The Evening Blues - 12-19-18



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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Howlin' Wolf

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago bluesman Howlin' Wolf. Enjoy!

Howlin Wolf - Watergate Blues

"Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda."

-- Hannah Arendt


News and Opinion

This Isn’t News. This Is War Crimes Apologia.


The fact that George W Bush has given Michelle Obama two pieces of candy is once again making headlines in mainstream outlets like Time, The Hill, and Newsweek. He has not given her any new pieces of candy since the last time he did so at his father’s funeral. He also has not ceased to be the man who facilitated the murder of a million Iraqis and inflicted a whole new level of military expansionism and Orwellian surveillance upon our world. As near as I can tell, the only reason this story is once again making headlines is because Michelle Obama and the mainstream media have decided to bring it up again. ...

If you’re starting to feel like attempts to rehabilitate George W Bush’s image are being aggressively shoved down your throat by the mass media at every opportunity, it’s because that is exactly what is happening. ... The last Bush appreciation blitz was less than two weeks ago. Make no mistake, this relentless, aggressive campaign to rehabilitate George W Bush whether you like it or not is actually a campaign to rehabilitate what he did and the mass media’s unforgivable complicity in it. The mass media failed spectacularly to practice due diligence and hold power to account in the lead-up to the illegal and unconscionable Iraq invasion, not just the ghouls at Fox News but respected centrist outlets like CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post as well. ...

In an environment where the New York Times is instructing its readers how to “help fight the information wars” against Russia, the BBC is coaching its audience to scream the word “whataboutism” whenever a skeptic of establishment Russia narratives brings up Iraq, and the US Secretary of Defense is claiming that Putin is trying to “undermine America’s moral authority,” the massive credibility hit that imperial media and institutions took by deceiving the world into the destruction of Iraq matters. Propaganda is a lot more important in cold war than in hot war since avoiding direct military confrontation limits the options of the participants, and Iraq is a giant bullet hole in the narrative of US moral authority which Moscow is rightly all too happy to point out.

Without the claim of moral authority, none of America’s manipulations against Russia make any sense. It’s absurd for America to spend years shrieking about Russian election meddling after it openly rigged Russia’s elections in the nineties, unless America claims that it rigged Russia’s elections for moral reasons while Russia rigged America’s elections for immoral reasons. It makes no sense to have mainstream western media outlets uncritically manufacturing support for wars and coaching their audiences on how to help government agencies fight “information wars” against Russia while also criticizing RT as “state media”, unless you can say that western media functions as an arm of the US government for moral reasons while RT does so for immoral reasons. It makes no sense for the US to criticize Russian military interventionism when the US is vastly more guilty of vastly more egregious forms of military interventionism, unless the US can claim its interventionism is moral while Russia’s is immoral. For this reason it’s been necessary to rehabilitate the image of the Iraq invasion, and since there is no aspect of the Iraq invasion itself that isn’t soaked in blood and gore, they are rehabilitating its most recognizable face instead.

Integrity Initiative: 'Anti-Russia crusade' funded by UK govt revealed

Freedom Rider: UK and US PSYOP Collusion

For more than two years the corporate media, elite think tanks, NATO leaders, and most Democratic Party politicians have insisted that Russia interferes in American and European elections. The charge doesn’t withstand scrutiny but the lies are repeated. There is proof that surveillance state meddling in the affairs of democratic nations is real, but Russia isn’t the culprit. It is the United Kingdom and the United States who lead in skullduggery and meddling with the rights they claim to uphold. Thanks to the Anonymous hacker community the work of the Integrity Initiative has been exposed to the public. The Integrity Initiative is a British “charity” founded in 2015. Its mission is to “bring to the attention of politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North America.” That mission is suspect in and of itself, a phony trope meant to cover up its own imperialist wrong doing. The Integrity Initiative is an arm of the British government and has received more than $2 million in funding from the British Foreign Office and Defense department. It has also raised money from NATO, Facebook and rightwing foundations.

