The Evening Blues - 7-25-19



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Little Mack Simmons

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues harmonica player, singer, and songwriter Little Mack Simmons. Enjoy!

Little Mack Simmons - Just Your Fool

“There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future.”

-- Noam Chomsky


News and Opinion

Iran hints at ship swap with UK amid de-escalation efforts

Iran has indicated it wants to de-escalate the British-Iranian crisis, hinting at swapping two captured tankers. “We do not seek the continuation of tension with some European countries,” Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said on Wednesday during a weekly cabinet meeting. “If Britain steps away from the wrong actions in Gibraltar, they will receive an appropriate response from Iran.”

He was speaking after a two-day visit by Iraq’s prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, who had revealed he went to Tehran this week partly at the request of the UK defence secretary, Penny Mordaunt, to negotiate the release of the captured British-flagged ship Stena Impero seized by Iranian forces in the strait of Hormuz last Friday.

The Iraqi prime minister revealed that on Monday “there was a phone call with the British defence minister to discuss bilateral ties, the regional crisis, and efforts of de-escalation and decreasing tensions in the region, and also the existing crisis covering the confiscated ships”. Iraq is a strong opponent of US sanctions against Iran. ...

The new US defence secretary, Mark Esper, said on Wednesday, than Washington was also seeking to defuse the standoff in the Gulf. “We’re trying to deescalate and at the same time message them very clearly that without preconditions, any time, any place, we are willing to meet with them and talk about how we get back into a negotiation,” Esper told reporters.

He added that European plans to coordinate naval escorts for oil tankers transiting the strait of Hormuz were “complementary” to the US proposal, dubbed Operational Sentinel. “The Brits are escorting their ships, and we will escort our ships to the degree the risk demands it and I assume other countries will escort their ships.”

Environmental disaster of unprecedented scale may occur if Yemeni oil tankers explode

Trump vetoes resolutions attempting to block Saudi arms sales

President Trump has vetoed three congressional resolutions that would block his emergency arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

"This resolution would weaken America's global competitiveness and damage the important relationships we share with our allies and partners," Trump wrote in veto messages to Congress released by the White House on Wednesday evening.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) earlier in the afternoon entered Trump's veto messages into the Senate record and set up a vote on the messages before Aug. 2.

Congress is not expected to have the two-thirds majority needed to override Trump’s vetoes.

The move marks the third time Trump has used his veto pen, and it follows an earlier veto of a Saudi-related measure.

Senators Break Ranks Over Saudi Arabia

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, traditionally a haven of bipartisan cooperation on Capitol Hill, has become ensnared in a bitter and rare dispute between its top Republican and Democrat over separate bills on Saudi Arabia. Both Sen. James Risch, the Republican chairman of the committee, and Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the committee, have accused each other of breaking agreements on how to proceed with two bills that would ramp up pressure on Saudi Arabia following the kingdom’s role in the deadly conflict in Yemen and Saudi officials’ culpability in the 2018 murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. ...

In a break from long-standing tradition, Risch scheduled a meeting for the committee to vote on the bills this week over the objections of his Democratic counterpart, Menendez. The move angered Democrats, but Republicans said it was necessary to proceed with votes. Historically, Republican and Democratic leaders on the committee have only scheduled meetings once both sides agreed; this tradition of “comity”—based on the belief that politics should stop at the water’s edge—set Foreign Relations apart from nearly all of the other Senate committees that have fallen into increasingly partisan and politicized gridlocks. ...

Risch put forward a bill, backed by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Chris Coons, that would force the secretary of state to conduct a review of the U.S.-Saudi relationship and deny or revoke visas to some members of the Saudi royal family as reprisal for the kingdom’s human rights violations. Republican Senate aides told Foreign Policy that Risch consulted with the White House and State Department on the bill. Menendez and Republican Sen. Todd Young introduced a bill that takes a harsher line on Riyadh, backed by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins as well as several Democrats. Their bill halts some U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, bars U.S. refueling of Saudi aircraft engaged in Yemen, and puts sanctions on people involved in the murder of Khashoggi. ...

