5.1 The official unemployment rate is 5.1 percent, or 8 million people, according to the US Department of Labor. However, this widely reported “official” number overlooks the millions of people unemployed for more than a year nor does it count those who are working part-time and looking for full-time work. The Department of Labor monthly report which includes people working part-time and looking for full-time work shows the real rate of unemployment is 10.3 percent.

6 It has been 6 years since the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour was raised.

8.9 Millions of adults, 8.9 million in fact, work full-time, year round and earn too little to lift their families out of poverty.

Our bold Saudi allies, using US weapons and guidance, struck another blow for freedom in Yemen this weekend, slaughtering 44 civilians including mourners at a funeral for people killed by the Saudis' enemies. The US is currently helping the extremist, misogynist, anti-Semitic, terrorist-supporting, head-chopping Saudi tyrants "restore" a former Yemen leader who took power in a single-candidate election. Because, as we all know, spreading freedom and democracy is the only reason we are involved in the Middle East. That's why we're working with the Saudi tyrants to overthrow the Syrian tyrant with the help of the religious tyrants of ISIS and al Qaeda whom we are also fighting when we are not working with them to overthrow the Syrian tyrant with whom we used to work closely in torturing suspects in the War on Terror but whom we now seek to overthrow just like we did Libya's Gadafy with whom we also worked until we overthrew him and turned his country over to ISIS and al Qaeda whom we are now fighting in Syria when we are not working with them in Syria (and Yemen) along with the terrorist-supporting religious extremists in Saudi Arabia. All of this, of course, springing from the deeply humanitarian exercise in freedom-spreading known as the Iraq War of 2003 (not to be confused with Gulf War of 1991, or the super-righteous War of Humanitarian Annihilation Against Children and the Elderly 1991-2003, during which the progressive Clinton administration openly accepted responsibility for the deaths of at least 500,000 Iraqi children at the time -- "We think it's worth it") which opened the door for al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni extremists groups whom we armed and funded during the famous "Surge" and later went on to become ISIS whom we are now fighting when we're not working with them to overthrow the Syrian tyrant and I think this is where we came in … but God almighty, is there no way out?

As hundreds of thousands of my regular readers know, I became a candidate for the U.S. presidency several months ago. As I saw the field of Republican candidates grow, and as I assessed the quality of my competition shrink, my hopes rose. If I couldn’t beat a bunch of bozos that included Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and the brother of George W. Bush, I had no business even considering running for such a high office.

But even beyond the sub-mediocrity represented by those Republican presidential wannabes, I just figured the time was ripe for what I had to offer. After all, everyone was saying how the electorate wanted an “outsider,” a guy who was not beholden to the big money donors, not corrupted by coziness with the corporate CEOs, the Koch brothers, or the Wall Street crooks. When it came to being an outsider, I had damn near everyone beat by a mile, and as for my associations with the rich and powerful were concerned, the richest guy I knew as a close personal friend drove a ten year old Ford truck and lived in a house that was badly in need of a new roof.

He was born into poverty in New Hampshire in 1811.

His father was a struggling farmer. His mother did most of the other chores.

He was a brilliant student, but the family often moved, looking for a better life—a couple of times so the father could avoid being put into debtor’s prison.

At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and became a printer’s apprentice, sending much of his wages to help his family.

For several years, he worked as an apprentice and then as a printer, his hands covered by ink, his body ingesting the chemicals of that ink.

He worked hard, saved money, helped others achieve their political dreams, became the editor of newspapers, and soon became an owner.

— from Strategic Culture

Starting in 2011 in Libya, the United States dropped bombs on Libya in order to replace its pro-Russian dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. The EU is now tearing itself apart with guilt-feelings at European nations’ responses to the refugee-crisis that was caused by this American bombing-campaign in Libya, and then by the one in Syria. Europe has also received refugees from the American-sponsored bombing-campaign in eastern Ukraine (the bombing-campaign that the 2014 American-installed anti-Russian Ukrainian government calls an ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation,’ or ‘ATO,’ which labels the residents in that pro-Russian area — where the residents reject the February 2014 U.S. coup — as ‘Terrorists’ and thus as being suitable to be bombed, and even firebombed). 

And yet, despite these millions of U.S.-caused refugees into Europe, European nations still permit U.S. troops to remain stationed on European soil decades after the entire reason for NATO’s very existence (which was protection of Europe against a communist invasion from the east) ended. (The Soviet Union’s equivalent Warsaw Pact had dissolved and ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union itself did — yet NATO continued on, and constantly touts ‘the Russian threat,’ just as it did the Soviet threat, as if there were no change when communism collapsed, as if the ideological reason for the Cold War had been fake all along. There is no justification whatsoever for “the New Cold War.”) Russia is now responding to this new American-created hostility of Europeans against Russia, by its matching this newly transformed now anti-Russian  NATO’s war-games against Russia, with similar Russian defensive maneuvers to prepare for an increasingly possible NATO invasion into Russia. 

