Again, stand-up comedy cutting through the bullshit:

We are debating between two horrific, criminal versions of healthcare designed to make people rich off of the pain and suffering of every American. Yes, Obamacare is better. Yes, Trumpcare is worse. Yes, I don’t care. By acting like this is a legitimate debate, we are subconsciously solidifying cultural hegemony for the idea that healthcare should be something exploited for profit. It should not. Stop dignifying that thought process.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/ghost-candidates-are-not-acceptable

I did not know that Ossoff's predecessor was, for all intents and purposes, a non-existent person...

For your collection:
https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/877916375209181184

*promote

https://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.de/2017/06/a-firefighter-who-attended-grenfell.html

Ian Welsh reminds us of a quote by Mark Twain:

There were two ‘Reigns of Terror’, if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror – that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

*doublepromote

Mark's been on the money since about the time he wrote "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea", but there have been two significant developments in Europe that he seemingly didn't see coming: Portugal and the UK.

The Left Alliance in Portugal has basically been giving Schäuble the finger for two years now, with their unilateral end to austerity. How dare they defy the master of coin?! If Schäuble says you need another round of austerity, by God, you better tighten your belts, even if they are already around your neck.

Unsurprisingly, everyone going along with austerity without having a completely export-dependent economy is in deep doo-doo. Meanwhile, those pesky Portuguese actually managed to massively reduce unemployment, despite running a deficit that is entirely too small for their current situation. But that's a different story.

And then there's the UK. There's Corbyn. Tribune of the Plebs. Managed to get the youth voting by offering actual left-wing policies (the "radical youth", as the NYT likes to call them, while claiming that the warmongering, Constitution-shredding, wage-depressing, ecosphere-destroying "centrists" are not the real radicals). Managed to turn quite a lot of UKIP voters around as well. Within striking distance of the Tories, despite the media running 24h a day of drivel like "Jezza's Jihadi Comrades" -- Goebbels would be ashamed of the crudeness of the propaganda campaign by the Sun/Daily Mirror/etc.

The populist left is back, bitches. Corbyn and Sanders are the first steps past the neoliberal warmongers of the Third Way. The Obama experience of a corporatist disguised as a left populist may have given us The Orange One, but it also put another nail into the coffin of neoliberalism.

Antonio Gramsci, founding member of the Italian communist party, who was killed by the fascist regime of Mussolini, gave us the appropriate description of our time:
"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

That's your Trump. That's your opioid epidemic. That's the EU's austerity program in Greece, doing twice as much damage as the German occupation in WW2.

Up for a laugh? Read the McCain part of this series of interviews.

John Moses Browning, giving vehicles the right of way for 99 years now.

Third Way isn't dead yet, Jonathan. And they will try to undermine Corbyn every step of the way, just as before.

SPD (Germany): 23%
PSOE (Spain) : 22.6%
SPÖ (Austria): 26%
PS (France): 10%
PvdA (Netherlnds): 5.7%

Those are just some of the latest election/polling results of social-democratic parties in continental Europe. Corbyn's Labour came in at 40.1%. Yet somehow, Corbyn (and Sanders) is painted as the destroyer of his party's electability.

Watch all the trolls come out of the woodworks again, after claiming for months and months that Corbyn would be the ruin of Labour. And keep track of all the hacks who will still maintain that neoliberal party apparatchiks are the only option to win elections. The mental gymnastics will be hilarious, and the smear campaigns against Corbyn will be even more ferocious. They cannot let anyone challenge the neoliberal consensus and get away with it.

Edit: https://twitter.com/TKMarx/status/873157244967432192

Remember Scott Ritter? Arms inspector, made the rounds with Seymour Hersh about a decade ago with "Target Iran", when the Bush administration was in a very bellicose posture vis-a-vis Iran.

Interesting guy, often amongst the first to call out attempts to fabricate a casus belli on Middle Eastern nations.

He had a go at the NSA document supposedly leaked by Leigh Winner. Check it out: Leaked NSA Report Short on Facts, Proves Little in ‘Russiagate’ Case

"In many ways, the rush to blame Russia for attempting to undermine American democracy by meddling in our election system has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The damage done to the credibility of our democratic institutions as a result of the politicized congressional proceedings has been incalculable, and by all accounts the worst is yet to come.

The Russians barely had to lift a finger—the wounds derived from this political maelstrom have all been self-inflicted. The fact that the mainstream media have been unable to accurately report on the issue only underscores the depths to which institutions and agencies will fall to deride and destroy that which they detest and abhor, namely President Trump."

For your amusement:
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814.2.56.5

105 years ago.

https://www.sandersinstitute.com/

Kelton, West, and Turner? Hot diggity!

Obama: a Hollow Man Filled With Ruling Class Ideas

If you read that piece by Paul Street, I guarantee you will not regret it. You might need a cup of coffee though, it's rather long. And maybe a punching bag.

Appetizer:
"Like his politico-ideological soul-brothers Bill Clinton and Tony Blair (and perhaps now Emmanuel Macron), Obama’s public life has been a wretched monument to the dark power of the neoliberal corporate-financial and imperial agendas behind the progressive pretense of façade of telegenic and silver-tongued professional class politicos."