On June 19, Menendez said on the Senate floor, “We have agreed to use [Risch’s] legislation as a base text to which we will be able to offer amendments that reflect the bipartisan consensus contained in my bill.” Risch disputes this, several Republican Senate aides tell Foreign Policy, saying he agreed to put forward both bills separately. ... Democratic aides say they worry if two bills go forward, McConnell will bring Risch’s bill, which they view as weaker on Saudi Arabia, to the floor, leaving the Menendez and Young bill dead in the water.

When Risch broke comity by announcing a committee meeting on Thursday to vote on the Saudi bills over Democratic objections, Menendez responded by proposing over 370 amendments to the bills, as well as several other bills set to be voted on in the meeting. Both sides see the other as unwilling to cooperate: “It’s meant to gum up the process, it’s not legislating, it’s just kind of absurd,” said the Republican aide. “This is not a stunt, this simply shows what a post-comity world looks like,” said a Democratic one.

U.S. blocks U.N. rebuke of Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes

The United States on Wednesday blocked an attempt by Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa to get the United Nations Security Council to condemn Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes on the outskirts of Jerusalem, diplomats said. ...

Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa circulated a five-paragraph draft statement, seen by Reuters, to the 15-member Security Council on Tuesday that expressed grave concern and warned that the demolition “undermines the viability of the two-state solution and the prospect for just and lasting peace.”

Lots more detail at the link.

As Puerto Rico Erupts in Protests, “La Junta” Eyes More Power

Embattled Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló is expected to resign July 24 amid massive protests on the island and around the world. A demonstration in the capital city of San Juan on Monday drew an estimated 1 million people — almost a third of the island’s total population — to protest a decadeslong economic crisis that peaked in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The unelected and Washington-appointed body now overseeing the island’s finances — the Fiscal Oversight and Management Board, called la junta by Puerto Ricans — may use a democratic explosion in Puerto Rico to further curtail its democracy.

For protesters, leaked Telegram chats, published by the Center for Investigative Journalism earlier this month, were the final straw after years of a painful recession and austerity measures imposed by la junta following the 2017 hurricane. In addition to the governor joking with his top staff about shooting San Juan mayor and gubernatorial candidate Carmen Yulín Cruz and calling former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito a puta, or whore, the chats show that confidential information on government contracts and operations was being shared with ex-officials now working for corporate interests. Protesters erupted with anger over the fact that money which should have gone to hurricane recovery was being filtered toward lawyers and consultants close with the government. ...

Now many fear la junta will use these rolling legitimacy crises as ammo in an ongoing push to have Washington amend the oversight legislation to grant them broader authority, like the ability to veto measures passed through the island’s legislature. The Washington Post editorial board recently called for exactly that, writing that la junta’s “effectiveness has been hampered” and that “Congress should take steps to strengthen the board.” So far, presiding Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who is overseeing the bankruptcy proceeding, hasn’t accommodated board requests for more power, such as over day-to-day governance. And on July 24, at the urging of 60 civil society organizations and others, Swain ruled to put that legal process on hold for the next three months until the situation on the island is more stable.

“This is a moment when we have people rising up and saying they want to have power to make their own decisions,” Julio López Varona, a lawyer and San Juan-based organizer with Construyamos Otro Acuerdo and the Center for Popular Democracy, told me. “People are not in the streets because they want more federal control. They are in the streets because they want a say in their future.”

As one popular chant goes, “¡Ricky renuncia y llévate a la junta!” or “Ricky resign and take la junta with you!”

“A Victory for the People of Puerto Rico”: Gov. Ricardo Rosselló Resigns Following Mass Protests

Puerto Rico governor clings to power amid threat of impeachment

The fate of Puerto Rico’s besieged governor, Ricardo Rosselló, hung in the balance on Wednesday evening as the US territory’s legislature threatened impeachment proceedings if the governor did not resign. Mass demonstrations on the island are approaching their second week, as local press reports on Tuesday evening indicated the governor would resign by midday on Wednesday.

But the governor’s resignation did not manifest by the afternoon and the administration later issued a release stating Rosselló was “in a process of reflection and of listening to the people”. ...

On Wednesday, local reports indicated that the president of Puerto Rico’s house of representatives, Carlos “Johnny” Méndez, would convene a special session of the island’s legislature on Thursday to initiate impeachment proceedings against the governor.

The news followed an announcement that a group of attorneys commissioned by the legislature to examine Rosselló’s conduct had unanimously found five offenses, some related to embezzlement, that constituted grounds for impeachment.

