The Evening Blues - 5-10-19



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: B.B. King

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features the king of the blues B.B. King. Enjoy!

BB King - How Blue Can You Get

“Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.”

-- Stanley Milgram


News and Opinion

Chelsea Manning released after 62-day confinement in jail

Chelsea Manning has been released from jail after 62 days of confinement for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

The former army intelligence analyst, who leaked hundreds of thousands of state secrets to WikiLeaks in 2010, was released from the William G Truesdale adult detention center in Alexandria, Virginia, on Thursday after the grand jury she had defied expired.

But her liberation may yet be short-lived. According to her lawyers, even before she walked free, she was issued with a new subpoena ordering her to appear before another grand jury – possibly as soon as 16 May. ...

The former army private faces another term in jail for contempt of court if she continues to refuse to answer questions in front of a reconvened grand jury. She has consistently indicated that she is determined to resist. ...

Details have not been made public as to why Manning is being forced to testify or face jail. The case in which she has been called is sealed. However, it is being processed by a federal court in the eastern district of Virginia – the same district where Julian Assange of WikiLeaks was charged last month.

Swedish prosecutor to give decision on Assange rape inquiry

Sweden’s state prosecutor will announce on Monday whether she will reopen a preliminary investigation into a rape allegation against Julian Assange.

The statute of limitations ran out on the sexual assault allegations in 2015 and the prosecutor dropped the investigation into the rape allegation in 2017 because Assange was in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had taken refuge to avoid extradition. The prosecutor said at the time the investigation could be reopened if the situation changed.

After Assange’s arrest last month, the lawyer representing the woman who accused Assange of rape asked for the investigation to be reopened.

Trump Steps up War on Whistleblowers: Air Force Vet Daniel Hale Arrested For Leaking Drone War Info

Ex-NSA official charged with leaking classified drone documents

A former National Security Agency (NSA) official has been charged with giving classified documents on drone warfare to a journalist, amid a crackdown on government leaks by Donald Trump’s administration. Daniel Hale is accused of leaking top secret files that were published by an online news outlet. The outlet was not identified by prosecutors, but the files described appear to match those published in a series by the Intercept.

Hale, 31, was indicted by a grand jury on five charges relating to the alleged leak. Each charge carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence. The US justice department said Hale was arrested on Thursday morning and would appear in court later in the day.

Authorities said Hale, of Nashville, Tennessee, worked as an intelligence analyst in Afghanistan for the NSA while serving as an enlisted airman in the US air force from 2009 to 2013. He later worked as a contractor for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in Virginia, and allegedly began printing documents unrelated to his work. He allegedly provided at least 17 to the news outlet, 11 of which were marked “secret” or “top secret”.

Trump's top intelligence and military advisers held unusual meeting at CIA on Iran, officials say

In a highly unusual move, national security adviser John Bolton convened a meeting at CIA headquarters last week with the Trump administration's top intelligence, diplomatic and military advisers to discuss Iran, according to six current U.S. officials. The meeting was held at 7 a.m. on Monday, April 29, and included CIA Director Gina Haspel, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, five of the officials said.

National security meetings are typically held in the White House Situation Room. The six current officials, as well as multiple former officials, said it is extremely rare for senior White House officials or Cabinet members to attend a meeting at CIA headquarters.

Five former CIA operations officers and military officials said that in the past, such meetings have been held at CIA headquarters to brief top officials on highly sensitive covert actions, either the results of existing operations or options for new ones. ...

Another possible reason to hold a meeting of senior White House officials at Langley is if there is disagreement about what the intelligence shows on a particular subject, said John McLaughlin, a former acting CIA director. Then-Vice President Dick Cheney frequently traveled to CIA to grill analysts about intelligence, McLaughlin said. Critics later accused Cheney of seeking to cherry-pick intelligence suggesting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, a charge he denies. The CIA and other agencies wrongly assessed that Iraq had WMD.

Donald Trump tells Iran ‘call me’ over lifting sanctions

Donald Trump has offered Iran direct talks, saying its leaders should “call me” and suggested the US would help revive the country’s economy as long as Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons. The impromptu offer by the US president, if serious, represents a dramatic lowering of the bar set by his administration for lifting extensive sanctions, including an oil embargo. ...

