The Evening Blues - 11-22-21
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features New Orleans soul and blues singer Johnny Adams. Enjoy!
Johnny Adams - Walking On A Tightrope
"Don't get depressed when you read in the press
About world revolution and social unrest
Try not to panic when you switch on the news
And see crooked politicians and the unemployment queues
It's only life it's really fine
So don't you believe all you read in the headlines
Live life, see it through
Carry on, it's all you can do ...Trendy intellectuals always take action
For every cause that's ever been in fashion
Weekend revolutionaries protest and sing
Because they're dedicated followers of any old thing
They got every solution for every revolution
They live in the slums just like the poor people do
But they'd rather sniff coke instead of glue
Right-wing fascists beat up the blacks
Then they salute the Union Jack
You can't pretend there's nothing wrong
It's not the end, so just carry on"-- Ray Davies
News and Opinion
The System is Broken: Jacob Blake’s Dad & Uncle on Kyle Rittenhouse Acquittal for Vigilante Killings
Worth a scan:
Kyle Rittenhouse has walked free. Now it’s open season on protesters
In essence, the Rittenhouse ruling has created a kind of “stand your ground” law for the whole country. White people now have the apparent right to travel around the country, heavily armed, and use violence to protect the country from whatever and whoever they believe to be threatening to it. Given the feverish paranoia and racism that has captured a sizeable minority of white people in the US these days, this is a recipe for disaster.
In the coming hours and days, many media outlets will eagerly await riots or other potentially violent reactions from the other side – from the anti-racists and progressives of all colors and races who are disturbed by this verdict – and use the existence of those riots, if they occur, to push a misguided “both sides” frame. If there is protest or rioting, don’t expect the police to be as courteous and supportive as they were towards Rittenhouse and his far-right buddies.
The most worrying effect of this verdict may be this: giving rightwing vigilantes a legal precedent to take up arms against anyone they consider a threat – which pretty much runs from anti-fascists to so-called Rinos (Republicans in Name Only) and includes almost all people of color – means it is now open hunting season on progressive protesters.
Kyle Rittenhouse ACQUITTED, What Does The Verdict Mean For Open Carry And Self Defense Laws?
Iraq Resistance Warns It's Ready to Expel U.S. by Force at End of Year
A group of Iraqi militias has issued a warning that they were prepared to take up arms against the U.S. military presence in Iraq if U.S. troops stayed in the country past the upcoming year's end deadline for combat operations revealed over the summer by President Joe Biden.
In a statement issued Friday and shared with Newsweek, the Iraqi Resistance Coordination Commission, an umbrella of paramilitary groups aligned with the pro-Iran Axis of Resistance opposed to the U.S. footprint in the region, said its members were "closely monitoring the extent of commitment to the outcomes of the so-called strategic dialogue round" that took place between Washington and Baghdad in July.
The message went on to say that the council "did not believe in the seriousness of the occupation and its commitment" to withdrawing combat troops from Iraq according to the established timeline, but was itself "committed to giving the Iraqi negotiator an opportunity to expel the American occupation from our pure land through diplomatic means." But since then, the commission said it had "not yet seen any manifestations of withdrawal despite that only 42 days separate us from 12/31/2021."
"On the contrary, we have observed that the brazen American occupation increased its numbers and equipment in its bases in Iraq," the commission said, "and we even heard official and semi-official statements from officials of the American states of evil about their intention not to withdraw from the country under the pretext that there was a request from Baghdad [not] to do so, at a time when we did not see any response or denial from the Iraqi government about these clumsy statements!" ...
"We affirm that the weapons of the honorable resistance, which have been talked about a lot in the past days, and some insisted on embroiling them in recent political rivalries, will be ready to dismember the occupation as soon as the moment comes and the deadline ends after twelve o'clock in the evening of 12/31/2021," the statement said.
Heh, Politico makes it sound like its a bad thing that the defense bill (NDAA) might not become law on time.
Senate punts defense bill until after Thanksgiving as debate hits roadblock
The Senate's $768 billion defense policy bill is on hold until after Thanksgiving after efforts to vote on an array of amendments broke down late Thursday evening under objections from several Republicans.
The roadblock is just the latest delay for the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, which had already languished for months without action despite complaints from both Democrats and Republicans. The impasse dashes the aims of Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to finish work on the legislation before the holiday. ...
After days of wrangling over what amendments would receive votes or be included in a bipartisan manager's package, Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) sought to secure votes Thursday evening on 19 amendments from Democrats and Republicans.
But seven Republicans took turns blocking votes because their amendments weren't included — some with little connection to defense policy. ...
Now time is running short for the House and Senate to hammer out a compromise version of the defense bill, which has become law every year for six decades.
The US Has As Much Moral Authority As Saudi Arabia On The Legitimacy Of Elections
“Let there be no mistake – Sunday’s regional and municipal elections in Venezuela are nothing more than a sham,” reads a recent statement authored by Republican US Senators Jim Risch and Michael McCaul. “The illegitimate Maduro regime has taken drastic measures to dismantle or control every independent institution in the country, including hijacking political parties and the National Electoral Council to ensure state-sponsored electoral fraud.”
“Today’s elections in Venezuela are as illegitimate as Maduro’s tyrannical regime,” reads a tweet by Republican Senator Rick Scott. “The Venezuelan people deserve free and democratic elections NOW. The U.S. and all freedom-loving nations must stand up, condemn these sham elections and support the people in their fight for freedom.”
The imperial media are lining up behind the official US government line on Venezuela’s gubernatorial and mayoral elections, with The New York Times assuring us that conditions “are far from freely democratic” and The Washington Post reporting that opposition parties “say the elections have been stacked against them by the socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro,” who sees the elections as “a chance to reassert strength while projecting a veneer of legitimacy.”
This level of intrusiveness into Venezuela’s heavily internationally monitored democratic process is typical of what we’ve been seeing from the US political/media class with regard to electoral contests in empire-targeted Latin American nations like Bolivia and Nicaragua. Which is really silly, because the US has no more moral authority over the legitimacy of democratic processes than a totalitarian monarchy like Saudi Arabia.
US elections are of course corrupt and fraudulent, entirely dominated at the federal level by legalized oligarchic bribery in the form of campaign contributions, manipulated primaries, gerrymandering, voter suppression, shutting out third parties, and the worst voting system in the western world.
More than this, though, the United States is also the world’s single most egregious offender when it comes to interfering in foreign elections. As Claire Bernish has observed in The Free Thought Project, the US government’s own data shows that it interfered in no fewer than 81 foreign elections just between the years 1946 and 2000. You’d never know it from the shrieking of the political/media class post-2016, but this would also include brazenly interfering in Russia’s elections in the nineties to ensure the presidency of Washington lackey Boris Yeltsin.
And that’s just election interferences. It doesn’t include more brazen interferences in who governs foreign nations like direct military invasions, staged coups, color revolutions and proxy wars.
As a completely undemocratic country whose government is also far and away the world’s single most aggressive saboteur of democracy, it is fair to say that US institutions are the absolute least qualified to comment on the validity of any nation’s elections on the entire planet.
Everyone would laugh if Saudi Arabia’s psychopathic crown prince Mohammed bin Salman began opining on the quality of various nations’ democratic processes, especially if those criticisms were directed at the so-called liberal democracies of the west. But this same scrutiny of a power structure who has no business commenting on electoral integrity never gets directed at the United States, whose institutions issue such criticisms on a daily basis despite being no more morally qualified to do so than the House of Saud.
If you think about it, Saudi Arabia is nothing other than a more honest version of the United States. Its oligarchs and its official government are the same people, it doesn’t pretend that its warmongering is humanitarian, when it wants to kill a journalist it just dismembers him with a bone saw rather than trying to squeeze him to death with lawfare in a maximum security prison, and it makes no pretense about being a democracy.
The more I observe its behavior on the world stage the more hilarious it gets to see US political and media figures criticizing the democratic parties of foreign nations. It’s like McDonald’s evaluating whether mom and pop restaurants are sufficiently eco-friendly and vegan.
Very silly stuff, mate.
Runoff In Chile LOOMS As Far-Right Populist, Ex-Protest Leader DEADLOCKED In Presidential Election
Chileans face stark choice in vote for president after two years of unrest
Voters in Chile head to the polls on Sunday in a general election in which the two frontrunners for president offer starkly contrasting visions for the country’s future after two years of street protests and political unrest. Polls suggest that the progressive former student leader Gabriel Boric, 35, and the far-right candidate, José Antonio Kast, are neck-and-neck ahead of five other candidates – though neither seems likely to cross the 50% threshold needed to avoid a December runoff.
Boric, who shot to prominence during Chile’s 2011 education protests, has promised to “bury” Chile’s past as a cradle of neoliberalism imposed under the dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet, and pledges to build a fairer Chile marked by inclusivity, diversity and liberal social values.
Kast, 55, is a staunch Catholic who opposes abortion and rails against the “gay lobby” – and a proud supporter of the Pinochet dictatorship. A perennial fringe figure in Chilean politics, he has earned support among those who believe Chile needs a firm hand on the rudder after its most turbulent period in decades. ...
The country has tumbled through two years of protests, which began when millions took to the streets in 2019 to voice their frustration at deep inequalities and Pinochet’s lingering legacy of privatised social services. The demonstrations eventually petered out amid coronavirus quarantines, but they prompted a landmark plebiscite which led to an assembly to rewrite Chile’s constitution, which had been drafted without popular input under Pinochet. ...
If no candidate takes more than half of the vote on Sunday, a run-off next month between the two highest-placed candidates will decide who takes the reins from President Sebastián Piñera in March 2022.
Hate to tell you this AOC, but your fears have already been realized. What happened to that $2000. check? $15 an hour, etc.? You people are useless.
AOC Warns of Political Disaster for Democrats If They 'Over-Promise and Under-Deliver'
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York warned Sunday that congressional Democrats risk depressing turnout in upcoming elections if they further weaken their flagship reconciliation package, which right-wing lawmakers have already stripped of popular programs and cut by roughly $2 trillion overall.
In an interview with the New York Times, Ocasio-Cortez said that "the stakes are really, really high" as the reconciliation bill—known as the Build Back Better Act—heads to the evenly divided Senate, where Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and other conservative Democrats will have additional opportunities to erode the package's investments in climate action, housing, child care, and other key areas.
