The Evening Blues - 3-3-17



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: country blues and rockabilly

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features an assortment of country blues and rockabilly. Enjoy!

Billy Lee Riley - Flying Saucer Rock and Roll

"My guess is that most of the world is just collapsing in laughter [about unsubstantiated American claims that Russia hacked the election]. Suppose all the charges are true, I mean every single one, it is so amateurish by US standards that you can hardly even laugh. What the US does is the kind of thing I described in Italy in 1948. Case after case like that, not hacking or spreading rumors in the media; but saying look, we’re going to starve you to death or kill you or destroy you unless you vote the way we want. I mean that’s what we do."

-- Noam Chomsky


News and Opinion

Democratic Senator Confirms That Establishment Dems Are Trying To Start A War With Russia

During Thursday morning’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, New Hampshire Democratic US Senator Jeanne Shaheen told her peers that the US government should begin considering the possibility that the alleged (and still completely unproven) Russian hacking campaign during the 2016 presidential election cycle was “an act of war.” The Hill reports that Shaheen “asked the panel of experts and former officials testifying before the committee ‘what kind of message’ it sends to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the rest of the world — including America's allies — if the U.S. does not respond to the election hacks.”

To be clear, the last time officials in the US government claimed that America had been on the receiving end of an act of war was after the 9/11 attacks, which led to the invasion of two sovereign nations and the regime-toppling, drone-bombing policies of the so-called war on terror. When they use the phrase "act of war", they are saying that war has been waged. The "responses" Senator Shaheen is advocating are military responses. As a reminder, Shaheen belongs to the same political establishment that just ran a presidential candidate who campaigned on the promise to set up a no-fly zone in Syria, knowing (as testified by top military officials) that this would necessarily entail shooting down Russian military planes and starting a war with Russia. She also openly pledged “military responses” to the alleged Russian "cyber attacks".

These monsters are so adept at pacing the US public into insane acts of military aggression. ... They’ve been gradually turning up the heat on the anti-Russia rhetoric from a few unexpected comments here and there to the perpetual, glass-shattering shriek it has reached today, with many Democratic partisans so fiendishly addicted to the manic McCarthyist witch hunt that they’ll gulp down a 13,000-word New Yorker article by the latest red-baiting presstitute with feverish gusto and still be hungry for more. ... So after months and months of psychologically brutalizing the American people with lie after lie after alarmist, fearmongering lie, the establishment power structure and its political allies in the Democratic party are ready to start easing people into the next level where they’re able to openly speak about a Russian war.

Dem senator: Russian hacking may have been 'act of war'

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) on Thursday said Congress needs to consider whether Russia's cyber campaign during the U.S. presidential election was an act of war.

Shaheen made the statement during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday morning exploring the Pentagon's strategy to deter and respond to malicious acts in cyberspace.

The intelligence community released an unclassified report in January concluding that the Russian government engaged in a cyber and disinformation campaign during the election to undermine American democracy and damage Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and had established a preference for President Trump.

"We should think about whether it is an act of war or not," Shaheen said Thursday, referring to the election hacking.

As Sessions Recuses Himself From Campaign Investigation, Questions Remain Over Trump-Russia Ties

Who is Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador rattling Trump's presidency?

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Vladimir Putin’s man in Washington, is usually far from view inside an imposing white marbled embassy on the third highest hill in the city – a location that prompted fears the Soviets would be able to intercept communications – but now finds himself in the spotlight. ...

“Kislyak was acting strategically to engage individuals the Russian government thought could be key allies in the incoming US administration,” said Alina Polyakova, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center in Washington. “What is surprising is how successful they’ve been: Sessions is the second person after Flynn revealed to have had meetings they tried to cover up, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more to come.”

Kislyak, 66, trained as an engineer in Moscow, attended the Soviet Union’s Academy of Foreign Trade and joined the foreign ministry in 1977. His first spell as an envoy to the US was between 1985 and 1989, just as Mikhail Gorbachev was pursuing perestroika and glasnost. His focus was arms control.

Steven Pifer, a former US state department official who is now director of the arms control and non-proliferation initiative at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, recalled: “He was working to enhance US-Soviet relations and trying to make progress on arms control. I did not detect, as I did with some Soviet diplomats, a visceral dislike of the US. “He’s intelligent. He speaks very good English. He can show a sense of humour. At the same time he can also represent his country even when he has a bad brief to represent, for example over the military intervention in Ukraine. He’s loyal to Russia. I imagine he’s had some interaction with Putin but didn’t come from his inner circle of intelligence and St Petersburg.”

Kislyak was ambassador to Nato from 1998, then a deputy foreign minister from 2003. In 2008 he was appointed ambassador to the US, not long before the election of Barack Obama. Last December Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 of Kislyak’s colleagues.

Sessions’s Recusal Gives Senators Powerful Leverage to Demand Russia Special Prosecutor

Now that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from any involvement in investigations by the Justice Department involving potential Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the authority to make decisions on the issue — including whether the appointment of a special prosecutor is necessary — falls to the deputy attorney general. ...

There is currently no permanent deputy attorney general, just Acting Attorney General Dana Boente, a former U.S. Attorney who stepped in after Sally Yates, an Obama appointee, was fired. However, Donald Trump’s nominee, U.S. Attorney for Maryland Rod Rosenstein, will undergo confirmation hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee this month.

And those Judiciary Committee members can now ask Rosenstein to commit to naming a special prosecutor before voting whether to send his nomination to the full Senate.

At least seven of the nine Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, including ranking member Dianne Feinstein of California, have publicly called for a special prosecutor to investigate potential criminal actions by Russian officials and any of Trump’s associates. South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, one of the 11 Republicans on the committee, has said that “if there is something there that the FBI believes is criminal in nature, then for sure you need a special prosecutor.” If the nine Democrats and Graham acted as a block, they would have the power to prevent Rosenstein’s nomination from being voted out of committee.

