The Evening Blues - 11-8-24
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues harmonica player and singer James Cotton. Enjoy!
James Cotton - When It Rains It Pours
"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy."
-- George F. Kennan
News and Opinion
Donald Trump Is Not Your Friend
Virulent Iran hawk Brian Hook has reportedly been chosen by Donald Trump to help staff the State Department of the incoming administration, just in case you were still holding out hope that this time might be different and Trump really would end the wars and fight the deep state.
Readers might remember Hook as the swamp creature who in 2017 was seen in a leaked State Department memo lecturing Rex Tillerson on the US government’s policy of using human rights as a cynical tool to undermine enemies and reinforce alliances. This is done, Hook explained, by ignoring human rights abuses when they are perpetrated by US allies while emphasizing them at every opportunity in the nations of enemy governments in order to “impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”
“The ‘realist’ view is that America’s allies should be supported rather than badgered, for both practical and principled reasons, and that while the United States should certainly stand as moral example, our diplomacy with other countries should focus primarily on their foreign policy behavior rather than on their domestic practices as such,” Hook wrote in the memo, saying that “In the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights.”
“One useful guideline for a realistic and successful foreign policy is that allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries,” Hook wrote. “We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them. For this reason, we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to US relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And this is not only because of moral concern for practices inside those countries. It is also because pressing those regimes on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”
Hook’s words, shared in confidentiality with the political neophyte Tillerson, were an excellent window into what western empire managers are doing when they feign outrage at alleged human rights abuses in nations they’ve targeted for destruction. The fact that his would be one of the first names chosen by Trump suggests we can expect more despicable foreign policy recklessness from the returning president.
I’m already getting people telling me to “give Trump a chance” and stop criticizing him before he’s in office when I point out developments like this. Give Trump a chance? He had four years. He was the president for four fucking years. Trump showed us who he is: a murderous warmongering empire lackey just like his predecessors.
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. There’s no reason to think this time will be different. Trump criticizes foreign interventionism because that kind of rhetoric is popular, not because he actually means it. In order to get to where he’s at Trump cut deals with Zionist oligarchs, powerful lobby groups, and more or less the exact same Republican voting base and donor class that’s given rise to every other disgusting Republican president in recent years. Even if he wanted to end wars and fight the establishment (and there is no evidence that he does), he’s already tied his own hands with the deals he’s made with the powerful establishment factions he’s promised his service to.
Trump supporters are George W Bush supporters LARPing as Ron Paul supporters. They act like they’re backing some anti-war figure who’s taking a meaningful stand against the machine, when they’re really backing a guy who spent four years rolling out longstanding neocon agendas.
That’s what makes them so annoying. At least liberals are more or less honest about wanting to preserve the status quo; Trumpers want you to take seriously their belief that they participated in some huge revolutionary act by ticking a box for the Republican on election day. They correctly believe that their country is controlled by an unelected deep state (though they are very confused about who that actually is), but they incorrectly believe this unelected power structure can be defeated by voting for one of the two mainstream candidates presented to them at the ballot box. Like that would ever be an option.
I am really not looking forward to another four years of that shit, I’ll be honest. For four fucking years these morons were in my mentions telling me every action of Trump’s that I criticized was actually a brilliant 47-dimensional chess maneuver against the deep state, even when he was openly advancing some longstanding agenda of the CIA and neoconservative swamp monsters like ramping up aggressions against Iran or staging a coup in Venezuela. They warm up to me because they see me criticizing the media and talking about corrupt power structures and go “Ooh, she’s like me!”, but then they cannot understand why I keep criticizing their shitty Republican daddy figure. And then I have to spend my time explaining to them that their hero is a murderous imperialist shitstain.
And at the same time I’m going to have to be criticizing the Democrats because they’ll be attacking Trump for being insufficiently hawkish on foreign policy, because that’s the only foreign policy criticism you’re allowed to level at a US president in mainstream politics and media — which will only contribute to the problem of Trump supporters thinking I’m on their side. It’s a much less efficient and straightforward way for me to do my thing than when there’s a Democrat in charge of the war machine. It’s not my preferred way to operate.
Let me make things simple: if you are cheering for the US president, you are not fighting the power. You are a power-worshipping bootlicker, and you should feel embarrassed.
