The Evening Blues - 10-14-20



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Memphis Minnie

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer and guitarist Memphis Minnie. Enjoy!

Memphis Minnie - Hoodoo Lady Blues

"Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered. But whether there are any miraculous cures from faith-healing, beyond the body's own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue. Secondly, the expose' of fraud and error in science is made almost exclusively by science. But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost never done by other faith-healers."

-- Carl Sagan


News and Opinion

Bad apples world tour now in the Big Apple:

Stop-and-Frisk Never Really Ended. Now It’s Gone Digital.

Terron Belle was walking home from an upper Manhattan subway station one evening, three years ago, when an unmarked police car pulled up behind him. Four officers in plainclothes surrounded him on the sidewalk, ordering him to turn around against a gate so they could search him. Belle complied, and the officers found nothing on him, but they then demanded his ID, telling him that they were looking for guns and doing a “warrant check.”

“I didn’t have any warrants,” Belle told The Intercept. “I was a bit confused, like, why were they searching me for a warrant?” Still, he complied. “I wasn’t going to argue,” he said, fearing that if he had, the encounter would have quickly turned dangerous for him. “It could have gone different, it was night time, there was nobody around us.” When they found no warrant for Belle officers returned his ID and let him go without so much as an apology. ...

The same scene, plainclothes officers rushing out of unmarked cars to stop mostly Black and Latino New Yorkers and demand their IDs, has played out thousands of times, according to a federal class-action lawsuit currently before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In each case documented in the lawsuit, officers stopped and searched people in mostly poor communities, then, even after finding no unlawful items on them, they demanded to see identification. Officers sometimes told the suspects that they were looking for guns — and ran their IDs to search for arrest warrants or possibly matches in other law enforcement databases, including ones tracking alleged gang affiliation or connections to open cases. But police ran those checks without any basis or reasonable suspicion, making the temporary detentions and digital searches unconstitutional, the lawsuit claims. “By exploiting surveillance technology, the NYPD has replaced traditional — and largely discredited — police practices such as stop-and-frisk with invasive digital searches that rely on surveillance systems,” the complaint says. “The NYPD’s policy and practice of detaining people without individualized lawful justification in order to search NYPD databases violates the United States Constitution and is the latest tactic in a long history of unwarranted search and seizure practices.”

“They have nothing besides the fact that these are young men in certain neighborhoods,” said Cyrus Joubin, an attorney for the plaintiffs, arguing that the practice violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches, and the 14th, which prohibits racial discrimination. “They have at most a baseless hunch and they’re just going on a fishing expedition.”

The practice appears to be sanctioned by the NYPD itself, the lawsuit notes, with officers sometimes telling the individuals they stopped that they were just “following procedure.” The lawsuit accuses department officials of failing to properly train and supervise officers on the legality of these searches.

Far-right plotters 'discussed kidnapping Virginia governor Ralph Northam'

Members of anti-government paramilitary groups discussed kidnapping Virginia governor Ralph Northam during a June meeting in Ohio, an FBI agent testified on Tuesday during a court hearing for a group of men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor.

Special agent Richard Trask also revealed new details about investigators’ use of confidential informants, undercover agents and encrypted communication to arrest and charge six men last week in the plot aimed at Gretchen Whitmer.

Tuesday’s hearing was to review investigators’ evidence against Adam Fox, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta and to determine if they should be detained before trial. The men are all from Michigan. A sixth man, Barry Croft, was being held in Delaware.

The FBI discovered the 6 June meeting in Dublin, Ohio, during an investigation of various anti-government groups, leading to the case in Michigan that foiled the alleged kidnapping conspiracy.

It was not immediately clear whether talk of targeting Virginia’s governor went beyond the June meeting, and nothing from a criminal complaint or from Trask’s testimony indicated that anyone had been charged with plotting against Northam, like Whitmer a Democrat.

Jimmy's Message To TRUMP on Tucker Carlson's Show!

President Trump can’t use $3.6 billion in military funds for border wall construction, federal court rules

A federal appeals court ruled late Friday that President Donald Trump’s use of his emergency powers to build his long-promised border wall with military funds is illegal, striking a blow to one of his signature campaign promises just weeks before the November election.

The 2-1 decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes as $3.6 billion was slated for construction of about a dozen projects, including two projects in the Laredo and El Paso areas. The money was diverted from funds dedicated for military construction after the president declared a national emergency in February 2019 to tap the funds. The projects in Texas would have covered more than 60 miles, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The courts have once again confirmed what everyone knows: Trump’s fake ‘national emergency’ was just another pretext for targeting immigrants and border communities,” said Dror Ladin, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project. “It’s past time for Trump to finally give up on trying to raid the federal budget for his wasteful and illegal project.”

Nancy Pelosi MELT DOWN!

Trump administration can end census count early, supreme court rules

The US supreme court will allow the Trump administration to immediately end counting for the 2020 census, despite warnings that doing so would result in inaccurate data with severe consequences for the next decade.

The ruling essentially cuts short counting every living American resident, scheduled to end on 31 October, by two weeks. The court did not offer any explanation for its order, which came after the Trump administration asked the justices to pause a lower court ruling extending the count while the case was appealed. Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she would have blocked the request to halt the proceedings.

“Meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the census is not a cost worth paying, especially when the Government has failed to show why it could not bear the lesser cost of expending more resources to meet the deadline or continuing its prior efforts to seek an extension from Congress,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.

Lower courts had ordered the Trump administration to extend counting until 31 October. The decennial survey, used to draw electoral districts and allocate $1.5tn in federal funds, was originally scheduled to end 30 September, but the Trump administration originally sought a one month extension earlier this year, pointing to delays because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In late August, the commerce department, which oversees the Census Bureau, abruptly reversed its position, saying it would try and complete counting by 30 September and deliver the data used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets by the 31 December statutory deadline. The reversal came even after the bureau’s own experts warned they could not meet those deadlines.

Court Expansion Is An Easy Answer

As the GOP races to try to install Amy Barrett to the Supreme Court before the election, Joe Biden and most competitive Democratic Senate candidates — other than one — are running away from queries about whether they would support expanding the court. ...

If Democrats have any interest in protecting Americans’ fundamental rights, they only have a few options. They can try using parliamentary tactics to successfully block Barrett’s nomination, which Senate Democrats have been reluctant to do, and they can add more court seats later. This is reality, and it is precisely why Democrats are getting so many media questions about adding court seats.

The easiest way to talk about whether to expand the court is to cast it as an issue of values and policies that people actually care about. If — as they insist — Democrats are firmly committed to protecting reproductive, voting, labor, health care and civil rights, it shouldn’t be difficult for any Senate candidate to say they will consider all options available to protect them, including expanding the court. In that sense, Democratic support for expanding the court is synonymous with supporting popular, essential liberties like a woman’s right to choose, workers’ right to form unions and Americans’ right to not be thrown off their health insurance because they have a pre-existing health condition. ...

At least one Democratic Senate candidate seems to understand the situation: Over the weekend, Montana’s Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock said that if he is elected to the Senate, he would consider expanding the Supreme Court. ... Republicans were quick to attack Bullock for this position, but there is little evidence that the exact number of justices on the court is some top-of-mind concern among voters. There’s absolutely zero evidence that voters want the Supreme Court stuck at nine justices, even if that means those justices doing wildly unpopular things, like throwing out protections for pre-existing medical conditions. ...

Over two centuries, the court’s size has been adjusted. If the founders wanted the court permanently set at nine justices, they would have put that into the Constitution. They didn’t. They gave Congress the flexibility to adjust the court’s size. That power allows the legislative branch to make sure that the court doesn’t become a star chamber totally disconnected from public will.

