The Evening Blues - 6-22-22



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Ann Cole

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer Ann Cole. Enjoy!

Ann Cole - Got My Mojo Working

“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”

-- Robert A. Heinlein


News and Opinion

Sotomayor accuses supreme court conservatives of dismantling church-state separation

In a dissent to the ruling in Carson v Makin, released on Tuesday, Sotomayor wrote: “This court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the framers fought to build.

“… In just a few years, the court has upended constitutional doctrine, shifting from a rule that permits states to decline to fund religious organisations to one that requires states in many circumstances to subsidise religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars.” ...

In the Maine case, John Roberts, the chief justice, wrote for the conservative majority. In Roberts’ view, the tuition programme violated the free exercise clause of the first amendment to the US constitution, because it said private schools were “eligible to receive the payments, so long as they [we]re ‘nonsectarian’”. Roberts wrote: “Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the programme operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”

Concluding her dissent, Sotomayor wrote: “What a difference five years makes. In 2017, I feared that the court was ‘lead[ing] us … to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment’. Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. If a state cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any state that values its historic antiestablishment interests more than this court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens.

Lithuania is living dangerously, angering China and Russia

NATO’s Baltic blockade opens new front in war against Russia

On Monday, the Baltic state of Lithuania, a member of NATO, imposed an effective blockade on Russia, preventing the transportation of many goods, including steel and coal, to its external enclave of Kaliningrad, which is separated from the rest of Russia by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Traditionally, the imposition of a blockade has been seen as an act of war. With this reckless provocation, the United States and its NATO allies are seeking to goad Russia into a military attack on NATO territory, which would lead to the invocation of Article V of the NATO Charter and a full-scale war with Russia.

Faced with a series of military reversals on the ground in Ukraine, the US, NATO and the European powers are seeking to open a new, northern front in the war.

Lithuanian officials implied that the decision to implement the blockade against Russia was taken in close consultation with other NATO members and Washington. “It is not Lithuania doing anything, it is European sanctions that started working,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said. ...

The imposition of a blockade against Russia by a NATO member comes just days after a series of highly provocative statements by European military and civilian leaders.

In an internal message to military service members, Sir Patrick Sanders, the incoming chief of the British general staff, declared, “There is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle.” In a chilling allusion to the First and Second World Wars, he concluded, “We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again.”

U.S. Urges Corporations To Keep Working With Russia

Russia threatens ‘serious consequences’ as Lithuania blocks rail goods

The head of the Kremlin’s security council has threatened the “population of Lithuania” in an escalation of the row over Lithuanian railway’s refusal to allow some goods to cross to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

After a meeting in the region, which is wedged between Lithuania and Poland, 800 miles from Moscow, Nikolai Patrushev, a close ally to Vladimir Putin, upped the rhetoric by threatening “serious consequences”.

“Russia will certainly respond to such hostile actions,” Patrushev said. “Appropriate measures … will be taken in the near future … Their consequences will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania.”

Patrushev did not specify how Russia would retaliate, merely saying it would be “interagency”. Lithuania has already blocked Russian energy imports, leaving few other options for the Kremlin.

US volunteer fighters captured in Ukraine could face death penalty, says Russia

The Kremlin has said that two captured US volunteers are not covered by the Geneva conventions and could face the death penalty.

“We are talking about mercenaries who threatened the lives of our service personnel,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said. “And not only ours, but also the service personnel of the DPR and LPR,” he added, referencing the Russian-controlled self-proclaimed peoples’ republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russian media has claimed that two of three US volunteers missing in Ukraine have been captured and are being held by pro-Russian separatist forces.

The Kremlin, however, denied that it knew the location of the two men.

Asked whether the Americans could be put on trial in Russian-controlled territory in Donetsk and sentenced to death, Peskov said: “We cannot exclude anything because these are decisions for the court. We never comment on them and have no right to interfere in court decisions.”

Macron struggles to find compromise in France impasse

Average price for US homes hits record high in May despite rise in interest rates

The average US house price hit an all-time high of over $400,000 in May even as interest rate rises and high prices led to a fourth consecutive month of declining sales.

