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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Sax Mallard

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues sax player Sax Mallard. Enjoy!

^{Roosevelt Sykes (w/Sax Mallard) - Time Wasted On You}

“In the United States […] the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the corporate community, have refused to reform laws that make it virtually impossible to create new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competitions and free choice have little meaning. In some respects the caliber of debate and choice in neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of a genuine democracy.”

-- Robert W. McChesney

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News and Opinion

US braces for historic election amid fears democracy is in danger

Americans are bracing for an election day unlike any in US history, overshadowed by a direct threat from Donald Trump of “violence on the streets” if the vote count is not cut short, stoking fears that democracy itself is at stake when the polls close on Tuesday night.

The president’s incendiary tweet, which was quickly labelled by Twitter as potentially misleading, was fired off amid a febrile atmosphere on the last night of his campaign, with reports of mobs of his supporters driving around the streets in flag-waving motorcades seeking to intimidate opponents, while business districts in major cities boarded up windows.

The Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one. It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws. It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2020

Trump stepped up his demand for the vote count in the battleground state of Pennsylvania to end on election night, before most of the state’s postal ballots have been counted, and he railed against the supreme court, which had turned down a Republican lawsuit seeking to cut off the count.

The dark warning from the president marked the conclusion of a campaign that was in many ways unprecedented. It is the first election in which the incumbent president has said he would try to stop the vote count if early returns on election night show him to be ahead, and has openly encouraged acts of intimidation by his supporters. ...

A poll by USA Today and Suffolk University found that three out of four voters were worried about possible violence, with only a quarter of the electorate “very confident” there would be a peaceful transfer of power if the Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, won the election.

Turning White House Into a 'Fortress'? Federal Agents to Install 'Non-Scalable' Fence Just Before Election Day

Federal authorities are reportedly planning to erect a "non-scalable" fence around the entire perimeter of the White House on Monday as law enforcement officials, including 250 national guardsmen put on standby, prepare for possible protests in the aftermath of Election Day. 

NBC News White House Correspondent Geoff Bennett was the first to report on the latest White House fence construction plans. CNN confirmed the news, citing an unnamed source "with knowledge of the matter." 

"The White House on lockdown," Bennett tweeted on Sunday night, just hours after it was reported that President Donald Trump is planning to prematurely claim victory if he has a lead Tuesday night, as the Republican Party bolsters its attempt to further delegitimize mail-in ballots counted after November 3. 

According to CNN, the "non-scalable" fencing being set up this week is the same type that was put into place during this summer's protests against racism and police violence that erupted in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis officers in May. 

The source said that the fortification will "encompass the Ellipse and Lafayette Square. It will go down 15th Street to Constitution Avenue and then over to 17th Street. The fence will then run up to H Street and across by Lafayette, and then come down to 15th Street."

Four years after pledging to make America great, Trump has to turn the White House into a fortress to protect himself from the people.
Authorities building “non-scalable” fence around the White House today over fears of civil unrest on Election Day. https://t.co/5rhTmLUZZv

— Frida Ghitis (@FridaGhitis) November 2, 2020

Many observers—regardless of the outcomes—anticipate post-election turbulence this year. "The extra layer of security," CNN reported, "marks the most high-profile example to date of authorities preparing for unrest following this year's election, especially if there is no clear winner come November 4."

Expectations of and preparations for potential political violence are unusually high this year, driven in large part by Trump's dangerous encouragement of armed "poll watchers" as well as other cases—such as the harassment of a Biden campaign bus by reckless, pro-Trump motorists this weekend—in which the president has incited and/or condoned violence and intimidation.

Warning 'Wannabe Fascists,' Philly DA Says People Dressing 'Up Like G.I. Joe' to Intimidate Voters Will Be Prosecuted

Philadelphia's Democratic district attorney Larry Krasner is warning armed, so-called "poll watchers" to stay away from the city's voting precincts unless they want to find themselves explaining to a jury why they "thought it was okay to come to Philly and steal our votes."

"If you want to dress up like a G.I. Joe and claim you are protecting the polls when we all know what you're really doing is intimidating voters," Krasner told CNN on Friday, "you're getting locked up."

