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The Evening Blues - 8-19-25



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Jimmy Smith

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues and jazz organ player Jimmy Smith. Enjoy!

Jimmy Smith - The Organ Grinder's Swing

"Power never takes a back step only in the face of more power."

-- Malcolm X


News and Opinion

Israelis Understand That Trump Can End The Nightmare In Gaza. Americans Should Know This Too.

It’s so revealing how Israelis keep begging Trump to end the killing in Gaza, because they understand that the US president has the power to force Israel to stop. It seems like Israelis understand this far better than Americans do.

Six former Israeli hostages and the widow of a slain hostage have released a video pleading with President Trump in English to support a comprehensive deal to make peace in Gaza so that the remaining hostages can be freed.

“You have the power to make history, to be the president of peace, the one who ended the war, ended the suffering, and brought every hostage home, including my little brother,” implores one of the hostages.

“President Trump, please act now before it’s too late for them, too,” pleads the widow.


This is not the first time Israelis have begged Trump to force an end to the slaughter. Earlier this month more than 600 former senior Israeli security officials from Mossad and Shin Bet sent Trump a letter urging him to compel Netanyahu to make peace in Gaza. They did this because they understand something that many Americans do not: that the US president has always had the power to end the Gaza holocaust.

It’s crazy how many times I’ve encountered Americans telling me that this is “Israel’s war” and there’s nothing the president can do to end it. It was mostly Democrats doing this back when Biden was president and I was slamming Genocide Joe for continuing this mass atrocity, and now that Trump is in office it’s his supporters who show up in my comments section white knighting for the president.

“It’s not our war and we should stay out of it,” they sometimes claim, mistakenly thinking that critics of the US-backed genocide are asking for some kind of US intervention.

But the call isn’t for the US to intervene, it’s for the US to stop intervening. To end the US interventionism that has been underway for two years. The Gaza holocaust can be ended by the US simply ceasing to add wood to the fire.


Israeli military insiders have been saying again and again that the onslaught in Gaza would not be possible without US support.

A senior Israeli air force official told Haaretz last year that “without the Americans’ supply of weapons to the Israel Defense Forces, especially the air force, Israel would have had a hard time sustaining its war for more than a few months.”

In November 2023 retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick told Jewish News Syndicate
that, “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert wrote the following last year:

“The entire Israel Air Force relies completely on American aircraft: fighter planes, transport planes, refueler planes and helicopters. All of Israel’s air power is based on the American commitment to defend Israel. We have no other reliable source for essential supplies of equipment, munitions and advanced weapons that Israel cannot manufacture on its own. In recent months, hundreds of American transport planes have landed at IAF bases carrying thousands of tons of advanced, vital military equipment and munitions.”


The Israelis clearly understand that they’ve been entirely dependent on the US for the IDF’s acts of butchery in Gaza this entire time, and they clearly understand that the US president has the ability to turn off the tap whenever he wants.

And now they are begging the president to do so with increasing urgency, because it’s been made clear to them that their own government isn’t going to stop until it is forced to stop. They can’t stop the gunman, so they’re turning to the man who’s feeding him the ammo.

It would be good if Americans understood this as well. Trump is committing genocide in Gaza, just as surely as Netanyahu is, and he could end it at any time. The fact that he still has not chosen to do so makes him one of the most evil people on earth.

LEAKED AUDIO: Israeli Mil Head Celebrates Killing Kids

Hamas says it accepts proposal for Gaza ceasefire and release of hostages

Hamas officials say they have accepted a proposal for a Gaza ceasefire deal that would include the release of half of the approximately 20 remaining living Israeli hostages as part of a phased resolution to the war, as Gaza health officials said 62,000 Palestinians had died in the 22 months of war.

The proposed deal follows negotiations between Hamas and Egyptian and Qatari officials that have been taking place in Cairo in recent days, and comes after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was confronted on Sunday by Israel’s biggest protests of the war, which called for a deal to secure the release of the hostages.

Netanyahu has criticised the large-scale street protests against his handling of the Gaza war, and his failure to secure the release of the remaining hostages, claiming that demonstrators were giving comfort to Hamas’s position in negotiations. Organisers of the protests, for their part, have called for a fresh demonstrations this Sunday.

The latest Gaza ceasefire proposal agreed by Hamas includes a suspension of military operations for 60 days and could be seen as a path to reach a comprehensive deal to end the nearly two-year-long war, according to Egyptian sources. During the period of suspension, Palestinian prisoners would be exchanged in return for half of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

The suggestion of movement in the long-running ceasefire negotiations comes as Egypt – long regarded as a key mediator between Hamas and Israel – has taken a more central role in the talks, and amid threats by Israel to launch a large new military offensive to take control of Gaza City, potentially displacing up to 1 million Palestinians. The proposal was expected to be presented to Israel on Monday, although Netanyahu has said Israel is no longer interested in part deals, saying it will only agree to end the war if Hamas releases all of the hostages at once, disarms, and allows for the demilitarisation of Gaza.

Israel Waging 'Deliberate Campaign of Starvation' in Gaza: Amnesty

Amnesty International on Monday published new testimonies of Palestinians suffering from Israel's "systemic and intentional" campaign of starvation in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of people—including more than 100 children—have died of malnutrition over 682 days of US-backed genocide.

Israel "is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip, systematically destroying the health, well-being, and social fabric of Palestinian life," Amnesty said in an introduction to the testimonies of starved and forcibly displaced civilians in the embattled enclave.

Amnesty said that the victims' accounts underscore the group's "repeated findings that the deadly combination of hunger and disease is not an unfortunate byproduct of Israel's military operations."

"It is the intended outcome of plans and policies that Israel has designed and implemented, over the past 22 months, to deliberately inflict on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction—which is part and parcel of Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza," the group added. The statement used language found in the treaty under which the International Court of Justice is currently determining whether Israel is committing the crime of genocide.


Among the 19 Palestinians interviewed by Amnesty are Hadeel, a 28-year-old pregnant mother of two, who said, "I fear miscarriage, but I also think about my baby: I panic just thinking about the potential impact of my own hunger on the baby's health, its weight, whether it will have [birth defects], and even if the baby is born healthy, what life awaits it, amidst displacement, bombs, tents."

Aziza, age 75, told Amnesty: "I feel like I have become a burden on my family. When we were displaced, they had to push me on a wheelchair. With toilet queues extremely long in the camp where we stay, I need adult diapers, which are extremely expensive. I need medication for diabetes, blood pressure, and a heart condition, and have had to take medicine which has expired."

Nahed, who is 66 yearsc old, said that "people I knew were almost unrecognizable" due to the effects of famine, and that "the experience of hunger and war has changed Gaza completely."

Adding that the desperate scramble for food "has denied people their humanity," Nahed described what she saw at an aid distribution site. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed or wounded while seeking aid, including more than 850 people slain at or near sites run by the US-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) whistleblowers have said they were ordered to fire live bullets and artillery shells into crowds of desperate aid-seekers, even when they posed no security threat.

"I had to go there because I have nobody to look after me," Nahed explained. "I saw with my own eyes people carrying bags of flour stained with the blood of those who had just been shot."

One emergency doctor at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City—which has endured multiple IDF attacks, including the alleged execution of children in and around the facility—told Amnesty that many patients would be leading "reasonable lives" were it not for the "combination of starvation, destruction, and depletion of the healthcare system, unsanitary conditions, and multiple displacements under inhumane conditions."

Referring to Israel's imminent US-backed reoccupation of Gaza and plan to ethnically cleanse 1 million Palestinians from in and around Gaza City, Erika Guevara Rosas—Amnesty's senior director of research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns—said Monday that "as Israeli authorities threaten to launch a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza City, the testimonies we have collected are far more than accounts of suffering, they are a searing indictment of an international system that has granted Israel a license to torment Palestinians with near-total impunity for decades."

Such impunity was implicit in a recording broadcast on an Israeli news channel Sunday in which former IDF Gen. Aharon Haliva said that for every Israeli killed during the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, "50 Palestinians must die," and "it doesn't matter" if "they are children."

Guevara Rosas continued:

To even begin reversing the devastating consequences of Israel's inhumane policies and actions, which have made mass starvation a grim reality in Gaza, there must be an immediate, unconditional lifting of the blockade and a sustained ceasefire. The impact of Israel's blockade and its ongoing genocide on civilians, particularly on children, people with disabilities, those with chronic illnesses, older people, and pregnant and breastfeeding women is catastrophic and cannot be undone by simply increasing the number of aid trucks or restoring performative, ineffective, and dangerous airdrops of aid.