The Integrity Initiative is a means of undermining the sovereignty of the British people by manipulating them with lies. It engaged in numerous efforts to libel Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and prevent him from ever being elected prime minister. Corbyn has been accused of Soviet era espionage, anti-Semitism and anything else his enemies choose to use against him. Academics and writers who spoke out against UK involvement in attacks on Syria were likewise targeted by The Times and other influential British media. The reporters involved were part of this Integrity Initiative campaign. The attacks are consistent and are obviously coordinated at a very high level. ...

When Integrity Initiative isn’t planning to start wars it plots to interfere in the affairs of other countries through orchestrated “clusters” of journalists and academics. The Spanish cluster quashed the appointment of a new defense secretary through the use of a coordinated social media campaign. They were also involved in subverting the Catalan independence vote. After Julian Assange revealed the extent of interference in Spain the cluster targeted the Ecuadorean government to end his asylum. Clusters are operating not just in the UK and Spain but in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway and Lithuania. There is evidence that the Integrity Initiative sent an operative into the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. An Englishman named Simon Bracey-Lane got much media attention for volunteering in the Sanders Iowa caucus campaign. Bracey-Lane is now a research fellow at the Institute for Statecraft, the Integrity Initiative’s parent company. There was foreign meddling in the 2016 election but it came from British spooks like Christopher Steele and undercover operatives, not Russian agents.

The only Americans aware of the Integrity Initiative are those who use social media to gather information outside of the corporate media bubble. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC haven’t covered this story. They repeat what Robert Mueller says about crooked and amateurish Trump allies who cheat on taxes or pay off porn stars. They repeat flimsy evidence of Russian collusion while America’s allies in the UK cheat their own citizens of their rights.

Bigoted Paternalism Behind “Russians Targeted African-Americans” NY Times Article

The outlandish “Russian interference” narrative just took a turn from the banal to blatantly disrespectful. For the past two years, the punditry on the supposed left have been peddling the lie that the thousands of dollars spent on Facebook and Google ads—purportedly at the behest of Putin—had more impact on the outcome of the 2016 elections than the billions of dollars that were unleashed by corporations, lobbyists and the dark moneyed oligarchs. This week, the New York Timesdecided to stop insulting our intelligence and instead chose to insult decency. According to an article written by Scott Shane and Sheera Frenkel, Russians allegedly unleashed an intricate plot to targeted African-Americans in order to foment discontent and dupe “black people” to vote against their self-interest. The corporate recorders at the Times would have us believe that the reason African-Americans did not uniformly vote for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is because they were too dimwitted to think for themselves and were subsequently manipulated by foreign agents. This yellow press drivel is nothing more than propaganda that could have been written by George Wallace.

Sure enough, within short order, the “liberal” establishment latched on to this pathetic and racist story line to feign shock and dismay that Trump and his allies took advantage of the weak and vulnerable. With rank paternalism and bigotry worthy of David Duke, these supposed progressives are inferring that we can’t think for ourselves and that only they can act on our behalf. We are “their Negroes” and if we are not walking in lock step with Democrats, it’s not because we are critical thinkers but because we are fragile people who need to be spoken for. The insidious undertones of the New York Times article is straight out of the COINTELPRO playbook that was deployed during the Civil Rights Era to dismiss the frustrations of African-Americans. J. Edgar Hoover would have been proud of Scott, Sheera and the editors at “the Grey Lady,” after all he used the same feigned concerns for “black folks” to smear anyone who dared to speak against a repressive system of racism that was bludgeoning the masses from Selma to Boston and beyond. The insinuation back then was that “Negroes” were protesting because of Soviet influence, surely it had nothing to do with the fire hoses, German Shepherds and horse hooves that were being deployed to segregate people in their place. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Once again, the New York Timesdusts off their blueprint from the past while Democrats channel their inner Joseph McCarthy. ...

