@smiley7
Wow, very well said. That's a lot to unpack, but here goes. First things first.

The forth estate plays tiddly winks
releasing the mad dogs from their leashes
to roam neighborhoods, stand in pulpits and fatten sheriffs

blatancy surprises and overwhelms

(your words rearranged - changed surprised to surprises and overwhelmed to overwhelms)

Yes, you're right - "You can't fight city Hall." Not a lot of difference between the Company Store and City Hall, my friend. Thanks for your comment.

Be well, stay safe and have a good one .

concerns; worried disillusioned younger generations throw their hands up; my son, nearing forty, for instance, disdains anything political saying it's bullshit on both sides. And i recall my generation fading away into the capitalist journey for the most part, as well, leaving in our wake a void quickly filled by the machinery of night, four-dead-in-Ohio.

Today, innocent people, mostly the working poor pay the Oil Piper's price. A quick aside, study shows more deaths from c-virus in areas with polluted air. A deeper irony of the US of A angers me as those most imperiled cast their votes for Trump and Biden while the forth estate plays tiddly-winks.

Very sad Bernie and us could not break the logjam of corporate broadcasters and entrenched political hacks, think tanks, billionaires and the party apparatus. They lied voraciously and cheated at every turn and it doesn't help knowing we knew they would lie, cheat and steal to stop Sanders going in, but the blatancy surprised and overwhelmed.

"You can't fight City Hall," a very common refrain from childhood expressed all around which inevitably came no doubt from the trials and tribulations and stories passed down from those oppressed before. This thinking, unfortunately, perpetuates and feeds the machine releasing the mad dogs from their leashes to roam neighborhoods, stand in pulpits and fatten sheriffs.

In this, only Bernie stands tall, the other candidates, all of them also exposing their commitment to the established dollar. At least we see the pretenders for who they really are and Sanders deserves thanks for this as well, adding the talking heads professing liberalism to that exposition, a bitter gravy on top for journalism.

"What the fuck are we to do?" I don't know, magi, frankly; but i do know this that blaming Bernie as many of such great integrity and track records of wonderful accomplishments seemingly wish to do won't fly. Those people choosing to do just that, blame Bernie, reveal truths about themselves in the process, earning this morning's new title of mendacious sycophants to their own humanity. To those folks, i say, fuck you.

Our local hospitals sent out press release appealing for hand sanitizing donations giving our rural community little faith we're prepared for the disease's arrival; my god, the hospitals don't have alcohol. I write this to ask, is there a breaking point in this fake society's political fabric? Can we expect a sea change? Or will thousands continue to die while casting their votes for the company store?

After all, "You can't fight city Hall."

@enhydra lutris
Many of us have been working on 'change' for a very long time and it's gotten worse. The rich are richer and the poor fucked, basically, for the most part. Not only have things gotten worse, 'that worse' was part of a well-scripted, long-term plan and at every turn, every one, the ptb have been able to turn the table to benefit themselves.

So, I am not thinking that change is going to come from within. We tried and failed just now. So what's next. I don't know. Something has to give. That's what I think.

Thanks for your thoughts. Be well and have a good one.

of us are supposed to do in the sense of how to bring about change. All of my life a large faction has said that the best plan is to "work from within" which is, of course, simply the most comfortable plan, no resistance is required or even desired. They have, as far as I can see not really accomplished a hell of a lot, in fact, we seem to have lost some rights we once had gained, yet, everybody must eat and all that, so some concessions in the form of obtaining sustenance must be made. I can say that taking over either major political for the purpose of making it serve the people seems laughably futile except at the most local levels.

The need to feed is an impediment to using our communicative technology to more or less force local direct democracy, plus that technology is catastrophically vulnerable until and unless the people build out a people's communication infrastructure, owned and controlled by the people, either as individuals or collectives as well as people's media. The fact that creating that will be a slog is a deterrent to doing it at all, because everybody wants quicker results than can come from that process.

be well and have a good one

@randtntx
Thanks for the music. Very nice.

Yes, the young ones are remarkably informed and know they are screwed. I wonder if they also know how hard it is to change the system. They are trying certainly. Just now Sunrise and others are asking byedone for promises. Easily broken, I say. I remember Obomba making all these promises and then breaking them. So easy to do again. No?

It's a double edged sword. A dance on the head of a pin. We must stay informed and in spite of the challenges presented by that information and stay centered. Both are important. Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

Take good care and have a good one.

like a good percentage of the millennials know they are so screwed. The ones in my family absolutely know. The heartbreak over that fact is undeniable. We, and everybody I know, have worked so long and hard to prevent that from happening and yet....

Lookout said that these are dark times. That is also undeniable and I wish it were not so. But here we are. The feeling of being in dark times is so prevalent as to be almost palpable. It's surreal. I feel like I'm watching myself go through motions of daily life from the outside as if from a distance and in slow motion. (No, I'm not on drugs ). It's just a bad movie, or a bad novel, or a hackneyed old plot and I'm repeating a hackneyed old cliche. Ugh.

