Where they stand: The Environment.
Let's Do This
The People are within sight of having an advocate in the Oval Office. But we're going to have to fight for it, and fight hard. The reaction is going to be fierce. The oligarchs won't like it, of course. But if you want to witness terror look in the eyes of the aparatchiks of the Democratic Party. They know that decades of three-martini lunches and torrents of cash are over. This is our moment to kick the corporate bagmen, hustlers and bunco artists out of politics. There'll be no lesser-of-two-evils this time. We've had forty years of Middle-Managers-in-Chief. We need an Organizer-in-Chief. If you can't go to Ohio and Nevada and New Hampshire, send money. Get out the vote where you live. Let's take back the Senate. Let's put Sen. Bernie Sanders in the White House. Let's do this.
Not to miss. In theaters now.
Award-winning documentary about Lea Tsemel, a Jewish-Israeli lawyer who defends Palestinians: from feminists to fundamentalists, from non-violent demonstrators to armed militants.
Iran under US threat
America has a global empire in a modern sense, maintaining hegemony by through hundreds of airforce and naval bases scattered to every corner of the planet. Iran, a nation that has enjoyed our attention in ways extending from sanctions and cyberattacks to assassinations and coups d'etat, is surrounded by US military bases and naval forces. Under these conditions, it needs to said that Tehran has shown maturity and restraint in dealing with a superpower led by a lawless and erratic manchild who means it no good.
quote unquote: Dorothy Day
“People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.” -- Dorothy Day
Guilty until proven innocent
"According to the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE), since 1989, 2,515 men and women have been exonerated after proving their innocence. In total, among all known exonerees, Americans have shelled out a staggering $4.12 billion to incarcerate innocent men and women since 1989, according to a Yahoo Finance analysis. That’s largely money spent on trials, and the cost of housing inmates in prison. According to the Bureau of Prisons, in the fiscal year 2017, the average cost to house a prisoner was over $36,000 a year in federal facilities. But black men make up the majority of those wrongfully convicted — approximately 49%. And since 1989, taxpayers have wasted $944 million to incarcerate black men and women that were later found to be innocent. That number climbs to $1.2 billion when including Hispanic men and women."
The rest of the story:
US Taxpayers spent almost $1 billion incarcerating innocent black people (Blacks in Law Enforcement of America)
The rest of the story:
US Taxpayers spent almost $1 billion incarcerating innocent black people (Blacks in Law Enforcement of America)
Too little, too soon
Only two articles of impeachment? Under most circumstances, prosecutors include all alleged crimes in an indictment. If the jury won't convict on one, they will on another. Multiple crimes also suggest a criminal mindset. His defenders are saying that even if Donald Trump is guilty of the Ukraine shakedown, it's a trivial and isolated offense that doesn't rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor. Nancy Pelosi's slowing down of the process opens the door to getting this right. If this is going to be done at all, there should be a second bill of impeachment. The Intercept points to 26 impeachable Trump offenses that were inexplicably overlooked or ignored by the House.
The rest of the story: The A to Z of Things Trump Could and Should Have Been Impeached For by Mehdi Hasan (The Intercept)
The rest of the story: The A to Z of Things Trump Could and Should Have Been Impeached For by Mehdi Hasan (The Intercept)
Corporate Media and 'Moderate' Democrats Are Defending the Oligarchy Against Bernie Sanders
The greatest trick the American oligarchy ever played was convincing the country they didn't exist.
by Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
For the United States, oligarchy is the elephant – and donkey – in the room. Only one candidate for president is willing to name it.
Out of nearly 25,000 words spoken during the Democratic debate last Thursday night, the word “oligarchy” was heard once. “We are living in a nation increasingly becoming an oligarchy,” Bernie Sanders said, “where you have a handful of billionaires who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying elections and politicians.”
Sanders gets so much flak from corporate media because his campaign is upsetting the dominant apple cart. He relentlessly exposes a basic contradiction: A society ruled by an oligarchy – defined as “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes” – can’t really be a democracy.
The super-wealthy individuals and huge corporations that own the biggest U.S. media outlets don’t want actual democracy. It would curb their profits and their power.
