Fibbin' Joe

Because Joe Biden did not actually do what he’s saying in this video, or in other videos - waking up early as a 17 year old high school senior to go to the 7:30AM Catholic mass so that he could then go to a local Black church for their 10AM church service to be trained for the Civil Rights Movement - he has absolutely no idea just how foolish this sounds. In 1960, during the Civil Rights Movement, even in the Deep South, even in churches pastored by Dr. King himself, Sunday morning was not at all like a Monday night planning meeting or strategy session. Sunday mornings were sacred religious moments of prayer, song, praise, offering, sermon, and invitation. Even during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Sunday morning services were almost exclusively religious in nature. They weren’t brainstorming sessions, as Biden describes, where Black folk and their white friend named Joe would decide where they’d go desegregate next.--SK

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For These Times

Or...




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Nailed It

Yes she did.


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Her Relentless Stupidity

In an interview with “The Hollywood Reporter” published Tuesday, Clinton was asked about a comment she makes in an upcoming documentary where she says Sanders was “in Congress for years” but, “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done.”

Clinton replied that the criticism still holds and refused to say she’d endorse him this cycle if he wins the party’s nomination, adding: “It’s not only him, it’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters.”--AP

On one hand Clinton is once again demonstrating her bitchiness, ignoring the fact that Sanders tried to throw his support to her in 2016 (the Sandernistas didn't bite), and on the other hand bitch slapping anyone who is fed up with the status quo, including the imbeciles backing Trump.

One could argue that this woman's leadership has most effectively destroyed the Democratic Party. There were many others before her of course, but she drove the final, golden spike.


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Oregon Women Crush Stanford

Sabally goes for 18 to Sabrina's 37, and the Ducketts
blast Stanford on ESPN.

Pretty sweet.


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Macaulay Culkin Finally Wins Heisman, CFP National Championship!

He goes by Joe Burrow now, transferred from Ohio State to LSU, straightened and darkened his hair, stomped Clemson.


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The Curse of the Ruling Class

In his remarks to Congress, the president (George HW Bush) was asserting a prerogative that his predecessors had long ago appropriated: interpreting the zeitgeist in such a way as to merge past, present, and future into a seamless, self-congratulatory, and reassuring narrative of American power. He was describing history precisely as Americans — or at least privileged Americans — wished to see it. He was, in other words, speaking a language in which he was fluent: the idiom of the ruling class.--AB

From my favorite retired general.


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Classic Larry

Thx to RP Thomas for reminding me of this old gem.  Ferlinghetti is 100.


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More Freedom

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The Mother of All Meddling

The assassination by the United States of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, near Baghdad’s airport will ignite widespread retaliatory attacks against U.S. targets from Shiites, who form the majority in Iraq. It will activate Iranian-backed militias and insurgents in Lebanon and Syria and throughout the Middle East. The existing mayhem, violence, failed states and war, the result of nearly two decades of U.S. blunders and miscalculations in the region, will become an even wider and more dangerous conflagration. The consequences are ominous. Not only will the U.S. swiftly find itself under siege in Iraq and perhaps driven out of the country—there is only a paltry force of 5,200 U.S. troops in Iraq, all U.S. citizens in Iraq have been told to leave the country “immediately” and the embassy and consular services have been closed—but the situation could also draw us into a war directly with Iran. The American Empire, it seems, will die not with a whimper but a bang.--CH

It is no secret that Donald Trump is cruel, amoral, unfit for the office he holds, and, despite his age, immature. He is also, as his former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, famously put it, “a fucking moron.”

Of course, this hasn’t stopped him from becoming the de facto leader of a following, essentially a cult, comprised of some forty percent or more of the voting public in the United States. There are a lot of morons out there.--AL

Two worth your time.


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No Doubt

A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the New York Times and Politico published major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins—but they foreshadow a massive escalation of anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.--NS

No doubt.  Fake leftists, pragmatists and women from 2016 are still out there, attacking Bernie and his supporters at every opportunity. A big bitch among the establishment Dems was Bernie's supposed insulting treatment of the super-delegates. Never mind they were card-carrying Clintonite/Wall Street capitalists.  I'm actually quite shocked that Clinton hasn't, to date, jumped into the fray.  I guess her desperation has finally run its course.

Hopefully.

Bernie or Liz has to win just to restore some sense of stability to the country.  Even Liz is shaky, but at least the women would have their day, finally. I'd be down with that.

Remember the ridiculous lineup of Republicans in '16?  That's what the Democrats look like today. Pete Butthead is the Jeb Bush of his Party. And Joe Biden is as dumb as Rick Perry, so there it is.


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Australia is Burning

Australia is on fire.


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Can We Talk?

Global finance capital has seized control of the economies of most nation-states. The citizens watch, helplessly, as money and goods are transferred with little regulation across borders. They watch as jobs in manufacturing and the professions are shipped to regions of the global south where most workers are paid a dollar or less an hour and receive no benefits. They watch as the taxes of the rich and corporations are slashed, often to zero. They watch as austerity programs dismantle or privatize utilities and basic social services, jacking up fees to consumers. They watch as chronic unemployment and underemployment devastate workers, especially the young. They watch as wages stagnate or decline, leaving working men and women with unsustainable debts. This economic tyranny lies at the root of the unrest in Hong Kong, India, Chile, France, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon as well as the rise of right-wing demagogues and false prophets such as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.--CH

Like Paul Street and many other left intellectuals, Chris Hedges is convinced that the only way to defeat the malignant cancer (power) of corporate neoliberalism, unleashed on the global populace since the end of World War II, and particularly since Reagan, is an actionable non-violent street mobilization of the masses.  Such movements have arose around the world already in recent months.

Where, wonder Street and Hedges, is the U.S. movement?  The faux "resistance" of mainline Democrats seeking to retake power from Donald Trump and Republicanism doesn't count. Voting itself, in the U.S. construct, cannot be depended on for anything more than a continuation of the ruses of false hope and change.

The age of trickery has to change via massive global protests--from the bottom up.


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Army/Navy Game Blues

The ultimate demonstration of U.S. militarism is made annually in the good old game of American football.  And of course, nothing is quite so emblematic of that as the Army v. Navy game.  It is the one game of the year that I, as a football connoisseur, find the most drab, boring, reprehensible, and disgusting spectacle ever invented for the edification of the common man.

There are many reasons why I despise this game, not the least of which it is that it is always ugly. It is ugly in its aesthetics, ugly in its style, and ugly in its blind worship of all things military.  (Well, of course it is, it is the Army/Navy game.)

Packed into the stadium at kickoff, the assembled future brass, and likely sprinkle of "sacrificed" officers--against the multitude of enlisted poor--cheered uproariously for the introduced U.S. near-dictator and fascist POTUS, Donald Trump. (If that doesn't convince you that this game is whacked out, nothing will.)

It causes one to ponder: perhaps former Army history professor Maj. (Ret.) Danny Sjursen should have built an outpost in his classroom and fought off  to the last soldier--Japanese-style--the invading generals who wanted him out now!

But, so much water under the bridges southeast of Normandy in 1944!

Speaking of the pro game (I didn't but you did under your breath). Here is a fantastic piece.  Read it.


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Pilger Visits Assange

I set out at dawn. Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh is in the flat hinterland of south east London, a ribbon of walls and wire with no horizon. At what is called the visitors centre, I surrendered my passport, wallet, credit cards, medical cards, money, phone, keys, comb, pen, paper.--JP

Degrading, disgusting, despicable; Assange as Her Majesty's political plaything.


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