The Evening Blues - 11-9-16



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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Lonnie Johnson

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues & jazz musician Lonnie Johnson. Enjoy!

Lonnie Johnson - Hard Times Ain't Gone No Where

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

-- Woody Allen


News and Opinion

Editorial

Well, it's over at last. That much is good.

I can't wait for the official verdict from the Democrats as to what was to blame for their abject defeat. I wonder if Putin will win the blamestakes or perhaps they'll stick with stupid, racist, misogynist deplorables.

Whatever.

This election was the Democrats' to lose. The Democrat elites chose their candidate, they even worked their connections with the media corporations to get the opponent that they wanted.

If the Democrat elites were not such a bunch of corrupt, self-dealing jackasses, we would be celebrating the triumph of President-elect Sanders today.

The Democrat elites are to blame for the loss as well as their toadies that refused to stand up and renounce the kool-aid when they were presented with incontrovertible evidence that the primaries were a corrupt process.

The Democrats have rendered themselves politically irrelevant. It's probably best that the party crawls off and dies rather than trying to resurrect itself with any of the previous bureaucracy intact which might slip back into bad habits.

The good news is that it appears that we have discovered the limits of the effectiveness of money. Clinton had the money, the Wall Street establishment, the military-industrial complex, the media and the delusional camp followers of the Democratic Party all behind her and she still got trounced because she didn't get enough votes from the everyday people that make up the vast majority of the electorate.

There is some hope in that.

Donald Trump is moving to the White House, and liberals put him there

He has run one of the lousiest presidential campaigns ever. In saying so I am not referring to his much-criticized business practices or his vulgar remarks about women. I mean this in a purely technical sense: this man fractured his own party. His convention was a fiasco. He had no ground game to speak of. The list of celebrities and pundits and surrogates taking his side on the campaign trail was extremely short. He needlessly offended countless groups of people: women, Hispanics, Muslims, disabled people, mothers of crying babies, the Bush family, and George Will-style conservatives, among others. He even lost Glenn Beck, for pete’s sake.

And now he is going to be president of the United States. The woman we were constantly assured was the best-qualified candidate of all time has lost to the least qualified candidate of all time. Everyone who was anyone rallied around her, and it didn’t make any difference. ...

What species of cluelessness guided our Democratic leaders as they went about losing what they told us was the most important election of our lifetimes?

Start at the top. Why, oh why, did it have to be Hillary Clinton? Yes, she has an impressive resume; yes, she worked hard on the campaign trail. But she was exactly the wrong candidate for this angry, populist moment. An insider when the country was screaming for an outsider. A technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine.

She was the Democratic candidate because it was her turn and because a Clinton victory would have moved every Democrat in Washington up a notch. Whether or not she would win was always a secondary matter, something that was taken for granted. Had winning been the party’s number one concern, several more suitable candidates were ready to go. There was Joe Biden, with his powerful plainspoken style, and there was Bernie Sanders, an inspiring and largely scandal-free figure. Each of them would probably have beaten Trump, but neither of them would really have served the interests of the party insiders.

The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman. The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the “last thing standing” between us and the end of the world. It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability.

Bill Black: Liberals Didn’t Listen – The Immense Cost of Ignoring Tom Frank’s Warnings

I am writing this article late on election night in my office at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, about a mile from the home in which Tom Frank grew up just over the state line in Kansas. Beginning with his famous book, What’s the Matter with Kansas, first published in 2004, Tom Frank has been warning the Democratic Party of the increasing cost it was paying by abandoning and even attacking the working class, particularly the white working class. Some political scientists tried to savage his work, pointing to Bill Clinton’s electoral success and arguing that the disaffected members of the working class were also less likely to vote. Frank returned to the theme just in time for this election with a new book – Listen, Liberal – that documents in damning, lively narrative the New Democrats’ war on the New Deal, their disdain for organized labor, and their antipathy for what they viewed as retrograde white working class attitudes.

Frank kept showing the enormous price the working class were paying as a result of the economic policies of the Republicans and the New Democrats, and the indifference to their plight by the leaders of the New Democrats. Senator Bernie Sanders consciously took up the cause of reducing surging inequality and became a hero to a broad coalition of voters, many of them fiercely opposed to the New Democrats’ embrace of Wall Street cash, policies, and arrogance. Sanders set records for small donor fundraising and generated enormous enthusiasm. Sanders knew he would face the opposition of the New Democrats, but he also found that progressive congressional Democrats would rarely support him publicly in the contest for the Party’s nomination and even union leaders sided overwhelmingly with Secretary Hillary Clinton, the New Democrats’ strongly preferred candidate.

Hillary did not simply fail to reach out to the working class voters that the New Democrats had turned their backs on for decades, she infamously attacked them as “deplorables.” This was exactly the group of potential voters that was enraged because it believed, correctly as Tom Frank keeps showing us, that the New Democrats looked down on them and adopted policies that rigged the system against the working class. Hillary’s insult confirmed their most powerful bases for their rage against her. Her insult was an early Christmas present to Trump. Her attempt to walk the insult back was doomed.

Hillary Clinton handled things so miserably that she allowed a plutocrat whose career is based on rigging the system against the working class to become the hero of the working class. That is world-class incompetence.


The Nightmare President

Donald Trump shocked everyone but his own supporters Tuesday as his racist, xenophobic, authoritarian, climate-science-denying, misogynistic, “grab-them-by-the-pussy” candidacy somehow carried him to victory.