Protests Erupt in London as Boris Johnson Is Sworn in as New Prime Minister, Promising Swift Brexit

Why Europe can’t stop laughing at Boris Johnson

After years of laughing at him, Europeans simply don’t take Johnson seriously. At this stage, it’s difficult to imagine what could change their minds. While Europeans may take delight in lampooning Donald Trump, they also respect (and fear) the power of his office. Whether they like it or not (and most don’t), Trump has considerable leverage over Europe, both in terms of the economy and security.

But no one’s afraid of Johnson.

Though the U.K. remains a key strategic player within Europe, that reliance cuts across both sides of the Channel. Following the seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker by Iran last week, for example, the U.K. responded by calling for a European naval force to protect sea routes in the Strait of Hormuz.

When it comes to the economy, the U.K. is far more dependent on the EU than vice versa. That’s why Europe’s response to Johnson’s threat to leave the EU come what may on October 31, deal or no deal, has been a polite yawn. If anything, Johnson’s election as prime minister will make it easier for EU leaders to stick to their guns by refusing to budge on the terms of the deal they negotiated with Theresa May, his predecessor. Whatever her shortcomings as a prime minister, May, unlike Johnson, enjoyed a reputation among European leaders as an honest broker.

Given the leading role Johnson played in the Brexit campaign and his continued taunting of the EU, European leaders don’t just distrust the new prime minister, many despise him.

The danger of Johnson’s credibility gap is that it could prompt EU leaders to underestimate his willingness to drive Britain off the Brexit cliff, triggering a potentially catastrophic chain reaction.

The UK Now Considers Far-Right Terror As Dangerous As Islamic Extremism

The British government has overhauled the way it assesses terror threat levels to include homegrown and right-wing extremists, putting them on an equal footing with foreign and jihadist threats.

Until now, the terror threat system — which assesses the likelihood of an attack in the UK on a scale from "low" to "critical" — has only addressed the threat from international terrorism, which the Home Office said had become largely synonymous with jihadist attacks.

Announcing the changes Tuesday, Home Secretary Sajid Javid said the new system reflected the growing terror threat from the far-right.

“While the Islamist threat remains, we have recently seen an increase in terrorist activity motivated by the extreme right-wing,” he said. “Our approach to stopping terrorists is the same, regardless of the twisted ideology that motivates them.” ...

British police revealed in March that four of the 18 terror plots thwarted in the past three years have come from the far-right, including a neo-Nazi plot to kill a left-wing MP with a machete. Meanwhile, of the nearly 400 people who were referred to the government’s de-radicalization program in 2017-2018, roughly an equal number were referred for concerns of about far-right and Islamist extremism.

Right-wing terrorism 'merkin style, video at the link:

Video Shows ICE Agents Smashing a Family’s Car Window and Dragging the Dad Out

When Florencio Millan-Vazquez refused to roll down his car window after being pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers Monday, the officers smashed the window and dragged him out of the car. The arrest was documented on Facebook Live by Cheyenne Hoyt, the girlfriend of 32-year-old Millan-Vazquez. The couple was reportedly taking their 7-month-old daughter to the doctor when a car pulled in front of them and a man who identified himself as an ICE officer said he had a warrant for Millan-Vasquez’s arrest.

Hoyt can be heard asking the officers if they have a warrant. “Do you have proof that you’re here legally?” one officer replied when asked for a warrant. “If you have it, we’ll leave.” ... One officer smashed the window, pried the door open, and dragged Millan-Vazquez out. Officers with the Kansas City Police Department assisted with the arrest. ...

"He said that he had a warrant for my boyfriend’s arrest," Hoyt told a local news station of the ICE officer. "We asked to see the warrant. He refused us the warrant. I asked for the name on the warrant. He still refused."

On Facebook, Kansas City Mayor Sly James slammed the Trump administration for the arrest. “This issue is about politics and the hate-filled ideologies of the current administration in Washington,” Sly wrote.

Border Patrol Chief Denies Knowing About Vulgar Posts in Facebook Group She Was a Member Of

Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost said Wednesday that she knew nothing about the existence of a racist, vulgar Facebook posts in a group for agency officers — even though she's been a member of since 2017.

