Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features jazz guitarist Charlie Christian. Enjoy!

“Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better and better. We lost that war, by the way. Order couldn’t be restored in Indochina until the people kicked us out.

That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. Today's war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.”

-- Kurt Vonnegut

News and Opinion

Despite 'War Crimes' Concerns in Yemen, Raytheon Nabs $1.6 Billion Arms Deal With UAE

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) just inked billions in deals to secure new weapons from top Pentagon contractor Raytheon a week after an Amnesty International investigation further implicated the Gulf nation in war crimes for transferring Western weapons to unaccountable militia groups, thereby deepening the humanitarian crisis and fueling carnage in war-ravaged Yemen.

"The ongoing carnage against civilians in Yemen—including at the hands of the Saudi Arabia and UAE-led coalition and the militias it backs—should give serious pause to all states supplying arms," said Patrick Wilcken, arms control and human rights researcher at Amnesty International. "Emirati forces receive billions of dollars' worth of arms from Western states and others, only to siphon them off to militias in Yemen that answer to no-one and are known to be committing war crimes."

The human rights group, which is calling for a stop to all arms transfers to the Saudi- and UAE-led coalition, also notes that the "the UAE has steered the ground offensive" in the conflict, which broke out in 2015 and has, by some estimates, killed over 60,000 Yemenis, uprooted millions, and left millions more on the brink of famine.

"American fingerprints are all over the air war in Yemen," as the New York Times recently reported, noting the nation's key arms sales and intelligence. But given the accusations of war crimes committed by all parties during the conflict, mounting civilian casualties, and devastated infrastructure, new legislation is hoping to halt U.S. support for the war. Raytheon International CEO John Harris, for his part, though, has brushed off criticism his industry is facing, telling CNBC this weekend, "we don't make policy."

Thus, the lucrative deals continue.

On Contact: Iran Nuclear Deal w Scott Ritter

Trump Administration Threatens Families Of Venezuelan Military

Today, President Trump presented Venezuela’s military officers with a choice - work for a democratic future for all Venezuelans or see the financial circle close for their families and loved ones.

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 18, 2019

If you know anything about John Bolton, you just know he typed “noose” first instead of “circle”.

This would be the same John Bolton, for the record, who once threatened to murder an international official’s children for obstructing his attempts to manufacture support for the Iraq invasion which killed a million human beings and plunged the region into terrorism and chaos. A man named José Bustani was the director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in early 2002, during which time The Intercept reports he came under fire for having too much success in diplomacy with the Iraqi government, which undermined the case for an invasion. So Bolton attempted to scare him off.

From The Intercept:

“Cheney wants you out,” Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. “We can’t accept your management style.”

Bolton continued, according to Bustani’s recollections: “You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you.”

There was a pause.

“We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.”

And now we see this same psychopath threatening to starve and impoverish the families of a sovereign nation’s military with economic warfare if they don’t facilitate a coup by the most violent government on earth in the most oil-rich nation on the planet. All in the name of spreading Freedom and Democracy™, of course.

Venezuela's foreign minister on 'failed' coup and the new Non-Aligned Movement

Trump urges Venezuelan military to desert 'Cuban puppet' Maduro

Donald Trump has told a rally in Florida “a new day is coming in Latin America” as he again warned president Nicolás Maduro that he sought a peaceful transition of power “but all options are open”. The US president, sought support from the largest Venezuelan community in the US for opposition leader Juan Guaidó, appealed directly to Venezuela’s armed forces, saying: “We want to restore Venezuelan democracy and we believe the Venezuelan military and its leadership have a vital role to play in the process.”

“Today, I ask every member of the Maduro regime: end this nightmare of poverty, hunger, and death for your people. Let your people go. Set your country free,” Trump told the crowd at Florida International University in Miami.

Maduro responded with televised comments in which he accused Trump of speaking in an “almost Nazi style” and thinking he could deliver orders to Venezuela’s military. “Who is the commander of the armed forces, Donald Trump from Miami?” Maduro said. “They think they’re the owners of the country.” ...

Trump praised Venezuelan dissidents, kissing and bringing to the lectern for brief remarks in Spanish the mother of Oscar Pérez, a rebel helicopter pilot who was killed near Caracas last year after dropping grenades on government buildings.

