Some say the Inflation Reduction Act was actually more about green energy than reducing greed-driven inflation. It's already been successful in driving capitalists to invest in green businesses, more and more of which are suddenly popping up in WV etc.
It's nice, but doesn't guarantee companies will end fossil fuel production, being that it will always be profitable. This report looks at the economic sticks that need to come with all those pro-business tax-break carrots.

https://www.climateandcommunity.org/economists-case-end-fossil-fuels

In 2000, Harry Reid said that Koch Industries produces more greenhouse emissions than Chevron, Shell and Valero, a statement PolitiFact rated 'mostly true'.

They paid the highest fine *ever* imposed on a company for causing 300 oil spills.

Charles Koch *is* the climate crisis.

Fun facts about Henry Kissinger:

- Helped Nixon fight a secret war in Cambodia

- Encouraged bombing campaigns throughout Southeast Asia that either killed, wounded or left 6 million people homeless

- Helped brutal dictator Pol Pot gain power, which led to a genocide

- Won a Nobel Peace Prize

Waitwhat

@Coctaanatis 😹

So Marianne Williamson is just as wacky as she appears. Okay.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/16/marianne-williamson-former-staffers-abuse

The super-wealthy don't worry about covid because everything they do in their daily lives has a seclusive aspect: private planes, food preparers, country clubs, physicians making in-calls, all-inclusive hotel-sized homes, etc. They don't have to take the daily risks regular people do, so they quickly began to view covid as an inconvenience to their lifestyle.
Climate catastrophe is the problem that will force them to embrace massive change, and a lot sooner than you think.

@JLong - It definitely does. Thanks.

Woke: subscribing to the admirable, very accurate belief that basically all groups are far less privileged and respected than cis het white males but meanwhile refusing to see that economic class is the great denominator and thus remaining completely unaware that in order to change our unregulated free-market torture-capitalist system they need to stand up for all workers who are less educated and financially secure than they are.

Somehow the 400-500 psychotically greedy families who own America successfully normalized a level of inflation in which every single thing suddenly cost twice what it did a few months ago. During a pandemic. During an unnecessary interest rate hike. The blame it on "energy costs" and "lack of workers," but that's bs.

This is how extreme nationalism grows, stuff exactly like that, when regular people are under so much stress that they blame everyone but the elites who screw them over.

@JohnAustin - 100%. exactly/

@Jones_NX03 - I honestly don't know. I wear a mask all the time, it simply seems to me that a lab leak could have happened. Like, you can find tons of evidence supporting either theory, and all we can do is choose our reality wrt what we honestly think. It's all good afaic.

The covid lab leak theory gets people really angry, mostly because it's culture war nonsense, like you're attacking science itself if you say "Sure, it's possible."
Seems kind of stupid for non-virologists to read one article and go online and yell "No way was it a lab accident! What are you, a Trump voter?!"
I can admit it's possible it was a mutation. So what? Half the shit you read online is a psyop to begin with. Shouldn't labs always be improving their safety standards anyway? Jfc.

America will never have a serious labor movement without making all workers understand that system-wide racism isn't helpful to the cause in any way. Fact, not opinion.

Lol I'm so totally overloaded with stuff to do.

Every day, apart from my day job, I work on a weekly music review column for Hippo Press, a full-time antiques-flipping side hustle, tons of social media stuff, and now I'm in the middle of writing a book.

It's my jam but not recommended. 3 months off would be so goddam mint. 😂

PS: I'm not a huge coffee lover either. Kinda sick of it to tell the truth.

ok

Ron DeSantis Was a Guantanamo Torturer?

Might be old news to you, but probable GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis did spend time in Guantanamo Bay as a JAG attorney. Months ago, The Empire Files interviewed a former Guantanamo detainee who swore that DeSantis' function was interviewing detainees in order to find find out how best to torture them.
Note that under the circumstances this is hearsay unless someone has corroborating anecdotes etc.
https://soundcloud.com/eyesleft/desantis

Our neoliberal, monetarist form of Capitalism can only sustain itself by perpetuating relations of ridiculous levels of inequality among human groups, so, for it to survive, it has to exploit and prey upon the unequal differentiations in human "value."

Other than that it's the best, don't get me wrong.

Have to admit that when I saw that Seymour fucking Hersh had written an article that's 1/3 the size of an actual *book* about how the US had bombed the Nord Stream pipeline, I immediately went "Oh, ok, so we bombed the Nord Stream pipeline," not "Oh great, another Russian troll!"

Boy, what a funny world we have here, being $6 trillion behind China in infrastructure spending. Their citizens have high-speed rail and like 50 airports in each of their major cities, but for we Americans, nowadays, everyone who's stuck waiting for a train to go through automatically pulls out their phone to record it in case it derails, and half the time it actually does. Don't you love this place?

I don't think the oligarchs who run this glorified third-world country have any idea what to do about covid at all and they never actually did, they just wanted everyone back to work. They probably talked about doing stuff like "We'll only keep workers on the payroll if they sign a contract promising not to get sick" or something.

Worthlessness comes in all shapes and forms.