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This evening's music features blues piano player and singer Big Maceo Merriweather. Enjoy!

"We’re now living in an ever more chaotic and aberrant land run by billionaires and retired generals, and overseen by a distinctly aberrant president at war with aberrant parts of the national security state.

That, in a nutshell, is the America created in the post-9/11 years. Put another way, the US may have failed dismally in its efforts to invade, occupy and remake Iraq in its own image, but it seems to have invaded, occupied and remade itself with remarkable success. And don’t blame this one on the Russians.

No one said it better than French King Louis XV: Après moi, le Trump."

-- Tom Englehart

News and Opinion

Trump’s Use of Navy SEAL’s Wife Highlights All the Key Ingredients of U.S. War Propaganda

During his Tuesday night address to the U.S. Congress, President Trump paid tribute to Ryan Owens, the Navy SEAL killed in the January commando raid in Yemen that Trump ordered. As he did so, television cameras focused for almost four full minutes on Owens’ grieving wife, Carryn, as she wept and applauded while sitting next to and being periodically touched by Trump’s glamorous daughter, Ivanka. The entire chamber stood together in sustained applause, with Trump interjecting scripted, lyrical expressions of support and gratitude for her husband’s sacrifice.

It was, as intended, an obviously powerful TV moment. Independent of the political intent behind it, any well-functioning human being would feel great empathy watching a grieving spouse mourning and struggling to emotionally cope with the recent, sudden death of her partner. The majestic setting of the U.S. Congress, solemnly presided over by the U.S. President, vested the moment with political gravity. ...

The raid in Yemen that cost Sgt. Owens his life also killed 30 other people, including “many civilians,” at least nine of whom were children. None of them was mentioned by Trump in last night’s speech, let alone honored with applause and the presence of grieving relatives. That’s because they were Yemenis, not Americans; therefore, their deaths, and lives, must be ignored (the only exception was some fleeting media mention of the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar Awlaki, but only because she was a U.S. citizen and because of the irony that Obama killed her 16-year-old American brother with a drone strike). ...

Sgt. Ryan Owens is a household name, and his wife, Carryn, is the subject of national admiration and sympathy. But the overwhelming majority of Americans do not know, and will never learn, the name of even a single foreign victim out of the many hundreds of thousands that their country has killed over the last 15 years. This imbalance plays a massive role in how Americans understand themselves, the countries their government invades and bombs, and the Endless War that is being waged. ...

By dramatizing the deaths of Americans while disappearing its victims, this technique ensures that Americans perpetually regard themselves as victims of horrific, savage, tragic violence but never the perpetrators of it. That, in turn, is what keeps Americans supporting endless war: these savages keep killing us, so we have no choice but to fight them.

Trump Honors Widow of Navy SEAL Killed in Yemen, But Ignores His Father's Calls for Investigation

Trump responds to father of Navy SEAL killed in Yemen raid

President Trump responded to the father calling for an investigation of his Navy SEAL son's death in a Yemen military raid, with the president expressing sympathy for the service member's family but defending the mission as one "that started before I got here."

"This was something that they were looking at for a long time doing," Trump said in an interview on "Fox & Friends" that aired this morning. "And according to Gen. [James] Mattis it was a very successful mission. They got tremendous amounts of information." ...

Trump said Tuesday, "They explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected. My generals are the most respected we've had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan."

Trump went on to say, "I was at the airport when the casket came in, the body came in and it was a very sad with the family and it's a great family -- incredible wife and children. I met most of the family."

"And I can understand people saying that. I would feel -- I would feel, what's worse? There is nothing worse," Trump said.

Trump Seeks Record Pentagon Budget Eclipsing Spending by Ronald Reagan & George W. Bush

Trump Vows Record Military Spending, End of Sequestration

While military policy wasn’t heavily focused on in President Trump’s first address to Congress, an early and quick emphasis was placed on the recently announced plan to increase military spending by 9%, in particular emphasizing that this meant the formal end of sequestration, which led to loud applause. ...

In practice, the sequestration never really happened, with every annual military budget finding some way or another to circumvent it. Despite this, hawks regularly referred to the sequestration as though it was happening, and lamented insufficiently huge military budgets.

