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This evening's music features lap steel guitar player Sonny Rhodes. Enjoy!

"There have always been benevolent aristocrats. That doesn’t make me fall in love with the feudal system."

-- Noam Chomsky

News and Opinion

Why Hillary Clinton's 90s nostalgia is so dangerous

Campaigning in Kentucky recently, [Hillary Clinton] promised that, should she be elected, she would task former president Bill Clinton with “revitalizing the economy, because he knows how to do it”. ...

[Clinton] reminded the audience in Kentucky of the specific elements of our lost golden age. First among those gauzy memories: “A budget that is balanced and in surplus” – like the budget Bill Clinton built in the good old days before the spendthrift George W Bush administration came in. There were other ways in which the GOP had diverged from Clinton orthodoxy as well, like their desire to “Cut taxes on the wealthy [and] get out of the way of regulation of all kinds,” sins that, Hillary said, contributed directly to the financial crisis of 2008. ...

[W]hat really lends distinction to her announcement is the perversity, the sheer incoherence of the kind of policies she seems to hope her husband will recommend.

Take her apparent belief that balancing the federal budget is a good way to “revitalize” an economy stuck in persistent hard times. ... Europe’s turn toward budget-balancing austerity after the financial crisis is what made their recession so much worse than ours. President Obama’s own quest for a budget-balancing “grand bargain” is what destroyed his presidency’s transformative potential. There is no plainer lesson from the events of recent years than the folly of austerity and the non-urgency of budget-balancing.

And deregulation! Before I watched the video of that Hillary Clinton campaign event, I had never heard someone denounce deregulation and hail the economic achievements of Bill Clinton in the same speech. That kind of mental combination, I’ve always assumed, puts you in danger of spontaneous combustion or something. After all, Bill Clinton is America’s all-time champion deregulator. ...

Yes, we all know that times were good in the last few years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. But unless 90s nostalgia has completely paralyzed our brains, we also know that this was due in large part to a series of financial bubbles. It is true that a different person was in the White House when the last of those bubbles exploded, but even a child understands that doesn’t get Bill Clinton entirely off the hook for it. Nor would it be a good idea to get Bill working on another Nasdaq bubble, even assuming such a thing is possible.

General Advising Donald Trump Says Killing Terrorists’ Families Might Be OK

A top military adviser to Donald Trump expressed qualified support for Trump’s proposal to kill terrorists’ families on Thursday, telling Al Jazeera that it would depend on the “circumstances of the situation.” ...

Flynn, who was appointed by President Obama, is one of the few credentialed military officials in Trump’s inner circle. But when Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan asked Flynn directly “Would you kill the family of a terror suspect, yes or no?” Flynn replied that he would have to “see what the circumstances of that situation was.” ...

Flynn acknowledged that troops have a duty to disobey illegal orders, but refused to say whether he would, remarking only that “these are difficult political decisions…” and that “he would advise differently.”

Obama's global anti-corruption cops should call Internal Affairs

Our Democratic president continues to fund global corruption just like the Republican before him. It looks like Hillary Clinton will too.

The Obama administration wants Americans to believe that it is fiercely anti-corruption. “I've been shocked by the degree to which I find corruption pandemic in the world today," declared Secretary of State John Kerry at last week’s Anti-Corruption Summit in London. Kerry sounded like the French detective in Casablanca who was “shocked” to discover gambling. Six years ago at the United Nations, President Obama proclaimed that the U.S. government is “leading a global effort to combat corruption.” Maybe he forgot to send Kerry the memo. ...

[T]he summit largely ignored how corruption is fueled by western governments, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Foreign aid has long been notorious for breeding kleptocracies — governments of thieves. Economic studies have revealed that corrupt governments receive more foreign aid. Fourteen years ago, President George W. Bush promised to reform foreign aid: “We won’t be putting money into a society which is not transparent and corrupt.” (He probably meant “corruption-free.”) But U.S. aid programs — which cost taxpayers more than $40 billion a year — continue to bankroll many of the world’s most crooked regimes (according to ratings by Transparency International) — including Uzbekistan, Haiti and Kenya.

The Obama administration has valiantly resisted congressional efforts to stop payouts to political bandits abroad. In 2011, when a House committee sought to curb the abuse, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that restricting handouts to nations that fail anti-corruption tests “has the potential to affect a staggering number of needy aid recipients.” ...

