“Nothing to see here, move along…” – A.G. William Barr

Citizens and journalists alike, we live in chaos by design. For a decade, the coalition of grifters and politicians who seem to dominate our politics and culture have deployed Generaloberst Steve Bannon’s strategy of “flooding the zone with shit” so successfully that news stories which once would have been on everyone’s lips now go unremarked. That’s why we’ve been asking The Google about the phrase “$10 million.” We were immediately introduced to “a 19-year-old British garbage man [who in 2002] won 10 million pounds (approx $15 million) on the lottery. He spent it all on drugs, gambling and prostitutes and 8 years later was back …

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The Undemocratic Reality of Capitalism

by Richard D. Wolff Fans of capitalism like to say it is democratic or that it supports democracy. Some have stretched language so far as to literally equate capitalism with democracy, using the terms interchangeably. No matter how many times that is repeated, it is simply not true and never was. Indeed, it is much more accurate to say that capitalism and democracy are opposites. To see why, you have only to look at capitalism as a production system where employees enter into a relationship with employers, where a few people are the boss, and most people simply work doing what they are told to …

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‘Hot Enough For Ya?’

Heat Records Falling Like Dominos“Pay No Attention,” Say Politicos This past Sunday, July 21st, was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth—which, other than in Elon Musk’s drug-addled dreams, is the only place in the universe known to be habitable by our species. For now, anyway. That heat record stood for 24 hours. It was surpassed on Monday, the New York Times reported Wednesday. While this milestone is technically news, it may not be all that surprising. NOAA reported in June that May had been the 12th consecutive warmest month on record. Rounding out our review of broken records, while 2023 was the hottest year …

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Why Bernie Sanders Is Thanking Elon Musk

by Jake Johnson U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on July 16th took the unusual step of applauding Elon Musk—but not for reasons that the Tesla CEO and world’s richest man would likely find flattering. In the wake of reports indicating that Musk plans to inject $45 million per month into a new super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump’s bid for another four years in the White House, Sanders (I-Vt.) thanked Musk for doing “an exceptional job of demonstrating a point that we have made for years—and that is the fact we live in an oligarchic society in which billionaires dominate not only our economic life …

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Anyone Remember Covid?

Turns Out It’s Still HereAlso: It’s Still Bad For You The citizenry of the U.S. of A may be unable to agree on much of anything, but we do appear to have arrived at a consensus about Covid: “Thank God that’s over with. Let’s all go back to living our normal lives, as if all that pain, suffering, and death was just a bad dream.” To whatever extent they still acknowledge that Covid ever existed, right wingers tend to brush it off as just another typical overreaction by liberal weenies. For its part, the Biden administration seems to have stopped keeping track of cases a …

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Billionaire Grandson of Gilded Age Plutocrat Gives Trump Super PAC $50 Million

Timothy Mellon is one of at least a dozen billionaires backing Donald Trump’s bid for another four years in the White House. by Jake Johnson Billionaire businessman Timothy Mellon, 81, the grandson of Gilded Age plutocrat Andrew Mellon, made a $50 million donation to a pro-Donald Trump super PAC last month, a day after the former president was convicted by a New York jury on 34 felony counts. Mellon had previously donated $25 million to super PACs backing both Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate. The New York Times noted late Thursday that Mellon, a reclusive GOP …

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