The Evening Blues - 11-17-22



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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Eddie Bond

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features rockabilly singer Eddie Bond. Enjoy!

Eddie Bond And His Stompers - Rockin' Daddy

"You just keep feeding hogwash to people, and pretty soon they'll eat it."

-- Holly Near


News and Opinion

Journalistic Responsibility Vanishes When Reporting On US-Targeted Nations

Two false news reports have gone viral in recent hours due to sloppy sourcing and journalistic malpractice. As usual they both featured bogus claims about US-targeted nations, in this case Russia and Iran.

An article in Responsible Statecraft titled “How a lightly-sourced AP story almost set off World War III” details how the propaganda multiplier news agency published a one-source, one-sentence report claiming that Russia had launched a deadly missile strike at NATO member Poland, despite evidence having already come to light by that point that the missile had probably come from Ukraine. This set off calls for the implementation of a NATO Article 5 response, meaning hot warfare between NATO and Russia in retaliation for a Russian attack on one of the alliance members.

Mainstream news reports circulated the narrative that Poland had been struck by a “Russian-made” missile, which is at best a highly misleading framing of the fact that the inadvertent strike came from a Soviet-era surface-to-air missile system still used by Ukraine, a former Soviet state. Headlines from the largest and most influential US news outlets like The New York Times, CNN and NBC all repeated the misleading “Russian-made” framing, as did AP’s own correction to its false report that Poland was struck by Russia.

All current evidence indicates that Poland was accidentally hit by one of those missiles while Ukraine was defending itself from Russian missile strikes. President Biden has said it’s “unlikely” that the missile which killed two Poles came from Russia, while Polish president Andrzej Duda and NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg both said it looks like it was an accidental strike from Ukrainian air defenses. Russia says its own missile strikes have been no closer than 35 km from the Polish border.

The only party still adamantly insisting that the strike did come from Russia is Ukraine, leading an exasperated diplomat from a NATO country to anonymously tell Financial Times: “This is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”

It is very sleazy for AP to continue to protect the anonymity of the US official who fed them a lie of such immense significance and potential consequence. They should tell the world who it was who initiated that lie so we can demand explanations and accountability.

Another false story that went extremely viral was one that Newsweek has been forced to extensively revise and correct that was initially titled “Iran Votes to Execute Protesters, Says Rebels Need ‘Hard Lesson’,” but is now titled “Iran Parliament Chants ‘Death to Seditionists’ in Protest Punishment Call.” The latest correction notice now reads, “This article and headline were updated to remove the reference to the Iranian Parliament voting for death sentences. A majority of the parliament supported a letter to the judiciary calling for harsh punishments of protesters, which could include the death penalty.

Moon of Alabama explains how the Newsweek piece was the springboard that launched the viral false claim that the Iranian government had just sentenced 15,000 protesters to death, which was circulated by countless politicians, pundits and celebrities throughout social media. This claim has been debunked by mainstream outlets like NBC News, who explains that “There has been no evidence that 15,000 protesters have been sentenced to death. Two protesters had been sentenced to death as of Tuesday, although they can appeal, according to state news agencies.”


An article by The Cradle titled “Fact check – Iran has not sentenced ‘15,000’ protesters to death” explains that the Iranian parliament actually just signed a letter urging the Iranian judiciary to issue harsher sentences upon protesters who’ve been demonstrating against Tehran. Those sentences can include the death penalty as noted above, but up to this point have more often entailed prison sentences of five to ten years.

The Cradle also notes that even the “15,000” figure is suspect, as its sole source is an American organization funded by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy:

Further muddying the waters, the figure of 15,000 protesters detained by Iranian authorities originates from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).

US-based HRANA is the media arm of the Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI), a group that receives funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – a CIA soft power front that has for decades funded regime-change efforts across the globe.

Indeed, it’s public knowledge that NED is funded directly by the US government, and that according to its own cofounder was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly. It’s possible that the 15,000 figure could be more or less accurate, and it’s possible that a great many more Iranian protesters will be sentenced to death for their actions, but reporting such possibilities as a currently established fact is plainly journalistic malpractice.