Larger than expected turnout among rural and working-class white voters led Trump to outperform polling expectations in almost every battleground state, winning Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which, according to the Associated Press, put him over the required 270 electoral votes early Wednesday morning. ...

Wide open questions remain as to how Trump would staff his administration, or govern. Trump has flip flopped on hundreds of policy positions, and despite his promise to break the control of Washington by political insiders, his transition team is full of corporate lobbyists and Republican power brokers.

Two places he’s been consistent: His convictions to build a wall on the southern border, and to stand by police when they kill unarmed black men.

Political scientists, pollsters and pundits will likely debate for many years how media elites could have been so wrong in predicting an overwhelming Clinton victory. But in the short term, many communities, from undocumented immigrants to Muslims, suddenly face grave concerns for their rights and security.


Why Trump Won; Why Clinton Lost

American voters chose [Trump] in part because they felt they needed a blunt instrument to smash the Establishment that has ruled and mis-ruled America for at least the past several decades. It is an Establishment that not only has grabbed for itself almost all the new wealth that the country has produced but has casually sent the U.S. military into wars of choice, as if the lives of working-class soldiers are of little value. ...

For this dangerous and uncertain moment, the Democratic Party establishment deserves a large share of the blame. Despite signs that 2016 would be a year for an anti-Establishment candidate – possibly someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Sen. Bernie Sanders – the Democratic leadership decided that it was “Hillary’s turn.”

Alternatives like Warren were discouraged from running so there could be a Clinton “coronation.” That left the 74-year-old socialist from Vermont as the only obstacle to Clinton’s nomination and it turned out that Sanders was a formidable challenger. But his candidacy was ultimately blocked by Democratic insiders, including the unelected “super-delegates” who gave Clinton an early and seemingly insurmountable lead.

With blinders firmly in place, the Democrats yoked themselves to Clinton’s gilded carriage and tried to pull it all the way to the White House. But they ignored the fact that many Americans came to see Clinton as the personification of all that is wrong about the insular and corrupt world of Official Washington. And that has given us President-elect Trump.

Obama’s promise of change questioned as presidency closes

The triumph of Trumpism: the new politics that is here to stay

Consider the scale of Donald Trump’s victory: someone who had never run for office led a successful revolt against the Republican establishment, and then roundly defeated a candidate who enjoyed a significant fundraising advantage, a superior ground game, and the nearly unanimous support of American business and media.

Trump didn’t pull off this extraordinary insurgency merely through the force of his personality. He did it by innovating a new kind of politics – Trumpism – that proved enormously popular. The triumph of Trump is the triumph of Trumpism. ...

Trumpism has two main ingredients. The first is the notion that people of color and women are less than fully human. This idea isn’t new to the Republican party – far from it. But Republicans usually prefer to be a bit less explicit in their reliance on racial hatred and misogyny. As Stanford University professor Tomás Jiménez put it to the New York Times, Trump has turned the “dog whistle into an air horn”. Mainstream Republicans may feign outrage at Trump’s bigotry, but bigotry has been paying the party’s bills for a long time. Trump is merely saying as text what House speaker Paul Ryan says as subtext.

The second component of Trumpism is what pundits insist on calling “populism” – more precisely, an anti-elite ethos that pairs a critique of corporate oligarchy with support for a degree of social protection. Over the course of his campaign, Trump has promised to tax Wall Street, penalize companies for outsourcing jobs, kill the TPP, and renegotiate or rip up Nafta. He has also repeatedly promised to protect social security and Medicare. Of course, it’s likely he has no intention of fulfilling any of these promises. His extremely regressive tax plan includes deep cuts for corporations and the rich, which suggests that President Trump will be far less “populist” than candidate Trump.

Still, Trump’s rhetoric matters. Republicans typically vow to uphold free trade and gut the welfare state. Not Trump. A Trump ad released a few days before election day blasted elites for imposing policies “that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities”. It’s a brilliant piece of political messaging, complete with a montage of shuttered factories and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein talking at the Clinton Foundation. It’s also impossible to imagine Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or any of Trump’s Republican rivals producing something similar.

US Presidential election: Canada's Immigration website crashes due to huge requests number

Three-for-three, Republicans also maintain control of both houses of Congress

Republicans didn’t just win the White House on Election Day. They also held on to both the House and the Senate.

Retaining control of the House was expected, but Democrats had hoped to regain control of the Senate with strong showings in a dozen hotly contested races. They needed a five-seat net gain, but failed in all but one of them. It was not the Democrats’ night. ...

The Democrats’ stunning defeat means that Republicans will have close to free reign in Washington for at least the next two years. One of the first things Republicans will likely go after is the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature piece of legislation. Less than three weeks before Election Day, the government announced that health care premiums were going to go up next year, which amplified Republicans’ vow to destroy it. ... Republicans will also likely be poised to approve any Trump Supreme Court nominees.


Donald Trump Recruits Corporate Lobbyists to Select His Future Administration

As Donald Trump finishes his campaign with a promise to break the control of Washington by political insiders, his transition team is preparing to hand his administration over to a cozy clique of corporate lobbyists and Republican power brokers.

“Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you the American people,” Trump says in his closing campaign advertisement, followed by flashing images of K Street, Wall Street, and Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein.

