The end of empire echoes across the western world. Political leaders across the spectrum are being rejected by the people, and yet retain power... from Van der Lying being reappointed to the unpopularity of Stammer, Macron, and Sholtz. Orban seems to be the only European leader supported by his own people, as the other EU countries try to sanction, punish, and even coup him. The US continues to lose international respect as they steal Maduro's airplane (after stealing Citco and the Venezeulan gold reserves in London) not to mention the theft of Russian assets. Most of the world understands the role of US in the ongoing Palestinian genocide. Meanwhile there's the distraction of the election. Now TPTB are rolling out Russiagate version 3.0 which Ray Mcgovern suggests is a way to prepare the citizenry for a war with Russia.

Afternoon folks!

There's plenty of blues for ya this week. We've got albums from Texas guitar great Phillip Walker and blues composer, pianist and producer Sonny Thompson. We've also got a great album featuring Sippie Wallace and Otis Spann backed up by the Jim Kweskin Jug band - this album is an overlooked gem, don't miss it. After that there's blues rock - a solo album from Jorma Kaukonen (Hot Tuna, Jefferson Airplane), an album from The Fabulous Thunderbirds and a radio interview with Dave Edmunds which includes a live version of his big hit "I Hear You Knockin'." We finish up in the diversity department with country guy Charlie Rich and an album with some great tunes, including "Mohair Sam" and "I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water."

Enjoy the tunes and have a great weekend!

Good morning, good friends! Hope you have a fun filled weekend developing!

So hot here 2 weeks ago, being outdoors made me want to don a bathing suit and jump in the water.

Now, I need a light sweater in the evenings. Wonderful!

From: Miriam Webster Dictionary

Democracy
noun

1 a: government by the people
especially : rule of the majority

b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

2: a political unit that has a democratic government

3 capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the U.S.
from emancipation Republicanism to New Deal Democracy—C. M. Roberts

4: the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority

5: the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

Anybody seen muh democracy anywhere?

I was reading this article (Circular Battery Self-Sufficiency) by Cory Doctorow, a person I know more about in relationship to his work with open source software and the EFF, about battery recycling and climate change and suddenly I found some reasons to be optimistic about the future. Maybe there aren't very many reasons, but they are there! Yay!

Doctorow starts off by acknowledging the difficulty it is going to take to transition to renewable energy, but says it's not insurmountable. It's going to require a lot of politics AND a lot of engineering, and reconceiving our relationship to energy and materials. Instead of energy being scare and materials being abundant, energy is everywhere (sunshine!, tides!...) and materials are scare. What a change it's going to take to get humans to accept that though!

Here comes the sun... (from here).