Hookin you motherfuckers up: Jonathan Toubin's NY Night Train Daily Party Platter bringing you up to speed to begin the week with his 1st 4

From one of my favorite current party DJ's out there, ever, the always incredible and shitloads of fun rock'n'roll, May I introduce to you: Jonathan Toubin!

From the original 45 of Eddie King and Mae B. May's 1967 recording "Please Mr. D.J." on Chicago's Conduc Records!



The inaugural track of the NY Night Train “Daily Party Platter” series is a supremely spicy slab of wax! Its hard to go wrong when raw electric blues collides with a raw rhythm and blues beat. This pleading minor key diamond takes the cake with all of its intensity and wild pleading vocals. “Please Mr. DJ! Play my song!” What song are they begging to hear? I hope it goes something like this! The rough production and primal nature of the thing makes it difficult to believe this is a 1967 recording! I would’ve guessed five years earlier… Is your hair standing on end?

Eddie King was an Alabama-born Chicago West Side blues guitarist who worked with Little Mac early on, led his own band and was recorded by Willie Dixon. Mae B. May was his little sister who was reluctant to sing at first (hence her nickname – “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t”) but when she got down to it, the wind reakky blew through those mighty pipes! Not long after this single the siblings separated. King would become Koko Taylor’s longtime guitarist and Mae drifted back and forth between music and raising her ten children – doing a brief stint in Lonnie Brooks’ legendary band. The duo reunited nearly two decades later for their first and only LP “Blues Has Got Me” before parting ways again. Eddie King just passed away in 2012.

you can read up about them here: http://www.last.fm/music/Eddie+King+&...
and eddie king's wikipedia is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Ki...



This is my daily addition to the New York Night Train Party Platter playlist. Each track here is recorded directly from the original 45 (no bootlegs, reproductions, etc) to give you an idea of what the real deal authentic vinyl sounds like. COME BACK EVERY DAY FOR A NEW FIX! Because the records pass so quickly at my parties, this channel is an attempt to stop and focus on one record at a time in hopes that it'll turn you on to the artists, tracks, labels, etc. But mostly I hope this music moves you as much as it moves me.

Get your enjoys,
Jonathan Toubin
Soul Proprietor, New York Night Train

http://www.NewYorkNightTrain.com
https://www.facebook.com/newyorknight...
https://twitter.com/jonathantoubin
https://instagram.com/jonathantoubin/

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From the original 45 of The Premiers 1966 recording "Get On This Plane" on Faro Records.



This one is a shout out to all of my Los Angeles friends! See you at the Soul Clap and Dance-Off Sunday (May 24) at The Regent Theater! The Premiers are the supreme San Gabriel ,CA group best known for their 1964 smash hit version of Don and Dewey's "Farmer John" - which kicked in the door for an entire generation of killer East L.A. Chicano rock'n'rollers. They also recorded a number of other NY Night Train-approved killers of the highest order during their brief career that came to a halt when two of the members were drafted to go to Vietnam. On a dark night in 1966, in the flash of an electrical storm, in a single gargantuan thunderclap, this teenage quartet breathed life into this drop-dead gorgeous monster. Driven by a relentless "I Can Give You Everything" baseline, this groovy fuzz-drenched beast builds and builds to "take you on a trip that'll blow your brain"! Come on baby! Get on this plane....

And get on this train! The New York Night Train!

learn more about The Premiers here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prem...
and here: http://markguerrero.com/11.php
and here: http://www.npr.org/2014/08/10/3386324...
http://www.markguerrero.com/17.php


This is my daily addition to the New York Night Train Party Platter playlist. Each track here is recorded directly from the original 45 (no bootlegs, reproductions, etc) to give you an idea of what the real deal authentic vinyl sounds like. COME BACK EVERY DAY FOR A NEW FIX! Because the records pass so quickly at my parties, this channel is an attempt to stop and focus on one record at a time in hopes that it'll turn you on to the artists, tracks, labels, etc. But mostly I hope this music moves you as much as it moves me.

Get your enjoys,
Jonathan Toubin
Soul Proprietor, New York Night Train

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A few weeks ago I came across this Decca version of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell On You” at Detroit’s People’s Records. Since “All Night,” one of my favorites, is also the same label from the same period, and since, what the heck, he’s the best singer/performer/musical personality of all time (I always buy even his worst stuff!), I adopted this puppy and gave it a home with me back in New York City! And it’s been driving the dancers wild ever since!

I’m definitely aware that this comes nowhere near the incomparable first couple of versions in terms of quality. And I admit that the competent vanilla studio band chugging through the glossy arrangement may as well be Blood Sweat and Tears in Vegas (the arranger was later not surprisingly responsible for The Main Ingredient - "Everybody Plays The Fool, "etc). And there are female backing vocals! This time Hawkins’ signature song has been reassembled and locked onto a fast enough grid that you can finally turn “I Put A Spell On You” for the dance floor! In that sense this one''s conceptually similar to the contemporary remix - given a more danceable makeover on one hand at the expense of losing focus and being nowhere near as good as the original! But what the heck, in this case the disparate aesthetically questionable ingredients have their own perverse magic when combined. It just works and he's having fun with it.

In the intro and the awkwardly introduced mid-section we find Screamin' Jay at his weirdest and wildest. Nearly one-third of this short spin is devoted to the beatless stops and starts in the break - showcasing Screamin’ Jay’s trademark grunting and shrieking. Its long enough and weird enough to make anybody dance floor uncertain of what they should be doing and, in general, very uncomfortable. The decadent tedium of this section's length, combined with the freakishness, dissonance, and frustrated anticipation of a return to rhythm, insures that when the beat finally hits again, the floor will commence the dance with the type of universal shared relief and excitement you witness when geriatrics hear a wedding DJ drop the Four Seasons on the heels of an extended Iggy Azalea megamix...

Maybe I’m so hypnotized by Screamin' Jay's hoopin’ and hollerin’, that “I Put A Spell On You” ’66 may in fact be the worst record of all time and I’m too blinded to notice. And next week I may well regret bringing this platter to your attention. But I know that in this life (as well as in any other life) you might as well go out on a limb at the risk of looking ridiculous. There’s a fine line between the worst and the best so I’ll just take my chances, go way beyond the safety zone, and irresponsibly proclaim this the best record ever made… by anybody… EVER… of all time! And even if this track, which I just heralded the preeminent exemplar of the art of recorded music, doesn't even measure up to Screamin’ Jay’s top twenty sides, his most humdrum nostril booger is more resplendent than Drake’s chef d’oeuvre (or his coffee cake for that matter). Like Louis Armstrong before him, Screamin' Jay proves here that his distinctive musicianship can swing even the squarest of musical combos. And what the heck, the man dabbled in schmaltz since day one and I'll take this curiosity over his classic version of, say, "I Love Paris" any day.

If archeologists in the not-so-distant future dive down, deep down below the ocean, into the submerged ruins of New York City and find a random box of records and they pull out this firecracker and drop the needle, they would no doubt assume that this must be the voice of god speaking to them. What’s left of civilization would try to talk and grunt and sing like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and they would spend the rest of eternity trying to figure out the meaning of his words and sounds, what he looked like, how he dressed, his morality, etc. "What would Screamin' Jay do?" (I often ask myself the same question). This shiny little slab of black petroleum would herald a new awakening and change the course of humanity the same way Poggi’s discovery of “De Rerum Natura” sparked the renaissance...

Or at the very least our progeny would dig the vocals...

In summary, this isn’t Screamin' Jay Hawkins' best work but what's not to love? Its wild and unique and I don’t plan to stop turning it anytime soon. Sooooo... You.... You've no doubt heard the entire thing if you've read this far. And YouTube has probably since moved on to the theme from "Ghostbusters" by now... Or maybe your computer has already gone to sleep? Or you've gone to sleep? Anyway, if you're still with me, I'm talking to you... I wanna know... What do you think of this 1966 Decca version of "I Put A Spell On You"?

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From the original 1958 vinyl 45 MISS LA-VELL (LaVelle White) "TEEN-AGE LOVE" on DUKE Records

So far this YouTube playlist has featured relatively new acquisitions, but this one is an old New York Night Train classic that I've turned so many times over the years that its downright embarrassing! But I can always count on this hot little pepper and its one of the few tracks I never get bored with. I planned on highlighting another track for today but when I turned this last night I felt in my gut that this one had to go up today!

And take a listen! That's how you start a song! A strong fast blow right to the head! The screaming intro slides right in after only a couple of seconds and glides across rocky terrain for two minutes of pure bliss! The fluidity of her vocals melt across the top of the coarse rhythm like the perfect grilled cheese! Feel her power and hear that band go! It’s over so fast! A sonic whippit! Play it again!

If you haven't seen thee fantastic LaVelle White play live, she's still got it! Everything! Pipes, showmanship, style... the entire package. Its hard to imagine that such a dynamic contemporary entertainer was making records nearly six decades ago. Though born in Louisianna, she moved to Houston, TX and started singing in blues clubs in the 1940s. She made this, her first record on local/international entertainment don Don Robey's legendary Duke Records - the most commercially successful black-owned record label of the 1950s and one of the most consistently solid imprints of all time. "Teen-Age Love" kicked off a small but mighty string of supreme and highly underestimated Miss LaVell Duke sides that are hands-down some of the finest raw rockin' late rhythm and blues/early soul you'll find anywhere - including NYNT favorites "Stop These Teardrops," "Stolen Love," and "Why Men Go Wild."