Over the weekend, The Washington Post editorialized that the agendas of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren “probably would fail at the polls and, if not, would carry extreme risks if they tried to implement them.” The editorial went on to praise “the relative moderates in the race” – Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar – for “offering a more positive future.”
But “a more positive future” for whom? Those “moderates” are certainly offering a more positive future for the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, who usually ranks as the richest person in the world. He wants to acquire even more extreme personal wealth beyond his current $108 billion.
The Washington Post’s routinely negative treatment of Sanders, which became notorious during his 2016 presidential run, remains symptomatic of what afflicts mass-media coverage of his current campaign – from editorial pages and front pages to commercial TV news and “public” outlets like the “PBS NewsHour” and NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.”
The essence of a propaganda system is repetition. To be effective, it doesn’t require complete uniformity – only dominant messaging, worldviews and assumptions.
Prevailing in news media’s political content is the central, tacit assumption that oligarchy isn’t a reality in the United States. So, there’s scant interest in the fact that the richest three people in the USA “now have as much wealth as the bottom half of the U.S. population combined.” As for the damaging impacts on democracy, they get less attention than Melania Trump’s wardrobe.
Now, as Sanders surges in Iowa and elsewhere, there’s a renewed pattern of mass-media outlets notably ignoring or denigrating his campaign’s progress. Like many other Sanders supporters, I find that disgusting yet not surprising.
In fortresses of high finance and vast opulence – with no ceiling on the often-pathological quests for ever-greater wealth – defenders of oligarchy see democratic potential as an ominous weapon in the hands of advancing hordes. Media outlets provide a wide (and shallow) moat.
For mass media owned by oligarchs and their corporate entities, affinity with the “moderate” orientations of Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar is clear. Any one of them would be welcomed by corporate elites as protection against what they see as a hazardous upsurge of progressive populism.
While Buttigieg has emerged as a sharp corporate tool for the maintenance of oligarchy, Joe Biden is an old hand at such tasks. Meanwhile, ready to preempt the politician-intermediaries for plutocracy, Michael Bloomberg is offering a blunt instrument for direct wealthy rule. Estimated to be the eighth-richest person in the United States, he was urged to run for president this year by Bezos.
During the next few months, Bloomberg will continue to use his massive class-war chest to fund an advertising onslaught of unprecedented size. In just weeks, he has spent upwards of $80 million on TV ads, dwarfing all such spending by his opponents combined. And, with little fanfare, he has already hired upwards of 200 paid staffers, who’ll be deployed in 21 states.
If Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar or Bloomberg won the Democratic presidential nomination, that would be a triumph for oligarchy in the midst of rising grassroots opposition.
Right now, two corporate Democrats are the leading contenders to maintain corrupted business-as-usual at the top of the party. As the executive director of Our Revolution, Joseph Geevarghese, aptly put it days ago, “Almost every problem facing our country – from runaway greed on Wall Street, to high prescription drug prices, to locking kids in private detention facilities, to our failure to act against the climate crisis – can be traced back to the influence of the kind of donors fueling Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden’s campaigns for president.”
While uttering standard platitudes along the lines of making the rich and corporations “pay their fair share,” you won’t hear Buttigieg or Biden use the word “oligarchy.” That’s because, to serve the oligarchy, they must pretend it doesn’t exist.
Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the author of a dozen books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
by Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
For the United States, oligarchy is the elephant – and donkey – in the room. Only one candidate for president is willing to name it.
Out of nearly 25,000 words spoken during the Democratic debate last Thursday night, the word “oligarchy” was heard once. “We are living in a nation increasingly becoming an oligarchy,” Bernie Sanders said, “where you have a handful of billionaires who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying elections and politicians.”
Sanders gets so much flak from corporate media because his campaign is upsetting the dominant apple cart. He relentlessly exposes a basic contradiction: A society ruled by an oligarchy – defined as “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes” – can’t really be a democracy.
The super-wealthy individuals and huge corporations that own the biggest U.S. media outlets don’t want actual democracy. It would curb their profits and their power.
