Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features jazz pianist and bandleader Count Basie. Enjoy!

"Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality."

-- Eric Hoffer

News and Opinion

Socialists Leave Rahm Emanuel Legacy in Tatters in Chicago Elections

On Tuesday night, Chicago voters elected at least three socialists to City Council, crumbling the neoliberal Democratic machine of outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Three members of the Democratic Socialists of America won their runoff races, joining two others who won outright last month — adding up to the highest number of socialists City Council has seen in more than a century. ... There will potentially be a fourth democratic socialist victor: The race in the 33rd Ward is still too close to call, but DSA member Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez holds a narrow lead over Deborah Mell, whose prominent family has represented the ward for more than 40 years. As of Wednesday morning, Rodriguez-Sanchez was ahead by 24 votes, but mail-in ballots and a recount may still prove decisive. In February, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a democratic socialist, won his re-election race, and Daniel La Spata, another DSA member, ousted scandal-plagued incumbent Joe Moreno. Ramirez-Rosa noted that there are now enough members to form a socialist caucus within City Hall.

These wins wouldn’t be possible without the organizers & volunteers from many different orgs across the city. We’re ready to get to work & fight against corporate greed, gentrification & austerity politics that have hurt Chicago’s working class, while benefiting a wealthy few.

— Chicago DSA (@ChicagoCityDSA) April 3, 2019

In the mayoral race, former Chicago Police Board President Lori Lightfoot, who identified as a progressive but whose record has been called into question, was elected to replace Emanuel, making Chicago the largest city to elect a black woman and openly gay woman as its mayor. Lightfoot defeated Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who is also a black woman, by a large margin. Both candidates sought to distance themselves from the outgoing mayor, running against school privatization. ...

Lightfoot has been criticized by criminal justice reform advocates and activists for her mixed record as a federal prosecutor. Still, her politics are a sharp departure from those of Emanuel, who has consistently fought progressive policy at every step of his career. ... Activists in the city celebrated Emanuel’s departure and said they are hopeful about the slate of progressives who were elected. Emma Tai, executive director of United Working Families, said that what Emanuel “has done in Chicago for the past eight years has raised troubling questions about whose interests the mainstream Democratic Party represents.” But this wave of insurgents, Tai said, is building an infrastructure for progressives that serves as an alternative to a Democratic Party, governed “by white men, the corporate class” — which has dominated politics in Chicago for years, “to the detriment of black and brown working class communities.” ...

“Chicago belongs to the people,” Tai said in a Tuesday statement. “Tonight, voters rejected Rahm Emanuel’s legacy of crumbling schools, skyrocketing violence and gentrification, and crushing inequality.

"Think Progress" Publishes Shameful McCarthy List Of Americans

Respectable Racists

Since Trump’s election, the usual stereotypes and tropes about Russians have morphed into an all-encompassing racist conspiracy. It’s become totally fine — and even respectable — in American liberal media circles to bombard viewers and readers with all sorts of conspiracies that see shadowy Russian interests infecting “our” society and lurking behind everything that’s going wrong in America and around the world. ...

The liberal journalists, academics, media personalities, Hollywood stars, and New York Times documentary filmmakers who’ve been screeching about “the Russians” for the past three years may not be aware that they’re serving up reheated racist fantasies, but they are. And this bigotry isn’t coming from the “lower-classes” that liberals love to mock so much, but from very top — the crème de la crème of our media and political class. One day you get Rachael Maddow working herself into paranoid seizure about a supposed Russian plot to cut power lines and freeze millions of Americans in their sleep. On another, you can watch the screenwriter of Mrs. Doubtfire take to the Internet to theorize about how the Russians are plotting to take down Joe Biden (and I guess to covertly boost Bernie Sanders) by getting an American politician to highlight the creepy and demeaning way Biden treats women.

It’s gross, and it goes to show that the respectable liberal opposition to Donald Trump is no less racist and paranoid than he is — it just operates in a different xenophobic market demographic.

On Yemen, Congress Has Spoken. It Wants the U.S. Out. Now the Ball Is in Trump’s Court.

