Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features vaudeville singer and dancer Bertha "Chippie" Hill. Enjoy!

“Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”

-- Oscar Wilde

News and Opinion

An anonymous person, claiming to be an ex-British intel agent & working as a Dem oppo researcher, said anonymous people told him things. https://t.co/RIi1iItpZw

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 10, 2017

Greenwald nails it. This is a must-read article.

The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer

In January, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his Farewell Address after serving two terms as U.S. President; the five-star General chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” ...

This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already-widely-disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”

Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing – eager – to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.

The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan Congressional coalitions and Constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.

But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected President is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth – despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie – is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.

President-elect Donald Trump: "Buzzfeed is a failing pile of garbage"

BuzzFeed Posts Unverified Claims on Trump

BuzzFeed News became the center of a swirling debate over journalistic ethics [!?! - js] on Tuesday after its decision to publish a 35-page document carrying explosive, but unverified, allegations about ties between the Russian government and President-elect Donald J. Trump.

The document, a dossier prepared by a former British intelligence officer hired by Mr. Trump’s political opponents, had been circulating among high-ranking politicians and some journalists since the fall. Intelligence officials recently presented a two-page summary of the allegations to Mr. Trump and President Obama, CNN reported on Tuesday. ...

In a brief interview in the Times newsroom on Tuesday evening, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said the paper would not publish the document because the allegations were “totally unsubstantiated.”

“We, like others, investigated the allegations and haven’t corroborated them, and we felt we’re not in the business of publishing things we can’t stand by,” Mr. Baquet said. [pffffttt!!!! - js]

Donald Trump to CNN reporter: "Not you, your organization terrible! You're fake news!"

The British have learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa Donald Trump paid prostitutes to piss on Obama's bed.

Trump Received Unsubstantiated Report That Russia Had Damaging Information About Him

The chiefs of America’s intelligence agencies last week presented President Obama and President-elect Donald J. Trump with a summary of unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising and salacious personal information about Mr. Trump, two officials with knowledge of the briefing said. ...

The appendix summarized opposition research memos prepared mainly by a retired British intelligence operative for a Washington political and corporate research firm. The firm was paid for its work first by Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals and later by supporters of Mrs. Clinton. The Times has checked on a number of the details included in the memos but has been unable to substantiate them.

The former British intelligence officer who gathered the material about Mr. Trump is considered a competent and reliable operative with extensive experience in Russia, American officials said. But he passed on what he heard from Russian informants and others, and what they told him has not yet been vetted by American intelligence.

The F.B.I. obtained the material long before the election, and some of the memos in the opposition research dossier are dated as early as June. But agents have struggled to confirm it, according to federal officials familiar with the investigation.

FBI Sought FISA Court Warrant to Spy On Trump Campaign Officials

The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.

Senators roll out Russia sanctions bill after election meddling

Senators are rolling out new sanctions against Russia as lawmakers debate how to respond to its meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

The bipartisan legislation spearheaded by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) was introduced Tuesday and comes in response to cyberattacks as well as ongoing conflicts in Syria and Ukraine.

"We have been attacked. We have been attacked by Russia," Cardin told reporters at a press conference. "That is no longer subject to debate." ...

The legislation would include new sanctions for transactions with Russia's two main intelligence agencies and individuals tied to cyberattacks attacks, including freezing any assets within the United States and banning their visas.

It also includes sanctions targeting large investments in Russia's energy sector and the development of Russian energy pipelines, and pass into law recent sanctions that President Obama issued by executive order.

Russia waging information war against Sweden, study finds

Sweden’s most authoritative foreign policy institute has accused Russia of using fake news, false documents and disinformation as part of a coordinated campaign to influence public opinion and decision-making in the Scandinavian country.

The Swedish Institute of International Affairs said in a comprehensive study that Sweden had been the target of “a wide array of active measures” aimed at “hampering its ability to generate public support in pursuing its policies”.

The study said Russia had used misleading reports on its state-run news website Sputnik, and public interventions by Russian politicians in Swedish domestic affairs, as well as more covert methods.

These included forged documents and fabricated news items that appeared in Swedish media and were subsequently picked up by Sputnik and “other sources of Russian public diplomacy” and broadcast to an international audience, it said.

