Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas blues piano player Whistlin' Alex Moore. Enjoy!

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

-- Albert Einstein

News and Opinion

Apparently, Greta Thunberg thinks that the UN is a viable institution with actual power rather than a toothless debating society and virtue signalling platform.

Transcript of Thunberg's speech here.

Greta Thunberg condemns world leaders in emotional speech at UN

Greta Thunberg has excoriated world leaders for their “betrayal” of young people through their inertia over the climate crisis at a United Nations summit that failed to deliver ambitious new commitments to address dangerous global heating. ... Thunberg predicted the summit would not deliver any new plans in line with the radical cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are needed to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown.

As the summit spooled through about 60 speeches from national representatives, it became clear that Thunberg’s forecast was prescient. Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, told delegates that “the time for talking is over” in announcing a plan to ramp up renewable energy but didn’t announce any phase-out of coal – a key goal set by António Guterres, the UN secretary-general who convened the summit.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, did set out the end of coalmining in her country but only by 2038 – a lengthy timeframe that disappointed environmentalists.

Meanwhile, China declined to put forward any new measures to tackle the climate crisis.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, called for the European Union to deepen its emissions cuts and said that France would not make trade deals with countries not signed up tor the landmark Paris climate agreement. “We cannot allow our youth to strike every Friday without action,” Macron said, in reference to Friday’s global climate strikes.

Despite Guterres’ efforts, the summit was somewhat overshadowed by its absentees – most notably the US, and Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, whose representatives were reportedly not selected to make a presentation there because of Brazil’s failure to outline plans to strengthen its efforts to counter climate change.

Saving the Planet Means Overthrowing the Ruling Elites

Friday’s climate strike by students across the globe will have no more impact than the mass mobilizations by women following the election of Donald Trump or the hundreds of thousands of protesters who took to the streets to denounce the Iraq War. This does not mean these protests should not have taken place. They should have. But such demonstrations need to be grounded in the bitter reality that in the corridors of power we do not count. If we lived in a democracy, which we do not, our aspirations, rights and demands, especially the demand that we confront the climate emergency, would have an impact. We would be able to vote representatives into power in government to carry out change. We would be able to demand environmental justice from the courts. We would be able to divert resources to the elimination of carbon emissions.

Voting, lobbying, petitioning and protesting to induce the ruling elites to respond rationally to the climate catastrophe have proved no more effective than scrofula victims’ appeals to Henry VIII to cure them with a royal touch. The familiar tactics employed over the past few decades by environmentalists have been spectacular failures. In 1900 the burning of fossil fuel—mostly coal—produced about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. That number had risen threefold by 1950. Today the level is 20 times higher than the 1900 figure. During the last decade the increase in CO₂ was 100 to 200 times faster than what the earth experienced during the transition from the last ice age. On May 11 the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded 415.26 parts per million of CO₂ in the air. It’s believed to be the highest concentration since humans evolved. We will embrace a new paradigm for resistance or die.

The ruling elites and the corporations they serve are the principal obstacles to change. They cannot be reformed. And this means revolution, which is what Extinction Rebellion seeks in calling for an “international rebellion” on Oct. 7, when it will attempt to shut down city centers around the globe in acts of sustained, mass civil disobedience. Power has to be transferred into our hands. And since the elites won’t give up power willingly, we will have to take it through nonviolent action. ... The ruling elites, trained in business schools and managerial programs, are not equipped to confront the existential problems caused by climate catastrophe. They are trained to maintain, no matter the cost, the systems of global capitalism. They are systems managers. They lack the intellectual capacity and imagination to search for solutions outside the narrow parameters of global capitalism. ...

We must embrace a new radicalism. We must carry out sustained civil disobedience to disrupt the machinery of exploitation, even as we prepare for the inevitable dislocations and catastrophes ahead. We must alter our lifestyles and consumption to cut our personal carbon footprints. And we must organize to replace existing structures of power with ones capable of coping with the crisis before us.