Venezuela in Crisis: As U.S. Pushes Regime Change, Fear Grows of Civil War & Famine

With Trump Pushing Regime Change in Venezuela, Critics Warn News Outlets Failing US Viewers Once Again

Ahead of a speech in Miami on Monday in which President Donald Trump promoted the ouster of Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro, progressive media critics continued their warnings that corporate news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and others are carrying water for the White House's regime change policy in the country despite interventionist failures like the invasion of Iraq in 2002, the overthrow of the Libyan government in 2011, and the long U.S. history of backing bloody coups and civil wars in Latin America going back to the 1980s.

Leading the charge is journalist Adam Johnson, a contributor to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and host of the Citations Needed podcast, who recently warned that the "same U.S. media outlets that have expressly fundraised and run ad campaigns on their image as anti-Trump truth-tellers have mysteriously taken at face value everything the Trump White House and its neoconservative allies have said in their campaign to overthrow the government of Venezuela." According to Johnson, "The self-aggrandizing 'factchecking' brigade that emerged to confront the Trump administration is suddenly nonexistent as it rolls out a transparent, cynical PR strategy to delegitimize a Latin American government it's trying to overthrow."

Trump—who called Mexicans rapists and left Puerto Rico to die—suddenly caress about the Venezuelan poor. This is what CNN is asking us to take at face value. They don’t bother to even entertain the idea US military build up on the border of Venezuela may have an ulterior motive.

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) February 17, 2019

Last week, Johnson specifically analyzed the coverage by MSNBC and found that its coverage of Venezuela "ranged from outright support" of Maduro's overthrow "to virtual silence" on the critical issues and context that surround the situation. "Based on a search of MSNBC's website," only a 5-five minute segment by anchor Chris Hayes could be described as critical of regime change, he reported, and "these were the only five of the cable channel's 30,240 on-air minutes since Trump's coup was launched three weeks ago that were dedicated to criticizing it, and these did so only mildly." ...

However, as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was on the ground in neighboring Colombia over the weekend and assuring journalists covering his trip that U.S. aid sent to the Venezuela border "will get through" whether the Maduro government likes it or not, there was very little questioning from most U.S. reporters about whether Rubio or members of Trump's hardline foreign policy team—including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security advisor John Bolton, and the State Department's special representative to Venezuela Elliott Abrams—actually have the best interests of the Venezuela people in mind as they push for Juan Guaido, current leader of the nation's right-wing opposition, to be officially recognized as the "Interim President" of the country.

China Is Flooding the Middle East With Cheap Drones

Particularly in the Middle East, the drone became the symbol of the U.S. empire operating in a legal vacuum. In the first decade and a half of the “War on Terror,” the U.S. still had a virtual monopoly on the risk-free execution from thousands of meters above—but once the genie is out of the bottle, every attempt to squeeze it back in is notoriously doomed to failure. And so, quickly other countries in the region aspired after the financially—and politically—cheap execution by drone. The number of armies with their own drone fleet is growing rapidly. A multi-billion-dollar market with astronomical growth rates opened up—demand that’s essentially served only by one actor: China.

The appearance of the Rainbow CH-4 — the driving force of Chinese combat drones — is almost identical to the notorious Reaper drone of the U.S. arms manufacturer General Atomics. While the CH-4 lags behind the Reaper in most performance parameters, it can keep up with or even outperform its competitor in some of them. Also, the CH-4’s weaponry, the AKD-10 warhead, is almost identical to the Reaper’s Hellfire missiles. ...

Meanwhile, the number of countries with combat drones has swelled to at least 29, as research organization New America identifies. And 10 countries have demonstrably used them to kill suspected enemies; in addition to the three mentioned, there is Iran, Azerbaijan, the UAE, as well as Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey (the last four countries drone-killed people on their own soil). ... Several of Beijing’s buyers are close strategic U.S. allies who have requested the sale of armed drones from Washington to no avail and have thus fallen back on Chinese products. ...

Since 2001, thousands of people, most of them civilians, have been killed by drone in the so-called “War on Terror,” changing the nature of war in its entirety and exposing civilians in all these undeclared war zones to a permanent threat on their lives. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama proved he could always escape punishment and international condemnation even after using drones to turn weddings and funerals into blood baths and mass graves. And so, the desires of local actors to acquire these practical killing tools were aroused, too.