The report admitted it was impossible for researchers to establish exactly where and how the forgeries and fake stories had been generated, but said they were consistent with Russia’s strategic objectives.

How Russian and American Oligarchs Benefit from Mutual Demonization

Facebook unveils measures to promote stronger ties with news industry

Facebook has unveiled measures to establish stronger ties between the social network and the news industry, allowing for collaboration on product development, new ways for publishers to make money, and training for newsrooms and readers.

The announcement of the Facebook Journalism Project comes in the wake of heightened scrutiny of the social network’s role as a distributor of news, which saw the company accused of failing to tackle the spread of misinformation in the run-up to the US presidential election. At the same time, Facebook and Google are taking the lion’s share of online advertising revenue while newsrooms cut costs and make lay-offs. ...

“We’ve been working on this for a long time. Our media partners want a deeper engagement, not just at a business level, but a product/engineering level,” said Fidji Simo, Facebook’s director of product, who is leading the project.

She said the program is linked to the news feed values that Facebook announced in June 2016. In a blogpost, Facebook’s VP of product management, Adam Mosseri, revealed the news feed’s primary role was to show content from friends and family, but the other two roles are to inform and entertain.

Simo said: “We are making sure that journalism thrives as part of the ‘inform’ axis.”

Chelsea Manning on Obama's 'shortlist' to commute prison sentence – report

Chelsea Manning, the army soldier who leaked state secrets in 2010 and has been imprisoned longer than any other official leaker in US history, has called on President Obama to show her clemency in the final days of his presidency, saying that this amounts to her last chance for freedom “for a very long time”.

With nine days left for the Obama presidency, Manning is reportedly on Obama’s “shortlist” for a commutation of her sentence, according to NBC News.

Iraq PM: Turkey Ties Cannot Improve Without Troop Pullout

Speaking today on state television, Iraqi Prime Minister Hayder Abadi reiterated his demand that Turkey immediately withdraw all of its ground troops from Iraqi soil. An estimated 500 Turkish troops are believed to be stationed in Bashiqa, a fact which has been a source of tension between the two nations.

Abadi now insists it is impossible for Iraq’s relationship with Turkey to take “one forward step” until the troops have left. Turkey has repeatedly insisted that the troops will not leave Iraq under any circumstances, and are necessary to prepare for future regional events.

Democrats are about to do a 180 on foreign policy. Just you wait.

Partisanship requires a certain level of hypocrisy. Republican Congresses and the conservative media put on their green eyeshades and become budget hawks during Democratic presidencies, then abandon such fiscal principles in favor of big new spending commitments when Republicans are in the White House. We're seeing this play out in real time now: After eight years of railing against President Obama's deficit spending, the GOP Congress seems ready to embrace Donald Trump's big ideas about infrastructure spending.

Democrats have a version of this hypocrisy as well. It's on foreign policy.

Wars launched under Democrats are often lauded by many liberals as great patriotic exercises, vindicating our nation's commitment to human rights. When those same wars are prosecuted by Republicans, they ipso facto lack congressional oversight and authorization, and the connecting lines between U.S. action and the suffering of poor non-white innocents around the globe suddenly reveal themselves to the bleeding hearted.

In less than two weeks, Trump will assume the office of the presidency. He will inherit from Obama a U.S. military engaged in conflicts across the Islamic world. Will Democrats who either cheered or ignored these patriotic exercises of American power suddenly find it in themselves to oppose these wars as racist, imperialist actions of an arrogant unilateral superpower gone rogue?

U.S. Media Neglects to Report on Al-Qaeda's Presence Among Syrian Rebels

An excellent article, worth a full read.

How Obama Spread the Mideast Fires

With President Obama down to less than two weeks in office, everyone is busy assessing his legacy. So let’s begin with the Arab world. Not since the Vietnam War, we can safely say, has an administration left a region in ruins the way Obama has left the Middle East (although it’s true that George W. Bush contributed mightily to the mess).

But Obama has expanded the chaos outward from Bush’s legacy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now including Libya, Syria and Yemen with ripple effects from the refugee flows extending into Turkey and even into Europe. Terrorism is exploding, entire nations have been reduced to war zones, while religious sectarianism is raging out of control. ...

