It's good to see you. Come on in, leave your shoes in the hallway, we've got fire on the stove preparing lunch for later. In the meantime, browse the bookshelves and plunk down on the sofa with one, or pick out some tunes from the music library or come in to the kitchen to help with the cooking. Our special blend of tea is steeping and will be right up.

Make yourself at home...

Being an urban dweller has many inherent challenges. Having grown up in the suburbs I still haven't quite gotten used to the all kinds of noises that could potentially accost you throughout the night. Especially once summer hits and school's out, and every attention-seeking douchebag is set free from whatever hole they've crawled out from.

Motorcycles buzzing by with sport bikes' throttles revved to a fevered, high-pitch whine; helicopters whirring overhead from early morning to late evening, whisking 1% criminals out of the city from their clandestine meetings to their faux castles in the country, over the cities and town they continue to prey upon so, so as to never have their consciences pricked by having to observe the wreckage they've wrought on the 99%; freight trains humming with ominously low frequency, as they drag insanely long lines of cargo at very slow speed. And of course, if there aren't enough loud, obnoxious, self-centered neighbors to jolt you out of your inner sanctum, the cops' sirens and fire trucks' horn blasts peppering the cityscape will be sure to. Up and down, back and forth, all day long. I'm crabby in the summertime, in case you haven't noticed.

But what sometimes irks me the most, aside from all that chronic noise pollution, is the ferocity with which New York City sends around traffic cops to ticket the masses. Packs of roving parking meter attendants, who I believe are now an extension of the NYPD, and whose only job it is is to write parking tickets or any host of other car violations imaginable.

Just yesterday I had to move my car up the street during this oppressive heatwave and sought to leave it there with 20 minutes to go before it was legal to park there. Good thing I hung around walking in the shade with the baby in my arms, just in case. Because sure enough, with 12 minutes to go one of these automatons came by to harangue me. He's got a quota of 30 some odd tickets to fill out a day, easily netting the city a thousand or two bucks a day - and these guys are everywhere. Last week I parked in front of my favorite restaurant, went in and put the baby in his high chair because the staff know us - and when I went out to pay the meter there was already a ticket in the window. Unbelievable. They're down to last minute scrounging to write tickets.

A person getting a parking ticket in New York City then fills out his check to the "Dept of Finance." Can this parking ticket scheme be anymore transparent? It is the working and middle class who, disproportionate to their income, wind up being the ones saddled with paying to finance the city - on their backs.

The irony cuts deep. Because the city is also known as the financial capital of the world. But we've refused in any demonstrable way to police the financial sector, as we do black male teenagers, for instance. They're not getting tickets written for their innumerable violations. When met with any kind of populist uproar to pay their taxes, or be levied with a transaction tax to help pay for the city, they cry wolf and threaten to leave. The same idle threats are spewed in London, or anywhere the Economic Terrorists conduct "business."

Why don't we do what these Nordic socialist countries do? "Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket: Most of Scandinavia determines fines based on income. Could such a system work in the U.S.?"

Reima Kuisla, a Finnish businessman, was recently caught going 65 miles per hour in a 50 zone in his home country—an offense that would typically come with a fine of a couple hundred dollars, at most, in the U.S. But after Finnish police pulled Kuisla over, they pinged a federal taxpayer database to determine his income, consulted their handbook, and arrived at the amount that he was required to pay: €54,000.

The fine was so extreme because in Finland, some traffic fines, as well as fines for shoplifting and violating securities-exchange laws, are assessed based on earnings—and Kuisla's declared income was €6.5 million per year. Exorbitant fines like this are infrequent, but not unheard of: In 2002, a Nokia executive was fined the equivalent of $103,000 for going 45 in a 30 zone on his motorcycle, and the NHL player Teemu Selanne incurred a $39,000 fine two years earlier...

But more importantly, day-fines (sliding-scale fines) could introduce some fairness to a legal system that many have convincingly shown to be biased against the poor. Last week, the Department of Justice released a comprehensive report on how fines have been doled out in Ferguson, Missouri. "Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs," it concluded.

“There’s a renewed interest in this because of the outrageous kind of fining and gouging that has become well-known out of Ferguson,” says Judith Greene, who founded Justice Strategies, a nonprofit research organization. “But of course that kind of stuff goes on everywhere.” Greene says that day-fines won't curb the troubling practice of aggressive, means-to-an-end fining, but it would be effective to introduce them anyway. “Then the criminal fines should come into the picture as they were originally intended, which is a criminal sanction—a penalty for crime—and then scaled appropriately,” she says.
(bolding mine)

I just paid $65 for an expired registration . A double-parking ticket costs you $125 here. I once got a ticket on my van alleging it wasn't the proper class, charging it was commercial, when all the guy had to do was look in and see a legitimate bench seat for passengers in the back (I beat that one). There isn't a person in the this city who owns a car who hasn't paid hundreds of dollars in tickets and fines. I've paid lots more than that.