Existing home sales fell 3.4% last month from April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.41m, the National Association of Realtors said on Tuesday. Sales fell 8.6% from May last year, hitting a two-year low.

After climbing to a 6.49m annual rate in January, sales have fallen to the slowest pace since June 2020, near the start of the pandemic, when they were running at an annualized rate of 4.77m homes.

May’s sales were mostly closings on contracts signed one to two months ago before mortgage rates started accelerating amid a surge in inflation expectations and aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.

But demand for homes still outstrips supply. Even as home sales slowed, home prices kept climbing in May. The national median home price jumped 14.8% in May from a year earlier to $407,600. That’s an all-time high according to data going back to 1999, NAR said.

Biden To Ask Congress For GAS TAX HOLIDAY, White House SHRUGS OFF Recession Predictions

Study Shows Excess Corporate Profits in the US Have Become 'Widespread'

A new paper published Tuesday shows that U.S. corporate price markups and profits surged to their highest levels since the 1950s last year, bolstering arguments for an excess profits tax as a way to rein in sky-high inflation.

Authored by Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani of the Roosevelt Institute, the analysis finds that markups—the difference between the actual cost of a good or service and the selling price—"were both the highest level on record and the largest one-year increase" in 2021.

"Markups this high mean there is room for reversing them with little economic harm and likely societal benefit," Konczal said in a statement. "To tackle inflation, we need an all-of-the-above administrative and legislative approach that includes demand, supply, and market power interventions."

In their new brief, Konczal and Lusiani note that higher markups don't always mean larger profits.

"But they did in 2021," the researchers write, showing that the net profit margins of U.S. firms jumped from an annual average of 5.5% between 1960 and 1980 to 9.5% in 2021 as companies pushed up prices, citing inflationary pressures across the global economy as their justification.

"How high companies can increase their sales up and above their costs... matters for the economy more generally because these markups distribute economic gains from workers and consumers to firms and shareholders," said Lusiani. "This is especially the case when almost 100% of these firms' earnings derived from markups are distributed upward to shareholders rather than retained and reinvested."

"Making corporations once again price-takers rather than price-makers," Lusiani added, "will help bring down prices, and in time lead to a more equitable, innovative economy."

The new research comes as the White House struggles to formulate a coherent and effective response to an inflation surge that has become a serious economic and political problem, particularly as the pivotal 2022 midterms approach.

Survey data shows that U.S. voters, including those in key battleground states, overwhelmingly want the Biden administration to challenge corporate power and support a windfall profits tax to counter soaring prices at grocery stores, gas stations, and elsewhere across the economy.

Biden’s Plan For Inflation Will Force MILLIONS Of Workers Into Unemployment: Briahna Joy Gray

Biden Taps Anti-Social Security Ideologue To Oversee Program

Last month, President Joe Biden nominated a longtime advocate of Social Security privatization and benefit cuts to a key board overseeing the Social Security system. The move comes as Republicans get ready to push cuts to Social Security and Medicare, if they end up winning control of Congress during the November’s midterms, as expected.

The development suggests that there could soon be a coordinated push in Washington to cut the Social Security program, which provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to 66 million Americans.

On May 13, Biden chose to nominate Andrew Biggs, a fellow at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute think tank, for a Republican seat on the bipartisan Social Security Advisory Board, which was created in 1994 to consult the president and Congress about the Social Security system.

For years, Biggs has been a vocal critic of expanded Social Security and workers’ right to a secure, stable retirement free from the vagaries of the stock market. He has dismissed the retirement crisis as a non-issue and as recently as 2020 blamed problems with the Social Security system on “older Americans’ game of chicken.” And two decades ago, Biggs worked on a Bush administration commission that pushed to privatize Social Security.



the horse race



Haha, liberal censors get bitten by their own beast:

YouTube CENSORS Jan 6 Committee Claiming Misinformation



the evening greens


'Moral Failure': California Dem Pulls Plug on Fossil Fuel Divestment Legislation

Climate, environmental, and social justice advocates on Tuesday condemned the decision by a Democratic California lawmaker to kill proposed legislation that would require two of the state's leading pension funds to divest from the fossil fuel industry.