"Wannabe fascists stay home," he added. "If your idea of how to have a democratic election is to steal it, then I've got something for you. I've got a jail cell, and I've got criminal charges."

Krasner's fierce condemnation of potential voter intimidation in Philadelphia—described by the DA as not only the biggest city in one of the most important battleground states in the country but also "the birthplace of American democracy"—preceded a press conference on Monday, during which he explained the steps that an election task force made up of more than 90 city prosecutors and detectives are taking to ensure that Philadelphians are able to cast ballots without fear on Tuesday. 

"I want Philly voters to be assured that we are all working together to make sure you have a clean and fair Election Day" Krasner said Monday. "I do not expect any threats or harassment tomorrow, but let me be clear: Anyone intending to steal Philadelphians' votes by breaking the law to disrupt a fair and free election could find themselves in a jail cell, facing criminal charges and a Philadelphia jury wondering why you thought it was okay to steal their votes."

As the New York Times reported on Sunday, "many jurisdictions have sought to educate both the public and law enforcement of what is permissible at the polls," a task that has taken on heightened importance due to President Donald Trump's repeated incitement of political intimidation and violence that has prompted dozens of historians of authoritarianism to warn about the existential threats facing democracy. 

According to the Times, Krasner "issued a six-page memo on the law to the police, noting for example that anyone can face five years in jail for a misdemeanor if they 'unlawfully strike, wound, or commit an assault and battery upon the person of any elector' in or near a polling place."

Edward Snowden applies for Russian citizenship for sake of future son

The US whistleblower Edward Snowden and his wife are applying for Russian citizenship in order not to be separated from their future son in an era of pandemics and closed borders, he said on Monday. Snowden’s wife, Lindsay, is expecting a child in late December, the Interfax news agency cited Anatoly Kucherena, his Russian lawyer, as saying. ...

“After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our son. That’s why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we’re applying for dual US-Russian citizenship,” Snowden wrote on Twitter.

“Lindsay and I will remain Americans, raising our son with all the values of the America we love, including the freedom to speak his mind. And I look forward to the day I can return to the States, so the whole family can be reunited. Our greatest wish is that, wherever our son lives, he feels at home.”

Russia has already granted Snowden permanent residency rights, his lawyer said last month, a vital step towards Russian citizenship.

Mass protests against anti-abortion law in Poland develop into a revolt against government

Protests against the tightening of abortion restrictions in Poland have intensified further in the past week and are developing into a revolt against the PiS government. In opinion polls, almost two-thirds of the population support the protests. Three-quarters of respondents rejected the decision of the Constitutional Court to further limit the right to abortion.

Every day, there are new protests. Last Wednesday, according to police reports, 430,000 took to the streets throughout the country for a “general strike by women.” There are no reliable figures about how many stayed away from work. During the day, it was mainly schoolchildren and students who took part in the demonstrations; but there were many spontaneous expressions of solidarity. In some places, protest slogans were posted on public transport notice boards. Road traffic was blocked in many places. The protests continued to grow throughout the afternoon.

The Polish ruling class has reacted to the protests with violence and repression. The new Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek (Law and Justice Party, PiS) is particularly prominent in this regard. When he was appointed on October 19, he was already confronted with protests by students demanding better protection from the coronavirus, protests that have now seamlessly merged into the broader movement. ...

The education minister is leading a veritable crusade against the protesters. He declared that women should not be dissuaded by “neo-Marxists and feminists” from their God-given role as housewives and mothers. Czarnek described the participants in the demonstration as “radical left-wing revolutionaries,” some of whom were shouting “Satanist” slogans and for whom “there can be no place” in Poland.

As voivode (chief of the district administration) of Lublin, Czarnek had openly collaborated with the fascist ONR (National Radical Camp). On October 27, the ONR announced a new initiative to create paramilitary associations. These “National Brigades” are to protect “Polish society, religious sites and patriotic events from militant attacks and provocations by neo-Marxists, an embodiment of Bolshevism.” They have openly announced a “systematic training in martial arts, weight training, shooting and other disciplines.”

Trump's FCC Repeals NET NEUTRALITY Again!

'The numbers floored me': hunger in Pennsylvania hits highest level since pandemic's start

Hunger is rising in Pennsylvania, with the demand for food aid at its highest level since the start of the pandemic, according to new figures obtained by the Guardian.

Food banks distributed almost 1.17m aid boxes in the first three weeks of October, providing fresh produce and staples like rice, pasta and peanut butter to 2.75 million people. October will almost certainly beat the previous record monthly distribution from July, when 1.38m households received food boxes across the state. “These numbers have floored me,” said Sheila Christopher, executive director of Pennsylvania Food Banks. “Demand is going up across the state and the country. We’ve never seen anything like this before, it gives me goosebumps.”

And it’s not just here: nationwide the demand for aid at food banks and pantries has soared during the pandemic amid unprecedented job losses and the worst unemployment rate in modern times. A recent census bureau survey found 12% of American households with children did not have enough food sometimes or often during the previous week – compared with 10% before the pandemic.

A staggering 54 million people in the US – ostensibly the richest country in the world – may have faced hunger by the end of 2020, according to Feeding America, the national food bank network. This would represent a 54% increase since last year, according to food insecurity figures recently released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). “We’re already stretched trying to keep up with demand and now we’re preparing for an even worse second wave,” said Katarah Jordan, director of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Lehigh Valley and Northeast Pennsylvania, which supplies 200 pantries.

Trump’s Rural Health Adviser Fiddles While the Heartland Burns

The coronavirus pandemic has created a rural health emergency in the United States. Hospitals in some rural areas have become overwhelmed as emergency rooms and in-patient services reach — and sometimes exceed — capacity. In just the last month, the number of non-metropolitan counties reporting at least 100 cases per 10,000 people has doubled. While the pandemic initially struck New York City and other urban areas hardest, the states reporting the highest death rates from Covid-19 are now North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

Yet we have heard little about the virus raging throughout rural America from the person President Donald Trump put in charge of the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services, Jeff Colyer. Instead, while the coronavirus has stretched medical resources to the breaking point in his hometown of Kansas City, Colyer has been performing plastic surgery in his office there. Trump appointed Colyer, a plastic surgeon who served as governor of Kansas for one year beginning in January 2018, to chair the 21-member committee in February. ...

The committee Colyer now chairs is supposed to advise the secretary of Health and Human Services on how best to serve the country’s rural areas. But so far, most of his public appearances and writings seem to have focused on promoting the drug hydroxychloroquine. ... The rural health committee itself has been relatively quiet about the coronavirus pandemic since Colyer took the helm. The virus didn’t even come up when the group met in March to discuss maternal and obstetric care and HIV prevention in rural areas, subjects that were chosen before Colyer joined the group.

At a virtual meeting in July, when the coronavirus had already begun to spread through the country, the committee mostly discussed how to redefine its vision, values, and mission statement, rather than the emerging crisis. At the end of the meeting, Colyer invited committee members to respond to questions from the public, many of which, he noted, were “about Coronavirus response in rural communities,” according to a summary of the meeting. After noting that “the Covid-19 pandemic is going to strategically change rural healthcare in the future,” Colyer suggested that the committee meet to discuss that topic at some point in the future. But the committee hasn’t met again, and the only other document it has released during Colyer’s tenure, a September draft of the committee’s vision statement, which presumably grew out of the July discussion, doesn’t mention the pandemic at all.

Trump & the Coronavirus: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Donald Trump threatens to fire Anthony Fauci after US election

Donald Trump threatened to fire Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, during a midnight rally in Florida 24 hours before the presidential election. As crowds at the Miami Opa-Locka airport chanted “Fire Fauci”, Trump allowed the chants to continue for several seconds before responding: “Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election. I appreciate the advice. I appreciate it.”

He continued: “Nah, he’s been wrong on a lot. He’s a nice man though. He’s been wrong on a lot.”

Fauci, 79 and one of the world’s foremost infectious diseases experts, has served under six presidents over three decades as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He is one of the lead experts on Trump’s coronavirus taskforce and has frequently offered frank public health guidance in contrast to the president’s repeated falsehoods on the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a hard-hitting interview with the Washington Post published on Saturday night, Fauci said the US should prepare for “a whole lot of hurt” under the coronavirus pandemic and predicted a winter of 100,000 or more cases a day and a rising death toll. ...