In April of this year Newsweek published an article titled “Russians Raped 11-Year-Old Boy, Forced Mom to Watch: Ukraine Official.” In May of this year Newsweek published an article titled “Ukraine Official Fired Over Handling of Russian Sexual Assault Claims.” It was the same official. Newsweek made no mention of the fact that its source for its sexual assault story had just been fired for disseminating unevidenced claims about sexual assault. To this day its April report contains no updates or corrections.

Contrast this complete dereliction of journalistic responsibility with Newsweek’s extreme caution when one of its reporters tried to report on the OPCW scandal which disrupted the US government narrative about an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government. Reporter Tareq Haddad was forbidden by his superiors to write about the many leaks coming out exposing malfeasance in the Douma investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, on the basis that NED-funded Bellingcat had disputed the leaks and that other respectable outlets had not reported on them.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has published numerous articles documenting what Adam Johnson calls the North Korea Law of Journalism, which holds that “editorial standards are inversely proportional to a country’s enemy status.” In other words, the more disfavorably a foreign government is viewed by the US empire, the lower the editorial standards for reporting claims about them. Because Russia and Iran are both viewed as enemies of Washington, western news media often feel comfortable just publishing any old claim about them as fact regardless of sourcing or evidence.

We saw this highlighted during the insanity of Russiagate, where mainstream news outlet after mainstream news outlet was caught publishing unevidenced conspiratorial hogwash that it was often (though not even always) forced to retract. This was possible because when it comes to implicating Russia the evidentiary standards for reporting on something are much lower than they would be for implicating a government that is held in favor by the US.

And this is the case because the western mainstream media are the propaganda services of the US-centralized empire. They do not exist to tell people the truth, they exist to manipulate the public into hating the official enemies of the empire and into consenting to foreign policy agendas that they would not otherwise consent to.

Imperial propagandists lower their editorial standards when reporting on official enemies not because they are bad at their job, but because they are very good at their job. It’s just that their job isn’t what we’ve been told.

Ukraine B@mbs Poland & Blames Russia

Ukraine At Odds With Western Backers Over Missile That Hit Poland

Ukraine is at odds with its Western backers over the missile that landed in Poland and killed two people. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that he’s confident the missile didn’t come from his country even after NATO, Poland, and the US said it was likely fired by Ukrainian air defenses.

“I have no doubt that it was not our rocket,” Zelensky told reporters, adding that his assessment was based on reports from his military commanders. “I believe that it was a Russian missile based on the credibility of the reports of the military,” he said. ...

Speaking to the Financial Times, a diplomat from a NATO country expressed frustration in response to Zelensky’s comments. “This is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile,” the diplomat said.

When news of the missile hitting Poland first broke, Zelensky and his top advisors framed the incident as a deliberate Russian attack on a NATO member, and implied that the military alliance should take action. Any NATO strikes on Russia would mean World War III, which could quickly spiral into nuclear war.

Biden Requests 37 BILLION MORE For Ukraine

White House Asks Congress for $37.7 Billion in New Ukraine Aid

The White House on Tuesday asked Congress to approve $37.7 billion in new aid for Ukraine, which would bring total US spending on the war to about $105 billion.

According to The Hill, the request includes $21.7 billion in military aid for Ukraine and to replenish US military stockpiles that have been sent to the country.

A total of $14.5 billion in budgetary aid to directly fund the Ukrainian government is included, as Kyiv is expecting the US and its allies to pay its budget deficit for 2023.

The request also includes $626 million for the US Strategic Oil Reserve and for nuclear safety for Ukraine and $900 million for healthcare and other services for Ukrainians.

Russia Launches Another Missile Strike, Kiev Doubles Down Polish Missile Strike; Xi Crushes Trudeau

An article worth a peek. Here's a snippet to get you started:

More Futile Pacific Overtures

I’ve given up being amazed at how stupidly the Biden administration conducts its diplomacy with China and, by extension, Asia altogether. I spend my time now being amazed at how stupid these people assume the Chinese and other Asians to be. Nearly halfway through his term in office — and let us hope there is not another after this one — the man from Scranton finally met Chinese President Xi Jinping Monday to discuss the single most important relationship between any two nations anywhere in the world.

