/\ Time Lines /\
Politics 2021
12/26/21
NYTimes: Burma's Army Carries Out Massacres As It Begins to Lose Its Grip on Power
12/24/21
Common Dreams: Bernie Sanders Counters Joe Manchin's Bogus Inflation Argument Against Build Back Better - Manchin voted for Pentagon spending which will add $778 billion to the deficit in 2022. The Build-Back-Better bill would spend 1/4 of that amount and would have been fully paid for by tax hikes on the wealthy.
Manchin has voted for the last 11 military budgets in a row without any complaints about their effects on the deficit or inflation.
The latest budget that Manchin, and practically every politician in Washington voted for, except of course Sanders, immediately followed the end of the longest war in US history, and was $25 Billion more than the President and the Defense Dept. requested.
Corporate donations flooded into Manchin's PAC just prior to his No vote.
12/21/21
CNN: W. VA. Coal Miners Have a Message for Joe Manchin - Too bad they are not his acutal constituency. That would be the big coal corporations. Again, we don't live in a democracy. We live in a corporate dictatorship.
12/20/21
New Yorker: The Afghans Joe Biden Left Behind - Many brave Afghans helped American soldiers in their country. The message to them was: "We will take care of you." As a reward, they get to watch their
New Yorker: Joe Manchin Has Wrecked the Biden Presidency - And Liberated It - "The need to appease the West Virginia senator is gone now and not just on the climate."
12/18/21
New Yorker: The Rio Grande Valley's Abortion Desert - Designed to churn out fodder for the short term use of industry.
12/16/21
Guardian: Facebook Bans Seven 'Cyber Mercenary' Companies From Its Platform
12/11/21
NYTimes: In Bid for Control of Elections, Trump Loyalists Face Few Obstacles
12/4/21
New Yorker: The Mississippi Abortion Case and the Illegitimate Supreme Court - The whore court is now completely run by partisan hacks. Even the justices know it stinks.
Guardian: Surprise! Surprise! The Supreme Court is Coming After Women's Rights Afterall - A comprehensive overview of increased restrictions on women's health care around the world.
12/3/21
Guardian: Voting Rights Activists Frustrated by 'Same Old Same Old' Meeting With Kamala Harris
12/2/21
Guardian: Chilian Environmental Activist Who Opposed Dam Project Found Dead
12/1/21
Socialist Alternative: Biden Has a Poor Record on Abortion Rights - From the days of his harsh questioning of Anita Hill, to his ongoing support for the Hyde amendment, he is not a friend of womens' basic health care.
11/30/21
Guardian: Its Crunch Time for Humanity. We Need Everyone to Start Leading Like a Woman! - Mahdawi's new book here.
11/29/21
Guardian: How Far-Right Extremists Groups Face Exposure from Army of Hacktivists
11/18/21
NPR Fresh Air: 'Twilight of Democracy" Author Says Autocrats Are Winning
11/12/21
NYTimes: Menace Enters the Republican Mainstream
11/8/21
BBC: Afghans Facing 'Hell on Earth' as Winter Looms - Head of World Food Programme: "...we're now looking at the worst humanitarian crisis on Earth."
Stanford: Understanding the Global Rise in Authoritarianism
11/4/21
Intercept: House Democrats Give Billionaires a Pass and Target New Nicotine Levy - What good little Democrats they are.
10/26/21
NYTimes: Joe Manchin's Deep Corporate Ties - Manchin has been a high ranking member of ALEC since at least 1993.
Guardian: Robert Reich: Biden's Entire Agenda is About to Sink Into Nothingness - The Democrats now $2 trillion 10 year agenda could be easily paid for by:
1. Repealing Trump's $1.9 trillion tax cut that is going mostly to the rich and large corporations. That tax cut cost the treasury and American taxpayers $8 trillion in additional debt during Trumps 4 years in office.
2. Taxing the $2.1 trillion and Here that the 750 billionaires in the US have raked in during the pandemic.
3. Cutting our $8 trillion in defense spending over the next 10 years - which mostly goes directly into the pockets of the execs and shareholders of Pentagon contractors.
10/24/21
10/22/21
NYTimes: Internal Alarms, Public Shrugs: Facebook Employees Dissect Its Election Role
10/21/21
Guardian: Americans No Longer Have Faith in the Supreme Court
10/8/21
Guardian: Senate Republicans Sow Disinformation After $480 Billion US Debt Ceiling Deal - "...the overriding reason for raising the debt ceiling stems from the fact that the US needs to borrow new money to pay the principal and interest on about $8tn of debt incurred over the course of the Trump administration."
