The Evening Blues - 3-6-17



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Alberta Hunter and Lucille Bogan

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features early blues singers Alberta_Hunter and Lucille Bogan. Enjoy!

Alberta Hunter - Working Man, My Castle's Rocking

"Now there is also the rather obvious uses that blaming Russia serves for the DNC and its various funding sources. The fact that the Democratic Party snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by running a wildly hated and corrupt candidate in Hillary Clinton, needs an explanation. And that explanation is Putin and Russia. ... As a desperate reflex excuse for losing what was supposed to be a cake-walk for Hillary, it is sort of understandable. But what isn’t understandable is how so many otherwise seemingly rational people buy into this fantasy.

And the result of this new Russophobic hysteria is to create a precedent for the CIA and even more shady and shadowy forces to unseat an elected President. I mean common cause is being made with the worst actors in American politics. And, more, to sanction a public interrogation of whoever they deem hostile to their interests. This is the useful idiot meme on steroids. It is the white liberal class ASKING for totalitarian government."

-- John Steppling


News and Opinion

Democrats Now Demonize the Same Russia Policies that Obama Long Championed

One of the most bizarre aspects of the all-consuming Russia frenzy is the Democrats’ fixation on changes to the RNC platform concerning U.S. arming of Ukraine. The controversy began in July when the Washington Post reported that “the Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces.” Ever since then, Democrats have used this language change as evidence that Trump and his key advisers have sinister connections to Russians and corruptly do their bidding at the expense of American interests. ...

The general Russia approach that Democrats now routinely depict as treasonous – avoiding confrontation with and even accommodating Russian interests, not just in Ukraine but also in Syria – was one of the defining traits of Obama’s foreign policy. This fact shouldn’t be overstated: Obama engaged in provocative acts such as moves to further expand NATO, non-lethal aid to Ukraine, and deploying “missile defense” weaponry in Romania. But he rejected most calls to confront Russia. That is one of the primary reasons the “foreign policy elite” – which, recall, Obama came into office denouncing and vowing to repudiate – was so dissatisfied with his presidency. ...

Establishment Democrats – with a largely political impetus but now as a matter of conviction – have completely abandoned Obama’s accommodationist approach to Russia and have fully embraced the belligerent, hawkish mentality of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Bill Kristol, the CIA and Evan McMullin. It should thus come as no surprise that a bill proposed by supreme warmonger Lindsey Graham to bar Trump from removing sanctions against Russia has more Democratic co-sponsors than Republican ones.

This is why it’s so notable that Democrats, in the name of “resistance,” have aligned with neocons, CIA operatives and former Bush officials: not because coalitions should be avoided with the ideologically impure, but because it reveals much about the political and policy mindset they’ve adopted in the name of stopping Trump. They’re not “resisting” Trump from the left or with populist appeals – by, for instance, devoting themselves to protection of Wall Street and environmental regulations under attack, or supporting the revocation of jobs-killing free trade agreements, or demanding that Yemini civilians not be massacred.

Instead, they’re attacking him on the grounds of insufficient nationalism, militarism, and aggression.

Fact: Establishment Dems Are So Awful They’ve Made The GOP The Default Anti-War Party

I see Democrats everywhere making melodramatic arm-waving outbursts over Trump’s increase in military spending (a standard Republican policy that every Republican presidential candidate needs to commit to in order to get elected) as though they didn’t just try to elect a woman who was campaigning on a promise to start World War 3. Wanna talk about Hillary some more? I do. The front-runner for her pick as Secretary of Defense just published an op-ed in the Washington Post (yes, that Washington Post) arguing that Trump is right to push for such an increase and explaining how to do so wisely. After eight years of Obama’s bombings and regime change interventionism Democrats finally remember how to pretend they’re anti-war again, and they’re shrieking about something their own would-be defense secretary wanted.

I hate establishment liberals. I hate their hypocrisy and their virtue-signaling vanity politics. I hate the pathetic weakness that keeps them from hauling themselves out of the tar pit of cognitive dissonance and facing the reality of what the Democratic party is and what it’s been doing to the American people and the world. I hate their phoniness and the way they're constantly regurgitating the latest think tank-generated slogan from the pundits on corporate media. I probably hate them a lot more than most Trumpsters hate them, because I’m more familiar with what they’re made of and what makes them tick. These were my buddies up until recently, you see. These are the people who don’t talk to me anymore because I speak out against heroes of theirs like Hillary Clinton. I know they purport to want an end to America’s nonstop military executions of innocent people around the world for corporatist interests. I also know they’re lying. They will pretend to care about America’s despicable, bloodthirsty foreign policy until the second they get one of their own back in the White House, and then anti-war Democrats will disappear from the face of the earth once more, after doing literally nothing to fix anything whatsoever.