Over the weekend, The Washington Post editorialized that the agendas of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren “probably would fail at the polls and, if not, would carry extreme risks if they tried to implement them.” The editorial went on to praise “the relative moderates in the race” – Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar – for “offering a more positive future.”
But “a more positive future” for whom? Those “moderates” are certainly offering a more positive future for the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, who usually ranks as the richest person in the world. He wants to acquire even more extreme personal wealth beyond his current $108 billion.
The Washington Post’s routinely negative treatment of Sanders, which became notorious during his 2016 presidential run, remains symptomatic of what afflicts mass-media coverage of his current campaign – from editorial pages and front pages to commercial TV news and “public” outlets like the “PBS NewsHour” and NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.”
The essence of a propaganda system is repetition. To be effective, it doesn’t require complete uniformity – only dominant messaging, worldviews and assumptions.
Prevailing in news media’s political content is the central, tacit assumption that oligarchy isn’t a reality in the United States. So, there’s scant interest in the fact that the richest three people in the USA “now have as much wealth as the bottom half of the U.S. population combined.” As for the damaging impacts on democracy, they get less attention than Melania Trump’s wardrobe.
Now, as Sanders surges in Iowa and elsewhere, there’s a renewed pattern of mass-media outlets notably ignoring or denigrating his campaign’s progress. Like many other Sanders supporters, I find that disgusting yet not surprising.
In fortresses of high finance and vast opulence – with no ceiling on the often-pathological quests for ever-greater wealth – defenders of oligarchy see democratic potential as an ominous weapon in the hands of advancing hordes. Media outlets provide a wide (and shallow) moat.
For mass media owned by oligarchs and their corporate entities, affinity with the “moderate” orientations of Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar is clear. Any one of them would be welcomed by corporate elites as protection against what they see as a hazardous upsurge of progressive populism.
While Buttigieg has emerged as a sharp corporate tool for the maintenance of oligarchy, Joe Biden is an old hand at such tasks. Meanwhile, ready to preempt the politician-intermediaries for plutocracy, Michael Bloomberg is offering a blunt instrument for direct wealthy rule. Estimated to be the eighth-richest person in the United States, he was urged to run for president this year by Bezos.
During the next few months, Bloomberg will continue to use his massive class-war chest to fund an advertising onslaught of unprecedented size. In just weeks, he has spent upwards of $80 million on TV ads, dwarfing all such spending by his opponents combined. And, with little fanfare, he has already hired upwards of 200 paid staffers, who’ll be deployed in 21 states.
If Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar or Bloomberg won the Democratic presidential nomination, that would be a triumph for oligarchy in the midst of rising grassroots opposition.
Right now, two corporate Democrats are the leading contenders to maintain corrupted business-as-usual at the top of the party. As the executive director of Our Revolution, Joseph Geevarghese, aptly put it days ago, “Almost every problem facing our country – from runaway greed on Wall Street, to high prescription drug prices, to locking kids in private detention facilities, to our failure to act against the climate crisis – can be traced back to the influence of the kind of donors fueling Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden’s campaigns for president.”
While uttering standard platitudes along the lines of making the rich and corporations “pay their fair share,” you won’t hear Buttigieg or Biden use the word “oligarchy.” That’s because, to serve the oligarchy, they must pretend it doesn’t exist.
----
Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the author of a dozen books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
G.O.P. Lawmaker Had Visions of a Christian Alternative Government
He networked with local militia groups, talked about plans to create a 51st state called Liberty and distributed to his closest followers a “Biblical Basis for War” document that calls for the “surrender” of those who favor abortion rights, same-sex marriage, “idolatry” and communism. “If they do not yield — kill all males,” it said.
The rest of the story by Mike Baker (New York Times).
The rest of the story by Mike Baker (New York Times).
Should impeachment be a bipartisan effort?
Jimmy Dore, the former comic turned political commentator, now so smitten with the sound of his own voice he's become Rachel Maddow for Radicals, here interviews Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on her decision not to take a position on the articles of impeachment. Even at the cost of enduring Dore, Rep. Gabbard's argument is important, especially as the impeachment effort stalls.
