Going mad, shooting sparks into space

"A Moment of Relax" by Catia Trovarelli is from the Hyperrealism collection.

So, Kyle Rittenhouse was cleared of all charges, having convinced a jury that he was afraid for his life and shot in self-defense. Since the prosecution couldn't prove otherwise, he was Not Guilty. That's the law. And I'm not linking to any stories about it because they're all so politicized I can't stand it. Most of what was in the news was slanted and overblown and wrong. Yes, Rittenhouse "crossed state lines," but since he lived a mile from the state line, that hardly means anything. Nor was he haring off across another state to interfere in a strange community; he worked in that community, and his father lived there. But it's the kind of thing right-wingers will point to as "proof" of a left-wing bias in the media, never realizing that it's the division, not anything "left", that the media is promoting.

Meanwhile, in the case of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, all three white men, Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael and William 'Roddie' Bryan, were convicted and face the possibility of life in prison. For many, this feels like a particular victory since one of the accused was an ex-cop. All but one of the jurors were white, which had worried some. Both McMichaels will appeal.

The "Bipartisan Infrastructure" bill passed both Houses without the BBB being passed, because Pelosi rounded up some Republicans to support it while the progressives were still digging in their heels for passage of both simultaneously. Once she called the vote, she nullified the progressives' leverage. Since the whole point of BIF was to kill BBB, a lot of people are wondering whether the continued coverage of attempts to negotiate the latter is merely a charade meant to demoralize progressives further. Biden signed BIF so now it's down to implementation, as David Dayen has been warning. There's a reason that there is absolutely no optimism about whether Democrats will hold the House or Senate. Most people expect a bloodbath.

David Dayen, "Fighting the Inflation Profiteers: Companies are raising prices well above increases in their costs. The only antidote is to finally take action against corporate power. In a time of high inflation, you hear a lot about companies 'passing costs' on to customers. In order for companies to maintain their God-given right to earn a profit, they must raise prices to offset the cost of producing goods and getting them into peoples' hands. And thanks mostly to the hidden risk, exposed by the pandemic, of neoliberal gospels like just-in-time logistics, deregulation, and offshoring, prices really are going up. But there's something else mixed in with this latest bout of inflation. Companies aren't just passing costs onto us. With corporations using inflation as a cover for raising their prices, you and I are passing profits onto companies. 'Executives are seizing a once in a generation opportunity to raise prices,' reads a Wall Street Journal story explaining that around two-thirds of the largest publicly traded companies are showing profit margins higher today than they did in 2019, before the pandemic. Over 100 companies show profit margins of 50 percent or more above those 2019 levels." And it's even worse than that.

"2 Men Convicted of Killing Malcolm X Will Be Exonerated After Decades: The 1966 convictions of the two men are expected to be thrown out after a lengthy investigation, validating long-held doubts about who killed the civil rights leader. [...] For decades, historians have cast doubt on the case against the two men, Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam, who each spent more than 20 years in prison. Their exoneration represents a remarkable acknowledgment of grave errors made in a case of towering importance: the 1965 murder of one of America's most influential Black leaders. [...] A 22-month investigation conducted jointly by the Manhattan district attorney's office and lawyers for the two men found that prosecutors and two of the nation's premier law enforcement agencies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department — had withheld key evidence that, had it been turned over, would likely have led to the men's acquittal."

"Jury Returns $31.8M Civil Verdict Against Alt-Right Defendants in Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' Lawsuit: A federal jury has returned a $31.8 million civil verdict in a case connected to the 'Unite the Right' protest in Charlottesville, Va., in Aug. 2017. A collection of nine plaintiffs sued a number of figures in the alt-right movement — including Jason Kessler, Matthew Heimbach, Richard Spencer and Christopher Cantwell — on a series of federal and state law claims. The jury deadlocked on the federal claims but returned verdicts on the state law claims in various dollar amounts. [...] Legally, the jury agreed that a far-right conspiracy was afoot in Charlottesville — one which resulted in legally cognizable tort injuries."

"GOP Offers Taste of 2022 Attack Ads If Democrats Approve Tax Cut for Millionaires: 'Democrats' SALT tax giveaway is handing Republicans a potent political weapon to crush Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.' [...] On Monday, Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) shared a 60-second spot lampooning House Democrats' plan to raise the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions from $10,000 to $80,000 through 2026—a proposal that would predominantly benefit the rich. One recent analysis estimated that U.S. millionaires would receive an average tax cut of $16,760 from the provision."

"It's not just white people: Democrats are losing normal voters of all races: Democrats fear they are losing white swing voters over racial politics. Three studies suggest that the party's elite culture may be the real problem."

"Leonard Peltier Is America's Longest-Serving Political Prisoner. Biden May Be His Last Hope.: The FBI put the Native American activist behind bars 44 years ago based on lies, threats and no proof he committed a crime. Why is he still there? [...] HuffPost talked to a number of people who have played a role in either fighting or preserving Peltier's imprisonment over the years — international human rights attorneys, senior-level officials from the Obama administration, Peltier's longtime allies — and they all pointed to the same reason for him remaining in prison: resistance from the FBI."

"Five Reasons the Left Won in Venezuela: These elections should put the Biden administration on notice that continuing to support the MUD, and in particular, the fiction of Guaidó as "interim president," is a failed policy." Basically, the left kept Covid deaths low, gave people health care and kept them fed, and the opposition is hugely unpopular.

"New bill quietly gives powers to remove British citizenship without notice: Clause added to nationality and borders bill also appears to allow Home Office to act retrospectively in some cases [...] Frances Webber, the vice-chair of the Institute of Race Relations, said: 'This amendment sends the message that certain citizens, despite being born and brought up in the UK and having no other home, remain migrants in this country. Their citizenship, and therefore all their rights, are precarious and contingent.'"

RIP: "Stephen Sondheim: master craftsman who reinvented the musical dies aged 91." I don't have to tell you anything, but for that columnist I won't link to who didn't seem to know: West Side Story. Gypsy. And "Send in the Clowns."

RIP: "Longtime Beach Boys Sideman Billy Hinsche Dies at 70: Billy Hinsche, longtime Beach Boys touring member and one-third of '60s pop-rock trio Dino, Desi and Billy, has died at age 70. Lucie Arnaz — daughter of I Love Lucy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and sister of the latter band's Desi Arnaz Jr. — confirmed Hinsche's death Saturday on Instagram, writing, 'Giant cell carcinoma. Only diagnosed a couple weeks ago. It ravaged him like an out of control train.' Hinsche was born in Manila, the Philippines in 1951, but he moved with his family to Beverly Hills as a child, becoming friends with Desi Arnaz Jr. and Dean Martin's son Dean Paul Martin. The trio eventually formed their band and signed with Reprise Records, who released their four proper studio albums and a run of singles, including the 1965 hits 'I'm a Fool' (later covered by Alvin and the Chipmunks) and 'Not the Lovin' Kind.' During this period, the group landed opening spots for major acts like the Mamas & the Papas, the Lovin' Spoonful and, most famously, the Beach Boys. The latter's Brian Wilson later co-wrote Dino, Desi and Billy's final single, 1970's 'Lady Love.' The Beach Boys connection proved crucial for Hinsche, who joined that band as a touring multi-instrumentalist from 1971 to 1977, then again from 1982 to 1996. He also appeared on a handful of their LPs: His credits include backing vocals on 1973's Holland, and guitar on 1976's 15 Big Ones and 1978's M.I.U. Album." I admit, I never really listened to DD&B, but the Beach Boys, that's a whole 'nother thing.

Pareene, "The Mess Age: We need to talk about what we talk about when we talk about talking about popular things [...] Running against an unpopular president remains a good way to pick up seats in Congress no matter what your message is, and that's just what the Democrats did again in 2018. The problem is the margins were smaller than 2006, and, unlike Bush, Donald Trump's unpopularity seemed eerily stable and entirely disconnected from actual events. Now, everyone with a brain expects Democrats to lose Congress in the next few years, and perhaps the White House again as well, which is why everyone is yelling at each other online all day about messaging and popularity."

"Conservative Democrats' Lucrative Career Path: Democratic senators who oppose core party agenda items and upset the base can't lose — because if they do, they get paid. [...] To understand what's in it for conservative Democratic senators who play the party's rotating villain role, look at those who came before them: Many of those who do big business' bidding and then either fail to win reelection or retire quickly end up scoring lucrative careers on K Street. It's the ultimate win-win situation."

"Alec Karakatsanis: This is a thread about how journalists decide what is 'news' and what isn't. Anyone shaping the news and anyone consuming the news should understand who decides what counts as news, how they decide it, and what determines what they say about it. Here, I ask a few questions: This thread is inspired by the gap in what mainstream media treats as urgent and what are the greatest threats to human safety, well-being, and survival. For example, air pollution kills *10 million people* each year and causes untold additional illness and suffering. It rarely features in daily news stories. Why? Instead, daily news is dominated by 'crime' stories. But even these are 'crime' stories of a certain kind: they aren't stories about the many air pollution crimes. They are the kind of "crimes" publicized by police press releases, usually involving poor people. Much of deadly U.S. air and water pollution is also criminal, but 'law enforcement' chooses to ignore it, and thus so do most journalists."

"Passing Fancy: In the Jim Crow South, courts understood that rigidly enforcing the rules against mixed marriage would have been a disaster—for whites."

"'Fighting To Free Our People': 55 Years Of The Black Panther Party: The Black Panther Party was founded 55 years ago. Black Panther Party archivist Bill Jennings and Eddie Conway discuss the enduring legacy of the Panthers and how people are carrying on that legacy today."

"Elections and the Illusion of Black Political Power: Black politicians may be openly conservative or pretend leftists but their constituents rarely get what they need. Politics absent a mass movement is a recipe for inaction or even outright betrayal."