Huawei founder warns Trump you cannot “crush us” because we are “more advanced”

The reclusive founder of Chinese tech giant Huawei warned Donald Trump Monday: “There's no way the U.S. can crush us.” Speaking to the BBC in a rare on-camera interview, Ren Zhengfei also called the arrest of his daughter, Meng Wanzhou — the company’s chief financial officer — “politically motivated.”

Besides pursuing Meng and Huawei on charges of money laundering, fraud and stealing trade secrets, the White House has recently increased pressure on its international allies to block the use of the company’s equipment in next-generation 5G networks over security fears.

“The world cannot leave us because we are more advanced,” a defiant Ren said. “Even if they persuade more countries not to use us temporarily, we can always scale things down a bit.”

The interview came hours after Vice President Mike Pence praised Poland for “protecting the telecoms sector from China.” Warsaw said it was considering excluding the company from its 5G networks following the arrest a Huawei employee for spying. Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have this week been touring Europe to push the White House message that Huawei is a threat to national security.

An interesting analysis of where Trump's continuation of Obama's pivot to Asia will put us - worth a full read:

Will the Trade War Lead to Real War with China?

Today our government is trying to break apart Sino-American interdependence, weaken China, and prevent it from overtaking us in wealth, competence, and influence. We have slapped tariffs on it, barred investment from it, charged it with pilfering intellectual property, arrested its corporate executives, blocked tech transfers to it, restricted what its students can study here, banned its cultural outreach to our universities, and threatened to bar its students from entering them. We are aggressively patrolling the waters and air spaces off its coasts and islands. Whether China deserves to be treated this way or not, we are leaving it little reason to want to cooperate with us. Our sudden hostility to China reflects a consensus — at least within the Washington Beltway — that we need to wrestle China to the ground and pin it there. But what are the chances we can do that? What are the consequences of attempting it? Where are we now headed with China?

Realism is out of fashion in Washington even if it’s alive and well elsewhere in America. It should give us pause that our new enemy of choice is a very different, larger, and more dynamic country than any we have unbefriended before. ... China is no longer isolated, poor, or irrelevant to affairs distant from it. It is a society with capabilities that rival and are beginning to overtake our own. China faces many challenges, but its people are resilient, resourceful, and optimistic that the lives of their descendants will be vastly better than their own — this at a time that we Americans are unprecedentedly pessimistic about our own country’s present and future condition. ...

It doesn’t seem to matter which political party controls the House or Senate. Congress still can’t pass a budget or otherwise set national priorities. When it’s not shut down, our government runs on credit rollovers. Our debt is out of control. So far this century, we’ve committed almost $6 trillion to wars we don’t know how to end. Meanwhile, we’ve deferred about $4 trillion in maintenance of our rapidly deteriorating physical infrastructure. We are disinvesting in our human endowment, cutting funding for our universities and scientific research. Our government is bleeding talent. This is not our finest hour. And, if allies are assets rather than liabilities, the willingness of our security partners abroad to follow us is more uncertain than at any point since we became an active world power seven decades ago. We are withdrawing from international agreements and institutions, not seeking to shape them to our advantage or crafting new ones. Instead of asking our allies to do more to defend themselves, we are asking them to pay us to defend them. Our Senate can no longer bring itself to consider, let alone ratify treaties – even those we ourselves originally proposed. In short, we are not leading the world as we once did. We’re not part of the solution to transnational problems like global warming or arms control. Instead, we are becoming active obstructionists of solutions to pressing global problems. ...

There’s a lot to fix at home before we can be sure we have what it takes to go abroad in search of dragons to destroy. There is a real danger that we have taken on more than we can handle. China is guilty of malpractice in several aspects of its trade policies. We are right to demand that it correct these. Experience strongly suggests that, if we work with others of like mind in organizations like the World Trade Organization to persuade China to do so, we can move China in desirable directions. An across-the-board assault on China of the sort we have just mounted is not only likely to fail, it entails risks we have not adequately considered. These risks include armed combat with a nuclear power. And China is getting relatively stronger, not weaker, even as our inept handling of foreign affairs increasingly marginalizes the United States in areas of human endeavor we have traditionally dominated. We have given inadequate thought to how to leverage China’s rise to our advantage. Trying to tear China down will not succeed. Neither will it cure our self-induced debilitation as a nation.