Your president is not your friend. The US president will always, always serve the warmongering power structure you correctly feel needs to be opposed. The plutocrats and empire managers who rule your country are never, ever going to let you vote them out of power.
Hope that helps.
Israel Considers Attacking Iranian Nuclear Sites During US Transition
Israel is considering hitting Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities during the US presidential transition period, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The report cited an Israeli official familiar with the thinking inside the Israeli security cabinet who said the handover period might provide Israel with a window to attack Iran’s nuclear program.
Realistically, Israel would likely need US support if it wanted to do significant damage to Iranian nuclear facilities that are buried deep underground. A US official speaking to Bloomberg ruled out the idea of President Biden ordering an attack on Iranian nuclear sites in cooperation with Israel, but the US is vowing to defend Israel if Iran responds to recent Israeli airstrikes that hit Iranian territory.
The fact that Israeli officials are discussing the idea of hitting Iran’s nuclear sites signals that they are looking for another escalation with Iran before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated. During the last transition period in 2020, Israel carried out a covert attack inside Iran that killed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear scientist.
Larry C. Johnson: Hezbollah Wipes Out Israeli Forces—IDF Facing Massive Defeats Across All Fronts!
Yoav Gallant reportedly says Israeli army has nothing left to do in Gaza
Israel’s ousted defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has reportedly said the army has achieved all its objectives in Gaza and that Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a hostages-for-peace deal against the advice of his own security establishment.
Gallant was speaking to hostages’ families on Thursday, two days after being sacked by Netanyahu, and reports of his remarks quickly surfaced in Israeli media.
“There’s nothing left in Gaza to do. The major achievements have been achieved,” Channel 12 news quoted him as saying. “I fear we are staying there just because there is a desire to be there.” He reportedly told the families that the idea that Israel must remain in Gaza to create stability was “an inappropriate idea to risk soldiers’ lives over”. ...
Gallant reportedly told the hostage families there was no military reason for holding on to the Philadelphi corridor. “The IDF commander and I said there was no security reason for remaining in the Philadelphi corridor,” Channel 12 reported him as saying. “Netanyahu said that it was a diplomatic consideration; I’m telling you there was no diplomatic consideration.”
The World According to Trump (w/ Col. Wilkerson)
Trump will give Israel ‘blank check’ which may mean all-out war with Iran, says ex-CIA chief
Donald Trump will as president give Benjamin Netanyahu a “blank check” in the Middle East, possibly opening the way for all-out war between Israel and Iran, the former CIA director and US defense secretary Leon Panetta predicted. “With regards to the Middle East, I think he’s basically going to give Netanyahu a blank check,” Panetta said of Trump. ... “‘Whatever you do, whatever you want to do, whoever you want to go after, you have my blessing.’ I mean, he basically said that [before the election].”
The Israeli prime minister has overseen attacks on Iran and its assets as part of a growing conflagration since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October last year. He and the US president-elect were reported to have spoken during the US election campaign. Netanyahu congratulated Trump on Wednesday, after Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris was confirmed.
Panetta continued: “And so the real question there is whether Netanyahu decides to continue to try to expand that war, go after Iran, or do things that basically create an even greater concern about whether or not the Middle East is ever going to resolve itself or be in constant conflict.”
Speaking on the One Decision podcast, which he co-hosts with Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, the British intelligence service, Panetta also said he expected Trump to favour allowing Russia to retain control of areas of Ukraine held since its invasion two years ago.
End the Arms: Humanitarian Leader Urges U.S. to Stop Arming Israel Before Trump Takes Office
IDF distances itself from ‘no return’ remarks about north Gaza evacuees
The Israeli army has distanced itself from comments made by a brigadier general that ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of the northern Gaza Strip and residents will not be allowed to return home. In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the Israel Defense Forces’ Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return”. He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to “regularly” enter the south of the territory but there were “no more civilians left” in the north.
International humanitarian law experts have said that such actions would amount to the war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon.
The IDF did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Cohen’s remarks. But on Thursday, a spokesperson said the comments had been taken out of context during a discussion about Jabaliya, and did not “reflect the IDF’s objectives and values”. The spokesperson said the briefing on Tuesday had been on background, and the brigadier general should not have been quoted in Hebrew media reports that emerged.
