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12/31/20
Intercept: Biden's "Cabinet of Firsts" Betrays a Cynical Approach to Diversity - Fudge's appointment to HUD was a consolation prize. Her expertise is in Agriculture, but Biden had already put Obama-retread, corporate servant Vilsack in that spot. Biden's approach to filling cabinet positions appears to be in some ways just as slipshod as Trump's.
Democracy-NOW: 'America's Reckoning' Cornel West - "...when you sow the seeds of greed — domestically, inequality; globally, imperial tentacles, 800 military units abroad, violence and AFRICOM in Africa, supporting various regimes, dictatorial ones in Asia and so forth — there is a connection between the seeds that you sow of violence externally and internally. Same is true in terms of the seed of hatred, of white supremacy, hating Black people, anti-Blackness hatred having its own dynamic within the context of a predatory capitalist civilization obsessed with money, money, money, domination of workers, marginalization of those who don’t fit ... So, it’s precisely this convergence...of the ways in which the American Empire, imploding, its foundations being shaken, with uprisings from below...the failures of the predatory capitalist economy to provide the satisfaction of the basic needs of food and healthcare and quality education, jobs with a decent wage, at the same time the collapse of your political class, the collapse of your professional class. Their legitimacy has been radically called into question, and that’s multiracial. It’s the neofascist dimension in Trump. It’s the neoliberal dimension in Biden and Obama and the Clintons and so forth. And it includes much of the media. It includes many of the professors in universities. The young people are saying, “You all have been hypocritical. You haven’t been concerned about our suffering, our misery. And we no longer believe in your legitimacy.” And it spills over into violent explosion."
12/28/20
Visual Capitalist: Visualizing the US Population By Race
12/24/20
Democracy-NOW: US Becomes First Country to Recognize Morocco's Annexation of W. Sahara
12/23/20
Stephen Semler: The Progressive Caucus Isn't Living Up to Its Name
12/21/20
New Yorker: How Ammon Bundy Helped Foment an Anti-Masker Rebelliion in Idaho - He's a domestic terrorist pure and simple. Also see Here, and Here.
12/20/20
New Yorker: An Advent Lament in the Pandemic -
"But white evangelical Protestants, once again, overwhelmingly supported President Trump in the election, despite his denialism about the pandemic, which has now killed more than three hundred thousand people in the United States, and his utter lack of compassion for its victims. Many churches, particularly conservative ones, fought lockdown orders and rebuffed public-health warnings about large indoor gatherings. The virus has swept through houses of worship across the country. In the end, the lasting image of the church in the pandemic may very well be that of an unmasked choir at First Baptist Church, in Dallas, led by the pastor, Robert Jeffress, a staunch Trump supporter, singing in front of Vice-President Mike Pence at a “Freedom Sunday” service, as the county where the church is located reported a record high for COVID-19 cases."
According to their own scripture this is how we will all be judged: "“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
And: "...Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me...Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me...And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."
12/18/20
New Yorker: The Veterans Organizing to Stop Trumpism
12/16/20
Intercept: AOC: Pelosi Needs to Go, but There's Nobody to Replace Her Yet
12/15/20
Guardian: As Biden Won the Presidency, Republicans Cemented Their Grip on Power For the Next Decade
12/14/20
Politico: Goldman Sachs Vets Quietly Added to Biden Transition - Biden packs his transition team with bank and corporate lobbyists, neo-cons, neo-libs. Progressives? Zero.
12/13/20
New Yorker: Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is Overcoming Her Fears - the duly elected president of Balarus
12/11/20
EDGI: Biden's Pick for the Office of Public Engagement, Cedric Richmond, Profits While Polluting Industries in His District Avoid Culpability - Richmond previously represented the poorest district in America, into which the Oil & Gas Industry pumps huge amounts of raw waste, devastating its residents' health. The Industry that contributed the most to his political career: Oil & Gas.
12/8/20
Common Dreams: 'Bad News': Biden Picks Retired General and Raytheon Board Member Lloyd Austin as Pentagon Chief - Major supplier to Saudi Arabia in its ongoing slaughter of Yemenis. Primary manufacturer of drone/drone swarm technologies. Merged with United Technologies on 4/3/20. Were awarded $15.4 Billion in defense contracts in 2019.
