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The Evening Blues - 7-30-26



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Jimmie Lee Robinson

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues singer and guitarist Jimmie Lee Robinson. Enjoy!

Jimmie Lee Robinson - Boss Man

"A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges."

-- Benjamin Franklin


News and Opinion

How To Be An Empire Propagandist

If you want to help the western empire administer war propaganda, one of the best ways to do this is to pretend the violence of empire-targeted governments happens in a vacuum, completely divorced from western imperial agendas.

Pretend the protesters killed in Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with the known US-Israeli agendas to foment violence in that country and arm insurgent factions in order to topple Tehran.

Pretend Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had nothing whatsoever to do with NATO amassing a proxy force on Russia’s border in ways the United States would never tolerate on its own border.

Pretend Beijing’s crackdown in Xinjiang had nothing at all to do with the west’s obvious desire to balkanize China with the help of Uighur separatists.

Pretend the “authoritarian” measures we’ve seen in nations like North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela happened completely separately from the western empire’s efforts to infiltrate, subvert and take over those countries.

Frame the US and its allies as mere passive witnesses to these dynamics, and the occasional revelation of CIA ops and State Department shenanigans as mere unrelated coincidences.

Frame the use of force by empire-targeted governments as the reason for the empire’s efforts to topple them, rather than as the product of those efforts.

There is a reason why all the empire’s enemies are willing to exert force to remain in power, and it’s not because Washington is leading an alliance of virtuous democracy-loving angels in a fight against tyranny and oppression. It’s because the US-centralized empire is the most tyrannical power structure on earth, and the only ones able to resist its agendas of total planetary domination are the ones who are willing to use force to thwart its efforts.

The primary job of the empire apologist is to obfuscate this reality. If you want to help advance Pentagon propaganda and grease the wheels of the imperial psyop machine, that’s where you focus your efforts.

IRGC Reports 3 F-35s DESTROYED in Jordan as ATTACKS Force U.S. Military OUT | Dr. Marwa Osman

US-Saudi strikes in Iraq push region into ‘uncharted territory’

US-Saudi strikes on Iran-backed militia in Iraq have pushed the region into “uncharted territory”, analysts have warned. Amid stark warnings of a widening and increasingly “unpredictable” conflict, Riyadh’s decision to publicly join the US in striking sites associated with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), killing at least 20 fighters, has added another complicating dimension to the war.

The strikes on Wednesday came after a brief lull in direct US attacks on targets in Iran, but Tehran’s allies in Yemen and beyond have become increasingly drawn in. Iran, meanwhile, launched missiles at US military installations in Jordan in its first attack in the region since the pause in fighting with the US. Those tit-for-tat strikes seemed to indicate the pause in fighting was at an end The US president, Donald Trump, said the US would be “be hitting [Iran] hard”, even as he claimed the strikes in Iraq were coordinated with the government, despite Baghdad’s condemnation.

In Baghdad, the Iraqi presidency called the air raids on the PMF, also known as al-Hashd al-Shaabi – an armed alliance that includes powerful pro-Iran factions – “a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty, targeting its official institutions”. Iraq’s Harakat ⁠Hezbollah ⁠al-Nujaba, ​an Iran-backed ⁠militia, added that ‌Washington’s and ‌Riyadh’s interests ‌and security would face ‌consequences. Mourners shouted Shia ⁠sectarian slogans and “Death to America!” as they carried the bodies of slain fighters in body bags out of a hospital in Mosul, northern Iraq.

The sense of growing chaos in the Middle East was summed up by Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and north Africa programme at the Chatham House thinktank. “Everyone is trying make sense of something that is increasingly senseless,” she said. “One view is that the informal [US] pause in direct strikes on Iran saw a shift from Tehran to its proxies to maintain pressure [on Washington]. But there is no longer any plausible deniability because everyone knows how the relationships are intertwined.” On the Iranian side, suggested Vakil, the unpredictability of Tehran’s tactics appeared to be a deliberate strategy to pressure Trump “either into confrontation or concession” with the aim of maintaining “a stranglehold on the strait of Hormuz”.

Vakil also said countries in the region were interpreting the chaotic context of the conflict as a historic opportunity, including to weaken Iran. And on the Saudi side, she said there was a similar desire to be unpredictable. “No one wants to stay in the status quo.”

