Category Archives: Government

Russia’s Information War on the West

Posted on by The Old Wolf

A Twitter thread by Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) from 27 February, 2022. A critical analysis of what is still going on, and why it matters. See the original here.

Ok. Deep breath.

I think we may look back on this as the first Great Information War. Except we’re already 8 years in.

The first Great Information War began in 2014. The invasion of Ukraine is the latest front. And the idea it doesn’t already involve us is fiction, a lie.

It was Putin’s fury at the removal of President Yankovych in Feb 2014 that kicked everything off. Information operations were first crucial step in invasion of Crimea & Donbass. A deliberate attempt to warp reality to confuse both Ukrainians & the world.

This was not new. The Soviets had practiced “dezinformatsiya” for years. But what was new in 2014 was technology. Social media. It was a transformative moment. “Hybrid warfare” on steroids: a golden Willy Wonka ticket to manipulate hearts & minds. Almost completely invisibly.

But it wasn’t just Ukraine. We now know Russia began another offensive in Feb 2014. Against the West. Specifically, but not exclusively, America. How do we know this? Because the FBI conducted a forensic, multi-year investigation. That almost no-one paid any attention to.

The Mueller Report. You’ve heard of it. But probably as a headline about how it didn’t “prove” collusion between the Kremlin & Trump campaign. We can come back to that. What it did prove – BEYOND ANY DOUBT – was that Russia attacked 2016 US election through multiple routes.

And just one of the ways Russia attacked 2016 US election was via the tech platforms. Especially: Facebook. This was a military technique, it pioneered in Ukraine in 2014. By 2016, it refined, iterated & supersized these. Most brilliantly of all, they were entirely invisible

And it wasn’t just Russia. Companies such as Cambridge Analytica. Political operatives such as Manafort. Amoral opportunists such as Cummings. They learned how to exploit a platform that was totally open – anyone could do so. And totally closed – no-one could see how.

But also it was Russia. That’s what the Mueller Report proves. And, again, Ukraine is at centre of it all.(Read @profshaw’s thread here. Note walk-on role for Arron Banks’s business partner & his friend the Russian spy)

In 2016, we knew none of this. Russia & other bad actors acted with impunity &, in some cases alignment. But now, through the sheer bloody hard work of academics, journalists & FBI, we do know.

But it was complex, messy, difficult. So… We brushed it all under the carpet

We failed to acknowledge Russia had staged a military attack on the West. We called it “meddling”. We used words like “interference”. It wasn’t. It was warfare. We’ve been under military attack for eight years now.

This failure is at the heart of what is happening now in Ukraine. Because the first offensive in the Great Information War was from 2014-2022. And Putin won.

And he won by convincing us it wasn’t even a war.

We fell for it. We said it was “just ads” that “don’t work anyhow”. And “a bot didn’t tell me to vote”. Facebook is still an open threat surface. Exploited by authoritarians from Philippines to India to Brazil to Hungary. It’s maybe not a world war. But the world is at war.

Meanwhile, in Britain, we’re a captured state. In America, the institutions of govt worked. Even in spite of Trump. The authorities investigated. Individuals were indicted, charged, jailed. The hostile actions of a foreign state examined & unpicked.

(Not that it mattered.) The US media & therefore public failed to understand the real lessons of Mueller Report. And in the UK? We didn’t even bother trying. We allowed Johnson’s govt to sweep 2016 under the carpet. Nigel Farage. Arron Banks. Facebook. Russia. The lot.

But it wasn’t ‘just ads’. It was war. And it’s absolutely crucial that we now understand that Putin’s attack on Ukraine & the West was a JOINT attack on both.  

That began at the exact same time.

Across the exact same platforms.

And this new front, the invasion of Ukraine, is not just about Ukraine. We are part of the plan. We have always been part of the plan. And Ukraine is not just fighting for Ukraine but for the rest of us too.