Chris Hedges & Abby Martin - Trump, Fascism & the Christian Right

To counter Turkey, Damascus sidles up to Kurds

President Bashar al-Assad’s government has repeatedly criticised Turkey’s operation in Syria, which saw Ankara in late August send troops across the border where they are working with local rebels.

Turkey’s invasion has also been fiercely opposed by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which is dominated by Kurdish fighters.

“For the government, just as for the Syrian Kurds, the enemy is (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan. They want to counter his project of invading the border territory,” said Waddah Abed Rabbo, editor-in-chief of Syria’s Al-Watan daily.

“It’s completely normal that the forces present on the ground would ally with each other to block any Turkish advance in Syrian territory. Now, Turkish forces are totally encircled,” said Abed Rabbo, whose paper is close to the government.

Hosni Mubarak acquitted over 2011 protester killings

Six years after the uprising that ended his rule, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been acquitted over his alleged involvement in the killings of hundreds of protesters in 2011.

The Court of Cassation's final ruling on Thursday could see Mubarak walk free. ... The Cairo-based court rejected demands by lawyers of the victims to reopen civil suits, leaving no remaining option for appeal or retrial.

Mubarak was accused of inciting the deaths of nearly 900 protesters in an 18-day uprising that ended when he stepped down on February 11, 2011. He had been sentenced to life in 2012 but an appeals court ordered a retrial, which dismissed the charges two years later.

Mubarak, 88, has spent most of his time in a military hospital since his arrest in 2011.

White House is considering direct military action to counter North Korea

In a dramatic shift from traditional policy, an internal White House review on North Korean strategy revealed that the option to use military force or a regime change to curb the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons was on the table, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

This review comes at the heels of a report claiming President Donald Trump believes the "greatest immediate threat" to the US was North Korea's nuclear program.

Recent provocations from the Hermit Kingdom, including the ballistic missile launch in the Sea of Japan and the assassination of Kim Jong Un's estranged half-brother in Malaysia, may have provoked this shift in the policy that have many officials and US allies worried.

White House supports renewal of spy law without reforms

The Trump administration does not want to reform an internet surveillance law to address privacy concerns, a White House official told Reuters on Wednesday, saying it is needed to protect national security. The announcement could put President Donald Trump on a collision course with Congress, where some Republicans and Democrats have advocated curtailing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, parts of which are due to expire at the end of the year.

"We support the clean reauthorization and the administration believes it's necessary to protect the security of the nation," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The FISA law has been criticized by privacy and civil liberties advocates as allowing broad, intrusive spying. It gained renewed attention following the 2013 disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the agency carried out widespread monitoring of emails and other electronic communications.

Portions of the law, including a provision known as Section 702, will expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress reauthorizes them. Section 702 enables two internet surveillance programs called Prism and Upstream, classified details of which were revealed by Snowden.

Mike Pence used a private AOL account for state business while governor of Indiana

Vice President Mike Pence used a personal email account for official business while governor of Indiana, according to a new report out Thursday. An investigation by the Indianapolis Star also showed that his personal account was hacked, revealing — among other information — sensitive security information related to terror suspects.

Pence, a vocal critic of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state, claims he’s done nothing wrong, stating that there is no law against a governor using a personal email account.

However, the fact that certain emails were not released due to their confidential and sensitive nature suggests that Pence’s use of a personal email account could have potentially led to leaks of compromising information.  

Palantir Provides the Engine for Donald Trump’s Deportation Machine

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deploying a new intelligence system called Investigative Case Management (ICM), created by Palantir Technologies, that will assist in President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport millions of immigrants from the United States.

In 2014, ICE awarded Palantir, the $20 billion data-mining firm founded by billionaire Trump advisor Peter Thiel, a $41 million contract to build and maintain ICM, according to government funding records. The system is scheduled to arrive at “final operating capacity” by September of this year. The documents identify Palantir’s ICM as “mission critical” to ICE, meaning that the agency will not be able to properly function without the program.

ICM funding documents analyzed by The Intercept make clear that the system is far from a passive administrator of ICE’s case flow. ICM allows ICE agents to access a vast “ecosystem” of data to facilitate immigration officials in both discovering targets and then creating and administering cases against them. The system provides its users access to intelligence platforms maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and an array of other federal and private law enforcement entities. It can provide ICE agents access to information on a subject’s schooling, family relationships, employment information, phone records, immigration history, foreign exchange program status, personal connections, biometric traits, criminal records, and home and work addresses.

“What we have here is a growing network of interconnected databases that together are drawing in more and more information,” said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union. “If President Trump’s rhetoric on mass deportations is going to be turned into reality, then we’re going to see these tools turned in that direction, and these documents show that there are very powerful and intrusive tools that can be used toward that end.”

Dreamer in process of Daca renewal to be deported without court hearing

A 22-year-old who was detained as she was leaving a press conference on immigrants’ rights Wednesday will not get a court hearing before she is deported, her lawyers said.

Daniela Vargas was in the process of renewing her application for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), the Obama administration program that temporarily protects from deportation undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children. Vargas was an aspiring math teacher who went to college while under the program. And Bill Chandler, an immigrants’ advocate who knew Vargas well, said she had a receipt showing that her application was being processed.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said in a statement on Wednesday that the action was part of “targeted immigration enforcement”. On Thursday, the lawyer Nathan Elmore said Ice had indicated it would pursue immediate deportation against Vargas without allowing her to first have a court hearing. Vargas’s lawyers have filed a petition challenging Ice’s decision.