Keiser Report: The One Belt, One Road to Superpower

Why Trump and his team want to wipe out the EU

The Trump administration not only dislikes the European Union, it is out to destroy it. The trip by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to Europe last week was episode three of the onslaught, designed to play on east-west divisions within the EU. Episode one was Donald Trump’s 2017 Warsaw speech, infused with nativist nationalism. Episode two was Trump’s 2018 moves on tariffs, and his tearing up of key agreements such as the Iran nuclear deal and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. To which should be added his open encouragements to Brexiteers, and his decision to pull out of Syria. All of the above affect European (including British) interests in very concrete ways, unlike mere tweets or insults thrown at allies. ...

An article Bolton penned in 2000 helps to bring the Trump strategy into sharper focus. Headlined “Should we take global governance seriously?”, it reads today like a roadmap of the Trump administration’s intent to destroy the EU. In it, Bolton lashes out at “globalists” who seek to tie nation states into a web of international norms and agreements that restrict sovereignty. He says a truly democratic mandate can only exist at the national level. Along the way, he hammers NGOs and civil society (“which sees itself as beyond national politics”) and the “limitless” breadth of multi- or supra-national institutions.The EU, he says, is “the leading source of substantive globalist policies”.

Bolton goes further: he identifies the EU as a threat to US interests (last year Trump called it “a foe”). “European elites” are “not content alone with transferring their own national sovereignty to Brussels, they have also decided, in effect, to transfer some of ours to worldwide institutions and norms, thus making the European Union a miniature precursor to global governance”. And he depicts the EU as “tinged with a discernable anti-Americanism”. Never mind that Trump has arguably done more to bolster anti-American sentiment in Europe than any other US leader. What this reveals is that conventional explanations often given for Trump’s attacks on the EU are only one part of the picture. Trump’s anger at the EU as a trading bloc, his tactics to boost US armament exports to the continent, as well as his personal aversion to Merkel, are but the translation of a wider ideological battle about global governance.

Jeremy Corbyn warned to change after seven Labour MPs quit

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has told Jeremy Corbyn that he must change direction or face a worsening Labour split after seven MPs quit to form a new movement in the party’s biggest schism in nearly 40 years. Watson’s emotional intervention came as a number of Labour MPs were poised to follow the founders of the new Independent Group – and after reports on Monday night that some Conservatives were also ready to defect. ...

The announcement of the group founded by Luciana Berger and Chuka Umunna represented the most significant challenge to party unity since the “gang of four” senior figures quit to form the Social Democratic party in 1981. But on a day of drama, recrimination and occasional chaos, Corbyn loyalists derided the MPs as fringe figures who were out of touch with the public. ...

The MPs had been organising for months but they faced embarrassment within hours of the launch when Smith had to apologise for appearing to refer to people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds as having a “funny tinge”.

Corbyn, who has repeatedly faced down leadership challenges, showed little sign of panic. He released a statement saying he was disappointed with their departures but highlighted the popularity of Labour’s recent policies and gains at the 2017 election. ... Some of his allies took a more strident approach, with John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, calling on the MPs to “do the honourable thing” and resign from parliament to fight byelections.

Ian Welsh:

Seven MPs Quit Britain’s Labour Party

That this group could only find seven willing to leave the party means MP opposition to Corbyn, while it still exists, is not longer particularly serious. There was a point where people thought 30 MPs might leave. (Though I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a couple more leave, held back to extend news cycles.)

This makes headlines, but I think it’s more of a good thing than a bad one. These people were constantly attacking Corbyn, having them out of the party is good, and their replacements will almost certainly be loyal.

Whether Corbyn can win the next election remains to be seen. As for Brexit: he doesn’t have enough MPs to force anything, but Europe has consistently said that it likes Labour’s ideas, and would be willing to re-negotiate with it. Whether they’ll do so after Brexit, I don’t know, but there’s a better chance of Corbyn fixing things than May.