To be honest, this entire Russian farce is not only insulting to African-Americans but to every American. Our elections have been subverted a long time ago, the lesser of two evils a Democracy does not make. The Democrat and Republican Parties are wholly owned subsidiaries of the military-financial racket, they give us platitudes and rhetoric while policies are reserved for the richest 1%. Russians did not undermine our elections, Citizens United and the billions of unaccounted dollars did that long before 2016. Mainstream media “journalists” would write about this and speak up against this cancer that eats away at our Republic if they too were not muzzled by the paychecks they are getting from their corporate overlords.

Overwhelmed by Yellow Vest protests, French police launch ‘slow-down strike’

Inspectors Find Big Cyber Vulnerabilities in US Missile Defense System

Critical cyber vulnerabilities could allow adversaries to undermine the system of interceptors and sensors that protect U.S. territory from enemy missiles, the Pentagon’s inspector general said in a new report.

Much of the Dec. 10 report is redacted to hide the names of the five facilities and components that were under scrutiny. But the readable portions paint a picture of failures to take even the sort of basic cyber security precautions that are standard in business, such as enabling two-factor authentication, encrypting files that are removable, physically locking up server racks, and using cybersecurity software to detect intrusions.

“The disclosure of technical details could allow U.S. adversaries to circumvent BMDS capabilities, leaving the United States vulnerable to deadly missile attacks,” the report said.

Colombia: six killed at site of notorious 1990s massacre as violence returns

Six people have been killed in a remote Colombian town notorious as the site of one of the worst massacres of the country’s civil war, stoking fears that the brutal violence of the past has returned. ...

The Colombian government signed a peace deal with leftist insurgents the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc) in late 2016, formally ending 52 years of civil war that left more than 260,000 dead and 7 million displaced. The military and state-aligned paramilitary groups contributed to the bloodshed. That deal was supposed to usher in a new, peaceful chapter in Colombia’s history, but atrocities continue at an alarming pace. At least seven massacres have been committed by myriad groups since March last year, while murders of human rights defenders and local activists have soared since the signing of the peace deal.

Mapiripán has been a byword for atrocity since July 1997, when a paramilitary death squad armed with chainsaws and machetes beheaded and butchered dozens of people suspected of collaborating with the rebels. ... It is not yet clear who is responsible for the latest massacre. Authorities have speculated that it is the result of a dispute between local drug trafficking gangs.

The region, a key drug trafficking corridor, has long been frequented by Farc dissidents who chose not to lay their weapons following the 2016 deal, as well as resurgent paramilitary groups who ignored their own demobilisation process in 2006.

Dem senator: Bombshell Facebook report shows need for federal privacy law

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Tuesday cited a bombshell New York Times report about Facebook providing access to users' data to other companies in order to revive calls for a federal privacy law. "It has never been more clear. We need a federal privacy law. They are never going to volunteer to do the right thing. The (Federal Trade Commission) needs to be empowered to oversee big tech," Schatz tweeted.

The senator confirmed in a separate tweet that his comment came after reading a New York Times story revealed that the social media giant granted major tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix previously undisclosed access to users' personal data.

The news outlet cited interviews with dozens of former employees and hundreds of documents from the social media platform that showed the company allowed Microsoft's Bing search engine to view the names of Facebook users' friends without consent; allowed Netflix and Spotify to read users' private messages; and allowed Amazon to obtain users' names and contact information.

Facebook's Director of Privacy and Public Policy, Steve Satterfield, told The Hill in a statement that none of the arrangements violated users' privacy agreements, or a deal between Facebook and the FTC.

Slate’s Readers May Be Liberal, but Its Labor Politics Are Kochian

While successful unionization drives and contract settlements have been common in the digital media-sphere for the last several years, the sector just may see its first strike. Union members at Slate, represented by the Writers Guild of America East, voted 52 to 1 last week to authorize a strike (Bloomberg, 12/11/18), and the sticking point is an interesting one: The company refuses to back down from its demand that a contract make union fees optional, creating a so-called “right-to-work” environment that unions regard as union-busting. ...

