When director and writer Alfred Hitchcock advised other filmmakers with his filmmaking philosophy of back at the ranch, he envisioned two parallel tracks. We have been forced into watching the repeated defeats of California representative Kevin McCarthy for most of the week in his bid to become the Speaker of...
Trade
Brittney Griner and her wife Cherelle are an American love story. Let us try a thought experiment. Instead of being a 6’9” basketball player and black lesbian, Brittney Griner is a five-foot-two (eyes of blue) white evangelical named Buffy with a business that refuses to serve the LBGTQ+ community. Further,...
…suppressing your opposition with power; strong regimentation of society and economy, and dictatorial power- Fascism In the collegial setting, politics is taught as a science. It is meant to be an apolitical study based upon history or comparison, its global effects i.e. international implications, and accepted theory. Although modern fascism...
The latest rabbit punch thrown by the Republican party in the culture bout was to deny Texas children the truth about women’s suffrage and that white supremacy is a bad thing. Besides the obvious moral failure of Texas Republicans, who voted in favor of this measure in the absence of...
Layaway, on-time, and paying-something-down-on-it have been very familiar phrases in black, brown, and poor neighborhoods for generations; credit was for the people who did not need it. Financial freedom because of race, religion, and status was prohibitive for countless numbers of Americans and immigrants. The constant pressure of having to...
Several hundred million pounds of the UK Treasury may get allocated to a new, replacement yacht for the Queen, likely to be used more by Prince Chuck. Because that’s where national wealth should go. Most of the announcements have resembled Trumpist PR for Space Force. The "national flagship" announcement has no...
Former President Trump ordered the Pentagon to release all of its information on “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAP) within 18 days in his last coronavirus relief bill in December 2020. More inexplicable sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) will be released for public scrutiny in June — including a UFO that broke...
These are days fraught with political battles over cultural histories abjuring complexity. Today it’s The Wall Street Journal and the reactionary path to critical race theory, the latest bit of Trumpist ignorance now projected into personnel policies and the larger revisionist history project that would deny the historical relevance of slavery...
So today, Giuliani Giunior (aka Andrew) announced he’s running for governor of New York. He’s apparently hoping to trade on the Giuliani name, which, unfortunately, isn’t what it used to be since the dildo shop. So I was hoping to see rivulets of black tar coursing down the sides of Andrew’s...
So this happened yesterday: Glenn Youngkin, a wealthy first-time candidate who walked a line between his party’s Trump-centric base and appeals to business interests, won the Republican nomination for governor of Virginia on Monday. He heads into a general election in one of only two states choosing their governors in...
There is a capitalist propaganda battle at work, with the Wall Street Journal claiming that “ Biden has sent a signal around the world that nobody’s intellectual property is safe in America.”. The National Review now claims that “Profit Margins Save Lives”. “The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service...
Because of new post-Brexit rules, a marine boundary dispute required the UK to dispatch two naval vessels to deal with a blockade of French fishing boats off the main port of the island of Jersey. Not exactly the Falklands crisis of 1770, or the Anglo-Vichy war of 1940-42, but there...
President Joe Biden seems to be doing the right thing. Progressive's fight to #FreeTheVaccine may be realized. This could mitigate COVID-19 worldwide. #FreeTheVaccine may be realized x x YouTube Video See full episodes here. Most Progressives were receiving messages through the grapevine that was disturbing earlier this week. Many activists believed that...
Pennyfarthing doth doff his cap to John Oliver, the agreeable British bloke who plies his trade on this side of the pond to our immense and perduring delight. Oliver’s HBO show, Last Week Tonight, expertly meshes topical comedy with must-see segments on vitally important issues. It’s like 60 Minutes with...
Donald Trump kept saying “we have turned the corner” on Covid so many times one would think we were in an endless maze. Joe Biden saw it differently. His administration is conducting one of the greatest vaccination campaigns in history, starting with bringing the vaccination level up now to 44% of all Americans...
Whether it’s soccer teams or sandwich shops, financialization was there before the pandemic, only making some of its supply-chain hijacking yet another example of an impending capitalist disaster. Re-regulation must remain important as crises loom in the post-pandemic recovery. A 2017 interview with UMass’s Gerald Epstein points to the need to...
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that...
One of the more despicable senators in the US Senate now acknowledges that climate change is real after four years of kissing Trump’s ass as the know-nothing did all he could do to derail the fight against climate change and kill life on the planet. Better late than never, but words...
Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has learned from the death of Bernie Madoff about Ponzi schemes, because QAnon surely couldn’t be a cult of personality or a grift used by criminals in charge. Because the previous guy still says “the best is yet to come”, having killed hundreds of thousands, we also know...
Received this e-mail yesterday from former Presidential candidate, Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D. TX), on behalf of his organization, Powered by People: Having these conversations now (and not in the weeks just before an election) shows our commitment to work with each other even when there’s not an election on the...
More attention should be paid to an economy that might be in trouble this summer especially as there will be something, something military that will require US attention somewhere, somewhere. That increased military activity might distract from finally indicting the previous guy, who apparently allowed the Chinese economy to become #1...
Top Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro didn’t come out of nowhere. The administration found him where most high-level government aides are found … i.e., the same place I found the anti-fungal treatment for my big toenail—Amazon. You may or may not know that Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner found Navarro while...
