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This evening's music features Texas blues guitarist and singer Johnny Clyde Copeland. Enjoy!

“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”

-- Carl Sagan

News and Opinion

Trump seems to like the fit of Obama's nuclear shoes. Same footprint, different jackass.

Donald Trump’s Remarks Signal He Could Start a New Nuclear Arms Race

Donald Trump's declaration on Thursday that “if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack,” flew in the face of decades of U.S. efforts to negotiate cautious, mutual reductions in nuclear arsenals around the world. ... The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Congress ratified in 1970, requires the U.S. to pursue the “cessation” of a nuclear arms race between superpowers, and to take steps towards mutual disarmament.

Trump has stoked fears about a new arms race before. When pressed for details about his nuclear policies in December, he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe “let it be an arms race,” and later tweeted that the U.S. should “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” ...

In 2013, national security officials in President Obama’s White House determined that the U.S. could safely reduce its deployed nuclear force by one third. Other experts have said it could go much lower. But instead of pursuing reductions that could have saved hundreds of billions of dollars, the Obama administration started investing in a trillion-dollar effort to modernize the arsenal, which budget critics slammed as unaffordable.

Arms control groups slam Trump's 'alternative facts' on nukes

Nuclear nonproliferation groups are sounding the alarm after President Trump in an interview Thursday said he thinks an arms control treaty with Russia is a “bad deal” and that the United States should build up its nuclear arsenal to be the “top of the pack.”

The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation issued a press release “correcting Trump’s alternative facts."

“President Trump’s assertions about nuclear weapons policy conveniently ignore the facts,” former Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.), the executive director of the center, said in a statement. “Every world leader on Earth except for President Trump knows that the United States already has the ‘top of the pack’ nuclear arsenal. No U.S. military leader would trade our nuclear weapons for the Russian stockpile, let alone any other nuclear power’s arsenal.”

“Once again, President Trump has called for a new nuclear arms race — signaling a dangerous turn for global security,” Bruce Blair, a former nuclear launch officer and co-founder of Global Zero, said in a separate statement Thursday. “This would be an alarming reversal of decades of nuclear weapons reductions that should scare everyone."

Top general: US mulling 'long-term commitment' in Iraq

The US military is contemplating a long-term presence in Iraq to stabilize the country after the anticipated defeat ISIS, America's top military officer said Thursday. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford said that both the US and NATO have begun discussions with Iraq about the possibility.
"We have, as has NATO, begun a dialogue about a long term commitment to grow the capacity, maintain the capacity of Iraqi Security Forces, but no decisions have been made yet," Dunford told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington, his first time fielding questions since the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

"Iraq has begun to speak, and you've heard Prime Minister (Haider) Abadi speak, about the international community continuing to support defense capacity building," he added. A NATO official told CNN Friday that, at Abadi's request, the alliance had already begun training Iraqi troops this month and that NATO's presence there "has no fixed end date."

Turkey-backed rebels seize Islamic State’s al-Bab stronghold in Syria

Turkish-backed rebels seized the Syrian town of al-Bab from Islamic State militants Thursday, ending a grinding offensive to push the extremist group from one of its final strongholds.

Launched in August, the operation has proved unexpectedly long and bloody, forcing Turkey to triple its original deployment amid dozens of combat deaths and hundreds of civilian casualties.

It has also driven a wedge between Turkey and the United States, which initially backed a Kurdish-led force to retake the northern border town.

Ankara views those Kurdish fighters as terrorists. Its operation also aims to thwart Kurdish hopes of establishing an autonomous zone along the Syria-Turkey border by preventing the Kurds from linking up territory east and west of al-Bab.

Syrian War Propaganda at the Oscars

The Netflix movie “The White Helmets” may win an Oscar in the “short documentary” category at the Academy Awards on Sunday. It would not be a surprise despite the fact that the group is a fraud and the movie is a contrived infomercial.

Awarding “The White Helmets” an Oscar would fit with the desire of Hollywood to appear supportive of “human rights,” even if that means supporting a propaganda operation to justify another bloody “regime change” war in the Middle East.

Much of what people think they know about the White Helmets is untrue. The group is not primarily Syrian; it was initiated by British military contractor James LeMesurier and has been heavily funded (about $100 million) by the U.S., U.K. and other governments. The White Helmets are not volunteers; they are paid, which is confirmed in a Al Jazeera video that shows some White Helmet “volunteers” talking about going on strike if they don’t get paid soon.

