The Evening Blues - 8-18-16



eb1pt12


Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues, country and rock singer Tracy Nelson. Enjoy!

Tracy Nelson - Every Night Of The Week

"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian."

-- Pat Paulsen


News and Opinion

Donald Trump Proposes Banning Immigrants Based on Ideology, But Bush and Obama Got There First

Donald Trump's plan to apply an “ideological screening test” on would-be immigrants has been denounced as “un-American,” and “a nonstarter.” But the U.S. government already can and does bar immigration on ideological grounds – and has abused that power.

In addition to dramatically expanding government surveillance, the Patriot Act passed by Congress soon after the 9/11 terror attacks allows the State Department to exclude anyone who it determines “undermines the United States efforts to reduce or eliminate terrorist activities.”

The Bush administration used that power to deny entry to leftist activists and administration critics. ... The Obama administration has also blocked people of certain viewpoints from entering the United States. [See article for examples. - js] ...

Trump’s proposal would go much further, of course. Trump is calling for every immigrant to be given an actual test, to screen out not only “sympathizers of terrorist groups,” but anyone with “hostile attitudes towards our country and its principles.” Trump also suggested he was a fan of the McCarran-Walter Act. “In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today,” Trump said Monday.

President Obama's Protocols For Deciding Whether To Kill You: A Grand Illusion Of Due Process And The Rule of Law

On August 5, 2016, President Barack Obama released a declassified May 22, 2013 document euphemistically styled Presidential Policy Guidance. It delineates the secret procedures the President has promised to employ (shielded from outside scrutiny or verification) to determine whether any person on the planet shall live or die based on his say-so alone.

The nation predictably received the alarming document with a yawn. ...

Just as in World War II, no opposition was provoked by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's racist concentration camps for 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans, allegedly to defeat Japan, President Obama's protocols for deciding whether he alone should decide if you live or die "to protect American lives," even if it means killing Americans, have been accepted with equanimity throughout the political spectrum. ...

The document emphasizes, for instance, that the President's kill decisions must be lawful. But the President decides what the law is. There is no adversarial process. There is no judicial, congressional, public, or other review. And we can deduce a president's ordinary belief in presidential omnipotence from President Richard Nixon's interview with David Frost: "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal." It took the United States Supreme Court, the Senate Watergate Committee, and the House Judiciary Committee to hold President Nixon accountable to the law. He was not about to accuse himself. ...

Even if the enumerated restraints in the president's protocols were real--any they are not-- Section 5 of the document empowers the President unilaterally to waive them all in secret in cases of "fleeting opporunit[ies]" in which he plays judge, jury, and prosecutor too like the Fury in Alice in Wonderland. And to hammer home the emptiness of the restraints, Section 8 decrees that they are "not intended to, and [do] not create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities ,its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person."

Boy in the ambulance: shocking image emerges of Syrian child pulled from Aleppo rubble


A photograph of a boy sitting dazed and bloodied in the back of an ambulance after surviving a regime airstrike in Aleppo has highlighted the desperation of the Syrian civil war and the struggle for control of the city.

The child has been identified as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, who was injured late on Wednesday in a military strike on the rebel-held Qaterji neighbourhood.

The image is a still from a video filmed and circulated by the Aleppo Media Centre. The anti-government activist group has been contacted to confirm details about when and where the footage was shot. The group posted the clip to YouTube late on Wednesday, shortly after Omran was injured. ...

The horror generated by the image of Omran echoes the anguished global response to pictures of Aylan Kurdi, the drowned Syrian boy whose body was found on a beach in Turkey. Those pictures came to encapsulate the horrific toll of Syria’s civil war.

US: Russia’s Use of Iran Bases Could Violate UN Resolution

The US State Department is claiming that the Russian use of an Iranian air base for strikes against ISIS in Syria could violate UN Security Council Resolution 2231, and claims to be consulting “our lawyers” to decide if it amounts to a violation.

Resolution 2231 bans Iran from obtaining nuclear-capable ballistic missiles or combat aircraft, though the State Department claims it can be used to do a lot of other things, and that Russia having military assets inside Iran might amount to the “transfer of military technologies” to them.