APOD: The Extraordinary Spiral in LL Pegasi — I've never seen this before, it's pretty cool.

Vincent, the play, starring Leonard Nimoy.

Game of Thrones: The Musical

Listen to the final four songs from the last Monkees concert ever. Only Mike and Mickey left, but the crowd loved them.

@tedgioia: "I've never seen anything like this on film before. Paul really has nothing at the 30 second mark—but 45 seconds later he's got the makings of a hit single."

Marnie Nixon and Jim Bryant (dubbed for Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer), "Tonight"

Some try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend

"Winternight" by Ulrika O'Brien, 2021.

While some say it's a bit of a miracle when "An Unexpected Victory: Container Stacking at the Port of Long Beach" eases some of the supply bottleneck, Yves sees the answer to the question of, "Why the US Supply Chain Crisis Is Intractable and Will Get Worse: Readers bwilli123 and Carolinian flagged a must read post by Ryan Johnson, I'm A Twenty Year Truck Driver, I Will Tell You Why America's 'Shipping Crisis' Will Not End. You really really really need to consume it in its entirely. It makes a detailed, cogent case as to why the America's ports are a mess and why there is no simple and even not so simple way out. No wonder Pete Buttigieg is in hiding, um, on paternity leave, rather than putting his hands on the supply chain tar baby. I am going to run the risk of oversimplification to pull a few key points out of his compact and well argued post. They serve to reinforce his contention that Americans are royally fucked via where trucking industry deregulation (the first big deregulation initiative, thank you Jimmy Carter) has been amplified by neoliberalism: too many interconnected actors, so diffuse responsibility with contacts creating rigidity and incentives to do nothing, and cowards in government. I'll argue that there are some steps that could theoretically be taken to get a little more flow through the stuck ports, but even those moves would be seen as too interventionist despite the high and rising cost of standing pat. The severity of the supply chain crisis combined with the near-certainty that the only actor that could partially (stress partially) clear this logjam is the Feds. They are guaranteed not to do enough even if they understood how the moving parts interconnect."

"How a little-known New Jersey truck driver defeated a top state Senate power broker on less than $10,000" is the title of the USA Today story, but it was actually less than $200 and the real story, from this 2019 article, is that this poor excuse for a Democrat really deserved to lose: "Last month, New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney was at Rutgers University's main campus in New Brunswick. He was there to hold a town hall meeting to discuss 'The Path to Progress,' an ambitious cost-cutting plan that would seek to right New Jersey's perilous finances by cutting the state's generous public worker pension and health benefits." He said this to a mostly union audience and it did not go down well.

There are different kinds of inflation, and sometimes "Inflation Is Good for You [...] And what's happening is this: The inflation freakout is all about class conflict. In fact, it may be the fundamental class conflict: that between creditors and debtors, a fight that's been going on since the foundation of the United States. That's because inflation is often good for most of us, but it's terrible for the kinds of people who own corporate news outlets — or, say, founded coal firms. And a panic about inflation usefully creates the conditions to weaken the power of working people." Well, that's if it's natural inflation, which usually follows rises in wages. But there aren't really that many rises in wages The thing is, people aren't wrong when they say prices are up while those rising wages have by and large not been manifesting. Because the minute the eviction moratorium was called off, landlords rushed to raise rents. Meat prices are up not because there's a shortage of beef (there's not) and not because truckers are getting more money (they aren't) or grocery clerks suddenly got raises (they didn't), but because the people at the top of the chain decided to raise the prices for more profits — and the people underneath them saw none of that growth. But rich people just love to whine about the threat of inflation to excuse a lack of pubic spending by the government, which they don't want to see, and also so they can claim to be doing the rest of us a favor by refusing to adequately compensate employees.

"Is Summers Owed an Apology—or Does He Owe Us One?: Today on TAP: The policies that he promoted helped produce the supply chain crisis, and his diagnosis of today's inflation is just plain wrong. [...] The reality, however, is that the current bout of inflation has little to do with Biden's recovery program—and is actually the result of perverse policies that Summers and his confreres foisted on America over three decades. As that Bolshevik, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, could explain to Summers, the current inflation has little to do with macro pressures and everything to do with bottlenecks resulting from the supply chain crisis. If you dig a little deeper, the supply chain mess is precisely the consequence of economics according to Summers—deregulate, globalize, ignore the risks and hyper-concentration promoted by unhinged finance. The usual sources of macro pressure are not part of the story. Wages on average are rising more slowly than prices."

So, Terry McAuliffe, Clinton Dem and Carlyle guy, lost to a Republican. Naturally, the "moderates" blamed progressives, who had nothing to do with it. Zach is smarter. "The Democratic Unraveling Began With Schools: Republican victories in Virginia show how COVID-19 has fundamentally changed American politics. Republican Glenn Youngkin's victory in Tuesday's Virginia gubernatorial election was about schools. It wasn't about Donald Trump, or inflation, or defunding the police, or Medicare for All, or President Joe Biden's infrastructure agenda. It wasn't really about critical race theory or transgender rights—though those issues shaded the situation a bit by highlighting anxieties surrounding the education system. Fundamentally, the contest was about schools—specifically, how many parents remain frustrated by the way public schools have handled the coronavirus pandemic. Whether the Virginia results translate to other states will depend on how schools in those states reacted to the spread of COVID-19, and whether a major national issue can take the place of these local frustrations in voters' minds. All the usual caveats about drawing too many conclusions from a single contest apply. The national political environment could change, the 2022 midterms are a whole year away, and Virginia isn't a perfect microcosm of America. But given the very public, ongoing dysfunction among Democratic leaders in Washington, the party's devastating loss in Virginia looks like a five-alarm fire for its near-term electoral future."

"Quit Whining & Start Presidenting! Joe Biden's executive branch has the ability AND obligation to enforce laws limiting corporate misbehavior--which would also be overdue good politics. We agree with everyone else: Tuesday night was bad for Democrats and... confirms our priors. But 'confirming our priors' doesn't mean we're wrong. Our emphasis is less on presuming our ideology is a winner than understanding how modern communications operate. And also from our utter disdain for the idea that people like Joe Biden and Terry McAuliffe lack agency. Real world problems don't just happen. The political economy is never inevitable. Yet as their poll numbers slump, Joe Biden and his administration have mostly whimpered that they are the victims of circumstance. Terry McAuliffe, Carlyle investor, must also own his defeat to failed Carlyle private equity mogul-turned-Trump dog whistler Glenn Youngkin in Virginia."

"The Outer Limits Of Corporate Politics: The halving of Democrats' agenda suggests the party is still primarily intent on fulfilling Biden's promise to donors that 'nothing would fundamentally change.' [...] In general, the reason the Democratic Party always sounds so helplessly incoherent is because its lawmakers are trying to simultaneously appease their corporate donors and look like they are fulfilling their public promises to fix problems created by those corporate donors. In most cases, this is impossible. You cannot protect pharmaceutical and fossil fuel industry donors and also reduce the price of medicine and solve the climate crisis. If you try to pretend you can do both, the donors always eventually win out. So you end up talking in circles, complaining accurately about the problems while doing nothing to solve them, and then portraying marginal victories as huge wins to voters who must wonder why their lives aren't improving."

Good interview by Ryan Grim of Sirota, "If Biden Wants To Build Back Better, He Should Look To Obama's Mistakes." Leaving aside the question of whether Biden really wants to Build Back Better, this interview feeds my need to occasionally fly into a rage at how badly, and with how much evil, Obama handled the financial crisis.

"The Democracy Crisis That Is Never Discussed: Corporate media's democracy-in-crisis discourse almost never mentions the gap between what Americans want and what corrupt elected officials are doing. In 2014, Northwestern and Princeton researchers published a report statistically documenting how lawmakers do not listen or care about what most voters want, and instead mostly care about serving their big donors. Coupled with additional research documenting the discrepancy between donor and voter preferences, they bluntly concluded that the 'preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy.' Seven years later, America is witnessing a very public and explicit illustration of this situation in real time — and Tuesday's off-year election results are the latest confirmation that the country seems pretty ticked off about the situation ahead of the 2022 midterms."

"'Complete Attack on Our Democracy': FEC Rules Foreign Corporations Can Donate to Influence US Elections: 'Foreign donors shouldn't be influencing our elections, no matter whether it's at the federal, state, or local level,' said Rep. Katie Porter. [...] Democracy defenders expressed concern Tuesday in response to new reporting on a Federal Election Commission ruling that affirmed foreign entities—including overseas corporations—can fund U.S. state-level ballot campaigns." Really, this is incredible. And I can't help but notice that all those people who have been raving about how the evil Russians "interfered with our election" haven't said one word about this open invitation for every foreign country to take over our law-making apparatus.

"Illinois just became the first state to make it illegal for cops to lie to kids [...] This means that — until 2021! — it was perfectly legal in every US state for police to lie to minors (which gives me flashbacks to the tragic interrogation of Brendan Dassey, as shown in Making a Murderer). As NPR notes, there are other states trying to pass bills that offer the same protections to minors, or else to outlaw deceptive police interrogation tactics entirely. The fact that we have to explicitly forbid police from intentionally manipulating and deceiving children speaks volumes about the underlying issues."

"The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure [...] How big is this elephant? A staggering $50 trillion. That is how much the upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over the past several decades. This is not some back-of-the-napkin approximation. According to a groundbreaking new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation, had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP—enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year."

"40 Million People Rely on the Colorado River. It's Drying Up Fast. [...] Lake Mead, a reservoir formed by the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s, is one of the most important pieces of infrastructure on the Colorado River, supplying fresh water to Nevada, California, Arizona and Mexico. The reservoir hasn't been full since 1983. In 2000, it began a steady decline caused by epochal drought. On my visit in 2015, the lake was just about 40% full. A chalky ring on the surrounding cliffs marked where the waterline once reached, like the residue on an empty bathtub."