Instead of attending discussions on a climate crisis he doesn't believe in, the president who paid hush money to a porn star he had an affair with while his third wife nursed his fifth child will hold a session on....religious persecution https://t.co/PW6YkZj3SR

— Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) September 23, 2019

CBS News Pushes 100% Propaganda On I-R-A-N

'Your Presence Has Always Been a Calamity': Iranian President Demands US Get Out of Persian Gulf

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday that the only way to move toward lasting peace in the Middle East is for the United States and other Western powers to immediately leave the Persian Gulf, a call that comes days after the Trump administration announced the deployment of more troops to Saudi Arabia.

"Your presence has always been a calamity for this region, and the farther you go from our region and our nations, the more security would come for our region," Rouhani said in a speech during a rally on Sunday.

Rouhani also accused the U.S. and other nations of falsely blaming Iran for a recent attack on Saudi oil facilities, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called "an act of war."

"Those who want to link the region's incidents to the Islamic Republic of Iran are lying like their past lies that have been revealed," said Rouhani. "If they are truthful and really seek security in the region, they must not send weapons, fighter jets, bombs, and dangerous arms to the region."

Yemenis should try 'covering themselves in oil' to finally be noticed by the media - Lee Camp

The Inexhaustible Bad Faith of Iran Hawks

Ted Cruz wrote a forgettable op-ed reciting the usual false hawkish talking points about the JCPOA:

There’s no doubt that the catastrophic Obama-Iran nuclear deal, which flooded the Iranian regime with hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and sanctions relief, directly contributed to the recent attacks.

The deal didn’t just provide Iran with resources it poured into its military; it also created an incentive for the international community to ignore Iranian aggression for the sake of preserving the deal, emboldening the Iranians to launch exactly these sorts of attacks.

Like Pompeo with his upside-down worldview, Cruz seeks to blame the nuclear deal for the consequences of Trump’s decisions to renege and violate that deal. According to this bizarre argument, an agreement that successfully limited Iran’s nuclear program somehow “directly contributed” to attacks that happened years later only after the U.S. withdrew from the deal and waged economic war on Iran. It’s as if one were to accuse the owner of the building that was set on fire for the resulting blaze instead of holding the arsonist responsible. This is painfully stupid, but it is all that Iran hawks have left to fall back on as their preferred policy blows up in their face.

Among the other absurd things Cruz claimed in the op-ed, he said this:

The Iranian regime openly threatens “all-out war” and seeks weapons that could incinerate American cities with a single flash of light. The nuclear deal legalized Iran’s nuclear program and lifted international sanctions against its aggression.

Iran doesn’t seek nuclear weapons and doesn’t have the means to produce them. The nuclear deal that Cruz rails against and wants to destroy ensures that their nuclear program remains peaceful. Even if Iran possessed a handful of nuclear weapons, they aren’t going to use any of them against American cities because they would be inviting their own destruction if they did so. Iran’s civilian nuclear program has always been legal under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The sanctions that were lifted in connection with the deal concerned only Iran’s nuclear program. It takes a lot of gall for Iran hawks to bemoan that the nuclear deal addressed only the nuclear issue and then pretend that sanctions relief was related to anything but that. Iran is threatening war only to deter an attack on their country. It is worth noting that the U.S. and Iran are so close to war because of the “maximum pressure” campaign that Cruz is so dishonestly defending. ...

It is no surprise that Cruz’s latest attack on the JCPOA was nonsense. The entire case against the nuclear deal from the beginning has been nonsense, and it has only gotten worse as the Iran hawks have prevailed in driving the U.S. to abandon and violate it. Now that they are faced with the dangerous consequences of getting what they want, Iran hawks are desperately trying to shift the blame to anyone else.

Reports of Wedding Party Bombing Indicate US Forces Have Massacred at Least 70 Afghan Civilians in One Week

Dozens of Afghan civilians are dead, local officials said Monday, following operations carried out late Sunday by U.S. and Afghan forces targeting al Qaida fighters. The incident in the southern province of Helmand, which came just days after a U.S. drone strike killed at least 30 farm workers in eastern Nangarhar province, highlights the fragile situation for civilians as the U.S. enters its 19th year of war in Afghanistan. 

Details on exactly how many people were killed and who was responsible for the Sunday attacks remain unclear, a fact attributed at least in part to the area being under Taliban control. The U.S. has blamed the "majority of the deaths" on al Qaida. U.S. and Afghan officials say they're investigating.