What's puzzling about this is Democrat messaging. They keep referring to their 10 year $3.5 Trillion social safety net program instead of referring to it as a $350 billion per year program. This would more easily be compared to the $780 billion per year Pentagon budget, and all the other programs that far exceed their plan. It almost seems that Dems want to scuttle their own plan. 🤔
During the Trump years, Republicans and Democrats voted to raise the debt ceiling 3 times with no drama.
"Congress has tinkered with the debt ceiling, ..., a grand total of 78 times since 1960 - 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents."
9/29/21
New Yorker: Trump Still Faces a Reckoning in New York
9/23/21
New Yorker: It's Too Early to Consign Joe Biden to the Ash Heap of History, But Not Too Early For Democrats to Start Panicking - Now think back to March, 2020, right after Jim Clyburn derailed the Sanders campaign just as Bernie was building serious momentum. One has to wonder if any members of the DNC are having second thoughts about that move right now. Or possibly the cynical Democratic leadership finds being out of power very good for their pocket books.
9/15/21
New Yorker: California Republicans Flee to Florida and Texas In Search of Dumber Governors
9/8/21
Guardian: Domestic Far-Right Terror Poses Bigger Threat to US than Islamist-Extremism Post-9/11
9/5/21
NYTimes: S.B. 8 and the Texas Preview of a World Without Rov v. Wade
9/4/21
Guardian: 'Panic Made Us Vulnerable': How 9/11 Made The US Surveillance State - And the Americans Who Fought Back - Not enough did, and so here we are.
9/2/21
Guardian: Justice Sotomayer's Scathing Legal Dissent Over Supreme Court Decision to Ban Abortions in Texas - 60% of Americans are, and consistently have been, pro-choice. Only about 13% of Americans are against abortion in all cases.
9/1/21
Guardian: Why is Spike Lee's 9/11 Docuseries So Controversial
8/26/21
Guardian: Portland Gunfight Fuels Alarm Over Growing Use of Weapons at Rallies -
Entry of 3/1/21:
US Department of Justice: Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021 - The IC assesses that racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent extremists (MVEs) present the most lethal domestic violent extremists (DVE) threats, with RMVEs most likely to conduct mass-casualty attacks against civilians and MVEs typically targeting law enforcement and government personnel and facilities.
Entry of 7/27/20:
Guardian: Anti-Fascists Linked to Zero Murders in the US in 25 Years - The data was revised after this article was published - an A-F was linked to one. Per the Georgetown University Center For Strategic and International Studies: Number of victims of leftwing activists in the US in the last 24 years: 1. Victims of American white-supremacists and rightwing extremists during the same period: 329. The study. A little more about the Center.
8/25/21
Reuters: American Antifa: From Girl Scout to Anarchist Street Warrior
8/23/21
NYTimes: Spike Lee, Exultant at the 'Epicenter' - Check out the last 3 questions of the Q&A.
Intercept: Portland's Bizarre Experiment With Not Policing Proud Boys Rampage Ends in Gunfire - The police tried this in Charlottesville. The result was the death of Heather Heyer. The German police adopted this same tactic and Here in the 1920s and 1930s and the result was the death of 55 million people including 6 million Jews. White supremacists and Proud Boys generally wear swastikas and other nazi attire, and Here.
Guardian: Trump's Border Wall Reportedly in Severe Disrepair in Arizona - “I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively,” Trump said when he announced his run for president in 2015. “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
8/19/21
NYTimes: US Revives Facebook Suit, Adding Details to Back Claim of a Monopoly
8/12/21
Center for Strategic and International Studies: Examining Extremism: The Militia Movement
8/10/21
The Pharisees: Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right
8/2/21
New Yorker: The Big Money Behind the Big Lie: "Donald Trump's attacks on democracy are being promoted by rich and powerful conservative groups that are determined to win at all costs."