So...Did the CIA kill Kennedy? "Cuban exile told sons he trained Oswald, JFK's accused assassin, at a secret CIA camp: Almost 40 years after his death following a bar brawl in Key Biscayne, Ricardo Morales, known as 'Monkey' — contract CIA worker, anti-Castro militant, counter-intelligence chief for Venezuela, FBI informant and drug dealer — returned to the spotlight Thursday morning when one of his sons made a startling claim on Spanish-language radio: [...] 'My brother asked 'Who killed John F. Kennedy?' and his answer was, 'I didn't do it but I was in Dallas two days before waiting for orders. We were the cleaning crew just in case something bad had to be done.' After the assassination, they did not have to do anything and returned to Miami,' his son said on the radio show. Morales Jr. said his father told them he did not know of the plans to assassinate Kennedy. 'He knew Kennedy was coming to Dallas, so he imagines something is going to happen, but he doesn't know the plan,' he said. 'In these kinds of conspiracies and these big things, nobody knows what the other is doing.' Morales also knew Oswald, his son claims. 'When my old man was training in a CIA camp — he did not tell me where — he was helping to train snipers: other Cubans, Latin Americans, and there were a few Americans,' he said. 'When he saw the photo of Lee Harvey Oswald [after the assassination] he realized that this was the same character he had seen on the CIA training field. He saw him, he saw the name tag, but he did not know him because he was not famous yet, but later when my father sees him he realizes that he is the same person.' [...] While Lee Harvey Oswald was accused in Kennedy's assassination, a 1979 report from the House Select Committee on Assassinations contradicted the 1964 Warren Commission conclusion that JFK was killed by one lone gunman. The committee instead concluded that the president was likely slain as the result of a conspiracy and that there was a high probability that two gunmen fired at him. The House Select Committee, which also interviewed Morales, said they couldn't preclude the possibility that Cuban exiles were involved."

"The McDonald's Test: Once a Wall Street banker, Chris Arnade spent three years crisscrossing the United States to visit 'the places you were told not to go to.' His travels took him from the Bronx to the Ozarks to East Los Angeles. He shares what he learned in Dignity, a searing new book of essays and photojournalism. Plough's Peter Mommsen caught up with him to talk about fast-food joints, storefront churches, meritocracy, and whether to give cash to panhandlers."

"Revolt of the Essential Workers: The resurgent labor movement may be the greatest challenge yet to the top-down class warfare of the pandemic era. [...] The economic discontent that propelled both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to popularity had been building for many years. As a recent article in the journal American Affairs noted, $34 trillion of real equity wealth, in 2017 dollars, was created between 1989 and 2017. Nearly half that sum (44%) consisted of a reallocation of corporate equity to shareholders at the expense of worker compensation, while economic growth accounted for just 25% of that increase in wealth. In other words, despite the advent of seemingly near-miraculous, time- and space-saving digital technologies, the post-Cold War 'economic boom' consisted mainly of America's wealthy shareholders taking money from its increasingly insecure workforce."

"Navy Christens Ship Named For Slain California Gay Rights Leader Harvey Milk: 'There is no doubt that the future sailors aboard this ship will be inspired by Milk's life and legacy,' said Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro."

RIP: "Dean Stockwell, 'Quantum Leap' Star, Dies at 85: Dean Stockwell, who began his acting career as a child in Hollywood's golden age and later performed memorably in David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet'; in the comedy 'Married to the Mob,' for which he was Oscar nominated; and on TV's 'Quantum Leap,' for which he was Emmy nominated, died Sunday. He was 85." I met him briefly at the premier of (David Lynch's film of) Dune, in which he played the Duke's physician early in the story, but I have no tale to tell about that. There's a loving appreciation at the Roger Ebert site.

RIP: "Moody Blues Drummer Graeme Edge Dies at 80." He was with them from the beginning, when they released one of my favorite tracks, "Go Now!", and I still loved them when they changed. But he was still there, and still the backbone of the band, until he retired and they all agreed that it couldn't be The Moody Blues without him and they all went their own ways.

RIP: "Wallace & Gromit Writer Bob Baker Dies Age 82: Robert John 'Bob' Baker, a film and television writer best known for his work with Aardman Animations on its Wallace & Gromit films and for creating the dog-like mobile computer K9 on Doctor Who, died November 3 at age 82. The news was announced by the @K9official1 Twitter account on Friday."

This story is old, but I just found it and it tickled me. "The mystery of Ireland's worst driver: Details of how police in the Irish Republic finally caught up with the country's most reckless driver have emerged, the Irish Times reports. He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines. However, each time the serial offender was stopped he managed to evade justice by giving a different address. But then his cover was blown. It was discovered that the man every member of the Irish police's rank and file had been looking for - a Mr Prawo Jazdy - wasn't exactly the sort of prized villain whose apprehension leads to an officer winning an award. In fact he wasn't even human.

Someone mentioned to me that the Beatles statue in Liverpool is pretty good, and I agree, although they look a bit old for their Liverpool days. (But at least it's in Liverpool. A friend in Little Rock tells me, "The little town of Walnut Ridge is the only place in Arkansas where the whole band ever set foot (their plane stopped there briefly) and, in the 2000s, they made a whole cottage industry out of it, including a more conceptual tribute.")

"Kamila Valieva (RUS) | Women SP | Skate Canada International 2021"

"Hasui Kawase's Stunning Japanese Woodblock Prints from the 1920s-1950s

Moody Blues, "Nights in White Satin"

You think you might surprise her

"Dancing Autumn" by Kot Valeriy is from the Dance collection.

"Jerome Powell Sold More Than a Million Dollars of Stock as the Market Was Tanking: Disclosure documents reveal that the spectacle of Fed officials personally trading stocks extended to the chair himself." TAP's email newsletter also discusses some back story that involves cover-ups from the Fed and complicity from the news media.

Well, that was fast: "FEDERAL RESERVE Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks, restrict trading following controversy: Responding to a growing controversy over investing practices, the Federal Reserve announced Thursday a wide-ranging ban on officials owning individual stocks and bonds and limits on other activities as well. The ban includes top policymakers such as those who sit on the Federal Open Market Committee, along with senior staff. Future investments will have to be confined to diversified assets such as mutual funds. Fed officials can no longer have holdings in shares of particular companies, nor can they invest in individual bonds, hold agency securities or derivative contracts. The new rules replace existing regulations that, while somewhat restrictive, still allowed officials such as regional presidents to buy and sell stocks."

"A worker in Florida applied to 60 entry-level jobs in September and got one interview: Joey Holz recalled first hearing complaints about a labor shortage last year when he called to donate convalescent plasma at a clinic near Fort Myers, Florida. "The guy went on this rant about how he can't find help and he can't keep anybody in his medical facility because they all quit over the stimulus checks," Holz told Insider. "And I'm like, 'Your medical professionals quit over $1,200 checks? That's weird.'" Over the next several months, the 37-year-old watched as a growing chorus of businesses said they couldn't find anyone to hire because of government stimulus money. It was so ubiquitous that he joined a "No one wants to work" Facebook group, where users made memes deriding frustrated employers. He said he found it hard to believe that government money was keeping people out of the labor force, especially when the end of expanded federal unemployment benefits did not seem to trigger a surge in employment. All expanded benefits ended in September, but 26 states — including Florida — ended them early in June and July. "If this extra money that everyone's supposedly living off of stopped in June and it's now September, obviously, that's not what's stopping them," he said. Workers have said companies struggling to hire aren't offering competitive pay and benefits. So Holz, a former food-service worker and charter-boat crewman, decided to run an experiment."

From that famous left-wing rag, Forbes, "New Proof That Police Use Civil Forfeiture To Take From Those Who Can't Fight Back [...] Civil forfeiture is a process already prone to abuse, but in Philadelphia property owners were at an even greater disadvantage than typical. Property owners were summoned to Courtroom 478 at City Hall, but there was no judge in the room. The show was run by prosecutors, the same people who filed the forfeiture actions and who stood to benefit financially from successful forfeitures. [...] Similar to how Philadelphia went after Nassir for empty baggies, law enforcement typically wasn't using civil forfeiture to fight serious crime. Only 1 in 4 survey respondents was ever convicted of a crime. And like Nassir, many of those who were convicted pleaded to low-level offenses that were eventually scrubbed from their record. Moreover, half of all reported seizures were worth less than $600. One respondent even said police seized his crutches."

"'70s radical David Gilbert granted parole in Brink's robbery: Former Weather Underground radical David Gilbert has been granted parole after decades in prison for a fatal 1981 Brink's robbery north of New York City. [...]Supporters — including his son, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin — lobbied to have Gilbert join other defendants in the case who have been released from prison. [...] Though unarmed, Gilbert was charged with robbery and murder, since people were killed during the crime. Also charged was Chesa Boudin's mother, Kathy Boudin. The boy was 14 months old when his parents were imprisoned."

Audio, "Revisiting Racecraft with Barbara and Karen Fields: A lengthy interview with historian Barbara Fields and sociologist Karen Fields on their seminal essay collection Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. Dan talks to the sister scholars about the book; how Ta-Nehisi Coates' primordialist view of white racism spells defeat; that racism serves the interest of capitalist class war, and endless debates over Rachel Dolezal distract us from that fact; and a whole ton more. This is over two hours, so you might want to bite it off on a few chunks, or on a long drive." Long, but worth the time.

