Independent News

This post was originally published on this site

Reuters has an excellent report on pro-Trump Republicans who have attacked U.S. election systems, stealing voting data or attempting to do so under the supposed justification of searching for “election fraud.” Reuters counts eight known recent attempts, the most infamous being the case of Colorado election clerk Tina Peters, who now faces multiple felony charges after allowing voting data to be breached and stolen. But Peters isn’t the only pro-Trump official accused of attempted or successful thefts of voting data or unauthorized access to sensitive, must-be-secured-at-all-times election machines.

There is a trend of Republican officials and allies looking to breach election systems so that they can comb through voter data looking for “fraud” that they claim to be omnipresent simply because they refuse to believe Americans did not vote overwhelmingly to reelect the incompetent loudmouth Donald Trump. Cases include Adams Township in Michigan, where a QAnon-promoting clerk was found in possession of sensitive election tabulation hardware four days after it went missing; another Michigan episode in which a Republican activist impersonated a government official in an attempt to steal equipment; a Colorado election clerk caught on video making “forensic” copies of “everything on the election server”—the two hard drives the information was copied to have not been recovered. Pillow kingpin Mike Lindell features heavily as a financier of election conspiracy theories that have now morphed into pro-Trump crimes and attempted crimes.

It’s worth reading in full, if only as emphasis on how widespread the attacks on the validity of our elections have become and will become, but there are some key takeaways worth highlighting:

1. It is all based on conspiracy theories. Not sophisticated conspiracy theories, but QAnon or similar-styled ranting at clouds, bizarre claims with no evidence other than being passed around on the internet from crackpot to crackpot. The “evidence” the pro-Trump officials are looking for is not something that they can even describe; the goals are to obtain voting records or the secured software being used on election equipment so that it can be looked through and distributed to others, upon which the presumption is that “something” corrupt will be found. Like what? You know, something. And what are these suspicions based on? What tidbits of information are out there to suggest that stealing this information will result in exposing a conspiracy?

Not a damn thing. Literally nothing. The best the evidence ever gets is the sort of “looking for bamboo fibers in our ballots”-styled nonsense of the Arizona Republican audit; the tabulation machines are being targeted to look for secret “make Joe Biden win this thing” code, the 2020 election records are being targeted in the hopes that a grand conspiracy will be uncovered in which long-dead or nonexistent voters overwhelmed the vote counts through raw force of their nonexistence.

The people doing the crimes are conspiracy cranks who have either risen to positions of minor local party power or want to. They are … not scholarly people, to say the least. They are people who have been incited by the invented propaganda claims put on television by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, House Republicans, Fox News, and Pillow Dude, and believe them simply because one of those aforementioned bozos managed to convince them through the sheer power of their televised hairlines.

2. Each case shows a brazen Republican disregard for the law. The Republican clerks and other local officials behind the data breaches and thefts are unapologetic; since they believe somebody else somewhere might be doing a crime, they assert they are justified in doing real crimes to expose the imagined ones.

Historically, this has tended to be a significant component of conservatism and is a blazingly obvious component of authoritarianism in all its forms. Enemies, named and unnamed, are “oppressing” us by secretly doing crimes. The crimes are so secret that they cannot be found, which only proves that even more crimes are being committed to hide them. Therefore the laws are now invalid and we’re going to break them in order to “level the playing field” between the imaginary crimes and our real ones, rinse, repeat.

So you’ve got things going on like a local Republican official threatening to get an elections official fired if that elections official doesn’t let the Republican have access to secured voting equipment that by law nobody is allowed to have access to because then it wouldn’t be secure. Election integrity can simply be disregarded if it is in service to Republicanism, especially Republicanism that is itself obsessed with proving that our election integrity is faulty.

It turns out that having a “president” willing to break laws regularly, alongside party-devoted lawmakers who are eager to simply scrub out enforcement of whatever rules he breaks, may result in more widespread party beliefs that Criminality Is Good Now. Given the number of Republican lawmakers still willing to spout the same arguments and a justice system that has gone from apathetic pursuit of crimes committed by public officials to near-silence, there is no indication this will not get much, much worse.

3. These criminal efforts are more coordinated than they might look. The tell here is the simple note that Mike Lindell, the aforementioned Pillow Dude, is pouring a lot of money into convincing people like these local Republican conspiracy theorists that Republican election conspiracy theories are so dire that extraordinary action needs to be taken to combat them. In Texas, a big Republican donor is now under indictment for financing a supposed “investigation” into election fraud that saw one of his investigators run a random Texan off the road and hold him at gunpoint on the bizarre belief that the man’s truck was stuffed with fake ballots.

The crimes are all committed due to a belief in a handful of nebulous, nonsensical conspiracy theories that came from top Trump propagandists and which continue to be repeated now as core movement beliefs. The reason those beliefs continue is because there’s a whole lot of Republican money being poured into making them continue.

There are also legislative efforts to make such tampering the new normal, Republican-controlled state legislatures have now passed a bevy of new laws that allow them to simply seize control of whatever local election offices have reported back with vote totals that Republican partisans find suspicious. Here’s a tip: Counties that tend not to vote for Republican candidates are the ones being singled out as “suspicious.” Elections officials who object to partisan party hacks thumbing through secure data are either being voted out of office by the Republican base or are being stripped of their authority, and the lawmakers writing those laws are being quite clear that they’re taking those actions because of party conspiracy theories being propped up by, well, themselves.

Reuters is reporting on a wave of conspiracy-minded Republican cranks now looking to target the nation’s election systems by stealing sensitive data, but the broader context here is that the party is looking to legalize those sorts of breaches, not tamp down on them. The problem they’re trying to solve is that, in states like Georgia, Americans aren’t voting for Republicans in sufficient numbers for Republicans to win. The solution they’ve come up with is to declare that if a Republican candidate doesn’t win, it’s because there was a secret conspiracy to fudge the numbers—thus requiring Republican “investigation” into votes against them.