Kerry joined foreign chieftains in calling for more transparency to fight corruption but he forgot to notify his own State Department. Three days before Kerry’s speech, the State Department confirmed that it had “lost” all the emails of I.T. technician who set up the private email server that Hillary Clinton used to potentially illicitly keep her correspondence secret (and to ignore federal law on classified information). Nor have we learned the shady details behind our former secretary of State shoveling out scores of billions of dollars and special treatment to foreign governments at the same time the Clinton Foundation collected millions of dollars from some of the beneficiaries.

NATO Plans More Anti-Russia Moves After Finalizing Latest Build-Up

The ink isn’t even dry on the latest moves by the alliance’s foreign ministers to finalize the current anti-Russia military build-up, the largest since the Cold War ended, and officials are already openly talking about doing “more” to target Russia along their frontier. ...

US Ambassador Douglas Lute said the plan is for a “very sober discussion on dealing with Russia,” insisting Russia has “thrown out the rulebook” and NATO has to respond. Lute is seen as loudly advocating more military buildups around Europe to target Russia.

And while there was some talk among European members about targeting ISIS in Libya at the ongoing NATO meetings, materially everything that was agreed to, including future talks in Warsaw, were about targeting Russia more aggressively.

NATO Invites Montenegro to Join as 29th Member Nation

Actual membership won’t actually happen until all 29 involved nations’ parliaments sign off on the plan, but NATO today formally invited tiny Montenegro to join the alliance, making it the smallest economy in NATO.

Montenegro would be the first new NATO member since 2009, when Albania and Croatia joined, and adds yet more former Warsaw Pact territory to the alliance, further antagonizing Russia. Russia complains NATO is trying to encircle it by absorbing former allies.

Turkish parliament to vote on MP's immunity

Erdogan's 'Unprecedented destruction' of Kurdish city of Cizre

An extensive independent report from the Turkish human rights NGO Mazlumder concludes that Turkish army campaigns in the predominantly Kurdish city of Cizre in the country's far southeast turned the city into a "war zone" where over 200 people were killed during the curfew. More than
10,000 homes were destroyed.

In interviews with dozens of local residents, local officials, as well as the local government and opposition party representatives, along with field research in Cizre, the NGO gathered evidence of
multiple human rights violations after the city was subjected to a round-the-clock military lockdown from December to March.

"Cizre has witnessed unprecedented destruction following clashes which took place during a curfew lasting over 78 days, and unlike in curfews before, the curfew in Cizre saw mass killings," Mazlumder said.

The military operations in Cizre were part of the Turkish army's campaign against militants linked to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who have been locked in an armed struggle with state forces in Turkey's southeast for almost a year.

On May 10, UN Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein criticized the Turkish military campaign in the southeast in general, and the killings in Cizre in particular. He demanded a full investigation into reported killings of civilians.

Al-Qaeda-Led Islamists Gear Up for Return to Syria War

With the ceasefire increasingly crumbling across Syria, the return to all-out-war is being embraced by a lot of rebel groups, but none more-so than al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which was never a party to the truce to begin with, and used the ceasefire period to re-establish itself as a major rebel force with numerous Islamist allies. ...

With a lot of Islamist rebels nominally part of the ceasefire but not really happy with it, Nusra’s aggression was embraced by many, and those groups are increasingly rallying to the banner of Nusra’s umbrella group, the Jaish al-Fatah.

Al-Qaeda’s parent organization is also increasingly behind the Syrian affiliate, with reports that a number of senior al-Qaeda figures have been deployed to Syria to help Nusra prepare for the establishment of an independent “emirate” in northern Syria, an effort to challenge ISIS by establishing their own state in the region.

Russia proposes US to cooperate in fighting terrorists in Syria

Battle of the banknotes as rival currencies are set to be issued in Libya

Diplomats fear chaos as two central banks threaten to circulate their own dinars with separate security details and watermarks

The risk of economic chaos caused by billions of dollars worth of rival banknotes starting to circulate in Libya may fatally undermine the new unity government in Tripoli, senior European diplomats fear.

A political battle between the UN-recognised Tripoli government led by Fayez Sarraj and the Tobruk-based parliament loyal to General Khalifa Haftar in the east has led to parallel splits in the country’s financial institutions, with two central banks threatening to circulate rival Libyan dinar banknotes in the country.

