The Evening Blues - 8-14-23



eb1pt12


No news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Jimi Primetime Smith

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Twin Cities blues guitarist Jimi Primetime Smith. Enjoy!

Bob Corritore & Jimi Primetime Smith Band - Don't Throw Your Love on Me So Strong


No News or Opinion

News will be back tomorrow.


A Little Night Music

Jimi "Prime Time" Smith & Bob Corritore - I Got The World In A Jug

Bob Corritore & Jimi Primetime Smith Band ft. Taildragger - Stop Lyin

Jimi "Prime Time" Smith - Walking the dog

The Jimi 'Primetime' Smith & Bob Corritore Blues Band ~ Just Like A Fish

The Jimi 'Primetime' Smith & Bob Corritore Blues Band ~ We Got To Stick Together

Jimi ‘ Primetime ‘ Smith - Hideaway

The Jimi 'Primetime' Smith & Bob Corritore Blues Band ~ Blinded

Jimi ‘ Primetime ‘ Smith - I can’t hold out

Jimi 'Primetime' Smith - If Trouble Was Money

Jimi Prime Time Smith - I'll Play The Blues For You


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ggersh's picture

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/08/14/the-most-important-election-o...

The 2024 presidential election will be THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF ALL TIME, because if Americans don’t make the correct choice between the two candidates something terrible might happen to their country. The US might even turn into an abusive totalitarian dystopia where everyone’s mind is controlled by propaganda engineered to shape them into unthinking gear-turners for a globe-spanning empire.

People on one side of the partisan divide are being trained to fear a future fascist takeover. 

People on the other side are being trained to fear a future communist takeover. 

Both sides are being trained to overlook the oligarchic totalitarian takeover that has already occurred.

Three things are certain when there’s a major international conflict:

1. The western empire will be involved, and on the wrong side.

2. The western media will insist the empire is on the right side.

3. Westerners will tell you, “You don’t get it! THIS time we’re the GOOD GUYS!”

It always gets spun as “supporting Russia” to say the US and its allies provoked the war in Ukraine, but that’s moronic. You don’t have to support Russia at all to acknowledge the well-documented ways the US empire provoked and sustains this war to advance its own agendas. You can hate Putin with all your heart, mind, body and soul and still acknowledge those extensively documented and glaringly obvious facts. Spinning the acknowledgement of obvious facts as sinister support for a foreign government is done solely to prevent criticism of our own rulers.

The only people who use phrases like “Putin apologist” are US empire apologists. And I’m not just reversing the accusation, I’m highlighting a fact: their accusations are seldom if ever directed at those who love Russia, they’re directed at those who criticize US foreign policy. The overwhelming majority of accusations of Kremlin loyalty are directed not at those who cheer for Russia and support Putin, they’re directed at those who criticize things the US empire is doing. This tendency could only arise from a fierce loyalty to that empire.

Some of the most toxic and impossible people to associate with are those who expect you to play by their rules and hate who they hate and value what they value and act like the whole world revolves around them. And today we are ruled by a giant empire who does exactly that.

The US empire has all the personality characteristics of a malignant narcissist. It sees people as resources to exploit instead of humans to relate to, it communicates to manipulate and control rather than to connect and understand, and anyone who doesn’t center its desires as a priority above all else becomes its enemy.

US foreign policy in the 2000s emphasized giant overt ground invasions (Iraq, Afghanistan). In the 2010s it shifted emphasis to arming proxies (Yemen, Libya, Syria). In the 2020s it’s moved to staging massive proxy conflicts on the borders of its top two rivals (Ukraine, Taiwan).

With each adjustment it gets harder to perceive the depravity of the empire. It was easy when it was just Bush-style smash-and-grab ground invasions, but it’s been getting sneakier and sneakier about its murderousness to maintain international support and avoid antiwar sentiment. 

And yet the empire is still just as murderous and destructive as it was under the Bush administration. Its creation of the Ukraine conflict is just as evil as anything Bush or Obama did. More so really, because now we’re getting closer and closer to nuclear annihilation. The task of opposing the empire’s warmongering has thus become more and more difficult, but it’s also getting more and more important. We do need to keep helping the public see what these bastards are doing and the destruction they’re causing and the armageddon they’re risking. 