And maybe that could be why we’ve failed to understand Putin’s strategy in Ukraine? Because it’s not just a strategy in Ukraine. It’s directed at us too. And that’s what makes this such a uniquely perilous moment. Not least, because we still don’t understand we’re at war.

If it helps, the penny dropped for me with Skripal. Planned by the GRU – Russia’s military intelligence. As was the weaponised hack-&-leak of Hillary’s emails. Military doctrine carried out by military officials in  military operations. Just like the one now in Ukraine.

TL;DR – She’s tired.

The story of Arron Banks is intertwined with every single element of the above. That’s for another time. What matters now is Ukraine. And the key to helping it is to understand that Putin isn’t just coming for us next. He already has.

You can help Ukraine against Russian aggression

Russia is not our friend. Russia has never been our friend, despite fighting the Nazis together in World War II. I lived through the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis and Civil Defense and Duck and Cover drills, and it’s all Russia.

“We will bury you!” ¹

Putin is still a KGB agent. Never forget this.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Footnotes

¹ Some have suggested this is a mistranslation of what Nikita Khrushchev said, which was “Мы вас похороним!” While I am not a Russian linguist, based on the feeling that was coming from the Soviet Union at the time, I dispute this. He meant exactly what he said.

Roe is dead… and many women and girls will be as well.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Today the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, struck down Roe v. Wade, which newly-confirmed justices Brett Kavanaugh (the alleged rapist) and Amy Coney Barrett (the evangelical activist) had sworn to the Senate was “established law.”

Immediately, a number of states moved to implement “trigger laws” – most recently Missouri – State Attorney General Eric Schmitt acted to put his state’s trigger law into effect within minutes of the court ruling, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. [Newser]

It is expected that over half the states will now move to ban abortions, with varying degrees of draconian severity.

The evangelical right will be celebrating tonight, and there will be many posts and tweets about “liberal tears” filling the ether in days to come. But I personally can guarantee you the following things, just for starters:

  • If one of their own – an individual, a spouse, or a child – is raped or otherwise violated, or if a pregnancy strikes them as inconvenient, they will find a way to get that abortion, either by going to a progressive state or by going to what will pass for a “back-alley abortionist.”
  • Women and girls will die, and many will suffer irreparable health issues.
  • There will be a surge in poverty rates and homelessness associated with this decision
  • With the stroke of a pen, the court has not prevented abortions – they have only prevented safe abortions.
  • The ripple effect will be horrific.

This is the Republicans’ long game come to fruition, a game they have been playing for the last 60 years at least. It demonstrates why evangelical voters didn’t care how terrible a person Trump is; they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that if they could get him into the White House that the Supreme Court would be theirs for generations, and would strike down every law they considered unholy.

Like Roe. And, as Clarence Thomas wrote:

“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraceptives], Lawrence [gay rights], and Obergfell [same-sex marriage].”

Where this will go, I cannot say. I know only that I will not live to see the end of it, since the echoes of this court will propagate down generations. But I take comfort in the sane and sensible words of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

This is the kind of person we need leading our country and making our laws, and not the clown-circus dumpster fire minority-led junta we currently have.

I am a boomer, but this is not what I voted for or worked for. I apologize to my posterity for the world that they are now inheriting. For as long as I have breath, I will fight the trend of authoritarian oppression that so many in the Republican Party seem to want imposed upon our entire nation, and I hope that they will do so as well instead of succumbing to despair and apathy.

For the love of anything you hold dear, vote in November and in every local and national election from now until the end of time. Vote for people who will work to build a world that works, in the words of R. Buckminster Fuller, “for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” Vote to repudiate Trump and Trumpism in all its aspects, vote as if your life and the lives of your loved ones depend on it… because now, more than ever, they do.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Note: Comments are disbled for this post, for obvious reasons. If you have dissenting opinions, post them on your own pages, not here.

Note 2: If you come to the conclusion by reading this that I think abortion is a great thing, I regret I must disappoint you. Read this.

