The Evening Blues - 10-23-17
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Piedmont blues musician Barbeque Bob. Enjoy!
Barbecue Bob - I'm On My Way Down Home
"The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides."
-- Nhat Hanh
News and Opinion
U.S. to put B-52 nuclear bombers on 24/7 alert for first time since Cold War
The U.S. Air Force is planning to put its aging fleet of B-52 nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert for the first time in 25 years, according to the Defense One newsletter.
“I look at it more as not planning for any specific event but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told the publication.
The move comes amid an escalating war of words between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and deteriorating U.S. relations with Iran after the president decertified the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran last week.
North Korea thinks Abe’s election win is a prelude to invasion
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to wield “stronger pressure” against North Korea after his ruling coalition scored a sweeping victory in Sunday’s election.
Abe said Monday he would confront Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions with “strong, resolute diplomacy,” pledging to work closely with the U.S. and other world powers.
“I will make sure the Japanese public is safe, and safeguard our nation,” he continued, promising to “dramatically show countermeasures against the North Korea threat.”
Pyongyang responded to the result with a statement published in state media Monday accusing “Japanese reactionaries” of working to “pave the groundwork for a reinvasion of the Korean peninsula.”
Jimmy Carter says he is willing to go to North Korea on peace mission
In an interview marked by conciliatory remarks regarding Donald Trump and his administration, Jimmy Carter said he was willing to travel to North Korea in an attempt to soften tensions between Washington and Pyongyang.
Speaking to the New York Times mostly about foreign policy, the 93-year-old former president also said Trump was not solely to blame for damage to America’s world image.
“The media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about,” he said. “I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.” ...
The Democrat has been active on the world stage since leaving the White House, via the Carter Center non-profit. In 1994 he went to Pyongyang and negotiated a short-lived deal to lessen tensions not resolved since the end of the Korean war in 1953. He also travelled to North Korea in 2010, to negotiate the release of an American held in the country, and again in 2011. Asked by the Times if he would go again, he said: “I would go, yes.” ...
Carter said he was “afraid” of nuclear conflict between the US and North Korea. “They want to save their regime [and have] now got advanced nuclear weaponry that can destroy the Korean peninsula and Japan, and some of our outlying territories in the Pacific, maybe even our mainland.”
Will Catalonia Declare Independence After Spain Moves to Impose Direct Rule, Oust Catalan Leaders?
Spain Will Remove Catalonia Leader, Escalating Secession Crisis
The escalating confrontation over Catalonia’s independence drive took its most serious turn on Saturday as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain announced he would remove the leadership of the restive region and initiate a process of direct rule by the central government in Madrid. ...
The unexpectedly forceful moves by Mr. Rajoy, made after an emergency cabinet meeting, thrust Spain into uncharted waters. The prime minister is trying to put down one of the gravest constitutional crises his country has faced since embracing democracy after the death of its dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in 1975.
“There’s nothing soft or limited about what he announced today,” Josep Ramoneda, a political columnist, said of Mr. Rajoy. “We’re entering a very delicate phase, in which an independence movement that appeared to be running out of options might now draw instead on a collective sense of humiliation at seeing Catalonia being forced under Madrid’s control.”
Fueled by economic grievances and a distinct language and culture, aspirations for an independent state in Catalonia have ebbed and flowed for generations.
But the current confrontation has presented a vexing quandary not only for Spain but the entire European Union, pitting demands for self-determination against the desire to preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of an important member state.
Madrid takes control of Catalan public broadcaster
Catalan MPs to discuss response to Spanish move towards direct rule
The Catalan parliament will meet on Thursday to decide how to respond to the Spanish government’s unprecedented decision to impose direct rule, as speculation mounts that the regional president, Carles Puigdemont, could use the occasion to ask MPs to vote on a unilateral declaration on independence.