And people are getting left behind as the warmongering gets sneakier. Many people who opposed Bush’s warmongering are now cheerleaders for the US proxy warriors orchestrating conflicts with Russia and China. It’s important to work to keep the manipulators from confusing people.

Imperial information control has two major components: secrecy and manipulation. 

Government secrecy keeps people from knowing about the evil things the empire is doing.
Propaganda and censorship manipulate public thought about the evil things that can’t be kept secret.

Imperial secrecy takes the form of government classification and opacity and the brutal persecution of whistleblowers and journalists who transgress it. Imperial manipulation takes the form of propaganda, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and mass media blackouts.

Empire managers work to keep as much information as possible about the empire from being made public, but once it is public they can still keep the information from having a major impact by manipulating whether people pay attention to it, and by manipulating how people see it. In this way public understanding of the empire’s abuses is continuously obfuscated; even after information makes it past the walls of opacity, there’s still a whole other line of defense which is arguably more of an obstacle, because the impact of the information can be neutralized.

Whistleblowers, leak publishers and investigative journalists are very important in getting information past the walls of secrecy, but after they’ve done that there’s a whole other battle that needs to be fought: getting the public to notice, understand, and think clearly about the information.

But what’s cool is that anyone can play a role in that second battle. Not everyone can be a whistleblower or leak publisher or investigative journalist with a massive scoop, but everyone can help fight against imperial information manipulation by working to circulate the truth. You can do this by spreading awareness of the information that’s publicly available about the abuses of our rulers. Spread it online and offline, in whatever ways you can think of. Disrupt the manipulation machine with hard facts, and with robust and attention-grabbing arguments.

That’s where I find I’m best used in this fight. I’m not out there breaking stories and talking to sources and spending weeks combing through FOIA documents (though I am grateful to everyone who does), but I do have a knack for using words to help people see the information that has been made public with more clarity.

One huge obstacle to revolutionary change is that people can’t really see the depravity of the empire, because they’ve been conditioned not to look at it too closely, and because they’ve been habituated to it their entire lives. It’s possible to help them see it with fresh eyes.

And to those that survived the Lahaina fire my heart goes out
to you for all that you lost. May those that lost their lives
RIP

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13 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

as usual caitlin is spot on. thanks!

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6 users have voted.

When Russia reacts accordingly they Ukrainians scream "War Crimes" which the stenographers in the MSM repeat without hesitation.

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10 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

yep, it's been going on since the beginning of the war. i remember early on there was a maternity hospital filled with ukronazi troops that the russians bombed and the ukronazis staged a photo op with a couple of pregnant women and one with a newborn to claim that the russians were committing war crimes. the trick has been used repeatedly and it's gotten a little stale.

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snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

Her tweet had been up for 3 hours and she only got 1 reply.

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11 users have voted.

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

snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

Hills has a sad.

In a coincidence for the ages, Hillary Clinton—widely dismissed in 2016 as she tried to warn the country of what a threat Donald Trump posed—was on MSNBC on Monday night as the latest round of indictments around Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election were coming out.

In the interview, Rachel Maddow asked the question everyone wants to ask Clinton: “Do you feel satisfaction in that?”

“I don’t feel any satisfaction,” Clinton responded. “I feel great, just great profound sadness that we have a former president who has been indicted for so many charges that went right to the heart of whether or not our democracy would survive.”

Clinton went on to note that while we don’t yet know what’s in the Georgia indictments, the publicly available evidence of efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn that state’s election paint a damning picture.

“The only satisfaction,” Clinton added, “may be that the system is working. That all of the efforts by Donald Trump, his allies, and his enablers to try to silence the truth, to try to undermine democracy have been brought into the light, and justice is being pursued.”