7/27/21
New Yorker: Biden Considers Banning Vaccine to Persuade People to Get It
7/26/21
Chris Hedges: The Collective Suicide Machine
7/25/21
New Yorker: The Unmaking of Biblical Womanhood - reference to Magnolia Journal - #Evangelical - Chip and Johanna Gaines; "The Gaineses have built a commercial empire called Magnolia, by selling the trappings of a trendy, Christian life style." Magnolia Market at the Silos "The Gaineses’ brand often seems to valorize aspects of traditional gender roles...This aesthetic, perhaps unintentionally, has resonances with the evangelical notion of complementarianism, the concept that, though men and women have equal value in God’s eyes, the Bible ascribes to them different roles at home, in their families, and in the church. The ideology promotes the notions of Biblical manhood and womanhood, conceptions of how proper Christian men and women should comport themselves, which are ostensibly based on scriptural teaching, and tend to encourage women’s submission to men. Johanna's book: "Homebody"
"Beth Allison Barr, a medieval-history professor at Baylor University, who studies the role of women in evangelical Christianity" Her book: "The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth"
Kristin Kobes Du Mez: "Jesus and John Wayne"
For other entries on this subject, search on #Evangelical within the Politics and Other Interesting Stuff pages.
7/20/21
Guardian: Emmanuel Macron Identified in Leaked Pegasus Project Data and French Minister's Phone Shows Traces Linked to NSO Spyware and Pegasus Project Turns Spotlight On Spyware Firm NSO's Ties to Israeli State - The Guardian has blown the lid off a story that has been suppressed by media in the US. This web site has been commenting on the gargantuan intrusion into the privacy of all Americans and people around the world by NSA since 2013.
Summarization published on TimeLines on 3/1/18:
Intercept: The Powerful Global Spy Alliance You Never Knew Existed - First there was Prism, the NSA program that “allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, and has obtained access to Google, Facebook and Apple servers.”
Then there was XKEYSCORE. The National Security Agency’s most powerful tool of mass surveillance which makes tracking someone’s Internet usage as easy as entering an email address, and provides no built-in technology to prevent abuse.
Then there was the admission by the NSA that they had been using a perceived loophole in the FISA Amendments Act to surveil anybody they wanted to, with or without a warrant, whether or not they were in contact with foreigners, or suspected of any crime - despite James Clapper’s repeated lies to Congress to the contrary and Here, Here, Here, Here.
Then there was Medusa - which facilitated the capture the equivalent of 1 million average sized emails, online chats, social media conversations and internet browsing histories every minute.
Then there was Palantir to easily sort and search all of this data.
And now there is this Global Spy Alliance article about various countries that use Pegasus software. The NSA and other governments use it to collect phone calls, text messages, emails, Snap Chats, Skype calls, Facebook posts, online comments, credit card purchases, collect passwords, track locations, access the target device's microphone and camera, harvest information from phone apps, and then save and store that info either in the enormous data store in Utah and Here which holds yottabtes of data (a yottabyte is one trillion terabytes), and costs about $40 million/year to maintain, or on multiple servers from multiple cooperating countries around the world. All this plus voice and facial recognitions systems have removed almost every smidgen of privacy from our lives - despite the guarantees of the 4th Amendment.
None of this is about crime prevention. It's all about control. Interesting to think that we would not have all of this surveillance without 9/11, and we wouldn't know about it without Edward Snowden.
7/19/21
Guardian: Pegasus Project: Spyware Leak Suggests Lawyers and Activists at Risk Across Globe
NPR: An Israel-Based Firm's Spyware Found on Nearly 900 Phones
Tucson Weekly: No End in Sight for Maricopa Election Audit, or For Feuding Over It
7/15/21
Glenn Greenwald: Nancy and Paul Pelosi Making Millions on Stock Trades in Companies She Actively Regulates - Top 5 companies actively traded by the Pelosis: Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Google. 75% of their stock trading has been Big Tech. 17.7% Apple. When Tim Cook called, all Nancy wanted to know was what changes were needed in the proposed anti-trust laws to avoid harming Apple and other Silicon Valley giants. "Can even the most hard-core Democrat partisan loyalist justify this blatant conflict of interest and self dealing?"
7/14/21
AZ Central: Maricopa County Will Spend Millions to Replace Voting Machines Turned Over to Arizona Senate for Audit and Associated Press
7/8/21
Guardian: 'Radicalized' Anti-Abortion Movement Poses Increased Threat to American Democracy - Pro-gun, forced-birther, misogynist, anti-immigrant, anti-democratic, militant groups want America to become a theocratic state ruled by white males. They use pseudo-scripture to justify their violence. The thread that ties it all together: White Supremacy.