At a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, Provost called the posts “highly offensive and absolutely unacceptable,” and referred to the people who uploaded them as “a few bad apples.”

There were roughly 9,500 members of the Facebook group, ProPublica reported. There are about 20,000 Border Patrol agents in the U.S. ...

Provost also said that she “self-reported” her membership to the group to the Office of Professional Responsibility, and gave officers there the login information to her personal Facebook account. “In their assessment, from June 2018 through June of 2019, I logged onto Facebook on nine different days,” she said. “I am as outraged as everyone else when it comes to the statements that were made on that page.”

Trump administration's bid to limit asylum seekers blocked by US judge

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s effort to bar migrants from seeking asylum in the US if they have passed through another country first without seeking protection there. The preliminary injunction, issued by the US district judge Jon Tigar in California, was handed down after a hearing in which government lawyers presented oral arguments for new asylum restrictions on migrants coming to the southern border.

During a hearing on Wednesday morning in San Francisco, the justice department lawyer Scott Stewart described the new interim rule, announced by the Trump administration last week, as “lawful” and “appropriately issued”, saying it was needed to “address the urgent, ongoing crisis” at the border.

Opponents of the measure, which include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for Constitutional Rights, have argued that the policy violates domestic and international law as well as the right of migrants to seek asylum in the US.

During the hearing, Tigar questioned the ability of countries such as Mexico and Guatemala to handle the volume of asylum-seekers and process their claims. “There’s some pretty tough stuff in there,” Tigar said, adding that applications were “up dramatically”. He noted that the government had failed to provide a “scintilla of evidence” about the ability of the asylum system process in Guatemala to cope with the influx.

Tigar, who previously issued an injunction in another case involving administration-sought asylum restrictions, said during the hearing he expected an appeal by whichever side was not successful in his ruling. ... Tigar’s previous order blocked the president’s effort to deny the protection to anyone who did not enter the US through a legal port of entry.

4,000 Migrant Kids Might Have to Spend the Rest of Their Childhood in Federal Custody

Thousands of migrant kids could spend the rest of their childhoods in federal custody because the government hasn’t been able to find their sponsors.

Approximately one-third of the children held in shelters operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or more than 4,000 kids, have been designated “Category 4,” meaning they have no identifiable sponsor in the U.S., CBS News reports. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the government hasn’t tried to find their sponsors, usually relatives or family friends living in the U.S. It just hasn’t been able to.

It also means that these children will be held indefinitely until — or unless — a sponsor comes forward.



the horse race



Tulsi Slams Kamala “NOT QUALIFIED To Be Commander & Chief”

Joe Biden’s New Foreign Policy Adviser Supported Iraq War and Dubbed Edward Snowden a “Traitor”

Joe Biden’s new foreign policy adviser was a supporter of the Iraq War while serving in the George W. Bush administration, though he now says it was “a pretty serious blunder.” Nicholas Burns, whose hiring was first reported by CNN on Monday, has also called NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden a “a traitor.” Biden, of course, was a supporter of the war himself and later advocated splitting Iraq into three independent countries along sectarian lines. In the runup to the war, Biden was chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Burns worked on the National Security Council staff under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He then served as ambassador to NATO, and later undersecretary of state for political affairs, the third-ranking position in the State Department, under George W. Bush. Burns retired in 2008 from public service and has since been a senior counselor at the Cohen Group, a global lobbying and influence firm, as well as a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He was an adviser to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. 

According to his Harvard resume, he is a consultant for Goldman Sachs. His Harvard bio also lists speeches he gave in 2018, some of which he says he was paid for. He spoke to Bank of America, State Street, CitiBank, Honeywell, and a number of other companies, universities, and associations.

Robert Mueller Testimony Disappoints Democrats Who Bet on Special Counsel to Help Sink Trump

Mueller Unravels! Cringe Worthy Testimony Exposes Russiagate Hoax!

Democrats Are Launching “News” Outlets to Turn Swing State Voters Against Trump

Get ready for local news — brought to you by the Democrats.

One of the party’s largest Super PACs is finally pulling the trigger on a $100 million plan to help boot Trump from office. But much of the media it’s pumping out won’t look like traditional advertising. Rather, Priorities USA is planning to flood swing states — many of which have lost their local papers — with stories favorable to the Democratic agenda. Four “news” outlets staffed by Democratic operatives will publish state-specific information across social media in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin. They’ll also boost content by independent sources.