12/4/20
Intercept: Biden is the Perfect Figurehead for the Post-Trump National Security Establishment - "Biden is a Washington creature with a mutli-decade support for wars and militarism."
12/3/20
Democracy-NOW: Massacre in Lagos
12/2/20
Democracy-NOW: Where Are the Progressives? - Neera Tanden neo-lib, neo-con, pro-war corporate toady, who opposes and undermines progressive policy at every opportunity. Along with John Podesta, Tom Perez and the rest of the DNC she was primarily responsible for the removal of the ban on fracking and the support for a carbon tax, the support for M4A and a $15 minum wage from the platform and the support for TPP and the Israeli Occupation to be included in it. These are the people who are responsible for the disastrous H. Clinton campaign strategy which failed horribly against the 2nd worst candidate in history, and gave us 4 years of cheeto-head. While promoting her identity, and her mother's upbringing by using entitlements, she has often said that entitlements should be 'on the table' with cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. She is against cancelling student-load debt, a $15 hourly wage and M4A. She is the definition of neo-liberal. She is 'more of the same' from the DNC, which is the reason that most working Americans stayed home in 2016.
12/1/20
BlackRock Gains Clout As Biden Builds His Team - BlackRock is a major fossil fuel infrastructure and Saudi Arabian financing agent.
11/30/20
American Prospect: The Day One Agenda - All of the things Biden could do on Day 1, regardless of Congress and without abusing executive authority.
11/29/20
Salon: Congress Can Wait: How Biden Can Reshape the Future With Executive Action
Guardian: Dehumanizing: Israeli Groups' Verdict on Military Invasions of Palestinians' Homes
11/24/20
American Prospect: BlackRock Executive Brian Deese Could Get Major White House Position - As head of his National Economic Council.
Intercept: Congress Has the Power to Override Supreme Court Rulings
11/23/20
Intercept: The Other Race on Georgia's January Ballot
11/22/20
Common Dreams: Black Voters Saved Our Democracy - "Black voters waited in 10-hour lines to show up for Joe Biden. Now Biden needs to return the favor."
NBC News: What Trump Faces on Jan. 20, 2021
11/20/20
New Yorker: Masha Gessen: The Coup Stage of Donald Trump's Presidency - "“Con versus coup” might be a false dichotomy. A coup is a power claim made illegitimately...A con is an illegitimate act of persuasion. A coup always begins as a con. If the con is successful—if the power claim is persuasive—then a coup has occurred." Contains the story of Tatyana Malkina. Gessen also wrote the definitive deliniation of how the unsubstantiated connections between the Trump administration and Russia first got started in the American press, and eventually became the "Russia Hacked the Election" mantra/canard.
Intercept: Biden Doesn't Need the Senate to Boost the Economy and Tackle Climate Change - Biden could: 1. Make sure the Fed dedicates itself to creating jobs and growing the economy. 2. Forgive the first $50,000 of student debt by executive order. 3. Direct the Labor Dept. to block companies from cheating workers out of overtime. 3. Deschedule marijuana at the federal level - in states controlled by Democrats, expunge criminal records and restore voting rights. 4. Direct the Treasury Dept. to defund the fossil fuel industry and encourage renewables. The "New Consensus" offers a broader plan.
11/19/20
Democracy Now: Progressives Demand "Corporate Free Cabinet" as Biden Taps Pharma and Fossil Fuel Allies for Top Jobs - Just more Democrap lesser-of-two-evils sell out.
Cedric Richmond for senior adviser, White House Office of Public Engagement.
Steve Ricchetti, Big Pharma lobbyist, for Senior Counselor.
Bruce Reed probable for OMB.
Deb Halland considered for Sec. of Interior
Ron Klain chief of staff.
"for Democrats to allow Mitch McConnell to rob this majority of governing would be really terrible for all the Democrats who poured their heart out for Joe Biden and wanted bold action and fundamental change."
Common Dreams: Dear Joe Biden: Are You Kidding Me? - Biden taps former DuPont front man to join his EPA transition team.
American Prospect: Will Biden Name a Deficit Hawk to Head OMB?
