Welcome to The Now

 "If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children." - Confucius 

 How does Russia oscillate between being a threat to America to being easily beatable by Ukraine to being a future WW3 opponent to being too old/slow/incompetent to hold a city?  I'd give links here, but the narrative changes so much the links would be outdated in a week or two. Just do a search for those phrases (or something similar) and try to make sense of it. But this is a tool of the propagandist: confuse the audience to the point where they'll believe anything just so they won't have to think too much and/or too hard. 

 ...and if anyone thinks that the Left has a singular POV on this development , you would be wrong. Jimmy Dore , RBN , Russell Brand and Niko House all have different takes. We should keep in mind that every person has flaws and biases, and the biggest test to one's belief system or life philosophy is when they are personally challenged, i.e., how Alyssa Milano felt about #MeToo when accusations of sexual assault (by Tara Reade) were made about Joe Biden.  America has survived this long because of how it's citizens create, enforce and interpret its laws, not by relying on the best intentions of individuals.

 Maybe trying to push a streaming service in the midst of a game-changing merger was a bad idea. Maybe CNN should bundle with HBO, seeing as the later isn't doing news. Nevertheless, CNN main can focus on hard-hitting stories like why the White House has run out of glassware . 

 Not good news considering he needed them to win his election: (CNN)Just 41% of young Americans approve of President Joe Biden's job performance, according to a new Harvard Institute of Politics poll of adults ages 18-29 released on Monday. That's down from 46% in fall 2021 and a 59% majority last spring -- a trend also seen in other recent surveys. By comparison, according to past Harvard IOP polling, only 25% of young Americans approved of then-President Donald Trump heading into the 2018 midterm cycle. Twelve years ago, however, 56% approved of then-President Barack Obama ahead of the first midterm cycle of his presidency, when Democrats went on to lose the House in 2010. "Overall, Biden voters who now disapprove of his performance rate him more harshly on the economy," John Della Volpe, Harvard IOP's polling director, writes in the survey's release. "(T)hey see the current political system as ineffectual; they view the President as putting the intere...

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 No what you would think. Danny Haiphong from The Left Lens explains.  

 If you're an American who's wondering why their situation hasn't improved despite going back-and-forth politically from Republicans to Democrats to Republicans almost every other election cycle, keep in mind two things: You don't have the money to influence either of the two major parties ; AND The media is influencing what's important to talk about. For example, here's MSNBC's current front page: And here's Fox News: And lastly, here's CNN: Not According to MSNBC, the things we should be concerned about include: Iowa caucuses How Democrats are addressing immigration Dianne Feinstein's chances on becoming president Republicans being both negligent and aggressive Trump , Trump's administration and Trump's influence Selena As for Fox News, we should be paying attention to: Black Americans being murdered while people call on defunding the police Biden deciding whether or not he'll run again Trump...'s judge lifts a mask mandate ...

 "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in" - Greek Proverb

 "Authorities" are being censored based on years-old comments because now such comments are considered "misinformation." Russell Brand explains.

 Because the focus is on Russia and Ukraine, you probably won't see much coverage regarding Israel and Palestine : Israeli forces on Friday launched a raid on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, injuring more than 150 Palestinians as they gathered to worship on the second week of Ramadan. Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani, the director of the Al-Aqsa Mosque—one of Islam's holiest sites—told Middle East Eye that "what happened today is an attack on all peaceful worshipers." "This was a barbaric premeditated attack on worshipers," he added. Israeli police fired tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated steel bullets as a small group of Palestinians hurled rocks, reportedly injuring three Israeli officers. "The Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service said it treated 152 people, many of them wounded by rubber-coated bullets or stun grenades, or beaten with batons," the Associated Press reported. "The [Islamic endowment that administer...

 CNN is hoping that a combination of money, media connections and social media manipulation:

 Don't be fooled by Elon Musk's neo-libertarianism cloaked in generosity : He'll be the first to censor anyone critical of his businesses, his philosophies and his actions.  One person deciding what is or isn't free speech is no better than a small group of people doing the same thing. The law should decide, not tech people .

  War. Global Pandemic. Police Brutality. Flint, Michigan still having poisoned drinking water. Indigenous People getting beat for protesting oil pipelines. Racial, gender, orientation and religious discrimination and persecution occurring both in practice and through the law. Fissures in the economic system, which is leading to more civil unrest, leading to more surveillance and an increased police state. But the people behind CNN+,  a streaming news service they want people to pay for , would like to take some time to talk hypothetically about fictional parents.  What about the real parents who are dyeing because of all the things I just mentioned? Could we take three minutes per issue and talk about how those things impact parenting?  UPDATE : Here's what CNN+ is highlighting now. Hard-hitting stuff.