But the Trump transition team is a who’s who of influence peddlers, including: energy adviser Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist for Koch Industries and the Walt Disney Company; adviser Eric Ueland, a Senate Republican staffer who previously lobbied for Goldman Sachs; and Transition General Counsel William Palatucci, an attorney in New Jersey whose lobbying firm represents Aetna and Verizon. Rick Holt, Christine Ciccone, Rich Bagger, and Mike Ferguson are among the other corporate lobbyists helping to manage the transition effort.

Presidential transition teams develop policy plans and come up with a list of more than 4,000 people an incoming president appoints, including White House jobs, cabinet secretaries, and lower level positions that oversee the military, agriculture, trade, and beyond.


Putin applauds Trump win and hails new era of positive ties with US

After an election campaign in which Russia has been openly accused of interfering in favour of Donald Trump, his surprise victory led to applause in the Russian parliament, a swift call from the president, Vladimir Putin, for a new era of “fully fledged relations” between his country and the US, and the suggestion that US-imposed sanctions could be lifted.

Speaking in the Kremlin, Putin congratulated Trump on his victory and said Russia was ready to work for better ties. “We understand that it will not be an easy path given the current state of degradation in the relations,” he said.

“And as I have repeatedly said, it’s not our fault that Russian-American relations are in such a poor state. But Russia wants and is ready to restore fully fledged relations with the United States.”

Earlier, Putin became one of the first world leaders to congratulate Trump, sending him a telegram expressing hope for an era of positive ties. Many Russian politicians welcomed the news, both because Trump has spoken of his admiration for Putin and because he represents a blow against the US “establishment”.

Relations between the US and Russia have reached a post-cold war low over the past two years, due to differences over Syria and Ukraine. Moscow’s involvement in the latter’s conflict led the US to impose sanctions.

President elect Donald Trump: the Guardian view on a dark day for the world

The unthinkable is only unthinkable until it happens. Then, like the sacking of Rome, it can seem historically inevitable. So it is with the global political earthquake that is the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. If he is true to his campaign pledges, which were many and reckless, Mr Trump’s win will herald America’s most stunning reversal of political and economic orthodoxy since the New Deal in the 1930s, but with the reverse effect. It halts the ailing progressive narrative about modern America and the 21st-century world in its tracks. It signals a seismic rupture in the American-dominated global liberal economic and political order that had seemed to command the 21st century after communism collapsed and China’s economy soared. ...

But this is primarily an American catastrophe that America has brought upon itself. When it came to it, America failed to find a credible way of rallying against Mr Trump and what he represents. Hillary Clinton failed that crucial test both in herself and in what she offered; for her this is the end. Mr Trump was not taken seriously and was widely not expected to beat Mrs Clinton throughout the long, bitter campaign. At each stage, his candidacy was deemed certain to crash and burn. The opinion polls and the vaunted probability calculus rarely trended in his direction; both are discredited today. Only after the FBI director’s intervention, less than two weeks before the election, was it widely imagined that the tables might turn in Mr Trump’s favour. Nevertheless by the eve of poll Mr Trump was again the outsider.

Yet Mr Trump has won big in an election where, if the exit polls were right, most people made up their minds long before the James Comey furore. Mr Trump’s victory was total. It was the most stunning upset in modern US history; not even a squeaker. He won most of the battleground states into which the Clinton campaign had poured money – Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin – en route to a decisive Republican electoral college total exceeding 300. That majority is centred on the so-called flyover states, which inhabitants of the big Democratic bastions on the coasts often only see from 35,000 feet.

Wall Street elite stunned at Trump triumph

From plush penthouse apartments on the Upper East Side to bars in midtown Manhattan, New York’s financial community watched in stunned dismay on Wednesday as Republican Donald Trump clinched the White House.

An early party mood quickly soured as donors and supporters of Hillary Clinton realized that the Democratic candidate, Wall Street's preferred choice because she represented the status quo, had lost. ...

Trump's unpredictable pronouncements and opposition to free-trade agreements have made the real estate mogul unpopular with many financiers, who fear that he could disrupt global trade and damage geopolitical relationships.

The U.S. dollar sank and stocks plummeted as investors fled risky assets. S&P 500 index futures crashed. ...

Matthew Farley, a lawyer with Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP in New York, said he had been warning friends and colleagues about an electoral upset for months.

"I told them that ... a significant portion of the country wanted someone to do a cannonball into the pool and mess up the status quo," said Farley, who advises Wall Street brokerages on regulation and arbitration issues.

"The cannonball party is not united. They're progressives and conservatives, but they're fed up with the status quo and all they know is that anything is better than what we got."

Jeremy Scahill:

The True Scandal of 2016 Was The Torture of Chelsea Manning

A few days ago, we learned that Private Chelsea Manning attempted to take her own life last month for the second time since being sentenced to 35 years at the U.S. military prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. The whistleblower, who provided the collateral murder video, the Iraq and Afghan war logs, and the hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables to Wikileaks, was convicted of espionage. As I waited to vote today, I found myself thinking of her languishing in misery in isolation and incarceration.

This election — particularly in its closing stages — has been dominated by controversies over emails, classified documents, and Wikileaks. We’ve heard endlessly about Hillary Clinton’s private basement server, her 33,000 deleted emails, the phishing and leaking of John Podesta’s emails, including parts of Clinton’s much discussed private speeches to Goldman Sachs. ...