Supreme and highly underestimated!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavelle_White
http://www.ponderosastomp.com/music_m...



This is my daily addition to the New York Night Train Party Platter playlist. Each track here is recorded directly from the original 45 (no bootlegs, reproductions, etc) to give you an idea of what the real deal authentic vinyl sounds like. COME BACK EVERY DAY FOR A NEW FIX! Because the records pass so quickly at my parties, this channel is an attempt to stop and focus on one record at a time in hopes that it'll turn you on to the artists, tracks, labels, etc. But mostly I hope this music moves you as much as it moves me.

Get your enjoys,
Jonathan Toubin
Soul Proprietor, New York Night Train

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thank you, Joie Jerkface

I'll share more when i take my summer break
look forward to it, JT rocks!

Liberals Make Big Comeback in 2015 Poll Analysis Finds

from The Wall Street Journal - Washington Wire

There are signs that liberals are making a comeback — and not just because a socialist is running for president, gay marriage is spreading like wildfire and pot legalization is gaining acceptance.

A new analysis of Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll data finds a marked increase in the share of registered voters identifying themselves as liberals, and an even bigger drop in the share saying they are conservatives.

In three national polls conducted so far in 2015, the analysis found that 26% of registered voters identified themselves as liberals — up from 23% in 2014. At the same time, the share of voters identifying as conservatives dropped to 33% from 37% in 2014.

The analysis by GOP pollster Bill McInturff, who looked at survey data from 2010 to 2015, found that the biggest ideological shifts came among women, young people, Latinos and well-educated voters, as well as people in the West and in cities.

From 2010 through 2014, there was little overall variation in the share of people identifying themselves as conservative, moderate and liberal, with conservatives either a plurality or tied with moderates. But that stability seems to be ending this year. For the first time since 2010, conservatives are no longer a plurality: 38% identify as moderates, compared with the 33% who identify as conservative and 26% as liberal.

Mr. McInturff said it wasn’t immediately clear what accounts for the shift. Another poll analysis by Gallup also suggests there has been a leftward movement on social issues: 31% of adults in a May 6-10 poll identified themselves as liberal on social issues — the largest share since Gallup started asking the question in 1999, and the first time social liberals matched the share who said they were socially conservative. On economic issues, by contrast, conservatives continued to dominate by a 39%-19% margin.

These signs of an ideological shift come at a time when public opinion is rapidly changing in favor of gay marriage — a social view long regarded as liberal that is gaining wider acceptance among members of both parties. On the broader political landscape this year, liberal populism is gaining prominence in the anti-Wall Street rhetoric of presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, and of liberal icon Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“Americans’ growing social liberalism is evident not only in how they describe their views on social issues but also in changes in specific attitudes, such as increased support for same-sex marriage and legalizing marijuana,” the Gallup report said.

Mr. McInturff’s analysis of WSJ/NBC data found that the demographic group that now has the most liberals – and that has seen the most dramatic swing to the left since 2010 — is women aged 18-49. Among those voters in 2015 polls, 37% said they were liberal, 23% said they were conservative — a 20 point swing since 2010 when 27% said they were liberal and 33% said they were conservative.

Younger voters also saw a notable swing to the left, with 35% of 18-34-year-olds saying they are liberal and 26% saying the are conservative. In 2010, that age group split 28% liberal-32% conservative.

The Challenger Bernie Sanders: 'We're Going to Win New Hampshire'

from Bloomberg news:

The Vermont senator says he can beat Hillary Clinton in the Granite State.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders boldly predicted Saturday that he would beat Democratic presidential rival and heavy favorite Hillary Clinton in the 2016 New Hampshire primary, expected to be in early February.

“Let me tell you a secret: we’re going to win New Hampshire,” Sanders told upwards of 1,000 supporters gathered in Keene, N.H., the Keene Sentinel reported.

Sanders, 73, has drawn large crowds as he campaigns across Iowa and New Hampshire. Clinton, meanwhile, has continued her low-key "listening tour" ahead of a June 13 campaign event at New York's Roosevelt Island that is expected to kick off a more outgoing phase of her quest for the White House.



A Bloomberg Politics/Saint Anselm poll in May found Clinton leading Sanders in New Hampshire by a margin of 62-18 percent, but Sanders' support has grown as he continues to deliver a populist message on the campaign trail.

“In my view, the issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time,” Sanders said Saturday.

While Sanders didn't mention Clinton by name in his stump speech, he was asked by a reporter afterwards whether the former secretary of state's lack of a concrete position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential trade deal involving the U.S. and much of the Pacific Rim, was hurting her campaign. On Sanders' Senate website he calls the TPP "disastrous."

"Call her up and ask her," Sanders said. "I'm against it."

DIVINE STYLER: IT’S ALL MENTAL

I shot Divine Styler's original LP cover way back when:

HE'S BACK AGAIN.

from L.A. Record:

Word power, it ignites like the sun. Divine Styler’s verbiage has developed a cult following over the span of 25 years since he first appeared in the late 80s via Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate. What appeared initially to be a particularly cerebral iteration of the Afrocentric Native Tongue-era styles quickly blossomed into a fiercely iconoclastic voice. Def Mask, his fourth solo LP and his first since 1998, utilizes a voracious flow to craft a dark, affecting cinematic experience centered on a technocratic dystopia—think Aldous Huxley meets Rammelzee. On a cool L.A. winter afternoon, I sat in conversation with Divine Styler inside a private room at the Seventh Letter’s flagship location on Fairfax. With his teen son by his side, the one-of-a-kind MC candidly spoke about his journey through the music industry, the concepts behind his dystopian opus Def Mask, why he rejects the label of Afrofuturism and the guilty pleasures of smartphone art apps. The earnest intensity that has made his music draw in curious minds the world over is just as present in person as on wax. A musical Morpheus, Divine Styler offers up the red pill for those brave enough to take the plunge. This interview from our print issue #118 by sweeney kovar.

How are you feeling these days?
Considering the state of the world? I got a grumpy old man thing about me but I’m pretty much at peace. It’s a crazy world we’re living in right now. I had to back up from the music business when everything became free. I haven’t made a record in 14 years but I’ve still been doing music—I just wasn’t [going to] put anything out. Five out of those 14 years I just took to try and understand this new paradigm. People tried to tell me, ‘You gotta give music away.’ That didn’t make any sense to me. I didn’t understand how that worked and why you have to give it away. Pop and rock musicians aren’t giving music away— why do MCs have to give music away? Why do you have to make a free mixtape, which is essentially an album, and give it away? And then put out a free record for download and give it away? And then do shows and so on?

What specifically made you feel like you needed to retreat from music for a bit?
The Napster thing—the whole download thing. You then had groups like Metallica who spoke out against it, which I thought was excellent. We do this music and we should be paid for it. Just because a new generation comes into play and with the technology at hand people can download shit that other people are hosting doesn’t mean it’s right. What about the artist? The artist don’t work for the fan. The artist works for himself and he should be compensated. Those are conversations that piqued my interest into thinking about what we are getting into. Now all is accessible. Eventually iTunes caught up and other places caught up but you can still get shit for free. You can’t go anywhere on this planet and get shit for free—except music. Why is that? It was an interesting time to pay attention. Then you begin to ask questions like, ‘How do you get a record deal?’ Record deals don’t exist anymore, you have to put it out yourself. What does that mean? I did the independent thing so I know what that means from a wax perspective. I put out Directrix myself and then licensed it to Mo’ Wax. So I know how that process works but people are asking you how many Twitter followers you have or how many hits on YouTube you have, because that’s who they’re giving deals to now—people who give away their music. And the more ratchet—the more bullshit it is—the more followers they get because people are more interested in some craziness than then are in anything of substance. And now you have a generation of children that think the crazier the content the better the art. That don’t make sense. Why does it have to be just the worst shit ever to be cool? It’s not adding up. That being followed by the 360 deal—major or independent. There is no difference between a major and an independent company. The indies are backed by the majors and they’re all giving 360 deals.

And certain acts are being promoted as indie artists though they’re really backed by a major company via proxy.
Yeah. C’mon now—it’s still a billion-dollar industry and one of the most influential industries America has in the world. Who is making money? There is money somewhere. It appears there are fewer people making money so there has to be something deeper. That’s what I’m interested in. How can I do this so it works for me and not against me and I don’t have to make mixtapes and give away content for free? It’s hard to make a record— it’s not easy. You need resources, you need a place, you need to have your bills paid and take care of yourself. How are you going to do that shit? Get an investor who wants 200 per cent return on his investment?

You said something really interesting earlier—that the artist doesn’t work for the audience but for himself. I see behavior in hip-hop today that shows the opposite.
‘You gotta give them what they want.’ They don’t know what they want. They want what you give them. When did the psyche flip to where now you’re serving the fan? What does ‘fan’ mean? It came from the word fanatic. Look at the language. I come from a different school. I read. [laughs] I want to understand something before I do it.