This first face-to-face encounter since Joe Biden began his presidency comes after nearly two years of diplomatic drift during which the U.S. has escalated the threat of open conflict, incessantly provoked the Chinese on the Taiwan question and the administration’s bench of incompetents makes one mess after another. All the while Beijing has been consolidating an extensive range of ties with non–Western nations in the declared cause of a new world order.

I do not see that anything of moment got done when Biden and Xi met just prior to the Group of 20 session in Bali this week. A great deal could have been accomplished, of course, given the worsening state of the bilateral relationship, but Biden proved once again not up to it. He seems to have figured the Chinese side would be too stupid to notice that he and his administration are effectively paralyzed, a herd of deer caught in headlights. Our moment calls upon American statesmen and stateswomen to act imaginatively, creatively, even courageously in response to a new era and new geopolitical circumstances. But those sailing the American ship of state, from the president on down, have neither imagination nor creativity nor courage. All they can do is reiterate past positions while expecting the other side to respond differently.

This is what Xi got in Bali on Monday. Nothing more. Nothing has changed, nothing of consequence has moved forward.

It was easy enough to see this pointlessness coming, this remove from reality, as Biden and his people advertised the Bali summit last week. America proposes to “build a floor in the relationship,” officials declared. The object of the encounter was to “set expectations.” The two sides need to “draw red lines,” Biden said in a press conference last Wednesday, “and determine whether or not they” —China’s and Washington’s red lines — “conflict with one another. And if they do, how to resolve it and how to work it out.”

What in these various remarks is there to hold onto, what of constructive substance did the U.S. side propose to get done in Bali? It is all sponge, exhausted rhetoric, a continued commitment to avoid addressing the Sino–U.S. relationship seriously. This is what I mean by paralysis. American officials have nothing to say when they speak across the Pacific, and therefore say nothing in the cotton-wool language of obfuscation.

Xi angrily rebukes Trudeau over ‘leaks’ to media about Canada-China relations

Xi Jinping has angrily rebuked Justin Trudeau after Canadian officials shared details of a previous meeting, highlighting the frosty relationship between the two leaders.

In a clip recorded by the media pool at the G20 summit in Indonesia, a visibly frustrated Xi pulls the Canadian prime minister aside and says it was “not appropriate” for details about a previous conversation between the two leaders to have been shared with media, suggesting Trudeau lacked “sincerity” in his approach.

“Everything we discuss has been leaked to the paper, that’s not appropriate,” Xi says to Trudeau through a translator. “And that’s not the way the conversation was conducted,” he added.

The testy exchange came a day after government sources briefed that during a previous conversation on the margins of the summit, Trudeau had raised “serious concerns” with Xi over China’s increasingly aggressive “interference activities”.

Xi’s irritation on Wednesday was a rare break with his normally carefully scripted public appearances.

UK unveils austerity budget despite recession

'A Massive Mistake': Alarm as Dems Cast Doubt on Lame-Duck Debt Ceiling Deal

With Republicans widely expected to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2023, Democrats are under pressure to make the most of the lame-duck session—but raising the debt ceiling doesn't seem to be on the table, increasing fears of what that means for social programs in the GOP's crosshairs.

The Senate Democratic whip, the party's second-ranking member in the chamber, told Bloomberg they don't plan to use the budget reconciliation process that was employed earlier this year to avoid a filibuster and pass the Inflation Reduction Act without any GOP support.

"That would not be done this year by reconciliation. It takes too much time," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said of lifting the debt ceiling before the Treasury's current borrowing limit is reached—which is projected to be sometime next year. "We have three weeks and there is too much else on the agenda."

Even if the Democrats tried the budget reconciliation approach, they may not have the votes in the Senate—in which Vice President Kamala Harris breaks ties—thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who has repeatedly held up his own party's agenda over the past two years while insisting on bipartisanship.