7/5/21
HuffPo: Trump's New Spokesperson Tweets Article That Says His Election Claims are All Lies
CNN: Trump Accidently Reveals the Truth About His Dis-information Strategy
7/2/21
Democracy-NOW: Supreme Court Hijacking Democracy and Allowing More Dark Money
Forbes: After Arizona Audit, Is Pennsylvania Next? - ...and then?
7/1/21
Intercept: Scientific American Retracted Pro-Palestinian Article Without Any Factual Errors - "After right-wing outrage, the esteemed journal removed an opinion piece expressing solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli bombardment."
6/28/21
Guardian: New Michael Wolff Book: Trump Was Puzzled and Confused After His Speech on Jan. 6 - "I didn't mean it literally." Ivanka thought the insurrection was just 'an optics issue'.
6/22/21
Glenn Greenwald: Court Rules: Viewers Know Rachel Maddow Offers Only Exaggeration and Opinion, Not Facts - "those who want to claim that this court ruling proves Tucker Carlson is a lying propagandist who cannot be trusted have no way out of applying the same claim to Maddow."
6/20/21
Guardian: Squad Goals: AOC Warns Biden Patience is Growing Thin
6/11/21
Guardian: Revealed: Rightwing Firm Posed as Leftist Group on Facebook to Divide Democrats
Intercept: Political System Unites to Condemn Ilan Omar for Telling the Truth
Intercept: Biden Admin Routinely Sending Mexican Children Back Into Danger - Claiming asylum for protection against violence is legal under US law. Therefore it would seem that ICE and the Biden Admin are in violation of that law.
6/8/21
Guardian: AOC Condemns Kamala Harris for Telling Guatemalan Migrants Not to Come to the US
6/3/21
Democracy-NOW: The Lethal Nexus: Mass Shootings and Domestic Violence
5/31/21
Socialist Alternative: We Can't Trust the Courts To Protect Reproductive Rights: Defend Roe V Wade!
New Yorker: In Gaza, An Impasse Cannot Be Mistaken for Stability
5/29/21
5/28/21
Intercept: Biden is Filling Top Pentagon Positions With Defense Contractors
Guardian: Republicans Are Trying To Rewrite The History of the Capital Attack. Don't Let Them -
"Do you remember how, just a few short months ago, supporters of Donald Trump staged a violent insurrection? How they stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of last November’s presidential election, looting and vandalizing the seat of American democracy? The fact that they carried firearms, explosives and handcuffs, some wanting to kill Vice-President Mike Pence, and others to run the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, over with a car? And how the whole thing was incited by the former president, Donald Trump, who told the mob beforehand to “fight like hell”?"
Inciting a mob to cause an insurrection is the textbook definition of Sedition, and it is punishable by death.
5/27/21
Democracy-NOW: One Hundred Years After the Tulsa Massacre
Guardian: Ireland Condemns 'de facto Annexation' of Palestinian Land by Israel
Reuters: UN Launches Investigation Into Whether Israel, Hamas Committed Crimes
Daily Poster: Obama Labor Secretary/DNC Chair Tom Perez Joins Anti-Union Law Firm
5/24/21
5/20/21
Democracy-NOW: Joe Biden's Hit and Run on the Palestinian People
New Yorker: The GOP Looks for New Ways to Ignore January 6th
New Yorker: Trump Orders Kevin McCarthy to Go to Prison in His Place
5/19/21
Code Pink: Biden and Congress approve the sale of $735 Million in precision guided bombs during the slaughter of Palestinians - The bombs currently being used for the slaughter of 220 Palestinians, 1/3 of them children on top of the 'regular' $3.8 Billion annual gift.
Democracy-NOW: Gaza Becomes A Virtually Uninhabitable Wasteland - Unlike 26 of 27 countries in the European Union, Human Rights Watch and numerous NGOs, Biden has yet to call for a cease fire. Other than platitudes and lip service he has betrayed and abandoned progressives.
UK Independent: AOC and Progressive Democrats Issue Resolution to Block US Arms Sales to Israel
Guardian: New York Attorney General Opens Criminal Investigation Into Trump Organization
5/18/21
Democracy-NOW: Israel is Targeting Doctors and Health Facilities - That's a war crime.
Scheer Post: How America Went From Mom-And-Pop Capitalism to Techno-Feudalism - "Free men could be kept enslaved by debt by paying them wages that were insufficient to meet their costs of living."