Imposing “right-to-work,” or the option for workers in a unionized workplace to opt out of the union without paying union dues or agency shop fees, has long been a campaign of the US right. These “right-to-work” laws are on the books in more than half the states, and as of this summer, they apply to all public-sector unions, thanks to the Supreme Court decision Janus v. AFSCME, which overturned a four-decade old precedent. In Washington, DC, where the Slate Group is based (it’s controlled by the Graham family, which used to own the Washington Post), there are no “right-to-work” laws for the private sector, but Slate is trying impose them through bargaining. That WGAE members are threatening a strike over this says how much of an affront to union power such a demand is.

“We just feel that it’s a total and absolute betrayal of Slate’s most fundamental values,” Slate writer and union activist Mark Joseph Stern told Bloomberg. Slate is hardly an anti-capitalist news website, but it’s noted by critics and supporters alike for its fairly nuanced takes on politics and the economy, generally seen as coming from the center-left. Pew Research Center (10/20/14) found that Slate’s audience, alongside that of the New Yorker, was more “consistently liberal” than consumers of other mainstream outlets, including NPR, the Daily Show, Huffington Post and MSNBC. ...

Regardless of whether there is a strike, or whether this language appears in the final collective bargaining agreement, the damage to Slate’s reputation goes beyond the bargaining table. How can readers take seriously critical commentary on Republican tax cuts, or the administration’s attack of the Affordable Care Act, when the company has allied its own economic outlook to that of the Koch brothers?

Judicial council tosses misconduct claims against Brett Kavanaugh

Scores of complaints accusing US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh of improperly conducting himself during his contentious Senate confirmation process have been thrown out by a panel of eight federal judges. The judges said the complaints of misconduct, including accusations that Kavanaugh made false, unduly partisan and disrespectful statements to senators, must be dismissed because he has been confirmed to the supreme court and the federal law governing judicial conduct applies only to lower court judges. Kavanaugh was a federal appeals court judge when Donald Trump appointed him in July. He was confirmed in October.

In all, 83 complaints were filed against Kavanaugh by “lawyers, doctors, professors and concerned citizens, among others”, according to Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich of the Denver-based 10th circuit court of appeals. Some complaints also related to Senate testimony Kavanaugh gave in 2004 and 2006 when he was a nominee to become a federal appeals court judge.

“Congress has not extended the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act to supreme court justices,” Tymkovich wrote for the panel of judges, part of the judicial council of the 10th circuit. As they piled up at the Washington appeals court, US Chief Justice John Roberts in October transferred the complaints to be handled by that council.

Trump made the conservative dream of remaking the federal judiciary true

The presidency of Donald Trump has had very mixed results for those of his supporters who hoped he would deliver conservative policy priorities. Trump’s scandals and high-octane promotion of white identity politics have sucked up all the available oxygen. The only major legislative achievement Republicans can point to after two years is an unpopular tax reform package. ... Although a dedicated base still sticks by Trump, the midterms showed that Republicans have paid a price in credibility and electability as a result. Their ability to deliver conservative policies by winning elections has been reduced accordingly.

Yet there is one area in which Trump has made the long-held dreams of his conservative supporters come true: the remaking of the federal judiciary. By making an unusually high number of appointments to federal courts, Trump could profoundly remake large parts of American life even if the Republicans lose every post-Trump presidential election for the next 20 years.

An indication of what is at stake came last Friday, when a federal judge in Texas ruled the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) unconstitutional. ... Even most conservative legal scholars, including ones who have appeared in court at other times to oppose Obamacare, agree that the case is based on fringe legal ideas and is likely to be thrown out by a higher court. But it is still indicative of a broader attempt to roll back the limits of what conservatives derisively call “the administrative state” and its regulation and welfare policies by judicial rather than electoral means.