The squishes have gone squeamish. When it comes to one of their own, they quiver, wobble, worry and fret; they know not what to do. They, their brains and their nerves, have gone soft. Ted Cruz is right. These clowns are squishes.

I speak, of course, of the once-formidable, once-singleminded Republican establishment. Its mission on earth was to attack — to attack anyone who moved in colors other than the deepest reds. Purpled Arkansan conservatives; center-left stiffs — later, latte-sipping windsurfers — of pinkish hues; young black! Illinoisans; older white women — all were fair game, and the game was always on. The Republican establishment had found its reason for being, and all was right with the world. It was here to attack, to slander, to destroy, to bundle plutocratic millions and with them defame anyone not of the sickly honeyed hive. This was the Golden Era of malice well financed.

A September 3 caption on Canada’s Global News:

Warning: the next image contains content some viewers may find disturbing. Discretion is advised.

The impact of that image of a three-year old Kurdish boy, drowned, lying face down on a Turkish beach is astonishing. What is remarkable is the hesitancy of much of the media to publish the picture.

What is most “disturbing” about the picture is that it speaks to the world’s incredible apathy over the past many months as the greatest refugee crisis since World War II has continued to build—in plain sight.

There are so many things competing for our attention, so many requests for our money, our support, or our “likes.” Every day the requests renew themselves in the news media, in the mail, and in social media, the appeals to our conscience, our self-interest, our sense of outrage. Legions of people and organizations want our help, want our empathy, or even just want our affirmations for what they believe.

It’s overwhelming, the bombardment of information about things going wrong nearly everywhere, from the horrible plight of refugees from Syria to the idiotic burble of comment from so many of our politicians and presidential wannabes.

How does anyone remain sane amid the clutter of it all, the assaults on our empathy and our not-inexhaustible ability to care about so many things beyond our control, things near and far about which we can do little or nothing?

— from Waging Nonviolence

Frida Berrigan’s husband Patrick Sheehan reads to their children Rosena (left) and Seamus (right). (WNV / Frida Berrigan)

I am in countdown mode. In just one week, Seamus Philip Berrigan Sheehan-Gaumer starts school. That’s right, our three-year-old will matriculate at The Friendship School in Waterford, Connecticut from about 9:30 in the morning until 3 p.m. five days a week. Yikes!

Some days, when he is in full possession of his “No,” I count down gladly, gleefully, with madcap anticipation at all I will be able to accomplish when he decamps. When he snuggles into my lap after a friend’s funeral mass and says “Peace be with you, Mommy,” my heart breaks at the idea that I would delegate any of my parental responsibilities to Ms. This and Mr. That. But, day by day, whether I exult or exude anxiety at how fast we are catapulting towards the beginning of school, I am convinced that Seamus will love school for three-year-olds.

The huge military parade held in Beijing this week was billed as a commemoration of China’s role in World War II. Over 15 million Chinese died in its eight-year resistance to Japanese invasion.

China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, dressed in a finely tailored Mao suit, stood atop the Forbidden City’s Gate of Heavenly Peace to observe 12,000 troops and a legion of armored vehicles, missile carriers, and warplanes.

Interestingly, Xi underlined that China’s political development is based on Marxist-Leninist theory and the thinking of Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping.

China rightly observed that the West has long ignored, its important role in fighting the Japanese Empire. Without fierce resistance by China’s Nationalists and Communists, Japan might have managed to invade Australia and eastern India -though it would still have lost the war to overwhelming American power.

It had to happen sometime and it did. Two young television journalists from CBS affiliate WDBJ in Roanoke, Virginia, were shot and killed on live TV by a former coworker on Aug. 26. The killer filmed the murders himself and left a trail of comments and a video of the deed on social media before committing suicide as police closed in on him hours after his crime. The murderer used his previous experience in television to publicize his mad act for maximum effect.

Reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were killed while they were interviewing Chamber of Commerce executive Vicki Gardner about tourism in the Roanoke area. Gardner survived the shooting. The interview was to have been just another upbeat segment on the station’s early morning news program when shots rang out and happy talk turned to horror. Thousands of viewers within range of WDBJ’s signal saw the killings as they happened on live television and millions more saw them around the world in cyberspace soon afterward.

— from Robert Reich's Blog

I

An economy depends fundamentally on public morality; some shared standards about what sorts of activities are impermissible because they so fundamentally violate trust that they threaten to undermine the social fabric.