De La Rue, the Basingstoke-based currency printer and a long-term supplier of notes to the Libyan government in Tripoli, sent 70m dinars, worth about $50m, to the country last month and is in the process of delivering a further 1bn dinars before and during Ramadan.

A rival bank governor in the east, Ali Salim al-Hibri, once recognised as the bank governor by the IMF, claims to have printed 4bn dinars worth of banknotes with the help of the Russian state.

The two currencies would have different serial numbers, security details and watermarks, diplomats say. The danger is two central banks flooding the country with conflicting currencies that are not interchangeable in banks. They are also likely to worsen inflation. Food inflation has reached 14% a year.

First Interview With Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff Since the Senate’s Impeachment Vote

Glenn Greenwald:

On Tuesday, I spoke to President Rousseff in the presidential palace for her first interview since being suspended. The 22-minute interview, conducted in Portuguese with English subtitles, is below. Rather than subdued, resigned, and defeated, Rousseff — who was imprisoned and tortured for three years in the 1970s by the U.S.-supported military dictatorship that ruled the country for 21 years — is more combative, defiant, and resolute than ever.

[Full transcript at link. - js]

Brazil's interim government wastes no time erasing Workers' party influence

In just a week, centre-right government has scaled back social policies as ideological shift already has sparked outrage and fear of going backward

It is just a week since Michel Temer became interim president of Brazil, but his new centre-right administration already has begun scaling back many of the social policies put in place by Workers’ party governments over the previous 13 years.

Moves are under way to soften the definition of slavery, roll back the demarcation of indigenous land, trim housebuilding programs and sell off state assets in airports, utilities and the post office. Newly appointed ministers also are talking of cutting healthcare spending and reducing the cost of the bolsa familia poverty relief system. Four thousand government jobs have been cut. The culture ministry has been subsumed into education. ...

Temer has said he is prepared to make unpopular decisions because he does not intend to stand for re-election in 2018. He is barred from running due to previous electoral violations – and is so widely disliked that he would not stand a chance of winning even if he could. ...

But he is less confrontational in congress. This was evident in his seemingly reluctant acceptance of André Moura – who is accused of attempted murder, criminal conspiracy and embezzlement – as the coalition leader in the lower house.

Temer had wanted a less controversial figure, but had to accept the recommendation of a powerful rightwing lobby controlled by the suspended house speaker Eduardo Cunha, who orchestrated Rousseff’s impeachment.

Underscoring the extent of the canker in Brazil’s political class, Cunha was himself removed from his post by the supreme court for obstructing justice.

Austria Is Set to Become the First European Country to Elect a Far-Right Leader Since WWII

If Norbert Hofer wins, as polls suggest he will, he will become Europe's first far right populist head of state since World War II: carried to power on the back of a party whose founding fathers included more than a few former Nazis with aspirations to rebuild a Greater Germany. A Freedom Party presidential victory could also trigger snap parliamentary elections, currently scheduled for 2018. As it stands, the Freedom Party is forecast to win those too, though it would be unlikely to gain a straight-up majority in government.

Austria's political center ground is left looking moribund. The two major centrist parties have run the political show since the mid-20th century — but even together, they won less than quarter of the first round vote. Days after the ballot results were revealed, Austria's Social Democratic Chancellor resigned in disgrace. On Sunday, Hofer will face off against Alexander van der Bellen, a Green Party-backed candidate.

The Austrian presidency is traditionally a ceremonial post, but Hofer advocates "a new understanding of the office." He has already threatened to dissolve parliament if the current government can't fix Austria's major problems with haste and to reject a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal with the United States, even if his parliament supported it. "You will be surprised by what can be done [by a president]," Hofer shrugged, in a recent TV debate. ...

With the Freedom Party leading the polls, Hofer seems primed to win the presidency on Sunday — unless the centrist parties rally behind the Green candidate. Such a strategy was used in France, back in 2002, to help then-presidential candidate Jacques Chirac beat the far right firebrand Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far right Front National party.

Incidentally, Le Pen's daughter Marine Le Pen, who now runs the Front National — and who has offered public support for Hofer in Austria — is expected to give the socialist incumbent president Francois Hollande in France's a tough run in presidential elections next year.

