Darrell Issa is retiring.
Jacobs is the best-financed Democrat in the race, as befits the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, but at age 29 she would be the youngest congresswoman ever, and she has been snubbed in favor of several more experienced rivals by recent Democratic Party caucuses. One of her opponents is Douglas Applegate, a career Marine Corps judge advocate general with combat tours in Fallujah, Baghdad and Ramadi, who narrowly lost the 2016 race to Issa.
Talley Sergent, yet another State Department official turned Clinton campaign aide, is running in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Charleston, against two-term incumbent Republican Alex Mooney. A former aide to Senator Jay Rockefeller, Sergent worked on slavery and sex trafficking at the State Department, then managed Clinton’s disastrous campaign in West Virginia before becoming a public relations executive for The Coca-Cola Co.
Challenging her for the Democratic nomination is Aaron Scheinberg, West Point graduate and Iraq War veteran, deployed first as a platoon leader in the 4th Infantry Division, then as a civil affairs officer in Haswah, Iraq. Scheinberg is now executive director of The Mission Continues, a nonprofit promoting the employment of veterans, whose board of directors includes such figures as Michele Flournoy, Pentagon undersecretary in the Obama administration; Meghan O’Sullivan, Iraq director for the National Security Council under George W. Bush; and retired General Ray S. Odierno, former commander of US forces in Iraq.
Jessica Morse was Iraq country coordinator for the State Department in the course of “over a decade as a national security strategist,” according to her website. She worked for the US Agency for International Development, a longtime CIA front, then as adviser to the US Pacific Command, where she “strengthened the US-India defense relationship … and worked to counter terrorist threats in South Asia.” Her opponent for the Democratic nomination in the 4th District of California, to face Republican incumbent Tom McClintock, is another former State Department officer, Regina Bateson, who was a vice-consul in Guatemala and “studied terrorist travel and border security,” according to her campaign website.
A Stealth Candidate – and some Celebrities.
The American corporate media has been slow to comment on the extraordinary influx of military and intelligence officers into the Democratic Party’s 2018 congressional campaign. The media prefers to cover the campaign from the standpoint of secondary characteristics, focusing on the great number of women running for office, mainly as Democrats, supposedly in response to Trump’s misogyny.
An exception to this pattern was the article February 8 by the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call, under the headline, “Active-Duty Candidates Can Run—But Can They Campaign?” The article profiled a Tennessee Democratic congressional candidate, Matt Reel, who was called up from his reserve status for a five-month deployment with the 20th Special Forces Group (Green Berets). According to the article, “Even Matt Reel’s staff doesn’t know where he’s deployed.”
>Reel announced his campaign for the <strong7th District seat shortly after incumbent Republican Marsha Blackburn announced that she was leaving the House of Representatives to run for the US Senate seat from Tennessee currently held by Bob Corker, who is retiring. Because of the late announcements, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has not yet targeted the district and Reel is not included in the figures cited earlier in this article.
The unusual situation for Reel is that, under Pentagon rules, he cannot direct his own campaign while he is on active duty. His aides and supporters can continue to campaign, but he is barred from communicating with them in any way. Reel is not even allowed to tell them where he is, since the military deployment is covert. This truly “dark horse” candidate left his campaign having shot a few commercials and other video material, and will return a month or so before the August 2 primary.
Reel is one more example of a candidate from the “black ops” section of the military running as a Democrat. In his case, the two cannot be separated: he has been a Democratic Party functionary and a Green Beret since completing college. A former chief of staff to Alabama Representative Terri Sewell, his most recent position was deputy staff director for the Democrats on the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
While Reel is considered an extreme long-shot as a candidate, running in a district won by the Republicans in 2016 by a 3-1 margin, the DCCC is heavily promoting a number of career military candidates, most of them women, as star recruits for the most competitive districts in 2018, those where a switch from Republican to Democratic control is most likely.
These candidates have access to funding far beyond what would be expected for first-time candidates without huge personal resources.
Running in the 31st District of Texas is Mary Jennings Hegar, a helicopter pilot and certified military celebrity—Angelina Jolie is cast to play her in a biographical film based on her memoir, Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman’s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front. Hegar came to prominence through a lawsuit against the Pentagon policy of barring women from combat. Opposing her for the nomination to face incumbent Republican John Carter is Kent Lester, a West Point graduate and career military officer who retired as a lieutenant colonel after deployments to Panama and Bosnia, among other locations.
In Virginia’s 2nd District, which encompasses the Norfolk-Hampton Roads area with its complex of naval bases and shipyards, the DCCC has promoted Elaine Luria, one of the first Navy women to serve as an officer on a nuclear-powered ship, as its favored candidate under the “Red-to-Blue” program. Luria has “deployed six times to the Middle East and Western Pacific as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer.” She was second-in-command of a guided missile cruiser and commanded assault craft supporting a Marine Corps deployment.
Other military candidates who had already raked in more than one million dollars in campaign funds in 2017, the year before the election, and have been widely publicized in local media in their districts, include:
Mikie Sherrill, a career Navy helicopter pilot, with ten years’ active service in Europe and the Middle East, now a federal prosecutor. She reported raising $1,230,000 by December 31, 2017 for her campaign for the Democratic nomination in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rodney Freylingheusen is retiring.
Chrissy Houlahan, a former US Air Force captain, has raised $1,228,000 for her campaign in Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District, against incumbent Republican Ryan Costello.
Amy McGrath, a career Marine fighter pilot with 89 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, has raised $1,133,000 for her campaign in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Andy Barr.
Some Political Conclusions
There is growing popular hostility to the Trump administration, but within the political straitjacket of the two-party system, it is trapped without any genuine outlet.
In November 2016, faced with the choice of equally repugnant ruling class figures—Hillary Clinton, the longtime stooge of Wall Street and the Pentagon, and Donald Trump, the corrupt billionaire from the financial underworld of real estate swindling and casino gambling—millions refused to vote.
But disappointment and anger over the bankrupt, right-wing policies of the Obama administration led a sufficient number of working people to vote for Trump, particularly in devastated industrial states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, that he could eke out an Electoral College victory despite losing the popular vote.
The 2018 elections could well see a similar process, but in reverse.