An interesting book review. Here's a taste to get you started:

How the US Began Its Empire

The election of Donald Trump will no doubt have many calamitous consequences, but one of the most insidious is likely to be its impact on foreign policy. During the campaign, Trump voiced misgivings about the recent string of unwinnable wars that have followed military interventions abroad—exercises in regime change and nation-building, conducted in the name of humanitarian democracy—and he suggested that his administration would be reluctant to embark on similar projects. Yet Trump enveloped this sane skepticism (rarely if ever articulated in American presidential campaigns) in a cloud of racist bombast, bellicose posturing, and xenophobic nationalism.

What has emerged from Trump’s rants is a self-contradictory vision of a Fortress America with tightly controlled borders that invites foreign conflict by maintaining a provocative, overextended presence abroad. This is hardly a recipe for international stability. What might have been an overdue debate on the limits of interventionist overreach has not materialized, while Trump has been dismissed as a dangerous isolationist. A debate on American intervention is as necessary as ever.

Since the 1930s, the word “isolationist” has been used pejoratively by those who reject any tendency toward restraint in the use of American power abroad. Yet the objections to open-ended military interventionism cannot be reduced to isolationism. They have a rich and complex history—rooted in the classical republican mistrust of empire and articulated by thinkers as diverse as William James, Mark Twain, Walter Lippmann, George Kennan, and William Fulbright, none of whom was a xenophobic nationalist. Stephen Kinzer’s The True Flag locates the origins of this anti-imperial tradition in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, and argues for its continued relevance to public life today.

One could not ask for a timelier argument. For decades, anti-imperial thought has been largely absent from public discourse. So has the word “imperialism.” The chief substitute for it has been “internationalism.” This word evokes a vision of global cooperation, with examples ranging from the Allied war against fascism to contemporary grapplings with climate change. No one can deny the necessity of the United States engaging constructively with the rest of the world; the problem is that engagement has so often involved imperial aims and military methods. The rhetorical shift from imperialism to internationalism suggests a sanitizing process at work during the twentieth century, as the United States moved away from a formal empire based on the occupation of foreign territory to an informal empire based on proxy governments backed by occasional US invasions.

Colombia's FARC rebels to begin surrendering weapons

Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels on Wednesday will begin surrendering their weapons to the United Nations now that almost 7,000 of them have reached designated demobilization zones around the country, the government and insurgent group said.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement with the government late last year to put an end to Latin America's longest-running armed conflict, which killed more than 220,000 people and displaced millions.

"It's the start of the process of disarmament, which involves the registration of weapons, the destruction of unstable weapons and the storage of side arms," Colombia's High Commissioner for Peace Sergio Jaramillo told reporters on Tuesday.

The rebels are expected to have turned in all their arms by June, President Juan Manuel Santos has said.

Can Geert Wilders win the Dutch election?

How the Press Serves the Deep State

The New York Times has made it official. In a Sunday front-page article entitled “Trump Ruled the Tabloid Media. Washington Is a Different Story,” the paper gloats that Donald Trump has proved powerless to stop a flood of leaks threatening to capsize his administration.

As reporters Glenn Thrush and Michael M. Grynbaum put it: “This New York-iest of politicians, now an idiosyncratic, write-your-own-rules president, has stumbled into the most conventional of Washington traps: believing he can master an entrenched political press corps with far deeper connections to the permanent government of federal law enforcement and executive department officials than he has.”

Thrush and Grynbaum add a few paragraphs later that Trump “is being force-fed lessons all presidents eventually learn – that the iron triangle of the Washington press corps, West Wing staff and federal bureaucracy is simply too powerful to bully.”

Iron triangle? Permanent government? In its tale of how Trump went from being a favorite of the New York Post and Daily News to fodder for the big-time Washington news media, the Times seems to be going out of its way to confirm dark paranoid fears of a “deep state” lurking behind the scenes and dictating what political leaders can and cannot do. “Too powerful to bully” by a “write-your-own-rules president” is another way of saying that the permanent government wants to do things its way and will not put up with a president telling it to take a different approach.

Entrenched interests are nothing new, of course. But a major news outlet bragging about collaborating with such elements in order to cripple a legally established government is. The Times was beside itself with outrage when top White House adviser Steve Bannon described the media as “the opposition party.” But one can’t help but wonder what all the fuss is about since an alliance aimed at hamstringing a presidency is nothing if not oppositional.

Congress May Lack Technical Expertise to Properly Investigate Russian Hacking

Congressional Intelligence Committee leaders have pledged to examine Russia’s involvement in hacks against Democrats during the 2016 presidential election. As the ranking member of the Senate’s intelligence panel Rep. Adam Schiff put it, “we want to make sure that the intelligence community got it right. … We want to look at the raw intelligence, and make sure their conclusions were substantiated.”

