Welcome to The Now

 What's being discussed in this clip should be discussed publicly, without fear of being attacked or censored. 

 From a baby boom and working from home to deaths and evictions, read about how one state adapted . 

 Or as I call it, "America's multi-year temper tantrum":

 As this Sabby Sabbs video reveals, the Squad is little more than vassals that the Democratic Party uses to display what's "acceptably Left." You can't be in the Democratic Party and be more left than these guys, and these guys support Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries and other status quo-pushers.  They will talk about left-leaning things, they will use left-leaning language and they will occasionally bristle their party's leaders, but they will not use legislative or activist power to change things. To do so would risk their careers and paychecks, and they're not about to to do that.

 Second Thought has...thoughts:

 Much like BLM, it's been revealed that Federal employee/assets were part of Jan 6:

 That's a lot of words to say there's a reason Feinstein hasn't resigned/retired yet:

 

 

  They weren't always conservative, and he wasn't always on the outs .

 For his (belated) birthday, here's just a few clips showing the courage, charisma and cleverness of this iconic activist .

 Yes they do, just not in the way many people think:

  A long but very good read .

 Margret Kimberley pretty much sums it up : New York City's mayor isn't just a self-interested member of the Black political class. He is also singularly incompetent and lacking in the most basic political skills. After a Black man was publicly murdered on the subway, Adams saw no need to go through the motions of expressing appropriate concern. New Yorkers are protesting but the clueless mayor insists that he can only mouth tin eared platitudes that please his most racist constituents. Obama had an uncanny ability to seem concerned about issues while doing next-to-nothing about addressing them. This ability helped protect him in the black community (black Democrats in particular). Not every black politicians has this gift.

Reuters is going all in on the idea that bats will be the catalyst of the next pandemic (while implying that they were likely behind the most recent one). It's a series of   interesting  (and mostly)  infographic stories , but I wonder why Reuters is all about blaming animals instead of (1) our capitalistic drive to ruin the environment and (2) our militaristic drive to develop new bio-weapons of destruction. That said, if said intrusion is forcing virus-spreading bats into human-populated areas we should also ask what medical steps are being taken to help the sick and prevent a world-wide infection.  Chances are I might go into each of these stories separately at a later time.

 We take a break from the freakout over Elon Musk's CEO choice to remind everyone that the guy has very thin skin :

 Namely, that two hijackers were CIA recruits : A newly-released court filing raises grave questions about the relationship between Alec Station, a CIA unit set up to track Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his associates, and two 9/11 hijackers leading up to the attacks, which was subject to a coverup at the highest levels of the FBI. Obtained by SpyTalk, the filing is a 21-page declaration by Don Canestraro, a lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions, the legal body overseeing the cases of 9/11 defendants. It summarizes classified government discovery disclosures, and private interviews he conducted with anonymous high-ranking CIA and FBI officials. Many agents who spoke to Canestraro headed up Operation Encore, the Bureau’s aborted, long-running probe into Saudi government connections to the 9/11 attack. Despite conducting multiple lengthy interviews with a range of witnesses, producing hundreds of pages of evidence, formally investigating several Saudi officials, a

 I guess Pfizer won, huh ?

 Try about a third: Looks like the problem isn't exactly guns or mental health, huh?

 

 Trump proved that he can rebound CNN is (further) exposed as caring more about eyeballs than addressing important political issues (the questions they asked Trump proved that) Liberals freak out over a presidential candidate getting a platform DNC being exposed for ignoring their own primary challengers

 Second Thought; take it away:

So Blackrock (yeah that BlackRock . No seriously; that BlackRock ) has a sub-division called BlackRock Neurotech , which has designed something very interesting :   A US firm has implanted 50 chips into people’s brains, with scientists at the company hopeful that they will one day be able to massively improve the lives of people with paralysis, depression and physical paralysis. The device is called the NeuroPort Array and it’s been made by a company called Blackrock Neurotech, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. The eventual aim of the device is for those implanted with the chip to be able to control robotic arms and electric wheelchairs with their mind, amongst other things . If this all sounds too futuristic, you’re perhaps not too far away from the truth, and it’ll probably be a while before they actually get these things outside of the lab. Nathan Copeland, who was involved in a serious car crash back in 2004, is a pioneer of the technology, having received his implant in 2014. Copela

This is what dystopia looks like. Like a bunch of thought-controlled automatons mindlessly marching toward ecocide and omnicide to a beat played out by screens who tell them every day and in every way that there is no higher purpose than this. Like military industrial complex-funded feminist rock operas about drone operators and Cookie Monster helping Samantha Power psychologically colonize Iraqi children. Like Bono coming home from singing a heartfelt number about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr to illustrate a cover for a war propaganda piece in The Atlantic. It’s like they’re pouring concrete over our hearts. Sewing blindfolds over our souls. Numbing us, distracting us, sedating us, so that the local riff raff won’t interfere in the workings of the imperial machine. They’re killing off something beautiful and sacred in humanity, and they’re doing it to roll out some of the ugliest visions this planet has ever seen.  -- Caitlin Johnstone, summarizing how " mainstream

 Apparently when CNN ran that story , they forgot to mention some things, like the funder of the report has ties to the US Government or that parents were well aware that their children were "missing":

 For anyone curious about some of the details behind the Game of Thrones-like ceremony: 

 Lee Camp answers this question (and more!):

Yes, it's true: the issues that impact your household, town, city or even state can and will trump federal and national issues. It's one of the main reasons people default on foreign policy; the politician and media make little to no effort to connect what's going on beyond our borders to the people outside of the occasional saber-rattling and jingoism.  But politics is also by association: meaning, that what makes the headlines is pushed as if it's a product (because in a lot of ways it is). The same reason you see more Coca-Cola and Pepsi ads than those for RC Cola is the same reason there's seems to be more reason behind the Hollywood Writer's Strike than those of Amazon, Starbucks or the railroad workers: For all practical purposes, TV shows do as much for the average American as a coffee franchise or an industry responsible for moving 28% of the country's freight around . But from the perspective of those who are connected to television , like say Seth

 Once again, something happens involving Russia and the US media's reaction is to concoct wild theories:

 All you have to do is replace his personal pick (Marianne Williamson) with any third-party candidate: Again, she's polling less than RFK, Jr., who's at 10%. But Kulinski argues that this is because of the media and the party playing tricks on potential voters. Well, that exactly the argument advocates of third-parties have said for years. Just like America is in the middle of a global economic temper-tantrum over China, the "Infiltrate the Dems" crowd are grasping at anything that can vaguely support their flawed strategy. 

 So Hillary Clinton was speaking at the Vital Voices conference (hey look: her Chief of Staff is on their Board of Directors !) and she was asked about how Joe Biden was handling being in the White House (in a way that suggested that she should be president, or course). In her response , she touted some of Biden's policies: building roads, broadband, the CHIPS bill, and clean energy. Now on the surface, these are safe issues that could possibly get a few on-the-fence Democrats to pull the lever in Biden's favor. But when you look at how these policies played out, you start to wonder why Biden didn't just do something that would help more average Americans, like cancel all student loan debt (ANSWER: his donors don't want that).  For example: Biden's infrastructure plan requires a lot of currently-sparse skilled labor, and has the unfortunate consequence of potentially splitting up black communities . And not everyone is elated that only nine bridges are being addres

 So apparently Russia has something called Victory Day, which is related to Russia's military victory over Nazi Germany in WWII . Of course, because Russia is involved in a proxy war against Ukraine (with the US being Ukraine's backer), the American media has decided to mock Russia : Now I'm no military strategist, but if I were involved in a war on my country's border, I would not be reserving tanks, troops and weapons for public relations parade. I would be using my arms to, well, win said war.  The fact that CNN thinks that tanks and soldiers are better for photo ops than actual combat says a lot.

  Gail Collins has taken notice that a majority of voters don't want to see a Biden v Trump rematch , and she's put pen to paper . Let's break this down, shall we?  The presidential race sure does seem like it’ll wind up coming down to Biden vs. Trump — and a whole lot of people would rather have an alternative. Here’s an important early message: Even if you aren’t thrilled by the Republican and Democratic options come Election Day, don’t vote for anybody else. Well we're two paragraphs in and already the readers are being told to ignore democracy...  We’re talking here about the attraction of third parties. So tempting. So disaster-inducing. Oh; OH. Whoa, for a minute there, I thought you were saying that people can only vote for Biden or Trump. Sounds more like, "just vote for the Democrat of Republican. Gotcha...  The lure is obvious. Donald Trump’s terrible and Joe Biden’s boring. Much more satisfying to go to the polls and announce you’re too far above the st

 It's a long-yet-necessary thread curtesy of Walker Bragman .

Wait … Are you telling me that law enforcement officers aren’t required to learn the law? No, sir. I’m not the one who surveyed 681 state and local law enforcement academies that “provided basic training to entry-level officer recruits in the United States.” I didn’t examine the training tactics used to train 59,811 police officers in 2018. My name is not “The Bureau of Justice Statistics.” That’s who’s telling you . I’m just wondering why you call them “law enforcement officers” if they don’t know the law they supposedly enforce. How can anyone in this country be shocked by police brutality when we train them to be brutal? The largest part of their training is learning to shoot people and the smallest part of their training is learning cultural competence.  They are going to shoot Black people . That’s what they do. Expecting cops to not shoot Black people is more insane than abolishing the police. That’s a good reason to abolish the police.  -- Michael Harriot, explaining why "

  People are either too infirm, too ill or too "seasoned" to perform daily duties , which means they can't do the people's business. And instead if actually calling for election reform or term limits, elected officials ask us to keep them in office until they literally cannot function. In any other occupation, employees would be either given extensive leave or be asked to resign.

 Does the existence of a few black billionaires (who are barely billionaires) really excuse the sub-par conditions other black people experience? Are they symbols of possible achievement, or just exceptions to the rule ?

  Instead of doing homework, playing video games or watching TV, s ome children are taking food orders and flipping burgers : Two 10-year-old children were found working at a Louisville McDonald’s restaurant — sometimes until 2 a.m. — the US Department of Labor said Tuesday. The revelation was part of an investigation into the child labor law violations in the Southeast. The agency also found three franchisees that own more than 60 McDonald’s locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio, “employed 305 children to work more than the legally permitted hours and perform tasks prohibited by law for young workers,” the Labor Department said in a statement. The franchisees, Bauer Food, Archways Richwood and Bell Restaurant Group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CNN has also reached out to McDonald’s for comment. “Investigators from the department’s Wage and Hour Division found two 10-year-old workers at a Louisville McDonald’s restaurant among many violations of f

  More here . FYI, this means that a little over a quarter (about 26%) of US foreign-owned debt is with China. 

 Margaret Kimberley talks to Dr. Melina Abdullah about how racism, violence, gun rights, black history and white supremacy intersect . 

  Did you know that Taiwan had nuclear weapons at one point ? 

 Lee Camp covers this rather disturbing proposal:

 There was a time when it seemed that Sanders was a real gadfly to the more imperialist and anti-worker elements within the Democratic Party. That time has come and gone:

 

 Another African country is trying to break out of financial quagmire : Zimbabwe will launch a digital currency next month by introducing “tokens” that are backed by gold reserves and can be transferred between people and businesses as a form of payment, the country’s central bank said Friday. The move is aimed at shoring up Zimbabwe’s faltering national currency, the Zimbabwe dollar, which is fast depreciating amid yearslong economic woes in the southern African nation. The Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria have already launched digital currencies backed by their central banks, with several other countries, including China, running trial projects. The United Kingdom is moving closer to it by asking for public input on the idea. The U.S. and European Union are considering similar moves. In Zimbabwe, the new tokens “will be fully backed by physical gold held by the bank” and will go into circulation on May 8, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Gov. John Mangudya said. People can buy the tokens and use

 

  BONUS: It'd be a shame if this clip went viral. Real shame. 

 Back in 2018, there was a story about how then-President Trump wanted the Pentagon and the White House to plan " a military parade in Washington similar to the Bastille Day parade he witnessed in Paris in July ." Now things like COVID-19 and the national and worldwide response to the Pandemic put this on hold, but the truth is the parade was more from Trump than the military. And if we're being honest, America celebrates the military a lot . Even knowing that, we still apparently have events like SALUTEFEST : Actual Promotional Picture Now if that wasn't a sight, check out the overview : Basically What You See At Sporting Events is the Military Being Restrained If it wasn't for the imperialism American leaders uses the military for, the Air Events from the schedule would make a for positive recruiting drive: Wonder How They Knew Drones Were Good For Taking Pictures? As for the Sponsors (this time I'm sharing screenshots because of what happened with the Ame

So I was looking up, well, people in politics who speak against the status quo narrative, and realized something interesting/odd about Scott Ritter's Wikipedia profile box: His criminal charges (another story for another time) are listed, as if that's his identifier. Curious, I went through some higher profile people with more publicly known criminal charges to see what's in their box: Huh, interesting. Well maybe this is strictly a political thing, so let's look at (and I can't believe this is a Wikipedia entry) a list of American federal politicians convicted of crimes , like Scooter Libby , J esse Jackson Jr. , John Dean , and Anthony Weiner . Of those four convicted politicians, only Weiner's crimes are highlighted in the profile box.  So apparently if you're involved in politics and convicted of crime like sexual assault and rape will it be part of your Wikipedia profile. So fraudsters, embezzlers, people who create and/or advocate for policies t