Angered by the tax cuts for the wealthy and big business, the gutting of social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, the attacks on immigrants and democratic rights more generally, and Trump’s threats of military violence and even nuclear war, millions of working people, however reluctantly, will go to the polls to cast their ballots for the official “opposition,” the Democratic Party, which does not actually oppose Trump at all.
It is by no means certain that the Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm election on November 6. But the details presented in this report demonstrate that a Democratic victory would in no sense represent a shift to the left in capitalist politics.
In a sense, the Democratic Party’s promotion of a large number of military-intelligence candidates for competitive districts represents an insurance policy for the US ruling elite. In the event of a major swing to the Democrats, the House of Representatives will receive an influx of new members drawn primarily from the national security apparatus, trusted servants of American imperialism.
Parenthetically, it should be noted that there would be no comparable influx of Bernie Sanders supporters or other “left”-talking candidates in the event of a Democratic landslide. .
Only five of the 221 candidates reviewed in this study had links to Sanders or billed themselves as “progressive.” None is likely to win the primary, let alone the general election
When the dust clears after November 6, 2018, there will almost certainly be more former CIA agents in the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives than former Sanders activists. It is the military-intelligence operatives who constitute the spine of the Democratic Party, not the Sanders “Our Revolution” group.
This is a devastating verdict on the claims of the Vermont senator, backed by various pseudo-left groups, that it is possible to reform the Democratic Party and push it to the left.
The preponderance of national security operatives in the Democratic primaries sheds additional light on the nature of the Obama administration. Far from representing a resurgence of liberal reformism, as apologists for the Democrats like the International Socialist Organization claimed at the time of his election, Obama’s eight years in office marked the further ascendancy of the military-intelligence apparatus within the Democratic Party.
This is demonstrated by the subsequent role of his top personnel. Among the former Obama civilian officials who are running in the Democratic primaries for seats in the House of Representatives, 16 served in the State Department, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security or National Security Council, while only five served in domestic agencies.
One of those, Haley Stevens, was chief of staff for the Obama auto industry task force, which imposed 50 percent wage cuts on newly hired auto workers. Among the five, only Stevens is considered a likely winner in the primary.
The Democratic Party has always been a party of the American capitalist class, and that means, from the dawn of the 20th century on, it has been a party of imperialism and imperialist war, whatever the occasional “peace” noises made by its candidates for the purpose of diverting and derailing mass antiwar sentiment among the American people.
The struggle against the Democratic Party, as well as the Republicans, remains the main focus of the effort to establish the political independence of the working class.
But the 2018 campaign represents something qualitatively different. Neither party offers any credible prospect of significant social reform. Both offer right-wing nostrums, laced with militarism, while seeking to split the working class along the lines of race, gender and national origin.
The campaign takes place in the wake of more than a year of unrelenting focus by the Democrats on the anti-Russian campaign, a narrative claiming that Trump’s victory in the presidential election was the result of Russian interference and that Trump is, for all practical purposes, a Russian stooge in the White House.
Not a shred of evidence has been provided either of Russian interference or of collusion with Russia on the part of the Trump campaign. Nor is there any suggestion that there was any significant element of fraud in either the vote or its tabulation by local and state governments.
But the Democratic Party has deliberately sought to whip up and appeal to the most right-wing, McCarthyite, chauvinist sentiments. It denounces Trump not for his right-wing policies, his immigrant baiting, his consorting with fascists and white supremacists, or his tax cut bonanza for the wealthy, but because he is allegedly insufficiently committed to confronting Russia militarily in the Middle East, Central Asia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe and the Baltic.
Clinton ran in 2016 as the favored candidate of the military-intelligence apparatus, amassing hundreds of endorsements by retired generals, admirals and spymasters, and criticizing Trump as unqualified to be the commander-in-chief.
This political orientation has developed and deepened in 2018. The Democratic Party is running in the congressional elections not only as the party that takes a tougher line on Russia, but as the party that enlists as its candidates and representatives those who have been directly responsible for waging war, both overt and covert, on behalf of American imperialism.
It is seeking to be not only the party for the Pentagon and CIA, but the party of the Pentagon and CIA.
This is not merely a result of the political psychology or even the career paths of those who make up the upper echelon of the Democratic Party. It has a social and class character. The Democratic Party has long abandoned even a limited role as a party pledging social reforms in the interests of working people as a whole, in favor of the promotion of privileges for sections of the upper-middle class, doled out on the basis of identity politics.
The Democratic Party proposes a certain redistribution of wealth and power within the most privileged layer of the population, while leaving the essential social structure unchanged, with society divided between the super-rich at the top, a privileged upper-middle class, perhaps ten percent or less, and below them, the vast majority of working people, whose conditions of life continue to deteriorate as the economic “recovery” from the 2008 Wall Street crash approaches its tenth year.
The upper-middle-class layer that provides the “mass” base of the Democratic Party has moved drastically to the right over the past four decades, enriched by the stock market boom, consciously hostile to the working class, and enthusiastically supportive of the military-intelligence apparatus which, in the final analysis, guarantees its own social position against potential threats, both foreign and domestic.
It is this social evolution that now finds expression on the surface of capitalist politics, in the rise of the military-intelligence “faction” to the leadership of the Democratic Party.
Citation
[1] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/09/dems-m09.html
AnonymousF~~~ YEMEN, BOMB THE S~~~ OUT OF THAT TRASH.
YA VOLT HEIR CARNAGE!
I don’t like hitler at all, he wanted the perfect race, I want all race extincted.
He pretended to purify humanity, I want to purify the planet.
He wanted a new order, I want total mayhem.
Finally! Someone Hitler can look up to!
Yemen – Appeal to President Putin
Peter Koenig
The SakerBlog
November 19, 2017[Y : The Republic Yemen is a forgotten country in a war of genocide that is not important enough for the MSM to publish. Yet the carnage there is worse than any other country in the Middle East.
Let us take a few moments to understand what goes on there. And perhaps add our voices to those who work for this evil against humanity to stop for good. – Y]
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 21st Century (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites.
He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance
Larger Map : https://images.financialexpress.com/2015/04/yemen-re-graph.jpgBackground to the Genocide
The conflict began in early 2015, when the Houthi a minority Shia group from the north of the country – backed by the majority of the Yemeni people and supported by Iran – drove out the US-backed government, led by President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and took over the capital, Sanaa.