A statement said that the IDF was permitting aid to enter northern Gaza, including Jabaliya. Residents say no aid has entered Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya or Beit Hanoun since a new offensive and tightened siege began on 5 October.
Report Details Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in Beit Lahia, Northern Gaza
A report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published on Wednesday detailed the situation in Beit Lahia, a city in northern Gaza near the Israeli border where Israeli forces are implementing an ethnic cleansing campaign.
The Israeli military has said it forcibly expelled 55,000 Palestinians from the Jabalia refugee camp, and it has no intention of allowing them back. According to Haaretz, only a few thousand civilians remain in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun. ...
The Haaretz reporters traveled to Beit Lahia and al-Atatra, a neighborhood northwest of the city, and described the destruction they saw. “In [al-Atatra] and Beit Lahia, there isn’t a single house that people can return to and live in. The area looks like it was hit by a natural disaster. There are no civilians to be seen among the ruins,” the report says.
As an attempt to remove any remaining civilians, the Israeli military fires artillery into Beit Lahia at night. “Those who want to return can’t do so, because the army prevents it. The bottom line is that it makes no difference what the IDF calls its actions. The army has begun the stage of cleansing the northern Strip while it prepares to hold onto the area for a long time to come,” the report reads.
Turmoil at the ICC as Fears Rise Over Israel and the US Interference
On May 20, 2024, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, submitted a request to the ICC for warrants to arrest Israeli leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination. In the same statement, he included an extraordinary warning, saying “I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this Court must cease immediately. My Office will not hesitate to act pursuant to article 70 of the Rome Statute if such conduct continues.” The Prosecutor did not elaborate on the source of the threats against the ICC officials.
The Court, in accordance with its established procedures, then assigned the case to a three-judge, pre-trial chamber, presided over by Judge Iulia Motoc.
Only eight days after the Prosecutor announced the warrant requests and his warning about intimidation of Court officials, the Guardian and +972 Magazine published an exposé revealing a decade of interference, pressure, and threats by notorious Israeli intelligence agencies against personnel of the International Criminal Court in order to derail investigations of Israeli crimes. But by then the Court had gone silent on the Palestine file- a silence that would last for five months. Court watchers were left to wonder, and worry, about the unprecedented delay in the issuance of the warrants.
And then, as if on cue, sometime around early October, pro-Israel publications began circulating anonymous allegations accusing the ICC Prosecutor of harassing a female staff member. Just days later, on October 20, 2024, the ICC announced that Motoc, the Presiding Judge of the three-judge pre-trial chamber assigned to decide whether to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister, had suddenly stepped down. Citing unspecified “health reasons,” the Court provided no further information. Motoc was replaced by Slovenian Judge Beti Hohler, with French Judge Nicolas Guillou now Presiding over the chamber.
In ordinary times, these developments might hardly be noticed. But these are not ordinary times, and this is no ordinary case.
Will Trump be controlled by neocons?
Venezuelan leader extends olive branch to Donald Trump
During his first administration, Donald Trump waged a “maximum pressure” campaign against Nicolás Maduro, unsuccessfully trying to depose Venezuela’s authoritarian leader with an arsenal of sanctions cyber-attacks and threats. But this week Maduro extended an olive branch to a man he once called “a miserable racist cowboy”, fuelling speculation that Trump’s second presidency might witness an unlikely rapprochement between the two strongman survivors.
“In his first government … Trump wasn’t good to us [but] this is a new start,” Maduro proclaimed during a live TV broadcast clearly designed as a peace offering to the US president-elect. Maduro – who has also previously called Trump a mentally ill crook who handles foreign affairs like “a New York mafia extortionist” – even parroted the US tycoon’s nationalist catchphrase.
“Your slogan is ‘Make America great again’. And, paraphrasing your slogan, I’d say that our slogan is to make the united Venezuela, Latin America and the Caribbean great,” Maduro said, calling for a new era of “win-win” relations. ...
Christopher Sabatini, a Chatham House Latin America expert, said he saw “a very strong tendency” for Trump to take a dramatically different approach towards Venezuela than during his 2017-21 term. Sabatini believed Trump’s fawning over “brilliant” and “fierce” strongmen such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, his desire to cut petrol prices by doing business with an oil-rich country, and his “proximity to some oil men in Louisiana and Texas who’ve been telling him ‘Let’s just move on!’” all pointed to a possible deal.
Another motivating factor was Trump’s need to honour a campaign promise for the “largest deportation operation in American history”, targeting undocumented migrants from Latin American countries such as Venezuela. “To be able to repatriate them he needs to have normal relations with Maduro,” Sabatini said. About 8 million citizens have fled Venezuela in the last decade, most of them to neighbouring countries, but many heading north to the US.
Putin Valdai. Neocons set Ukraine trap for Trump
Olaf Scholz faces calls for confidence vote after German coalition collapses
Germany’s centre-right opposition leader led calls for an immediate vote of confidence to be held in parliament to head off months of political paralysis after Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition collapsed. Friedrich Merz, the chair of the former chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), stands to profit most from the bombshell developments in Berlin, one day after Donald Trump’s election as US president upended the global political landscape.
In a hastily called news conference on Wednesday night after firing his finance minister – the leader of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), Christian Lindner – Scholz had laid out a roadmap for the coming weeks, including a formal confidence vote in January that would have led to a snap election, probably in March – six months ahead of schedule.
But on Thursday morning, Merz, who is in a strong position to become the country’s next leader, rejected that timetable out of hand, saying there was “absolutely no reason to wait to put off the confidence vote to January”.
“The end last night is the end of the traffic light,” Merz said, referring to Scholz’s three-way coalition government, “and hence the end of this mandate.” Scholz and his alliance have been in power since 2021.
The opposition leader told reporters his parliamentary group had agreed unanimously that Scholz should schedule the confidence vote by next week “at the latest”, after which the country’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, would have 21 days to dissolve the Bundestag lower house of parliament. That would probably lead to a snap election in late January.
Americans stockpile abortion pills and hormones ahead of ‘reproductive apocalypse’ under Trump
When the presidential election results were handed down on Wednesday, Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of Aid Access, the No 1 supplier of abortion pills by mail in the United States, was huddled in a Paris apartment with her team of eight American physicians and 15 support staff. The group – which usually operates remotely, shipping out more than 9,000 abortion pills a month – had convened in person before the election, knowing they might have to spring into action.
They were right: as news of Trump’s victory spread, the website received more than 5,000 requests for abortion pills in less than 12 hours – a surge even larger than the day after Roe v Wade fell. “I can see all the new requests ticking in as we’re talking,” Gomperts said in a phone call on Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve never seen this before.”
The scenario repeated itself across the country as news of Trump’s victory broke, with women’s and trans health providers getting inundated with requests for services that their patients feared might be banned in a Trump administration. The telehealth service Wisp saw a 300% increase in requests for emergency contraception; the abortion pill finder site Plan C saw a 625% increase in traffic.
“Clearly, people are trying to plan for the reproductive apocalypse that we anticipate will be happening under a Trump presidency,” said Elisa Wells, the co-founder of Plan C.
Susie Wiles, who was named Donald Trump’s new White House chief of staff, will be the first woman to serve in the role as gatekeeper to the president, a position that typically wields great influence. The chief of staff position is usually the first appointee that a president-elect names, and may oversee the transition from one administration. Once Trump is sworn in as president, Wiles will also be in charge of all White House policy, serving as a confidant and adviser and managing day-to-day affairs.
Wiles, 67, is a veteran of Florida politics who ran Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns in the state and served as his “de facto chief of staff” over the last three years to lead his successful re-election bid and helped him work with lawyers on his various criminal and civil cases.
“Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history, and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns,” Trump said in a statement. “Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected.” ...
In a profile, Politico described her as a “force more sensed than seen”, crediting her as the reason the former president’s latest campaign has been “more professional than its fractious, seat-of-the-pants antecedents”.
A self-described moderate, Wiles has also been credited – by Trump’s allies and opponents – as the person who has given him the discipline and focus to succeed politically. She has been known to keep good relationships with reporters, and holds a wealth of knowledge about all aspects of running a campaign.
Billionaires Come Out of The SHADOWS to FUEL 2024 Elections; Will Investment PAY OFF?