The House voted again on Thursday to end the U.S. role in Yemen’s war, finally sending a bill to President Donald Trump’s desk and potentially setting up the second veto of his presidency. The 247-175 vote, largely along party lines, is a sign that Democrats will continue to try and hold Trump accountable for his close relationship to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and congressional Republicans will largely line up to try and protect him.

The House passed a similar resolution last month, but Republicans stalled its progress with a procedural trick. On a motion to recommit the bill, Republicans attached entirely unrelated language about Israel and anti-Semitism, baiting the Democrats to vote for it. The Senate parliamentarian then ruled that the language would “de-privilege” the resolution, meaning that Democrats could no longer bypass committee and force a floor vote. The result was that both chambers of Congress had to pass the resolution again.

But on Thursday, Democrats blocked a similar motion. Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader, called the Republican motion a “cynical, political ploy” and a “charade of a motion,” and it was defeated.

Rand Paul teams up with Ocasio-Cortez, Omar to press Trump on Syria withdrawal

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is teaming up with liberal House Democrats, including firebrand freshmen Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.), to urge President Trump to follow through on his pledge to pull U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan, a move that's opposed by most congressional Republicans.

“We write in bipartisan support of your announcement of the start of a ‘deliberate withdrawal’ of U.S. military forces in Syria, and we welcome the completion of this process within the next six months,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Trump.

Others who signed the letter occupy opposite ends of the political spectrum on Capitol Hill: Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.).

They argue that the 2015 deployment of U.S. military forces to Syria was never approved by Congress, in violation of the Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Resolution.

“A Great Moment for Democracy”: Erdogan’s AK Party Suffers Major Defeat in Local Turkish Elections

Turkey's purchase of Russian missile system 'defies Nato'

Turkey’s insistence on buying a missile system from Russia is striking a note of disunity as the Nato alliance prepares to mark its 70th anniversary in Washington. Foreign ministers from the 29-member western alliance are hoping to show a tough, united, front over a resurgent Russia as they meet for two days in the US capital.

But the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, declared in Washington that there was no turning back on buying Russia’s S-400 missile defence system – two days after the US suspended the Nato ally’s participation in the F-35 fighter jet programme. “The S-400 deal is done and we will not step back from this,” he told a thinktank forum as part of the Nato festivities.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has seen his Islamist-rooted government increasingly clashing with the west as it cracks down on dissent at home and threatens to strike US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria. But Cavusoglu said Turkey still backed Nato on core concerns with Russia and would never recognise Moscow’s 2014 takeover of Crimea from Ukraine. “We have been working with Russia,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that we are undermining the alliance and we agree with Russia on everything. There is no shift on our foreign policy.”

Cavusoglu added that Turkey had turned to Russia as it could not buy US Patriot missiles, and quoted the president, Donald Trump, as saying, in an unspecified phone call, that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had made a “mistake” in not selling the system to Ankara. But the foreign minister went on to criticise Trump on Syria. Asked if he understood US policy on the war-torn country, he replied bluntly: “No, and this is the problem.”

Pope Francis: Govts. That Sell Arms to Saudi Arabia 'Have No Right to Talk About Peace'

Nations that send arms to Saudi Arabia "have no right to talk about peace," Pope Francis said recently. The statement by the Pontiff came in an interview that aired Sunday on the weekly Spanish news show "Salvados."

When presenter Jordi Évole asked him about Spain's selling of weapons to the kingdom—which is leading the coalition waging catastrophic war on Yemen—Pope Francis expressed sorrow but promptly added that "it's not the only government" doing that. Spain is just one among the numerous nations that supply arms to Saudi Arabia, and continues to do so despite accusations of the coalition committing war crimes and increased attention on the kingdom's vast human rights abuses following the killing of journalist Jamal Khahoggi.

The amount of arms Spain sells to the kingdom, howerver, is dwarfed by the amount of weapons sold to Saudi Arabia by the United States and the United Kingdom, with the U.S. being the biggest supplier of arms to the Saudis. Referring to those countries, the pope said, "They're fomenting war in another country, but want peace in their own." Yet that will come back to bite them, he said, because there's always a "boomerang" effect. Fuel "war over there, and you'll have one in your own home—whether you want it or not."