"In the face of the horrors Israel is inflicting on the Palestinian population in Gaza, the international community, particularly Israel's allies... must uphold their moral and legal obligations to bring an end to Israel's ongoing genocide," Guevara Rosas added. "States must urgently suspend all arms transfers, adopt targeted sanctions, and terminate any engagement with Israeli entities when this contributes to Israel's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza."

The new Amnesty report came as the Gaza Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from Israel's 22-month annihilation and siege of the strip topped 62,000—mostly women and children—although experts say the actual toll is likely far higher. The ministry also said Monday that at least 263 people, including 112 children, have starved to death since October 2023.

Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation—deny Gazans are starving. However, even as staunch a supporter as US Vice President JD Vance has acknowledged that "little kids... are clearly starving to death" in Gaza.

Bari Weiss's FP Starvation Denial EXPOSED

US aid group ‘distressed’ at block on medical visas for Gaza children

An aid group that coordinates medical care in the United States for badly injured children from Gaza has said it is “distressed” by the US state department’s decision to stop issuing visitor visas for Palestinians after a far-right influencer complained directly to the secretary of state about their work.

Laura Loomer, who has previously described herself as a “proud Islamophobe”, told the New York Times that she had spoken to Marco Rubio on Friday night to warn the secretary of state of what she called the threat posed by “Islamic invaders”.

The aid group, Heal Palestine, said in a statement that it was “an American humanitarian nonprofit organization delivering urgent aid and medical care to children in Palestine, including sponsoring and bringing severely injured children to the US on temporary visas for essential medical treatment not available at home”.

“After their treatment is complete, the children and any accompanying family members return to the Middle East,” the charity added, to rebut Loomer’s false claim that the visitors were part of a secret wave of “Islamic immigration”.

“This is a medical treatment program, not a refugee resettlement program,” the aid group stressed.

Jeffrey Sachs BREAKS DOWN Trump Zelensky 'PEACE' Summit

Trump arranging Zelenskyy-Putin meeting as European leaders push for US security guarantees

Vladimir Putin has agreed to face-to-face talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss a peace deal in Ukraine, according to Donald Trump and European leaders, although Moscow has not confirmed the meeting.

The potential breakthrough came after a day of tense diplomacy at the White House in which Trump ruled out a ceasefire while Zelenskyy and his allies pushed for US-backed security guarantees as part of any long-term agreement. The Ukrainian president said that following the talks security guarantees for Kyiv would be “formalised” within 10 days.

“At the conclusion of the meetings, I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelenskyy,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding that a trilateral meeting including the US president would follow.

British prime minister Keir Starmer and German chancellor Friedrich Merz appeared to confirm the meeting. Merz told reporters: “The American president spoke with the Russian president on the phone and agreed that there would be a meeting between the Russian president and the Ukrainian president within the next two weeks.”

But the chancellor cautioned: “We don’t know whether the Russian president will have the courage to attend such a summit. Therefore, persuasion is needed.” Putin, for his part, said he was open to the “idea” of direct talks with Ukraine as he spoke by phone with Trump, according to Russia’s Tass news agency, but there was no confirmation that the meeting would take place.

Pepe Escobar & Mohammad Marandi: Explosive Conflicts Rage in Middle East & Caucasus–Is Ukraine Next?

LtCOL. William (Bill) Astore : Can the US Be Rid of the CIA?

House Report Warns Trump Tariffs Could Stymie US Manufacturing for 'Years to Come'

US President Donald Trump's tariff whiplash has already harmed domestic manufacturing and could continue to do so through at least the end of this decade to the tune of nearly half a trillion dollars, a report published Monday by congressional Democrats on a key economic committee warned.

The Joint Economic Committee (JEC)-Minority said that recent data belied Trump's claim that his global trade war would boost domestic manufacturing, pointing to the 37,000 manufacturing jobs lost since the president announced his so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs in April.

"Hiring in the manufacturing sector has dropped to its lowest level in nearly a decade," the Democrats on the committee wrote. "In addition, many experts have noted that in and of itself, the uncertainty created by the administration so far could significantly damage the broader economy long-term."

"Based on both US business investment projections and economic analyses of the UK in the aftermath of Brexit, the Joint Economic Committee-Minority calculates that a similarly prolonged period of uncertainty in the US could result in an average of 13% less manufacturing investment per year, amounting to approximately $490 billion in foregone investment by 2029," the report states.