"What If Build Back Better Builds Back Worse? Joe Manchin's prescriptions for the Biden bill in some cases even fall short of the status quo. This was a bad weekend for fans of worthwhile economic policy. We saw a series of leaks about Joe Manchin's red lines for the Build Back Better public-investment legislation, which, if agreed to, would leave a desiccated husk of a bill that might not even be worthwhile on its own terms. [...] Once winnowed down by Manchin, what's left of Biden's proposal? Manchin is 'less interested' in paid family and medical leave, or elder care, according to Axios. There's enough opposition to the drug pricing reform from Democrats other than Manchin to potentially sink it, and typically, it's the savings from health care-related items that fund other health care advances. In other words, no drug pricing piece could mean no Medicare expansion, Obamacare subsidies, or fix of the Medicaid coverage gap. Biden has acknowledged that his plan for two years of tuition-free community college is likely gone. The immigration measures were bounced out by the Senate parliamentarian, and the PRO Act unionization measures could face the same fate. The housing proposal might have the broadest support of all—AOC and Josh Gottheimer signed the same letter supporting it—and yet that looks to be threatened, too."

"As closed-door arbitration soared last year, workers won cases against employers just 1.6 percent of the time: U.S. companies are increasingly relying mandatory arbitration to settle employee and consumer grievances during the pandemic. Family Dollar closed 1,135 such cases last year, up from three in 2019. U.S. employers relied heavily on arbitration in the first months of the pandemic, pushing a record number of complaints involving discrimination, harassment, wage theft and other grievances through a closed-door system largely weighted against consumers and workers, according to a report being released this week."

"Julian Assange and the Poisoned American Psyche: Julian Assange's case is indicative of a poisoned American psyche that has suffered from prolonged exposure to what Martin Luther King Jr. called the triple evils of capitalism, racism, and militarism. In the modern era, these evils have consolidated into a military-media industrial complex which has effectively merged the interests of corporations, military institutions, and the so-called 'mass' corporate media. The United States is the only country in the world where majorities of people hold a negative view of WikiLeaks and believe Assange to be a criminal. That's because the corporate media generally ignores Julian Assange's case . When it is covered, Assange is portrayed as nothing more than an agent of a foreign government and an international criminal of the highest order."

Rick Pearlstein, "A Short History of Conservative Trolling: David Frum, the former George W. Bush speechwriter and current never-Trump conservative, recently wrote, 'The post-Trump right has a style as distinctive as its authoritarian substance: trolling, ironic, evasive.' But that ain't so. On the right, trolling has been part of the story from the beginning."

"As Sen. Joe Manchin's Star Rose In West Virginia, The FBI And IRS Probed His Closest Allies" — But how did this coal baron stay out of jail?

RIP: "Peter Scolari, Newhart and Bosom Buddies Actor, Dies at 66: Peter Scolari, who rose to stardom on the brilliant-but-canceled Bosom Buddies alongside Tom Hanks, died Friday morning at age 66 of cancer, after a two-year illness. [...] On Friday, Newhart issued a statement to Variety: 'I knew that Peter was sick, but his death still comes as a great shock. We were friends and colleagues for over 40 years. Julia [Duffy] and Peter, as a vacuous couple (Michael and Stephanie), were an essential part of the success of 'Newhart.' In life, he was a fantastic person, and it was a joy to work together. He will be sorely missed and his passing at 66 is much too early.'" He was so sweet in Bosom Buddies, and I was delighted to see him in Newhart. A really great comic actor.

RIP: "Jay & The Americans' Jay Black Dead At 82 [...] Black's smooth operatic voice, created pop radio magic for the group with a string of hits in the 1960's - - 'Only In America,' 'Come A Little Bit Closer,' 'Cara Mia,' 'This Magic Moment,' and 'Walkin' In The Rain.' His magnificent vocal range on 'Cara Mia' led to his fans calling him 'The Voice.' The group made countless television appearances during that time including pop radio shows 'Hullaballoo' and 'Where The Action Is,' and countless talk and variety shows including 'The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,' 'The Mike Douglas Show,' and 'The Merv Griffin Show.' The group had 21 charting hits and opened for The Beatles at their first US concert in 1964. Jay Black continued to tour as a successful solo act for decades after the group disbanded in 1973. He even tried his hand at acting and co-starred in the 1970's made-for-tv movie 'Contract On Cherry Street' starring Frank Sinatra. Black's live show was a combination of great music and humor. Along with his hits, Black always performed 'Pretty Woman' and 'Cryin' as a tribute to his music idol and friend, Roy Orbison. And he spoke about how Walter Becker and Donald Fagen recorded and performed with the group before they formed Steely Dan." Yeah, he had the pipes. And he could still sing "Cara Mia" at 62.

RIP: 'Funniest of them all': tributes paid to Mort Sahl after death aged 94 [...] The Canadian-born comic was credited with revolutionising American comedy in the 1950s thanks to his acerbic political satire. Sahl was known for performing with a rolled-up newspaper as a prop and would frequently ask the audience: 'Are there any groups I haven't offended?' [...] He died at his home in Mill Valley, near San Francisco in Northern California, on Tuesday, a friend told the New York Times. Sahl became an influential figure during the 1950s, when he recorded what the US Library of Congress described as 'the earliest example of modern standup comedy on record'. By the end of the decade he had appeared in films, hosted the Oscars and written jokes for John F Kennedy's presidential campaign." There were times he really pissed me off, but he was important to the moment.

RIP: "Colin Powell, Who Helped George W. Bush Lie Nation Into Iraq War, Dead at 84: 'It's crucial to remember just how important Colin Powell was to selling the Iraq War, and how deliberately he used his public credibility to boost the lies that pushed us into the war. That is his biggest legacy.'" This article leaves out his earlier hit record of covering up My Lai.

Did you ever wonder why we "had to" invade Grenada? "An Unrealized Political Possibility: Remembering the Grenada Revolution: October 25th marks the 38th anniversary of Operation Urgent Fury -- the name given to the United States invasion of the Caribbean commonwealth of Grenada. Thanks to the efforts of 7,600 US troops and a flagrant violation of international law, Grenada was 'rescued' from the horrors of communist dictatorship and certain economic collapse. This is the reason why October 25 is Grenada's 'Thanksgiving Day', and similar to the better known Thanksgivings, it celebrates a myth. The truth is that the US invasion of Grenada and the liquidation of the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) was a triumph of western imperialism and neoliberalism over a peoples' socialist experiment. [...] The PRG was working to build a revolution in an underdeveloped, small island nation. The terrifying thing for the US and the neo-colonial puppets in the region such as Edward Seaga , Eugenia Charles , and John Compton was that it was working."

"'Systemic Racism' Can't Explain the USA—but Class Mobility Can" — Amazingly, wealthy people do better than poor people, regardless of race.

"The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism: Scare stories on "left-wing illiberalism" display a familiar pattern." From the McDonald's case to "political correctness" to "speech codes" to "CRT", the right-wing invents stories about a left that's "gone mad" doing...little or nothing.

Photo Essay on Affrilachians — "These Photos Will Change the Way You Think About Race in Coal Country: The myth that Appalachia is uniformly White lingers, but communities of 'Affrilachians; were documented in the 1930s."

From 2018, Tom Sullivan on theft from the public, "Selling America for parts revisited [...] Privatization of any public service is not about quality. It's about ideology and about into whose pockets tax dollars flow. It arises from the privatizer's belief that any product or service provided by 'we the people' that might even in theory be provided by the private sector is a crime against capitalism. They don't see a need to be filled or a service to be improved or a duty to be met. They see billions of dollar$ budgeted annually of which they are not getting their cut."

2011, Tony Williams illustrates Class Warfare in Action: "There are no clever mathematical models here, only facts. No Nobel prize for me." And Dave Johnson presents Nine Pictures Of The Extreme IncomeWealth Gap.

I'm just saving this link for my own reference: "What actually happened in Alabama? [...] But if you actually look at the exit polling, it is pretty clear that the real story of Jones's victory was not inordinate black turnout but rather inordinate white support for the Democratic candidate."

20 years ago, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and friends interview John M. (Mike) Ford.

"Remembering singer-songwriter Gene Clark, co-founder of the Byrds: 30 years later: 2021 marks 30 years since the passing of folk-rock pioneer and co-founder of the Byrds (formed in 1964), Gene Clark. Clark was a key figure in the brief, but influential early period of the Byrds, who played a significant role in the expansive and electrified 'pop' turn of folk music in the mid-1960s. He also had an intriguing solo career in its own right, before his life was tragically cut short." That was my favorite period of the Byrds, and for my money, Clark wrote one of the best rock songs of all time with "Feel A Whole Lot Better".

Mike Bloomfield at the Fillmore, "Blues On The Westside, 1969, w/ Nick Gravenites, Mark Naftalin, Snooky Flowers, et al.

Well, I was born to have adventure

"Two and Autumn" is from the Colors Fall collection.

I can't keep up with Manchin and Sinema's current reasons for what to do with reconciliation. Atrios: "I suspect they both didn't realize times have changed, a little bit, that Biden isn't Obama (*cough* black), that eventheliberals in the news media are a bit sick of this act."

"'Havana Syndrome' Noises Were Likely Crickets, Not Super Weapons, State Department Report Says: Scientists believe the Indies short-tailed cricket, not a foreign power, is responsible for strange sounds recorded by U.S. diplomats in Cuba who are reporting unexplained symptoms." Not so sure those symptoms are so unexplained, either — I'm sure everyone in the foreign service is experiencing symptoms of stress these last few years. But the "intelligence" operatives who were telling these microwave secret weapon stories to the media knew they were false years ago. That report exposing the whole sham, now public thanks to a FOIA request, is three years old.

"House Progressives to Pelosi: Reject Divisive Means-Testing in Favor of Universal Benefits: 'We can choose to strengthen the bond Americans have to one another by proposing universal social insurance benefits that broadly benefit all Americans.' Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Wednesday reiterated their top-level priorities for the nascent reconciliation package and urged their fellow Democrats to pursue universal programs instead of 'complicated methods of means-testing that the wealthy and powerful will use to divide us.'"

