The acronym is - situation normal, all f***ed up. The oligarchs win regardless of who is president. Max and Stacy declared Fed Chairman Jerome Powell the real winner, and Barron's magazine agrees. However I think Powell is simply an agent of the elite, creating and funneling money ever upward to the oligarchs. They are preparing for a new Bretton Woods and a "Great Reset" to save capitalism. Who will have a seat at the table? Well, the oligarchs at Davos in 2021. Somehow I don't think regular working folks are going to benefit. The writing is on the wall...

Chris nails it yet again...

Well, it’s over. Not the election. The capitalist democracy. However biased it was towards the interests of the rich and however hostile it was to the poor and minorities, the capitalist democracy at least offered the possibility of incremental and piecemeal reform. Now it is a corpse. The iconography and rhetoric remain the same. But it is an elaborate and empty reality show funded by the ruling oligarchs — $1.51 billion for the Biden campaign and $1.57 billion for the Trump campaign — to make us think there are choices. There are not. The empty jousting between a bloviating Trump and a verbally impaired Joe Biden is designed to mask the truth. The oligarchs always win. The people always lose. It does not matter who sits in the White House. America is a failed state.

(worth the full read)
https://scheerpost.com/2020/11/05/chris-hedges-american-requiem/

Jimmy also describes the dilemma well in this 7 min clip...

Jimmy also spoke with Nick Brana this week about the plans for a "People's Party"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjdE-0zcDXg (28 min)

Trader Gregory Mannarinno also sees the Fed as the big winner in this epic 10 min rant...
but you'll get the message about the Fed in 5 min.

Rick Wolff suggest the $14 billion spent on the election would have been better spent helping people. Kind of a no brainer really.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5FNqYpfBPM (5 min)

Rick also discusses California's prop 22 to call gig workers independent contractors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WQTio1744Q (6 min)

Chris at Peak Prosperity had a good summary of US election blues...(18 min)

Paul Jay has a new site https://theanalysis.news/. He has recently interviewed several interesting folks about our current situation. He provides clips and transcripts.
Thomas Frank
Larry Wilkerson
Gerald Horne
Abby Martin was interviewed twice.
Michael Hudson
And many others. Pick and choose your favorites.

Of course the US only promotes the illusion of democracy...and has for a long time.

A study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities has found that the United States’ government more closely resembles an Oligarchy or a Corporatocracy than a Republic or Democracy.
...
The study concludes with the following statement:
“We believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”
...
Interestingly enough the researchers also mention critics who believe the elite themselves created the Constitution to take away freedoms from the average citizen. “Analyses of U.S. politics centered on economic elites go back at least to Charles Beard, who maintained that a chief aim of the framers of the U.S. Constitution was to protect private property, favoring the economic interests of wealthy merchants and plantation owners rather than the interests of the then-majority small farmers, laborers, and craft workers.”

https://truthinmedia.com/princeton-study-declares-u-s-government-an-olig...

The illusion of democracy is maintained through elections. However, our elections have been largely kabuki theater for years as well. Consider Gore, Kerry, and Bernie all cheated and all remaining silent about the hoax.

Gore conceded to Bush, in a speech full of high-minded rhetoric about “the law” and how his surrender could “point us all to a new common ground.” Bush officially won Florida by 537 votes and the Electoral College by 271-266 and went on to become one of the most catastrophic presidents in U.S. history.

A year later, in November 2001, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago announced the results of an examination of all 170,000 undervotes and overvotes.

NORC found that with a full statewide hand recount, Gore would have won Florida under every possible vote standard. Depending on which standard was used, his margin of victory would have varied from 60 to 171 votes.

The recount was paid for by a consortium of news outlets — CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Tribune Company, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the St. Petersburg Times, and the Palm Beach Post. But this was just two months after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The outlets patriotically buried the blockbuster news that George W. Bush was not the legitimate president of the United States.

https://theintercept.com/2018/11/10/democrats-should-remember-al-gore-wo...

Then Kerry was cheated in 2004...

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.

There were many other tricks played in that election...
https://www.commondreams.org/views06/0601-34.htm

Not to mention the democratic manipulation to stop Bernie in both 2016 and 2020.