"I don't think it should go to reconciliation," Manchin said Tuesday of raising the debt limit, according to Politico. "My goodness, it's something we've always worked together on."

"It should be bipartisan," Manchin told reporters. "We've got to pay our bills but the bottom line is we have got to get serious about getting our financial house in order."

Durbin told Bloomberg that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "is continuing to negotiate" with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—who was reelected to his position Wednesday—in hopes of reaching a debt limit agreement this year. However, if McConnell holds out, it sets up his party for a fight in 2023.

When asked Tuesday about the possibility of increasing the ceiling during the lame-duck session, McConnell said, "I don't think the debt limit issue is until sometime next year."

According to Politico, President Joe Biden's administration has all but given up on making a deal this year, with one senior official saying: "We'd love to do the debt limit. That doesn't magically create the votes to get the debt limit done."

As the outlet reported:

"Although there is grave risk to the economy, the gun is in Republicans' hands," said one Biden adviser, summing up the administration's view of the political stakes on the debt limit. "And there is little question as to who will get blamed for this."

A White House spokesperson noted that congressional Republicans voted three times to lift the debt ceiling under former President Donald Trump. "The debt ceiling should never be a matter of political brinksmanship," the spokesperson said. "Congress must once again responsibly address the debt ceiling before its expiration."

Leading up to Election Day earlier this month, Republican candidates made clear that if they regained control of the House or Senate, they hoped to use the debt limit battle to fight for spending cuts—specifically taking aim at Medicare and Social Security.

Biden vowed last week that "under no circumstances" will he go along with GOP attempts to cut the social safety net programs, saying: "That's not on the table. I will not do that."

However, fears are mounting that Biden could be forced to strike a deal—like then-President Barack Obama did in 2011—to prevent the first-ever default in U.S. history.

Texas sends bus carrying 28 migrants, including sick child, to Philadelphia

A bus carrying 28 migrants from Texas arrived in Philadelphia on Wednesday, including a 10-year-old girl suffering from dehydration and a high fever who was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Advocates who welcomed the migrants with coats and blankets before dawn on a cold and drizzly morning said the families and individuals came from Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. The city and several non-profit groups were ready to provide food, temporary housing and other services. ...

The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, announced on Tuesday that Philadelphia would be the next destination for migrants the state is transporting by the thousands to Democratic-led areas. ...

Other buses have turned up in recent months in New York, Washington and Chicago. Texas has transported more than 13,000 migrants since April. Abbott has sent the buses to Democratic-led cities as a way to maximize exposure over what he says is inaction by the Biden administration regarding the southern border.

Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma could get first delegate to Congress in 200 years

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma moved a step closer on Wednesday to having a promise fulfilled from nearly 200 years ago that a delegate from the tribe be seated in Congress.

Chuck Hoskin Jr, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, was among those who testified before the US House rules committee, which is the first to examine the prospect of seating a Cherokee delegate in the US House. Hoskin, the elected leader of the 440,000-member tribe, put the effort in motion in 2019 when he nominated Kimberly Teehee, a former adviser to Barack Obama, to the position. The tribe’s governing council then unanimously approved her.

The tribe’s right to a delegate is detailed in the Treaty of New Echota signed in 1835, which provided the legal basis for the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River and led to the Trail of Tears, but it has never been exercised. A separate treaty in 1866 affirmed this right, Hoskin said.

“The Cherokee Nation has in fact adhered to our obligations under these treaties. I’m here to ask the United States to do the same,” Hoskin told the panel.

Hoskin suggested to the committee that Teehee could be seated as early as this year by way of either a resolution or change in statute, and the committee’s chairman, the Massachusetts Democrat James McGovern, and other members supported the idea that it could be accomplished quickly. “This can and should be done as quickly as possible,” McGovern said. “The history of this country is a history of broken promise after broken promise to Native American communities. This cannot be another broken promise.”

Much more at the link.

‘The sheriff who went rogue’: Alex Villanueva’s scandal-plagued tenure ends in LA

For only the second time in more than a century, Los Angeles residents have voted out an incumbent sheriff, ending the reign of Alex Villanueva, a scandal-plagued official who civil rights leaders say had become a “danger to the people”.

Villanueva conceded to Robert Luna, the former police chief of the city of Long Beach, on Tuesday, one week after the election, with latest count showing Luna had 60% of the vote compared with the incumbent’s 40%. The results marked a decisive rejection of the leader of the largest county sheriff’s agency in the US.

The downfall of the cowboy hat-wearing sheriff comes at the end of a four-year term marked by a dizzying pace of misconduct, abuse and corruption scandals. As the race heated up in the last year, Villanueva faced increasing national scrutiny for his frequent, at times weekly, lashing out at politicians, community leaders, journalists, whistleblowers, watchdogs and other law enforcement officials who tried exposing problems at the department. ...

Villanueva was a lieutenant when he was elected in 2018 on a platform to clean up an agency that had repeatedly been the subject of investigations. More than a dozen LASD deputies had faced charges five years prior surrounding the beatings of incarcerated people; the top sheriff and his undersheriff were eventually imprisoned following federal obstruction and corruption cases. At trial, the undersheriff admitted he had a tattoo associated with a gang of officers that a judge said was a “neo-Nazi, white supremacist” group.

Villanueva has been accused of engaging in the same kind of cover-ups as his predecessors; while the county’s inspector general has recently identified dozens of current deputies believed to be members of officer “cliques” and gangs, which are known for encouraging brutality, Villanueva has defied subpoenas to testify on the issue and issued legal threats aiming to prevent officials from using the term “deputy gang”.



the horse race



Data REVEALS Dems NEED Trump to Win

Republicans scrape back control of US House after underwhelming midterms

Republicans have won back control of the House of Representatives scraping a victory from a midterms election that many had expected to be a red wave of wins but which instead turned into more of a trickle.

Nevertheless, the party finally won its crucial 218th seat in the lower chamber of Congress, wresting away control from the Democrats and setting the stage for a showdown with Joe Biden in the next two years of his presidency. ...

Control of the House is crucial as it will allow the Republicans to launch an array of congressional investigations ranging from Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan to more obviously politicized probes of government actions during the coronavirus pandemic and Biden’s son Hunter’s business activities.

The Republican-run House is likely to be a raucous affair as its predicted slim majority means that it will only take a few rebels to stymie any legislation – effectively handing great power to almost every member. With the Republican right full of fringe figures, like Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, that could be a recipe for chaos and the promotion of extremist beliefs and measures.



the evening greens


Lula vows to undo environmental degradation and halt deforestation

President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has told the world that “Brazil is back” at Cop27, vowing to begin undoing the environmental destruction seen under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and work towards zero deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

Followed by a carnival atmosphere wherever he went on Wednesday, Lula told the climate summit that his administration would go further than ever before on the environment by cracking down on illegal gold mining, logging and agricultural expansion, and restoring climate-critical ecosystems.

In his first big overseas speech since winning election, Lula said Brazil did not need to clear another hectare of rainforest to be a major agricultural producer, and he would use his presidency to demand that rich countries deliver on their promise of $100bn of climate finance for developing countries and to create a fund for loss and damage compensation. ...

In a speech that ranged from inequality to reform of the UN security council, Lula placed a lot of emphasis on building partnerships. He vowed to work with other Amazonian countries – including Peru, Colombia, Guyana and Venezuela – to work towards sustainable development in the region while also protecting key ecosystems, early in his presidency.

“There is no planetary security without a protected Amazon. We will do whatever it takes to have zero deforestation and degradations of our biomes. For this reason, I would like to announce that efforts to fight climate change will have the highest priority in my next government. We will prioritise the fight against deforestation of all of our biomes and reverse damage done in recent years by the previous government,” Lula said.

Indigenous Activists Tom Goldtooth & Eriel Deranger on the Link Between Colonialism & Climate Crisis

Weather disasters hit 90% of US counties in last 11 years, report finds

Ninety percent of the counties in the US suffered a weather disaster between 2011 and 2021, according to a new report. Some endured as many as 12 federally declared disasters over those 11 years. More than 300 million people – 93% of the population – live in these counties.