"Although businesses have received additional clarity on reciprocal tariff rates in recent days, uncertainty over outstanding negotiations is likely to continue to delay long-term investments and pricing decisions," the publication adds. "Furthermore, even if the uncertainty about the US economy were to end tomorrow, evidence suggests that the uncertainty that businesses have already faced in recent months would still have long-term consequences for the manufacturing sector."

According to the JEC Democrats, the Trump administration has made nearly 100 different tariff policy decisions since April—"including threats, delays, and reversals"—creating uncertainty and insecurity in markets and economies around the world. It's not just manufacturing and markets—economic data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that businesses in some sectors are passing the costs of Trump's tariffs on to consumers.

As the new JEC minority report notes:

As independent research has shown, businesses are less likely to make long-term investments when they face high uncertainty about future policies and economic conditions. For manufacturers, decisions to expand production—which often entail major, irreversible investments in equipment and new facilities that typically take years to complete—require an especially high degree of confidence that these expenses will pay off. This barrier, along with other factors, makes manufacturing the sector most likely to see its growth affected by trade policy uncertainty, as noted recently by analysts at Goldman Sachs.

"Strengthening American manufacturing is critical to the future of our economy and our national security," Joint Economic Committee Ranking Member Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) said in a statement Monday. "While President Trump promised that he would expand our manufacturing sector, this report shows that, instead, the chaos and uncertainty created by his tariffs has placed a burden on American manufacturers that could weigh our country down for years to come."

Whatever Trump does appears to cause an economic slump, he's a Midas in reverse:

Washington DC restaurants suffer sharp drop in diners since Trump crackdown

The number of people eating at restaurants in Washington DC has plummeted since Donald Trump deployed federal troops to the city, according to data, as the president’s purported crackdown on crime continues.

Research by Open Table found that restaurant attendance was down every day last week compared with 2024, with the number of diners dipping by 31% on Wednesday, two days after Trump ordered the national guard to patrol Washington.

Trump announced the move on 11 August, claiming that Washington had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people”. His claims contradicted official statistics which show that violent crime in the capital is at a 30-year low.

Data from Open Table shows that the number of people making online reservations dropped by 16% on Monday compared with the previous year. The number fell by 27% on Tuesday and 31% on Wednesday, as military vehicles and armed troops were deployed to the city.

"Kidnapped": L.A. Immigrant Rights Activist Recounts Violent Arrest by Masked Federal Agents

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detainees face abuse and are denied due process

A federal judge in Miami was hearing arguments on Monday that detainees at the remote immigration jail in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” are routinely subjected to human rights abuses and denied due process before being deported. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is one of two separate actions before the courts that could lead to the closure of the controversial facility celebrated by Donald Trump for its harsh conditions.

District court judge Kathleen Williams is expected to rule this week in the other case, brought by an alliance of environmental groups and a Native American tribe, claiming that the immigration jail has inflicted irreversible damage to the fragile wetlands.

Earlier this month, Williams issued a temporary restraining order against the state of Florida halting new construction and expansion of the tented camp, although its operations for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) were allowed to continue. The jail currently holds an estimated 700 detainees.

Monday’s hearing, before district court judge Rodolfo Ruiz in the same downtown Miami courthouse, was focused on alleged breaches of immigrants’ rights during their detention. Eunice Cho, an attorney for the ACLU, told reporters at a pre-hearing press conference on Thursday that the situation at “Alligator Alcatraz” was “anomalous from what is typically granted at other immigration facilities”. She expanded on the allegation during an interview on Sunday with the Miami news channel Local 10, claiming the government was “running roughshod” over detainees’ constitutionally mandated protections.

“We are hearing stories of officers who are going around the facility pressuring people to sign voluntary removal orders without being able to speak to counsel,” Cho said. “We heard a case of an intellectually disabled man being presented with a paper … he was told that he should sign the paper to get a blanket, and it turned out to be a voluntary departure form. And he was deported very soon after.” Cho also challenged assertions by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, and the state’s department of emergency management (DEM) that operates the facility for Ice, that all the detainees held there had broken the law, and had either criminal records or active criminal proceedings against them.



the horse race



Trump says lawyers are drafting executive order to end mail-in voting

Donald Trump on Monday announced that lawyers are drafting an executive order to eliminate mail-in voting, days after Vladimir Putin told him US elections were rigged because of postal ballots. In a White House meeting alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump said: “We’re going to start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail in ballots because they’re corrupt.”

