Check out the losers and has-beens sponsoring this $1,000 per plate fundraiser for the New Jersey celebrity running for Senate in PA. I mean Mike Castle… Mike Castle for fuck sake.

I don’t know much about the the flag of North Dakota other than the fact that the design is an almost exact copy of the unit banner carried by the state’s troop contingent in the Philippine–American War. (per wikipedia)

I only put it here to trick you into listening to this week’s Highlands Bunker, which deals with a film called Welcome to Leith

Job openings in the U.S. approached record levels in October while the number of people quitting eased off its record pace but remained historically high, the Labor Department reported.

If you want a low paying, de-humanizing grind – you are in LUCK!

Biden’s “Build Back Better” has been trimmed to the bone in part because Coons signaled a willingness to give up half of the projected $400 billion plan prior to day one.

Now, with Senate action scheduled in the coming weeks Machine and Sinema are threatening additional cuts. But don’t worry. This WaPO article is here to let you know that Chris Coon is on it.

“Relationships, understanding where another senator is coming from and being respectful of their frame and their concerns is the best way to be persuasive with any senator,” said Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.)

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., will resign from Congress to become CEO of Trump’s fledgling “Media & Technology Group” next month.

Nunes, who boasts of being a dairy farmer, will begin his new career despite having no apparent prior experience working in the tech industry or as an executive.

This item was found by alumni DL contributor, Nemski.

The item below was posted to the “Even More Patriotic Patriots for Delaware” FB page. I agree with the sentiment 100%.

The Democratic Party “leadership” doesn’t have any fight in it, mostly because they are doing ok, and suppose they will continue to do ok event after the end of democracy. Many of them are probably correct. People like Chris Coons, for example have transnational family fortunes so they can afford to be the token Democrats to provide the veneer of a republic. The same goes for the media. They continue to cover the advance of fascism as if it is some jolly parlor game.

“America’s supposed pro-democracy leaders should be rallying the people to resist the Republican fascist assault. Most are not. In the most high-profile example, President Joe Biden is choosing to publicly embrace ‘bipartisanship’, in the empty hope that the Democratic Party’s legislative successes will somehow blunt the power of the Republican-fascist movement.

“Meanwhile, the mainstream news media remains trapped in obsolescent norms of ‘fairness’, ‘balance’ and ‘objectively’, rather than engaging in the type of pro-democracy advocacy journalism demanded by the country’s escalating political crises.”

As I see it, the Democratic Party lacks the will to confront fascism with direct action; the MSM doesn’t have the courage to put Republican fascism on blast; and “moderates” across the political spectrum are capitulating far more than they’re resisting.

I mentioned Haiti in the last one of these, and as it happens – Haiti’s flag as an origin story.  This is it, in brief.

Sugar cultivation in what was then Saint-Domingue was a real shit show for the slaves – but GREAT for the French Barrons, merchants and traders who amassed fortunes!

What was missing in Haiti was a Chris Coons type who might have found middle ground between the slavers and the enslaved. (Sunday’s off!  or maybe 1/2 Day off from slavery every other Sunday?! Generous!)  As it played out, owing to the brutality of slavery, the Haitian revolution was the story of horrific violence and and ever increasing cycles of  brutality committed by whoever happened to have the upper hand at the moment.

When independence of Saint-Domingue was proclaimed after 13 years of bloodshed, Jean-Jacques Dessalines  is said to have taken the French tricolor and cut out the center white strip and sewn the blue and red together.

This was not mere symbolism. It was meaningful symbolisms.   One of Dessalines’ first acts was to have the Haitian Declaration of Independence written which stated:

“It is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two centuries; … We must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government …. In the end we must live independent or die.”

Then Dessalines ordered the massacre of nearly all the remaining French white men, women, and children.

(For more on the Haitian revolution check out the Revolutions Podcast.  I just finished the part on the Haitian revolution, but all of it is good.)

Anyhow, after a lot of Republicans, Kingdoms and Despotism (including the CIA backed regime of “Papa” Doc Duvalier) each with its own flag, the Republic of Haiti ended up this this flag (most recently readopted on 25 February 2012.)