The plenary session will be held a day before the Spanish senate is expected to approve measures that would strip Puigdemont’s administration of its powers and transfer its functions to the relevant ministries in Madrid. The constitutional measures would require elections for the Catalan parliament to be held within six months.
On Monday the Catalan foreign affairs minister, Raül Romeva, said the region would not accept the Spanish government’s attempts to take control, and accused the EU of doing nothing.
“How can the European Union live with that situation [if this happens]?” Romeva told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “How can the EU democracy survive and how can they be credible if they allow this to happen? Because what I can tell you is that the people and the institutions in Catalonia will not let this happen.”
Spain’s deputy prime minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, said the Spanish government would appoint its own representative to replace Puigdemont as soon as direct rule came into effect. ... Puigdemont’s junior coalition partner, the far-left, separatist Cup party, has urged a campaign of mass civil disobedience against what it called “the greatest aggression against the civil, individual and collective rights of the Catalan people” since Franco.
It Didn’t Just Start Now: John Kelly Has Always Been a Hard-Right Bully
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s gruesome defense Thursday of President Donald Trump’s call to the widow of Army Sgt. La David T. Johnson was shocking. But it should not have been a surprise. Any examination of Kelly’s past public remarks makes clear he is not a sober professional, calculating that he must degrade himself in public so he can remain in place to rein in Trump’s worst instincts behind the scenes. Rather, Kelly honestly shares those instincts: He’s proudly ignorant, he’s a liar, and he’s a shameless bully and demagogue.
The chief of staff in an administration headed by any halfway-normal human being would have said: “The president is deeply concerned by news reports that he miscommunicated his condolences when speaking with Sgt. Johnson’s wife Myeshia. He hopes to talk to her again as soon as she feels able, to apologize and make this right. And while he would have preferred that Rep. Frederica Wilson had not spoken publicly about what he intended to be a private call, he appreciates her personal connection to Sgt. Johnson and that she is mourning his loss as well.”
Instead, Kelly did not express any concern for the well-being of Johnson’s widow and family. He did not acknowledge any possibility that Trump had done something wrong, even inadvertently. He engaged in a Trumpian scorched-earth attack against Wilson, claiming to be appalled that she had “listened in” on the conversation — when obviously she could not have avoided hearing it while in a car in which it was on speakerphone — and making up a story about her statements at a public appearance in 2015. He metaphorically dug up every body in Arlington National Cemetery to use them as human shields for Trump. And he interspersed all this with rambling, Strangelovian remarks about how women, life, and religion used to be “sacred” in America but are no longer – and hence “there’s nothing in our country anymore” that indicates that it’s worthy of sacrifice.
[Click the link for a detailed examination of Kelly's previous relevant public statements. - js]
Police Reportedly Claim a Brooklyn Teen Consented to Sex in Custody. That’s Impossible.
On September 28, attorney Michael David filed notice of a claim against the New York Police Department, the City of New York, and two unnamed police officers, referred to as John and Jim Doe. These plainclothes cops, alleged the claim, “brutally sexually assaulted and raped” his 18-year-old female client. David told me that within a day, he needed to amend the claim: The officers had been identified by police in the press as Brooklyn South narcotics detectives Richard Hall and Edward Martins.
“What was strange,” said David, “was that within only two or three hours of me filing, there was a story leaked to the New York Post saying that the detectives were claiming that the sex they had with my client in custody was consensual. They hadn’t even been named yet.” The attorney told me that he believes “the police were trying to get ahead of the story.”
At a time of elevated public awareness about police violence and sexual assault, these detectives’ apparent defensive tack raises troubling questions about the way cops approach these national plagues. Let us be clear: Someone in police custody cannot give consent, in any meaningful sense of the word, to the officer holding them.
Claiming to have received consent, whether it is based in any truth or not, betrays a policing culture that refuses to recognize its own outsized power over those it alleges to protect and serve. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office is currently investigating the case to determine whether the claim of consent is credible under law, but the fact that consent seems to be on offer as a defense at all speaks to how the police themselves view rape — a dynamic that needs immediate redress.
Richard Spencer's supporters sue universities for not allowing speeches
Supporters of Richard Spencer are suing public universities in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, seeking to force the schools to allow him to speak on campus – and to provide security to allow the far-right provocateur to “speak safely”.
The latest lawsuit, against Ohio State University, was filed on Sunday, days after police in Florida announced attempted homicide charges against three men who shouted “Hail Hitler!” and fired a gun at protesters after Spencer spoke at the University of Florida.
Security for the speech in Gainesville on Thursday, which drew more than 2,500 protesters, cost at least $600,000, the university’s president said. Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan State have announced they will not allow Spencer to rent a campus venue, citing public safety concerns and serious disruption to school communities.
Spencer’s backers argue this is an unconstitutional infringement of his rights, since the government, including public universities, is not allowed to discriminate based on the content of speech. In April, Spencer won a suit against Auburn University in Alabama, when a federal judge ruled a planned speech should be allowed.
Bank Downgrades Chipotle, Complaining It Pays Workers Too Much
Bank of America Merrill Lynch downgraded Chipotle and warned investors that the stock will “underperform,” complaining that the restaurant chain is paying its workers too much, and that cutting labor costs further will be difficult for the chain.
“We are downgrading Chipotle to Underperform from Neutral as we believe, assuming no significant tax reform, that 2018 and 2019 consensus EPS needs to drop at least 10 percent,” analyst Gregory Francfort told CNBC Wednesday. “We believe further gains from trimming hours will prove difficult which limits the opportunity to get labor below 27 percent of sales even if traffic recovers.” ...
The downgrade is a symptom of Wall Street’s maniacal obsession with labor costs.
The Bank of America analysis cut the 2017 earnings estimate from $7.60 to $7.40, and the 2018 estimate $10.50 to $9.50, according to the report. Meanwhile, Chipotle CEO Steve Ells raked in $15.7 million in 2016. Nonexecutives are not getting rich stuffing tortillas at Chipotle; the typical worker makes a little more than $9/hr.
Post-hurricane cleanup could kill more workers than storms themselves
More workers could die from the long-term effects of cleaning up after hurricanes Harvey and Irma than were killed by the storms, according to a nationwide network of workplace health and safety groups.
The mainland US death toll for the two hurricanes, which battered Texas and Florida in August and September, now stands at approximately 200 people. But according to Jessica Martinez, executive director of National Council of Occupation Safety and Health (Cosh), a nationwide network of workplace health and safety groups, a greater number of people will die cleaning up in their wake “if more resources aren’t put into health and safety training from post-cleanup”. ...
Disaster cleanup work is extremely hazardous. For example during the hurricanes chemicals got into Houston’s water, including flesh-eating bacteria that already took the life of one woman trying to clean up her home.
As well as chemicals released during the storm, hurricane damage knocked loose asbestos, creating a toxic brew of chemicals and mold, which could cause debilitating and deadly long-term problems for those doing the work.
More than 1,000 workers died from the cleanup work following the 9/11 terror attacks. However, unlike 9/11, where the work was done mainly by firefighters and skilled unionized demolition workers, the cleanup work following Harvey is being done mainly by undocumented day laborers, paid on average $80 a day.
Empire Files: The Sacrifice Zones of Hurricane Harvey
EPA kept scientists from speaking about climate change at Rhode Island event
The Environmental Protection Agency kept three scientists from speaking at a Rhode Island event about a report that deals in part with climate change. The scientists were expected to discuss in Providence on Monday a report on the health of Narragansett Bay, New England’s largest estuary. The EPA did not explain exactly why the scientists were told not to.
“EPA supports the Narragansett Bay Estuary and just this month provided the program a $600,000 grant,” EPA spokeswoman Nancy Grantham said in a statement on Monday. “EPA scientists are attending, they simply are not presenting. It is not an EPA conference.”
Thomas Borden, program director of the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, which published the report, said Wayne Munns, director of the EPA’s Atlantic Ecology Division, called him on Friday afternoon to say two staffers who work out of its research lab in the town of Narragansett had been advised that they could not attend on Monday.
Munns did not give him an explanation, but Borden said he understood that the decision came from EPA headquarters in Washington. ...
The report finds that climate change is affecting air and water temperatures, precipitation, sea level and fish.
I hate the framing of this article. It's just wrong, from the idea that partisan advantage is a game worth playing to the silly-assed idea that the Democrats in aggregate care one whit more about the destruction of the planet for profit than the Republicans in aggregate do. The idea that partisan politics will offer a solution to the climate crisis is beyond stupid. It's a dangerous waste of time for anyone who has not made peace with the impending demise of much of the sentient life on the planet.
Democrats Are Letting the Climate Crisis Go to Waste
What should be a sparkling opportunity to push forward an ambitious agenda on climate — to condemn Republicans for not just ignoring but fueling a crisis with increasingly human and economic consequences — is going quite literally up in smoke. Even the most dogged climate champions in Congress are doing something Republicans would never dream of: Letting a crisis go to waste. ...
Each of the 10 hottest years on record have happened since 1998, and Republicans are doing everything in their power to rip up the regulations and policies that could help mitigate the United States’ contribution to our ongoing climate crisis, most recently in taking their first official step to dismantle the Clean Power Plan.
There’s been no unified policy response from congressional Democrats to Republicans’ attack on the Clean Power Plan or recent extreme weather events. Instead, the country’s most progressive Democrats have taken the GOP’s advice of not politicizing the events of the last few months. “We have a lot of time to make that point,” climate hawk Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D.-R.I., told Politico when asked about seeing the storms as a chance to talk about rising temperatures.
Senators like Whitehouse may not be ignorant about how urgent the climate crisis is, but do seem to think the path to dealing with it runs through the Republican Party. In an an interview this week with Vox’s Jeff Stein, Whitehouse spoke excitedly about his talks with “‘six to ten’ Senate Republicans who…privately support his carbon tax bill but are unwilling to publicly back it,” Stein writes. The bill he’s referencing — The American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act, co-sponsored by Brian Schatz, D.-H.I. — is an overture to the GOP, stocked with a generous reduction in the corporate income tax. Despite such pre-emptive concessions, it currently has just one public Republican supporter: Lindsey Graham. ...
Compare Democrats’ muted response to the GOP attack on climate policy to recent fights over health care. When Republicans moved to tear the Affordable Care Act to shreds, weeks of protests and coordinated civil disobedience—in Congressional districts and on Capitol Hill — turned up the heat on not just Republicans but on Democrats, whose constituents made it clear that compromising with Trump on any version of their healthcare plan wasn’t an option.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Spain: Taking control of Catalonia means big power transfer
Will Trump Oversee the Financial Apocalypse?
Democratic Party Drama Puts Deputy Chair Keith Ellison in a Tough Spot
Accused of Spying, Russian Security Firm Will Show Its Code and Operations to Outsiders
A Little Night Music
Barbecue Bob - Barbecue Blues
Barbecue Bob - She Shook Her Gin
Barbecue Bob - Going Up The Country
Barbecue Bob - Mississippi Heavy Water Blues
Barbecue Bob - Motherless Chile Blues
Barbecue Bob - Waycross Georgia Blues
Barbecue Bob - Ease It To Me Blues
Barbecue Bob - Blind Pig Blues
Barbecue Bob - She Moves It Just Right
Comments
Yet another example of how evil unfettered capitalism is:
A bank downgrades a business because it's paying it's workers too much. Our vulture capitalism culture downgrades our civilization. Those banksters should be strung up like Mussolini.
The real SparkyGump has passed. It was an honor being your human.
The banksters all think it's normal.
Maybe it is. Most politicians, lobbyists, other assorted DC riff-raff, they're all perfectly OK with workers having a raw deal. As long as it's not them that's getting robbed, they're cool with it.
native
heh...
the banksters feel that they are being robbed when the workers get a penny more than the lowest wage that the labor commodity can be purchased for.
ah, found it...
evening sparky...
the raw, selfish greed of the banksters reveals the true nature of capitalism.
Costco was accused by Wall Street of having living wages
I don't know what Costco pays its employees now, but a number of years ago, Wall Street slammed Costco for paying good wages to their employees:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/richard-galanti-wages_n_339610...
This happened in 2013.
Wall Street think of themselves as some hard nosed bottom line motherfuckers doing cold hard object analysis of profits, yet never attack a company for paying its CEO too much--even though that effects the scared bottom line. This isn't about the bottom line but a system of morality based on a vicious class system. This is a view that sees workers as shit and undeserving, and the elites as deserving and responsible for all profits and benefits.
As a side rant, Clinton up to the election profusely praised Walmart as community building and refused to approach the company to increase wages when urged by various activists.
Fucking freeloaders.
That's what the capitalist class is. Literally.
But this is nothing new. Hell, the Dodge brothers whined because Ford wanted to pay higher wages while reducing prices which led to the Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. court decision:
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Ah that is where the "shareholder primacy" came from. Tx.
Just amazing. I suppose this rule should be invoked on upper management when they run the company solely to their benefit.
I think it was $15/hr average at that time.
If not $15, it was close to it.
And I know it’s been covered many times, but it’s amazing how people can ignore Clinton’s cozy relationship with WalMart and act like she’s done anything positive for women and families not in her economic strata.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
And SEIU endorsed Clinton during primaries.
The endorsement just showed the corruption at the top the union which has as its signature demand making $15 the min. wage. SEIU members were not allowed to vote in any endorsement scheme. Walmart is the largest employer of min. wage workers with the majority of those workers being women. The democratic and union establishment stabbed not only Bernie in the back, but also basically the people who are the working poor. Is it any wonder the working classes either voted against Hillary or did not vote period.
It's amazing that she kicked millions of women and children
into deeper poverty, laughed after getting a young girl's rapist off, destroying the girl's life and killing millions of women and children and sending millions more into refugee camps and still be considered the greatest defender of women and children by her supporters.
This is the definition of cognitive dissonance.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
And Speaking of Billary....
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGYOizfMpfM]
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
@The Aspie Corner Regarding Hillary:
Regarding Hillary:
On the pay for play scheme of uranium to Russia, the Obama Administration kept all that information under wraps. I don't like to think so, but I have to wonder if Obama got a slice of that pie.
I really hope I'm wrong, but it would explain some things.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
evening mr w...
i remember that brewhaha. costco has managed to do quite well:
but wall streeters don't like it. it's an alien logic to the upper class twits that were fed a steady diet of ayn rand twaddle.
Uumm!
I love the smell of Cold War in the morning. And to think that I thought humanity might amount to something when the Berlin Wall came down all those years ago.
Silly me.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
evening bollox...
yeah, i know what you mean. there was a brief period there when phrases like "peace dividend" were tossed around and i was hopeful that mankind might be headed in the right direction for once in my lifetime.
well, you saw how quickly that got fucked up.
it goes to show, you just can't be too cynical.
The Catalonia self-determination issue
looms large. If it works there, what about Kurds, Palestinians, Native Americans, Aboriginals in Australia? We might be redrawing maps and teaching geography again.
Thank you for your interesting and varied news roundup, Joe.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
i wish the catalans well and hope that they are able to achieve the devolution that they are seeking.
i have thought for years that large countries are a bad idea, that they are beyond human scale. i wonder if it is not inevitable that more large, cobbled-together countries will eventually break up into more citizen-responsive units.
i guess it might happen if we manage to navigate a way around our gigantic-scale nation states destroying our habitat.
There’s a parallel to the idea of sanctuary cities, isn’t there?
Central or federal governments aren’t always automatically in the right, even if the letter of the law is on their side.
If it’s acceptable for millions to enter a country “illegally,” why shouldn’t millions decide they can pull out of a country “illegally”?
European Union leaders are trying to normalize the first while strongly opposing the second.
Good evening, Joe. Thanks for the news and blues. If it weren't
for the music, I might suspect that this is from around when I left for out trip to Morro Bay a little over a week ago, and that I simply missed a couple of items, like the b-52 alert and the Chipotle downgrade.
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 --
evening el...
heh, you probably could have extended your vacation another couple of weeks and felt pretty much the same way about the news. we seem to be locked into a cycle where most of what news you can find is trivial baloney based on the outrage du jour and only a couple of bits of interest reported. that's not to say that nothing is happening, it's for the most part pretty well buried or only found in alt-press outlets.
anyway, hope you had a great time at morro bay!
The news cycle is like soap operas
You can miss a few weeks and when you tune back into it, nothing new is happening.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Yes, same here.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
A major regret in life is that I was not in good enough shape
to make it out of the bay into the ocean in a kayak. Hope you had a great time!
FWIW We paddled on Lake Powell Glen Canyon NRA last week on day. Beauty.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Hola, Joe & Gang - Medicare Alert! Two conservadems
(Kaine and Bennett) have introduced a Bill to implement a 'managed care' version of Medicare. (It would be an elective, not mandatory, for now; and would be offered on the Marketplace Exchanges.) They're also claiming that this program won't affect seniors age 65 and older, or those already enrolled in the Traditional Medicare program--it will only be open to folks age 64 and younger. (yeah, sure!)
Frankly, I don't trust that assurance, so, as soon as we get back, I'm going to activate a Twitter account to push back on this, because I 'suspect' that they are just framing it this way, so as to not alarm seniors. IOW, my concern is that if they are serious about this Bill--and, it's not just a mid-term election gimmick--they'll try to push seniors into it, once they get it up and running.
Oh, found a really kewl video of The Temptations (black and white) last week, that I hope folks will enjoy. Hope to post it Friday or Monday.
Thank you for tonight's EB, Joe.
Hey, Everyone have a good week!
Mollie
“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit, and therefore, to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)
SOSD - A volunteer-run organisation dedicated to the welfare of Singapore’s street dogs. We rescue, rehabilitate, and rehome strays to give them a second chance.
SOSD Rescue 'Barabas The Brave'
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
evening mollie...
thanks for keeping up with the healthcare issues. i'm pretty sure that tim kaine has never promoted any legislation that is good for the 99%, if his name is on a healthcare bill, there's sure to be something horribly wrong with it.
De nada, Joe! It's called "“Medicare-X Choice Act of 2017,”
and here's the link to the text of the Bill.
Mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Thanks UL for that info. YES ! To the twitter push back!
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Welcome, DO! I've found a
couple articles about their proposal; when we get back, I'm going to try to come up with a blurb that (hopefully) explains the proposed program. Unfortunately, what I've found, thus far, is still a little sketchy.
Mollie
“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit, and therefore, to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Happy Monday. Not really
The stupid was out in force yesterday on the internets.
Sadly, I read this in a comment today on our local website about the troops that died in Niger. How the troops were defending anyone there is anyone's guess, but others agreed with him.
Another article saying what the democrats should be doing if they want control of congress again. This person points out that democrats aren't going after republicans for ripping up regulations.
I haven't heard any one of them say anything about how they are rolling back decades of regulations. Especially the ones that affect us the most directly, such as the clean water act. But the other damage they are doing is just as despicable, disgusting and dangerous.
And for what reason are they doing this? To save corporations money or so they can make more.
Not. One. Democrat. Has. Spoken. Out.