The New York Times reported:

Omar Zwak, a spokesman for the Helmand governor, said an undetermined number of civilians were killed after an explosion at an insurgent weapons depot that had been targeted by government forces late Sunday. But Haji Attaullah Afghan, head of the provincial council in Helmand, said a two-vehicle wedding convoy was fired upon by military helicopters, and that civilians were killed in both vehicles.

According to provincial council member Abdul Majid Akhundzada, at least 40 civilians, including many women and children, were killed, CBS News reported.

Josh Jacques, a spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan told Stars and Stripes that "we did conduct targeted precision strikes against barricaded terrorists firing on Afghan and U.S. forces," and said the operation was to target militants presenting "an imminent threat."

"The locals are trapped in a war between the Taliban and the U.S. and Afghan forces," one local resident told CBS News. "We told the Taliban, 'don't settle foreign militants near our houses,' we told the Afghan government, 'don't target us if militants live in the middle of our houses, that is not our wish or our fault. We can't stop anyone. Don't kill us.'"

Spanish supreme court approves exhumation of Franco's remains

Pamela Anderson: Julian Assange has been 'psychologically tortured' in London prison

Former "Baywatch" star Pamela Anderson argued on a British morning show Monday that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been "psychologically tortured" while being held in a London prison.

"I went to visit him in prison," said Anderson, a longtime supporter of Assange. "That's not somewhere you want to leave a dear friend. I care a great deal about Julian. I think he has been psychologically tortured."

"I just want people to understand that this is a good person who has dedicated himself to telling the truth to the public, which we deserve to know," Anderson later added. "Exposing war crimes, and the people he’s exposed haven’t faced any penalty. But he’s sitting in prison because there are obviously more stories to keep."

Johnson's suspension of parliament unlawful, supreme court rules

The supreme court has ruled that Boris Johnson’s advice to the Queen that parliament should be prorogued for five weeks at the height of the Brexit crisis was unlawful. The unanimous judgment from 11 justices on the UK’s highest court followed an emergency three-day hearing last week that exposed fundamental legal differences over interpreting the country’s unwritten constitution. ...

The first legal question the judges had to resolve was whether the prime minister’s decision – exploiting residual, royal prerogative powers – was “justiciable” and could consequently be subjected to scrutiny by the courts. The English high court declined to intervene; the Scottish appeal court concluded that judges did have legal authority to act. The supreme court supported the Scottish interpretation. Delivering judgment, Hale said: “The question arises in circumstances which have never arisen before and are unlikely to arise again.”

Then, giving the court’s judgment on whether the decision to suspend parliament was legal, Hale said: “This court has … concluded that the prime minister’s advice to Her Majesty [ to suspend parliament] was unlawful, void and of no effect. This means that the order in council to which it led was also unlawful, void and of no effect should be quashed.

“This means that when the royal commissioners walked into the House of Lords [to prorogue parliament] it was as if they walked in with a blank sheet of paper. The prorogation was also void and of no effect. Parliament has not been prorogued.” Hale continued: “It is for parliament, and in particular the Speaker and the Lord Speaker, to decide what to do next. Unless there is some parliamentary rule of which we are unaware, they can take immediate steps to enable each house to meet as soon as possible. It is not clear to us that any step is needed from the prime minister, but if it is, the court is pleased that his counsel have told the court that he will take all necessary steps to comply with the terms of any declaration made by this court.”

She added: “The court is bound to conclude, therefore, that the decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification.”

UK Brexit Case: "The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful"

Boris Johnson is not fit to be prime minister, says Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn has told Labour’s conference that Boris Johnson is not fit to be prime minister and must resign, after the supreme court declared Johnson’s decision to shut down parliament was illegal.

In a rousing speech, hastily brought forward from the traditional Wednesday lunchtime slot in response to the supreme court judgment, the Labour leaders slammed what he called Johnson’s “born-to-rule government of the entitled”. He said: “Boris Johnson has been found to have misled the country. This unelected prime minister should now resign.