The truth tellers and the fighters that QMS mentioned are the first to be targeted and silenced. They keep popping up though and that is gold....to be cherished. Every act of truth telling and every time someone stands up to show people that; 'hey, it doesn't have to be this way', ranks among our highest actions and should rank along side our most valued things. Things like trees, clean water, clean air, a healthy Mother Earth, healthy communities, mountains, snow, glaciers....the list of our shared treasures is miraculously, magnificently, fabulously, and beautifully long.

QMS mentions maintain soul strength, hold back the darkness, and a struggle we share. Those phrases are now in my brain, so thank you.
Here is a musical interpretation that expresses a bit of this.

@Cassiodorus
Thanks. Great article.

Biden was one of the key architects of the bankrupty bill, which made it impossible to declare bankruptcy on student loans.

The result of the bankruptcy bill is that millenials and zoomers who went to university and don’t have rich parents can’t own a house and many have decided they can’t afford families. They expect to live in poverty for decades as a result. (Not going to university means you can’t even apply for good jobs.)

Plus his push for three-strikes laws and the drug wars. We now have prisons full of mostly young black men. Still.

And this

Trump may be worse, but this a case of Beelzebub vs. Satan.

Heh. Have a good one.

https://www.ianwelsh.net/its-bidens-world/

@Unabashed Liberal
gosh golly gee whiz

Dunno, dunno, dunno. It looks like we are in for a rough ride. I wish I could say to all the young ones that we tried and it didn't work. That what is left is not enough. And I hope they can think outside the box and do better, because they have to. And that I, and many of us have there backs. Use us because we can help.

I read your reply and yeah, let's not take this lying down. Thanks Mollie. Take good care of you and yours. Have a good one.

but, think that young people outta push Sanders to run third Party, or, recruit someone else (equally as progressive) to do so--NOW!

Wanted to share this Tweet with you. It's one reason I loved Interior Alaska so much--the lovely weather.

Of course, the long very termperate summer days are gorgeous, too.

@NWSFairbanks Winter’s not done with us yet pic.twitter.com/xaKJUWMvvw

— Bill Witte (@Anisian) April 3, 2020

Thanks for reading my OAP blurb the other day. Hope you saw my reply to you.

Take good care, and stay well.

Mollie

THANK YOU America's Physicians & Nurses, All Medical Personnel, First Responders, To Include Medical (EMT/Paramedics/Ambulance), Pharmacy Personnel, Fire Depts, Police Depts, Retailers/Grocers--Especially, To Marginally-Paid Frontline Retail Cashiers & Clerks.

Last, but not least,

THANKS to America's Truckers/Delivery Persons, Especially, To Over-The-Road/Long Haul Truckers Who Obviously Have The Capacity To Shut Down The Entire Country, If They Were To Choose To Sit Out The Current Public Health Crisis, In Order To Protect Their Own.

You are all truly heroes.

Godspeed.

FYI

From the website Concierge Medicine Today,

Concierge Care for Congress: Attending Physician of the United States Congress

July 15, 2014

OAP provides members of Congress with physicals and routine examinations, on-site X-rays and lab work, physical therapy and referrals to medical specialists from military hospitals and private medical practices. When specialists are needed, they are brought to the Capitol, often at no charge to members of Congress.[4]

Members of Congress do not pay for the individual services they receive at the OAP, nor do they submit claims through their federal employee health insurance policies. Instead, as of 2009, members pay a flat, annual fee of $503 for all the care they receive. The rest of the cost of their care is paid for by federal funding, from the U.S. Navy budget. The annual fee has not changed significantly since 1992.[4]

and,

Yearly Fee

One aspect of the office’s operations which remains unclear is just how the annual $503 fee is determined.

Until 1992, OAP services were free to members of Congress. But after former Sen. Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania angered members by introducing a bill to make Congress members pay market rate prices for using the OAP, a compromise was reached.

Instead of charging for each service, Wofford said, members of the House and Senate agreed to hire independent consultants to determine the average value of the services offered and to use that amount to determine an annual fee.
“We thought of the pricing much like an HMO,” Wofford said of the compromise pricing model. “The attending physician at the time told me he had no interest in handling insurance or billing for each service available.”

But Wofford said the House and Senate committees tasked with determining the fee each insisted on hiring their own consultants, leading to a split pricing system. According to press accounts from 1992, the Senate set the fee at $520; the House fee was set at $263 for the same care. At some point, sources say, the separate rates were scrapped and replaced with the single fee, now set at $503.

The Office of the Attending Physician refused to comment on the fee or why it has not changed significantly in 17 years, despite rampant inflation in all other areas of health care costs.

Anderson refused repeated requests for the Committee on House Administration to provide details of how the rate is determined or who determines it.

“Members pay an annual fee determined by an independent actuary for use of the OAP services,” Anderson responded each time he was asked about the pricing model.

Gotta put an end to this Congressional Perk, if we hope to ever have a decent healthcare program.

IOW, our lawmakers' current excellent OAP healthcare program allows them to be exempt from any austerity/managed care tools that they seek to impose on the masses, as evidenced by several Dem Party MFA/public option proposals.

@smiley7
I keep telling myself there is a difference between being a cynic and being a realist and I am a realist. Funny how there were no tests in early January. /s

The White House press office announced today that it would start administering rapid coronavirus tests to reporters after one journalist, who was last at the White House on Tuesday, started developing symptoms. The guardian