So how did Def Mask happen?
I made contact with [UK label] Gamma Proforma. I was doing some art on Instagram. Rob [Swain] and I chatted a little bit and he wanted to use some of the art for a show he was doing. I had just started doing hip-hop demos and I gave him a couple of songs. One thing led to another and I started getting back into the swing of things. A year later he hit me up like, ‘You want to make a record?’ The reason I decided to make a record with him is that he follows in the tradition of Mo’ Wax, which is a boutique small indie label that is more art driven than monetarily driven. That always works for me. I’m not the type of artist to do shout-outs, I’m not going to do certain things that now you have to do. I just want to do what the fuck I want to do, which is make music. I have people that like it and people that don’t like it. I’ve earned that over a span of 25 years and I’m cool with that. To have a company that understands that and doesn’t want to bend me to this new system and to have a company that is heavily art influenced also means the packaging is unique in a sense that it’s personal. It’s not a part of the machine. That’s what caused me to really be into it again.

Speaking of your Instagram art—how did that begin? It’s pretty amazing.
I’ve been writing graff since I was nine or ten in New York. When I started getting into computers I started illustrating on Photoshop. My idea was to take my graff and interpret it through the computer. Then I started my record label so I had to do all my own graphics so I really had to learn Photoshop. Casey ‘Eklips,’ who owns Seventh Letter, started teaching me shit back in the 90s and I’d sit there watching him do his mock-ups for his clothing line and it taught me how to do a lot. Then the apps for phones started to come out. I got this one called Snapseed and I started messing with it and I was like, ‘Damn! It would take you eight hours to do this on Photoshop or Illustrator.’ The technology is mind-bending. That led me to reading up on blogs about art apps and music apps. I downloaded more apps and just started messing with them and I found a lane to be able to do the art that I like—that I would traditionally do on a wall—on my phone. There was a lot of guilty pleasure in that shit. Graff is all about burners and bombing and getting up and here I am feeling like I’m cheating. That’s how I got into digital art and I’m now heavily into it.

That makes me think of some of the themes of Def Mask—how technology can be a tool to link us all as well as being something that isolates us.
That lends itself to the age we’re living in. I can put out a record and make a traditional rap record or I can just embrace where things are. I’ve always been a tech head from the beginning of technology, from analog gear into computer recording. I do drum n bass, I do dubstep, I do EDM which is basically disco with bells and whistles on it. I like elements from all of those things and I like pushing envelopes. It’s just a culmination of all the technological capabilities of what is happening on the back end and what is happening sonically on the front end. I could do a traditional record but I’m always going to use the technology and pull from different sources to create a picture to back the concept. For me it’s about creating the music around the concept so it’s more cinematic than a traditional record. It’s more about an experience and the ride than just some head- nod shit. People say, ‘Your music makes me think.’ I never intended it to be that way but as I’ve gone along making music I started to realize that I like doing cinematic stuff.

Is that the kind of stuff that grabbed you when you were younger?
Shit—Rammelzee. Rammelzee was a Five Percenter, he was a graff writer, so he was like a scientist. Between mathematics, science and math there was a school of us in the 80s who followed that route. You had Kase2, the one-armed bomber—he had the computer style. ‘Computer Rock,’ he used to call it. That’s where I was. I was on the Trans-Europe Express. I was into that tech-y sound but I was also into abstract futurism. I wanted to be an architect so I studied Syd Mead, I studied Carl Sagan and shit like that. I was into sci-fi the whole time growing up as a kid. I started to sample those things and reduplicate those things in music. Rammelzee was a super influence on me, just being a graff writer and an MC at the same time who used to rap in graff style—although he had a whole universe backing his movement. He had theorems and treatises and all types of shit. A lot of people say I remind them of him and rightfully so— he’s the father of my style. I see my music in images first. I have the idea and I just see it. Like Directrix—I forget how I came across that word. When I read the definition of it, it said the median line of trajectory of fire. That created the whole landscape for me. That’s the balancing point. They use it for space exploration. I think I was reading something about NASA. The mechanics around directrix is that there will be a launch point and an orbiting point and then you have these geometric lines and you’ll have a directrix, which is a center point on which everything is counter-balancing. That kind of thing is how it works for me musically and visually. The visual is first and then I gather the source material to back the sound.

What were some of the visuals you were seeing in Def Mask?
As I began to write, I got to the Def Mask—the ‘Mask’ being what you use in opera or a play. In the old world, they would do operas with masks and those masks represent characters, but also a mask has to do with symbolism and the personification behind it. ‘Def’ for me—just being old school—def was the flyest shit ever. Def was the ultimate shit. It could be fresh, it could be funky-fresh, it could be cool … but when you said it was def? It was untouchable. Once I got that combination then both worlds began to join. As I started to write around the concept of Def Mask and outlining my ideas, this character came and he became Def Mask himself. What does he use the mask for? To protect himself from the pollutants of the environment. Each part of his mask is an element—earth, air, fire, water, ether—each one of those elements have elementals which are creatures or components that adhere to that dimension. So I went way off into the sci-fi thing. I had to pull back and I started to categorize it how I could deliver it. I’m looking out into the world and we’re living in a borderline dystopian science fiction landscape now. This whole technocratic shit we’re moving into where laws are based on technology. In New York they’re trying to pass a law where you can’t text and walk at the same time. That’s technocratic. That’s due to technology being so crazy that they think people are so stupid that they think they’re going to get hurt if they’re texting and walking. It went from ‘you can’t do it in the car’ to now ‘you can’t do it while you’re walking.’ The foundation is being laid for a technocratic society based on data, projections and behaviometrics. Measurable patterns and behavior being compiled by data mining systems. The average citizen hearing this type of language immediately takes the defense and their only come back is conspiracy. Well, in an age where information is more readily available in public domain than ever before, I find it fascinating that most don’t care to be informed except by what directly affects their immediate comfort zone. This is insane. It’s happening all over from the eavesdropping on calls to the collection of emails. Since the Patriot Act it’s been a wrap! Nobody is paying attention to it so I’ll fucking report on that shit. It’s a superimposed interpretation of what’s happening. Some people like to say that is conspiracy-driven and fear-driven paranoia but if you really look at it, a couple of years ago the US government admitted on the news—on CNN—to the Manchurian candidate program, which is called MK Ultra. They made two movies about it—the original and a remake—but it’s not a conspiracy. They want you to think it’s a conspiracy but in an age where information is everywhere, nobody is paying attention to information. I’m taking things I’ve run across, not from my imagination but from reality and weaving it in. Like in ‘Architectonic,’ the narration was a KGB narration from an actual KGB agent that defected in the 70s being interviewed on CBS Tonight. It’s on the Internet. I think Mike Wallace interviewed him—I can’t quite remember the interviewer but everything I said—I just re-recorded it—was everything he said. How am I paranoid? This was on the news in America in the 70s. So again—people don’t want to disrupt the dream, the illusion, that the American Dream is just that. We’re slowly moving into this fascist lock-down by way of convenience. I don’t make this stuff up. I report it. I research and gather legit source material. I think they use the conspiracy term to turn people off—to dismiss it. I don’t get into debates and arguments about it because it’s nothing to debate. Facts are facts. Look it up. So the record started going into an Orwellian dystopian thing, which is nothing new. People been writing about that shit forever. It felt cool and it was something different for me.

I thought it was really interesting you included the instrumentals with the release.
I like the instrumental version better than the vocal version because it creates a whole other cinematic experience. I was up in Frisco a couple of months ago and I was walking on the streets listening to the instrumental and it was another picture different from the actual content of the vocals but it matched. We did it for no reason other than ‘Why not?’

Did you incorporate electronic elements in the music to fit the concept? Or as a response to the electronic influence that’s so pervasive in music lately?
Yeah—it lends itself to the concept more. It’s hard to listen to new music today. I don’t listen to too much rap. If I do listen to it will be my usual suspects, which are Nas, Premier, Ghostface, Raekwon, Death Grips—that’s the closest to me that you’ll get to where the people are today which is just on some ‘burn it down, it’s the fucking end’ shit.

That reminds me of a conversation with my friend DJ Sake-One in SF. He was commenting how popular music today reminds him of the fall of the Roman empire because that’s when the empire was most decadent and gratuitous.
It’s a major transition where going through because we’re on the cusp of going from analog music, analog life, analog existence to this digital shit. My son don’t know nothing about analog. He don’t have a clue. Matter of fact, when he was born I purchased my Mackie digital console. I went from my analog Mackie to my digital Mackie. Kids don’t have any clue of that. I say that to say we’re on the cusp of moving into this new paradigm and the average person using the technology because they’re addicted to it but they’re not making the transition mentally. How do you not serve the machine and use it to benefit you to move forward? Instead of buying a $500 iPhone with all the memory you can get on that thing just to play music and to Snapchat and social media bullshit, make the phone work for you. How can you apply it to your daily activity and make it useful for you? It doesn’t matter what it is. Educate yourself on the use of whatever it is that you want to use. You don’t really see that amongst the youth. You see that in other places like TED talks but it doesn’t get reported on a broader scale. If you start to investigate you see how people are using technology to push art, to push social agendas and awareness. I’m into generative art. It’s art you can manipulate through code in real time, like three- dimensional projections—like the images you see when you put your computer to sleep. Now it’s so easy you can download scripts and run that shit on a projector and MIDI-map it to your sound to where your kick is creating one design and your snare is creating another. It’s out there but a small percentage is using it. I’ve been following that and using it for a couple of years now. Let the technology serve you. Everybody is serving technology. There was a projection that in 10 years if you don’t know HTML you won’t have a job. I think you go from HTML to Java to CSS to C+ but you have to have HTML as the foundation or you won’t be able to get a job. That’s scary!