Iran Missiles STRONGER THAN ORESHNIKs /MIT Professor TED POSTOL

Trump’s Iran Quagmire Spirals as US Teams Up With Saudis to Bomb Iraq

US President Donald Trump’s illegal war of choice against Iran further spiraled out of control on Wednesday as American forces teamed up with Saudi Arabia to bomb Iraq, strikes that came hours after the US military said it intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile attack on American forces in Jordan.

The US Central Command said its strikes in Iraq targeted “Iran-aligned terrorists that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) directed to attack US forces and Saudi energy infrastructure.” The office of Iraqi President Nizar Amidi condemned the US-Saudi airstrikes as “an unacceptable attack and a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.” According to Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, at least 20 of its members were killed by the US-Saudi attacks.

The exchange marked the first military escalation since the US and Iran paused strikes over the weekend, briefly hinting at the possibility of a return to diplomatic talks that have thus far not produced a lasting peace agreement.

Trump signaled Wednesday that the US onslaught—which is historically unpopular with the American public—was far from over.

“We’re going to beat the fucking shit out of them,” Trump told Fox News, according to reporter Trey Yingst. “We’ll be hitting them hard.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that the US-Saudi bombing of Iraq was aimed at expanding “the scope of the war and conflict in the West Asia region.”

“The warmongering US regime and its accomplices in the region [are] responsible for the dangerous consequences of these criminal, inhumane, and provocative acts,” the foreign ministry added.

Shortly after the flurry of attacks, CNN published a survey showing that 67% of Americans believe that Trump’s military actions in Iran have “hurt the US” as oil prices surged once again. Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe Trump does not “have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iran,” according to the poll.

“It remains remarkable that Trump won two elections criticizing America’s Middle East wars, attacking the Bush era, and disavowing the regime change business,” Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, wrote on social media. “Yet with each passing day, his presidency and legacy are becoming consumed with a Middle East quagmire of his own making.”

“Investors should stop assuming this war is nearing its end,” Toossi added. “The conditions for a durable settlement do not yet exist. Without a fundamental shift in US objectives and acceptance of a new regional balance, this conflict could drag on with profound and lasting economic consequences.”

Trump Escalation CRIPPLED By U.S. Munitions RUNNING OUT

US Starts Bombing Iran After Trump’s Threats

US Central Command announced on Wednesday night that it began launching airstrikes against Iran, hours after President Trump threatened a response to an Iranian missile attack on a US base in Jordan.

CENTCOM described the attacks as a “powerful response” to the attack in Jordan, though the extent of the US strikes remains unclear at this point. Trump has reportedly been mulling a significant escalation compared to the airstrikes the US was launching against Iran earlier this month.

The attack came after several days of a lull in US airstrikes against Iran, though the US military has still been enforcing a blockade against Iranian ports, and the Iranian military warned on Monday that it would consider the continued blockade an “expansion of war in the region” and vowed a response.

Max's legal battle advances - Live with Judge Napolitano

Protests Follow Netanyahu Everywhere as He Visits Trump in DC

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has traversed Washington, DC this week amid talks with US President Donald Trump, scores of angry protesters have rarely been far behind.

Across the nation’s capital, relentless chants and jeers have followed Israel’s leader, who has been accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and whom numerous human rights organizations say has committed genocide in Gaza.

American support for Israel has only continued to curdle as Trump has plunged deeper into a war with Iran that Netanyahu has goaded him to escalate; Israeli settlers have rampaged across the West Bank committing what have been described as “pogroms” against Palestinians; and the Israel Defense Forces have flattened entire neighborhoods in Lebanon, displacing over a million people.

Polls from YouGov earlier this week found that Americans believe Israel is committing genocide by a 19-point margin. By a margin of 22 points, they said they wanted to see American authorities arrest Netanyahu in accordance with the ICC warrant.

As Netanyahu’s motorcade arrived near the White House on Monday, protesters were there to let him know, waving Palestinian flags and pepper him with expletives.

“That’s our tax dollars going right there, to protect a fucking war criminal!” shouted one man as a squadron of black SUVs escorted Netanyahu, one video from Al Jazeera shows.

Outside his government-provided residence, Blair House, more protesters gathered, pounding drums, blowing whistles, and holding signs calling to “expose Israel’s control of Washington” and “stop the US/Israel war machine.”

As the prime minister joined members of Congress for a dinner at the Four Seasons hotel honoring the late war hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Monday night, more protesters stormed the hotel lobby.