11/18/20
Food and Water Watch: Dozens of Groups Back Fudge as Next Secretary of Agriculture
Intercept: Defeated Trump Campaign Tells Supporters: "The Left Hates You" in Fundraising Emails
11/16/20
Guardian: A Youth Group Helped Biden Win. Now They Want Him to Fix the Climate Crisis. - Sunrise Movement
11/8/20
Daily KOS: AOC Slams Back in Defense of Progressives Against Centrist Attacks of Spanberger and McCaskill - Neo-lib Spanberger barely won back her seat. McCaskill lost hers. And yet they are trying to tell the rest of the party how to run. Note that every Democrat that signed onto M4A won their race.
10/22/20
Center for Strategic and International Studies: The War Comes Home - "White supremacists and other like-minded extremists conducted two-thirds of the terrorist plots and attacks in the United States in 2020."
Alternet: How BlackRock is On Track to Infiltrate the Biden Administration - Orchestrated by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. In the running: BlackRock Investment Institute Chairman Tom Donilon, BR investment strategist Brian Deese, BlackRock chief investment strategist Mike Pile,
10/7/20
Guardian: A Further 150m People Face Extreme Poverty by 2022 - Currently about 736 million people live in dire poverty (less than $1.90/day). That number has been dwindling over the last decade. But now, due to Covid and climate change it is turning back up. Many of these may soon become climate refugees. For reference there are currently about 80 million refugees worldwide. Worldwide, climate change could easily increase that number 10 fold. What would that world be like?
9/25/20
SPLC: Ammon Bundy Launches New Anti-Government Organization That Takes On Coronavirus Restrictions - Domestic Terrorist pure and simple.
9/17/20
NYTimes: The Evangelicals Who Are Taking on QAnon - #Evangelical
9/2/20
New Yorker: Christianity's White Supremacy Problem - #Evangelical
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: zero. Victims of American white-supremacists and rightwing extremists during the same period: 329. The study. A little more about the Center.
7/7/20
New Yorker: The Study That Debunks Most Anti-Abortion Arguments
6/24/20
3/26/20
CNN: Jim Clyburn Endorses Joe Biden Prior to SC Primary - Up until this point Bernie Sanders had a lead in delegates and all of the momentum. Clyburn changed the whole Democratic nomination process. As a result, we now have a president who caters to the corporate class instead of the working class, a candidate that made all sorts of promises about climate change and then did the opposite, a disasterous withdrawal from Afghanistan. This is what the Democratic party is all about.
3/16/20
3/20/20
New Yorker: American Christianity's White-Supremacy Problem - #Evangelical
12/8/18
Guardian: A New Series on Anti-Racism, and Why Beto O'Rourke is No Bold Progressive
5/10/18
Democracy-NOW: Jeremy Scahill: Obama Paved Way for Haspel to Head the CIA by Failing to Hold Torturers Accountable - By now it’s clear that both Bush and Obama approved torture, and rendition, with a lot of help from John Brennan and Here, Here Here and James Comey. Then Obama made sure the 6,700-page Senate torture report got delayed and then got ‘lost’, and Here so no one would ever be held accountable, and Here.
From the article: “The 6,700-page report, the product of years of work by the Senate Intelligence Committee, contains meticulous details, including original CIA cables and memos, on the agency’s use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other aggressive interrogation methods at “black site” prisons overseas. A 500-page executive summary was released in December 2014 by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s outgoing chair. It concluded that the CIA’s interrogations were far more brutal than the agency had publicly acknowledged and produced often unreliable intelligence.”
As this article points out, Gina Haspel was the operative that actually did the deleting. Then Obama signed the 2014 NDAA which allows the president to indefinitely detain anyone in the world for any reason, or no reason. The only person ever convicted of any torture related item was the guy who revealed it. Rethuglicans and Democraps are equally to blame. Combine this with universal surveillance, and Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, and Here, and it adds up to a corporate police state.
See entries of 12/27/13 and 2/11/13.
