The Evening Blues - 5-31-24



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans brass band The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Enjoy!

Dr. John & The Dirty Dozen Brass Band - Everything I Do Gon' Be Funky

"Teller contended, not implausibly, that hydrogen bombs keep the peace, or at least prevent thermonuclear war, because the consequences of warfare between nuclear powers are now too dangerous. We haven't had a nuclear war yet, have we? But all such arguments assume that the nuclear-armed nations are and always will be, without exception, rational actors, and that bouts of anger and revenge and madness will never overtake their leaders (or military and secret police officers in charge of nuclear weapons). In the century of Hitler and Stalin, this seems ingenuous."

-- Carl Sagan


News and Opinion

Biden Lets Ukraine Strike Russia With US Weapons While Ukraine Attacks Russian Nuclear Defenses

Well it finally happened: Biden is now letting Ukraine strike Russian territory with US-supplied weapons. Escalations in nuclear brinkmanship which would have been unthinkable a few short years ago are becoming increasingly common as Ukraine loses more and more territory and runs out of soldiers to fight.

In a new report from Politico titled “Biden secretly gave Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia with US weapons” which cites multiple anonymous US officials, the article’s authors correctly describe the new White House authorization as a “stunning shift the administration initially said would escalate the war by more directly involving the U.S. in the fight.”

This report comes shortly after an article by The New York Times titled “From Allies and Advisers, Pressure Grows on Biden to Allow Attacks on Russian Territory,” in which David E Sanger accurately forecast that “Biden is edging toward what may prove to be one of his most consequential decisions in the war for Ukraine: whether to reverse his ban on shooting American weapons into Russian territory.”

Politico reports that the approval for these attacks is limited to “solely near the area of Kharkiv,” but, again, these escalations were once unthinkable even for this administration, and every time a new escalation is authorized the warmongers are already well on their way to pushing for a further one. We will surely see increasing calls for Biden to authorize US-backed strikes deeper into Russian territory in the coming weeks.

This new development comes just after we learned that Ukraine has been repeatedly attacking Russia’s early warning systems for incoming nuclear strikes, with Ukrainian drones targeting Russian radar sites hundreds of miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory. 

Just a few years ago if I had told you that a NATO proxy would soon be attacking Russia’s nuclear defense infrastructure, you’d probably have assumed we’d be pretty close to another Cuban Missile Crisis-level nuclear standoff, and that it would be receiving high levels of alarm and attention. But this report is barely in the news, and hardly anyone in the west even knows it’s happening.


This also comes as Reuters reports that France is preparing to send “several hundred” troops to Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, which of course means we may soon be seeing the armed forces of a NATO power getting killed by the Russian military.

Any of these three new developments has the potential to lead to unpredictable events which spiral out of control into a nuclear war between NATO and the Russian Federation, which would be the single worst thing that could possibly happen on planet Earth. There is no excuse for anyone to be playing around anywhere remotely close to such a precipice, and yet here we are.

As we discussed last year, the terrifying thing about the west’s pattern of continually escalating against Russia every time it doesn’t get a nuclear ICBM in the kisser for the last escalation naturally incentivizes Russia to attack NATO directly in order to re-establish its credibility for deterrence. So far Russia has been content to respond to NATO’s escalations by just tearing into Ukraine with greater and greater ferocity, but if the western empire keeps interpreting every time Russia doesn’t attack NATO forces directly as a sign that it’s safe to keep escalating, at some point Russia’s going to have to hit NATO.

It is not sane or acceptable that any of this is happening. The empire knowingly provoked this war, and now it’s getting more and more casual about risking the life of everyone on this planet as its proxy runs out of lives to throw into its gears. 

And it’s so hard to draw attention to this, because there are so many other horrible things happening in the world which the western empire is also directly responsible for. The empire is increasingly acting like a wounded, cornered animal as China rises and the US slowly sinks into post-primacy, the only major difference being that wounded, cornered animals have teeth and claws instead of weapons of armageddon.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: How Dangerous To Threaten Nukes

US state department falsified report absolving Israel on Gaza aid – ex-official

The state department falsified a report earlier this month to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week. Stacy Gilbert left her post as senior civil military adviser in the state department’s bureau of population, refugees and migration, on Tuesday. She had been one of the department’s subject matter experts who drafted the report mandated under national security memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and published on 10 May.

The NSM-20 report found that it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel had used US weapons in a way that was “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, but that there was not enough concrete evidence to link specific US-supplied weapons to violations. Even more controversially, the report said the state department did not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance” in Gaza.

It was a high-stakes judgment because under a clause in the Foreign Assistance Act, the US would be obliged to cut arms sales and security assistance to any country found to have blocked delivery of US aid.