But a detailed investigation into hacking demands technical skills that staff for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees appear to be lacking.

Research into public committee staff lists, LinkedIn, and conversations with several sources who have interacted with the committees shows a serious dearth of technical expertise among the staffers cleared to access classified materials that would be involved in the investigation. Essentially, committee staff are underwater when it comes to poking into the nitty gritty of cyber warfare — a longstanding problem made more relevant as attacks on U.S. government and politicians escalate.

Colorado's governor vows to “confront” Trump's DOJ on a marijuana crackdown

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper says he’s seen “a real sense of anxiety and fear” among residents of his state under Donald Trump’s Administration. He’s warning the Trump White House that Colorado “will confront them” if the Justice Department steps up enforcement of federal marijuana laws.

"They have federal law on their side so there are certain places where they can impose their will. But again, they cannot compel us to violate our own constitution. We’re not going to have the state patrol suddenly go out and make a priority of trying to arrest people for what is, in our constitution, legal. The federal government has a constitutional sovereignty, but all 50 states have constitutions and that that is also a level of sovereignty.

We’re going to argue with the attorney general that, you know he’s worried about violence around marijuana. I saw it was reported this morning. There’s a heck of a lot more violence around illegal marijuana than there is around legal marijuana. We know that for a fact. Many parts of the country have seen an increase in homicides not because of gang activity but because of domestic violence. I don’t want to make light of it but, if someone’s smoking pot, you rarely — and I’ve talked to police officers about this — how often you see guys who are high involved in physical domestic violence? Pretty unusual, right? Almost always with alcohol, right?

So we’ve got to begin taking — if you really want to worry about violence — marijuana, increased marijuana use among adults might — you might begin to see data that that will reduce violence and domestic issues."

Donations made using PayPal platform may never reach charities, lawsuit says

PayPal’s charitable platform, which the company says raised more than $7bn in 2016, claims to allow individuals to give directly to “over a million charities”. But only a fraction of those charities actually receive the donations, the lawsuit alleges, because they aren’t registered with PayPal.
The suit stems from the experience of Terry Kass, an Illinois resident who used PayPal’s system to donate $3,250 to 13 local and national charities in late 2016. Kass had received an email from PayPal promising an additional 1% donation from PayPal if she used their platform, the suit states.

Kass searched for the charities she wanted – including the North Shore Health Center, Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation, Chicago Foundation for Women, and the Highland Park-Highwood Legal Aid Clinic – and found a special PayPal page for each one. The PayPal sites promised that 100% of her donation would go to the chosen charity.

After making the donations, however, Kass learned from an employee of the legal aid clinic that her donation had not been received. Kass pursued the issue with PayPal and learned that 10 out of her 13 charities were not registered with PayPal Giving Fund. Donations made to non-registered charities are held by PayPal for six months before being transferred to other not-for-profit organizations, according to the suit.

Not only did PayPal not notify Kass that her donations had not been received, but the company did not inform the charities that they needed to register in order to receive the funds intended for them, the suit alleges.

Linda Sarsour on March 8 "Day Without a Woman" Strike & Continuing to Organize Against Trump

New Trump immigration order will remove Iraq from list of banned countries

President Donald Trump's new immigration order will remove Iraq from the list of countries whose citizens face a temporary U.S. travel ban, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed U.S. officials.

Four officials say the decision follows pressure from the Pentagon and State Department, the AP reported.

Betsy DeVos sparks ire by linking historically black colleges with 'school choice'

Betsy DeVos, the controversial newly appointed secretary of education, is facing scorn on Capitol Hill and around the country after releasing a statement that compared the emergence of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), amid pervasive and overt racial exclusion, with the battle for “school choice”.

In a statement tied to a listening session with HBCU leaders, DeVos said HBCUs “are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality”.

“HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” the statement said. ...

To many the intended argument didn’t survive the contradiction of associating HBCUs, born out of necessity when black Americans were almost uniformly barred from existing universities by racist admittance policies, with the idea of “choice”.

“Yesterday’s attempt to whitewash the the stain of segregation into an argument for privatizing our public schools is perhaps a new low in her current position,” said the Michigan congressman John Conyers, who also called the statement “shocking and insulting”.