CNN/ORC poll: Most back special prosecutor for Russia investigation

About two-thirds of Americans say a special prosecutor should investigate contacts between Russians and Trump campaign associates, according to a new CNN/ORC poll, and 55% say they are at least somewhat concerned by reports that some connected to the Trump campaign had contact with suspected Russian operatives. ...

Concerns about the reported contacts are closely tied to partisanship, with 71% of Democrats saying they are "very concerned" about it while 54% of Republicans say they have no concerns "at all" about the reports. ...

And more now see Russia as a threat to the United States than said so last spring, before any news about Russia's attempted interference in the election emerged.

In the new survey, 34% call Russia a "very serious" threat, up from 21% in May 2016. Last spring, Republicans were about twice as likely as Democrats to consider Russia a deep threat (30% among Republicans, 15% among Democrats). Now, that's reversed, with Democrats about twice as likely to consider Russia a very serious threat (51% among Democrats, 24% among Republicans).

The Politics Behind ‘Russia-gate’

Official Washington’s Russia hysteria has reached such proportions that New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has even compared the alleged Russian hacking of Democratic emails to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, two incidents that led the United States into violent warfare. On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show, Friedman demanded that the hacking allegations be taken with the utmost seriousness: “That was a 9/11 scale event. They attacked the core of our democracy. That was a Pearl Harbor scale event. … This goes to the very core of our democracy.”

But what really goes to “the very core of our democracy” is the failure to deal with this issue – or pretty much any recent issue – with the sobriety and the seriousness that should accompany a question of war or peace. Just as Friedman and other “star” journalists failed to ask the necessary questions about Iraq’s WMD or to show professional skepticism in the face of U.S. propaganda campaigns around the conflicts in Libya, Syria or Ukraine, they have not demanded any actual evidence from the Obama administration for its lurid claims about Russian “hacking.” ...

Having worked in Washington for nearly four decades, I have seen political investigations before, both in steering away from real crimes of state (such as Nicaraguan Contra cocaine trafficking and Republican collaboration with foreign governments to undercut Democrats in 1968 and 1980) and in fabricating scandals that weren’t there (such as the fictional offenses of Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Chinagate, etc. under Bill Clinton who was finally cornered for the heinous crime of lying about sex). So far at least, “Russia-gate” fits much more with the latter group than the former.

What I also have learned over these years is that in Official Washington, power – much more than truth – determines which scandals are taken seriously and which ones are not. “Russia-gate” is revealing that the established power centers of Washington arrayed against Trump – the major news media, the neoconservatives and the Democratic Party – have more power than the disorganized Trump administration.

Trump backing off from Russian deal

President Donald Trump is telling advisers and allies that he may shelve, at least temporarily, his plan to pursue a deal with Moscow on the Islamic State group and other national security matters, according to administration officials and Western diplomats.

In conversations with diplomats and other officials, Trump and his aides have ascribed the new thinking to Moscow's recent provocations. But the reconsideration of a central tenet of his foreign policy underscores the growing political risks in forging closer relations with Russia, as long as the FBI investigates his campaign associates' connections to Moscow and congressional committees step up their inquiries into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. ...

Trump's new skepticism about brokering a deal with Moscow also suggests the rising influence of a new set of advisers who have taken a tougher stance on Russia, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and new national security adviser H.R. McMaster. ...

Trump, who spoke favorably about Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout the campaign, is said to have shown interest in a broad deal with Russia that could address cooperation in fighting the Islamic State, nuclear arms control agreements and Russia's provocations in Ukraine. But in recent days, the administration has signaled that the moment for such a deal may not be right.

Pentagon fruitcakes and nutbars are itching to nuke somebody. Couldn't they just drop a little one? Pretty please with cherries on top?

Could America Really Win a "Limited" Nuclear War?

Just this past week, CQ Roll Call reported that a blue-ribbon Pentagon panel urged the Trump administration to make the U.S. arsenal more capable of fighting a “‘limited’ atomic war.”

According to the report, “The Defense Science Board … urges the president to consider altering existing and planned U.S. armaments to achieve a greater number of lower-yield weapons that could provide a ‘tailored nuclear option for limited use.’”

The strategy behind limited nuclear use sounds deceptively simple. You need to escalate a conflict just enough to end it. As the theory goes, using low-yield nuclear weapons against an adversary’s conventional forces will demonstrate that you mean serious business and might be crazy enough to launch an all out nuclear attack. This will cause the enemy to “blink” and ultimately back down, rather than risk global thermonuclear war or continue conventional hostilities.

But if you think “limited atomic war” sounds like a colorful milspeak euphemism, you would be right. Dropping a nuke on someone is still dropping a nuke on someone, even if it is just a little one. And fighting a “limited atomic war” with the Chinese or Russians would almost certainly involve absorbing retaliatory nuclear counterstrikes.

The reality is that planning to use nuclear weapons in a “limited” way is a dangerous fantasy. Even the Nixon administration paid lip service to the futility of the concept by referring to its plan for limited nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union as the “Madman Theory.”