We just found out that Trump has been indicted in the Georgia case. But I don’t believe that the Hellabitch isn’t satisfied with what you wrought on Trump. In fact I’m betting that she is smiling ear to ear. But the good thing is that she never got to or will get to be president. 2 good things came out of Trump winning. He canceled the TPP and the other Tp…something trade agreements and he didn’t start the war with Russia. And if the facts are true he stopped the planned war on Iran. Remember he called the plane full of bombs back after they were sent. I wonder who actually gave that order?

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4 users have voted.

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

snoopydawg's picture

.

The U.S. Army killed the buffalo during Manifest Destiny for the same reason that the World Economic Forum wants to kill all of the cattle in Holland and Ireland during the Great Reset — they want to starve the people and drive them off their land so that the robber barons can steal everything.

Turley on the Weiss being upgraded to special counsel.

‘Shoeless Joe’ Weiss and the fixing of the Hunter Biden game

This is not a case of history repeating itself. After being confronted by allegations of a fixed investigation, Attorney General Merrick Garland just sent Shoeless Joe back into the game.

The appointment of Delaware David Weiss as the new special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden left many with the same disbelief as that kid in Chicago. This is, after all, the same Weiss who headed an investigation that was trashed by whistleblowers, who alleged that his investigation had been fixed from the outset.

It is the same Weiss who ran an investigation in which agents were allegedly prevented from asking about Joe Biden, obstructed in their efforts to pursue questions and compromised by tip offs to the Biden team on planned searches.

It was also the same Weiss who reportedly allowed the statute of limitations to run out on Hunter’s major tax offenses, even though he had the option to extend it.

It was the same Weiss who did not indict on major tax felonies and cut a plea deal that brushed aside a felony gun charge.

It was the same Weiss who inked a widely panned “sweetheart” deal that caused a federal judge to balk and trash a sweeping immunity grant — language that even the prosecutor admitted he had never previously seen in a plea deal.

That is why many asked Garland to “say it ain’t so.”

The Weiss appointment definitively established Garland as a failure as attorney general. As someone who initially praised Garland’s appointment, I now see that he has repeatedly shown he lacks the strength and leadership to rise to these moments.
…..
Second, there is the failure to expand Weiss’s mandate. Garland described that mandate as focusing again on Hunter Biden, and the Justice Department refused to respond to questions on the possible inclusion of his father in the investigation.

This was another opportunity to recognize the widespread distrust over the department and expressly allow the special counsel to include the corruption allegations involving both Hunter and the president. That would have supported calls for the House to delay further investigations.

As it stands, Garland has virtually ensured that Congress will pursue an impeachment inquiry as the only body seriously investigating the scandal.

It could not be worse for the Justice Department as an institution. “Shoeless Joe” Weiss is back in the game, long after the public has left in disgust.

The corporate media is spinning the republican’s response to this as being upset about it after they actually asked Garland to appoint a SC, but of course they are leaving out the reasons why they are upset. After reading more of how Garland and Weiss have gone out of their way to keep Joe Biden from being investigated it brought to mind how it’s usually the cover up of the crime that is worse than the crime itself.

Biden was asked for a comment on the Hawaii fires and he said, No Comment and got in his car after spending another weekend at his beach front house in Delaware. Hey remember all that time Trump spent golfing? Yeah that was bad, but it wasn’t bad when Obama spent a lot of time golfing himself.

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9 users have voted.

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

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

...who acted as Mueller's muscle during the Trump/Russia false flag investigation?

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snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

I’ll look into it. But just like a lot of the previous investigations the same people from them were involved in others. I’ll see if I can find the comment on this.

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4 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@Pluto's Republic

i did a quick google and i don't see usa david weiss listed on mueller's investigation team.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Andrew Weissmann, a lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation

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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

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

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2 users have voted.

@snoopydawg

A bit more.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4152105-white-house-blows-of...

The White House on Monday blew off criticism over President Biden being on vacation and offering a “no comment” this weekend during the catastrophic fires in Maui, the deadliest wildfires in the U.S. in more than a century.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was questioned by CNN’s Kayla Tausche on whether the American people should see the president working the phone rather than spending time on the beach during the crisis, after Biden spent the weekend in Rehoboth, Del., and returned to the White House on Monday morning.

Biden on Sunday morning, during a bike ride in Rehoboth, replied, “We’re looking at it,” when asked about whether he would go to Maui. Later on Sunday, following a stop at the beach, he responded “no comment” when asked about the rising death toll in Maui.

Jean-Pierre was pressed again by Tausche about the White House response to critics who suggested that the president should not have been vacationing during the wildfire.

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snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

and nailed Trump to it if he had blown off a comment like that. You know they would have, but like a lot of things that they rode Trump’s ass for they let Biden get away with it. The funniest one is Biden speaking to the press in front of helicopter that has its engines running. They hated it when Trump did it.

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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

ggersh's picture

@snoopydawg they want to make Maui a "Smart Island"

https://open.substack.com/pub/sashalatypova/p/maui-plans-for-a-high-tech...

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7 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

snoopydawg's picture

@ggersh

and I hope others will read it to see why so many are questioning the fires. The governor passed an executive order in January that will affect the rebuilding after the fire. Maybe Sasha covered it in her essay. Lots of people on substack were writing about it yesterday. It doesn’t pass the smell test…but I guess time will tell.

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6 users have voted.

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

usefewersyllables's picture

@snoopydawg

can we not do the conspiracy-theory thing here while people are still dying from their injuries?

Pretty please? I’m sure the sharks will come and feed on the ruins of their lives- that’s what the sharks do. Many people with much money will come in and fuck the victims over- that is what they do. I have friends who have lost everything, and friends who are forever changed by this. Let’s please not start inventing prurient pseudo-details just yet. Please?

Thank you.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

yep, weiss certainly appears to be a sympathetic prosecutor. or perhaps just a pathetic prosecutor. on the other hand, i'm sure that he's the sort to throw the book at lesser mortals.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

I keep a library of truth bombs and hoax busters like the one posted below. I watch them for clues to try to understand why a huge majority of minds in a large population of ordinary people are instantly and permanently snared and triggered by certain preposterous hoaxes. They are potentially weaponized by their insensible gullibility, which endangers the entire population. What is different about the minds of the small minority of ordinary people, who instantly see the illogical fault lines and the surrealistic distortion of a Big Lie? This minority, consisting of adults and children are often shocked — usually into silence — when they realize that most people actually believe it. (Chinese Spy Balloon, anyone?)

This is an intellectual anomaly that defies functional logic, and it needs to be addressed and resolved. How were so many minds derailed? I hypothesize that at one point, during a specific 14-year period, some 'thing' or 'event' happened, that markedly fractured people's natural instincts for self preservation. On a related note, I also hypothesize that leaders who are close to power (for example, elected members of Congress, media figures, and other spokespersons and representatives) have no mental awareness that they lie repeatedly when they speak. They sound as if they are mentally ill. This phenomenon, which can resemble hypocrisy, is completely bi-partisan.

Anyway, it's a slow Monday night. So here's a hoax-buster you might enjoy:

.

As always, thanks for the blues, Joe.

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soryang's picture

@Pluto's Republic ..in an.online video for about a year or so. Used to follow him regularly. For a second I was hoping that this was a new video. I saw this one at the time. I remember when he went to Xinjiang to document the "suppression" of Uyghur culture. He couldn't find the concentration camps either, or any evidence of "genocide." Go figure. A couple of other expats I used to follow from the west went to Xinjiang, and came to the same conclusions.

Sometimes I found DDs fixation on twitter thread wars a bit too obscure for me to follow. He took his critics very seriously. In any case, I wish him well. I thought his videos were quite informative. Loved his visit to Lhasa, that was another eye opener. It's one thing to read about CIA machinations in China, another to see how the the "enlightened" monks of "independent Tibet" really governed Tibet like a slave state. Where's Richard Gere when you need him?

Thanks for posting his video @Pluto's Republic.

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語必忠信 行必正直

joe shikspack's picture

@Pluto's Republic

it's always good to hear from people in a position to debunk the crap that our mainstream stenographers tell us about the world.