“Ice is supposed to target undocumented immigrants who commit crimes,” said Elmore. “Convicted criminals. Daniela doesn’t fit into any of these categories. Is this where you want your tax dollars directed?”

'Visa War': EU Votes to Bar Visa-Free Travel for American Citizens

United States citizens traveling to Europe will soon have to pay for a visa to enter the continental bloc, thanks to an escalating "visa war," as the Telegraph puts it, between the U.S. and the European Union.

The European Parliament, "by a show of hands, [on Wednesday] urged the Commission to adopt restrictive measures against U.S. citizens 'within two months,'" reports Reuters.

The U.S. has long forced citizens of some E.U. countries—namely Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland, and Romania—to purchase visas in order to enter the country, denying the E.U. complete reciprocity when it comes to visa-free travel. The E.U. gave U.S. officials notice in 2014 that the country need to enact reciprocity or the visa-free travel for U.S. citizens would come to an end, but the U.S. did nothing. While E.U. officials told Reuters that talks are ongoing, under the hostile right-wing Trump administration visa reciprocity seems extremely unlikely to happen.

And so the European Parliament voted to end visa-free travel for Americans, marking a "serious negative step in the E.U.-U.S.A. visa war," an unnamed European Parliament source told the Telegraph. The European Commission has until the summer to enforce the measure.

Why are French farmers ditching conservatives to rally to Le Pen?

Arkansas Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Ban Howard Zinn From Classrooms

A Republican Arkansas lawmaker has introduced legislation to ban the works of the late historian, activist, and writer Howard Zinn from publicly funded schools.

The bill from Rep. Kim Hendren, just noted by the Arkansas Times, was introduced on Thursday and referred to the House Committee on Education.

It states (pdf) that any "public school district or an open-enrollment public charter school shall not include in its curriculum or course materials for a class or program of study any book or other material" authored by Zinn from 1959 until 2010, the year in which he died

The Zinn Education Project, which aims to "to introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of United States history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula," noted Thursday that educators in the state may have a very different take from Hendren: "To date, there are more than 250 teachers in Arkansas who have signed up to access people's history lessons from the Zinn Education Project website."

Your political system in action. God, how proud the founding generation must be.

There's apparently a “secret” GOP bill to repeal Obamacare — and Rand Paul is determined to find it

Sen. Rand Paul was joined by House Democrats in a literal treasure hunt through the Capitol Thursday in search of House Republicans’ Obamacare replacement bill. They didn’t find it.

It was a rare bipartisan stunt, inspired by the unusual secrecy surrounding the GOP’s bill. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported the bill was being kept in a reading room in the Capitol and only available for members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and their staff to read, in an attempt to avoid leaks to the press.

Paul announced on Twitter that he was heading to the “secure location” where the bill was being held, and soon drew a sizable gaggle of reporters and cameras.

When Paul finally entered the room, it was empty — the bill had, reportedly, been moved.

But House Democrats couldn’t let a good messaging opportunity go to waste. A number of them joined what quickly became a hunt through the Capitol for the bill, with lawmakers trailing reporters as they poked their heads into random offices to see if they could find the bill.



the horse race



Republican Senator Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter to Constituent for Calling Too Much

Wisconsin GOP senator Ron Johnson has been avoiding his constituents lately. Last week, a group of constituents even held a town hall about health care without him, after he declined to attend. (He held a telephone town hall instead).

Now one of Johnson’s constituents has received a cease-and-desist letter from the senator’s office, demanding that he stop calling the senator and stop trying to meet with his staff. The letter to Earl Good of Milwaukee instructs him to only contact the office in writing from now on.

Good is a Vietnam veteran and attentive constituent who, in an interview with his local CBS station, acknowledged that he has been very persistent in his attempts to get through to the office and talk to the senator’s staff about issues that concern him, including the possible privatization of the Veterans Administration. ...

Daniel Schumann, a former congressional staffer who works on federal government transparency at Demand Progress, said he has never heard of such an action being taken by a congressional office.

“It’s extroardinarily unusual to say the least,” he told The Intercept. “I mean if they were doing things that were illegal or otherwise really inappropriate, then maybe there could be grounds for doing something like that — if they were threatening him or his office staff. But while the member office is under no obligation to listen to any communications, they can’t tell people that they can’t communicate with their elected official.”

The Supreme Court won’t decide if Virginia’s gerrymandering was racist

A district court will have to re-examine whether the Republican-led legislature in Virginia illegally sought to dilute black voters’ influence when it drew legislative districts, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. Democrats may now have another chance to win more of the state’s legislative districts.

Following the 2010 census, GOP lawmakers rewrote the boundaries of 12 Virginia legislative districts in order to create a black population of at least 55 percent within each. The Legislature and the Department of Justice then approved the maps of the districts. Yet in 2014, a voter in each of those 12 districts filed a joint lawsuit arguing the gerrymandering illegally weakened black voters’ impact in other districts, as African-Americans traditionally vote for Democrats.

In order to make sure that minorities have a fair voice at the ballot box, Supreme Court precedent holds that race can be used as a factor when drawing legislative districts — but it can’t be the primary factor.

A district court initially found that race was not the main factor behind the drawing of 11 of these 12 districts. (In the 12th court, it found that race was in fact used to gerrymander illegally.) The Supreme Court didn’t go so far as to say it was. Instead, the justices ruled in a 7-1 opinion that the standard the district court used to make its decision was not constitutional, and that it needed to take another look at the case.



the evening greens


Permafrost collapse

The climate-driven collapse of Canada’s Arctic permafrost is much more widespread than previously thought, according to new research that presents a dire picture of the changing northern landscape. The study maps an unprecedented area of permafrost that is poised to thaw, threatening local communities and infrastructure, and may speed up global warming.