"I think that if we pass the Build Back Better Act as the House passed it, that we have a shot to go back to our communities and say we delivered," said the New York Democrat. "But that's not to say that this process has not been demoralizing for a lot of folks, because there were enormous promises made. Not just at the beginning, and not just during the election, but that continued to be made."
"And this is where I have sounded the alarm, because what really dampens turnout is when Democrats make promises that they don't keep," she added. "With the bipartisan infrastructure plan, there's all of these headlines going around. And I understand the political importance of making a victory lap. But I think that the worst and most vulnerable position we could be in is to over-promise and under-deliver."
Speaking of broken Democrat promises and the Build Back Burglary:
Biden Just Nominated Joe Manchin-Lite
In early October, President Joe Biden and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V) reached a deal to expand a tax subsidy for fossil fuel companies and heavy-emitting industries that invest in carbon capture technology in the Build Back Better bill. Weeks later, Biden announced his compromise framework for the legislation, which omitted the Democrats signature climate policy: The Clean Electricity Performance Program, which would provide subsidies to utility companies for switching to renewable energy sources and penalties for those that did not. While this compromise, which will subsidize the fossil fuel companies that are heating up the planet to invest in expensive and speculative carbon capture technology, seems to have come from Manchin, there’s also evidence that the Biden administration appears to share Manchin’s view that carbon capture could provide a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry even as the president claims to be tackling climate change.
In September, as Congress was hammering out the details of the infrastructure package, Biden quietly nominated Brad Crabtree, a coal ally and longtime carbon capture advocate to serve as the Department of Energy’s Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. The Wall Street-friendly think tank Third Way was elated at the news that Crabtree would be taking a prominent position within the Biden administration. Crabtree has served as an advisor to the National Coal Council since 2014 and is the Vice President for Fossil Energy at the Great Plains Institute, an opaque pro-fossil fuel group that has been lobbying in DC for funding for carbon capture technology. Crabtree is also the director of the D.C.-based Carbon Capture Coalition, whose members include fossil fuel companies like Shell, NRG Energy, and Valero — and, incidentally, Third Way. ...
With Congress set to allocate more than $8.5 billion to carbon capture in the bipartisan infrastructure bill alone — and with even more generous subsidies promised in the larger Build Back Better spending plan released recently — one of the key positions at the Department of Energy will soon be occupied by a man who shares Manchin’s view that the speculative technology is a way to sustain the fossil fuel industry in a net-zero world.
“With this nomination, Biden is legitimizing a false solution to climate change and locking in needless pollution, warming, and further destabilization of the planet and the people who are harmed by the fossil fuel industry,” Dorothy Slater, senior climate researcher at the Revolving Door Project, an advocacy group which scrutinizes executive branch appointments, told The Daily Poster. “For Biden to put someone like Crabtree in this role is for him to contradict his own goals to address climate change and environmental justice, and sadly is another indication that his climate plan relies on words and empty promises rather than needed action.”
Sinema Digs in on Filibuster Defense Amid GOP's Assault on Voting Rights
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is refusing to budge from her vow to uphold the archaic legislative filibuster as congressional Democrats and the White House attempt to chart a path forward for their faltering voting rights agenda amid the GOP's nationwide—and intensifying—assault on the franchise.
In recent months, Senate Republicans have used the 60-vote filibuster rule to block debate on a sweeping pro-democracy bill known as the For the People Act; Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) compromise measure, the Freedom to Vote Act; and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were gutted by the Supreme Court.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted to start debate on the third measure, but the Senate GOP unanimously filibustered the other two, imperiling Democrats' hopes of negating the dozens of voter suppression laws enacted this year by state-level Republicans around the country.
Despite the GOP's continued obstruction of popular voting rights bills, Sinema and Manchin—the most outspoken, but not the only, filibuster defenders in the Senate Democratic caucus—haven't wavered in their support for the 60-vote rule, which progressives have condemned as a relic of the Jim Crow era.
The filibuster can be weakened or abolished with a simple-majority vote, meaning every member of the Senate Democratic caucus and Vice President Kamala Harris—the tie-breaker in the upper chamber—would have to support the move.
But in comments to the Washington Post published Saturday morning, Sinema made clear that she remains unwilling to modify or eliminate the filibuster rule.
LEAKED AUDIO: How Amazon Is Trying To Bust Unions
'Now Fire DeJoy': Biden Moves to Replace Trump-Picked Postal Board Members
President Joe Biden won applause Friday for moving to replace Ron Bloom and John Barger, two members of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors who've shown unwavering loyalty to scandal-plagued Postmaster General Louis DeJoy even as he's dramatically worsened mail delivery performance.
But replacing Bloom—a Democrat and the USPS board's current chairman—and Barger, a Republican, is just the first step toward rescuing the mail service from the ongoing right-wing assault, progressive advocates and Democratic lawmakers stressed Friday.
Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) called Biden's decision to replace Bloom "great news," slamming the outgoing postal board chair as DeJoy's "chief enabler and cheerleader."
"Now fire DeJoy," Pascrell added.
On Friday, Biden nominated former General Services Administration official Daniel Tangherlini and Derek Kan—a Republican and the former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget—to replace Bloom and Barger.
