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This evening's music features delta blues singer and guitarist Willie Brown. Enjoy!

"You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good."

-- Harold Pinter

News and Opinion

GOP maneuver will block Yemen bill from getting Senate vote

A House-passed bill to halt U.S. involvement in Yemen’s deadly civil war will not get a vote in the Senate, a setback to Democrats and Republicans who sought to cut off U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

The Senate parliamentarian ruled that an amendment to the House-passed bill which contains language condemning anti-Semitism was not “germane” to the Yemen War Powers resolution — a decision that allows Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to block a vote on the measure. The legislation initially had “privileged” status, giving supporters an end run around McConnell, who has long opposed the effort.

“It’s no surprise that the Republican leadership in the Senate would try to use any means to thwart the will of the Congress and thwart the will of the people. It’s just disgraceful,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. “I’ve been around this place for 30 years. When there’s a will, there’s a way. If you want to pass something, you do it. And if you don’t want to do it, you find every excuse under the sun to say why you can’t do it.”

House Republicans added the anti-Semitism amendment at the last minute before the resolution was set to pass the House. That amendment passed earlier in February with 424 votes in the wake of comments by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) that were roundly condemned by lawmakers from both parties as anti-Semitic.

Bernie Sanders Moves to Rescue Yemen Withdrawal After House Screwed It Up

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has a fallback plan to save his push to get the U.S. out of the disastrous Yemen war—a plan that’s become ironically necessary since the House of Representatives, which voted for withdrawal just two weeks ago, accidentally compromised its chances in the Senate.

On the surface, it’s a parliamentary effort to rescue something that has become a signature foreign policy achievement for the socialist senator as he runs for president. But beneath, the episode underscores just how difficult it is to get the U.S. out of a war—no matter how brutal the conflict, nor how peripheral it is to American security interests. ...

To save the Yemen extrication, Sanders, who last week announced a second run for president, is turning to a Plan B. Instead of pushing ahead with the House version, Sanders will instead move to discharge the exact same resolution that the Senate passed in December, a resolution that both matches the initial House language and has already been ruled as privileged, so it can come to the floor. Sanders and his allies, Republican Mike Lee of Utah and Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut, will call on their colleagues to pass the same measure in the current Congress.

Then, they’ll ask Khanna to get the House to re-pass the measure it passed earlier this month. It’s going to be a tough ask, but there’s brewing outrage amongst sympathetic House Democrats over the opportunity the parliamentarian’s ruling hands McConnell.

CodePink’s Medea Benjamin on Peace Delegation to Iran & Fallout from U.S. Withdrawal of Nuke Deal

The Meaning of ‘Humanitarian Aid’

The government of Venezuela has two programs to tackle the problem of hunger:

1. Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción (CLAP). The Local Committees for Supply and Production are made up of local neighborhood groups who grow food and who receive food from agricultural producers. They distribute this food to about 6 million families at very low cost. Currently, the CLAP boxes are being sent to households every 15 days.

2. Plan de Atención a la Vulnerabilidad Nutricional. The most vulnerable of Venezuelans – 620,000 of them – receive assistance. The National Institute of Nutrition has been coordinating the delivery of food to a majority of the country’s municipalities.

These are useful, but insufficient. More needs to be done. That is clear. Through CLAP, the Venezuelan government distributes about 50,000 tons of food per month. The “humanitarian aid” that the U.S. has promised amounts to $20 million – which would purchase a measly 60 tons of food.

On the issue of “humanitarian aid” to Venezuela, the international media has become the stenographers of the U.S. State Department and the CIA. It focuses on the false claims made by the U.S. government that it wants to deliver aid, which the Venezuelans refuse. The media does not look at the facts, even at this fact – that $20 million is a humiliating gesture, an amount intended to be used to establish the heartlessness of the government in Venezuela and therefore seek to overthrow it by any means necessary. This is what the U.S. government did in the Dominican Republic in 1965, sending in humanitarian aid accompanied by US marines.

The U.S. has used military aircrafts to bring in this modest aid, driven it to a warehouse and then said that the Venezuelans are not prepared to open an unused bridge for it. The entire process is political theatre. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio went to that bridge – which has never been opened – to say in a threatening way that the aid “is going to get through” to Venezuela one way or another. These are words that threaten the sovereignty of Venezuela and build up the energy for a military attack. There is nothing humanitarian here.

The term “humanitarian” has been shredded of its meaning. It has now come to mean a pretext for the destruction of countries. “Humanitarian intervention” was the term used to destroy Libya; “humanitarian aid” is being used to beat the drum for a war against Venezuela.

Irony alert!

Pence threatens war in Venezuela at Colombia summit: “There is no turning back”

US Vice President Mike Pence delivered a bellicose speech before representatives of 14 Latin American countries at a meeting of the Lima Group in Bogotá, Colombia, yesterday. The remarks were timed to coincide with the US-orchestrated provocations at the Venezuelan border over the weekend, resulting in clashes that left several people dead.

Pence rehashed phrases plagiarized from speeches given by George W. Bush in the run-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, combining them with denunciations of socialism. “There is no turning back,” Pence said. “All options are on the table.” ...

In his speech, Pence gave several justifications for intensifying US war threats against Venezuela. Venezuela exploits indigenous tribes, damages the environment through oil exploration and impoverishes its population, Pence said.

These claims would be laughable were it not for the seriousness of the threats. The United States is the world’s worst offender in each of these departments.

Particularly disgusting was Pence’s attack on Venezuela for refusing “shelter for those displaced” immigrants along its border. The Washington Post wrote that Pence “embraced a sobbing elderly man,” an immigrant waiting to enter Venezuela. The Post reporters, tears welling in their eyes, wrote that Pence “told the man in English, ‘We are with you.’”

The Post report made no mention of the thousands of immigrants currently sleeping on the streets in Mexican cities along the US-Mexico border after the US barred them from entering the country to apply for asylum.

As India and Pakistan Issue Veiled Nuclear Threats, New Ceasefire Urged to Defuse Kashmir Conflict

'Get ready for our surprise': Pakistan warns India it will respond to airstrikes

Pakistan’s army has warned it will respond to India’s aerial bombing over the disputed border in Kashmir, telling Delhi: “It is your turn now to wait and get ready for our surprise.”

Pakistan’s foreign ministry has summoned India’s top diplomat in Islamabad to protest against the pre-dawn airstrike on what India called a terrorist training camp, while India has accused Islamabad of shelling the disputed region in an “unprovoked” violation of the 2003 ceasefire.

Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours have escalated in recent weeks with the killing of 40 Indian security personnel in a suicide bombing, and now Tuesday’s airstrike – the first such attack by India since it went to war with Pakistan in 1971.

Imran Khan, the Pakistani prime minister, said India’s claim that it had hit a terrorist training camp at Balakot was “a self-serving, reckless and fictitious claim”. ... The attack was celebrated in India, but it was unclear on Tuesday whether anything significant had been struck by the fighter jets, or whether the operation had been carefully calibrated to ease popular anger over the 14 February suicide bombing without drawing a major Pakistani reprisal.

Pakistan and India say they just shot down each other’s warplanes

Pakistan and India said Wednesday they had shot down each other’s warplanes, in a dramatic escalation in the standoff between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

Pakistan also said it had carried out airstrikes on the Indian side of the Line of Control in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, following Indian airstrikes on alleged terror targets on Pakistani territory a day earlier.

The high-stakes clashes, stemming from tensions over a Pakistani-based militant group’s attack on Indian forces earlier this month, mark the first time in history that two nuclear-armed powers have carried out airstrikes on each other.

Leaders on both sides Wednesday called for restraint, to prevent the situation from lurching closer to war.

'Incessant Warmongering' Pays Off: Critics Respond to Nikki Haley Joining Boeing's Board

Congrats to @NikkiHaley on having her incessant warmongering pay off so quickly & lucratively. And congrats to @Boeing for obtaining her influence. It is at all a problem that politicians convert their access into massive personal wealth upon leaving? https://t.co/uHKhruMBjQ

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 26, 2019

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is expected to join the board of directors for weapons systems and aircraft maker Boeing on April 29 – a continuation of the Washington revolving door system between government and private corporations. ...

News of the Boeing appointment came less than 24 hours after Haley announced she was forming a new policy group, "Stand America Now."