The idea is to convince voters that Trump’s economy isn’t working for them.

“This should be covered by local news, but local news is dying,” Priorities USA Communication Director Josh Schwerin told VICE News. “Our hope is that we can help fill that hole a bit with paid media while also making it easier for the remaining local outlets to report by providing local angles on national policies with specific facts and people to tell their stories.”

The Super PAC expects its digital spending to rival many presidential campaigns as it ramps up in the coming weeks, reaching above $1 million a month. “There is not an end date,” Priorities USA Chairman Guy Cecil said at a news conference Tuesday. The group will put tens of millions more toward TV commercials and get-out-the-vote efforts as the campaign drags on. Priorities brought its ads team in-house to respond more quickly to news cycles and push out a greater volume of content across Facebook, Google, and elsewhere.

Denouncing Misleading Attacks and Lack of 'Fact-Based Analysis,' Sanders Campaign Fires Back at MSNBC

Sen. Bernie Sanders has never been shy about criticizing MSNBC, but the senator's 2020 Democratic presidential campaign is becoming increasingly vocal in calling out the self-styled liberal cable news network in response to a spate of attacks and misleading coverage from the outlet's hosts and contributors.

"There's no effort to push for fact-based analysis," an anonymous Sanders campaign official said of MSNBC in an interview with The Daily Beast, which reported Wednesday that tensions between Sanders and the Comcast-owned network have "reached a new peak."

The latest incident that sparked outrage from the campaign was MSNBC legal analyst Mimi Rocah's anti-Sanders diatribe during a segment over the weekend.

"Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl," said Rocah. "I can't even identify for you what exactly it is. But I see him as sort of a not pro-woman candidate."

As Rocah suggested, without evidence, that Sanders is not a good candidate for women, MSNBC analyst Zerlina Maxwell—who herself came under fire in March for launching patently false attacks on Sanders—appeared to nod along and offered no pushback. ...

The Sanders campaign told The Daily Beast that, far from being an isolated incident, Rocah's tirade was part of a pattern of fact-free attacks that MSNBC has allowed to air completely unchallenged and without any alternative perspective.

The Daily Beast cited frequent MSNBC guest Donny Deutsch's recent declaration that he would vote for President Donald Trump if Sanders wins the Democratic nomination as another example of the network's recent attacks on the Vermont senator. "A socialist candidate," said Deutsch, "is more dangerous to this country as far as the strength and wellbeing of our country than Donald Trump."




the evening greens


'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts

The scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming is likely to have passed 99%, according to the lead author of the most authoritative study on the subject, and could rise further after separate research that clears up some of the remaining doubts. Three studies published in Nature and Nature Geoscience use extensive historical data to show there has never been a period in the last 2,000 years when temperature changes have been as fast and extensive as in recent decades.

It had previously been thought that similarly dramatic peaks and troughs might have occurred in the past, including in periods dubbed the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Climate Anomaly. But the three studies use reconstructions based on 700 proxy records of temperature change, such as trees, ice and sediment, from all continents that indicate none of these shifts took place in more than half the globe at any one time. ...

Major temperature shifts in the distant past are also likely to have been primarily caused by volcanic eruptions, according to another of the studies, which helps to explain the strong global fluctuations in the first half of the 18th century as the world started to move from a volcanically cooled era to a climate warmed by human emissions. This has become particularly pronounced since the late 20th century, when temperature rises over two decades or longer have been the most rapid in the past two millennia, notes the third. The authors say this highlights how unusual warming has become in recent years as a result of industrial emissions. ...

“This paper should finally stop climate change deniers claiming that the recent observed coherent global warming is part of a natural climate cycle. This paper shows the truly stark difference between regional and localised changes in climate of the past and the truly global effect of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions,” said Mark Maslin, professor of climatology at University College London.

Scientists Urge UN to Add Environmental Destruction to Geneva Conventions' List of War Crimes

In a letter to the editor published Tuesday by the journal Nature, two dozen scientists from around the world urged the United Nations' International Law Commission to adopt a Fifth Geneva Convention that creates protections for the environment in armed conflicts.