If Biden's picks are confirmed by the Senate, his nominees will have a majority on the nine-member postal board—enough votes to remove DeJoy.
Facebook demands LAPD stop making phony accounts to spy on suspects
Facebook, now known as Meta, warned the LAPD that its reported practice of setting up fake accounts to surveil users and collect their data on its platforms violates the company’s terms and policies.
In a cease and desist letter to police chief Michel Moore last week, lawyers demanded that the department stop creating “fake (or dummy) Facebook accounts” to “impersonate legitimate users.”
The missive came after internal documents obtained by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice in September showed the LAPD encouraged cops to collect social media account information from suspects and create a “Fictitious Online Persona” to spy on them.
The department also partnered with a third-party network that analyzes social media information to unlock connections between users, according to the documents.
Biden Team PANICS As Dems Doubt He Can Run Again
Joe Biden reportedly telling allies he will run for president again in 2024
Joe Biden has reportedly been letting allies know he’ll be running for president again in 2024. Amid sliding approval ratings, Biden is reported to be keen to dash any assumption in Democratic circles that he’ll be standing down after a single term and opening the field to hopefuls including Vice-President Kamala Harris.
“The only thing I’ve heard him say is he’s planning on running again. And I’m glad he is,” the Democratic former Connecticut senator Chris Dodd told the Washington Post in an article published Saturday – Biden’s 79th birthday.
According to the newspaper, Biden shared his decision “with a small group of donors” during a virtual fundraiser earlier this month.
Climate denial is waning on the right. What’s replacing it might be just as scary
Standing in front of the partial ruins of Rome’s Colosseum, Boris Johnson explained that a motive to tackle the climate crisis could be found in the fall of the Roman empire. Then, as now, he argued, the collapse of civilization hinged on the weakness of its borders. “When the Roman empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration – the empire could no longer control its borders, people came in from the east and all over the place,” the British prime minister said in an interview on the eve of crucial UN climate talks in Scotland. Civilization can go into reverse as well as forwards, as Johnson told it, with Rome’s fate offering grave warning as to what could happen if global heating is not restrained.
This wrapping of ecological disaster with fears of rampant immigration is a narrative that has flourished in far-right fringe movements in Europe and the US and is now spilling into the discourse of mainstream politics. Whatever his intent, Johnson was following a current of rightwing thought that has shifted from outright dismissal of climate change to using its impacts to fortify ideological, and often racist, battle lines. Representatives of this line of thought around the world are, in many cases, echoing eco-fascist ideas that themselves are rooted in an earlier age of blood-and-soil nationalism.
In the US, a lawsuit by the Republican attorney general of Arizona has demanded the building of a border wall to prevent migrants coming from Mexico as these people “directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”. In Spain, Santiago Abascal, leader of the populist Vox party, has called for a “patriotic” restoration of a “green Spain, clean and prosperous”. In the UK, the far-right British National party has claimed to be the “only true green party” in the country due to its focus on migration. And in Germany, the rightwing populist party Alternative for Germany has tweaked some of its earlier mockery of climate science with a platform that warns “harsh climatic conditions” in Africa and the Middle East will see a “gigantic mass migration towards European countries”, requiring toughened borders.
Meanwhile, France’s National Front, once a bastion of derisive climate denial, has founded a green wing called New Ecology, with Marine Le Pen, president of the party, vowing to create the “world’s leading ecological civilization” with a focus on locally grown foods. ...
Simply ignoring or disparaging the science isn’t the effective political weapon it once was. “We are seeing very, very little climate denialism in conversations on the right now,” said Catherine Fieschi, a political analyst and founder of Counterpoint, who tracks trends in populist discourse. But in place of denial is a growing strain of environmental populism that has attempted to dovetail public alarm over the climate crisis with disdain for ruling elites, longing for a more traditional embrace of nature and kin and calls to banish immigrants behind strong borders.
Monarch butterflies may be thriving after years of decline. Is it a comeback?
On a recent November morning, more than 20,000 western monarch butterflies clustered in a grove of eucalyptus, coating the swaying trees like orange lace. Each year up to 30% of the butterfly’s population meets here in Pismo Beach, California, as the insects migrate thousands of miles west for the winter. Just a year ago, this vibrant spectacle had all but disappeared. The monarch population has plummeted in recent years, as the vibrant invertebrates struggled to adapt to habitat loss, climate crisis, and harmful pesticide-use across their western range.
Last year less than 200 arrived at this site in 2020 – the lowest number ever recorded – and less than 2,000 were counted across the California coast. But ahead of the official annual count that takes place around Thanksgiving, early tallies show monarchs may be thriving once again across California. The rise has sparked joy and relief, but the researchers, state park officials, and advocates say that doesn’t mean the species is safe. Even with the exponential increase, the population is still far short of once-normal numbers. It’s still unclear whether the butterflies are making a dramatic comeback or will continue to decline.
“The takeaway is that the migration isn’t gone, which some people really feared last year,” says Emma Pelton, the senior conservation biologist for the Xerces Society, an organization dedicated to protecting pollinators and other invertebrates. Between 4 million and 10 million butterflies once graced the California coasts before dropping to just over a million at the end of the 1990s. In the decades that followed, the population plateaued at about 200,000.