Russian officials are pointing out that’s obviously not the case, and that no aircraft or supplies are being transferred to Iran, they’re just using an Iranian base.

Erdogan Islamizing Turkey, Arresting Enemies + ‘Only the bikini is compatible with the values of France’

Turkish police detain two dozen journalists after closing pro-Kurdish daily

Turkish police have detained at least 24 people working for a pro-Kurdish newspaper since it was banned this week on suspicion of supporting Kurdish militants, the newspaper said.

The detentions bring the number of imprisoned Turkish media workers to 99, based on figures from the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) media watchdog, making Turkey the world's biggest jailer of journalists.

A government official denied the action against Ozgur Gundem was linked to the state of emergency declared after a failed coup on July 15, but an international media watchdog saw it as part of President Tayyip Erdogan's widespread post-coup purge.

An Istanbul court on Tuesday banned the left-wing newspaper, which has a circulation of 7,500, after ruling it made propaganda for the banned PKK party and acted "as its de facto news outlet," according to the court document.

Osama bin Laden's son Hamza urges overthrow of Saudi rulers

A son of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida’s slain founder, has urged Saudis to overthrow the kingdom’s rulers to free themselves from US influence, the terrorism-monitoring company Site Intelligence Group has said.

In an undated audio message, Hamza bin Laden urged Saudi youth to join the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) to “gain the necessary experience” to fight, according to Site. ...

US intelligence officials have said that 23-year-old Hamza was the favourite son of the 9/11 mastermind who had been grooming him to take over as al-Qaida’s leader

On the fifth anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death – on 2 May 2011 – experts noted Hamza’s increasing prominence among jihadists in comparison with that of Egyptian al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

US Has Launched 48 Airstrikes in New Libya War

AFRICOM says they have carried out 48 airstrikes against Sirte since this new war began, and while officially the Obama Administration has presented the matter to Congress as a 30-day campaign, officials have repeatedly conceded that there is no exit strategy in place, and no expectation that this is anything other than another open-ended war.

Though the “unity government” insists they are now “close” to taking over Sirte, they have made only intermittent gains, and have a relatively limited number of troops, mostly the Petroleum Facilities Guard forces, who were never meant to be offensive fighters, and are only trained to hold facilities.

In addition to the airstrikes, the US has confirmed that some of their special forces operating on the ground in Libya have taken part in the Sirte battle, though so far they’ve insisted this is just a small number of troops, and they are mostly targeting for warplanes.

US Sees Longtime CIA Asset Gen. Hifter as Threat to Libya War

As the US war in Libya moves into its third week, officials and analysts are seeing a lot of problems with their plans, but perhaps the biggest problem is one of their own creation, the Libyan Army and its leader, long-time CIA asset Gen. Khalifa Hifter. ...

When NATO imposed regime change in 2011, Gen. Hifter was quick to make his grand return, and has been trying to consolidate his power ever since. He announced a coup in 2014, which didn’t amount to much, and is now at the head of the army loyal to the UN-backed Tobruk government.

Which is only just now becoming a problem for a US, which launched the war nominally to unite the country under the UN-backed “unity government,” a wholly different faction. Though so far the US is focused on bombing ISIS forces in Sirte, the long-run ambition of uniting Libya is going to eventually put the US in direct conflict with every other faction in the country, and that includes Hifter’s substantial forces. US officials are already referring to him as a “spoiler” who is getting in the way of their ambitions.

Green Party's Jill Stein: U.S. Should Stop Funding Israel & Saudi Arabia

NPR Host Demands That Assange Do Something Its Own Reporters Are Told Never to Do

In a ten-minute interview aired Wednesday morning, NPR’s David Greene asked Wikileaks founder Julian Assange five times to reveal the sources of the leaked information he has published on the internet.

A major tenet of American journalism is that reporters protect their sources. Wikileaks is certainly not a traditional news organization, but Greene’s persistent attempts to get Assange to violate confidentiality was alarming, especially considering that there has been no challenge to the authenticity of the material in question.