RELATED STORIES

Election official, conspiracy theorist busted by grand jury in felony election tampering charges

Republican megadonor indicted for role in ‘election fraud’ assault on air conditioner repairman

Mike Lindell boasts spending $800K on MAGA-supporting election official’s defense—which isn’t legal

The army of Trumpists gathering at megachurch rallies build around myth of stolen election

This post was originally published on this site

What better way to kick off the month of May than with a birthday tribute to Mabel Louise Smith, better known to R&B, blues, gospel, jazz and rock fans as Big Maybelle? Born on May 1, 1924 in Tennessee, Big Maybelle’s musical output was prolific during a career that ended with her death at the age of 47. It’s difficult to place her discography in one single category. And sadly, like far too many Black female artists who were musical groundbreakers, her legacy and impact on multiple genres has been obscured, and virtually forgotten.  

It’s hard to believe, given Maybelle’s drawing power among the Black community during the height of her career, that not one biography has been written about her, and certainly no biopic starring famous musicians of today. But at least we’ve got her extensive catalog of music to listen to.

So for this #BlackMusicSunday, let’s do just that, as we celebrate Ms. Maybelle, the American Queen Mother of Soul.

I was pleased to find this tribute to Big Maybelle from YouTube’s Soul Facts. The web series is a creation of Mike Boone, who bills himself as the “Chancellor of Soul,” and describes himself as “a music historian and storyteller from Harlem.” His work focuses deeply on the work of “unsung or unnoticed” musicians.

As Boone explains, while singing in churches and carnivals as a child, Maybelle was “discovered” by bandleader Dave Clark in the early 1930s.

Boone’s video launched me onto a small detour into the story of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm; historians, including Boone, note Maybelle toured with the group early in her career. Daily Kos Community Contributor Charles Jay showcased the Sweethearts in 2021, and this 30-minute documentary about the Sweethearts from 1986 was produced by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss.

Oddly, Big Maybelle is not mentioned.

Finding mentions of Big Maybelle longer than a paragraph or two is difficult. Harlem World Magazine offers an exception, picking up her career as she reached adulthood.

In the early forties Mabel was part of pianist Christine Chatman’s orchestra (a decade later Chatman was a session pianist on some of Hank Ballard & The Midnighters sides for King) and made her first recording with that group in 1944 for Decca Records. Soon she toured with the Tiny Bradshaw band, and her work with him and Oran “Hot Lips” Page led to a couple of appearances on record for King in the late nineteen forties. By the start of the new decade she was now working as a single, but bookings were sporadic and recording sessions were non-existent. At an appearance with Jimmy Witherspoon at Detroit’s Flame Show Bar in 1952, the struggling performer gained notice, and soon it paid off.

Here’s that first record from 1944—when, just 20 years old, she was still billed as Mabel Smith.

Back to the Harlem World story:

Okeh Records, the newly revived R & B offshoot of Columbia records was developing a roster of recording talent when word was passed about the blues belter based in Cincinnati, Mabel Smith. The people at Okeh liked what they saw and heard, and so the newly renamed Big Maybelle was signed to the label in September of 1952. Her first session for the label produced the song “Rain Down Rain” written by promising composer Lincoln Chase on #6931. The flip side was “The Gabbin’ Blues”. This very first session produced the first success of Maybelle’s career. “Gabbin Blues” along with Chuck Willis “My Story” resulted in the biggest month for the label ever and the first time Okeh had two top ten sellers on the list at the same time. Maybelle was an in person smash in Philadelphia, first for a week at the Earle Theater along with Willie Mabon, and then at a number of nightclubs in that city including Pep’s and Emerson’s cafe.

Gabbin‘ Blues, her 1952 Okeh debut, is a very Black shade-slinging session between Maybelle and Rose Marie McCoy, the tune’s cowriter.

It opens with McCoy saying, “Here come ol’ evil chick, always telling everybody she come from Chicago. Got Mississippi written all over her,” before Maybelle’s powerful vocal comes in. McCoy keeps up a steady stream of trash-talking and cackling in response to each sung stanza.

Dave Penny offers an anecdote about Maybelle’s risque humor, displayed one night at The Apollo.

“She became a super favourite at The Apollo; they loved her not only for her singing – she’d tear the place apart – but also for her comedic work. One joke she used to tell all the time : at that time there was a product on the radio, a detergent called Duz whose slogan was “Duz Does It!”. Maybelle said, ‘I’m gonna go to work and make commercials for a new cleaning detergent. It’s called Fug, and if Duz don’t do it, then Fug it!’”   Fred Mendelsohn (producer and friend) DVD of the Newport Jazz Festival 1958

In 1956, Okeh Records dropped Maybelle due to lagging record sales, but she got picked up immediately by Savoy. There she would record the hit Candy, which would become her signature tune. Maybelle posthumously received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award for the song in 1999.

Most fans of early rock and roll are very familiar with Jerry Lee Lewis’ 1957 hit, Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On, which is lauded as one of the founding classics of the genre. I actually saw him perform the song live as a teenager, at Atlantic City’s Steel Pier. He was a curiosity for me; it was odd to see a white guy playing Black music with a country twist. But few know that the song originated with Big Maybelle.

Here’s Big Maybelle’s rendition, which was recorded two years before Lewis’, in March 1955. The song was produced by a young Quincy Jones.

Thanks to the 1959 documentary Jazz On A Summer’s Day—filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival—we get to see Big Maybelle at her best, and in color!

Here’s the audio of the entire session:

As for Maybelle’s personal life and struggles, they were many. The most dangerous was her ongoing battle with heroin addiction, as well as with her weight—which she was taunted for most of her life—and diabetes. Even as her health declined, Maybelle had one last unlikely hit with a cover of 96 Tears in 1967, made famous by the Mexican American garage rock band, ? and the Mysterians.

In 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Big Maybelle shouted out the pain that people around the globe were feeling. Paul Devlin wrote about her for The Root in 2011, dubbing her tribute “The Best Martin Luther King Jr. Anthem Ever.”

