“The problem of this war consists in the awful fact that the present class of men who rule the South must be killed outright rather than in the conquest of territory.”

You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization!

You people speak so lightly of war, you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing!

You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors.

You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.

Short on cash, scared of coronavirus, Georgia businesses grapple with reopening
By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Haisten Willis, Washington Post
April 24, 2020

Only a handful of the 18 hairdressers who work at Salon Cheveux came in on Friday. They donned masks, spaced their workstations apart and screened inbound customers by phone with the dedication of hospital admission nurses: Any fever recently? Or contact with someone sick? Can you wear a mask?

It was the first day businesses reopened in Georgia, which is moving faster than any other state to ease restrictions amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. As a result, Georgia has become a flash point in the battle over whether it is time to remove the shutdown orders that have kept much of the country indoors.

Jamie McQuaig glanced at the two cosmetologists, clad in masks, coloring customers’ hair and wondered whether coming back to work was the right decision for her family, her salon or her state.

“I do feel like it’s too soon, but it will probably always feel like it’s too soon because we’re all scared of the virus,” she said. The nation’s response to the pandemic has left many in her shop with difficult choices. “The ones that are going back to work right now are the ones that have got to. They’ve got to feed their children. They’ve got to pay their mortgage.”

Gov. Brian Kemp (R) was one of the last governors to issue a statewide stay-at-home order to help stem the spread of the coronavirus; it went into effect April 3. Now, Kemp is opening more businesses more quickly than anywhere else, bucking experts who warn that doing so could lead to an increase in the number of coronavirus deaths.

Friday was the first day bowling alleys, tattoo parlors, gyms and salons were allowed to reopen, provided they follow social distancing guidelines, take employees’ temperatures and screen them for signs of illness. Movie theaters and dine-in restaurants will follow suit on Monday, three days before the state’s shelter-in-place order expires.

Georgians tiptoeing back to work in those industries acknowledge they are essentially guinea pigs as governments experiment with how to return the nation to normal. After weeks of unemployment, often with uneven government help, some said they are happy to be earning paychecks but worry about the ultimate costs of abandoning isolation too soon.

They will not be worrying alone for long. Tennessee’s governor has said he will allow many businesses to reopen once his shelter-in-place order expires next week. The governor of South Carolina allowed some retail stores to reopen this week. People have been walking on the beaches near Jacksonville, Fla., for a week.

Darwin.

If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place. I know thousands and millions of good people who at simple notice would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations there. If the people of Huntsville think different, let them persist in war three years longer, and then they will not be consulted. Three years ago by a little reflection and patience they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late.

All the powers of earth cannot restore to them their slaves, any more than their dead grandfathers. Next year their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and rightfully, too, and in another year they may beg in vain for their lives. A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know the consequences. Many, many peoples with less pertinacity have been wiped out of national existence.

Everything so far has been a bad deal. Put restrictions on the types and size of the Businesses being bailed out? They will ignore them. Get money for the Post Office? They’ll seize it and jack up the Rates 400%. Put in specific provisions against Graft and Self Dealing?

Well, what are you going to do about it? Impeach?

But Democrats have been typically weaselly claiming great victories and progress.

But Chuck and Nancy and their minions are lying to your face, just like Republicans do because their interests are the same.

Michael Hudson from a Podcast by Moderate Rebels on 4/21/20. Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton also paticipated but I’m highlighting only Hudson. There’s a full transcript @Naked Capitalism

Why is it okay for the Fed to create $1.5 trillion to buy stocks to prevent rich people from losing on their stocks, when it’s not okay to print only $1 trillion to pay for free Medicare for the entire population? This is crazy!

The idea is that only the rich should be allowed to print money for themselves, but the government should not be allowed to print money for any public purpose, any social purpose — not for medicine, not for schools, not for personal budgets, not for full employment — but only to give to the 1 percent.

People hesitate to think that. They think, ‘It can’t possibly be this bad.’ But for those of us who have worked on Wall Street, for 60 years in my case, that’s what the numbers show.

But you don’t have the media talking about actual numbers. They talk about just words, and they use euphemisms. It’s a kind of Orwellian vocabulary, describing an inside-out world.
…
Banks and corporations, airlines, have a whole wish list that they had their lawyers and lobbyists prepare for just such an opportunity. And when the opportunity comes up — whether it’s 9/11 with the Patriot Act, or whether it’s today’s coronavirus — they just pasted the word coronavirus onto an act, which should be called a giveaway to the big banking sector.

Let’s talk about who’s not bailed out. Who’s not bailed out are the small business owners, the restaurants, the companies that you walk down the street in New York or other cities, and they’re all shuttered with closed signs. Their rent is accumulating, month after month.

Restaurants, gyms and stores are small-markup businesses, small-margin businesses, where, once you have no sales for maybe three months and rent accruing for three months, they’re not going to have enough money to earn the profits to pay the rents that have mounted up for the last three months.

The other people that are not being bailed out are the workers — especially the people they call the prime necessary workers, which is their euphemism for minimum-wage workers without any job security. There have been huge layoffs of minimum-wage labor, manual labor, all sorts of labor.

They’re not getting income, but their rents are accruing. And their utility bills are accruing. Their student loans are accruing. And their credit card debts are mounting up at interest and penalty rates, which are even larger than the interest rates. So all of these debts are accruing.

The real explosion is going to come in three months, when all of a sudden, this money falls due. The governor of New York has said, “Well we have a moratorium on actually evicting people for three months.” So there are restaurants and other people, individuals, wage-earners, who are going to be able to live in their apartments and not be evicted. But at the end of three months, that’s when the eviction notices are going to come. And people are going to decide, is it worth it?

Well, especially restaurants are going to decide. And they’re going to say, “There is no way that we can make the money to pay, because we haven’t had the income to pay.” They’re going to go out of business. They’re not going to be helped.

The similar type of giveaway occurred after 9/11. I had a house for 20 years in Tribeca, one block from the World Trade Center. The money was given by the government to the landlords but not to the small businesses that rented there — the Xerox shops and the other things. The landlords took all of the ostensible rent loss for themselves, and still tried to charge rent to the xerox shops, the food shops, and ended up collecting twice, and driving them out.

So you’re having the pretense of a bailout, but the bailout really is an Obama-style bailout. It goes to the banks; it goes to those companies that have drawn up wish lists by their lobbyists, such as the airlines, Boeing and the large banks.

The banks and the real estate interests are going to be the biggest gainers. They have changed the real estate law so that the real estate owners, for a generation, will be income tax free. They are allowed to charge depreciation, and have other fast write-offs to pretend that their real estate is losing value, regardless of whether it’s going up and up in value.

Donald Trump says that he loves depreciation, because he can claim that he’s losing money, and gets a tax write-off, even while his property prices go up.

So there’s a lot of small print. The devil is in the small print of the giveaway. And then President Trump has his own half-a-trillion-dollar slush fund that he says he doesn’t have to inform a Congress or be subject to any Freedom of Information law. He gets to give to his backers in the Republican States.

And states and municipalities are left broke. Imagine New York City and other states. Most states and cities, have balanced budget constitutional restrictions. That means they’re not allowed to run a deficit.

Now if these states and cities have to pay unemployment insurance, and have to pay carrying charges on the schools and public services, but are not getting the sales taxes, not getting the income taxes, from the restaurants and all the businesses that are closed, or from the workers that are laid off, they’re going to be left with a huge deficit.

Nothing is done about that. There has been no attempt to save them. So three months from now, you’re going to have broke states, broke municipalities, labor that cannot, whose savings was wiped out.

As I’m sure you’ve reported on your show, the Federal Reserve says that half of Americans do not have $400 for emergency saving. Well now they’re going to be running up thousands of dollars of rent and monthly bills.

So the disaster is about to hit. They will not be bailed out. But no major investor, really will lose. You’ve seen last week, the stock market made the largest jump since the depression — the largest jump in in 90 years. And that’s because Trump says, “The economy is the stock market, and the stock market is the One Percent.”

So from the very beginning, his point of reference for the market and for the economy is the One Percent. The 99 Percent are simply overhead. Industry is an overhead. Agriculture is an overhead. And labor is an overhead, to what really is a financialized economy that is writing the whole bailout.

It’s not a bailout — it’s a huge giveaway that makes them richer than they ever were before.