“What I’d like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me,” Trump said. He pointed out the Iranian economy was in a shambles as a result of the pressure from the US. “What they should be doing is calling me up, sitting down and we can make a deal, a fair deal,” Trump said. “We just don’t want them to have nuclear weapons. It’s not too much to ask. And we would help put them back into great shape.”

The Trump administration has previously insisted Iran would have to fulfil a list of 12 wide-ranging conditions, including non-intervention in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, in order for sanctions to be lifted. Trump’s remarks suggested that a new deal on the nuclear programme would be enough.

The new Iranian ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht Ravanchi, immediately responded by saying Iran had no interest in developing nuclear weapons. “The first question that he has to answer is why he left the negotiating table because we were talking to all participants of the nuclear deal, including the US,” Ravanchi told NBC News. “So all of a sudden he decided to leave the negotiating table … What is the guarantee that he will not renege again on the future talks between Iran and the US?”

'A Hellfire Missile With F***ing Swords Attached to It': Pentagon Unveils New Weapon

The U.S. military and the CIA reportedly have a new tool in their arsenal: a bomb that doesn't explode, but deploys sword-like blades to kill or maim its human targets.


The R9X Hellfire Missile, which The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday has been used at least twice—once by the Pentagon and once by the CIA—is a new weapon that is intended to reduce civilian casualties. The missile does not have an explosive warhead, but rather uses its weight and "a halo of six long blades" that deploy before impact to shred through whatever is in its path.


"To the targeted person, it is as if a speeding anvil fell from the sky," said the newspaper, citing an official familiar with the missile. ...

"This knife missile seems like something ACME Corporation would design to kill Road Runner," said Defense News naval warfare reporter David Larter. "The payload would either be knives or it can deploy a goofy, over-sized white-gloved hand that bops you in the head with a hammer."


Venezuela Embassy Siege

Trump reportedly blames John Bolton for embroiling him in a potential Venezuelan quagmire

President Trump is having second thoughts about "his administration's aggressive strategy in Venezuela," complaining to aides and advisers that "he was misled about how easy it would be to replace the socialist strongman," President Nicolás Maduro, with opposition leader Juan Guaidó, The Washington Post reports. "The president's dissatisfaction has crystallized around National Security Adviser John Bolton and what Trump has groused is an interventionist stance at odds with his view that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires."

Officially, U.S. policy in Venezuela is the same, and last week's failed effort to oust Maduro has "effectively shelved serious discussion of a heavy U.S. military response," and "Trump is now not inclined to order any sort of military intervention in Venezuela," the Post reports, citing current and former officials and outside advisers. Instead, the U.S. is settling in to wait out Maduro on the expectation he will fall on his own, with the help of U.S. sanctions.

Cenk Uygur Keeps Trying To Out-Maddow Maddow

A new Washington Post article titled “A frustrated Trump questions his administration’s Venezuela strategy” has got people all across the political spectrum barking at shadows, and it doesn’t seem like any of them have actually read it. The opening paragraphs of the anonymously sourced article say there’s tension between the president and National Security Advisor John Bolton about the administration’s humiliating April 30th failed coup attempt in Venezuela, and if you only read those, it looks like a very significant news story. ...

Trump supporters and other hopeful right-wing anti-interventionists have seized on these paragraphs in the hope that Trump is scaling back his escalations in Venezuela and moving toward firing his bloodthirsty National Security Advisor. Liberals, and some self-proclaimed “progressives”, are seizing on this same article as proof that Trump is bought and owned by Vladimir Putin. They are both wrong.

In a new video titled “Told Ya! Trump Changes Venezuela Policy After Putin Call!”, Cenk Uygur, creator of the popular The Young Turks platform, told his 4.3 million YouTube subscribers that this Washington Post article proves Trump has “reversed” his administration’s stance on Venezuela, and that he has done so because of his controversial phone call with Putin a few days earlier. Uygur claims that the report vindicates his previous Russiagate conspiracy mongering because it proves that Trump takes orders from the Russian president. ...

Back to that Washington Post article. Paragraph four reads as follows (emphasis mine):

“The administration’s policy is officially unchanged in the wake of a fizzled power play last week by U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó. But U.S. officials have since been more cautious in their predictions of Maduro’s swift exit, while reassessing what one official described as the likelihood of a diplomatic ‘long haul.’”