The push follows Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday, when the Russian president allegedly told him that the 2020 election “was rigged because you have mail-in voting”, according to Trump’s subsequent interview with Sean Hannity. Trump falsely claimed that late former president Jimmy Carter opposed mail-in voting, saying: “Even Jimmy Carter with this commission, they set it up. He said, the one thing about mail in voting, you will never have an honest election if you have mail in it.”

In reality, Carter urged the opposite during the 2020 Covid pandemic, with the Carter Center arguing that the best way to tackle potential voter fraud in a vote-by-mail situation is to strengthen safeguards and expand voting access. ...

Trump started off his Monday morning by making a lengthy Truth Social post, in which he said: “I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” while also targeting “Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES” which he claimed cost “Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper”. In that post, Trump falsely asserted that the US was “now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting” and claimed “All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.”

Democrats return to Texas as California kicks off push to pass new electoral map

Texas Democrats returned to their state on Monday as California lawmakers returned to the state capitol to kick off a rapid push to get voters to approve a new congressional map that could add as many as five Democratic seats in the US House.

Their return to Texas ends a two-week walkout that stalled the Republican effort to redraw the state’s congressional districts to satisfy Donald Trump’s demands to reshape the US House map in his favor ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The California plan was drafted in response to Texas’s push to redraw the congressional map there to add five Republican seats. On Friday, Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, called a second special session after Democrats remained out of the state for two weeks, denying Republicans a quorum to conduct legislative business.

The Democrats said last week they would return once California moved ahead with its counter-proposal, all but ensuring that Texas’s new maps will pass. ...

The new California map, released on Friday, would create three new safely Democratic districts and two new districts that are Democratic leaning, but still competitive. The plan, led by the California governor Gavin Newsom, must be approved by the state legislature before it is put to vote in a special election this fall. If voters agree to override the house map created by the independent redistricting commission after the 2020 census, the proposed boundaries would replace current ones through 2030. Democrats said they will return the mapmaking power to the commission after that.

ADL Straight UP LIES About Zohran Jewish Voters



the evening greens


US pipeline protester’s obstruction conviction overturned by appeals court

The controversial felony conviction of a peaceful climate activist has been overturned by an appeals court due to “pervasive” prosecutorial misconduct. Mylene Vialard, 56, was found guilty of felony obstruction in 2023 for her role in trying to halt construction of a fossil-fuel pipeline through Indigenous territory in Minnesota, in a trial beset by irregularities.

Vialard was charged after attaching herself to a 25ft bamboo tower erected to block a pumping station in Aitkin county in August 2021, as part of a crackdown on non-violent Indigenous-led protests opposing the expansion and re-routing on Line 3 – a 1,097-mile tar sands oil pipeline with a dismal safety record that crosses more than 200 bodies of water from Alberta in Canada to refineries in the US midwest.

According to legal groups representing the activists, Vialard was among more than a thousand arrests by Minnesota law enforcement – which along with other agencies reportedly received at least $8.6m in payments from the Canadian company Enbridge behind Line 3. On Monday, the conviction was overturned and a new trial ordered by the Minnesota court of appeals.

“Weighing the relevant factors, we conclude that the prosecutorial misconduct conceded to by the state was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The state’s evidence against Vialard was not particularly strong, the misconduct was pervasive, and the district court’s instructions did not cure any prejudicial effect of the misconduct,” the three-judge panel found. “We therefore conclude that the prosecutor failed to meet his affirmative obligation to ensure that Vialard received a fair trial, and instead sought a conviction at any price. Accordingly, Vialard is entitled to a new trial,” the written judgement concluded.

Vialard and her legal team welcomed the ruling. “It is everyone’s role to resist bullies and protect the only world we have that can feed and provide for all of us humans and non-humans,” Vialard told the Guardian in a statement. “I’m glad that the appellate court recognized the plethora of misconduct from the prosecution and the judge during my trial and acknowledged the fact that the prosecutorial arguments that led to my guilty verdict were weak at best. But let’s not forget that we were fighting the heavy polluter that is Enbridge, and that fight continues,” Vialard said.