5/17/21
UK Independent: AOC Calls Israel an 'Apartheid State'
5/14/21
Intercept: Facebook's Secret Rules About the Word "Zionist" Impede Criticism of Israel
NBC News: Democratic Left Lashes Out at Biden for Following Old, Pro-Israel Precedent
5/13/21
Democracy-NOW: "Lynch Mobs": Palestinians Face Brutal Attacks Inside Israel - Ethnic cleansing and Apartheid in occupied territories
5/12/21
Newsweek: Liz Cheney's Speech Her During Removal Hearing - Very short, honest and statesmanlike. She was removed for maintaining that Trump legally lost the election. The very next day Kevin McCarthy (House Minority Leader and leader of House Republican Conference that gave her the boot) stated to reporters: "I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election."
5/11/21
5/10/21
5/9/21
New Yorker: A Pennsylvania Lawmaker and the Rise of Christian Nationalism - #Evangelical
5/5/21
Newsweek: The Republican Push to Ban Critical Race Theory Reveals an Ugly Truth - A core tenet for Republicans is small government, yet in this case they want the government to dictate what can be taught and what can be banned in public school, interfering in the affairs of citizens. It also defies their new-found attachement to free speech where they call out Big Tech for deplatformig those they don't agree with, and the cancel culture.
4/28/21
Intercept: Joe Biden: Empire Politician
4/27/21
Human Rights Watch: Abusive Israeli Policies Constitute Crimes of Apartheid, Persecution and Democracy-NOW
Guardian: Biden Plans to Beef Up IRS to Claim up to $700B in Tax From Richest Americans
Code Pink: Biden Poll - A pretty good list of his pluses and minuses. Foreign policy is a major set of minues: $753 Billion defense budget, leaving sanctions in place against Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea and Syria, massive weapons sale to S. Arabia and UAE, recognition of un-elected despots in Honduras and Venezuela.
4/26/21
New Yorker: The Incredible Rise of North Korea's Hacking Army - The Shadow Brokers make another appearance. Search on cryptocurrency, 'hot wallets'.
Glenn Greenwald: The Targets of Biden's War on "Domestic Extremists" May Not Be Who You Think
4/24/21
New Republic: The Right to Crash Cars Into Progressive Demonstrators - "It took a few more years for the right-wing propaganda apparatus to fully numb conservative consciences, and prepare them to openly endorse an idea as plainly depraved as this one."
4/20/21
Rolling Stone: Ted Nugent, Covid Denier, Now Has Covid - His karma just ran over his dogma.
4/19/21
Washington Monthly: Is Facebook Buying Off the New York Times?
4/13/21
Frontline: American Insurrection
Nation: Biden's Supreme Court Commission is Designed to Fail
4/7/21
Guardian: How Republicans Are Trying to Prevent People From Voting After 'Stop the Steal'
4/6/21
Intercept: The Democratic Party's Consultant Factory
Guardian: How the Far-Right Group 'Oath Enforcers' Plans to Harass Political Enemies
4/5/21
Guardian: 'Allergic Reaction to US Religious Right' Fueling Decline of Religion, Experts Say
3/1/21
New Yorker: "Judas and the Black Messiah" and the Klan Act - A must-read. Once again Hollywood attempts to make a moral equivalency between domestic white-supremacist extremist terrorists' efforts to violently overthrow US democracy and attempts by Americans of color to achieve simple economic equivalency. Racism seems to be at the core of our ruling class.
3/24/21
Guardian: Evangelical Leaders Condemn Role of Christian Nationalism in Capitol Attack - American Christianity has a white supremacy problem. #Evangelical
3/4/21
New Yorker: The Wasting of the Evangelical Mind - #Evangelical
"Cultivating the life of the mind, however, has been an important current throughout much of Christianity’s history, a recognition that intellectual pursuits can glorify God.
During the Middle Ages, monasteries became centers of learning and gave rise to the first European universities.
The writings of Thomas Aquinas, which blended Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology, set out a framework for reconciling scientific knowledge with scriptural truths.
Martin Luther, who led the Protestant Reformation, was an early advocate of universal education and argued that educating needy youth was vital “in order that a city might enjoy temporal peace and prosperity.”
The Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards grappled with metaphysics and epistemology in his writings and sermons.
The English Puritans who settled throughout New England had a deep scholarly tradition, which led to the founding of Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth. Puritan clergy were expected to be paragons of both learning and piety.
In the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis and Reinhold Niebuhr enjoyed popular acclaim as Christian public intellectuals. T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden are among the writers whose theologically orthodox Christianity served as a focal point of their art.