Paragraph twelve reads as follows:

“Despite Trump’s grumbling that Bolton had gotten him out on a limb on Venezuela, Bolton’s job is safe, two senior administration officials said, and Trump has told his national security adviser to keep focusing on Venezuela.

Paragraph 39 reads as follows:

“Officials said the options under discussion while Maduro is still in power include sending additional military assets to the region, increasing aid to neighboring countries such as Colombia, and other steps to provide humanitarian assistance to displaced Venezuelans outside of Venezuela. More forward-leaning options include sending naval ships to waters off Venezuela as a show of force.”

So, according to this same report that Uygur is basing videos and tweet after tweet after tweet on, Trump is keeping Bolton, is keeping existing Venezuela policies, and is currently exploring military options to get Maduro out of power. Furthermore, Trump was openly expressing his reluctance to engage in direct military confrontation in Venezuela before his phone call with Putin. On a Fox News interview with Trish Regan in the wake of the coup attempt, Trump said he doesn’t even “like to mention” direct warfare, dodged around Regan’s attempts to get him to address the issue of war directly, and emphasised that there are many other options on the table. ...

Uygur has absolutely no basis for the latest excuse he’s using to continue fanning the flames of Russia hysteria among his millions of followers, but he’s doing it anyway.

‘Bernie Speaks’—and Politico Hears Deviations From Cold War Orthodoxy

Politico magazine (5/3/19) took a deep dig into Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “bizarre, charming and, at times, startling cable-access TV show,” Bernie Speaks With the Community—produced in the 1980s when Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vermont. While the article and accompanying video are relatively friendly to the senator—remarking on his humor (“who knew?”) and other agreeable personality quirks—writer Holly Otterbein’s description of certain clips as “startling” was more eye-opening than anything Sanders actually said.

Rather than explicitly condemning any of Sanders’ statements from the episodes, the piece used the dodge that other people (not us!) might use them against the presidential hopeful. ...

Let’s sum up the fresh dirt Politico so helpfully prepared for anti-Sanders campaign consultants:

  • Sanders is against the media lying about countries targeted by the US government.
  • Sanders is against the US backing crimes against humanity.
  • Sanders is against economic warfare and coercion.
  • And Sanders is for exchange programs that would ease hostility between the US and other countries.

Now, I haven’t watched all the tapes. It’s very possible that Bernie Sanders said something “startling” in the 51 episodes of Bernie Speaks—but if he did, Politico didn’t find it. Instead, the publication showed us its own failure to dislodge from the corporate media’s anti-Communist, neo–Cold War worldview. In a Sanders story that tried to play nice—a rare find in establishment outlets—Politico nonetheless gave us a peek at US media jingoism that was past its sell-by date nearly three decades ago.

Anyway, thanks for the funny tapes, Politico.

Privacy Experts, Senators Demand Investigation of Amazon’s Child Data Collection Practices

Last year, a coalition of privacy advocates and child psychologists warned against putting an Amazon Alexa speaker anywhere near your child on the fairly reasonable grounds that developing minds shouldn’t befriend always-on surveillance devices, no matter how cute the packaging. Now, a group of privacy researchers, attorneys, and U.S. senators are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Amazon’s alleged violations of COPPA, a law protecting the littlest users of all.

COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, regulates how companies can collect and use data on users who might have trouble spelling “privacy,” let alone understand it enough to consent to relinquishing it. COPPA is the reason why so many sites, like Facebook, simply don’t allow children under 13 to sign up. Amazon, on the other hand, decided to court children for its data collection business, releasing the Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition, an always-listening “smart speaker” that retains all of the functions of its adult counterpart, but tucks them inside a candy-colored shell. The kiddo speaker also adds child-specific features, like the ability to have Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa read your child a story in her disembodied robo-voice, or play child-geared content from sources like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon.

A new complaint drafted by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the consumer privacy group Center for Digital Democracy, and Georgetown University’s Institute for Public Representation says that Amazon is committing a litany of COPPA violations through the Echo Dot Kids Edition, and calls on the FTC to investigate.

Amazon’s COPPA violations, according to the complaint, include failure to provide parental notice and obtain parental consent for online services related to the kids’ Echo Dot, failure to tell parents that they have a right to review personal information submitted by their child, and failure to provide parents a way to delete such information or opt out of its collection.