Brexit: What does the vote in the House of Commons really mean for the process?

Corbyn and May agree to more talks after 'constructive' first day

Jeremy Corbyn will resume Brexit talks with the prime minister on Thursday, after Labour tensions over a second referendum burst into the open, with the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, writing to colleagues to insist any pact must be put to a public vote. Both Labour and Downing Street described the discussions as “constructive” and said they would hold technical talks, facilitated by civil servants, on Thursday.

“We have had constructive exploratory discussions about how to break the Brexit deadlock,” a Labour spokesperson said. “We have agreed a programme of work between our teams to explore the scope for agreement.” An emergency shadow cabinet meeting was convened in the aftermath of the discussions to consider how Labour should proceed. ...

Corbyn accepted the prime minister’s surprise offer of negotiations, and her signal that she was willing to contemplate a softer form of Brexit, after a marathon cabinet meeting on Tuesday. But he faces intense pressure from MPs concerned that he may be willing to sign up to a Brexit deal without submitting it to a referendum – and stressed afterwards that he had raised the issue. In a tweet after the meeting with May, he said, “I put forward Labour’s alternative plan and raised the option of a public vote to prevent No Deal or leaving on a bad deal.”

That is the careful formulation used by the leadership since Labour shifted its position towards support for a referendum in February – and falls short of Thornberry’s position that any deal should be subject to a public vote. ... The Scottish National party, which commands 35 votes in the Commons, has strengthened its demands for a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal agreed after May’s cross-party talks, although it has not yet made that a precondition for its support of a new soft Brexit proposal.

The Invisible People: France’s Yellow Vest Revolt Against Macron & Elites Reaches 20 Weeks

he NRA is fighting the Violence Against Women Act over the “boyfriend loophole”

The Violence Against Women Act isn’t supposed to be controversial. But the landmark 1994 law, set for re-authorization, has hit an NRA-sized snag: The gun lobby opposes the measure and is threatening to hold any lawmaker who votes for it accountable in the next election.

The NRA is up in arms over a new provision dubbed the “boyfriend loophole” that’s aimed at blocking anyone convicted of physically assaulting or even stalking a former lover from obtaining firearms. Democratic leaders slid that provision into the bill once they gained control of the House this year. (The VAWA bill lapsed in the midst of the government shutdown, so it has to be reauthorized by Congress.)

The provision is forcing House Republicans to choose: Vote against a wildly popular bill this week, or risk the powerful gun lobby slapping a target on their backs in 2020. But with the NRA’s power on the wane, the bill is attracting support from the GOP, particularly moderates in suburban swing districts.

Hundreds of millions of Facebook records exposed on public servers – report

More than 540m Facebook records were left exposed on public internet servers, cybersecurity researchers said on Wednesday, in just the latest security black eye for the company. Researchers for the firm UpGuard discovered two separate sets of Facebook user data on public Amazon cloud servers, the company detailed in a blogpost.

One dataset, linked to the Mexican media company Cultura Colectiva, contained more than 540m records, including comments, likes, reactions, account names, Facebook IDs and more. The other set, linked to a defunct Facebook app called At the Pool, was significantly smaller, but contained plaintext passwords for 22,000 users.

The large dataset was secured on Wednesday after Bloomberg, which first reported the leak, contacted Facebook. The smaller dataset was taken offline during UpGuard’s investigation.

The data exposure is not the result of a breach of Facebook’s systems. Rather, it is another example, akin to the Cambridge Analytica case, of Facebook allowing third parties to extract large amounts of user data without controls on how that data is then used or secured.

'Tax the Rich. It's Just That Simple': US Campaign Aims to Make Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share

A coalition of over a dozen progressive advocacy groups launched a nationwide "Tax the Rich" campaign Wednesday with the goal of building a grassroots movement to unrig the tax code and make wealthy Americans pay their fair share. The new project, led by progressive advocacy group Tax March, will consist of on-the-ground organizing in crucial battleground states like Wisconsin and Iowa. ...