Larger Picture http://www.internal-displacement.org/assets/library/Blog/Images/201506-infographic-me-yemen.pngThe crisis quickly escalated into a multi-sided war, which allowed al-Qaeda and ISIS and other enemies of the Houthis — to grow stronger amid the chaos.
On 25 March 2015, an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia launched air strikes against the Houthis and then every civilian in Yemen and turning a civil war into an coalition-orchestrated genocide.
Members of the coalition include the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Sudan. The USA and UK have been providing key intelligence and logistical support to the coalition.
The coalition is allied with anti-Huthi armed groups operating on the ground in Yemen, often referred to as “Popular Resistance Committees”. They are also supported by units of armed forces loyal to President Hadi and a variety of different factions.
Civilians bear the brunt of the violence in Yemen. As well as causing the deaths and injuries of thousands of civilians, the conflict has exacerbated an already severe humanitarian crisis. This crisis is man-made, with the war deepening and exacerbating the humanitarian situation, and all sides impeding the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Approximately 22.2 million Yemenis today rely on humanitarian assistance in order to survive. In order to deny supplies to the Huthi forces, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition imposed a partial aerial and naval blockade.
n November 2017, Save the Children reported that 130 children were dying every day, with 50,000 children already believed to have died in 2017.
In December 2016, UNICEF reported that a child dies every 10 minutes from preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, malnutrition and respiratory tract infections. And the UK-based NGO, Disasters and Emergencies Committee’s recent report put the number of deaths from preventable causes at 10,000.
The Saudi Arabia-led coalition unlawfully continues to impose restrictions on aid and commercial imports of essential goods, including food, medicine and fuel.
For three years much of the world has ignored this raging conflict and heard little about its devastating consequences.
“There is no reasonable explanation by states such as the US and the UK that would justify their continued support and irresponsible arms flows to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, when there is extensive evidence that these have resulted in enormous harm to Yemeni for the past three years.”
Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International
According to the Yemen Data Project – an independent initiative to collect and disseminate data on the war in Yemen – out of 15,489 attacks, around one-third are known to have hit non-military targets (4,509). There are still 4,803 attacks for which the target is unknown.
But for those that have been identified, only 5,883 (around one-third of all attacks) were directed at military or security targets, and 294 were targeted at political or tribal figures.
Dear President Putin,
Yemen, a peaceful and extremely poor country is being slaughtered, literally slaughtered by the Saudis, with the full weapons, funding and political support of the United States of America and the UK.
The rest of Europe is fully complicit, due to their inaction, due to their lack of courage to bring a halt to this openly organized genocide.
Europe, in the form of individual countries or collectively through Brussels, could stand up and stop this murder, not by war, but unilaterally and strongly requesting the Saudis, the UK, the US and Israel, to stop the bombing, to open the seaports for immediate emergency shipments of medicine and food to reach the dying from cholera and famine.
The Anglo-Zion-Saudi aggressors would be shocked in surprise, but would listen. Surprise, because it would be the first time Europe would stand for justice and against their traditional criminal and genocidal allies.
What’s Europe’s leverage, if not weapons? Trade, for example. Shifting alliances to the East, to Russia and China – to Eurasia? It would work but I am afraid not Brussels, nor Germany, or France, or Italy, or the Netherlands – none of the EU countries with any weight in the corrupt EU system would have the courage to detach themselves from their own slavehood, from vassalage of Washington’s – and stand up for peace and justice for stopping the human misery of a helpless people.
What’s Wrong with the World? – Is humanity totally gone and we haven’t even noticed?
Dear Mr. Putin, you have had the Grandeur to intervene in Syria, for the people of Syria. Your army in coordination with Iran and Hezbollah has helped save the Syrian people, the legitimate Syrian regime from the Daesh / Isis led proxy war they are fighting on behalf of Washington.
Larger picture: http://www.who.int/hac/crises/yem/sitreps/yemen-infographic-april2017x630px.jpgYour intervention is bringing back hope to the millions who are homeless and refugees in their own country, in neighboring countries – and in the countries of their hangmen, Europe.
They will migrate back to their beloved Syria – the cradle of western civilization – an era that today can hardly be called anymore ‘civilization’.
What is the reason for this Saudi-led proxy-war for the (wannabe) emerging Anglo-Zionist empire? It is not oil or gaz. It is not fear from the Houthi ‘rebels’, who are really just defending the legitimate interest of the majority of Yemenis, to bring democracy to a people that has been oppressed for decades by dictators, puppets of the United States.
In the first place, it is a fight for the dominance of one of the geographically most strategic locations in the Middle East, right where the Red Sea connects to the Arabian Sea, overlooking the Tehran controlled Gulf of Hormuz, where daily 25% to 30% of the world’s hydrocarbon consumption passes.
It might also be an affront and provocation for direct war with Iran. If Iran were to step onto this barely veiled trap, the entire Middle east might go up in flames – worse, in a nuclear mushroom.
Who would benefit from a nuclear war? – Nobody, as you, Mr. Putin, widely and repeatedly said. It would bring misery destruction and tens of millions of deaths – an area under a toxic cloud, maybe for decades, centuries. Nobody really knows.
The Middle East might have to be cordoned off from the rest of the world, if there still is something called ‘the rest of the world’ surviving, after one or several nuclear blasts that could easily spread north, east and west.
But foremost, Mr. Putin, my plea is for Russia’s humanitarian intervention on behalf of the Yemeni population; “humanitarian”, in the true sense of the world, not in the western sense, where ‘humanitarian aid’ has been highjacked as a meaning for going to war.
The International Red Cross reports that there are one million people, most of them children, at risk for being caught in the ongoing cholera epidemic that claimed already the lives of tens of thousands of people.
Larger Picture https://cdn.almasdarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/agression-on-Yemen.jpgThis is mostly due to the maliciously and willfully destroyed drinking water supply and sanitation systems. The impact is being exacerbated by the lack of medication and food. Two thirds of Yemen’s 28 million people risk severe famine – the largest famine in recent history, if seaports and borders currently blocked by Saudi Arabia are not being opened immediately to let emergency medication and food into the country – for quick distribution to the victims.