‘Straight-up BS’: Democratic chair attacks Bernie Sanders’ election critique
Amid Democratic mourning over the loss of the presidential election to Donald Trump, the party chair risked deepening already growing divisions by rebuking the leftwing Vermont senator Bernie Sanders for saying Democrats have “abandoned working class people”. “This is straight up BS,” Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, said on Thursday. “[Joe] Biden was the most pro-worker president of my lifetime – saved union pensions, created millions of good paying jobs and even marched in a picket line.”
Harrison also defended Kamala Harris, the vice-president who lost the election to Trump, for proposing policies that “would have fundamentally transformed the quality of life and closed the racial wealth gap for working people across this country”. He said: “From the child tax credits, to [$]25k for a down payment for a house to Medicare covering the cost of senior healthcare in their homes. There are a lot of post-election takes and this one ain’t a good one.” ...
Harrison has reportedly chosen not to seek to stay on as DNC chair but his dismissal of Sanders’s statement provoked anger of its own, including from the reporter and columnist Glenn Greenwald.
“You and the corporatist and militarist party you lead just got your ass kicked all up and down the US, because Americans see that you only care about enriching yourselves at the corporate lobbying trough,” Greenwald wrote. “If the humiliation you just suffered doesn’t usher in some humility and self-reflection, nothing will.”
Jill Stein: “Kamala Harris has no one to blame but herself”
Plastic pollution is changing entire Earth system, scientists find
Plastic pollution is changing the processes of the entire Earth system, exacerbating climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and the use of freshwater and land, according to scientific analysis. Plastic must not be treated as a waste problem alone, the authors said, but as a product that poses harm to ecosystems and human health.
The authors gave their warning in the days before final talks begin in South Korea to agree a legally binding global treaty to cut plastic pollution. Progress towards a treaty on plastic pollution has been hindered by a row over the need to include cuts to the $712bn plastic production industry in the treaty. At the last talks in April, developed countries were accused of bowing to pressure from fossil fuel and industry lobbyists to steer clear of any reductions in production. The discussions in South Korea, which start on 25 November, mark a rare opportunity for countries to come to an agreement to tackle the global crisis of plastic pollution.
In 2022 at least 506m tonnes of plastics were produced worldwide, but only 9% gets recycled globally. The rest is burned, landfilled or dumped where it can leach into the environment. Microplastics are now everywhere, from the top of Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on earth. ...
The research team showed that plastics pollution was changing the processes of the entire Earth system, and affected all pressing global environmental problems, including climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and the use of freshwater and land.
“Plastics are seen as those inert products that protect our favourite products, or that make our lives easier that can be “easily cleaned-up” once they become waste,” Villarrubia-Gómez said. “But this is far from reality. Plastics are made out of the combination of thousands of chemicals. Many of them, such as endocrine disruptors and forever chemicals, pose toxicity and harm to ecosystems and human health. We should see plastics as the combination of these chemicals with which we interact on a daily basis.”
This year ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest on record, finds EU space programme
It is “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, the European Union’s space programme has found. ...
The report found 2024 is likely to be the first year more than 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than before the Industrial Revolution, a level of warming that has alarmed scientists.
“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming climate change conference,” said Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The scientists found global temperatures for the past 12 months were 1.62C greater than the 1850-1900 average, when humanity started to burn vast volumes of coal, oil and gas.
In their monthly climate bulletin, they said October 2024 was the second-warmest October on record, behind only October 2023, with temperatures 1.65C greater than preindustrial levels. It was the 15th month in the past 16 to be higher than the 1.5C mark.
Wind-driven wildfire rages in California with scores of homes charred
A wind-driven wildfire roared through rural and residential communities north-west of Los Angeles, charring more than 19,600 acres and leveling scores of homes. The Mountain fire in Ventura county, California, continued to burn on Thursday morning, as footage showed dozens of structures turned to smoldering ruins now lining the streets where neighborhoods once stood.
“This is a challenging fire and a wind-driven fire. We are still at 0% containment as we are still focusing on life safety and structure defense,” said Ventura county fire spokesperson Andy VanSciver in a morning press conference, adding that the county has deployed 10 damage assessment crews to go street-by-street to tally the toll. It will take time.
Hundreds of firefighters battled the blaze through the night using both ground resources and helicopters, according to the Ventura county fire department, and officials added more resources were on the way.