“He thought he could do whatever he liked just as he always does. He thinks he’s above us all. He is part of an elite that disdains democracy. He is not fit to be prime minister.” With parliament due to reconvene on Wednesday morning, Corbyn said: “The democracy that Boris Johnson describes as a rigmarole will not be stifled, and the people will have their say.”

He did not set out how Labour plans to proceed when MPs return to Westminster, but called for a general election once a no-deal Brexit has been definitively ruled out. “This crisis can only be settled with a general election. That election needs to take place as soon as this government’s threat of a disastrous no deal is taken off the table. That condition is what MPs passed into law before Boris Johnson illegally closed down parliament.”

Trump’s Plan to Save American Jobs by Slapping Tariffs on China Doesn’t Seem to Be Working

When Donald Trump talks about tariffs on China, he stresses protecting American workers. But the jobs aren’t exactly coming back to America.

Gong Pengfei’s company, BUD Electronics, used to make Bluetooth speakers for the U.S. market, which accounted for nearly half of his revenue. But his staff is now a third of the size it was last year.

“Since the trade war started, pretty much all of our customers in the U.S. have switched to Vietnam, the Middle East, India, and Thailand because of lower labor costs and that they are not targeted by the tariffs,” Gong said. ...

"We have already made a deal with our American clients to split the additional cost caused by the tariffs," said Yang Guohe, CEO of Kontech, a company that exports about half a million monitors to the U.S. every year for RVs, yachts, businesses, and even prisons. "Whether they make their customers pay for it or not, I don't care."

Heh, I wonder how long it will take Trump and his supporters to learn how to chant "Lugenpresse!"

Trump shrugs off impeachment talk over call with Ukraine president

Donald Trump has attempted to shrug off renewed demands for his impeachment over the allegation he tried to pressure a foreign government to hurt his leading rival in next year’s presidential election.

Trump travelled to the United Nations in New York under the shadow of reports that he asked Ukraine’s leader to investigate Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2020, and that a US intelligence community whistleblower filed a report about it.

Some Democrats said the allegation was a tipping point in the dilemma over whether to begin impeachment proceedings. Asked on Monday if he took that threat seriously, the president replied: “Not at all seriously.”

Later, Trump lashed out at the media.

“Joe Biden and his son are corrupt, but the fake news doesn’t want to report it because they’re Democrats,” he said. “If a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did, if a Republican ever said what Joe Biden said, they’d be getting the electric chair by right. Look at the double standards … You’ve got a lot of crooked journalists. You’re crooked as hell.”

Progressives to Pelosi as Trump Lawlessness Mounts: 'Stop Playing Craven Political Games' and Impeach

Pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to drop her longstanding opposition to impeachment has reached new heights following reports that President Donald Trump asked Ukraine's leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a move that appears to be at the heart of an urgent whistleblower complaint Trump's intelligence chief is refusing to turn over to Congress.

Progressive groups and members of Pelosi's House Democratic caucus have aired their frustrations with the Speaker in public in since the new reports of Trump's latest potential crime, which adds to a mountainous list of transgressions that impeachment supporters say is more than enough to remove the president from office. ...

At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior - it is the Democratic Party’s refusal to impeach him for it.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 22, 2019

It is one thing for a sitting president to break the law. It’s another to let him.

The integrity of our democracy isn’t threatened when a president breaks the law. It‘s threatened when we do nothing about it.

The GOP’s silence & refusal to act shouldn’t be a surprise. Ours is.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 22, 2019

Pelosi, in the wake of initial reports on Trump's request to the Ukrainian leader, condemned the White House for "stonewalling" Congress as it seeks to investigate the whistleblower complaint, which was reportedly filed by an intelligence official in response to the president's alarming misconduct.

Heidi Hess, co-director of Credo Action, said in a statement that "it's awfully bold of Speaker Pelosi to call out stonewalling tactics when she herself has stonewalled impeachment efforts for the past eight months."

"Donald Trump has committed numerous impeachable offenses and threatens our communities, our democracy, and our planet on a daily basis," said Hess. "Pelosi must stop playing craven political games and lead now. It's past time for her to throw her full support behind moving forward with impeachment proceedings. Doing anything less further cements her legacy as the Speaker of the House who refused to do her constitutional duty and was complicit in Trump's crimes and his bigotry."