Trump’s judicial picks make it more likely that in the future, these cases will go the way of the enemies of federal regulation and welfare. In picking his judicial nominees, Trump has relied on the advice of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that aims to place judges who advocate a very strict reading of the constitution on the federal bench. Such judges are apt to overturn laws for which they cannot find an obvious basis in the constitution, a category which they argue includes Roe v Wade and much of the legislation that governs the modern American regulatory and welfare state.

Elizabeth Warren Plan Would Allow the Government to Manufacture Its Own Generic Drugs

If I told you that there are two major efforts on the left to reform the pharmaceutical industry, and one relies on market competition while the other establishes a publicly run office to manufacture prescription drugs — to control the means of production, so to speak — you might assume that the first comes from capitalist-to-her-toes Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the second from honeymooned-in-the-USSR Sen. Bernie Sanders.

It’s actually the opposite. Warren introduced legislation on Tuesday with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., that would create an Office of Drug Manufacturing within the Department of Health and Human Services. That office would have the authority to manufacture generic versions of any drug for which the U.S. government has licensed a patent, whenever there is little or no competition, critical shortages, or exorbitant prices that restrict patient access.

Last month, Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., released their own bill to tackle high drug prices, which would require the government to identify any excessively priced drugs (relative to an international index of list prices) and grant a license to private companies to provide competition with a generic version.

The two bills from Warren and Sanders, who are both likely running for president, are actually complementary efforts that deal with different elements of a system that results in Americans paying more for medications than anywhere in the industrialized world. And they reflect a broader attack on the industry from multiple angles.



the horse race



Trump Foundation is shutting down after the New York AG called it “little more than a checkbook” for Trump

President Donald Trump’s personal charitable foundation agreed to shut down Tuesday amid an ongoing civil suit alleging Trump illegally used assets from the foundation to settle disputes in his businesses and boost his political campaign.

The suit, filed by New York’s outgoing Attorney General Barbara Underwood, accused Trump of using the charity's money to give out sizable grants to veterans organizations leading up to the Iowa Caucuses in 2016. The New York-based foundation was originally created to donate proceeds from Trump’s popular book ”The Art of the Deal” to charitable causes, and it did give to an array of groups, notably in the healthcare and law enforcement fields, but only $2.8 million of some $10 million given from 2001 to 2014 came from Trump himself, according to Forbes. ...

The lawsuit was initially filed last summer. Though the charity lawyers agreed to a shutdown, Underwood will continue to seek restitution of $2.8 million and a 10-year ban on Trump and his three eldest children running any charities. The charity’s lawyers argued in court that the case was politically motivated and should be thrown out. The judge rejected these arguments and has yet to approve Tuesday’s agreement.

Trouncing Biden and Beto, Bernie Sanders Emerges as Clear Frontrunner in 2020 Straw Poll

While an outsized chunk of the corporate media's early 2020 coverage has been centered on the speculation and big donor enthusiasm surrounding centrist Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke's possible White House bid, a new straw poll released on Tuesday found that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is far and away the leading presidential choice among progressives eager to take down President Donald Trump and forge ahead with a bold agenda.

Conducted by Democracy for America (DFA)—a political action committee with over a million members—the survey found that Sanders topped the ever-growing list of potential Democratic candidates with 36 percent support, followed by former Vice President Joe Biden at 15 percent and O'Rourke at 12 percent. All other possible candidates included in the straw poll, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), earned less than 10 percent support.

The Intercept's Ryan Grim argued that the DFA survey shows political elites may once again be underestimating Sanders, who consistently polls as the most popular politician in the country.

Bruce Springsteen Says Democrats Are Out Of Touch



the evening greens


'Draft Beto' Campaign Launches Just as O'Rourke Booted From 'No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge' List

Urging the Texas congressman to run for president, a group of Democratic Party activists enthusiastically launched a "Draft Beto" 2020 campaign on Tuesday—but the timing couldn't have been much worse. Following a report by Sludge detailing how O'Rourke received dozens of large donations from oil and gas executives during his 2018 Senate run despite signing the "No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge"—a vow to reject donations of over $200 from PACs and individuals who work in the fossil fuel industry—Oil Change USA announced on Tuesday that it has decided to remove the Texas congressman from the list of candidates and lawmakers who have promised to turn away oil and gas money.

