Today's number is Twenty-Two

Good morning 99percenters!
Morning news dump and music by Martha and the Vandellas

Meanwhile, as the media and puppeteers decide who shall lord over us for the next four years, we inch closer to WWIII and the world burns.

U.S. kicks off its new bombing campaign in Libya killing 2 Serbian embassy workers
Serbian officials say they were close to freeing the two ISIS hostages, but U.S. airstrikes killed them

"For in order for capitalism to work — in order for it to produce a good and a stable society — the traditional Christian virtues are essential."
Antonin Scalia

Good Morning, 99%'ers!

Today I am on the road, traveling south for a couple of days and I will not be on line for the next couple of days. Since my last several Open Thread essays have been of a serious nature, I thought I would post a more light hearted Open Thread today. Since we are in the primary season and President's Day was on Monday, I thought I would post ten fun facts about our Presidents.

Today's number is Fifteen

Good morning 99percenters!
Morning news dump and music by Buddy Holly.

This is how the CIA botched Iraq post-9/11: Bob Gates, careerist sycophancy, and the real history of the Deep State
A veteran CIA officer explains to Salon exactly where the agency has gone wrong for decades — and the consequences

In a lengthy exchange with Ray McGovern, or when you listen to him speak, a lot comes at you. This is a former C.I.A. officer who, as branch chief in the analysis section, counted daily White House briefings among his tasks. Given his years out in Langley, Virginia—from the early Kennedy days until he retired in 1990—he was witness to the agency’s collapse into a factory producing politically and ideologically motivated “intelligence.” Long before the end, Langley had turned into a building full of “prostitutes”—McGovern’s word “not too strong.”

Good morning fabulous citizens of C99.

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
― Charles Darwin

Today is the final installment of this series on police brutality and the militarization of our local police forces. For this essay, I am going back to where we started with it and reference Campaign Zero. Campaign Zero was created by four activists affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement but Campaign Zero is a separate entity from Black Lives Matter.

Good morning 99percenters!
Climate news and music by Levon Helm.

Today's number is eight