Global

With six months to go before the midterm election, new national polls are showing that the Democratic Party’s much-touted momentum to gain control of the House has stalled out. The latest numbers tell us a lot about the limits of denouncing Donald Trump without offering much more than a return to the old status quo.

Under the headline “Democrats’ 2018 Advantage Is Nearly Gone,” CNN reportedWednesday that nationwide polling found “the generic congressional ballot has continued to tighten” -- “with the Democrats’ edge over Republicans within the poll’s margin of sampling error for the first time this cycle.”

30 Apr 2018– Antidepressants were once considered a short-term therapy to help people get over a troubled time. All that changed with the debut of the so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant drug ads on TV, and the promotion of the now-discredited “chemical imbalance” theory of depression. Though there is almost no evidence of the theory––that SSRI antidepressants correct deficits in brain levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter––antidepressants became blockbusters for Pharma.

Bob interviews Lee Camp from Redacted Tonight and talks about the history of the Kent State shootings that happened May 4, 1970

http://www.wcrsfm.org/audio/by/title/the_other_side_of_the_news_may_4_2…

The first (of many) junior mining company that wants to mine copper in northeast Minnesota’s water-rich, relatively unspoiled forest and lakes region is the PolyMet Mining Corporation that is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

PolyMet is a Canadian Penny Stock mining company that you can buy on the NYSE for 81 cents a share. It’s peak share price over the past 12 months was $1.36 a share, but it isn’t on anybody “buy” list at the moment.

PolyMet has never mined anything in its life and has never earned a single penny producing anything of value. It is a front group for Glencore, a multinational mining, commodities and oil and gas trading company that is based in Switzerland. Both groups prefer remaining hidden behind boardroom walls. PolyMet’s daily operations are totally funded by mostly greedy institutional investors and loans from deep-pocketed Glencore. Neither corporation should have any credibility in the minds of right-thinking individuals. I will explain that stance later in the column.

Note: This review contains plot spoilers.]

I “celebrated” Karl Marx’s 200th birthday by attending a theatrical version of the 1940 novel Native Son by onetime Communist Party USA member Richard Wright. As adapted by playwright/screenwriter Nambi E. Kelley, Antaeus Theatre Company’s SoCal premiere of Nambi’s play is anything but namby-pamby. Indeed, viewer beware: this is a very disturbing, upsetting one-acter and those who prefer for their stage outings to be innocuous entertainments might want to skip this relentlessly hard hitting drama. After all, as dramatist Bertolt Brecht noted in The Threepenny Opera: “Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can't bear to see it.” 

Whenever the topic is nuclear weapons, I remain in a state of disbelief that we can talk about them “strategically” — that language allows us to maintain such a distance from the reality of what they do, we can casually debate their use.

Consider, in the context of the sudden rush of alarming news that Donald Trump may trash the Iran nuclear agreement on May 12, on the false grounds that Iran is in violation of it, this piece of news from several months ago:

By David Swanson

Fifty years ago, Bobby Kennedy was about to win the Democratic presidential primary in Indiana. He would soon lose in Oregon and in a few weeks win in California, practically clinching the White House, and be murdered the same night. The film RFK Must Die and book Who Killed Bobby? leave little doubt that the CIA killed him. And of course there is no doubt that many have always suspected as much, which has had a damaging effect on U.S. politics whether or not true. But the major impact of RFK’s killing is separate from the question of who killed him.

Technology has bestowed a stunning twist of fate in the arcane world of counting how America votes.

A decade ago, activists railed against private companies who made the computer-driven “black boxes” that tabulated election results. That opacity, to protect their trade secrets, fueled sore losers, conspiracy theories and thwarted journalistic investigations of miscounts or tampering.

But today, the voting machine industry’s newest devices are producing digital images of individual paper ballots, accompanied by devices that mark the ballot or its image, and include audit systems that can trace disputed ballots back to their precincts—by using technology that’s akin to how banks allow smart phones to securely deposit checks.

These newest systems vary—some are better than others. Yet taken together, they suggest technology in on the brink of ushering in a new era of vote counting transparency. This is before winners are certified, not afterward as an academic exercise or audit.

Dear diary, many of my colleagues are unhappy about the recent events in Syria. They are unhappy that Assad is still in power. However, I see the metaphorical glass as being half full. In a recent poll, 58% of Americans support the bombing of Syria and 19% have “no opinion.” This is wonderful news, since it shows how the vast majority of people are easily manipulated and are simply apathetic. In a democracy, the most important but least understood tool is propaganda. Let me share with you the fundamentals of a successful propaganda campaign.

Here are the five rules of public relations a.k.a propaganda:

·        Keep the message simple

·        Make it emotional