"Today amidst a historic mega-drought, wildfires, and fossil-fueled public health crises, Assemblymember Jim Cooper, Chair of the Assembly Committee on Public Employment and Retirement, refused to allow Senate Bill 1173, California's Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, to be heard in his committee," Fossil Free California said in a statement. "This one-man veto allows the state's pensions to continue to invest billions from public funds into the fossil fuel industry, for now."

S.B. 1173 would have prohibited the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS)—the two largest public pension funds in the United States—from making or renewing investments in fossil fuel companies. The measure would also have required the pensions to liquidate their fossil fuel holdings by 2030. The two funds currently hold an estimated $9 billion in fossil fuel investments.

"This decision is a moral failure that disproportionately impacts young people, Indigenous communities, communities of color, and low-income communities," the coalition asserted. "Climate chaos has already cost California billions in damages and health costs from fossil fuel pollution and climate disasters. Jim Cooper, who has just been elected Sacramento County Sheriff, has reported $36,350 in Big Oil campaign contributions from this election season alone."

State Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-33) said in a statement that "while I am deeply disappointed that my Senate Bill 1173 was not set for a hearing in the Assembly Committee on Public Employment and Retirement this week, I remain committed to the necessary and ongoing fight against the impacts of climate change on our state, and especially those communities in my district that are disproportionately impacted by the negative effects of the climate crisis."

"Teachers and state employees whose retirement futures are invested by our state's pension funds have long demanded that CalPERS and CalSTRS cease investing their money in fossil fuel companies, and this demand will only grow stronger and louder," she continued.

James Stone of the Southern California Divestment Network said that "today is a sad day in the history of California when the fossil fuel industry and its political allies defeated the will of the majority of CalSTRS and CalPERS beneficiaries and silenced the voices of the majority of the citizens of our great state."

"This defeat is just a temporary setback, however. We will organize to come back stronger to make our demand for fossil fuel divestment heard because fossil fuel companies are driving us toward unimaginable disaster and neither CalSTRS and CalPERS management nor our elected representatives are doing enough to hold them accountable," he added. "We must prevail because our common future is at stake."

'Snow blood': Why climate change may be turning the Alps red

US Forest Service admits ‘multiple miscalculations’ caused New Mexico fire

Employees with the US Forest Service made multiple miscalculations, used inaccurate models and underestimated how dry conditions were in the south-west, causing a planned burn to reduce the threat of wildfires to explode into the largest blaze in New Mexico’s recorded history, the agency said on Tuesday.

The agency quietly posted an 80-page review that details the planning missteps and the conditions on the ground as crews ignited the prescribed fire in early April. The report states officials who planned the operation underestimated the amount of timber and vegetation that was available to fuel the flames, the exceptional dry conditions and the rural villages and water supplies that would be threatened if things went awry.

Within hours of lighting a test fire on that April day, multiple spot fires were reported outside containment lines and there were not enough resources or water to rein them in.

“The devastating impact of this fire to the communities and livelihoods of those affected in New Mexico demanded this level of review to ensure we understand how this tragic event unfolded,” the US forest chief, Randy Moore, wrote. “I cannot overstate how heartbreaking these impacts are on communities and individuals.”

As of Tuesday, the blaze had charred more than 533 square miles (1,380 sq km), making it the largest fire to have burned this spring in the US. It comes during a particularly ferocious season in which fire danger in overgrown forests around the west has reached historic levels due to decades of drought and warmer weather brought on by climate crisis.