70,000 STRIKE In Mexico! Workers Winning!

Catalan Leaders’ Trial a Major Factor in Upcoming Spanish Election

Last week, the minority Socialist government collapsed because their partners, two Catalan separatist parties, voted against the national budget. It forced Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, to call a snap election on April 28. The Catalan Republican Left (ERC) and Catalan European Democratic Party (PdeCat), who have 17 members of Parliament (MP) between them in the 350-seat Spanish parliament, voted against the budget because a few miles away from the parliament on the other side of Madrid leading members of these groupings were appearing before the Supreme Court.

Twelve Catalan politicians and civil activists stand accused of rebellion, sedition, misuse of public money, and disobedience over their roles in an illegal independence referendum and a failed secession declaration in 2017 which has polarized Spanish society. In what has been hailed as the most important trial since Spain returned to democracy in 1978, the accused stand to go to prison for up to 25 years. They deny all the charges. ...

As the trial of the Catalans rumbles on for the next three months, it will coincide with the general election and play an important role in how Spaniards vote. ... “We made Pedro Sánchez prime minister as a result of the no-confidence vote for the exact same reasons that we have had to maintain our position (against) his budget bill,” said Eduard Pujol, a leading member of Catalonia’s secessionist regional government. “You cannot govern Spain without listening to Catalonia.”

Separatists forces showed their strength at the weekend as about 200,000 protesters marched through Barcelona to demand a not-guilty verdict for 12 of their leaders. ...

A succession of polls have pointed to the Socialists winning the most votes at the general election, but not enough to form a government. This could mean that the secessionists could wield power again over any future Socialist government. The same polls show the right could form a coalition between the center-right Popular Party (PP) and Citizens with the help of Vox, a right-wing party which staged a dramatic breakthrough in December, winning 12 seats in regional elections in Andalusia. Should it repeat its victory in April, it means the right-wing has finally established a toehold on power for the first time in decades.

Amazon’s Defeat in NYC Galvanizes Movement to End Billion-Dollar Corporate Welfare

45-year-old Mexican migrant is the third person to die in Border Patrol custody since December

A 45-year-old undocumented immigrant who was arrested in the border town of Roma, Texas, died Monday morning after about two weeks in Border Patrol custody. He's the third migrant to die in the agency’s custody since December.

The person, who crossed the border into Texas without documentation and was arrested by the Roma Police Department on Feb. 2, had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and congestive heart failure, and their identity has not been released. The migrant’s official cause of death isn’t yet known. It’s also unclear whether the person was seeking an asylum claim in the U.S., although Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Monday that the migrant was arrested for illegal reentry.

The day they were arrested, the person asked for medical attention and was taken to the Mission Regional Medical Center, about 50 miles from Roma, and “cleared.” The person was released that day from the hospital into the custody of Customs and Border Protection agents, and requested medical attention again. The next day, Feb. 3, they were taken to the McAllen Medical Center, where they died Monday.

Democrats secured a quiet border wall victory in the spending bill

The spending bill President Donald Trump signed on Friday, which includes just a fraction of the money he demanded for a wall on the U.S. Mexico border, was a major political defeat on its face. But the fine print shows secondary capitulations: In addition to allocating only $1.37 billion for the wall, the bill includes limitations on where he can build.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, was behind the provisions in the bill that effectively turned some areas along the Texas border into no-wall zones.

The five areas the federal government isn’t allowed to build are: the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge, the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, the La Lomita Historical Park, the National Butterfly Center, and within or east of the Vista del Mar Ranch tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. All of these locations have been named in border wall–related lawsuits. ...

While these provisions were small wins for the Democrats, places like La Lomita and the butterfly center are still not completely shielded. Any money the president may have access to because of the national emergency declaration is not covered by the bill Congress just passed.

16 US states sue over Trump border wall emergency declaration

A coalition of 16 US states led by California has launched legal action against Donald Trump’s administration over his decision to declare a national emergency in order to fund a wall along the Mexico border.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the US district court for the northern district of California after Trump invoked emergency powers on Friday when Congress declined his request for $5.7bn to help create his signature policy promise. ...