Georgia's six-week abortion ban reveals the cruelty of the anti-choice movement

The anti-choice movement has taken a sadistic turn in Georgia, where a new abortion ban, called HB 481, has just been signed by Governor Brian Kemp. Signed into law this Tuesday and due to take effect in 2020, the bill effectively bans abortion outright, declares fetuses to be persons with full legal rights and protections, and imposes prison sentences for women found guilty of aborting or attempting to abort their pregnancies. The bill is misleadingly termed a “heartbeat” bill, and it bans abortions at any stage of pregnancy after the detection of “embryonic or fetal cardiac activity”. But “heartbeat” is a bit is a bit of a misnomer, since the cardiac activity that is first detected in an embryo is not a heartbeat by any stretch of the imagination; what is first observed is the pulsing of cells that are specializing and will eventually become a heart. At this point in the pregnancy, the fetus has no brain and no face.

This cellular movement can first be detected at a phase of pregnancy referred to as six weeks of gestation. But this, too, is a misleading phrase. Gestational age is measured not from insemination, but from the beginning of the patient’s last menstrual period. So the bill bans all abortions at four weeks after conception, or roughly two weeks after the woman’s first missed period.

This stage of pregnancy is often past before the patient even knows that she is pregnant. This is the idea: to make the logistical, legal and monetary burdens to access an abortion so heavy that most women will not be able to get one. All this is justified by a moralizing, misogynistic and medically arbitrary logic based on a fantasy that wants to equate the movement of cells with personhood. Based on this logic, women who abort their pregnancies – and, probably, some women who have accidental miscarriages – will be treated as murderers under the law, subject to imprisonment and even capital punishment. Those who leave the state for an abortion, or who help others leave the state for an abortion, can be charged with conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

It is tempting to imagine that the law would not be enforced this way, that prosecutors and juries would not enforce a law that forces women to give birth and threatens to kill them if they refuse. But prosecutors have proved themselves zealous in prosecuting women in states where abortion is already de facto illegal. It would be a mistake to underestimate their capacity for cruelty.

According to our capitalist overlords, you're broke because you eat lunch

We live in what feels like permanently lean times. Forty-two per cent of American adults are at risk of retiring broke, a whopping 60% don’t have enough money saved to cover a $1,000 expense and the majority don’t expect their lot to improve in 2019. But fret no more, for the Nobel-worthy economists at LadderLife.com (“we make life insurance simple”) have figured out what’s holding you back from getting ahead, saving for retirement and taking out a lavish life insurance policy: lunch.

According to a study commissioned by the altruistic insurance website and reported by USA Today, the average American spends nearly $1,500 a month on “nonessential items” such as takeout or delivery, gym memberships, rideshares and “buying lunch”. So, food, exercise, transportation and ... um, food. Also on the chopping block: personal grooming (because hiring managers love an unkempt dirtbag), bottled water (think of your thirst as God’s way of punishing you for your poor financial planning) and TV or movie streaming services (forget “Netflix and chill”, it’s time for “stare at the wall and drool”). But who has time to watch movies anyway when you get up at 4am to walk to work because they defunded public transit in your area? Oh well, at least that takes care of exercise. Meeting a friend for drinks or coffee? Whatever you say, Warren Buffett. ...

While this is obviously well-funded PR designed to shame you into buying insurance from LadderLife.com, legitimate outlets such as USA Today are uncritically presenting “the tendency to splurge consistently on nonessentials” as what’s “causing Americans to neglect their near-term savings” and “skimp on other important items” like – Jesus Christ – “life insurance”. (I hope the paper at least got some money for this.) The embedded ideological message: if you’re broke, it’s your own fault, so suck it up, make some air sandwiches, and whatever you do, don’t blame the system. Bootstraps! John Wayne! Horatio Alger!

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders Team Up on Bank Legislation

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will announce her first major bill today, in partnership with Vermont Sen. and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. It’s something Sanders has proposed for many years: a 15 percent interest rate cap on all consumer loans, which would reduce what many Americans pay on their credit cards and effectively eliminate the payday loan industry. The bill is called the Loan Shark Prevention Act, and it’s only two pages long. It includes language that would prevent lenders from adding fees to “evade” the interest rate cap and sets penalties for violators, including a forfeiture of all interest on the illegal loans.