Federal Appeals Court Quashes FCC Attempt to Weaken Media Ownership Rules

Public interest groups celebrated Monday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit quashed an effort by the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission to relax local media ownership rules. ...

In late 2017, the FCC voted along party lines to eliminate or weaken various rules, making it easier for companies to buy more televisions stations in the same market and killing a decades-old ban on a company owning both a newspaper and radio or TV station in the same market. As Common Dreams reported at the time, critics of media consolidation called it a "massive handout" to companies like the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group—which reportedly has ties to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and spearheaded the overhaul.

The FCC's attempt to loosen its rules was challenged by Common Cause, the Communications Workers of America, Free Press, the Media Mobilizing Project, the Prometheus Radio Project, and the United Church of Christ Office of Communication as well as attorneys from the Georgetown Law Institute of Public Representation. In a 2-1 decision (pdf) Monday, the Philadelphia-based appeals court found that the FCC "has not shown yet that it adequately considered the effect its actions... will have on diversity in broadcast media ownership."

The decision is just the latest in a long series of rulings from the appeals court regarding the FCC's media ownership rules over the past 15 years. González noted that "this marks the fourth time this court has rejected the relentless attempts from the FCC and the broadcast industry to weaken media-ownership limits regardless of the damage such drastic deregulation would cause local communities." ...

Pai, for his part, released a statement (pdf) on Monday accusing the majority of judges who have served on the appeals court the past 15 years of "blocking any attempt to modernize these regulations to match the obvious realities of the modern media marketplace." The chairman added that the FCC intends to seek further judicial review of the decision.

Keiser Report: JP Morgan Bankers Charged with Racketeering

The FBI Just Arrested a U.S. Army Soldier Who Allegedly Plotted to Bomb a Major News Network

The FBI arrested a member of the U.S. Army who allegedly plotted to bomb a major news network and shared bomb-making information online. Jarrett William Smith, a 24-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, was charged with one count of distributing information related to explosives and weapons of mass destruction. As early as 2016, he also discussed joining the thousands of men traveling to Ukraine to fight alongside the far-right paramilitary group Azov Battalion, according to the FBI. ...

Smith had risen to the level of private first class infantry soldier since joining the Army in June 2017. If convicted on the current charges, he could get up to 20 years in federal prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.

After joining the military, Smith connected with an American man on Facebook who had already traveled to Ukraine between 2017 and 2019 to fight with a group similar to Azov, according to the FBI. The man positioned himself as Smith’s mentor and was helping him prepare to travel to Ukraine. ...

On August 19, Smith unwittingly spoke with an undercover FBI agent online and told him he was hoping to meet like-minded “radicals” and aspired to kill members of antifa. He was also considering targeting cell towers or a local news station, according to court documents. Days later, he’d settled on his chosen target: He wanted to attack the headquarters of a major American news network using a car bomb. ...

Smith was arrested over the weekend and admitted to FBI agents that he knows how to make explosive devices and routinely provides instruction on how to build those devices online.

Think America's fate hinges on the 2020 presidential race? You're forgetting something

Every day brings more headlines about the game-show-like spectacle of the presidential race. Of course, the 2020 presidential election commands attention because the stakes are so high. The presidential race, however, isn’t the only election that will have major ramifications for both the immediate and long-term direction of the nation. This November, 538 state legislative seats in four states are up for election. Another 4,798 state legislative seats in 44 states will be decided in November 2020. And 14 governors will be elected in the next two years. There is no way for Democrats to execute a long-term pro-active political project without winning in the states immediately.

Winning state and local races is more crucial now than ever. The Trump administration has appointed an unprecedented number of conservative judges who will evaluate state laws. If Republicans continue to wield outsized power in state legislatures, states are all but guaranteed to pass envelope-pushing laws that will climb the courts, opening the possibility that major national legal precedents will change. The abortion bans that seized national attention this past spring are just the tip of the iceberg. Another huge reason: 2021 is a redistricting year. If Republicans maintain control of state legislatures around the country, they will be able to once again gerrymander districts in their favor - for a decade. ...