Close to 50% of Yemen’s population is under 15 years of age. This outrageous, criminal and totally illegal war is literally and figuratively killing off an entire generation of Yemenis; it is destroying the future of this country, as more that 60 % of the victims are children and women.
Those that are not killed have no future – no schools, no health system, no infrastructure, no housing. The Saudi-piloted American planes, dropped their UK-made bombs on purpose also on hospitals, health centers and schools – and of course roads and bridges. Yemen is perhaps the country with the least available drinking water resources in the world – and that even before the bombing.
Having worked in Yemen, particularly in the Hodeida area for years, helping building water supply and sanitation system, the people, their friendliness and hospitality, the endless smiles of the kids watching water fountains being built – have grown into my heart. It is devastating to see the human misery caused for greed and power – for world hegemony.
Mr. Putin, saving Yemen’s population alone is worth fighting for.
Then, there are other reasons for this infinitely growing western violence in the Middle East, and of course, along Russia’s borders, encircling China with over 60% of the US Navy fleet in the South China Sea, as Obama promised by 2018; and Trump’s threatening North Korea with “fire and fury the world has never seen before”.
A destroyed DPRK (Democratic People’s republic of Korea) would be another strategic entry point for aggressions and war with Russia and China. In fact, that’s Washington’s and its dark behind then scene handlers only interest in Pyongyang – building a strategic platform for aggressing the key players of the new and emerging SCO – Shanghai Cooperation Organization, that – let me repeat it – already comprises half the world’s population and one third of the world’s economic output.
It’s the Petro-Dollar. It’s the looming end of the Petro-Dollar. There is from Washington’s point of view no peaceful handing over to the inevitable Petro-Yuan.
The entire US hegemony depends on the US dollar’s world hegemony – “Who controls the money, controls the world” (Henry Kissinger, 1974, the world’s number one war criminal, and close buddy of the Rockefeller / Rothschild clan).
He is right. A number of countries, starting with Russia and China, followed recently by Venezuela and Iran and others may soon follow, are no longer trading their hydrocarbons in US dollars. Imagine the gaping hole this is causing in the demand of the petro-dollar – the (still) main reserve currency – status of which will also soon be displaced by the Yuan and other economy-backed currencies. The fiat dollar is only backed by thin air.
Washington will not peacefully back down. It is an iron rule, written into the PNAC – Plan for New American Century, no concessions, just make believe and deceptions – but never give up on ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’. But the world economy can do it. Washington knows it.
Therefore, there is no-holds-barred in Washington’s path of destruction of every country, every regime that could pose a vital threat to the (wannabe) hegemon. – And Yemen is just an unfortunate pawn in this bloody chess game.
Dear Mr. Putin, for the sake of the Yemeni people, for the sake of humanity and for the sake of taking another crucial step towards world peace, may I appeal to you to help stop this murderous bloodbath in Yemen, help safe the population from dying from disease and famine.
You may do this in ways of diplomacy in alliance with China, in a first instance through the UN Security Council – which obviously is a long shot – secondly, the Saudis want to sell their future hydrocarbons to Russia and China, a leverage for stopping the killing is not to be discarded; and finally, if nothing works, the Russian army may repeat in Yemen their miracle precedent in Syria.
Thank you.
Petr Koenig
for TheSakerBlogCitation
[1] http://thesaker.is/yemen-appeal-to-president-putin/
[2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/yemen-the-forgotten-war/
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/06/middleeast/yemen-conflict/index.htmlChristie vs NCAA : The Forthcoming US Supreme Court Judgement [1] [2]
Facts of the case
In 1992, the United States Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), 28 U.S.C. §§ 3701-3704, to prohibit state-sanctioned sports gambling.
Included in PASPA are exceptions for state-sponsored sports wagering in Nevada and sports lotteries in Oregon and Delaware, as well as for New Jersey, provided that New Jersey also enact a sports gambling scheme within one year of PASPA’s enactment, which it did not do.
PASPA also permits any sports league whose games are or will be the subject of sports gambling to bring an action to enjoin the gambling.
Question
Does a federal statute that prohibits modification or repeal of state-law prohibitions on private conduct impermissibly commandeer the regulatory power of states in contravention of New York v. United States?
States’ Action
In 2011, the New Jersey Legislature held a referendum asking voters whether sports gambling should be permitted, and 64% voted in favour of a state constitutional amendment that would permit sports gambling.
The legislature then drafted and received voter approval of a sports-wagering constitutional amendment, after which time, in 2012, it enacted the Sports Wagering Act (“2012 Act”), which authorised certain regulated sports wagering at New Jersey casinos and racetracks and implemented a comprehensive regulatory scheme for licensing casinos and sporting events.
Five sports leagues sued under PASPA to enjoin the New Jersey law, which the state defended by arguing that PASPA was unconstitutional under the anti-commandeering doctrine.
The district court held that PASPA was constitutional and enjoined the 2012 Act.
Governor Chris Christie, along with the 216th New Jersey State Legislature, passed a second law (“2014 Law”) that purported to repeal the regulatory scheme for licensing casinos and sporting events, effectively providing tacit authorization of them and ratifying an amendment to the State Constitution, known as NJ S2460.
Though the doctrine of federal pre-emption holds that in any case in which a state law conflicts directly with a federal law, the federal law controls, the State of New Jersey claims that in this case, pre-emption does not apply.
The State argues two main points,
1) that S2460 does not directly violate PASPA; and
2) that PASPA itself, violates the United States Constitution and must be repealed.New Jersey alleges that PASPA violates the “anti-commandeering doctrine.”
This doctrine interprets the 10th Amendment to mean that Congress cannot “commandeer” state officials to implement federal policy.
Current Status
Christe vs NCAA is now before the Supreme Court.
Possible Outcomes
While there are multiple permutations of how the Court might rule, there are three basic paths.
First, the Court finds PASPA unconstitutional, repeals the law, and New Jersey (along with every other state in the union) will be free to legalize sports wagering, as they see fit.
Second, the Court either upholds PASPA or declines to rule on its constitutionality but finds that S2460 does not violate the law. This outcome would surely result in some level of bureaucratic chaos, as New Jersey will have won the right to allow sports wagering but without the ability to regulate it, which begs the question; who will oversee New Jersey’s newly reformed gaming industry?
Finally, the Court could uphold PASPA while finding that S2460 violates the law. This decision would be a de facto death sentence for S2460, as the state law would be pre-empted by the Federal Statute.