According to Ocasio-Cortez’s office, the freshman representative plans to suggest postal banking as a public option for consumer lending, though that is not in the legislation. A postal lending option would in theory minimize the impact on access to credit from the rate cap. Sanders endorsed postal banking during his 2016 presidential campaign.

The interest rate cap, often referred to as a usury cap in a reference to the biblical term, has been a mainstay of Sanders’s left-wing agenda. He introduced similar legislation as far back as 2009, when Congress was debating the CARD Act, which added some more modest protections for credit card holders. While the 2009 bill specifically focused on credit cards, by 2016 Sanders had added all consumer loans to the plan.



the evening greens


Stop eating fish. It’s the only way to save the life in our seas

It is the most important news humanity has ever received: the general collapse of life on Earth. The vast international assessment of the state of nature, as revealed on Monday, tells us that the living planet is in a death spiral. Yet it’s hardly surprising that it appeared on few front pages of British newspapers. Of all the varieties of media bias, the deepest is the bias against relevance. The more important the issue, the less it is discussed. There’s a reason for this. Were we to become fully aware of our predicament, we would demand systemic change. Systemic change is highly threatening to those who own the media. So they distract us with such baubles as a royal baby and a vicious dispute between neighbours about a patio. I am often told we get the media we deserve. We do not. We get the media its billionaire owners demand.

This means that the first duty of a journalist is to cover neglected issues. So I want to direct you to the 70% of the planet that was sidelined even in the sparse coverage of the new report: the seas. Here, life is collapsing even faster than on land. The main cause, the UN biodiversity report makes clear, is not plastic. It is not pollution, not climate breakdown, not even the acidification of the ocean. It is fishing. Because commercial fishing is the most important factor, this is the one we talk about least. ... An investigation by Greenpeace last year revealed that 29% of the UK’s fishing quota is owned by five families, all of whom feature on the Sunday Times Rich List. A single Dutch multinational, operating a vast fishing ship, holds a further 24% of the English quota. The smallest boats – less than 10 metres long – comprise 79% of the fleet, but are entitled to catch just 2% of the fish.

The same applies worldwide: huge ships from rich nations mop up the fish surrounding poor nations, depriving hundreds of millions of their major source of protein, while wiping out sharks, tuna, turtles, albatrosses, dolphins and much of the rest of the life of the seas. Coastal fish farming has even greater impacts, as fish and prawns are often fed on entire marine ecosystems: indiscriminate trawlers dredge up everything and mash it into fishmeal. The high seas – in other words, the oceans beyond the 200-mile national limits – are a lawless realm. Here fishing ships put out lines of hooks up to 75 miles long, which sweep the sea clean of predators and any other animals that encounter them. But even inshore fisheries are disastrously managed, through a combination of lax rules and a catastrophic failure to enforce them. ...

There are almost no fish or shellfish we can safely eat. Recent scandals suggest that even the Marine Stewardship Council label, which is supposed to reassure us about the fish we buy, is no guarantee of sound practice. For example, the council certified tuna fisheries in which endangered sharks had been caught and finned; and, in UK waters, it has approved scallop dredging that rips the seabed to shreds. Until fishing is properly regulated and contained, we should withdraw our consent. Save your plastic bags by all means, but if you really want to make a difference, stop eating fish.

Shocking UN Report Warns up to a Million Species are at Risk of Extinction Due to Human Activity

200+ Groups Demand Senate Kill Bill That Would Pour 'Fuel on Fire of Climate Crisis'

More than 200 national climate action groups on Thursday demanded that the Senate stop the passage of a bill that would serve to keep both Europe and the U.S. dependent on fossil fuels for decades to come—as millions around the world have marched in recent months to demand that governments rapidly shift away from carbon-emitting energy sources.

Passed by the House in March, the European Energy Security and Diversification Act of 2019 (S. 704) would provide billions of dollars in support for natural gas infrastructure projects, propping up fossil fuel industries and leading to fracking projects in the U.S.—undercutting the goals of climate campaigners who are demanding that all industrialized countries move toward renewable energy systems.