It only took four years but history is repeating itself. Bernie is getting burned, and just like before, he is taking it lying down.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/03/06/bernie-sanders-is-getting-burned...

However instead of calling attention to the corrupt nature of US elections everyone is distracted into the tar baby of Russiagate and other distractions. How convenient!

Using Democracy to Create Coups...
Our own failed elections have not stopped the US from creating coups in the name of election failure elsewhere. The cases are too numerous to completely cover, but a few which should come to mind include Iran in 1953 shortly after the creation of the CIA.

On Aug. 19, 2013, the CIA publicly admitted for the first time its involvement in the 1953 coup against Iran's elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthrew-irans-dem...

More recently in Venezuela and Bolivia. In both cases we install presidents that we have chosen for them (how's that for democracy?). Fortunately, Maduro holds on to power and the MAS party just won by a landslide in Bolivia.

Quite simply the US is a failed state... (4 min)

Just look at the spread of the pandemic here and globally. We've mismanaged this virus from the get-go. In this coming holiday season I predict more spread. Somehow we can't seem to behave properly. We want things back to "normal" so badly we mix and mingle as though there is no virus in the community. Deaths are finally following the case trend and increasing also. The US had been holding pretty steady at 1000 death per day. We're at about 1600 a day now. Check out the cases and deaths in your state with this new option on the John Hopkins site... https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/state-timeline/new-deaths/alabama/0

There are however pockets of success in the US. Consider this small commune in California
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVFZmaT4vIE (21 min)

In 1953 Jack Kerouac stayed here for part of the spring, but when Sara McEre bought the former 19th-century boarding house in San Luis Obispo (CA), it was rundown. Instead of converting it to apartments for a profit, she turned it into a communal living residence for 19 like-minded individuals. Having lost her 19-year-old son she had lost 3 months prior, she wanted to create the kind of place he would have liked, with the people she liked.

Today, “The Establishment” is one of the country’s longest-running coliving sites. With 4 refrigerators, two stoves, 19 bedrooms (many with private sinks), a living room, a porch, a vegetable garden, 4 bathrooms, and one outdoor bathtub/shower, there is plenty to be shared, including cleanup (the chores board assigns a weekly task to each resident).

It’s run as a democracy- new members are voted in- and while there is no bigger philosophy behind the place, everyone strives to live in community. While each resident has their own fridge and pantry space and cooks their own food, often meals are shared (usually around a themed dinner). To stimulate conversation and bonding, cell phone use is forbidden in the communal areas and board games are plentiful and well used.

I think the young farmer movement is a US (and global) success as well.

Here's an appropriate song for the next clip/story

Bobby Tucker uses pigs to clear forest and create a disturbance. This land is being prepared for future silvopasture to graze sheep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o53nJsHvmVo (21 min)

Later I learned this tune of the same name...which we often play for dances

And so in closing, we have a president elect in Bye-done. Will he be less damaging than Trumpolini? Time will tell. I'm willing to bet the big message is going to be how well the system works and great the US election system is. I think I've provided ample evidence today to refute that notion, but if you tell the American people a lie often enough they will believe. The Georgia county where I spend a good bit of time went 80% for Trump. I often hear comments like, "He's done so much for us.", and I wonder what has he done for you. It isn't any better on the other side. My urban friends often tell me what a good president Obummer was. I remind them that he bailed out the banks and foreclosed on homeowners; accepted his peace prize by declaring a troop increase in Afghanistan; approved more drilling in the gulf as deep water horizon was spewing oil; he was fracker in chief and drone killer in chief; and so on...you know the drill. My point is both sides are deluded with the illusion of greatness while really being subjected to a corporate oligarchy in a neofuedal system. However, there are oasis of sanity much like I suspect existed during the middle ages...Pockets of creative and productive people. I think this c99 community is an example of one of those pockets. If you can spare a little money, I'm sure JtC could use our support. I'm mailing him a bit in this season of Thanksgiving, and encourage you to do the same if you are able. I wish you all a lovely Sunday and week as we move onward.