How did someone so charming and seemingly so progressive wreak such havoc? The answer is through a combination of weakness, complacency, and taking the easy way out. Obama is the sort of cool and laid-back individual who adapts effortlessly to whatever institution he finds himself in, whether it’s the Harvard Law Review, the Illinois state legislature, the U.S. Senate or the White House.

The writer Edward L. Fox argues that, during his childhood in Indonesia, he soaked up the Javanese doctrine of halus in which a king “does not conquer opposing political forces, but absorbs them all under himself.” Instead of meeting conflict head on, the king floats serenely above it. The idea is to “let your opponent yell and scream, listen politely, and then, when your adversary has exhausted himself, somehow end up winning.”

Whereas someone a little less afraid of getting his hair mussed might have confronted “the Blob,” as Washington’s pro-war foreign-policy establishment is known, Obama decided to name Hillary Clinton, one of its chief standard-bearers, as Secretary of State, and keep Robert Gates, another pillar of the national security establishment, as Secretary of Defense.

Rather than fighting what President Dwight Eisenhower dubbed the “military-industrial complex,” Obama’s idea was to disarm it by bringing some of its chief advocates into his inner circle and perhaps give his own standing a boost as well. But what it chiefly did was to provide the War Party with a new lease on life.

Thanks for the crumbs from the table, Obama!

Financial Crash Analysis: $22.6 Billion in Homeowner Relief; $7.8 Trillion to Four Wall Street Banks

As Goldman Sachs guys prepare to take the reins of power in Washington under the Trump administration, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) provided a tragic reminder on Monday regarding the power of the U.S. citizen versus their Wall Street overlords. The GAO released a study showing that as of October 31, 2016, the government “had disbursed $22.6 billion (60 percent) of the $37.51 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds” that were directed at helping distressed homeowners as a result of the 2008 Wall Street financial crash and the resulting housing bust.

Those paltry billions stand in stark contrast to the $7.8 trillion in near-zero interest loans that the Federal Reserve secretly funneled to just four Wall Street banks from 2007 to 2010. The Fed funneled $2.5 trillion to Citigroup; $2 trillion to Morgan Stanley; $1.9 trillion to Merrill Lynch; and $1.3 trillion to Bank of America. The total amount that the Fed secretly loaned to both U.S. and foreign banks came to $16.1 trillion.

The American people would still be in the dark about the Federal Reserve’s covert money spigot to the banks except for Senator Bernie Sanders. In 2010, as Congress was debating the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, Sanders introduced an amendment that would force the GAO to conduct a one-time audit of the Fed covering its emergency lending programs from December 1, 2007 through July 21, 2010, the date the legislation was signed into law by President Obama. (Because of this abbreviated period of time, the public may still lack full details about Wall Street’s bailout. Sanders got pushback from the White House that prevented him from pushing for a stronger amendment.)

Trump just turned the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare into an even bigger fiasco

Donald Trump urged Republicans in Congress to repeal Obamacare immediately and worry about a replacement plan later, during an interview with the New York Times Tuesday. The president-elect’s recent request throws a wrench into the current debate within his own party over how to proceed with repealing President Obama’s signature health insurance legislation without having a viable replacement for it.

Trump, who didn’t seem to fully understand the timeline of how Congress passes laws, told the Times that Republican lawmakers could vote on repealing Obamacare “probably sometime next week” and that “the replace will be very quickly or simultaneously, very shortly thereafter.”

Trump’s line of thinking complicates the battle between squabbling Republicans who want to do away with Obamacare as quickly as possible but can’t agree what to replace it with or when. Drafting, let alone passing, another massive piece of health care legislation would likely take years, despite Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House. Yet if Congress repeals the act with no clear solution on the horizon, insurance companies would likely pull out from the government marketplace, leaving those currently covered with evaporating health insurance options.

Jeff Sessions conducts a master class on deflecting tough questions

The Senate confirmation hearings for Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, were forecast to be brutal, and in many ways the first four hours of questioning Sessions faced on Tuesday lived up to the expectations.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Sessions is a member, grilled their colleague about his views on abortion, immigration, criminal justice reform, LGBT issues, his questionable record on civil rights, and several other tough topics. ...

The staunchly conservative Republican proceeded to repeatedly dodge and deflect difficult questions about his beliefs, deftly avoiding any potentially damaging moments. When pressed about sensitive subjects, Sessions frequently said it would be up to Congress to decide the laws he would enforce as attorney general. ...

When confronted with facts, Sessions often resorted to some variation of, “I haven’t studied that closely,” and let the questioner move on to the next topic. He also responded with disarming bluntness to some queries, saying he does not “support the idea that Muslims as a religious group should be denied admission to the United States,” and that the law “absolutely” does not allow waterboarding. (Trump’s transition website still lists a Muslim ban as being in his plans; Sessions also voted against efforts to end the use of torture.)

In a session that was frequently interrupted by protesters, Sessions seemed unflappable. While the demonstrators shouted and were escorted from the room, Sessions calmly paused, smiled, and took sips of water. The only moment he appeared to lose his cool came when Sen. Al Franken vigorously questioned whether Sessions actually handled several voting rights cases when he was a federal prosecutor in Alabama. Sessions disputed the allegations, made by attorneys who worked under him, and avoided a “gotcha” moment.

Sessions will return on Wednesday to face another round of questioning.

Sessions Faces Repeated Interruptions by Protesters & Weak Line of Questioning at Confirmation

Greasing the wheels

Big oil has donated over $4 million to senators in charge of confirming former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State

The confirmation hearings for Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson begin Wednesday, and one thing is certain: the wheels have already been thoroughly greased by campaign donations from the oil and gas industry.

Because while Tillerson may officially be a political novice, his company Exxon Mobil and the broader oil industry have poured $4.6 million in campaign contributions to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee members over the past six years (the length of a Senate term). Of that sum, the vast majority ($4,063,612) went to the 11 Republicans on the committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. ...

Democrats, who have little to lose in terms of campaign donations from oil and gas, are likely grill Tillerson about times he acted at odds with the state department, as happened when he pursued a deal in with Kurdish regional government in Iraq in 2011. While the Tillerson’s confirmation could still derail, the money is very much on his side.

Bill McKibben: Rex Tillerson is big oil personified. The damage he can do is immense

In one of the futile demonstrations that marked the run-up to the Iraq war, I saw a woman with a sign that read “How Did Our Oil End Up Under Their Sand?” In nine words she managed to sum up a great deal of American foreign policy, back at least as far as the 1953 coup that overthrew Mossadegh in Iran and helped toss the Middle East into its still-boiling cauldron.

If the Senate approves Rex Tillerson after his testimony on Wednesday, they’ll be continuing in that inglorious tradition – in fact, they’ll be taking it to a new height, and cutting out the diplomats who have traditionally played the middleman role.

Rex Tillerson – who has literally spent his entire working life at Exxon – is big oil personified. It’s like appointing Ronald McDonald to run the agriculture department (which is certainly a possibility, since that job is still unfilled).

So in one sense Tillerson’s appointment simply makes formal what has long been clear. But in another way, his announcement is truly novel: the honor (secretaries of state are usually considered the second-most important official in our government) comes after a season of disgrace at the world’s largest oil company, in a moment when the energy business is on the ropes and when its product is causing the greatest crisis the planet has yet faced. ...

The only consolation is that it removes all the window-dressing. Big Oil will run our foreign policy, right out in the open. In that sense, I suppose, Trump gets credit for a kind of barbaric transparency. When the CIA overthrew Mossadegh at least they had a little shame about it. No more.

Flint Residents Barred From Closed-Door Water Quality Meeting

Residents of Flint, Michigan who traveled to Chicago were barred from attending a private meeting Tuesday between Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and other officials, who advocates say are rushing to declare the city's water supply safe.

Outrage over the closed-door meeting prompted protests in Flint and Chicago, where residents held signs outside the Water Quality Summit asking for their detailed water quality report.

Inside the summit, officials from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) and the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), as well as Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, who is credited with exposing the lead contamination crisis, met with Snyder to discuss current sample data, ignoring testimony from residents.