Still, most of the group’s heavy funding goes to marketing, which is run by “The Syria Campaign” based in New York. The manager is an Irish-American, Anna Nolan, who has never been to Syria. As an example of its deception, “The Syria Campaign” website features video showing children dancing and playing soccer implying they are part of the opposition demand for a “free and peaceful” Syria. But the video images are taken from a 2010 BBC documentary about education in Syria under the Baath government. ...

The film is as fraudulent as the group it tries to turn into heroes. The filmmakers never set foot in Syria. Their video footage takes place in southern Turkey where they show White Helmet trainees in a hotel and talking on cell phones. The footage from inside Syria is not from independent journalists but from the White Helmets themselves – and much of it looks contrived.

Not Russian hackers: Brit arrested for cyberattack on Germany blamed on Moscow

Andrew Bacevich, At the Altar of American Greatness

The members of what TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich, author of America’s War for the Greater Middle East, calls “the Church of America the Redeemer” are in some disarray these days and in quite an uproar over the new Pope and his aberrant set of cardinals now ensconced in Washington. Perhaps there was no more striking -- or shocking -- evidence of that than the brief comments that hit the front page of the New York Times last week in an article on a month of “turmoil” in the Trump White House, but never became a headline story nationally. Amid the hurricane of news about the fall of national security adviser of 24 days Michael Flynn, the reported contacts of Trump associates with Russia, and a flurry of leaks to major papers from what are assumedly significant figures in the intelligence community (talk about "feud"!), one thing should have stood out. Here’s the passage from that Times piece: "Gen. Tony Thomas, head of the military’s Special Operations Command, expressed concern about upheaval inside the White House. 'Our government continues to be in unbelievable turmoil. I hope they sort it out soon because we’re a nation at war,' he said at a military conference on Tuesday. Asked about his comments later, General Thomas said in a brief interview, 'As a commander, I’m concerned our government be as stable as possible.'”

It may not have looked like much, but it should have stunned the news media and the country. That it didn’t tells us a great deal about how the U.S. has changed since September 11, 2001.  Thomas, the head of the crème de la crème, secretive military force (all 70,000 of them) cocooned inside the U.S. military, had just broken the unwritten rules of the American political game in a major way. He fired what amounted to an implicit warning shot across the bow of the Trump administration's listing ship of state: Mr. President, we are at war and you better get your house in order fast. Really? Direct public criticism of the president from a top commander in a military once renowned for its commitment to staying above the political fray?  Consider that something new under the sun and evidence that what might once have been considered a cliché -- sooner or later wars always come home -- is now an ever more realistic description of just where we’ve ended up 15-plus years after the Bush administration launched the war on terror. Seven days in May?  Maybe not, but when the nation's top special warrior starts worrying in public about whether civilian leaders are up to the task of governing, it's no ordinary day in February.

Be Thankful for a Dysfunctional, Chaotic White House

White House asked FBI to deny reports linking Russia and Trump advisers

Donald Trump’s chief of staff asked the FBI to deny media reports that campaign advisers were frequently in touch with Russian intelligence agents during the election, a White House official has said. Reince Priebus’s discussion with the FBI’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, has sparked outrage, with some Democrats saying he violated policies intended to limit communications between the law enforcement agency and the White House on pending investigations.

The official who spoke late on Thursday would not comment when asked if the administration was concerned about the appropriateness of Priebus’s communications with McCabe. The official was not authorised to disclose the matter publicly and insisted on anonymity. The FBI would not say whether it had contacted the White House about the veracity of the Times report.

When asked about the matter, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, was quoted by CNN as saying: “We didn’t try to knock the story down. We asked them to tell the truth.” ...

Priebus made the request after the FBI told the White House it believed a New York Times report describing the contacts was not accurate, the official said. As of Thursday the FBI had not stated that position publicly, and there was no indication it planned to.

Israel denies visas to staff from 'hostile' Human Rights Watch

Israel is refusing to issue visas to the international staff of one of the most prominent international human rights NGOs - Human Rights Watch – accusing the group of an “extreme, hostile and anti-Israel agenda.”

The Israeli accusations against the organisation, which documents human rights abuses around the globe, follows a growth in official hostility to local human rights activists under the right wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Human Rights Watch condemned the move as “ominous turn” adding it “should worry anyone concerned about Israel’s commitment to basic democratic values.”

