The Evening Blues - 11-3-17



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: B.B. King

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features The King of the Blues, B.B. King. Enjoy!

B.B. King - Lucille

"Politics have no relation to morals."

-- Niccolo Machiavelli


News and Opinion

Americans Want Indictments, Not Apologies, From Democrats

On November 2, 2017, an explosive Politico article authored by disgraced former DNC Chair Donna Brazile blew open one of many ongoing scandals enveloping the Democratic Party as its wounds following their humiliating 2016 defeat to Donald Trump continue to bleed out. ...

Brazile’s Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC sheds new light on the “corrupt” and “unethical” financial arrangements and political alliances that coalesced to favor Clinton for the Democratic Party’s nomination before any American had voted in the primary. While much of the information contained in Brazile’s confession was previously available, much if not all of the details regarding Clinton’s rigged primary had been previously downplayed or dismissed by the same corrupt mainstream media that abetted Clinton’s fraudulent primary to begin with, and was banking on her success in the general election. ...

Longtime Democratic Party hack Brent Budowsky penned a blistering response to the scandal, demanding the DNC owes Bernie Sanders and all Democrats an apology for allowing Sanders to collect over $200 million dollars from individual donors during 2016’s staged primary. Burdowsky is a curious choice as an author here, given his awareness the DNC’s primary was fraudulent all along.


Of course, an apology here is nowhere near enough. The Democrats owe the American people — particularly Sanders voters whose time, money, and votes the Party stole — the guarantee of a thorough and transparent investigation into the civil and criminal wrongdoing associated with the Party’s financial and political arrangements that were made behind closed doors. To knowingly deny voters truthful information about a Party and its candidates as it asks for financial contributions and civic engagement is inexcusable, if not outright criminal.


Twitter’s Lawyer Admits Hiding Tweets With ‘#DNCLeak’ And ‘#PodestaEmails’ Hashtags

Twitter admittedly censored large amounts of information referencing Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”) published prior to the 2016 presidential election.

In prepared testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism delivered on October 31, Twitter’s acting general counsel Sean J. Edgett acknowledged this large scale effort to hide political information by noting, “Before the election, we…took action on activity relating to hashtags that have since been reported as manifestations of efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.”

With respect to #DNCLeak, approximately 23,000 users posted around 140,000 unique Tweets with that hashtag in the relevant period. Of those Tweets, roughly 2% were from Russian-linked accounts. As noted above, our automated systems at the time detected, labeled, and hid just under half (48%) of all the original Tweets with #DNCLeak.

In total, Twitter is effectively admitting to have hidden roughly 64,000 tweets referencing the leaked DNC emails. The total number of tweets using #DNCLeak from “Russian-linked accounts” hidden by Twitter was less than 3,000. ...

In the two months preceding the election, around 57,000 users posted approximately 426,000 unique Tweets containing variations of the #PodestaEmails hashtag. Approximately one quarter (25%) of those Tweets received internal tags from our automation detection systems that hid them from searches.

In sum, Twitter’s censorship of Podesta-related information blocked users from viewing roughly 106,000 tweets with the #PodestaEmails hashtag. Edgett attributes Twitter’s reasoning for hiding the Podesta-related tweets from Twitter users simply by reference to the source of their publication: Wikileaks.


“Hurr, Durr, It’s A Conspiracy Theory!”

An excerpt from Donna Brazile’s upcoming book has been published in Politico, in which the corrupt weasel who’s been sleazing her way up the DC political ladder since the Dukakis campaign flips on Hillary Clinton and former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to make herself look like a virtuous hero. The first rat to bail from a sinking ship. ...

In revelation after revelation, people’s suspicions that their will was being actively subverted by forces beyond their control have been confirmed as new revelations come to light. Mainstream official narratives repeated over and over again as fact in confident-sounding voices by professional pundits are proving less reliable in interpreting what’s going on in the world than our own independent research and perspectives. You hear what they want you to hear, and what they want you to hear is a narrative that bolsters the agendas of the plutocracy whose neoliberal neoconservative agendas the two establishment parties exist to promote.

Did you know that the majority of Democrats now have a favorable opinion of George W Bush? Nothing has changed since he was considered the scourge of the earth — the million Iraqis he butchered aren’t any less dead, the Orwellian surveillance program he helped institute in the wake of 9/11 hasn’t gotten any less Orwellian, the crony capitalist programs he bolstered haven’t gotten any less pernicious. The only thing that has changed is the narrative surrounding him. Democrats are being told that neocons are good because they oppose Trump, so they love George W Bush now.