Over the last several decades, Republican operatives and lawmakers found multiple ways to build self-perpetuating political power via state politics. First, in localities across the country, Republicans set the terms of the conversation about guns, abortion, race, immigration and other issues that became so divisive in part because state lawmakers campaigned on them and never stopped proposing envelope-pushing bills. Second, they weakened Democratic bastions such as unions. And third, once they had majorities on the state level, Republican lawmakers controlled the drawing of district maps, which enshrined their advantage.

Conservative state lawmakers have undermined the will of progressive city residents in another crucial way that has gotten less attention than gerrymandering: by instating “preemption laws,” which restrict towns and cities from passing laws different from those approved by state lawmakers. In 2017, for example, St Louis increased its minimum wage to $10 per hour. Then, the Missouri legislature reversed that wage, meaning workers were back to being paid $7.70 per hour. ... When cities are disproportionately black, brown, immigrant, and LGBTQ, and rural voters are over-represented in statehouses, preemption laws magnify the power of conservative white Americans.

GOP Racial Gerrymandering Mastermind Participated in Redistricting in More States Than Previously Known, Files Reveal

The reach of late Republican gerrymandering mastermind Thomas Hofeller may be longer than previously known, according to a review of thousands of documents and emails culled from his hard drives, obtained by The Intercept. While Hofeller was known for drawing maps to give Republicans an advantage and to limit the impact of voters of color in North Carolina, Texas, Missouri, and Virginia, the new documents reveal he also participated in the 2010 redistricting cycle in Alabama, Florida, and West Virginia.

And, in those three states, it appears Hofeller and other Republican mapmakers experimented with using race as the primary factor in drawing districts in these states — a tactic ruled unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which requires that people in similar circumstances be treated the same under the law. Among the trove of over 70,000 documents are draft maps with voter data broken down by race, spreadsheets that include the home addresses of members of Congress, travel plans, and legislation marked up by Hofeller himself.

These new documents shed additional light on the coordinated national strategy behind maps that locked in a GOP advantage in Congress and in state legislatures nationwide. They reveal the sophisticated racial data that drove GOP mapmaking in several states, potentially opening new avenues for litigation challenging these plans as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders — including one Alabama case that will be heard in a U.S. district court in seven weeks — or as violations of state constitutional protections of free and fair elections. And they show that Hofeller intentionally failed to disclose his involvement in Florida redistricting in an affidavit filed with a court.

Taken together, these revelations provide a powerful wake-up call ahead of the next round of redistricting, which will begin in 2021, about how determined and effective strategists, armed with voluminous voter data, can tilt the political playing field for a decade.

'Unfortunate But Not Surprising': Sanders Responds to Report Biden-Linked Firm Poll Testing Attacks on Medicare for All

Sen. Bernie Sanders hit back Monday after news broke that the centrist group Third Way is focus-testing attacks on Medicare for All to see what will stick, using a firm with close ties to former Vice President Joe Biden's 2020 Democratic presidential campaign.

"It is unfortunate but not surprising that Vice President Biden's polling firm is helping distort what Medicare for All is about," Sanders said in a statement. "My Medicare for All legislation eliminates all premiums, copayments, deductibles and out of pocket expenses that crush millions of Americans, which not only saves people money, it will allow all Americans to go to any doctor or hospital they want with no one expending more than $200 a year for prescription drugs."

Bloomberg reporter Sahil Kapur broke the news earlier in the day.

According to Kapur:

The survey, commissioned by the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, found that primary voters start off favoring the government-run health care system by a margin of 79 percent to 21 percent, but can be persuaded to oppose it. The study showed that Democrats are most swayed by the arguments that the program would impose a heavy cost on taxpayers and threaten Medicare for senior citizens.

The poll was conducted by Lisa Grove of Anzalone Liszt Grove Research. Her partner, John Anzalone, is the chief pollster and an adviser to Biden, who opposes Medicare for All and wants to make government-run insurance optional.