Also of Interest

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

Lithuania, Kalingrad and NATO article Five

Largest US & NATO Naval Drills in Pacific

British security state collaborator Paul Mason’s war on ‘rogue academics’ exposed

British ‘watchdog’ journalists Mason and Cadwalladr unmasked as security state lapdogs

Craig Murray: Your Man in Saughton Jail Part 2

Between Jamal Khashoggi and Shireen Abu Akleh

Global Summit to Halt Extinction Crisis Moved to Montreal

Marble head of Hercules pulled up from Roman shipwreck site in Greece

Ukraine Bans Russian Books, Music & Language

Twitter Is MASS HIRING FBI Agents, Intel Officials: Report. But Why?


A Little Night Music

Ann Cole - Each Day

Ann Cole - I´ve Got Nothing Working Now

Ann Cole - Easy Easy Baby

Ann Cole - Summer Nights

Ann Cole - Have Fun

Ann Cole - Are You Satisfied?

Ann Cole - Don't Stop The Wedding

Ann Cole - Plain As The Nose On Your Face

Ann Cole - Darling, Don´t Hurt Me

Ann Cole, Dave McRae Orch. - I'm waiting for you


Share
up
14 users have voted.

Comments

ggersh's picture

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RoNeLhc7o0&t=2s]

More proof that the empire is in decline, Ecaudorians fighting back

Corruption 101-404....maybe a PhD?

https://jacobin.com/2022/06/kathy-hochul-ny-buffalo-bills-stadium

https://jacobin.com/2022/06/kathy-hochul-ny-buffalo-bills-stadium

Oh and the one and only democracyapartheid state in the ME does this.

up
11 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

joe shikspack's picture

@ggersh

glad to see that ecuador is out in the streets trying to rid themselves of neoliberal idiots. i hope that the usual cast of u.s.-trained, violent repression troops stays locked down in their stations this time and the people get their business done.

heh, so new york just exchanged one abusive corporate bastard for another one. way to go, new york! i wonder how many greedy-billionaire-owned sports franchises a state really needs. oh well, i suppose that they are sparing another state the smell, the mess and the high cost of feeding billionaires.

wow, arrested for possession of a kitchen knife and a peeled cucumber. you can't say that the idf doesn't have a vivid imagination.

have a great evening!

up
9 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

@ggersh @ggersh  
make a big stink about how a huge mural at this year’s Documenta (a triennial world art show) is allegedly anti-Semitic because Israel is included in imagery critical of oppression around the world.

https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-a-scandal-foretold-over-antisemitic-art-at...

https://www.dw.com/en/antisemitic-mural-removed-at-documenta-art-fair/a-...

And the Greens are leading the charge to turn the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces, into a new Wehrmacht capable of waging blitzkrieg abroad.

Some mornings I don’t wanna get out of bed anymore.

Docs / therapists say I gotta stop following the news. They say I gotta accept that it’s over, my race is run when it comes to trying to change the fate of anything / anyone. At my age, they say, caring too much about others and the outside world is just an excuse for neglecting my own needs and desires, dismissing them as “selfish” and egotistical. That’s bad; it drains energy, kills joy, and shortens one’s life.

——

Speaking of selfishly ethnic and tribal, in Asian-American and Pacific Islander identity politics…

Overshadowed by Juneteenth, June 19 also marked the 40th anniversary of the murder of Vincent Chin, an incident where most non-Asian Americans seemed to sympathize with the perps, unemployed white auto workers who thought Chin was Japanese and somehow to blame for taking their jobs. They were let off with a slap on the wrist.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/40-years-after-vincent-chins-death-a...

up
7 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

I unhooked the trailer so I could get service for a phone call and the damn car wouldn’t start. It said that the key was nowhere to be found…except it was in my pocket. After trying for 15 minutes to find what the destruction manual said I should do it noticed the key in my hand and started..yay! As I was driving lower a lert said alert no key! I decided that I had just gotten lucky and turned around and re-hooked everything back without killing the engine and came home. There’s a key inside the ‘intelligent' key fob but nowhere to insert it in the car to start it. It’s 2 years old and this crap shouldn’t be happening so soon. I have another fob thing but it won’t lock the doors, but will start the engine. Ehh? Do things just stop working that quickly without any warning?