Fueled by strong winds with gusts up to 85mph (187km/h) and humidity levels as low as 8%, the fast-moving fire gave residents little time to flee on Wednesday, causing frenzied evacuations of more than 10,000 people. Roughly 3,500 homes and businesses remain under threat, according to officials. ...
The Santa Anas, warm, dry winds that typically whip through southern California this time of year, weren’t unexpected. But back-to-back years of strong rainy seasons seeded these landscapes with grasses that turned to tinder after getting baked in the summer heat. Combined with low humidity and this region’s natural tendency to burn, the perfect recipe was set for the disaster to unfold.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Chris Hedges: The Politics of Cultural Despair
French minister cancels holy site visit after Israeli police arrest gendarmes
How California has been ‘Trump-proofing’ itself against federal reprisal
Unprecedented Pro-Israel PAC Funding Floods 2024 Elections
Canada beach blobs mystery solved by chemists
Dems Should "Abolish Racism": Election Analysis With Lee Fang
Jimmy Dore on Trump's landslide victory
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Israel in Turmoil
Aaron Maté : Russia On the March
A Little Night Music
James Cotton - Well, I Done Got Over It
James Cotton – I'm A Free Man
The James Cotton Band – Boogie Thing
James Cotton Blues Band – I Remember
James Cotton – Cut You Loose
Hubert Sumlin With James Cotton - Juke
James Cotton – Hungry Country Girl
James Cotton – Easy Loving
James Cotton - Born In Chicago
James Cotton Blues Band – Creeper Creeps Again
The James Cotton Band w/ Matt 'Guitar' Murphy - N.Dartmouth, MA (February 25, 1973)
Comments
Pelosi throws Biden under the bus
.
NYT
Hey didn’t Biden flub the debate and then he went to Europe and did all kinds of things that made people wonder if he had dementia and we were told to zip it and that there was nothing wrong with Biden’s brain? That he ran circles around his staff and Kamala said that he was sharp as a
rocktack. And didn’t the media tell us that those videos from Europe were just AI? And didn’t democrats refuse to hold a primary where voters could choose their candidate instead of Biden being pushed on us like Obama did in 2020?How can she now blame it on Biden for being pushed out at such a late date?
And just a few days before the election Pelosi told voters that Democrats had enough votes to hold the house…oops.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
evening snoopy...
heh, the search for a scapegoat goes on. anything to continue to justify their phoney baloney jobs.
Apprapox of nothing
I’m having trouble with the key phob for the beast so I had to drive the convertible today. It was 41 degrees and I wanted to put the top up, but Sam vetoed the idea so I’m driving around town with the heater blasting while she enjoyed the kingdom of the backseat.
I passed a guy who was all bundled up and boy did he give me a look. Drove into the cemetery and the workers gave me the same look. Hey needs must when the dawg sets the rules.
On the key phob the battery died and I bought 2 new ones and neither work. The place that helped me last time has gone out of business. Guess I’ll take it to the Nissan dealer….they have been spamming me with phone calls about a great deal they have for me on service. Oil change for $40 plus a free car wash when jiffy lube charged me $118 and no car wash.
Anyone deal with a dead key phob? Last time it happened I was up in the high hills and 10 miles from the ranger station that is rarely open. Scary times. So I carried the extra one with the battery out…it’s dead too.
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
heh...
yeah, i've replaced key fob batteries a few times. we have a franchise around here called "batteries and bulbs" and they've always had the batteries i need. i found them after i had tried half a dozen auto parts stores which didn't have them. i got tired of fiddling with the little screws and micro-surgery tools, so now i let the fellow behind the counter replace the battery.
I found the battery easy enough
and finally got the thing open with no screws, but it still doesn’t work after I put the new battery in it. Twice. I got them at Ace hardware.
If I push hard it will start, but I have to put it right next to the button. There should be a key option, but that’s only for the door. It’s 4 years old and the convertible is 33 and still on its first battery…and it will still start with a key. I’d have to replace the phob itself if the battery dies.
Once I sell the trailer I’ll sell the beast and if I get another car it will be without all the bells and whistles. Too much technology…yuck.
The convertible is front wheel drive, but too light for snow plus my steep driveway…
Sigh..1st world problem.
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
LOL
.
I remember the first world. Those were the days. I thought they would never end....
Now I'm surrounded by a shocking number of things that no longer work properly.
