Who owns the world? The Establishment at play, as reported by Politico. Frenemies.
“OUT AND ABOUT IN THE HAMPTONS — LALLY WEYMOUTH held her annual summer party last night at her house in Southampton. There was a long gold carpet entrance from where the parking was to a big tent next to her house. She served champagne, rare filet, fried chicken, cornbread, a big chocolate cake, ice cream and cookies decorated as American flags. Brother Don Graham did a big tribute to toast Lally (whose birthday is tomorrow) and shouted out Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film about how Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham challenged the government for the right to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971 (Tom Hanks is playing Bradlee and Meryl Streep is playing Graham). Don made a big deal that Spielberg was there and jokingly conceived a Spielberg movie about Lally and described the cast (some actors and some in the room).
“– SPOTTED: Jared and Ivanka chatting with Joel Klein and Alan Patricof, Kellyanne Conway on the dance floor, Boyden Gray, Chris Ruddy, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and wife Iris, Katharine Weymouth, Mary Jordan, Richard Cohen, Margaret Carlson, Gillian Tett, Steven Spielberg chatting with Steve Clemons and Robert Hormats, Carl Icahn, Tom Lee (famous for doing a leveraged buyout of Snapple and now lives in Princess Radziwill’s house), Charles Koch, John Paulson, Dina Powell, Richard Edelman, George Soros and his wife Tamiko Bolton, former Florida Gov. and Sen. Bob Graham (Lally’s uncle), her cousin Gwen Graham (who is running for Florida governor), Maria Bartiromo, Ray Kelly, Bill Bratton, Alan Patricof, Jeff Rosen, William Drozdiak, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.).”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So pissed , I wasn’t invited
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Excuse me while I vomit!
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Leave a spot open for me! Won’t even have to stick my fingers down my throat. It’s the “bipartisan” and press elite inclusion part of it that makes it so disgusting.
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Most of us know by now that the U.S. is an oligarchy governed by and for the top 10%, with a Corporate Congress, ‘President’, and Supreme Court.
All pretensions to it being a ‘democratic republic’ are no more than that – pathetic pretensions.
Is it even possible to remake this corrupt, sociopathic, greed-is-everything political/economic system to one truly representing the needs and wants of the populace?
I doubt it.
Time is running out for us: Next Three Years Will Decide Fate of Our Planet’s Climate, Experts Warn http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/44400-next-three-years-will-decide-fate-of-our-planets-climate-experts-warn
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Ed,
Be sure to read The NY Times story about Scott Pruitt’s rapid demolition of environmental regulations.
As the polar ice caps melt, as the streams and air go foul, will he care? No. That is his goal. I guess the Trump child and grandchildren will be fitted for face masks.
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“As the polar ice caps melt, as the streams and air go foul, will he care? No. That is his goal. I guess the Trump child and grandchildren will be fitted for face masks.”
In Mike Pence’s worldview why should he & his devout followers care about climate change? The chosen Christians (e.g., only those “saved”) will be swept into heaven when the world ends. The rest will burn in the conflagration & cast to hell.
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That article was telling. Pruitt chooses profit over children’s health. Truly a vile, human being. Like his boss.
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The elite, the 1% at play? Isn’t it interesting that both Dems and Repubs were there, one assumes “mingling.” Wasn’t it F. Scott Fitzgerald who said: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we
are. They are different. ”
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Thank you Will Thomas for reminding readers that, (quote):
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
In the same token for those very rich, those arrogant “ivy” graduates assume that they are very smart, but all of them are truly selfish, egoistic, coward, and heartless. Back2basic
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I have met homeless people who came from wealth and, while not all of them, a few were very conservative and against social policies that provide safety nets, even though they had hit rock bottom and benefited from them. They acted as if they were better than the rest of the world and just had a temporary setback.
One claimed that he chose to not to have the same privileged life style that he was raised in, but he was extremely arrogant and often told people whether they were allowed to talk. After an incident when he was so combative that he tried to set the rules for staff and told them when they could speak, too, the police had to be called and he was kicked out. The police said he’d had several orders of protection against him. That was his second tour at one of the best shelters and when people complained that he had not been adequately vetted and questioned his history there, it was suggested that his rich father had paid the shelter to take him back.
Need I say this hot mess was an extremely avid Trump supporter?
