Articles by Mark Taylor

Republican Wet Dream: What It Means That Hillary Clinton Might Run For President In 2020

Third time’s a charm, right? Right? By Norman Solomon Reader Supported News (12/4/18) wenty-five years ago – when I wrote a book titled “False Hope: The Politics of Illusion in the Clinton Era” – I didn’t expect that the Democratic Party would still be mired in Clintonism two and a half decades later. But such approaches to politics continue to haunt the party and the country. The last two Democratic presidencies largely involved talking progressive while serving Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. The obvious differences in the personalities and behavior of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama diverted attention from their underlying…


The Republican Betrayal Of The Lincoln Heritage

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character give him power.” — Abraham Lincoln   By Mike McCabe Blue Jean Nation (12/2/18) For a very long time, the Republican Party was synonymous with the man who was arguably America’s greatest president, Abe Lincoln. For most of my life, I heard the GOP referred to as the party of Lincoln. Today, no one can make that claim with a straight face. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and guided the nation through the Civil War to save the union by ending slavery. Today’s Republican Party…


The Crass Hypocrisy, Cynical Mendacity & All-Around Fakery Of Our Very Own Paul Ryan

His record of accomplishing virtually nothing. By Andrew O’Hehir Salon (12/1/18) There’s considerable pathos and dramatic irony to the end of Paul Ryan’s political career — if you are able to view him from a distance, like a character in a Jonathan Franzen novel or a Netflix drama set in Norway. He’s a guy who believed he was out in front of history and positioned to shape it, but wound up being dragged behind the emperor’s chariot while the populace laughed at him and threw unpleasant objects. Until a few years ago, I bet he didn’t even know what “cuck”…


Russia Monitor: Donald Isn’t The Only Sell-Out In Trumplandia

  “This memo is more blacked out than Brett Kavanaugh on a school night.” — Trevor Noah, The Daily Show, tweet (12/4/18)   By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (12/6/18) Dear Fellow Readers, The former Trump National Security Adviser and retired 3-star U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to a single charge of lying to the FBI following investigation of influencing U.S. foreign policy to benefit Turkey and coordinating in secret with Russia to negotiate a quid pro quo deal related to U.S. sanctions against Russia; these sanctions were in place prior to those related to Russian influence…


‘We Have Not Come Here To Beg World Leaders To Care,’ 15-Year-Old Greta Thunberg Tells COP24. ‘We Have Come to Let Them Know Change Is Coming’

Time to hand over the baton. By Jon Queally Common Dreams (12/4/18) Striking her mark at the COP24 climate talks taking place this week and next in Poland, fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg of Sweden issued a stern rebuke on behalf of the world’s youth climate movement to the adult diplomats, executives, and elected leaders gathered by telling them she was not there asking for help or demanding they comply with demands but to let them know that new political realities and a renewable energy transformation are coming whether they like it or not. Thunberg said that she was not asking anything of…


High-Profile Wall Street Pedophile Pal Of Trump, Bill Clinton & Alan Dershowitz Benefits From Corrupt Connections & Twisted ‘Just-Us’ System

  The Young Turks (12/4/18) Jeffrey Epstein avoids a civil trial by paying out and apologizing. Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. “A politically connected multi-millionaire sex offender accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls struck a last-minute deal to avoid a civil trial that would have allowed some of his victims to finally testify against him in open court. Jeffrey Epstein struck the deal with lawyer Bradley Edwards shortly before jury selection was set to begin in West Palm Beach, Florida. ‘What happened today was a win,’ Edwards, who represents some…


The Trace: Guns News Updates From Around The Country

  The Trace (12/5/18) Police arrested an armed man in a school cafeteria. Police are trying to figure outhow the man was able to enter the North Carolina high school on Monday with a backpack filled with bullets and two handguns, which he pointed at officers before he was detained. Law enforcement agencies and gun shops are getting a heads up on the bump stock ban. A Minnesota TV news team obtained a copy of a memo circulated by the Department of Justice laying out new details about an upcoming reclassification of devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to approximate machine guns. According to the memo,…


The Reality Of George H.W. Bush’s Legacy: War Crimes, Racism, Weapons Smuggling & Obstruction Of Justice

  [Editor’s Note: This past weekend was awash in high praise for former president George H.W. Bush. The lofty ad infinitum praise of supposed statesmanship, wisdom, decency and ‘public service’ had little tethering to the truth of the man or his administration and earlier gigs as vice-president, head of the CIA and his personal life. The coverage was a cringe worthy display of the mainstream media’s servile deference to the ruling ‘elite’. Fortunately, the Intercept boldly injected a dose of reality about what H.W — and similar grifters of the corrupt corporate ruling class — was really about. — Mark…


