taxes

House Democrats’ plans to raise taxes on the rich and on profitable corporations stop well short of the grand proposals many in the party once envisioned to tax the vast fortunes of tycoons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk — or even thoroughly close loopholes exploited by high-flying captains of finance.

 

Instead, the House Ways and Means Committee, influenced more by the need to win the votes of moderate Democrats than by progressive Democratic ambitions, focused on traditional ways of raising revenue to pay for the party’s $3.5 trillion social policy bill — by raising tax rates on income.

horseshit

The George Bush Center for Intelligence is the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, located in the unincorporated community of Langley in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States; near Washington, D.C.

ill-reputeJournalist Glenn Greenwald teared into several prominent Democrats after they praised ex-President George W. Bush’s speech about the “dangers to our country” rising “at home” – 20 years after the beginning of his ‘War on Terror’.

 

In his speech on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks – which sparked Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan, war crimes, and the rise of a surveillance state against American citizens – the former president warned that there was “growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within.”

 

revolution

The American Revolution is often credited to be the first before the French Revolution. But these two events that bear the name “revolution” have nothing in common. nothing at all...

 

The American Revolution was mostly the revolt of a rich people who did not want to pay taxes (what’s new in the land of the Pilgrims?) and the French Revolution was from a people who could not afford bread ("let’s them have cake"). As well the American Revolution was helped by the French armies against the English without whom the American Revolution would have completely fizzled. The debt to the French was soon erased by what could have been the first US “false flag” event called the XYZ affair.

cia

A controlled detonation by American forces that was heard throughout Kabul has destroyed Eagle Base, the final C.I.A. outpost outside the Kabul airport, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Blowing up the base was intended to ensure that any equipment or information left behind would not fall into the hands of the Taliban.

Eagle Base, first started early in the war at a former brick factory, had been used throughout the conflict. It grew from a small outpost to a sprawling center that was used to train the counterterrorism forces of Afghanistan’s intelligence agencies.

unity

WASHINGTON — As they traveled the country laying wreaths, strolling through crash sites in pastoral meadows and comforting families whose wounds are ripped open anew each year, two living presidents used the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to urge Americans to come together in an effort to weather deep political and cultural divisions.

 

godots

“My freedom and my children’s freedom and children’s children’s freedom are at stake,” said Ms. Holmes, who lives in Indiana. In August, she submitted an exemption request she wrote herself, bolstered by her own Bible study and language from sources online.

 

Some vaccines were developed using fetal cell lines from aborted fetuses, she wrote, citing a remote connection to a practice she finds abhorrent. She quoted a passage from the New Testament: “Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit.”

 

Read more:

 

the list...

The execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein took place on 30 December 2006. Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging, after being convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for the Dujail massacre — the killing of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in the town of Dujail — in 1982, in retaliation for an assassination attempt against him.

 

greg

Our leaders have used a pandemic to divide us, and we have taken the bait.

Public health is now a pawn on a political chessboard as Australia’s major parties seek to wedge each other over whose fault it is that much of the eastern seaboard remains locked down and under-vaccinated, and whose strategy is better.

The timing of the forthcoming federal election is entirely linked to COVID, and whether there will be enough vaccine in arms to allow liberty to return before Christmas, or whether the Festive Season will come with a huge spike in hospital admissions.

 

That would be bad optics.

superman

ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, I woke up around 8:30 a.m., took a shower, and made a mug of Nescafé instant coffee. By the time I opened up my laptop and maneuvered to Common Dreams — the favorite website of all progressives of that time — it was 9 a.m.

 

Common Dreams was then designed with the important stories in the middle of the page, with brief snippets about less significant issues in a column on the left. It was the left-hand column that featured one sentence in red: “Plane hits World Trade Center.”

mice

Humanized mouse is a general term that refers to a mouse that has been engrafted with something from a human. This could be a short strand of human DNA, human tissue, a human tumor, a humanized immune system, or parts of the human microbiome.

 

Meanwhile:

 

9/11

"A really bad idea, embraced by millions of people, is still a really bad idea.” ~ Tony Blauer

 

“A personal creative idea outside the box can still be a really bad idea" — Gus Leonisky

 

WELCOME...

 

Here we follow a couple of videos on YouTube. 

 

One is by John Cleese about creativity for managers. 

nuz flash

When a news network based in India or a newspaper based in Nigeria or Hong Kong can be held in the same high regard as The New York Times or the Financial Times, we will know that we have succeeded in eradicating global white privilege in the media.

 

In the Western liberal tradition, the media is deemed to have a critical role in speaking truth to power, exposing injustices and scandals, and even seeking notoriety to attract eyeballs.

democracy President Joe Biden will convene a ”virtual Summit for Democracy” in December – a brave and foolish move, given the political paralysis and discord in the US.

 

sunday

Water crashing through New York subways, extreme wildfires tearing through California, Greece and Australia’s own black summer: All media companies, but especially those with populist and tabloid voices, know the power of these images in a world dealing with the catastrophic impact of climate change.

 

News Corp Australia’s decision to end its long-standing editorial hostilitytowards carbon-reduction policies and advocate for the world’s leading economies to hit net zero emissions by 2050 is welcome, but lags far behind a broader shift in the business community and among voters.