This is a perfect illustration of how the narratives people are fed by the mainstream media have nothing to do with facts or reality; Bush didn’t get any better, Democrats were simply manipulated into liking him now. If the establishment pundits and presstitutes play their cards right they could get a workable majority of Americans to approve or disapprove of pretty much anyone. If it were in the establishment’s interests the plutocrats who own the media could have had Rachel Maddow and Chris Cuomo telling Americans every night that John Podesta was involved in a pedophile ring associated with a James Alefantis pizza parlor, and they’d be swallowing it just like they’re swallowing the evidence-free Russia conspiracy theories now.

DNC Chair Admits Primary Was Rigged Against Bernie!

Trump Accuses Clinton of Deliberately Losing Election So He Could Be Impeached

In what might be his most startling allegation against his former election opponent, Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Hillary Clinton of deliberately losing the 2016 election just so that he could be impeached.

“How could one of the most experienced politicians in history lose to the most unfit candidate ever?” Trump asked reporters. “Crooked Hillary lost on purpose because she wanted me to be impeached.” ...

“I don’t know if Hillary Clinton lost the election on her own,” Trump said. “Maybe she asked the Russians to help her lose. But the fact is, Hillary Clinton deliberately plotted to put me in the White House, and the American people should be very angry about that.”

An excellent article worth a full read. Here's a taste:

For NYT, Making the Democrats Safe for the Oligarchy Is Literally Job One

Reviewing The Family, a history of the owners of the New York Times, veteran Times reporter John L. Hess (Extra!, 1–2/00) summarized the book’s account of how dynasty founder Adolph Ochs was able to purchase the paper in 1896:

How did Ochs, a virtual bankrupt from Chattanooga, persuade Wall Street to set him up with the moribund New York Times? Answer: The financiers were anxious to keep the paper alive as a Democratic voice against the populist Democratic candidate for president, William Jennings Bryan, who was stirring the masses with that speech about the Cross of Gold. Ochs bought a fine new suit, set up a fake bank account as reference, and persuaded J.P. Morgan and others to bankroll the purchase. His paper promptly pilloried Bryan, and Ochs marched with his staff in a businessmen’s parade against him.

It’s striking how more than a century later, the Times still plays the same role in Democratic politics—defending the party’s Big Money wing against populist encroachments. (See, e.g., FAIR.org, 7/29/13, 11/27/16, 6/23/17, 7/6/17.) But rarely has the paper’s pleading on behalf of elite interests in the Democratic Party been as frenetic as it has lately.

Last week, the paper published an op-ed by Douglas Schoen, “Why Democrats Need Wall Street” (10/18/17). Who is Douglas Schoen, you might ask? He’s billed by the Times as having been “a pollster and senior political adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000.” More relevantly to the current century, he’s a corporate PR consultant who works for the likes of Walmart, AT&T, Time Warner, Procter & Gamble and GlaxoSmithKline. ...

Nevertheless, with no warning label, the Times presented Schoen’s advice to Democratic Party:

If the party is going to have any chance of returning to its position of influence and appeal, Democrats need to work with Wall Street to push policies that create jobs, heal divisions and stimulate the American economy.

Aside from making the obvious point that Wall Street has a lot of money and will give the Democrats some if they make themselves useful, Schoen’s argument is dubious. “Despite what the Democratic left says, America is a center-right, pro-capitalist nation,” he declares, citing polling that 60 percent in the US still have a positive view of capitalism, with socialism viewed favorably by only 35 percent—as if only socialists want politicians to stand up to Wall Street.

Racial tensions exploited by US media & politicians yet Russia’s to blame

Prosecutor seeks to investigate Afghan war crimes allegations – and claims of US torture

The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court is seeking approval to investigate allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, including possible torture by US forces and the CIA.

If authorised, the investigation would also look at crimes allegedly committed by armed opposition groups, such as the Taliban, and Afghan government forces.

The ICC chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said in a report last year that the US military and the CIA may have committed war crimes by torturing detainees in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2014.

Her request comes after an unusually long preliminary process, which has dragged on for 10 years because of a lack of capacity at the court as well as lobbying from the Afghan government, which tried to block it. The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, met with Bensouda as late as September during the UN general assembly.

Crimes to be investigated include crimes against humanity and war crimes such as murder, imprisonment, targeting humanitarian workers, use of child soldiers and carrying out executions without sentencing from the formal legal system. The ultimate focus, Bensouda said, would be “upon those most responsible for the most serious crimes”.