S. 704 would lock "both the United States and Europe into decades of continued fossil fuel dependence under the guise of national security," said Food and Water Watch, which organized the letter signed by groups including the Sunrise Movement, 350.org, Greenpeace, Oil Change U.S., and Friends of the Earth. "At a time when we should be leading the global mission to rapidly quit fossil fuels, the notion of seeking new and deeper fossil fuel codependence between America and Europe is patently absurd," Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch, said.

The legislation is now under consideration in the Senate, with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) sponsoring the bill along with five bipartisan co-sponsors. Murphy and other proponents say the bill would counter Russia's influence over energy production in Eastern Europe, but climate campaigners warned against using the fossil fuel sector, which releases millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, to push Russian President Vladimir Putin out of European energy markets is a short-sighted solution.

While U.S. funding of fossil fuel projects in Europe may drive down Russian influence for now, the groups wrote, it would also exacerbate water scarcity, food shortages, and rising sea levels—all "geopolitical threats" in their own right.

The high tech sector dreams of a life without you:

Silicon Valley Could Care Less About Earth’s Imminent Demise

Plenty of people and companies have had a hand in leading the globe down the destructive, possibly irreversible path to climate catastrophe. In his New York Times Best Seller “Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?,” Bill McKibben, who has written over a dozen books about the environment and has been called “the world’s best green journalist,” fingers the Koch brothers, the Republican Party and fossil fuel companies worldwide, among countless others. This is humanity’s endgame, after all, and in a matter so serious and wide-reaching, there is plenty of blame to go around.

While each of these actors has played their part in our environmental tragedy, however, there’s another culprit that has largely gone overlooked: Silicon Valley. In the global tech capital, McKibben found megamillionaires who are less interested in saving this planet and more invested in finding a new planet to inhabit. And the reasoning behind this destructive desire is even more perverse than many would imagine.

“[Tech barons are] believers in some kind of techno fantasy world, where at least they will be able to survive and prosper,” McKibben tells Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer in the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence. “And they’re completely caught up in that world, and not paying much attention to [earth’s destruction]—in fact, they’re abetting it. We learn with each passing day more about the ways that, say, Google’s tools are being used by the oil industry to find yet more hydrocarbons that we can’t burn. … What [tech barons] and the Koch brothers don’t want is society—they don’t want the rest of us in their way. They want to do what they want to do.”

McKibben traces this ideology, prevalent in Silicon Valley as well as other sectors of U.S. society, to such figures as Ronald Reagan, author Ayn Rand and former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who popularized an extremely individualistic worldview about life that reigned for decades. “That worldview would have been a problem at any time,” McKibben asserts, “but it’s a tragedy at the moment, when we desperately needed government to step in and do something about climate change.”


Also of Interest

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

Is Trump a Fascist?

‘Turnkey Tyranny’ on the Streets of Washington

CodePink’s Medea Benjamin: Venezuelan Embassy’s Power Cut

Is America Ready for John Bolton’s War With Iran?

“The Fourth Amendment Doesn’t Apply Here” — U.S. Border Guards Arrest Arizona Immigrant Rights Volunteer

U.S. Government Indicts Another Intercept Source

Trump Continues Obama’s War On Whistleblowers, Arrests Another Alleged Intercept Source

Intercept Statement on the Indictment of Alleged Drone Strike Whistleblower

A Grim Fate Awaits Most of Rural America

Joe Biden Personifies a New “End of History,” This time for U.S. Imperial Rule

Cyclone-hit Pine Ridge reservation forced to recover on its own

Our obsession with growth is ruining the planet. A Green New Deal can save us

Dyson patents reveal plans for electric car with off-road potential


A Little Night Music

BB King - I Believe To My Soul

B.B. King - Sitting On Top Of The World

B.B. King - I've Got a Mind to Give Up Living

B.B. King - Growing Old

B.B. King - Worried Dream

B.B. King - I Gotta Move Out Of This Neighborhood

B B King - Hummingbird

B.B.King - Better Not Look Down

B.B. King - Why I Sing the Blues

B.B. King - BB's Blues

B.B. King - There Must Be A Better World Somewhere


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called it

Shares of Uber fell more than 7% on its first day of trading Friday, marking a rocky Wall Street debut for a company that endured plenty of bumps on its long road to going public. Uber opened at $42 a share, below its IPO price of $45, and ended the day even lower at $41.57.
That disappointing first day performance sets Uber apart from the vast majority of its tech peers. In the past five years, only 10% of venture capital-backed US technology IPOs finished the first day in the red, according to data provided to CNN Business from Renaissance Capital, which manages IPO-focused exchange-traded funds.