NPR’s own ethics handbook urges journalists to respect and protect sources: “As an ethical matter, we would not want to reveal the identity of an anonymous source unless that person has consented to the disclosure. That’s why we take the granting of anonymity seriously.”

Experts Agree: Leaked NSA Code Is Authentic

Years of American efforts to portray the NSA as so far advanced above other hacking organizations as to be practically untouchable are taking a serious blow over yesterday’s announcement of a substantial collection of their cyber weapons being seized by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, and WikiLeaks’ confirmation they have the same files.

Experts in the field increasingly agree that the NSA code is absolutely authentic, with top cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab confirming 347 instances of encryption within the leaked files using a technique heretofore only seen in NSA code.

Former NSA employees are also confirming the authenticity of the documents, terming them “the keys to the kingdom.” ... The leak of this trove of files could set the stage for a dramatic leap forward in network security, closing decades of security flaws which the NSA was desperate to keep unfixed.

State Department sued for records of deleted press briefing video

A conservative group has filed a lawsuit demanding that the State Department release all records of how the publicly posted video of a 2013 press briefing was edited to remove an exchange about the secrecy of U.S. nuclear talks with Iran. ...

Fox News reporter James Rosen discovered earlier this year that State's online video version of a December 2, 2013 press briefing flashed to a white frame just before his questioning of then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki. After that back and forth, the video of the rest of the briefing picked back up.

State Department officials initially said it was a "glitch." However, they later reported a technician intentionally edited the video in response to what he said was a request from someone in State's public affairs office. Psaki has denied making any such request.

White House Official Cozied Up to Google Before Antitrust Lawsuit Was Shelved

When the Federal Trade Commission neared a momentous decision on whether to charge Google with violating antitrust laws in January 2013, the White House was watching closely.

New emails uncovered by the Campaign for Accountability, a public interest watchdog organization, show that a White House advisor met with top Google lobbyist Johanna Shelton and top Google antitrust counsel Matthew Bye twice in the weeks before the FTC announcement.

And hours prior to the final decision – in which FTC commissioners took the unusual step of overriding their staff’s recommendation to sue, and voted to settle the case instead – the White House official even sought Google’s talking points in the matter.

The FTC is an independent agency within the executive branch. As with the Justice Department, the White House political staff is prohibited from contacting federal regulators who might bring a formal case on behalf of the government. ...

The revelation about the White House’s contacts with Google prior to the FTC decision is another example of the extraordinarily close relationship between Google and the Obama White House. ... The newly released emails reveal that the White House was interested in and actively discussing the case before the FTC made their decision, and let the target of the investigation know that.

Cambodians sue US and Thai firms over trafficking and forced labour claims

Cambodian villagers have filed a lawsuit against four companies that supply American supermarkets, claiming they were trafficked to work under slavery-like conditions in a Thai seafood factory that exports to the US.

The civil lawsuit, filed in June in a California federal court, accuses the US and Thai firms of knowingly profiting from the villagers’ working conditions and violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a US law aimed at preventing human trafficking. Last week, the firms filed a motion to dismiss the complaint on jurisdictional grounds. ...

The complainants claim they were victims of human trafficking, forced labour, indentured servitude and peonage while working in Thailand in 2010 and 2011. ...

The complaint names Phatthana Seafood and SS Frozen Food, two Thai companies and major exporters to the US, as well as two California-based importers, Rubicon Resources LLC and Wales & Co Universe, which sell shrimp and seafood to US companies. Walmart is named in the complaint among the buyers (pdf) of Phatthana’s shrimp products.

The four companies are part of a “vertically integrated enterprise to produce, transport and sell seafood products from Thailand in the US”, the lawsuit claims.



the horse race



How a Question’s Phrasing Hobbles Third Parties

By asking Americans who they expect to vote for rather than who they want to be President, pollsters skew the numbers in favor of major-party candidates and help exclude third-party challengers from crucial debates

This week, the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates announced what polls it will utilize in excluding candidates from its debates. The CPD says candidates like the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein must get 15 percent in polls conducted by “five national public opinion polling organizations” — ABC/Washington Post, CBS/New York Times, CNN/Opinion Research Corporation, Fox News, and NBC/Wall Street Journal.

