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This evening's music features blues singer and piano player Big Walter Price. Enjoy!

“The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

-- Hunter S. Thompson

News and Opinion

Trump blinks:

Trump signs COVID-19 relief bill after nearly weeklong delay

After days of opposition and hours before the federal government was going to shut down, President Donald Trump signed the $900 billion coronavirus relief package, the White House announced Sunday night.

Congress passed the legislation last Monday after months of negotiations in the Senate. The package includes $600 checks for Americans who earn less than $75,000 per year, half of the $1,200 checks that were mailed out earlier this year.

After its passage, Trump initially called for the bill to be revised to include $2,000 checks and refused to sign it until his call was answered. However, he didn't officially say he would veto it.
In a Sunday night statement announcing he had signed the bill, Trump called on Congress to make more revisions to cut down excess spending.

"I will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed. I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill," he wrote.

Prof. Wolff: The Rich Get Stimulus, The Rest Get Stiffed

So who was it that thought it would be a great idea to let a bunch of rich jagoffs periodically gather in their millionaire's clubhouse to vote on whether the less well-off and well-connected can have their existential needs until the next meeting of the millionaire's club?

Millions lose benefits as Trump refuses to sign Covid relief package

Millions of Americans battling the financial hardships of the coronavirus pandemic lost their unemployment benefits on Sunday as Donald Trump continued to refuse to sign a relief package agreed in Congress and headed instead to the golf course.

The president’s belligerence over the bipartisan Covid relief and spending bill, that would have extended the benefits and given direct cash payments to most American families, drew the ire of senior Republicans, who accused Trump of inflicting more misery on citizens.

I simply want to get our great people $2000, rather than the measly $600 that is now in the bill. Also, stop the billions of dollars in “pork”.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2020

Trump, who is spending the Christmas and New Year holiday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, raised objections to the $900bn relief bill only after it was passed by Congress last week, having been negotiated by his own treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin. The bill has lain unsigned on his desk since Christmas Day as the president, who was mostly silent through weeks of intense negotiations, spent the weekend at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach. ...

Democrats in the House of Representatives will try again on Monday to break the impasse by voting to increase the amount of the direct payments, a move thwarted once already by House Republicans on Christmas Eve.

As well as denying help to long suffering Americans, Trump’s refusal to sign the package also holds up a connected $1.4tn funding bill, which could result in a US government shutdown as early as Tuesday, in the midst of a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 332,000 in the US.

Rep. Ro Khanna: $2,000 Stimulus Checks Are Needed, Not More Austerity, Amid Economic & Health Crisis

Gosh, Bernie, do you suppose that you could equally blame Republicans intransigence in refusing to do more for the american people and larding up their "relief bill" with military pork spending?

Geez Bernie, why are you covering for corporate Republicans and centrists by blame shifting to Trump? Do you really buy into the idea that the current bill is the best that can be done and no amount of activist pressure can fix it?

'Unbelievably Cruel': Sanders Slams Trump's Intransigence as Millions Lose Unemployment Lifeline

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday led progressive lawmakers in condemning President Donald Trump's refusal to approve a $900 billion Covid-19 relief and spending bill as unemployment coverage expired for millions of Americans on Saturday night as a result of his intransigence.

"What the president is doing right now is unbelievably cruel," Sanders (I-Vt.) said during an appearance on ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning. "Many millions of people are losing their extended unemployment benefits. They're going to be evicted from their apartments because the eviction moratorium is ending."

Although Congress on Monday approved a compromise relief bill that would have temporarily averted catastrophic expiration of critical unemployment and other benefits—including an extension of the federal eviction moratorium—during the deadliest period of the pandemic, Trump declined to sign the measure into law, blasting its $600 direct payments to Americans as "a disgrace" and calling for $2,000 stimulus checks instead.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—one of only two House Democrats to vote against the bill—also called its $600 payment "woefully inadequate."

"I have watched as many of my colleagues rush to provide billions to corporations and wealthy individuals, while admonishing the needs of the majority of families," Tlaib explained on Monday. "Republicans continue to do all they can do to poison our society further with corporate greed, while abandoning the very people they are supposed to be working for."