None of the disclosures in this campaign — not one thing in any of the hacked emails or those declassified and released from Clinton’s private server — has brought to light anything of greater importance than the documents Chelsea Manning provided to Wikileaks. She revealed war crimes, including murder and torture, dirty and duplicitous dealings of the U.S. and its allies, exposed liars, documented a secret history of America’s longest running war, and forced a much needed debate about the U.S. role in the world. And for that, she is being tortured. ...

Chelsea Manning, whose motivation was noble, whose actions made our country better, faces the full wrath of the system. And it may end up killing her. When we talk about the high-tech scandals that marked this election, at the top of the list should be the torture of Chelsea Manning.

War in Yemen: Saada, a city in ruins

Turkey Warns US: ‘Wrong Groups’ Mustn’t Enter ISIS Capital of Raqqa

While the US rejected Turkey’s long-standing demands that Kurdish YPG forces not be involved in the fighting over the ISIS capital of Raqqa, Turkish officials and Kurdish officials continue to trade barbs over the matter, with both trying to limit the potential involvement of the other.

Turkey seems resigned to the YPG participating in the operation to encircle Raqqa, but Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has warned the US against allowing the “wrong groups,” presumed to mean the Kurds, to enter the city itself, meaning in effect they expect the Kurds to stay out. ...

The YPG-dominated umbrella group, the Syrian Democratic Forces, dismissed Turkey’s comments, insisting they are in a better position than Turkey to decide who is needed to invade Raqqa. Though Turkish-backed forces are generally not in the area around Raqqa, Turkey has conducted airstrikes against YPG forces during anti-ISIS offensives in the past, and could quickly derail the Raqqa invasion.

US Apache Helicopters Involved in Attacking Mosul

The Iraqi government has long rejected US offers to use Apache helicopters in military offensives against ISIS, with the Abadi government fearing the perception that they are taking a back seat to the US and giving the Pentagon too much power in driving the offensive.

But the helicopters are active in the offensive against the large ISIS city of Mosul, with Pentagon officials saying they are being used “with significant effect” and are primarily aimed at attacking vehicles that they believe are going to be suicide bombs.

These deployments are part of an ever-growing US involvement in front-line operations within the Mosul invasion, with signs that more or more US special forces, who officials insist are “non-combat” and wouldn’t be put on the front lines are getting closer and closer to the areas of direct combat.

The Navy can't fire its awesome new gun because the rounds cost nearly $1 million each

The U.S. Navy can't fire its awesome new gun that can hit a target more than 70 miles away because the rounds are costing the service nearly a million bucks a piece.

Just a couple weeks after the Navy commissioned its most advanced warship, the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000), the service says it won't be buying any more of the guided precision munitions the ship's Advanced Gun Systems uses, called the Long Range Land-Attack Projectile (LRLAP).

The Navy wasn't expecting the exorbitant cost when it first began producing the advanced Zumwalt-class destroyers.

It originally planned to build 32 of the stealth ships, but cost overruns led the service to eventually reduce the number down to just three. That reduction in the number of ships also led the cost of its ammunition to rise, Defense News reported.

Congress May Not Require Women to Register for Draft

While U.S. Defense Department officials have made clear it has no problem with requiring women to register for the draft, lawmakers in Congress appear poised to dodge the issue in the upcoming battle over the defense policy bill.

House and Senate negotiators plan to shelve the provision in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act in favor of ordering up a study of the issue, sources told Politico and the Washington Examiner. ...

A spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee declined to comment on whether the proposal to have women register for the draft would be scrapped but said a House and Senate conference committee would take up the legislation when Congress returns next week.



the evening greens


Wells Fargo: Big Oil’s Biggest Banker

The courageous stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline, led by indigenous nations and especially the Dakota and Lakota people of the Standing Rock Sioux, has sprouted a divestment campaign targeting the pipeline’s major creditors. A September report by Food and Water Watch noted that 38 banks have financed the companies building the pipeline, most notably Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), which owns a controlling three-quarters interest in the so-called Black Snake.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a 1,170-mile underground monument to North America’s fracking boom linking North Dakota’s prodigious Bakken oil patch to East Coast and Gulf Coast transmission routes, and is backed by $10.25 billion in financing overall, the Food and Water Watch tally revealed. ...

[Wells Fargo] is the Dakota Access Pipeline’s second largest financial backer, with $467 million invested to date, is therefore an attention-grabber in itself. But Wells Fargo also acts as Energy Transfer Partners’ so-called “administrative loan agent,” the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings show, giving it a qualitatively greater role in fueling the pipeline than any other bank. Wells Fargo performs all record-keeping associated with all of ETP’s loans, handles the interest and principal payments made in connection with those loans, and monitors their ongoing administration. In other words, all bank financing ETP receives passes through Wells Fargo. ...

In 2014, Wells Fargo assumed the mantle of Wall Street’s top oil and gas banker, having more aggressively ramped up its investments than any other following the 2008 economic crash.

'Climate Tax' on Meat and Dairy Would Sink Emissions and Diseases: Study

Taxing the meat and dairy industries for their impact on climate would lead to lower emissions and save about half a million lives per year, according to the first global study of the issue, published Tuesday.

A 40 percent fee on beef and a 20 percent fee on dairy would counter the industries' impact on climate change, as livestock release significant greenhouse gases while exacerbating deforestation, and would encourage people to consume less of each—which in turn would improve global health, according to the Oxford Martin Program on the Future of Food, part of the University of Oxford.