In a world where even Jon Chait is tweeting criticisms of the "moderates", "Josh Gottheimer criticizes Pelosi — but not one other moderate Dem would join him: report." This is actually kind of hilarious, since Gottheimer and his nasty little right-wing friends were trying to kill the main Democratic bill — "the President's agenda" that everyone keeps talking about — by slipping the "bipartisan infrastructure bill" past without the main "Build Back Better" bill that is the one everyone else wants to pass. The BIB is the giveaway to the super-rich, the one with privatization of public assets and tax breaks for the 1% that is really the poison pill in this "dual path" strategy of passing both bills at once because the right-wingers say they won't vote for the President's Agenda™ unless Dems swallow their piece of crap along with it. What it really does is expose the fact that the "Problem-Solvers" have no intention of voting for BBB ever — a promise from them to vote for it later is not worth the paper it isn't printed on.

"In Scathing Senate Testimony, Whistleblower Warns Facebook a Threat to Children and Democracy: Frances Haugen said the company's leaders know how to make their platforms safer, 'but won't make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.'"

Stoller, "The Facebook Whistleblower Is Heroic... And Terribly Wrong: Frances Haugen got a lot right. But a digital regulator that legitimizes Facebook's power would be the worst possible outcome. [...] Haugen is a trained designer of algorithms, and along with many naive Silicon Valley insiders turned critics, at heart does not see a danger with concentrated power. 'I don't hate Facebook,' she has said. 'I love Facebook. I want to save it.' Her approach to social media is similar to what many left consumer oriented groups support, which is not to take apart a concentration of power, but to regulate it. It is, in many ways, a similar framework as Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial reform package, which, rather than making systemic changes to concentrated and bloated dysfunctional sectors, simply overlaid captured regulators on top of them."

Also Stoller: "Economists to Cattle Ranchers: Stop Being So Emotional About the Monopolies Devouring Your Family Businesses: Agricultural economists manipulated data to block Congress from acting on high beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching. Why? Because they think monopolies are good. [...] Is there really an emergency in the supply chain, or is this just a fight over money between well-off ranchers and massive multi-nationals? The answer is that there is a serious problem that goes beyond parochial concerns. Back in May, I interviewed independent ranching advocate Bill Bullard to talk about something that hadn't happened in America since World War II - a beef shortage, along with accompanying high prices. Like a lot of shortages, it's easy to chalk this one up to Covid. But in fact there was plenty of cattle, it just wasn't getting to the shelves. So what was happening?"

Meyerson, "In Hollywood and America, the Strike Is Back: 1919, 1946, 2021—after wars and pandemics, workers are restless. [...] THE STRIKE, THE ULTIMATE WEAPON of workers, has been out of favor for the past four decades. When Ronald Reagan fired the nation's air traffic controllers in 1981, he gave carte blanche to corporations to follow his lead. In short order, companies with long histories of coexistence with their unions began locking out workers, or provoking strikes so that they could hire replacements at a lower pay rate or compel their unions to accept steadily diminishing pay and benefits. In the 15 years following World War II, when unions had more power under the law and employers had less, the nation averaged around 300 major strikes every year. Not coincidentally, this was the only time in American history when median pay rose at the same rate as productivity. Then, due in part to a series of court rulings, the playing field began to tilt in employers' favor, and following 1981, that tilt became much steeper. In this century, the number of annual major strikes is often in the single digits. Today, that appears to be changing. Not only is IATSE a credible threat to shut down production, but workers in other industries are rebelling as well. Recently, workers at five Nabisco factories across the nation went on strike to protest their long hours and low pay, returning only when those problems had been addressed. Around 24,000 nurses at Kaiser Permanente in California are voting on a strike authorization, and other Kaiser workers in California and Oregon are threatening the same. Ten thousand John Deere workers voted to strike last month. A thousand coal miners at Warrior Met in Alabama have been on strike for six months. And there are several other possible strikes under way."

"'Death of 1,000 cuts': Kellogg's workers on why they're striking: Union took issue with company's threats to outsource jobs from the US to Mexico if workers refuse to accept their proposals [...] Trevor Bidelman, president of BCTGM Local3G and a fourth-generation employee at the Kellogg's plant in Battle Creek, Michigan, explained workers are on strike against a proposed two-tier system for current and new employees proposed by Kellogg's. Bidelman said Kellogg's wants to not offer pensions to new employees, remove cost of living provisions, and make changes in holiday pay and vacations."

"Take it back: Copyright reversion, bargaining power, and authors' rights. Few labor markets are as dysfunctional as the market for creative labor. Writers, musicians, graphic artists and other creative workers often produce because they feel they have to, driven by a need to express and discover themselves. Small wonder that creative workers are willing to produce art for lower wages than they'd accept for other types of work. This leads to a vast oversupply of creative work, giving publishers, labels, studios and other intermediaries a buyer's market for creative labor. For the most part, arts policy pretends this isn't true. When economists and business-people talk about labor markets, they lean heavily on the neoliberal conception of 'rational economic actors' who produce when it makes sense to do so, and move on to another form of work when it doesn't. Homo economicus is a nonsense — behavioral economics has repeatedly demonstrated all the ways in which 'economic actors' don't behave the way economic models predict they will — but it's especially absurd when applied to creative labor markets."

"Lawyer Steven Donziger gets six-month sentence for contempt in Chevron battle." He's already spent two years in house arrest and now he's been sentenced to six months without time served, on a contempt of court charge that should never have been lodged. "Donziger was ordered to turn over his computer, phones and other electronic devices. That later escalated into a criminal case when he failed to do so." This was essentially a demand for all of his papers, including confidential items for his clients. It was his right and obligation to refuse.

I wish I had time to keep up with every single word Cory Doctorow writes.
"'Are you calling me a racist?' [...] Interestingly, the caller was able to speak intelligently about the nature of systemic racism and identify it as a serious problem. He just doesn't think it's as big a problem as high taxes."
"Wells Fargo can't stop criming: Wells Fargo is America's third-largest bank. It used to be the largest, but it committed a string of terrible frauds that it was never truly punished for (it made more from crime than it paid in fines). Its crime spree did result in one meaningful punishment: Wells was forced to downsize to #3, with a mere $1.77 trillion in assets. Have no fear: Wells Fargo is down but not out, and despite its reduced stature, it is still engaged in egregious acts of fraud."
"Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid: It's been just over a year since the death of activist, writer and anthropologist David Graeber — a brilliant speaker, writer and thinker who helped give us Occupy, 'we are the 99%' and Bullshit Jobs. On the anniversary of David's death, his widow Nika Dubrovsky convened the first "Art Project" discussion, a fascinating debate between Thomas Piketty and Michael Hudson, a pair of political economists whose work is neatly bridged by Graeber's own. Piketty, of course, is the bestselling French economist whose 2013 Capital in the 21st Century was an unlikely, 700+ page viral hit, describing with rare lucidity the macroeconomics that drive capitalism towards cruel and destabilizing inequality. Hudson, meanwhile, is the debt-historian and economist whose haunting phrase "Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," is a perfect and irrefutable summation of the inevitable downfall of any system that relies on household debt to drive consumption. [...] Like Graeber, Hudson also treats Babylonian policy as key to economics — specifically, the Babylonian understanding that "debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," which is why the state would periodically declare a jubilee in which all debts were declared void."

Froomkin has an idea to highlight bad headlines and stories in the press, "Let me rewrite that for you! [...] I'm going to take a handful of recent articles that I felt badly missed the mark, and offer alternative ledes or nut graphs that I think do a better job of telling the truer story." (I found that link at CJR in an article about "The problem with 'moderates v. progressives'" — that is, the way the press uses language about Democrats and what they are doing.)

"Julian Assange Kidnapping Plot Casts New Light on 2018 Senate Intelligence Maneuver: The CIA labeled WikiLeaks a 'non-state hostile intelligence service' while entertaining plans to kidnap or assassinate its founder. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2017 gave its stamp of approval to a legal maneuver that we now know the CIA was using to hunt WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. According to an explosive investigation published Sunday by Yahoo News, senior Trump administration officials — including the former president and director of the CIA — considered options to kidnap and even assassinate Assange in 2017 as part of a CIA 'offensive counterintelligence' operation. In order to expand its legal options, the administration moved to designate WikiLeaks as a 'non-state hostile intelligence service,' a label first unveiled by then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo at an April 2017 think tank event. The creative relabeling was the culmination of an effort that had begun under the Obama administration. In the wake of Edward Snowden's leak of classified National Security Agency documents, intelligence officials moved to label WikiLeaks an 'information broker,' which they distinguished from journalism and publishing. In an extraordinary assault on the press, the officials also pushed to apply the same designation to Intercept co-founders Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in a related but failed effort to strip them of First Amendment protections in the wake of the NSA leaks. The Obama White House rejected that effort as it related to all three, Yahoo reported, but under Trump, officials successfully applied the 'non-state hostile intelligence service' label to WikiLeaks."

"Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn't Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge: Judge Donna Scott Davenport oversees a juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, Tennessee, with a staggering history of jailing children. She said kids must face consequences, which rarely seem to apply to her or the other adults in charge. [...] The police were at Hobgood because of that video. But they hadn't come for the boys who threw punches. They were here for the children who looked on. The police in Murfreesboro, a fast-growing city about 30 miles southeast of Nashville, had secured juvenile petitions for 10 children in all who were accused of failing to stop the fight." At an elementary school. The Supreme Court ruled that the police don't have a duty to intervene in crimes, but they sent an eight-year-old girl to jail for failing to stop a fight.