"Taxing the rich isn't just good policy, it's good politics—and this campaign will prove that," Maura Quint, executive director of progressive advocacy group Tax March, said in a statement. "Raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy is wildly popular with a majority of both Democratic and Republican voters." To underscore this point, Tax March released new polling data (pdf) Wednesday showing that 75 percent of likely 2020 voters—including 60 percent of Republicans—support raising taxes on the wealthy.

Inequality is skyrocketing. The rich are getting richer while the working and middle class are left behind. It’s time to take a step towards a fair tax code. #TaxTheRich pic.twitter.com/zedRZtl5kM

— Tax March (@taxmarch) April 3, 2019

"This important poll provides a detailed look at how voters feel about taxes and the overwhelming message is that they want the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share," Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, said in a statement. "If we are ever going to address our important national priorities, including healthcare, infrastructure, education, and climate change, we must raise trillions of new tax dollars from the well off and implement a tax system that works for everyone," Clemente added. "That starts by repealing the Trump-GOP tax cuts for the rich and corporations."

The campaign is scheduled to begin with a conference in Washington, D.C. on April 13. Two days later, the progressive coalition will hold a nationwide day of action.

Jayapal Confronts Top Pelosi Aide for 'Inappropriate' Effort to Undermine Medicare for All

Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Tuesday directly confronted an influential health policy aide for attempting to undercut the Democratic caucus's push for Medicare for All. Jayapal, author of the Medicare for All bill H.R. 1384, demanded to know at a meeting of the Congressional Progressive Caucus why Wendell Primus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's top health policy adviser, derided her proposal in discussions with insurance executives.

"I think it's really inappropriate for staff representing the Speaker's office to be undercutting members of our caucus," Jayapal told Politico after the meeting.

As multiple outlets including Common Dreams reported, Primus spoke with executives and health policy experts on November 30 at a meeting where he called proposals like Jayapal's and the broader push toward Medicare for All an "unhelpful distraction." While last year's meeting was private, attendees told Politico in reporting published Tuesday that Primus had given the impression that those present should work to steer public sentiment away from a single-payer system and toward propping up the for-profit health insurance sector.

As one single payer advocate pointed out on Twitter, Primus entirely misrepresented the reality of Medicare for All's broad support. He claimed that single-payer healthcare would be "very expensive," despite the fact that it's projected to cost $2 trillion less than the current for-profit model in its first decade; that "stakeholders" are against it, ignoring polls showing the at least 70 percent of Americans including more than half of Republicans back the plan; and that it will create "winners and losers," suggesting that the current system—which allows profit-driven insurance corporations to regularly refuse to cover medical expenses and kick Americans off their insurance plans—is more equitable than a proposal to expand the broadly popular Medicare program to the entire country.

Pelosi's senior health policy advisor says a #MedicareForAll health system isn't a good idea because "stakeholders are against" it. Yup.

I may be wrong, but I thought politicians were elected to serve citizens, not insurance and pharmaceutical companies?!https://t.co/tTlSs2FiJi pic.twitter.com/BCFWMQMtxg

— All On Medicare (@AllOnMedicare) April 2, 2019

In Tuesday's closed-door caucus meeting, Jayapal reportedly reminded Primus of the slides he had shown and rejected his claim that his remarks in November had been taken out of context or misinterpreted. "We took some things out of the slides and said, these are some of the things you said—it's not a matter of perception," Jayapal told Politico.

Oh my. The Democrats are furious again. And impotent. It's not like they have any ability to organize and push back. What a bunch of ineffectual, simpering wimps the Democrats are.

Senate Republicans just rammed through a rule that lets them pack the courts even faster

Senate Republicans just rammed through another sweeping rule change that will allow President Trump to further speed up the remaking of the nation’s courts with conservative judges.

On a strictly party-line vote, with just two Republicans breaking ranks, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell deployed the so-called nuclear option and blew up the Senate’s filibuster rule to push through a package that will enable the GOP to approve judges faster, by requiring just two hours of debate for district court judges and sub-Cabinet nominees, instead of the previous 30 hours required.