Gilbert, a 20-year veteran of the state department who has worked in several war zones, said that report’s conclusion went against the overwhelming view of state department experts who were consulted on the report. ... Gilbert was one of two US officials to resign this week over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy. Alexander Smith, a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAid), who resigned on Monday, said he was given a choice between resignation and dismissal after preparing a presentation on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians, which was cancelled at the last minute by USAid leadership last week.

Smith, a senior adviser on gender, maternal health, child health and nutrition, chose to resign on Monday after four years at USAid. In his resignation letter to the head of the agency, Samantha Power, he complained about the inconsistencies in USAid’s approach to different countries and humanitarian crises, and the general treatment of Palestinians. “I cannot do my job in an environment in which specific people cannot be acknowledged as fully human, or where gender and human rights principles apply to some, but not to others, depending on their race,” he wrote.

"I Was Shocked": Meet the State Dept. Official Who Quit After Report Denies Israel Blocking Gaza Aid

Israeli Minister Threatens to Turn Occupied West Bank Into Ruins 'Like in the Gaza Strip'

Israel's forces have killed at least 36,224 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in less than eight months, and far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday threatened to similarly attack the illegally occupied West Bank.

Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism party, shared on social media a video he recorded in Bat Hefer, following similar posts a day earlier. The Times of Israel reported that the minister's comments came after Palestinians' gunfire from Tulkarem in the West Bank toward the Israeli settlement.

"Our message to the neighbors beyond the fence in Tulkarem, Nur Shams, Shuweika, and Qalqilya: We will turn you into ruined cities like in the Gaza Strip if the terror you are exerting on the settlements continues," Smotrich said in Hebrew, according to a translation from Al Jazeera.

NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy pointed out that not only is Smotrich an advocate of illegal Israeli settlements—he has a home near Kedumim—but also "his role as finance minister means he oversees budgets, like police and army."

Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns of the U.K.-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, said of Smotrich's remarks: "Take this seriously. If extremists like Smotrich get their way they will do to the West Bank exactly what they have done to Gaza. Starting with the refugee camps and Area C communities (to a certain extent it has already begun)."

Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces and settlers have killed over 500 Palestinians in the West Bank.

Rather than stop weapons to Israel Biden double-downed on it

Israeli jets kill two paramedics in Rafah after ‘deliberately’ bombing ambulance

Israeli forces bombed an ambulance in Rafah, killing two Palestinian paramedics on a rescue mission, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS). The pair, identified as Haitham Tubasi and Suhail Hassouna, were “deliberately” targeted while in a PRCS ambulance in the Tel al-Sultan area in western Rafah, the medical group said

The charity added that they were killed while “they were performing their humanitarian duty”. Their bodies were retrieved on Thursday by their colleagues, who were moved to tears as they buried them in Rafah.

“The Israeli occupation forces deliberately bombed the ambulance vehicle despite it bearing the internationally protected Red Crescent emblem,” PRCS said on social media platform X.

The Palestinian health ministry condemned the “heinous crime” in a short statement, saying it was another example of Israel’s deliberate effort to “annihilate and destroy the health system in the Gaza Strip”. According to the Gaza-based government media office, Israeli forces have killed at least 69 members of the Palestinian civil defence and 496 medical professionals since 7 October 2023.

Israeli journalist describes threats over reporting on spy chief and ICC

An investigative reporter with Israel’s leading leftwing newspaper, Haaretz, has said unnamed senior security officials threatened actions against him if he reported on attempts by the former head of the Mossad to intimidate the ex-prosecutor of the international criminal court. ... In an article published on Thursday, the investigative reporter Gur Megiddo described how two years ago security officials blocked an attempt by the paper to report efforts by the then Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, to threaten the then ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda. Details of the operation to influence Bensouda were revealed this week by the Guardian. ...

Megiddo described how he had been summoned to meet two officials and threatened with serious consequences after they became aware he had tried to telephone Bensouda to discuss Cohen’s efforts to influence her. Megiddo had been investigating what the Mossad chief had been doing during three trips he made to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which he reportedly enlisted the help of the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, to assist with efforts to pressure Bensouda.

“At the beginning of 2022, I attempted to contact the former prosecutor through a third party who knew her,” Megiddo wrote. “Bensouda never responded to the approach, but days after the attempt, when I wanted to publish the story, my phone rang and on the other end of the line was the voice of a senior security official. ‘Can you come to see me tomorrow?’ he asked.

“At the entrance to the senior official’s office, I was asked to deposit my mobile phone to prevent me from recording the conversation. In the room, another senior official from a different security agency was waiting for me. The conversation began with the words, ‘We understand you know about the prosecutor.’” Megiddo said it was “explained that if I published the story I would suffer the consequences and get to know the interrogation rooms of the Israeli security authorities from the inside”.

“In the end, it was made clear to me that even sharing the information ‘with my friends abroad’, referring to foreign media outlets, would lead to the same results.”

UN Rapporteur accuses Israel of sexual violence against Palestinian women

UCLA threatens to withhold degrees from pro-Palestinian student protesters

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has threatened to discipline and withhold degrees from at least 55 students involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, according to faculty members supporting the students.