The study (pdf), published in the journal Nature Climate Change, finds that raising the price of beef by 40 percent would lead to a 13 percent decrease in consumption.

It is also the latest evidence that keeping global emissions below 2°C and preventing widespread irreversible damage cannot happen without global food system reform. Other recent studies have found that not only is Big Agriculture incapable of "feeding the world" as biochemical giants like Monsanto have promised, but that the focus must actually be on empowering local, small-scale farmers.


Also of Interest

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

The Rejection of Wall Street’s Globalization Project: Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead!

Trump won. Now we organize to block him, every step of the way

Election 2016: The World Was Watching – With Disgust

Voters Repudiate Clinton

The Working Class Won the Election

Weed’s big night

A View of the Syrian War From the Golan Heights

The United States May Be Guilty of War Crimes in Yemen


A Little Night Music

Lonnie Johnson - Uncle Ned Don't Use Your Head

Lonnie Johnson - Woke Up With the Blues In My Fingers

Lonnie Johnson - South Bound Water

Lonnie Johnson - Swing Out Rhythm

Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson & Texas Alexander - Work Ox Blues

Lonnie Johnson - Somebody's Got To Go

Lonnie Johnson - I Got The Best Jelly Roll In Town

Eddie Lang & Lonnie Johnson - Guitar Blues



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joe shikspack's picture

i'll be off having dinner and commiserating with the kids (perhaps with some libations) tonight. i'll check in a little later on this evening.

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OLinda's picture

Greenwald - The Intercept

more at link.

...

(1) DEMOCRATS HAVE ALREADY BEGUN FLAILING AROUND trying to blame anyone and everyone they can find — everyone except themselves — for last night’s crushing defeat of their party. You know the drearily predictable list of their scapegoats: Russia, WikiLeaks, James Comey, Jill Stein, Bernie Bros, The Media, news outlets (including, perhaps especially, the Intercept) which sinned by reporting negatively on Hillary Clinton. Anyone who thinks that what happened last night in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Michigan can be blamed on any of that is drowning in self-protective ignorance so deep that it’s impossible to express in words.

When a political party is demolished, the principle responsibility belongs to one entity: the party that got crushed. It’s the job of the party and the candidate, and nobody else, to persuade the citizenry to support them and find ways to do that. Last night, the Democrats failed, resoundingly, to do that, and any autopsy or liberal think piece or pro-Clinton-pundit commentary that does not start and finish with their own behavior is one that is inherently worthless.

Put simply, Democrats knowingly chose to nominate a deeply unpopular, extremely vulnerable, scandal-plagued candidate, who — for very good reason — was widely perceived to be a protector and beneficiary of all the worst components of status quo elite corruption. It’s astonishing that those of us who tried frantically to warn Democrats that nominating Hillary Clinton was a huge and scary gamble, that all empirical evidence showed that she could lose to anyone and that Bernie Sanders would be a much stronger candidate especially in this climate — are now the ones being blamed: by the very same people who insisted on ignoring all that data and nominating her anyway.
...

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joe shikspack's picture

i'm interested to see what narrative that the democrats will settle on this time to assign to others the blame that rightly should be their own. could putin replace nader? Smile

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solublefish's picture

Greenwald has been all over this now for years. Let's hope the Dems get the message, else as GG suggested, it can only get worse.

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on the guitar.
Eddie Lang(Salvatore Mazzeo) is the man who drove the banjo from jazz with his accompaniments showing the guitar was a more flexible instrument for jazz than banjo. Eddie would often hit a different chord on each beat and drove the band that he was playing in. He could play modern classical music but preferred jazz. He used a Gibson L-5 which became the basic jazz guitar(Maybelle Carter played an L-5 too.) Bing Crosby hired Lang as his musical director - this was when Bing was cutting edge.

Johnson's solos are inventive and reflect his ability in both jazz and blues.

I would recommend Tomorrow Night as a good song that Lonnie recorded in his later years.

Eddie Lang also paired with Joe Venuti, one of jazz's most accomplished violin players, and these recordings are also available.

Lang, in that segregated era also recorded under the name Blind Willie Dunn when he recorded with an all African American band.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

joe shikspack's picture

the lonnie johnson/eddie lang duets are also notable because they are among the first recorded interracial performances. lang was credited under the name that you note above, blind willie dunn on these 1929 recordings.

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well as being a sociological phenomenon as you point out.

I like big band rhythm guitar and those f-hole guitars could cut through the horns and keep the keep and the harmonies flowing. It started with Eddie.

Lonnie Johnson enjoyed a long career but never got rich at it. I liked his singing as much as his playing.

Thanks for featuring the pair - they don't seem to be well known today and deserve to be listed among the greats.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

divineorder's picture

Agree with your editorial.

Onward !

http://act.350.org/signup/trump-win-strategy-call/?rd=1&t=4&utm_medium=e...

Update: People across the country are gathering together for vigils tonight, to support each other and to reaffirm our commitment to working for justice across movements. To find the path forward, we need each other. We aren't giving up.

Please go here to find a vigil near you. Or, go here to host one.

Best,

May

Dear friends,

It’s hard to know what to say in a moment like this. Many of us are reeling from the news and shaken to the core about what a Trump Presidency will mean for the country, and the difficult work ahead for our movements.