McConnell claimed the change is necessary because Democrats have used delay tactics and required the GOP to use up the entire 30 hours of debate even on appointees with broad bipartisan support. ...

It’s an audacious move considering McConnell blocked former President Barack Obama’s last Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, from ever even getting a hearing in the Senate. Then McConnell used the nuclear option and ended the filibuster for all Supreme Court nominees, which former Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democrats had left intact for the high court, requiring those justices to get at least 60 votes, instead of the current 51 required for confirmation.

The move left Democrats furious— and terrified that McConnell is doing permanent damage to the nation’s judiciary.

Trump is capturing the judiciary at an alarming rate

Mexico is not paying for Donald Trump’s wall. The 2018 tax cut did not give tax relief to middle-class Americans. And no infrastructure or healthcare bills have emerged from this administration. But, the one promise that the president has kept, and perhaps the one that is of greatest importance to his base, is his selection of judges for the federal bench. The president has vowed to appoint judges who share the views and values of the minority of Americans who voted him into office. And he has succeeded. A look at the growing list of judges now occupying life terms in the federal judiciary shows that, as a general matter, they oppose reproductive rights, gay rights, affirmative action, unions, government regulation, any form of gun control, and immigration.

To date, 92 judges selected by Trump have been confirmed: two for the supreme court, 37 for the circuit courts of appeal, and 53 for the district courts (the entry level trial courts). Thirty-nine nominations have cleared the Senate judiciary committee (two appellate and 37 trial court) and are pending Senate confirmation – which means they could be confirmed any day. Twenty-one of these 39 were voted out of committee on a vote of 12-10 (54%) which means on strict party line votes – supported only by Republican senators. Finally, 61 more nominations (six appellate and 55 trial court) have been made. To date, Trump has appointed nearly 22% of the appellate judges with more surely to come. Only six of the 13 circuits have a majority of Democratic appointees and that number will decrease in the remaining months of his presidency.

These appointments are well on their way to reshaping the federal judiciary. Because so few cases are heard by the supreme court – between 80 and 90 per year – the circuit courts are often the final word on issues raised in federal court. A number of the circuit courts of appeals now have a majority of judges appointed by Republican presidents. For example, Trump has appointed 37.5% of judges in the sixth circuit (six of 16); 35% of judges in the seventh circuit (four of 11) and the same in the eighth circuit (four of 11); nearly 30% of the judges in the fifth circuit (five of 17) and 27% of judges on the eleventh circuit (three of 11). The addition of three Trump judges to the third circuit, has added that circuit to the list of circuits dominated by Republican appointees.

These new judges have already shown that they can be counted on to advance the president’s agenda. One example is judge James C Ho of the fifth circuit who referred to the “moral tragedy of abortion” in a recent published opinion. Finally, it is worth noting, that of the 92 judges confirmed to date, only 1% are African American, and only 25% are women.

Six states sue agriculture department over 'weakened' school lunch rules

Six states and the District of Columbia have sued the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), saying it weakened nutritional standards in school breakfasts and lunches when the Trump administration relaxed the requirements affecting salt and refined grains last year. The lawsuit in Manhattan federal court asked a judge to overturn the changes, saying they were carried out in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

The government “significantly weakened” nutritional standards for sodium and whole grains, according to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, without giving the public a chance to comment on them and in opposition to nutritional requirements for school meals set by Congress. ...

The USDA school lunch program provides low-cost or free lunches and breakfasts in public schools and other institutions. Last year, it served an estimated 30 million children. ...

New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, led the multistate civil legal action, saying in a release that more than a million children in New York depend daily on the meals. “The Trump administration has undermined key health benefits for our children – standards for salt and whole grains in school meals – with deliberate disregard for science, expert opinion and the law,” she said.

The other plaintiffs are California, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont and the District of Columbia.

Keiser Report: Money Supply Drives Stock Market Rally

Elizabeth Warren’s new bills are trying to make it easier to jail CEOs

Sen. Elizabeth Warren took aim at Wall Street again Wednesday with two bills that could throw executives at giant corporations into jail if they break the law. Warren, a 2020 presidential candidate, introduced the Corporate Executive Accountability Act, which would hold executives at corporations criminally responsible when the companies they oversee commit crimes. Warren also re-introduced the Ending Too Big to Jail Act, which she first introduced in 2018 and would create a permanent investigative body within the U.S. Department of the Treasury to prosecute financial crimes.