Students who were arrested on 2 May when police forcefully raided the Gaza solidarity encampment received letters on Friday from administrators accusing them of violating the student code of conduct and warning them of a range of potentially serious sanctions. In the letters, copies of which have been reviewed by the Guardian, assistant deans write that the students failed to respond to police’s dispersal orders and engaged in “disorderly behavior”, “disturbing the peace” and “failure to comply”.

The students are required to attend a meeting to discuss the “allegations” against them, according to the letters, and “no degree may be conferred until any pending allegations and any assigned sanctions and conditions have been completed”.

The letters further warn that if students do not schedule their meetings by 5 June or miss their appointments, the administration will place a “hold” on their records, preventing them from registering for future classes, obtaining grades or graduating. Some students said “active holds” were already placed on their online accounts, with a “you are prevented from graduating” warning.

The letters also said the university had not made a “final decision” about their cases: “Please note that during our meeting, you will be given the opportunity to explain this situation from your perspective.” UCLA spokesperson Eddie North-Hager declined to comment, citing confidentiality policies. He pointed to the university’s disciplinary procedures, which lay out a wide range of possible sanctions for code violations, including forced apologies, housing exclusion and suspension.

ATACMS, F16s, boots on the ground; Russian warnings ignored

Biden changes stance to allow Ukraine to fire US-supplied weapons into Russia

Joe Biden has allowed Ukraine to use some US-made weapons over one part of the Russian border, to allow Kyiv’s forces to defend against an offensive aimed at the city of Kharkiv, relaxing an important constraint on Ukraine’s able to defend itself.

“The president recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use US-supplied weapons for counter-fire purposes in the Kharkiv region so Ukraine can hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them,” a US official said.

Limits on the use of US long-range weapons such as the army tactical missile system (ATACMS) will remain, however.

“Our policy with respect to prohibiting the use of ATACMS or long-range strikes inside of Russia has not changed,” the official said.

The statement suggests that the main impact of the policy change would be to allow Ukrainian US-supplied artillery to fire back at Russian batteries over the Russian border from Kharkiv region, which have had a withering effect on Ukrainian defences around Kharkiv city.

Bob Menendez: Democratic senator charged with bribery set to run as independent

Senator Bob Menendez has reportedly procured enough signatures to run for re-election as an independent, even while the incumbent Democrat faces bribery charges over his alleged work promoting the interests of the Egyptian government.

NBC News reported on Thursday that Menendez secured the 800 signatures needed by 4 June to appear on the November ballot, although the senator’s team hopes to collect as many as 10,000 signatures before the Tuesday deadline.

Menendez’s presence on the ballot could complicate Democrats’ efforts to hold on to the Senate seat, although Joe Biden won New Jersey by 16 points in 2020. New Jersey will hold its congressional primaries on Tuesday, and Congressman Andy Kim is expected to easily win the Democratic Senate primary. If Kim is victorious, he will face off against one of the four Republican Senate candidates in November. ...

Menendez’s hopes for a victory in November appear bleak. A poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University last month showed Menendez receiving just 6% or 7% of the vote in hypothetical general election match-ups. But Menendez’s candidacy will allow him to fundraise for donations that can be used to help cover his lawyers’ bills, as campaign finance filings show the senator has already spent at least $2m on legal services.

Texas Republicans open to death penalty for abortion providers

Texas Republicans are open to applying the death penalty to abortion providers, a new proposal from the state party indicates.

Over the weekend, during the Texas GOP convention, Republican delegates voted on a party platform for 2024 that proclaims “abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide” and suggests striking a state law that protects abortion providers from being charged with homicide. In Texas, capital murder is punishable by the death penalty. Killing a child under the age of 15 can qualify as capital murder, the most severe form of homicide.

Elsewhere in the platform, the Texas GOP calls for “legislation to abolish abortion by immediately securing the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization”.

That language, as highlighted by the feminist writer Jessica Valenti, who first called attention to it earlier this week, draws from the rhetoric of “abortion abolitionists”, a fringe, hardline segment of the anti-abortion movement that has inched closer to the mainstream in recent years. While the mainstream anti-abortion movement typically supports exempting women seeking abortions from punishment, abortion abolitionists adhere to what they consider a more consistent line of logic: if a fetus is a person and abortion is murder, then abortion patients deserve to be punished like murderers.

Abortion patients are not mentioned in the provision in the proposed platform that redefines abortion as homicide, making its implications for abortion seekers unclear. Abortion bans typically target abortion providers for punishment, not patients.



the horse race



Donald Trump found guilty of hush-money plot to influence 2016 election

Donald Trump has been found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

The verdict came after a jury deliberated for less than 12 hours in the unprecedented first criminal trial against a US president, current or former. It marks a perilous political moment for Trump, the presumptive nominee for the Republican nomination, whose poll numbers have remained unchanged throughout the trial but could tank at any moment.

Trump was convicted by a jury of 12 New Yorkers of felony falsification of business records, which makes it a crime for a person to make or cause false entries in records with the intent to commit a second crime. He will be sentenced on 11 July at 10am ET.

“This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump said at the courthouse after the verdict was read. “This was a rigged trial, a disgrace.”

Joe Manchin DEFECTS From Dems On SAME Day Trump RAILS Against The LEFT



the evening greens


No need for countries to issue new oil, gas or coal licences, study finds

The world has enough fossil fuel projects planned to meet global energy demand forecasts to 2050 and governments should stop issuing new oil, gas and coal licences, according to a large study aimed at political leaders.

If governments deliver the changes promised in order to keep the world from breaching its climate targets no new fossil fuel projects will be needed, researchers at University College London and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) said on Thursday.

The data offered what they said was “a rigorous scientific basis” for global governments to ban new fossil fuel projects and begin a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry, while encouraging investment in clean energy alternatives.

By establishing a “clear and immediate demand” political leaders would be able to set a new norm around the future of fossil fuels, against which the industry could be held “immediately accountable”, the researchers said.

Published in the journal Science, the paper analysed global energy demand forecasts for oil and gas, as well as coal- and gas-fired electricity, using a broad range of scenarios compiled for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that limited global heating to within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. It found that in addition to not needing new fossil fuel extraction, no new coal- and gas-fired power generation was needed in a net zero future.

Dems Urge DOJ to Prosecute ​Big Oil Price Fixing That 'Harmed Virtually Every American'

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday led over 20 Senate Democrats in calling for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate fossil fuel companies for collusion and price fixing, arguing in a letter that the industry could have added as much as $500 in annual fuel costs for every car that an average American household has.

The senators' push follows revelations earlier this month that Scott Sheffield, founder of Pioneer Natural Resources, had allegedly colluded with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to keep oil prices high in recent years. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a complaint as part of its decision to block Sheffield from taking a place on the ExxonMobil board when his company is acquired by the oil giant.

"Pioneer's and its co-conspirators' collusion may have cost the average American household up to $500 per car in increased annual fuel costs—an unwelcome tax that is particularly burdensome for lower-income families. Meanwhile, Western oil majors collectively earned more than $300 billion in profits over the last two years," Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the other senators wrote.

The price fixing may have "materially harmed virtually every American household and business," they also wrote. ...

Matt Stoller, research director of the American Economic Liberties Project, argued that the FTC's evidence in the Sheffield complaint showed that oil price fixing cost the average American family $3,000 per year—a figure also used by More Perfect Union—and caused 27% of all inflation in 2021.

‘Termination shock’: cut in ship pollution sparked global heating spurt

The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big “termination shock” that is estimated have pushed the rate of global heating to double the long-term average, according to research.

Until 2020, global shipping used dirty, high-sulphur fuels that produced air pollution. The pollution particles blocked sunlight and helped form more clouds, thereby curbing global heating. But new regulations at the start of 2020 slashed the sulphur content of fuels by more than 80%.

The new analysis calculates that the subsequent drop in pollution particles has significantly increased the amount of heat being trapped at the Earth’s surface that drives the climate crisis. The researchers said the sharp ending of decades of shipping pollution was an inadvertent geoengineering experiment, revealing new information about its effectiveness and risks.

High ocean surface temperatures smashed records in 2023, alarming experts who have struggled to explain the huge rises. But scientists have mixed views on the role played by the cut in shipping pollution. Those behind the new study say it could be a “pretty substantial” factor. Others say it is only a small factor, and that the reasons for the extraordinary rises in sea and global temperatures remain an alarming mystery.

Dr Tianle Yuan, at the University of Maryland, US, who led the study, said the estimated 0.2 watts per sq metre of additional heat trapped over the oceans after the pollution cut was “a big number, and it happened in one year, so it’s a big shock to the system”.

“We will experience about double the warming rate compared to the long-term average” since 1880 as a result, he said. The heating effect of the pollution cut is expected to last about seven years.


Also of Interest

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

When Nicaragua Took Germany to Court, Media Put Nicaragua in the Dock

US military hasn’t airdropped Gaza aid since May 9

‘Unprecedented Health Emergency’ – UNRWA Warns of Critical Situation in Gaza

China’s Xi calls for peace conference to end ‘tremendous suffering’ in Gaza

The Revival Of Anti-Semitism By Israel And Its Defenders

Egypt tight-lipped over Israeli takeover of Gaza buffer zone

California comedown: how illicit cannabis farms have left a wilderness where ‘you’re lucky to see a lizard’

Scientists have discovered a 50,000-year-old herpes virus – and perhaps how modern humans came to rule the world

USAID Contractor Resigns After Presentation on Maternal & Child Mortality in Gaza Canceled


A Little Night Music

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – My Feet Can't Fail Me Now

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – Mardi Gras In New Orleans

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band - Use Your Brain

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – Do It Fluid

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – Night Train

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – I Ate Up The Apple Tree

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – Voodoo

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – I'll Fly Away

Dr. John & The Dirty Dozen Brass Band - It's All Over Now


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11 users have voted.

Comments

January 2016:

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" he said, referring to the major street in New York City that cuts through Manhattan's large commercial district. "It's, like, incredible."

Guess Trump didn't reckon on a DA, judge, and jury that could lock him up for shooting somebody. For now, Trump will have to rely on his bodyguards obeying his order to "shoot somebody" as the tough guy lost his right to bear arms.

The tough guy that in a court of law couldn't beat "alleged weak charges," an "alleged biased judge," and a jury. Let's hope that this lifetime fraudster fare as poorly in his other (but not nearly enough) court cases.

Only wish DAs nationwide and the ICC would indict all those in Congress and at US agencies that have promulgated war crimes for the US MIC.

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5 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@Marie1

and a "biased jury."I don’t think Trump had a chance beating both together. I don’t think anyone could because that’s the whole point of having both. No one has still explained what the crime was. And from what I understand is that a state AG can’t prosecute a federal crime. And the federal justice department passed on charging him. And besides the statute of limitations had expired. Trump’s attorney pointed out that Bragg stated something conclusive about how federal election law was broken, but that was facts not in evidence. Why? Because the judge refused to let a federal election law expert testify for the defense. Probably #1 issue on appeal.

Mentioned on the net: At least Trump was competent to stand trial while Biden who has also taken classified documents was deemed incompetent to stand trial.

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8 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

@snoopydawg
The US justice system isn't fair.

It only got Capone on tax evasion instead of murder. But it was better than nothing.

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5 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@Marie1

heh, i reckon that the da, judge and jury are not his voters. i would imagine that he still hasn't lost any for the heinous crime of sleeping with a porn star and paying the virtuous woman to keep her mouth shut (seems it didn't work). if anything, i think that trump may be gaining voters because they are charging him with things that are obviously far less significant than the serious war crimes that he and other government figures have committed.

the justice system, such as it is, is beclowning itself.

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8 users have voted.

@Marie1 nonsense. This is not lay persons time to rant and rail, including Trump.
Let's let attorneys and higher court judges examine this. I see several substantial grounds for reversal or grant of a new trial, and future summarily dismissing the charges.
This is not the justice system you want or that I can practice in, in accordance with the Constitution.
Be patient, and hope what happened to idiot and despicable Trump never happens to you or you loved ones.

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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

bondibox's picture

[Hillary] Clinton campaign made an $8k payment to Fusion GPS to pay for the Steele Dossier, and then lied to the FEC about it. The DNC also paid FusionGPS $105k for the Dossier. Both paid fines to the FEC for the infraction.

With Trump, the amount of money is more but the use of campaign funds is the same, therefore it's a matter of judgement as to whether the two are truly congruent when it comes to the choice of prosecuting a felony.

But on the state level, Trump's transgression amounted to only a misdemeanor, with a long expired statute of limitations. In order to elevate it to a prosecutable felony, DA Bragg had to allege it was part of a conspiracy to violate federal law, though no federal prosecutor has posited any such conspiracy.

Conspiracy: a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful.

When it comes to a secret plan employing unlawful actions to influence an election I would say that the level of conspiracy between Clinton, Steele, and the DNC was much greater than Trump, Cohen and Daniels. On the one hand you've got a candidate trying to suppress information about himself, and on the other you've got a candidate helping to concoct fictions out of whole cloth.

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10 users have voted.

“He may not have gotten the words out but the thoughts were great.”

@bondibox the election integrity, the other to save a marriage.
We have devolved as a nation of laws to that point.
Gaah!

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9 users have voted.

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

snoopydawg's picture

@bondibox

51 ex intelligence officers to write a letter stating that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian propaganda? That was blatant election interference and so far no one (Blinken) has been charged for it.

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9 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

@bondibox
Clinton on election night 2016. If given a choice, I'm sure Clinton would have much preferred a slow criminal justice system that would only catch up to her eight years later at the end of her second term in the WH.
I don't actually believe in karma or some invisible justice system that can see the past, present, and future and act for the greater good. But Clinton may well have been the greater danger.

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5 users have voted.
bondibox's picture

@Marie1 Clinton posed a much greater danger. Her stint as SOS combined with adoration for Kissinger gave us a strong indication as to what she would have done as president. Basically, every Biden has done only 4 years sooner.

At least Trump was merely incompetent.

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10 users have voted.

“He may not have gotten the words out but the thoughts were great.”

joe shikspack's picture

@bondibox

there is a kind of surreal quality to this whole sordid affair with one tribe of deeply corrupt people attempting to smear, tarnish and jail another set of deeply corrupt people.

perhaps our next president will govern from a jail cell. somehow that seems entirely appropriate. it would be great if we could just get the rest of the ruling elites to join him there as that is where they belong.