ToP discussed the DNC purge yesterday. The first person had a problem with the word splurge. 17 million comments later, the next person said that Bernie shouldn't get a say in what happens with the DNC because he isn't...... a democrat!
It went downhill from there.
And in case that diary wasn't enough, someone had to write another one from a different perspective and off they went again with the same stupid arguments.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
evening snoopy...
heh, there's a lot of stupid to go around on the internets. there is not much in the way of a decent explanation of why so many us troops are on the ground there.
obama sent a small number of troops (or should i call them "boots on the ground?") over there in 2013 and the number has swelled to a recently reported 800.
what they are doing there is anybody's guess. there's a lot of hemming and hawing about assisting the french, or assisting the us embassy, collecting intelligence as well as building a new air base for africom.
congresspeople say they weren't aware that there were us troops there:
though, perhaps they are just not paying attention and maybe should have googled before shooting off their mouths:
of course, as people will remember from the last time this was highlighted during the valerie plame scandal, niger is the world's fourth largest producer of uranium.
Congress should prescribe to Nick Turse's website for breaking
news. He has been writing about the troops being in almost every country in Africa for many years.
Or they could start reading the EBs to become up to date on what's happening in the Middle East and other countries
On the other hand, if congress doesn't even know where the military is being sent to, then maybe it's finally time to sunset the aumf and make presidents start getting congress' permission to send the troops anywhere first.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
nick turse is an excellent resource...
whenever i run across his pieces in the intercept or, more usually, in tomdispatch, i put links in the blog posts of interest section. his articles are almost always too information dense to fairly abstract and give some sense of what a bonanza of information is within them.
given that there are us troops in about 130 countries (give or take a few) perhaps congress ought to just assume that they are present - or do something about it.
Can only hope that divestment efforts can make a mark
on the war profiteers and armaments mfgs. What else can we do? National strike is what this guy :
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
evening do...
that strategy might work again, though organizing it seems to be far more difficult now. i suspect that we have just as many people who would like the wars of choice to end, but they do not seem as fervent about stopping the wars as we were during the vietnam era.
Saw too many old and young get tear gassed etc during Occupy?
Not much courage these days?
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Drone base?
That's what I heard on some news (poor man's antenna t.v.) yesterday or day before. They showed a map too of the "drone base" unless I dreamt it, which happens. They said it was a base being constructed. Weird. How big could it possibly need to be? The words made me look up from my phone, so I missed much of the story (multitasking is bullshit and has been scientifically proven as such). Likely woulda been abc out of Houston.
Topic change: 3rd person with flesh-eating bacteria due to hurricane Harvey. 2nd to die. Houston news.
Building bases is one of the reasons why they are there
Obama continued PNAC's goals in the Middle East and into other countries that we won't know about until troops start dying there too.
Instead of people thanking the troops for their service (yuck) I haven't seen anyone asking wtf were they doing there. The current official story is that they were killed by an ISIS group. They are the new AQ boogeymen who are cover for what the real reasons are.
I still find it unbelievable that we can invade Syria and after killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and making many more refugees, we can start building bases there. It's like no country has a say about what we can do and too many other country's leaders just go along with it.
I'm sure you can imagine what would happen if any country decided that they could build their bases here.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Here’s some insight into what the US is really doing in Africa:
West eyes recolonization of Africa by endless war; removing Gaddafi was just first step
And here I thought NATO was created to stop this
type of action instead of supporting it.
I was aware that Gaddafi had to go because he was going to use and accept other currencies for oil, but I doubt that there was anything he could have done that didn't end with Libya being invaded.
The type of total destruction that our country inflicts on others is what should be what shuts people up from saying that our military has to go into other countries to protect people. But they would blame it on terrorists, not our Air Force.