Trump’s misogyny, racism, and climate denial pose a greater threat than we’ve ever faced, and the battleground on which we’ll fight for justice of all kinds will be that much rougher.

The hardest thing to do right now is to hold on to hope, but it’s what we must do. We should feel our anger, mourn, pray, and then do everything we can to fight hate.

In 48 hours, leaders from across movements for justice will gather on a live broadcast to discuss plans for the fight ahead. To continue toward justice, our movements must join together like never before.

If that’s a vision you want to be part of, join the live strategy session on November 11th.

When times get tough, it’s crucial to remember: we are in this together, and when we mobilize, we are capable of the unimaginable. No one man — no matter how cruel or powerful — can take that away.

Here’s what I’m keeping in mind right now:

This is a global movement. It’s more important than ever to remember our connection with people in literally every country who are fighting the fossil fuel industry right now — many in the toughest conditions imaginable. I believe in our collective power like nothing else.
The fossil fuel industry is in a fight for its life. When we expose their lies, stop their pipelines, divest from their stocks and take away their social license — they fight back. Their investment in this election was no secret, and they’re going to double-down in its aftermath.
Local fossil fuel resistance is taking root everywhere. Not only has the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline spread like wildfire, but other campaigns against fracking, pipelines, and coal are too many to name. None of us are giving up or going home today.

There is no denying the fact that our job is harder now. I’m taking a moment to grieve with loved ones today, and I hope you are too.

But tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, the movements for climate justice, for Black and brown lives, for immigrant justice, for democracy and everyone who believes Donald Trump is the opposite of what makes America great — will step into our power together and show that the people who want justice represent a force too great to ignore.

It will take all of us. But together, we can — and we will — blaze a bright path through this dark day.

With hope and resolve,

May for the 350.org team

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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

it's going to take a while to sort out what trump's victory means in terms of what power he will actually be able to exercise to bring some of his bad ideas to fruition. given the hold that the oil and gas industry has on the republicans generally, his environmental policy may be one of his areas of potential success. on the other hand, obama's many failures to act responsibly to implement sensible climate policy have prepared and galvanized a large group of activists that, due to dapl are organized and ready to mount serious resistance.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

joe shikspack's picture

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Shockwave's picture

Not just respect him but idolize him and praise him at every occasion. Keep in mind he is a narcissist, sociopath, megalomaniac, etc.

We are in filthy uncharted waters.

The masses will start to understand the magnitude of the disaster in about 6 to 12 months and by then it will be clear that there is no way back. Throw in the Supreme Court for good measure. NATO is freaking out. Putin and Duterte were the first to congratulate him.

Goodbye EPA, goodbye Obamacare, goodbye prison reform. goodbye Paris Accord, etc. Hello "law and order" and The Wall;

[video:https://youtu.be/fvPpAPIIZyo]

I do have a plan B ready for myself which I will start soon.

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The political revolution continues

joe shikspack's picture

trump has talked big, but he will likely find that enacting many of the things that he's bloviated about is beyond his abilities and the power of his new office.

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For providing us with such a thorough coverage of what's happening in the wider world and for being a part of starting this website that means a lot to many folks.

I like the sound of "Cannonball Party." That could be more fun than even the Pirate Party.

That Diana Johnstone post on Counterpunch has some unusually delicious mocking and parody of the Democrats. Diana is clearly enjoying today:

Trump was sexist, because he referred to certain women as “bimbos”. Elizabeth Warren called him out for this, on a platform where Hillary sat listening, mouth wide open in delight – she who had referred to Bill’s girlfriends as “bimbo eruptions”.

And one thing that caught my attention watching the elites alternately piss themselves and pat themselves on the back on TV, Angus King (I) was interviewed on MSDNC. He seems a pretty reasonable, kinda liberal Republican from Maine.

But then he went into the obligatory "Trump has the button!!!" schtick. He said he thought Trump was the kind of guy who understood deals and compromise, but that 3 AM tweeting bothered the prim Yankee. Angus's solution for the President-elect was some pre-job training, and King proposed a complete, across-the-board exposure to every kind of expertise. The Senator, member of the Armed Services Committee, wants Trump not only to talk some generals, the Manhattan Bad Boy needs to meet with some admirals too!

Didn't this country once have a corps of people known as "diplomats?" Guess they've become an artifact of history where international relations threatens to resemble a comic book plot.

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joe shikspack's picture

Didn't this country once have a corps of people known as "diplomats?" Guess they've become an artifact of history where international relations threatens to resemble a comic book plot.

heh, yeah, we used to have diplomats, but then bush turned over most diplomatic functions to the pentagon and under obama, clinton and kerry have tried to direct the pentagon from the state department.

if there seems to be little use for diplomats, blame it on george w. obama.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

What a day! I had to talk Raggedy Andy down, this morning. He has been such a Trump hater that I've worried for his well being. The sun still came up, so there is that. I'm at peace, though. Giving it up to the universe. The question is, will the universe give us despair and utter hopelessness or total extinction? That's what we will all come to see in 2017 or will Trump surprise us?

In looking over the results, I also find that third party voting made no difference; had no affect on the result. In every state I looked at, with the exception of Michigan, third party voting did not affect the outcome. In Michigan, voting for her heinous instead of Jill would have given her Michigan. It would have made no difference in the electoral count, though.