MSM Downplaying US Contribution to Potential Yemen Famine

For almost two years, the United States has backed—with weapons, logistics and political support—a Saudi-led war in Yemen that has left over 10,000 dead, 40,000 wounded, 2.5 million internally displaced, 2.2 million children suffering from malnutrition and over 90 percent of civilians in need of humanitarian aid.

A recent UN report on the humanitarian crisis and near-famine conditions in Yemen (that encompassed South Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia as well) has led to a rare instance of Western media taking notice of the war and its catastrophic effect. But missing from most of these reports is the role of the United States and its ally Saudi Arabia—whose two-year-long siege and bombing have left the country in ruins.

A Daily News editorial (“USA for Africa (and Yemen),” 2/27/17) called on readers to give to aid organizations helping to alleviate the crisis, but neglected to mention the US/Saudi role in the humanitarian disaster the Daily News itself insisted was “caused by acts of man rather than God.” Which men were those? The Daily News doesn’t say.

Similarly, reports on the near-famine in Yemen in the Guardian (2/12/17), AP (2/21/17), CBS News (2/22/17) and Reuters (2/22/17) neglected to mention the US-backed, Saudi-led bombing and siege that caused the hunger crisis in the first place.

To the extent these stories cover the war in Yemen, they typically do so in a “cycle of violence” framing that gives the reader the impression the crisis is entirely domestic in origin.

Artist Banksy opens Bethlehem hotel

North Korea fired four ballistic missiles towards Japan, angering pretty much everyone

North Korea fired four banned ballistic missiles towards Japan early Monday, drawing international condemnation and heightening concerns about the rapid pace of Pyongyang’s illegal missile program.

Analysts told VICE News the tests could be intended to send a message that North Korea will respond to any pre-emptive measures which seek to hamper its development of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The latest move from North Korea came as the U.S. and South Korea carry out joint military exercises seen by Pyongyang as a provocation.

North Korea’s development of a long-range nuclear missile capable of striking the United States looms large over the Trump administration. The issue has prompted U.S. national security officials to consider mounting pre-emptive strikes on North Korean launch sites to thwart the program, the New York Times reported Saturday.

Debate: Are Trump’s Ties to Russia a Dangerous Security Issue or Critics’ Fodder for New Red Scare?

FBI Director James Comey rejects Trump's claims that Obama tapped his phones

FBI Director James Comey has rejected President Trump’s sensational claims that President Obama ordered a wiretap of his phones before the election last year. According to a report in the New York Times published Sunday evening, Comey contacted the Justice Department shortly after Trump made the allegations on Saturday to ask them to publicly deny the story. According to senior officials speaking to the newspaper, Comey made the call because Trump’s claim wrongly insinuates that his organization broke the law. ...

In a mini-tweetstorm on Saturday, while he was at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump accused Obama of tapping his phones in October, just before the election. ... Trump offered no evidence to back up his claims — just as with his comments about widespread voter fraud during the election — but the allegations appear to stem from similar claims made by conservative talk show host Mark Levin on his show last Thursday, when he said Obama had used the “instrumentalities of the federal government” against Trump. This was then picked up by Breitbart News on Friday before making its way into Trump’s Twitter feed 24 hours later.

Trump has called for a congressional hearing to be made into the claims and, on Sunday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said — again via Twitter — that the president would be “requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.”

Corporate Media Suddenly Not Okay With Unsubstantiated Claims Following Trump Twitter Ran

It is the MSM’s dominance over American political thought that exerts a tremendous (though steadily decreasing in the age of Assange) amount of influence over the way Americans think and vote. Nobody elects these people, but they wield an immense amount of power. This sort of blatant unelected power structure is what the concept of the deep state is meant to refer to, not the secretive cabal a lot of people think of when they hear that term.

If you google the word “proof” anywhere near the time I’ve published this article, you will find that these deep state mouthpieces are extremely upset about the way the current administration is able to bypass their filter by speaking directly to the American people using social media. They are outraged that the President would have the gall to make an assertion about the previous administration’s wiretapping behavior without providing any proof of those allegations, which is absolutely precious coming from a group that’s been relentlessly yammering about Russian hacking for months and months without ever once providing a single shred of tangible proof. And all over an allegation of wiretapping in a nation we know for a fact spent the last sixteen-year Bushbama administration making it legal for the US government to spy on private American citizens, which Donald Trump was until his inauguration.

The corporate media does not care about an absence of proof. Their entire operation is built upon making assertions in the absence of proof. This was how they paced the American people into consenting to the disastrous invasion of Iraq and duped a full 70 percent of the US population into thinking that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks; instead of doing their jobs as journalists, they functioned as the establishment mouthpieces that they are and told America that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction absent any proof at all, while in the same breath mentioning the 9/11 attacks over and over again for no other reason than to create a false association between the two in the minds of the American people.