A majority of Supreme Court Justices argued in favour of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie< that the ban on sports betting in most states is unconstitutional.
Justice Anthony Kennedy: “The citizens of the State of New Jersey are bound to obey a law that the state doesn’t want but that the federal government compels the state to have”
Justice Stephen Breyer:“It falls within commandeering”
New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, said: “If the people of those states decided they want to do what Nevada is already being permitted to do, they should be permitted to do it.”
Sen. Raymond Lesniak, the sponsor of New Jersey’s law, predicted the court would rule in the state’s favour: “It’s not quite a slam dunk, bit it’s like Tiger Woods and a five-foot putt.”
The writing is on the wall. Everyone is preparing for the Supreme Court to side with New Jersey and effectively legalize sports betting.
Although the Supreme Court’s decision in the New Jersey sports betting case, Christie v NCAA, is likely at least two months away, that is not stopping the state’s top gaming enforcement official from starting the money train rolling.
Speaking at the ICE Totally Gaming Conference in London earlier this month, David Rebuck, the director of New Jersey’s Department of Gaming Enforcement, announced to the world that New Jersey would immediately begin accepting applications for state-issued sports betting licenses.
There are 18 states that supported New Jersey in its quest to slay PASPA, and experts predict that 32 states will legalize sports betting in the next few years.The court’s decision will bring America’s vast underground sports betting market into the light of regulation, surfacing billions of dollars in revenue for the states. Want to bet that your state’s government would love to get its hands on more tax money? That’s exactly what happened with marijuana.
Roughly a dozen states have introduced legislation this year that deals with sports betting. The research experts at Gambling Compliance Inc. are predicting that 21 to 37 states will offer legal sports betting sometime after PASPA is lifted.
Why this is important commercially:
1. Every state will want its own Las Vegas for tax revenue
And every single casino company will be ready to build ‘em. Gaming floors. Show halls. Hotels. Restaurants. The real estate and construction deals alone will mint legions of millionaires.
On February 8, the $900 million Resorts World Catskills casino resort in New York opened its doors to the world. The next monster casino could open up in your backyard
2. Nearly 74.7 million Americans at one time planned on participating in fantasy sports.
Since then the number has only grown. But no one wants to be glued to their computer screen when checking in on your team with your smartphone is far easier and more convenient.
Yahoo’s fantasy sports app has over 10 million people using it. Then there are apps from FanDuel, DraftKings, Fantasy
Draft, each with potentially 10s of millions of users each.The smartphone app market and online gambling craze will boom as never before.
3. Fortune 50 and 100 companies that can’t turn down a billion-dollar payday will, all of a sudden, jump into the betting pools.
One American telecom giant is reportedly meeting with experts and consultants to assess the potential for a sports-focused online gambling venture.
The influx will take gambling to unprecedented heights as a national sport and pastime – to every nook and cranny of America. No one will be left out – there will be something for everyone to lose at.
4. These other judgements may be affected – marijuana, self-driving cars, gun ownership, drug use.
The US gambling market is n the order of $200 billion or higher. Not one company is going to walk away from that. Neither is your state Governor or Congressman.
Citation
[1] https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-476
[2] https://esportsobserver.com/lawyers-perspective-christie-v-ncaa/Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with BBC HardTalk [1]
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
16 April 2018
Stephen Sackur is in Moscow for an exclusive interview with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The world has been alarmed by the very real possibility of a direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia. Syria is of course where the current tensions are highest, and where missiles have been fired, but the hostility is deep-seated on a number of fronts. There have been diplomatic expulsions and sanctions, and there is talk of a new cold war. What is Russia’s next move?Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov (Russian: Сергей Викторович Лавров born 21 March 1950) is a Russian diplomat and politician, he is currently the Foreign Minister of Russia, in office since 2004. Previously, he was the Russian Representative to the UN, serving from 1994 to 2004.
Video can be viewed here:
Transcript
Question: The world was deeply alarmed last week by the prospect of a direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia. How close do you believe we came to that?
Sergey Lavrov: Well, I don’t think that was very close. I believe it was a situation created by very reckless behavior of our Western colleagues who accused the Syrian Government and us as allies of the Syrian Government in applying chemical weapons against civilians without waiting for OPCW to inspect the place. Actually, at the moment when OPCW was physically ready to move from Lebanon to Syria, they executed these strikes. As the representatives of our military explained, the deconflicting channel has been engaged all the time.
Question: So, to be clear about that, without using jargon, the US and ally forces gave you indications of how strikes would be carried out and you gave them some indication that you would not retaliate?
Sergey Lavrov: I prefer not to get into the nitty-gritty of these military communitory channels. There is a channel existing between the Russian and the United States military, both between the capitals and on the ground in Syria, and I believe the military discussed and continue to discuss this and other things very professionally. They understand each other and they understand, maybe better than anyone else, the danger of this kind of adventure.
Question: But Mr. Lavrov, this crisis is not over, is it?
Sergey Lavrov: It depends on those who invented the crisis.
Question: Well, it is quite clear from words used by your own diplomats. Your Ambassador to United States said there would be consequences for the strikes that we saw. Vladimir Putin called it an illegal act of aggression. So the world wants to know what Russia is going to do now.
Sergey Lavrov: That is a statement of fact. Certainly there would be consequences. We lose basically the last remnants of trust to our Western friends who prefer to operate on the basis of very weird logic. Proof is in the punishment – they’ve punished first – like they did in Salisbury – then they wait for Scotland Yard to finalize the investigation. They punished first in Douma in Syria and then they wait for the inspectors of OPCW to visit the place and to inspect. Proof by the punishment is what is being applied by the Troika of Western countries.
Question: I want to talk to you about the detail of the cases that you’ve mentioned – about the Douma and the Skripal cases. But before we get there I just want to continue the idea of diplomatic relationship today. Now, the US Ambassador to United Nations Nikki Haley said US forces remain “locked and loaded”. When you hear that kind of language, how do you respond?
Sergey Lavrov: Well, I think they have to put their own house together in Washington because we understand that this kind of statements could be made either by the Commander-in-Chief or by the military and, as I said, the military of the United States and of the Russian Federation maintain the deconflicting channel on Syria and this is some kind of confidential information.