What are they going to do? People talk about an economy that squeezes certain people out into the margins.
That economy is human slave labor at that point. What are you going to do if you can’t read or write? You work at McDonalds. Not literally but I’m saying that in the analog world if you don’t have an education you work construction or you’re a janitor. If you don’t have basic coding skills or a degree what are you going to do? Nobody is paying attention to that shit.

Some of the things you’re talking about also make me think of what people describe as Afrofuturism.
I just heard that bullshit. That shit is bullshit. It’s just another fucking word for people to coin. I don’t know. If you read the Futurist Manifesto from decades ago that was created by that small group of artists, it has to do with certain things. What they’re coining it into now, it’s really no relation. What’s Afrofuturism—because they’re Black or they’re rapping and using electronic equipment or because it’s minimal? I don’t really see the validity and the connection unless someone who understands Futurism in a traditional sense can point out to me.

The definition I’ve seen is something along the lines of dealing with themes that are connected to the African diaspora through a framework of Futurism.
That’s a reach. That’s vague. Why’s it gotta be Afro? Where’s Country-futurism? Better yet, EDM would be house-futurism if that’s the case because it’s just disco melodies—with the 4/4, which is house, which is minimalism. Now they’ve put melodic chords on top. Drum & Bass is pentatonic shit. It’s still disco and house. Should that be Futurism? No, it’s electronic dance music now. I guess my mind wants to know why. I want to understand something before I adhere to it instead of just blindly doing it. That’s where I’m at with it. Again, I’m from the era of reading and wanting to understand and not just do something because it’s cool. I saw some writings where I was put in the Afrofuturism category. I’m not that shit, I’m not Afro nothing. I’m expressing something else. I’ve always broken molds, especially when they’ve tried to put me in them. Why? Why not.

It sounds like you don’t relate much with identity politics?
No. That is my pet peeve. I understand that system and I’m not against it. But I’ll always buck up against it just for fun. If you don’t speak for yourself and tell your own story, they will.

I ask that because I had planned on asking you a question around that track you did years back, ‘Make It Plain.’ You say something to the effect of America living off your blood, sweat and tears. It was on my mind because I’d recently re-read Ta- Nehesi Coates’ ‘A Case For Reparations’ in The Atlantic. His argument was not that the U.S. Government owes X amount of dollars to the descendents of U.S. slaves, but moreso that until there is a very large and wide and public conversation on the vestiges of slavery then America will continue to have these moments of spectacular tragedy.
A people can only define who they are, not another source outside of it. That’s the whole problem with the African-American paradigm. The African-Americans were brought over here as property and by law they were three-fifths of a human being because by law they lacked two of their five senses— which by law made them property. That was the first time that slavery was made lawful by ethnicity and not by indentured servitude, conquering people and shit. Now it’s based on ethnicity and after hundreds of years of that being etched and hard-wired into a system, the masters or the conquerors of those people always identify them as property and always identify them from a place where ‘I determine who you are!’ just because it’s so hard-wired. When people say reparations, people usually think about money. I don’t think money is the issue but more about how do you undo that hard-wired psyche that is the foundation of this country? It happened first to Native Americans—the holocaust that began from the day the pilgrims landed. After the Native Americans saved their asses, like five years later they signed a treaty amongst themselves to take their land and eradicate them. That was the Indian Removal Act. How do you fix that? You have to change the economic and the mental myth and perception of the relations between the two—the same thing with African-Americans. There is an old saying that however long it took you to become a certain way, it will take you that long to get rid of that. It’s conditioning.

Do you see our society progressing towards undoing that psyche?
Yes, because it’s getting hot. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. You have to destroy it in order to rebuild it. The destruction is moving slow. I don’t think I’ll see it in my lifetime because it’s a generational thing. I tell my son all the time, ‘If you don’t get your hair cut, I’m going to cut it. You’re not going to walk around here with a nappy Afro dressed like a skater. That’s cool for you but in the world you give a certain image. Keep your hair cut. Look presentable. Wear some clean shoes. Don’t look like a fucking bum. Them whiteboys can do that shit. You can’t do that shit. You’re a Black kid.’ He don’t understand—he just feel like I’m just getting on his ass. We can’t do that. We get choked out and shot. We’re thugs. I don’t think that’s going anywhere in our lifetime unless something cataclysmic happens to the planet that brings us all together and moves us past this shit. But the conversation is on the table in a different way because I don’t think it’s a thing that just Black people or people of color can do as much as it is the people who are in control of institution. That’s where I think the change can be made. There is economic imbalance. There is ethnic imbalance. The myth of everything white being bad and everything Black being bad is a myth—it’s been around for a long time. You got some cultures where it’s the opposite. It’s something systemic in this country that no matter how much you intellectualize it, it gets more complicated and it seems like it just needs to be a simple conversation. How far are we from that simple conversation? Everyone is using the complex intellectual jargon of the day to talk about it but without really addressing it and saying how they really feel in a public forum. We will treat you like a nigga but you can’t say ‘nigga.’ There needs to be some hard conversations. What will get us to that point? It’s like when you have an argument that’s festering with a friend and you say, ‘Fuck it, let’s fight or let’s get it out.’ You yell through it and then everyone calms down and comes to some sensibility about it.

That sounds like what we’re living now with some of these more flagrant acts of state violence.
It’s coming to the surface. It has to come to the surface. In a time when we are being monitored and everything you’re saying and doing is being recording in infinity, you’re catching people at their best and their worst. That’s revealing. Before there was none of that so everything was behind closed doors. Now it’s out in the open.

The one guest on the album, Orko Eloheim—he fits so well.
I love that guy. That’s my brother. He was so fucking respectful of the craft and the lineage—he deserved it. Most of these people don’t know what respect is. He was influenced by something when he was young. We hooked up and talked and it was nothing but homage. To me, that’s what it’s supposed to be. Quincy Jones wasn’t disrespectful to Coltrane or Miles. Coming up, you make that exchange. Inspiration, influence, whatever it is—there could not be one without the other. For me that’s how it’s handed down. He was so respectful and understands what we do, which is angular to what the general direction is. Out of all the new cats he’s the most respectful cat I’ve met and that’s cause for celebration. Let’s connect and build—ain’t enough of that in the world. Dudes want to hook up to make themselves look good or elevate themselves higher in status from your look, but there is no connection. It’s ‘I can get more fans or more followers if I fuck with you.’

Even in the process of it, people collaborate via email. That’s the norm now.
Music is a communal experience—it’s a communion and a communication and a language with a vocabulary. How are we going to express this joyous process when now it’s so far away from the communion aspect of it? It’s all a fame game. I can’t do that. I just can’t do that. That’s okay for other people but not for me.

A song on the album that stands out to me is…
‘Pandorum.’

Yes! The rest of the album is very dark and almost claustrophobic at times but this track comes in and it has remnants of the first album from the loop you used to the Wildstyle sample.
In the old days, when you would go to the movies there would be an intermission and the movie would stop, the curtains would close, and you would go and get popcorn. That’s kind of what that track is like. That’s the closest I could come to that. There was another track like that that I took off the album because I couldn’t get the beat right. It was paying homage to my graff background and it included Seventh Letter. I had did a record like that already called War Machine Prototype, but this was going to be the remix of that. I couldn’t get the beat right so I took it off the record. I wanted to have something like that so I split the difference on “Pandorum” with the Style Wars sample and the ‘Frisco Disco’ sample, which was a breakbeat we used to B-Boy to. I still kept the Blade Runner-ish soundscape to it though. It’s like an intermission.

When did you first come out to L.A.? Some people still don’t know you’re originally from New York.
I came out here in ‘83 to go to school for two years because I was getting in too much trouble. I went back to New York in high school. I had met friends out here and I was coming back and forth to do demos from ‘86 to ‘89. I finally got my record deal with Rhyme Syndicate but I was still back and forth until about ‘94. After ‘94 I was pretty much permanently here. It was major culture shock. There was no hip-hop how I knew it out here. There was Ultrawave and Uncle Jamm’s Army and The Time and all of that shit. The gang-banging, that was all culture shock like a motherfucker. I came from New York with 360 waves, Lee’s and British Walkers—they didn’t know what planet I came from. Then Wildstyle came out and that’s when everybody started to put two and two together. I was here during that transition so I started sharing a lot of stuff with a lot of cats. I taught cats graff styles, some B-Boying and just built relationships. Some of the cats I taught graff got down with MSK in the early years. It was a trip watching L.A. define itself in regards to hip-hop. Before graff took hold out here it was just gang writing. I used to do that shit because I hung out because with gangbangers—not because they were gangbangers but because they were the cats from my neighborhood out here. When the bombing came out, then they started to switch and I watched kids like Shaka and all them early dudes, Risky—they developed their own style that was very unlike New York. But the same was with the music. They leaned more towards the bass music, which was more Planet Rock, more T La Rock ‘It’s Yours’—more electronic-based shit which went from N.Y. to Miami to L.A. and less boom-bap shit. Watching that music transition from the Ultrawave and Egyptian Lover to their love for the 808 was interesting because in New York it was all about that dirty kick and snare.