Uber did succeed in raising $8.1 billion in one of the largest public offerings ever, a substantial war chest that should fund the company's expansion into new cities and service categories. But that amount was still at the low end of what Uber originally set out to raise.

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@gjohnsit
This reminds me of a phenomenon we saw during the big dotcom boom, something I referred to at the time as the "Way-load" mutual funds. These weren't actually mutual funds, they were internet service companies that held IPOs and then went shopping with their shareholders' investments, paying ridiculous prices to buy startups that were unlikely to ever turn a profit.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

joe shikspack's picture

@UntimelyRippd

a substantial war chest that should fund the company's expansion into new cities and service categories

woohoo! now they can lose money and oppress workers in new markets!

capitalism for the win!

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dystopian's picture

@UntimelyRippd So much potential to disrupt and undermine legal licensed businesses, just like cabs. There are lots of industries out there ripe for the pickin', just waiting for some asshole to come along and F it up, I mean gig economy it.

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

snoopydawg's picture

Who else remembers the TV ads saying "buy American"? This came out just as Japan was building Hondas and Datsuns and US cars were huge gas guzzlers and just not as fun to drive. My first car was a Honda. It came with a choke that froze every winter. lol. Don't know how many times I had to call someone to get towed home. Good ole Herbie..it became a Hoda after the N fell off.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

Who else remembers the TV ads saying "buy American"?

yeah, i remember those - and the bumper stickers of the same period that said "live better, work union."

seems that the folks that organize the economy (sometimes confused with the invisible hand of the "free" market) had other ideas.

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dystopian's picture

Love Blues Boy. That intonation, the vibrato, and great singing too. Sooooo good.

So Bolton, Haspell, and Pompeo had a meeting... the results of which though undisclosed, smart money is on it not ending well for some people with less lily-white asses. When Bolton was born and all the other babies cried waaaaaaaaaaaa, Bolton cried warrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Ever since Cenk at TYT took those big establishment bucks, it is almost as if a switch was flicked. I can't imagine why... what a sellout!

The GA abortion bill is insanity. As is the new OH one. First for the definition of a heartbeat, when there is no heart, brain, face or organs. It ought to be criminal to misuse terms at this level, and thrown out on this alone. Surely a big reason for it, is hoping it will go to the SCOTUS. Funny how the same folks splitting these cells are climate science deniers.

The U.S. saying the Venzuelan government asked them to turn off power and water, when of course that did not happen, they are only aiding and abetting a coup, seems like it could hardly be more illegal. Regardless, it is insanity.

May the farce be with you!

Thanks for all the great tunes, and encyclopedic knowledge of the blues...

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

joe shikspack's picture

@dystopian

So Bolton, Haspell, and Pompeo had a meeting... the results of which though undisclosed

... but one doesn't have to be a psychic to know just what the topic was. of course any time some of the most evil people on the planet meet like that one can only hope that their collective incompetence exceeds their ability to act.

Funny how the same folks splitting these cells are climate science deniers.

heh, i grew up in a rural area and had many amusing interactions with folks who would tell you all about how selective breeding works but didn't think that evolution was a plausible theory.

the farce is omnipresent.

have a great weekend!

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Azazello's picture

I don't eat that much fish anyhow, living in the desert.
But I'm getting tired of people telling me what to eat. Stop Eating Fish, they say, you're depleting the oceans. Stop Eating Beef, they say, like I caused feedlots and factory farming.
It's not my eating habits that are the problem. Don't blame me.
How 'bout this: STOP HAVING FUCKING KIDS.
We used to talk about ZPG back in the day, Zero Population Growth.
That's the problem. It doesn't matter what we eat, there's too damn many of us.
That's all.
I have a nice little piece of beef in the fridge and I intend to make chili tomorrow.
I'm going to the northwest this summer and I'm going to eat some fish, some Indian style smoked salmon. And yes, I know that the fish harvest is down but I didn't do it.