Welcome to the United States. Remember to set your watches back… 50 years

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Seen at the Facebook group “Memoirs of a Moddler.” My commentary is at the end.

I’m not pro-murdering babies.
I’m pro-Becky who found out at her 20 week anatomy scan that the infant she had been so excited to bring into this world had developed without life sustaining organs.
I’m pro-Susan who was sexually assaulted on her way home from work, only to come to the horrific realization that her assailant planted his seed in her when she got a positive pregnancy test result a month later.
I’m pro-Theresa who hemorrhaged due to a placental abruption, causing her parents, spouse, and children to have to make the impossible decision on whether to save her or her unborn child.
I’m pro-little Cathy who had her innocence ripped away from her by someone she should have been able to trust and her 11-year-old body isn’t mature enough to bear the consequence of that betrayal.
I’m pro-Melissa who’s working two jobs just to make ends meet and has to choose between bringing another child into poverty or feeding the children she already has because her spouse walked out on her.
I’m pro-Brittany who realizes that she is in no way financially, emotionally, or physically able to raise a child.
I’m pro-Emily who went through IVF, ending up with SIX viable implanted eggs requiring selective reduction in order to ensure the safety of her and a SAFE amount of fetuses.
I’m pro-Christina who doesn’t want to be a mother, but birth control methods sometimes fail.
I’m pro-Jessica who is FINALLY getting the strength to get away from her physically abusive spouse only to find out that she is carrying the monster’s child.
I’m pro-Vanessa who went into her confirmation appointment after YEARS of trying to conceive only to hear silence where there should be a heartbeat.
I’m pro-Lindsay who lost her virginity in her sophomore year with a broken condom and now has to choose whether to be a teenage mom or just a teenager.
I’m pro-Courtney who just found out she’s already 13 weeks along, but the egg never made it out of her fallopian tube so either she terminates the pregnancy or risks dying from internal bleeding.
You can argue and say that I’m pro-choice all you want, but the truth is:
I’m pro-life.
Their lives.
Women’s lives.
You don’t get to pick and choose which scenarios should be accepted.
Women’s rights are meant to protect ALL women, regardless of their situation!

roevwade #prochoice #abortion #women #womensrights #mybody #mychoice #mybodymychoice

This is one of the thorniest issues for me with regards to my own spiritual walk. I happen to believe that life is precious, and that the spirits that inhabit the bodies created on earth belong not to ourselves, but to God.

But here’s the conclusion I have come to, for my own peace of mind:

My beliefs prohibit me from eating ice cream in the park on Thursdays.
So don’t do it.
You don’t understand. Since I believe this, you can’t do it either.
*The same thing happens with civil unions.
Art by Peruvian cartoonist Carlín

What you believe your God or your holy books say is just fine, as long as it’s valid for you. Just you. 𝐘𝐎𝐔. Nobody else. Freedom of religion gives you the right to believe anything you want. It even affords you the privilege of preaching, teaching, exhorting, persuading, inviting, and enticing people to follow a path that you may believe brings humanity the greatest happiness.

But freedom of religion also guarantees freedom 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 religion. And there is a whole world of people out there who don’t ascribe to your particular flavor of sky cake or mine. What you or I 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 get to do is CRAM OUR BELIEFS DOWN ANYONE ELSE’S THROAT AND NULLIFY THEIR AGENCY (and yes, I’m SHOUTING to make sure you hear me). 𝐖𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲.

This is where the Republican Party and all its subsets, specifically the Evangelical Right, have gotten it completely wrong. If you believe abortion is a sin, well then, golly gee 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑒. It’s as simple as that. But just because your faith prohibits you from eating ice cream in the parks on Thursday, you don’t get to tell your neighbors that they can’t either. You don’t get to harass women, or take away their constitutional rights, or kill doctors, or bomb abortion clinics. The only thing you get to do is act for yourself according to the dictates of your conscience, and then shut up and let others do the same. If you are doing anything else, you have much to repent of.

For what it’s worth, if the GOP really wanted to reduce abortions – and they’re going to happen regardless of what legislation gets passed or what SCOTUS happens to say, they just won’t happen safely and many women will be irreparably injured and many will die – they would support organizations like Planned Parenthood, whose work prevents far more abortions than they facilitate, instead of trying to defund them and legislate them out of existence.

I have spoken.

Ode to [De]Joy

Posted on by The Old Wolf

The essay below by one of my friends appeared on my Facebook feed yesterday, and it broke my heart.

We read during the election of Louis DeJoy’s efforts to hamstring the post office in order to bolster the irrational claims of The Thermonuclear Bowel Evacuation Formerly Disgracing the Oval Office that mail-in voting would lead to massive fraud. It wouldn’t, and it didn’t. But the actions of this Trump sycophant and donor, a man who has no business as Postmaster General of our nation, are continuing to have repercussions down the line and will continue to do so as long as this waste of human cytoplasm is permitted to continue castrating one of our nation’s most important institutions.

This is a cry from the trenches.

There is a gravestone somewhere with the inscription:

When you go to work tomorrow, I will be going, too, but only long enough to turn in my ID and my laptop.

The GOP Ten-Year Plan To Rape The Postal Service took its first blood on Friday, with hundreds of postal employees and contractors getting the word that their position has been eliminated. As usual, there will be new jobs posted, maybe, at facilities somewhere far from home and at a lesser salary, but a job is a job, and there will be struggles for these positions that will be as entertaining as the old gladiator battles in the Coliseum. And with similar results.

This came about because Louis DeJoy, who ran a shipping company that competed with the USPS, and was a major GOP donor, was appointed Postmaster General during the last administration. The board that oversees the PMG is still a pack of GOP curs, and will not remove him until enough of them are removed to force a vote. By then, it will be too late to save much of the USPS.

In the past year, the IT office that I work in has gone from twelve people to five. The UNIX support group is perhaps 2/3 the size it was at this time last year. The workload has not been reduced at all. Overtime is strongly discouraged. If you think this is a recipe for a catastrophe, I will not contradict you. But it will SAVE MONEY. Just like trashing the sorting machines just before the 2020 election was going to save money. I didn’t notice any savings, because the O/T put in by the employees to take up the slack would have more than eaten it. Oh, wait, they weren’t allowed to charge O/T. So a lot of them did their work off the clock. What a savings!

It will also cripple the USPS even further, so there will be more pressure to simply disband it and give the work to private corporations. Sending a birthday card by FedEx will cost about $15, instead of $0.55. But, hey, small government, right?

And giving us the shaft on a Friday morning of a long weekend was THE morale-booster that we all needed.

Oh, and the USPS employs more veterans than any other government function. So the “We Support Our Troops!” boys have just screwed over the veterans. Again.

I’m a contractor, not a USPS employee. The USPS unit at Peraton is only about 6 months old, having just been acquired from NorthropGrumman. So the scramble for new jobs there will be at least as bad as the one at USPS, because they were still trying to fit us into the organization as it was.

Screw it. I’m six months from turning 66. I may just sign up for the dole, and Medicare, and let the people who are trying to support their families get the jobs. I’m sick of this. I’ve watched the front line get screwed at Kodak, Informix, IBM, and now USPS, and the old men who made the decisions that got us there walk away with fat wallets. This is not how I had thought of retiring, those 40+ years ago, but, as some profound thinker said, it is what it is.

So, tomorrow I drive to San Mateo (55 miles each way, and that I will not miss), turn in all my gear, and drive home to see what happens next. I’d like to thank all the people who voted GOP in 2016 because they were afraid they’d lose their guns, on behalf of the hundreds of us who just lost our jobs.

On behalf of my friend who lost his livelihood and the countless others who have or will, many of whom will not be in a position to retire and say “Screw it,” thank you, Louis DeJoy, for shoving a stake into the heart of our nation’s postal system in the name of ideology and personal profit. May you roast in Hell forever, you simpering, thermonuclear asstrumpet.

The Old Wolf has spoken

PS: Congress, please remove the insane requirement for the USPS to pre-fund its retiree health benefits. Adopting a traditional “pay-as-you-go” method would produce billions of dollars of desperately-needed additional cash flow.

Press the Numerical Button One Now!

Posted on by The Old Wolf

It is beyond me how Manasseh Jordan Ministries can still be operating. He is one of this country’s worst robodiallers, and has been sued more times than I have fingers and toes to count on.

https://www.scammer.info/d/24136-america-s-worst-robodialer-manasseh-jordan-ministries

“Prophet Manasseh Jordan

Apparently he comes to the business of defrauding people honestly, if one can even say that – he is the son of “Master Prophet E. Bernard Jordan,” another Prosperity Gospel preacher. The Wikipedia article confuses father for son in some of the references, but it’s not hard to see that the road apple didn’t fall far from the horse’s ass.

Just got another call from him tonight – from 775-954-0107. Instead of a spoofed number, it goes right to his recorded message:

“They are trying to take something. Press 1! Press 1! There has been spiritual warfare that is coming up and this is why the enemy has been messing with your stuff! Press 1 now to hear this blessed word, press 1!”

If you do happen to press 1, you get his long-winded spiel of spiritual gobbledygook (he’ll fight this warfare for you, etc., including some really weird “speaking in tongues” stuff), but it ends up in his hitting you up for that “great reward seed of $46.46, that $146.00 seed, that $246.00 seed, adding that 46 cents for your great spiritual reward, please hold while I connect you to the blessed operator!”

It’s 2021 and this guy is still operating, and sadly he seems to be amazingly successful as people continue to send him money so he can live a lifestyle of decadent luxury. He’s been fined by the FCC twice, and illegally robocalls millions of cell phones every week, and they can’t seem to shut him down, or don’t care to. It’s a disgrace.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

I don’t want conservative tears

Posted on by The Old Wolf

In 2016 when 45 won the election, one of my overseas friends posted on my wall that the most delicious thing he had ever tasted were the liberal tears.
That saddened me deeply, but it essentially reflected the attitude of 45’s supporters over the last four years. Everything about the GOP has been focused on making liberals sad or angry, whether it was good governance or not.

Now the pendulum has swung the other way. The small, petty part of me that festers in darkness wants to post snarky comments on the Facebook walls of everyone who smugly told me that 45 was going to win by a landslide, but that would be emulating the morally bankrupt, tinsel-coated con-man who will soon fade into the mists of ignominy.

I don’t want conservative tears. For the duration of this administration, many Republicans have been shoving their middle fingers in the faces of Democrats, chanting “He won, get over it.” It’s time for them to take their own advice. For eight years, Mitch McConnell did everything he could to stymie and block any legislation proposed by President Obama; it’s time for that to end. America deserves better, and if Republicans want to spend the next four years making sure that no progressive legislation is even considered, let alone passed, they will be obstructing themselves into irrelevance.

I don’t want conservative tears, I want conservative coöperation for the benefit of all of us. I want people to be able to reach across the aisle and craft legislation important to Americans the way Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch did in 1997 to provide healthcare for half of America’s 10 million uninsured children. We need this, and we deserve it.

I don’t want conservative tears. The simple fact that Joseph Biden will be president doesn’t mean that conservative values are suddenly irrelevant; it doesn’t mean that liberals all of a sudden will come for your guns, make you all have abortions, close your churches, put everyone on welfare, open our borders to every conceivable immigrant or make your children change their gender. It does mean that – as ever it has been – America consists of people with similar hopes and dreams for themselves and their families but different viewpoints about how to get there. I want to see us make America a nation (and by extension, the world) a place that works for everyone, with no one left out.