5/14/17
New Yorker: My Grandmother's Desperate Choice
8/2/16
Truthdig: Don’t Fall For It: The Nader Myth and Your 2016 Vote - Hopefully, we can lay this old canard in its rightful place: a complete fable. 90,000 Florida voters of all persuasions (not just Democrats) voted for Nader in 2000. Over 300,000 registered Democrats voted for Bush. 191,000 self-described liberals voted for Bush. A final count of all the votes showed that Gore actually won Florida. The Supreme Court is the reason Gore lost Florida, nothing that happened in the voting booths had anything to do with it. If Gore had won his home state, Florida would not have mattered. More details in the article.
5/6/16
Intercept: Atlanta Mayor's Column Ripping Bernie Sanders Drafted by UnitedHealth Lobbyist
12/27/13
Salon: Obama Signs NDAA 2014, Indefin ite Detention Remains - Chris Hedges: “We live in a system where, under Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, the executive branch can put the soldiers in the streets, in clear violation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, to see—carry out extraordinary rendition of American citizens who are deemed to be "terrorists," strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military facilities, including in our black sites. We are a country that engages in torture. We’ve seen, under Obama, an assault against civil liberties that has outstripped what George W. Bush carried out. We’ve seen the executive branch misinterpret the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act as giving itself the right to assassinate American citizens, including children...on the issue of the destruction of civil liberties, including our right to privacy—and I speak as a former investigative journalist, which doesn’t exist anymore because of wholesale government surveillance—we have no ability, except for hackers.”
2/11/13
UK Guardian: DOJ Kill List Memo Forces Dems Out of The Closet As Totally Unprincipled Hacks - This article easily deserves a second read after some clear self- reflection. “former Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith - who provided the legal authorization for the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program - went to the New Republic to celebrate that Obama was not only continuing the core Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism, but even better (from his perspective), was strengthening those policies far beyond what Bush could achieve by transforming Democrats from opponents of those policies into supporters.” ... “On MSNBC, Obama aides and pundit-supporters now do their best Sarah Palin impression by mocking as weaklings and losers those who think the President should be constrained in his militarism and demonizing as anti-American anyone who questions the military (in between debating whether Obama should be elevated onto Mount Rushmore or given his own monument).” ... “Democratic partisans owe a public, sincere, and abject apology to George Bush and Dick Cheney. It's certainly true that Obama has not continued many of the policies progressives found so heinous: he hasn't invaded Iraq or legally authorized waterboarding. But Obama has completely reversed himself on so many of the core criticisms he and other Democrats made about Bush and Cheney regarding the need for due process for accused Terrorists, the dangers of radical secrecy, the treatment of Terrorism as a war on a global battlefield rather than a crime to be prosecuted.” ... “It's lowly reality TV viewing and rank cultural tribalism masquerading as political ideology.”
8/1/12
Democracy-NOW: US Postal Service Faces Default, Critics See Manufactured Crisis to Speed up Privitization - "The problem is not about the mail volume going down, and problem is not the internet. The problem is not even private competition. The problem is a pre-funding mandate that Congress imposed in 2006 that the Postal Service pre-fund retiree health benefits 75 years in advance."...and to do it over a 10 year period. "The American Postal Workers Union says the law’s requirements account for 100 percent of the service’s $20 billion in losses over the previous four years, without which the service would have turned a profit."
Who wins if the Postal Service goes away? FedEx and UPS
Who looses? The American people, expecially the elderly, poor people, the disabled, small-business owners, rural residents because they can't afford the alternatives.
5/24/12
Rolling Stone: Study: Watching Fox News Makes You Stupid
4/23/12
Guardian: Deny the British Empire's Crimes? No, We Just Ignore Them
6/7/10
Jonathan Turley: Holder Ends Last Torture Investigation Without Charges - Remember the stories about Nuremberg? When, after WWII, the Nazis were brought before the international court and were asked about why they murdered 6,000,000 defenseless Jewish people? And their answer was, “We were just following orders?” And then those Nazis were executed, and we told the world that ‘We were just following orders’ is not an excuse. Remember that? Well Obama and Holder have just made that a legal excuse again.
Obama torture links:
http://www.thenation.com/article/161936/cias-secret-sites-somalia#
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/23/world/la-fg-iraq-prison-20110124
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/world/asia/07kabul.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha22