@Raggedy Ann
Yes to that. Be smarter and buy land. Good luck and may your land find you. I am well and continue to spend as much time outside as I can. The fall here is gently, dry and beautiful. No rain in sight. Though maybe Sunday. We are late again this year.

Take good care!

Thanks for posting the Richard Wolf video. He is always worth listening to no matter if it's his show or someone else's. We all need to be financially smarter. Buy land. So important. I need to purchase some.

Hope you are well!

Enjoy the day!

@randtntx @randtntx
God I love those women. And that song. The first time I heard them I went searching for all their songs.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doi7qFWZtNA]

Thanks for the Ian Welsh link:

So, in June 30 percent of Americans couldn’t make their rent. July 25th, federal eviction protection ends. There may be another check, but another $1,200 (or even $2k) isn’t going to cut it, just as people couldn’t pay rent event with the $600 unemployment benefit top-up.

Covid now has more active cases than the previous peak. Less people are dying, because the new victims are mostly young (and due to the lag) but even non-fatal cases of Covid are nasty and can leave the victim with symptoms for months (or longer, we don’t know yet). Indeed, evidence is coming back that cases with no symptoms still do damage.

Even if there is an extension of eviction protection and some new checks, that will only push the problem back. People can’t make rent, and aren’t going to be able to. Because there are so many people competing for jobs (which are bouncing back somewhat), they have no wage leverage.

So, expect a huge wave of evictions, homelessness, and hunger. Food banks will be overwhelmed, people will go hungry.

Your lords and masters have decided that if you aren’t useful to them (aren’t employed, can’t make rent) that you don’t deserve anything, including life. This has been the case for a long time, it’s just that, in the middle of a pandemic, they see a lot of you as useless eaters towards whom they have no responsibility.

My heart aches for them and our planet. Thanks randtntx. Be well and take good care.

Well here we are, watching all this unfold in a way that many had predicted. Catastrophe upon catastrophe. Climate change we know is a sticky problem, but the problems with the economy and the pandemic could be mitigated. In comparison with other ways we spend our money, it would cost a "trivial amount".

The money to fix this is fairly trivial. 69,600.000,000 – about sixty-seven billion dollars. In context, the TARP bailout for rich people was 700 billion back in 2008. The Federal reserve, by some calculations, floated about 20 trillion dollars. Seventy billion isn’t even real money in the modern world.

https://www.ianwelsh.net

Earlier in the summer things were looking bad. We all saw it. Predictable.
https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-coming-homelessness-and-hunger-apocalypse-i...
(edited to fix link)

Young talented people doing what young talented people should do:

@randtntx
[video:https://youtu.be/yR-1v-Si7bs?t=67]

to my previous comment.

Every person who is, or will be homeless, has a story. The increasing numbers of the unhoused is staggering.
No one deserves this: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/10/port-d10.html

@wendy davis
Hola chica. Thanks for dropping in. Your fave, Gates.

And Bezos, said to be the richest man in the US, wasn’t even the most blessed by Covid-19. That title goes to Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, whose wealth grew by an eye-popping 542 percent – from “just” $24.6 billion in March to $143 billion by December. Musk is about to get quite a bit richer, too, after his StarLink satellite company won a Federal Communications Commission auction to deliver bandwidth to hundreds of thousands of rural Americans.

Be well and take good care.

and thank you, magiama. interestingly enough, the RT.com version of the AFTF report had only mentioned bezos and elon musk.

clicking into the report does name billionaire bill gates (not his and mel's foundation), not so much in extra wealth, but oy and veh: will he/they profit mightily given investments in vaccine makers, robotic doctors, and 'the WEF's Great Covid Reset' and 4th Industrial revolution'.

i have more, including a Q or two, but RL chores are calling.

@ggersh
Don't you wish.