A better candidate for the best-ever MLK tribute title: Big Maybelle’s visceral, angst-ridden dirge, “Heaven Will Welcome You, Dr. King,” a searing shriek from the depths of the soul. Unlike “Abraham, Martin and John,” “Heaven Will Welcome You, Dr. King” was not designed for AM radio. The lyrics (by Jack Taylor) are very simple. They don’t rely on poetic devices. They appear to have been straightforwardly written and recorded while the pain of the moment was still overwhelming.

The song seems to have lain dormant for years. It was released on iTunes and Amazon.com in 2009 on a two-song “album,” along with her cover of “Eleanor Rigby” (which certainly deserves to be known by Beatles fans far and wide). “Heaven Will Welcome You, Dr. King” doesn’t even sound as if it was fully produced, and that feels appropriate; the rawness of the sound mirrors the rawness of the emotion. It is less pristine, clear-sounding, marketable, music-business commodity than intensely and authentically felt horror and anguish. The anger and sadness in her voice is matched by the playing of the musicians. It adds up to a mighty lament, an expression of darkest funerary gloom, unimpeded by any sweetness or light, evoking the emotions of what that April 1968 morning must have been like.

Have a listen for yourself.

Big Maybelle would be welcomed into the heavenly band of angels in January 1972, her life ending in a diabetic coma. She is buried in Evergreen Memorial Park Cemetery, in the Cleveland, Ohio, suburb of Bedford Heights.

In 2019, Maybelle was honored in her Tennessee hometown with a historical marker.

Please join me in the comments for lots more music from Big Maybelle, and to celebrate this first day of May. Be sure to post your favorites!

This post was originally published on this site

We start today with Nicholas Confessore of The New York Times and his three-part profile of Tucker Carlson of Fox News.

…Mr. Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful. Though he frequently declares himself an enemy of prejudice — “We don’t judge them by group, and we don’t judge them on their race,” Mr. Carlson explained to an interviewer a few weeks before accusing impoverished immigrants of making America dirty — his show teaches loathing and fear. Night after night, hour by hour, Mr. Carlson warns his viewers that they inhabit a civilization under siege — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters in American cities, by diseased migrants from south of the border, by refugees importing alien cultures, and by tech companies and cultural elites who will silence them, or label them racist, if they complain. When refugees from Africa, numbering in the hundreds, began crossing into Texas from Mexico during the Trump administration, he warned that the continent’s high birthrates meant the new arrivals might soon “overwhelm our country and change it completely and forever.” Amid nationwide outrage over George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, Mr. Carlson dismissed those protesting the killing as “criminal mobs.” Companies like Angie’s List and Papa John’s dropped their ads. The following month, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became the highest-rated cable news show in history. […]

Alchemizing media power into political influence, Mr. Carlson stands in a nativist American tradition that runs from Father Coughlin to Patrick J. Buchanan. Now Mr. Carlson’s on-air technique — gleefully courting blowback, then fashioning himself as his aggrieved viewers’ partner in victimhood — has helped position him, as much as anyone, to inherit the populist movement that grew up around Mr. Trump. At a moment when white backlash is the jet fuel of a Republican Party striving to return to power in Washington, he has become the pre-eminent champion of Americans who feel most threatened by the rising power of Black and brown citizens. To channel their fear into ratings, Mr. Carlson has adopted the rhetorical tropes and exotic fixations of white nationalists, who have watched gleefully from the fringes of public life as he popularizes their ideas. Mr. Carlson sometimes refers to “legacy Americans,” a dog-whistle term that, before he began using it on his show last fall, appeared almost exclusively in white nationalist outlets like The Daily Stormer, The New York Times found. He takes up story lines otherwise relegated to far-right or nativist websites like VDare: “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has featured a string of segments about the gruesome murders of white farmers in South Africa, which Mr. Carlson suggested were part of a concerted campaign by that country’s Black-led government. Last April, Mr. Carlson set off yet another uproar, borrowing from a racist conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement” to argue that Democrats were deliberately importing “more obedient voters from the third world” to “replace” the current electorate and keep themselves in power. But a Times analysis of 1,150 episodes of his show found that it was far from the first time Mr. Carlson had done so.

One of the more interesting facts in this profile is how Carlson used to to have guests on his show with opposing viewpoints but it was discovered that Fox News viewers did not want to hear opposing viewpoints so the show did away with them.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is back. And we are still in the Age of COVID. I guess…

Paul Krugman of The New York Times writes that so much of the student debt burden felt by those seeking loan relief is because of false promises.

How much relief will he offer? I have no idea. How much relief should he offer? I’m for going as big as political realities allow, but I understand that too generous a debt write-off might produce a backlash. And I have no confidence that I know where the line should be drawn.

What I think I do know is that much of the backlash to proposals for student debt relief is based on a false premise: the belief that Americans who have gone to college are, in general, members of the economic elite.

The falsity of this proposition is obvious for those who were exploited by predatory for-profit institutions that encouraged them to go into debt to get more or less worthless credentials. The same applies to those who took on educational debt but never managed to get a degree — not a small group. In fact, around 40 percent of student loan borrowers never finish their education.

But even among those who make it through, a college degree is hardly a guarantee of economic success. And I’m not sure how widely that reality is understood.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr of The Boston Globe writes in a similar vein to Krugman about student debt but centers Black attendees and graduates.

Stay in school. It’s an American maxim, the path to the so-called American Dream. Or so we’re told.

“What is the master narrative that we tell ourselves over and over again, in policy conversations, in our national conversation? That master narrative is: If you go the college, and borrow student loans, you’re going to get a return on those student loans through your degree and the labor market,” says Jalil Bishop, co-author of the Education Trust’s report “Jim Crow Debt: How Black Borrowers Experience Student Loans” and co-creator of the National Black Student Loan Debt Study. “Well, that’s not happening for a lot of students, and it’s really not happening for Black students.”

We know there’s a gaping wealth chasm between Black and White American households.

We also know a key factor driving the financial gap is the staggeringly high cost of college and post-graduate education. Unequally distributed by race, this cost is often paid through student loans that saddle graduates with crippling debt.