Was this the straw that is going to wake up America? Will a Trump presidency finally put an end to the lull into consumerism that is America's lifeblood? In any event, I am breathing a sigh of relief today, however, that there will be no Clinton in the White House.

Great tunes, today. Many thanks for lifting our spirits.

Have a beautiful evening, everyone! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

joe shikspack's picture

i suspect that all across america people were talking others down today. most of the people that i talked to today seemed to be somewhat in a state between disbelief and disgust. i guess we will see what the next stage is.

have a good evening!

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here's a good video, made yesterday by Jordan from TYT. He gets a little long winded but he's good. Skip to the 25 min mark if you're crunched for time.

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joe shikspack's picture

thanks for the video!

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OLinda's picture

Senate page.

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Lookout's picture

I should have seen it coming (Prez T-rump), but it caught me off guard. It is a wild wind that blows...

political wind.jpg

what will it bring?

trumpxit.jpg

They're freaking out now

trump effect.jpg

Not my hope...

hope.jpg

My hope is it will only be four years....

four years.jpg

All the best to you Joe and all you c99ers!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

joe shikspack's picture

i think pretty much everybody was surprised at how the election went down. you don't see the powers-that-be have to settle for their second choice too often.

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Crider's picture

Last night I was sure it wasn't going to be Trump, but today I live in a fascist country! Anyway, John D. Loudermilk died in September and I didn't even know. RIP.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciU7A8spOCI]

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joe shikspack's picture

it's funny how so many people's perceptions of america have changed overnight.

george w. obama created and institutionalized the tools of a fascist state and now they are to be turned over to an unstable, narcissistic con-man.

well, there's a plot twist worthy of a writer of dystopian fiction.

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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

thanks! it was great.

have a great evening!

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

your evening out with your Family. I imagine they are wondering 'what the heck' went down last night. We're still trying to re-assess the situation.

Hey, I'm getting ready to set up some Goggle Alerts on the duopoly Leadership, hoping that I can be made aware of possible Lame Duck Session legislative negotiations. I suspect that I'm already getting more gray hair, worrying about Ryan working with corporatist Dems to further demolish the Social Safety Net--in spite of DT's repeated pledges not to cut so-called entitlements. Hopefully, the Freedom Caucus will be able to nix his attempt(s) to remain in the Speakership.

One positive thing that 'may' come out of all this--it might be considerably more risky for the Republican Party to cut entitlements, since there won't be split government [for at least two years].

As we've seen in the past, both parties prefer to 'hold hands, and jump together,' when it comes to cutting popular social programs.

IOW, they rarely enact cuts, unless the two parties can give each other 'cover.' We'll see.

Most of all, I'm hoping that the shellacking will incentivize 'the Left' to form a new Party/Coalition in hopes of dethroning 'the Donald' in 2020. I truly believe that it is doable, if we get enough of a head start.

Hey, Everyone have a nice evening!

Bye

[Edited: Deleted redundant phrase. Added Freedom Caucus comment.]

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)

Chris Hedges 2020

The SOSD Fantastic Four

Available For Adoption, Save Our Street Dogs, SOSD

Taro
Taro, SOSD

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

joe shikspack's picture

One positive thing that 'may' come out of all this--it might be considerably more risky for the Republican Party to cut entitlements, since there won't be split government [for at least two years].

also, one of trump's somewhat consistent positions was that he was against cutting social security. not that i expect that his word means much, but there's that.

have a great evening!

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Because I know for a fact many of my die hard Republican neighbors would have voted for Bernie but, as you saw, would never vote for Clinton. I also know they aren't racist and sure as hell aren't misogynists, and so Im inclined to believe that the vast majority of voters who voted for trump aren't either. If trump gleans a different message from the results, other than that he's a protest president, he is screwed. I know the fight begins for real now and Im frankly exhilarated. The corrupt and lying Dems gone. Look out. We really might be able to make America great again for all of us.

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joe shikspack's picture

the demonization of the working class by the clintonistas and their pals in the media seems to have convinced a lot of liberal types that they are completely surrounded by horrible, stupid people who refuse to re-educate themselves and become fit company for modern democrats.

perhaps the folks that call themselves progressives should figure out a way to put aside their prejudices long enough to get close enough to working class people to see the error of the propaganda that they have been fed.

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snoopydawg's picture

Hillary ran things so miserably that she allowed a plutocrat whose career is based on rigging the system against the working class to become the hero of the working class. That is world-class incompetence.

I can't believe how many people don't even know what countries the USA is bombing or has invaded. Of course the media doesn't tell us these things, but come on! Haven't these people looked at the Internet?
I'm thoughorly disgusted with Americans who aren't aware of what's happening with the military.
I still feel that a lot of the reason why Hillary lost is because of what Obama did and didn't accomplish during his two terms.
And his hiding behind the republican obstructionism makes him look weak.
He let a lot of their heinous policies that hurt us and helped his buddies through.
He could have used signing statements on how much money was cut from the food stamps program.
But when he saw the rampant fraud when people were trying to save their homes, he did nothing. Just let the banks continue to screw people.
The legacy he leaves behind isn't anything that helped the people in this country.
Income inequality continues to worsen.
The only thing I can applaud him for is he at least tried to keep the war hawks in check in Syria. They were waiting for Hillary to let them off the leash.
We will see how much power Trump has over the military or if he tries to stop the war of terror.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

heh, it is hard to come up with words that fully describe just how poorly hillary campaigned. for a politician of her experience, surrounded by a the successful clintonista brain trust and all the money that a politician could dream of having at their disposal - it's practically incomprehensible that hillary still screwed the pooch.