“When a criminal on the street steals money from your wallet, they go to jail,” Warren wrote in a Washington Post op-ed announcing the first bill. “When small-business owners cheat their customers, they go to jail. But when corporate executives at big companies oversee huge frauds that hurt tens of thousands of people, they often get to walk away with multimillion-dollar payouts.”

Warren’s Corporate Executive Accountability Act builds upon existing federal laws to make it easier to send CEOs and other executives to jail by expanding criminal liability at corporations that bring in more $1 billion in revenue per year.

House Democrats just demanded the IRS turn over Trump’s tax returns

Democrats have talked about getting Trump’s tax returns for years.

On Wednesday, they finally went there.

The House Ways & Means Committee sent a request to IRS commissioner Charles Rettig for six years’ worth of President Trump’s tax returns, with a deadline of next Wednesday, April 10, the committee said in an emailed statement Wednesday afternoon.

“I today submitted to IRS Commissioner Rettig my request for six years of the president’s personal tax returns as well as the returns for some of his business entities,” said committee chairman, Richard Neal, a Democrat from Massachusetts. “We have completed the necessary groundwork for a request of this magnitude and I am certain we are within our legitimate legislative, legal, and oversight rights.” Neal wants to see returns from 2013 to 2018, along with eight corporate entities, including the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, and also Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to the letter sent to the IRS.

The Biden count today is up to 7. There's more than I can fairly extract. It's pretty ugly.

Joe Biden's policies are as troubling as his inappropriate touching

One thing is clear. Joe Biden is the wrong candidate for 2020. ...

Biden was anti-abortion before he was pro-choice; his record shows that he is still highly ambivalent and unreliable in his support for a woman’s right to choose. In response to the supreme court legalizing abortion for American women in 1973’s Roe v Wade, Biden said they went “too far” and that a woman shouldn’t have the “sole right to say what should happen to her body”. In 1981, when Biden was a young senator and abortion rights were under attack, he voted in favor of a bill that would have allowed states to invalidate Roe – something that would have made abortion effectively illegal for millions of American women. He later voted against the same bill, but that didn’t exactly mark a turn toward feminism or reproductive freedom from Biden.

There’s an anti-abortion amendment named after him, which bans federal dollars from paying for overseas biomedical research related to abortion; he also supported the initial iteration of the Global Gag Rule, which cuts off US family planning foreign aid dollars to any organization that performs abortions with its own non-US money, refers for abortion services, or advocates for legal abortion (he later reversed that position, too).

Biden also supported the Hyde amendment, which says that poor women who rely on Medicaid for their healthcare must nonetheless pay for abortion services out of their own pocket, further stigmatizing abortion, taking it out of the healthcare space, and making it much harder for poor women to have real reproductive choices. He voted for the ban on so-called “partial-birth abortion”, a term invented by the anti-abortion right, that outlawed a rare but sometimes necessary procedure. It didn’t end or outlaw later abortions, it simply told doctors that they could no longer utilize a particular procedure, even where it was safer for a patient in need. Biden said that law did “not go far enough” and that if it was up to him, many more procedures would be banned. He continued to support these kinds of abortion bans even when they didn’t offer exceptions to save a pregnant woman’s life. ...

His political stances on race are similarly conservative and narrow-minded. He opposed bussing as a way to integrate schools, helping to entrench racial segregation to this day. In 1975, he told a Delaware magazine that he didn’t buy the idea that black men have been oppressed for 300 years while white men got ahead, and that “In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race.” Saying he didn’t feel responsible for the sins of his father and grandfather, Biden added, “And I’ll be damned if I feel responsible for what happened 300 years ago.”

Unsurprisingly, Biden has not come out in support of reparations for African Americans. He also hasn’t changed his mind on bussing as a necessary component of school integration, even though, back then, he was casting aspersions on Brown v Board of Education (the supreme court case that invalidated racial segregation in schools) and said that “To ‘desegregate’ is different than to ‘integrate’.” For Biden, apparently, desegregating was fine, but racial integration wasn’t necessary or even desirable.