American Christianity took a decisive shift, however, toward religious “enthusiasm” during revivals that swept the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, a period that came to be known as the First Great Awakening. Believers’ direct connection to God became the primary focus. Ministers who believed in the importance of learning and rationality in religion found themselves increasingly under threat.
The style of the most popular and influential pastors tend to correlate with shallowness: charisma trumps expertise; scientific authority is often viewed with suspicion. So it is of little surprise that American evangelicals have become vulnerable to demagoguery and misinformation.
a “resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it.”
anti-intellectualism
“The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter,”
The church found itself increasingly at odds with advances in science
3/1/21
US Department of Justice: Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021 - The IC assesses that racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent extremists (MVEs) present the most lethal DVE threats, with RMVEs most likely to conduct mass-casualty attacks against civilians and MVEs typically targeting law enforcement and government personnel and facilities.
2/27/21
Common Dreams: With $15 Wage Included, House Passes $1.9 T Covid Relief Package - The President of the Senate, Kamala Harris, can overrule the Senate Parliamentarian, and then pass the bill. No excuses Democrats! Get it Done!
2/23/21
2/19/21
Intercept: RIP Rush Limbaugh, Who Spent His Entire Life on the Government Dole
2/16/21
Fight for $15: Hundreds in Congress Cosponsor the Raise the Wage Act
2/15/21
Reuters: Fact Check: Courts Have Dismissed Multiple Lawsuits of Alledged Electoral Fraud Presented by Trump Campaign - "Courts dismissed more than 50 lawsuits of alleged electoral fraud and irregularities presented by Trump and allies. U.S. election security officials have said the election was “the most secure in American history”.
ScheerPost: Chris Hedges: Cancel Culture, Where Liberalism Goes to Die - "Capitalism, because God blessed the righteous with wealth and power and condemned the immoral to poverty and suffering, is shorn of its inherent cruelty and exploitation...the worst aspects of American society are sacralized by this heretical form of Christianity.
This collective self-delusion is the story of America, from its foundation on the twin evils of slavery and genocide to its inherent racism, predatory capitalism and savage wars of conquest."
2/13/21
Guardian: Mitch McConnell Savages Trump Minutes After Voting to Acquit
Intercept: How to Understand the Rage Economy - "Just as the old advertising model incentivized news outlets to project a business-friendly view of the world, the new model requires readers to stay not just satisfied but also engaged enough that they are willing to maintain economic support. Unfortunately for society as a whole, one of the best ways to monetize engagement on the internet is by generating anger and hatred, usually directed at some other group of people."
2/6/21
Guardian: FBI Net Closes on MAGA Mob That Stormed the Capitol - Here's a list of those arrested.
2/4/21
Brennan Center For Justice: How to Change Incentives for Both Politicians and Donors - "In the current broken system, a small number of megadonors spend millions to influence elections and expect something in return from the officials who benefited. Many Americans have lost interest in civic participation because they don’t have confidence in our political system. Reform can restore that confidence and make people more likely to engage with the political process, including through small donations. With public financing, politicians would have a greater incentive to seek broad support from all of their constituents, not just the rich ones."
2/1/21
New Yorker: The Next Cyberattack is Already Under Way
1/28/21
Intercept: Merrick Garland Wants Former Facebook Lawyer to Top Antitrust Division - There will be no antitrust enforcement in the Biden Administration.
Alternet: This Fox News Employee Was Fired After Inruriating Trump - Now He's Speaking Out - Per Stirewalt: "Having worked in cable news for more than a decade after a wonderfully misspent youth in newspapers, I can tell you the result: a nation of news consumers both overfed and malnourished," Stirewalt explains. "Americans gorge themselves daily on empty informational calories, indulging their sugar fixes of self-affirming half-truths and even outright lies. Can anyone really be surprised that the problem has gotten worse in the last few years?"
1/27/21
New Yorker: Why An Israeli Human-Rights Organization Decided to Call Israel an Apartheid Regime - Jimmy Carter - 'Peace Not Apartheid'
1/25/21
Reuters: Biden Says He's Open to Negotiating The $1,400 Covid Stimulus Checks - Disgusting. They own the executive branch and majorities in both House and Senate. A continuation of the neo-liberal approach that got them defeated in 2016. Do the Republicans and McConnell open the dialogue with, 'but we're willing to negotiate'?
The messaging should be: 'Good News! Your $1,400 check is on the way!'