Trump Surrogate Suggests Democrats Could Be Behind Bomb Threats Against Jews

Jewish community centers across the United States are operating in a climate of fear after a fifth wave of bomb threats aimed at Jews on Monday that targeted at least 13 community centers and eight schools in a dozen states.

A top Trump surrogate — hedge funder Anthony Scaramucci, who fundraised for the Trump campaign, joined his transition team, and was in the running for a senior role in the White House — took to Twitter on Tuesday to imply that these threats could be coming from Democrats, rather than from a radical far-right wing that has been emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric and staff choices.

It's not yet clear who the #JCC offenders are. Don't forget @TheDemocrats effort to incite violence at Trump rallies https://t.co/uTBFGhI0Kh

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) February 28, 2017

In his first tweet, he referred to a report about Democratic Party-aligned activists who staged raucous protests at Trump events — a far cry from calling in bomb threats against a religious minority.

Scaramucci’s tweets are only the latest sign that the Trump administration, those close to the president, and the wider Republican Party are fundamentally unwilling to either acknowledge or challenge the wave of far-right hate crimes in the United States that has in recent months targeted a wide set of religious and racial minority groups.

Trump hails 'new chapter in American greatness' in Congress speech

Donald Trump promised a “new chapter of American greatness” in a speech to Congress that sought to reset relations with his opponents – but was swiftly condemned for inaccurate claims and a lack of detail.

In a scene that was unthinkable a year ago, when the businessman was a political novice facing much hostility in his own party, Trump gave his first address to senators and members of congress and received cheers as he attacked Barack Obama’s legacy.

The tone was arguably Trump’s most presidential yet, with the dark vision of “American carnage” in his inaugural address giving way to an attempt at an optimistic theme of “American greatness” as the country nears its 250th birthday in 2026.

The raw economic nationalism of his chief political strategist, Steve Bannon, was notably sweetened for politicians’ palates on both sides of the aisle. “This was Steve Bannon on steroids, with a smile,” Tom Perez, the new Democratic party chair, told the MSNBC channel later.

But there was audible dissent from Democrats when Trump derided Obama’s healthcare policy, claimed he was “draining the swamp” in Washington, called for an end to “trivial fights” – despite his regular Twitter spats – and said he was setting up a group to represent victims of crimes committed by immigrants.

Here are a couple of items from The Guardian's fact check of Trump's speech, for more click the link.

Fact-checking Donald Trump's first presidential address to Congress

“Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force.”

This is a grossly exaggerated claim that seems to rely on the roughly 94 million civilians who are 16 or older and not in the labor force: a figure that includes retired people, high school and college students, people with a disability, and others. The unemployment rate in January was 4.8%, or about 7.5 million people who are looking for work but can’t find it

[The fact-checkers grossly underestimate the pool of unemployed or partially-employed workers who would like to work, in that the U3 BLS unemployment figures (the numbers commonly reported by the media, including these fact checkers) exclude these people from the labor pool. The BLS U6 measurement is more accurate, though probably still understates unemployment. Currently, U6 is running about double U3 and the Gallup poll measurement is nearly triple U3 at 14.1% - js]

“Over 43 million people are now living in poverty, and over 43 million Americans are on food stamps.”

Trump is correct that about 43 million Americans are classified as living in poverty, according to the Census Bureau, after a small decline last year. He is also correct about 43 million people using food stamps, according to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That number reached as high as 47.6 million people in 2013, during the slow recovery.

“Right now, American companies are taxed at one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.”

The US is not even in the top 30 highest-taxed nations in the world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD’s most recent data ranks the US 31st of 34 industrialized nations for tax revenue as a percentage of GDP – far behind Denmark, Britain, Germany and Luxembourg. The US ranks 17th for corporate tax revenue, and 19th for tax revenue per capita.

Despite the "happy numbers" that Obama's BLS cooked up for years, here is an indication of why Trump's economic message resonated so powerfully and Hillary's pitiful "America is already great," garbage failed miserably:

For Every Living-Wage Job, There Are Seven People Looking for Work

Living-wage jobs are scarce in the United States. The People's Action Institute (PAI), a national organization with the goal of achieving economic, racial, gender and climate justice, just released a study that reinforces the profound need for jobs that pay a wage people can live on. A PAI news release states:

The report shows the gap between job seekers and jobs that pay a living wage. According to the report, Prosperity, Not Poverty, nationally there are seven job seekers for every job opening that pays the national single adult living wage of $17.28 per hour.