"This is evident by the inclusion of the 'three martini lunch' tax giveaway," she added, referring to a tax deduction for business meals included in the bill.

However, Sanders on Sunday argued that the "terrible economic crisis facing this country" makes action imperative.

"We are looking at a way to get the vaccine distributed to tens of millions of people," Sanders said, referring to the massive nationwide effort to distribute Covid-19 vaccines. "There's money in that bill."

Progressive lawmakers from across the country joined Sanders in urging the relief bill's passage.

"Here we are with people living on the edge as a result of this pandemic, and [Trump] is playing with their lives and their livelihoods," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) during a Saturday interview on MSNBC. "People can't afford to live life on the edge... Eight million more people have fallen below the poverty line."

Meet The Pseudo-Left Imperialists Fighting Against Universal Healthcare

Some Said the Vaccine Rollout Would Be a ‘Nightmare.’ They Were Right.

Dozens of states say they didn’t receive nearly the number of promised doses. Pfizer says millions of doses sat in its storerooms, because no one from President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed task force told them where to ship them. A number of states have few sites that can handle the ultra-cold storage required for the Pfizer product, so, for example, front-line workers in Georgia have had to travel 40 minutes to get a shot. At some hospitals, residents treating COVID patients protested that they had not received the vaccine while administrators did, even though they work from home and don’t treat patients.

The potential for more chaos is high. Dr. Vivek Murthy, named as the next surgeon general under President-elect Joe Biden, said this week that the Trump administration’s prediction — that the general population would get the vaccine in April — was realistic only if everything went smoothly. He instead predicted wide distribution by summer or fall. The Trump administration had expressed confidence that the rollout would be smooth, because it was being overseen by a four-star general, Gustave Perna, an expert in logistics. But it turns out that getting fuel, tanks and tents into war-torn mountainous Afghanistan is in many ways simpler than passing out a vaccine in our privatized, profit-focused and highly fragmented medical system. Gen. Perna apologized this week, saying he wanted to “take personal responsibility.” It’s really mostly not his fault.

Throughout the COVID pandemic, the U.S. health care system has shown that it is not built for a coordinated pandemic response (among many other things). States took wildly different COVID prevention measures; individual hospitals varied in their ability to face this kind of national disaster; and there were huge regional disparities in test availability — with a slow ramp-up in availability due, at least in some part, because no payment or billing mechanism was established.

Why should vaccine distribution be any different?

"Ludicrous" Arguments Against #ForceTheVote -- Disrupts Line Of Succession!

There's some interesting stuff in this article. Here are some excerpts to get you started:

Biden’s Win Trades One Political Fantasy for Another

The terms of public debate in the United States today have become less about how to wield power than a fight over defining basic premises of reality. It’s too early to say whether this means the end of American democracy, or what such a thing might look like. For the meantime, what is playing out is an increasingly extreme divergence of narrative from reality, on all sides: a phenomenon that some have termed “political virtualism,” or even “dreampolitik.”

On the liberal side, the simulation of exceptionalism is not ending even after the revelatory events of the past four years. Likewise, among the conservative base, there is no consensus about accepting the unfavorable election results and moving on. Instead, the fantasies everywhere seem to be getting more powerful. Just as Trump enjoyed portraying a fascist strongman while governing like a standard, corrupt Republican Party politician, he is now performing a role as the victim of a great conspiracy, to the evident thrill of his supporters, even as the institutional gears turn to ease him out of office. The virtual politics continue with each party living out its preferred narrative. As always, any confrontation with unpleasant realities are to be deferred, with any hope, indefinitely. ...

At the start of the information age — decades before the maelstroms of social media, reality television, and cable news — the historian Daniel Boorstin warned that such a challenge to American democracy was on the horizon: the threat of fantasy. As Boorstin wrote in his 1962 book “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America,” an extremely powerful culture industry had already begun to reshape the consciousness of Americans in a way that could blind them to the realities of their own country. The sober and even boring constraints of managing politics began to blend with the limitless fantasy world of entertainment, which, as early as the Kennedy era, had begun to exert an influence on American political culture. “We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them,” Boorstin wrote. “We are the most illusioned people on earth. Yet we dare not become disillusioned, because our illusions are the very house in which we live; they are our news, our heroes, our adventure, our forms of art, our very experience.”

The fear of becoming disillusioned is key not only to understanding the Trump movement, but also the liberal backlash. The campish, hypermasculine fantasy offered by the Trump years is now transitioning back to the fantasies embodied by Biden. To put it another way, the channel is being changed from “The Apprentice” back to “The West Wing.” ...

In his staffing decisions, Biden aimed at the closest possible return of approximation of the pre-Trump status quo: the great reboot. For many Trump opponents, the halcyon golden age they would like to recreate was the exact moment before his election. It is to that fantasy that they now return. The simulation, in other words, remains strong on both sides, Liberals are congratulating themselves for defeating authoritarianism and reclaiming their esteemed place in the world. The right, meanwhile, descends into a miasma of conspiracy theory and victimhood. What both fantasies have in common is that they flatter and entertain those who take part.

Can we send the elites off to Russia to fight? Or if that's to old fashioned, can we strap a warmonger journalist and a billionaire (a la Slim Pickens) to every bomb?

Worth a full read, this piece by Glenn Greenwald has lots of great info:

With Biden's New Threats, the Russia Discourse is More Reckless and Dangerous Than Ever

To justify Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump, leading Democrats and their key media allies for years competed with one another to depict what they called “Russia’s interference in our elections” in the most apocalyptic terms possible. They fanatically rejected the view of the Russian Federation repeatedly expressed by President Obama - that it is a weak regional power with an economy smaller than Italy’s capable of only threatening its neighbors but not the U.S. - and instead cast Moscow as a grave, even existential, threat to U.S. democracy, with its actions tantamount to the worst security breaches in U.S. history.

This post-2016 mania culminated with prominent liberal politicians and journalists (as well as John McCain) declaring Russia’s activities surrounding the 2016 to be an “act of war” which, many of them insisted, was comparable to Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attack — the two most traumatic attacks in modern U.S. history which both spawned years of savage and destructive war, among other things. ... With the Democrats, under Joe Biden, just weeks away from assuming control of the White House and the U.S. military and foreign policy that goes along with it, the discourse from them and their media allies about Russia is becoming even more unhinged and dangerous. Moscow’s alleged responsibility for the recently revealed, multi-pronged hack of U.S. Government agencies and various corporate servers is asserted — despite not a shred of evidence, literally, having yet been presented — as not merely proven fact, but as so obviously true that it is off-limits from doubt or questioning.

Any questioning of this claim will be instantly vilified by the Democrats’ extremely militaristic media spokespeople as virtual treason. “Now the president is not just silent on Russia and the hack. He is deliberately running defense for the Kremlin by contradicting his own Secretary of State on Russian responsibility,” pronounced CNN’s national security reporter Jim Sciutto, who last week depicted Trump’s attempted troop withdrawal from Syria and Germany as “ceding territory” and furnishing “gifts” to Putin. More alarmingly, both the rhetoric to describe the hack and the retaliation being threatened are rapidly spiraling out of control.

Democrats (along with some Republicans long obsessed with The Russian Threat, such as Mitt Romney) are casting the latest alleged hack by Moscow in the most melodramatic terms possible, ensuring that Biden will enter the White House with tensions sky-high with Russia and facing heavy pressure to retaliate aggressively. Biden’s top national security advisers and now Biden himself have, with no evidence shown to the public, repeatedly threatened aggressive retaliation against the country with the world’s second-largest nuclear stockpile. ...

Indeed, the Biden team has been signalling that they intend to quickly fulfill demands for aggressive retaliation. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Biden “accused President Trump [] of ‘irrational downplaying’” of the hack while “warning Russia that he would not allow the intrusion to ‘go unanswered’ after he takes office.” Biden emphasized that once the intelligence assessment is complete, “we will respond, and probably respond in kind.”

Krystal Ball: How Force The Vote Became Proxy Fight For Future Of The Left

A cautionary tale about being too successful when working within the system.

Turkey: the rise and fall of the Kurdish party that threatened Erdogan

It has been a lonely year for Adalet Fidan, the mayor of Silopi in Turkey’s Kurdish south-east – and not just because of the pandemic. In 2019, when she was elected, Fidan was among a solid cohort of 65 candidates from the progressive left, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to win seats in nationwide local elections. Now, after a sustained government purge of HDP officials, she is one of only five HDP mayors left in office, the rest sacked or imprisoned and replaced with government appointees. ...

Turkey’s judicial system has been weaponised throughout the country’s turbulent history to advance or stymie different political agendas – but as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has consolidated his grip on power, critics say the state crackdown on opposition is unprecedented. For HDP, the party which has posed the most significant threat to Erdogan’s power, the reprisals have been brutal. ...

Not so long ago, the HDP’s future still seemed bright. Formed out of an alliance of leftists and Kurdish nationalists in 2012, the party is often compared to Green party movements and European democratic socialist parties such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. A parallel is also drawn with Sinn Féin, because of its historical association with the outlawed militant Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK). In just a few years, the HDP made good on its promise to appeal to a broad spectrum of Turkish society, rather than just a Kurdish voter base, rising to prominence during the Gezi park protests against the increasingly authoritarian direction of the AKP to become the country’s third-biggest political party.

In the 2015 national election, the HDP delivered a searing blow to the AKP by winning enough seats to break through the 10% election threshold that has traditionally kept small parties and Kurdish politicians out of parliament, in the process destroying the ruling party’s majority. The elation was short-lived, however. To undo the HDP’s success, the government pulled out of peace talks with the PKK, plunging Turkey’s majority Kurdish south-east into renewed violence, and began arresting HDP politicians and supporters over alleged links to the militant group. When the election was re-run later in the year, it yielded a result much more to Erdogan’s liking.

HDP’s charismatic former leader, Selahattin Demirtas, was arrested the year after, and faces a sentence of up to 142 years in prison despite an order from the European court of human rights that Turkey must free him.

Biden Admits He Will Be 'Unlikely' to Cancel Student Debt

President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday questioned whether he will have the authority to cancel student loan debt through executive action and said he is "unlikely" to do so, remarks that prompted forceful backlash from progressives who argue he will soon have the power—and a moral obligation—to provide at least some relief to millions of debt-saddled Americans.

Reiterating his promise to reenter the Paris climate agreement and protect Dreamers with executive action, Biden said he is skeptical that he could unilaterally cancel $50,000 in student loan debt for many borrowers, a proposal pushed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and others. A poll released last month found that 60% of U.S. voters would support Biden canceling up to $50,000 of student loan debt per person.

"I'm going to get in trouble for saying this... for example, it's arguable that the president may have the executive power to forgive up to $50,000 in student debt," Biden said in an interview with the Washington Post, correctly anticipating progressive outrage over his stance. "Well, I think that's pretty questionable. I'm unsure of that. I'd be unlikely to do that."

Biden has proposed canceling $10,000 in federal student debt per borrower through legislation, which would require the approval of Congress. If Democrats fail to win both U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia next month, Biden's hesitancy to use his executive authority could stand in the way of meaningful relief for Americans who collectively hold more than $1.7 trillion in student loan debt.

"It simply isn't correct to say the legal authority to cancel student debt via executive action is 'questionable,'" said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform. "The authority is clear, documented, and even the Trump administration used executive authority to cancel student loan interest payments, TWICE: in March (pre-CARES), then August."

"The Trump administration used executive action a third time, to once more cancel student loan interest payments... on December 4th, when the payment pause was extended to the end of January 2021," Goldstein noted.

Rahna Epting, executive director of advocacy group MoveOn, called Biden's position "unacceptable" and said progressives need to keep up the pressure on the incoming administration. MoveOn is part of a diverse coalition of more than 230 organizations calling on the president-elect to "use executive authority to cancel federal student debt on day one" of his administration.