If you truly believe that certain segments of our population don’t deserve to prosper, don’t deserve to be healthy, don’t deserve equal opportunities, don’t deserve to feel safe from abuse or oppression, don’t deserve a living wage, or don’t deserve to be happy… by all means, shed as many tears as you want. There is no room in the America I believe in for viewpoints that oppress, diminish, or sideline others just to keep others feeling good about themselves. But it is my hope that you will come to see that conservatism does not mean Trumpism or authoritarianism or fascism or brutal oppression of differing viewpoints or lifestyles, and conversely that being a liberal does not equate to Soviet-style socialism or a communist ideology.

What Americans of all stripes want is jobs to support their families; safety in their neighborhoods; and national security. That’s really about all that’s important. The freedoms that so many people are screaming will be taken away by this party or that are guaranteed in the Constitution – freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of religion (or from religion), and even the freedom to bear arms. That document is so frightfully difficult to amend, by design, that it’s unlikely those freedoms will ever be abridged regardless of who is in power. If they are, then the great experiment wrought by our founders will truly have failed.

Let us work together. This election was legitimate, despite the hateful lies spewing forth from the White House. There was no cheating. There were no dead people voting. Mail-in balloting is not rife for fraud. It just happened that more people voted for the Democratic ticket this time.

Now, to my Republican friends and family, I say this: If you want to see another Republican in the White House in 2025, put forth a candidate of good character, one who can represent all Americans even if they don’t happen to agree with everything (s)he believes in. Craft a platform that shows all Americans that you care about their welfare. Campaign on achievable goals that will raise the standard of living and the quality of life of all Americans… and you will stand an equal chance of winning. Not by voter suppression, not by gerrymandering, not by hateful lies and smear campaigns, but by virtue of honesty, dignity, and human decency. But please don’t ever again nominate an evil clown like the one we’ve all had to suffer with for the last four years.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

We deserve way more than we’re gonna get

Posted on by The Old Wolf

This is a bit modified from something I saw in a meme dump recently. That one was about relationships, but this one is about all of us and our relationship with our nation’s leaders.

No matter who gets elected in 2020, whether it’s the Orange Screechweasel or Joe Biden, we’re not even going to get the bare minimum.

The current *administration is dedicated to self-aggrandizement and personal enrichment; The Thermonuclear Bowel Evacuation Currently Disgracing the Oval Office is a pathological narcissist and serial liar, and Moscow Mitch is concerned only with his ego-orgasms every time he spites the Democrats.

While you can be sure I’m going to cast my vote for Biden if he’s anointed the official Democratic candidate, and I’ll do so with only a little less gall rising in my craw than I had in 2016 when I pulled the lever for HRC, it’s not what I want for our nation.

Instead of this clown-circus dumpster fire, I want a government that is driven by one principle and one only:

“If it doesn’t make the world a better place… don’t do it.”

Robby Novak, “Kid President”

I want a government that is willing to play in the World Game, defined by R. Buckminster Fuller as:

“[Making] the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”

This isn’t pie in the sky. This isn’t utopia. It could be done if human beings would drop their “us/them” mentality, and stop with the “I’ve got mine, screw you” philosophy. Many humans would be willing to do this. The ones who won’t… well, that’s why we need government regulation. Trust busting. Taking down the robber barons. Punishing the Enrons and the Wells Fargos and the Bank of Americas. Taking on the Facebooks and the Amazons, closing loopholes that permit companies and the super-rich, legally, to avoid paying their fair share of taxes by offshoring profits and other accounting skulduggery.

And it’s been done in the past – just have a look at history. When the people of our nation got tired of being treated like serfs, they rose up and elected men and women who were willing to make the world a better place. FDR was a democrat, and he gave us the New Deal programs. Eisenhower was a Republican, and he kept the world at peace, balanced the budget three times, ended the Korean war, gave us the Interstate system, and sponsored the Civil Rights Bill of 1957¹.

I want people like this again. They were not perfect, but they gave a rat’s South-40 for you and me, and our kids, and everyone. What we have now is a disgrace, a sham, and a grave embarassment to the Republic our founders gave us.