Question: You say there is no trust. You mean zero trust now between Russia and the United States?
Sergey Lavrov: I said they are losing the last remnants of trust – which is not yet zero.
Question: Not yet zero. I just wonder: as Foreign Minister of Russia when you wake up in the morning and you read on Twitter the words of the United States President and the Commander-in-Chief saying in essence: Get ready Russia; our nice, new, smart missiles are coming – what do you make of that?
Sergey Lavrov: Well, I make of that that the President of the United States writes his tweet.
Question: And your response to those tweets is?
Sergey Lavrov: Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as you know. So, we waited for these smart new – what else was there? – nice missiles to be used at the attack and we calculated that two thirds of them did not reach their target because they were intercepted.
Question: There is absolutely no evidence of that, isn’t it?
Sergey Lavrov: Well, the military of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, presented its assessment and it is available for the professional discussion.
Question: We’ll get back to the credibility of the information provided by all the sides of this crisis later, but for now, continuing with the diplomatic thread: Theresa May, British Prime Minister, and Emmanuel Macron, President of France, both made it very clear that the intervention we saw was all about degrading and deterring the Syrian Government’s chemical weapons threat. It was not about an intervention into the Syrian war and it was certainly not about regime change in Damascus.
Sergey Lavrov: So they said.
Question: Do you accept it?
Sergey Lavrov: We don’t accept this. I mean you have hard talk, you know, we want hard facts. And “highly likely” is really ridiculous. And the policies of our Western friends…
Question: Sorry, when you say “highly likely”, you mean the assessment that chemical weapons were used in Douma by the Assad government forces?
Sergey Lavrov: No, I said “highly likely” as a new invention of the British diplomacy to describe why they punish people – because these people are highly likely guilty, like in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – when he described a trial. And when they discovered that the jury could be engaged, then the King said “Let’s ask the jury” and the Queen shouted “No jury! Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” That’s the logic of “highly likely”.
Question: Well, that’s what you say. But let’s get into the detail of what happened in Douma. But let us do it by first asking a very basic question. Russia opposes the use of chemical weapons and it believes people who use those weapons should be punished. Yes?
Sergey Lavrov: Is it a question?
Question: Do you agree with that?
Sergey Lavrov: I thought you were much better informed about the Russian position to ask the obvious.
Question: It’s obvious? You agree? Because you’ve signed the relevant treaties, you are part of the international commitment to ban and eliminate the use of chemical weapons.
Sergey Lavrov: Yes, more than that – we did eliminate our chemical weapons in 2017 which was verified by the OPCW, which was welcomed by the entire OPCW Executive Committee and unfortunately the United States is still to deliver on its own obligations which they have been postponing again and again.
Question: But if I have just stated the obvious and it is quite clear what the Russian commitment is, then surely you must want the perpetrators of that chemical weapons attack in Douma for which there is overwhelming evidence to be punished…
Sergey Lavrov: Wait. You are jumping the facts again. There is no proof that on 7 th of April chemical weapons were used in Douma…
Question: Emmanuel Macron and the French have made it quite clear that they have intercepts which show helicopter movements, Syrian Government helicopter movements over Douma. They have pictures of gas canisters found at the site of the attack. They also have the record of the Syrian Government over the last several years using the chemical weapons. If you put all of that together…
Sergey Lavrov: I cannot be impolite with the heads of other states – and of course I cannot be impolite to the head of my state – but you quoted the leaders of France and UK and the United States and, frankly speaking, all the evidence which they quoted was based on the media reports and on social networks. The canisters – I saw this picture – a canister lying on a bed, and the bed is intact and the window glass is not broken… Look, you need to be a bit more serious. Can you explain to me why strike the day before OPCW is going to move there and to verify the fact which, they assert, was a fact?
Question: The American representative of the OPCW, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, says there is a deep concern that Russia has tampered with the evidence sites in Douma. Can you guarantee Russia has not tampered with it?
Sergey Lavrov: Yes, I can guarantee. It’s absolutely the same as was the logic of Theresa May on Salisbury. When we asked dozens of questions, when we requested joint investigation, when we requested our presence at this samples-taking ceremony if you wish, she said no, we are not going to answer any question until Russia answers all our questions. The only question which was addressed to Russia – tell us how you did it. Was it ordered by Putin, the poisoning of this poor couple, or this was the result of you losing your control over chemical arsenals? I believe, for any intelligent person it’s a situation which is absolutely odd…
Question: But listen…Back to Douma and back to credibility. You have claimed that the event in Douma, first of all, did not happen. Then the message seemed to change and you said there was some sort of event but it was stage-managed and fabricated by what you called a Russophobic country…
Sergey Lavrov: The event did not take place. What did take place was the staged thing. It did not involve any chemical weapons.
Question: And you believe Britain was behind the staging of a mock chemical weapons attack in Douma?
Sergey Lavrov: Well, the history knows some experience during previous decades… What we do believe and the special services, of course, can present information to their British colleagues…
Question: You say there is irrefutable proof that it was faked, it was staged. You claim the White Helmet humanitarian first-responders were involved. Where is this irrefutable proof?
Sergey Lavrov: Well, the irrefutable proof is in the visiting of the place…
Question: No, no, where is you irrefutable proof that the White Helmets backed by the British Government have faked the whole thing? It’s about credibility. Where is your credibility?
Sergey Lavrov: What I did say was that the White Helmets are known to work only on the territories controlled by the opposition, including Jabhat an-Nusra, and that White Helmets are known to be ringing the bell one year ago in Khan Shaykhun which was a fake from the beginning to the end and the White Helmets are known to be financed, among other countries, by the United Kingdom.
Question: But Foreign Minister, that doesn’t represent an irrefutable proof…
Sergey Lavrov: Wait a second, irrefutable proof of what?
Question: You said you have irrefutable proof that a Russophobic country by which you meant Britain had worked with these White Helmets…
Sergey Lavrov: Why did you say that I meant Britain? Don’t put your words into my mouth. I did say “a country which is trying to lead the Russophobic campaign”. Please, quote me correctly. Otherwise it would be not very journalistic, I would say. So, speaking of irrefutable facts. The Douma event was agreed to be investigated by OPCW inspectors. They moved to Lebanon, they were told by the Syrian Government that they would be immediately issued visas as they come to the border. Seven hours later the Douma and the Syrian territory was struck. What is the reason for going that way one day before the inspectors were about to arrive there?