“Today, on Presidents Day, we take President Trump to court to block his misuse of presidential power,” California attorney general Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “We’re suing President Trump to stop him from unilaterally robbing taxpayer funds lawfully set aside by Congress for the people of our states. For most of us, the Office of the Presidency is not a place for theatre,” added Becerra, a Democrat.

Cop Arrests 11-Year-Old Over Pledge Of Allegiance

'So many lies': Trump attacks McCabe over explosive CBS interview

Trump attacked McCabe on Twitter on Thursday, when CBS released excerpts of the interview, and again on Sunday night, when it was broadcast in full. Before dawn on the President’s Day holiday, he returned to the offensive.

Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2019

On CBS, McCabe said Rosenstein brought up the possibility of removing Trump using the 25th amendment, which allows the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet to deem a president unfit to perform his duties. ... The deputy attorney general also offered to wear a wire to record conversations with Trump, McCabe said.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice said in a statement Rosenstein rejected McCabe’s version of events as “inaccurate and factually incorrect”.

“The deputy attorney general [DAG] never authorized any recording that Mr McCabe references,” the statement said. “As the DAG previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th amendment.”

Bernie Sanders Is Running for President and He Wants One Million Campaign Volunteers

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent whose 2016 campaign for the presidency helped shift the Democratic party to the left on issues like “Medicare for All” and free college tuition, announced on Tuesday that he is running for president again. The self-described democratic socialist immediately set an ambitious target for his supporters, calling on them “to be part of an unprecedented grassroots campaign of one million active volunteers, in every state in our country.” ...

The appeal was also featured in an 11-minute YouTube video, in which Sanders laid out the rationale for his campaign, offering far more specifics on policy than rivals like Sen. Kamala Harris, whose website lacks a policy section.

... Another rival who is far closer to Sanders on the issues, and has laid out specific, radical policies, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, has attempted to distinguish herself from him by telling reporters, like Ruby Cramer of Buzzfeed News, that the core difference between the two is that, “he’s a socialist, and I believe in markets.”

[Sanders describes his "radicalism" and dismisses concerns about being associated with Venezuelan collapse in the following interview. -js]

In New Hampshire, Kamala Harris Makes Clear She Is Not With the Democratic Socialists

Distancing herself from the label that more progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have embraced in recent election cycles in the United States, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) made it clear during a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday that she does not consider herself a democratic socialist.

"The people of New Hampshire will tell me what's required to compete in New Hampshire, but I will tell you I am not a democratic socialist," Harris said in response to a question from a FOX News reporter while at a stop in Concord.

Elizabeth Warren proposes universal child care funded by taxing America’s richest

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has announced plans for a universal child-care program as part of her 2020 agenda in her bid for the White House, and she plans to fund it with a wealth tax on America’s richest.

The Massachusetts Democrat said the plan will allow the federal government to partner with local child-care providers to create daycare centers, preschools, and in-home options for everyone. The government would pick up a chunk of the total costs by providing all of it for free to families who make less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, which starts at $12,490 per year for a household of one and adds an additional $4,420 per year for each additional family member. That means a family of four would get free child care unless their income exceeds $51,500. No family will have to pay more than 7 percent of their income on child care.

“My plan provides the kind of big, structural change we need to transform child care from a privilege for the wealthy to a right for every child in America,” Warren said in a blog post announcing the proposal. “That means free coverage for millions of children.”

No other 2020 candidate has put forth a formal policy plan for child care.

The Donald is still a little sketchy on the concept of the First Amendment.

Alec Baldwin tweets back as Donald Trump talks of 'retribution' for SNL

Donald Trump has savaged Saturday Night Live as a “total Republican hit job” while calling for “retribution” and an investigation of the show after another unflattering portrayal of the president by Alec Baldwin. The actor responded by questioning whether the president’s words represented “a threat to my safety and that of my family”.

Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019

THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019

Baldwin reprised his role as Donald Trump with blonde wig, characteristic pout and exaggerated imitation of the president’s speech-making style, for the show’s cold open on Saturday. This time the sketch parodied the president’s press conference in which he announced a national emergency over his plans to build a border wall with Mexico. ...

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, said that while such language had become commonplace “it’s worth remembering that no other president in decades publicly threatened ‘retribution’ against a television network because it satirized him”.