Dem Senator EXPOSES Big Money Behind SCOTUS Nominees

Upcoming SCOTUS Climate Case Involves Oil Giant That Employed Barrett’s Father

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Tuesday declared that she does not have firm views on the existence and threat of climate change. The court is preparing to hear a climate case involving fossil fuel giants, including Shell Oil, where her father spent much of his career. With major climate cases pending before the high court, Barrett was asked by Republican Sen. John Kennedy if she had thought about climate change. She responded: “I’ve read about climate change. I’m certainly not a scientist. I mean, I’ve read things on climate change. I would not say I have firm views on it.”

Less than two weeks before the confirmation hearings, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by Royal Dutch Shell and other oil giants that are being sued by cities and states for the climate damage those companies created. Shell and the others are asking justices to allow the case to be heard in federal court.

In 2018, Inside Climate News reported that “internal company documents uncovered by a Dutch news organization show that the oil giant Shell had a deep understanding, dating at least to the 1980s, of the science and risks of global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions.” 

Barrett’s father, Michael, has written that “most of my legal career was spent as an attorney with Shell in New Orleans.”


Asked About Trump Effort to 'Unilaterally Delay Election,' Barrett Says She Would Approach It With 'An Open Mind'

When Judge Amy Coney Barrett was asked Tuesday during her second day of confirmation hearings if it would be constitutional for the president of the United States to "unilaterally delay an election," the right-wing Supreme Court nominee refused to answer the question except in vague terms, saying that judges should "approach cases with an open mind."

"Holy smokes. We are in danger," said Genevieve Guenther, founder and director of End Climate Silence, in response to Barrett's apparent openness to allowing President Donald Trump—who recently nominated her to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court—to unilaterally postpone the 2020 election. 

"This shouldn't be a hard question," tweeted Demand Justice, a progressive organization opposed to the Republican Party's anti-democratic court-packing efforts. "The fact that she would not answer it is deeply troubling."

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) highlighted the hypocrisy of Barrett's equivocation, saying that anyone with a so-called "originalist" interpretation of the U.S. Constitution should have been able to answer with a definitive "No."

In addition to Barrett's ambiguous and legally dubious response to Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) question about the constitutionality of a unilateral presidential postponement of Election Day, Trump's pro-corporate Supreme Court nominee also refused to commit to recusing herself from any cases arising from election disputes.

Dahlia Lithwick: Amy Coney Barrett May Claim Neutrality, But Her Record Is “Extremely Conservative”

'This Is a Dog Whistle': Barrett Condemned for Implying That Being LGBTQ Is a Choice and Saying Working With Anti-Gay Hate Group Was 'Wonderful'

LGBTQ people and their allies condemned Judge Amy Coney Barrett during the second day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearings Tuesday after the nominee falsely claimed she never discriminated against LGBTQ people, implied that their sexual orientation is a choice, and described her experience with an anti-gay hate group as "wonderful."

LGBTQ rights loomed large during the second day of Barrett's contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation. President Donald Trump's third Supreme Court nominee refused to say whether or not she would vote to roll back hard-fought civil rights while repeatedly dodging questions from Democrats on the committee about both her personal views on gay rights and how she might rule on the issue.

While Supreme Court nominees routinely invoke the principle of "judicial canon" to avoid disclosing their beliefs on issues and cases, Barrett recently said she espouses the same judicial philosophy as the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who routinely ruled against civil rights for LGBTQ people, in cases ranging from the overturned Texas sodomy ban to the landmark 2015 marriage equality case Obergefell v. Hodges.

When pressed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on her jurisprudential affinity for Scalia—for whom she clerked—Barrett replied that "you would not be getting Justice Scalia, you would be getting Justice Barrett."

"I have no agenda and I do want to be clear that I have never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference and would not ever discriminate on the basis of sexual preference," Barrett replied to questioning about Obergefell.

However, civil rights advocates were quick to remind the world that she had indeed discriminated against LGBTQ people. She did so while serving on the board of trustees of Trinity Schools Incorporated, a network of private Christian schools in Indiana which during her tenure enacted a policy prohibiting students with unmarried parents. As same-sex marriage was illegal in the state at the time, the policy effectively discriminated against LGBTQ people.

Furthermore, Barrett's use of the term "sexual preference" raised eyebrows and ire, as the word "preference" implies that sexual orientation is something LGBTQ people can control at will. Feinstein—a former San Francisco mayor who represents the state with the nation's largest LGBTQ population—said nothing about Barrett's use of the offensive term. Others, however, quickly did.

"When Amy Coney Barrett used the term 'sexual preference' in her testimony before the Senate today, she perpetuated the dangerous and false stereotype that being LGBTQ is not a fundamental aspect of identity, but a mere 'preference,'" said Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights. "This is why so many people, including many parents who send their children to conversion therapy, think being LGBTQ is a choice. As judges know, language matters."

"This is a dogwhistle," the LGBTQ civil rights group Lambda Legal tweeted in response to Barrett's response. "The term 'sexual preference' is used by opponents of equality to suggest that being #LGBTQ is a choice." ...

To many LGBTQ observers, the most alarming part of Tuesday's hearing was when Barrett was asked about her links to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a right-wing legal advocacy organization designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in part for its support for the criminalization of consensual sex between LGBTQ adults in the United States and abroad.

In recent years, ADF also intervened in support of now-repealed European laws allowing forced sterilization of transgender people. The group has also argued in favor of permitting employers to fire workers solely for being transgender—a practice ruled unconstitutional by the historic 2020 Supreme Court decision Bostock v. Clayton County.

Barrett, who has been paid to speak at the ADF's Blackstone Legal Fellowship program on five occasions, told the Judiciary Committee that her "experience with the Blackstone program was a wonderful one," and that she was "not aware" of ADF's efforts to criminalize LGBTQ people or repeal same-sex marriage equality.

However, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) then noted that Blackstone Legal Fellowship reading materials referenced (pdf) ADF's defense of sodomy laws, and that ADF's website clearly states the group's opposition to same-sex marriage equality.

A recent report (pdf) by HRC warned that Barrett has "demonstrated hostility toward LGBT+ rights in her words and rulings," and that if confirmed, "she would advance a legal philosophy that yielded reliably and rabidly anti-LGBTQ rulings and dissents during Justice Scalia's tenure."

Can Trump Delay Election or Reject Peaceful Transition of Power? Amy Coney Barrett Refuses to Say

Amy Coney Barrett dodges abortion, healthcare and election law questions

On the second day of hearings before the Senate judiciary committee, Democrats pressed supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on healthcare, election law and abortion rights – and met with little success. Donald Trump’s third nominee for the highest court dodged questions on how she might rule on a challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA); if she would recuse herself from any lawsuit about the presidential election; and whether she would vote to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v Wade, which made abortion legal.

In an exchange with the Democratic Delaware senator Chris Coons, Barrett said: “I am not here on a mission to destroy the Affordable Care Act. I’m just here to apply the law and adhere to the rule of law.”

Multiple Democratic senators pressed Barrett on whether she would recuse herself from a possible case about the outcome of the 2020 election. The Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal said he was “disappointed” in Barrett’s refusal to commit to a position. He added: “It would be a dagger at the heart of the court and our democracy if this election is decided by the court rather than the American voters.”

Barrett argued that she was not a pundit, citing remarks by Justice Elena Kagan and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg in saying that outside of reviewing a specific case, it was not her place to offer a position. “No hints, no previews, no forecasts,” Barrett quoted Ginsburg as saying, after the California senator Dianne Feinstein questioned her about how she might rule in any case challenging the legality of abortion. ...

When she was asked about a newspaper ad she signed criticizing Roe v Wade, first reported by the Guardian, Barrett said she had “no recollection” of it and stressed she had nothing to hide.

Krystal Ball Exposes Democrats FAKE Health Care Argument Against ACB



the horse race



What Elites Refuse To Face About The 2020 Election

Twitter suspends accounts for posing as Black Trump supporters

Twitter has suspended a network of accounts claiming to be owned by Black supporters of Donald Trump and his re-election campaign due to spam and platform manipulation, it said Tuesday. The company is investigating the activity and may suspend additional similar accounts if they are found to be violating its policies, a spokesperson said.