Question: If the French, British and the American governments are right and you are wrong, and President Assad continues to use chemical weapons just as he did in Ghouta where he killed up to a thousand people in 2013, just as he did in Khan Shaykhun last year, just as the US-led forces say he did in Douma – if they are right and you are wrong, will you agree that President Assad must be punished?
Sergey Lavrov: Look, you don’t hear me. You don’t even listen to me. What I said that the aggressive action was taken less than 24 hours before the international inspectors, including, by the way, American citizens, as far as I understand, were to visit the place where the alleged chemical attack happened. The last year event in Khan Shaykhun happened on 4 th of April, next morning Rex Tillerson called me and said why don’t you tell the Syrian Government they must allow inspectors to the airbase from which the plane allegedly carrying chemical bomb took off, and we told them next morning that the permission was granted. They said no, thank you, and they struck the next day. When we asked the OPCW to go there, they said it is not safe and that they don’t need this in any case because the Brits and the French did have the samples. We asked the French and the Brits: Can you explain how you got the samples from the place which seems not to be very safe? Then you have contacts with the White Helmets who control the territory? And they said this is the secret information. We have much more facts to be clarified, and we have much more legitimate questions in response to the only one question which we hear from the Western leaders, from the Western media, the question being “why did you do this? Why did you use chemical weapons in Britain? Why do you cover Assad?” And so on and so forth. And then, on the basis of these assertions, you say: if you are not right, will you punish Assad? It is a very interesting…
Question: If – you are Russia’s chief diplomat – if Assad is deemed by the United States, Britain, France and other countries to be using chemical weapons again, if it’s quite clear there will be a military response and it will be a bigger one than we have just seen, what will that lead to?
Sergey Lavrov: Before you say “again” you have to prove that he did use the chemical weapons. Can I give you a brief history…
Question: The world wants to know. If the US, to quote Nikki Haley again, “is locked and loaded” and if they deem – never mind what you think – if they deem Assad to again be using chemical weapons, it is clear they will come up with a military response bigger than the one we’ve just seen, what would the Russian response to that be?
Sergey Lavrov: I’m not in the guessing business. What I know is that when some time ago the three Western countries, who are leading this crazy campaign, said: if Assad uses chemical weapons then we would use force. You know, I believe that was a signal to the bad guys, including “White helmets” to stage a provocation. Now after the strike on the 14th of April they say again: if you do this again we would use force again. This is another invitation to the opposition, to the extremists to resume fighting which they did already – they tried to attack Damascus immediately after the strike. But my point is that when people say Russia is responsible for the obligations of Assad under the Chemical weapons convention, it’s a very outrageous statement. Everybody knows that we did it together with the United States.
Question: My final question that on the diplomacy before we move on to other matters: The US is pushing for a new UN security resolution today which they believe is needed to send the international signal that Assad cannot be allowed to do this again. Will you work with the United States at the UN, will you end vetoing any single resolution the US and its allies are putting forward?
Sergey Lavrov: Not every single resolution. If you mean that they want to resume an investigating mechanism which is not transparent, which is not independent and which takes you the decisions on a sentence itself without a verdict form the Security Council, then no – we cannot accept this.
Question: You won’t?
Sergey Lavrov: The entire reason for this resolution is to make it look that if Russia and Syria agree to cooperate, which is impossible because of the substance, but what they want to do is to make it look that we and Syria were bombed into negotiations. That’s why in that resolution they insist that Syrian government must start negotiating. They forget that the main opposition group which they all support, the so-called Riyadh group, Naser Hariri recently, the leader of this group stated that the United States must continue to use force not just in case of some chemical episodes, but against the Syrian government wherever and whenever the Syrian government opposes the opposition.
Question: Quick fire questions for you. First of them, do you believe that President Assad has won in this endless Syrian conflict?
Sergey Lavrov: It is not about winning. It is not about Assad or his opponents. It’s about the Syrian people getting a break from this disastrous eight years.
Question: And what is Russia’s endgame? I see you’re sending more military material and men into the Syria conflict. Is it your commitment now to back Assad all the way till he controls every single inch of Syrian territory?
Sergey Lavrov: It’s to protect the Syrian Arab Republic from aggression which was launched on the 14th of April and which the three countries say that they would continue.
Question: Are you going to send this latest sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft missile to President Assad in Syria? And if you are, the Israelis are going to be gravely concerned.
Sergey Lavrov: President Putin addressed this issue. And he clearly reminded that few years ago at the request of our partners we decided not supply S-300 to Syria. Now that this outrageous act of aggression was undertaken by the US, France and UK, we might think how to make sure that the Syrian state is protected.
Question: To be clear, you’re saying that what has happened in the last few days makes you reconsider and feel positive about sending those very sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to Syria.
Sergey Lavrov: It makes us convinced that whatever is required to help the Syrian army to deter aggression, we will be ready to consider.
Question: Five hundred thousand people at least killed in the seven years of Syria war. Twelve million people at least displaced. Five million of them at least now living outside Syria. Do you seriously think that President Assad can ever unify his country – heal the wounds, be the ruler of Syria in any meaningful sense?
Sergey Lavrov: We never said this. What we did say – Resolution 2254: it is for the Syrians to decide the future of Syria, new constitution, elections, let the Syrians decide. And mind you that the ongoing effort to split Syria is very much against what people say formally and publicly. And when we speak about disastrous effect of some civil wars, don’t forget what will shape Iraq is in, what shape Libya is in, and those who did it they now want to have Syria joining the club.
Question: I want to briefly turn to the case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal who were poisoned in Salisbury in the South of England. In this interview you’ve told me that credibility is important, that trust is important. You are the Russian foreign minister. You claimed that the Skripal attack was mounted by British intelligence services who you, perhaps jokingly, I don’t know, said are known for their “license to kill”. Do you expect that claim to be taken seriously?
Sergey Lavrov: When we were told that there is no other credible explanation, but to assume that it was Russia which “highly likely” poisoned Skripals – we said that there are other credible explanations.
Question: But yours isn’t credible.
Sergey Lavrov: Why? Why do you think so?