Big Corn and Big Oil Are Warring Over Trump’s Nomination of Andrew Wheeler

Two of the Republican Party’s biggest corporate allies — agribusiness and the fossil fuel industry — are waging an epic, if obscure, battle in the halls of Congress. And Big Oil, through its proxies in the Senate, has taken a hostage: Acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler. After the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee advanced Wheeler’s nomination for permanent EPA chief on a party-line vote, a group of five senators issued a veiled threat to the nominee: Promise to rewrite regulations on renewable fuels that are more favorable to oil refineries, or forget about being confirmed.

It’s a fight without a decent resolution for any human being needing to breathe clean air or inhabit a sustainable planet. The prodigious amount of energy used in producing corn-based biofuels is not much cleaner than the energy from burning oil-heavy gasoline. The fight is more over who will get to earn more money in the final, dying days of dirty energy dominance. It’s also a preview of the kind of battles that the advocates of a Green New Deal will have as they take on entrenched incumbent industries who have been spending heavily, for years, to generate government favors they are loathe to see disappear.

The regulation at issue is called the renewable fuel standard, or RFS, which requires all gasoline sold in America to contain a minimum volume of renewable sources — which are dominated by corn-based ethanol. Big Ag wants the standard to be higher; Big Oil wants to be free from the corn burden. ... The behind-the-scenes fight is symptomatic of a growing trend in an increasingly corporate-controlled government. In the Second Gilded Age, senators have become little more than traffic cops, mediating the grievances of competing sets of business giants. And Wheeler, himself a former lobbyist for all sorts of energy companies, has gotten caught in the middle of the latest showdown.

Fighting pollution: Toledo residents want personhood status for Lake Erie

In early August 2014, Crystal Jankowski was late in her pregnancy and knew she was about due. In was hot and humid where she lived in Toledo, Ohio and she remembers just wanting to relax in a cool shower. But the graphic designer could not take one. The water source for Toledo is Lake Erie, and an algae bloom caused in part by phosphorous runoff from farms had sickened the lake with an overload of “microcystin” bacteria. The city banned drinking the water for a week and “children, the elderly and pregnant women” were instructed not to even shower. “My gynecologist told me: ‘Don’t even touch the water, it could make you and your baby very sick,’ and that really got to me,” she said.

“So many of us in the community realized we had to do something about this.” They did, and the citizens of Toledo, on the western basin of Lake Erie, will now be voting on a controversial legal bill on 26 February. What they will be deciding is whether Lake Erie has the same legal rights as a corporation or person.

There have been cities and townships in the United States that have passed ordinances making some types of polluting illegal, but no American city or state has changed the legality of nature in a way that is this big and this extensive – effectively giving personhood to a gigantic lake. Called the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, it would grant personhood status to the lake, with the citizens being the guardians of the body of water. If passed, citizens could sue a polluter on behalf of the lake, and if the court finds the polluter guilty, the judge could impose penalties in the form of designated clean-ups and/or prevention programs.

“What has happened in Toledo is that we have lost our faith in the current mechanisms of power, and decided to take things into our own hands,” said Bryan Twitchell, a Toledo school teacher. “We decided it was our personal responsibility to take action and pull us back from that brink so we can live near a healthy lake.”

Also of Interest

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

America Has a Lot to Learn From the Roman Empire's Fall

Syria Sitrep - French Officer Criticizes U.S. Way Of War - Assad Offers Kurds Some Autonomy

Trump might have a solid case for emergency declaration, analysts say

Chris Hedges: Worshipping the Electronic Image

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A Little Night Music

Jerry Jerome, Charlie Christian, Frankie Hines - I Got Rhythm

Benny Goodman Sextet - Rose Room

Charlie Christian - Stompin' at the Savoy

Charlie Christian - Solo Flight

Benny Goodman, Charlie Christian - Flying Home

Charlie Christian - I Found A New Baby

The Edmond Hall Celeste Quartet - Profoundly Blue

Charlie Christian - Ad Lib Blues

Charlie Christian - AC-DC Current

Charlie Christian - Charlie's Dream

Henry Red Allen, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Christian, J.C.Higginbotham - Haven´t Named It Yet