Trump’s rally in Florida, a critical swing state he needs to hold to win the election, was held as Covid-19 cases in the state continued to surge. Like countless Trump rallies there was no social distancing and thousands of attendees did not wear masks.

Kentucky state police training quoted Hitler to create ‘ruthless’ warriors

Quotes attributed to Adolf Hitler and Confederate general Robert E Lee appear in training materials once used by the Kentucky state police (KSP) to create “ruthless” warriors who would “fight to the death”. The instructional slideshow, decorated with a bald eagle and American flag, advises officers to “meet violence with greater violence”. It includes the line “über alles” – a phrase from a Nazi-associated verse of the German national anthem – ironically juxtaposed against a background of American troops in Iwo Jima during the second world war.

“It is entirely inexcusable for the words of Hitler to be used in training Kentucky State Police,” the Anti-Defamation League tweeted on Friday. The genocidal führer is quoted more than any other figure in the presentation, on three separate slides. “The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence,” reads one of the citations.

A quote attributed to Lee, meanwhile, touts the importance of “truth and manliness” in a slide titled The Thin Gray Line. During the American civil war, Confederate soldiers who betrayed the Union wore grey uniforms.

The training’s explosive contents were first reported by Manual RedEye, a high school news publication in Louisville, Kentucky, after a local attorney uncovered the slideshow while requesting information about a detective who shot and killed a man. Lt Josh Lawson of the KSP told student reporters that “the quotes are used for their content and relevance” to teach “topics [that] go to the fundamentals of law enforcement such as treating everyone equally, service to the public, and being guided by the law”. ...

More than a hundred people have been shot and killed by police in Kentucky since the start of 2015, according to a database published by the Washington Post.

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Krystal Ball REVEALS Election Map: Biden Rebuilds Blue Wall In Populist Rebuke Of Trump

Ex-Bernie Adviser Chuck Rocha: Latinx Voters Will Be “Single Most Important Factor” in 2020 Election

It Looks Like AOC's Squad Will Double After Election Day

Call it the Squad plus four. There is good reason to think that the four progressive women of color House Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could double on election day—and climate advocates say it couldn’t come at a better time. After winning their primaries earlier this year, at least four candidates endorsed by the Sunrise Movement and other progressive groups are likely to be elected to the House because they are running in heavily Democratic districts: Cori Bush in Missouri, Marie Newman in Illinois, and Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones in New York. ...

If Joe Biden wins the election, activists and other observers say there is potential for an enlarged Squad to ensure that climate change is a top priority and pressure his administration to move forward with his plan to invest $2 trillion in green jobs and infrastructure, 40 percent of which is targeted to people living in disadvantaged parts of the country. ...

In the scenario that Democrats take the House and Senate, which is looking increasingly feasible but far from guaranteed, “we could arguably get a lot of parts of the Green New Deal funded and passed, or at least a down payment on it, in the next year,” Julian Brave NoiseCat, vice-president of policy and strategy for the progressive research group Data for Progress, told VICE News. ...

“Things that AOC and Ilhan Omar and the Squad do are news, and they have a large following online,” NoiseCat said. “At the end of the day, politics is increasingly about warring social media brands, so the ability to shape news cycles is an important form of power.”

American suburbs radically changed over the decades - and so have their politics

Chris Hayes' "Tough Decision" Election Day!

Manipulated video of Biden mixing up states was shared 1.1m times before being removed

A doctored video purporting to show Joe Biden addressing a rally and forgetting which state he was in was viewed more than 1.1m times on social media before it was removed from Twitter.

“Hello Minnesota,” the Democratic candidate says as he bounds on to a stage where signs saying “Tampa, Florida” and “Text FL to 30330” are prominently placed.

The footage was clipped from a campaign stop last Friday in St Paul, Minnesota. The signs, however, were fake, added by digital manipulation, according to an Associated Press fact check that debunked the story.

Late on Sunday, Twitter tagged the video, which was posted on a nondescript personal account, as “manipulated media”. Shortly afterwards, with the video having received more than 1.1m views, the user removed it.

While there is no suggestion the video came from the Trump campaign, highlighting Biden’s perceived lack of mental acuity has been a favored tactic for the president and his surrogates.