Question: Have you got one shred, shred of evidence to suggest British intelligence tried to kill Sergei Skripal?
Sergey Lavrov: There is an old Roman criteria “who is to benefit”. The UK is grossly benefiting from the provocations both in Syria and in the United Kingdom itself.
Question: Hang on a minute.
Sergey Lavrov: And Britain is back on the stage of world politics, though in a very negative and a very aggressive, and a very weird way.
Question: There can be inconsistency in your position, if I may say so, foreign minister, in this interview you’ve been at pain to tell me that Russia is utterly committed to all the international commitments and conventions on chemical weapons, including supporting the work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Sergey Lavrov: Absolutely!
Question: You know better than I that the OPCW has run tests in four different labs on the nerve agent used in Salisbury. All of them have concluded that that was a Novichok agent in a highly pure form as described by the British government.
Sergey Lavrov: That’s a problem. First, the A-234 agent in highly pure form in high concentration is already raising suspicions.
Question: It came from Russia. In the former Soviet Union, you invented that.
Sergey Lavrov: Stephen, you are not factual. You may be hard talking, but you are not listening. This chemical substance indeed was invented in the Soviet Union, then one the inventors fled to the United States and made the formula public. And if you want to check before raising the issue, please do so, the United States patented this formula; and it was formally taken by United States special services or the army, I don’t remember. But A-234 is a very light, I mean, it seriously damages a person, kills him of her, but it evaporates very fast; and the sample taken two weeks after the event cannot, according to our scientists, contain very high concentration.
Question: I guess it’s all the question of credibility, and what you’re telling me, it may be credible for Russia; it’s certainly not credible around the world. See, you’ve had over a hundred diplomats expelled from over the twenty countries. It’s clear where the consensus lies. Russia is seen as culpable.
Sergey Lavrov: If you want to finish the issue of the substance, on Saturday we presented a paper which contains, literally, the conclusion of the Swiss laboratory in the city of Spiez, which was one of the four laboratories, which did say that there were traces of A-234 of very high concentration, but they also said that there was…
Question: I will use: you trust the OPCW or you don’t? It’s quite simple. You seem as you’re not saying you trust the OPCW.
Sergey Lavrov: For a Brit, you have very bad manners. The Swiss laboratory report also said that, and in the first place, they found BZ, which was I think invented in the United States in 1955 and was among the equipment of the US and UK army. And we asked OPCW, whom we trust, whether this is true or not that in addition to A-234 there was also BZ discovered. And we are waiting a reply of OPCW, whom, of course, we trust, but we want to trust and verify.
Question: We’re almost out of time. I have to ask you about sanctions before we finish. The US Treasury Secretary is due to announce another raft of sanctions against Russian companies and individuals who are deemed to have contacts with the Syrian military. There are already over the past few weeks new sanctions from the United States on a whole bunch of different companies and individuals which have hit the Russian stock market very badly. Russia’s being squeezed.
Sergey Lavrov: Thank you for your sympathy, but don’t worry, we will survive.
Question: Stock market down ten percent. Rouble down against the dollar.
Sergey Lavrov: You’ve seen the times which were very troubling in the past when George Soros undermined your stock market and dropped the pound sterling very lowly. It’s not just these threats do punish those who keep contacts with the Syrian government; it’s a threat which, as we see, to punish the entire Russian people for making the wrong choice during the elections. When they say that “we would never target the Russian men and women, we only target the oligarchs, the politicians, the military who disturb the world”, they are lying because the desire, as I see, is to make thousands and dozens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of Russians disturbed, those who have been employed…
Question: But that is Russia’s vulnerability.
Sergey Lavrov: Yes.
Question: You may have lots of nuclear weapons that President Putin boasts about. In fact, he says that those weapons are the most potent and powerful in the world today, but you have an economy which is weak and vulnerable.
Sergey Lavrov: True, and we know this. But this economy has sustained quite a lot beginning from World War II. And I can assure you that the Government and the President are very much keen, you know, to make sure that the necessary reforms are taken through. And this was the essence of the first half of the Presidential message to the Parliament. And his second part when he informed his audience about the new weapons delivered in Russia. He ended by saying we always are ready to talk, provided the talk is respectful and based on the looking for balance of interests.
Question: And my final thought. The Secretary General of the UN Antonio Guterres said the other day: the Cold War is back with a vengeance, but also with a difference, because now the safeguards that managed the risk of escalation are no longer present. That is a truly frightening thought. You’ve been foreign minister 13 years. Is this the most scary time that you have been through?
Sergey Lavrov: One of the safeguards is having normal channels. The channels between us and UK have been closed by the British, with all agencies fighting against terrorism between the military dropped long ago by the initiative of London. NATO-Russia Council which was a very useful mechanism to promote confidence and transparency was closed for all practical purposes by NATO, who only wants to discuss Ukraine in that body. And the European Union closed all the avenues of cooperation with Russia except talking to us of Syria or some other things.
Question: Do you feel you are in a new Cold War?
Sergey Lavrov: I think it’s worse.
Question: Worse?
Sergey Lavrov: Because during the Cold War there were channels of communication; and there was no obsession with Russophobia which looks like, you know, genocide by sanctions.
Question: You think the situation today is worse than the Cold War?
Sergey Lavrov: Yes, because of the lack of channels of communication except very few.
Question: That makes it very dangerous.
Sergey Lavrov: I hope not only you but other compatriots of yours including the Government recognize this.
Question: And that’s hard to imagine or remember time when Russia looked more like a pariah, looked more isolated. You have the World Cup coming in the summer which Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in a rhetorical flourish said could be compared by some to Hitler’s staging of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
Sergey Lavrov: In 1938, the UK team was playing against Germany (in 1938 when 1936 was already past us). And if you go to Internet you will see a photo picture before the beginning of the game when both the German soccer players and the UK football players salute by the Hitler Nazi welcome.
Question: What’s your point?
Sergey Lavrov: I’m not going to discuss Boris Johnson. We had a chat recently when he was in Moscow. Let him get fun.
Question: Sergey Lavrov, we are out time, but thank you very much for having hard talk.
Sergey Lavrov: Thank you, Stephen.
Citation
http://www.mid.ru/en/press_service/video/-/asset_publisher/i6t41cq3VWP6/content/id/3172318
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