I gotta' settle down.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c3FD6msOzo width:500 height:300]

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

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

population decline is needed and will happen one way or the other. but what is really needed is for the people who organize society need to be replaced by smarter and more compassionate people. unfortunately, the means by which the masters of the universe are chosen does not select for intellect and compassion so much as it selects for ruthless perseverance in the face of any sort of moral dissonance or opposition.

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Azazello's picture

@joe shikspack
of course, but the underlying problem remains.
Does the planet have a certain carrying capacity,
and have we reached it yet ?

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

mimi's picture

@joe shikspack @joe shikspack
the one way which is more likely, imo, is the one that is more efficient in killing massive amounts of people, war and man-made diseases.

Count on it.

BB King says it all. Too damn sad, life that is. Growing old is not easy.

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skod's picture

@Azazello My farts contribute to global warning; without question. So do the farts of all of the cattle grazing in feedlots or on the plains.

Now, let’s talk for a moment about the literal *megatons* of coal and literal *billions* of barrels of oil burned to execute the Manhattan project and tear it down, build Hanford and tear it down, build 500+ missile silos and pretty much immediately tear them back down, and build 90 gazillion dollars of war machinery that was obsolete before they were started, which we are *still* tearing down. Fuck, at this point, we start paying for tearing them down before we start building them.

Chrome Dome alone (keeping a fleet of B-52s on 24/7 airborne alert for freakin’ *decades*) used a gallon or two of gas, I think. There’s never been an accounting of which I’m aware. Nor has there been an accounting of how much fossil energy was used to create the kg or so of plutonium in each warhead (of which we have thousands), let alone how much thermal energy was flushed uselessly down the Columbia River, or the Techa, in the pursuit of that .00002% of “product” from every ton of raw uranium.

I’m a downwinder. If I eat a farting steak, and fart while doing so, *I’m* not the problem. I’ve got a few bequerels of “sunshine units” on board that I didn’t particularly want, either.

No smiley. Perspective is, as they say, a bitch.

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GreatLakeSailor's picture

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

joe shikspack's picture

@GreatLakeSailor

thanks for the link! i hope that gravel's campaign starts getting some attention.

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it attacks the privilege that has otherwise been enjoyed by women whose socioeconomic status has always meant they could simply fly to somewhere that hadn't banned abortions.

i suspect that even our current supreme court full of religious fanatics will find it hard to stomach that provision in the bill. hell, you could argue that it violates the commerce clause.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

joe shikspack's picture

@UntimelyRippd

i have this dream of another means of solving the problem. i would like to see all of the (non-christofascist-nutcase) women of georgia leave the state. let the guys enjoy their rules.

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@joe shikspack
So, I sent an excerpt of that excerpt to a right-wing loony-tune of my acquaintance who happens to live in Georgia, and I was shortly informed that I had been misinformed.

I searched in vain for any source that cited the text from the bill, gave up, found a link to the bill, and went and read it myself -- a rather painful experience, because
A. It contains lots of struck-through text representing current law that was being amended
and
B. It's utterly nauseating in its content, beginning with this bit from the preamble:

(4) The State of Georgia, applying reasoned judgement to the full body of modern medical science, recognizes the benefits of providing full legal recognition to an unborn child above the minimum requirements of federal law;

In fact, no such application of reasoned judgement to the full body of modern medical science was performed, given that -- as I illustrated a day or two ago with a remarkable youtube video -- there is no relationship between the automatic "beating" of a cardiomyocyte and the proximal humanity (or any other -ity) of the bit of tissue within which the cardiomyocyte happens to find itself.

Nonetheless, there is no text in the bill that even approximately asserts Georgia's right to prosecute someone for going out of state for an abortion, or for giving somebody else bus fare to go out of state for an abortion. As is exhaustively explained at truthorfiction, that claim was a legal speculation made by Mark Stern, who covers courts and law for Slate.

That doesn't mean it's impossible -- but it does mean that a prosecutor would have to decide to try to win such a case ... and then would have to win it.

So anyway, if you don't want to look like an idiot, I suggest you avoid repeating that assertion -- it's more or less impossible to back it up.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

SnappleBC's picture

That is a long established thing. I remember my brother telling me about it at least 15 years ago. Here's the really fun part. The region extends for 200 miles from any border... and they include international airports as borders. Stop and think on that for a moment.

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard