Vonnegut quote about need for expanding ones experiences:
“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.”
Kurt Vonnegut,
I reside in USA, northeast coast. I am 78 year old male, fully retired. Use social security and medicare benefits.
My peers(baby boomers) need to step aside in every aspect of life: jobs, economics, political offices at all levels. We had our shot at running things.
Old farts like Trump and others are just obstacles in the way for real changes,ie, universal healthcare, climate change and use of renewables, living wages, childcare for families, wealthy to pay fair share of taxes, etc, etc.
ProPublica article:
“Economic Civil War”: States Push Laws to Shield Oil and Gas Companies From Accountability
Most of the 15 bills being considered are part of a coordinated effort by groups linked to right-wing activist Leonard Leo.
US Guardian article today April 7:
" The more immediate legal framework is the Geneva conventions of 1949 onwards, which both countries have ratified. Article 33 of the Fourth Convention explicitly prohibits collective punishment of a civilian population. Article 54 of Additional Protocol I – whose core principles are binding as customary international law even on states, like the US and Iran, that never ratified it – prohibits attacks on infrastructure indispensable to civilian survival...."
James Baldwin quote rather appropriate for current American political admin verbal diarrehia on media:
"I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do."
James A. Baldwin
Bertrand Russell on fascism. Sound familiar America? No secret strategy.
"The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other."
I run Unbuntu LINUX on an old Mac Book Pro(2009) and also use a Mac Book Pro(2015) running OS 11.7.
For photography , I use 3 35mm Nikon film format analogue cameras and 2 analogue 6x6 medium format film cameras, plus 2 full digital 35mm Nikon DLSR cameras. Probably going all analogue.
For music listening I use +2,000 cds. High end components. No laptop, no streaming services.
I need to update my laptop computers for they are getting old. Any machine/LINUS distro suggestions ?
Did an international vacation trip last week, returning home on Saturday night. Airports were a real shit show.
Took a miserable12 hours to get from St Martin to Boston MA, with one connection in Ft Lauderdale.
I guess when our government is run by a three times failed casino owner, you get real crap services.
News media and all media must tell the truth and use real words for what happened. Call it what it was..we all saw various videos of the event.
The unnecessary ICE shooting of the woman yesterday in Minneapolis was a homicide: criminal murder by America's newly formed Gestapo.
He's just openly saying what this was all about:
"The United States is going to be very strongly involved in Venezuela’s oil industry after the operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump told Fox News on Saturday."
"We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we’re going to be very much involved in (Venezuela's oil industry)."
This isn't some conspiracy theory thing, it's straight from the horse's mouth.
EDIT: Trump now also openly saying that the US "will run Venezuela".
Heads up for Demo politicians going forward. You really need it......
If you are not talking about and putting forth concrete proposals for *increasing wages, *addressing healthcare costs and affordable housing and *increasing taxes on ultra wealthy and large corporations you will remain out of power.
These are traditional "kitchen table issues" for wage earning families....Dems seem to have forgotten their past successes.
Robert Reich today posting:
"I want to repeat a warnings I issued a few weeks ago about both AI and crypto.
The question I asked was: What happens when huge amounts of money pour into a poorly understood and unregulated industry that promises spectacular profits for a few winners?
Answer: Many investors lose their shirts while the lucky ones make fortunes. At worst, the bubble bursts and takes the entire economy down with it. "
We have seen this such scenarios before.
You can watch the full version of it on PeerTube at https://fedi.video/w/t4sN6wtVxGox9V8MyK1EzX
The whole thing is scarily familiar.
(About the film dates, they did two versions, one during the war and an update just after. This is the updated version.)
There are no checks and balances, nothing legally and politically currently to stop the Trump admin from implementing its' fascist policies. His game, his house, his refs.......rank corruption throughout the political and legal system.
*EXCEPT* the power and unity of the American people in exercising their Constitutional rights to mass protests. Disrupt, stall the systems any way possible.
WE are 300 million people strong and over +50% do not approve current government regime. USE it.
.
Only people who can legally impeach Trump is the congressional Republicans in the House and a trial in Senate. They acquitted him twice before and they now control both houses of government. Republicans in control.......
Seek another path people.....not going to happen.
Only exception: if "some" Republicans provide the lead( however, none have any character, morals or commitment to the Constitution).
Robert Reich: "When Target rolled back DEI, the company confronted a consumer boycott, which led to a 17 percent drop in the value of its stock. A similar boycott of Walmart has contributed to an 18 percent drop in its stock value in the past month alone."
Economic boycotts are impactful... Spend your money at businesses that share your democractic values. Keep it up
Trump and ICE unlawfully using military against US citizens protesting in California for political purposes.
Is this the end of the beginning, meaning real fight starts now against taking down American fascism?
Or, the beginning of the end, meaning American Fascism prevailing and America has fallen?
Only "We the People" can answer those questions with our actions ......
Thom Hartmann :
"..Umberto Eco, who had a ringside seat to the rise of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the 1920s, noted in his “14 indicators of fascism” that dumbing down the populace by lowering educational standards was critical to producing a compliant populace a fascist leader could easily manipulate.
“All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks,” he wrote, “made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts