Welcome to The Now

 It's up to the Senate now to either pass it, kill it, or send it back to be modified.

 Professor Richard Wolff on the US almost-pathological need to frame everything as playing the role of the "defender:"

  Whistle-blower John Kiriakou believes so, which is probably why US Presidents go for the low-hanging fruit of pardoning turkeys .

 

 

 AOC is basically a liberal, like Nancy Pelosi before her:

 Apparently, there are tons of connections between the US government/US military/Intelligence Community and the popular video game . As the article states, "a closer inspection of Activision Blizzard’s key staff and their connections to state power, as well as details gleaned from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Call of Duty is not a neutral first-person shooter, but a carefully constructed piece of military propaganda, designed to advance the interests of the U.S. national security state."

 Second Thought hit another one out of the park:

 Sabby Sabbs breaks it down:

  This story in Mint Press News is a good example. Political Party currently in power authorizes money transfer to country in need, who in turn uses some of that money to support a company that has ties to the same political party. Jimmy Dore covers this as well:

 According to Lee Camp: no; no they don't .

 Tell me you're tying yourself in knots without telling me you're tying yourself in knots: This is the global version of "Dick Cheney shoots guy in face, and guy apologies." Only, you know, this inches us closer to WWIII.  UPDATE: This scheerpost article adds to the narrative . 

 Interesting conversation:

 Mainstream media would lean " yes ," but Patrick Lawrence from scheerpost doesn't think so : Straight off the top, it would be incautious to conclude that Russia’s pullback across the Dnieper represents a dramatic turn in the course of the Ukraine conflict. We heard this kind of thing last summer, when the Armed forces of Ukraine made swift territorial advances in northeastern Ukraine. The AFU is beating back the Russians, we read. Victory is suddenly within the Kyiv regime’s grasp. Only gradually did it emerge that Russian forces had abandoned the northeast and the AFU had shadow-boxed an enemy who was no longer there. No one seems to be trying this one on in the Kherson case, which is wise. There was no “Battle of Kherson,” no Stalingrad revisited, as Ukrainian propagandists have put it about in recent weeks. As of Friday morning there were no Russian troops left in Kherson, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, and none in the surrounding region on the river’s we...

 Link to Twitter thread here .

 Representative government isn't exactly democratic:

 

Apparently Briahna Joy Gray asking is we can have some consistency on American foreign policy is a bit much for some people:

 The first person from Generation Z to be elected to US Congress apparently threw his Palestinian constituents under the bus to gain favor with the Democratic Party establishment.

 First Twitter, now Facebook . It's a shame that these billionaires can't cut their own pay so they can retain some of their employees. But hey, when your product is no longer profitable, mass firing has always been the quick fix. 

  The Most Important Lesson From 2022 The Mid-Terms

 So who won and who lost? Well real quick: Winners : The Military-Industrial Complex, Russia-Gate, Political Duopolies . It appears that funding for the proxy war between Ukraine and Russia will continue, despite being an anchor . Fears of Russian interference reared it's ugly head again . Third parties were practically drowned out because Democrats propped up Trump-friendly GOP candidates to the point where they could scare and shame voters from considering alternatives.  Losers : The Working Class, Anti-War Activists, Third and Independent Political Parties . Whether Democrat or Republican, the issues impacting those who live paycheck-to-paycheck will continue to be ignored or exploited. Both parties also favor war, whether it be with Russia, China or Iran. And because smaller parties either aren't organized, aren't disciplined, or have too big an ego to collaborate on shared issues, the Big Two can use their money, power and media influence to make third and independent...

 Tulsi Gabbard, the anti-"regime change war" advocate who left a cushy position in the Democratic Party to support Bernie Sanders in 2016, challenged Hillary Clinton , had to explain her positions on everything when she ran for president in 2020, dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden (as a "good man" with a "good heart") and recently left the Democratic Party has endorsed forever politician Chuck Grassley  : In a statement, Gabbard praised Grassley’s conservative priorities and said Grassley’s Democratic opponent, Mike Franken, would be a “rubber stamp for the Biden administration.” “I’m supporting Chuck Grassley because we need leaders who will put the well-being of people ahead of party politics, and fulfill their commitment to uphold the Constitution and defend our freedoms,” Gabbard said. In a video posted to Twitter, Gabbard said Grassley was the alternative to what she called “radical, so-called woke idealogues” supported by the Democratic Party. Not t...

 Stay Classy:

 Chris Hedges goes through a laundry list of Biden's offenses : Biden  supported  the campaign to discredit and humiliate Anita Hill to appoint Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. He was one of the principal architects of the endless wars in the Middle East,  calling for  “taking Saddam down” five years before the invasion of Iraq. He  rehabilitated  the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, after  vowing  to make the country a pariah because of the assassination of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden is a fervent  supporter  of Israel,  calling  the apartheid state “the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East” and declaring “I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.” His campaigns have been lavishly  funded  by the Israel lobby for at least two decades.  In the 1970s, he fought school busing,  arguing  that segregatio...

 In "political Frankenstein" news : Former NYPD cop Eric Adams surfed into the New York City Mayor’s office on a wave of sensationalist crime coverage  by mainstream media. Adams was happy to use the non-stop, hyperbolic coverage of crime, as well as the fear engendered in the public  by that coverage, in order to justify doubling down on NYC’s racist police state. However, now that he’s been mayor for almost a year and will have to accept credit or blame for what’s happening in the city, Adams is suddenly trying to assure people that the public perception and media coverage of crime doesn’t line up with reality. Unfortunately for him, regardless of the facts, mainstream local media refuse to stop their exaggerated crime coverage. In fact, Adams is being told that he is in “Fantasy Land.”

 

 CNN's anti-China story in a nutshell: China's lockdown policies regarding COVID-19 prevented a  a 3-year-old from the Gansu province from getting medical treatment that led to his death, and this is only one of many stories . The implication is that China's COVID-19 policies and health care protocol is inferior and ergo, Americans should even bother to emulate anything about China (especially their economic system). This inference/critique falls flat for a few reasons: America never had a real coordinated approach to dealing with COVID-19. For the most part, the federal government acquiesced to the states, and many of them passed the buck to cities/towns/counties/etc. The mission to get past COVID-19 was economically-driven, not "well-being of the populace" driven, as evidence by rules changing because of complaints from airlines or parents who didn't want to watch their own children after two months.  Partially because of #1, COVID-19 in America became (and...

 The whole thing plays out like a whiter, more political version of the OJ/Nicole Brown Simpson story :

  I mean, if a country had bases running up along my border I'd feel uneasy too. 

 I can't let people (even those on the left) continue to even mention this guy in passing like he's some foreign policy hero now. The problems we're seeing in Europe and Asia right now are due to the damage Sachs' shock doctrine did to countries like Poland and Russia and Ukraine. From Sachs' own website (referencing a statement he gave in 1994):  The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991 are watershed events in world history. Naturally, the real import of these monumental events has been especially hard to judge in their immediate aftermath. Each succeeding year, we gain important new perspectives on their meaning. This is certainly true in the economic realm, where debates about the transition from communism to market economy have been especially lively and contentious.  As the economic advisor to the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1989, I urged Poland to undertake a rapid transition to “normal” capitalism, on the mode...

 So I briefly talked about how "woke" became co-opted , but I wanted to mention that this Vox article explains the history better . Also, CJ from RBN makes many good points about the term, in particular the fact that because white culture cannot quantify the term, they can't relate or understand it.