Rebuild by Design, which published the report, is a non-profit that researches ways to prepare for and adapt to climate change. It was started by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the catastrophic storm that slammed the eastern US just over 10 years ago, causing $62.5bn in damage.

Researchers had access to data from contractors who work closely with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), allowing them to analyze disasters and payouts down to the county level. They also looked at who is most vulnerable and compared how long people in different places are left without power after extreme weather.

California, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Iowa and Tennessee had the most disasters, at least 20 each, including severe storms, wildfire, flooding and landslides. But Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, North Dakota and Vermont received the most disaster funding per person. Amy Chester, managing director of Rebuild by Design and co-author of the report, said she was surprised to see some states getting more money to rebuild than others. That is partly because cost of living differs among states. So does the monetary value of what gets damaged or destroyed.

“Disaster funding is oftentimes skewed toward communities that are more affluent and have the most resources,” said Robert Bullard, an environmental and climate justice professor at Texas Southern University, who was not part of the team that wrote the report.

Devastating floods in Nigeria were 80 times more likely because of climate crisis

The heavy rain behind recent devastating flooding in Nigeria, Niger and Chad was made about 80 times more likely by the climate crisis, a study has found.

The finding is the latest stark example of the severe impacts that global heating is already wreaking on communities, even with just a 1C rise in global temperature to date. It adds pressure on the world’s nations at the UN Cop27 climate summit in Egypt to deliver meaningful action on protecting and compensating affected countries.

The floods that struck between June and November were among the deadliest on record in the region. Hundreds of people were killed, 1.5 million were displaced and more than 500,000 hectares of farmland was damaged.

The study, by an international team of climate scientists as part of the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, used weather data and computer models to compare the likelihood of the heavy rain in today’s heated world versus a world without global heating. Such rain would have been extremely rare without human-caused heating, they found, but is now expected once a decade. ...

The WWA study said the reason the floods were so disastrous was that people in the region were already very vulnerable to extreme weather, as a result of poverty, violent conflicts and political instability.


Also of Interest

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

Russia Continues to Escalate Electrical Grid/Infrastructure Attacks; Charges Over Attack on Poland Shift Focus from Damage

Another Ukrainian Missile Stunt

Top Zelensky advisor threatens war with Iran

Did Ukraine Just Quietly Drop Its Bid for NATO Entry?

How We Created A Population Incapable Of Radical Change

The Inter-American Commission’s Landmark Case

Chile’s Boric Addresses Ancestral Land Dispute

FTX Was Creating Money Out of Thin Air Like the Fed; and Trading Its Own “Stock” Like the Wall Street Mega Banks in their Dark Pools

'Break Up Ticketmaster,' Chorus of Lawmakers Demands Amid Taylor Swift Fiasco

Shakespeare portrait said to be only one made in his lifetime on sale for £10m

Meteorite that landed in Cotswolds may solve mystery of Earth’s water

NYC Film Fest Honors An Open N@zi From Ukraine

Zelensky LIES About Ukrainian Missile That Hit Poland, Billions In Funding MUST STOP

Israel Won't Cooperate With US FBI Investigation Into Shireen Abu Akleh's Death


A Little Night Music

Eddie Bond - One way ticket

Eddie Bond - Gonna rock my baby tonight

Eddie Bond - Slip, Slip, Slippin' In

Eddie Bond - Here Comes The Train

Eddie Bond - Tore up

Eddie Bond - I've Got A Woman

Eddie Bond - Boppin' Bonnie

Eddie Bond - Big Boss Man

Eddie Bond - No. 9 Train


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Comments

the vid is kinda psychedelic.
Wrote a better response earlier
but it got eaten in the ethers.

Thanks joe!

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6 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

heh, i hadn't noticed, i mostly listen to the videos and rarely watch them too carefully. i guess psychedelia probably was not eddie's intention. Smile

have a great evening!

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5 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

@QMS

that freight. Wink Good flic, like ya said.

be well and have a good one

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4 users have voted.

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

snoopydawg's picture

"We've got to pay our bills but the bottom line is we have got to get serious about getting our financial house in order."