Also of Interest

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

US, UK Spy Flights & the Murder of Gazan Innocents

Europe Demands 'Security Guarantees' For Ukraine ... Russia Can Give Those

Fog of Summit and Neocon Backlash: Lindsey Graham Readies Threat of Designating Russia a Terrorist State

Trump’s Budget & The NATO 5% Of GDP Requirement Have The Same Effect

Private-equity backed prison health companies continue despite decade of alleged constitutional violations

Trump and Democrats Fuel the Washington DC Crime Panic

Fire in the hole: the Indigenous crews blasting the Alaskan rainforest to save it

Here’s The BIGGEST Surprise From Zelensky’s White House Meeting!


A Little Night Music

Jimmy Smith - Midnight Special

Jimmy Smith - Back At The Chicken Shack

Jimmy Smith - The Cat

Jimmy Smith w Kenny Burrell - Got my Mojo Workin'

Jimmy Smith - Some Of My Best Friends Are Blues

Jimmy Smith - Moanin'

Jimmy Smith - Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

Jimmy Smith - The Sermon

Jimmy Smith - Root Down (And Get It)


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Comments

soryang's picture

AFP cites John Yoo to "fact check" whether Trump's deployment of armed forces personnel to Wash DC, LA, and other domestic civilian venues is similar in nature to Yoon Seok-yeol's attempted imposition of martial law in South Korea. First of all, this is a political, not a legal question. Whether the comparison is valid or not will only be determined definitively in retrospect. Citing a tarnished source like John Yoo who attempted to legally justify torture is a sign of ignorance, if not desperation. There is an old saying, "if you can't argue the facts, argue the law..."

https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1476&context=facpub

Whatever else you might say about John Yoo, the former Justice
Department lawyer who drafted several memos in 2002 authorizing the CIA
to commit torture, you have to admit that he’s not in the least embarrassed
by the condemnation of his peers. The Justice Department on February 19,
2010, released a set of previously confidential reports by its Office of
Professional Responsibility (OPR) excoriating Yoo’s legal work – but
stopped short of referring him for professional discipline. Immediately
thereafter, Yoo wrote op-eds for The Wall Street Journal and The
Philadelphia Inquirer trumpeting his “victory.” In The Wall Street Journal
piece, titled “My Gift to the Obama Presidency,” Yoo argued that President
Obama owes him a debt of gratitude for “winning a drawn-out fight to
protect his powers as commander in chief to wage war and keep Americans
safe.”1
Four days later, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Yoo called the
decision not to refer him for bar discipline “a victory for the people fighting
the war on terror.”2
This is a bit like a child coming home with an F on his report card and
telling his parents that they should congratulate him for not getting
suspended, or President Bill Clinton proclaiming to Hillary that Congress’s
failure to impeach him was a vindication of his affair with Monica
Lewinsky. The one thing practically everyone interviewed by the OPR
agreed about was that Yoo’s legal work on the torture memos was
atrocious. Bush’s Attorney General Michael Mukasey called it a “slovenly
mistake.”3

Thanks for the EBs Joe! Particularly liked Ian Bremmer's article on what Trump's BBB and tariffs have done to further economic inequities in the US. This is very damaging to the economy. Look forward to watching some of these videos.

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語必忠信 行必正直

joe shikspack's picture

@soryang

wow! i can't believe that anyone would solicit john yoo's opinion of anything for publication. i can't think of any public figure in the last hundred years any more discredited than john yoo.

that said, trump has not yet shut down the government of the united states and declared himself the interim dictator supported by a chamber of his cronies. i wouldn't say that it isn't coming, he hasn't got around to it yet.

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3 users have voted.
earthling1's picture

the Astore interview was good. So were the tunes.

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3 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

joe shikspack's picture

@earthling1

yes, i am glad that judge nap has found astore. i've been reading him occasionally, i think over at tom dispatch. he's written quite a few excellent articles over the years.

have a great evening!

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5 users have voted.
janis b's picture

I enjoyed Astore’s analogy of the character and culture of Putin and Trump to chess and poker. I’ve never played chess or poker, but I have played checkers and blackjack, if that counts. I'd bet on Putin to win at either. The depth and maturity of cultures and characters are extreme. I have Russian blood, but was born american. In the bigger picture, I'm probably lucky I was born in america?

I enjoyed all the different moods of Jimmy Smith, thanks for all joe.

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