Along with their September letter arguing that the president can order the Secretary of Education to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt without congressional approval, Warren and Schumer attached a seven-page analysis (pdf) from legal experts affirming that the president has the authority to take such a step.

Amazon's New Lobbyist Just Happens To Be Brother Of Top Biden Advisor

Amazon Workers in Alabama Clear Hurdle in Fight for Historic Union Vote

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama are making strides in their fight to unionize following three days of hearings this week which resulted in an agreement with the company regarding which workers will be able to vote on joining a union.

Weeks after the workers filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU)—a move which, if successful, would make the warehouse the first unionized Amazon facility in the U.S.—the agreement reached broadened the employees who would be included in the proposed bargaining unit.

Amazon representatives had argued that the 1,500 workers included in the original proposal should not be the only employees who vote on unionizing, as a total of 5,000 employees work at the warehouse. Seasonal workers will now be included in the proposed bargaining unit—which could make the threshold needed by the union backers more difficult to reach.

The NLRB has yet to schedule a date, but workers are expected to vote on unionizing early in 2021.

Meanwhile, the RWDSU is countering misinformation they say Amazon officials are spreading, including a claim that anyone who signs a union card ahead of the vote can be forced to pay dues.

"These are the tactics that union-busters do to get you not to believe in yourself," RWDSU representative Allan Gregory told workers in a video message this week. "This card says, federal government, we would like the opportunity to organize our workplace."

Amazon is also pushing for an in-person vote on unionizing, despite the coronavirus pandemic, according to The Hill.

The NLRB has mainly been holding unionization votes by mail since March and is advocating for voting-by-mail in any county that is experiencing a 14-day Covid-19 positivity rate of 5% or higher. Jefferson County, where the Bessemer warehouse is located, has reported a weekly positivity rate of 16% or higher for more than three weeks.

An Amazon spokesperson told The Hill Wednesday that the company doesn't believe the warehouse workers represent "the majority of our employees' views."

But last spring, Amazon workers circulated at least two petitions, gathering a total of 6,000 employee signatures, demanding better pay and benefits amid the pandemic. Workers have also held protests this year at facilities in Staten Island; Chicago; Portland, Oregon; and other cities, over unsafe working conditions.

Boston students reject Israeli training of campus cops

Students at Tufts University in Boston have voted in favor of ending all foreign military training of the college’s police department.

Their referendum is just the latest in a recent series of victorious student campaigns in support of Palestinian rights around the country.

Members of Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and more than 40 allied campus groups launched the referendum campaign after documents revealed that Tufts’ police chief attended a “counter-terrorism seminar” in Israel, funded by the Anti-Defamation League.

The referendum passed with the support of 68 percent of voters, and in spite of smear campaigns by Israel lobby groups to try and influence the outcome.

Tufts SJP says it is the first student group to adopt the national End the Deadly Exchange campaign, a project of Jewish Voice for Peace, which seeks to end ties between US and Israeli police forces. ...

Tufts administrators have already dismissed the referendum, with the university’s public relations chief claiming it was “misinformed.”

Andre' Hill, Unarmed Black Man Killed by Columbus Police

Grieving relatives of Andre' Hill—an unarmed Black man shot dead by police in Columbus, Ohio earlier this week—along with their lawyers and community activists demanded justice at a Saturday afternoon candlelight vigil and news conference in the Ohio capital. ...

Hill, 47, was standing inside the garage of a friend's home early Tuesday morning when he was killed by veteran Columbus officer Adam Coy, who was responding to a neighbor's non-emergency disturbance complaint, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

Footage from Coy's body camera shows the officer approaching an open door to a dark garage as Hill walks from behind a parked car toward him, holding up a cell phone in one hand. His other hand is not visible.

There is no audio in the footage leading up to the shooting, as neither Coy nor the officer who responded to the call with him had their body cameras turned on until after the incident. However, the cameras have a "look-back" feature that captures 60 seconds of video—but not audio—before they are turned on.

What is clear from the video is that Coy opened fire within 10 seconds of encountering Hill. The audio resumes as Hill is seen lying on the ground and Coy orderes him to put his hands out to his sides and roll over on his stomach. But Hill, who can be heard groaning in the video, does not move until Coy rolls him over.

