The Evening Blues - 8-25-17



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Magic Slim

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues musician Magic Slim. Enjoy!

Magic Slim & The Teardrops - I Ain't Looking for No Love

"Like the sun, nations also fall into eclipse."

-- Victor Hugo


News and Opinion

Trump Administration Can Sift Through User Data of Inauguration Protest Website, Judge Rules

Defying First Amendment concerns, a judge in a Washington, D.C., trial court has upheld a controversial search warrant that would allow the government to sift through data from a major protest website. Prosecutors allege that the website, DisruptJ20.org, was used to coordinate a riot on Inauguration Day, which led to property damage at multiple businesses in downtown Washington. But the vast majority of the actions and protests the site coordinated were peaceful. It’s unclear what connection, if any, the site had to the violence.

Robert E. Morin, the chief judge of the D.C. Superior Court, ruled in favor of the government. But Morin added additional protections, ordering that the government must, before executing its search, file special affidavits describing its procedures. “I’m going to be supervising their search,” he said. The data that investigators don’t identify as criminal evidence would be filed with the court and placed under seal, according to the ruling. Morin forbade the investigators from sharing that data with other government agencies.

Earlier this month, the Department of Justice received pushback from privacy and free-speech organizations after it obtained a search warrant against the website-hosting company, DreamHost. The original warrant order was incredibly broad, requiring the company to produce all of its data on the website – including visitor logs from all 1.3 million people who viewed it. DreamHost challenged the warrant, saying that the information could be used to identify people’s political preferences, and that the request for so much data couldn’t possibly be legal under the First Amendment.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice dropped its request for visitor logs, but still demanded communications and group email lists from the organizers — information that DreamHost says could still be used to identify the political beliefs of innocent people.

North Korea Keeps Saying It Might Give Up Its Nuclear Weapons — But Most News Outlets Won’t Tell You That

The current phase of the decades-long U.S.-North Korea standoff began this past July 4, when North Korea launched its first genuine intercontinental ballistic missile. In a statement, North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un called it “a gift for the American bastards.” Then, on August 8, President Trump terrifyingly declared that “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Two days later he said, “maybe that statement wasn’t tough enough,” and tweeted that “military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded.”

Meanwhile, North Korea explained that it was examining its options “for making an enveloping fire at the areas around Guam,” a U.S. territory. Kim later walked this peculiar provocation back, at least for the moment.

But here’s what you don’t know, unless you’re an obsessive North Korea-watcher:

Also starting on July 4, North Korea has been saying over and over again that it might put its nuclear weapons and missiles on the negotiating table if the United States would end its own threatening posture.

This fact has been completely obscured by U.S. and other western media. For the most part, newspapers and television have simply ignored North Korea’s position. When they haven’t ignored it, they’ve usually mispresented it as its opposite – i.e., claiming that North Korea is saying that it will never surrender its nuclear weapons under any circumstances. And on the rare occasions when North Korea’s statements are mentioned accurately, they’re never given the prominence they deserve.

Russian nuclear bombers fly near North Korea in rare show of force

Russian nuclear-capable strategic bombers have flown a rare mission around the Korean peninsula at the same time as the United States and South Korea conduct joint military exercises that have infuriated Pyongyang.

Russia, which has said it is strongly against any unilateral U.S. military action on the peninsula, said Tupolev-95MS bombers, code named "Bears" by NATO, had flown over the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan, the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, prompting Japan and Seoul to scramble jets to escort them.

The flight, which also included planes with advanced intelligence gathering capabilities, was over international waters and was announced by the Russian Defence Ministry on the same day as Moscow complained about the U.S.-South Korean war games.

"The U.S. and South Korea holding yet more large-scale military and naval exercises does not help reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula," Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, told a news briefing in Moscow.

"We urge all sides to exercise maximum caution. Given the arms build-up in the region, any rash move or even an unintended incident could spark a military conflict."

Tariq Ramadan: The U.S. & Allies Are Destabilizing the Middle East & Selling Arms to All Sides

The Possible Education of Donald Trump

Though little noted, arguably the most important foreign policy decision of Trump’s presidency was his termination of the CIA’s covert support for Syrian rebels and his cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to expand partial ceasefire zones in Syria. By these actions, Trump has contributed to a sharp drop-off in the Syrian bloodshed. It now appears that the relatively secular Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad is regaining control and that some Syrian refugees are returning to their homes. Syria is starting the difficult job of rebuilding shattered cities, such as Aleppo. But Trump’s aversion to any new military adventures in Syria is being tested again by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is threatening to attack Iranian and Hezbollah forces inside Syria.

Last week, according to Israeli press reports, a high-level delegation led by Mossad chief Yossi Cohen carried Netanyahu’s threat to the U.S. government. The Israeli leader surely has raised the same point directly in phone calls with Trump. I was told that Trump, who appears to be growing weary of Netanyahu’s frequent demands and threats, flatly objected to an Israeli attack and brushed aside Israel’s alarm by noting that Netanyahu’s policies in supporting the rebels in Syria contributed to Israel’s current predicament by drawing in Iran and Hezbollah.

This week, Netanyahu personally traveled to Sochi, Russia, to confront Putin with the same blunt warning about Israel’s intention to attack targets inside Syria if Iran does not remove its forces. A source familiar with the meeting told me that Putin responded with a sarcastic “good luck!” and that the Russians thought the swaggering Netanyahu appeared “unhinged.”

Still, a major Israeli attack on Iranian positions inside Syria would test Trump’s political toughness, since he would come under enormous pressure from Congress and the mainstream news media to intervene on Israel’s behalf. Indeed, realistically, Netanyahu must be counting on his ability to drag Trump into the conflict since Israel could not alone handle a potential Russian counterstrike. But Netanyahu may be on somewhat thin ice since Trump apparently blames Israel’s top American supporters, the neocons, for much of his political troubles. They opposed him in the Republican primaries, tilted toward Hillary Clinton in the general election, and have pushed the Russia-gate affair to weaken him. ...

The question is whether Trump’s instinct for survival finally will lead him to policies that blunt his enemies’ strategies or will cause him to succumb to their demands.

Israel destroys Palestinian classrooms ahead of first day of school

Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank have started the new school year in improvised tents after Israeli authorities demolished their classrooms the day before term began. Around 80 children aged five to 10 from the village of Jub-Ad-Dhib had to attend classes in cramped tarpaulin tents or under the hot sun on Wednesday. One day earlier, Israeli authorities had decided to confiscate and destroy steel terrapin cabins used as school buildings along with other educational equipment.

The area was sealed off, declared a military zone, and security forces used stun grenades to keep residents away, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said in a statement. Israeli media said that locals had thrown stones at soldiers during the demolition.

The six newly installed cabins, donated by the EU, were put in place so that local children did not have to walk an hour to get to school.

Over the past two weeks, four Palestinian communities have seen their educational facilities – donated by international bodies and NGOs – destroyed on the grounds that they had been built without proper planning permission. Critics of Israeli policy point out that building permissions for new Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the occupied West Bank are almost impossible to obtain.

“The demolition of a school building the night before the start of the year epitomises the administrative cruelty and systematic harassment by authorities designed to drive Palestinians from their land,” Roy Yellin of B’Tselem said.

Kushner Assures Abbas That Trump Is Optimistic on Mideast Peace, But Offers Few Details

Earlier this week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas complained that he’d met with US officials some 20 different times, and still didn’t have a real understanding of Trump’s Mideast peace plan. Today, he met with Jared Kushner, apparently with hope that the deal be ironed out.

Kushner assured Abbas of President Trump’s optimism and hope for peace, though once again this came without any real specifics on what the plan actually was, and still not even offering clarity on whether this is to be a two-state solution or not.

Has the Pentagon Taken Over US Foreign Policy in Afghanistan?

U.S.-led airstrikes are killing hundreds of civilians in the battle for ISIS-held Raqqa, groups say

U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria are killing hundreds of civilians each month, according to monitoring groups, deepening already grave concerns for thousands of families trapped inside the city.

At least 725 civilians have been killed in coalition airstrikes since the offensive to retake Raqqa began June 6, according to Airwars, a London-based monitoring organization that works with local activists, human rights groups and the Pentagon.

“We had been flagging for months prior to the offensive that far more civilians were dying around Raqqa than we would have expected even a few months earlier,” said Chris Woods, the director of Airwars.

“Since the assault began, we have seen a casualty count that is relatively high compared to the rest of the coalition’s war against ISIS,” he said, using another name for the Islamic State. “In Raqqa, this means high numbers of identifiable civilians, many of them women and children.”

10 Civilians, Including Kids, Dead in US-Backed Somalia Raid

Ten civilians, including three children, were killed in a raid by foreign and Somali forces on a farm in southern Somalia, a deputy governor said Friday, as the U.S. military confirmed it supported a counter-terror operation in the area and said it would look into the allegations.

The deaths raise questions about growing U.S. military involvement in the Horn of Africa nation after President Donald Trump approved expanded operations against the al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab, often in support of Somali forces.

The farmers were killed "one by one" after soldiers stormed into Barire village early Friday, the deputy governor of Lower Shabelle region, Ali Nur Mohamed, told reporters in the capital, Mogadishu, as victims' bloodied bodies were on display. ...

"These local farmers were attacked by foreign troops while looking after their crops," Mohamed told reporters. "The troops could have arrested them because they were unarmed but instead shot them one by one mercilessly."

Mattis: US 'actively reviewing' sending weapons to Ukraine

Defense Secretary James Mattis said Thursday that the Trump administration is “actively reviewing” whether to provide weapons to Ukrainians who are fighting Russian-backed rebels. “On the defensive lethal weapons, we are actively reviewing it,” Mattis said during a press conference alongside Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. ...

Congress has given the president the authority to send Ukraine so-called lethal aid as it fights Russian-backed rebels in its east. Former President Obama opted not to use that authority for fear of provoking Russia and worsening the conflict, and instead sent only nonlethal aid.

Mattis on Thursday dismissed the idea that sending defensive lethal aid would be controversial.

'Time to Redistribute Wealth': 1% Thriving While 78% Living Paycheck to Paycheck

Top CEOs may be thriving, but most American workers are drowning in debt, saving little, and living paycheck to paycheck.

That's according to a new report by CareerBuilder, which found that:

  • 78 percent of American workers are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 75 percent last year;
  • 71 percent of workers are in debt, up from 68 percent last year;
  • 56 percent believe their debt is unmanageable;
  • 54 percent of minimum-wage workers say they have to work more than one job to make ends meet.

The report's findings—based on a survey of more than 3,400 full-time workers across various industries and income levels—suggest that the stock market boom President Donald Trump has so frequently flaunted has done little to help the workers he claims to support.

As Michelle Styczynski pointed out in an analysis for the People Policy Project, "the stock market tells us about the prospects of capital owners, but it certainly doesn't tell us much about the average worker."

David Hildebrand, a democratic socialist challenging Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for her Senate seat in 2018, observed that the numbers found in the CareerBuilder survey are "nothing new," and that they show "it's time to redistribute wealth."

After a UN warning over racism, America’s self-image begins to crack

There is a certain expectation, a certain image that comes to mind of the country that receives a rebuke from the United Nations on human rights. One in the south or the east, with a military dictatorship perhaps – a country that has a large oppressed religious or ethnic minority, or has a poor record of treating women as second-class citizens. Earlier this week, the US joined those countries; that publicly shamed stable of those that have incurred the wrath of the global human rights ombudsman. Inevitably, it was due to race.

A UN committee charged with tackling racism has issued an “early warning” over conditions in the US and urged the Trump administration to “unequivocally and unconditionally” reject discrimination. The warning specifically refers to events in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the civil rights activist Heather Heyer was killed when a car crashed into a group of people protesting against a white nationalist rally. Such statements are usually issued by the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination (Cerd) over fears of ethnic or religious conflict. In the past decade, the committee has only issued six warnings. Those admonishments went to Burundi, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan and Nigeria.

Civilisations are undone in many ways, not all of them obvious. We tend to think of decline along military or economic lines but it is actually a nation’s culture, particularly in terms of equality, that determines its civilisational credentials. America’s descent into what looks like a full on race crisis is graphically dragging it down the “development” scale. Reality is closing in on the country’s exceptionalist self-perception. But to be shocked by this is to have thought of the US as a superior civilisation in the first place. ...

It took only eight months to go from a nation that voted for a black president two terms in a row to one that is suffering from race riots and killings, with officials having to send troops out on to the streets and declare a state of emergency. The speed with which it happened is the clue that it was in fact happening all along, unseen. And the fact that it was lying in wait is an indicator of how little racial equality is prized in the United States’ DNA.

Politics have been getting more extreme as the middle class shrinks

Even before President Donald Trump’s contorted series of quasi-condemnations, the image of helmeted neo-Nazis squaring off with protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, stood out as a remarkably awful moment in the country’s recent history. But it was also just the latest sign of mounting stress in an America where political polarization, extremism, and just plain ill will between people of different ideological stripes regularly spills into sporadic violence.

Sure, racist violence is nothing new. And in that sense Charlottesville was just a reboot of America’s long struggle with race, identity and power. But I write about economics. And looking at those young white guys in VICE News Tonight’s footage of the Nazi-style Tiki torchlight parade, I couldn’t help but see Charlottesville as part of the social rot that has set in — particularly among some white men — after a decades-long rise in inequality in the U.S. “That makes them sort of susceptible to political mobilization along these identity lines, in a way that’s hard to imagine happening in the 1990s, when the economy was rather good,” said Nolan McCarthy, a Princeton University political science professor who has studied the interplay between economic inequality and political polarization. “I think economic growth is very helpful for dampening down these animosities.” ...

Some argue the decline of the middle class doesn’t really matter because at least some of that decline is due to people climbing up to the ranks of the richer classes. But that’s wrong. The middle class is more than just an average of rich people and poor people. The group has unique attributes — such as high rates of investment in education, homeownership, and entrepreneurship — that help make it a key ingredient for healthy economic growth and, more importantly, a healthy democracy. ...

[The precipitous decline of the middle class] is occurring against the backdrop (and longtime) trend of Americans clustering in different areas defined largely by lifestyle, culture, education, and economic opportunity. That process, known as the Big Sort, essentially ensures that Americans of different views have lead increasingly separate lives with few opportunities to get to know one another. And it’s a lot easier to hate people you don’t know. ...

Perhaps the jump from extreme political polarization to hatred isn’t quite as far as we think. Vanderbilt University political science professor Marc Hetherington has found that, increasingly, political polarization among everyday Americans has reached levels that he describes, basically, as hatred. “This is new, and it’s intense,” said Marc Hetherington, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University who has studied political polarization, at a lecture at the London School of Economics late last year. “The two different sides hate each other.” Again, it’s hard to say for sure that rising U.S. inequality is responsible for that increase in hatred among Americans — whether it’s hatred of people for their politics or their race or religion. But if we’re interested in trying to save this democracy of ours, it would make sense to prop up the middle class, and tamp down on the hatred, sooner rather than later.

As Calls Grow, Former Adviser Warns of Armed 'Insurrection' If Trump Impeached

As questions swirl about President Donald Trump's mental stability and fitness for office—and with calls for his impeachment again spiking after his repeated embrace of white supremacists—one of the president's former top advisors warned Thursday that the result of Trump's removal would be an "armed" and violent "insurrection."

"You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you've never seen," declared Roger Stone, a prominent Republican operative and top advisor during last year's presidential campaign, when asked about impeachment. Stone argued that those calling for Trump's impeachment were simply upset that Hillary Clinton lost the election, but that they should "get over it."

In his interview with TMZ, Stone said he wasn't "advocating violence," only "predicting" that it would it occur. He also warned that anyone who voted for impeachment "would be endangering their own life."

Turd Reich: San Francisco dog owners lay minefield of poo for rightwing rally

When a group of far-right activists come to San Francisco to hold a rally this Saturday, they will be met by peace activists offering them flowers to wear in their hair.

Also, dog shit. Lots and lots of dog shit.

Hundreds of San Franciscans plan to prepare Crissy Field, the picturesque beach in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge where rightwing protest group Patriot Prayer will gather, with a generous carpeting of excrement.

“I just had this image of alt-right people stomping around in the poop,” Tuffy Tuffington said of the epiphany he had while walking Bob and Chuck, his two Patterdale terriers, and trying to think of the best way to respond to rightwing extremists in the wake of Charlottesville. “It seemed like a little bit of civil disobedience where we didn’t have to engage with them face to face.”

Tuffington, a 45-year-old artist and designer, created a Facebook event page based on the concept, and the dog owners of San Francisco responded in droves. Many have declared their intention to stockpile their shitpiles for days in advance, then deliver them in bags for the site. (The group is also planning to reconvene on Sunday to “clean up the mess and hug each other”.)



the evening greens


New York state's final chance to stop fracking is slipping away

New York banned fracking in 2014, Maryland recently followed suit, and local ordinances to limit it have been passed in 22 states. But a fracking expansion juggernaut is subverting state and local attempts to keep fracking’s negative impacts out. The federal fix is in, with the Trump administration ramming through project approvals and reversing Obama’s initiatives to regulate fracking’s air and water impacts and methane leakage. There has been some push-back from the courts, including important decisions over the last few days rejecting Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval of Florida's Southeast Market pipelines because it ignored their climate impacts, and upholding New York state's refusal to issue a water permit for the Constitution Pipeline.

Still, some of the damage to state power to say “no” to fracking has been self-inflicted. Even in states like New York and California, which proclaim themselves sustainability leaders, fracked gas power plants and infrastructure are getting built over local objections, to serve as markets for fracked gas producer states like Pennsylvania and Wyoming. Increasingly, fracking’s environmental and health impacts are coming home to residents who fought to keep fracking out and believed they had prevailed. Sadly, they haven’t. New York is a cautionary case in point. Already the fourth-largest consumer of fracked gas in the U.S. despite its famous fracking ban, New York is surely on track to become the largest. It took a giant step down that path by allowing Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) to build an unneeded 680 MW fracked gas plant in the Hudson Valley’s Orange County.

CPV opponents call it “the head of the snake,” because the plant necessitates a vast network of pipelines, compressor stations and fracking wells. Despite CPV’s spectacularly inappropriate siting, its efforts to preempt state laws and regulations, and an egregious corruption scandal, construction of the plant continues. If it becomes operational, it will signal a public health and climate catastrophe, and carte blanche for fracking expansion elsewhere.

Science Envoy who Resigned in Protest of Trump: Climate Change Makes Storms like Harvey More Severe

Texas braces for Hurricane Harvey as Trump administration faces a major test

As Texas residents boarded up windows, stockpiled supplies and evacuated their homes ahead of Hurricane Harvey on Friday, Washington braced for what was set to be the first major natural disaster faced by the Trump administration. Donald Trump spoke with the governors of Texas and Louisiana on Thursday,anticipating the arrival on the Texas shoreline of what is predicted to develop into a category 3 hurricane.

Hurricanes are rated on a 1-5 scale based on wind speed. If Harvey became a category 3, that would make it the most powerful storm to hit the US since Wilma pummelled Florida in 2005. Earlier that year, the Bush administration offered a calamitously inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina.

Harvey was expected to make landfall near Corpus Christi early on Saturday, then potentially roll up the coast towards Houston and stall for days, bringing sustained rainfall and causing extensive flooding in the US’s fourth-largest city and surrounding areas. Forecasters warned of rising sea levels and 25in or more of rain in some areas.

Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, said in a statement that Trump had “pledged all available resources from the federal government to assist in preparation, and rescue and recovery efforts”.

With Trump in Charge, Heightened Fears of a Hurricane Harvey Petrochemical Nightmare

Texas is bracing for potentially "catastrophic" flooding as Hurricane Harvey is set to make landfall Friday, and many are raising concerns that given the state's role as the heart of the petrochemical industry, the storm could create a "nightmare situation" for the environment—one that the Trump administration's aggressive deregulatory agenda will only make worse.

Writing for The New Republic, Emily Atkins highlights the devastating impact Hurricane Sandy—a Category 1 Hurricane—had in several states in 2012, and underlines the fact that Harvey now threatens as a Category 3 storm.

"In the devastating wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, parts of the East Coast were left not only demolished, but polluted," Atkins observes. Wastewater treatment plants lost power and discharged 11 billion gallons of sewage into receiving waters."

Harvey, environmentalists and researchers worry, could be even more devastating—"a huge pollution disaster," Atkins writes. As Reuters reported Friday, oil prices are beginning to surge as the petroleum industry prepares for the hurricane's impact.

Quoting former EPA administrator Judith Enck, Atkins continued:

There is a huge environmental risk to this storm. If the "biblical event" predicted materializes in this densely packed industrial area, "it may impact the Gulf Coast oil refineries and chemical plants," said Judith Enck, who served as administrator for EPA's Region 2 during Hurricane Sandy. "I am extremely concerned about the path of Hurricane Harvey."

Environmental advocates are also worried that Harvey will create long-term public health problems due to accidental toxic substance releases, and not just from refineries and power plants. In the 30 counties where a disaster has been declared, there are dozens of Superfund sites, many of which are essentially waste pits containing harmful chemicals.

These risks are magnified by the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda, which has taken aim at environmental rules designed to protect the public from dangerous pollutants. Adding to these concerns is the fact that there are still numerous vacancies in federal agencies that will be tasked with confronting the hurricane's impact.


Also of Interest

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

Even WikiLeaks Haters Shouldn’t Want it Labeled a “Hostile Intelligence Agency”

The War That Time Forgot

Venezuela: Chavistas Gain Upper Hand, Big Challenges Remain

The Road to Charlottesville: Reflections on 21st Century U.S. Capitalist Racism

Whistleblower Lawsuit Charges Illegal Retaliation, Dangerous Practices at CIA’s Elite Directorate of Operations

Vote Tallies and Class Struggle

Mathematical secrets of ancient tablet unlocked after nearly a century of study

Heh, mark this day on your calendar. I'm linking to an article at National Review:

The Very Strange Indictment of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s IT Scammers


A Little Night Music

Magic Slim - I Don't Want No Woman

Magic Slim - Mary Lou

Magic Slim - How Unlucky Can One Man Be

Magic Slim & Keb' Mo' - Help Me

Magic Slim & The Teardrops - Down In Virgina

Magic Slim & The Teardrops - I Don't Believe You Baby

Magic Slim & The Teardrops - Before You Accuse Me

Magic Slim - Look On Yonder Wall

Magic Slim - 1823 South Michigan Avenue



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mimi's picture

a collection of all stories and their included links, packaged on a medium that can be read years from now, in a safe locked up over in Germany. Archives. on PAPER.

Thanks for the EB.

Game is pretty much over, isn't it?

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joe shikspack's picture

@mimi

heh, yeah, a searchable database of stories would be cool, but incredibly time consuming to put together retrospectively. especially if they are to be printed out on paper. the collected archives of years of the evening blues (with the embedded links printed out, too) on paper would be a sizeable mound of paper.

game over? maybe. depends on if you give up.

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mimi's picture

@joe shikspack
to pull you over to their side, use our stubborn idea to cling to the last bit of dignity you want to have in your life very much as well, just to play with your emotional reactions. It's abuse all over the place and fake as fake can be. I just don't want to play anymore and probably will stop talking.

at least a little bit ... Wink

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Raggedy Ann's picture

Was put through the paces to renew my drivers license today. No more just showing up and taking your picture and walking out with your license. Now they want proof you are alive, even though you are standing in front of them. Thank you, Big Brother.

Looking forward to the weekend. I need a break.

Have a beautiful evening and weekend, folks! Pleasantry

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

joe shikspack's picture

@Raggedy Ann

ah, you had a close encounter of the bureaucratic kind at the dmv. my condolences. i always dread dealing with maryland's version of a sartre play, er, the maryland motor vehicle administration.

well, at least it's in the past now, for you.

have a great weekend.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Raggedy Ann
their entire lives have to bring their birth certificate and social security cards to get their drivers license.
How many people had to go through the hassle of getting their birth certificate? They aren't given out for free, plus people had to find the time to go to the building and wait in long lines.
The reasons for why this was done across the country is asinine.
After people submit their forms, online renewals should be reinstated.

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

https://disobedientmedia.com/2017/08/breaking-dnc-fraud-lawsuit-dismissed/

After months of litigation, The DNC Fraud Lawsuit has been dismissed by Judge Zloch. Lawyers Jared and Elizabeth Beck have long cited deep corruption of the judicial system as a potential reason for the suit’s dismissal. The ruling comes as a blow to many former Bernie Sanders supporters who had hoped that the suit would address what many view as deeply seated corruption in the Democratic party establishment.

In his ruling, Judge Zloch wrote that the plaintiffs had failed to prove their injury, calling it “too diffuse” for Federal court. Despite the dismissal, Zloch did state that the court assumed the basic claim made by the plaintiffs to have been true; that the DNC acted against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton despite outward claims of neutrality.

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joe shikspack's picture

@eyo

i wonder if they are going to appeal. it was nice of the judge to stipulate that the claim was true.

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divineorder's picture

friends on the TX coast.

One possible path has it going ashore at fracked oil refinery heaven, then circling back into the Gulf then tracking right back up across the point where we used to live on East Bay after we retired when Rita hit it a glancing blow, and on to Houston and Southeast TX where we have many friends and relatives who will surely not leave in time. Worst case is, many will die, and the Gulf will once again be inundated with oil.

The Gulf waters are so hot that they are really ginning up this monstah.

We shall see.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

@divineorder

best of luck to your relatives and friends and the environment in the path of harvey. i will hope for the miraculous.

i read a bunch of stuff about the vulnerability of the oil infrastructure in the gulf, and hence, the vulnerability of the gulf to the feeble-minded, greedy morons of the oil industry and their captive governments, local, state and federal. i hope that it all works out, but i fear that within a year or two we will be reading about an expanded and expansive dead zone in the gulf with no hope of effective correxit correction.

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divineorder's picture

@joe shikspack wetlands was never a good idea, but gee, just think of the money to be made in unREALestate. Even Austin, where we lived for so many years, has the possibility of a tropical storm. Wind shear has blown over 150 year old Oak trees there before, and those things have quite a grip on the rocky earth.

Now a Category 4...
350 dot org Retweeted

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

@divineorder

Hurricane Harvey Targets South Texas Nuclear Power Station With High Dam Failure Vulnerability

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divineorder's picture

The way I presented it didn't go over very well here today. Oh well, win some, lose some.

http://mailchi.mp/nader/in-the-public-interest-barack-obama-whats-he-wai...

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

@divineorder

i saw your piece. i get it that ralph is just trying to needle the weak points of the system and prod them into action. given the few available workable alternatives, i suppose that it couldn't hurt for people to badger the crap out of obama - perhaps it might provoke some sort of satisfying schadenfreude moment or something.

on the other hand, nader's premise, that obama might actually make himself useful to the 99%, or do something that might force the 1% to work against its most narrow, short-term, money-grubbing interests - is so lamentably preposterous on the face of it that nader's proposed exercise is all too obviously busywork, another exercise in futility.

n.b. - i really like ralph. i've voted for him a couple of times. i deeply respect many of the things he's done and continues to do. on the other hand, a fellow might have an idea that's a klunker once in a while in the midst of a generally sterling career.

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divineorder's picture

@joe shikspack

is so lamentably preposterous on the face of it that nader's proposed exercise is all too obviously busywork, another exercise in futility.

....and to me this was obvious tounge in cheek/snark on his part. I tried to play along with his tone and hoped others would see it that way as well. I hardly think the guy who had been such a strong critic of Obama--even asking if BO would be an Uncle Tom to goad him after his first election--is really very serious about this being serious work.

Some of what RN listed was straight from his campaign talk we attended at The University of Texas years ago. Guess is that he is still trying to get those ideas out there, 'bless his heart.'

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

@divineorder

i guess the sarcasm didn't register for me. oh well. i guess i wasn't the only one.