Must reads:
✓ Pundits are pitting “fast” vs. “slow” and “Ukraine only” vs. “everything.” But smart and thorough is the way to go: Democrats Must Reject False Choices as They Pursue Impeachment by Joan Walsh (The Nation
✓ Tulsi Gabbard Releases Statement on Impeachment of President Trump
✓ The congresswoman, a Hawaii Democrat, called impeachment “a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities” and said she favored censure instead: Tulsi Gabbard Votes ‘Present’ on Impeachment Articles: by Michael Levenson (New York Times)
✓ The way to defeat a rightwing political coalition is through leftwing politics, not political theater: Impeachment is the wrong way to beat Trump by Bhaskar Sunkara (The Guardian)
✓ Socialists should see impeachment as an opportunity to attack a movement that poses a long-run threat to the Left’s very existence: The Left Case for Impeachment by Max B. Sawicky (Jacobin)
✓ Getting rid of Trump would be great, but Congress isn’t going to do it — we actually have to vote him out. And impeachment, a therapeutic ritual for MSNBC hosts and an act of score-settling by the national security state, isn’t helping: What’s the Point of Impeachment? by Doug Henwood (Jacobin)
John Cleese Has a Theory on Why Political Correctness Is Rampant in Our Culture
“The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is one I absolutely do not subscribe to.” -- John Cleese
Christ Stopped at Ramallah
"Like all forms of tribalism, Identity replaces shared truths with private property. The Politics of Identity are therefore ideal expressions of capitalist economics. They also serve, quite directly, to kill mass numbers of our fellow human beings. All in the name of my pain trumping your pain. The embrace of the Holocaust as the defining act of inhumanity to which nothing else can ever be compared blinds those embracing its sonorities to other kinds of oppression and carnage, creating a deep perversity of meaning: making the condemnation of this towering act of evil the reason to ignore the rest, or to derogate them as inferior to the full-on nightmare of Nazi genocide. Merry Christmas, Palestinians." --- Joan Clams Bodenheim
He didn't know the half of it
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone from barbarism to degeneracy without the usual interval of civilization. -- Georges Clemenceau
Why can't Jaws be a Russian submarine?
Hollywood may have gotten a little more woke of late, but every screenwriter who has ever had a pitch meeting go off the rails will appreciate this one:
“I was told how one studio head said in a meeting, ‘This script is fantastic. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.' When someone pointed out that Roberts couldn’t be Tubman, the executive responded, ‘It was so long ago. No one is going to know the difference’” (Gregory Allen Howard, writer-producer of the Tubman biopic, recounting early days of two-plus decades trying to get the film off the ground).Even now, it's an even bet there is more than one development gnome hoping to route the Underground Railroad through Wakanda.
Truth in sloganizing
Joe Biden's campaign slogan, “Our Best Days Still Lie Ahead,” is lame bordering on pathetic. Can't one of his corporate underwriters contribute its marketing team for an hour or two to spin something catchy? In light of his comments on marijuana this week, I submit "No Pot in Any Chicken." More apt, given his campaign so far, might be the old MBA dictum, "Good Enough Is Good Enough." Or he could save time and money by unpack now the tattered "The Lesser of Two Evils" banner, the de facto campaign message of every Democratic presidential campaign, save 2008, of the last 40 years.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the millions of voters that agree with them are freaking out the billionaires.
The illustration is by Victor Juhasz.
Seem familiar?
Israel is doing to Palestinians no less than the United States did to Native Americans: stealing their land, penning them in reservations, impoverishing them, killing them.
Sanders, AOC Unveil $180 Billion Green New Deal for Public Housing
The legislation aims to repair and upgrade public housing by securing renewable energy sources for approximately one million federally owned public housing units, affecting some two million people.
Beauty is in the eye of the officeholder
The folks at UglyJerry made a font out of congressional districts, many of them twisted into alphabetical shapes by gerrymandering.
They want you to urge your congressperson to do something about it.
The biggest city in the US is joining a voting reform movement.