Some extraordinary claims here, but interesting nonetheless:

‘DC insiders seek to defeat Donald Trump - even in aftermath of his victory’ – ex CIA agent

Trump 'wiretap': White House wants investigation, Ex-DNI Clapper denies order

The White House has asked Congress to investigate Donald Trump’s allegation, presented without evidence, that Barack Obama ordered illegal wiretapping of Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential election.

On Saturday, a spokesman for Obama said the former president had not ordered any such surveillance. On Sunday, a former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, went further, denying the existence of any surveillance order at Trump Tower, at least during his tenure. ...

In a statement, Spicer said the president had asked congressional intelligence committees to “exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016”.

Within an hour of the White House request, Clapper appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and denied the existence of any wiretap operation at Trump Tower while he was in office.

Obama’s intel chief says he knows of no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion

James Clapper, the longtime director of national intelligence under former President Barack Obama, said unequivocally Sunday that Donald Trump’s home and office were not wiretapped before the presidential election last year.

Clapper, who served as director for more than six years before he departed in January, also said he knew of no evidence that members of Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russia during the election campaign and that no suggestion that they had was made in a January report on the subject.

The U.S. Government’s Privacy Watchdog Is Basically Dead, Emails Reveal

There's a little-known federal agency whose job is to ensure U.S. spy agencies protect privacy and other civil liberties even as they work to defeat terrorists and criminals, and to blow the whistle when that doesn’t happen. But the agency, known as the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, is down to just a single voting member — which means it has been stripped of nearly all its powers, according to emails obtained by The Intercept.

The board was created by Congress in 2004, at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, to help the executive branch balance national security priorities with individual rights. After Bush administration officials heavily edited PCLOB’s first report, one member resigned, and Congress in 2007 turned it into an independent agency and expanded its writ to include oversight of congressional action. ... PCLOB is supposed to have five members, no more than three of whom come from the same political party; to employ a full-time chairperson; to have regular access to the 17 intelligence agencies; and to publish unclassified versions of its evaluations of U.S. espionage powers.

Without the statutory quorum of three members, PCLOB “may not initiate new advice or oversight projects” or offer advice to the intelligence community, according to a list drawn up by Jen Burita, PCLOB’s public affairs and legislative officer, and shared by email with several congressional staffers who had raised questions about the impact of the attrition among board members.

Nominations to bring PCLOB to quorum seem unlikely to happen any time soon, if they happen at all. One hurdle is that Trump has to work with Democrats to name at least two of the board’s members, and lack of bipartisan cooperation stymied PCLOB appointments under Presidents Bush and Obama. The bigger issue is that Trump may not be interested in naming any members at all. On Fox News on Tuesday, the president claimed he hasn’t filled upwards of 600 administration slots because “they’re unnecessary to have.”

May believes EU could scupper Brexit if MPs given proper veto

Theresa May will not allow MPs and peers a proper veto over her Brexit deal in case it gives the EU the incentive to offer the UK bad terms, her spokesman has said. The prime minister believed the UK must not allow the establishment of a process that encouraged EU countries to scupper Brexit, he said on Monday.

The warning came on the eve of a House of Lords debate about giving MPs and peers a meaningful vote at the end of two years of talks with Brussels. Parliament is currently only being offered a “take it or leave it” vote: accept May’s Brexit deal or leave the EU with no deal, and trade on World Trade Organisation terms instead.

However, peers are expected to vote on a cross-party basis for parliament to have the power to reject May’s deal and send her back to the negotiating table if it does not like what she has achieved.

Supreme court rules that jury secrecy can be lifted if racial bias is suspected

The US supreme court ruled on Monday that racial bias in the jury room can be a reason for breaching the centuries-old legal principle of secrecy in jury deliberations. The court ruled 5-3 in a Colorado case in which a juror reportedly tied defendant Miguel Angel Pena Rodriguez’s guilt to his Hispanic heritage.

The juror’s statements came to light after Pena Rodriguez was convicted. Two jurors reported that a third juror colleague determined that he was guilty because Pena Rodriguez is “Mexican, and Mexican men take whatever they want.” Pena Rodriguez said the juror’s views, expressed behind the closed doors of the jury room, deprived him of a fair trial.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority “that blatant racial prejudice is antithetical to the functioning of the jury system and must be confronted in egregious cases like this one despite the general bar of the no-impeachment rule”. But the court stopped short of ordering a new trial or even laying out procedures for lower courts to follow.

Canada: No plans to clamp down at border to deter migrants

Canada will not tighten its border to deter migrants crossing illegally from the United States in the wake of a U.S. immigration crackdown because the numbers are not big enough to cause alarm, a government minister said on Saturday.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the issue had not risen to a scale that required hindering the flow of goods and people moving across the world's longest undefended border.

Hundreds of people, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, have defied winter conditions and walked across the border, seeking asylum. They are fleeing President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, migrants and refugee agencies say.