"My eyes are still burning. I can't breathe when I get out of the shower...we're still melting here," Flint resident Tony Palladeno said in a recording aired on The Young Turks (TYT). Many residents have reported similar symptoms, particularly in regards to the city's shower water, which TYT host Cenk Uygur notes was not tested.

Synder, a Republican, has claimed that the water quality is improving and said the summit will allow experts to review all of the available data. But advocates are warning that current tests are not sufficient to declare the city's water free of dangerous contamination, and residents feel it is their right to be privy to the discussion.

First US bumblebee species listed as endangered after numbers plummet

The rusty patched bumblebee, a prized but vanishing pollinator once familiar to much of North America, was listed on Tuesday as an endangered species, becoming the first wild bee in the continental United States to gain such federal protection.

One of several species facing sharp declines, the bumblebee known to scientists as Bombus affinis has plunged nearly 90% in abundance and distribution since the late 1990s, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The agency listed the insect after determining it to be in danger of extinction across all or portions of its range, attributing its decline to a mix of factors, including disease, pesticides, climate change and habitat loss.

Named for the conspicuous reddish blotch on its abdomen, the rusty patched bumblebee once flourished across 28 states, primarily in the upper Midwest and Northeast – from South Dakota to Connecticut – and in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.

Today, only a few small, scattered populations remain in 13 states and Ontario, the Fish and Wildlife Service said. ...

Bumblebees, as distinguished from domesticated honeybees, are essential pollinators of wildflowers and about a third of all US crops, from blueberries to tomatoes, according to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, which petitioned the government for protection of the insect.

Water relief for 8,000 thirsty elephants neglected by Zimbabwe

As a drought-inducing El Niño settled over southern Africa in 2016, the animals of Hwange national park in Zimbabwe faced desperate water shortages.

During a heatwave in October, conservation worker Prince Sansole spotted an elephant partially submerged in a muddy pool. His movements initially looked no different from the water games routinely played by the giant creatures. Only a closer look revealed that the young bull was in trouble, struggling to get up. His limp trunk kept dropping back into the water, unable to catch a fresh breath.

A postmortem later revealed that the elephant had succumbed to heat stroke on arrival at Chamabonda waterhole, after days of searching in vain for water amid the heat and sand.

But thanks to an emergency effort by a local conservation group, water is now reaching at least 8,000 elephants and up to 10,000 other animals.

Alerted by the predictions of drought, the Victoria Falls-based Bhejane Trust started drilling and setting up solar-powered boreholes in the park in May last year.

Hwange’s animals rely on an artificial supply of water developed in the 1920s. But since the early 2000s, Zimbabwe’s government has let pumps and pipes slide into disrepair. When the rains last failed in 2005, hundreds of elephants died. ...

The Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (PWMA) of Zimbabwe blames the collapse of the network of diesel-powered water pumps, boreholes and pipelines that supplied the watering pans in Hwange on the withdrawal of US and EU donor support in protest at president Robert Mugabe’s violent farm seizures early in 2000.

Also of Interest

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

After 15 Years, Prisoners at Guantánamo Face More Uncertainty Than Ever

Donald Trump Is A Liar — And That's A Good Thing

Who’s More Anti-American, Russia Today or the US Director of National Intelligence?

How ’60 Minutes’ Became a Pentagon Mouthpiece for Drone War

Intelligence panel chair asks why Democrats denied FBI access after Russian hacking

Democratic Hysteria on Russia

Northern Ireland's decades-old peace agreement is collapsing

‘Correct The Record’ Scumbag David Brock Comes Groveling To Bernie Sanders

Meryl, Have We Been Living in the Same America All This Time?

A Little Night Music

Bertha "Chippie" Hill w/Wild Bill Davison - Baby Won't You Please Come Home

Bertha "Chippie" Hill - Do Dirty Blues

Bertha "Chippie" Hill w/Louis Armstrong - Pratt City Blues

Chippie Hill - Charleston Blues

Bertha "Chippie" Hill, Louis Armstrong & Richard M. Jones - Kid Man Blues

Bertha "Chippie" Hill w/Wild Bill Davison - Don't Leave Me Daddy

Bertha "Chippie" Hill - Some Cold Rainy Day

Chippie Hill - Mistreatin' Mr. Dupree

Bertha "Chippie" Hill - Sport Model Mama