The Washington Post first reported on the investigation, citing more than a dozen accounts using identical, inauthentic language including the phrase: “YES IM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP!!!”

A review of some of the suspended accounts shows they often used stolen images to appear real. The accounts sometimes claimed to be owned by military veterans or members of law enforcement.

This is not the first time Twitter has had to address a spam operation claiming to be led by Black voters. NBC News also reported spam operations from fake accounts posing as Black Trump supporters in August. Some accounts were able to attract thousands of followers before they were suspended. One tweet, for example, amassed more than 10,000 retweets before it was removed, NBC News found. Another account allegedly used a photo of a veteran who died last month to pose as a Trump supporter.

Trump DESPAIRS At Possibility Of Losing To 'Worst Candidate In History'

Appeals court upholds Texas governor’s restriction on mail-in ballot drop boxes

Texas can block county election officials from offering more than one place to drop off their mail-in ballots, a federal appeals court ruled late on Monday, a blow to civil rights groups who argued the restriction made it needlessly harder for voters to cast ballots.

Earlier this summer, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, issued a proclamation extending early voting in the state and allowing voters to return their mail-in ballots in person before election day. But after some of the state’s largest, and most Democratic counties announced they were setting up multiple locations for voters to return their ballots, Abbott issued a second proclamation only allowing counties to return their ballots in one place.

The decision most severely affected Harris county, which is nearly 2,000 sq miles, and planned to offer 12 drop boxes for its 2.4 million voters. Now, it only has one. The county is also home to a sizable chunk of minority residents; 20% of the county is Black and 43% are Hispanic.

After a federal judge struck down Abbott’s restriction last week, a three-judge panel on the fifth circuit court of appeals put that decision on hold while the case made its way through the appeal process. They wrote that Abbott had actually expanded opportunities to vote recently. In that context, only allowing one place for voters to leave their ballots, the judges said, did not amount to a severe burden on the right to vote.

Biden’s Floated Cabinet Is RETURN Of The Clinton-Obama Swamp



the evening greens


The Arctic is in a death spiral. How much longer will it exist?

At the end of July, 40% of the 4,000-year-old Milne Ice Shelf, located on the north-western edge of Ellesmere Island, calved into the sea. Canada’s last fully intact ice shelf was no more. On the other side of the island, the most northerly in Canada, the St Patrick’s Bay ice caps completely disappeared.

Two weeks later, scientists concluded that the Greenland Ice Sheet may have already passed the point of no return. Annual snowfall is no longer enough to replenish the snow and ice loss during summer melting of the territory’s 234 glaciers. Last year, the ice sheet lost a record amount of ice, equivalent to 1 million metric tons every minute.

The Arctic is unravelling. And it’s happening faster than anyone could have imagined just a few decades ago. Northern Siberia and the Canadian Arctic are now warming three times faster than the rest of the world. In the past decade, Arctic temperatures have increased by nearly 1C. If greenhouse gas emissions stay on the same trajectory, we can expect the north to have warmed by 4C year-round by the middle of the century. ...

The Arctic of the past is already gone. Following our current climate trajectory, it will be impossible to return to the conditions we saw just three decades ago. Yet many experts believe there’s still time to act, to preserve what once was, if the world comes together to prevent further harm and conserve what remains of this unique and fragile ecosystem.

Native Americans Protesting Trump Border Wall Tear Gassed, Arrested by US Agents on Indigenous Peoples' Day

Twelve people, including at least eight Native Americans, were arrested near an immigration checkpoint in Southern Arizona on Indigenous Peoples' Day after United States Border Patrol agents and Arizona law enforcement officials violently repressed a peaceful action held Monday morning by roughly 30 land and water protectors.

The O'odham Anti Border Collective—a group of Akimel O'odham, Tohono O'odham, and Hia Ced O'odham tribal members that seeks to promote the cultural practices and protect the homelands of all O'odham nations "through the dismantling of colonial borders"—organized an Indigenous prayer ceremony to voice opposition to the cultural and ecological destruction caused by the construction of President Donald Trump's border wall.

According to a statement released by the group, O'odham families "sang traditional songs, prayed, and attempted to discuss the Freedom of Religion Act that decriminalized Native American religions and opened the path towards the protection of sacred sites."

After telling them to clear the roadway, Border Patrol agents, Arizona state troopers, and officers from the state's Department of Public Safety attacked participants with tear gas and rubber bullets. ...

The O'odham Anti Border Collective said the police shot at least one O'odham man in the chest with a rubber bullet, an example of what the group called the "violence [and] extensive abuses" that O'odham communities endure as a result of "border militarization."

The collective stated that those who were ripped out of vehicles and tear gassed included "children and people with vulnerable health" who were attempting observe the ceremony from the safety of their cars.

According to the group, the police "grabbed children who had been in vehicles and abducted them from their parents—stealing children from Indigenous parents for practicing their religion is a clear violation of the Freedom of Religion Act and the Indian Child Welfare Act."

"It's obscene and offensive to us that local and state governments move to celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day while the federal government blows up our sacred sites, steals our kids, militarily occupies our communities, and shoots at Native Americans praying to protect our land and ancestors from desecration," said one O'odham tribal member who was present at the ceremony Monday morning.

California: autumn heatwave sparks fears of new wildfires

California’s siege of wildfires has significantly quieted but forecasters warned on Tuesday that a fall heatwave could bring back critical fire weather conditions this week.

Fire weather watches will go into effect in much of northern California early on Wednesday due to high pressure producing hot and dry conditions with gusty offshore winds, the National Weather Service said. Peak gusts are likely to start late on Wednesday, with parts of California expected to see winds of up to 50 miles per hour.


“Critical fire weather conditions” are possible across the higher elevations of the North and East Bay as well as the Santa Cruz Mountains due to high winds, a dry air mass moving in from the north and a drop in relative humidity values, said the National Weather Service in San Francisco. ...

The National Weather Service in Los Angeles warned of “briefly critical fire weather conditions” in Los Angeles and Ventura counties starting on Thursday night, due to “weak Santa Ana winds” that “will likely worsen on Friday” in addition to “very warm to hot and dry conditions”. Southern California, which started the week with triple-digit high temperatures, is predicted to see particularly gusty north-east winds on Friday. Temperatures are expected to stay in the high 90s and lower 100s through the end of the week, with heat advisories in effect for many areas.


Also of Interest

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

If the needs of the people aren’t being addressed, what is the purpose of putting Biden and Harris into office?

Because 'People Are Suffering,' Ro Khanna Says Democrats Have 'Moral Obligation' to Pursue Deal With White House on Covid Relief

New Book Proves U.S. Is Living Under a Disastrous Banking Model from a Century Ago

Professor Chossudovsky Is Wrong - Here Is How PCR Tests Work

Virginia Online Registration Portal Left Unworkable—Just Hours Before Deadline—After Cable 'Accidentally Cut'

How Texas Republicans Paved the Way for Their Own Demise

'Uninhabitable Hell' for Millions: UN Report Sounds Alarm on Humanity's Continued Destruction of Planet Earth

Image of tiger hugging tree wins 2020 wildlife photographer award

Lt. Gov. of Michigan DEFENDS Biden Touting Endorsement Of Gov. Who 'Poisoned’ Flint

Saagar Enjeti: Pelosi’s OUTRAGEOUS Obstruction Of Stimulus Dooms Millions To Score Political Points

Our Favorite Media Screwups: Tara Reade Finally Covered, Pence COVID Story Accidentally Published


A Little Night Music

Memphis Minnie - Hot Stuff

Memphis Minnie - This Is Your Last Chance

Memphis Minnie - If You See My Rooster

Memphis Minnie - Pig Meat On The Line

Memphis Minnie - You Can't Rule Me

Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe McCoy - Mister Tango Blues

Memphis Minnie - Kissing In The Dark

Memphis Minnie - Dirty Mother For You

Memphis Minnie - When the Levee Breaks


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Comments

(But I only use the N-95 in higher risk environments. Anywhere close to Trumpsters would qualify.)