Advocate: We Expect Trump’s New Muslim Travel Ban Will Be As Unlawful As First Executive Order

Revised travel ban: Trump signs order targeting six Muslim-majority countries

Donald Trump has signed a revised executive order to reinstate a ban on immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries and suspend the US refugee program.

The new travel ban blocks entry to the US for citizens from six of the seven countries named in Trump’s original order, officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and state department told reporters on a conference call on Monday. ...

As with the previous order, people from Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya will face a 90-day suspension of visa processing. But Iraq will be removed from the list of countries affected. The inclusion of Iraq in the original order had prompted concerns from the national security community because of the country’s role in fighting terrorism alongside US forces.

The revised order will keep in place a 120-day suspension of the refugee program, but it will no longer identify Syrian refugees as subject to an indefinite ban. Officials on the call said Syrians would be treated no differently from other refugees seeking asylum in the United States. The order will not come into effect until 16 March, according to leaked guidance documents published by Just Security, in contrast to the first order, which was implemented immediately.

Deporting undocumented immigrants could lose states $11 billion in taxes, study finds

Just because an immigrant is undocumented doesn’t mean her taxes are. In fact, undocumented immigrants currently pay more than $11 billion in state and local taxes each year, according to a report released Wednesday by nonpartisan think tank Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

If these immigrants were to receive legal status, they’d likely contribute about $2.18 billion more in taxes, because they’d earn more and be able to fully comply with the tax code.

“Public debates over federal immigration reform, specifically around undocumented immigrants, often suffer from insufficient and inaccurate information about the tax contributions of undocumented immigrants, particularly at the state level,” reads the report, which criticizes the Trump administration’s policies on the matter as “haphazard in design and impact.”

California Nonprofit May Have Violated Tax Law By Donating to Anti-Muslim, Far-Right Dutch Candidate

The David Horowitz Freedom Center, a controversial California-based nonprofit that sponsors virulently anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant campaigns in the U.S., has quietly played a prominent role in financing Dutch far-right nationalist Geert Wilders’s People’s Party for Freedom (PVV). The PVV’s platform calls for an end to Muslim immigration and the closing down of mosques and Islamic schools in the Netherlands — and polls suggest it may win the largest number of seats in the Netherland’s parliamentary elections this month.

By providing grants to the PVV, the Freedom Center, which operates as aa 501(c)3 nonprofit, may have violated IRS tax rules that prohibit tax-exempt charitable groups from funding overt political campaign activity.

Former IRS tax officials who spoke to The Intercept also note that the Freedom Center failed to disclose the grants to Wilders’s political party in its annual tax return, another potential violation of the law. Nonprofit groups’ tax returns are public documents.

Records posted by the Dutch interior ministry show that in 2014 and 2015 the Freedom Center provided multiple donations totaling 126,354 euros — approximately $134,000 — to the “Stichting Vrienden van de PVV,” or the Friends of the PVV Foundation, the fundraising arm of the party.



the horse race



Big Money and the Organizational Suicide of the Democratic Party

The Democratic Party is a good example of an ongoing organizational suicide.

They are internally focused, preoccupied with form but tone deaf and tactically inept, and so given over to cynicism that they can no longer communicate effectively with anyone outside of their own declining circles and enclaves.

They cannot change enough to grow and prosper without shedding the policies which have led them to a sweeping loss of public offices.



the evening greens


Americans are confused on climate, but support cutting carbon pollution

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication published the findings of its 2016 survey on American public opinion about climate change. The results are interesting – in some ways confusing – and yet they reveal surprisingly broad support for action to address climate change. ...

The first survey questions asked about participants’ beliefs about whether climate change is happening, what’s causing it, what scientists think, and whether they trust climate scientists. Overall, 70% of Americans realize that global warming is happening, while just 12% said it’s not. A majority of Americans in every state answered the question correctly, ranging from 60% in West Virginia to 77% in New York and 84% in Washington DC. Drilling down to a more local level, majorities in every congressional district and nearly every county in America were aware of the reality of global warming.

But when asked whether most scientists think global warming is happening, Americans got a failing grade. Just 49% correctly answered ‘yes,’ while 28% believed there’s a lot of disagreement among scientists. In reality, even 95% of weathercasters – who are among the most doubtful groups of scientists about human-caused global warming – realize that climate change is happening. This shows that the campaign to cast doubt on the expert consensus on global warming has been remarkably successful in the US.

58% of the Americans surveyed said they’re worried about global warming, while 42% aren’t. By state, answers varied from 45% worry in West Virginia to 67% in New York and 74% in Washington DC. Interestingly, even in a coal-heavy state like West Virginia, nearly half of Americans are worried about climate change.