If appointed as head of the Interior Department—which oversees the Bureaus of Indian Affairs and Indian Education—Haaland would be the first Indigenous leader to serve in the role. Last month, more than 120 advocacy groups and Indigenous tribal leaders voiced their support for Haaland's nomination.

"The Bureau of Indian Affairs still has significant impact upon the 574 recognized Indian tribes, and in setting policy impacting upon all enrolled tribal members including the Indian Health Service," wrote the supporters, including the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Gwich'in Steering Committee, and the Water Protector Legal Collective. "In addition, the Department of Interior is responsible for defending tribal sovereignty, ensuring that the legal trust responsibility of the United States toward Indian nations is upheld, and that Indian land oversight is conducted in a responsible way. Rep. Haaland has intimate knowledge of all of this."

No, they want someone who worked in the obomba administration.

Despite Haaland's history of fighting to preserve the lands that the Interior Department oversees, according to the HuffPost, Biden advisors said this week that the congresswoman "is not qualified" and pushed the potential nomination of Michael Connor, who is a member of the Taos Pueblo tribe and served as a deputy interior secretary in the Obama administration before joining international law firm WilmerHale. Leaders of Connor's own tribe are among the Indigenous leaders who back Haaland's nomination.

You do the math.

Thanks for the link. Take good care.

by Dementia Joe, the people want her

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/10/climate-action-indigenous-r...

The national women's rights organization UltraViolet on Wednesday became the latest group to call on President-elect Joe Biden to appoint Rep. Deb Haaland as secretary of the interior, highlighting the importance of nominating a progressive Indigenous leader to oversee 500 million acres of public land and repair "the historic harms forced on Native communities throughout American history," including the stealing of land.

Haaland is a backer of the Green New Deal, a fierce proponent of keeping fossil fuels in the ground and fighting for a clean energy economy, and has been a vocal defender of tribal nations "who are battling the fossil fuel industry in their backyards."

@wendy davis

the Pentagon is not seeking to ward off Russian and Chinese aggression, but to prepare for US aggression against one or both countries

Thanks for the article. Take good care.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLMlkjnYe0U]

exposé on Kerry as militarized climate czar. his on fluornoy and rice was great (or was that raul diego?), later SOS 'nice guy' blinken. and caitlin johnstone's on SecDef 'easier to sell to progressives' curtis.

‘In bipartisan vote: US House approves record $741 billion military spending bill’, patrick martin, wsws.org, dec. 10 (longish, a few excerpts):

“The House vote for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) [H. R. 6395] was by a massive margin, 335–78. Democrats supported passage by 195–37. Republicans supported passage by 140–40. Every leader of the House Democrats backed passage: Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James Clyburn. They were joined by the top Republicans: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Minority Whip Steve Scalise and the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, the co-sponsor of the massive bill, Mac Thornberry of Texas.”

The margin was far more than the two-thirds required to override a threatened Trump veto, although it is not clear that Trump will actually follow up on his tweets demanding two changes in the bill, neither relevant to its basic purposes. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said the Senate will pass the NDAA in the next few days. The margin is likely to be even more decisive than in the House.” [...]

“One of the largest single components of the Pentagon budget is Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), funded to the tune of $69 billion. This is the spending for ongoing military operations where US forces are deployed: primarily Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, as well as the Persian Gulf, where vast naval and air assets are arrayed against Iran. The OCO also covers active drone missile warfare operations across Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

The bill puts billions into preparations to confront Russia and China, including fully funding the European Deterrence Initiative, the NATO build-up on Russia’s western borders, and the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, providing $2.2 billion for similar activity by US naval and air forces directed against China. The label “deterrence” is entirely deceptive: the Pentagon is not seeking to ward off Russian and Chinese aggression, but to prepare for US aggression against one or both countries, regarded as the main obstacles to maintaining US world domination. Another $250 million goes for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, while $500 million (and likely much more) is earmarked for Israel.”

hmmmm...for what other purposes could those mega-billions have been allocated?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omEX35pbelI]