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soryang's picture

I spent some time Sat, Sun and this morning watching video of demos in Seoul. Listened to 3-4 of the speakers. I don't know what happened to the labor movement in South Korea lately, for while they were very active in the streets and on the job site. They seem to have disappeared. I guess Yoon's legal crackdown on union leadership has had a chilling effect. Also, the progressive side of the democratic party didn't organize any last weekend either. I think the blazing heat, and the fight over reorganization of the party nomination rules between the two factions are taking everyone's attention inside the party. I just took a couple of screenshots to show the demos that did take place Saturday and Monday (today) respectively.

(Source- 오마이TV 8.14.23 youtube) "괴물을 보았다" 경찰과 충돌 끝에 서울시청역에서 열린 천주교 정의구현사제단 월요시국기도회 (2023.08.14 오후) "I saw a ghost" (play on words, media critiques of Yoon government corruption and incompetence are ridiculed by government officials as "ghost stories" a new expression for fake news). After confrontation with police ends the Monday prayer meeting organized by the Catholic Priests Justice Association opens near City Hall Station.

(Source- 빨간아재 8.13.23 youtube) [52차 촛불대행진] 나라가 엉망이다! 윤석열을 몰아내자! / 6시 시청-숭례문 앞 대로 52nd Candlelight procession (demo) The nation is a mess! Oust Yoon Suk-yeol! / (Saturday) 6pm (assemble on) street from City Hall to Sungnyemun (Namdaemun).

Large demonstration in Seoul today (upper screenshot) organized by Catholic Priests Association for Justice against pro-Japanese prosecution dictator Yoon calling for him to step down. Demo was larger than Saturday's candlelight demo (lower screenshot). It looked like police tried to restrict the Catholic priests' sponsored assembly to sidewalks initially. I think the crowd from dioceses all over South Korea was too large for that and they ended up occupying a couple a lanes in the roadway for quite a distance. The far right sound trucks were there trying to drown out the speakers. I think the assembly was open (non-denominational). One of the executive board members of the candlelight organization in religious garb 김민웅 목사 Minister Kim Min-woong, delivered a roaring presentation, there. I think he is a protestant minister. So there is some crossover. They support each other's political goals.

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語必忠信 行必正直

joe shikspack's picture

@soryang

do you think that there are enough people mobilized to perhaps move yoon out of office over a shortish period of time? it looks like there is institutional support, which is a good sign.

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soryang's picture

@soryang . ...several months ago Humphrey suggested that I was too optimistic and he was right. Most South Korean analysts critical of the Yoon administration are looking forward to the spring general elections for National Assembly to see if the PPP party suffers a major loss, giving the democratic party plus perhaps the justice party the two thirds majority to potentially support an impeachment vote.

The problem with this scenario, is that there are DINOs (soo bak dul) maybe 30 or so hard core who probably won't go along with this because they are really conservatives at heart representing the so called rotten special interests (corporations). The key variables are further Yoon administration screw ups, disasters, natural, manmade, political and or economic, and whether they are bad enough to turn the MSM media that dominate the Korean information space away from Yoon. These media are Joongang Ilbo, Chosun Ilbo, and Donga Ilbo. Yoon's wife and mother in law are critical liabilities in this respect, because they are so obviously corrupt, and Yoon and his clique at Justice and in the prosecution are protecting them, as they have for many years. The DINOs in the democratic party (the majority party in the National Assembly) will go with whatever the MSM chaebol say. This is what they did when President Park Geun-hye was impeached. The street demonstrations were much larger back then, in the hundreds of thousands. The DINOs and the more left leaning democrats are struggling for control of the party nomination process because they know its critical to the numbers game. These demos I commented on today are small, numbering perhaps 3 to 10,000 or so by my guess. The public broadcasting stations KBS, SBS, and MBC are the primary televised critics of Yoon, and they are going to be dismantled in short order with the Yoon takeover of the KCC.