The new policy emerged after Israeli authorities turned down a visa for its new Israel and Palestine director, Omar Shakir who is a US citizen. The rejection had been advised by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In a letter rejecting Shakir’s visa application – and seen by the Guardian - Israel accused the New York based group of “public activities and reports [and being] engaged in politics in the service of Palestinian propaganda, while falsely raising the banner of ‘human rights.’’

Keiser Report: China-US Trade War

China hits back at Donald Trump's 'champion of currency manipulation' jibe

Beijing has hit back at Donald Trump after the US president risked reigniting a simmering feud with China by accusing it of being the “grand champion” of currency manipulation.

After months of turbulence and uncertainty between the world’s two biggest economies, relations appeared to settle two weeks ago after the US president and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, held their first phone conversation since the billionaire’s inauguration.

However, in an interview with Reuters on Thursday that also saw Trump reiterate his desire for American nuclear supremacy, the US president, who has attacked China over trade, Taiwan, North Korea and the South China Sea, threatened to undermine the tentative rapprochement with a fresh verbal assault. ...

The president’s comments were reported just hours after the incoming treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, made apparently contradictory remarks signalling that the White House had no immediate plans to label China a currency manipulator – something Trump had pledged to do on his first day in office. ...

Chinese scholars expressed frustration at the president’s allegation. “He has such a big mouth. What can we do about it? Let him talk,” said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University.

John Dean: The Difference Between Trump & Nixon is Trump Says Publicly What Nixon Said on Wiretap

Bannon Heralds "Deconstruction of Administrative State" and Trump's "New Political Order"

Giving rare public remarks on Thursday, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said the Trump cabinet was working towards the "deconstruction of the administrative state" and repeatedly referred to the media as "the opposition party."

He outlined what he described as "three verticals" of Trump's agenda that would focus on "national security and sovereignty," "economic nationalism," and "deconstruction of the administrative state"—meaning a rollback of taxes, regulations, and trade agreements that the administration has claimed are hampering economic growth and individualism.

"If you look at these cabinet nominees, they were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction," he said.

[Heh, they admit it straight out. At least you can't accuse them of having an opaque program. - js]

At one point, Bannon, who formerly chaired the rightwing outlet Breitbart News, called the media "the opposition party," echoing remarks both he and Trump have previously made.

Trump attack on press is 'biggest threat to democracy' says ex-Navy Seal chief

A retired Navy Seal who was an architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden has warned that Donald Trump’s attack on the press as an enemy of the American people “may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime”.

Retired admiral William McRaven, the former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command and later the US Special Operations Command, issued his defense of the media during a Tuesday late-afternoon lecture to journalism students at the University of Texas, where he serves as chancellor.

McRaven, himself a journalism graduate of the school, referred to the press as “the single most important institution in this republic” and said: “This may be the most important time for journalism that I have seen in decades. Probably we need you now more than ever before.” ...

“On February 17, the president said the news media is the enemy of the American people. The news media is the enemy of the American people,” McRaven said, according to a video of the speech the University of Texas made available to the Guardian. “This sentiment may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime, this sentiment,” McRaven said to applause.

Goose stepping into the future:

ICE manhunt forces passengers to show ID to exit domestic flight

Passengers on a domestic flight from San Francisco to New York received an unusual greeting when they landed at JFK Airport Wednesday night: two Customs and Border Protection agents waiting on the jet bridge to check IDs as people exited the aircraft. ...

Anne Garrett, a video editor at VICE News who was traveling for personal reasons, said the incident occurred as passengers disembarked Delta Airlines flight 1583 from San Francisco. According to Garrett, shortly after the plane landed, at about 7:45 p.m., a member of the flight crew announced over the plane’s intercom that all passengers would have to show their “documents” to CBP officers in order to exit the aircraft.

“People were like, ‘What does that mean? Do I need to show my ticket?’” Garrett recalled. A few moments later, Garrett said, a flight crew member clarified that passengers would need to show their passport or another form of government-issued identification. ...

“CBP should explain why one of its officers was apparently demanding that passengers on a purely domestic flight show ID,” said Hugh Handeyside, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Security Project. “CBP is not an always-and-everywhere police force, and any attempt to expand its operations beyond its authority would raise serious concerns.”