I once had to cough up over $1000 for a fiasco involving multiple unpaid parking tickets that I frustratedly allowed to pile up when I was younger. The system just kept tacking on fines while making it difficult to defend, which ultimately resulted in a Marshall trolling around and hitting the jackpot when his computer gave him the details of my license plate. I had the mortification of having walked out into this scene, just after a triumphant gig in which the late music critic Timothy White attended on my behalf, with he and lots of friends there to witness the Marshall impounding my crappy little Honda Accord, which was probably not worth as much as the accumulated tickets/fines.

Being caught in the web of the overly punitive, dranconian system also included a towing fee, a "Marshall's fee" and interest - not to mention the insane stomach-knotting scene of trying to locate it by calling the aggressively unhelpful Parking Violations Bureau, and then having to drag yourself first to a Marshall's office to pay the ransom fee, where you're made to feel like a criminal, and then be sent further on for another wild goose chase to some remote, foreboding part of the city to which your car has been dragged. It can take a full degrading day to do all of this.

It's clear to me what this is all about, beyond the obvious prohibitive nature of owning a car in the city. A few years ago bridge and tunnel fares were raised almost 50%, while subway fares are constantly being ratcheted up. But we can't even get a 1% tax on high speed, computer generated financial transactions, the tactic of which being part of the way the Economic Terrorists further game the system.

Until we have a revolution, the working and middle class will new forced to keep paying a disproportionate part of their earnings for society. All the while the Economic Terrorists of Wall St pillage the 99% unnoticed, from every other conceivable direction. A Frank Zappa tune just came to mind.

Thursday last week British parliamentary elections.I pulled up Twitter to see what was going on there. "Trending" on the left column list were:

#ComeyDay
@Honest_Hillary, @CVHaction and 3 more are Tweeting about this
#WorldOceansDay
Celebrate the oceans on World Oceans Day
#ThursdayThoughts
@RebelJayRaye is Tweeting about this
#PitMad
Dodd-Frank
7,829 Tweets
Rep. Chris Collins
Senate Intelligence Committee
25.5K Tweets
#newsisback
Comey's Political Shrewdness
1,033 Tweets

Nothing on the British election, or Corbyn? Just Russia-related, red herring distraction.

However, on my thread was this tweet from a firebrand who during the 2016 Primary was lighting it up with a fusillade of pro-Bernie stuff, calling herself Jeanette Bernista. I'm not so well versed in the format so it seems I didn't have my "settings" right apparently. What that meant this time is that this tweet below was blocked out. And over it was a message saying something like, "this video is unavailable due to --- content, blah, blah your settings." Must have been some objectionable pornographic or violent video, right?

"You hide the problems of poverty by incarcerating people, and create a profitable enterprise." - Angela Davis pic.twitter.com/KY4GO6km9w

— Jeanette Corbynista (@JeanetteJing) June 7, 2017

Not quite. But it was a clip of that pinko/commie/socialist/terrist Angela Davis talking about the Prison Industrial Complex, with a shot of an Intercept article by Lee Fang saying Hillary accepts prison money.

Looks like we learned a couple of basic things with the British election in which socialist Corbyn amazingly defied the odds to deal an embarrassing and potentially knock-out blow to the conservative Tories under the hubristic May.

Haha. Gotta love this revelation, Clinton Super PAC Chair Ran Theresa May's Campaign... Poorly:

It appears the Neoliberals run in the same circles internationally; but the Socialist movement is getting deeper roots globally too. It is clear with Bernie's run, and now Corbyn's showing, that the potential exists to overturn their stranglehold. The former are running scared and out of fear-mongering ploys, unable to hide behind identity politics alone. People want answers. They want something tangible in their everyday lives for the taxes they pay, and have woken up to realize that they're not getting it, because their elected officials are beholden to their campaign donors, and not the voters. The Socialists propose answers.

I'm a pretty big fan of Russell Brand's sociopolitical and philosophical views. The day after the election he had a bright take on the results and how they bode for the world and revolution:

He also penned a clear-eyed, and colorful (as usual) essay just prior to the election, "Jeremy Corbyn Won’t Be Perfect, But He Has The Qualities I Want In A Strong And Stable Leader" or if you prefer to watch him read it and provide commentary.