Reuters: Biden Pushes Elusive 'Buy American' Goal With New Federal Contract Guidelines
1/23/21
NYTimes: Navalny Protests: Mass Rallies Sweep Across Russia - In -60F weather.
1/21/21
New Yorker: The Meaning of The Mittens: Five Possibilities - "We're still here it said. Ignore us, and we won't sit nearly so quietly next time."
"It’s clear that some people in the upper reaches of the Democratic Party understand that if they are going to bask in a glamorous return to neoliberal “normal,” there needs to some nod to reality."
1/20/21
New Yorker: Janet Yellen's Confirmation Hearing Provides a Glimpse Into the Biden Era - Corona virus, spending and taxes. - China,
Keynesian a further burst of government spending is needed "to alleviate human suffering, shorten the recession, and head off long-term “scarring” to the economy. expanding child tax credits and raising the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour; expanding and extending unemployment insurance, boosting food-stamp programs, and raising refundable child tax credits to three thousand dollars a year—a set of proposals that would reduce the incidence of child poverty by half, according to a study by Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.
Most of the Republicans in Congress voted for the 2017 tax bill, which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will increase the budget deficit by $1.9 trillion over ten years, and, before that, for the costly tax cuts of George W. Bush. Not to mention Bush's Afghan ($2 T) and Iraq ($1.1 T) wars and the financial meltdown that occured just as Bush was leaving town ($2 T and counting), costing 10 million homeowners between 2006 and 2014
"it’s essential that we put the federal budget on a path that is sustainable . . . but the most important thing, in my view, that we can do today to put us on a path of fiscal sustainability is to defeat the pandemic,” she said to Thune. A failure to spend enough to revive the economy would “likely leave us in a worst place fiscally and with respect to our debt situation,” Yellen added.
1/19/21
Glenn Greenwald: The New Domestic War on Terror is Coming
1/18/21
Intercept: Big Tech Critics Alarmed at Direction of Biden Anti-trust Personnel and American Prospect - Byline: "Renata Hesse, who has worked for Google and Amazon, is the leading candidate to run the Justice Department’s antitrust division."
"Juan Arteaga, another Obama Justice Department veteran who defended JPMorgan Chase and several other financial firms in fraud cases and represented AT&T in its merger with Time Warner, was also being considered but was more likely to be appointed deputy assistant attorney general in the antitrust division."
1/17/21
New Yorker: A Reporter's Footage From Inside the Capitol Siege
1/16/21
NYTimes: Before the Capitol Riot, Calls for Cash and Talk of Revolution - Byline: "A network of far-right agitators across the country spent weeks organizing and raising money for a mass action to overturn President Trump’s election loss."
1/15/21
Guardian: US Set for Flurry of 'Christian Nationalist' Bills Advanced by Religious Right - Evangelicalism is suffering from a white supremicist problem. #Evangelical
1/14/21
ProPublica: Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It Will Weigh Down the Economy for Years - Per the article: His $1.7 Trillion tax cut for the rich eventually ate a $3T hole in the national debt. During his administration the national debt rose $7.8 Trillion to $28 Billion. Federal debt increased by 50%.
Intercept: DOJ Considers Charging Capitol Rioters With Seditious Conspiracy, Felony Murder - However, as explained in the article, so far actual charges are very few and minor. Contrast this with the vendictive DOJ response to the J20 and George Floyd protests which were immediately met with an army of police arresting everyone present for simply being there. They were then charged with felony rioting, later upgraded to conspiracy and threatened with decades in prison, thus upending their lives.
This is in contrast with the Capitol insurrection, where most of the perps simply walked out the front door when they were through having their fun, and disappeared into the night.
The next day the crime scene was immediately cleansed of all forensic evidence before any real investigation could take place.
1/12/21
Reuters: Trump Supporters at US Capitol Riot Face Consequences at Home
1/11/21
New Yorker: Trump Can't Be Allowed to Escape Justice Again
New York Mag: Who Are Joe Biden's Cabinet Nominees? - No mention of Deputy Treasury Sec. Adeyemo's BlackRock background or Tom Vilsack's Monsanto background. And what the hell does Pete Buttigieg know about Transportation? Is he the token LGBT? Marcia Fudge didn't want the job as HUD, since most of her public service has been in the Ag sector - but Biden gave that to Vilsack. Is Fudge the token black female?