Time running out for North Korea: McMaster

US President Donald Trump's 12-day trip to Asia will demonstrate America's commitment to the Indo-Pacific, encourage China to do more on trade issues, and convince the region "we are running out of time" to halt North Korea's pursuit of nuclear missiles.

Mr Trump's national security adviser, HR McMaster, offered a preview of the president's trip that will take him to Hawaii, Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

"The president recognises that we're running out of time and will ask all nations to do more," General McMaster, describing the North Korean threat, told reporters at a White House press conference on Thursday.

Turkish troops, Kurdish militants clash near Iraqi border, 25 killed: army

Turkish security forces killed 17 Kurdish militants near the border between Iraq and southeast Turkey, the armed forces said on Thursday, after eight members of Turkey’s security forces were killed in clashes.

Early on Thursday, Turkish forces killed five Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in clashes after the militants sought to cross the border into Hakkari province’s mountainous Semdinli district, the armed forces said in a statement.

It said six Turkish soldiers and two members of the country’s state-backed village guard militia were killed in the fighting.

An interesting article with far more information than can be fairly excerpted here.

NSA wanted to use the Espionage Act to prosecute a journalist for using FOIA

Declassified documents in the Central Intelligence Agency’s archives show that while the CIA was looking to include the Freedom Of Information Act in its war on leaks, the National Security Agency was seriously considering using the Espionage Act to target target Puzzle Palace author James Bamford for using FOIA.

While Bamford has briefly discussed this on a handful of occasions, the declassified memos and briefings from NSA confirm that this was more than just an intimidation tactic or a passing thought - the NSA had truly wanted to jail a journalist for his use of public records. When the Agency determined that this was unlikely to happen, they moved on to exploring other legal avenues which could be used to punish Bamford for his FOIA work. ....

A September 1982 Congressional briefing for both the Senate and House intelligence committees and sent to the CIA Director shows that the desire to prosecute Bamford under the Espionage Act wasn’t a passing thought, but a long-term desire of the NSA’s.

Documents Raise Fears of Pentagon Domestic Spying

Trump wants to keep our draconian surveillance laws. Don't let him do it

Lost amid the constant headlines about hearings on social media companies and Russia, is that Congress is having the most important debate on privacy rights in years. While it’s an uphill battle, if enough pressure is put on representatives in the coming months, there is a real chance some of the most controversial NSA surveillance powers exposed by Edward Snowden could be substantially restricted.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) – the controversial spying provision that allows the NSA to spy on hundreds of thousands of foreign individuals and warrantless access to Americans’ emails – expires at the end of the year. The Trump administration and intelligence agencies are lobbying for the law to be permanently reauthorized, but a bipartisan coalition of congressmen are pushing for important reforms.

How many Americans are affected by the law? We literally have no idea – because the government refuses to disclose it. But we do know it’s likely unconstitutional. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have been challenging the constitutionality of the law for years, but so far the government has thrown up so many procedural and catch-22 secrecy hurdles, there’s never been a definitive ruling on the law.

The gold standard, the “USA Rights Act”, written by Democrat Ron Wyden, Republican Rand Paul – and co-sponsored by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – provides several robust reforms while keeping the least controversial parts of the program intact. The EFF has an easy-to-use tool that allows you to contact your member of Congress to make your voice heard. I would implore everyone, no matter what state you live in, to do so immediately.

'Puigdemont's fate is now in the hands of Belgium'

Spanish judge to grill Catalan separatists – except Puigdemont

Spain is set for another day of high drama in the Catalonia crisis on Thursday with a judge in Madrid to grill the deposed leaders of the region’s separatist government. Notable by his likely absence, however, will be the dismissed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who is in Brussels and according to his lawyer refusing to come. “He will not go to Madrid and I have suggested that he be questioned here in Belgium,” Paul Bekaert told Spain’s TV3 television on Wednesday. ...

Puigdemont, 54, has dismissed the accusations as politically motivated and on Tuesday said he would remain in Brussels until he had guarantees that any proceedings would be impartial. In a statement, he said there was a concerted effort to divide his government. Some will go before a national audience “to denounce the drive of Spanish justice to pursue political ideas,” while others “will stay in Brussels to decry this political process to the international community,” he wrote.