“Bibi, Bibi, you can’t hide! You’re committing genocide!” they chanted before they were escorted out by armed security.

The protests continued the next day as Netanyahu met with Trump at the White House, where they reportedly discussed negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear program and its control over the Strait of Hormuz, US attempts to increase economic pressure on Iran, and the possibility of Israel once again joining US attacks.

At the height of rush hour, a group of protesters braved the pouring rain to occupy a roadway in an attempt to block Netanyahu’s motorcade.

According to Bloomberg reporter Emily Birnbaum, the “unreal scene” occurred “because the White House erected extra black fencing that prevented the protest from setting up where they usually do, in front of Lafayette Square.”

‘They targeted us directly’: how the Israel-Lebanon war became deadly for healthcare workers

Moustapha Hamze can see his house from the hospital where he works; from a distance, he tries to make out if it has been damaged. The surgeon heads to the balcony every third explosion to make sure his home was not the one targeted.

His house, on the hillside village of Kfar Roummane, is about a five-minute drive from the hospital where he works in the southern Lebanon town of Nabatieh. But despite a ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon war, he cannot return. The last time he tried, he was met by an Israeli drone that first dropped a stun grenade, and then launched a bomb about 10 metres away. He was lucky to escape with his life.

Hamze is one of thousands of Lebanese doctors and healthcare workers who have placed themselves in harm’s way to continue saving lives. Their country has become one of the world’s deadliest places for healthcare workers, with Israel targeting doctors, first responders and healthcare facilities with alarming regularity.

At least 135 healthcare workers in Lebanon have been killed by Israel since 2 March – many of them in so-called double-tap strikes – according to the Lebanese health ministry. Israel has claimed that ambulances were used to transport weapons for Hezbollah – an allegation that human rights groups such as Amnesty International say is not supported by evidence.

Russia Huge Strike Across Ukraine Great Destruction; US Without Patriots Ukraine No AD; Dobropiliya

Altman SHOOK After AI Hacking Crime Spree

OpenAI Model Goes ‘Full Cybercriminal’ on Another Firm

US Rep. Greg Casar on Wednesday called for a congressional hearing following reporting that the OpenAI artificial intelligence model that autonomously breached the systems of the open-source platform Hugging Face during recent internal testing also independently hacked another tech company.

Akshat Bubna, chief technology officer at New York-based Modal Labs, told Reuters that OpenAI’s model exploited vulnerable code written by a customer that was hosted on the company’s platform.

Last week, calls for stronger AI guardrails mounted after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted to a “significant security incident” during evaluation of one of the ChatGPT maker’s models.

The target of that breach, the popular open-source platform Hugging Face, said Tuesday that the OpenAI model—widely described in the press as “rogue”—broke into a sandbox “hosted on a third-party provider’s infrastructure” and used it to launch a broader attack.


Responding to Wednesday’s reporting, Casar (D-Texas)—who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus—said on social media: “Today we learned more disturbing news about OpenAI’s security breach. Sam Altman should answer questions under oath.”

“Congress should immediately hold public hearings with the CEOs of big AI companies about the threat their technology poses to national security and American jobs,” he argued.

'AI' Hedge Fund BLOWN OUT As Bubble Fear Grows

Fed holds interest rates steady despite Trump’s renewed calls to lower them

The US Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday in a divided vote, indicating growing pressure on the central bank to address heightened inflation.

The Fed’s federal open market committee voted 9-3 to maintain rates, with three dissenting members indicating a preference to raise the rate by a quarter-percentage point. It was the first time in a decade that three board members shared dissent over a policy decision.

Cooler inflation data published earlier this month may have eased expectations for an imminent rate hike, but Kevin Warsh, the new Fed chair, said in a news conference that the committee was less interested in “any one piece of data” and was more focused on overall trends. The tenuous peace deal between the US and Iran has also sent energy prices creeping up again.

The Fed’s main tool to combat higher prices has traditionally been to hike interest rates, which raises borrowing costs and, in effect, cools the economy. But Trump has persistently and aggressively called for rate cuts since the start of his presidency, going so far as to attack the previous Fed chair, Jerome Powell – who is still on the Fed’s board – with verbal insults and target him with a Department of Justice investigation for failing to deliver.