Haley, who was Governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 before accepting the ambassador's position in the Trump administration, left her U.N. post at the end of 2018 after almost two years at the position. She's been mentioned as a possible future presidential contender and is frequently referred to as a possible foil for the president she served under.

For now, though, Haley seems intent on cashing in. She’ll join Boeing's board as the company deals with difficult decisions about its future growth.

The “adult in the room” who could “talk tough” at the UN just became a war profiteer. Love this country! https://t.co/4NitckT5cB

— District Sentinel (@TheDCSentinel) February 26, 2019

Economy could be 9% weaker under no-deal Brexit, government says

The government has issued a bleak warning over a no-deal Brexit, estimating the UK economy could be 9% weaker in the long run, businesses in Northern Ireland might go bust and food prices will increase. In an official document only published after repeated demands by the former Conservative MP Anna Soubry, the government also revealed it was behind on contingency planning for a third of “critical projects” in relation to business and trade. ...

The no-deal notice said customs checks alone could cost businesses £13bn a year and that it was impossible to predict the impact of new tariffs. It said this was partly because the government’s communications to businesses and individuals about the need to prepare for no deal had not been effective. It said small- to medium-sized businesses were not making basic preparations despite government advice to do so. Only 40,000 of 240,000 businesses that had no experience of customs or tariffs had registered for an economic operator registration and identification number. ...

Evidence suggested the public had not been heeding no-deal warnings either, with no “noticeable behaviour change” witnessed on a “significant scale” over the need to renew passports, and get international driving permits and green cards for insurance for driving in the EU, it said.

Interesting, worth a peek:

Corporate Agenda Moves into the Maternity Ward

Jenny Brown has cracked the code that few writers, outside of analysts trained by the CIA, have cracked. In her new book scheduled for release on March 1 by PM Press, Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women’s Work, Brown performs a brilliant forensic examination of the money and people behind the stealth agenda to raise the low birth-rate in the United States. That agenda includes concerted campaigns against abortion, the “morning-after pill” and other forms of contraception. Using exhaustive research, Brown convincingly makes the case that it’s a well-financed corporate agenda implanted in Washington with an end goal of putting more American women in the maternity ward.

It’s not a cultural or religious agenda as many people believe. It’s just about money – corporate profits to be more specific. More babies mean more workers and more workers mean cheaper labor because there is no shortage of supply and thus no bargaining power for higher wages. (In that respect, it’s akin to why corporations spent decades undermining the right to unionize. Without a union, the individual worker has little negotiating power for higher wages, benefits or a shorter work week.) ...

The book revolves around these two facts: “A stable population in the developed world requires a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman, enough to replace the woman and her male counterpart. The current birth rate in the United States is estimated at 1.76, considerably below this replacement level,” writes Brown. Equally at issue, the current birth rate has “decreased 16 percent since 1990,” Brown notes.

The stealth agenda to boost the supply of corporate workers by raising the birth rate is not as stealthy as it once was – although it has eluded a lot of feminist writers until now. Brown provides numerous examples of men openly acknowledging the agenda. For example, Brown cites the 2014 book by Steven Philip Kramer of the National Defense University, The Other Population Crisis: What Governments Can Do about Falling Birth Rates, and the 2004 book by Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do about It. Longman writes: “Capitalism has never flourished except when accompanied by population growth and it is now languishing in those parts of the world (such as Japan, Europe, and the Great Plains of the United States) where population has become stagnant.”

Thousands of migrant children in federal custody have been allegedly sexually abused, HHS documents show

Thousands of migrant children were allegedly sexually abused while in the custody of the federal government in the last four years, according to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) documents released by Rep. Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat.

In total, there have been 4,556 reports of sexual abuse since 2014, according to the documents. The majority of those reports are instances of migrant children abusing other migrant children. But 178 reports involve accusations against employees at facilities operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency under HHS responsible for caring for unaccompanied migrant children, including those separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.

Over the last three years, that’s nearly an average of one sexual assault per week, according to Deutch, a senior member on the House Judiciary Committee.