This is worth a full read. There's a bunch of content from an interview that Buttigieg had with the American Jewish Committee that is quite revealing. Apparently, the Mayor has a taste for KoolAid.

After Gaza slaughter, Buttigieg praised Israeli security responses as ‘moving’ and faulted Democrats for easy judgment

Last May, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg went to Israel with the American Jewish Committee and two weeks later discussed his trip with that organization. At the time Israel was killing Palestinian protesters at the Gaza fence– 60 on one day within days of Buttigieg’s visit, getting global attention — yet Buttigieg repeatedly praised Israel’s security arrangements as “moving” and “clear-eyed”, said the U.S. could learn something from them, and blamed Palestinians and Hamas for the “misery” in Gaza.

He also faulted fellow Democrats for making snap judgments based on “90-second cable news versions of what’s going on over there.” ...

Buttigieg did not meet with AIPAC last week; but we can expect Buttigieg to take a centrist pro-Israel position in opposition to the Democratic base, which is highly critical of Israel.

Congressman Eric Swalwell set to run for president on gun control

Congressman Eric Swalwell will announce next week that he is running for US president with a campaign focused on gun control, it was reported on Thursday.

The 38-year-old will declare during an appearance on CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where he will be joined by Cameron Kasky, a survivor of last year’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, according to the Atlantic magazine. ...

There are already 17 Democrats running for president – congressman Tim Ryan also entered the fray on Thursday – with former vice-president Joe Biden also expected to soon join. Swalwell, a fourth-term congressman from northern California, would potentially follow the playbook of Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state, by differentiating himself with a laser-like concentration on a single issue – in Inslee’s case, climate change.

An excellent piece worth a full read. The road to hell is apparently paved by the greed of the Washington Post and The New York Times.

How the Media Launders Fossil Fuel Industry Propaganda Through Branded Content

There it was in black and white ­— or black, white, and a palette of gentle greens and blues. With a headline predicting that natural gas “will thrive in the age of renewables,” the article made the case that there are limitations on solar and wind power and that — as a subhead spelled out in aquamarine type — natural gas “is part of the solution.” Why was the Washington Post weighing in on the need for continued production of this fossil fuel in the face of climate change?

Or was it? On closer inspection, the report wasn’t coming from the D.C. paper’s newsroom. Though the link takes you to a page published by WashingtonPost.com, the story is actually a publication of WP BrandStudio, the paper’s branded content platform. In other words, the article is really an advertisement, and the copy was paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. The tagline — “Content from American Petroleum Institute” — is plain to see if you’re looking for it, though easy to miss if you’re not.

It’s not surprising that the trade group representing the oil and gas industry would want to leap to the defense of natural gas now. The notion that the energy source is a “bridge fuel” that will somehow safely deliver us to wind and solar — and past the threat of climate change — has been vaporized by recent science. The combustion of natural gas does in fact create less carbon dioxide than the burning of coal, as the API “article” notes, pointing out that “new natural gas plants emit 50 to 60 percent less carbon into the atmosphere than new coal facilities.” But what the piece doesn’t mention is that the drilling, extraction, and transport of natural gas also releases methane. And though carbon dioxide is the best-known greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere longer than methane, methane traps at least 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide before it degrades. Nor does it reference the fact that the amount of methane in the atmosphere has increased sharply in the past few years and, scientists warn, threatens to derail efforts to limit warming. While there are questions as to which of several global sources of methane — including cows, wetlands, and coal mines — is driving the recent spike in emissions, evidence has tied it to the boom of natural gas production. ...

Fossil fuel companies aren’t the only ones using stories that appear to be part of a journalistic publication, but are actually paid for by advertisers in attempt to improve an image suffering in the coverage done by actual journalists. Native advertising, as it’s called, has spread misinformation on everything from the “superfood” moringa to Thai seafood slavery, and has raised serious questions about journalistic ethics. And WP BrandStudio, which has also produced spots for BP and Lockheed Martin, is hardly the only example of a branded content shop associated with a mainstream newspaper helping fossil fuel companies spin their message. T Brand Studio, a brand marketing unit within the New York Times, has produced pieces for Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Shell.