Puigdemont has retained the support of many in Catalonia, whose people are fiercely proud of their language and culture. Maria Angels Selgas, a 60-year-old sales manager in Barcelona, said that for her, Puigdemont was still the Catalan president. “If they humiliate him then they humiliate also the more than two million Catalans who voted ‘yes’ in the referendum,” she told AFP.

Scottish lawmakers call for international recognition for Catalan independence

Pro-independence Scottish lawmakers have presented a motion in their devolved parliament urging international recognition of Catalonia’s unilateral declaration of independence from Spain, putting pressure on Scotland’s leader to endorse the movement.

Scotland’s pro-independence First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has criticized Madrid’s handling of the crisis with its northern region but refrained from backing the declaration. The European Union, which she would like to see admitting a future independent Scotland, has backed Spain’s central government.

According to the website of the Scottish parliament, the lawmakers’ motion called on “the international community to recognize the vote of the Catalan parliament for an independent republic of Catalonia”.

Yanis Varoufakis on Global Capitalism & How Trump’s Tax Plan is Class War Against the Poor

Recycled GOP Promises of ‘Trickle Down’

It is really important that the Republican Party decorated its Tax Cuts and Jobs Act with the word “Jobs” because the GOP is going to sell this to their base using the magical thinking that giving a big tax cut to corporations is giving a big raise to workers. The idea is that you give more money to big businesses. The executives, in turn, will take that excess money and trickle it down onto their employees in the form of raises.

This wishful thinking is predicated on the people at the top suddenly feeling compelled to share this new windfall when they’ve refused to share all the windfalls of the past. For some reason, that didn’t happen with the previous two big tax cuts (Reagan/BushII) and, of course, GOP supporters of this deal say “middle class hasn’t gotten a raise in decades,” without pointing out that the severe wage/income gap began with the coming of Ronald Reagan’s tax cut (the graphed data is stark) and it has continued unabated, George W. Bush’s tax cuts be damned. ...

If the Republican tax cut comes through you can expect some profit-taking. The market has been rising on speculation of a tax cut, after all. Why not visit Wall Street’s magical ATM machine? And just like the previous two tax cuts (Reagan/BushII), this will put money in the hands of the people at the top who’ve shown since 1981 that they have no inclination to share their wealth with “the workers” in the form of raises, in spite of their own meteoric compensation.

Why would they hand out higher wages now … particularly with a whole new robotic workforce on the horizon? Why not hoard the wealth and take advantage of the initial cut to, and the eventual end of, the estate tax, which already only applies to multimillionaires and – through its elimination – will allow wealth to be passed on from one generation of plutocrats to the next? So, why not cement your own family’s elite position before the next shock? And why give raises to people who’ve become grateful to just have a job … or two jobs, as the case may be?

Republican Tax Plan Milks Blue States to Pay for Cuts for the Rich

The most recent version of the Republican tax plan unveiled Thursday leaves Republicans representing blue states in a tough spot, threatening to derail the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act train just as it’s leaving the station.

Subsidizing tax cuts for the wealthy by making middle-class people in Democratic-leaning states pay more might make for satisfying politics for House Republicans, but the math will be difficult for them. The issue comes down to state and local taxes. Blue states tend to have higher rates, along with the better social outcomes that come with them. Taxpayers are able to write off the amount they pay in state and local taxes on their federal taxes.

Some Republicans want to end that entirely, but the House Committee on Ways and Means indicated last week that it would likely preserve a more limited version of the state and local tax, or SALT, deductions. The version of the plan released Thursday morning, however, eliminated them entirely, leaving only some relief — capped at $10,000 — for property owners. Now the question is whether Republicans from high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, and California, which were opposed to the repeal, will ultimately decide to support what could be their party’s first major legislative achievement of the year. ...

Rolling back SALT deductions is seen by the GOP as a way to balance out the estimated $1.3 trillion the plan’s tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy could add to the deficit, with state and local deductions accounting for about a third of that amount. Republican representatives in blue states already see themselves as subsidizing the rest of the country with high tax rates, meaning a repeal of the state and local deductions could be seen as adding insult to injury. “The issue is that states like mine … pay more than we get back,” MacArthur said. “Of course, [other states] have lower taxes in some cases because we’re not only paying for our poor people, we’re paying for their poor people.”



the evening greens


US Climate Assessment Exposes 'Simply Terrifying' Recklessness of Trump

With the release of its National Climate Assessment on Friday, the U.S. government has released a report—which states the current period is "now the warmest in the history of modern civilization"—that critics say directly and irrefutably undermines the climate denialism and inaction of President Donald Trump and his administration.