Yep…
That’s our first world problem these days. Things aren’t built to last anymore and we have to replace them every year or so. Take the key phob for the convertible. 33 years old while the one for the Nissan is only 4.
I usually have to replace my coffee maker every year and other stuff that’s newer doesn’t last as long as stuff made a decade or more ago used to last longer. I’ve seen countless people complaining about this.
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
It is almost comical, but very telling
the first thing the bye-done administration does
after getting their asses kicked is to send the Ukies
another 8 billion in weapons and aid 'cuz they can'
what does that say about their priorities?
it is why they lost the election after all
question everything
evening qms...
it says that their priorities are, "take the money and run."
Biden’s sending foreign contractors too
not to fight, but to fix our equipment when it breaks down. But that was off limits a few days ago.
Place your bets on whether Trump will change the Ukraine war. My bet is no or not much.
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
Gag. I just received
a fundraising email- from Daily Kos.
Daily freakin' Kos! Asking *me* for money? Now? The irony is so severe...
I haven't set virtual foot in that shithole since the Bernie-supporter purge on the Ides of March, 2016. And they have the sheer effrontery to ask me for money?
I guess that the dems and the CIA have stopped writing Kos the big checks, after the Current Unpleasantness. Well, that's encouraging. My response was to immediately add them to my spam filters, since I know all too well that there is no way to get off a dem fundraising mailing list once you're on it. I wish I still had an account there, because that put me in the mood for a little headstone-peeing and grave-dancing.
Not a fan. Hope they go bankrupt, in the unlikely case that the dem party actually does some agonizing self-reappraisal. Talk about beiing a day late and a dollar short...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
After Kamala lost
Kos said that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to alienate people and that they should reach out and talk them back into the fold. Not sure if he was talking about the Bernie supporters he kicked off the site, but that was my guess. If anyone is interested I’ll try to find it.
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
That's rich-
"talk them back into the fold" by begging for money. After the election is over. Sounds like vintage Kos.
If you have an account there, and are so inclined, feel free to send a message to him for me, using any obscenities of your choosing.
Hungarian has the best obscenities: they don't look like much in writing, but when you hear them pronounced by a native speaker, there's no missing their intent.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Nah…
I’m banned from the orange blob. I did find his diary.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/6/2283163/-Trump-won-Now-what
Racism, misogyny and Nazis…but still no talk about Democrats returning to being the party of the working class and not the donor class. I’ve seen 3 diaries there today saying that people are upset about the high price of living and they get poo-poo'd for saying it.
One reason Trump won last time because Obama’s hope and change did neither. He bailed out the banks and told people to get lost. Remember how he brutally broke up OWS? Yeah that probably cost him a lot of votes.
Now the head of the DNC told Bernie that it wasn’t the dems abandoning the working class so that the working class abandoned dems…
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
Thanks for the link.
I remember all those things, and all too well.
I'll spend a little time thinking about my response, and then go sign up for a new account there to commit the dem-party-approved seppuku by giving him a piece of my mind.
I'll only get one comment out of that temp account before they ban it, so I'll have to make it worthwhile.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Let me know your username name so I can read it
Give ‘em hell and tell them that one of the reasons Kamala lost besides continuing the genocide is because she and Biden refused to admit that the economy stinks for most of us.
Lol…kos says they need to listen to those who they disagree with. Well his readers aren’t listening to him. Anyone who says that Kamala lost for other reasons than misogyny, racism, etc are told to take a hike. Those are the only acceptable reasons.
Seen in another essay:
Kamala Harris was Hillary Clinton 2.0. She was the change-nothing candidate in an age in which change has never been more necessary.
Hillary offered nothing different than Obama and that’s why she lost. I doubt Democrats don’t understand why they keep losing and to someone like Trump who at least acknowledges people’s pain.
So we’re in debt to the tune of $31 trillion that will never be paid off and congress keeps printing money to fund wars and give to other countries. Since they aren’t worried about the debt then they can obviously start printing a few hundred billion dollars for we the people. Instead many of we the people accept living on austerity policies and decaying infrastructure. And there hasn’t been an anti war movement for many decades. Too many accept military interventions and brutal cops. Why is that?