In other words, six out of seven job seekers are unlikely to find work that pays enough for a single adult to make ends meet. The odds are much worse for a single parent hoping to be paid enough to support herself and a child....

[Many] communities of color, women, and LGBTQI communities are doubly impacted, by both the lack of wealth-building work available and by living in neglected communities most in need of ... public infrastructure investment.

It is worth noting that the national average livable wage of $17.28 per hour (as cited by PAI) is more than twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, and two dollars higher than the $15 minimum wage advocated by the national Fight for $15 campaign. States and cities may have higher minimum wage requirements, but one would be hard pressed to find a jurisdiction that requires employers to pay an hourly livable wage of $17.28.

Regardless of any government infrastructure investment, long-term jobs that provide a living wage are headed in the wrong direction. As a February 27 article in the Socialist Worker states:

One major component driving the sense of [employment] insecurity is the increase in jobs considered contingent or nonstandard over the past 10 years. Irregular hours, variable earnings, temporary or on-call employment, and a lack of job security are some of the aspects associated with this type of work.

This isn't a phenomenon of small businesses, either. In a majority of cases, these work arrangements involve large companies employing outsourced labor instead of directly hiring their workforce. ...

The [study's] authors, economists Alan Katz and Lawrence Krueger, found that all of the net gain in employment since 2005 has been in jobs considered "alternative work arrangements." These jobs are defined as contract workers, independent contractors or freelancers, on-call workers, and temp agency workers.

In short, the trend in the US is moving in the opposite direction of full-time, long-term employment that pays a just wage to workers.

Obama Starts To Cash In

It took Bill and Hillary years to get to 100 million. The Obamas, well…

Barack and Michelle Obama have sold the rights to their next books to Penguin Random House for a sum that has reportedly passed $60 million, according to a report by the Financial Times. (They will be writing separate books, but the rights were sold jointly.) As far as past and present presidential book deals go, this one’s a biggie: it surpasses previous records set by George W. Bush’s reported $7 million deal and Bill Clinton’s reported $15 million dollar advance.

I think this is only fair, though. Clinton may have carried water for the rich, but Obama played a huge part in making sure that they didn’t lose all their money after the financial crisis (yes, Bush and Bernanke started the bailouts, but Obama had them all by the short and hairies and could easily have put almost every senior executive in the financial industry in prison for fraud, and could have spiked large parts of the bailouts had he chosen.)

This is why I don’t get very worked up about Trump’s conflicts of interest. They are real, but the only difference is that he’s getting paid now as opposed to later. Politicians exist to do what rich people want, Trump is only cutting out the middle man and the partial delay.

For the folks who think that the Democratic Party can be taken over from inside, there's some excellent information in this article. Here's a taste:

How Democrats Can Un-Rig the Party and Start Winning Again

The real problem is not the DNC, it's the campaign committees. ...

If we want to talk about rigging elections, though, we shouldn’t look at the DNC. Its role is mostly irrelevant in that regard; it’s a party-building and fundraising organization. Other groups within the Democratic Party do dominate elections, bringing a rigid, stale sensibility to the issue of who can represent the leftward pole in our politics. And those organizations more credibly steer the debate Sanders fans are waging over how to change the country.

I’m talking mainly about the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the campaign arm for Democrats within the House of Representatives now chaired by Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico. For decades now, no matter who has led it, the DCCC has been run on the principle that only a certain type of Democrat can win a House race. It anoints candidates well in advance of any election, gets involved in primaries, favors candidates with money and endorsements and discourages donors from giving to candidates they don’t like. Unlike in a high-profile presidential campaign, this preferential treatment can absolutely make the difference in who represents the party in House races.

This is all done largely out in the open. It’s called “candidate recruitment” and “electoral strategy.” Read the archives of Howie Klein’s indispensable Down With Tyranny blog and you’ll see this play out in election cycle after cycle. His chronicle of how Democrats have misfired consistently in Republican Darrell Issa’s California House district, which has been winnable for years, is a good primer.

"Keep Showing Up": After Trump's Address, Sanders Urges Continued Resistance

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) recorded a response to President Donald Trump's first address to Congress on Tuesday night, breaking down the speech's biggest takeaways—or lack thereof—and calling on viewers to keep up the resistance.

"Those of you who attended rallies or town hall meetings: Keep showing up, keep calling Congress, and continue to fight," he said. "If you haven't taken action yet, we need your voice. Only together when millions of people stand up for economic justice, for social justice, for racial justice, for environmental justice, only then can we create a political revolution that will turn this country around."