That debt often means Black Americans, who already begin with a fraction of the wealth of White Americans, start their working lives financially underwater. These factors harm their credit; their ability to gain assets, and start and grow businesses; save for retirement; or pass on generational wealth — ensuring that the racial wealth gap persists for generations.

Sigal Samuel of Vox looks at several different Guaranteed Income (GI) programs taking place across the nation.

The point of running pilots is to amass evidence that an intervention works so you can then make a convincing case that it should become policy. In a sense, GI pilots targeting parents are all tryouts for an idea that we’ve already implemented as federal policy: the expanded CTC.

The CTC proved extremely effective. In July 2021, when the first checks went out to parents, the child poverty rate dropped from 15.8 percent to 11.9 percent, the lowest rate on record. And yet, that evidence wasn’t enough to make the CTC permanent. Although polling found a bipartisan majority of voters wanted it to be permanent, Congress let it lapse — with Sen. Joe Manchin’s opposition dealing the final blow.

So you might wonder whether there’s much point in continuing to run pilots aimed at amassing more evidence. Maybe a lack of evidence isn’t the constraining factor. Should the movement for GI focus its efforts on something else, like building political will?

Charles P. Pierce of Esquire writes that Republicans throwing around the name of George Orwell in protest of a Disinformation Governance Board within the Department of Homeland Security are simply full of it.

Spare a thought for Nina Jankowicz, who has stepped up to lead this effort at the Department of Homeland Security. Volunteering to be a piñata takes a certain amount of gumption. And yes, for the record, I am concerned what this operation would look like under, say, President DeSantis, and there had to be a more deft way to roll it out than having DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas just drop it into his testimony before a House committee. (The Senate will have its turn at him next week.) And there had to be a better name for it than the Disinformation Governance Board, a monicker that sounds as though it were made of steel, concrete, and barbed-wire. Why are Democrats so bad at naming stuff? The Republicans are terrific at naming stuff, even though, most of the time, those names are perfect examples of…disinformation. We should all talk about this seriously at a later date.

But I am not going to listen to it at the moment from the party of insurrection, the party of book-banning and library-scouring, the party of dangerous myth-making bullshit about “grooming” and (eek!) “critical race theory,” the party full of people who still bend the knee to the Prince of 30,000 Lies down in Florida. Hell, this is a party that lies to itself. Isn’t that right, Never-To-Be-Speaker Kevin McCarthy? Regain your sanity, folks, before you start throwing around George Orwell’s name in defense of your absolute right to launder and launch all the fantastical tales spun by Macedonian teenagers. Orwell would eat you all on toast and still have room for bangers and mash.

Oliver Milman of the Guardian writes that climate change may become the catalyst of the most extreme extinction event for marine life in 250 million years.

The world’s seawater is steadily climbing in temperature due to the extra heat produced from the burning of fossil fuels, while oxygen levels in the ocean are plunging and the water is acidifying from the soaking up of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

This means the oceans are overheated, increasingly gasping for breath – the volume of ocean waters completely depleted of oxygen has quadrupled since the 1960s – and becoming more hostile to life. Aquatic creatures such as clams, mussels and shrimp are unable to properly form shells due to the acidification of seawater.

All of this means the planet could slip into a “mass extinction rivaling those in Earth’s past”, states the new research, published in Science. The pressures of rising heat and loss of oxygen are, researchers said, uncomfortably reminiscent of the mass extinction event that occurred at the end of the Permian period about 250m years ago. This cataclysm, known as the “great dying”, led to the demise of up to 96% of the planet’s marine animals.

“Even if the magnitude of species loss is not the same level as this, the mechanism of the species loss would be the same,” said Justin Penn, a climate scientist at Princeton University who co-authored the new research.

Dave Zirin of The Nation thinks that in light of the release of Trevor Reed from Russian custody, perhaps now is the time to make some noise about the detainment of WNBA star Brittney Griner.

The Trevor Reed story should focus our attention on another imprisoned US citizen in Russia, WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner, and indeed, judging by trending across social media, it has. Since mid-February, Griner has been detained in Russia awaiting a May 19 trial date where she faces 10 years behind bars—five years at hard labor—for the alleged crime of having hashish vape cartridges in her bag at the airport. With Reed’s release, Griner’s supporters want to know that she is next.

If you’ve been reading this space, you know that I believe we need to understand Griner as a political prisoner, partly because she has been paraded in front of Russian state media like some sort of six-foot-nine prize, partly because 10 years for allegedly having cannabis cartridges is obscene. Factor in that Griner is a Black queer woman in a country where national minorities and LGBTQ people have been victims of targeted harassment, and the urgency to secure her freedom only grows.

The State Department and the WNBA has preached silence in the hope that Griner would not become the kind of high-profile political prisoner Russia could use like a pawn on a chessboard. But that’s wishful thinking. Of course Griner was always going to become a political prisoner. This was easier to predict than the success of an attempted Griner slam dunk. It is past time that supporters shed their silence and spoke out for her return. They only need take a cursory look at Trevor Reed’s case and the activism of Reed’s parents—done with one-millionth of Griner’s cultural capital—to see that this could prove to be a positive approach—or at least more positive than doing nothing. The possibilities could be seen in how the release of Reed spurred a long-overdue public discussion about Griner. The State Department commented on the matter, with spokesperson Ned Price saying to CNN, “When it comes to Brittney Griner, we are working very closely with her team. Her case is a top priority for us. We’re in regular contact with her team.”

Timothy Snyder writes for The New Yorker about the long history of colonialism and Ukraine.

Ukraine is a post-colonial country, one that does not define itself against exploitation so much as accept, and sometimes even celebrate, the complications of emerging from it. Its people are bilingual, and its soldiers speak the language of the invader as well as their own. The war is fought in a decentralized way, dependent on the solidarity of local communities. These communities are diverse, but together they defend the notion of Ukraine as a political nation. There is something heartening in this. The model of the nation as a mini-empire, replicating inequalities on a smaller scale, and aiming for a homogeneity that is confused with identity, has worn itself out. If we are going to have democratic states in the twenty-first century, they will have to accept some of the complexity that is taken for granted in Ukraine.