What do you think about the gentrification of cities like L.A. and New York?
I think the gentrification is the emergence of a younger generation being prepped to be the governing body of the next phase. If you look at the gentrification, it’s all young transplants that are educated and have trust funds and bank accounts. Their lineage is allowing them to go into these places and purchase space and open businesses. The gentrification is not being done by the people who are from these places. It’s being done by people from the outside who are actually building and restructuring the new economic base. It ain’t for the people—it’s for outsiders. It’s like the elite sending their kids out into the world and telling them to make something of themselves. It’s economics. That’s the next phase we’re going into. In the 40s you had the people who came back from World War II, because war builds industry. That was the boom of the middle class. They took precedence over those that didn’t go to war—who were those in the ghettoes and the slums and so on. They were able to build an economic base and establish the suburbs. In the 50s America was perfect based on that happening in World War II. I think it’s just another cycle we’re seeing.

How do you stay balanced in the midst of all of this?
That’s easy. I don’t care about it. It’s all ideas from our imagination and I’ve dug deep to learn to stand apart from ideas of Self and others. There’s no attachment to this shit. There are discomforts but that too passes. When you see inhumane acts of Americans going down to South America to buy as much land as they can—what does that mean for the people who live there? They’re being tricked or carpet-bagged out of their land. It’s another form of invasion. You have companies like Monsanto that want to outlaw all seeds and put their GMO seeds in place. They want to make it illegal to grow fucking vegetables. That’s insanity. I can’t turn away from it in the sense of ignoring it, I have to be aware but not attached to it. The attachment to it gives it support. It gives it life. It gives it power. To be detached from it is almost to go towards a place of ‘there’s something bigger going on in the interest of humanity.’ Just because you can’t see it right now don’t mean it ain’t in operation. It’s happening—we just can’t see it. I remain aloof. I don’t let it constrict me mentally. I had my years of that, being angry and shit. Awareness is powerful.

What do you do with it? You’re speaking about a crossroads that many of us come to after awareness. Some people feel like you have to tackle these things head on, some hide from it—what is your take?
Me, I do it through this music. This is my vehicle. I am not a politician, I am not a speaker, I am not a protester, I am not an activist. That’s not my thing and that’s never been my drive. My drive has been sharing the information through music or some sort of sonic and visual art. I’ve had people try and convince me into the whole activism role and fuck all that. You’re not going to guilt trip me. You do that. That’s what works for you. For all the people that have faith in a deeper power, they understand how it works. Everybody plays a role in the mechanism. It’s a trip becoming aware, remaining aware and then watching everything happen. I read this article about outlawing children playing outside. From something like 5 PM to 8 AM a child can’t be in a park by themselves— and then for teenagers it’s the same thing. It’s fucking insane. How are you going to make it illegal for children to be outside unattended? Now you pose the formula and behind that you create more paranoia, more predatory nature, more dissention. That type of thinking shouldn’t even have a place in the world. What planet is this? They outlawed 20 oz beverages in New York—once they passed that law New York was a wrap. Talking about kids getting too fat. Tell Coke to stop making Coke then! Why make it illegal to drink something that’s legal?

You end up with this system that has to contradict itself to stay alive.
That’s the end of the world in whatever world that is. It’s the ending of a mental construct— it’s not the end of the trees and the sky.

Exactly—people talk about global warming and climate change as if it’s an end to the planet when they really mean it’s an end for us.
The planet kicked dinosaurs. It will shake us off—I think George Carlin said it, like a dog shaking off a tick or a flea. We haven’t even been here as long as any race of dinosaur was here and we’ve done worse to it than anything before. When it’s time, it’ll get rid of us before we kill it. What type of world are we living in? It’s all mental, all ideas, all in our imagination—then people give power to it and that power becomes a sub-reality.

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File under NO SHIT: Billionaire Cartier Owner Sees Wealth Gap Fueling Social Unrest

from Bloomberg.com:

Johann Rupert, the South African who has made billions peddling Cartier jewelry and Chloe fashion, said tension between the rich and poor is set to escalate as robots and artificial intelligence fuel mass unemployment.

“We cannot have 0.1 percent of 0.1 percent taking all the spoils,” said Rupert, who has a fortune worth $7.5 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “It’s unfair and it is not sustainable.”

The founder and chairman of Richemont, whose 20 brands also include Vacheron Constantin and Montblanc, said he expects advances in technology to lead to job losses after having read books on the subject recently. Conflicts between social classes will make selling luxury goods more tricky as the rich will want to conceal their wealth, Rupert said in a speech Monday at the Financial Times Business of Luxury Summit in Monaco.

“How is society going to cope with structural unemployment and the envy, hatred and the social warfare?” he said. “We are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us. It’s unfair. So that’s what keeps me awake at night.”

Rupert, a university dropout whose father made a fortune setting up Rembrandt Tobacco Corp. and selling it off, has in the past made other social critiques. Nicknamed ‘Rupert the Bear’ for his pessimistic views on the economy, the 65-year-old refers to himself as a “reformed prostitute,” having spent a decade as an investment banker. He said in 2008 that the collateral damage from the financial crisis was yet to come.

“We’re in for a huge change in society,” he said Monday. “Get used to it. And be prepared.”

Good thing that some one up there is noticing...

Prediction: Bernie Sanders Will Win the White House

from Washington's Blog:



by Eric Zuesse

On May 12th, I presented my analysis of the polling as of that time, headlining, “The Early Signs of Whom The Next U.S. President Will Likely Be: Presidential Polls Look Confusing Regarding Bernie, But Downright Bad Regarding Hillary & All Republicans.” Based on the net-favorability ratings of candidates in the first poll that had really meaningful results on that most important of all factors (which poll had just been published), and also based on the latest available reliable poll of Americans’ ideological preferences (which had been taken in 2011, but that’s okay because ideology changes only very slowly), I concluded that Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders was likely to surprise on the upside at the start of his contest, and that, “Sanders would probably be able to crush any Republican except perhaps Rand Paul, if he were to win the Democratic primaries.” He is already surprising on the upside (though pundits haven’t yet caught on that Hillary’s a dud), and so I am now predicting that Sanders will win, first, the Democratic nomination, and then the White House. But, first, to summarize:

The crucial net favorabilities were shown and documented in that May 12th article to be outright terrible for every candidate except Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, and Bernie Sanders; they were merely bad for Walker and Rubio; and they were probably marginally good for Sanders, but the latest poll hadn’t even included Sanders’s name, and so for him I extrapolated from ideologically the only candidate, who had been named, who was at all similar to Sanders ideologically, and this was Elizabeth Warren; and she had a slightly positive net favorability rating, which was by far the best of any of the named candidates (either male or female). Based on information that I’ve been provided access to, she will not be entering the contest, and Senator Sanders will be the only progressive candidate running in the Democratic primaries.

The 2011 ideological poll showed that of the five ideological orientations that were named, the one with the highest net-favorability — the ratio of “positive” to “negative” ratings — by the American public, was “Progressive,” at 67%/22%, or 3.05; and the second-highest was “Conservative,” at 62%/30%, or 2.07. Like Senator Warren, Senator Sanders is one of the U.S. Senate’s three leading (if not the Senate’s only three) progressives. He clearly represents the most-widely-shared ideology: progressivism. If he wins the Democratic nomination, then the nation will be in for its first clear ideological choice since 1932 in a two-major-Party contest between a progressive Democrat versus a conservative Republican. That time it was FDR versus Herbert Hoover.

Of course, FDR won. Back in 1932, the conservative’s deadweight load, which the Republican had to overcome but couldn’t, was the crash of 1929. In 2016, the conservative’s deadweight load, which he’ll have to overcome but won’t be able to, will be his record of supporting or opposing George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Everyone but Republicans already knows that that was a catastrophic decision in every way, and was never justifiable; so: no candidate who is even on the fence about this important matter can stand even a chance of winning the Presidency if his or her chief opponent has always been clearly opposed to it, as Sanders has been, in both words and actions. Sanders, then a member of the U.S. House, was one of the small minority who voted in 2002 against it. And, unlike Barack Obama, who wasn’t even a national politician then and who spoke in 2002 about the Iraq question only briefly and in passing (in a video-clip that became famous in 2008), Bernie Sanders spoke against it passionately and repeatedly — and then he actually voted against authorizing the invasion. (And here’s the final vote, in both the Senate and the House.) By contrast, every current Republican Presidential candidate, except Rand Paul, says that GWB made the right decision “based on what was known then” (referring to the selective release by Bush’s Administration of faked evidence supporting the decision to invade). Marco Rubio contradicts himself about the matter, but basically he says that in the final analysis, “The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein does not run Iraq.” Even that statement would hurt him a lot in the general election (unless the Democrat is Clinton, since she actually voted to invade), because most Americans aren’t that stupid, to think that there’s any excuse whatsoever for Bush’s choice to fake evidence and then to invade Iraq on the basis of it — it was clearly a rigged deal from the get-go, to invade Iraq. Rubio is betting that the only way to win the Republican nomination is to support that rigged invasion; but Paul is betting that, by the time of the primaries, enough even of Republicans will have come to the (long overdue) realization that this issue could kill the Party’s chances in the general election, and that they’ll therefore get in line behind Paul’s candidacy as the Party’s only hope to get this issue off the backs of the Republican Party. The other leading Republican candidate, Scott Walker, is a pure mainstream Republican on the matter, saying that the decision was based on bad intelligence, “but knowing what we know now, we should not have gone into Iraq.” This line might suffice for him to be able to win the Republican nomination, but, if Bernie Sanders will be the Democrat he’ll be running against, then the Democrat will win, no matter how much money Republican billionaires pour into supporting their nominee. (Again, if Hillary becomes the Democratic nominee, the Republican nominee might win the Presidency — and probably will win if that Republican happens to be Rand Paul.)