Indigenous community evicted as land clashes over agribusiness rock Paraguay
Armed police with water cannons and a low-flying helicopter have faced off against indigenous villagers brandishing sticks and bows in the latest clash over land rights in Paraguay, a country with one of the highest inequalities of land ownership in the world. Videos of Thursday’s confrontation showed officers in riot armour jostling members of the Hugua Po’i community – including children and elderly people – out of their homes and into torrential rain.
Tractors then tore down the thatched wooden cabins and ripped up crops from the surrounding land, which is claimed by a Mennonite soybean farmer. ...
“This is another blow against indigenous peoples,” lamented Mario Rivarola, whose relatives had lived in the village. The surrounding land is valuable, with fertile soil, a river and a paved road on hand. But it also has a spiritual and environmental importance, he said. “The graves of our grandparents are here,” Rivarola explained, adding that the community had returned 10 years ago to occupy their ancestral land. “We want to recover its history and preserve the forest that remains.” ...
At the Cop26 conference in Glasgow earlier this month, western leaders agreed to give indigenous peoples at least $1.7bn to support their crucial role in protecting the world’s carbon-dense forests. ... But a wave of rural evictions in Paraguay this year demonstrates the challenge in converting these agreements into concrete action to halt agribusiness from advancing into Latin America’s surviving forests – and dislodging their inhabitants.
Western Canada braces for more torrential rain after deadly mudslides
Crews in British Columbia raced to clear debris from motorways and repair dykes as the Canadian province braced for more downpours on Sunday, just days after record rainfall led to the deaths of four people, brought parts of the province to a standstill and sparked shortages of food and fuel.
The western Canadian province declared a state of emergency on Wednesday after parts of the province were pummelled by a phenomenon known as an “atmospheric river”, dumping a month’s worth of rain in two days and causing floods and mudslides that swallowed bridges and stretches of highways, cut off entire towns and forced the evacuation of thousands of people. ...
Provincial officials warned on Saturday that the rough weather was set to continue, with Environment Canada forecasting that a similar weather system was set to bring as much as 150mm of rain and 20cm of snow to parts of northern British Columbia.
The storm was forecast to turn south on Sunday, potentially resulting in heavy rains in some of the storm-affected areas, said the province’s public safety minister, Mike Farnworth. “I urge people to pay close attention to weather warnings, given the unpredictability that comes with climate change,” he added.
Last week’s storm came less than six months after the western Canadian province suffered record-high temperatures that killed more than 500 people and fuelled to wildfires that gutted an entire town.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t convicted because, in America, white reasoning rules
Anthony Huber Was a Hero: Victim of Kyle Rittenhouse Remembered for Trying to Save Lives At Protest
US Warns China After Standoff With Philippines in South China Sea
Nicaragua explains why it’s leaving OAS, responds to US attacks on its elections
Video: Nicaragua explains why it's leaving OAS, responds to US attacks on its elections
FBI investigates attempted breach of local election network in Ohio
FBI searches for Jimmy Hoffa’s body in New Jersey landfill after deathbed tip
‘Heal the past’: first Native American confirmed to oversee national parks
Jacob Blake’s Family Hails Rare Conviction of KC Police Officer Who Shot Dead Cameron Lamb in 2019
Hunter Biden CAUGHT Helping China Buy Critical Materials
CHRISTMAS CANCELED? Not So Fast
Bill Gates Caught Buying Positive News Coverage
NYTimes & FBI Wage War On Project Veritas
Kim Iversen: SHAKEDOWN of Americans! Biden To Hire 80K MORE IRS Agents To Find Money For BBB
A Little Night Music
Johnny Adams - Body and Fender man
Johnny Adams - Salt of The Earth
Johnny Adams - After All The Good Is Gone
Johnny Adams - Reconsider Me
Johnny Adams - Imitation of Love
Johnny Adams - Fortune Teller
Johnny Adams - One Foot in The Blues
Johnny Adams - This Time I'm Gone For Good
Johnny Adams - Danger Zone
Johnny Adams - Snap Your Fingers
Comments
Venezuela held an election yesterday. What will the US say?
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuelans-head-polls-regional-l...
Of course this is how the US reacted.
https://www.rfi.fr/en/us-calls-venezuela-elections-grossly-skewed
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-22/guaido-says-u-s-to-co...
Fixing the incorrect wording in the article -
"We call on the
Maduro regimeUS State Department to cease its repression and allow Venezuelans to live in the peaceful, stable and democratic country they deserve and have long sought."Let the gods speak....
evening humphrey...
heh, the u.s. government can't stand it when other countries have less corrupt elections than the u.s. does.
My wish to Santa Claus :
can you help the Americans to get a President, who is under 70 years old, please.
Good evening and many thanks for the EB.
Hope it is not too cold and stormy in your part of the world. I prepare my mind to not freeze like the weather seems heading up to. We have below zero centigrades here. Not that bad actually, we simply stay in bed.
Good night.
https://www.euronews.com/live
evening mimi...
i propose that we just install santa claus as president. he's no more a fictional character than a good politician from the democrats or the republicans.
progress creeps along the at the bottom of the sea....
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpbwb/octopuses-to-have-their-feelings-...
Wonderful news about the Monarchs; this California native has been exceptionally upset by what's been happening to them.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
evening moonbat...
i am glad that somebody is concerned for the well being of the sentient beings in the ocean, perhaps they could move on to protect the dolphins, porpoises, whales, cuttlefish, etc.
i am also delighted to read that the monarchs are rebounding out west. this year in my area was a down year based on my observations. ms shikspack managed to acquire a bunch of monarch caterpillars and we hatched them out and released them so that the grandkid would at least have the childhood experience of seeing them.
It appears as if the results from Chile are nothing to get
excited about.
yep...
the article that i read today suggested to me that boric is one of those elite liberal types who is more interested in labels than promoting the interests of the working class.
or as the article put it:
i'll post the article in tomorrows eb.
Just spotted this...
...read it carefully; this could be one of the most transformative papers ever written:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/22/therapist-super-ri...
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Awwww, poor widdle babies. A simple
cure for them, get up each day and give away some money to total strangers, preferably those who are down and out, and without church or charity middlemen. Go get a doughnut and tip the waitress $100, stuff like that on up to endowing a university chair of logic.
be well and have a good one
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 --
heh...
perhaps one day the therapists will discover a cure for the accumulation mania that drives these people. until then, i guess we all get to be a part of their misery.
That's interesting
American democracy
evening gj...
who knew north korea was on so many usians' radar?
millenials are just going to have to realize that home ownership tends to reduce the available revenue streams available for rich people to harvest, so in order to reach the rich peoples' expectations of revenue growth, i am afraid that millenials are just going to have to pitch in and sacrifice.
democracy, here? pfffffttt!!!
Breaking news to scare you!
Brandon tries to spin the polling but fails.
Also worked well for Trump.
May have worked for Nixon if Agnew hadn't been indicted and then resigned.
evening cb...
heh, joementia is the president darnit. thank goodness he's not so insecure that he has to have high approval ratings, too.
Good evening Joe and thanks for the EB's
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2021/11/debt-rattle-november-22-2021/
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
evening ggersh...
heh, great cartoon. thanks!
have a great evening!
Evening, Joe
Bojo,"Immigration is why Rome failed." What?
I thought it was because the Roman Empire was spread so thinly looting and pillaging across their world that there was no money left after all the Roman corruption by their Elite, to pay the troops. So they went AWOL and returned home.
but, I am not an historian.
Boris Johnson is presiding over a sunk ship of state and blaming immigration rather than the rampant greed and theft by the British ruling upper class and monarchy.
Fear and blame shifting seems to be the first thing rulers reach for. It's worked for a long time.
Everything does come to an end. Let's see where we all are in a few years.
NYCVG
I love me some Clash
So is this a broken record a great song?
They say immigrants steal the hubcaps
Of the respected gentlemen
They say it would be wine an' roses
If england were for englishmen again
video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMIzKdewzCE
evening nycvg...
heh, i suspect that my ancient civ prof would have flunked bojo with extreme prejudice for gross oversimplification.
i suppose that it's not a surprise that everybody sees what they want to when they peer into the past.
have a great evening!
China's economic model is little different than the US.
Chinese people just work really hard. Really hard compared to us. They often dont have a life because they work so hard.
They are also under pressure, like we are to work even harder.
Unlike most Americans, however their wages and benefits have been rising fairly rapidly. Chinese companies brag about this, something you never see in the US.
evening zed...
as near as i can tell, while chinese distribution of wealth is broader than in the u.s., the average household income in china (if i am converting yuan to usd correctly) is about $6800. while the average household income in the u.s. is around 10 times that at $67k.
the fact of the matter is that how hard people work is not so much a factor. amazon, for example, demonstrates that american workers are easily exploited to work to physical failure. it's how cheap they will work and expendable/replaceable they are that capital is interested in.
UK supposed to outsource millions of jobs like we are.
Bojo said that because he knows the UK is supposed to outsource a lot of those jobs because of GATS, just like we are. So he plans to outsource those jobs. They want the ultra-cheap labor, its pretty hard to resist. Thats the whole point of "opening up" as they frame it.
What is it people dont get about a global coup going on since 1986. Since 15-20 Sept 1986.
Its a global dirty deal. . It goes back to 1986, like that Indian gentleman was telling us in my last post. Narcissists do things like that consistantly. Its pathologicsl projection.
So heads up, all the oligarchs are lying and scheming to steal the world and all the jobs behind the peoples backs, to make the oligarchs even more rich. Its basically modern slavery. A return to slavery in a sense. Because workers are prisoners of their second class legal status, and cant negotiate any kind of labor rights. Or they will get shipped off like that.. poof. Back you go, back to India, Maylasia, South Africa. They work really hard, Americans don't work like that. 60 hours a week.
Imagine how much money they would want for that.
The oligarchy in India demand special treatment and corruption is endemic. They claim to be middle class but thats a huge con. Worse than here, probably. Routine. Corruption is the norm. Corrupt politicians are the norm. A work world where people pay for good jobs. Thats the way the rich want things. So thats what GATS and TISA do. They are creating a world where corporations rule everything and where money is everything. Where everything is for sale. But not to you, unless you have the dough re me.
In india they are cutting back on public education. Making it easier to return to child labor.
Because of GATS, thats what he was talking about.