Fed governors periodically release forward-looking projections illustrating when they think further rate changes will occur. Last month, half of all Fed members projected at least one rate increase this year, in a U-turn in outlook from just months earlier, when a majority of Fed members called for at least one rate cut over the same time period.

US schools are struggling to keep the yellow bus running amid shortages and cuts

Education officials across the United States are increasingly facing a fundamental challenge: how do they ensure that school students can actually get to their classrooms? The bright yellow school bus might be a visual icon of US education famous around the world, but in reality it is becoming harder for districts to steer. Student transportation has become more difficult for districts in the US in recent years due to factors such as a shortage of bus drivers, budget constraints and the growth of the school choice movement.

This year, school officials in states such as Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia have either reduced, or proposed reducing, student transportation services. District leaders are trying to solve the transportation issues, which not only make life harder for parents but can lead to worse academic outcomes for students.

“It’s an especially important thing for families who don’t have reliable forms of transportation or others who they can regularly turn to for help,” said Jeremy Singer, assistant professor of education at University of Michigan-Flint, who has studied school transportation and absenteeism. “If schools reduce their school bus offerings, that means more families driving, which means more money on gas, more traffic and more emissions.”

Eighty per cent of US districts have seen their transportation operations affected by bus driver shortages, and 73% have seen such operations affected by budget shortages, according to a 2025 report from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The study was conducted in partnership with HopSkipDrive, a school rideshare company.

Experts trace many of the problems to the Covid-19 pandemic, when most schools shifted to remote learning, which, of course, meant there was less need for bus drivers. They then had to find other employment, and when schools reopened, some didn’t return. In August 2019, there were more than 223,000 US school bus drivers, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group; in August 2025, there were only 202,000, a 9.5% decrease.

Dem Senator Says ICE Threatened to Beat Seattle Business Owner Unless He Signed Deportation Form

Sen. Patty Murray on Wednesday accused federal immigration enforcement officials of attempting to coerce a longtime Seattle resident to sign a voluntary deportation form using threats of violence.

In a video posted on social media, Murray (D-Wash.) delivered an update on Eduardo Aguirre Esparza, who was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last week.

The senator said that Aguirre Esparza, whom she described as “a local Seattle small business owner with no criminal history” and the husband of a US citizen, was taken to an ICE office in Tukwila, Washington, where he was held in a room for 10 hours.


“He was surrounded by 20 ICE agents, who were pressuring him to sign a voluntary departure,” said Murray. “They physically pushed him and threatened to beat him up if he didn’t sign it. This is disgusting.”

Murray said that she has learned that there are security cameras in the room where Aguirre Esparza was being held, and she demanded that ICE hand over any footage in its possession.

“What ICE is doing is illegal and disturbing,” Murray emphasized. “Eduardo is now being held in Texas, away from his family and his lawyers. I am demanding that [the US Department of Homeland Security] return Eduardo to Washington state now so he can get the due process everyone should expect in America.”

In a separate statement, Murray said that Aguirre Esparza has “deep ties to our local community” and “was working hard to pursue a legal pathway to lawful permanent residence.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, commented that Murray’s account of Aguirre Esparza’s detention “is a good reminder that some ‘voluntary’ departures people sign while detained by ICE are the product of coercion.”

“The worst incidents I’ve heard of over the years involve agents grabbing a person’s hands and forcing them to sign a piece of paper they can’t read,” Reichlin-Melnick added. “It’s a ‘voluntary’ removal.”

Senate unanimously passes resolution opposing pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell

The US Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution declaring its opposition to any presidential pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes.

Introduced by Senator Jacky Rosen, a Democrat of Nevada, the resolution states that Maxwell “should not be granted a Presidential pardon or any form of clemency for her crimes with Jeffrey Epstein relating to the sexual exploitation and abuse of minors”.

Although Senate resolutions like these are non-binding and symbolic, Rosen’s office noted in a news release in February when she introduced the measure that the resolution was “designed to put the Senate on record opposing the prospect” of Donald Trump of granting a pardon or clemency to Maxwell.

The resolution was brought on Wednesday, as the Senate weighed Trump’s nomination of Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, to stay in the role permanently. Rosen said its unanimous passage sent a clear message to the White House and Blanche that “there should be NO special treatment for Ghislaine Maxwell”.

The resolution comes as Maxwell has exhausted a series of appeals of her conviction, with the US supreme court declining to hear her petition last October.