From Siberia to Canada, giant craters and canyons are opening in the Arctic permafrost, the result of climate change in the north. Now for the first time, scientists have mapped the permafrost thaw across a huge swath of the Canadian north — a 1.27 million square kilometre region from the Yukon to Nunavut.

“The intensity of the changes that we’re starting to see haven’t been seen for thousands of years,” the paper’s lead author Steve Kokelj told VICE News over the phone from Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. “It’s the first time that disturbance over this large of a landmass has been mapped, and that a scientific rationale was provided for why the hotspots are where they are.”

Scientists fear this process will also release stored methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Permafrost thaw could trigger what some have dubbed “catastrophic climate change,” a cyclical process in which the earth’s warming releases stored greenhouse gases, further warming the earth.


'Just racist': EPA cuts will hit black and Hispanic communities the hardest

Planned cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency are set to fall heaviest upon communities of color across the US that already suffer disproportionately from toxic pollution, green groups have warned.

Donald Trump’s administration is proposing a 25% reduction in the EPA’s $8.1bn budget, eliminating nearly 3,000 jobs and several programs including the agency’s environmental justice office. Funding for the cleanup of lead, marine pollution, tribal lands and the Great Lakes region faces severe cuts, while climate initiatives are earmarked for a 70% budget reduction.

The environmental justice office is tasked with bridging the yawning disparity in pollution experienced by black, Hispanic and low-income communities and wealthier white neighborhoods. It provides grants to communities to mop up toxins and rehabilitate abandoned industrial facilities that are invariably found in poorer areas.

In the final months of Barack Obama’s administration, the EPA unveiled a new effort to tackle lead poisoning, air pollution and other problems suffered by communities of color situated next to waste treatment plants, smelters and other sources of toxins. But this plan will be cut down in its infancy should the environmental justice office be dismantled.

[Gosh, I wonder what took the Obama administration so long? You don't suppose that perhaps like the DAPL decision, they might have done it with the expectation that Trump would reverse it, creating negative publicity? - js]

EPA Chief and "Polluter's Tool" Pruitt Lied to Senate About Private Email Use

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt lied to Congress during his confirmation hearings when he said he had never used his private email account for official business while serving as attorney general of Oklahoma. ...

The court-ordered release of tens of thousands of Pruitt's emails, published as part of a lawsuit filed by the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), expose not just the former Oklahoma lawmaker's cozy relationship with the fossil fuel industry—they also show that many of his official emails were copied to his personal account, contradicting his testimony to the Senate Public Works Committee, whom he told, "I use only my official OAG [office of the attorney general] email address and government-issued phone to conduct official business." ...

The emails copied to his personal account include correspondence with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate-funded conservative lobbying group; the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM); and members of his then-staff.

One email from Sarah K. Magruder Lyle, then vice president of AFPM's strategic initiatives, refers to renewable fuel standards (RFS), an environmental rule that requires mixing renewable fuel into gasoline. Lyle writes, "AFPM remains very interested in the prospect of your state filing a similar waiver request highlighting the environmental harm caused by the RFS mandate which we discussed previously."

Another few emails revolve around setting up a speaking engagement for Pruitt at an ALEC convention.

Revealed: Environmental Activist Berta Cáceres' Suspected Killers Received U.S. Military Training

Standing Rock: arson accusation renews fear of police targeting military veterans

North Dakota police have accused a US veteran of arson at Standing Rock, renewing concerns that law enforcement is targeting former service members for prosecution. Police on Thursday said that Sean Sullivan was a “possible arson suspect” and sent out a photo taken from his Facebook page of him standing near a burning structure at the main encampment at Standing Rock, which officers evicted last week.

Sullivan, a 35-year-old navy veteran from San Diego, who returned home from Standing Rock on Monday, had not heard he was a suspect until a Guardian reporter called him on Thursday afternoon.

“It’s just completely unfounded,” said Sullivan, who was part of a group called VeteransRespond that recently traveled to North Dakota to assist the remaining Native American activists demonstrating against the Dakota Access pipeline. “It’s intimidating. They’re just trying to bully me around. Everyone knows I didn’t start that.”

The arson accusation, which police said could lead to prosecution, is the latest in a series of arrests and charges filed against veterans aiding indigenous groups fighting the pipeline, which could soon be in operation. Last month, police filed charges against two veterans supporting Standing Rock, holding one in jail for several days. The prosecutions raised concerns that police were trying to prevent them from going to the camps.


Also of Interest

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

Trump May Choose “Alternative Intelligence” to Support His “Alternative Facts,” Former Agents Warn

Has Van Jones Lost His Mind, Or Are Sane People Missing the Point?

Homeland Security Sees Anger At Trump as a Driver of “Domestic Terrorist Violence”

An Interview with Noam Chomsky

A Confession on Meeting a Russian

Why We Shouldn’t Feel Too Optimistic If ISIS is Driven From Mosul

From ObamaCare to TrumpCare: The “Fresh Hell” Of Health Savings Accounts

The Democratic Party Is Facing A Demographic Crisis

Banksy opens hotel on Bethlehem barrier wall

Stunning imagery from the Smithsonian’s 14th annual photo competition


A Little Night Music

Warren Smith - Ubangi Stomp

Eddie Zack And Cousin Ritchie - I'm Gonna Roll And Rock

The Hi-Tombs - Sweet Rockin' Mama

Sonny Burgess - We Wanna Boogie

Jimmy Evans - The Joint's Really Jumpin'

Lucky Lee - Mistreaded Blues

Ronnie Self - Pretty Bad Blues

Hayden Thompson - Fairlane Rock

Charlie Feathers - One Hand Loose

Narvel Felts - My Babe

Tillman Franks - Hot Rod-Shotgun Boogie

Junior Thompson - Mama´s Little Baby

Ronnie Dawson - Rockin' Bones

Joe Bennett and the Sparkletones - Black Slacks

Dale Hawkins - Little Pig

Wanda Jackson - Hard Headed Woman

Warren Earl & His Atomic Rockers - Hillbilly Boogie



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joe shikspack's picture

it's rib night at the local bbq shack. i'll be back after a bit.