The Occupation of the American Mind - RAI with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters

Israel's defence minister quits over rift with Binyamin Netanyahu

The departure of Moshe Ya’alon came after Netanyahu offered the defence job to the hawkish ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman as part of moves to widen his fragile coalition. ...

Snap polls suggested Israelis preferred Ya’alon to Lieberman as defence minister by a wide margin. A poll aired by Israel’s Channel 10 television on Thursday found that 51% of Israeli Jews believed Ya’alon to be better suited for the cabinet position, while 27% favoured Lieberman. Two other polls showed similar responses.

Yaalon’s exit could put a fresh dent in domestic and western confidence in the Netanyahu government.

The Palestinian foreign ministry issued a statement criticising the expected appointment of Lieberman, and declaring that Netanyahu was turning his government into the most extreme administration in Israel’s history.

Ya’alon, a former chief of Israel’s armed forces, had shored up relations with the Pentagon, providing a counterweight to Netanyahu’s policy feuds with Barack Obama over peace talks with the Palestinians and Iran’s nuclear programme.

In a furious social media post, Ya’alon said he had told Netanyahu on Friday that “following his conduct in recent developments and in light of the lack of trust in him, I am resigning from the government and the Knesset [Israel’s parliament] and taking a time out from political life”.

Palestinians: Lieberman in cabinet means no Israeli partner for peace

The Palestinian authority is following the political developments in Israel and isn't hiding its surprise and disappointment from recent events, which started off by signaling a unity government may come together on the backdrop for a regional diplomatic move and ended with Avigdor Lieberman being offered the role of defense minister.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas' office and the top PLO leadership refrained from formally responding to reports of Lieberman's expected appointment, noting they would wait until the decision is formal.

But a senior Palestinian official didn’t hide his disappointment from the move, while also noting its public diplomacy potential for the Palestinians. ...

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Yisrael Beiteinu’s entry into Benjamin Netanyahu’s government would mean the Palestinian Authority had no real peace partner. ...

According to the ministry, Lieberman’s pending entry to the government “is a message to the world that Israel prefers extremism, the occupation and settlements to a peace accord. The international community must take responsibility and embark on a diplomatic and ethical initiative regarding the Palestinian people.”

An Attempt to Crack Down on Boycotting Israel in Canada Has Failed

A bill that would have barred supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement from doing business with the provincial government and municipalities, put civil liberties groups on edge but failed on Thursday afternoon.

"The bill, if passed, would seriously undermine freedom of expression," Cara Zwibel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association told VICE News. "It is deeply problematic for the provincial legislature to attempt to tell municipalities, universities, and colleges that they may not support or participate in certain causes or movements."

The motion failed, with 18 members voting in favour and 39 voting against. A large chunk of the Ontario parliament, however, were absent for the vote.

The Standing Up Against Anti-Semitism in Ontario Act, introduced by Progressive Conservative MPP and former leader of the party Tim Hudak would've meant that no public body would be allowed to enter into contracts with people and entities that support or participate in the movement.

Canada's Indigenous & Black Lives Matter Activists Unite to Protest Violence & Neglect

Chelsea Manning Appeals “Unprecedented” Conviction

Lawyers for Chelsea Manning appealed her conviction on Thursday, calling it “grossly unfair and unprecedented” and arguing that “no whistleblower in American history has been sentenced this harshly.”

Manning was convicted of six counts of espionage by a military court in 2013 and is currently serving a 35-year sentence in military prison. ...

In the 209-page legal brief made public on Thursday, lawyers for Manning questioned the testimony of military officials at her trial, arguing that their claims of harm were “speculative” and “provided no indication” of actual harm, which they said had a “highly prejudicial” effect on the trial.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief arguing that applying the Espionage Act to whistleblowers is unconstitutional and “furnishes the government with a tool for selective prosecution.”

Oregon militia standoff member pleads guilty to conspiring against government

A participant in the Oregon militia standoff at a wildlife refuge pleaded guilty to conspiring against the federal government on Thursday, making him the first of 26 jailed protesters to accept a deal with US prosecutors.

Corey Lequieu, 46, pleaded guilty to using force, intimidation and threats to impede federal officers at the Malheur national wildlife refuge, where a group of activists, some heavily armed, staged an occupation in January to protest the government’s treatment of ranchers.

Brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who helped lead the protests, refused to enter pleas at their arraignments, resulting in a a judge entering a “not guilty” plea on their behalf, paving the way for a high-profile trial.

Federal prosecutors have recommended that Lequieu spend two-and-a-half years in prison and have agreed not to level any additional charges against him, according to the Oregonian. In the government’s indictment he had originally faced two additional charges related to his possession of firearms at the bird sanctuary.

The conspiracy charge for which Lequieu pleaded guilty carries a maximum sentence of six years.

San Francisco police chief resigns in wake of fatal shootings and scandals

San Francisco police chief Greg Suhr resigned on Thursday, at the request of mayor Ed Lee and just hours after police officers shot and killed a black woman in the city’s Bayview neighborhood. ...

In recent months, calls for Suhr to resign have intensified amid a string of fatal shootings and scandals. But as recently as two days ago he had assured the San Francisco Chronicle that he had no intention of stepping down. ...

The fatal shootings came at a time when the department was already under intense scrutiny.

In March 2015, court filings from a federal investigation into police corruption revealed racist and homophobic text messages exchanged by a group of 14 officers. The messages [...] compromised thousands of criminal cases. In March 2016, a group of four more officers were implicated in exchanging racist and homophobic text messages. Their messages were revealed in the course of criminal investigations into two of the officers.

The department has long been criticized for disproportionate policing of black people. Though the city is just 5.8% black, black adults make up 40% of all arrests in the city. Black adults in San Francisco are seven times more likely to be arrested than whites, according to a 2015 study.

New report is 'huge warning sign' that desegregation has failed in US schools

A report released this week by the Government Accountability Office illuminated the extent to which school systems across the US are, once again, becoming more segregated. The report found that more than 60% of schools with high levels of poor students were racially segregated, which the report defined as being at least 75% black or Latino.

The study reviewed federal data from 2001 to 2014 and found 16% of all US schools were both racially segregated and poor, increasing from about 7,000 schools in 2001 to 15,089 by 2013 to 2014. Observers and advocates for school desegregation said the report should be a “huge warning sign” that needs to be addressed.

“There are many who believe in this country that we are operating on an even playing field,” said Jadine Johnson, staff attorney at Advancement Project.

“I think what this report revealed … is that the legacies of slavery in this country, the legacies of Jim Crow, are alive and active,” she said. “That did not go away with Brown v Board of Education.”

Compared to other schools, the GAO report found, segregated schools offered fewer college prep, science, and math classes to take, and a disproportionate number of students were either held back in ninth grade, suspended, or expelled.

Gosh, if Democrats quit pandering to corporations and built a genuine party of the people, they might not be reduced to impotent bellowing at the other party of the corporations when they get outmanuevered on one of their social wedge issues.

Democrats Shout 'Shame!' as Republicans Overturn Vote to Prevent LGBT Discrimination

Furious Democrats repeatedly bellowed "shame!" in the US House of Representatives on Thursday as their Republican colleagues changed their votes at the last minute to defeat a pro-LGBT amendment.

The chaotic scene unfolded on the House floor shortly before noon, and comes less than a day after the chamber passed a defense authorization bill that includes a Republican provision protecting federal contractors from discrimination based on religious beliefs.

Democrats say that the amendment is an explicit attempt by Republicans to undercut President Obama's 2014 executive order preventing discrimination against individuals based on their gender identity or sexual orientation in federal contracts. The religious liberty amendment was attached in committee and never got a separate vote by the full House, leaving Democrats to choose between authorizing funding for the Department of Defense or voting against language that they had dubbed discriminatory.

The defense bill passed 277 to 147, with a majority of Democrats opposing.

Pfizer’s Death Penalty Ban Highlights the Black Market in Execution Drugs

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer made big news last week when it announced a ban on the use of its drugs to carry out the death penalty by lethal injection. “Sweeping controls on the distribution of its products” have clamped shut “the last remaining open-market source of drugs used in executions,” the New York Times reported, calling it a milestone in the fight against capital punishment. ...

“Pfizer has closed the circle,” said Arizona federal public defender Dale Baich, who litigates lethal injection challenges across the country. “The states can no longer obtain drugs from legitimate and legal sources.” But as Baich and others know too well, many states stopped seeking drugs from legitimate sources a long time ago. Today, most active death penalty states rely on anonymous compounding pharmacies, whose loose regulations vary wildly from state to state, making them dangerously unreliable compared to FDA approved drug companies when it comes to the efficacy of their products. Other states have broken federal law by importing illicit drugs from overseas. In driving states to the underground market, Pfizer’s announcement merely makes official what has already been happening for years. ...