Not only — as several have correctly argued — is the 15 percent threshold arbitrary and exclusionary, but these polls don’t actually ask voter preferences at all. They all ask “If the presidential election were being held today for whom would you vote?” or some minor variation of that. Who you want or prefer and what you would do in the voting booth may be very different things. These “public opinion polls” don’t actually measure opinion — they are non-opinion polls. They ask a false hypothetical regarding a future action.

A better public opinion question would be: “Who do you want to be president” or “Who do you prefer to be president?” or “Who is your first choice to be president?”

By contrast, the question that the CPD relies on from these media organizations — if held today, who would you vote for — is a tactical question. As has become increasingly clear, there are many people who would like Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or Green Party nominee Jill Stein to be president. However, many who fear Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton are currently planning to vote for Clinton or Trump (based on who they judge to be the “lesser evil”).

Each of the dominant candidates is using fear of the other to prevent public opinion from manifesting itself for possible third-party candidates. Our voting system puts voters in a bind, making it difficult for them to vote their true preference. But public opinion polling should be a relief from that. Such polling should find out what the public thinks and wants — especially if the electoral system doesn’t allow for those choices. But that’s not what’s happening. The “tracking” poll question that’s being used over and over and obsessed over by all these organizations is actually disguising public opinion.

And then the CPD, acting on behalf of the two major parties, is using that to exclude third-party candidates from the debates, further marginalizing any public thinking that questions the establishment parties.

Did Green Party Pitch for 'Greater Good' Resonate with National Audience?

'I will have trouble sleeping at night if Donald Trump is elected. I will also have trouble sleeping at night if Hillary Clinton is elected.'—Jill Stein

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka took part in CNN's first Green Party town hall Wednesday night, laying out their proposals to abolish all student debt, establish a single-payer healthcare system, create a foreign policy based on humanitarian values, and to establish a "Green New Deal" that would both create millions of jobs nationwide and help transition the country to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.

Throughout the town hall, Stein and Baraka explicitly reached out to Bernie Sanders supporters—arguing that his presidential run was about a progressive movement, not Sanders himself—as well as to the tens of millions of young Americans overwhelmed by student debt.

And both candidates didn't hold back their critique of the candidates of both major parties. "I have serious questions about Hillary's judgment, her safeguarding of national security information, and above all her trustworthiness in the job where she will have her finger on the button," Stein said, "given how she handled major decisions around both the war in Iraq and the war in Libya, where she led the charge."

Baraka also condemned Trump's campaign for contributing to the "degradation of the democratic process" in the United States. "We're going to have to deal with Donald Trump even after the election, win or lose, because he is appealing to a social base that is prepared to continue to embrace the darkest side of humanity," Baraka said. "His appeal to the folks who embrace xenophobia, racism, his bigotry around religion—the unfortunate reality is that it has resonated with some elements of society."

Pfffffttt!!! The Democrats are spinning some new talking points to protect their corrupt candidates and establishment from the truth.

Democrats' new warning: Leaks could include Russian lies

Democratic leaders are putting out a warning that could help inoculate Hillary Clinton against an October cyber surprise: Any future mass leaks of embarrassing party emails might contain fake information inserted by Russian hackers.

[Yeah and monkeys might fly out of Nancy Pelosi's arse. - js]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is among those sounding that alarm, echoing security experts who say Russian security services have been known to doctor documents and images or bury fictitious, damaging details amid genuine information. For hackers to resort to such tactics would be highly unusual, but security specialists say it’s a realistic extension of Moscow’s robust information warfare efforts. ...

Democratic strategists say the party would be wise to trumpet warnings about faked leaks as it braces for the possibility of hackers releasing damaging information about Clinton or other candidates close to Election Day. Preemptively casting doubt on the leaks may be easier now than trying to mount a full response days before voters go to the polls.