The contrast between an aging empire and a new kind of nation is captured by Zelensky, whose simple presence makes Kremlin ideology seem senseless. Born in 1978, he is a child of the U.S.S.R., and speaks Russian with his family. A Jew, he reminds us that democracy can be multicultural. He does not so much answer Russian imperialism as exist alongside it, as though hailing from some wiser dimension. He does not need to mirror Putin; he just needs to show up. Every day, he affirms his nation by what he says and what he does.

Catherine Belton and Greg Miller of The Washington Post write that a number of Russian oligarchs are getting fed up with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

At least four oligarchs who made it big in the more liberal era of Putin’s predecessor, President Boris Yeltsin, have left Russia. At least four senior officials have resigned their posts and departed the country, the highest ranking among them being Anatoly Chubais, the Kremlin special envoy for sustainable development and Yeltsin-era privatization czar.

But those in top positions vital to the continued running of the country remain — some trapped, unable to leave even if they wanted to. Most notably, Russia’s mild-mannered and highly regarded central bank chief, Elvira Nabiullina, tendered her resignation after the imposition of Western sanctions, but Putin refused to let her step down, according to five people familiar with the situation.

In interviews, several Russian billionaires, senior bankers, a senior official and former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, described how they and others had been blindsided by their increasingly isolated president and feel largely impotent to influence him because his inner circle is dominated by a handful of hard-line security officials.

“…his inner circle…of hard-line security officials,” the siloviki.

Finally today, Bobby Ghosh of Bloomberg writes that the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Africa may not be limited to food shortages.

The war has cut off Africa from two major sources of grain. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, 14 African nations depend on Russia and Ukraine for half their wheat, with Eritrea (100%), Somalia (over 90%) and Egypt (nearly 75%) topping the list. Overall, wheat imports make up 90% of Africa’s $4 billion trade with Russia and almost 50% of its $4.5 billion trade with Ukraine, according to the African Development Bank. In an interview with Al Jazeera, the bank’s president, Akinwumi Adesina, warned of a growing food crisis that could “destabilize the continent.”

In addition to crimping wheat supplies, the war has caused a price surge in a wide range of commodities, sending inflation soaring even as nations struggle to recover from two years of economic suffering caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This poses a threat to governments throughout the developing world, but especially in Africa, which is already experiencing a democratic retrenchment and a resurgence of military coups.

Everyone have a great day!

This post was originally published on this site

And there goes another month. Goodbye winter, hello spring. Ending April with a smile, we are back with the Joy Collective, a collection of the cutest, funniest clips we can find on the Internet.

Social media is filled with funny moments and stories. Sometimes we just need to step away from the seriousness and take some time to relax; lighter posts allow us to mentally recharge.

As part of a weekly series that aims to make you laugh, Daily Kos will be compiling and sharing viral funny videos from across social media platforms. The news cycle can be a bit much at times. Self-care is needed. We all need balance, so let’s have some joy where we are able. 

Share your videos and your favorites with us for the next round-up!

Starting off with some cuteness! A TikTok a video of a cow having a “spa day” has been named one of the most viral videos on the Internet. 

In the video, @l.thomas2020—also known on TikTok as LT—goes through several steps of pampering her cow. She scrubs her hooves with a toothbrush before polishing them, gives her coat a deep brushing, and then lays milk-soaked strawberry slices across the blissed-out cow’s head and back. 

Her treatment leaves many viewers commenting: “Can I be treated like your cow.”

So you thought polar bears are cute right? Well, they are about to get even cuter. Check out this one special bear who is kindly petting a dog.

According to Mashable, the two were spotted hanging out by the water in Manitoba, Canada.

Polar bears don’t seem to be the only ones who can hang out with dogs. Take a look at this duck’s playtime with this dog.

I don’t know about you but I am definitely ready for the beach. This elephant definitely makes me more excited about it, too.

Honestly, the accuracy in this. Welcome to my mornings.

Clearly, I cannot get enough of these puppy videos.

But I am still a loyal cat mom and lover.

And now for some community favorites!

This adorable parrot from @CrimsonQuillfeather

This prank video from @abluerippleinohio

And a fun music video, too, just for kicks. 

This “cheetah brothers” video from @Lefty Coaster.

And this adorable dog video from @bobdevo:

Have any funny videos you think will bring more joy to Daily Kos readers?

You know the drill! Send them over to me at [email protected] or comment below and I’ll try to feature them in the next roundup!

This post was originally published on this site

Workers in New York could gain new protections through separate bills in New York City and in the state legislature—but the New York City measure was delayed Thursday for five more months, despite having been passed by lawmakers four months ago. That bill would require many job listings to include salary information, a move that could help crack down on pay inequities. It would apply only to employers with four or more employees.

In the state legislature, the newly introduced Warehouse Worker Protection Act “would require employers with at least 50 employees in a single warehouse or 500 workers statewide to share a written description of productivity quotas, how the quotas are developed, and how they can be used for disciplinary purposes with each worker,” Lauren Kaori Gurley reports at Vice. “It would also ensure that production quotas do not interfere with workers’ basic rights such as bathroom breaks and rest periods or health and safety laws.”

● The four most popular anti-union talking points and why they’re wrong.

● This is no way to treat pregnant workers, writes A Better Balance’s Dina Bakst.

● Nurses at two Palo Alto hospitals went on strike Monday:

“We are out here trying to get the hospital to listen to us about getting paid, being willing to make good contract agreements with us that will make nursing more sustainable, and improve our staffing, among other things,” said Kathy Stormberg, a registered nurse at Stanford and Crona Vice President.

● And speaking of nurses, Aparna Gopalan reports on The nurses who wouldn’t come in from the cold:

As 2021’s longest labor action, the St. Vincent nurses’ strike reflects the labor movement’s rapidly expanding horizons. After decades of concessionary bargaining focused on an increasingly narrow set of bread-and-butter issues (such as pay and benefits), more recent labor actions have shifted to ​“common good” demands that include the broader communities workers are part of, and serve.

● Learn it, do it, teach it: Member organizers turn the moment into a movement.