There is a similar contest in the conservative PPP nominally Yoon's party. Yoon's people have been maneuvering to eliminate independent non-Yoon candidates from the nomination slate of party candidates for similar reasons. In the event that adverse events reduce Yoon's support to less than 30 percent on a consistent basis, non Yoon members who get elected could defect to a Yoon impeachment movement to get rid of him. He's a liability to their political futures. He blackmails his rivals and critics with threats of political prosecution, party expulsions etc. Major party figures forced out of the election campaign nominations by Yoon forces are discussing whether to run independent or form a new party.

The independent political media I follow mostly on youtube, and these demonstrators talk openly of impeachment so I probably overstate the possibility. Yet, Yoon's disapproval rate however is consistently 58 to 62 percent depending on the poll taker. Polls showing better results are usually viewed as skewed for one reason or another, or just rigged for political purposes. I like to think of this potential for Yoon to fall just as in traditional Korean court politics. Natural disasters, epidemics, fires, floods, military losses and public police violence on righteous protestors could trigger the overthrow of the current leader. In Korean psychology such things reflect poorly on the country's leader and seem to elicit a visceral response. The way police handle these well behaved demonstrators is very critical. So is the way Yoon manages any future mishaps involving loss of life.

edited for clarity, and typos.

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4 users have voted.

語必忠信 行必正直

joe shikspack's picture

@soryang

i have been wondering about it. it seems that here in the u.s. popular disapproval is not really a liability for a politician due to various manipulations of the system, so i guess south korea is pretty much the same.

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4 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

.

Bidenomics

The Biden Administration announced Monday that Maui residents may qualify for a whopping “one-time $700 payment per household” for hurricane relief efforts.

Link

There’s a graphic of the tweet in the article but I don’t see a link to it. Dunno why so many writers on substack don’t provide links to tweets or the articles they write about. Big pet peeve, but geezus how hard is it to post one?

A lawyer is telling people to have a lawyer look at any forms from the government before they sign it. They might be giving up any future money that they are entitled to. If you know anyone suggest that to them.

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6 users have voted.

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

@snoopydawg

May and eligible seems rather bureaucratic.

https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20230814/maui-residents-may-be-eligib....

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5 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

if only they were bombing somebody the usg doesn't like, then the money would flow like water.

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7 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

Biden would up the money. Either that or make an exception to give the family more money than the long time residents.

I just read that homelessness has jumped 11% during Biden and credit card debt is now a trillion with very high interest rates. Banks are probably snarfing up homes again after people declared bankruptcy. Just think 70 years ago only dad had to work and he even made enough money he could afford to buy a vacation home and now both mom and dad have to work more than 1 job just to make ends meet. Meanwhile on the rich side of things…..

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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

@snoopydawg supported his extended family by being a bus driver.
Typical then. Not an anomaly.

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4 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Edited to add this image.

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8 users have voted.

Alex Rubinstein@RealAlexRubi

Former Czech diplomat Petr Tuma says the quiet part out loud in the NATO's de-facto think tank Atlantic Council:

"Coastal ECOWAS countries understand... if putschists in Niamey aren’t put in line, their own political survival is at risk," because "successful examples are appealing."

Translation: The anti-colonial military takeover in Niger must fail because if it doesn't, it will send a message to West Africans that self-determination is possible in the region, and they may try to overthrow their Western-backed neocolonial rulers.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/experts-react/did-...

The Atlantic Council part is a few days old but it is revealing.

Of course Blinky is deeply involved.

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snoopydawg's picture

.

The J6 free speech trial won’t be the first time Chutkan has been entangled by court conflicts stemming from her legal workings with outfits targeting Trump.

Chutkan was forced to recuse herself from the bench when she was overseeing Fusion GPS’s attempt to block former congressman Devin Nunes and Kash Patel from outing the source of payments that funded the infamous Steele dossier.

“Fusion GPS, the DNC, and the Hillary Clinton campaign paid Christopher Steele millions of dollars and they laundered it through the FBI and the FISA court to unlawfully surveil Donald Trump. That’s big-time stuff,” Patel, who served in the Trump administration, noted during an interview with America First’s Sebastian Gorka.