Make no mistake. Republicans are forced to make another deal as Red and Swing State Governors storm the Capitol with pitchforks and torches because they’re the first ones who are going to go “Bankrupt”.

This actually means no Police, Fire, Teachers and while they might be willing to throw Teachers under the Bus they like to at least pretend that Cops and Firefighters love them.

I’m sure our Corporatist Neo Liberal Democrats led by Chuck and Nancy will find a way to screw the pooch on this one too.

This is kind of a House/Cartnoon mashup. I know I’ve done the Depeche Mode Behind the Wheel/Route 66 Mix before as it was one of my DJ partner’s favorites though I can’t recall a single time anyone danced. It’s really quite good.

See?

What put me in mind of it is this new piece by Ms. History Guy.

This is the PBS Episode that got posted day before yesterday.

Oh, I totally hate them. Right there next to Jug Handles. They’re confusing and you end up going around in circles. What’s wrong with a nice Left Hand Turn?

I’d much rather take a Train and the Subway anyway.

We are exceptional.

Readers, I invite you consider the Power of Flesh.

Shall I tell you? It’s the least I can do. Steel isn’t strong, boy, flesh is stronger! Look around you. There, on the rocks, a beautiful girl. Come to me, my child…

As my Doctor friend tells me you can easily survive a fall of almost any height because soon enough you reach Terminal Velocity and don’t fall any faster than that.

Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

As the Narrator says, after a sudden wet thump there was silence. Oh no, not again.

That is strength, boy! That is power! What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart, I gave you this! Such a waste.

Wait! She might be OK. (Boom). Well, probably not now.

He had other powers like being able to turn into a snake and who can resist James Earl Jones when he detects a disturbing lack of faith but I think we can pretty much understand why Thulsa Doom is an antagonist.

Now the Modern Religious parallel is Martyrdom and I want to do 2 things, the first of which is the obvious Parable (it means Instructive Story, get over it) of Jonestown. Kool Aid gets a bad rap but I must admit the commercials are truly annoying.

I’m not going to do your required reading for you. Instead I want to talk about the Thought Process that makes Martyrdom seem desirable (not that I wouldn’t sacrifice myself for the greater good mind you, just I would have been working for a while to make that not necessary).

Of course they have a sense of the Righteousness of their Cause and a feeling their sacrifice is required for it’s success. The more pernicious aspect of it that they conceive of their lives as miserable tests of worthiness compared to which only Hell Fire and Eternal Damnation is inferior.

In the Therapy biz we call that ‘Suicidal Ideation’. It’s a Red Flag and normally you get at least 2 days of observation and 2 or 3 a day with the Shrink. Frequently they’ll lock you up for a month and medicate you because…

You’re sick. Really.

But I want to be very, very clear that what they sell is Pie in the Sky of Big Rock Candy Mountain after you Die.

Provided you kiss enough ass in the approved manner.

Drinking or Injecting Clorox, Lysol, or Isopropyl Alcohol (not at all the same as Drinkin’ Whisky) will probably result in your IMMEDIATE DEATH!!!

Now if you hate your life and want to Die so you can ‘Own the Libs’ be my guest. I have one word for you and you won’t accept it- Darwin. Stupid is always a Capital Crime.

I’m not kidding you about the lethality, even in small amounts. There’s a reason they put that Skull and Crossbones on the side of the Bottle and it’s not because they’re full of Jack Sparrow Brand Rum.

On the other hand if you think it’s ripping good fun to install a Supreme Court Justice who will shove a Quart of Vodka up his Ass so he can get even Drunker (yes friends, that’s what “Boofing” is) then maybe the finer points of why you shouldn’t drink Battery Acid or Anti-Freeze are lost on you.

I’ll not dignify the UV nonsense. The easiest way is a razor. You’ll want a warm bath because you’ll get cold and some pain killers for the headache.

Trump Suggests Injecting Disinfectant, Shining UV Light Inside Patients to Kill Coronavirus in Bizarre, Rambling Tangent
By Reed Richards, Mediate
Apr 23rd, 2020

President Donald Trump offered up bizarre and possibly dangerous suggestions about medical research on the coronavirus at his daily White House briefing, suggesting that blasting patients with “tremendous” amounts of UV light, even “inside of the body” as well as injecting them with the same disinfectants that are used to kill the viruses on surfaces might be effective treatments for Covid-19.

Trump was riffing off of some still developing research presented by Bill Bryan, an official from the Science and Technology branch of the Department of Homeland Security, who had just detailed the half-life of the coronavirus under various heat, humidity, and light conditions. Bryan noted that the virus seemed to decay quicker under the ultraviolet light from the sun.

As Bryan finished answering a reporter’s question, however, Trump stepped back up to the podium and began to discuss his own take on the data, which quickly devolved into highly unscientific and potentially harmful advice.

“So, a question some of you are probably thinking of if your are totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting,” Trump said, before posturing as a medical expert.

“So, supposing we hit the body with tremendous, I don’t know if it’s ultraviolet or very powerful light, and I think you said that has been checked but your’e going to test it,” Trump said, turning to Bryan in a sidebar moment at the end for confirmation. “Then I said what it if you brought the light inside of the body which you could do either through the skin or some other way and I think you said you were going to test that, too, sounds interesting,” he added next, again turning to Bryan for validation.

But then Trump even went further, connecting the household bleaching agents in most surface disinfectants to a possible internal treatment for humans, which would be toxic and possibly fatal. “Then I see the disinfectant, one minute. Is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that so that you’ll have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds interesting to me. So we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, where it goes in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”

Minutes later, ABC News’ Jon Karl revisited Trump’s totally unfounded claims in a question to Bryan, asking if there was any scenario in which a human could be injected with bleach or isopropyl alcohol to treat the virus.

Bryan’s answer, diplomatically delivered with Trump standing just behind his left shoulder, effectively dismissed the idea. “We don’t do that in our labs,” he added.

Trump, however, not letting it go, tried to salvage his medical reputation, which includes no formal schooling at all, and jumped in to elaborate on his earlier comments.

“Not cleaning through injection,” Trump said, waving his hand as if to demonstrate his imagined procedure. “Almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work. But it certainly has a big effect if it’s on a stationary object.”

Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t work.

Who wants to live forever? Well, me.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

An aborted mission to free American hostages in Iran ends in disaster; Ireland’s ‘Easter Rising’ begins; Armenians face mass deportation during World War I; Singer Barbra Streisand born.

No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.

Robin Williams

Continue reading

Gotta love Fred Hiat, Jeff Bezos, and the WaPo (or as I prefer to call it, Pravda). Michelle Wolf was asked to do a piece and they decided that it was ‘surplus to their needs’ which is the polite way Book Publishers tell you to get lost.

Gee, I wonder why? Do you think it has anything to do with this?

So anyway she got it published over at Daily Beast.

The ace comedian writes about how the media got her White House Correspondents’ Dinner routine so wrong and keeps giving Trump exactly what he craves.
by Michelle Wolf, Daily Beast
Apr. 23, 2020

Back in February, when the hosts of this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner were announced, The Washington Post asked me to write an op-ed on my thoughts. I wrote something knowing full well that they would probably refuse to publish it because my foul language doesn’t follow their moral guidelines. I guess we can’t all be as kind and upstanding as their generous owner. You should see how I treat MY warehouse employees. Well, I was right about their refusal to publish it, but here it is anyway…

Confession: I Blew Trump

Why would I ever admit to blowing Trump even if it isn’t true? Because it doesn’t matter what’s in the article. All that matters is the headline. The only reason anyone thinks I made fun of Sarah Sanders’ looks is because that’s what the headlines were. If you look back at those jokes, there is not a single moment when I make fun of Sarah’s appearance. Also, contrary to headlines, I was not partisan. I made fun of the right, I made fun of the left, I made fun of myself, I made fun of the monkfish, I made fun of a lady who died on a Southwest airplane that week, and, most importantly, I made fun of the news. I called the news out on their gross, symbiotic relationship with Trump. Trump is great for their business, which is ironic since he’s catastrophic for his own. But the problem with criticizing the news is that they don’t like it—and they’re the ones who write the headlines.

So who’s been blowing Trump? Providing him sweet, sweet oral satisfaction? It’s The New York Times, it’s MSNBC, it’s CNN, it’s The Hill, it’s CBS, it’s definitely Fox News. It’s all of these media organizations and blogs and websites and books. It’s all the contributors who go on those shows and make money for every temper tantrum they throw. They’re all satisfying Trump, and then wiping their mouths with the money they made. And it’s also YOU. It’s you who’s reading this right now and watching all those shows because you can’t wait to hear how bad Trump is every single day, like an ex who you can’t get over. You’re not #resist, you’re #obsessed.

Is Trump the worst president? I dunno. We’ve had a lot of bad presidents. Nixon started the war on drugs pushing through mandatory sentencing, Reagan (and Nancy) couldn’t have cared less about the AIDS crisis, and one time Obama wore a tan suit. Trump is definitely the least refined president, but the worst? Hard to say. He’s just the first one that powerful white people cared was bad. And if there’s one group that is hoping he wins again, it’s the media. Both sides. And maybe some of you. It’s not often that privileged white people get to feel like the victim. I think the last time it happened was the Titanic.

Am I happy that the Correspondents’ Dinner has a comedian this year? No. The event shouldn’t exist. Why did I do the Correspondents’ Dinner if I’m so opposed to it? So I could do exactly what I did: call the media and the politicians out on their bullshit directly to their face. Whatever this year’s host tries to do, I’m sure it will include some jabs at Trump and his administration that one side of the news will label as “savage” and “eviscerating” and the other side will say is “offensive.” And if the dinner was hosted by a pro-Trump comic, they’d swap headlines quicker than spit at an orgy. (Don’t get fake offended at that. We all know DC has more dirt in it than the folds in Mitch McConnell’s neck— that is a joke about looks.)

But the real problem is that there are sides. The news should not have sides. It should not be entertaining. It should not be on 24 hours a day. The news should be a dry reading of events and facts. It should be a presentation of information, and that is it. It shouldn’t be “breaking” with the same story and no new information hour after hour. It shouldn’t have a panel of four of the loudest contributors where their only qualification appears to be that they can put— and keep on— a shirt. It shouldn’t have opinions or takes or, even worse, fake pearl-clutching in order to maintain their access.

I did my job at the Correspondents’ Dinner. It would be nice if the news would do theirs. The only thing anyone should have gotten upset at was the fact that I made fun of a lady who died— at no fault of her own— and that FLINT STILL DOESN’T HAVE CLEAN WATER. And guess what? They still don’t. Write about that you breaking news, outrage whores. But, instead, I’m sure you’ll continue to write the headlines that get you the most clicks and have contributors on your shows that’ll get enough viewers to keep the step-in bathtub company sponsor happy.

Side note: I wrote this before the virus when the dinner was still scheduled for this weekend. I think that was somewhere between two months and 10 years ago. It’s been rescheduled for August or whenever it’s deemed safe to breathe huffs of indignation on each other. But based on the media’s coverage of the virus, the administration, and what’s going on in general, I’m positive I’m still being too nice. The news’ ratings have spiked the way you said deaths from COVID would. Somewhere in your 24-hour cycle of fearmongering and that charming death ticker, I’m sure there’s good factual information. It’s just hard to find crammed between propaganda press briefings and all your opinions about it. It’s like trying to find a woman’s back Joe Biden refuses to massage. The media is doing us an unforgivable disservice. You’re blowing Trump and talking at the same time. And didn’t your mother ever tell you: it’s rude to talk with your mouth full.

I think Michelle is wrong about the News having sides.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.

There are a lot of ways to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people — who are almost always your enemies, for one reason or another, and who usually deserve to be crippled, because they are wrong. This is a dangerous notion, and very few professional journalists will endorse it — calling it “vengeful” and “primitive” and “perverse” regardless of how often they might do the same thing themselves. “That kind of stuff is opinion,” they say, “and the reader is cheated if it’s not labelled as opinion.” Well, maybe so. Maybe Tom Paine cheated his readers and Mark Twain was a devious fraud with no morals at all who used journalism for his own foul ends. And maybe H. L. Mencken should have been locked up for trying to pass off his opinions on gullible readers and normal “objective journalism.” Mencken understood that politics — as used in journalism — was the art of controlling his environment, and he made no apologies for it. In my case, using what politely might be called “advocacy journalism,” I’ve used reporting as a weapon to affect political situations that bear down on my environment.

So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here — not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits— a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage. – Stockton