The natural world can help save us from climate catastrophe

Most climate scientists agree that it is now too late to prevent 1.5C or more of global heating only by cutting our production of greenhouse gases. Even if we reduced our emissions to zero tomorrow, we would probably overshoot this crucial temperature limit. To prevent a full-spectrum catastrophe, we need not only to decarbonise our economy in the shortest possible time, but also to draw down carbon dioxide that has already been released. ...

[See article for a counting of problematic solutions on the table. -js]

None of this is necessary, however, because there is a much better and cheaper way of drawing carbon from the air. Natural climate solutions do it through the restoration of living systems. The greatest potential identified so far – as so much land can be used this way – is in protecting and restoring natural forests and allowing native trees to repopulate deforested land. The greatest drawdown potential per hectare (though the total area is smaller) is the restoration of coastal habitats such as mangroves, salt marsh and seagrass beds. They stash carbon 40 times faster than tropical forests can. Peaty soils are also vital carbon stores. They are currently being oxidised by deforestation, drainage, drying, burning, farming and mining for gardening and fuel. Restoring peat, by blocking drainage channels and allowing natural vegetation to recover, can suck back much of what has been lost.

These are the best-studied natural climate solutions. They could help to solve two existential problems at once: climate breakdown and ecological breakdown. Their likely contribution is enormous – bigger than almost anyone guessed a few years ago – and other possibilities have scarcely been explored. For example, we currently have little idea of what the impact of industrial fishing may be on the seabed’s vast carbon store. By disturbing the sediments and lifting the carbon they contain into the water column, trawlers and dredgers are likely to expose it to oxygen, turning it into carbon dioxide. One study suggests that repeated trawling in the north-west Mediterranean has caused a reduction in carbon storage in the top 10 centimetres of sediments of up to 52%. Given the vast area trawled every year (most of the seabed on the world’s continental shelves), the climate impact could be enormous. Closing large parts of the seas to trawling could turn out to be a crucial climate strategy.

Scientists have only begun to explore how the recovery of certain animal populations could radically change the carbon balance. For instance, forest elephants and rhinos in Africa and Asia and tapirs in Brazil are natural foresters, maintaining and extending their habitats as they swallow the seeds of trees and spread them, sometimes across many miles, in their dung. White rhinos can play a major role in preventing runaway wildfires in African savannahs: their grazing prevents dry grass building up. If wolves were allowed to reach their natural populations in North America, one paper suggests, their suppression of herbivore populations would stop as much carbon being released every year as that produced by 30-70m cars. Healthy populations of predatory crabs and fish protect the carbon in salt marshes, as they prevent herbivorous crabs and snails wiping out the plants that hold the marshes together. ...

We don’t want natural climate solutions to be used as a substitute for the rapid and comprehensive decarbonisation of our economies. The science tells us both are needed: the age of carbon offsets is over. But what this thrilling field of study shows is that protecting and rewilding the world’s living systems is not just an aesthetically pleasing thing to do. It is an essential survival strategy.

Also of Interest

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

Jeremy Corbyn as Target Practice

16 Years Later, How the Press That Sold the Iraq War Got Away With It

It’s Time To Reckon With Clinton Democrats Who Pushed Russiagate

Nine Reasons Why You Should Support Joe Biden For President

Deadly appetite: 10 animals we are eating into extinction

Fossil of ancient four-legged whale with hooves discovered

A Little Night Music

BB King & Count Basie Orchestra - Everyday I Have The Blues

Count Basie and his Orchestra - Swinging The Blues

Count Basie & His Orchestra - Blues (I Still Think Of Her)

Bennie Moten with Count Basie - Moten Swing

Oscar Peterson & Count Basie - Jumpin' At The Woodside

Count Basie - Good Times Blues

Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie - Honeysuckle Rose

Oscar Peterson & Count Basie - Slow Blues

Count Basie - One O'Clock Jump