The two officers waited four minutes before they called for medics. Five minutes into the video, Hill still hasn't received medical attention. Another officer who arrived at the scene can be heard suggesting, "let's cuff him up."

Columbus Police Chief Tom Quinlan on Thursday announced he had begun termination proceedings against Coy. ...

Coy—who was roundly blasted by city officials for failing to turn on his body camera or render aid to Hill after shooting him—has a history of excessive force complaints during the course of his 19-year career. The Dispatch reported Coy had nine complaints filed against him in 2003 alone—including four in one month.

Master bluegrass picker Tony Rice dies aged 69

Tony Rice, the master bluegrass picker, has died at the age of 69.

Rice, famous for the quick, fluid sounds conjured from his Martin D-28 guitar, died on Friday at his home in Reidsville, North Carolina, according to International Bluegrass Music Association spokesperson Casey Campbell. Rice lived in Reidsville with his wife, Pamela Hodges Rice.

Ricky Skaggs, who had performed and recorded with Rice, called him “the single most influential acoustic guitar player in the last 50 years”. ...

Rice released dozens of albums, including several as a member of the David Grisman Quintet; Skaggs & Rice with Ricky Skaggs; Manzanita as leader of the Tony Rice Unit; and such solo efforts as Tony Rice and Me & My Guitar.

He played with everyone from Jerry Garcia to Dolly Parton and received many honours, notably a Grammy in 1993 for best country instrumental performance, and citations from the International Bluegrass Music Association as guitarist of the year.

Nina Turner On ForceTheVote: All Tools On The Table

Democrats in Georgia’s runoff elections raise more than $200m in two months

Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both running for crucial US Senate seats in Georgia that will decide the fate of Joe Biden’s new administration, have raised over $100m each in just two months.

The announcement of the recent record-breaking hauls – which considerably exceed that of their Republican opponents – comes with less than two weeks to go until the runoff races are decided in special elections on 5 January.

Ossoff, who runs a media production company and is running against the incumbent Republican senator David Perdue, raised over $106m from 15 October to 16 December, according to his campaign’s latest finance report.

Meanwhile, Warnock, who is pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and is running against incumbent Kelly Loeffler, raised just over $103m.

Civil Rights Groups Denounce Georgia Officials For Closing Early Voting Sites Ahead of Senate Runoffs

Voting rights groups on Wednesday accused officials in at least two Georgia counties of voter suppression, pointing to the closures of several early voting locations in majority-Black and Latino communities ahead of two Senate runoff elections on January 5 which will decide whether Democrats or Republicans control the upper chamber.

State and national organizations including MiJente Support Committee and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund participated in a conference call in which they said officials in Hall County, with a population that's 8% Black and nearly 30% Latino, have cut the number of voting locations from eight during the November 3 election to just four ahead of the runoffs.

The effect of the closures is already clear, the advocates said, as turnout across the state has been high, with more than 1.4 million ballots cast since December 14, the first day of early voting. In Hall County, turnout in the runoffs so far has reached just 13%—far lower than the county's early voting numbers ahead of last month's election.

Civil rights groups' fears of voter suppression "isn't theoretical or hypothetical," Michael Pernick, the Georgia state lead for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s voting rights project, told HuffPost on Wednesday.

"The reason Hall County's turnout is lower in the runoff is because Hall County cut early voting locations," he added. "We know this because turnout is up in almost every other county in the state, but not in Hall."

Hall County was carried by President Donald Trump in last month's election, with Trump winning 71% of the vote. But advocates say even the closure of four polling places in majority-Black and Latino communities could have a dramatic impact on the runoff elections between Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who are challenging Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively.

In a poll released Wednesday by InsiderAdvantage and FOX 5 Atlanta, Warnock had a 2% lead over Loeffler, while Perdue had a 1% lead over Ossoff. Four percent of respondents said they were still undecided, and the polls were within the 4.4% margin of error.