● One simple trick to protect workers from inflation, via Hamilton Nolan.

● Late disclosures concealed the extent of Amazon’s anti-union campaign, reports Dave Jamieson.

● Noam Scheiber reports on the revolt of the college-educated working class.

● Adjunct professors can work three jobs to make a living wage.

● Workers at Massachusetts hospital vote to unionize despite management’s fierce opposition

● 

This post was originally published on this site

Imagine being part of an industry bringing in record profits—nearly $174 billion in profits in 2021. You receive incentives to grow through taxes, you have benefits thrown at you through state incentives, you are able to work with people to split their surface and mineral property rights to grow when you need to if you want to find more places that can handle your business. Every indicator is coming up roses for you.

Consumer demand for your product is rising as COVID falls, and you decide now is the time to give back investors $36.5 bilion in compensation and nice bonuses, all while raising the price of your product. Care to take a guess about which industry it is?
 

Welcome to the oil industry. Over the last few years, we’ve all connected via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet. With travel resuming, oil and gas demand goes up, and the lack of planning by the industry in face of record profits leads to, well, them making more profits but everyone else feeling the pinch. Cars spin up and so do prices. Conservatives will tell you how much they love Elon Musk this week over his attempt to buy Twitter, while at the same time seemingly hating the sheer concept of electric vehicles. Who knows. The oil industry, though, won’t sweat it, and they aren’t the only ones profiteering right now.

For the American Petroleum Institute, the war in Ukraine has been an absolute gift. They are pushing for greater domestic drilling and more options in the U.S., at one point saying that fracking may be the best weapon the U.S. has against Russia. If you’re curious, you can find out where the oil and gas leases are near you through documents filed with your county, or through a land specialist. It took me minutes to find out that near me, hundreds of wells had been approved for potential drilling and … nothing. There is no movement to drill any of them. In fact, in counties all around me, that number of instilled wells skyrockets.

The United States is full of lease agreements with nothing happening—agreements held and agreed to in states and counties. If you believed the American Petroleum Institute, you would think they have nowhere to go and are all out of options. What may be more desirable is to get similar leases with way, way less oversight. Or maybe no oversight at all while combining it with products that have very little benefit to Americans looking for relief. 

Americans will be looking at the ballot boxes this fall and wondering about their pocketbook. That is certainly reasonable. Under Trump, I frequently pointed out the president doesn’t control the price of gas; it is controlled by the industry. The same is certainly true now, and for the oil industry record profits right now are a great way for them to get fat and try to make it harm anyone who sees a more environmentally conscious future. A win-win, if you will.

There is an answer to that, and that is recognizing and talking about it for what it truly is: profiteering.

With that in mind, I hope you join us for our 20th anniversary Cheers & Jeers, 4PM PST on May 20! Just send me a KosMail to attend.

This week, instead of music, let me offer you some trailers for, let’s say, fitting movies:

This post was originally published on this site

What is there to say about Fox News and the right-wing-o-sphere that hasn’t been scratched by the nails of demons into the toilet stall walls of hell? Every day, every hour, every minute, Fox News and the propaganda machines it has birthed are either selling their audience lies, misinformation, and disinformation about the world, or selling them pillows, telling them to sell their gold, and saying that the way out of debt is to give Magnum P.I. your home in a reverse mortgage. 

The Fox-News-o-sphere has been doing double time sticking its head both up its own behind and also deep into the sand. Impossible to do, you say? You can say a lot of things about Fox News but you can’t say they aren’t willing and able to continue to surprise you when it comes to how low they can go. At this point the fact that a hole hasn’t ripped open in the space-time continuum under the Fox News studios is arguably the most surprising thing.

There has been a lot of news lately about audio of GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy saying all kinds of relatively sober things about how much of a disaster Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol were. He even happened to mention how crappy people like Florida man Matt Gaetz are. The problem is: The GOP is nowhere near sober in their public-facing acceptance of the fascism being called for by the MAGA wing of the party. McCarthy has one thing going for him—being craven and a liar seems to work just fine with the MAGA crowd, regardless of how much evidence is laid before their feet.

RELATED STORY: Kevin McCarthy is in large trouble with his fellow Republicans after more recordings released

Let’s see what Fox News is doing to facilitate the dissemination of news and information to its audience.

Later on, Fox News’ Howard Kurtz had Glenn Greenwald on to talk about Elon Musk and how great his ideas on free speech are. Surprisingly (see: not surprisingly) they didn’t discuss any of Elon’s stated mentions of what he thinks “free speech” is. They didn’t because this …

…doesn’t make much sense.

Any-the-ways! Kurtz brought up and defended Fox News’ lack of coverage, instead opting to continuously discuss the media’s lack of luster over Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop leak in the days leading up to the November 2020 election. Kurtz’s argument, the one he laid out to his interviewee Greenwald, is that the McCarthy story isn’t a “big story.” Greenwald, who has been spending most of his time recently talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop, had to admit that it showed clearly that Kevin McCarthy is lying, but made sure to offer up the defense (while saying he wouldn’t know why one would want to defend McCarthy) that “it’s a very hard job to manage a Republican caucus with 250 very disparate voices with Donald Trump hovering over you. There was a lot of emotions surrounding 1/6, but we should demand from our political leaders the basic obligation not to tell lies to the public, and the fact that he got caught red-handed should be a pretty significant event for him.”

But, was it a big story? Greenwald, who has spent a considerable amount of the past year talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop, said that he thinks what happened was that “emotions were high” after the “Jan. 6, riot,” and it is definitely a “news story,” but guess what he says next? “If we did flood-the-zone coverage every time a politician lied we would never do anything else as journalists.” Greenwald ended by telling the Fox News host—on the network that continues to cover the Hunter Biden laptop and insist that President Joe Biden is maybe lying about something for the last year and a half—that “covering it is reasonable, but excessively covering it is what happened because obviously there’s a partisan agenda involved.”

Wild stuff. You see what Greenwald did there? He conflated a politician lying about wanting to ASK THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO RESIGN FROM OFFICE with “politicians lying.”

That first Fox News story count was from like April 22. I’m sure things picked up a few days later.