Last time I went camping I had a hole in the propane tubing and froze my buttocks off because it snowed and now this! Im starting to wonder if I'm cursed for some reason. Good gravy I’ve spent enough money getting everything perfect and then something else happens. I had planned on staying 2 more nights and had a fun hike planned today with the Sam. Ima gonna get this fixed and go back up there. Sam made friends with a deer last night. They both hopped and ran thru the weeds. Hopefully he will still be there waiting for her.

up
9 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

Do things just stop working that quickly without any warning?

heh, it's been my experience that the newer and more electronically complex cars become the more of a pain in the patoot they are. if it wasn't so darned hard to find parts for them, i'd never again own a vehicle built after about 1974.

good luck with your rig, i hope that you and sam get back to camping and enjoying yourselves very soon.

give sam a scritch for me!

up
8 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

but when my other one died suddenly I got a Nissan Armada that gets horrible gas mileage but I had planned on getting a trailer so it worked. But sheesh at least they should come with some manual controls for when the other stuff fizzles out. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t started since my internet had been out all morning. It’s why I unhooked to go where I could get service cuz I needed to make a call. I don’t know how to plan for something so unexpected. How can something work 1 minute but not the next like that? I just realized that I never made that call…drat!

Oh well we had a good time there and I’ll go back and see if I can break this stupid cycle. Before the snow and propane I had the bug invasion at the island. 3 times should be enough!

up
4 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg I only know this because it happened to a friend and he related the long story over beer on the back deck last week. He hitched in and went to the Nissan place for a fix, and in the end they fixed the fob but also told him there was a work around:

Starting Your Nissan

Once you’re in, you’ll need to know how to start Nissan with dead key fob.

If your Nissan car, truck, or SUV has a key fob port, you can still put the fob in the port and tap the brake pedal or clutch as you press the START/STOP button. If your Nissan doesn’t have a port, just step on the brake or clutch as you press the key fob against the START/STOP button.

Who knew, right? I hope this information is not needed in the future, but good to know, eh?

up
4 users have voted.
TheOtherMaven's picture

@peachcreek

is usually caused by a dead/dying key fob battery. If you know what type of button battery it takes (usually 2032) and have a minimum of skill, you can change the battery yourself and save the service charges.

I agree, however, about newer cars being too much trouble. Especially all the fancy-schmancy electronic doodads that are supposed to "help" but are a distraction when they work, and don't work when you really need them to. Blum 3

up
5 users have voted.

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

snoopydawg's picture

@peachcreek

I couldn’t find the key fob port but stopped looking once it started. I did put it against the start button thinking that the battery was dying but after getting the warning that I had no key I tried putting it there again but the warning stayed on. I posted this hoping that someone would know how to work around the problem. Much appreciated.

up
4 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

up
7 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

you gotta wonder, with quality programming like that, why anybody watches msdnc.

up
5 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

Breaking News - You Tube sux, furthermore, censorship sux. I'm sure glad that is finally being exposed. Heh. And MSDNC puts on a guest from a right wing rag backed by a right wing billionaire who can't even find personnel who use better English than

There is a great deal of Americans where it is uncomfortable that they're spending more ...

. Please tell me that she isn't an editor.

Just ate the season's first apricot from the tree in our backyard - delicious, so things still aren't all bad.

be well and have a good one

up
8 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

hey, she speaks just as well as george dubya bush and they let him be the presidunce.

have a great evening with your apricots. i'm looking forward to my peaches.

have a great evening!

up
5 users have voted.
The Liberal Moonbat's picture

up
4 users have voted.

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!

joe shikspack's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

interesting. i don't know what to make of it, but perhaps one day we will all know what happened that day in some detail.

up
2 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

but didn't really have 21 minutes to waste, because what the film maker was doing was pretty obvious. It is quite easy to make a convincing case that something is staged, but that doesn't make it so. I have been in a ton of demonstrations, including one that turned violent, and with cops shooting people and in one case killing one shooting victim and can assure you that there is a lot of standing around, conversing, looking around, giving (sometimes conflicting) instructions or directions, etc. There is both order and disorder, chaos and periods of inaction. I was in one where I was called as it was starting and alerted that I should get there because my experience and expertise in street actions would probably be needed given the particular circumstances.