Corbyn has been in the game a while and knew that what he said would be warped in order to stoke fear but said it anyway. Why? Integrity and trust that people can discern truth from propaganda. Qualities I want from a strong and stable leader.

It seems we have forgotten that politics can offer hope and change. We think that elections must be between two barely distinguishable parties, fronted by leaders that look like they could be in the same ‘Now That’s What I Call Democracy’ tribute act.

A glance across the Atlantic demonstrates what happens when the left rejects the popular emergence of a caring socialist leader in favour of the well-groomed centre. Denied the opportunity for meaningful change, the American people went for the sugar rush high you get from pushing the ‘fuck it’ button.

Those clamouring for a more centrist leader in America got what they deserved, they got Donald Trump.

Continuing on,

Britain is not America but what I sense is currently universal is that ordinary people are pissed off. They’re pissed off with being lied to, they’re pissed off with not getting what they’re entitled to expect from their government. They’re pissed off with life.

Anger leads to bad decisions. When angry and afraid we make choices that hurt us. It’s time for those of us that are well-off to make some (pretty modest) financial sacrifices, and for those that aren’t to vote in the interest of themselves and their communities, and they (we, they, we?) know, deep down, that that isn’t a party so hungry for power that it swallowed Ukip whole and is now belching the consequences into our faces.

A Labour government won’t be perfect, it will be operating within a system that opposes its new, manifest agenda to serve the people it will be elected to govern. Jeremy Corbyn won’t be perfect, he is a human being. We have a chance to elect a politician who is committed to serving the people of Britain. To supporting the NHS, public services and educating the young people to whom the future belongs.

During the dark days of Neo-fascism at the start of this century that enveloped this country after 9/11, one of the few bright spots was the debut of Air America. They came about around a year after we fudged the evidence to invade Iraq to be greeted with roses. Sam Seder had a show with Jeanine Garafalo, Rachel Maddow was actually a progressive (before she started making $30k a show, as Jimmy Dore reminds us), Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhoads, Al Franken and Mike Malloy. Sadly, when I look at that list through the prism of the 2016 Democratic Primary the majority of those folks, many who I had held in high esteem at that time, have joined a long list of similar Neoliberal apologists who I can't trust anymore. Mike Malloy is among the sadder entries. He was such an unabashed, take no prisoners Progressive. I couldn't believe he went all in for $hills.

So I was pleased to see his wife hand his ass to him recently. She lays into every Hillbot LOTE voter, including Mike, in a pretty epic takedown. "I Wrote In Bernie Sanders": War At The Malloy´s (w/Kathy Malloy)"

Well, to revisit this from last November I was thinking at the time, and I still kind of feel this way, that I had to vote for the candidate who upset my stomach the least. And the two that were on my touchscreen were giving me, you know, vomitus.

I couldn't do Hillary after the whole Debbie Wasserman-Schultz debacle, and Donna Brazile, and knowing how badly she cheated Bernie. I I don't care what her positions were on a number
of issues. The fact that she was complicit in destroying the primary...

My point is she knew about it. An honest candidate would have come out and said, as I would have said had I been Hillary, and I had found out that the Democratic National Committee was screwing up my opponent deliberately and I knew it. I would come out and say, "guys, this is wrong. We're going to have a fair fight. If I can't win on my own merit then I don't want to win. I don't want to win by cheating. I don't want to win by having Bernie discredited."

I still don't regret writing in Bernie Sanders, even to this day. Because I still think she was crooked and I think maybe in some bizarro, twisted way, maybe this is exactly the kind of Susan Sarandon-type scenario that this country needs to wake the hell up, and realize, "okay guys, we have to do something." We cannot let these two parties blend to the point where there is no red/there is no blue. They're all crooked. They're all a bunch of monsters...

So, how do I feel about the outcome? I think that this is sort of just deserts. We're getting what we deserved. This is what America wanted.

We have been lulled here, I want to say, for decades into this very complacent two-party control kind of system, where we've ended up with not a damn cent of difference essentially between the corporate candidate who is handed to us on a platter from the RNC, or the corporate candidate that's handed to us on a platter from the DNC's. For decades we were given, "Do you want Bush or do you want Clinton? Do you want Reagan or do you want Mondale?"

We had our choices were removed from us a long time ago. It's the electoral college that plays a part in it, super PACs play a part in it, Citizen United plays a part in that, the Fairness Doctrine plays a part in that. Our voices as American citizens have been diluted for 50 years. So now we're at a point where we have this Hobson's choice, "do you want Hillary Clinton or do you want Jeb Bush?," for example. And it took something as catalystic and as horrifying as Donald Trump.