Wrong again!

What does Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have to add?

Gotcha! But Walter, you say, this is Ron Johnson talking out of his ass two weeks ago; surely things are different now?

“Highest level.” In an unrelated story, Sen. Ron Johnson is a corrupt, racist, lying, POS.

Listen to Markos and Kerry Eleveld talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

This post was originally published on this site

Around these parts, we’ve been fighting for progress for a long time. Twenty years, to be (almost) exact. Daily Kos might have started with seven sentences from one man, but my goodness, it’s become so much more, and done so much. And each of you have been a part of that, with your action, your donations, and yes, your writing on our open platform. 

As our May 26 anniversary looms, we’ve been celebrating the best of the millions upon millions of stories written here, by Staff and Community alike. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been challenging everyone—including you, dear Community—to ponder our writings here on Daily Kos over the last 20 years and pick a personal best.

It’s been a blast collecting submissions from the Community Contributors Team, our Daily Kos staff (part one and part two), Kos himself, and you, dearest Community. And now, it’s time for another installment of This Is My Best (TIMB)—focused again on Community writing. 

For those who are new to this series, here’s a quick recap:

Some years ago, I’m told, there was a wonderful series called This Is My Best (TIMB), which encouraged Community members to share their own writing that they were most proud of, rather than the writing of others. One part self-promotion, one part self-confidence, all parts awesome, TIMB encourages writers to press pause on their role as their own worst critics and take some time to toot their own horns.

Let’s dive right in. As noted last week, these stories are intimate and reflective, deeply researched, and political. And they mean a lot to the people who wrote them. So give ‘em a read!

And remember: If you don’t see your story below, we’ll be keeping the party going right up until our joyful 20th anniversary on May 26!

GARY NORTON

Why the debt limit fight will be a political face-off with no gimmicks or constitutional crisis (2013)

The title of this article is certainly long-winded. But it was an attempt to quell some of the hyperbolic and somewhat frantic arguments and concerns surrounding the debt limit face-off between President Obama and the Republicans in Congress.

For people who were not here at the time the Republicans were threatening to have our government default on its obligations by refusing to raise the debt limit. This was a major issue at the time. Raising the debt limit had always been done as a matter of course until the Republicans decided they could weaponize the issue, first with Bill Clinton and later with Barack Obama. By 2013 the Republican threats reach their zenith the president Obama stared them down ending not only that crisis but also republican attempts to use at in later dates.

I am highlighting this article because it attracted many informed comments and seems to have been appreciated by a large number of readers. It gave me an opportunity to talk about a subject that I had some familiarity with from my work in government and that enabled me to weave together politics and the law. Sometimes otherwise dry subjects can really be interesting when they are explained with sufficient detail and are made accessible to people with no background in the subject. I thought this article hit that sweet spot pretty well.

CFK

Resistance and joy: The story of Jacques Lusseyran (2006)

This is the first story I ever wrote for Daily Kos and I still think despite writing 771 stories over the years, it is my most heartfelt one. We are still here and we are still a vital community who gets things done. I celebrate us!

ALGEBRATEACHER

WYFP: Marry me (2013)

This is from a time when I hosted WYFP nine years ago, almost to the day. Mrs. algebrateacher and I are doing fine. I am retired now. We have been fixing up the house in preparation for the next lots-and-lots of years together because that’s what married people do.

PTOLEMY

Saving the republic: The Star Wars prequels finally make sense in the 2016 election (2016)

This piece on the looming authoritarian threat in 2016, as seen through the Star Wars prequels [is my best]. Because I was right. And because the Sith always return.

1BQ

R.I.P., Dad (2008)

[It’s my best] because I cried while writing it.

MAGNIFICO

Hugs (2012)

[It] may not be the best thing I’ve ever written, but I think it really captured the joy we had with Obama’s re-election in 2012.

SOLLACE

The futures of the GOP (2021)

Honestly, I think my first post is my favourite. I like it because 1) it helped me organize my thoughts for the video dialogue on which I was working at the time; and 2) it resulted in some interesting discussion.

My only regret is that I didn’t stick around right after posting so that I could have interacted with the commentariat. I posted it with the expectation that it would sink without trace, and wandered off for the rest of the day, but I woke up the next day to find a good discussion going on, with some thoughtful comments. I had wanted to be more of a participant and less of a lurker, and I’d blown it!

Oh well. Anyway, despite losing that chance for interaction, it remains my favourite. It’s a reminder that I shouldn’t underestimate myself. 🙂

APPY

Pow Wow (Commemorative for Matthew Gives Plenty) with my many feathered friends (2021)

Although it did not attract a lot of attention when originally published, I feel Pow Wow is an impactful diary on several counts. There is the obvious significance of the occasion on which it is based. For another, it is a different approach for my cultural activism by encouraging readers to participate in an interactive way and on their own level. It also helps bring focus to the importance of better understanding and protecting Indigenous culture. I defer to Meteor Blades’ comment that it “needs more eyes..

CAMERON PROF (as BKSKINNER)

A white Jewish male: My perspective on why we all need to pay for slavery reparations (2020)

I have been lucky enough for a pretty dumb guy, to have been blessed with people on here that for some reason enjoy my writing. I have written many thousands of diaries on here first under my old handle of BFSkinner and now under my current one. Some diaries get 500 plus comments, I give myself a pat on the back and go on for another day.

The one diary, though, that I am most “proud” of writing reached far fewer eyeballs: 66 diary recs with 27 TJ recs. The diary was written in a topic I no longer broach on here, for multiple reasons: being Jewish. It talked about how I as a Jewish guy could find no other reason to not favor giving reoperations, it is a situation of a no-brainer. For all the work and the vast majority of that forced and undetpaid and underappreciated made by the black community we owe them.

OCEANDIVER

The Daily Bucket: Friendly Seal is a mom!! (2016)

Everything I write is about nature and the environment. To me, humans are just a minor part of the world but the twisted perception we have of our importance is what’s led to pretty much all the problems that have emerged, from environmental to political to pandemic, you name it. My little diaries describe what I pay attention to in the natural world; I post them in the nature community groups Backyard Science (Daily Buckets) and Birds and Birdwatching (Dawn Choruses). We invite readers to join us daily and weekly—the comment threads are a great way to focus attention on Mother Earth and to honor her.