 Despite the sad events that occurred earlier today at the NYC substation , New York and America will need to brace for the inverse of what happens when there's a school shooting. In that (sadly reoccurring) instance the pundits and politicians would say something to the effect of, " Please don't make this political by talking about gun control or gun regulations; now's not the time ." Don't be surprised that in this instance, instead of keeping mum some of the same pundits and politicians start talking about funding police more...despite their actual productivity / output . UPDATE: As if on cue, the NYC mayor calls for more cops .

 According to the report , the Top Five countries are: Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and the Netherlands.  (For what it's worth, these same countries also rank in the top 13 of the Heritage's Foundation's economic freedom ; for comparison's sake, Singapore has the highest economic freedom but is considered the 27th happiest country. In other words: money isn't everything).

 "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." - Nietzche

Senators were asked to vote by last name alphabetically. At 53-46 Yea-to-Nay, the Senate was waiting for Rand Paul. He came in about 10 minutes later to give his "No." Lindsey Graham did not vote when his name came up (he did after Jackson passed 50 "Yea" votes. The speeches from each party were more or less predictable. Republicans expressed skepticism that Jackson could avoid "legislating from the bench" while Democrats hyped up the fact that Jackson would be the first black female to the Supreme Court and talked about how inspirational that would be. Neither side talked much about Jackson's actual judicial record, let alone the political reality of her nomination . 

  It's safe to say that any program designed to help the poor, working poor and/or disenfranchised minorities will inevitably help all Americans. Unfortunately, programs like the GI Bill had components that specifically left minorities out , which only contributed to the increasing economic disparity in the country. With that in mind, it's not surprising to find out that COVID-19 has also fallen prey to this form of "targeted" support: In May 2020, when the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard virtual arguments about the state’s stay-at-home order, Gov. Tony Evers pointed to a tenfold Covid surge in Brown County, home to a meatpacking plant whose workers are mostly Black and Latino according to The Washington Post. Chief Justice Patience Roggensack said, then, that spikes in cases “were due to the meatpacking, though. That’s where Brown County got the flare. It wasn’t just the regular folks in Brown County.” Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of the grassroots org...

 Now that COVID-19 is no longer politically expedient (Thanks Russia-Ukraine conflict!), America can refocus all that money they once allocated to "help" people : Republican and Democratic congressional negotiators on Monday are reportedly set to announce a $10 billion coronavirus funding package that contains no money to fight the pandemic globally, prompting outrage from public health experts who say the decision will prolong the Covid-19 crisis. "Failing to fund the global fight against Covid-19 is a choice to extend the pandemic, to accept preventable suffering and insecurity for all, and to live with the knowledge that, deep in the time of the world's greatest need, the United States gave up," tweeted Peter Maybarduk, Access to Medicines director at Public Citizen. Lawmakers were initially considering a package that included $1 billion in funds for the global pandemic response, money that would go toward worldwide vaccination initiatives and other key progr...

 Can someone become immune to being banned? We're about to find out : New York (CNN Business)Elon Musk is set to join Twitter's board of directors, a move that potentially boosts his influence over the social media platform and which comes one day after it was disclosed that he had become the company's largest individual shareholder. Twitter said in a regulatory filing Tuesday that it plans to appoint the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to its board for a term that ends in 2024. As part of the deal, Musk has agreed not to acquire more than 14.9% of the company's shares while he remains on the board. On Monday, Twitter said in a filing that Musk had bought 9.2% of its shares. The news came as somewhat of a surprise, after Musk had tweeted multiple times in recent weeks criticizing the company's policies and mulling whether a new social media platform was needed. "I'm excited to share that we're appointing @elonmusk to our board!" Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said...

 Dr. Harriet Fraad discusses:

 As Status Coup notes, there was a very significant victory for Amazon workers recently . It's important to note two things here: the Amazon workers managed to unionize without backing of the usual movers and shakers , and Status Coup was hands down gave the most coverage to this story (a distance second would be Krystal Ball of The Hill and Breaking Points).  Another important thing to note, as a byproduct, is that with this victory, all sorts of people and groups are now standing in celebration with Chris Smalls and others, most notably AOC.  Status Coup , Kyle Kulinski and Krystal Ball were quick to point out that despite AOC's...jaundiced account, there are Amazon workers that live in her district and she had ample opportunities to promote what was happening via her social media. And to show that even the ones who called AOC out on her political hesitancy are not immune, Sabby Sabs from RBN pointed out that when they (and others like Jimmy Dore ) were criticizing AO...