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9 users have voted.
bondibox's picture

@joe shikspack Both sides continue to dismantle the framework of reality with their counter spins. I think everything is disintegrating, but their b.s. works on the masses. FB is overflowing with celebrations today from underinformed partisans. It's pretty fascinating, really. I can't wait to see where it leads.

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7 users have voted.

“He may not have gotten the words out but the thoughts were great.”

joe shikspack's picture

@bondibox

i haven't logged into facebook for years now. it's full of football fans who see politics through the lens of what is good for their team. while the corporate commissioners patrol the space doing what they think is best for the game and will cause its continuance. hopefully, a lot of the fan base will catch on and get beyond the corporate gatekeepers to demand that we play a different game.

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5 users have voted.

system is paying great dividends.

It just shows that distributing shekels in the right spot is worth it!

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4697023-benjamin-netanyahu-israel-ham...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has officially been invited to deliver an address to Congress, according to a letter obtained by The Hill.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday sent Netanyahu a formal invitation to speak during a joint meeting of Congress, and the invitation featured the signatures of all four Congressional leaders: Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).

“We join the State of Israel in your struggle against terror, especially as Hamas continues to hold American and Israeli citizens captive and its leaders jeopardize regional stability,” the letter reads. “For this reason, on behalf of the bipartisan leadership of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate, we would like to invite you to address a Joint Meeting of Congress.”

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7 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

great! perhaps he can instruct his beaming, attentive pupils in the finer points of genocide.

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6 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

for the thousands of Palestinians that Israel has arrested and locked up for decades without a trial. But then they aren’t the right color like Israelis and Americans are.

Reminds me of when the world got concerned about Ukrainians facing harm after a decade of hundreds of thousands Yemenis had been slaughtered and starved and the media rarely mentioned it.

Remember when buses of Ukrainians were being evacuated except for those who were not white? I love it when the world shows its true colors.

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5 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

snoopydawg's picture

.

In a wordy but meaningless follow-up article last evening, the Times ran another hand-wringing story headlined, “From Allies and Advisers, Pressure Grows on Biden to Allow Attacks on Russian Territory.” The sub-headline explained the ultra-high stakes: “President Biden is weighing fears of escalation with a nuclear-armed adversary as he considers whether to let Ukraine shoot American weapons into Russia.”

Once again, the grotesque parody of a newspaper never quoted a single White House official. The only quotes are from Blinken. Not even Biden. The Times laughably offered Biden’s lack of public comment to his profound reflection on these complicated and important issues:

So far Mr. Biden himself has remained silent, as he often does when faced with a major policy decision that is the subject of complex debate within the White House. His national security aides are running what one called "a very brisk process" to make a formal recommendation to the president, knowing that momentum in the war has shifted in Russia.

Haha! They don’t trust Biden to talk about this. And, again the Times attributed one of the most significant decisions of our lifetimes to invisible, unidentified “aides.” Who are these aides evaluating these critical decisions about whether it’s worth risking global thermonuclear war to help Zelensky? Why are they so secretive? Are they like fairies who leave security briefs on the doorstep if you put cookies out before you go to sleep?

Or, is the truth there are actually no ‘aides’ at all, and it is really just Blinken?

Even more hilariously, the Times explained that, even if Biden does decide to give Ukraine the nuclear green light, don’t ever expect him to say so. Why would he? It’s not like it affects the whole country or anything. The truth is they still don’t want Sleepy Joe answering questions about it:

But if Mr. Biden reverses course, officials concede he most likely will never announce it: Instead, American artillery shells and
missiles will just start landing on Russian military targets.

Great. It will be an official unstated U.S. policy. Can you imagine the media outcry if Trump were stage-managing this disastrous train wreck of a foreign policy?

The awful, terrible, no-good New York Times failed to quote a single response from the Russians, in either article, about the proposed change in U.S. policy, even though the shift marks a historic moment, the first time in history a nuclear superpower has ever authorized a proxy and supplied the weapons with which to directly attack the other nuclear superpower. It would be like Russia giving Cuba long-range tactical missiles (able to carry nukes!) and providing all the telemetry and guidance for how to hit the White House.

We have lived long enough to witness the final failure of the long-lauded policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). It’s been replaced with Mutually Assured Brinksmanship. And at the end of the day, it was us, the United States, that shattered MAD into a million dagger-like fragments.

In yet more journalistic malpractice, despite the unimaginably-high stakes, the Times never even tried to call the Russian embassy for a reaction. It never even went on Twitter. If we citizens wish to stay fully informed about what is happening, we are forced to visit the Kremlin’s website for ourselves.