However, only 40% of Americans think global warming is harming them today (with no state reaching 50%), and just 58% think global warming will harm Americans in the future. 63% of Americans think climate change will harm people in third world countries, 70% think it will harm future generations, and 69% think it will harm plants and animals.

[See also: Red State Rural America Is Acting on Climate Change — Without Calling It Climate Change - js]

Poachers kill one of Africa's last remaining 'big tusker' elephants

One of Africa’s oldest and largest elephants has been killed by poachers in Kenya, according to a conservation group that protects a dwindling group of “big tuskers” estimated to be as few as 25.

Richard Moller of the Tsavo Trust said Satao II, about 50 years old, was found dead on Monday and was believed to have been shot with a poisoned arrow. Two poachers believed to be responsible for the killing were apprehended not long after his carcass was spotted in routine aerial reconnaissance of the Tsavo national park. ...

The elephant, named after another giant killed in 2014, was beloved by visitors to the park. Moller said about 15 tuskers, named for impressive tusks that nearly scrape the ground, remained in Kenya out of an estimated worldwide population of 25. “They are icons, they are ambassadors for elephants,” he said.

Satao II’s death comes two days after a Kenyan Wildlife Service officer was killed during an anti-poaching incident in the park, the second to die in less than a month at the hands of poachers, according to the wildlife authority.

Pollution is responsible for one in four deaths of kids under 5, study finds

Each year, more than one in four deaths of children under the age of 5 are due to polluted environments — mostly unsafe water, air, and environmental toxins — according to two studies from the World Health Organization released Monday.

That’s 1.7 million children around the world.


Also of Interest

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

How U.S. Support for Syrian Rebels Drove the Refugee Crisis That Trump Has Capitalized On

If Trump Tower Was Wiretapped, Trump Can Declassify That Right Now

Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been, a Secret Agent of Vladimir Putin?

And Now NATO Allies Have Begun Echoing The ‘Election Meddling Is An Act Of War’ Line

Trump Wants NSA Program Reauthorized But Won’t Tell Congress How Many Americans It Spies On

Another Hatchet Job on Snowden

This resistance group — not the DNC — propelled Democrats to their first big election win under Trump

Party Unity is Now Impossible: Democrats Need a Hostile Takeover

Vanity Fair Acts as Democratic Party Enforcer Against Greenwald, NC, Others; Train Wreck Ensues

Was There a Wiretap of Trump?

Great Wall of China's troubled history offers lessons for Trump, scholars say

How 90% of American Households Lost an Average of $17,000 in Wealth to the Plutocrats in 2016

Memos Reveal Army Corps Knows Dakota Access Pipeline Violates Legal Requirement

Is Yucca Mountain once again to be America’s nuclear waste dump?


A Little Night Music

Alberta Hunter - You Can't Tell The Difference After Dark

Alberta Hunter - He's Got A Punch Like Joe Louis

Alberta Hunter - Two-fisted Double-Jointed Rough & Ready Man

Lucille Bogan - Shave 'em Dry

Lucille Bogan - Pot Hound Blues

Lucille Bogan - Coffee Grindin' Blues

Lucille Bogan - I Hate That Train Called The M & O

Lucille Bogan - Alley Boogie

Lucille Bogan - That's Wat My Baby Likes



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OLinda's picture

Not being familiar with John Steppling (opening quote), I looked him up. Here is the article the quote comes from which I have not read yet and which joe links to in the "Also of Interest" section.

To his quoted remarks, I say right on, exactement.

A playwright and intellectual born in my hometown! Burbank, CA. Smile

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OLinda's picture

Re article in essay: Trump backing off from Russian deal."

Wouldn't that be part of the reason for all the Ruskie BS? To make it difficult for Trump to pursue more relaxed diplomatic relations with Russia? To force him not to lest he look guilty and unAmerican? Looks like it is working.

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joe shikspack's picture

@OLinda

Wouldn't that be part of the reason for all the Ruskie BS? To make it difficult for Trump to pursue more relaxed diplomatic relations with Russia?

i think that is precisely what the mccain-graham-clinton-neocon deep state lunatic fringe is after. they really want to get their war on. their followers probably suspect that it's just politics and their team is just grabbing the most convenient bludgeon to use to drive trump out of office, but underneath political convenience, i fear, lies the dark throbbing engine of a machine too evil to spring from even stephen king's imagination.

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janis b's picture

@joe shikspack

as the winds start to pick up and bring a change from two weeks straight of settled, calm weather, makes me want to retreat. Maybe that’s the safe solution ; ).

Enjoy the rest of your evening joe, and all.

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joe shikspack's picture

@janis b

we are on the cusp of a rainstorm here, too - and they say that the coming weekend we may get some snow. just as the cherry blossoms are starting to fire in earnest. go figure.

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janis b's picture

@joe shikspack

I don't envy you the snow, especially at cherry blossom time. Hopefully the temperature won't be too severe.

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joe shikspack's picture

@janis b

we've been having a pattern where we get a couple of days of cold weather followed by several days of warm weather. pretty odd.