Dunno, for sure, if it was fake or real, but the video isn't convincing.

"OH look, a guy with one glove, look, another" - one glove is somewhat common on both sides in real demonstrations, protect your hands, especially if there are reasons to suspect that are tear gas canisters or edged weapons or clubs might be used, but consider keeping one hand glove free if you think it possible that you will need manual dexterity for helping self or others.

"OH look, the windows aren't glass, they're plastic" Ignorance or attempted con? Has the filmmaker never seen auto glass broken, or other safety glass? Layers of glass separated by plastic to strengthen and shatter-proof it - pretty common stuff that I would certainly expect to be used in those particular doors.

Protesters intentionally changing their appearance as best they can - not at all rare. Protesters donning or doffing items of clothing or gear, not necessarily with intent to change appearance, but having that effect nonetheless - also not at all rare.

Decisions which retroactively seem irredeemably stupid or counter productive - common.

"Evidence of planning and coordination", hopefully expected. The one I was called to go to was because it was spontaneous while the cops were on hand and had standing battle plans and drills and it was felt the protesters were likely to get slaughtered without anybody providing any guidance. (One guy was, in fact, killed.) Even in that case, there was a degree of spontaneous order and organization and even ad hoc coordination because those situations lead themselves to such things.

Again, who knows the truth, but, as much of the video as I watched was unconvincing and seemed purposely intended to present a predetermined narrative.

be well and have a good one

up
6 users have voted.

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

janis b's picture

Thanks to you joe, I didn't miss ever hearing Ann Cole!

Good for Sotomayor for speaking out. Elena Hagen is also not bad. Both were appointed by Obama. It does make me consider again the question of “what is voting good for?” I know it’s a drop in the bucket, but maybe one of the very few opportunities left to get better blood in the game. I really don't know if voting would continue to help because of how deeply rooted conservatism is in the Democrats, but I do continue to wonder.

On the NZ front, I have been surprised by the conformity of NZers regarding covid issues, but more currently experience the walls beginning to crack, and people questioning more.

up
5 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@janis b

and you got to hear the first recording of got my mojo workin', something that most folks don't know exists. Smile

i guess i'm glad that sotomayor spoke out, i haven't read kagan's commentary. i'm not thinking that voting has done much good as the senate democrats have not exhibited the strategic abilities to block new justices that the conservatives have. the blue team just basically sucks, while the red team has capitalized on their ability to walk all over the blue team and insert their ideological buddies onto the court. in short, it doesn't seem that i can vote for somebody that will represent my interests.

oh well. have a great evening!

up
6 users have voted.
janis b's picture

@joe shikspack

Nice to know that little piece of musical information, thanks again.

'Oh well' sounds like a sigh of resignation, a feeling we are subjected to over and over, sadly.

up
4 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@janis b

It does make me consider again the question of “what is voting good for?”

It sure seems that every time democrats have all branches of government they just can’t seem to get things done because there’s always enough democrats and republicans to stop them, but when republicans hold them they can rush through whatever they have in mind and democrats are helpless to stop them. Pelosi gave Trump everything he asked for whilst calling him the most dangerous president evah.

Kagan and Sotomyer are good on constructions issues, but they toe the line on things that help corporations. One of Ginsberg's last votes was for an oil pipeline in the appellation mountains. That passed 7-0. The 1st amendment is being used for things that help the parasite class. Citizens United and now this religious school issue. Separation of church and state was a pipe dream of the founders because they never thought that those whose job it was to uphold the constitution would dismantle it like it has been since it was signed. How many times has it been set aside for whatever reason was convenient for those who did it? The patriot act and Obama’s NDAA have made it that gawd damn piece of paper. Voting ain’t going to change that.

up
8 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

janis b's picture

@snoopydawg

[video:https://youtu.be/rOAU8_V4PzY]

up
4 users have voted.