Mandated by law and released every four years, the Fourth National Climate Assessment (or NCA4)—which states that recent years have seen "record-breaking, climate-related weather extremes, and the last three years have been the warmest years on record for the globe"— concludes (with emphasis in the original) that "based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence."

Despite that being the declared consensus from the global scientific community for years, the Trump administration has done nearly everything in its power to cast doubt by embracing the denialism pushed by the fossil fuel industry. Instead of offering solutions to the crisis, the administration has been hard at work doing the bidding of the oil and gas industries while rolling back efforts—both domestically and internationally—meant to combat the threat of human-caused global warming.

As the Washington Post reports, the Trump administration did not try to block the publication of the report even though "its findings sharply contradict the administration's policies." According to the Post:

The report’s release underscores the extent to which the machinery of the federal scientific establishment, operating in multiple agencies across the government, continues to grind on even as top administration officials have minimized or disparaged its findings. Federal scientists have continued to author papers and issue reports on climate change, for example, even as political appointees have altered the wording of news releases or blocked civil servants from speaking about their conclusions in public forums. The climate assessment process is dictated by a 1990 law that Democratic and Republican administrations have followed.

The good news about the new assessment, according to Wolf, is that it shows "scientists can beat Trump's climate censorship if they speak out bravely."

From Miami to Shanghai: 3C of warming will leave world cities below sea level

Hundreds of millions of urban dwellers around the world face their cities being inundated by rising seawaters if latest UN warnings that the world is on course for 3C of global warming come true, according to a Guardian data analysis. Famous beaches, commercial districts and swaths of farmland will be threatened at this elevated level of climate change, which the UN warned this week is a very real prospect unless nations reduce their carbon emissions.

Data from the Climate Central group of scientists analysed by Guardian journalists shows that 3C of global warming would ultimately lock in irreversible sea-level rises of perhaps two metres. Cities from Shanghai to Alexandria, and Rio to Osaka are among the worst affected. Miami would be inundated - as would the entire bottom third of the US state of Florida.

The Guardian has found, however, that local preparations for a 3C world are as patchy as international efforts to prevent it from happening. At six of the coastal regions most likely to be affected, government planners are only slowly coming to grips with the enormity of the task ahead - and in some cases have done nothing. ...

In Miami - which would be almost entirely below sea level even at 2C warming - the sense of urgency is evident at city hall, where commissioners are asking voters to approve a “Miami Forever” bond in the November ballot that includes $192m for upgrading pump stations, expanding drainage systems, elevating roads and building dykes.

Canada approves plan to build ski resort on land held sacred by indigenous people

Canada’s highest court has given developers the green light to build a 6,250-bed ski resort on land considered sacred by an indigenous community in British Columbia, in a landmark court case that pitted religious rights against the controversial project.

The case centred around a proposal for a year-round ski resort on the site of an abandoned sawmill in south-eastern British Columbia. Plans for the Jumbo Glacier Resort include as many as 23 ski lifts, a gondola to ferry visitors into the soaring mountain peaks as well as accommodation for thousands of overnight guests.

The project met with stiff resistance from the Ktunaxa Nation, whose traditional connection to the land stretches back millennia. For hundreds of generations they have revered the area, which they call Qat’muk, as home of the Grizzly Bear Spirit. The community worried that development would drive away the spirit – who figures prominently in their religious beliefs – turning their prayers and ceremonies into empty gestures. They pursued the issue in court, arguing that the destruction of their sacred site was a violation of their religious freedom. ...

In a decision released on Thursday, the supreme court ruled that the project could proceed on the grounds of public interest. The majority of the judges found that the community’s freedom of religion had not been breached and noted that it is not the state’s duty to protect the Grizzly Bear Spirit. ...

The Ktunaxa Nation said on Thursday that they were disappointed by the decision. “With this decision, the supreme court of Canada is telling every indigenous person in Canada that your culture, history and spirituality, all deeply linked to the land, are not worthy of legal protection from the constant threat of destruction,” said Kathryn Teneese, the Ktunaxa Nation council chair. “We’re not opposed to people experiencing that place, we’re not opposed to people going there,” she added. “And I want to make that very clear – we’re not saying it’s off limits, we’re just saying it’s off limits to development.”


Also of Interest

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

Angry About the DNC Scandal? Thank Obama.