It is ironic that at a time the Republican presidential candidates and state legislators are furiously focusing on private morality – what people do in their bedrooms, contraception, abortion, gay marriage – we are experiencing a far more significant crisis in public morality.

We’ve witnessed over the last two decades in the United States a steady decline in the willingness of people in leading positions in the private sector – on Wall Street and in large corporations especially – to maintain minimum standards of public morality. They seek the highest profits and highest compensation for themselves regardless of social consequences.

“What a world, where Hillary Clinton isn’t in jail, but Kim Davis is.”
— Mike Huckabee

I have great respect for people who have the courage to stand by their principles, who are willing to go against the prevailing currents, who are willing to make sacrifices for what they believe. That respect does not extend to Kim Davis, the elected county clerk in Kentucky, the one who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples seeking them. She’s in jail now, put there by a judge who found her to be in contempt of court. I think she belongs in jail.

In the eyes of some right wingers, withholding my respect from this woman is just another example of liberal hypocrisy, of a double standard they see people like me applying in cases where we disapprove of civil disobedience when it’s engaged in by people whose views we don’t share, but applaud when practiced by people with whom we agree.

[click image to enlarge]

A court clerk in Kentucky has refused to issue marriage licenses to LGBTQA couples despite a US Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states. Along with photographers who refuse to work gay weddings, where does all this commercialized bigotry end?

— from Let's Try Democracy

The United States and its European allies have launched wars on the Middle East that have created an enormous refugee crisis. The same nations are threatening Russia. The question of maintaining peace with Iran is on the tip of everyone's tongue. Even in Asia and the Pacific, not to mention Africa, the biggest military buildup is by the United States.

So why does Japan, of all places, have streets full of antiwar demonstrations for the first time since the U.S. war on Vietnam? I don't mean the usual protests in Okinawa of U.S. bases. I mean Japanese protests of the Japanese government. Why? Who did Japan bomb? And why do I say the future of war and peace in the world is at stake in Japan?

Let's back up a little. Japan went through a period of relative peace and prosperity between 1614 and 1853. The U.S. military forced Japan open to trade and trained Japan as a junior partner in imperialism, a story told well in James Bradley's The Imperial Cruise. The junior partner chose not to stay a junior partner, challenging U.S. dominance in World War II.

— from Foreign Policy In Focus

The national security community in the United States and the West neither predicted the Islamic State’s rise, nor has been able to figure out how to halt it. Writes Burak Kadercan at National Interest, the Islamic State has

… constituted a source of embarrassment for the security community…. Consequently, there is little agreement in the security community over the true nature of ISIS and the proper strategy to effectively “degrade and destroy” the organization. Put bluntly, for all the pride that the security community takes in its predictive, explanatory, and prescriptive capabilities, it has failed (with a capital F) over the puzzle that ISIS poses.

Kadercan maintains that policymakers and natsec analysts have bought into three myths. The first:

A MEMO TO SENATOR SANDERS

"...the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to allies or partners..."
— Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense May 10, 2010

Senator Sanders, the extravagance of military spending today cannot be defended, and it reflects a corrupted political system. Great wealth is taxed away from the American people and transferred unjustly to a tiny cohort of wealthy and influential oligarchs—in the so-called military/industrial complex—while civil programs of much public benefit languish, starved for funds.

The excess is decoupled from any credible need. We spend more on defense than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Great Britain, India, and Germany combined—the next seven largest defense budgets. We account for 39% of all the military spending in the world. Our defense budget is almost three times larger than China's and greater than Russia's by a factor of seven.

When the apocalypse arrived no one knew it could be so seductive. In the Pacific Northwest global warming has meant winter days fit for lounging outside in t-shirts. Wildfires feeding on drought-stricken forests are producing surreal tangerine-orange sunlight. The heat has wreaked havoc on everything from snowpack to marine estuaries, but it is also resulting in a longer growing season and greater crop diversification.

This is not to put smiley faces on the four horseman. Humanity, after taking over the driver’s seat of evolution, has crashed it into the brick wall of industrial civilization.

Nonetheless, the apocalyptic world is what we make of it. We are now in a salvage operation where our goals are to recuperate and regenerate the disappearing world.

New York real-estate mogul and media personality, Donald Trump, is the odds-on favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination. Here are the top ten reasons why Trump will prevail.

10. He's the best of a weak field. The latest Huffington Post National Republican Primary poll of polls shows Trump in first place (30.7 percent), followed by Surgeon Ben Carson (12.1 percent) and 15 candidates in single digits. The early favorites Jeb Bush (8 percent) and Scott Walker (4.8 percent) have faded.