Krystal and Saagar: No Matter Who Wins Americans Are In DEEP Despair

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Shell Oil Asked What People Are Willing to Do to Reduce Emissions. 'I'm Willing to Hold You Accountable,' Said Ocasio-Cortez

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday denounced the "audacity" of oil giant Shell after it waded into the global discussion about the climate crisis by asking members of the public what they would do to reduce carbon emissions.

"I'm willing to hold you accountable for lying about climate change for 30 years when you secretly knew the entire time that fossil fuels emissions would destroy our planet," the New York Democrat and co-sponsor of the Green New Deal legislation replied.

The audacity of Shell asking YOU what YOU’RE willing to do to reduce emissions.

They’re showing you RIGHT HERE how the suggestion that indiv choices - not systems - are a main driver of climate change is a fossil fuel talking point.

Yes, make good choices. Reign in FF corps.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 2, 2020

In the poll it posted to Twitter, Shell offered choices to the public including "stop flying," "buy an electric vehicle," and shifting to renewable electricity.

What are you willing to change to help reduce emissions? #EnergyDebate

— Shell (@Shell) November 2, 2020

Coming from the world's third-largest company, which knew as early as 1988 that its extraction of oil and gas was linked to the heating of the planet, the question was seen by Ocasio-Cortez and other critics as a gross deflection of Shell's own responsibility.

'In the sun they'd cook': is the US south-west getting too hot for farm animals?

South-west of Phoenix, Arizona, in the hottest desert in North America, Beth and Tim Wilson use sprinklers to cool their 300 pigs. Nearby, the Adams Natural Meats bison ranch employs shaders and misters. North of the city, chicken farmer Dave Jordan says he cannot put his 10,000 birds out to pasture. “If they were out in the sun, they would just get cooked.”

Animal agriculture accounts for one-third of the US south-west’s agricultural revenue. Like the rest of the world, however, the region is changing. Between 1901 and 2016, its average temperature increased by 0.9C (1.6F), and by 1.6C (3F) in some of its hottest places. Arizona recently struggled through a summer that was the hottest ever recorded in some parts of the state.

Animal farmers are now compelled to find ways to adapt to this climatic shift, exploring new ways of keeping chickens and cows cool, or importing more heat-resistant breeds. Lingering in the air is the question of whether the climate crisis is making animal agriculture in this part of the world impractical.

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Also of Interest

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

'Democracy is broken': state races aim to undo decade of Republican map-rigging

The Fed Appears to Have Put Its Finger on the Scale for Donald Trump on Friday

Ian Welsh: The Day Before The US Election

The Billionaires’ Duopoly Wins on Tuesday

The US quietly makes major shift on Israel-Palestine policy

Talk of Another Pink Tide

Ending Regime Change — in Bolivia & the World

How DHS and FBI officials spun a dubious Russian election threat days before voting

UK govt report undermines stars of Cambridge Analytica-Russiagate scandal

Hunter Biden's Story Could Help Hillary Clinton To Become Vice President

'This is revolutionary’: new online bookshop unites indies to rival Amazon

Liberals Worship of Obama is "Adult"!

Saagar Enjeti REVEALS Election Map: Trump Will WIN Florida, Faces Tough Battle In Sunbelt

Kyle Kondik: Dems UNLIKELY To Outright Win U.S. Senate

Krystal and Saagar: Dems DOMINATE Early Vote, Here's How Trump Can Make It Up

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A Little Night Music

Sax Mallard w/Mitzi Mars - I'm Glad

Sax Mallard - Fine and Brown

Sax Mallard - The Mojo

Sax Mallard - Slow Caboose

Sax Mallard w/Mitzi Mars - Roll ‘Em

Andrew Tibbs, Sax Mallard, Sun Ra & Dozier Boys - In A Traveling Mood/The Holidays Are Over

Roosevelt Sykes (w/Sax Mallard) - Mama, Mama

Big Bill Broonzy (w/Sax Mallard) - Big Bill's Boogie

Roosevelt Sykes (w/Sax Mallard) - Raining In My Heart

Big Bill & his Rhythm Band (w/Sax Mallard) - I Can't Write

Earl Hooker (w/Sax Mallard) - Dynamite

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