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Knucklehead's picture

@joe shikspack Joe, I remember in the mid-fifties while summering in Prince Edward Island watching a rock band in Montague PEI playing this kind of music & how I was totally fascinated. Thanks for the childhood memories, musically. I did progress to having my own band in the mid 60`s.

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I`m already against the next war

joe shikspack's picture

@Knucklehead

i grew up listening to rockabilly (and lots of other great stuff) on the radio and when i first started to get interested in playing guitar, it was the virtuosity of a lot of the rockabilly players that made me start practicing in earnest. heh, like you, i progressed to playing in (in my case, garage) bands though it took me til the seventies to get that together.

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China

Want to rub elbows with the rich? Go to China, where the country's parliament could pass for an elite club of the world's richest, where about 100 delegates are U.S. dollar billionaires.

They made their fortune in everything from property to energy, according to data from the Hurun Report, which publishes the China Rich List. A bunch of tech entrepreneurs sit at the top of the list, including Pony Ma of Tencent, Robin Li of Baidu and Lei Jun of Xiaomi.

The names are among delegates gathering for their annual meeting in Beijing starting on Friday, a roughly weeklong affair that's big on posturing, but small on legislating. Delegates always vote to approve proposals from the ruling Communist Party.

Here's another fun fact: The richest 209 parliament delegates are each worth more than 2 billion yuan ($300 million) – their combined wealth is equivalent to the annual GDPs of Belgium and Sweden, using World Bank figures on GDP for those countries.

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@gjohnsit Revolution and partly repealed the Clay Rice Bowl and Iron Rice Bowl and privatized essential services.
Today in China, there's a 100 million+ floating reserve army of labor that migrates to cities for part of the year. They work in horrid conditions, living in dormatories, and working up to 80 hours a week. They are not fed enough to sustain a long life but since they are going back to the country after 6 - 8 months, the capitalists think it's OK to starve them for a few months while paying them 5% of American wages.
There are over 100,000 protests in China each year of late because ancestral land is being stolen; workers toil in slave-like conditions; and corruption is rampant.

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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"

Pluto's Republic's picture

@gjohnsit

I didn't know CNBC could pass a propaganda turd that huge.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Pluto's Republic's picture

....the free world? See for yourself how different forms of government and economic systems work?

China can always be nuked later, if communism gains a foothold.

China's top political advisory body started its annual session Friday in Beijing, ushering in a political high season that will continue with the opening of the country's top legislature Sunday.

Yu Zhengsheng, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, delivered a work report to more than 2,000 political advisors who gathered to discuss major political, economic and social issues in the world's most populous nation and second-largest economy.

THE Source: http://www.china.org.cn/china/NPC_CPPCC_2017/node_7245802.htm

With full transparency, the evil Chi Coms will grade their performance on the continuation of the Five- and Ten-Year Plans to lift a billion people out of abject poverty and rural isolation into a sustainable and productive middle class … and beyond. There are 3,000 representatives from all walks of life, seated to be heard in the Great Halls.

See a helpful video here that explains how all those voices reach the President to influence this years choices. It's an opportunity to see how a functional representative government works.

@Pluto's Republic

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
CB's picture

@gjohnsit
getting upset about worker's conditions. That's one hell of a lot of pitch forks and torches.

'We The Workers': On the front lines of China's record-level labor unrest
According to the most recent annual report from China's National Bureau of Statistics, more than 2.7 million migrant workers -- around 1% of the total -- weren't paid on time in 2015, the highest number in five years. Workers also face insufficient safety regulations, gender and other discrimination, and being deprived of their social security rights.
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@CB
For a century (1850 to 1950) China was either in revolution, or near one.
More than once they lined their political leaders up against a wall.

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CB's picture

@gjohnsit
scared of their people. They had no qualms about executing corrupt politicians or businessmen. They've eased off a tad lately.

Corruption In China: How Much Dirty Money Attracts The Death Penalty? $463,000
SHANGHAI — China has announced new rules governing the use of the death penalty in corruption cases, setting the threshold at 3 million yuan, or $463,000. Anyone found guilty of embezzlement or taking bribes of this amount or more — in what China’s top court called “extremely serious cases” that have an “extremely vile impact” — will face the death penalty, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
...
The official Global Times newspaper noted that two senior executives at Chinese state enterprises were given death sentences for taking kickbacks worth about 200 million yuan last year — though it did not giver further details and did not say whether the sentences were carried out.
...

Of course, China could solve many of the problems of corruption within the government once and for all. Simply allow lobbying like in the US.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@CB

Just to keep the data in its most fulsome context;

Wage Theft by Employers is Costing U.S. Workers Billions of Dollars a Year

Rampant wage theft in the United States is a huge problem for struggling workers. Surveys reveal that the underpayment of owed wages can reduce affected workers’ income by 50 percent or more. Most recently, a careful study of minimum wage violations in New York and California in 2011 commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) determined that the affected employees’ lost weekly wages averaged 37–49 percent of their income. This wage theft drove between 15,000 and 67,000 families below the poverty line. Another 50,000–100,000 already impoverished families were driven deeper into poverty.

