caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

About once a year, when I can find the strength, I do a news search to see what Blackwater-founder Erik Prince has been up to, and he never disappoints. He's always doing things that are immoral, unethical, and often illegal. Keep in mind that this is only a sampling from just this past year.
Let's start with the immoral.

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

Power in a union

Editorial in the NY Daily News this morning.

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

A copy of The Imperial Cruise by author James Bradley was gifted to me last year by an 80+ year old Marine who lived close enough by to be considered a neighbor. Never met an ex-marine or a retired marine, the ones I a have met, at any age, consider themselves a Marine. We had many discussions over the years on our beliefs regarding politics, foreign interventions and military service. This was the book that convinced him to discourage his Grandson from following the family tradition of military service. I just found out he has passed, it seems appropriate to recognize the evolution of peoples beliefs and values as they become aware of greater scope of information.

The last question from the audience in the video below is regarding how the American public was kept uninformed of the foreign policy implications of the voyage.

The question is you know back in 1905 what was the coverage? In 1905 this was front page news, the President's daughter was off to Asia. But the reporters new very little about Asia. When this Imperial Cruise landed in China there were huge demonstrations. There were anti-American posters all over the walls. There were posters mocking Alice Roosevelt. The New York Times wrote there were disgusting placards. They never filled the American public in. So all they wrote about were sumo matches, successful trips and lunches. They detailed about what Alice Roosevelt wore, how many trunks of clothes she had, she changed at 3 pm for this reception, she put on a dress and blah, blah blah.

Then they replayed Taft's speeches. You know the Manila Chamber of Commerce told Taft it is on the brink of economic collapse. Taft got up and made a speech about how we are going to build railroads in the Philippines. The Philippines are a nation of 7,000 islands. The press just portrayed the administrations line. Which was how the press worked in 1905, was not exactly investigative journalism.

...the title of Margaret Kimberly’s  Oct. 6, 2021 column.  A few moths ago I’d emailed Ms. Kimberly, the man who handles readers comments (Choudray?), and Glen Ford (November 5, 1949 – July 28, 2021, Rest in Power), to ask why the content was no longer labeled Create Content at the bottom.  Only brother Glen had responded, and was quite baffled about my question.  I explained that for some reason, the content never ended, but kept scrolling and scrolling, as in: there IS no bottom.   He finally wrote back to consider it all free to publish, bless his ailing heart.

I’ll take him at his word, given the significance of this news.

Billionaire Betsy DeVos, the former Secretary of Education, who had never been inside of a public school in her life, who is also the sister of Blackwater-founder and war criminal Erik Prince, has a charmed existence.
It seems that once you get high enough into the upper strata of the ruling elites, then nearly anything can be overlooked or forgiven altogether.

You may recall that the prosecutions key witness against Assange recently recanted his testimony (aka he admitted that he lied).

When the weather turned cold and rainy in October, ready or not, we moved into our house after waiting so long.

Much of our belongings are in storage, until we can oil our shelving, kitchen, and finish space for storage on site and closets.