So congress is once again bitching that they are spending too much money and that they must cut the budget for social programs after finding billions upon billions for Ukraine including paying their government’s bills whilst more Americans suffer every day. Ah well at least the shitlibs are upset about democrats not doing anything with the debt ceiling and not only blaming Manchin for it. They’re even calling out Schumer for his lack of b*lls and trying to make deals with McConnell.

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7 users have voted.

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

Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

this must be some sort of record if congressmen are bitching that we are spending too much on war. naturally, they will want to take it out of domestic spending on human needs priorities.

heh, the shitlibs might be close to learning something.

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5 users have voted.

when will the military budget exceed tax revenues? Last year?2003?

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5 users have voted.

On to Biden since 1973

joe shikspack's picture

@doh1304

working your way through government statistics to figure that out will be a difficult task.

i looked for some simple data in order to plot historical military spending vs. tax revenues, but it's not that simple apparently.

most military spending figures that are out there are misleading at best. most include the pentagon budget, but don't include spending on veterans or the portion of foreign aid that goes to military expenditures. i couldn't find any data on the portion of the homeland security budget that goes to protecting against foreign threats. and then there's the secret budgets and intel black budgets to account for.

the revenue side is a mess, too, since most revenue figures include fisa taxes so that the budget looks balanced, but of course this is misleading since that money is obligated (well unless you're a corporate party jackal intent on stealing it for your wall street cronies).

anyway, if you want a real answer, you might try pestering your congressworm's staff. they can probably get some government quant jock to give you an answer if they want to.

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5 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

Gee what a surprise huh? $2.3 billion here, $21 billion there and that adds up to a lot of fcking money that has gone missing. But sure it’s the social programs that are breaking the budget.

up
6 users have voted.

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

Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.

enhydra lutris's picture

Teehee - I'm lovin' it. I was gonna say "Where's Gen. Custer when you need him. but he perpetrated tons of evil before he got his handed to him, so it isn't really that funny. Assuming that they can force this renegade Supreme Court to recognize and enforce the clear wording of Article VI, paragraph 2, it would seem pretty clear that they have to seat Teehee. Given the very narrow margins in the House, that could turn the Cherokee into the tie-breaker and king-maker, which would be hilarious.

be well and have a good one.

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4 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

i guess that depends upon whether they agree to make teehee a voting member, or like one of the members from the wilds of d.c., puerto rico and american samoa. my guess is that they will try to seat teehee as a non-voting member.

i hope that teehee's ancestors were pretty specific about what sort of seat they wanted in the house.

have a great evening!

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6 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

@joe shikspack

and intent, and back when that treaty was written I don't think there was such a thing as a non-voting member.

be well and have a good one

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4 users have voted.

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

New interestingly sucks. Always good to know.
Thanks, joe.

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2 users have voted.

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

Kept me up half the night. As is my usual habit, I woke up after a couple hours sleep to take care of some personal needs and as usual went back and the brain decided that sleep wasn't on the agenda. So I brought up the beast and started perusing. You didn't disappoint. Lots of topics to fire up the brain cells.

The one that really caught my attention is How We Created A Population Incapable Of Radical Change (https://www.ianwelsh.net/how-we-created-a-population-incapable-of-radica...).

From the article:

Our education system, as anyone who had gone thru it knows is about sitting down, not talking unless giving permission, and giving teacher the answer they want the way they want it. Our adult lives are about giving the boss what they want, the way they want it. This is how we spend most of our time from about age five.

In our lives outside of work we make choices from menus. We don’t create almost anything ourselves: the possibilities are predetermined. Even if we help create something that is on one of the menus, we usually work on a small part of it at best. Our society creates, but as individuals almost none of us create anything, and almost never anything important.
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Our actual lives are about doing what we are told, and choosing from a list of choices created by other people.

We’re followers. Unimaginative followers.

We are taught compliance and the educational system forces it. When it fails, as it is, the followers fail also.

BTW, Ian Welch's next offering about Boeing is also very good. I've added him to my goto list.

Bit of a ramble, probably because of lack of sleep.

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