1/10/21
NYTimes: Incitement to Riot? What Trump Told Supporters Before Mob Stormed Capitol
Intercept: Speculative "Blank Check" Companies Surround Tony Blinken, Biden Administration - These guys are going to be just as rapacious as the Trumpers. We all voted for Biden because 1. he had the best chance of beating schrump and 2. we would have voted for a tree stump with that same qualification. Maybe we need another party? Just a thought.
1/8/21
Reuters: If Rioters Who Stormed Capitol Were Black, 'Hundreds' Would Have Been Killed
YouTube: Donald Trump, Jr. Partying and High Fiving Before US Capitol Riot
1/7/21
Guardian: The Long List of Republicans Who Voted to Reject the Election Results and Common Dreams - Never forget!
Reuters: How Security Failures Enabled Trump Mob to Storm the US Capitol
Foreign Policy in Focus: America Has Entered the Weimar Era - Synopsis: The neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama saw the national income share of the bottom 50% go from 20% to 12%, and the income share of the top 1% rose from 11% to 20%, which paved the way for Trump. The white racist segment of that working class has been totally brainwashed by Fox News, conspiracy theories on Facebook, and the Republican party to the point of openly armed rebellion. Biden's Blackrock cabinet seems poised to continue the neo-liberal policies that got us to this point. It is possible that we will follow the Weimar example.
Common Dreams: 'A Profoundly Troubling Pick': Progressives Slam Biden Choice of Gov. Raimondo for Commerce Secretary - She's a venture capitalist, charter school advocate, against M4A, pushed for Medicaid Cuts, she issued an executive order sought by healthcare industry lobbyists that shielded nursing homes from lawsuits when their business decisions injure or kill people. The order was later expanded to shield nursing homes, hospitals, and other healthcare providers. She has a long history of prioritizing the desires of Wall St. firms, she stripped low-income areas of 50% of mid-pandemic aid funding. Given the power of the Commerce Dept. to decrease prescription drug costs because of its control of the US Patent and Trademark Office, control over climate research because it controls NOAA, possibility to fix the broken Census process, power to achieve a progressive trade policy via its oversight of the International Trade Administration; given all that this is one of several
"Raimondo's loathing of the needy and love of financial power is exactly the behavior Democrats have spent four years rightly decrying in Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin," the Revolving Door Project states on its No Corporate Cabinet website.
As such, Biden giving any executive position to the Democratic governor "would represent a profound and bitter betrayal of trust."
That sentiment was echoed by labor activist RoseAnn DeMoro responding to reports of Raimondo's selection, as well as reports of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh as Biden's labor secretary.
"Serious slap in the face to workers and to Sen. Bernie Sanders," DeMoro said in a Thursday tweet.
1/6/21
TPM: Here's What Trump Said Just Before His Supporters Stormed the Capitol - "Let's walk down Pennsylvania Ave...I'll be there with you...We're going to have to fight much harder."
New Yorker: The Rioters in the Senate Chamber - "childish, stupid, dangerous," scruffy, white, male, hooligan, thugs. On Monday night in Dalton, GA, Trump told them to they had to "fight...go all the way...fight like hell." That's Sedition. Then they did what he said to do. That's insurrection. Four people died. That's manslaughter and accessories to.
Also, we are at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and who knows how may countries where we have 'special operations' going on. It's interesting what one finds when one searches for the punishment of insurrection and sedition and Here during wartime.
Too bad we don't have national leaders in place who have the courage to do what this demands.
1/5/21
Intercept: Far-Right Violence Will Continue With or Without Trump - "The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that white supremacist groups were responsible for two-thirds of the 61 “terrorist plots and attacks” in the first eight months of 2020. Since 2009, the far right has been responsible for over 70 percent of extremist murders."
New Yorker: Trump's Alarming Call to Battle - During Monday night's speech in Dalton, Trump said: if "we don’t do something fast, there will never be another free election and the United States will succumb to “communism.”
“If you don’t fight to save your country with everything you have, you’re not gonna have a country left,”
"We have to go all the way, and that’s what’s happening,...You watch what happens over the next couple of weeks, you watch what’s going to come out, watch what’s going to be revealed.”
"They’re not taking this White House, we’re going to fight like hell.”
Sedition, pure and simple.
1/4/21
Reuters: Leave Your Guns At Home Washington Police Warn Pro-Trump Rally-Goers
1/1/21
Intercept: How Israel's Attacks Drove Warnock Into the Arms of a Centrist Pro-Israel Group