Trump on deportations: 'It's a military operation'

President Donald Trump, meeting with business leaders at the White House on Thursday, described his administration's moves to deport undocumented immigrants as a "military operation," a label that runs counter to what his administration has previously said. ...

A White House spokesperson said Trump did not misspeak by calling deportations a 'military operation,' but clarified the President meant "military" as an "adjective." "The President was clearly describing the orderly and professional manner in which his executive orders are being implemented, and the administration's emphasis on removing serious criminals here in the US illegally," the spokesperson said.

Trump, though, is not using the military to deport undocumented immigrants. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told reporters in Mexico City Thursday that there would be "no use of military force in immigration operations, none," and Trump's administration has gone to great lengths to deny reports that the National Guard would take the lead on deportations.

Tillerson endures 'tough trip' to Mexico as Trump stokes 'bad dudes' rhetoric

Donald Trump issued a staunch defence of his expanded deportation policy on Thursday, claiming his administration was getting “bad dudes out of this country”, further souring an already tense visit to Mexico by his secretaries of state and homeland security.

The president made his remarks at a business forum in Washington while Rex Tillerson, his secretary of state, was meeting his Mexican counterpart, Luis Videgaray.

Tillerson emerged to concede that there were differences between the two countries. He said it was natural for “two strong, sovereign countries” to disagree at times, but added they would continue their dialogue.

But new US immigration proposals unveiled on the eve of the trip, aimed at more deportations of Mexican and other Latin American undocumented immigrants, drew an angry response from the Mexican government and threatened to derail talks. After Trump’s remarks on Thursday, a minister cast doubt on whether a planned meeting between Tillerson, Kelly and the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, would even take place.

The foreign minister, who is a close aide to Peña Nieto, declared that Mexico would defend its people living in the United States and go to the United Nations if necessary. He also rejected any suggestions that non-Mexican deportees would be deported to Mexico, dismissing the US proposals as “unilateral”.

Meet the new "Deporter-in-Chief."

Donald Trump Plans to Bypass the Courts to Deport as Many People as Possible

Department of Homeland Security released a pair of memos laying out how the agency intends to implement President Donald Trump’s executive orders on domestic immigration enforcement. ... [T]he memos dramatically expand the range of people who can be deported without seeing a judge.

“I see now what the plan is,” Greg Siskind, a Tennessee-based immigration attorney and member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association board of governors, told The Intercept. “Their plan is basically to have everybody thrown out of the country without ever going to court.” Additional immigration attorneys and legal experts who spoke to The Intercept shared Siskind’s concerns, describing various elements of the DHS directives and the executive orders they reflect as “horrifying,” “stunning,” and “inhumane.” ...

A number of the measures called for in the memos will not happen immediately — it will take time, money, and congressional approval to appropriate the billions of dollars needed to build a network of immigrant detention centers along the southern border with Mexico, for example, and to hire 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and 10,000 more ICE agents. There are certain to be legal challenges to the implementation of the directives as well. Practical hurdles aside, however, the policy shifts Trump ordered — and that DHS has now signed off on — reflect major changes in the world of domestic immigration enforcement.

Key Question About DNC Race: Why Did White House Recruit Perez to Run Against Ellison?

The New Republic’s Clio Chang has a great, detailed analysis of the contest. She asks the key question about Perez’s candidacy that has long hovered and yet has never been answered. As Chang correctly notes, supporters of Perez insist, not unreasonably, that he is materially indistinguishable from Ellison in terms of ideology (despite his support for TPP, seemingly grounded in loyalty to Obama). This, she argues, is “why the case for Tom Perez makes no sense”: after all, “if Perez is like Ellison—in both his politics and ideology—why bother fielding him in the first place?” ...

I can’t recommend Chang’s analysis highly enough on one key aspect of what motivated the recruitment of Perez: to ensure that the Democratic establishment maintains its fatal grip on the party and, in particular, prevent Sanders followers from having any say in the party’s direction and identity:

There is one real difference between the two: Ellison has captured the support of the left wing. . . . It appears that the underlying reason some Democrats prefer Perez over Ellison has nothing to do with ideology, but rather his loyalty to the Obama wing. As the head of the DNC, Perez would allow that wing to retain more control, even if Obama-ites are loath to admit it. . . .