Putin gave an interview yesterday. In the interview, he responded to this idiotic proposal to fire long-range strategic weapons directly at Russia. The full interview transcript is up on the Russian government website. The Times could easily have found it there, and quoted Russia’s president, but they ignored him, because they are Putin-deranged. Or something even worse.

Since nobody else will provide the life-and-death, critical Russian point of view about the Biden Administration’s ‘evolving’ policy, I will tell you what Putin said. (He’s a little wordy, and it’s translated, so I’ll edit for brevity and clarity.) You can read the original interview for yourself (and you should) at the link above. Here’s what Putin said, not responding to Blinken, but to similar comments made yesterday by UN Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, another intellectually-depleted gasbag.

Our long-range strategic weapons require a small crew of experienced, highly-trained U.S. or NATO technical specialists, to manage every single step of the process. Meaning, even if a missile were staged for launch from the territory of Ukraine, the United States would be the one pushing all the buttons. They would never let Olaf get anywhere near the costly weapon.

In Putin’s own words:

Concerning the strikes, frankly, I am not sure what the NATO Secretary General is talking about. When he was the Prime Minister of Norway, we communicated often, and I am positive he was not suffering from dementia back then. If he is talking about potentially attacking Russia’s territory with long-range precision weapons, even though he is a civilian like me, he should be aware that long-range precision weapons cannot be used by Ukraine without space-based reconnaissance assistance from NATO.

Final target selection and ‘launch mission’ can only be programmed by highly skilled NATO specialists who rely on NATO’s space-based technical reconnaissance data. For some attack systems, such as British Storm Shadow, these launch missions occur without help from any Ukrainian military. So who does it? Those who manufacture and supply these attack systems to Ukraine do it.

This can and does happen without the participation of the Ukrainian military.

Other missile systems, such as U.S.-supplied ATACMS, likewise rely on space reconnaissance data. Targets are identified and automatically communicated to the launch crews who may not even realise what targets they are programming the missiles to hit. In other words, the launch mission is assembled by NATO officers, not the Ukrainian military.

These officials from NATO countries, especially the smaller European countries, should be fully aware of what is at stake. Before talking about ‘striking deep into Russian territory,’ they should remember that their countries are small and densely populated. It is a serious matter, and we are watching it very carefully.

This unending escalation can lead to serious consequences. If Europe were to face those serious consequences, what would the United States do, considering our strategic arms parity? It is hard to tell.

Do they WANT a global conflict?

Our corporate media loves wailing about how Putin is threatening nuclear war again, but have you noticed they never directly quote him? Honestly, I am no Putin fan, but I still find Putin’s arguments clear, thoughtful, and compelling. I defy anyone to explain how any of it was disinformation.

Do we really expect the Russians to just sit on their hands while nuclear-capable missiles are streaming across their border?

There’s more here.

In other words Ukraine didn’t target the 2 Russian early warning radar systems. NATO did. Paul Craig Roberts thinks that Putin allows nato to cross too many red lines and if he had put his foot down earlier….but Putin IS actually trying to avoid a global war.

Sachs says that something this monumentis Biden should be addressing the nation and explaining to us why he’s risking a global war or worse, a nuclear one. Even shitlibs should be asking that.

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

thanks for the article. it's hard to fathom how a group of people this stupid, corrupt and just plain evil has managed to set themselves up to rule a nation. sadly, there is nowhere on earth that one can go to escape the reach of their destructive toys.

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snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

Sachs basically says that we once had statesmen who could look at both sides of the issues and find a way to compromise and defuse tense situations. Now we have Blinken, Sullivan and Nuland who are hung home on taking Russia apart.

I’d love to sit in on a conversation between Blinken and Lavrov. Sachs has a high opinion of Lavrov.

So why do you think the Biden Gaza ceasefire agreement was posted? Netanyahu will never allow a 2 state solution that gives Palestinians equal rights. And further to the article it says that he still wants Hamas destroyed. Plus there is the West Bank and all that empty territory that he wants to steal for Israeli settlers.

Ha I read that article Ian linked to. I can’t believe how many people believe that gawd was a real estate agent and he gave Israel the land others have lived on.
And don’t forget that Netanyahu came from Poland. He has no right to it.

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i think that biden, too, feels the hot breath and quickening footsteps of the court authorities at his back and needs a device to distract and make it look like he is searching for a solution.

eta - i'm pretty sure that netanyahu was born in israel and spent considerable time in his youth in the united states (near philadelphia) and later went to mit and harvard.

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@snoopydawg I will dig in to your links.

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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

snoopydawg's picture

.

Biden announces Israel has offered a three-part proposal to end the war in Gaza

Hamas has not responded to the plan, which would start with six weeks of a complete cease-fire and the release of women and children being held hostage.

The plan's first phase would start with six weeks of a full and complete cease-fire, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas of Gaza, and the release of women and children being held hostage, Biden said during the surprise announcement. This initial stage would also include a surge of humanitarian assistance, with 600 trucks carrying aid into Gaza every day.