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divineorder's picture

Meteor_Blades and 3 others follow

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Azazello's picture

@divineorder

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

divineorder's picture

@Azazello

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

snoopydawg's picture

900,000 mainly poor and minority people that you posted a link to yesterday. To think that the members of the police department have to sue in order for them to be able to do their jobs is unfathomable.
And that no one was aware of it or the $75 million payout. This money came from the people's taxes.
The only way that this type of action is going to stop is for the payments coming from the police departments or from their pensions.
Thanks for the link to it.

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i guess i should give ms. shikspack a hat tip for that one. Smile

it seems like police departments everywhere are up to their eyeballs in corruption. here in baltimore there are new revelations this week about evidence-planting cops discovered due to body-cam footage. i hope that this allows the city to clean house, though, i suspect that we are just experiencing the lapse in time between the introduction of a new technology and the bad cops figuring out how to work around the technology and continue their corrupt actions.

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snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack
evidence. I'm sure that this type of thing happens many more times than people are aware of.
We saw the cop who so causally murdered Scott by shooting him in the back and then planting his taser by his body. If the video of him doing that wasn't submitted, he would have gotten away with it.
He might have been one of the few cops that were found guilty.
Most of the juries have voted not guilty on 100-1 of the cops who had been charged.
How the cop who murdered Garner by using a choke hold on him got away with it is beyond disgusting.
But just like people worship the military members, these same people worship the police.

In SLC a few years ago, a little girl had gone missing.
A cop went into a person's backyard and killed his dog. Any dog is going to bark at anyone who comes into its yard. But the cop had no warrant or reason to do that. The owner sued the cop and his department, but the judge threw the case out.
I can't imagine how I would feel if this happened to my dawgs. Especially Charlie. There is no way that she would be a threat to anyone. She's a beagle if you didn't know.
Sigh. This shit is getting old.

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Azazello's picture

The Real News Network to open a restaurant in Baltimore ?
I don't know if I'd eat there, joe. The Baltimore cops might plant dope in your car while you're inside eating.

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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

heh. the cops might just plant it in the food at the restaurant. Smile

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Azazello's picture

@joe shikspack

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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

have a great weekend!

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snoopydawg's picture

Defense Secretary James Mattis said Thursday that the Trump administration is “actively reviewing” whether to provide weapons to Ukrainians who are fighting Russian-backed rebels.

They tweeted out that Nazis have no place here in America and Hatch said that his brother died fighting them.
Yet they have no problem with sending weapons to the Nazis fighting in Ukraine. And of course the people in this country believe that Putin attacked and invaded it. They have no idea that our government overthrew Ukraine's president and then installed their puppet who has opened the country up to foreign corporations.

Have a great weekend joe

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

yeah, but in ukraine, the nazis are fighting putin (ooh scary)!!!

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divineorder's picture

@joe shikspack @joe shikspack we are witnessing.

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Azazello's picture

@divineorder
if you're into that sort of thing. It has turbo-prop engines with two contra-rotating props on each one. It's Russia's answer to the B-52. Here's a good photo feature: English Russia

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

enhydra lutris's picture

@Azazello

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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 --

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

…that was written in 2015 about an incident that happened a year earlier.

It seems that the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] has the distinction of being the first NGO to be banned in Russia for meddling in foreign elections. (Lest we wonder what our recent Russia-Mania was patterned on.)

The National Endowment for Democracy is a Washington-based nonprofit funded largely by the US Congress. According to its website, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) claims to be “dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world.” It has funded local non-governmental organisations in more than 90 countries. But in a statement on Tuesday, the prosecutor general’s office in Moscow said it “poses a threat to the constitutional order of the Russian Federation and the defensive capability and security of the government”.

“Using Russian commercial and noncommercial organisations under its control, the National Endowment for Democracy participated in work to declare the results of election campaigns illegitimate, organise political actions intended to influence decisions made by the authorities, and discredit service in Russia’s armed forces,” the statement said.

After the Spring 2014 pro-Western overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected government in Kiev, Russia's ouster of NED comes as no surprise.

I vaguely recalled the ouster, but this brought it into sharper focus:

According to Russian intelligence, NED funneled $14 million into the “Ukrainian project” that culminated in the Euromaidan mass protests in 2014, which ousted president Viktor Yanukovych. The National Endowment for Democracy claims that all they paid for were the cookies that assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland handed out to demonstrators.

(Why do we allow this terrorist-fluffer to travel outside the US?)

Anyway, isn't it ironic that a rabidly anti-Russian computer geek from the Ukraine provides the only eyes available to "seventeen US Intelligence Agencies" who didn't investigate the 2016 DNC document leak?

I think I may expand this to an essay. I just noticed an undeniable collusion between the NED Board and the DNC "hack."