RIP: "Frances 'Sissy' Farenthold, lodestar for Texas liberals, dies at 94: In 1972 and again in 1974, an ardently liberal Texas state legislator named Frances Tarlton Farenthold ran for governor on a platform that included imposing a tax on corporate profits, strictly regulating utilities, and liberating state government from Big Oil and a 'tyranny of private interests.' Ms. Farenthold called for lowering first-offense possession of marijuana from a felony to a misdemeanor and vowed that students in poor school districts would receive the same quality education available in wealthier districts. She reviled the Texas Rangers as 'a festering sore' because of that state police force's history of lawless brutality and summary executions of Mexicans and Mexican Americans along the state's southern border. She was also an outspoken defender of abortion rights. 'I play high with politics,' she said on the hustings. 'Why be a safe candidate?'" If McGovern had been smart, he would have chosen her as his runningmate and saved himself a lot of trouble.

The Lancet, "Fatal police violence in the USA: a public health issue [...] A lack of accurate data has arguably been one of the major impediments to adopting a public health approach to deaths caused by police violence. Today in The Lancet, a group led by researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) publish the most accurate and comprehensive assessment of deaths attributable to police violence in the USA to date. The study is a potential turning point for improving national estimates of fatalities from police violence by incorporating non-governmental open-source data to correct NVSS data. The findings are staggering: around 30,000 people died from police violence between 1980 and 2018. The NVSS omitted approximately 17,100 deaths, leading to an under-reporting of deaths attributable to police violence by more than 55%. Age-standardised mortality was higher in Black people (0·69 of 100,000) and non-Hispanic Black people (0·35 of 100,000) than White people (0·20 of 100,000)." For me the headline here is the enormous undercount in number of people police have been killing. Sentences like, "These figures show a system of violent and fatal policing in the USA that is unfairly and unevenly applied across race and ethnicity," are a bit worrying, since they seem to imply that violent and fatal policing would be okay if only it was done in proportion by race. It wouldn't.

"Mythical Class Reductionists vs. Actual Race Reductionists [...] When I took a closer look at people who talk about class reductionists, I saw the accusation is made by race reductionists whose beliefs can be traced to Derrick Bell, 'father of Critical Race Theory', a member of the black owning class who said he never read socialist works. Because Bell's followers have a shallow understanding of capitalism, they think their critics have an equally shallow understanding of racism. When I point out that identitarians ignore class, they insist they do not. They mention 'intersectionality' and fail to see that intersectionality was designed to discuss social identities and is completely inadequate for discussing economic class. What's most revealing about the identitarian claim that those of us who prioritize class are 'class reductionists' is the implication that we care less about injustice at the top of our class system than at the bottom. To that, I'll plead guilty."

Audio & Transcript, Citations Needed from November of 2018 on "The Neoliberal Optimism Industry: Nima: This week we're going to discuss the ideological project of telling both those in the West and the Global South over and over and over again, that things are, in fact, improving if not already really great. How those in power cook the books and spin data to make their case for maintaining the status quo, how a techno-capitalist middle-management ethos came to replace notions of justice, and how what we'd like to call The Neoliberal Optimism Industry gaslights us into complacency and political impotence. Today, we'll be speaking with Dr. Jason Hickel, anthropologist, author, and fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He serves on the Labour Party Task Force on International Development and works as Policy Director for The Rules collective." Instructive discussion of Bill Gates' relationship to Steven Pinker and the horrible impact they've had on society.

"Remember Red Pistachios? Here's What Happened To Them."

This is a genuine realtor's site, and the page looks exactly like all of their other house sales, slideshow tour and all, but this one is for an online tour of the Addams' Family Home.

"How The Firesign Theatre Predicted The Future: In the mid-1960s, the Beatles released a revolutionary album called "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Half a world away, four young men dropped the needle on a vinyl copy of the record and a new concept in comedy was born."

Frank Zappa, "Camarillo Brillo"
(Sorry, I just can't get this song out of my head after starting season two of Fort Salem.)

You ornament the earth for me

"Misty Mountains" at Long Lake, NY, Adirondacks, photographed by Jude Nagurney Camwell, September 2021

You remember how India Walton, the socialist, won the Democratic primary in Buffalo? Well, the incumbent she beat is doing a Lieberman. "Judge rules Byron Brown can be on Buffalo mayoral ballot [...] The Erie County Board of Elections invalidated Brown's petitions for the 'Buffalo Party' he created because they were late, but in court, Judge Sinatra agreed with the argument the new state deadline, established in 2019, was too early and prohibited fair ballot access." However, that ruling hit a snag when people started to notice a little obvious corruption. "Buffalo's Developer Class Backing Last-Ditch Attempt Against Socialist India Walton: A federal judge who wants Buffalo's incumbent mayor back on the ballot is being scrutinized for his real estate ties. [...] The involvement of conservative developers is no fluke: Close to one-third of the signatures Brown submitted in his August 17 petitions to appear as an independent candidate on the November ballot came from members of right-leaning parties, local NBC affiliate WGRZ reported. Other major GOP donors, as well as a Washington, D.C., real estate mogul who was convicted in 2006 of wire fraud and accused of bribing an official for government contracts, have contributed to Brown's campaign. And unlike in the New York City mayoral race, in which President Joe Biden and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo congratulated primary winner Eric Adams early on, Walton has received no such declarations of national Democratic support." Last time I looked there'd been another ruling, this time from the appellate court panel, saying Brown can't be on the ballot. Brown has had a write-in campaign going ever since he lost the primary, so we'll see how that goes. With so many rich Republicans backing him, that still gives him a good chance.

"Nabisco Strike Ends: BCTGM Members Overwhelmingly Accept New Contract: Members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) working for Nabisco/Mondelez in Portland, Ore., Aurora, Colo., Richmond, Va., Chicago, Ill. and Norcross, Ga. have voted overwhelmingly to accept a new collective bargaining agreement. Approval of the contract ends the BCTGM's strike against Nabisco which began on August 10, 2021." Maybe it's a good deal.

"General Failure: How the U.S. Military Lied About the 9/11 Wars: For generals like David Petraeus and Lloyd Austin, there has been no punishment for 20 years of disinformation on Afghanistan and Iraq.." And Glenn Greenwald points out it goes back a lot farther than that.

"The Supreme Court Is a Threat to Democracy: Last week's Supreme Court decision striking down the national eviction moratorium was a lawless power grab by an increasingly out-of-control institution. [...] The text is pretty clear. The law says the CDC can put in place and enforce regulations that prevent infectious diseases from spreading from state to state, examples of which include inspection, pest extermination, and other measures the CDC decides are necessary — a broad mandate that gives the agency wide latitude to act to contain a killer pandemic. [...] Luckily for the Wall Street housing barons and realtors' associations of the world, that's nothing a little bit of creative reading can't fix. When a different Trump-appointed US district court judge struck down the original moratorium back in May, her reasoning was that the CDC's clear authority to decide on regulations needed to halt an infectious disease in its tracks was somehow 'tethered to — and narrowed by — the second sentence' of the law, namely the list of examples given: inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, and the 'destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings.' [...] The Supreme Court's invalidation of Biden's latest version of the order, which had been amended to target only the parts of the country hardest hit by the virus, relies partly on this same wordplay. But what really makes it interesting is the nakedly ideological terms on which the court's right-wing supermajority rests its decision in the rest of the opinion."

"How Moderate Democrats Derailed Police Reform: Centrists demanded a police reform bill that didn't go too far. Now they don't get one at all. [...] One comment from a moderate appears to have pushed the course of negotiations south. On May 9, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., told CNN that Democrats should be open to passing a bill that didn't touch qualified immunity. In an interview two days later, Scott's office declined to comment on the record but denied that Scott was against eliminating qualified immunity, and said he was still pushing his compromise proposal. The next day, in response to comments from Bass that the package needed to eliminate qualified immunity, Scott said he was 'on the exact opposite side.' A June draft of the legislation included a proposal similar to Scott's."

Over at Slate, the theory that Republicans never really wanted to end Roe still lives, and it's probably right. "Republicans Don't Actually Want Roe v. Wade to End This Way: GOP politicians appear terrified of Texas' abortion ban. The Supreme Court should take note." And Josh Marshall is talking about the essential corruption on the court.

Meanwhile, "Mexico's Supreme Court Votes to Decriminalize Abortion: The ruling, which sets a precedent for the legalization of abortion nationwide, follows years of efforts by a growing women's movement in Mexico. MEXICO CITY — Criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, setting a precedent that could lead to legalization of the procedure across this conservative Catholic country of about 130 million people. The unanimous ruling from the nation's top court follows years of efforts by a growing women's movement in Mexico that has repeatedly taken to the streets of major cities to demand greater rights and protections."

"NEW: What happens when progressives defeat corporate-funded Democrats? In Prince George's County, Maryland, lobbyists & business groups are attempting to overturn an election in plain sight to keep control of a $2 billion school board budget. The corruption is shocking. In 2020, a slate of progressives defeated business-funded incumbents to take over the PG County school board. Now, contractors and lobbyists are trying to overturn the election results and remove the new board members from office, with the help of some establishment Democrats. Once they took office, the progressive slate tried to investigate irregularities in construction contracts. They passed a Community Benefits Agreement that ensured construction contracts created good, union jobs. Then, lobbyists launched an effort to remove them from office. The attempted overturn started with a series of ethics complaints against the progressive slate. @washingtonpost referred to the complaints as 'error riddled.' The former State's Attorney called them 'totally unsubstantiated' and \a political hit job.'"

"Dems Flail Over Pharma Cash And Drug Pricing Vote: Scott Peters, Kurt Schrader, and Kathleen Rice mount weak, incoherent responses trying to explain why they torpedoed a plan to let Medicare negotiate drug prices.Conservative Democratic Reps. Scott Peters (Calif.) and Kurt Schrader (Ore.) have been defending their huge hauls of campaign cash from the pharmaceutical industry since announcing their opposition to House Democrats' wildly popular plan to reduce drug prices. Meanwhile, another Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Kathleen Rice (N.Y.), has completely flipped her reasoning for why she voted against the measure. Last week, Schrader, Peters, and Rice used their seats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to try to block House Democrats from allowing Medicare to use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices as part of the party's $3.5 trillion infrastructure reconciliation effort. The proposal has support from 90 percent of registered voters in their districts, according to a recent poll by Data For Progress."