After months of litigation before Chutkan, when it became apparent that Nunes and Patel would be successful, “she recused -on her own- from that case. Why?” Patel asked rhetorically.

“We found out her law firm, Boies Schiller, represented Fusion GPS,” Patel answered. “The very client that was in front of her in federal court was one of her former clients. That is rule #1 for disqualification.”

It also sets a sterling precedent for Chutkan’s removal from the Trump J6 trial, Patel said.

“She set the precedent. She cannot neutrally and arbitrarily preside over Donald Trump’s criminal trial when she recused herself from the very representation of the Democratic entrenchment: the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, because she was so biased because of her prior representation from Boies Schiller,” he argued.

Link

She has also been sentencing 1/6 rioters to longer prison sentences than the defense asked for. Imo every person who has been sentenced should get a new trial that is moved out of DC. I don’t think there’s a way that they got an unbiased jury.

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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

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

that would certainly be grounds for recusal. on the other hand, judicial ethics aren't what they used to be - and that wasn't even a fig leaf.

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@joe shikspack
lately.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/california-judge-charged-killing-wife-47-guns-...

A California Superior Court judge arrested last week has now been charged with killing his wife in front of their adult son at their home. Court filings reveal the judge had over 47 weapons and 26,000 rounds of ammunition in his home.

Ferguson allegedly shot his wife, Sheryl Ferguson, through the chest in the living room of their Anaheim home in front of their adult son using a .40-caliber pistol he pulled from his ankle holster amid an argument, according to court records.

Jeffrey Ferguson, 72, has been charged with one felony count of murder, one felony enhancement of personal use of a firearm and one felony enhancement of discharge of a firearm causing great bodily injury and death.

He faces a maximum sentence of 40 years to life if convicted on all counts. He posted $1,000,000 in bail and has been released until his arraignment on Sept. 1.

In court filings, prosecutors allege Jeffrey Ferguson shot his wife at close range while he was intoxicated.The shooting stemmed from an argument earlier in the evening while they were having dinner at a restaurant near their home, according to filings.

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soryang's picture

@humphrey What are they kidding me? What's his bail a hundred bucks? why not release him on his own recognizance?

Thank dog, a drunk with a hundred guns isn't a threat to public safety.

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語必忠信 行必正直

@soryang Bail is no more than some guarantee to come to court, or lose your $. Fully refundable if you appear, less costs to the bail bond company.
Get an arrest warrant for failure to appear, bond company gets off the bond.
Wont happen.
I predict he will do no time, be put on probation, have to go to classes for alcohol abuse, pay a huge fine, court costs, and go his merry way. I make he assumption he is white. Loss of law license, loss of judicial capability, but no loss of assets, or freedom.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

soryang's picture

@on the cusp I was a criminal defense lawyer. You really think he won't do time? For manslaughter?

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語必忠信 行必正直

@humphrey @humphrey who use cocaine, or who are alcoholics, who are the problem.
Good to know.

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5 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

and that's a state superior court judge, not the local magistrate of some jerkwater town.

if you're looking for comfort that it's not just texas - up the road from me in pennsylvania there was a juvenile court judge that made an arrangement with a private prison company to get kickbacks for sentencing kids there sometime ago. it still stands out in my memory some years later of the sort of people that get appointed to be judges.

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@joe shikspack from municipal all the way up to the Supremes.
I just take some heart it isn't just me in my state, in my courtrooms. It is everywhere.
Spread the crime, spread the corruption.
I want to ex pat, have for a decade, because of what I see and experience.
But to where? Where is better?
Have a great evening, joe.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

But to where? Where is better?

that's the problem. over the years, places that i thought might be better have turned out to change politically (internally or with the help of ned/usaid/cia). i've thought about a lot of places and while i can find places where it might be economically feasible (maybe even a benefit) - much better is hard to find.

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quite good.