Sorry for the rant…
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
My rant came from this essay
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/11/08/trumps-return-to-the-white-house/
Sadly I won’t live long enough to see how this American experiment turns out, but unless the elites turn things around we will probably go the way America did in V for Vendetta. They are trying to get the last drop of blood out us turnips.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
evening usefewersyllables...
i guess democrats are eternal optimists. various democrat groups continuously spam me with support requests despite the fact that i have never donated to them in the somewhere around 20 years that they have had my email address.
good luck getting off the orange satanists' list.
I made the mistake
of donating heavily to Obama and Bernie. Fucking stupid, in retrospect, but you gotta learn somehow, amirite?
They’ll be spamming the fuck out of my last 5 physical addresses, including the smoking crater, until eternity.
Not a fan.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Someone called Jess Dellamere, hope I spelled that right has
this on his channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBTdF1vqwSc begin at 3.25
I will never darken the door of a 5 Guys again. Oh, BTW, my money, my choice, so you can spare me the rationalizations, justifications, it didn't really happens.
I am waiting with eager anticipation for the explanation of why the Women are Property signs seen at a Texas University didn't really happen, or were just funning, or something.
Mary Bennett
evening nastarana...
well, the 5 guys incident certainly looks authentic. i suspect that more such incidents will follow as the oligarchs brilliant divide and conquer scheme plays out.
what's up with those women are property signs? are there really people that stupid? wait, never mind, sure there are. i presume that they are looking to provoke confrontations.
I have worked as a retail manager.
I am sure the signs were a deliberate provocation. I hope someone on site took names as well as pix.
Mary Bennett
There is now more reporting about the signs, so this was
Someone please point out me the New Testament passage in which Our Lord EVER treated women like property or said anything which could be so interpreted. He roundly denounced both fornication and adultery, no extra-marital sexual privilege allowed for his followers.
Mary Bennett
It's American Patriot lingo.
It's a foundational principle of the US Constitution, a document overflowing with shame and disgrace, and completely void in Human Rights, which are conferred upon no one.
It is the obsolete vehicle that delivered the US to its current state of depravity. IMHO
heh...
i enjoyed this, perhaps some others will...
heh -- all the news that's fit to print
eight years late. Although that's a bit speedy for the NYTimes.
evening marie...
heh, even though it looks like a small shred of sense managed to sneak into the times, it's not like there was a true epiphany.
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs & James Cotton.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
have a great weekend!
the Hedges and Wilkerson Conversation
....video in tonight's EB is probably the most cogent and astute discussion I've heard on the risks and hazards that the West will be facing — if Israel pulls the US military Golem into a ground war with Iran. Not many are likely to return from that adventure.
But it's the looming economic devastation inside the US that seems shockingly sudden. When the US hits its inevitable default on the national debt as soon as next year, the collapse will be immeasurable. The US imports almost everything it needs, and sanctions and tariffs may be coming from the opposite direction this time around. The nation's assets and treasures, lands and resources will be pulled apart and seized by their globalist owners before you can say, "IMF." Just ask Russia or Greece what that's like. If there is a US default, a large number of working class Americans could be dislocated en mass. Younger Americans will form the next waves of nomadic migrants and displaced climate refugees.
Wilkerson paints a clear picture for Hedges. I didn't expect the economic default to arrive so soon. Wilkerson is right when he says, "Pay attention to the bond market." This time, the Treasury and the Feds cannot just "print money" to pay the TRILLION dollar interest payment coming due on our massive national debt. Under the concurrent de-dollarization taking place, the creation of phantom USD could render the dollar near worthless. and wipe out the bond market. The legendary gold in Ft. Knox amounts to less than $8 billion dollars, total. But it takes 1,000 billions to make One Trillion dollars — the interest payment due on the debt next year. The Neocon murder-spree that began on 9/11 certainly didn't come cheap. The DC politicians have already carried their defense-contractor kickbacks out of the US in diplomatic pouches, on their frequent trips to Ukraine.
evening pluto...
i am shocked at how long the powers-that-be have managed to string out the current (relative) economic prosperity. i remember before the banking crisis feeling that something was wrong and the situation was unsustainable. i've been feeling that way about the u.s. economy for quite some time now and am just waiting for whatever will be the catalyst that will create the next crisis for the banksters and rentiers to profit massively from.