According to Sludge's Alex Kotch, a close look at campaign finance records shows that O'Rourke violated the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge dozens of times, receiving $324,650 total in donations of over $200 from executives and other individuals in the fossil fuel industry throughout his unsuccessful campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). ...

On top of his centrist positions and voting record in the House, the enthusiasm O'Rourke is receiving from the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party has sparked extreme skepticism from progressives, who have argued in recent days that the Texas congressman is not the kind of ambitious left-wing candidate Democrats need in this moment of soaring economic inequality, endless war, healthcare disaster, and planet-threatening climate crisis. One example cited by O'Rourke's critics is his praise of natural gas production as "a great job opportunity and an environmentally responsible opportunity." Such praise, commentators have noted, is profoundly out of touch with the surging grassroots momentum for a Green New Deal, which a new poll found is backed by 82 percent of Americans.

"Beto O'Rourke's actual political record deserves scrutiny, and it's not what progressives might expect from the overheated adulation that has sent his presidential balloon aloft," Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction.org, argued in a piece for Common Dreams on Tuesday. As evidence, Solomon cited O'Rourke's votes to deregulate banks and grant "fast track" authority to ram through the corporate-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership. "As candidates and in office, the last two Democratic presidents have been young, dynamic and often progressive-sounding, while largely serving the interests of Wall Street, big banks, military contractors and the like," Solomon concluded. "Do we need to make it three in a row?"

COP24: Paris Agreement Rulebook ‘Does Not Deliver What The World Needs’ on Climate Change

Following two tension-filled weeks at the UN climate talks in Poland, countries finally agreed on the operating manual to implement the Paris Agreement. While this rulebook is essential to kick-start the agreement in 2020, campaigners and scientists have warned of a stark disconnect between the urgency to prevent climate breakdown and the failed opportunity for radical action. The rulebook covers a wide range of issues such as how countries should report their greenhouse gas emission reductions and who should pay what to help developing countries leapfrog fossil fuels and develop sustainably.

Given the elections of climate deniers Donald Trump in the US and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and strong obstruction from powerful oil and gas exporting countries such as the US and Saudi Arabia, the talks started in Katowice with low expectations.

Campaigners have accused the rulebook of being a compromise favouring corporate interests and countries which have been the most obstructive in the negotiation process. Vitumbiko Chinoko, from CARE — an international humanitarian agency — in Southern Africa, accused “a few powerful countries” of holding multilateralism “hostage” during the conference. “Vulnerable countries cannot carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. It is unacceptable for governments to continue to cower behind the inaction of the US and other big polluters,” he said.

Patti Lynn, executive director of NGO Corporate Accountability, said the climate talks had ended “without delivering what the world needs”.

“Governments fell far short of crafting a just and equitable roadmap to Paris’ implementation. The root cause of this failure — the fossil fuel industry’s interference — was on full display at these negotiations,” she said.

The Green New Deal Must Fight Militarism


Also of Interest

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

The disinformation campaign behind the allegations of Russian “disinformation”

The Pentagon Failed Its Audit Amid a $21 Trillion Scandal (Yes, Trillion)

The Coming of Hyperwar


A Little Night Music

Howlin' Wolf - 300 Pounds Of Joy

Howlin' Wolf - You Gonna Wreck My Life

Howlin' Wolf - Don't Laugh At Me

Howlin' Wolf - How Many More Years

Howlin' Wolf - Sittin' On Top Of The World

Howlin' Wolf - When I Laid Down I Was Troubled

Howlin' Wolf - Howlin' Wolf Boogie

Howlin' Wolf - Nature

Howlin Wolf - Do The Do

Howlin Wolf Live At The Washington D C Blues Festival November 1970


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The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

joe shikspack's picture

@The Aspie Corner

wow. there's an audience for movies about the made-up war on christmas. thanks, rupert murdoch.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@joe shikspack
the late fifties. '57 comes to mind somehow. Hell, Stan Freberg was able to make a comedic xmas record about it in '58, so you know it was already old news by then, maybe '56 or so.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

and in the intervening years, most americans celebrate xmas, vast numbers of americans celebrate christmas and the martyrs of the war on christmas and their legacy celebrate "christmas damnit!" Smile