Though Biden did not commission the poll, he and his team appeared on message Monday. In Iowa, Biden accused rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who says she backs a Medicare for All system, of wanting to raise Americans' taxes. Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield echoed that point during an appearance on MSNBC Monday. Bedingfield said that the Medicare for All bill presented by Sanders would make the cost of healthcare too high by raising taxes.

Krystal Ball: Dems on track to nominate Warren and lose to Trump

What Media Like Best About Elizabeth Warren: She’s Not Bernie Sanders

When the Washington Post‘s Paul Waldman (9/18/19) recently attempted to explain Elizabeth Warren’s rise in the Democratic primary polls, he attributed it in part to media:

Reporters on the campaign trail have said for some time that she is the one who generates the most enthusiastic response among voters on the ground. A rise in her poll standing inevitably produces stories about what she’s doing right, stories that get filled with the impressions those reporters have accumulated.

The resulting positive news coverage encourages more Democrats to feel favorably toward her, or at the very least give her a careful look. Which leads to poll numbers that continue to improve, which leads to more positive press coverage, and the cycle goes on.

It’s a logical path from enthusiastic crowds and rising poll numbers to news coverage about what a candidate is doing right. But it’s certainly not an inevitable one; media coverage is a product of editorial decisions, not laws of nature. And four years ago, when another Democratic primary candidate was drawing enthusiastic crowds and rising in the polls, it prompted a very different kind of coverage (e.g., FAIR.org, 7/1/15, 8/20/15, 8/21/15).

Why has Warren—who has positioned herself as Bernie Sanders’ closest ideological competitor, and a vocal crusader against corporate control over the political system—so far escaped the scathing and skeptical coverage Sanders has received? The answer has to do with both the differences in how the two candidates frame themselves, and the way major media cover elections.

As FAIR has shown over and over, corporate journalists’ rolodexes skew heavily toward establishment sources: party officials, strategists and operatives (Extra!, 7–8/14;  FAIR.org, 6/1/17), and centrist and right-leaning think tank analysts (FAIR.org, 7/1/13). Those sources are almost uniformly and vehemently anti-Sanders, and have been at least since his run against Hillary Clinton in the last election provoked their deepest antipathy (FAIR.org, 6/28/19, 8/15/19). But—no doubt in part because Sanders has helped shift the center of the party so much in recent years—many see Warren as a more acceptable alternative.

Even Third Way, the pro-corporate think tank that in 2013 warned in the Wall Street Journal (12/2/13) that Warren was leading Democrats “off a populist cliff,”  has warmed up a bit to her (Politico, 6/19/19). Politico quoted an attendee at a Third Way conference—who says he likes Warren’s consumer protection policies and infrastructure plan—describing the shift: “People are taking a second look at her and saying, ‘Hmm. Some of her policies are good. Maybe she isn’t like Bernie.’”

“She isn’t like Bernie” seems to be the take thus far of much of the Democratic establishment, which, as the New York Times (8/26/19) reported recently, Warren has been working hard to convince she “is a team player who is seeking to lead the party—not stage a hostile takeover of it.” By reassuring the kind of party insiders the media rely heavily on for framing their stories, Warren has largely avoided the kinds of aspersions—often anonymous—lobbed at Sanders. ... Warren, who emphasizes that she is “a capitalist to my bones,” inspires less fear than Sanders, not just among the centrist party insiders who make up a large bulk of media sources, but also, no doubt, among the owners and sponsors of major news outlets.

Bogus “Working Families Party” Endorsement Of Warren Exposed

Teen Climate Activists Wanted Real Action. The UN Gave Them iMovie Lessons and a 'Games of Thrones' Actor.

Hundreds of young climate activists watched as Oona Castilla Chaplin, the actor who played Robb Stark’s wife, Talisa, on "Game of Thrones," took the stage during the afternoon session of the United Nations Youth Climate Summit. They attended the Saturday event at the governing body’s headquarters in Manhattan in hopes of having their thoughts on the climate crisis heard by world leaders. Instead, they listened to a celebrity talk in vague, almost spiritual terms about humanity’s relationship to the planet. ...

Many of the young activists at the summit told VICE News the U.N. had used them for a photo op and pandered to what might interest them. The schedule was full of sessions about using social media to shift the conversation around climate change. “Instagram on Purpose” and “Viral Video Masterclass” were two of the workshops offered. ...

