caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

I've decided to make a new kind of OT. I'm going to try out the idea for a few weeks to see if y'all like it.

If you have an interest in planetary exploration, you might want to get yourself online this Thursday, February 18. NASA’s Perseverance rover is set to land on Mars around 3:55 PM Eastern (2:55 PM Central, 12:55 PM Pacific). If the landing is successful, this will be a big deal, as this rover comes equipped with the tools to detect past life on the planet.

Chairman Powell of the Federal Reserve this week said something amazing. He said that the official unemployment rate, of 6.3%, wasn't real. And thus the official number was nothing but propaganda.
Now it's not a big surprise that the official unemployment rate is dramatically understated. But what is surprising is that they actually admitted it.

As I thought about this Valentine theme my first notion was the US loves money...but that can't be right cause the US Fed creates currency willy-nilly, as much and as often as needed. However, follow the money and you arrive at America's true love...its corporate oligarchs. They receive trillions in created currency to purchase their own stock and protect profits for the market. Reagan created the "plunge protection team" back in the '80's to make sure the market wouldn't collapse, and now the Fed is in the business of funding them. The commoners are fodder for the profit mills in our neo-fuedal system. War was another tempting US love (7 min), but that also accelerates the oligarchs wealth, so I'm sticking with oligarchs as the primary US romantic obsession.
Who Rules America: The Rise of the Military-Industrial Complex | ENDEVR Documentary 2012

tometi, garza, and cullors

‘BREAKING: Black Lives Matter Inland Empire Announces Departure from BLM Global Network’, Feb. 4, 2021 by leftoutmag.com (my bolds)

“Recently, a group of BLM chapters known as the BLM 10 has come forward to voice their concerns and opposition to the Global Network. Those concerns, along with the egregious conduct the Global network demonstrated on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, have brought us to the conclusion that continuing to remain silent would be an act of betrayal. While the issues and problems that have been raised have been well known within our circle for years, it prompted many questions & concerns for us locally. We’d like to let the community know everything outlined in the statement put out by the BLM 10 is valid. We’ve also reached out to the BLM 10 and offered to sign on in support. Hopefully, we can provide insight and clarification into our chapter’s history, our relationship with the global network, and our commitments going forward.

The Pennsylvania decision:

On January 6 my country was attacked. I had already read the transcript of Trump's Jan 2 call to try to bully election officials in Georgia into falsifying their election results. On Jan 6 I was worried that there would be violent conflicts between the Trump people and counter protesters. Once it became clear that the Capitol building was being attacked I kept waiting for Trump to call off his supporters. One tweet would have made all the difference. Trump's incessant lies about the election results were the direct cause of the attack on the capitol.