Of course, the 2016 Presidential campaign won’t be about only the catastrophe in Iraq and George W. Bush’s having created it; there’s a President who followed after him, and he has continued GWB’s other catastrophe, the Wall Street bailouts and non-prosecution of the mega-banksters who cheated their ways to ‘AAA’ MBS-creating-&-marketing mega-bank fortunes (and the bailout-generated $10 trillion+ increase in the U.S. federal debt that was required in order for the public to absorb those mega-banksters’ “toxic assets”); and Sanders has always been against that pro-Wall-Street, anti-Main-Street, policy, too — both in words and in deeds. (And QE “The Greatest Backdoor Wall Street Bailout of All Time” is still continuing and so the total tab cannot yet be known, and Sanders has always been against that part of the Wall Street bailout too.) He was consistently correct on both of the big issues of recent U.S. history — both of the issues that depleted America’s future for the benefit of today’s super-rich.

On 15 February 2011, after Bush’s successor had been in office already two years continuing the bailouts, Rassmussen Reports bannered their poll, “57% Still Believe Bailouts Were Bad for US,” and also reported, “68% say bank bailout money went to those who caused meltdown.” Those overwhelming public views against the bailouts have also been not only Sanders’s own views throughout the period, but they’ve consistently been Sanders’s votes in the U.S. Senate, too, even at the start; so, on the two signature Bush catastrophes, Sanders would be in a perfect position to maul any Republican nominee, unless it turns out to be Rand Paul. However, unlike Scott Walker, whose net favorability rating is only modestly negative (i.e, it’s less than 1; it’s 73%, to be precise), Rand Paul’s is like almost all of the Republican field’s: it’s extremely negative (i.e., his ratio of strongly favorable to strongly unfavorable is much less than 1: it’s 56%). (Clinton’s, for comparison, is 69%. Elizabeth Warren’s was the only polled name that was positive: 1.08. As was previously mentioned, Sanders’s name wasn’t polled, and Warren was the only named candidate whose ratio was net-positive.)

In an earlier article, I stated the case “Why Hillary Clinton Would Be a Weak Presidential Nominee for Democrats,” and I explained why Ms. Clinton will never be able to rise from her present poor net favorability ratings. All the good publicity about her is past (from her flaks), while her support (being based purely on PR, sheer fluff) was a mile wide and an inch deep. The more that voters get to see her actual record, the more they’ll distrust her words. That reason she’d be a weak general-election candidate is: she’s not at all a trustworthy person (except by her financial backers), and there’s nothing she’ll be able to do at this late date to convince general-election voters that she is. The trust issue is so bad for her, that no matter how much money is spent on her campaigns, it’ll be like trying to paddle a boat not in water but in air — there won’t be the traction that’s needed to get her to being the first person past the finish-line in the boat-race. That boat has already been sold to the highest bidder, even before the race begins. She can evade, but she cannot hide, now that the contest has actually started. As more Democrats learn about this, they’ll turn away. Too many Democrats will avoid voting in the final, the general-election contest, or else will protest-vote for some third-party nominee; whereas the Republican nominee, whomever he is, will clearly be Republican in more than just his official designation. By contrast to Clinton: if Sanders is the Democrat, then voter-turnout on Election Day on the Democratic line will be enormous. And turnout in a Presidential election is crucial also in a much broader sense: it largely determines which of the two Parties will control both the Senate and especially the House (where everybody is up for election every two years). Even if Clinton were to win (which is unlikely), she would then be dealing in 2017 with a strongly Republican Congress, because of 2016’s resulting depressed Democratic voter-turnout. By contrast: if Sanders is the nominee, then not only will he win, but he will possibly (maybe even likely) be dealing with a Democratic Congress in 2017, by virtue of his drawing so many Democrats to the polls on Election Day 2016.

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/hillary-clinton-favorable-rating

In other words: after having been a popular celebrity since at least January 2009, Hillary Clinton has now become, again, a mere politician, but this time with the heavier-than-ever baggage of her actual record (and especially of her having destroyed crucial evidence of that record, which she had secreted on her own private server), so that her evasive behaviors, verbal and otherwise, have now become her message; and what she says or does from here on can only collapse the house-of-cards that she had long been creating.

As of May 26th, her net favorability rating, shown at Huffington Post, had finally switched from positive to negative (47.8% negative versus 45.9% positive). This measure shown at HuffPo isn’t as accurate a measure, however, as the figures that I had linked to at the first link in the present article, because instead of building the net ratios there on favorables versus unfavorables, I built it on strong favorables versus strong unfavorables; and, especially at this early phase in a political campaign, that’s actually a far more accurate predictive measure, because the few people in the public who have strong feelings about a given candidate are the ones who will likeliest become the volunteers who will then serve as the core of the get-out-the-vote effort and who will consequently build the candidate’s volunteer campaign, if there is any. (If there isn’t any, then the Democratic candidate will surely lose, because the big-money campaign will likely go overwhelmingly to the Republican regardless.) So: the net favorability-ratios that were shown in my first-linked-to article are far more accurate indicators than are the ratios that are graphed at HuffPo; and what these ratios show is a far higher net unfavorability regarding all of the candidates.

——

However, the most important decision that American voters will be making in the 2016 elections will be the decision that Democratic voters collectively will be making in their Democratic primaries. That decision, in the primaries, rather than in the general election, will be the key to deciding America’s future. The decision that Republican voters will be making in their Party’s primaries, might not matter much, although, in the final analysis, if they choose Rand Paul, then that could change: there could be a real contest in the final election, against Sanders. (Furthermore, if Clinton does win the Democratic contest, then the final race will instead be between two candidates both of whom will have net negative favorability ratings — both Clinton and Paul — but turnout will almost certainly be higher on the Republican than on the Democratic side; so, Paul would probably win that contest.)

All of the pundits have been saying, all along, that Clinton is the most-likely candidate to win the White House, but they’re looking at the wrong indicators. Often, these same pundits were also saying that Jeb Bush would be the likeliest Republican to be able to win the White House, or that Christ Christie would be. I don’t pay attention to what the pundits say. Of course, the political bettors do; and, so, as of today, the betting odds heavily favor Clinton as by far the #1 likeliest person to become America’s next President. The public read the pundits. And the pundits make the arguments that their bosses, who are chosen by the media-owners, want to be published. (The media-owners want the final contest to be between two candidates who are both owned by the billionaire class, because a billionaire decides which media will receive his corporation’s advertising dollars and other favors; and that’s what keeps the media going.)

The pundits aren’t published — they’re fired — if they don’t serve their bosses. I don’t serve any boss; I serve only the truth as I see it, and I always explain and document what I am seeing. And when what I see changes, I report and explain that change, just as I had reported what was before it which has changed. My opinion isn’t ever set in stone. I might change it at any time. But all I can ever report is what I see, when I see it.

What I am seeing right now, which is the first time that things have looked clear enough for me to make a prediction in the U.S. Presidential contest, is the likelihood that the next President of the United States will be Bernie Sanders. The reasons for that prediction have been summarized here, based on the documentation that’s in the sources that have been linked-to here. Those linked articles contain the basic data that I consider, on my standard best-evidence basis, to be determinative, at this stage in the development of the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign.

———-

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.

via our friends at Dangerous Minds

Go out in the world and fuck it up beautifully:John Waters' commencement speech at RISD

from Dangerous Minds:

I should say right off that I am really qualified to be your commencement speaker. I was suspended from high school, then kicked out of college in the first marijuana scandal ever on a university campus. I’ve been arrested several times. I’ve been known to dress in ludicrous fashions. I’ve also built a career out of negative reviews, and have been called “the prince of puke” by the press. And most recently a title I’m really proud of: “the people’s pervert.” I am honoured to be here today with my people. ~ John Waters

Seriously, just stop what you’re doing and give your undivided attention to John Waters as he gives one of the best commencement speeches EVER to the Rhode Island School of Design’s graduating class of 2015. Waters nails it. Every damn bit of it.

You’re lucky. When I went to school, my teachers discouraged every dream I ever had. I wanted to be the filthiest person alive, but no school would let me. I bet RISD would’ve. You could possibly even make a snuff movie here and get an A+. Hopefully you have been taught never to fear rejection in the workplace. Remember, a no is free. Ask for the world and pay no mind if you are initially turned down. A career in the arts is like a hitchhiking trip: All you need is one person to say “Get in” and off you go. And then the confidence begins.