"New York City has become the latest -- and most populous -- city to adopt ranked-choice voting, a major milestone for voting reform efforts.
"Voters in the city overwhelmingly approved Ballot Question 1 on Tuesday, enabling voters to begin using ranked-choice voting in local primary and special elections beginning in 2021.
"New York City joins 20 other cities around the country, as well as multiple states, that have already started using this method in various elections. Maine, notably, implemented ranked-choice voting for the first time in a federal election in 2018.
"Ranked-choice voting works much like its name suggests. Instead of picking just one candidate on the ballot, voters rank their top five in order of preference.
"Once those votes are cast, they are counted in the following way, Lee Drutman explains:
"Ranked-choice voting lets voters mark their first-choice candidate first, their second-choice candidate second, their third-choice candidate third, and so on. Each voter has only one vote but can indicate their backup choices: If one candidate has an outright majority of first-place rankings, that candidate wins, just like a traditional election."Advocates of ranked-choice voting argue that it has many benefits. Because candidates need broad-based support to win, they are forced to engage with a wide range of voters, including groups that do not always see outreach from political campaigns. Additionally, studies have found that ranked-choice voting increases the number of minority and women candidates who vie for elected office, partly because ranked-choice campaigning is less negative.
"But if no candidate has a majority in the first round, the candidate in last place is eliminated. Voters who had ranked that candidate first have their votes transferred to the candidate they ranked second. This process continues until a single candidate gathers a majority.
"In addition to shifting the nature of campaigns, ranked-choice voting also gives voters more freedom to consider the full slate of candidates. Because of the way that votes are tallied, an individual could feel free to pick their favorite option without worrying that in doing so they are acting as a 'spoiler' who contributes to the victory of an unfavorable or unpopular candidate.
"Opponents of ranked-choice voting argue that it complicates the process too much, both when it comes to voting and tabulating results.
"Overall, New York City’s decision to adopt the ballot measure — though it will only affect a specific set of races — will serve as a good test case for ranked-choice voting, and it signals growing momentum for this voting reform."
The rest of the story:
✓ New York City adopts ranked-choice voting, a major milestone for the reform by Li Zhou (Vox)
✓ How does ranked choice voting work? (The Committee for Ranked Choice Voting)
✓Voter Choice for Massachusetts is a campaign to place a question on the 2020 ballot that would bring Ranked Choice Voting to Massachusetts elections starting in 2022.
Bernie Sanders is Not a Radical, He Has Mass Support for Positions on Healthcare & Taxes
From 2016. True then. True now.
Trick or Treat
A lot of people on the streets today apparently still wearing their "homeless" costumes from last night.
Great nations do not fight endless wars.
"Let us stipulate at the outset that Donald Trump is a vulgar and dishonest fraud without a principled bone in his corpulent frame. Yet history is nothing if not a tale overflowing with irony. Despite his massive shortcomings, President Trump appears intent on recalibrating America’s role in the world. Initiating a long-overdue process of aligning U.S. policy with actually existing global conditions just may prove to be his providentially anointed function. Go figure.
"The Valhalla of the Indispensable Nation is a capacious place, even if it celebrates mostly white and mostly male diversity. Recall that in the eighteenth century, it was a slaveholding planter from Virginia who secured American independence. In the nineteenth, an ambitious homespun lawyer from Illinois destroyed slavery, thereby clearing the way for his country to become a capitalist behemoth. In the middle third of the twentieth century, a crippled Hudson River grandee delivered the United States to the summit of global power. In that century’s difficult later decades, a washed-up movie actor declared that it was “morning in America” and so, however briefly, it seemed to be. Now, in the twenty-first century, to inaugurate the next phase of the American story, history has seemingly designated as its agent a New York real estate developer, casino bankruptee, and reality TV star.
"In all likelihood, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan would balk at having Donald Trump classified as their peer. Yet, however preposterously, in our present moment of considerable crisis, he has succeeded them as the nation’s Great Helmsman, albeit one with few ideas about what course to set. Yet somehow Trump has concluded that our existing course has the United States headed toward the rocks. He just might be right.