The extensive weekly minimum wage violations uncovered by the DOL study in California and New York alone amount to an estimated $1.6 billion–$2.5 billion over the course of a full year. Given that the combined population of California and New York is 18.5 percent of the U.S. total, it is reasonable to estimate that minimum wage violations nationwide amount to at least $8.6 billion a year, and as much as $13.8 billion a year. On the one hand, violations in these two states might be less frequent because the wage and hour enforcement effort in New York and California is greater than in most states and violations might be deterred (Florida, for example, does not have a state labor department).

That story and the following one covers the same timeframe as the Chinese one, posted. I tend to believe the data from the US because the US stories are written by US organizations. The Chinese data is less credible because it is written by outside propaganda organ, CNN.

An Epidemic of Wage Theft Is Costing Workers Hundreds of Millions of Dollars a Year

Millions of Americans struggle to get by on low wages, often without any benefits such as paid sick leave, a pension, or even health insurance. Their difficult lives are made immeasurably harder when they do the work they have been hired to do, but their employers refuse to pay, pay for some hours but not others, or fail to pay overtime premiums when employees’ hours exceed 40 in a week.

This failure to pay what workers are legally entitled to can be called wage theft; in essence, it involves employers taking money that belongs to their employees and keeping it for themselves. Amounts that seem small, such as not paying for time spent preparing a work station at the start of a shift, or for cleaning up and closing up at the end of a shift, can add up. When a worker earns only a minimum wage ($290 for a 40-hour week), shaving a mere half hour a day from the paycheck means a loss of more than $1,400 a year, including overtime premiums. That could be nearly 10 percent of a minimum-wage employee’s annual earnings—the difference between paying the rent and utilities or risking eviction and the loss of gas, water, or electric service.

Survey evidence suggests that wage theft is widespread and costs workers billions of dollars a year, a transfer from low-income employees to business owners that worsens income inequality, hurts workers and their families, and damages the sense of fairness and justice that a democracy needs to survive. A three-city study of workers in low-wage industries found that in any given week, two-thirds experienced at least one pay-related violation.1 The researchers estimated that the average loss per worker over the course of a year was $2,634, out of total earnings of $17,616. The total annual wage theft from front-line workers in low-wage industries in the three cities approached $3 billion. If these findings in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are generalizable to the rest of the U.S. low-wage workforce of 30 million, wage theft is costing workers more than $50 billion a year.

It is useful to compare the cost of these wage and hour violations with crimes that are better recognized and greatly more feared, though they are much smaller in their overall dollar impact. All of the robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts in the nation cost their victims less than $14 billion in 2012, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports.2 That is well over one-third of the estimated cost of wage theft nationwide.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
CB's picture

@Pluto's Republic
Here's a more detailed report by a less biased source. It appears the CNN report may have been based on this one.

Strikes and protests by China’s workers soar to record heights in 2015
...
The increase in strikes and protests began around the time of the 11 August yuan devaluation and subsequent stock market crash and continued to build during the final quarter of the year as the economy showed little sign of improvement.

However, the economic downturn only partially explains the increase in labour disputes. The fundamental cause has been systematic failure of employers to respect the basic rights of employees, such as being paid on time and receiving their legally mandated benefits, and the failure of local government officials to enforce labour law.

More than two thirds of all the disputes recorded in 2015, for example, were related to the non-payment of wages. Wage arrears have been endemic in the construction industry for decades but are now increasingly evident in manufacturing, mining and services as employers simply refuse to pay workers or close their businesses down and disappear.
...

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@CB

Americans should be envious. By the end of the year, both those activities will be felonies in the US, and Federal labor laws and oversight will be gutted by Carl's Junior, who heads up Trump's Department of Labor. Federal workers will also be silenced by new "will work" contracts.

I meant no disrespect. I did not want to make snark at your expense. I think the data (and implied data) about the growing voices of the Chinese people speaking out about labor and wage crimes committed against them by capitalist employers — is just fine. (Lucky for them they don't have to contend with a Democratic Party to be heard.) Two of the three paragraphs quoted, however, were about the actual crimes committed. I'm responding to the crimes, not the existence of protests. I am merely amazed that US workers and Chinese workers have so much in common.

increase in labour disputes …. systematic failure of employers to respect the basic rights of employees, such as being paid on time and receiving their legally mandated benefits … failure of local government officials to enforce labour law.

and

two thirds of all disputes … related to the non-payment of wages ... increasingly evident in manufacturing, mining and services as employers simply refuse to pay workers

I don't think the Chinese workers will suffer as much as Americans will from the Great Automation that the employers are ushering in. The Chinese have already found the best solution to that, one the US would never, ever use: Tax the robots. The US will still be arguing over the American people's missing human rights — like health care and freedom from hunger — long after the Chinese have reached the stars and touched the face of Science.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
joe shikspack's picture

@Pluto's Republic

that us workers and chinese workers have so much in common - they are both working for corporate-neoliberal orders.

one day soon enough, both workforces will be equally screwed.

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joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

the funny/sad thing is that cnbc talks about it like it is a good thing.

they compare the wealth of the chinese parliament (i guess you could call them the "billionaires club") to the us congress (also known as the "millionaires club.")

of course the disparity in wealth between the chinese parliament and the us congress is just a cultural difference. in china the oligarchs sit in parliament and in the us, the oligarchs purchase congressworms. cnbc naturally fails to mention this.

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CB's picture

@joe shikspack
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/money-wealth/article/1867321/china-be-top...
millionaire-cn.jpg

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rockabilly songs. It almost defines the genre.
"Ubangi Stomp" by Warren Smith was not his biggest seller, "Rock n' Roll Ruby" was, but Ubangi Stomp and its fine guitar break and pinheaded lyrics is a classic.
Rockabilly came, was influential, and pretty much went away.
Johnny Burnett has some great tunes and I think he worked at the same supply company as Elvis.