And it’s not just Obama- and Clinton-ites that could see some power slip away with an Ellison-headed DNC. Paid DNC consultants also have a vested interest in maintaining the DNC status quo. Nomiki Konst, who has extensively covered the nuts and bolts of the DNC race, asked Perez how he felt about conflicts of interest within the committee—specifically, DNC members who also have contracts with the committee. Perez dodged the issue, advocating for a “big tent.” In contrast, in a forum last month, Ellison firmly stated, “We are battling the consultant-ocracy.”

In other words, Perez, despite his progressive credentials, is viewed – with good reason – as a reliable functionary and trustworthy loyalist by those who have controlled the party and run it into the ground, whereas Ellison is viewed as an outsider who may not be as controllable and, worse, may lead the Sanders contingent to perceive that they have been integrated into and empowered within the party.

[And then there's the dirty political underside...]

Just over two weeks after Ellison announced, the largest single funder of both the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign – the Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban – launched an incredibly toxic attack on Ellison, designed to signal his veto. ... There’s no evidence that Saban’s attack on Ellison is what motivated the White House to recruit an opponent. But one would have to be indescribably naïve about the ways of Washington to believe that such a vicious denunciation by one of the party’s most influential billionaire funders had no effect at all.

Here's an excerpt from the setup of this piece, there's lots more in the article than be fairly abstracted. The article makes a few good points that are worth thinking about going forward.

Here Is The Winning Strategy For The Progressive Revolution

In 1991, a man named Libero Grassi was shot and killed in the streets of Palermo, Italy, capital city of the island of Sicily. Earlier that year he had written an open letter published in the local paper which began with the words “Dear extortionist,” in which he publicly announced his refusal to pay pizzo, the extortion money the Mafia collected from businesses throughout Sicily under threat of vandalism, arson, physical harm, or murder. His death was a warning. Nobody would dare to openly defy the Sicilian Mafia again until 2004, when five graduates began the Addiopizzo (“goodbye pizzo”) movement, which went on to successfully organize a collaboration of hundreds of Palermo businesses that openly refused to pay pizzo together with one voice, in one co-ordinated movement. They secretly collected a tipping point amount of businesses to stand up to the mafia one beautiful sunny morning when all those businesses each put up a small sign in their window declaring that they were no longer going to pay pizzo. Each person only had to partake in one tiny act of rebellion — put an Addiopizzo sticker in the window at an agreed time.

Since the Mafia couldn’t kill them all, they had to leave them all alone and the pizzo system was neutered. It had other beneficial effects too — customers were also sick of the mafia’s reign of terror and were excited by this movement toward health. They flocked to support the businesses that sported an anti-pizzo sign by buying their goods and using their services. Each business who joined the rebellion ended up being handsomely rewarded for their defiant act of courage.

What changed between 1991 and 2004? Internet access, of course. Business owners were able to network and coordinate in secret using the internet, so that rather than one man taking a brave stand in the Palermo daily paper, hundreds of businesses were able to simultaneously put up Addiopizzo signs on their windows when they opened shop one morning. Endorsed and supported by the family of Libero Grassi, the movement has since been picked up in other cities in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.

Now, any Sicilians who had been lobbying their politicians in an attempt to solve the extortion problem using the government were surely overwhelmed by disappointment and despair at all the dead ends they encountered due to the widespread and pervasive dominance of the Mafia over that region. To anyone trying to escape their oppression by writing letters to their elected officials and trying to get anti-Mafia politicians elected, the immediate success of the Addiopizzo movement would have come completely out of left field. The old model of institutional problem solving would have been so immersed in its outdated approaches that such an unconventional approach couldn’t have been anticipated until a group of fresh-eyed college kids showed them the way. For those who were open-minded and clear-eyed enough to recognize an opportunity to move toward the light, it was a doorway to freedom.

Police arrest 47 while emptying Standing Rock protest camp

North Dakota has officially removed all protesters from the main Standing Rock camp after police swept through Thursday and arrested 47 people.

Officers walked into the camp wearing riot gear, driving military vehicles and carrying guns. Nearby a sign in the camp stated “we are unarmed.” After they arrested the remaining protesters, bulldozers began tearing down the last structures. The Morton County Sheriff’s Department said the ammunition in the guns was “most likely lethal.”

The arrests mark the end of the main protest camp, Oceti Sakowin, which swelled to an estimated 10,000 people in November, but contained only about 70 people on Thursday.