[Yep, as Goebbels would advise, repetition is key when you want to catapult the propaganda. - js]

Republicans say Democrats are just trying to distract the public from the most important issue: the content of the leaks. They say the Democrats already tried to do that with the first batch of 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails that leaked in July, which forced the resignation of Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz after showing that some DNC staffers had favored Clinton over primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“First, they made it all about Russia instead of the substance of what was actually in the emails,” said Matt Mackowiak, a veteran Republican strategist. Now, he added, “If there is a massive trove of emails or documents relating to the Clinton campaign or the Clinton Foundation … they may just say, ‘Look, the authenticity of the emails hasn’t been confirmed.’”

Zephyr Teachout Challenges Billionaire Right-Wing Donors to Debate

New York congressional candidate Zephyr Teachout is throwing down the gauntlet to right-wing money men who want to buy elections in secret.

Teachout, who won the Democratic primary for New York's 19th district in June, this week challenged hedge fund billionaires Paul Singer and Robert Mercer to a debate in light of their contributions to a super PAC that supports her Republican opponent, John Faso.

"The voters deserve to hear directly from the billionaires backing John Faso about what they expect to get from him in Congress," Teachout said. "When someone writes a $500,000 check they don't do it out of the goodness of their heart. These are people probably trying to buy power, and voters should know who they are and what they stand for."

"I'm challenging Paul Singer and Robert Mercer to put your mouth where your money is and debate me directly, not through your mouthpiece," Teachout said.

Trump is getting his first top secret intelligence briefing

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will receive his first classified intelligence briefing from the White House on Wednesday.

NPR and other news organizations reported that Trump will most likely be briefed at FBI headquarters in New York by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Trump will be accompanied by two advisors to his campaign: retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who is the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor.

The sitting president has offered classified briefings to the two presidential candidates from each major party since President Harry Truman extended the courtesy to Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson in 1952.

While the briefings do contain classified information, they are more of an overview than an in-depth briefing, and do not contain details like who collected intelligence, nor does it contain information about covert operations.

Trump: I don't trust U.S. intelligence information

Donald Trump offered a blunt explanation for why he wants retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn at his side as he gets his first classified briefing at FBI headquarters on Wednesday — he doesn't trust intelligence information coming from those currently in charge. ...

"I mean, look what's happened over the last 10 years. Look what's happened over the years. It's been catastrophic. And, in fact, I won't use some of the people that are sort of your standards, you know, just use them, use them, use them, very easy to use them, but I won't use them because they've made such bad decisions," said Trump, who will also be joined by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at the inaugural briefing. "You look at Iraq. You look at the Middle East. It's a total powder keg. It's a — if we would have never touched it, it would have been a lot better. I mean, we would have been much better off. On top of which, we've spent probably $4 trillion. Nobody even knows what we've spent. So, no, I have great people, and Gen. Flynn is one of them."



the evening greens


Visitors rush to the Great Barrier Reef to catch it before it’s gone

In a reversal of the normal travel bucket list, tourists are rushing to see the Great Barrier Reef before it dies.

Half of the reef’s coral has disappeared in the past three decades due to a combination of warming ocean temperatures, coastal development, invasive starfish and agricultural runoff. ...

This year, the reef has experienced its worst bleaching event on record. A huge underwater heatwave, which has killed off coral across the globe, has affected 93% of the reefs along the 2,300km wonder. In the northern and central sections, almost half the coral has been bleached so intensely and for so long that it will not recover.


India mourns crocodile-wrestling 'Queen mother' of tigers

The “Queen mother” of royal Bengals, thought to be the oldest surviving tiger in the wild, has died in a northern Indian national park.

Machali, aged about 20, was the star attraction of the Ranthambore national park and one of the most photographed tigers in the world.

Local media had been reporting on the animal’s declining health in recent days after she was discovered semi-conscious and starving on the fringes of the popular Rajasthan nature reserve. ...

Her exact age is unknown, but she was first spotted in 1997 and quickly became popular among tourists for her serene bearing and dominance among the park’s tigers, which officially number about 61.

Another iconic Indian tiger, Jai, is feared to have been poached after disappearing on 18 April from the Umred Karhandla wildlife sanctuary near Nagpur in central India. Two suspected poachers were detained from near where the seven-year-old was last spotted, according to the Hindustan Times.