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snoopydawg's picture

suicide again.
Jeremy made some great points about how Chelsea has been inprisoned and tortured for releasing the Collateral Murder video.
It was her duty as a member of the military to report on war crimes.
She did that out of a sense of honor and revulsion, while Petraeous did it out of hubris when he gave them to his mistress so she could write a book.
Chelsea is spending 3 decades in prison while petrayous only had to pay a $100,000 fine. He's still walking free and working in the think tanks dreaming up new ways to kill people.
Clapper and others got away with perjury.
We all know what Hillary got away with, but it's Chelsea that is paying the price.
F'ck you Obama, you sanctimonious POS!
I hope that one day your daughters will see what you have done to the world and turn their backs on you!

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

TheOtherMaven's picture

call the attack dogs off Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, free Leonard Peltier - there's a long long list of people who should come before Shillary. She should take her proper place at the bottom of the list - but when has she ever consented to be treated like one of the "rabble"?

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

mimi's picture

when I heard that Putin congratulated Trump as one of the first foreign head of states and apparently said something along the lines that he looks forward to cooperate with him in the future, I just thought, ok, give Putin that little moment of "Schadenfreude" and little kick in the behind of the Democratic losers, after having been made the evil guy to blame by the elites and media in DC.

Then I heard Mitch McConnel's press conference, he gave today (don't find a link other than articles about it, on the radio, and was just so entirely rolling my eyes and fainting to bang my head against the dashbord, because he just couldn't help him to stick to the same anti-Russian cold war rhetoric that comes out of the US since the 1950ies.

Nothing what Trump says is to take valid for more than a day.That is all way beyond fubar and completely unpredictable other than it will be horrible too. I do believe that all words spoken by Trump or Clinton and pundits can't be taken back, can't be forgotten, can't be made unspoken.

In that sense all the words Trump has spoken are to be taken seriously for good. How about that for inconsistency in my thinking? When he came down yesterday with a little bit of conciliatory words, you could also already hear that the commodity markets which were crashingyesterday already rebound on Bloomberg. How ridiculous is all of that?

So, the willingness of the people to cling to a couple of nice words, because they have no other choice than to cling to the dream of the US always be the good guys and standing behind a peaceful transition of power. McConnell's words in my opinion were the ones that described what we will be confronted with, and then they will be put to the meatgrinder of Trump's soul and all things are just that, a meaty mashed mess.

Comiseration with my kid too. Not easy.

Bernie's statement is so "scripted". It's not healing those, who feel betrayed and disappointed. The images of people protesting on the streets is just a small bandaid.

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joe shikspack's picture

i guess putin does have a sense of humor, after all.

heh, when you hear mitch mcconnell, it's best to turn off the radio. Smile

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So, how is this much different than what Hillary would have done, apart from perhaps a few different billionaires here and there?

...the Trump transition team is a who’s who of influence peddlers, including: energy adviser Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist for Koch Industries and the Walt Disney Company; adviser Eric Ueland, a Senate Republican staffer who previously lobbied for Goldman Sachs; and Transition General Counsel William Palatucci, an attorney in New Jersey whose lobbying firm represents Aetna and Verizon. Rick Holt, Christine Ciccone, Rich Bagger, and Mike Ferguson are among the other corporate lobbyists helping to manage the transition effort.

Presidential transition teams develop policy plans and come up with a list of more than 4,000 people an incoming president appoints, including White House jobs, cabinet secretaries, and lower level positions that oversee the military, agriculture, trade, and beyond. ...

Either corporate party rep - or any winning Presidential candidate who would support the illegal and unconstitutional TPP corporate coup based, in each case, on a traitor's signature - would be enacting corporate/billionaire law, as determined by involved corporations/billionaire's expectations of maximized self-anticipated future profits from all involved countries/publics, in their very own off-shored corporate court, with their very own corporate lawyers acting as a rotating triad of corporate judges, where the public interest has no standing and extortion via potentially thousands of multi-million/multi-billion dollar lawsuits against any citizen, animal or environmental protections is the mechanism intended to drain the public and to bring those who still survive to their dispossessed and penniless knees.

What we will likely still term government will be nothing more than corporate/billionaire management in enforcing off-shored corporate law while suppressing and shaking down the population and country their offices exist to serve.

Although one difference noted in the OP was that suddenly maybe women wouldn't have to sign up for the draft after all, indicating to me that the entire population of expendables might not be needed for 'boots on the ground' invasions of other people's countries now that Hillary's not getting in. Or this might just be because nukes are still planned to terrorize other countries into subjection (and universal planetary doom within decades) without a fight.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

joe shikspack's picture

heh, i expect that there will be little difference between the trump administration and what the clinton administration would have been like. they are both candidates of the 1% and will reliably serve their interests. that's why they were allowed to run as duopoly candidates.

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the truth occasionally.

Last night, he cracked that the Clinton campaign used a "cheap hotel" for the concession speech, not the extremely expensive hotel they booked for the victory bash. Then he went on to say that it must have been quite a shock to be making a concession speech rather than "doling out patronage." After all, he said, they "auction off ambassadorships--that's just the way it's done."

I wonder how long they're going to let grandpa stay on the air when he goes off script like that.

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