How's that from BernieBro Kathy Malloy to her disgraceful, lackey, once-great, husband - on air? Mike keeps yelling over her, barely able to contain his vitriol and invoking "Russia!!, while Kathy remains cool and clear-eyed, reminding him that she ran a "crappy campaign" and that "no one likes her."

Some of Malloy's listeners weighed in on YouTube:

- Shirle Vick

It was not the Russians involved in the election. the DNC is just obfuscating from the fact they cheated in the democratic primary against Bernie. He really won the primary they stole it from him.

12

There is also a class action DNC lawsuit in Florida for the DNC rigging the primary against Bernie.
4

- Allen Marlin

Shirle Vick I think the Democratic Establishment Hysteria over Russia well look I think the Democrats Russian hysteria is the new Macarthyism they're doing exactly what Senator Joe McCarthy did during the cold war.
4
Shirle Vick
Shirle Vick8 hours ago
Those were not imaginary emails they were real the DNC never denied and they went and obfuscated to Russia. Why were several people fired from the DNC that is enough proof. The DNC staffer Seth Rich shot in the middle of the night a so called botched robbery he had on a $2,000 chain and nothing was taken the DNC did not even put out a reward. Hillary mentioned him on the campaign trail for convenience on gun control

Shirle Vick
You also have to look at the Democrats now they purge votes in the democratic primary in states like, NY, Chicago and California they switch Bernie votes to Hillary this is fact.
1

Mike Bronx

Shirle Vick You have ZERO proof for any of your outrageous Alex Jones claims.
1

Shirle Vick

I do not watch Alex Jones. I watch Tim Black, HA Goodman, HardBastard, Jordan Chariton, Michael Tracy and Jimmy Dore. All this so called hacking going on is not real someone from inside DNC gave the info to Wikileaks. Julian Assange is very credible.
4

- The National Razor

Shirle you should watch Sane Progressive too. She's the best!

- Charles Hunt

Sorry Mike but Kathy is correct. I don't care where the Hillary emails came from or how they were obtained, THEY WERE STILL REAL! She has spent a lot of time on how we got them but even she never denies that they are real. She was, is and will always be the most hated Democrat ever. I wish I had Kathy's courage to vote my heart and for once not pick the slightly lesser of two evils.
10

- karrasue

I wrote in Bernie, too. And I'm damn proud of it. I now know that I am done settling.
10

- Jason

Mike is being infuriatingly obstinate. "Trump, an outsider?!" @ 15:25. Wake the fuck up, dude. That is why many people voted for Trump. Because he was viewed as an outsider. A non-corporate asshole, like Hillary Clinton. It is obviously wrong of them to think like that, BUT THAT IS WHAT THEY THOUGHT. Fucking Christ. Time to make this the Kathy Malloy Show.

Rebecca Garcia

I completely agree with Kathy! the DNC is corrupt and sadly nothing has changed after the election.. they have learned nothing
7

Jason

I'm with Kathy. Mike pretending that Hillary is anything but as corrupt as Trump is hilarious. His "where is your proof" statements concerning Clinton would have been mocked by Mike himself ten years ago. Further, If America is stupid enough to elect Trump, then America deserves Trump.
5

On the way home last night from the Lower East Side, I almost got caught behind a garbage truck just around the corner from the club. Riding the motorcycle in the summer was always fun in that regard - heh. A stream of garbage bits flecking you in the face, along with getting sprayed by dank liquid. None of that this time. I sat back in my seat, with the AC on, relaxing and listening to a re-broadcast of the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC. Approaching my street there was a parking spot just a few doors down. It's amazing how getting a good parking spot can change your whole attitude.

So, what's going on with you...

Back in the kitchen we're listening to:

Yes "Going For The One"

Reading/Browsing List:
Naomi Klein "No Logo"
Thomas Frank "The Wrecking Crew"
bell hooks "Where We Stand: Class Matters"

Fresh Summer Tabbouleh
pour 3/4 cup or thereabouts of bulgur wheat into a stirring bowl.
Dice finely two or three tomatoes, then add to cover the grain. Add salt and squeeze fresh lemon over it.
Let stand for half an hour or so, until bulgur wheat softens.
Chop finely a big bunch of parsley and a small bunch of mint leaves.
Squeeze a little more lemon and some more salt.
Stir briskly and taste. Should be lemony, and the herbs should be balanced.

Lemongrass Chai Blend

heaping scoop of dried Thai lemongrass
shards of cinnamon bark
a few cardamom pods
a few black peppercorns
A few cloves
fresh chopped ginger