Stopping the Snake: Indigenous Protesters Shut Down Construction of Dakota Access Pipeline

Louisiana floodwaters begin to recede but thousands remain in shelters

Floodwaters in Louisiana have begun to recede, but the horror of the disaster continues to mount: on Wednesday afternoon more than 30,000 people had been rescued from the flood, 40,000 homes were affected and 6,000 people remained in shelters. At least 11 people have died.

As some residents get a first glimpse of their destroyed homes, reunite with loved ones and connect with friends via social media, the scale of the trauma is coming into view. The American Red Cross reports that the flood is the worst natural disaster to hit the United States since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

“The Red Cross is mounting a massive relief operation, which we anticipate will cost at least $30 million and that number may grow as we learn more about the scope and magnitude of the devastation,” Brad Kieserman, vice-president for disaster logistics for the Red Cross, said in a statement.

Barack Obama has declared the flood a major disaster, with 20 of the state’s 64 parishes damaged. ...

The rainstorm was just that – rain – and so it crept up on residents without the alarms and warnings that accompany a hurricane. It began in the Florida panhandle and worked its way west along the gulf coastline, never swerving south to gain strength in the gulf, and never turning north to die over land. Eventually it came to a stop over south Louisiana and gushed rain for days, sometimes at a rate of three inches an hour.

Southern Louisiana is a flat, low-lying plain so there was nowhere for the water to go; once the rivers filled, the water went cascading across the landscape, sometimes rising a foot an hour as people scrambled to keep their children and pets safe.


Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

US War Crimes or ‘Normalized Deviance’

Uncovering the brutal truth about the British empire

Obama will leave his successor a ticking time bomb

These American deserters from the Iraq war may finally get refuge in Canada

Minnesota’s Bernie voters turning Green: Jill Stein courts progressive voters in an uncommonly independent-friendly state

As Clinton woos Republicans, Sanders' faithfuls fear they will be forgotten

Trip Reports from Sanders Delegates at the Democrat National Convention

The Fed Has Been Winging It for Eight Years; It’s Time for Congress to Step Up

Aetna's Greed Proves That Medicare-for-All Is the Best Solution

Why China’s Multi-Decade Manufacturing Miracle is Over

U.S. Jails Fail to Meet Basic Needs of Growing Population of Women

In photos: Louisiana's flood called worst US natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy


A Little Night Music

Bonnie Bramlett & Tracy Nelson - When Something Is Wrong With My Baby

Tracy Nelson - Walkin' After Midnight

Tracy Nelson - Motherless Child Blues

Tracy Nelson - Tennessee Blues

Willie Nelson + Tracy Nelson - After the Fire Is Gone

Tracy Nelson - Stranger in My Own Home Town

Tracy Nelson - Feel so Good

Mother Earth (Tracy Nelson) - A&R Studios 1971



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Comments

How 'bout that Aetna dude's pay? In TX, Aetna has retired teacher's healthcare benefit, costs have skyrocketed, and the legislature needs to pony up this biennial or we in deep doo doo.

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Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

joe shikspack's picture

apparently, bertolini makes pretty good money being a ceo. sorry to hear that your benefits are between a rock (aetna's unmitigated greed) and a hard place (the texas legislature that thinks that revenues are for lowering the taxes of their cronies).

have a great evening!

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mimi's picture

it looks like most readers are talking still elsewhere and without reading I can't say anything too. Just that I like your quote!

I will try to read now. Have a nice evening. And don't be upset when people can't keep up with reading it all at once. I got a chuckle about the monkey's coming out from you know where... Smile

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joe shikspack's picture

have a good read! watch out for flying monkeys. they might be anywhere.

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enhydra lutris's picture

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

i was quite impressed with her back in the day when she was singing with mother earth. she still has a fine set of pipes.

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jamess's picture

some HOT News:

July 2016 Was Earth's Warmest Month on Record [since records began in 1880]
wunderground.com -- August 17, 2016

article has lots of charts and maps.

toasty!

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joe shikspack's picture

yep, there's gonna be a hot time in the old, um, planet tonight.

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jamess's picture

It's gotten to the point locally I've got to escape my apartment,
and head for the hills, (or the coast),
whenever an extended heat-wave hits.

That is, 2 or more 95 F days in row.

On those days my abode turns into an "oven" by the 2nd day.

Side note, it sure seems I'm spending a lot of time away from home lately.
Guess I'm just another sort of Climate-Refugee.

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

gotta get 'the B' out before dark.

Wanted to drop by, and thank you for tonight's EB, which I'll enjoy when we get back in.

And thank you for giving me instructions regarding sharing the HTML Code for a Flickr photo, last evening.

Hey, it was for a good cause--C99P Fundraising!

Wink

Everyone stay cool, and have a nice evening!

Mollie


“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit, and, therefore, to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)

National Mill Dog Rescue (NMDR) - Dogs Available For Adoption

Update: Misty May has been adopted. Yeah!

Misty May - NMDR

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

joe shikspack's picture

have a good time with "the b," pass on a scritch for me.

glad to hear that the instructions worked out for you.

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Shockwave's picture

The word is out all over already.

She reminds me of a younger Elizabeth Warren.

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The political revolution continues

joe shikspack's picture

a record of anti-corruption campaigning would be an excellent resume line for a candidate next time around assuming the incredibly corrupt clinton gets elected. i'd imagine that folks would be pretty damned tired of corruption within a few months of clinton taking office.

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Azazello's picture

were disappointing, but hardly surprising. We all saw the same dishonest tactics, the same bullying, online from the followers of the Clinton Cult of Personality. Here's a question: The Clintons made $10 million last year. What, exactly, is their line of work ? Are they professional Do-Gooders, Motivational Speakers, Fighters for All That is Right and Just, what ? Whatever that occupation is called, it sure pays well.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

joe shikspack's picture

What, exactly, is their line of work ?

my guess would be that they are grifters.

whenever i think of them, this line from the great gatsby comes to mind:

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald

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divineorder's picture

Heh, we all know the article above missed a few 'folks' --including some of us here at teh caucus99percent-- we know not everyone has given Obama and tptb a pass on drones.

Por emplo Code Pink

href="http://www.codepink.org/ground_the_drones"> Ground the Drones

Check out the website where they name names in the Drone Fact Sheet

Now if we could just get this word out to the people .....

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

thanks for the snazzy fact sheet!

codepink does great work, and if hillary is elected, they and we are going to be even more busy.

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divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

rides the MIC to hell and takes us with her. /s

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

riverlover's picture

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Shahryar's picture

Not you people. I mean the other people.

This swimming thing is what's doing it to me tonight. Apologists coming out of the woodwork to assure us that what they did (piss on the gas station wall, bust down a door, act like ugly Americans, make a false claim that they'd been robbed) was really not important at all and anyway there's crime in Rio and the police should be dealing with that instead.

And then there's the other unreality, where those who support Hillary do so because, well...

"Clinton supporters believe the gap between the rich and the poor (70%) and the environment (43%) are major issues facing the country"

in other words, for Bernie's issues.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/politics/pew-research-center-poll-2016-ele...

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lotlizard's picture

I had no idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Job_in_Germany

“The Nazi party may be gone, but Nazi thinking, Nazi training and Nazi trickery remains. The German lust for conquest is not dead.... You will not argue with them. You will not be friendly.... There will be no fraternization with any of the German people"

Jack Warner, head of Warner Brothers, subsequently secured the rights to the movie and turned it into a short documentary entitled Hitler Lives?. It was released commercially on December 29, 1945 and won the 1946 Academy Award (Oscar) for Documentary Short Subject.

What’s wrong with me, here in Dresden, fraternizing with all those ex-Nazis and ex-Commies . . . the Aloha Spirit? — Jesus’ injunction to love one’s enemies? — how un-American can one get?

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Only connect. - E.M. Forster

mimi's picture

what's wrong with me, descendent of thsoe ex-Nazis and ex-Commies, soaking up the Aloha Spirit over in HI ? Typical German injunction to occupy and eat up one's friendly neighbors? How more German can I get?

Yckes, we all go nuts. It's time to stop the nonsense.

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