Never be like some of my generation who say “We had more fun in the ’60s.” No, we didn’t! The kids today who still live with their parents who haven’t seen them in months but leave food outside their bedroom doors are having just as much fun shutting down the government of foreign countries on their computer as we did banning the bomb.

If you’d like to read the entire transcript, you can find one here.

Being Healthy Is Unprofitable

 from: Of Two Minds.com 
Charles Hugh Smith (June 3, 2015)
U.S. healthcare is unsustainable. That it will break in the next decade is predictable.

That good health is insanely unprofitable was highlighted by a staggering statistic in the recent research paper The Concentration of Health Care Spending (via B.C.):
Mean annual spending for the bottom half of (the American population) distribution was just $236 per person, totaling only $36 billion for the entire group of more than 150 million people.

We don't know why the 150 million people did not consume much in the way of "health services"-- they might have been healthy and had no need for healthcare beyond routine tests, or they might have needed care and been unable to afford it, despite the Orwellian-titled Affordable Care Act (ACA).

But let's assume that the 150 million people--roughly half of America's 317 million residents--were healthy and had no need for health services beyond minimal prevention and a few low-cost tests.
The total cost of their care was $36 billion--just over 1% of the nation's $3.2 trillion bill for healthcare and healthcare insurance. Let's assume that 90% of the populace was healthy, and the remaining 10% were very ill and needed 100 times as much care as the healthy.

The total cost of caring for the 285 million healthy people would be roughly $67 billion, or just over 2% of the $3 trillion we currently spend on healthcare. The very ill 32 million would need $23,600 each, or $755 billion.

The total cost for a largely healthy population and 32 million ill people who required 100 times more care than the healthy would be $822 billion, or roughly 25% of the $3.2 trillion we currently spend annually.

Here is an example of the insanity of U.S. healthcare costs. One of our European friends was doing post-doctorate research at a major U.S. university. His son suffered a minor burn in the kitchen, and on the doctor's recommendation, the parents took the toddler to a hospital a few days later to have the dressing--basically a piece of gauze taped over the burn--changed.

Naive to the absurdities and costs of U.S. healthcare, the parents followed these instructions rather than just changing the gauze themselves.

Their punishment for foolishly asking the medical establishment to spend 5 minutes changing a small piece of gauze: a bill for $875. The list of similar charges is equally absurd. Among those known to me first-hand: $120,000 for a few days in a hospital, no operation, not intensive care; $6,000 for 20 minutes sitting in an observation room after a minor outpatient surgery on the patient's big toe--the list is essentially endless.

Readers are quick to note that the charges may not be paid in full--but that is no defense of the system. So that makes it OK that Medicare is charged "only" $80,000 for a few days in a hospital bed, or "only" $5,000 for sitting in a room for 20 minutes?

Estimates of the cost of paper-shuffling and fraud in our healthcare system start at 40%. Outright fraud (billing for phantom services and patients) accounts for an astounding percentage of healthcare expenditures, as do needless/ineffective tests and procedures.

Prevention is cheap, intervention and care of chronic disease is costly.
Sadly, we know 90% of the American populace is not healthy. Rather, the 70% who are overweight are facing decades of ill-health and needlessly early deaths.Consider this report cited in America The Obese:
Published in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, a study comparing young men and women of healthy weights to young obese individuals found that those who were overweight lost about 8.4 years off of their lives if they were men and 6.1 years off of their lives if they were women.
Young obese men suffered 18.8 more years of poor health leading up to their early deaths compared to men of healthy weight, while young obese women suffered 19.1 years of poor health. Even when obesity emerged just in old age, both men and women were found to lose years off of their lives: for men, an average of 3.7 years and for women about 5.3 years.

Americans spend $60 billion annually on weight loss programs and products, yet we become more overweight every year. Note that this $60 billion is almost twice the amount spent on healthcare for 150 million Americans.

The weight gain may be linear in nature, but the adverse consequences of extra weight are geometric. As noted in New obesity guidelines help physicians and patients with weight loss treatments:
As our waistlines expand, so too do the number of medical problems caused by excess body weight. A 2012 report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “F as in Fat, How Obesity Threatens America’s Future,” found that if obesity rates continue on their current trajectories, the number of new cases of type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, hypertension, and arthritis could increase 10-fold between 2010 and 2020—and double again by 2030.

“As evidence unfolds, everyone is beginning to appreciate that obesity and excess body weight are driving medical conditions and costs. You cannot get medical costs under control as long as we have these rising rates of obesity,” says Donna Ryan, MD, professor emeritus at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University Health System, and previous past president of The Obesity Society.

That America's ill health has become a national security risk is obvious: America: Too fat to fight.

Excess body weight threatens not just the nation's healthbut its economy and social fabric: F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).



Anyone who thinks the stagnant American economy that already spends twice as much per person on healthcare as our advanced 1st World competitors can support 10-fold increases in lifestyle-caused chronic diseases is living in Fantasyland. The pharmaceutical industry has a plan to "cure" diabesity--their fondest dream is a bunch of pills that cost $84,000 a year, just like the recent treatment for Hepatitis C. Patients Get Extreme to Obtain Hepatitis Drug That's 1% the Cost Outside U.S.

Here's what will happen as the wave of weight/lifestyle diseases swell into a tsunami:

1. Care will become scarce within our "somebody else pays for me" system as the system starts breaking down. 

2. Care will become cash only as payments to frontline providers dwindle.

The "cure" for excess body weight is well-known and well-documented. The vast majority of us can only change our lifestyle and thus our weight and health within a support group of others engaged in the same challenge. Supplements don't work, fad diets don't work, gym memberships (lacking a total transformation of lifestyle) don't work--nothing works but continual human support from those dealing with the same issues.

But operating support groups is not profitable, and so our healthcare system gives the only real cure lip-service. Prevention and support groups are cheap and effective, but they're terribly, horribly, unavoidably unprofitable, so they are given lip-service, while the healthcare industries gear up to provide $100,000 procedures and $84,000 per year medications, all paid by "somebody else." 


U.S. healthcare is unsustainable. That it will break in the next decade is predictable. We are collectively wandering the beach, picking up seashells, while a mighty tsunami wave is approaching that will wash everyone on the beach away. We can either deal with the lifestyle and cultural causes of our mounting ill health or be swept away when the system crashes. 

Minister of Culture for the Black Panther PartyEmory Douglas - a Mini Documentary Spiritual Sunday Special

A few months back we posted a piece on Black Panther artist Emory Douglas.
Today I just found this great mini- documentary on Emory and his art and the Panthers, dig it!

Emory Douglas was the Revolutionary Artist and Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party. Through archival footage and conversations with Emory we share his story, alongside the rise and fall of the Panthers. He used his art as a weapon in the Black Panther Party’s struggle for civil rights and today Emory continues to give a voice to the voiceless. His art and what The Panthers fought for are still as relevant as ever.

The Easy Life (Animation)

Wake Up motherfuckers!

Kick Flip Friday cool skate video "Lightbox: Grey"

Man who forced French supermarkets to donate food wants to take law global

from The Guardian:

Arash Derambarsh, a local councillor who kickstarted fight against food waste in his Paris suburb, wants to convince more countries to follow France’s example

A councillor whose campaign against food waste led to a law forcing French supermarkets to donate unwanted food to charity has set his sights on getting similar legislation passed globally.

Arash Derambarsh said it was “scandalous and absurd” that food is wasted and in some cases deliberately spoiled while the homeless, poor and unemployed go hungry.

Derambarsh – a municipal councillor for the “Divers Droit” (diverse right) in Courbevoie, north-west of Paris – persuaded French MPs to adopt the regulation after a petition gained more than 200,000 signatures and celebrity support in just four months.

The amendment was approved as part of a wider law – the Loi Macron – that covers economic activity and equality in France and is expected to be passed by the national assembly on Tuesday, entering the statute books shortly afterwards.

It will bar supermarkets from throwing away food approaching best-before dates and deliberately poisoning products with bleach to stop them being retrieved by people foraging through bins.

Now Derambarsh wants to convince European countries and the wider world to adopt similar bans. “Food is the basis of life, it is an elementary factor in our existence,” he told the Guardian.

“I have been insulted and attacked and accused of being naive and idealistic, but I became a local councillor because I wanted to help people. Perhaps it is naive to be concerned about other human beings, but I know what it is like to be hungry.

“When I was a law student living on about €400 a month after I’d paid my rent, I used to have one proper meal a day around 5pm. I’d eat pasta, or potatoes, but it’s hard to study or work if you are hungry and always thinking about where the next meal will come from.”

Derambarsh started his campaign by collecting and distributing unwanted food from his local supermarket. “Every day we’d help around 100 people. Half would be single mothers with several children, pensioners or public workers on low salaries, the other half would be those living on the streets or in shelters,” he said.

Derambarsh is planning to table the issue – via the campaign group ONE, founded by U2 singer Bono – when the United Nations discusses its Millennium development goals to end poverty in September as well as at the G20 economic summit in Turkey in November and the COP21 environment conference in Paris in December.

An estimated 7.1m tonnes of food is binned in France each year – 67% of it by consumers, 15% by restaurants and 11% by shops. The figure for food waste across the EU is 89mtonnes while an estimated 1.3bn tonnes are wasted worldwide.