Democrats, joined by 13 Republicans, passed the measure killing the president’s border wall order; it now moves to a Senate vote

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has advanced a resolution to terminate Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration at the US-Mexico border, in a bid to block the president from beginning construction on a border wall without approval from Congress. In a vote of 245-182, the House easily passed the measure. Thirteen Republicans joined Democrats in moving to revoke Trump’s executive order. ...

The resolution will now face a vote in the Republican-led Senate, where only a handful of defections are needed for it to pass in what would mark a major rebuke of the president. Trump has vowed to veto the measure if it reaches his desk. At least one key Senate Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said she would support the resolution to block Trump’s emergency declaration. ... Two other Republican senators, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, are expected to vote against Trump’s order.

Several other Republicans were critical of Trump’s decision to declare an emergency, arguing it set a dangerous precedent that challenged Congress’s power of the purse. But it remained unclear if enough Republicans, who have been reticent to take on the president, would be willing to issue a direct challenge of his authority.

ATT-Time Warner deal: justice department loses appeal against merger

A federal appeals court rejected the justice department’s second effort to undo AT&T’s $80bn purchase of Time Warner on Tuesday – dealing a probably decisive blow to opponents of the deal, including Donald Trump. In its ruling the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit unanimously affirmed a lower court ruling last June that found the 2018 deal was unlikely to harm competition. ...

The ruling will stand as one of the most significant losses for the justice department’s antitrust division in a generation.

The lawsuit was the first major antitrust action under the Trump administration – an action that was widely believed to be promoted behind the scenes by the president himself, who had made it a campaign pledge to block the deal and has made no secret of his antipathy for Time Warner-owned CNN.

CNN Gaslights Med4All, Green New Deal & Kamala Harris

Democrats are about to drop their most aggressive “Medicare for All” bill yet.

House Democrats will unveil new “Medicare for All” legislation on Wednesday — just as contenders for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination argue over the fine print of what that program would actually entail. ...

The benefits covered by the bill are sweeping:

• Hospital services, including inpatient and outpatient hospital care, 24-hour-a-day emergency services, and inpatient prescription drugs
• Ambulatory patient services
• Primary and preventive services, including chronic disease management
• Prescription drugs, medical devices, and biological products, like vaccines and blood agents
• Mental health and substance abuse treatment services, including inpatient care
• Laboratory and diagnostic services
• Comprehensive reproductive, maternity, and newborn care
• Pediatrics
• Dental, audiology, and vision services
• Rehabilitative services and devices
• Dietary and nutritional therapies
• Podiatric care
• Emergency services and transportation
• Early and periodic screening, diagnostic, and treatment services
• Transportation to receive health care services for persons with disabilities or low-income individuals
• Long-term care services and supports

The legislation also plans to eliminate premiums and deductibles, and recipients would not be charged co-pays or any other out-of-pocket costs. Patients could also visit any hospital or doctor they want without worrying about if their insurance is in-network. And everyone would have full abortion coverage by disallowing the Hyde Amendment, which blocks nearly all Medicaid funding for abortion coverage. ...

One year after the Medicare for All passes, people over 55 and people under 19 would be eligible. After two years, coverage expands to everyone. Jayapal said the bill would deliver a huge blow to private insurance companies, which she said had no role in providing core health insurance to everyday Americans.

'The Time for Medicare for All Has Come': Jayapal Unveils Visionary Bill to Remake US Healthcare System

... In her explainer on the bill at Vox, journalist Sarah Kliff's called it "the most ambitious plan for government-run health care yet." Kliff reports:

Jayapal’s bill envisions a future where all Americans have health coverage and pay nothing out of pocket when they visit the doctor or hospital. Her plan, the Medicare for All Act of 2019, describes a benefit package that is more generous than what other single-payer countries, like England or Canada, currently offer. The benefits in Jayapal’s bill are even more generous than those included in Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Medicare-for-all plan.

Read the two-page summary of the bill here (pdf). Read the ten-page section-by-section overview here (pdf).

Along with lead co-sponsor Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Jayapal's 120-page legislation will be unveiled with the original backing of 106 House Democrats, and the Washington congresswoman said she expects that number to rise quickly amid surging grassroots energy behind Medicare for All as the only solution to America's healthcare crisis.