Today, lethal injection secrecy statutes exist in some dozen states and counting, under the [...] pretense of security. ... For years, lawyers and journalists have argued that the real purpose of such laws is to block scrutiny of states’ execution protocols. In effect, they have also “prevented manufacturers from learning how states have gotten a hold of the pharmaceutical products they have been using in executions,” said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center. Pfizer’s tight new restrictions, Dunham said, are “designed to counter” such secrecy. With Pfizer’s announcement last week, the most significant challenge will not be overcoming state secrecy to ensure that major drug corporations can keep such promises. The bigger problem is how to hold states accountable to the Constitution as they do business with faceless companies that have no ethical qualms about selling execution drugs. “As compounding pharmacies do this in the dark,” said Maya Foa of the human rights group Reprieve, which has led the effort to convince the pharmaceutical industry to block its drugs for use in executions, “it is just going to a create more of a mess — potentially, more botched executions.”

Oklahoma officials backed use of wrong drug in botched execution – grand jury

The top lawyer for Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma urged prison officials to go forward with a planned execution even though they receiving the wrong drug, telling a deputy attorney general to “Google it” to confirm it could be used, a grand jury said in a report on Thursday.

The grand jury faulted many officials for three botched execution attempts but issued no indictments after its months-long investigation. But the panel noted that Fallin’s general counsel, Steve Mullins, advocated the use of potassium acetate in the 30 September execution of Richard Glossip, even though the state’s lethal injection protocol calls for potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Fallin later issued a last-minute stay for Glossip, who remains on death row.

“The governor’s general counsel stated potassium chloride and potassium acetate were basically one and the same drug, advising the deputy attorney general to ‘Google it’,” the grand jury report said. Mullins also argued that the state shouldn’t file a stay for Glossip’s execution because “it would look bad for the state of Oklahoma because potassium acetate had already been used in [Charles] Warner’s execution”

Mullins resigned in February as Fallin’s general counsel. ... The head of the prison system and the penitentiary warden also quit after appearing before the grand jury.

Cowardly jackass Hillary supporter knees are knocking over the mean things that Rethugs might say about them if they were to support single payer healthcare in Colorado. Surely we would be better off without these spineless, clueless morons?!?

ColoradoCare: universal healthcare plan has Democrats divided

A ballot measure in Colorado that would, if passed, make the state the first in the country to have universal, government-run healthcare is facing resistance from a surprising group: state Democrats.

ColoradoCare, as it’s being called, has given ammunition to Republicans looking to attack Obamacare-supporting politicians during the campaign season. That has prompted establishment Democrats to come out against the plan, revealing a split between populist voters who support Bernie Sanders and pro-Clinton politicians, such as Governor John Hickenlooper and US senator Michael Bennet.

“Our reforms are just beginning to bear fruit,” said Hickenlooper in a statement, “and it would be premature to dramatically remake our health care system at this time.” ...

Last October, the National Republican Senatorial Committee teased Bennet for not taking a stance on ColoradoCare, and used his silence to assert that he was for the measure. Bennet put a stop to this last April when his campaign spokesman told the Colorado Independent: “Michael does not think that single payer is the right approach to solving our health care problems, and in particular has concerns about putting a complete overhaul of our health care system, including a massive tax increase, into the state constitution where it can’t be changed.”

TR Reid, a spokesman for ColoradoCare and a former Washington Post political journalist, is pretty cynical about Bennet’s reluctance to endorse the measure.

“Michael Bennet is a gutless politician who gets his principles from his campaign manager,” Reid said recently. “He was afraid of being accused of supporting socialized medicine. Until this year he has always been for universal healthcare, he’s given a hundred speeches saying he wants to see everyone covered. If this had not come up in his election year he would be for it.”

According to this obituary, instead of choosing between Trump or Clinton, this lady went with another choice. pic.twitter.com/Gmd86RmvIM

— R.L. Bynum (@RL_Bynum) May 17, 2016

"Nothing of importance happened today."