Wikipedia tells us that it is one of eight national flags whose designs incorporate a depiction of the flag itself, the others being the flags of Afghanistan, Bolivia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Venezuela.

The flag is also one of four national flags of UN member states to feature a gun, the others being those of Mozambique, Guatemala, and Bolivia.

The Babados flag consists of a triband of two bands of ultramarine, which are said to stand for the ocean surrounding the country and the sky, separated by a golden middle band, which represents the sand. A black trident head, commonly called the broken trident, is centred in the golden band, and the fact that the staff is missing is significant. The trident symbol was taken from Barbados’ colonial badge, where the trident of Poseidon is shown with Britannia holding it. The broken lower part symbolises a symbolic break from its status as a colony. 

According to wikipedia, the first English to visit Barbados arrived on a ship poetically named, Olive Blossom.  It arrived in Barbados on 14 May 1625, and the island was claimed in the name of King James I.

Filling a void left by the collapse of the Hapsburg dynasty in Spain, the first permanent settlers arrived from England in 1627 (which happens to be the year Swedes first arrived in Delaware).  Anyhoo – the English established slave plantations in Barbados.  By the 1750’s large plantations muscled out smaller operations and put the island on an industrial sugar cane cultivation footing similar to the lucrative French operations in Hati.

Sugar cane cultivation was brutal, as wikipedia dryly notes: “Life expectancy of slaves was short and replacements were purchased annually.”  By 1660, Barbados generated more trade than all the other English colonies combined, and by 1731 Bridgetown, the capital, was one of the three largest cities in English America, the other two being Boston and Port Royal, Jamaica.

Barbados became independent from the United Kingdom in November 1966, but keep the Queen as the head of state and a London based privy council more than three centuries after English settlers arrived and turned the island into a wealthy sugar colony based on the work of hundreds of thousands of African slaves.

In recent decades, the island has begun distancing itself from its colonial past.  Last year, Barbados announced plans to stop being a constitutional monarchy and followed through by removing Queen Elizabeth as the Head of State yesterday.  Sadlty, the Queen survived the indignity.

The future King Charles noted,  “From the darkest days of our past and the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history, the people of this island forged their path with extraordinary fortitude,”  which was a nice thing to say, I suppose.

#facts

Witzke is the de facto leader, and most visible member of the Delaware Republican Party.

There are a lot of things to not like about Coons.  Being a self-proclaimed baby eating Satanist isn’t one of them.

Nearly three years ago my Mom was able to die with dignity in her own home in a way that was nearly identical to her expressed wishes.  It was pure luck.

She had an end of life directive and a DNR that kept her out of the hospital. That wasn’t the lucky part.  Her body closing up shop the way it did, that was lucky.  She would have hated hanging in a liminal state for months after her aneurysm.  Because of the nature of the aneurysm, she didn’t have to.  We had a nice day and night with her looking at photo albums and watching home movies, then she started drifting off.  A painless week later she was gone.  Lucky.

Delaware doesn’t have a “death with Dignity Law” right now, but it should.

In 1997, only Switzerland allowed their residents to decide if they wanted to end their life, but compassion for end-of-life sensibilities has seen that number rise dramatically across the West.

Since 2015, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Germany, Austria, Portugal, five Australian states, ten American states, and D.C. have legalized assisted dying. Countries that are largely Catholic such as Ireland, Chile, Italy, and Uruguay are currently crafting legislation to follow suit.

Anybody else watching the making to the ‘Let it Be’ album documentary on Disney+ ?

I found it utterly fascinating.  Grizzled music industry veterans (at 29 yrs old) trying to re-discover the fun of playing together and get a live album across the finish line.

Billy – Simply an amazing keys player and very cool dude. The rest are on their best behavior around him because being rude in front of a guest is not at all English.

Ringo – affable, capable, agreeable. A great drummer in spite of what everyone says.

George – a little prickly after being on the outside of the Lennon/McCartney thing for so long.  But keeping up the hippie chill in public.

John – periodically acting up and cutting up to keep the feeling that he is over it at bay.

Paul – the working class Liverpudlian just trying to set some goals and not seem like the boss.