The four existing Geneva Conventions and their three additional protocols are globally recognized treaties that establish standards under international humanitarian law for the treatment of wounded troops in the field, soldiers shipwrecked at sea, prisoners of war, and civilians during armed conflicts. Violating the treaties amounts to a war crime.

"Despite calls for a fifth convention two decades ago, military conflict continues to destroy megafauna, push species to extinction, and poison water resources," notes Tuesday's letter. "The uncontrolled circulation of arms exacerbates the situation, for instance by driving unsustainable hunting of wildlife." ...

Adopting an environment-focused convention "would provide a multilateral treaty that includes legal instruments for site-based protection of crucial natural resources," the letter explains. It also highlights the importance of companies and governments collaborating to regulate weapons transfers, and holding the military industry accountable for its impact on the environment.

Rising Emissions Are Robbing Us of Nutrients

It’s widely known that burning fossil fuels leads to all kinds of disastrous things: Worsening air pollution, acidic oceans, and flooding. But not many people know that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is making our food more sugary and less nutritious.

A new study in Lancet Planetary Health projects that the combined effects of climate change parching crops and the decreased nutritional value of the food those crops produce would wipe out significant efforts to combat malnourishment around the world. Nutrient deficiencies cause to 2.2 million deaths every year among children under the age of five.

There are lots of efforts underway to prevent those deaths: People are adding vitamins to processed foods, breeding better crops, and working to make nutrients available to more people. That work is saving lives, but the way we are altering our atmosphere is making it harder. This study suggests that the human diet of 2050 would have 19.5 percent less protein, 14.4 percent less iron, and 14.6 percent less zinc than we’d have in the absence of climate change and increased CO2 in the air. ...

“The size of the problem is staggering,” said Kristie Ebi, a professor of global health at the University of Washington who was not involved with this paper. “This is likely the largest impact on health from rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.”


Also of Interest

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

Did Trump Just Threaten to Attack Iran With Nukes?

The Great Reckoning

Elizabeth Warren Says Another Economic Crash Is Coming: Is She Right?

UK Buckles Up for Ride with Unpredictable New PM

Progressive Reps defend anti-BDS vote: Khanna cites Lincoln, Pressley ‘solidarity with Jewish families’

Brazil: four arrested over hacking of Bolsonaro justice minister's phone

Only Enlightened Collectivism Can Save Us

Activists Camped at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea Face Government Opposition as They Attempt to Block Telescope Construction on Sacred Land

The Cheapest Way to Save the Planet Grows Like a Weed

Challenging EPA's New FOIA Rule, Suit Seeks to Stop Trump's "Shameful Attempt to Keep Americans in the Dark"

Robert Mueller Hearing A 'Disaster' For Democrats


A Little Night Music

Little Mack Simmons - I Need Love

Little Mack Simmons - Givin' Me A Hard Time

Little Mac Simmons - Things Are Getting Tougher

Little Mack Simmons - Reefer Head Woman

Little Mack Simmons - You've Got To Help Me

Little Mack Simmons - Sun is Shining

Little Mack Simmons - Next Time You See Me

Little Mack Simmons - You're So Fine

Little Mack Simmons - Goose Walk

Little Mack Simmons - Killing Floor

Little Mack Simmons - Wild About You


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@gjohnsit

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joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

her comments are a mixed bag. i agree that racism is being used as a wedge to divide the people. it has always been used that way to great effect.

i draw the line, though, at saying it is a "distraction." i would like it if we could all get together on the same page and fight the power that oppresses all of us. i can see the utility of people putting aside their individual demands of whose issue should be the first to be addressed.

on the other hand, i cannot bring myself to complain about the pained expressions of urgency of a people who have been brutally oppressed for 400 years demanding that their issues be addressed.

i don't know how the matter can be settled, but it appears to me that complaining about racism being a distraction, rather than reaching out with compassion and comfort, is not going to get it.

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Dawn's Meta's picture

@joe shikspack

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

heh, howard beale was an angry prophet. as written by paddy chayefsky he was not crazy, the world is.

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ggersh's picture

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/23/investigative-reporter-seymour-hersh-th...