Thanks for this link. There is a lot more information I wasn't aware of. Anyone know why China keeps quiet about this? It affects them.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Obama is having a great time collecting his blood money
for the terror that he unleashed on the millions of people who are going to die by the hands of the terror he created. How he, Hillary and every person of their ilk could do these things and then blithely go on with their lives is beyond my comprehension.
This is the biggest reason I hold on to a belief in some type of higher power. I want to know that there is a chance that they will burn in hell for what they have done.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Financial Apocalypse?
The Vanity Fair article regarding the bond market was interesting. I didn't realize the bond market is 4X the size of the stock market. Evidently, bonds are misbehaving. Interesting quote from article:
Gundlach and Grant are bond experts. The U.S. & the world are still flirting with financial disaster.
evening karl...
yep, in a capitalist economy the key to efficient distribution of goods and services is correct market pricing. central banks trying to engineer a soft landing for a burst bubble have seriously distorted the pricing function of the market.
still, many people like to pretend that there is such a thing as a free market that is operating, and the winners are prospering because they are virtuous, rather than because the whole game is rigged.
if it wasn't so sad, it would be hilarious.
Good morning Joe
great links as usual, sadly though that
most of those headlines don't usually appear
in what one might describe is a "democracy".
But a simple correction for you as I believe
you were just being to kind, the markit's of
today are based on algo's, nothing to do with
supply/demand anymore, that's so pre crash of 08.
yep, in a capitalist economy the key to efficient distribution of goods and services is correct market pricing. central banks trying to engineer a soft landing for a burst bubble have
seriously distortedtotally fucked the pricing function of the market.I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
Hey js, wish you could have been in on the conversation with
Fellow camper here . He lives in Northern Africa, brought his wife here rented a big RV as a try out. He has bought a huge overland german truck he is converting and was interested in our roll up solar panel.
Conversation about rooftop vs two panels you can move around to where the sun really is while you park in the shade.
His buds back in the ME/North Africa have generators to run AC. He put a split system residential unit up on top of his truck then decided the fan would be being blown constantly and would wear out. As you know by now, lot’s of decisions and choices. Fun!
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
D. O. Do you know any way
to hook rv"s up to the internet? I am thinking of selling my house and buying a trailer, but I want access to the internet. I can't imagine not being able to connect to it. Not just for web browsing, but my tv device needs an internet connection.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Hey sd, we have been using
cellular mobile Hotspot for our Internet anywhere we are for over 10 years. The speed depends on how much willing to pay. We use the T-Mobile smartphone mobile Hotspot function for most our needs and it is plenty fast . Only 8n the last few years while home in the US have we started streaming video with Hulu and youtube. We never have been regular watchers 9f network or cable so can't advise you on that . There are lots of articles and forum posts you can find comparing costs and other attributes.
We recently got a no contract 3g modem from Straight Talk as a back up to use when not in a T-Mobile area, runs on Verizon. Too slow for streaming though . They also sell a 4G modem 5hat runs on ATT so we got one of those and it streams just fine. Neither Straight talk device worked when we couldn't get T-Mobile signal in Bluff UT on this trip but the RV park had free wifi.
We have not converted but T-Mobile has a discounted unlimited data plan for 55 and over but they throttle quality on vid.
FWIW illions of baby boomers have already, or are in the process of downsizing to a trailer or RV. Prices for parking and hooking up to water and electricity etc have really gone up in desirable areas.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Thanks for the Harvey info. I shared it on our FB page. Have
Quite a few childhood friends and relatives in that area. Many Fox News fans, but a few lefties. Hope they read it.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
2nd death due to flesh-eating bacteria
Due to Harvey in Houston area. 3 total cases blamed on Harvey clean up according to tonight's msm news (KHOU CBS).
Note: we usually get at least 1 case per summer from people going into the water at the beach or Galveston Bay. Sometimes they die. Horrible way to go or even try to survive.
Hillary Clinton, Julian Assange, and the War on Truth
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/20/clinton-assange-and-the-war-on-t...