The activists did, however, find some of the workshops useful, particularly one on climate finance. But at the end of the day, they still felt the U.N. had left them with little opportunity to speak to the powerful adults who will convene at the U.N. for the Climate Action Summit on Monday. ...

To some, the timing of the conference felt like a blow, like they had been relegated to the literal kids’ table. They’d rather have met during the week when about 100 heads of state are expected to attend the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit. But only a handful of the young activists at the summit on Saturday were invited to address them.

Most of world's biggest firms 'unlikely' to meet Paris climate targets

More than four fifths of the world’s largest companies are unlikely to meet the targets set out in the Paris climate agreement by 2050, according to fresh analysis of their climate disclosures. A study of almost 3,000 publicly listed companies found that just 18% have disclosed plans that are aligned with goals to limit rising temperatures to 1.5C of pre-industrialised levels by the middle of the century.

The report covers companies across the global economy and was undertaken by investment data provider Arabesque S-Ray which assigned each company a temperature score based on its publicly disclosed plans. The companies are scored based on their publicly disclosed emissions-intensity today and scientifically accredited plans to reduce their emissions in future.

The analysts found more than a third of the world’s top 200 companies still do not disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, despite rising concern that urgent action is needed to avert dangerous levels of global heating. Andreas Feiner, chief executive of Arabesque S-Ray, said companies “may appear to be taking steps to reduce their impact on climate change”, but many are choosing to keep the full scale of their emissions under wraps to avoid losing investment.

Arabesque’s temperature scores should help make investment more transparent by assigning a 3C increase to companies that fail to disclose their climate emissions, he said.

Worth a full read. Here's a taste:

Indigenous People Are Already Working “Green Jobs” — but They’re Unrecognized and Unpaid

A growing climate consciousness has spurred popular support for a Green New Deal complete with calls for “green jobs” to aid in the transition away from fossil fuels. It’s a welcome development, but it’s also important to recognize the old labor of ecological stewardship — particularly that being carried out by Indigenous land defenders and Water Protectors. ...

Founded in 2010 on unceded Wet’suwet’en land, Unist’ot’en Camp, some 750 miles north of Vancouver, Canada, aims to block the Coastal Gas Link pipeline, known as CGL, which is being constructed by TC Energy, the firm formerly known as TransCanada. But that’s not the camp’s only purpose: It was also founded to help bring the land and the community back to health after a period of intense logging that threatened moose hunts and salmon runs, elements of a land-based economy threatened by the oil pipeline. ... The sort of land defense undertaken in the camp opens up a larger discussion about what “green jobs” are already being performed by Indigenous peoples to save our Earth — and the kind of value we assign to them.

Similar to how women and non-men have been historically tasked with doing the unpaid labor of housework and child-rearing, the relationship Indigenous caretakers have with the land, water, air, and nonhuman world is typically not viewed as productive. The financial, service, industrial, or technology sectors usually define what counts as a “job” — and it’s frequently bound up with polluting. Rarely is Indigenous caretaking defined as work. Yet, like unwaged caregiving work, land defense and water protection are undervalued but necessary for the continuation of life on a planet teetering on collapse.

Despite preserving the very elements needed to sustain life — such as clean air, water, and land — from settler states, repression against Indigenous peoples protecting their territories runs rampant.

Also of Interest

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

‘Planet So Small We Must Live in Peace’

'Medication or housing': why soaring insulin prices are killing Americans

Google upended Pittsburgh – but will the city's working-class roots transform the tech industry?

The Plan to Trip Up Trump

Will Joe Biden Be a Rerun of 2016 Tragedy?

A Little Night Music

Alex Moore - They May Not Be My Toes

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Ice Pick Blues

Whistlin' Alex Moore - From North Dallas to the East Side

Charlie Louvin & "Whistling" Alex Moore - The Katy Blues

Whistlin' Alex Moore - It Wouldn't Be So Hard

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Blue Bloomer Blues

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Miss No Good Weed

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Across The Atlantic Ocean

Whistling Alex Moore - Whistling Alex Moore's Blues