-- King George III, July 4, 1776

Hillary Clinton: 'I will be the nominee' of the Democratic party

Hillary Clinton, for the first time since launching her campaign, declared herself the inevitable nominee of the Democratic party on Thursday, having held off a surprisingly strong challenge from her progressive rival, Bernie Sanders. ...

On Thursday, Clinton said her pledged delegate lead is “insurmountable” and concluded that Sanders is no longer a barrier on her path to the nomination.

“I will be the nominee for my party … That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN on Thursday.

The Sanders campaign dismissed Clinton’s comments in a statement that suggested the nomination was still his for the taking.

“In the past three weeks voters in Indiana, West Virginia and Oregon respectfully disagreed with Secretary Clinton,” said campaign spokesman Michael Briggs on Thursday.

“We expect voters in the remaining eight contests also will disagree. And with almost every national and state poll showing Senator Sanders doing much, much better than Secretary Clinton against Donald Trump, it is clear that millions of Americans have growing doubts about the Clinton campaign.”

this chyron should work for the next six months at least pic.twitter.com/jQczsXHhSU

— Colin Campbell (@BKcolin) May 20, 2016

"There are some pretty stable elements of [Donald Trump's] ideology, if you can even grant him that concept. One of them is: “Climate change is not taking place.” As he puts it: “Forget it.” And that’s almost a death knell for the species – not tomorrow, but the decisions we take now are going to affect things in a couple of decades, and in a couple of generations it could be catastrophic."

-- Noam Chomsky

Here's What Trump's Energy Advisor Thinks of Fracking, the Saudis, and Climate Change

The United States has to protect its domestic oil industry and should make no apologies for being one of the world's largest energy consumers, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump's new energy adviser said Thursday.

Rep. Kevin Cramer, North Dakota's sole member of the House of Representatives and a self-proclaimed climate skeptic, wants a congressional commission to investigate the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries — the Saudi Arabia-dominated cartel that drove prices down from more than $100 a barrel to the mid-40s today. Cramer said the fracking boom that made his state the No. 2 oil producer in the country is surviving the nearly 2-year-old crash in oil prices, and he told a Washington conference Thursday morning that the Saudis "probably regret picking this battle."

"The cartel thought they could drive North Dakota out of the business long ago by lowering prices," Cramer said. But he said his home-state producers adapted by cutting prices and speeding up production, and launching an investigation of OPEC "sends the message that you're not going to get by with collusion or monopoly tactics." ...

Cramer was one of dozens of members of Congress who signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, which aims to cut carbon emissions from electrical plants by 30 percent by 2030. The plan, which has been placed on hold by the US Supreme Court, is the centerpiece of the US pledge in the newly signed Paris climate accord.

More recently, he called the EPA's new rule limiting methane leaks from oil and gas infrastructure "another one-size-fits-all sledgehammer" aimed at the oil and gas industry. And as someone who's called the science behind global warming "fraudulent," he has swiftly become a target for environmental groups.

Bill McKibben issues another call for divestment from carbon polluters. Is divestment really enough? Or should he extend his logic a little further?

Let's give up the climate change charade: Exxon won't change its stripes

Every year at the shareholders’ annual meeting, there is an attempt to push the company on reducing emissions. It’s time to stop trying and divest instead

[See article for chronicling of 62 Exxon shareholder climate resolutions since 1990. - js]

There have been 62 failed resolutions at Exxon’s annual meetings. If nothing happens this spring, “there is no justifying continued attempts to negotiate with this company,” says Vermont activist Austin Davis.

And he’s right. There’s a certain point at which noble failure turns into moral cover – by continuing this process past the point where any reasonable person can see it’s a failure, shareholder “activists” actually help the company they’re targeting.

[I wonder if Bill McKibben might be willing to apply this same logic to the Democrats and/or the American government system. - js]

Even if somehow one of the handfuls of climate-related resolutions were to win a majority of the shareholders’ votes, the resolutions are non-binding; those with the most support merely request annual reports. What more information do shareholders need? Exxon has spent millions on climate policy obstruction, and – scientist’s pleas to the contrary – plans to burn all of its reserves and keep hunting for more.

If this meeting ends with the same dismal failure as the past 25, it’s time to admit the obvious: the Exxons of the world are not going to change their stripes, not voluntarily. It will be time for state treasurers and religious groups to join those students and frontline communities and climate scientists who are saying “No more.” It will be time – past time – to get serious, divest and break free of fossil fuels once and for all.