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh: The world is "run by ignoramuses, wackos and psychotics"
Legendary investigative reporter on why the media can't stay out of Trump's "kitty-litter box of tweets"

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

joe shikspack's picture

@ggersh

heh, hersh is right on target as to who is running things.

trump's twitter feed and his every utterance are all about distraction, so that a new order can be imposed while everyone is focusing on the outrage du jour.

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Azazello's picture

From this link:

At the peak of the crisis on September 30, 2008, the top 25 bank holding companies held $184.7 trillion notional (face amount) in derivatives. As of March 31, 2019, that figure stood at $272.5 trillion according to reports by the regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Even more frightening, 86 percent of the $272.5 trillion is concentrated at just five banks, which are, in turn, highly interconnected to one another. Those five bank holding companies are: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.

I thought Bacevich was good.
Here's a great interview, John Nichols & Chomsky: There Are Reasons for Optimism
Finally, If You Hate Capitalism You Will Love This Map

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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

long before 2008, the powers-that-be were delivered a wake up call in the form of long term capital management, which the fed bailed out in order to protect the global banking system from their derivatives.

apparently, the powers-that-be are not terribly concerned about these sorts of failures because the fed bails them out and there is an enormous transfer of wealth upwards. if it were the other way around, they'd have it cleaned up faster than you can say "alan greenspan is a delusional moron."

thanks for the articles, i'll try to catch up with them this weekend.

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lotlizard's picture

@Azazello  
Jeffrey Epstein chaired a $6.7 billion company that documents suggest may have received a secret Federal Reserve bailout

JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon has gone to Defcon 1 over bank’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein

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snoopydawg's picture

Well of course she did because if she said anything else it would effect her ratings and paycheck.

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i guess when smoke is all you have, you go with it. just like when trump is pushed into a corner where if there were an honest scorekeeper calling balls and strikes, so to speak, he would have to concede the falsity of his contention - he doubles down. that appears to be maddow's strategy in the absence of a scorekeeper as well.

it works because people want to believe them.

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Bollox Ref's picture

claiming that de Piffle Johnson has a mandate...... so there!!!!

The only mandate he has is withdrawing the Conservative Party from the EU.

The UK is in a sorry mess.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

joe shikspack's picture

@Bollox Ref

i remember when the shrub also claimed to have a mandate.

no doubt the claim presages trouble.

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GreatLakeSailor's picture

.
.

twit referenced

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

joe shikspack's picture

@GreatLakeSailor

heh, fineman should know that people don't like seeing the sausage being made. Smile

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Lookout's picture

https://phys.org/news/2019-07-asteroid-earth.html

funny how stuff out of view can totally change the world....

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8Rm4Z0_Tmw]

Round we go....

All the best to all of you!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Lily O Lady's picture

@Lookout

Bernie gets cheated again.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

joe shikspack's picture

@Lily O Lady

heh, i wonder if somebody will start tracking giant meteor's poll numbers for the 2020 election.

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Lily O Lady's picture

@joe shikspack

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

joe shikspack's picture

@Lookout

wow, that was a pretty close call. good thing it missed, we're fresh out of dinosaurs. Smile

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snoopydawg's picture

'We also don't know what we say we do either."

Hopefully when the democrats get back from vacation they will decide to just move on from this.

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

mueller is such a dud. donald rumsfeld at least had some flair.

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

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snoopydawg's picture

Schneider, who is Jewish, said the passage of the anti-BDS resolution made clear that opposition to the movement was a consensus issue. “I spent the last four months working with my colleagues to they understand the purpose of” the resolution, “what impact it will have in our [Jewish] community and promoting peace in the Middle East,” he said.

Also passed in the House Tuesday was legislation initiated by Reps. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., and Joe Wilson, R-S.C., that codifies the $38 billion over ten years in defense assistance that the Obama administration announced in the last months of 2016. Writing the assistance into law keeps any current and future presidents from walking it back. The Senate passed a similar measure.
.....
Another bill passed, sponsored by Gottheimer and Rep. Brian Mass, R-Fla., imposes new sanctions on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two terrorist groups that have fired missiles on Israeli civilian areas.

“AIPAC applauds the House of Representatives for adopting three bipartisan measures that strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship,” the lobby said in a statement.