Moreover, rank-and-file Republicans don't like their Washington leaders. Before Trump came on the scene, most observers thought that the real leader of the Republican Party was Roger Ailes, head of the Fox News Network; now it's "the Donald."

The Kim Davis gay marriage license case is a completely manufactured scandal, designed precisely to produce the current result: a “martyr” jailed for her beliefs, exciting media frenzy and fueling profitable fundraising and grassroots recruitment for ideological agitators. The actual issue is quite simple, and doesn’t involve “religious freedom” at all. But there is something more sinister going on behind these Kentucky conniptions.

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis swore an oath — before God — to “faithfully execute the duties of my office” when she took the post. These duties now include issuing same-sex marriage licenses, in line with the laws of Kentucky and the United States. If she now feels, upon her conscience, that she cannot do that, then she should simply resign her office. If she stays in the job but still refuses to execute the duties of her office, then she is literally breaking her oath to God. Obviously, she prefers to be an oathbreaker before the Lord than to give up the manufactured status of “martyr” she and her well-off backers are now promoting.

Yesterday, I posted a brief essay on this blogsite constructed from a series of rhetorical questions, all of them framed around the clause “how dumb do you gotta be,” and all of them directed at the stupidity required to vote for or otherwise support any of the Republican candidates who are seeking that political party’s nomination to run for the highest office in the land.

In my view, people must be pretty fucking dumb if they can support Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Jeb! Bush, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, or any of the others in that Republican herd of people who usually don’t seem very smart themselves. Oh sure, the Koch brothers and the big money donors to most of these people aren’t exactly stupid when it comes to pursuing their perceived self interest, but the slobocracy, the high school drop outs, the working class people, and the religious yahoos who shout agreement with these fools are, alas, not smart enough to know their own best interests, and seem entirely incapable of knowing who their friends are. It should be obvious to anyone with a particle of gray matter in his or her skull that none of these Republicans are ever going to do any of them a nickel’s worth of good. They are all intent, in fact, on working for the rich, further endangering the futures of the people who support them so mindlessly, widening the gap in income, making things easier for those oligarchs who want to pay even less in taxes, and otherwise reinstalling and reinvigorating the policies of George W. Bush even while we’re still trying to repair the damage done during that nitwit’s two terms in office. Those two terms were made possible, in part, by the self-defeating way people on the left conduct themselves, failing to keep their eyes on the prize, constantly splitting hairs and finding fault with people in their own camp while ignoring the menace at the gates of their own castle.

The right-wing manna-money-from-heaven scam continues. HuffPost:

[Kim Davis's] attorneys, who are from an anti-gay group [the "Liberty Counsel, which is closely tied to Liberty University"] designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, have steered her wrongly in terms of the law. They are more interested in creating a martyr for their fund appeals than in giving good legal advice….

One of her attorneys, Roger Gannam, claims: "Today, for the first time in history, an American citizen has been incarcerated for having the belief of conscience that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. And she's been ordered to stay there until she's willing to change her mind, until she's willing to change her conscience about what belief is."

If a pizza shop refused to sell pizza, everyone would say it was run by crazy people.

What does it say about the people who run the news media that they don’t want to report news?

If you read on, you probably expect this lede to be revealed as hyperbole. Sorry, no. I mean it: newspaper editors and TV producers routinely come across delicious slices of news, and then decide not to publish it or put it on the air.

Yet nobody calls them what they are: censors.

Or crazy people.

I understand Andy Parker, the grief-stricken father whose 24-year-old daughter Alison was slain on live television in Roanoke, VA.

When my nephew died in Iraq, I wanted to prevent other families from hearing the words delivered to my brother, “We regret to inform you…” I wrote my first op-ed and sent it for publication to a Kentucky newspaper, believing individual voices mattered, that I could make a difference. Even though signing petitions and participation in peace marches had accomplished nothing to thwart the Bush/Cheney bloodlust in the Middle East. For months after Chase’s death, I lay awake, thinking about his parents, siblings, and my parents, dwelling on the death of a child, children, and feeling panicky. How could I survive if this were one of my sons? I continued writing, spoke at rallies, protested.

I was on a mission.

— from Down With Tyranny!

If you're like me and work on a Windows-based system, you get these popups from time to time offering to "upgrade" you to Windows 10, Microsoft's latest and greatest, for free. Normally these upgrades cost $100 or so.

Me, I'm still on Windows 7, since like many I consider Windows 8 both half-baked for professional use and a data-suck for entertainment use. About the first, it was clear when Windows 8 first came out that you couldn't do serious work using that "tiles" screen, and the "Desktop" screen was so like Windows 7, why not just stick with Windows 7, which, after the Vista disaster, actually worked?