Trump’s pick for US attorney general Todd Blanche in jeopardy as vote postponed

Todd Blanche’s hopes of becoming US attorney general seemed to be in jeopardy on Wednesday after the Department of Justice did not provide written assurances to a key Republican senator that a $1.8bn slush fund was dead. The US Senate judiciary committee postponed a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to advance Blanche’s nomination.

Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, is already serving as acting US attorney general. He needs the vote of every Republican on the Senate judiciary panel to advance his nomination to land the role on a permanent basis. But a swing vote on the committee, John Cornyn of Texas, told reporters on Wednesday he would not support Blanche’s nomination until he received written confirmation that the fund was not moving ahead.

Cornyn also wants to clarify that a provision giving the president, his sons and related businesses blanket immunity from tax audits for all matters up until this year could not be applied to future matters, or to people who were not parties to the settlement. “Maybe they think I’m just going to give up or, you know, go along, but they’re mistaken,” said Cornyn, a four-term Republican senator who lost a re-election bid earlier this year to a Trump-endorsed rival. “We actually sent them a red-line strikeout of what we need, and they just need to make a decision. And if they do, then we’ll proceed with the markup tomorrow.”

The US federal government reached the agreement to resolve a $10bn lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS over the unauthorized leak of his tax returns. The deal created a $1.8bn loosely controlled fund to compensate people who say they are victims of government weaponization and gave Trump, his family and businesses blanket immunity from audits for anything filed until the agreement was reached.



the horse race



DSA Co-Chair Questioned: Will the DSA Support 3rd Parties or Sheep Dog Socialists? (w/ Megan Romer)



the evening greens


Ships stuck in strait of Hormuz pose ‘super-spreader’ biodiversity threat

The closure of the strait of Hormuz has created conditions for an extreme global biodiversity threat, with scientists warning that thousands of stranded ships could spread invasive marine species across the world’s oceans once they begin sailing again.

More than 1,500 commercial vessels have been stuck in the Gulf since the strategic waterway closed on 28 February after the outbreak of the US-Israel war on Iran. An international team of marine biologists said that with the stranded ships remaining motionless, their hulls were becoming encrusted with marine life – from microbes and algae to barnacles and other invertebrates – that could hitchhike to ports around the world when trade resumed.

Prof Mario Tamburri, of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the study’s lead author, said: “If you had to design the worst-case scenario, I don’t know if you could have done it differently. It is a perfect storm.” The research describes the situation as a potential marine “bio-invasion super-spreader event”, arguing that no previous shipping disruption has involved so many vessels remaining idle for so long.

According to the study, ships normally only remain at anchor in a harbour for one to three days, limiting the growth of organisms on their submerged surfaces. But many vessels trapped in the Gulf have remained stationary for months, allowing dense marine communities to establish themselves. If thousands of vessels leave carrying barnacles, algae, mussels and other organisms, they could introduce invasive species that outcompete with native wildlife, spread disease and permanently alter marine ecosystems. “When you move organisms around, they can reduce biodiversity in the regions they invade, cause local extinction of organisms that they displace,” Tamburri said. Invasive species can also devastate fisheries, clog the cooling systems of power plants and cost billions of dollars a year to manage, he added.

The Gulf is already a hotspot for marine invasions, with previous studies identifying dozens of non-native species introduced largely by commercial shipping. Researchers said the region’s extreme heat and salinity may make the organisms especially resilient. “They’re pretty hardy. They’re used to extreme environments, high temperatures and high salinities,” Tamburri said. “Those hardy organisms that can often withstand those extreme environments make really good invaders.”

The Great Lakes’ most emblematic fish could be consigned to history books

From the basement of the Sandusky library, page 29 of the book Sandusky of To-Day proclaims the town to be the “largest fresh water fish market in the world”. Two pages later, an image of the lake whitefish, referred to as “Sandusky’s pride”, takes up the entire page. But the book was published in 1888. Lake whitefish was a delicacy in this part of North America for centuries. Indigenous communities centered their lives and traditions on the fish. By the mid-1800s, settler communities on the southern shoreline of Lake Erie such as Sandusky cashed in on the demand for lake whitefish, building their economies around its popularity as a food source.