Media Spent Months Lionizing General Who Defended Slaveholders’ Revolt

Moscow Mueller: What the Indictments and Plea Agreements Mean for Donald Trump

Seven months long, 1,800 out … epic strike mirrors US unions' fight to survive

The Bitter Irony about Today’s “Real Disposable Income”


A Little Night Music

B.B. King - The Thrill Is Gone

B.B. King - Chains And Things

B.B. King - Never Make Your Move Too Soon

BB King - Why I Sing The Blues

Ray Charles & B.B. King - Sinners Prayer

BB King - Hummingbird

Jerry Reed & B.B. King - In the Sack

BB King - You're gonna miss me

B.B. King - 1997 Jazzopen Stuttgart


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Arrow's picture

So...How is #DemExit looking now? Pretty damn smart.
Gotta love B. B. He was one of the few who was able to break though to commercial success. And in so doing, influenced lots of others.
Love that Jimmy Dire gloat.

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I want a Pony!

joe shikspack's picture

@Arrow

#demexit was a great idea. i can only hope that americans catch on now that the 1% has finally shoved it right in their faces that the system is utterly corrupt and it's time for a total reboot.

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divineorder's picture

...

What a narcissistic dickhead.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Amanda Matthews's picture

@divineorder @divineorder @divineorder @divineorder
for a head and your remark;

What a narcissistic dickhead.

are really all that needs be included in any history book references to his ‘administration”.

I wonder, is his dislike of Clinton part of the reason he sabotaged the DNC? Was it possibly a way to put her her at a disadvantage during her inevitable future campaign?

EDIT: in/is
EDIT: the last sentence made NO sense
EDIT EDIT EDIT: last paragraph was still incomplete.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

@divineorder is that by blaming Obama squarely, that does seemingly let Shillary off the hook a bit, especially when the author points out how Her paid off it's debts. Just my take.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

divineorder's picture

@lizzyh7

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@divineorder of us, hard as that seems to fathom. They use every little opportunity to hone their spin.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

joe shikspack's picture

@divineorder

if i might offer a friendly amendment, that might more accurately read, "narcissistic, mass-murdering, war criminal dickhead."

cheers! Smile

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OLinda's picture

Americans Want Indictments, Not Apologies, From Democrats

I am so disgusted, sick about this. Of course we all knew it. I Demexited way back when, March 2016 I think, because of it. I didn't vote for my Dem congressman or Dem senator because they used their superdelegate votes for Hillary when the state and my congressman's district voted for Bernie.

There should be some kind of restitution for all of the people who contributed to Bernie's campaign. It's not his fault so he shouldn't have to pay it back. I don't know how to arrange it. It sucks mightily.

And, btw, Bernie would have won.

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joe shikspack's picture

@OLinda

yep, they owe us our democracy back. i'd like to banish all of them to some land mass where they can redeem themselves over the course of several generations, perhaps like australia. failing that, i vaguely remember reading that what is now the state of georgia started out as a penal colony...

actually, the thing that has been bothering me today, was reading brazile's narrative about calling bernie, telling him that, indeed, the system was rigged by clinton - and bernie didn't stand up for himself, or more importantly, all of the people whose energies had gone into his campaign.

some people would probably say that bernie did the pragmatic thing in the situation, hoping to stop trump from taking office, but he failed at that, too. and let's not forget, if clinton had won under the circumstances, bernie would have succeeded in putting someone he knew to be of very low character into high office.

i consider bernie's failure to fight the power (if brazile's narrative is true) to be an enormous collapse of character and decency. his lack of response did a lot more than hurt his campaign and all of his supporters. his lack of response injured what remains of our democracy by his refusal to demand that it be put right at a time when it would have made a real difference.

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OLinda's picture

"Politics have no relation to morals."

however, budgets are moral documents.

(Generally attributed to MLK.)

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divineorder's picture

...

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

on the Clinton Creature that with less money going to local Dem races, she'd end up with Repugnant dominated state legislatures as well as Congress. Ya think? s/

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

joe shikspack's picture

@lizzyh7

i dunno. it appeared to me that obama couldn't wait for the democrat majorities that existed when he took office to vanish so that he could justify his continual move to the right.

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janis b's picture

Thanks for the New Yorker piece. I love this satire of what Trump could be thinking, as the crazy and unreal person that he is. Only he is real, and his craziness is frighteningly destructive and sinister.

Especially thanks for the great B.B. King selections.

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joe shikspack's picture

@janis b

i ran across that piece when i desperately needed some comic relief. i'm glad that you got a kick out of it, too.

i love me some bb. i'm always glad when his turn on the wheel comes up. Smile

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