Unless some miracle happens, American’s best chance for a democracy that works for everyone, with no one left out, was sidelined by the moneyed interests of the Democratic National Committee. Bernie Sanders offered an opportunity to elect someone who wasn’t bought and paid for by superPAC dollars, instead of the corporate shills who pretend to represent their constituents.

Congress should be killed. : killthosewhodisagree

So whatever happens in 2020, it’s not going to be what America deserves. But the dream is still alive, and the struggle continues. If we keep working, new torchbearers will arise to carry that dream into reality. I may not be around to see it, but perhaps my children and grandchildren will.

As long as I have breath, I will continue to fight.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

¹Sadly, the bill was amended by Congress which severely weakened its effectiveness, but it was a worthy effort.

That 1.5 Trillion-dollar “bailout”

Posted on by The Old Wolf

This was posted to Imgur by a user whose name is less than family-friendly, but (s)he put some good information out there that I wanted to share. If you want to see the original, click here.

I have cleaned up the text a bit for readability and only bowdlerized a few things for family consumption.

I’m not a fan of the current administration, but what they did today isn’t a bad thing and it wasn’t a Wall Street Bailout.

Of the $1.5T available today, $297.55B was loaned out with $125B loaned out as a 1 day contract. I hope this helps simplify some things for you peeps. I know it’s not perfect and I doubt this even makes it out of user sub, but to heck with it. I tried.

$1.5 Trillion Wall Street Injection

I’m seeing a ton of misinformation about what happened today with the Fed “injecting” $1.5T into the market and figured I’d teach a few people about what it actually is. I’ll keep it as simple as I can and know that it is more complicated than I’m making it out to be, I’m just lazy.

Fancy words to know:

Repo – Repurchase agreement
Repurchase agreement – Fancy term for line of credit
Fed – the Federal Reserve

“ThEy COUID hAvE glvEn AmErlcAnS $XXXX InStEaD oF BAILİNG OuT tHe RICH”

“EaT tHe RiCh”

No. Just no.

On average, 2 to 4 TRILLION dollars are traded as Repos EVERY DAY. It’s a short term loan backed by bonds, securities, and other things that have a set value. It’s somewhat similar to borrowing $1,000 on your car that’s paid off and worth $5,000. You get cash immediately, but you will have to pay interest.

You pay less interest the faster you pay it off.

These daily Repos are usually on 1 day contracts.

Ever had a money market account?

Wondered where the interest came from? A lot comes from Repo and Reverse Repo operations. Everyone should have one, it’s free money.

So what happened today?

The Fed saw the stock crashing and how the virus is affecting certain industries, i.e. cruise lines, and said “Welp, these folks are in a bad way… for like, at least a month or two.” So Cheeto-in-Chief and the powers that be opened up a $1.5T line of credit for banks, financial firms, and primary dealers. As I said earlier, these are usually 1 day loans with low interest rates. Longer term loans are available but the interest rates go up with the longer terms

The new $1.5T repo operation has much longer terms with low interest rates.

How does this affect/help the American people?

They are anticipating small businesses struggling in the coming months with quarantines and shutdowns and other things so they want make sure they don’t fail. That small business goes to the bank to get a loan to weather the storm, the bank is then able to draw on the $1.5T and give the small business a low interest rate (and Fed rate cuts) because of the low interest on the $1.5T.

Hate the current administration all you want but this was done to help keep the economy going when this virus gets nasty. Think about Carnival cruise lines. They are doomed for a hot minute but they have thousands of employees depending on their employer that isn’t currently making any money. Carnival needs money for operation costs, insurance, paid sick leave, and debts. With no cash flow, this will be their last hope to make it through as long as they can.

My thanks to this user for making some things clearer for those of us who got “C’s” in Econ 101. I am definitely not a fan of the Orange Screechweasel and his *administration, but what they did here will ultimately benefit many people whose businesses might otherwise have gone down the drain.

The Old Wolf has shared.