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WindDancer13's picture

Stop with the polls already! (Not you, Joe. the media) The media is just messing with our collective heads again.

While I do not know all the ins and outs of the bills being proposed by Warren or Sanders, I can see several potential problems with both. As a government agency can only be effective with good, principled leadership, Warren's plan would be at the mercy of appointees who could dismantle the program, insure that it lacks funding or twist it into something else (cf EPA and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). Also having the gov't in charge of manufacturing something other than bullshit is absolutely NOT a good idea, not to mention setting its own prices. The gov't owning the means of production? No, thank you.

With Sanders' bill, I am not sure what the plan is to get around patents nor how those public companies would be chosen or what their contract would entail. There are a lot of questions regarding quality control and generic pricing along with the fore-mentioned aspects that may actually be contained in the bill, but as of now we don't know enough specifics to say much about it.

Meanwhile...want the FCC to deal with Internet privacy, start by getting Net Neutrality reinstated. With the caveat, do we really trust the FCC to do its job? Especially when it can be held hostage by politicians beholden to corporate interests.

I will throw in a distraction here: Jimmy Dore had a piece recently about small towns who are successfully installing their own Internet fiber and bypassing the corporations. Now, that is the direction to go.

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

The Aspie Corner's picture

@WindDancer13

Meanwhile...want the FCC to deal with Internet privacy, start by getting Net Neutrality reinstated. With the caveat, do we really trust the FCC to do its job? Especially when it can be held hostage by politicians beholden to corporate interests.

I will throw in a distraction here: Jimmy Dore had a piece recently about small towns who are successfully installing their own Internet fiber and bypassing the corporations. Now, that is the direction to go.

In fact, the idiots who continue to run this shithole into the ground would let it sink first before that ever happens.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

WindDancer13's picture

@The Aspie Corner

should build a wall to keep out the refugees from the sinking. Hopefully, Trump will be at his estate at the time and will be halted at the border.

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

joe shikspack's picture

@WindDancer13

Also having the gov't in charge of manufacturing something other than bullshit is absolutely NOT a good idea, not to mention setting its own prices. The gov't owning the means of production? No, thank you.

you point out an interesting problem. neither the government, nor the private sector can be trusted to perform certain necessary social functions that effect the survival of significant numbers of the people. further, since the people who control the means of production also control government, the government cannot be relied upon to regulate the private sector.

the solution to this problem is not difficult to conceive, but it's very difficult to implement.

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'if you read the news you know' not so much anymore. Don't know if I should laugh or cry. Sorry state of affairs.

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joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

perhaps the new motto should be along the lines of, "deep down you know, but you want not to believe."

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Azazello's picture

This is the second time Lee Camp has done it and it's really got legs. It's going to get ever more play when the new issue of The Nation comes out. That story, here, is going to be the cover story. I don't think the money is missing. Here's an interview with David Lindorff, the author of the article:

The truth is $21 trillion over that period of time works out to about $1.5 trillion per year, and if you were… If that was actually money, as some ill-thought-out articles on the left and on the right have written, we would never have had any recessions. That would be an incredible amount of deficit spending into the economy every year. We’d have a lot of inflation, but we wouldn’t have any recessions. There’s no sign of that money flowing into the economy. It’s not real money.

Sloppy accounting, yes, deliberately sloppy even. But nobody stole $21 T.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

WindDancer13's picture

@Azazello

$21 trillion is accounting errors means that no one ever know just how much was really stolen or used to make illegal purchases. Why is it that Mafia bosses always made sure to have a competent accountant?