Organizations and labor unions backing the bill—including Public Citizen, National Nurses United, Center for Popular Democracy, Business Initiative for Health Policy, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP)—say that it has set a new bar for single-payer legislation in Congress, and that no one who believes in creating an affordable and universal system of care should settle for anything less.

.@RepJayapal is introducing her groundbreaking #MedicareForAll bill, and it's an absolute must-watch.

"Why is it that other major countries can guarantee universal health care for half—literally half—the cost of what the United States spends, and yet we can’t do it?" pic.twitter.com/9ILZUpzsWn

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) February 27, 2019

North Carolina political operative charged in election fraud scandal

A political operative at the center of a ballot fraud scandal in North Carolina was arrested on Wednesday on criminal charges over activities in the 2016 elections and the Republican primary in 2018.

The Wake county district attorney, Lorrin Freeman, announced that Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr was arrested after grand jury indictments alleging illegal possession of absentee ballots and obstruction of justice.

North Carolina law makes it illegal for anyone other than the voter or a close relative to handle a mail-in ballot.

Also charged were people Dowless is accused of paying in 2016 to collect ballots. The state elections board reported last year that Dowless tried to obstruct investigators by coaching his associates about what they should say if questioned. ...

Dowless, who was hired by Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris, was at the center of a ballot-harvesting operation during the 2016 election, according to evidence presented at a special state board of elections hearing.

Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez right to ask if the climate means we should have fewer children?

During a recent Q&A live-streamed on Instagram, apparently shot while she was pottering in her kitchen, the rising star of the Democratic party – and one of the few frontline politicians to get the scale of the environmental emergency – pulled no punches in telling viewers that unless we take urgent, radical action on emissions, there is no hope for the future. “It is basically a scientific consensus that the lives of our children are going to be very difficult, and it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it OK to still have children?”

With this one question put to her 2.5 million Instagram followers, Ocasio-Cortez has stumbled into a highly contentious area. Population has long been a controversial factor in the climate change debate; one recent study said the most effective thing individuals can do to address the crisis was to have one less child. However, critics insist we should focus instead on overconsumption, and that putting the onus on individuals to address climate change obscures the systematic nature of the crisis. Crucially, they say, it lets the real culprits – fossil fuel corporations and successive global governments’ inaction – off the hook. ...

Ocasio-Cortez is not encouraging people stop having children. And as the leading advocate of the Green New Deal plan – which aims to radically transform the US economy by 2030 – she is one of the few politicians to be working on a plan that might just offer a way to avoid the worst impacts of this crisis. But perhaps she is raising a more profound issue. Faced with a future of social and political breakdown, flooding, deadly heatwaves and food shortages – and a world full of politicians in various states of denial – why shouldn’t young people question whether bringing children in the world is a good idea?

Trump's Pick of Wealthy Climate Denier for UN Ambassador Decried as 'Slap in the Face' of Planet and Humanity

Environmentalists on Wednesday said they are appalled by President Donald Trump's decision to promote yet another "anti-science, anti-climate, pro-pollution" figure to a key diplomatic role during such a perilous moment for the planet. Trump nominated GOP mega-donor and climate denier Kelly Knight Craft as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations last week.

"Trump's nomination of Kelly Craft for U.N. ambassador is a slap in the face of climate science and human rights," Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said in a statement.

Hauter said she is "disgusted but not surprised" by Trump's decision—which comes after the president's previous nominee, former State Department spokesperson and Fox News commentator Heather Nauert, withdrew her name from consideration—and added, "[A]t a time when the United States should be working harder than ever with the rest of the world to address our deepening climate crisis, to select an admitted climate denier to represent us before the U.N. is especially egregious."

"We have little confidence that Ms. Craft will be a competent advocate for clean air, safe water, and adequate public health either here or abroad if her nomination is confirmed," Hauter concluded. "We strongly urge the Senate to reject Ms. Craft's nomination out of hand."

Humpback whale found washed ashore in Brazil

A young humpback whale has been found dead after being washed ashore on a remote swamp in the Amazon River. The humpback whale should have migrated thousands of miles to Antarctica by this time of year, but members of the conservation group Bicho D’Água said they found it at Marajó Island in Brazil’s north-east.