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8 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@Marie

heh, i'm happy to see other people wearing one mask, i live in a college town, so there are lots of young people too stupid to wear one.

two sounds like a great idea.

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5 users have voted.

Redding Mega church 274 confirmed cases and counting. S. Korea has had to deal with multiple church hotspots. Guess like Trump they're asking god for a blessing followed by a miracle.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Marie

be well and have a good one.

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4 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@Marie

perhaps it's the new, reconsidered version of "the rapture."

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ggersh's picture

https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/

Thanks for the blues Joe, stay(keep away from NYC) safe everyone

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16 users have voted.

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, pretty apt - thanks for the cartoon!

have a great evening!

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Azazello's picture

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11 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

hmmm, it will be interesting to see how this new evidence shakes out and whether it is the smoking gun that it is being made out to be.

kimberley's article was good, there is also a much longer piece along the same lines by danny haiphong up at the bar which i got partway through that seemed pretty good.

thanks for the links, have a great evening!

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6 users have voted.

@Azazello Weak tea for several reasons. Voters will get no more exercised about Hunter having engaged in influence peddling than they have for all the Trumpkins doing the same. Was the Obama 'point man on Ukraine' so naive that he was unaware that he aided Burisma and by extension Hunter? Quite possible as Joe has no depth on any issue. However, as there won't be any legitimate investigation of this and Hunter appears to have flown the coop, Joe and Democrats will get away with claiming it's all been discredited and a lie.

The story on the laptop smells -- in a Roger Stone/Karl Rove sort of way. While not stated, we're supposed to believe that Hunter took his water damaged laptop in for repairs in DE in April and then forgot all about it. Mr. Repairman made a copy of the hard drive, eight months later (December 2019) turned in the laptop to the FBI, and at some point gave Guiliani a copy, who admits to having received stolen communications.

We don't know who owned the laptop. If the files on it are original or were downloaded to it. Based on news reports, at least some of the files are authentic, but that doesn't mean that all of them are. Nor do we know the time period the communications cover.

Was Mr. Repairman legitimate, set up, or paid off? Is that April 2019 date true? BannonCo were going after Hunter that early in the election cycle, but as he had been living in LA since early 2018, was he even in DE that April? For now have to accept that he turned in a laptop to the FBI in December 2019 because that would be more difficult to fake.

I'm going to go out on a limb with a couple of guesses. If none of the authentic files date from later than October 2015 (more likely not later than 5 July 2015), then it's not Hunter's laptop, the files were copied for a legitimate legal purpose, and somehow someone managed to download them onto a laptop that was made to look like Hunter's and was water damaged. If the files date up to early 2018, it could be Hunter's laptop or again a copy, and also stolen. Hunter was messed up enough from mid-2015 through early 2018 that he could have lost his laptop and not done anything about it. But would he have been that careless in 2019 as Joe was then definitely in the race?

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Azazello's picture

@Marie
I'd like to see the c-drive on Anthony Weiner's laptop too,
and all the stuff the cops found in Jeffrey Epstein's place in Manhattan.
I don't know what's real and what ain't,
but I know there was a lot of shit goin' on
that needs some lookin' into.

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10 users have voted.

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

@Azazello (not that I'm particularly interested in viewing anything sickening found on Weiner's laptop or in Epstein's houses.) WRT Epstein, the money trail is what I want to see. From that we can piece together far more about everything he was up to. Don't know that there's more than the usual amount of shit going on. It just may be that we're learning about a lot of it in a short period of time.