But then, beginning in the 1990s, it started to vanish, at first puzzling fishers and researchers who began observing fewer fingerlings and juvenile whitefish in Lake Erie. The huge fall in the number of the lake whitefish has since been attributed to the slow, implacable march of invasive mussels across the Great Lakes region, and the disappearance of diporeia, an oil-rich, shrimp-like crustacean typically found in cold water between 100 and 400 feet that whitefish fingerlings gorge on.

The arrival of freshwater quagga and zebra mussels, which reached the Great Lakes having hitched a ride in the ballast of transatlantic ships, led to their removing phytoplankton, tiny algae and bacteria that the diporeia feed on, setting off a calamitous chain reaction further up the food chain. While the proliferation of quagga and zebra mussels, which now carpet entire lakebeds for hundreds of miles in any direction, have helped clean the lake system of phosphates and other damaging agricultural and industrial pollutants, their huge numbers are eliminating whole regions of phytoplankton growth.

Now, biologists who completed an extensive survey of the fish here in western Lake Erie, the findings of which were released last year, are warning that the species could disappear from parts of the Great Lakes in the next five years.

For William Ortiz of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, the decline of the lake whitefish has been little short of disastrous. Ortiz says that where whitefish spawn along the shoals and shallows of the Great Lakes, zebra mussels have eliminated the diporeia that whitefish fingerlings eat after hatching, “so they’re starving out before they get to a size where they’re moving up in the food chain. “It’s heartbreaking what’s happening. It’s a treaty right; we used to be able to make a living, make enough money from spring till fall to hold yourself over through the winter. Now, it’s hard if not impossible to do that.”


Also of Interest

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

Zelensky's dangerous gambit to merge the Iran and Ukraine Wars

Iran War: Iran Hits US Base in Jordan After US-Saudi Strike on Iraqi Militia

War On Iran: – U.S.’ Missile Defense Stock Is Severely Depleted

Teaming Up for Genocide

US-Israel Rot Is Deeper Than AIPAC

Israeli defence minister boasts that US warplanes used Israeli bases to attack Iran

Some Jordanians Dare to Speak Out Against U.S. Troop Presence

US prosecutor who helped ICC's Karim Khan seek Israeli arrest warrants breaks her silence

Burning Down Great Library Yet Again

Your worst fears about cultural collapse might be true – here’s what you can do about it

Welcome to America, where you’re never quite sure if your senator is dead or not


A Little Night Music

Jimmie Lee Robinson - All My Life

Jimmie Lee Robinson - Times is Hard

“Lonesome” Jimmie Lee Robinson - Coming Home

Jimmie Lee Robinson - Mean Black Spider

Jimmy Lee Robinson - Twist It Baby

Jimmy Lee Robinson - Lonely Traveling

Jimmie Lee Robinson - The Sun Is Shining

Jimmie Lee Robinson - 3 O'clock Blues

Jimmy Lee Robinson - Remember Me


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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

She gets bonus-points for following it up with a Carmen Sandiego allusion.

BONUS:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/15/mitch-mcconnell-ho...

A 'money-quote' from the latter:

If you’re anything like me, your own job probably involves much less privilege and much less power, and you spend your days doing things that might be more honorable but are undoubtedly of less consequence. Now ask yourself: could you, with your lesser powers and lesser responsibilities, simply disappear from your job for four weeks without notice or explanation? And when you re-emerged from this abandonment, do you think you could claim that you are entitled to remain in that job, even if you can’t perform it, by the simple virtue of being technically alive?

Of course, what neither article dares touch is that what this really reveals is the fundamental irrelevance of the elected officials themselves: They are equal parts jack-o'-lantern, shield, and ill-treated racehorse for (and here I must H/T Vladimir Putin) the nameless little men in grey suits who just happen to follow them everywhere.

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9 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

joe shikspack's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

as people who are merely there filling positions to draw attention away from the people who are really running things, i guess that they can do the job just as well from a hospital bed with the right pr crew.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@joe shikspack https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/necrocracy

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4 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

joe shikspack's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

they could start their own party, the necrocrats. they could have their own dance craze, too ...

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@joe shikspack

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3 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

joe shikspack's picture

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1 user has voted.
QMS's picture

.
Very understandable breakdown of the issues
being faced in west Asia. Even some funny observations
on the trumpet front.

Thanks joe.

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8 users have voted.

Zionism is a social disease

joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

it's good to hear the thoughts of smart, connected people who actually live in the region. i like it better than the opinion of "experts" who visit or occupy a place.

have a great evening!