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OLinda's picture

Received a recall notice for the Takata airbag fiasco for my Honda Civic. Fortunately, my local dealer had caught it awhile back and I'm already all taken care of. Otherwise I would have freaked a little upon receiving the notice.

Interestingly, only the passenger side was affected. They opened up the driver's side to see what was in there, and it was not a Takata brand. Strange to me that 2 different brands would be in the same car. I didn't trust the checking online to see if it was affected, so had them check it out.

Of course this is an old Honda, so I drove it dangerously for several years. Humidity is supposed to cause a problem, so living in a low humidity environment may have made it safer in my case, but who knows. Very fortunate to not have had an accident.

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joe shikspack's picture

@OLinda

now you can drive fast and take chances! Smile

glad that your safety equipment is up to par. may you never have cause to find out how well it works.

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Everything you wanted to know about Tom Perez and more!

http://caucus99percent.com/content/wherein-i-do-tom-perez-part-1

http://caucus99percent.com/content/wherein-i-do-tom-perez-part-2

The Democratic Party today is made up of individuals who make money from big donors. They care about that more than they do about the survival of the Democratic Party. Besides, they've convinced themselves (and many others) that the survival of the Democratic Party depends upon Democrats being Republicans who believe in reproductive choice and integration, like Nelson Rockefeller and other moderate Republicans of the 70s and 80s. IOW, New Democrats = Old Republicans, but with a foreign policy difference: New Democrats do not ally with neocons. They ARE neocons. Anyone who looks at Hillary and does not see and hear a neocon is asleep.

They ran Hillary because they owe her and/or her husband. Both of them have worked for the party since law school, him, before that. They've done favors, given jobs, collected chits for decades. They've campaigned, fundraised, whatever. They probably know just about every state party head in the country. Besides, they're a little scary.

Hillary Clinton lost because only members of dwindling groups of (1) Dembots and (2) true believers in LOTE voting voted for her. People who have to write columns every day or week can come up with silly reasons for her loss until hell freezes over, but that was it.

For the first group, she had to do nothing. For the second group, she had to scare them brainless about Trump and she sure did her best to accomplish that. She gave no one an affirmative reason to vote for her, "I'm not Trump" not being an affirmative reason. Oh, yes, she is not Trump and she is a woman. Funny how that was not enough for some of us.

Members of the Democratic clan must unite against members of the Republican clan; members of the Republican clan must unite against members of the Democratic; and everyone must unite against a foreign enemy. That is how humans have functioned since before we lost our tails. Why mess with a winning formula just because we've traded in clubs for semi-automatic weapons and nuclear bombs? What could possibly go wrong?

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janis b's picture

@HenryAWallace

Thanks for this amazingly concise summary of the state of the world's superpowers, as well as your edgy question ...

That is how humans have functioned since before we lost our tails. Why mess with a winning formula just because we've traded in clubs for semi-automatic weapons and nuclear bombs? What could possibly go wrong?

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@janis b

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joe shikspack's picture

@HenryAWallace

thanks for posting the excellent essays.

richard nixon once said of george h.w. bush that he was "the sort of man that you appoint to things." meaning in nixon's way of thinking that bush wasn't the sort of guy who had what it takes to be elected.

tom perez strikes me as the sort of guy that you appoint to things. he's been mentored along and taken under the wings of various people, because he's a smart guy who ingratiates himself to the right people.

he's the sort of guy who needs a system to support him and he's happy to return the favor. his benefactor is the democratic party and the large donor class. they own him and he will deliver for them.

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@joe shikspack

And risen within the D of J remarkably quickly, even for someone who was graduated from Harvard Law with honors. How do you get to be in the No.4 position in the entire D of J after six years? How does Ted Kennedy single you out to be "Special Counselor" whatever that means>

George H.W. Bush wasn't appointed out of nowhere. There was Prescott Bush before Bush 41 and Samuel Bush before Prescott. Similarly, I have a feeling there is more behind Perez than his wiki tells us.

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janis b's picture

Thanks joe. I managed to find some balance between the tragic news of the day and the inspiration of Banksy's art and Alberta Hunter. Trying to incorporate the fact that WHO found one in four children under five, die from pollution, with meaningful art can be challenging! Wow, to the Banksy Walled Hotel in Bethlehem.

This sweet site had this quote and image ...

He doesn’t usually comment on his work, but this project appears to be a little different. He has spray-painted a wall of the hotel with these words: “If we wash our hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless we side with the powerful – we don’t remain neutral.”

My favourite (and funny) Alberta Hunter ...

[video:https://youtu.be/BmFtwwCOmmo]

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joe shikspack's picture

@janis b

i really like banksy's idea of the "walled off" hotel. (a word play on waldorf?) it gives people an opportunity to interact with the artwork at a leisurely pace and reflect on it, perhaps even after check out time.