Northern hemisphere sees in early spring due to global warming

Spring is arriving ever earlier in the northern hemisphere. One sedge species in Greenland is springing to growth 26 days earlier than it did a decade ago. And in the US, spring arrived 22 days early this year in Washington DC.

The evidence comes from those silent witnesses, the natural things that respond to climate signals. The relatively new science of phenology – the calendar record of first bud, first flower, first nesting behaviour and first migrant arrivals – has over the last three decades repeatedly confirmed meteorological fears of global warming as a consequence of the combustion of fossil fuels.

Researchers say the evidence from the plant world is consistent with the instrumental record: 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded, and it was the third record-breaking year in succession. Sixteen of the hottest years ever recorded have happened in the 21^st century.

The most dramatic changes are observed in the high Arctic, the fastest-warming place on the planet, according to a study in Biology Letters. As the polar sea ice retreats, the growing season gets ever longer and arrives earlier.

The pattern is not consistent: grey willow sticks to its original timetable, and dwarf birch growth has advanced about five days earlier for each decade. But the sedge, almost four weeks ahead of its timetable in a decade, holds the record, according to a study that observed one plot at a field site in west Greenland, 150 miles inland, for 12 years.

Latest Trump executive order aims to dismantle Obama's clean water rule

Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order aimed at unraveling one of Barack Obama’s signature environmental policies designed to protect American waterways from pollution.

The president’s move marked the first step toward fulfilling his pledge on the campaign trail to roll back Obama-era regulations, which include a 2015 rule designed to curb the flow of pollution into major bodies of water, wetlands and ponds by expanding the requirement of permits to pursue any actions that might cause them harm.

Trump, who cannot simply repeal the entire rule with the stroke of a pen, declared Obama’s policy “a massive power grab” and ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to formally review it. The action also bolstered the position of Trump’s new EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, who wishes to dismantle the rule and sued the Obama administration over it in 2015 while serving as the attorney general of Oklahoma. ...

The Obama administration and environmental groups had championed the rule as a necessary step in securing streams and wetlands that are connected to sources that provide roughly one-third of Americans with drinking water.

Ralph Nader tells Paul Jay that Trump's attack on the EPA and regulatory agencies will be a disaster

Study Shows Massive Global Permafrost Melt Underway While Trump Mentions Climate Not Once

A new study has discovered that tens of thousands of miles of permafrost in northwest Canada are rapidly melting, adding weight to recent research that shows an accelerating decline in permafrost in Alaska, Siberia, and Scandinavia.

The disintegration of permafrost throughout the Arctic Circle portends a massive release of carbon, both into the surrounding environment in the form of sediment and into the atmosphere in the form of CO2. An unprecedented Arctic heat wave is accelerating its decay.

And while global warming speeds up, President Donald Trump and his climate change-denying administration continues to push for fossil fuels and massive deregulation. In his speech last night, Trump failed to mention climate change even once.

Also of Interest

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

The full text of Trump's first speech to Congress

Just A Friendly Reminder That The Democratic Establishment Is Trying To Start A War With Russia

What America Needs More Than Anything Is An Anti-Corporatism Movement

Donald Trump’s Economic Policy Team Is Stacked With Lobbyists and Conflicts of Interest

Mr. President, This Is What You Should Know About Public-Private Partnerships

New York Times Gets Budget Story About Looming Trump-Ryan Clash Almost Completely Wrong

Israel’s Anti-Semitism Smears Backfire

Here’s how James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis plans to defeat ISIS

Lush heartlands of Nicaragua’s Miskito people spark deadly land disputes

Junta lite: how generals and billionaires took over Trump's militarized America

Trump's America is great for holidays – if you enjoy vigorous frisking by men in uniform

A Little Night Music

Big Maceo Merriweather w/Tampa Red - Ramblin' Mind Blues

Big Maceo Merriweather - Leaving Blues

Big Maceo Merriweather - It's All Over Now

Big Maceo Merriweather - Texas blues

Big Maceo Merriweather - Have You Heard About It?

Big Maceo - Some Sweet Day

Big Maceo - Chicago Breakdown

Big Maceo Merriweather - Why Should I Hang Around

Big Maceo Merriweather - Big Road Blues

Big Maceo - Things Have Changed

Big Maceo - Won't Be A Fool No More

Big Maceo - Detroit Jump