The Evening Blues - 7-12-17



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Willie Dixon

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues songwriter and musician Willie Dixon. Enjoy!

Willie Dixon w/ The Blasters - I'm Ready

“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”

-- Noam Chomsky


News and Opinion

Mosul: Amnesty International calls for investigation into civilian deaths after Isis defeat

Human rights organisation Amnesty International has called for a independent investigation into the unnecessary loss of civilian life caused by the US-led coalition’s fight against Isis in Mosul. ...

A new report into the scale of the human rights abuses, released by Amnesty International on Tuesday, claims the US and its allies used imprecise and unnecessarily powerful weapons, contributing to the heavy civilian death toll. The human rights violations may constitute war crimes and an independent investigation was needed, the group said.

“The scale and gravity of the loss of civilian lives during the military operation to retake Mosul must immediately be publicly acknowledged at the highest levels of government in Iraq and states that are part of the US-led coalition. “The horrors that the people of Mosul have witnessed and the disregard for human life by all parties to this conflict must not go unpunished. Entire families have been wiped out, many of whom are still buried under the rubble today.

US allies caught on film torturing prisoners in Syria

A video recently surfaced showing US-backed forces torturing captives near the Syrian city of Raqqa, ISIS' de facto capital that was recently invaded by coalition forces.

The video shows men in YPG uniforms kicking and stomping prisoners. One YPG fighter holds a knife as he repeatedly bounces up and down on a stool on the back of one detainee. He then smashes an object over his head. ...

Kurdish authorities in northern Syria have confirmed the incident, according to The Daily Beast. The Kurdish governmental body, or self-administration, in the Cizere Canton denounced the incident, saying it would prosecute the two YPG fighters, according to ARA News.

Senate Begins Confirmation Hearings for Trump FBI Pick Tied to Torture, Gitmo

Syrian Observatory says it has 'confirmed information' that Islamic State chief is dead

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters on Tuesday that it had "confirmed information" that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed. The report came just days after the Iraqi army recaptured the last sectors of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which Baghdadi's forces overran almost exactly three years ago.

Russia's Defence Ministry said in June that it might have killed Baghdadi when one of its air strikes hit a gathering of Islamic State commanders on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Raqqa. But Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials have been skeptical.

Reuters could not independently verify Baghdadi's death.

Trump’s Empty Promise on War Savings

President Donald Trump has always had contradictions in his “tough guy” national security policy. For starters, he has proposed a nearly 10 percent increase in defense spending, but also claims that his demands for U.S. allies to spend more on defense are producing results. And during his campaign, he alluded to the need to stay out of unneeded wars. If allies pay more and the United States stays out of pointless brushfire wars, the U.S. government could seemingly spend less, not more, on defense.

However, allied defense spending is probably not going to increase that much. Our wealthy allies have long allowed the United States to spend most of the money on security, so that they can use their money to compete with U.S. commercial interests on the world market without fully opening their markets to American products and services. Trump is right to pressure the allies to do more, but they really won’t unless the United States tells them they are mostly on their own to provide security. Also, it remains to be seen whether an American president with already the most powerful military in human history, both absolutely and relatively (the United States spends on defense what the next seven highest spending countries do), can avoid the temptation to needlessly meddle in the affairs of other countries. Recent presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have been unable to resist the urge. ...

Apart from these contradictions in the use of conventional military forces, Trump has promised to overhaul a nuclear arsenal that he has called “obsolete.” Barack Obama left him an expensive program — $1 trillion over 30 years — to revamp the nuclear triad of bombers, land based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of that gargantuan program has already skyrocketed 20 percent to $1.2 trillion. If past defense programs are any guide, the expenses will continue to escalate over time, because the government procures weapons using a highly regulated and inefficient manner. And Trump’s post-election promise that the United States “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability” has not even been figured into his already bogus budget of substantial tax cuts paid for by fantasy levels of economic growth (like the “cooked” budgets of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, which racked up huge budget deficits and thus accumulated mounting national debt).