An excoriating repudiation of our current *president.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday in response to an assertion by the *president that special counsel Robert Mueller’s entire Russia report was protected by executive privilege, members of Congress took the opportunity to vote on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for not providing the complete and unredacted Mueller report.

Many congresspeople spoke, but the most powerful commentary was delivered by Congressman Jamie Raskin, representing the 8th District of Maryland. The full transcript of his powerful remarks are below. If you really care about what’s happening to this country, you must acknowledge that every word he spoke is backed up by facts, by decency, and by common sense.

“Madam Chair, I think we need to remark how far this president has lowered our country. First, they destroyed the norms and the values of society – things that we’d always taken for granted.

  • You don’t mock people with disabilities.
  • Men don’t mock women’s bodies on television.
  • You don’t ridicule people and give them obnoxious nicknames, at least after you graduate from the third grade.
  • You don’t falsely accuse other political leaders of treason.
  • You don’t accuse other political leaders’ parents of assassinating President Kennedy.
  • You don’t use disgusting, profane language to disparage other people’s countries and you don’t call neo-Nazis and Klansmen ‘very fine people.’
  • You don’t give aid and comfort to the dictators of the world like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin by flattering them and being their sycophants.

But then you destroyed the norms and the values of your office.

  • You called the press the enemy of the people.
  • You called true facts fake news and you call fake news true facts.
  • You vilify, you demonize the hardworking employees of the Department of Justice and the FBI.
  • You accuse them of being a part of a fantasy deep-state conspiracy just for doing their jobs.
  • You falsely claim millions of people voted illegally while you deny and dismiss the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller that there was a sweeping and systematic campaign to disrupt our elections in 2016.
  • You refused to divest yourself of your business interests or to put them in a blind trust as other presidents have done.
  • You traveled to your own business properties and the hotels on government expense.
  • You double initiation fees to Mar-a-Lago.
  • You turn the government of the United States into a money-making operation for your family, for your business, and for yourself.
  • And then you violate and undermine the laws of the United States.
  • You sabotage the affordable care act to try to deny millions of people access to their healthcare.
  • You separate children from their parents at the border. You pull out of the Paris climate agreement, making our country an international environmental pariah and outlaw state.
  • You lie about what science has shown about climate change.
  • You call it a Chinese hoax.
  • You collect millions of dollars from foreign princes, and kings, and governments in violation of Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution.

And now the president, aided and abetted by the attorney general, tears at the very fabric of our Constitution. He orders that a curtain be pulled down over the executive branch. He says there will be no cooperation with the lawful demands of Congress for information. Congress shouldn’t be looking any more. The president-king declares, this is all. It’s done. No tax returns, no Mueller report, no witnesses, not Don McGahn, not John Gore. The president declares himself above and beyond the law. James Madison said, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance and those who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives. The people through the Constitution gave us that power. We must exercise it. If you act with contempt for the people in Congress, we will find you in contempt of the people and of Congress. And I support the resolution.”

Any subset of the above allegations would constitute impeachable behavior, simply in terms of incompetence, malfeasance, and outright inhumanity. There is a lot of debate right now in progressive circles as to whether such an effort is even worth the time and money, particularly in view of the unlikelihood of conviction in the Senate.

Personally, I wish the House would vote to impeach, if only to show The Thermonuclear Bowel Evacuation Currently Disgracing the Oval Office that actions have consequences. Let it be remembered that Bill Clinton was
impeached by the House in December 1998 on two charges, one of perjury and one of obstruction of justice; while he was acquitted, the charges stemmed from a single charge of sexual harassment by Paula Jones. The laundry-list of horrors perpetrated by the current occupant of the White House makes that transgression, while serious, look like a peccadillo.

But even if the House takes a path of political expediency and moves on to other pressing business of our nation, it is the obligation of every human and decent citizen of our country to sweep this horror from the political stage in 2020 and relegate him to the status of a terrible mistake of history.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

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