NASA Supports Replacing American Flag With A New Design, International Flag Of The Planet Earth May Be Used During Space Travel

from Inquisitr:

Since Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the iconic visual of the American flag they left behind marked NASA’s success in going where no man had gone before, marking their arrival for future visitors to see. Since then, all space suits worn by Americans have been adorned with the American flag. However, NASA has been supporting a design that may replace the American flag during space travel. The new flag, called the International Flag of the Planet Earth, is expected to represent Earth as a whole, rather than segment only the United States.

According to the International Flag of the Planet Earth’s official website, the new flag is intended to represent Earth as a whole and to “remind the people of Earth that we share this planet, no matter of national boundaries.” NASA is hopeful that other countries will adopt the new flag during their space expeditions and bring forth a level of solidarity across the planet, rather than segment the space race into different teams.

The flag features a vivid blue background, representative of the Earth’s oceans, and seven interlocking rings that are described as a flower by its creator, Oskar Pernefeldt.

‘Centred in the flag, seven rings form a flower – a symbol of the life on Earth. The rings are linked to each other, which represents how everything on our planet, directly or indirectly, are linked.The blue field represents water which is essential for life – also as the oceans cover most of our planet’s surface. The flower’s outer rings form a circle which could be seen as a symbol of Earth as a planet and the blue surface could represent the universe.’

The composition of the flag is described in a video that was posted on the International Flag of Earth’s website.

According to Engadget, the International Flag of the Planet Earth was not designed by NASA directly. However, they are supporters of the flag. The actual design was created as a graduation project, and NASA has been a significant contributor to the concept and the project.

The likelihood of the flag being adopted by the entire population of Earth is slim. However, it has drawn support of many notable contributors, such as NASA, LG, and Flagga. With space travel becoming an international cooperative (for example, the International Space Station), an international flag has positive feedback. However, there are still many that feel the American flag is the only one worthy of being placed wherever American astronauts land.

When or if planet Mars is visited by Americans of the planet Earth, would you be comfortable leaving the International Flag of the Planet Earth behind, or would you prefer the American flag be left instead?

[Photo Courtesy NASA / Metro U.K.]

Mr. W

great ad, thanks Michelle!

Top 10 Common Faults In Human Thought

From The idealist Revolution:

The human mind is a wonderful thing. Cognition, the act or process of thinking, enables us to process vast amounts of information quickly. For example, every time your eyes are open, you brain is constantly being bombarded with stimuli. You may be consciously thinking about one specific thing, but you brain is processing thousands of subconscious ideas. Unfortunately, our cognition is not perfect, and there are certain judgment errors that we are prone to making, known in the field of psychology as cognitive biases. They happen to everybody regardless of age, gender, education, intelligence, or other factors. Some of them are well known, others not, but all of them are interesting. I am sure everyone will find that one has happened to them, (I myself have been prone to several) and now will recognize when they are making an error in the future. 

10: Gambler’s Fallacy 

 

The Gambler’s fallacy is the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality, they are not. Certain probabilities, such as getting a heads when you flip a (fair) coin, are always the same. The probability of getting a heads is 50%, it does not matter if you’ve gotten tails the last 10 flips. Thinking that the probabilities have changed is a common bias, especially when gambling. For example, I am playing roulette. The last four spins have landed on black, it has to be red this time right? Wrong! The probability of landing on red is still 47.37% (18 red spots divided by 38 total spots). This may sound obvious, but this bias has caused many a gambler to lose money thinking the probabilities have changed.

9: Reactivity 

 

Reactivity is the tendency of people to act or appear differently when they know that they are being observed. In the 1920s, Hawthorne Works (a manufacturing facility) commissioned a study to see if different levels of light influenced worker productivity. What they found was incredible, changing the light caused productivity to soar! Unfortunately, when the study was finished, productivity levels decreased to their regular levels. This was because the change in productivity was not due to the light levels, but to the workers being watched. This demonstrated a form of reactivity; when individuals know they are being watched, they are motivated to change their behavior, generally to make themselves look better. Reactivity is a serious problem in research, and has to be controlled in blind experiments (“Blind” is when individuals involved in a research study are purposely withheld information so as not to influence the outcomes). 

8: Pareidolia 

 

Pareidolia is when random images or sounds are perceived as significant. Seeing clouds in the shapes of dinosaurs, Jesus on a hot pocket, or hearing messages when a record is played backward are common examples of pareidolia. The common element is that the stimulus is neutral, it does not have intentional meaning; the meaning is in the viewer’s perception.Interesting Fact: the Rorschach Inkblot test was developed to use pareidolia to tap into people’s mental states. Testees are shown images of ambiguous pictures, and asked to describe what they see. Responses are analyzed to discover the testee’s hidden thoughts. 

7: Self-fulfilling Prophecy 

 

Self-fulfilling prophecy is engaging in behaviors that obtain results that confirm existing attitudes. A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that causes itself to become true. For example, I believe that I am going to do poorly in school, so I decrease the effort I put into my assignments and studying, and I end up doing poorly, just as I thought. Another common example is relationships; I think my relationship with my significant other is going to fail, so I start acting differently, pulling away emotionally. Because of my actions, I actually cause the relationship to fail. This is a powerful tool used by “psychics” – they implant an idea in your mind, and you eventually make it happen because you think it will.Interesting Fact: Economic Recessions are self-fulfilling prophecies. Because a recession is 2 quarters of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) decline, you cannot know you are in a recession until you are at least 6 months into one. Unfortunately, at the first sign of decreasing GDP, the media reports a possible recession, people panic and start a chain of events that actually cause a recession. 

6: Halo effect 

 

The Halo effect is the tendency for an individual’s positive or negative trait to “spill over” to other areas of their personality in others’ perceptions of them. This bias happens a lot in employee performance appraisals. For example: my employee, Biff, has been late to work the past three days; I notice this and conclude that Biff is lazy and does not care about his job. There are many possible reasons why Biff was late, perhaps his car broke down, his babysitter did not show up, or there has been bad weather. The problem is, because of one negative aspect that may be out of Biff’s control, I assume that he is a bad worker.Interesting Fact: The Physical Attractiveness Stereotype is when people assume that attractive individuals possess other socially desirable qualities, such as happiness, success and intelligence. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when attractive people are given privileged treatment such as better job opportunities and higher salaries. 

5: Herd Mentality 

 

Herd mentality is the tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict. Also known as “Mob Mentality,” this is, at its most common form, peer pressure. Herd mentality explains why fads get so popular. Clothes, cars, hobbies, styles, all it takes is a group of people who think something is cool, and it catches on.Interesting Fact: things that are unattractive, or that would never seem cool or popular now have had huge followings due to herd mentality. Examples include parachute pants, pet rocks, mullets, cone bras, tie-dye, sea monkeys, and the 1980s (by the way, that is an ’80s guy in the picture above). 

4: Reactance 

 

Reactance is the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice. This is common with rebellious teenagers, but any attempt to resist authority due to perceived threats to freedom and/or choice is reactance. The individual may not have a need to do the specific behavior, however the fact that they cannot do it makes them want to.Interesting Fact: “reverse psychology” is an attempt to influence people using reactance. Tell someone (particularly children) to do the opposite of what you really want, and they will rebel and actually end up doing what you want. 

3: Hyperbolic Discounting 

 

Hyperbolic discounting is the tendency for people to prefer a smaller, immediate payoff over a larger, delayed payoff. Much research has been done on decision-making, and many factors contribute to the individual decision making process. Interestingly, delay time is a big factor in choosing an alternative. Put simply, most people would choose to get 20 dollars today instead of getting 100 dollars one year from today. Normally it makes sense to choose a greater amount of money immediately than less in the future, as the value of a dollar is worth more today than it is tomorrow. Assume that the interest rate is 9%, at this interest rate, a rational person would be indifferent to taking $91.74 now, or $100 a year from now. However, it is interesting how much less we are willing to take immediately rather than wait, would you rather have $100 a year from now, or $50 immediately? How about $40 immediately? Where do you draw the line? 

2: Escalation of Commitment 

 

Escalation of commitment is the tendency for people to continue to support previously unsuccessful endeavors. With all the decisions people have to make, it is unavoidable that some will be unsuccessful. Of course, the logical thing to do in these instances is to change that decision or try to reverse it. However, sometimes individuals feel compelled not only to stick with their decision, but also to further invest in that decision because they have sunk costs. For example, say you use half of your life savings to start a business. After 6 months, it is evident that the business is going to be unsuccessful. The logical thing to do would be to “cut your losses” and drop the business. However, due to the sunk costs of your life savings, you feel committed to the business and invest even more money into the project hoping that the additional cash will turn the business around. 

1: Placebo Effect 

 

The Placebo effect is when an ineffectual substance that is believed to have healing properties produces the desired effect. Especially common with medications, the placebo effect has been observed when individuals given a sugar pill for a real ailment report improvement. Placebos are still a scientific mystery. It is theorized that placebos cause an “Expectancy Effect”, (In cases of uncertainty, expectation is what is most likely to happen) individuals expect the pills to cure their ailments, so they feel cured. However, this does not explain how the ineffectual pills actually cause a reduction in symptoms. 

Interesting Fact: The term “Placebo” is used when the outcomes are considered favorable, when the outcomes are negative or harmful; the term is “Nocebo”