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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

@duckpin

ubangi stomp was a staple in the repertoire of a lot of bands in my area when i was a teenager, if you've never heard danny gatton play the guitar part, well, you just haven't lived. the nighthawks also used to do a nice version of it, too, back in the day.

i left the burnett brothers out of this collection since i have featured them before once or twice.

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@joe shikspack @joe shikspack and I put them on one of my Am Std telecasters and I like them a lot. He's quite a player.

I guess you have featured Carl Perkins a real King of Rockabilly & a big influence on the Beatles among others.

Hope you are OK these days.

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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"

CB's picture

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joe shikspack's picture

@CB

thanks for the vid!

i guess i'm sort of glad that there's anything left of palmyra. all of these regime change wars that the us has whipped up in the middle east are taking a huge toll on our historical record. it's really pretty disgusting.

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link

The clock is ticking for 71 penniless union pension funds that rely on a federal insurance company to support their retirees — because the agency itself is also running out of cash, its director said Wednesday.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s limited liquidity is part of the spiraling U.S. pension crisis that threatens to wipe out the retirement savings of more than a million Americans.
...
“We’re projected to run out of money in eight to 10 years. Many union pension plans are projected to run out in 20 years,” he explained.
“There are going to be people in plans who run out of money after we do, and there will be no water in the well.”

Right now, PBGC has $2 billion in assets built up over 42 years, Reeder said.

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joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

courts letting big corporations off the hook when they declare bankruptcy?

Pension dumping

"changes in bankruptcy laws also assisted companies shed their pension liabilities into the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, or PBGC. The PBGC, created in 1974, is charged with verifying that all retirement plans have enough assets to meet their obligations, and it guarantees that workers who were in failed plans receive up to 90 percent of the retirement benefit which was promised, or $54,000 per year, whichever is less. ... [M]any times courts will allow failing companies to simply unload their pension obligations onto the PBGC because the objective of courts is to help companies emerge from bankruptcy rather than protect pensions. ...

“Vulture investors,” as they are sometimes cuttingly referred to, realize there is still enormous value in distressed properties if their pension obligations can transferred to the PBGC. They justify their behavior by claiming that, without the equity injection they provide, the business would go under. Further, they claim the workers benefits as well, by getting up to 90 percent of the benefits promised them. Others, quite naturally, view this claim negatively. They see the vulture investors as recklessly wiping out the workers’ pension plans, all the while knowing that the PBGC will bail them out and raise premiums on companies playing by the rules to make up the difference.

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Crider's picture

@gjohnsit Many years of zero percent interest to gift the awful banks have devastated so many pensions.

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Azazello's picture

Noam's in town right now, teaching a course at the UofA.
Here's a dedicated scholar: Man commutes from Bakersfield for Chomsky course.
Add Russia:
Here's a 50-minute interview with Stephen F. Cohen: TYT Politics/YouTube
Here's Cohen's latest from The Nation: Why We Must Oppose the Kremlin-baiting Against Trunp
Add Bakersfield:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5P6zdlPJ34 width:500 height:300]

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

mimi's picture

@Azazello
very good to listen to. Brings sanity back when he debunks the current propaganda talk about the evil politicians who dared to talk to Russians. Thank you.

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joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

thanks for the links. i don't usually follow the young turks these days, so i'm really glad you posted the cohen interview link.

bakersfield, eh?

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Azazello's picture

@joe shikspack
How was your rib dinner ?
I love pork ribs and tomorrow is a big day for me. I've been smoking ribs for years on a rig that I got for free from a neighbor who was moving. So I finally broke down and bought a new rig, nothing special, just a Weber kettle. Tomorrow I will try it out for the first time.
I have to do a recipe 6 times before I've got it down and it's totally new equipment so I'll be smoking ribs all summer.
Have a good weekend , joe.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3zkAXNS6ww]

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

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

the local bbq joint does an excellent job.

ms shikspack has a weber kettle that we've been using for about the last 20 years which has produced some very memorable delights. we have friends with fancy smokers that frankly don't produce better results than the weber.

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GreyWolf's picture

Sonny Boy Williamson II today.

[video:https://youtu.be/Ixgu0H2p3WE]
Your Funeral, My Trial
[video:https://youtu.be/WBW9hYLsSHE]
Nine Below Zero
[video:https://youtu.be/6WfGHTOEFGQ]
Bring It On Home
[video:https://youtu.be/4bY0vcg2F-I]
The Sky is Crying

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mimi's picture

@GreyWolf
I have never heard a crying harmonika like that.

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joe shikspack's picture

@GreyWolf

i have a list that started out with a birthday calendar, but of course, there are far more blues and related music artists than there are days of the year, so the order is more or less right (except i've made a bunch of additions as inspiration strikes), but the folks that get featured almost never wind up being featured on their actual birthdays.

anyway, i'm not above doing something like doing a week of harmonica players or something like that, i just didn't do it this time. Smile

that said, thanks for the sb2!

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Pluto's Republic's picture

...left the room some time back. First they abandoned economics and politics followed. But now technology has abandoned all of us.

2017-mcafee.jpg

Thanks for the newscast, joe, as always.

It could be worse.

[Still… not one single piece of independent evidence. We're waiting and waiting.]

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
joe shikspack's picture

@Pluto's Republic

heh, sometimes i think that folks like us who demand things like facts and evidence are relics of the past in this post-truth era. i suppose that in the past, the truth was rarely what it was cracked up to be, but these modern whippersnappers with their made-to-order realities are creating some very unappealing, un-aesthetic realities.

perhaps these jerks spend a lot of time in the back room cooking up political realities because they don't have the talent to make up a decent fantasy.