Pierce, "This Is an Actual United States Senator Questioning the Actual Secretary of State: On Tuesday, the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee got its chance to question Secretary Blinken, and Republican Senator James Risch took the opportunity to force Blinken to sprain a muscle trying to keep a straight face. This is a United States Senator questioning the Secretary of State as to whether or not the President of the United States is being operated by remote control, and I am not lying about any of this. Gaze in awe."

"What Philadelphia Reveals About America's Homicide Surge [...] In his 2018 book Uneasy Peace, sociologist Patrick Sharkey, now at Princeton University, argued that an overlooked reason for the decline in violent crime since the early 1990s was the spread of grassroots organizations that sprang up to address the problem. The effect was quantifiable, he found: In any given city with 100,000 people, he wrote, 'every new organization formed to confront violence and build stronger neighborhoods led to about a 1% drop in violent crime and murder.'"

"Surprise, Surprise, Ending Unemployment Benefits Early Didn't Actually Get People Back to Work [...] But according to new research, not only did cutting off federal assistance early not only have little to no impact on jobs numbers, it immediately caused a decrease in spending, hurting those states' economies. According to a new paper from economists and researchers at Columbia, Harvard, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Toronto, 7 out of every 8 people who had their benefits cut off did not then find employment. Those unemployed people also cut their weekly spending by 20%, resulting in a $2 billion loss in those states between June and the beginning of August."

"Recent Unemployment Cuts Made People Poorer Without Increasing Employment: The media breathlessly reported on labor shortages this summer, helping generate support for unemployment benefit cuts. But a new study shows such cuts didn't do much but devastate poor people's incomes.

"The conservative Supreme Court is issuing some of its most extreme rulings in the shadows: As bad as the U.S. Supreme Court's regular decisions were this year, what it has done in its "shadow docket" has been particularly dangerous. That includes 10 emergency requests by religious groups challenging COVID-19 restrictions, all of which the court's conservative majority granted. The "shadow docket" is a term coined by University of Chicago law professor Will Baude six years ago to describe "a range of orders and summary decisions that defy its normal procedural regularity." The shadow docket has always been there, where the court issues rulings (without scheduling hearings) that are often unsigned and often consist of just one or two sentences. But the current iteration of the conservative court led by Chief Justice John Roberts has been picking up the pace of those shadow docket cases."

Maybe Covid in children really is a big deal after all. "Pediatric Diabetes Surge in Mississippi: Doctors Concerned COVID-19 Is To Blame: Dr. Jessica Lilley is a pediatric endocrinologist at the Mississippi Center for Advanced Medicine. For eight years she has seen children from across the state for pediatric diabetes and other hormonal issues. With each passing month of the pandemic, Lilley has grown increasingly concerned that COVID-19 is linked to a massive increase in new diagnoses of pediatric diabetes throughout Mississippi. Lilley is not alone in her observation. In conferring with other pediatric endocrinologists across the state and nation, Lilley says the spike in new cases is widespread. 'We are all seeing an increase in type 1 diabetes diagnoses as well as type 2 diabetes diagnoses. Those of us who tracked it have noticed anywhere from a 30% to 40% increase compared to (2019),' she told the Mississippi Free Press in a series of interviews in August and September. "

Why does Sinema act so crazy? "Sinema Cueing Up To Go Indy (Must Read): Absolutely fascinating look at Kyrsten Sinema's efforts to position herself as an independent in Arizona, possibly formally but definitely in effect. It makes pretty clear she's not done with politics or angling for a high dollar lobbying gig, as some speculate. She thinks she can be a latter-day McCain and build her political brand on that basis, likely looking for a promotion above the Senate." But she could be badly misreading the room.

"Why Are There Still Conservatives In The Congressional Progressive Caucus? [...] 'In addition to having members with ProgressivePunch scores of D or F. I find it deeply concerning that members such as Sheila Jackson Lee, who is one of the Vice Chairs of the Progressive Caucus, has received a ProgressivePunch score of C. This is another example of an establishment member of the party, who has long ties with corporate donors (Goldman Sachs, Chevron, BP, etc.) and has been virtually silent on all major progressive policies, buying their way into the Progressive Caucus to avoid major opposition in the primaries.'"

"America's Acute Governance Problem: We have difficulty handing out money intended for people who need it. And that's just the beginning. [...] If you really want to prevent evictions and keep people off the street in the middle of a pandemic that continues to pummel this country, you could institute what I would call the 'big bag of money' option. In theory—and again, all of this is theory—you could install a federal official at every eviction court in America, and whenever a case is read, with the amount owed to the landlord stated, the guy can dip into his big bag of money and pay the debt. In nearly all cases, this will satisfy the landlord and put a stop to evictions, which Goldman Sachs estimates will otherwise hit 750,000 families over the next four months."

FAIR, "NYT: China Needs to Rethink Its Not-Letting-People-Die-From-Covid Policy: It still boggles me that a US paper thinks it has standing to offer advice to China on how to address the Covid-19 pandemic (FAIR.org, 1/29/21). For those who have been on Mars for the past two years, China has had, since the disease first appeared, 95,493 cases and 4,636 deaths from Covid. The United States, with approximately one-fourth as many people, has had almost 42 million cases and 668,000 deaths. On a per capita basis, the US's handling of the coronavirus has been more than 600 times worse than China's. But still, the New York Times has some ideas on how China could do better!"

"Ken Loach: Keir Starmer Is Mr Bean Trying to Act Like Stalin: Last week, Ken Loach was kicked out of the Labour party. In his first interview since his expulsion, the socialist filmmaker told Jacobin that Keir Starmer's purge of the Left is driving the party to destruction."

I wonder if Nancy Pelosi is regretting keeping AOC off the committee and putting Rice in there instead. "How Kathleen Rice Is Threatening the Biden Agenda: Rice and two other House Democrats oppose aggressive drug price reform, which provides the budget savings available to fuel spending in the Build Back Better Act. [...] Flash forward to this week, where Rice joined with two other centrists to temporarily block an enormously popular drug pricing reform measure from advancing through the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Democratic-Republican split on the committee is 32-26. The objections of Reps. Rice, Scott Peters (D-CA), and Kurt Schrader (D-OR) to the drug price reform deadlock the vote. If AOC were on the committee instead of Rice, that measure would have passed. The standoff does not mean that drug price reform is finished. The Budget Committee can always fit it back in with a 'manager's amendment,' and because it provides at least $700 billion in budget savings for the overall bill, the committee almost certainly will. But it's a show of force from pro-pharma members in a Democratic caucus that only has three votes to spare to pass the reconciliation package out of the House. No agreement on drug prices threatens the entire bill and the Biden agenda, because of its importance in offsetting spending." Incredibly, Rice seems to be claiming she supports the incredibly expensive Bush non-negotiation clause out of "fiscal responsibility". Which just shows you what a lie that phrase has always been.

"Billionaires Are the Leading Cause of Climate Change: As the world faces environmental disaster on a biblical scale, it's important to remember exactly who brought us here. [...] Contrary to a lot of guilt-tripping pleas for us all to take the bus more often to save the world, your individual choices are probably doing very little to the world's climate. The real impact comes on the industrial level, as more than 70 percent of global emissions come from just 100 companies. So you, a random American consumer, exert very little pressure here. The people who are actively cranking up the global thermostat and threatening to drown 20 percent of the global population are the billionaires in the boardrooms of these companies."

Stiglitz is in the Financial Times saying, "Europe should not return to pre-pandemic fiscal rules: Given the challenges the EU faces today, a new round of austerity would be calamitous [...] In responding to the coronavirus emergency, European countries have abandoned the EU's fiscal rules governing deficits and debt-to-gross domestic product ratio, borrowing and spending to keep their economies afloat. There will and should be a debate about how well those borrowed funds are spent. But few would argue that spending was the wrong course of action."

"Where's My Lyme Vaccine?: The complex downfall of LYMErix—and what's coming next. [...] We had one, once. The Food and Drug Administration approved LYMErix, manufactured by SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline), for use in 1998. LYMErix worked by inducing antibodies into human blood, which would then go into any ticks that attached to your body. There, they would neutralize the bacteria that cause Lyme, Borrelia burgdorferi, before the bacteria could go from the tick into you. In clinical trials, the shot showed about 78 percent effectiveness after the required three doses (hey, I'd take it). But some patients who got the shot after it went on the market testified that they developed arthritis after vaccination. The FDA investigated, but decided the evidence that the vaccine was linked to patients' arthritis wasn't strong enough to withdraw its approval for LYMErix. Sales fell nonetheless, and the company pulled the vaccine in 2002."

"This is no ordinary spying. Our most intimate selves are now exposed: The Pegasus project shows we could all soon be ruled by states that know everything about us, while we know less and less about them"

"Clinton lawyer's indictment reveals 'bag of tricks': The 26-page indictment of former cybersecurity attorney and Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann by special counsel John Durham is as detailed as it is damning on the alleged effort to push a false Russia collusion claim before the 2016 presidential campaign. One line, however, seems to reverberate for those of us who have followed this scandal for years now: 'You do realize that we will have to expose every trick we have in our bag.' That warning from an unnamed 'university researcher' captures the most fascinating aspect of the indictment in describing a type of Nixonian dirty tricks operation run by — or at least billed to — the Clinton campaign. With Nixon, his personal attorney and the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) paid for operatives to engage in disruptive and ultimately criminal conduct targeting his opponents. With Clinton, the indictment and prior disclosures suggest that Clinton campaign lawyers at the law firm of Perkins Coie helped organize an effort to spread Russia collusion stories and trigger an investigation."