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

it seems intuitively obvious that all of the 21 trillion was not spent, but we have no evidence that sizable sums were not stolen or misused.

we citizens require an accurate accounting of what the government is doing in our names. that we have not received it is a massive failure of government, one for which heads should roll.

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Azazello's picture

@joe shikspack
and I think the "defense" budget ought to be cut by 75%, at least.
But we risk looking like fools when we run around saying that $21 trillion can't be accounted for and, therefore, has been stolen.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

WindDancer13's picture

Something that we should all be aware of and watch out for in ourselves.

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

enhydra lutris's picture

for the EB as a whole.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

thanks for reading/listening and have a great evening!

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frenzy by packing a bag and leaving the country.
This year is a tour of Columbia. 4 major cities, everything from Spanish forts to birding in the rainforest, floating along in a canoe in a mangrove rimmed river.
Unfortunately, 6 villagers were murdered today, in some remote northern village. I will not be anywhere close to the "bad places", but obviously will take extra precautions.
Wi-Fi will be sketchy, but I will likely keep abreast of things most of the time by reading your ebs. I log in to read it from all over the world.
Just too cool! Makes for great conversation with bartenders and wait staff. Your stuff has been read in Jordan and Bulgaria, Spain and Tanzania.
You are admired in lots of places.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

have a great time in colombia, but please do take care.

thanks for helping spread the eb around the world!

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If what the Russians are saying is true, does that make it propaganda? How can the truth be propaganda? From what I seen at least involving BLM, there are no jobvious false postings as in pushing bizaare conspiracy theories or fake news.

Here is an interesting article that shows a State Department memo on how the Soviet Union was using racism to attack the US. You read the memo and looks like the claims have insight and not false.

How the Soviets Used Our Civil Rights Conflicts Against Us

The best way to not let the Russians using "propaganda points" is like, don't do racism.

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@MrWebster MrWebster.
Americans are often oblivious to the way the rest of the world perceives us.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@MrWebster

i would say that the most effective propaganda contains strong elements of truth.

propaganda is persuasive speech in service of a point of view (often political) that presents information, often in a biased or misleading way.

it is the biased or misleading part that gives the term propaganda its pejorative character.

frankly, i think that the russians criticizing the u.s. for human rights violations against african-americans is very much fair game - and is probably a good thing if it causes the u.s. to change its behaviors.

heh:

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WindDancer13's picture

Here is some information on who conducted the research regarding Russians posting mean things about HRC:

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

Hi, ya'll. I'm new to our forum here. Not being too literary I'll probably just be reading and maybe make some comments but probably not do any essays. I appreciate what's going on here and have already enjoyed some of the information. Thank you to all the contributors and writers. You're appreciated.

So, my thought recently have been about the bot invasion on social media and it's impact on politics. One question that keeps popping into my head is "Who has the most to gain from the confusion and separation that is being caused?" I mean sure, blame russia, they're a good target, we haven't used that one in a while but who really benefits? And who loses?
I would love to hear any thoughts or links about this subject.

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WindDancer13's picture

@Gabriel Thomas

Who has the most to gain? Those who believe fear is the way to lead. You will find them on both the left and the right. It is a very old tactic and works best when the populace accepts it and when critical thinking is limited. What do they have to gain? Money and power over others.

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

joe shikspack's picture

@Gabriel Thomas

thanks for reading and commenting, welcome to the forum!

regarding cui bono, it seems to me that there is a class of folks who benefit when the public is divided and confused. that class is the ruling class who are adept at divide and rule tactics.

the losers are, of course, the usual suspects - the 99% who are riven and fighting amongst themselves over the scraps from the masters table - accepting governance that continues to disappoint the vast majority (witness the popularity of congress being somewhere around that of cockroaches). the public being divided prevents them from standing up as one and demanding better, and unlike recent movements, being able to articulate what "better" would be.

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