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I highly recomment this article on the new breed of “thought leaders” who have replaced authentic public intellectuals. I loved the discussion of the guru of “disruptive innovation” whose ideas have no credibility but are pushed by loyalists employed by an “institute” created to promote that idea.
See https://newrepublic.com/article/143004/rise-thought-leader-how-superrich-funded-new-class-intellectual
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That’s a really thought provoking article, Laura. Thanks for the link.
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Thanks for this article. It seems it going to take awhile for this idea of disruptive innovation to die. In this 2014 take-down by Jill Lapore, she shines a light on this fake science.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-machine
“A pack of attacking startups sounds something like a pack of ravenous hyenas, but, generally, the rhetoric of disruption—a language of panic, fear, asymmetry, and disorder”
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Loyalists of DI’s fake science are birthed in business schools. This new book by Duff McDonald takes apart the theoretical foundations of Harvard’s MBA program. It will take a unified effort of people power to undo the damage already done. This interview with Duff is well worth your time as it gives context to many edu-reformers empty beliefs.
https://majority.fm/2017/06/15/615-duff-mcdonald-harvard-business-school-the-limits-of-capitalism-and-the-moral-failure-of-the-mba-elite-m/
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This reminds of this morning’s ‘Washington Journal’ (C-SPAN), when Jack Moline of Interfaith Alliance talked about the group’s role in trying to bring back civility into politics and political dialogue. He noted more than once (in response to callers-in) that DC partisans’ public speech was purely political & gauged to garner votes– that in fact most of these folks socialized often & cordially.
found Moline’s message refreshing.
BTW, I found Moline’s message refreshing. He clearly [when pressed] found Trump’s tone deplorable & harmful. But he gave some historical reminders as to the decline of political discourse & the rise of public ad hominem attacks (suggesting that others set the stage). And his emphasis was: one can’t in a democratic society, impose a particular tone to civil discourse. But the tone w/which we express our ideas is an individual choice: if one chooses to raise the level of discourse (in response to disrespectful dialog) to a respectful level, the other party will often follow suit.
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I wonder how many people invited to that Hamptons party have to worry about paying for their health care? And, the health care of their loved ones?
America, July 2, 2017.
Having been a young child growing up in the 1960s, I just can’t believe this is where we have ended up.
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“Pale blue Dot”
A pale blue dot
In blackest void
They want the lot
The greedy boys
“The wealthy want it all”
The wealthy want it all
A third or half won’t do
The wealthy want the Fall
And other seasons too
The wealthy want the land
And want the Seven Seas
They even do demand
The flowers, birds and bees
The wealthy will not rest
Until the earth is theirs
And manage to bequest
The planet to their heirs
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Some of them are launching themselves off the pale blue dot so they can claim space too. Even NASA is being privatized. Leonard Cohen:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
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When pale blue dot
Turns black as ink
The wealthy lot
Will leave the stink
And search for new
Untrammeled place
And never rue
The human race
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Democrats and Republicans,
Labour, Unionists, Socialist Libertarians,
Ultra-Nationalists, even DeVos of Trumpistan
Will join in the Hamptons and all hold hands
As they launch from what they bought and used up: all the water, all the land.
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I thought it was the NY Times that challenged the government for the right to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971, not WaPo, since it was, in fact, published by the NY Times, I believe.
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KK, NYT published first three installments. When they faced injunction, Ellsberg shared more with Wa Post, which published a series of articles based on Papers.
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I just learned of the Mont Pèlerin Society and the influence of libertarian economist, James Buchanan, in the following interview with Nancy MacLean re her new book, “Democracy in Chains: the deep history of the Radical Right’s stealth plan for America.”
I just ordered the book, so I do not know if she recognizes the emergence of the nouveau riche (Gates, Zuckerbergs, etc.) in the plan for America. Nevertheless, Mont Pèlerin Society has been plotting since 1947, while the Kochs have been instrumental since the 70’s. Regime change and reforming dynasties is apparently the aim.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/29/republican_push_to_replace_obamacare_reflects?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=d9583f33a8-Daily_Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-d9583f33a8-192075561
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Darn. I wasn’t invited. Oh well. Don’t think I’d like the food. Certainly wouldn’t like the company.
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As the Los Angeles band X, one of my favorite groups of all time, once sung: “That’s sex and dying in high society.”
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