Go Joe

Xavier Becerra says he's ready to fight Trump's wall "the moment it touches the ground."

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in the Democrats’ official Spanish-language response that he’s prepared to challenge any declaration of emergency Trump may issue to fund a border wall “the moment it touches the ground.”

“The idea of declaring a nonexistent state of emergency on the border, in order to justify robbing funds that belong to the victims of fires, floods, hurricanes, and droughts, to pay for the wall is not only immoral, it is illegal,” Becerra said.

NPR - Nathan Phillips says he approached the boys to defend the Black Israelites

I just heard an interview with Omaha elder Nathan Phillips by David Greene on NPR. Phillips says he had just finished with his ceremony, saw the boys exchanging taunts with a group of 4 Black Israelites, and felt he needed to do something to protect them from the much larger group of boys. He says his nephew said "Uncle, we have to do something." So he approached the boys, not the other way around, which is what I'd assumed from the headlines:

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/21/687085976/outcry-results-after-video-appears-to-shows-students-mocking-native-american-man

I suppose if there's a moral it's don't jump to conclusions based on viral videos. I hope this doesn't get deleted, but jurors please bear in mind what Dr. King said at Grosse Pointe High School on March 14, 1968:

"Serotonine" : Houellebecq, romantique comme jamais

Gilbert Chevalier | Radio France | publié le 04/01/2019 | 06:00

Le septième roman de Michel Houellebecq sort vendredi en librairie, à la fois "très houellebecquien" et novateur, selon une universitaire spécialiste de l'écrivain.



Sérotonine, le nouveau roman de Michel Houellebecq, sort vendredi 4 janvier en librairie. L'écrivain nous parle cette fois d’un homme qui quitte sa petite amie japonaise sur fond de France agricole en crise.

L'histoire se passe entre Paris et la Normandie. Le narrateur, Florent Claude Labrouste, est un ingénieur agronome d'une quarantaine d'années, fatigué, qui prend des antidépresseurs libérant de la sérotonine, hormone censée l'apaiser. D'où le titre de ce roman, pur produit de la plume houellebecquienne, selon Agathe Novak Le Chevallier, universitaire spécialiste de l'écrivain. "C'est à la fois très houellebecquien et il y a quand même des choses nouvelles, explique-t-elle. Des choses nouvelles du point de vue des thèmes, avec une très grande importance accordée cette fois-ci au monde de l'agriculture. Il y a aussi des innovations stylistiques. Les phrases de Houellebecq deviennent de plus en plus longues". Mais c'est toujours houellebecquien parce qu'"on rit beaucoup, c'est toujours un humour à froid."

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/culture/livres/serotonine-un-roman-a-la-fois-tres-houellebecquien-et-novateur_3128303.html
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France's Houellebecq foresees Yellow Vest unrest in new novel

By Mike Woods | RFI 03-01-2019

French author Michel Houellebecq’s seventh novel, Serotonin, is slated for release on Friday. Its depiction of a revolt of desperate inhabitants of the French countryside echoes the Yellow Vest protests of recent weeks, continuing the writer’s trend of anticipating the evolution of modern society in eerily prophetic fashion.

The novel, whose title refers to the mood-regulating brain chemical targeted by many antidepressant medications, will be released in France on Friday, though an English translation is not slated for publication until September.

Synopses and reviews indicate its protagonist, a 46-year-old suffering the effects of a spiritually vacuous urban existence, breaks from a relationship and job and returns to his rural Normandy hometown.

There, he finds farmers and former factory workers whose way of life has been devastated by the liberal economic policies of the European Union and who start blocking roads in angry desperation, leading to an ill-fated encounter with CRS riot police.

http://en.rfi.fr/20190102-france-s-houellebecq-foresees-yellow-vest-unrest-new-novel