"Even During COVID-19 Recession, Temporary Assistance Does Little to Reduce Child Poverty: Many people in the United States might assume that the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program — the program created after 'welfare reform' — would be an important tool to assist needy families during the COVID-19 recession. The latest analysis from the Census Bureau shows that TANF has failed once again to provide much help to the impoverished during a recession. This fact is best illustrated by examining TANF's impact on child poverty last year. The Census Bureau examined the impact of 13 programs on reducing child poverty during 2020. Of the 13 programs, TANF was among the weakest at reducing child poverty. (See Figure.) The Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was more than five times as effective as TANF in reducing child poverty. Unemployment Insurance was nearly seven times as effective."

If you can get into the NYT, Zach Carter has a good article up called, "Why Are Moderates Trying to Blow Up Biden's Centrist Economic Plan?," but even if you can't, you might want to read his follow-up on his Substack, "Left, Right and Keynes [...] The situation with today's centrists in the Democratic Party is similar, only much worse. Joe Biden is a lifelong centrist who is fighting back progressive calls for structural political change with a commitment to robust economic reform. Adding new states to the union, adding new seats to the Supreme Court, eliminating the electoral college, abolishing the filibuster — Biden has politely ignored them all. But people calling themselves centrists are now attacking Biden's economic reforms — the very centrist agenda that is supposed to help beat back the demands from the left and right. Not a single one of Biden's intraparty critics has offered a coherent policy justification for their opposition. They've abandoned centrism as a set of ideas with a clear purpose and embraced an amorphous fear of action itself."

The Bronx Freedom Fund proved that cash bail is extortion: For over a dozen years, despite judicial threats and media attacks, we bailed out thousands of low-income New Yorkers who would have otherwise languished in jail while presumed innocent. In doing so, we exploded the myth that cash bail was necessary to ensure people returned to court, and laid bare its coercive power to force people to plead guilty and forfeit their right to trial. Close to 95% of our clients made every one of their court appearances even though they had no money on the line. Almost 50% of the cases in which we posted bail were dismissed, and over the life of the fund, fewer than 2% of the people for whom we provided bail assistance received a jail sentence. In short, we proved that when it comes to bail, money really does buy justice."

RIP: Judith Hanna, 67, of liver cancer. Joseph's obit for her in the Guardian is dry and restrained, but shortly before she died, she was calling him a hero, and he managed to get through his much more personal words for her at the funeral, choked with emotion as he obviously was. She gave us warning on Facebook that the docs had given her the death sentence, and so, she observed, she was seeing her own wake in the comments. And then no time at all seemed to pass before Joseph told us she was gone and that he'd been with her at the last. She was my friend, she had come to London from Australia just a couple of years before I'd moved here and she gave me tips and household items to help me through the transition. And violets, because they "like to grow over the roots of the roses and cool them." We all loved her and have things to thank her for, and we've all missed seeing her during the on-again-off-again quarantine and now we will miss her forever and I just can't seem to stop my eyes from stinging whenever I think of her.

RIP: "George Holliday, man who filmed Rodney King police beating, dies of COVID: LOS ANGELES (AP) — George Holliday, the Los Angeles plumber who shot grainy video of four white police officers beating Black motorist Rodney King in 1991, has died of complications of COVID-19, a friend said Monday. Holliday, 61, died Sunday at a Los Angeles hospital, where he had been for more than a month, according to Robert Wollenweber, a longtime friend and former coworker. Holliday was not vaccinated and was on a ventilator in recent days after contracting pneumonia, Wollenweber said."

Corey Doctorow reviews a book, "Love of Shopping is Not a Gene: exposing junk science and ideology in Darwinian Psychology: Anne Innis Dagg's "Love of Shopping" is Not a Gene is a scathing, entertaining and extremely accessible geneticist's critique of 'Darwinian Psychology' — that is, the "science" of ascribing human behavior to genetic inevitability. Dagg, a biologist/geneticist at the University of Waterloo, identifies Darwinian Psychology as a nexus of ideological pseudoscience cooked to justify political agendas about the inevitability of social inequality, especially racial and sexual inequality. One after another, Dagg examines the cherished shibboleths of Darwinian Psychology, examining the research offered in support of such statements as "Rape is genetic" or "Black people are genetically destined to have lower IQ scores than white people" and demolishes each statement by subjecting it to scientific rigor, including an examination of all the contradictory evidence ignored by proponents. Dagg opens the book with what seems to be an issue of personal affront: the story that "many" animals practice infanticide as a means of eliminating the genetic competition. This claim originates in part with Craig Packer, who seemingly lost his head when Dagg dared to point out that the overall data suggested that lionesses, not lions, were apt to kill cubs, and not cubs born to other lionesses, but their own progeny, to give the remaining offspring a better chance of survival. When Packer was sent a paper to review, he sent Dagg a threatening note promising to go public with a "harsh" characterization of her as a "fringe scientist" with a "bizarre obsession." Meanwhile, Dagg's investigation of the references cited in support of infanticide among other animals, especially primates, finds them to be just as specious as the claims of infanticide among lions. "

From recent history, a wise reminder that sometimes you have to look deeper. "The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill: All pandemic long, scientists brawled over how the virus spreads. Droplets! No, aerosols! At the heart of the fight was a teensy error with huge consequences.

"Inequality, not gerontocracy: The received wisdom among economists is that the US's historical low interests rates are driven by high savings by aging boomers who are getting ready for, or in, retirement. [...] The problem with the "boomers have so much in retirement savings that interest rates are low" theory is that boomers are incredibly unprepared for retirement. There's a small cohort — ~10% — of very well-off boomers sailing into their sunset years. The rest? Fucked [...] So why are rates so low? Well, the paper says it is being caused by high levels of savings — just not aging boomers' savings. Rather, it's the savings of the ultra-wealthy, the 1%, who are sitting on mountains of unproductive capital, chasing returns."

Stephanie Kelton explains "What Every American Needs to Know About the Congressional "Pay-For" Game (Part 1): I know this game. I watched it from the inside."

Audio, "Know Your Enemy #16: The Windbag City, with Marshall Steinbaum: Matt and Sam are joined by Marshall Steinbaum for a deep dive into the Chicago school of economics and the wreckage it's supported—from welcoming the birth defects caused by deregulating the pharmaceutical industry to justifying massive resistance to desegregation to being put in the service of coronavirus truther-ism. Where did this iteration of libertarianism come from, intellectually and institutionally? Who are the key figures in the Chicago school? How have their ideas infected the way we all think about economics and politics? It's a sordid, depressing tale of right-wing money, intellectual dishonesty, and a gleeful desire to discipline the forces of democracy."

Let's set the Wayback Machine all the way back to April of 2006 for, "The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney: A Washington press corps that stood idly by while Bush and Cheney plundered the country, wrecked the environment, spied on Americans without a warrant, tortured civilians and lied the country into a war that will only get worse, woke up one morning and collectively decided: 'Let's all play Get Cynthia!'"

"FDR And 'Court Packing' — Just One More 'Truth' That Isn't True: A lot of things we 'know' about history come from 'one side.' For example, we 'know' that 'protectionism' caused the Great Depression. Except it didn't. Who benefits from convincing the public that protecting national interests is bad if it reduces corporate profits? There are so, so many 'truths' like that. Another 'Truth': Court Packing is Bad. Here's another 'truth.' FDR tried to 'pack the Supreme Court' and it was very, very bad. I thought I'd look up what the Supreme Court was actually doing that led to FDR trying to do something to balance the Court, and what happened when he finally did try. Go ahead and try to find answers (the actual truth) to that question. It's hard to find."

"To Fight Racism, Organize With Your Coworkers: Too many anti-racist efforts today obsess over individual actions like microaggressions. We need to fight racism in a collective project rooted in shared material interests — as the United Packinghouse Workers of America did in its heyday."

Interview by Index on Censorship, "Daniel Ellsberg: The original whistleblower [...] 'I have never heard of anyone wanting to be a whistleblower,' said Ellsberg. 'People admire it when they see it, but it is a strange career to set out on — and it's not a career because you generally only get to do it once. Employers believe you won't tell their dirty secrets no matter how criminal, illegal, wrongful or dangerous your bosses may be.'"

"When Police Kill Police and Someone Else is Blamed : In the early morning of May, 2020, Bonneville County Sheriff's Deputy Wyatt Maser lost his life while responding to a call in Idaho Falls. He and another officer arrived to assist a motorist, Jenna Holm, after she was in a single-car crash on a rural stretch of road. They arrived to find Holm in distress. While attempting to bring her into custody, another officer driving at high speeds arrived and hit Deputy Maser with his patrol vehicle. Maser died at the scene. Holm was charged with manslaughter in connection with his death."

"The Most Terrifying Thing About 9/11 Was America's Response: The fear I experienced that terrible day in New York doesn't begin to compare with the dread I've developed watching our path since." I knew that day that what 9/11 really meant was that horrible people in our government would now be able to do every horrible thing they wanted to do. And they did.

You've probably all heard about how Ben Franklin started off as an antivaxer and then changed his mind, but here's a story I didn't know, and it all starts with Cotton Mather's slave.. "What if I told you this happens EXACTLY every 100 years?"

Matt Stoller, "Counterfeit Capitalism: Why a Monopolized Economy Leads to Inflation and Shortages: From railroads to plastic bags to semiconductors to ice cream, Wall Street and monopolists are creating shortages and exploiting them."

Former Black Panther Eddie Conway on "Cuba And The US: A Tale Of Two Prison Systems: There's no such thing as a 'good' prison, but the stark differences between US and Cuban prisons show just how deliberately inhumane the American carceral system is."

The creators of HEIST: Who Stole the American Dream? put it on YouTube so you can watch the full film for free.

The BBC covers the alien invasion

Carlos Santana and Steve Winwood, "Whiter Shade of Pale"

Laura Nyro, "Emmie"