First Look to Support Defense of Reality Winner in Espionage Act Prosecution - Intercept Admits Errors in Minimizing Risks of Source Exposure

The Intercept's parent company, First Look Media, has taken steps to provide independent support for the legal defense of Reality Winner, the NSA contract employee who was recently arrested in the first instance of the Trump administration using the 100-year-old Espionage Act to prosecute an alleged journalistic source. ... Belief that it is wrong for journalistic sources to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act is the key principle that moved the Press Freedom Defense Fund to provide support for Winner’s legal defense. With Winner’s consent, First Look’s counsel Baruch Weiss of the firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer may support the defense efforts while continuing to represent First Look’s interests. ...

At The Intercept, we have also been carefully examining our own role in Winner’s predicament. Our reporting practices came under immediate scrutiny after the publication of our story as the Trump administration’s DOJ suggested in an unsealed affidavit and search warrant that it had gleaned clues about the leaker’s identity in part from our reporting. An internal review of the reporting of this story has now been completed. The ongoing criminal case prevents us from going into detail, but I can state that, at several points in the editorial process, our practices fell short of the standards to which we hold ourselves for minimizing the risks of source exposure when handling anonymously provided materials.

Like other journalistic outlets, we routinely verify such materials with any individuals or institutions implicated by their disclosure and seek their comment, as we explain on our website. This process carries some risks of source exposure that are impossible to mitigate when dealing with sensitive materials. Nonetheless, it is clear that we should have taken greater precautions to protect the identity of a source who was anonymous even to us.

Trump's 'war on the open internet': tech firms join day of action for net neutrality

Amazon, Facebook, Netflix and a host of other tech giants will join with online activists, librarians, minority rights and free speech groups today in a day of protest against the Trump administration’s plans to roll back rules in what critics charge is a “war on the open internet”.

The “day of action” – which supporters claim will be the largest online protest in history – comes as the new head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the US telecoms and media watchdog, prepares to defang tough rules protecting internet access in the US following pressure from cable companies and other internet service providers (ISPs).

Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight For the Future, the not-for-profit group organizing the day of action, said the protest came at a critical moment for the internet. “The internet has had a profoundly democratizing impact on our society. If we lose these protections, then we will lose all that diversity,” she said.

The FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, is a longtime critic of the 2015 “open internet” rules which he has called politically motivated and “heavy handed” and has claimed stifle innovation by imposing unnecessary burdens on cable companies. Those rules have been unsuccessfully challenged in the US courts but could now be overturned by the Republican-controlled FCC.

In May, the FCC voted two to one to start the formal process of dismantling “net neutrality” rules that prevent ISPs from creating fast lanes (or slow lanes) that could favor one service over another and potentially allow them to choose winners and losers online.

How social media saved socialism

Socialism is stubborn. After decades of dormancy verging on death, it is rising again in the west. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn just led the Labour Party to its largest increase in vote share since 1945 on the strength of its most radical manifesto in decades. In France, the leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon recently came within two percentage points of breaking into the second round of the presidential election. And in the United States, the country’s most famous socialist – Bernie Sanders – is now its most popular politician.

The reasons for socialism’s revival are obvious enough. Workers in the west have seen their living standards collapse over the past few decades. Young people in particular are being proletarianized in droves. They struggle to find decent work, or an affordable place to live, or a minimum degree of material security. Meanwhile, elites gobble up a growing share of society’s wealth. But grievances alone don’t produce political movements. A pile of dry wood isn’t enough to start a fire. It needs a spark – or several.

For the resurgent left, an essential spark is social media. In fact, it’s one of the most crucial and least understood catalysts of contemporary socialism. Since the networked uprisings of 2011 – the year of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Spanish indignados – we’ve seen how social media can rapidly bring masses of people into the streets. But social media isn’t just a tool for mobilizing people. It’s also a tool for politicizing them.

Social media has supplied socialists with an invaluable asset: the building blocks of an alternative public sphere. The mainstream media tends to be hostile to the left: proximity to power often leads journalists to internalize the perspectives of society’s most powerful people. The result is a public sphere that sets narrow parameters for permissible political discourse, and ignores or vilifies those who step outside of them. That’s why social media is indispensable: it provides a space for incubating new kinds of political thinking, and new forms of political identity, that would be inadmissible in more established channels.

Brand new Macron, same old colonialism

France’s newly elected president, Emmanuel Macron, when asked in a press conference at the G20 summit in Hamburg why there was no Marshall plan for Africa, explained that Africa had “civilisational” problems. He added that part of the challenge facing the continent was the countries that “still have seven to eight children per woman”.

The condemnation online was swift and relentless. The US political scientist Laura Seay summarised the problem many had with Macron’s words in a series of tweets: “It is RICH for a French president to criticise Africa this way,” she said. “France’s colonial theory was called the ‘mission civilisatrice’, which purported to bring all the benefits of Frenchness to the continent. Part of the ‘mission’ was the institutionalisation of Catholicism as the official religion of French colonial territories in Africa.”

“We see all kinds of effects of the ‘mission civilisatrice’ in Francophone Africa today,” she continued, “like the church’s teaching against contraceptive use, which most African adherents take very seriously. Do women in Francophone Africa want to give birth to far more children than they can reasonably feed, clothe, and educate? I doubt most do.”

Macron’s words had commentators asking whether the “honeymoon” was now over as a chink appeared in the Golden Boy’s armour, but perhaps the signs were there all along. While still campaigning for the presidency, Macron called France’s colonial history in Algeria “a crime against humanity”. But this centrist politician quickly changed his mind when his rebuke of France’s brutal past was met with criticism at home. ... The test of Macron’s presidency is his foreign policy, particularly on Africa. At the moment he’s doing a fine job of proving he is cut from the same cloth as every leader who has come before him: adopting a paternalistic tone and happy to moralise, while profiting from the carnage France helped create – to which, at best, he turns a blind eye.

Black man was shot in the back by North Carolina state trooper, autopsy confirms

A black man who was killed by a North Carolina state trooper earlier this year was shot in the back and died after massive blood loss, according to an autopsy. The report by the state medical examiner’s office found that 31-year-old Willard Scott was hit once in the lower back and once in the buttock in the shooting, which happened in Durham in February. He was taken to a hospital but died of the wounds, the report released on Monday said. ...

The shooting happened around 1am on 12 February. Authorities said the trooper, who is white, observed Scott driving erratically and tried to pull him over with his siren and flashing lights. A highway patrol news release from February said the trooper followed Scott after he failed to stop, and the driver eventually got out of his car and fled on foot. “During the foot pursuit, an armed confrontation ensued,” the news release said. Authorities said a handgun that did not belong to law enforcement was found at the scene. ...

The NAACP described the autopsy as “confirming our worst fears” and said the family was urging a thorough investigation and further training for troopers on de-escalating conflicts. The statement said the district attorney “must prosecute [Trooper Jerimy Mathis] to the fullest extent of the law, as warranted by the investigation”.

Household income plays crucial role in determining a child's prospects – report

The importance of money in determining a child’s life prospects is highlighted in a major new study published today – with household income found to have a significant impact on everything from children’s cognitive and educational outcomes to their social development and physical health.

“We can now confidently say that money itself matters and needs to be taken into account if we want to improve children’s outcomes,” says the review’s co-author, Kerris Cooper. “We often focus on gaps at school – but what the evidence shows is that money doesn’t only make a difference to children’s cognitive outcomes, it also makes a difference to their physical health, to birth weight, and to social and behavioural development.”

Fifty-five of 61 studies carried out in eight countries over the past three decades showed increases in income to have a positive effect across a variety of measures, according to the systematic review carried out by Cooper and Kitty Stewart of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics.

The strongest evidence points to causal relationship between income and cognitive gains: an increase of US$1,000 in the year 2000 (roughly £860 in today’s currency) is associated with an improvement of between 5 and 27% in the “standard deviation” – meaning 5 to 27% of the gap between a poor and an average child would be closed if the former’s family had its income increased by this amount.

One US study, based on a randomised control trial and published last year, also shows how increased income reduces the likelihood of abuse or neglect.



the horse race



Interesting. I'm not familiar with this news outlet (so read with grain of salt) - this article was linked at antiwar.com in an article by Justin Raimondo.

Russian lawyer who got inside Donald Trump’s inner circle had been denied US visa

By her own account, the Russian lawyer that managed to slide her way into Trump Tower last year and meet with President Donald Trump’s eldest son, his campaign manager and son-in-law is a former Moscow prosecutor who had been denied a visa to enter the United States. Natalia Veselnitskaya filed an affidavit in a federal case in New York describing how she managed to get special permission to enter the United States after the visa denial to help represent a Russian company called Prevezon Holdings owned by the Russian businessman Denis Katsyv in a case brought against it by U.S. prosecutors. ...

Another player in the Russian influence scandal, the U.S.-based political firm Fusion GPS, was also involved in helping Prevezon, Katsyv and Baker Hostetler, according to the Grassley letter. Fusion has been a major focal point of the FBI and Congress because it hired a former British intelligence agent named Christopher Steele to produce a salacious intelligence dossier that made wild and still unsubstantiated claims about Trump ties to Russia.

Congressional investigators involved in the Russian influence case told Circa on Sunday that they are almost certain to probe if Veselnitskaya used her parole entry status to contact the Trump family and whether there is any connection to the Steele dossier and Fusion GPS. “This is new information that raises all sorts of new questions and we are digging into it as we speak,” one congressional investigator told Circa, speaking only on condition of anonymity. President Trump’s lawyers said Saturday they feared Veselnitskaya’s meeting at Trump Tower may have been part of a broader election opposition effort to smear the Republican by creating the impression he and his family had extensive ties to Russia as the Kremlin was interfering in the 2016 election.

“We have learned from both our own investigation and public reports that the participants in the meeting misrepresented who they were and who they worked for,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for President Trump’s legal team. “Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the President and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier. "

Julian Assange: I urged Trump Jr to publish Russia emails via WikiLeaks

Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, has claimed that he contacted Donald Trump Jr and tried to persuade him to publish emails showing he was eager to accept sensitive information about Hillary Clinton via the anti-secrecy website.

Instead, the US president’s eldest son did so via Twitter, igniting a firestorm of criticism around his apparent willingness to work with the Russian government against his father’s Democratic rival. ...

Asked by another Twitter user to explain, Assange elaborated: “I argued that his enemies have it – so why not the public? His enemies will just milk isolated phrases for weeks or months ... with their own context, spin and according to their own strategic timetable. Better to be transparent and have the full context ... but would have been safer for us to publish it anonymously sourced. By publishing it himself it is easier to submit as evidence.”

It was not clear whether Assange’s use of the word “enemies” was the reference to the media or political rivals.

Trump proclaims son 'innocent' victim as Russia scandal intensifies

The US president, Donald Trump, has described the storm over his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer as “the greatest witch-hunt in political history” and “sad!” In a typically combative tweet, Trump praised Donald Trump Jr and said “my son Donald did a good job last night” when he appeared on Fox News. “He was open, transparent and innocent,” Trump added. ...

Emails published by Trump Jr on Tuesday showed that Goldstone promised the lawyer would bring from Russia “some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton]”. He said: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump.”

Critics have said that the offer – and Trump Jr’s willingness to go ahead with the meeting – amount to proof of collusion. Trump Jr denies wrongdoing. On Tuesday evening, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity: “In retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently.” The meeting, he said, was “a nothing”. ...

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said it was “wild” that Trump’s son was being blamed for speaking with a Russian attorney. Lavrov – who met Trump last week at the G20 summit in Hamburg, together with Vladimir Putin – said he knew nothing of the meeting with the lawyer. Serious people were trying to “make a mountain out of a molehill”, Lavrov said. ...

Meanwhile, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that the Kremlin had not spoken to Agalarov and has no ties to Veselnitskaya.

Trump White House in Crisis as Emails Confirm Campaign Embraced Russian Effort to Defeat Clinton

California Governor Cautions Democrats Not to Go Too Far Left

In California, the Democratic Party holds the governorship and super majorities in both the State House and Senate, yet the Democratic establishment continues to side with corporate donors and oppose progressive legislation. Gov. Jerry Brown has suppressed efforts to ban fracking in the state, and the California Democratic Party was fined in May 2017 for laundering money from oil companies to Brown’s 2014 re-election campaign. Additionally, “debt free” college plan was watered down in the state legislature in favor of modest reforms.

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon shut down a single payer health care bill in June 2017, fueling resentment from National Nurses United and progressive activists that worked to get it passed by the State Senate as Republicans in Congress work to scale back Obamacare. ... Rendon and Democratic leaders have received over $2.2 million from the pharmaceutical and health care industries since 2012, including from groups that lobbied against the bill. ...

On July 10, Politico reported that California Democrats were plunging into a “civil war,” and the article cast blame on progressive activists. Several weeks before, the author wrote a hit piece on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ political revolution, claiming it has hit a “rough patch.” In the article, Gov. Jerry Brown cautioned the Democratic Party from going too far to the left. “Look, you can always go too far. Trump has obviously gone too far in one direction. It’s possible to go too far in the other direction,” he told Politico.



the evening greens


Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

The greatest impact individuals can have in fighting climate change is to have one fewer child, according to a new study that identifies the most effective ways people can cut their carbon emissions.

The next best actions are selling your car, avoiding long flights, and eating a vegetarian diet. These reduce emissions many times more than common green activities, such as recycling, using low energy light bulbs or drying washing on a line. However, the high impact actions are rarely mentioned in government advice and school textbooks, researchers found.

The new study, published in Environmental Research Letters, sets out the impact of different actions on a comparable basis. By far the biggest ultimate impact is having one fewer child, which the researchers calculated equated to a reduction of 58 tonnes of CO2 for each year of a parent’s life.

Jerry Brown: Climate Champion or Big Oil Ally?

Iceberg twice size of Luxembourg breaks off Antarctic ice shelf

A giant iceberg twice the size of Luxembourg has broken off an ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula and is now adrift in the Weddell Sea.

Reported to be “hanging by a thread” last month, the trillion-tonne iceberg was found to have split off from the Larsen C segment of the Larsen ice shelf on Wednesday morning after scientists examined the latest satellite data from the area.

The Larsen C ice shelf is more than 12% smaller in area than before the iceberg broke off – or “calved” – an event that researchers say has changed the landscape of the Antarctic peninsula and left the Larsen C ice shelf at its lowest extent ever recorded.


Also of Interest

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

The Basic Formula For Every Shocking Russia/Trump Revelation

Intercepted Podcast: Dumb, Dumber and Don Jr.

Don't call it treason: Trump advisers' legal jeopardy is deep, but not that deep

Who is Natalia Veselnitskaya: low-level lawyer or Kremlin power broker?

John McCain faces questions in Trump-Russia dossier case

The Biggest Plot Hole In Russiagate Is That Nobody Can Even Say What It Is

Viral Facebook Post Rips Right-Wing Arguments Against Omar Khadr Settlement

Why Trump's foreign policy is dangerous

Trump Is on Course to Get a Hot War Going with North Korea

The Coalition Pushing for Single Payer in California Is Fracturing

“Democracy Now” Again Misreports Nuclear Ban Treaty

Doomsday narratives about climate change don't work. But here's what does

Our Obsolescent Economy

Another Attack on Honduran Rights Activist

Thoreau at 200: Don’t Let Bill Gates Ban the Hoe


A Little Night Music

Willie Dixon & Walter "Shakey" Horton - My Babe!

Willie Dixon - I Just Want to Make Love to You + Bring it on Home

Willie Dixon - Wigglin Worm

Willie Dixon - Hoochie Koochie Man

Willie Dixon - The Real Thing

Willie Dixon - I Can't Quit You Baby

Willie Dixon - Crazy For My Baby

Willie Dixon - Wang Dang Doodle

J B Lenoir & Willie Dixon - Mama Talk To Your Daughter

Willie Dixon & The All Stars - Jungle Swing


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Azazello's picture

Speaking of Michael Tracey, this came up last night, a good discussion with Max Blumenthal: YouTube (1 hr.)

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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

thanks! listening now, sounds interesting.

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mimi's picture

@Azazello
[video:https://youtu.be/vcAqZWCnePM]
which lead me to search for Clarissa Ward

As Ward is active in the field of journalism for 13 years, she has the good salary which is reported to be around $2 million per annum. As of 2017, she has managed to keep her net worth secret, but we estimate it to be more than $15 million looking at other co-workers in Fox at the same position.

ahem ... what's the real news in that?

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

is good news!' Couldn't stomach listening to the confirmation hearing, so been out-of-the-loop on much of what's happening today. BTW, native posted a link to a blog piece that had an interesting photo of the Russian attorney sitting behind Ambassador McFaul (supposedly, she was his invited Guest at the House Hearing). If she's a Russian operative/spy--whatever, how the heck was she allowed to attend a Congressional hearing during the Obama Adminstration (last year)?

Also, I've been very puzzled by the lack of curiosity regarding the author of the conspiratorial emails--Rob Goldstone. Where the heck is he? Isn't he the one who proclaimed that the Russian attorney is 'connected to the Kremlin?'

Below is an excerpt from 'This Week' last Sunday. I think it confirms that the push for Medicare-For-All is mostly a gimmick.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you're hearing Senator McConnell say that he's willing to work with Democrats if this fails. Is he going to have a partner?

SWALWELL (Dem Lawmaker): I hope so. There's a lot we can do to strengthen the Affordable Care Act to make sure that places where there is not enough competition that you can put the risk corridors back in.

VANDEN HEUVEL: What are the conditions?

COLE: We hear what but we never see what these fixes are. I mean, Democrats have talked about that for a little -- well, we need some fixes. And, OK, tell us what you would propose. But so I think it's more rhetorical than real.

VANDEN HEUVEL: I think it's an opening for Democrats to -- if the history of reform in this country really operated with an obstructionist Republican Party right now, it isn't, history of Social Security. You build on it. You build on it.

I think it's an opening for Democrats to talk about health care as a right and I think it's an opening to begin to fight for Medicare for all, which would include the United States in the western industrialized nations. It is more efficient. 60 percent of Americans, according to a YouGov survey in April, would like to be part of such a thing. It's an opening to begin to fight for that.

Translation: "We need to 'reform' the ACA, but we'll throw a bone to the Party Base by "beginning to fight for MFA."

Whew! My only question is, "Will the Base fall for this, again?"

Biggrin

BTW, I have a wall calendar that tells which 'holiday' it is--every day. (Didn't know there was one, but there is.)

Today, July 12th, is: "Different Colored Eyes Day"

(For real--here's a website about it.)

Traveling tomorrow, but hope to catch you Guys Friday. Today has to be the hottest day this summer (for us), and the humidity is also off-the-charts--real feel is 100!

Hey, Everyone have a nice evening, and stay cool!

Bye

Mollie


"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."--Lao Tzu

"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving."
____Author Unknown

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."--Helen Keller

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

joe shikspack's picture

@Unabashed Liberal

Also, I've been very puzzled by the lack of curiosity regarding the author of the conspiratorial emails--Rob Goldstone. Where the heck is he? Isn't he the one who proclaimed that the Russian attorney is 'connected to the Kremlin?'

more importantly, if i'm reading the tire tread on the left side of the email chain correctly, goldstone is the one that characterized the information about clinton as being, "part of Russia and its government’s support for mr. trump."

it strikes me as kind of funny (assuming that i'm, correct about the source of that characterization) that people are taking the word of some virtually unknown publicist about what sort of material was to be discussed and delivered.

regarding medicare-for-all, the base will fall for it because it wants to believe.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Unabashed Liberal the link to. Did you catch these gems?Funny how no mentioned Obama's people having contact with some Russians.
I love the smell of hypocrisy Smile

“Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, said that he was in Moscow meeting with officials in the weeks leading up to Obama’s 2008 election win.” (Washington Post)

Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) have ties to Azerbaijan going back to at least 2010, if not before, during Clinton’s many trips to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan is also mentioned in the Wikileaks emails:

“In April 2015, the Clinton team had to decide whether to accept campaign donations from US lobbyists representing foreign states…like Iraq, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Libya and the United Arab Emirates.”

“After a great deal of back and forth, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook said he decided they should just accept the donations” (link)

“Azerbaijan: Could Baku Have Access to a Clinton White House? – A lobbyist connection between Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Azerbaijan could create the appearance of a conflict of interest”.

“(since 2009) the Podesta Group, a high-powered Washington lobbying firm, has handled networking and image-building for Azerbaijan’s embassy in the United States.” (link)

I

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

Unabashed Liberal's picture

@snoopydawg

the portion you blockquoted--thanks for posting it.

I did see the two photos, though; didn't watch the videos, only because I need to conserve bandwidth. But, I totally agree about the hypocrisy. I'm thinking about getting a screenshot of the photo of the attorney sitting directly behind McFaul, and Tweeting it to CNN--repeatedly! Wink

Have a good one--see you Guys Friday!

Mollie


"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."--Lao Tzu

"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving."
____Author Unknown

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

snoopydawg's picture

@Unabashed Liberal
IMG_1104.JPG

Where are you traveling to?

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

Unabashed Liberal's picture

@snoopydawg

Mollie

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

Pluto's Republic's picture

...Dmitri Alperovitch, the rabid anti-Russian Ukranian national and founder of CrowdStrike, the computer security company that the DNC hired to "look" at their servers and find the bad hackers who made Hillary lose. Alperovitch is the only living soul that has ever seen the DNC servers. The Deep State Intelligence Agencies are kicking back and taking his word for it in this investigation pertaining to "national security."

At the same time that Dmitri Alperovitch announced the "Russian hack" he couldn't resist describing a Russian hack of Kiev weapons systems, which Kiev denied. He had to retract that part of his delusional rant in March, 2017.

It turns out that Alperovitch also works for the Atlantic Council—a reliably anti-Putin, Deep State-friendly, think tank that publishes articles such as “Two Cheers for Cold War!” and policy papers like “Distract Deceive Destroy: Putin at War in Syria” and "Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin’s War in Ukraine.” The Atlantic Council is funded by the US State Department, US allies (Norway, Sweden, Finland, NATO) and a consortium of Western corporations (Qualcomm, Coca-Cola, The Blackstone Group), including weapons manufacturers (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman) and oil companies (ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP). Crowstrike also accepted major funding from the pro-Obama/Hillary folks at Google.

CrowdStrike's "evidence" that Russia hacked the DNC comes from a Russian expatriate with a history of issuing dire warnings against Russian hacking (long before the 2016 election).

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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

yeah, i can't believe that alleged high-information political observers don't find it odd that the government/fbi were not allowed to examine the dnc servers and have taken the word of a (biased) private contractor (of unknown competence) for the assessment that russia was behind the exploitation.

go figure.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@joe shikspack

Are skeptical of the far-fetched Russian hackers theory.

Other critical thinkers want to know why Comey stated that while it was possible her illegal private State Department server may have been hacked by Russia, it was impossible to ascertain because Russia is expert at covering their cyber tracks.

But when it comes to the DNC and the Podesta “hacks”, that same Russia talent pool supposedly left behind common, easy-to-discover malware such as Fancy Bear. Why so sloppy thus time?

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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

security researcher jeffrey carr has been all over crowdstrike for quite a while. here are a couple of things that i posted previously in eb:

Here’s the Public Evidence Russia Hacked the DNC — It’s Not Enough

Were the hackers who broke into the DNC’s email really Russian?

here's another piece from carr that's interesting and relevant:

The GRU-Ukraine Artillery Hack That May Never Have Happened

i recommend the conclusion of the above article if you don't have time to read the whole thing.

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mimi's picture

@joe shikspack
0.00001 percent of the political junkies wannabees.

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Roy Blakeley's picture

@joe shikspack The conclusion was decided first and the "evidence" was chosen or fabricated to support the conclusion. The "intelligence" agencies don't really care about the truth in this instance, they just want to blame Russia for their own reasons nor to the media, who repeatedly say that Russia "hacked" the election, without really asking what the real evidence is. (Pardon the excessive use of quotes, probably reflects the the fact that there is so much deceit.)

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@Roy Blakeley
It's difficult to comment on msm stories these days, without using an excessive number of quotation marks.

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native

snoopydawg's picture

I'm sure that people can guess how the news of Assange advising little Trump went over on their diary.
Remember when he was a hero by releasing damaging information about the Bush administration?
Not so much now.
The comments were actually quite amusing because of how angry they are because he released the DNC's emails that showed how they rigged the election for Hillary. (They don't believe that happened, even with DWS and Donna having to resign.)

So many to choose from, but I'll just post three of them.

To think that he was bandied about here as a hero. Remember? What a prick. What a calm, arrogant, destructive, vindictive prick.

Exactly. But notice he still has fans here. Hillary-hating fans. The whole kit and kaboodle of them should get fucking lost.

This is the best one.

Assange is despicable. He is complicit in the tRump crime family coup d’etat.

They are disconnected from reality and it's getting worse. I wonder what is going to happen when this Russian bullshit collapses and they find out that they have been lied to for over a year?

BTW, two democrats have written articles of impeachment against Trump for colluding with Russia to cheat Her out of her birthright.

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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 wonder what is going to happen when this Russian bullshit collapses and they find out that they have been lied to for over a year?

they may find out, but they will never believe it. they are true believers(tm).

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GreatLakeSailor's picture

@joe shikspack

they are true believers(tm)

Like trying to tell a fundy that the Earth is older than 6k years.

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

@snoopydawg They were for Assange before they were against him.

I think my favorite part has been all the kvetching about how Wikileaks is some biased tool of the Russians/Trump because they only published the DNC emails. Well 1) as you mentioned, they've done their bit against Bush back in the day and 2) apparently only John Podesta and whoever else in the DNC were dumb enough to fall for a phishing email and not change his password (Runner1234, if I recall) after it leaked all over the Internet. Somehow this was OK during the Bush years, but now it's the worst thing ever. Sigh.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

with a rationale for joining hands with the MIC, in pursuit of a common agenda, The Democratic Party's leadership now openly advocates for the same foreign policy objectives favored by Bush-era neoconservatives -- and favored as well of course, by a CIA-infested msm. This sort of Dem/MIC collusion has existed for a long time, just below the surface of the Party's ideology, but it has now come out in the open, proudly displaying itself in public.

To what extent this revival of Democratic advocacy for aggressive foreign policy is being caused by Trump, or is an effect of Trump, I'm not sure. Perhaps imperial ambition has always been a more or less latent element of the Party's DNA. Whatever the case, we are now seeing many formerly "liberal" political allies enlisted in a coordinated effort to prepare the public for a war with Russia. And doing so with a great deal of enthusiasm.

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native