Like Martin Luther objecting to Pope Leo X selling indulgences to raise money for a variety of excesses, the environmental costs of carbon markets far exceed the benefits. Austerity would have denied us Renaissance art which is less at risk in an age of non-fungible tokens. Today the consequences for the planet...
The stuck ship does tell us something about the fragility of global trade and the flow of capital. Fungible Space Logistics, that concept popularized by United Parcel Service is also about the spatial problems of concrete versus abstract global networks. x Everyone is talking about the big ship getting stuck...
Apparently John (no relation) Kennedy (R-LA) may endorse those sober drivers who run over demonstrators in Oklahoma, because a guy who “went to Oxford” should know something about logical fallacies. x Hours after America's second mass shooting in a week, Sen. John Kennedy downplays the gun problem by noting that...
He’s not the only one, of course. For instance, I’m convinced Matt Gaetz has the largest head-to-brain-size ratio in the animal kingdom and that Louie Gohmert is the lamentable result of a failed attempt to breed a white supremacist lemur with a bowl of beets. Then there’s Lauren Boebert and Marjorie...
Okay, it’s wrong to damage other people’s private property, even if displaying said property is basically a hate crime at this point. So I don’t condone this. Not one bit. That said, I may contact this museum to see if I can trade them for the Trump statue I’ve been...
A worthwhile article in the NYT Some highlights: Amazon has embarked on an advertising blitz this winter, urging Congress to follow the company’s lead and raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. American workers “simply can’t wait” for higher pay, the company said in a recent blog post....
The sparse number of actual carbon capture and sequestration projects plus weak carbon markets amplify the problems of the climate crisis yet to be revisited, post-Trump. Two heartland examples in North Dakota and Texas show how there are several interlocking problems addressing the climate crisis that must be included in future environmental policy. More specifically...
No, not by the US but by that jolly benevolent Empire of the British. Of course, it was started by a corporation. But something changed in 1765, shortly after the East India Company took control of the subcontinent and established a monopoly over Indian trade. They arranged a sweetheart deal....
Recovering memory and historical revisionism in sex work might be the sad product of many repressive regimes. What becomes worse is the complicity of academic institutions in white-washing crimes against humanity. Harvard is no stranger to items like Alan (buddy of Jeff Epstein) Dershowitz’s attempt to move the statutory rape...
Rush Limbaugh was more of a conservative index and perhaps a reactionary icon. He claimed whenever cornered with a political lie that he was an entertainer rather than any credible media source. “Rush Rooms” everywhere should be festooned with black crepe. x Trump Plaza in Atlantic City has been demolished,...
As Climate Crisis returns to the new US administration agenda, negative emissions technologies (NETs) may find their implementation hindered by neoliberal financialization. An earlier ACM story showed how Steve Keen’s critique of Nordhaus’s use of discounting climate change demonstrates that orthodox economics is incapable of accelerating innovation especially in...
The best explanation of short selling (as it applies to GameStop) that I've read pic.twitter.com/o9ZL5HqsKf — John M. Cunningham (@jmcunning) January 28, 2021 1/2Short selling means borrowing shares and immediately selling them. When the price goes down, they buy them back for cents and return them to the lender. This...
Large hedge funds representative of fictitious capital aka “dumb money” got screwed by swarming reddit collective action. Numerous “redditors” caused a small scale version of (short) market chaos. WE GOT JON STEWART TO JOIN TWITTER He's right tho… https://t.co/iHedgMhKqg — WSB Mod (@wsbmod) January 29, 2021 UPDATE: It's definitely not a...
From CNN: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the House's article of impeachment will be delivered to the Senate on Monday, triggering the start of the Senate's impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. “I have spoken to Speaker Pelosi who informed me that the articles will be delivered...
Oh, this is beyond delicious. Like a giant tub of Red Vines cascading down my Twizzlers-hole like a … this simile has gotten away from me. Never mind. Anyway. Delicious. The National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson. Witless Ape Rides Helicopter Well, that sucked. Memo to MAGA and all its myriad fellow-travelers: Maybe Death...
The modern slave trade. Forced Labour : 25,000,000 Sexually exploited: 4,800,000 [99% women] State sponsored: 4,100,000 Forced marriages: 15,400,000 [71% women] Total: 49,300,000 Women represent [excluding the sex trade] 55% of the total. Another 40,000,000 are living in slave like conditions [eg N. Korea] While there is only limited information...
From The Huffington Post: Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, one day before her closely watched Georgia Senate runoff, announced Monday she’s joining the coalition of GOP senators objecting to this week’s tally of the Electoral College results in Congress. “The American people deserve a platform in Congress, permitted under the Constitution,...
The neoliberals’ “free market” is not going to sequester enough carbon to save the environment. Even Warren Buffett isn’t willing to take a bet on surviving an impending climate crisis catastrophe, because “the rents are too high”. Existential threats have a critical reality, about which ruthless criticism is entailed. Even...
A piece in The Bulwark gives us another political neologism, as if we had enough to deal with in designated “more conservative”, “more moderate”, “less liberal”, and even anti-progressive Democrats. At their margins they may be responsible for the Democratic losses in Congress even as Trump has been defeated. “Can’t we all just get...
Biden got around 81.3 million votes = 51.4% of the vote give or take Trump got around 74.2 million votes= 46.9% of the vote Turnout was around 67% Those republicans that believe Trump was robbed = 77% give or take a crazy or two. That means there are about 57.1...