Canadian Regulator Greenlights Controversial Kinder Morgan Pipeline — If it Offsets Carbon Emissions

The National Energy Board has recommended the Canadian government approve a controversial pipeline — but for the first time, the company must offset greenhouse gas emissions from its construction.

The NEB decision on the project, which has provoked mass protests and arrests, is a major notch in the Liberal government's plan to approve a pipeline that would move Alberta oil to international markets.

While the decision is a blow to environmental and Indigenous groups that have opposed the project for years, the recommendation is sure to comfort Alberta as the province reels from ongoing mass wildfires and a two-year oil slump that has crippled its energy sector.

Kinder Morgan's $6.8 billion TransMountain expansion project would add to an existing pipeline, tripling its capacity from 300,000 to nearly 900,000 barrels of oil per day. That oil would flow from Edmonton, Alberta to the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, on BC's coast. ...

The board considered climate change in its decision, and as a condition of the project, Kinder Morgan will have to offset greenhouse gas emissions from the project's construction. It's the first time the board has ever tacked such a condition onto a pipeline project. The total amount of GHGs is not yet known, but will be calculated if and when the pipeline is built.

The NEB said the expansion "would not likely cause significant adverse environmental effects," although the board found there would be negative environmental impacts from increased tanker traffic.

[See also: First Nations and Allies Vow to Fight Kinder Morgan Pipeline Approval - js]

Pakistan prepares for scorching temperatures

In India, Demand for government action after temperatures hit 124F

Hospitals struggle to cope as patient numbers soar and cold water in short supply after hottest day

Residents of a city in the north-west of India have called for government action as temperatures reached 51C (123.8F), the highest the country has experienced since records began. ...

In Phalodi, where the temperature can fall below zero in winter and reach extreme peaks in the summer, the local government hospital has seen patient numbers double in the last few days as people report more heat-related illnesses.

Shiv Prakash Chanda, who works as a nursing officer in the hospital, said: “It is incredibly hot. None of the air-conditioners or coolers are working. We have running water, but the water is stored in tanks on top the buildings, and when it comes out of the tap the water is so hot that you can’t even wash your hands with it. You can’t even go to the toilet.”

Ranjeet Singh, a local police constable, said: “The ground is so hot, you could cook chapatis on it.” ...

“The government needs to do something – they need to put up tents and offer cold water in places like railway stations where people gather. The local administration has done nothing so far,” Chanda said. Last year, more than 1,500 people died in India because of heatwaves.

With New EPA Advisory, Dozens of Communities Suddenly Have Dangerous Drinking Water

The EPA announced new drinking water health advisory levels today for the industrial chemicals PFOA and PFOS. The new levels — .07 parts per billion (ppb) for both chemicals — are significantly lower than standards the agency issued in 2009, which were .4 ppb for PFOA and .2 ppb for PFOS. In areas where both PFOA and PFOS are present, the advisory suggests a maximum combined level of .07 ppb. While the old levels were calculated based on the assumption that people were drinking the contaminants only for weeks or months, the new standards assume lifetime exposure and reflect more recent research.

The new federal standards may unify what has been an inconsistent official response to the presence of these perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs, in drinking water. They will also instantaneously create official water contamination crises in dozens of cities and towns across the country.

According to the EPA’s most recent data on unregulated drinking water contaminants, released in January, 14 drinking water systems around the country reported levels of PFOA that exceed the new federal threshold, while 40 reported PFOS above the new cutoff. In all, water systems in 18 states, as well as in Guam, are contaminated.

Also of Interest

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

Group Pushes Obama to Pardon US War Criminals

US Government's Own Report Shows Toxic TPP "Not Worth Passing"

Can America learn to love the big bad wolf? There are signs of change

RoboCop is real – and could be patrolling a mall near you

A Little Night Music

Sonny Rhodes - You Better Stop

Sonny Rhodes - If the Blues Fits, Wear It

Sonny Rhodes & The Texas Twisters - House Without Love

Sonny Rhodes - Life's Rainbow

Sonny Rhodes - Cigarette Blues

Sonny Rhodes - Killing Floor

Sonny Rhodes - Ain't No Blues In Town

Sonny Rhodes at Terra Blues