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enhydra lutris's picture

Gotta throw in 2 more, Chickasaw Train Blues,

and the first MM song I ever heard

be well and have a good one

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8 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

thanks for the tunes!

have a great evening.

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1 user has voted.
snoopydawg's picture

Bolton doesn’t lie awake at night because 100 of 1k Iraqis are dead because.....well you see how he lets himself off the hook for being a war criminal.

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snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

this must be awkward for Biden now.

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

probably time to go back to hiding in the basement.

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

it's a fool's errand to ask bolton if something troubles his conscience. he doesn't possess a conscience.

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It is hard sometimes to read and listen to all that is going on day by day. There is so much blind belief that Joe Biden is the answer to all of our problems and none of these people seem to know much about his political history. The ones that have some knowledge will assure me things have changed and we will now be better off. Best just to walk away...

Thanks for the Photography contests winners. That is such a wonderful glimpse into the the life of these beautiful creatures.

Have a good evening all

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9 users have voted.

Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

joe shikspack's picture

@jakkalbessie

if joe biden is the answer, then the question being asked is the wrong one. why america needs to be run by a corporate flunky eludes me.

that picture of the tree-hugging tiger was quite spectacular.

have a great evening!

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8 users have voted.
dystopian's picture

Memphis Minnie was great! Way ahead of her time. She was a cuttin' edge gal. That Jimmy Rogers was great too. Great player, right in the thick of it. I had a grandma named Minnie, you won't believe this but she was real short. Penn. Deutch, York, PA, so I grew up eating the best soups, dumplings, and pickled eggs I will ever have.

I would heartily recommend everyone to watch the Sheldon Whitehouse piece (as in The Hill vid above). It was epic, it will go down in history, and was pure awesomeness. He did such a great job of showing how and why she was sitting there, squirming unable to respond or reply. It was beautiful. Sheldon rocks.

have a goodn'

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7 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@dystopian

heh, i couldn't find it on youtube, but memphis minnie and jimmy rogers played together and recorded at least one song (ludella - a song that rogers re-recorded a number of times over the years) together.

dumplings! heh, i don't live too far from "dutch country" and before coronavirus was a thing i used to go up to a couple of places in the area for dumplings, knockwursts, etc.

i'm so looking forward to the end of this damned pandemic.

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4 users have voted.
Granma's picture

@dystopian @dystopian yesterday morning. Thinking about what he said and other things I've read about Barrett, I had one thought. She belongs to a religious group of about 1700 people in the US. She claims to be open minded about all things. If that was even marginally true, she would not be part of a group so judgemental and not open, that in the whole US, there are so few.
I'm not expressing this well. Splinter religious groups are made up of close minded people. If that were not true, they would not splinter off.
For Barrett to claim to be open minded about all things while belonging to such a group, is an extremely blatant lie. I would not trust her to decide whether a tomato looked ripe, let alone make decisions affecting millions of lives.

Edit to add missing word

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6 users have voted.
travelerxxx's picture

@Granma

Actually, you are "...expressing this" just fine.

Your observation about her involvement in the tiny and secretive "People of Praise" group (which I personally consider to be a fringe cult organization) is right on the money.

(I suspect you meant to say "If that were not true, they would [not] splinter off.")

Also, agree with not trusting her judgement to determine ripe fruit! LOL

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Granma's picture

@travelerxxx

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@Granma sect of Catholics than Opus Dei that reportedly numbers 'over 3,000' which I suspect is an underestimate and is on the order of 0.001% of the US population. Both are religious cults, in part because members tend to be secretive about their membership status. (Like the KKK of old.) Two out of nine members (previously three before Scalia croaked) of the SC are Opus Dei members (I doubt that Roberts is) which is wholly out of whack with the US population. We don't need to add a one of out nine adherent of yet another fringe religious cult.

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3 users have voted.
travelerxxx's picture

@Marie

I suspect that our fellow C99 member Betty Clermont is on top of this. She's covered Opus Dei very well in the past. I'd like to read something from her in this regard. She's the Pro from Dover on this subject.

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