“'Great nations do not fight endless wars.' So the president announced in his 2019 State of the Union Address. Implicit in such a seemingly innocuous statement was a genuinely radical proposition, as laden with portent as Lincoln’s declaration in 1858 that a house divided cannot stand. Donald Trump appears determined to overturn the prevailing national security paradigm, even if he is largely clueless about what should replace it." -- Tom Dispatch
Old or young, climate change is the crisis of our lifetimes.
Meeting it is up to us. Mass civil disobedience is essential to forcing a political response.
"The political class, as anyone who has followed its progress over the past three years can surely now see, is chaotic, unwilling and, in isolation, strategically incapable of addressing even short-term crises, let alone a vast existential predicament. Yet a widespread and willful naivety prevails: the belief that voting is the only political action required to change a system. Unless it is accompanied by the concentrated power of protest – articulating precise demands and creating space in which new political factions can grow – voting, while essential, remains a blunt and feeble instrument."
"The media, with a few exceptions, is actively hostile. Even when broadcasters cover these issues, they carefully avoid any mention of power, talking about environmental collapse as if it is driven by mysterious, passive forces, and proposing microscopic fixes for vast structural problems.
"Those who govern the nation and shape public discourse cannot be trusted with the preservation of life on Earth."
The rest of the story:
Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse by George Monbiot (The Guardian)
Basic Income: An idea whose time has come
"We live in a new world, remade by many forces: the disruptive technological revolution,
brought about by the computer and the internet; the globalisation of trade, migration and communication; a fast-growing worldwide demand running up against the limits imposed by a shrinking pool of natural resources and saturation of our atmosphere; the dislocation of traditional protective institutions, from the family to labour unions, state monopolies and welfare states; and the explosive interactions of these various trends." -- Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght in Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy
Brecht
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.
-- Bertolt Brecht
qoute unquote: Friedrich Engels
"In this country, social war is under full headway, everyone stands for himself, and fights for himself against all comers, and whether or not he shall injure all the others who are his declared foes, depends upon a cynical calculation as to what is most advantageous for himself. It no longer occurs to anyone to come to a peaceful understanding with his fellow-man; all differences are settled by threats, violence or in a law-court. In short, everyone sees in his neighbour an enemy to be got out of the way, or, at best, a tool to be used for his own advantage." -- Friedrich Engels, 1845
End Game?
Bush the Younger abused executive power and overstepped constitutional boundaries.Democrats test limits of oversight powers on Trump by Jacqueline Thomsen and Morgan Chalfant (The Hill)
Congress did nothing.
Obama abused executive power and overstepped constitutional boundaries.
Congress did nothing.
Then came Trump.
Congress?
Left-Right is virtually meaningless.
AOC is not an outlier.
The divide is between the War Party and the domestic spending party, between the neoliberals and the New Dealers, between the 1%-ers and the rest of us.
The policies endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders and their allies are supported by the vast majority of American voters.
There are plenty of people to their left -- see Ralph Nader, Jacobin, Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Jimmy Dorn, Robert Reich, anarchists, Socialists, Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Chris Hedges, Richard Wolfe, Paul Buhle, Rev. William Barber, countless more -- who are, at least for the moment, limited to the power of persuasion.
The divide is between the War Party and the domestic spending party, between the neoliberals and the New Dealers, between the 1%-ers and the rest of us.
The policies endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders and their allies are supported by the vast majority of American voters.
There are plenty of people to their left -- see Ralph Nader, Jacobin, Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Jimmy Dorn, Robert Reich, anarchists, Socialists, Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Chris Hedges, Richard Wolfe, Paul Buhle, Rev. William Barber, countless more -- who are, at least for the moment, limited to the power of persuasion.
Where did it get Obama?
“‘Right on,’ Ben Labolt, Obama’s 2012 campaign press secretary, said sarcastically of former Vice President Joe Biden’s “call to renew bipartisan cooperation. ‘Mitch McConnell and Mark Meadows will rush to form the Woke Caucus. And Nelson Rockefeller will be revived from his grave.’” -- Daily Beast
Sorry, Joe
With polls showing Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and even Cory Booker beating DonaldTrump, the Joe Biden campaign has lost its only rationale.
Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off to War We Go
For those too young to remember, the draft had nothing to do with wind (although, if you were troubled by too much intestinal wind, that might have kept you out of the draft).
The Rule of Memo
The so-called prohibition against charging a sitting president with federal crimes is not a constitutional mandate. It's a Justice Department policy formulated in memos by lawyers who happened to be employed by Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton when the matter came up.
Reading List:
✓ Trump’s strategy to declare himself above the law and escape accountability by Paul Waldman (The Washington Post)
✓ Trump's Lawyer Says He Can't Be Guilty of Obstructing Justice: Is the President Above the Law? by Dale Eisman (Common Cause)
✓ The Supreme Court once rejected Bill Clinton’s claim of presidential immunity. Courts should now do the same with Donald Trump. The President Is Not Above the Law by Stephen B. Burbank, Richard D. Parker and Lucas A. Powe, Jr. (Politico)
✓ How Do We Keep a Criminal President From Running Out the Clock? One Possible Solution by Joshua A. Geltzer (Slate)
From the It's-A-Dark-Cloud-That-Doesn't-Have-A-Silver-Lining Desk:
The House Appropriations Committee this week approved its $690.2 billion version of the fiscal 2020 defense spending bill, sending the measure to the House floor.
In good news, the panel adopted an amendment by California Rep. Barbara Lee to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which opponents across the political spectrum have derided as a blank check for war. Lee's proposal would sunset the AUMF eight months after the spending bill becomes law.
For the record, total military spending is "budgeted" at $733 billion when contingency costs and nuclear-related funding are added.
From the It's-A-Dark-Cloud-That-Doesn't-Have-A-Silver-Lining Desk:
The House Appropriations Committee approved its $690.2 billion version of the fiscal 2020 defense spending bill on Tuesday, sending the measure to the House floor.
In good news, the panel adopted an amendment by California Rep. Barbara Lee to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which opponents across the political spectrum have derided as a blank check for war. Lee's proposal would sunset the AUMF eight months after the spending bill becomes law.
Total military spending is "budgeted" at $733 billion when contingency costs and nuclear-related funding are added.
In good news, the panel adopted an amendment by California Rep. Barbara Lee to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which opponents across the political spectrum have derided as a blank check for war. Lee's proposal would sunset the AUMF eight months after the spending bill becomes law.
Total military spending is "budgeted" at $733 billion when contingency costs and nuclear-related funding are added.
Nina Turner on Bernie Sanders Record
Since the Reagan-Clinton era, these ideas have been considered "radical." Not anymore. Now it is time to complete the political revolution begun by Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
Voters who have already made up their minds about 2020 probably won't watch this, but anyone still genuinely undecided should give it a look.
Voters who have already made up their minds about 2020 probably won't watch this, but anyone still genuinely undecided should give it a look.
Thimblerig
Nancy Pelosi is refusing to advance impeachment because "it won't pass the Senate," promoting instead legislation that won't pass the Senate.
Factoid:
Robert Caro, author of the epic must-read biography of Lyndon Johnson, has 11 identical Smith-Corona Electric 210 typewriters, proving that, even in the digital age, it is still the craftsman that matters, not the tools.
quote unquote: G. K. Chesterton
"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up." -- G. K. Chesterton (the first sentence of "The Napoleon of Notting Hill")
Could happen.
Warren: President. Booker: Veep.
Sanders: Senate Majority Leader.
Gabbard: Sec. of State. Harris: Attorney General. Hickenlooper: Defense. Yang: Treasury. Buttigieg, White House chief of staff. Inslee to Interior or EPA. Williamson: U.N. Ambassador: Moulton: Veterans Affairs. Bennett: Dept. of Education. Klobuchar: Agriculture. Castro: back to Housing and Urban Development. Swalwell, Ryan, Delaney and Messam play rock-paper-scissors for Transportation, Homeland Security, Labor and Energy.
Gillibrand: Ambassador to Nauru, with apologies to Nauru.
O'Rourke: U.S. Senator (TX).
Or not.
Or not.
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