The Democrat strategist strategizes to surrender to Pelosi:

: Cori Bush And Jamaal Bowman REFUSE To Say Whether They Will Back Pelosi For Speaker

Inside Clean Energy: Clean Energy Wins Big in Covid-19 Legislation

Clean energy industries got their biggest legislative win in a long time this week, thanks to provisions tucked into the $900 billion Covid-19 stimulus relief bill passed by Congress on Monday. ...

Deep in the 5,000-plus page bill, lawmakers included extensions of tax credits for solar power and onshore wind, plus five years of a new tax credit for offshore wind. But not everybody walked away with what they wanted. The energy storage industry, for example, has pushed for years to get its own tax credit, but hasn’t gotten it yet.

The bill contains some big steps toward reducing emissions. Among them is a 15-year phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons, which an analysis by the Rhodium Group says will cut emissions equivalent to 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, more than the total annual emissions in Germany.

Some of the highlights:

• The solar investment tax credit got a two-year extension. This up-front credit will continue at its 2020 level in 2021 and 2022, and then phase down after that.
• The wind production tax credit will get an extra year, meaning it will now be available for new projects that qualify before the end of 2021. This credit is based on the amount of electricity a project produces in its first 10 years. 
• Offshore wind gets its own investment tax credit, which will last for five years before a phasedown, and is retroactive to 2017. Under current law, offshore wind can qualify for an investment tax credit, but it is phasing out right as the offshore wind industry is on the cusp of a building boom.

The tax credits give breathing room to projects that may have been delayed because of the pandemic and were at risk of failing to qualify, or, in the case of the solar credits, were going to get a lower credit. Renewable energy business groups say this will translate to jobs, and help at a time when the renewable energy sector has had a net loss of 71,700 jobs, or 12 percent, since March.

Massachusetts city to post climate change warning stickers at gas stations

Cambridge, Massachusetts, has become the first US city to mandate the placing of stickers on fuel pumps to warn drivers of the resulting dangers posed by the climate crisis.

The final design of the bright yellow stickers, shared with the Guardian, includes text that warns drivers the burning of gasoline, diesel and ethanol has “major consequences on human health and the environment including contributing to climate change”.

The stickers will be placed on all fuel pumps in Cambridge, which is situated near Boston and is home to Harvard University, “fairly soon” once they are received from printers, a city spokesman confirmed.

“The city of Cambridge is working hard with our community to fight climate change,” the spokesman added. “The gas pump stickers will remind drivers to think about climate change and hopefully consider non-polluting options.”

The placement of the stickers follows an ordinance passed by Cambridge in January. The city has a target of slashing planet-heating emissions by 80% and offsetting the remainder by 2050, making it carbon neutral.

Also of Interest

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

Both-Sidesing the Stimulus Bill

Stimulus Bill’s “Pathetic” $600 Checks and Pork Giveaways Are Savaged on Social Media; Trump, Belatedly, Demands Bigger Checks

I Sued Blackwater for the Massacre of Iraqi Civilians. Trump Just Pardoned Those Convicted Killers.

Black doctor’s death becomes a symbol of racism in coronavirus care

Meet the Censored: Olivia Katbi-Smith

How real is the threat of prosecution for Donald Trump post-presidency?

Ephemeral edible: gingerbread monolith appears on San Francisco hilltop, then collapses

Leslie West obituary

Jimmy Dore: BIDEN Status Quo Protector -- "Nothing Will Fundamentally Change"

Zaid Jilani: Will GOP Reject Trump, Fox News On $2k Checks?

Rising: Fauci ADMITS He Lied To Americans On Herd Immunity

A Little Night Music

Big Walter Price - Pack Fair And Square

Big Walter Price & Albert Collins - Get To Gittin'

Big Walter (Price) & Albert Collins - My Tears

Big Walter Price and His Thunderbirds - Junior Jumped In

Big Walter (Price) & His Thunderbirds - Hello Maria

Big Walter Price - Oh Ramona

Big Walter Price - San Antonio Rose

Big Walter & his Thunderbirds - Six Weeks Of Misery

Big Walter Price - Gamblin' Woman

Big Walter Price and his Thunderbirds - Thunderbird

J Geils Band - Pack Fair And Square