Here’s one diary dear to my heart, about a friend in my local bay. I call her Friendly Seal.

HARICOT BLUE

The Unfathomable Stupidity of Rich White Men (2020)

This was a fun one to write and obviously touched a nerve at the time (in the heat of the BLM protest movement) but I’m afraid my optimism about the BLM protests presaging a genuine revolution against our Pasty Plutocratic Patriarchy has proved unfounded.

P CAREY

Books That Changed My Life: The Brothers Karamazov (2014)

Though published years ago and when I was fairly new at posting on Daily Kos, this is (if not my best) the diary I would single out. And while the writing is rough and I have learned much since, the energy of the piece still moves me. Ostensibly about a book that changed my life, it is more a requiem on the death of my youngest, dearest brother.

NONLINEAR

The handbook for dissenting voices here on Daily Kos (2021)

I think it is my best because I believe it addresses a question that is at the very heart of why Daily Kos is unique. It asks how can we encourage writers to express ideas and feelings outside the Daily Kos mainstream. It doesn’t do it by asking the question directly but rather by providing an answer.

OCCAMS HATCHET

Calling bullshit on the fear mongers (2006)

I really kinda like this one, because it’s timeless: Republicans are still all and only about fear (which begets hatred), so most of this still applies. (Plus ngl, I loved it when we could drop f-bombs around here and nobody said boo, lol.)

CLIO2

LGBTQ Literature: Nonbinary ways of being (2021)

DK writers and commenters greatly aided my own gender exploration. This diary reviews four volumes of personal accounts by a variety of nonbinary individuals, with some reference to my own life. And with a coda in—how DK!—cat pix. 😉 Both a thank you and the piece of writing here I’ve been most proud to own.

GREG DWORKIN

Mr. Roosevelt’s social insurance​​​​​​​ (2011)

I stumbled on this exhibit and the visuals were just so evocative of a long gone era, while the story still hits home.

That’s it for this week, so get to reading!

It’s not too late to submit your own TIMB story, of course. To make my job easier (and data entry much faster—give some love to Christopher Reeves for his help on that front), please use this format for your submission:

Linked title of story (year published)

A sentence or two in your own words—not an excerpt from the story—about why it’s your “best.”

See you in the comments!

RELATED: Daily Kos Turns 20: Let’s showcase our best work! Up next: The man who started it all—Kos himself

One more thing: If you’ve already submitted, there’s no need to do it again, and we are only accepting one story per person. And if you simply can’t narrow down your choice before comments close, we’ll be back with another installment (and opportunity to submit) next week, when I’ll have even more Community submissions.

This post was originally published on this site

Walmart, the original big-box vendor based in Bentonville, Arkansas, has always looked for ways to promote its wholesome family image. Sure, there are plenty of stories about Walmart killing communities and small businesses. Boy, though, one thing they did do was offer people with disabilities an opportunity to work as a greeter, right? It was a job that put Americans with disabilities out front and made them visible. Well, it was until 2019; that’s when Walmart cut the greeter position at over 1,000 stores, leaving many disabled staff members without a job. 

Before all of that, though, Walmart was a champion for those with disabilities, right? Not if you ask the jury that heard the case of Marlo Spaeth. Spaeth has Down syndrome. After working for almost 16 years at her Walmart location with high performance evaluations for her work, Spaeth was switched to a new position. Because she had difficulty adjusting to her new schedule, Walmart fired her in July 2015. Spaeth asked for a 60-minute adjustment to her new schedule to match her prior work schedule, but the company refused. She asked to be rehired in a similar role, and the company refused to consider her application. That was the moment that Spaeth decided to fight back.

From CNBC:

Then, after nearly 16 years of working there, Walmart abruptly fired her in 2015. Spaeth, who has Down syndrome, was devastated.

Her sister and legal guardian, Amy Jo Stevenson, said that Spaeth quickly “receded into a shell” and lost the sense of purpose she got from the job at the Walmart Supercenter in Manitowoc, where she had thrived on interacting with customers and had received praise from supervisors in performance reviews.

Devastated. Sixteen years of her life seemed to have been snatched away from her. After hearing a four-day court case brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a jury in Green Bay, Wisconsin, came back quickly with a record judgment of $125 million dollars. The verdict was meant to be a symbol of the level of her pain and suffering, as well as a reflection of the deliberate action that Walmart had taken to seemingly move an employee with a disability around internally in a way that set them up to fail so they could be fired.

Markos and Kerry talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections

In 2020, Walmart reported $129 billion in profit, not counting other businesses where Walmart heirs have ownership stakes. The ownership group is reported to be worth roughly $240 billion, with each family member sitting on around $62 billion. For Walmart, though, Spaeth’s case isn’t over. 

While the judge reduced the verdict to $300,000, the maximum allowed in the state, according to Spaeth’s sister, she was still excited about the possibility of going back to work at Walmart. 

Walmart makes an interesting claim in its appeal, according to Disability Scoop:

“So while Walmart knew that Ms. Spaeth had requested a return to her prior fixed schedule, nothing in Walmart’s knowledge suggested that this request was linked to her Down syndrome,” reads the court filing, which requests a new trial. “Walmart did not act with malice or reckless indifference towards Ms. Spaeth’s rights.”

There is an interesting thing to note here: Walmart is effectively going to contend that it had no way of knowing that Down syndrome impacts a person’s ability to adjust to a schedule and that after a schedule has been the same for almost 16 years, it is not surprising that changes to that schedule would be exceptionally difficult for that person.

Walmart simply wasn’t aware that Spaeth had Down syndrome, it seems, or they never took it into consideration. Walmart just didn’t see her, or her disability. They knew her for 16 years, but never saw Spaeth for this part of who she was. So they must be blameless, right? 

Note: this article originally had an incorrect profit margin pulled which has been corrected.