The Oceti Sakowin camp has been officially cleared of all protest activity and clean up will resume. #NDResponse #Dapl #NoDapl #YesDapl pic.twitter.com/94l1sJi94j

— NDResponse (@NDResponse) February 23, 2017

Protesters have moved to other camps, including the Sacred Stone camp, which was not evicted and is not on the floodplain.

Rio: Carnival parade gets political

Oceans Melting Greenland project measurements give us a glimpse of future sea rise

If you meet a group of climate scientists, and ask them how much sea levels will rise by say the year 2100, you will get a wide range of answers. But, those with most expertise in sea level rise will tell you perhaps 1 meter (a little over three feet). Then, they will immediately say, “but there is a lot of uncertainty on this estimate.” It doesn’t mean they aren’t certain there will be sea level rise – that is guaranteed as we add more heat in the oceans. Here, uncertainty means it could be a lot more or a little less.

Why are scientists not certain about how much the sea level will rise? Because there are processes that are occurring that have the potential for causing huge sea level rise, but we’re uncertain about how fast they will occur. Specifically, two very large sheets of ice sit atop Greenland and Antarctica. If those sheets melt, sea levels will rise hundreds of feet. ...

With hope we will have a much clearer sense of ice sheet melting and sea level rise because of a new scientific endeavor that is part of a NASA project - Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG). This project has brought together some of the best oceanographers and ice experts in the world. The preliminary results are encouraging and are discussed in two recent publications here and here.

Their experiments are measuring a number of key attributes. First, yearly changes in the temperature of ocean water near Greenland. Second, the yearly changes to the glaciers on Greenland that extend into the ocean waters. Third, they are observing marine topography (the shape of the land underneath the ocean surface).

The sea floor shape is quite complicated, particularly near Greenland. Past glaciers carved deep troughs in the sea floor in some areas, allowing warm salty water to reach huge glaciers that are draining the ice sheet.

Trump's EPA chief let an oil company edit his emails

In his new role as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott’s Pruitt’s job is to enforce rules that he’s been fighting — together with the oil and gas industry — for years. Pruitt became famous for fighting federal environmental regulation in Oklahoma when he was the state’s attorney general, and thousands of emails made public this week show he routinely collaborated with oil and gas companies in their efforts to buck the EPA and other agencies.

An earlier New York Times investigation from 2014 had revealed a “secret alliance” between Pruitt’s office and Devon Energy, an oil and gas company. Pruitt sent an official letter to the EPA with language that was nearly copied and pasted from a suggested draft from Devon Energy in 2011 about air pollution.

The more than 7,500 pages of emails released Tuesday show that this was not an isolated incident. Devon Energy and Pruitt’s office were routinely trading drafts of letters to federal agencies with each other and working very closely to fight federal environmental rules.

Also of Interest

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

Sleepwalking into a New Arms Race

The Increasingly Unhinged Russia Rhetoric Comes From a Long-Standing U.S. Playbook

Rachel Maddow Is An Asshole

Why We Must Oppose the Kremlin-Baiting Against Trump

The Coming Decline of US and UK Power

Like this is a serious question:

Did Obama Pave the Way for More Torture?

How The U.S. War In Laos Was Key To The 'Birth Of A Military CIA'

Liberal Hypocrisy, “Late-Shaming,” and Russia-Blaming in the Age of Trump

Who’s Behind US Downward-Mobility?

After losing healthcare battle, factory workers fear next blow

Paul Ryan's Next Attack on Workers' Retirement a Win for Wall Street

Will the Supreme Court Authorize Open Warfare at the Mexican Border?

Roaming Charges: Exxon’s End Game Theory

A Little Night Music

Johnny Copeland - Rock and Roll Lily

Johnny Copeland - Wella Wella Baby

Johnny Copeland - Heebie Jeebies

Johnny Copeland - Don't Stop by the Creek, Son

Johnny Copeland - Flying High

Johnny Copeland - I Wish I Was Single + Third Party

Johnny Copeland - Hooked, Hog-Tied & Collared

Johnny Copeland - Mother Nature

Johnny Copeland - Slow Walk You Down

Johnny Copeland - The Jungle

Johnny Copeland - Love Attack

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Johnny Copeland - Tin Pan Alley

Johnny Copeland - Every Dog Has His Day

Johnny Copeland - In Concert With Steve Morse