Senator Ro says that while he voted for the bill he will be working on legislation that keeps Israel from taking Palestinian's homes. Yeah, he says that right after Israel had just destroyed a lot of homes that they said are too close to the border wall that IIRC was built on Palestinian's land.

Trump said Omar is in bed with AQ when he just vetoed the bill against selling the Saudis more weapons even though they have been giving them to AQ. Yeah this makes sense.

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snoopydawg's picture

sorry for hogging the comments but there is just so much stupidity on Twitter today.

But why couldn't Mueller come right out and say it was a damn ham sandwich? Were there rules in place to stop him from doing that?

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Bollox Ref's picture

There's a troll in the house. Please don't feed him.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

earthling1's picture

that the little ice age of the early 1500s was due to the die off of 95% of the indigenous peoples of the newly "discovered" Americas from small pox, brought by Columbus.
The Amazon jungle reclaimed enormous cities spread throughout the basin as recorded by the Pizzaro expedition down the headwaters of that river in 1521 and subsequently produced a huge increase in global oxygen.
Another human caused climate change.
Source: Gavin Mensies "1491", Albert Bates "The Biochar Debate".

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

TheOtherMaven's picture

@earthling1

The climate downturn started well before 1500. People didn't start wearing heavier clothing, including more furs, because it was "stylish", they did it because they HAD TO. Same reason chimneys were invented and became popular (the first surviving English example dates to 1185 ad) - they heat interiors more efficiently than an open trench fire.

There was an even bigger depopulation event - and a recurring one - in the middle 14th century: the Black Death, which affected everywhere but (as far as we know) the Americas. If depopulation and reforestation were contributors, that one must have been a beaut.

There's also the odd correlation between extended sunspot minima and extended climate cooling - the "Maunder Minimum" is the most famous of these, but it appears to have been preceded by another, referred to as the "Sporer Minimum", which correlates fairly well with the pre-Maunder climate chilling (circa 1400-1510 plus or minus a decade or two). Europe wasn't keeping sunspot records at that time, but China was, and auroral records too.

So no, you can't pin all the blame on rapacious Conquistadores and even more rapacious microbes. No matter how faddy and "Social Justice-y" it is to do so.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

earthling1's picture

@TheOtherMaven
that the population of the Amazon basin was larger than the rest of the planet combined, some estimate up to 50 million. Nearly all were wiped out by european diseases beginning with 1492. Source: James Bruges "The Bio char Debate". Sorry about the mis attribulation of Albert Bates "The Biochar Solution".
That estimate comes from recently discovered manmade soil called "terra preta" found (and still being discovered) all over the basin that in aggregate become larger than France, a quarter million square miles. Enough to feed 50 million people.
All of these gardens became overgrown with jungle with the demise of the indigenous peoples in a very short time, less that 50 years.
"There was an even bigger depopulation event"
The Black Plague was bad, but the depopulation of BOTH north and south America must have been earth changing.
The nearly 3 million sq. miles of the Amazon basin suddenly (approx. 25 years) growing wildly into jungle had to have dumped an enormour "cloud" of oxygen into the earth's atmosphere. Yeah, it must have been a beaut.
Add to this the extensive agriculture in both Americas and you could make a case for mandmade climate disaster on a global scale.
Pre- Columbian history is still largely a mystery due to the fact there is little or no written record.
What we do suspect now though is that very little of the Americas were not untouched by the hand of man.
There is much to be learned yet.
Thanks for your kind responce. I will educate myself on the Maunder and Sporer minimums.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

TheOtherMaven's picture

@earthling1

When the population gets radically thinned from Korea to Syria to Tunisia to Iceland (which covers WAY more land area than both Americas put together), there should be some noticeable effects.

There were some secondary consequences in Europe, which have been noted and studied - for one thing, there was a massive labor shortage, which gave the peasants, for the first time, a bit of say in their working conditions. For another, significant numbers of people went stark staring foaming raving mad (Flagellants, etc.) And for a third, there was the (probably inevitable, always successful) search for human scapegoats....

Not much thought or study has been given to possible climate effects, hitherto. But that is beginning to change.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

mimi's picture

I am not Mimi Rocah or some such. I don't know what I read, just wanted to say hi and bye.
Bravely you go on moving on. Thanks.

Have some cooler weather over there at your side of the pond. And stay cool too.

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