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____________________

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

@Pluto's Republic

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Entropy has no friends. Entropy makes no enemies. Eventually, all complex systems breakdown. Good governance is essential. Beyond that, is mindless.

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Fighting for democratic principles,... well, since forever

enhydra lutris's picture

David Hildebrand, a democratic socialist challenging Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for her Senate seat in 2018, observed that the numbers found in the CareerBuilder survey are "nothing new," and that they show "it's time to redistribute wealth."

I am, of course, sanguine about his chances, but, all the same, w00t!

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

i wish him the best of fortune, as i do the progressive challengers of all of the democratic neoliberal scum office-holders.

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Meteor Man's picture

Evening joe. It appears the SPLC is a fund raising scam:

Ever since 1971 US Postal Service mailbags have bulged with Dees’ fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of hate-sodden America, in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC.

In 2000, Ken Silverstein wrote a devastating commentary on Dees and the SPLC in Harpers, dissecting a typical swatch of Dees’ solicitations. At that time, as Silverstein pointed out, the SPLC was “the wealthiest civil rights group in America,” with $120 million in assets.

As of October 2008 the net assets of the SPLC were $170,240,129, The merchant of hate himself, Mr. Dees, was paid an annual $273,132 as chief trial counsel, and the SPLC’s president and CEO, Richard Cohen, $290,193. Total revenue in 2007 was $44,727,257 and program expenses $20,804,536. In other words, the Southern Poverty Law Center was raising twice as much as it was spending on its proclaimed mission. Fund-raising and administrative expenses accounted for $9 million, leaving $14 million to be put in the center’s vast asset portfolio.

All the good guys in white hats died in the last cowboy show I guess:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/25/king-of-the-hate-business-inside...

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

snoopydawg's picture

@Meteor Man
This needs to get more exposure on it.

But where are the haters? That hardy old stand-by, the KKK, despite the SPLC’s predictable howls about an uptick in its chapters, is a moth-eaten and depleted troupe, at least 10 per cent of them on the government payroll as informants for the FBI. As Noel Ignatiev once remarked in his book Race Traitor, there isn’t a public school in any county in the USA that doesn’t represent a menace to blacks a thousand times more potent than that offered by the KKK, just as there aren’t many such schools that probably haven’t been propositioned by Dees to buy one of the SPLC’s “tolerance” programs. What school is going to go on record rejecting Dees-sponsored tolerance?

Dees and his hate-seekers scour the landscape for hate like the arms manufacturers inventing new threats and for the same reason: it’s their staple.

I thought this was a legitimate organization and that they were actually keeping their eyes on dangerous groups.
If this pans out to have been a scam, I think a class action lawsuit is in order.
Great find.

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mimi's picture

listening to Robert Scheer in an interview with Paul Jay from The Real News. It's three days old, but I like the straight talk of Robert Scheer, who sounded at times emotional and frustrated, for good reasons. There is a transcript for the video.

Trump and the Dysfunctional American State.

A comment from the TRN site hosting the video, summarizes something important about what he said:

Too many people, here and elsewhere, want to pile on and pummel Trump and his followers without considering the conditions that have fostered their radicalism.

This ridiculous character of Adolf Hitler, looking the exact opposite of the Aryan god that he was evoking, this funny-looking Charlie Chaplin figure, managed to captivate the German people, despite their science, their education, their good Christian values and everything else, because they were desperate. They were desperate and the system was not working for them...

Scheer then points out that leveraging the current and similar scenario "plays well with the [Trump] crowd, not because they're irrational and he's crazy, it plays with them because they're desperate."

Despair all around just not admitted for fear of losing one's dignity.

I am glad Truthdig and The Real News Network exist.

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snoopydawg's picture

@mimi
Amanda wrote an essay that touches on this.
People are getting to the end of their rope and the knot at the end of it is getting smaller.
Or as this person wrote:

People who rely on social programs are hanging by their fingertips and the republicans are greasing the edge by cutting the funding for those programs.

It's not only the people who rely on these programs, it's the people who have seen their quality of living continue to get worse, their incomes stagnating and their costs of living increasing.
This country is almost ripe for a massive correction and TPTB knew that this was going to happen. This is why they have militarized the police and why there was overwhelming force used against the DAPL protesters.
This is also why the police did nothing while the C'ville protests became violent.
This is going to continue to happen until this country explodes and then TPTB will declare martial law.
This plan has been in effect for quite some time and they are more than ready to fight back against us.
Hell, I'm not sure if the rumors of the FEMA camps are still considered to be a conspiracy theory or not.

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mimi's picture

@snoopydawg
I will write down how the despair destroyed my son. There is just so much you can swallow. Scheer was spot on. From his name I deduct he has German anchestry. May be that's why.

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divineorder's picture

@mimi

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.