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joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

heh, it's good to see somebody get a word in edgewise with alan "torture warrants" dershowitz.

have a good one!

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enhydra lutris's picture

We seem to be circling the drain faster and faster. Beyond that, the country has its twit in a wringer. I just hope we here don't get too dizzy as a result.

be well and have a good one

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

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

heh, well, for being a billionaire capitalist, trump is doing a great job of destroying the empire. i guess we'll see what replaces it when he's done.

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soryang's picture

No doubt there are problems with the AI bubble in the US. The KOSPI meltdown is something else entirely. There was a hyperbolic rise in KOSPI and then the recent crash. The difference is that economic growth in South Korea is not a mirage like it is here. South Korea produces things that sell at home and abroad. They are not uncompetitive. They are major shipbuilders for example. They produce war materials cheaper and faster than the US. They are major memory chip manufacturers. They have a strong industrial sector. Even with the recent "crash" the valuation is still 100 percent above a year ago. Look at the five year chart.

South Korea does have economic problems. Youth find it difficult to find suitable employment. There is a demographic problem. There is inequity in distribution of wealth which is a drag on the economy and a cause of social polarization.

I think the major risk of throwing in with US AI is the ponzi scheme aspect or the financializing of tech. If South Korea were simply to provide hardware it would continue to profit. But adopting the US financial model and the related data center frenzy might become a problem. I heard one expert say, the Chinese AI model focuses on manufacturing. The US AI model focuses in a major way of relieving people of their money in one sided exploitative relationships.

The South Koreans may not be doomed to be this way. They may be more pragmatic, remain industrially focused, keeping regulatory standards and oversight, but this is not to say that risks don't exist.

Also problematic is the effort of younger adults to see leveraged speculative tech investing as a way out of a loss of social mobility in South Korean society.

I'm hoping that the corporate and government leadership in South Korea maintain their freedom of action. It remains to be seen. The KOSPI needs to find a new floor. Too bad for the gullible young people who were taken in by the AI hype. I had a similar experience in the tech meltdown in the late nineties. I don't invest, nor do I give advice on financial things. There are people who will never recover their losses. So be it. However, the characterizations on the downside as far as South Korea is concerned tech wise, seem over stated. They are at risk energy wise, the value of the won has been suffering, and they are being pressured national security wise and economically by the US to do things that may not be in their interest. That is why peace and independent foreign policy is so important.

George Galloway had KJ Noh on, and he talked of South Korea's loss of sovereignty and North Korea's economic growth. Recently I was reading a lengthy historical review of South Korean economic development and particularly the Park Chung-hee years. Dictator Park Chung-hee ran a mobilizing goal driven dictatorship. In a sense, it shared characteristics with North Korea and earlier Japanese imperial militarist practices.

I don't see North Korea as charitably as a growth story or model for development as KJ does. I don't have a charitable view of Park either. I have more mixed views of how North Korea became the way it was and is now. The influences of outside cultures, Russia, Japan, and China, are all visible to one who studies the history of the region and the characters. What appears as bizarre or obscure to outsiders has "deep roots" as the saying goes. And it definitely isn't all good. The regime has been under assault for many decades. Therefore, to survive, a severe kind of discipline and regimentation was imposed. There is no "renaissance" in North Korea. That being said, the administrations of Moon Jae-in and Lee Jae-myung understood that the approach needs to be more positive, dialogue, exchange, cooperation where possible, and reduction in military tensions. With the exception of some posing otherwise by the earlier Trump administration, the US has been invariably opposed to this.

KJ's evaluation of another US Ukraine strategy in the Far East, and the "strangling China" strategy is worth hearing though imo. George's comments on the Philippines were spot on.

As if shot by a gun- relationship analogy to state affairs, the pain of trauma, the pain of separation. Been reading Yu Xin’s “Memory Palace”: Writing Trauma and Violence in Early
Medieval Chinese Aulic Poetry.

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己所不欲,勿施于人。

joe shikspack's picture

@soryang

thanks for the info. i agree with you that south korea's best strategy is to stay on the outside of the u.s. scam economy as an industrial supplier on a cash on the barrelhead basis - converting the dollars to a stable currency as quickly as possible rather than recycling them through the wall street scammers.

have a good one!

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the intent.

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joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

those guys really have it going on. Smile

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@joe shikspack

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