Thats what the neoliberal cabal wants. Thy want the same thing here.
Sixty? Even more
I was working as a contravtor at a large Telecom company. They had an H1-B they loved. He put in 12 hours a day and 8 hours each on saturday and Sunday. I told him, "Wow, you are racking up the overtime!" He said, "Oh, No. My company says to never put more than 40 hours on a time sheet."
About a month later I was replaced by two H1-B's.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Pro-Pinochet candidate wins first round
oh, joy
heh...
i wonder if antony blinken has phoned kast to congratulate him and let him know that his buds at the cia have his back.
What a load of bollox
Lots of flat out lies here. Yeah the child tax credit is okay, but she’s not making the rich pay anymore in taxes. In fact they’re getting their old ones back again. Nothing in it to make big pharma stop soaking people with high prices for drugs. Bunch of BS said cheerily and poorly, but boy she’s excited for not doing what she has promised to do for over 3 decades. Congress works less time than they are off doing whatever it is they do when they keep taking time off. They sure have lots of perks that we pay for whilst they refuse to let us have the same.
Instead of lowering the age for Medicare they gave insurance companies lots more money so they can continue to rip us off. No $15 minimum wage which is already below what people need to live on. Grrr this woman rubs me the wrong way, but I’ll refrain from commenting on her clothes for now. One day I’ma gonna let it rip. Manchin and Cinema still haven’t committed to voting for it yet either. But they are raking in the bribes for removing all the good stuff in both bills. $369 billion over 10 effing years? BFD when it comes to how much the military gets every year. Twice as much per year, but let’s not means test that.
I picked up all of Sam’s toys today so I could vacuum. Went to do the room they’re in and she had overturned her dawg bed and scattered them across the room. Grumble, grumble SAM! She’s happy cuz I brought the trailer home. Boink, boink, boink. Taking off Wednesday for the island. Nice and sunny, but it’s gonna be cold.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
evening snoopy...
heh, i started listening, but i couldn't bear to listen to nancy flap her gums cheerfully.
i wonder what she'll have to say when manchinema cuts everything except rescinding the salt cap out of the bbb.
glad to hear that you and sam are gearing up for a vacation. i hope that you manage to stay warm and comfy out there. give sam a scritch for me.
Giggle…
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Good evening Joe, thanks for the news and blues.
nize tunes, possible good news about the monarchs, good to hear.
be well and have a good one
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 --
evening el...
yep, nice to know that we might have some pollinators left.
have a great evening!
Countries need immigration of skilled people, but what GATS is
is not immigration, its modern day slavery, its intent is to gut workers wages and turn the whole world againat one another. Its a sleazy trick to keep themselves on top by crossing every line that people dont ever beleive other Americans would cross. Its really quite evil. Because they are destroying services people really need, and forcing us to walk back all the progress we made in the labor scarcity erain the past. Now all of them are being rolled back. Because we cant expect the poor countries to get better that would be unfair to their corporations, no in order to not discriminate our workers have to give up all they had won. six day weeks, no child labor, chemical safety, public education, and healthcare. Now they have become thefts from the rightful owners, the corporations. . At the same time they will slash what we think of as immigration, because having lost their jobs, everybody is going to blame it on the earlier real immigrants. When many of the workers who come here, expecting decent wages and less corruption, wioll actually be falling into a trap designed to steal their lives, too. Their kids will be prevented from getting jobs by their rights, too. Even if they work really hard.
They dont deserve this knife in the back. Their parents wanted better for them, they came here to GET AWAY from this SHIT. But they didn't go far enough, the oligarchs followed them here, bought real estate, paid off politicians. Now its getting captured - quick.
Ask them! They know whats going on with these oligarchs from back home. They came here to get away from them, and their captured countries rife with shameful elites and corruption / out of control corruption situation.
THE POLITICIANS JUST LIE AND LIE, ITS HOGWASH.; DONT FALL FOR THEM, DONT VOTE FOR THEM. ANY OF THEM. THEIR LYING TALK IS CHEAP.
Its a total theft to pay engineers less than US minimum wage. Thats what they want to do.
Clintons were in bed with the foreign oligarchs of all kinds to an extreme level, and its clear that they were pursuing an ioncome extraction strategy by means of debts to be made in the names of our country, "busting out the joint" in mob speech, extracting all the value to l;eave this country a indebted shell.. owing all sorts of things, assets to the rich of the world and not getting anythinmg for this, except bereavement. Oligarchs the essence of oligarchy is exploitatiuon of those things you control, especially people, the peons.. They all set up this deal so they could steal peoples lives in vast quantity.. Steal half of millions of guest workers wages and lock it in while not actually doing any work themselves. They can rent the guest workers outfor a third of the US workers wages (offering three workers for the price of one) and then still make a huge profit. Thats what they do.
Its a global coup a scam, a theft that nobody in their right minds would ever vote for. Privatizing healthcare, water, higher education, teaching, housing, civil engineering, and dozens of other trades will kill them for the people whop do those things. Look at what they are doing with IT. Making it impossible to get a real job, all the jobs advertised are fake, part of this scam, theforeign IT firms come in and take over entire departments, and part of the departing ex-workers last task is training their replacements. Then going for interviews and having them all be fake is just so depressing. And the job hunting folk just cant afford it. The nice clothes to wearm, the taxis, the emotional up and down, putting all your energy into interviewing only to be lied too. It got so that I knew that certain addresses were these temping fiorms. Not a real job.