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mimi's picture

over the insanity of the US state of affairs right now, I see people who have lost their minds and laughing themselves irrationally to death. First we laugh, then we get mad and then we die.

The EB article's titles read like the headlines of a lunatic asylum newspaper. It leaves a taste of 'last meal' behind.

Good night.

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joe shikspack's picture

@mimi

heh, i don't think that i have the words for you. fortunately, george harrison might have.

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mimi's picture

@joe shikspack
you have always the right song, Joe, and I hope that will not pass away...

Sunrise doesn't last all morning
A cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love is up and has
Left you with no warning
It's not always been this gray
All things must pass
All things must pass away
Sunset doesn't last all evening
A mind can blow those clouds away
After all this, my love is up
And must be leaving
It's not always been this gray
All things must pass
All things must pass away
All things must pass
None of life's dreams can last
So, I must be on my way
To face another day
And darkness…

Good Morning.

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OLinda's picture

Thanks for the news and blues, joe.

Love the song and visuals in the opening number!

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joe shikspack's picture

@OLinda

that billy lee riley had something. Smile

have a great weekend!

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gendjinn's picture

In the Assembly election the DUP has fallen below 30 MLAs. This is a really important threshold because of a Petition of Concern. That was put in by the GFA to give any minority that had 30 seats out of 108 to file a petition and block any legislation. Majority tyranny protection. Well it ended up giving the DUP (which up until yesterday had 38 seats) an automatic veto on all legislation.

Now the Assembly has been reduced to 90 MLAs, the threshold is still 30, and the DUP just got kicked in the nuts in the election and will end up on 27,28 or 29 seats. They were blocking marriage equality legislation and now they cannot. Every other party is on board with passing it so it is a done deal! (yes, yes, I know it's not done yet, but it really is Smile

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joe shikspack's picture

@gendjinn

thanks for the update. i've been reading a bit about the surprise results and i wonder if perhaps this might just make matters more tense between the unionists and sinn fein. as i understand it, if they can't get their act together and form a government, then they could wind up with direct british rule. i'm wondering about how likely that is, though.

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gendjinn's picture

@joe shikspack Everything is changed, changed utterly.

There will be recounts, especially in South Belfast where a late breaking surprise result may end up keeping BOTH DUP out by double digit vote margins.

Right now it is looking like SF 27; SDLP 12; DUP 27; UUP 11; TUV 1; IND Unionist 1; Alliance 8; Greens 2; People Before Profit 1. A real tragedy is long time activist, socialist and a bit of a lovable and annoying head banger Eamonn McCann lost his seat after only winning it in May.

That breaks down into tribes thusly Nationalists 40; Unionists 40 and Others 10. If these numbers stand then I don't know how people are going to react, handle it or move forward.

Bit of background - RHI scandal (google cash for ash/renewable heating initiative half a billion scandal) essentially pissed a large chunk of Unionists. Enough that the polls talked of a drop in DUP support of 3%, and dramatic drop off in UUP willing to transfer to DUP. Anecdotally the talk on the various Northern Ireland blogs had long standing Unionist commenters making heretical statements about intent to vote for SDLP, SF if needed to keep DUP out. I haven't crunched the transfers yet to know for sure.

It didn't matter, SF vote surged. 687k voted in May, 803k voted yesterday. 70k to Nationalists, 16k to Unionists and 24k to Others.

Direct Rule may not make a difference at this juncture. Brexit is the big thing and the demand will now be for a border poll. SF does not need to go back in the govt, the base supports them sticking it to the DUP after the last 5 years of incitement.

Tonight we celebrate this breakthrough. It is a high water mark, but it is one that will be beat next time out. You see, the gerrymandering of the north finally ends in the current Westminster redistricting. 18 constituencies go to 17 and the inbuilt Unionist advantage which currently gives Unionist 11 MPs and 7 MPs for Nationalism. The next round of elections will deliver Nationalist majority of MPs, MLAs and Local Govt too.

Brexit fractures the Unionists and delivers a majority for United Ireland within the EU over the Union with Britain outside the EU.

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gendjinn's picture

@gendjinn DUP 28, SF 27 - details

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ggersh's picture

here is something I feel the whole world needs to see and do, WAKE UP!

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyyUvxHLYr4]

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

joe shikspack's picture

@ggersh

thanks for the video, that was an awesome commentary. it reminds me that the israeli major media is generally more free than our own.

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snoopydawg's picture

[Gosh, I wonder what took the Obama administration so long? You don't suppose that perhaps like the DAPL decision, they might have done it with the expectation that Trump would reverse it, creating negative publicity? - js]

Obama waited until he had one foot out the door before he wrote a lot of legislation that wouldn't come in affect until a few months after he left office on purpose.
He had 8 years to do what he did during his last few months or weeks in office but could only get around to passing it at the last minute?
Yeah, I believe that he knew that Trump would reverse his decisions.
The Obama way. Don't try to help Main Street Americans when he held both houses in congress but wait until there's enough republicans to block anything.

Have a great weekend joe and bluesters.

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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

@snoopydawg

i found it really amazing that in his last 6 months, obama started making a lot of somewhat progressive actions (i guess you could call it his legacy period) that it seemed quite obvious would be reversed immediately once the next administration took office. it was like he really thought that these actions would go on his "permanent record" and people would think of him as a sort of progressive neoliberal or something.

have a great weekend snoopy!

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enhydra lutris's picture

Obama's legacy binge reminds me of how Clinton suddenly got environmentally aware on his way out the door, except that monuments, of course, stand, as will Obama's monuments.

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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 --