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snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey @humphrey

Being a useful idiot for Israel

The long nightmare of oppression of Palestinians is not a tangential issue. It is a black and white issue of a settler-colonial state imposing a military occupation, horrific violence and apartheid, backed by billions of U.S. dollars, on the indigenous population of Palestine. It is the all powerful against the all powerless.

Israel uses its modern weaponry against a captive population that has no army, no navy, no air force, no mechanized military units, no command and control and no heavy artillery, while pretending intermittent acts of wholesale slaughter are wars. The crude rockets fired at Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations — a war crime because they target civilians — are not remotely comparable to the 2,000 pound “bunker-buster” Mark-84 bombs with a “kill radius” of over 32 yards and which “create a supersonic wave of pressure when they explode” that have been dropped by Israel on crowded Palestinian neighborhoods, the thousands of Palestinian killed and wounded and the targeted destruction of basic infrastructure, including electrical grids and water purification plants

There is a heavy political price to pay for defying Israel, whose overt interference in our political process makes the most tepid protests about Israeli policy a political death wish. The Palestinians are poor, forgotten and alone. And this is why the defiance of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is the central issue facing any politician who claims to speak on behalf of the vulnerable and the marginalized. To stand up to Israel has a political cost few, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are willing to pay. But if you do stand up, it singles you out as someone who puts principles before expediency, who is willing to fight for the wretched of the earth and, if necessary, sacrifice your political future to retain your integrity. Kennedy fails this crucial test of political and moral courage.

Kennedy, instead, regurgitates every lie, every racist trope, every distortion of history and every demeaning comment about the backwardness of the Palestinian people peddled by the most retrograde and far-right elements of Israeli society. He peddles the myth of what Pappe calls “Fantasy Israel.” This alone discredits him as a progressive candidate. It calls into question his judgment and sincerity. It makes him another Democratic Party hack who dances to the macabre tune the Israeli government plays.

Kennedy has vowed to make “the moral case for Israel,” which is the equivalent of making the moral case for apartheid South Africa. He repeats, almost verbatim, talking points from the Israeli propaganda playbook put together by the Republican pollster and political strategist, Frank Luntz. The 112-page study, marked “not for distribution or publication,” which was leaked to Newsweek, was commissioned by The Israel Project. It was written in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 and January 2009 — when 1,387 Palestinians and nine Israelis were killed.

The strategy document is the blueprint for how Israeli politicians and lobbyists sell Israel. It exposes the wide gap between what Israeli politicians say and what they know to be the truth. It is tailored to tell the outside world, especially Americans, what they want to hear. The report is required reading for anyone attempting to deal with the Israeli propaganda machine.

Those who support these discriminatory laws and embrace Israeli apartheid are blinded by willful ignorance, racism or cynicism. Their goal is to dehumanize Palestinians, champion an intolerant Jewish chauvinism and entice the naïve and the gullible into justifying the unjustifiable. Kennedy, bereft of a moral compass and a belief system rooted in verifiable fact, has not only failed the Palestinians, he has failed us.

Kennedy is either woefully ignorant of what Israel is doing to the Palestinians or he’s sticking up for a murderous regime. Either way I think this makes him unqualified to be president for anyone who wants peace between the 2 countries. And I don’t believe that he can be that ignorant of what Israel has been doing for decades while the rest of the fcking world stays silent.

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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

@snoopydawg

stance on Israel. It will certainly cost him without any apparent gain. There is no reasonable explanation. It is not that he has a history of ducking controversial events like covid. Perhaps he is concerned that the Mossad will call for a hit job on him.

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snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

saying that while they don’t agree with Kennedy on Israel that issue isn’t that important to them and I just grind my teeth. I’m appalled that anyone can say that they don’t give a flying hoot about genocide because you know he’d be good for America. This attitude is one of the reasons why Israel has been committing genocide on Palestinians for so fcking long. Not many people object to it. Would they have said that same thing a few centuries ago when America was committing genocide on the Native Americans? Or be okay with how we treated the Chinese or any other ethnic minority back then?

Planning to take Sam swimming again and get my BP down.

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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

enhydra lutris's picture

@humphrey

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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 --

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joe shikspack's picture

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