Biden said that, in that first phase, Israel and Hamas would negotiate a permanent cease-fire and admitted that there could be major hurdles.

"I’ll be honest with you, there are a number of things to be negotiated to move from phase one to phase two," he said.

Just yesterday Bibi said that the war will continue for u more months. And that he doesn’t think that the hostages will be freed. But overnight he came up with this plan? My guess is that it’s Biden malarkey to stop people from talking about how close we are to nuclear war. Or he’s playing to the Saudis. The 3 stooges say that they are close to making the Saudi/Israel deal. The Saudis have said no we aren’t until the Palestinians are free to live freely.

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i don't believe that netanyahu would offer in good faith any sort of deal that would allow the palestinians to live in peace with autonomy. even if he puts it on paper, it is a lie.

it seems likely to me that netanyahu would like to have something to wave around at the institutions which are currently dogging israel with lots of pretty things that he will over the course of phase 1 sabotage so that further phases of the plan will be cancelled and the ethnic cleansing can resume.

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@snoopydawg bull shit.

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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

enhydra lutris's picture

crushed and mauled the amateur small time crook. He's maybe only down and not out, but I bet he never imagined half the shit they had in their bag of dirty tricks.

Neither team has much of a bench either, spewing up the possibility of one of the most entertaining election farces to play in theater USA. Heh, feydeau meets genet meets jarry or something.

To paraphrase leonard cohen, "at least we have the music".

Have a great weekend, be well, and have a good one

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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 --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

yep, the democrat machine is giving trump a master class in corruption. i am sure that he is taking notes assiduously and will bring this new consciousness to office should he be elected.

have a great weekend!

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snoopydawg's picture

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

dystopian's picture

Hi all, Hey Joe,

Thanks for the news and blues all week! Just too busy to stop lately... What a great version of "It's all over Now" this is. Very cool!

Hey was it last Saturday you posted that "Crack the Sky" I think it was, a 'prog' rock thing... that was very interesting and good... 'prog' rock in '75 in West Virginia??? I would've never guessed.

Thanks for all the great sounds discmeister! Have a great weekend!

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

joe shikspack's picture

@dystopian

yep, it was last saturday. crack the sky was a really talented band that really only became popular in baltimore and pittsburgh where their first album (the one i posted) got relentless airplay on the fm rock stations. they still play around here from time to time, they are semi-retired, i guess you could say. i saw them about a year ago at a bar downtown.

have a great weekend!

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snoopydawg's picture

.

Sam rolled in something awful today and it was so bad that I could smell her 10 feet away. She walked by me and I almost collapsed. There was a horse at the cemetery yesterday and maybe she rolled in its droppings. I mean she was covered in whatever it was. Head, neck, her whole back. Even with the top down and the air on high I almost gagged on the way home. 2 lathers and rinses and she’s still aromatic.
Hey if I have to live with her you should know about it.
I read that it’s a left over from their primitive stage where they would mask their scent so they could sneak up on their prey. Little shit is so pampered she doesn’t need to hunt for her dinner. She starts the day with cream that we call coffee and then gets some cheese that we call chicken. Left over from when she was recovering from parvo. 3 years AGO!
Anyhow…life with Sam. Always surprising.

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

dystopian's picture

@snoopydawg Hi SD!

I can relate to your smelly Sam situation...

#1
Goofy, our late mutzo of course birded all over America with us. His favorite was parks where there had been ducks and especially geese (!) making deposits near shore. Several times he evaded all efforts of mys dys and I whilst no doubt distracted by a bird and we wanted to tie him to the roof of the car for the ride home.

#2
At about 17 when I was a senior in high school in Big Pine I came home late one night, everyone asleep, and I might have had something... but I plopped down into my bed and crashed noticing it was messed up and wondering who had been sleeping in my bed. When I got up and walked into the house everyone started yelling at me and I was immediately ejected. Well Ruffles had tussled with a Skunk out back, and of course used my bed to rid herself of it. They knew before they went to bed this happened, a note would have been a nice touch. I stunk for days, no one wanted to party with me...

happy doggos! Smile

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

July.

Edited to add this image:

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snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

Is Blinken actually that stoopid to keep provoking Russia with offering Ukraine NATO membership? After 500,000 dead Ukrainians because Russia has said that putting Ukraine into NATO is their red line? My gawd, 36,000 Ukrainians died last month and yet America keeps pushing for more deaths. The number is 536,000 dead and probably much higher and there is no one sane enough to say that number is too fucking high! I sure hope that whatever new world Russia and China are creating will find ghouls like Blinken accountable for the deaths!
Gawd has probably had to build another circle of hell to hold American warmongers in it.

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

@snoopydawg

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usefewersyllables's picture

@humphrey

easy to know exactly where to aim and when to launch, assuming that they wait that long….

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

History will reveal us for the idiots we are. Present day media is not permitted to do so.

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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