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janis b's picture

@joe shikspack

I checked, but it's not on airbnb yet ; ).

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OLinda's picture

FBI Director James Comey has rejected President Trump’s sensational claims that President Obama ordered a wiretap of his phones before the election last year.

Should read: The disgraced for lying under oath to Congress, FBI Director James Comey, has rejected President Trump’s sensational claims that President Obama ordered a wiretap of his phones before the election last year.

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joe shikspack's picture

@OLinda

sometimes i forget to mention these things. Smile

perhaps i should add that ex-dni clapper lies like a rug.

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snoopydawg's picture

And as the post-9/11 defense buildup taught us, throwing more money at the Pentagon is not a panacea. What matters is how the money is spent. So what should we look for in the president’s budget request?

What we should be looking for is that $2.3 Trillion that Rumsfeld told us on 9/102001 was unaccounted for.
Funny how that after the events of the next day no one talked about how that much money could go missing.
And we were told that the computers that had the records of the money just happened to be in the area where the missile plane hit.
Does anyone believe that those computers were the only ones that stored the information?
Bueller?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

heh, as george orwell informed us in 1984, the military industrial complex is a giant machine for absorbing the excess production of the great masses of people in order that they remain in a state of permanent need and want, requiring the tender mercies of the elites to supply their daily gruel.

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Thanks for all the valuable info & commentary that I usually read w/o comments. You all have added so much to my understanding, especially you, Joe S.

This is a dated (2014) but, I think, very important video about air pollution in China.
My Chinese friend says the narrator works for the national TV. The video is illegal in China, but is having a great influence nonetheless because it's spread over the net. I admire the courage of the investigative journalist who risked jail to even get the facts for the video. My one criticism is her belief that US natural gas will solve China's air pollution problems. I can now understand this country's rather sudden surge of pipeline construction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5bHb3ljjbc

sfern

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snoopydawg's picture

@sfern
I watched some of the video and will finish watching it later.
I am in Utah and during the winter we have the worst air in the country because the mountains trap the air in.
This morning I read that one reason for our poor air quality has to do with the air in China.
I couldn't find it, but will look for it again.

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joe shikspack's picture

@sfern

thanks for the kind words and thanks for the video!

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snoopydawg's picture

The DP is dead on about not moving left for any reason and I don't think that they care if they lose their seats because they know they will have a job with any lobbyists company or any think tank.
This exchange provides the evidence for that.

One person tweeted this

Sally Albright
Berniecrats, sincerely asking in the spirit of unity: What do we need to do for you to feel welcome & to fully support DNC going forward?

And here's her response to another tweet

Walker Bragman @WalkerBragman
Clinton Democrats reach "Bargaining." They don't realize they've lost control. https://twitter.com/SallyAlbright/status/832748951094730754
Follow
Sally Albright @SallyAlbright
@WalkerBragman I guess we find out next week, but even then I'm not going to stop pressuring the party not to move left
4:37 PM - 19 Feb 2017

I have read countless comments about how people need to accept the DP being centrists not leftist or 'real' progressives on what used to be considered progressive websites.

They just don't get it why so many people have demexited and are not coming back to the party until they get rid of their centrist, neoliberal ideas and get back to representing the people like they did 40 years ago and especially after the Clintons got their hands on their party.

This is another good article that covers neoliberalism and what their goals are which gulfgal has written extensively about.

Economic liberalism prevailed in the United States through the 1800s and early 1900s. Then the Great Depression of the 1930s led an economist named John Maynard Keynes to a theory that challenged liberalism as the best policy for capitalists. He said, in essence, that full employment is necessary for capitalism to grow and it can be achieved only if governments and central banks intervene to increase employment. These ideas had much influence on President Roosevelt's New Deal -- which did improve life for many people. The belief that government should advance the common good became widely accepted.

But the capitalist crisis over the last 25 years, with its shrinking profit rates, inspired the corporate elite to revive economic liberalism. That's what makes it "neo" or new. Now, with the rapid globalization of the capitalist economy, we are seeing neo-liberalism on a global scale.

The article shows how and why the DP stopped representing us and started representing the banks and corporations.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376

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wind.png

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PriceRip's picture

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mimi's picture

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and vice-versa. China will also suffer from all the methane released when we frack, even if their water is not also poisoned. And we suffer from their pollution in several ways already, one being increased mercury in surface fresh water in the western US.

I had just seen this video and had to go to buy gas. Wow, did I ever smell raw gasoline fumes coming from the pump here in upstate NY. Now I'm trying to push NYPIRG to take this on as one of their projects. How ironic if the Chinese people believe that all of the US has the same automobile environmental regs as does CA.

About London: I still find myself believing the old saw that London has pea-soup fog; now I know it was smog. London, for all its successes with air quality, is still working to improve:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39132679

Well, whether or not we still have an EPA, we need to fight for better air quality.

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