They spotted the dead whale last Friday a short distance from the shore after they followed scavenging birds that were circling overhead. The lifeless humpback, which was about eight metres (26ft) long, was found in thick shrubs and brush. “We imagine it was floating and the tide took it into the mangrove,” Renata Emin, the president of Bicho D’Água, told local media. “The question is, what was a humpback whale doing in the month of February on the northern coast of Brazil? It’s unusual.”

A group of biologists examined the carcass over the weekend to figure out how the whale died. The group is expecting a postmortem report within 10 days.

Scottish wildcat on verge of extinction, report finds

Conservationists are planning to release captive European wildcats into the Highlands in a final attempt to save the Scottish wildcat from extinction.

The new measures, described by ecologists as a last-ditch effort to save the species, follow an expert report that confirmed the Scottish wildcat was on the verge of becoming genetically extinct, with as few as 30 left in isolated pockets of the Highlands.

“Based on the available information, we consider the wildcat population in Scotland to be no longer viable,” the report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), released on Wednesday, stated. “The number of wildcats is too small, the hybridisation too far advanced and the population too fragmented. We therefore conclude that it is too late to conserve the wildcat in Scotland as a standalone population.” ...

Ecologists believe they will need to import wildcats trapped on the continent, perhaps as early as next year, and add them to the captive population to help strengthen the gene pool. There are 94 Scottish pure wildcats in captivity and European wildcats will need time to acclimatise to Scotland’s wetter and colder climate.

Congresswoman condemns Ivanka Trump’s comments to Fox News on Green New Deal’s living wage guarantee

Without calling her out outright, the Democratic freshman congresswoman and Twitter wonder Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday rebuked the first daughter Ivanka Trump for sounding off on something she could never truly understand: working for a living wage. Describing her expertise “as a person who actually worked for tips and hourly wages”, Ocasio-Cortez essentially pointed out that Ivanka Trump has never had to work a minimum wage job in her life and that her comments on the Green New Deal jobs guarantee rang hollow.

As a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life, instead of having to learn about it 2nd-hand, I can tell you that most people want to be paid enough to live.

A living wage isn’t a gift, it’s a right. Workers are often paid far less than the value they create. https://t.co/P5FsQuhCTW

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 26, 2019

... Trump had waded into the Green New Deal debate on Monday during an interview with Steve Hilton on Fox News.

“I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get,” Trump responded to Hilton’s question about the Green New Deal. “So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to be able to secure a job. They want the ability to live in a country where’s there’s the potential for upward mobility.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal proposal, which she launched with the Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts this month, seeks to eliminate greenhouse gas pollution in the United States over the next decade while also addressing inequality with a job guarantee program “to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one”.

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: The Secrets of American Power: Unitary Executive Theory, Guantánamo Bay Prison, and Extraordinary Rendition

Tit-For-Tat Bombing By India And Pakistan Could Escalate Towards A Nuclear War

The Special Interests Behind Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s Medicare for All Bill Are Not the Usual Suspects

Washington Insider Taken Down a Peg

The Yellow Vest Phenomenon and the Radical Right

Mummified Gerontocrat Says She Didn’t Know About Mobile Phones Or The Internet

Time to Get on Board With Bernie

Israel Is Not-So-Subtly Targeting Jeremy Corbyn

'We Are Here to Buy a Senator': Ahead of Data Privacy Hearing, Digital Rights Defenders Target Lavish Telecom-Backed Fundraiser

Watchdog Group Slams FTC for Revolving-Door Practices Ahead of Pending Staples Merger

A Little Night Music

Willie Brown - Mississippi Blues

The Notting Hillbillies - Mississippi Blues

Willie Brown - Future Blues

ZZ Top - Future Blues

Willie Brown - Ragged And Dirty

Shakey Jake Harris - Ragged and Dirty

Bob Dylan & His Band - Ragged & Dirty

Willie Brown - M & O Blues

Rory Block - M & O Blues

Hans Theessink - M & O Blues

Kid Bailey (Willie Brown?) - Mississippi Bottom Blues

Kid Bailey (Willie Brown?) - Rowdy Blues

Thomasina Winslow & Nick Katzman - Rowdy Blues