We need to wise up. Politicians are doping this to divide and destroy all of us. To break our nation's spirit. The manager interviewing me at one place told me what they were doing, the jobs are fake. They never hire anybody they interview in these ads. Its part of the scam, they do it so they fail and can document the failure. They intend to fail. They are supposed to document an unsuccessful job hunt trying to find Americans so they then docuyment how they tried and failed. How could we ever have been so stupid. This will be you soon. They file a form with the government applying for guest worker visas, who they can pay minimum wage.Even that is being disputed, ad it may violate a treaty. They see Americans as not sufficiently motivated to work for as little as they want to pay. They hold fake interviews only to document how they tried, and failed to find Americans. Then they can get a guest worker visa for the person they picked out, and pay them almost nothing. The US workers whose jobs they take get to train their own replacements. And get laid off. Even the people interviewing me for the jobs, were getting laid off. All of them, entire departments. Its a huge scam so they can evade something called the WARN ACT and hide the sheer number of jobs that are being sent to the lowest wage countries. They get an entitleent to do all sorts of services jobs, professional jobs are next, they have a huge surplus of young people with advanced degrees, who are just desperate for US jobs, because they have to get out of the ruts they are in. They all claim to be middle class. But they are not. Thats an inside joke. What they mean is that their income would mean they would be middle class if they lived here in the US. BUt they grew up in the poor countries 1%. They are rich there. Sometimes very rich. Richer than even rich Americans who rarely are waited on hand and foot by servants. Thats quite common in poor countries to have multiple servants, maids, bodyguards, tons of single poask workers, maids, kitchen managers, pool workers, landscapers, etc.
So they come to the US and they make it so our government gets lots of workers without having to pay for their education. Thats what this is really all for.
And if you digm you'll soon figure out that Americans jobs are being given away by the millions to rich people. Almost exclusively.
There are a very few who are not rich they are often the ones who are working 60 hours a week. Others come here and start buying things, cars and real estate. Its for their families, so they own property here.
Some are so very well dressed, and clearly have expensive tastes. They drive a very expensive car, perhaps. They are not frugal. Its not infrequent that they already have lots of connections here.
At the very least they have a rich family that can pay their bills for a while, because they dont have public education in the poor countries, so everybody with the required education is fairly rich. Only rich people can afford to pursue undergraduate study and then get their doctoral or Masters degree. (the minimum to work in most of the sciences)
The wealthy from the developing countries always claim to be middle class. Ha haa.. You should in some cases laughn when they say that. As its a shameless lie.
In their experience Americans are very naiive, as we seem to think that everybody from their country is poor, even though a great many - by far most of their countrymen we se here are at the least very well to do.
Sure, in the US their income would mean they were middle class in New York, Washington or California. here, but in their home countries they are rich, they live in gated communities with guards, they go exclusively to private schools, private hospitals, they never ride public transportation. They have drivers to ferry them around. they go to private schools, have servants, sometimes even bodyguards. Which brings me tio the reason so many want to come here. They dont feel safe where they live now. Its not safe there because everything is so corrupt and there is a lot of tension . . Government excels in playing all the groups against one another. Thats how they keep control, how they keep wages dirt low.
NAFTA was for manufacturing, like in this video, But now the next big wave of offshoring and outsourcing is "services". Most of the remaining decent jobs in America are in services. For example, staffing services will replace most of the desk jobs within a few years. its the desk jobs turn, the rest of the jobs, thats what they are gtting ready to outsource now. Many will lose their careers and homes and will have to move out of the country to keep themselves housed. But they likely wont be able to work while out of the US. .
The politicians are hiding this, they put years of work and piles of lies into hiding it all.
"nothing is going to change" is absolutely correct.
Surprisingly this is not from The Onion or Babylon Bee.
Yet is would be suitable. LOL
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/582745-gohmert-running-for-texa...
I have my doubts that this will be money well spent. But it is Texas so you never know.
You tell yourself that, perhaps.
But you should realize its actually goig to get much worse. Because keeping this vernier of civilization is a luxury our country is going to dump soon, when millions are out of work. Their whle goal; is getting rid of their responsibilities, that means getting rid of the things that make life not just livable, as its more like possible, possible for the people of this country. Maybe even getting rid of them. As they are an embarassment, and in the way. Thats how it works. They wont want all those people moping around. Thats what the cashless transition (switch to a cashless society where all money is digital and can be digitally clawed back if you had income that you did not report. So for example, healthcare or welfare benefits can be clawed back by means of rescission, retroactive clawback, clawing back payments previously made to health providers..back to the beginning of the policy and rebilling at the uninsured billing rate, which can be several times the insured rate. is for control of the population. They intend to put the poor people so deeply into debt we wont be able to travel. Roads will be tlled. People will need the modern equivalent of the apartheid internal passport. You will be allowed to go to and from work (only) until after you pay off your many unpayable debts. In the privatized America, expect the government to attempt to recover debts for industry by taking peoples tax refunds, halting all benefits and instead, paying them to your creditors.