When the U.K. voted to leave the European Union, the results were fairly close-- 17,410,742 votes to leave (51.9%) to 16,141,241 to stay (48.1%). It wasn't that close in Scotland, however, where most people wanted to remain in the EU. This was the breakdown in the U.K.'s constituent parts:
As I've mentioned before, I got a threatening letter from Trump's attorney over a post we did on Melania's former career. I didn't think much about it and my own attorney told me to ignore it. Since then one member of the DWT staff told me he's been getting threats-- including to his family-- from Trumpist deplorables.
I spent much of my fifteenth year on earth stealing. I had a plan. Every day after school, I would go to the Woolworth's five and dime and steal something-- a packet of turnip seeds, a dish, a dish towel, a gardening implement, bug repellent... I carefully packed the loot in big boxes a shipped the boxes to myself care of Poste Restante in Nukuʻalofa, the capital of Tonga.
The new poll out this morning from Vox Populi of New Hampshire registered voters confirmed what pollsters are seeing nationally-- a Trumpanzee meltdown. In a 4-way race, Hillary leads Mr. Trumpanzee 41-31% with Gary Johnson at 11% and Jill Stein at 3%. What worries New Hampshire Republicans far more than the collapse of Mr. T, is that he's dragging down incumbent Senator Kelly Ayotte, who can't give a clear answer about where she stands on supporting Trump.
This evening, President Obama played out a vision for a more just tax system for working families. It isn't something he or anyone else expects to see passed-- at least not while Obama is president and the Congress is firmly controlled by Wall Street and Big Business through the Republican Party (and the New Dems and Blue Dogs) they own. A vision to aspire to? At best, I guess.The song above has a different sort of vision. The Clash released it in late 1979 on their third album, London Calling, their breakthrough (platinum) U.S. release.
Did you miss the BBC documentary about The Clash on New Year's Day? That's it above-- and worth an hour and fifteen minutes of your time. I remember how excited The Clash were that Julien Temple was filming them-- and I always wondered what happened to that footage. That's it-- almost 4 decades later. There are interviews and some decidedly mixed quality context bits, of course, and a somewhat interesting history of Covent Garden, but the greatest value here is the New Years Day 1977 concert The Clash did at The Roxy-- despite a seriously fucked-up sound system.
Over the past few days we talked about the corrupting nature of the culture of policing-- from the perspective of victims and from the perspective of good apple police officers who were sickened by the entire filthy enterprise.
A few days ago we took a look back on the 1992 war between the police and Body Count. They were hardly the only punk rock band to decry police racism and violence-- just the band that the police felt most threatened by. MDC never managed to sell the millions of records that Ice-T sold. Their music, which you can hear in the video above, was less accessible... and those initials stood, at least for a time when they moved from their native Austin to San Francisco, for Millions of Dead Cops.
In Sunday's NY Times Eric Lipton exposed one of the most insidious contemporary conspiracies in American politics: a secret alliance between Republican Attorney Generals and Big Oil. The chart above may summarize one of its key raisons d'être, but we'll come back and look at in in a moment.