Climate Catastrophe — This Is How Capitalism Kills Us

  By Hamilton Nolan Splinter News (11/18/18) On Meet the Press yesterday, Utah Senator Mike Lee said about our climate change crisis, “all the proposals I’ve seen so far that would address any of these issues would devastate the U.S. economy.” This is considered a reasonable explanation of maintaining the status quo. This is the insanity built into capitalism. Lee was specifically explaining why he would not support a carbon tax, the single most direct, rational, and market-friendly way of restricting carbon emissions. The context for the question was the release on Friday of a reportfrom the US government itself saying that, within a century, climate change…


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Bling, Celebrity & Narcissism: Filmmaker Lauren Greenfield On The Fundamental Shift In The American Dream

  Salon Talks The rich are not like you and I, but we are becoming more and more like them. That’s the observation of renowned documentarian and photographer Lauren Greenfield, who spent more than two decades documenting the lifestyles of the one percent. In that time, she observed something stunning: the cultures, values and (especially) the materialism of the hyper-wealthy were, unlike their money, trickling down to the middle and lower classes. In this special on-the-road episode of “Salon Talks,” held at the Original Thinkers Festival in Telluride, Greenfield describes how she became the foremost “rich-people-ologist,” and how wealth and…


Wealthy Hedge Fund Exec Jeffrey Epstein Sexually Abused Underage Girls And Got Off With A Light Sentence

  Morning Edition / NPR (12/2/18) Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown discusses her investigative report on hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein, who sexually abused dozens of teenage girls but served only 13 months in a county jail. Link to Story and 5+-Minute Audio ***** Bombshell Investigation Reveals How Trump’s Secretary Of Labor Helped Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein Hide His Many Sex Crimes By Travis Getty The Raw Story (11/28/18) President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor struck a highly unusual deal when he was Miami’s top federal prosecutor to go easy on the well-connected multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein — and keep his sex crimes…


Medicare For All: As Healthcare Costs Soar, Momentum Grows To Guarantee Healthcare For All Americans

  Democracy Now! (11/30/18) As Democrats prepare to take control of the House, pressure is growing on the Democratic leadership to embrace Medicare for All. Nearly 50 newly Democratic members of Congress campaigned for Medicare for All. In the last year, 123 incumbent House Democrats also co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation, double the number who supported a Medicare for All bill in the previous legislative session. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical, insurance and hospital companies are paying close attention. As the Intercept’s Lee Fang reports, over the summer the groups formed a partnership to fight the growing support for expanding Medicare. We speak…


America’s Forgotten Dark History Of Organized Anti-Semitism Re-emerges In Today’s Far-right Groups

Mass rally of 20,000 American Nazis at Madison Square Garden in 1939. Orgnizer Fritz Kuhn declared that if George Washington had still been alive, he would be a Nazi. This aspect of history is rarely found in textbooks. By Bradley W. Hart The Conversation (11/29/18) Hours after Robert Bowers allegedly walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 people, investigators told the media that Bowers appeared to have acted alone and fit what experts call the “lone mass shooter profile.” Weeks later, FBI agents arrested a Washington D.C. man who followed Bowers on social media. He had told relatives he wanted…


Russia Monitor: Truth Revealed On Trump’s Blizzard Of Lies

  “This is literally the “I am not a crook” tweet:”  @realDonaldTrump FollowFollow @realDonaldTrump “Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail…” — David Frum re-tweet of Donald Trump tweet 11/30/18 ***** “I have no deals … because I think that would be a conflict.” — Trump denial during presidential transition press conference. ***** “People…


Why Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Lied To Congress

  The Daily Podcast / The New York Times (11/30/18) Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, has pleaded guilty to lying about Mr. Trump’s business ties to Russia and has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation. It’s the second time this week that a subject of the inquiry has been charged with lying. On today’s episode: Michael S. Schmidt, who has been covering the special counsel investigation for The New York Times. Background reading: Mr. Cohen admitted on Thursday to making false statements to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and about Mr. Trump’s involvement in…


Empire Files: Randy Credico Exclusive Tell-All With Abby Martin On Trump Pal Roger Stone & Wikileaks

  Empire Files (11/28/18) In this exclusive extended interview, Randy Credico tells his side of the story on his role in the Russia investigation, his upcoming interview with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and true nature of his relationship with Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone. With never before revealed details about Roger Stone and the Mueller investigation, Credico details his long-standing ties to the political operative and answers the hard questions about his alleged coordination with Wikileaks. The interview highlights the larger context of the multi-front assault on Julian Assange, Wikileaks and the future of press freedom. Link to 44-Minute Video


With ‘Unlimited Funds to Lie,’ Insurance Industry & Corporate Democrats Gear Up To Kill Off Medicare For All

  By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (11/21/18) Medicare for All is rapidly surging in popularity among the American public and gaining momentum in Congress, but private insurance interests and Big Pharma have no intention of giving up their immensely profitable stranglehold on the U.S. healthcare system without a fight. According to strategy documents obtained by The Intercept and the watchdog group Documented, the private healthcare industry is working aggressively alongside corporate Democrats to spread anti-single payer propaganda and “minimize the potential” for Medicare for All as an alternative to the current for-profit status quo. Directed by former Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton staffers and leading insurance industry lobbyists, an…


Free & Open Press? Mmm, Not So Much In The World Of American Corporate Media

Jim Hightower in LaCrosse, Wisconsin for a 2016 campaign event. Free The Free Press From Wall Street Plunderers Texas populist Jim Hightower’s columns have been distributed by Creators Syndicate for a decade—but the agency said they had to take a pass on this one. “The big, hedge-fund owned newspaper chains that Hightower calls out in his column are big customers of theirs, and as such, they don’t want to risk offending them,” says Hightower assistant Melody Byrd (Corporate Crime Reporter, 11/29/18). “While Creators’ reluctance to anger these powerful interests is somewhat understandable, the implications are frightening. It’s one more example of this dangerous time…


Russian Trolls Prey Upon & Pry Open The Toxic Way We Do Our Politics

  By Rafael Behr The Guardian (11/13/18) To understand the current political frenzy on both sides of the Atlantic, it helps to know Tortuous Convolvulus. Unfamiliar with his work? Convolvulus was a spy, operating around 50BC, a specialist in psychological warfare. He was deployed by Julius Caesar against a stubborn Gallic rebellion, and his methods were not so different to those of Russian cyber-saboteurs against western democracies. It is worth adding that Convolvulus is a character from Asterix and the Roman Agent, a book known to most English readers in translation by Anthea Bell. The sad news of Bell’s death last month triggered many…


Meet The Russian KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News

A never ending, exhausting game of Whack-A-Mole The New York Times (11/19/18) In Episode 1 of Operation InfeKtion, we reveal how one of the biggest fake news stories ever concocted — the 1984 AIDS-is-a-biological-weapon hoax — went viral in the pre-Internet era. Meet the KGB cons who invented it, and the “truth squad” that quashed it. For a bit. Read the story here: www.nytimes.com/disinformation Link to 15-Minute Video ***** The Seven Commandments Of Russian Disinformation Fake News  The New York Times (11/20/18) Episode 2, Operation InfeKtion: The Pizzagate Playbook — same tactics, new technologies. How the seven rules of Soviet…


‘Corporate Greed At Its Worst’: After Reaping $514 Million From GOP Tax Scam & Billions In Public Subsidies, GM To Fire Nearly 15,000 Workers

  Sweet Deal! By Julia Conley Common Dreams (11/26/18) Tax justice and labor advocates were among those who expressed outrage Monday at the news that General Motors—one of the corporate giants that benefited immensely from the Republican tax plan last year—would cut 15 percent of its workforce, shuttering production facilities in three states as well as Canada to trim costs. The auto maker is closing five plants in Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, and Ontario, with plans to cut thousands of office jobs in January—slashing a total of 14,700 jobs. The move comes less than a year after the Republican Party pushed through its…


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Deadly Disparity: Who Controls The World’s Wealth?

While 30,000 people a day die of starvation. Ralph Nader Radio Hour (11/24/18) Peter Philips, author of the recently published book “Giant: The Global Power Elite”, reveals the handful of people who control the world’s wealth and maintain the yawning and deadly disparity of opportunity and resources crippling billions around the globe. This important book has garnered no coverage or interviews in the mainstream press. — even public broadcasting. Please forward on to your contacts. Interview begins at the 40-minute mark. Link to Audio


It’s More Than A Matter Of Nancy Pelosi: Heart Of House Dems Is On The Line

  Will it be the corporate dems or the dems representing the rights & future of the people?   By Norman Solomon Reader Supported News (11/28/19) When Democrats take control of the House in early January, they’ll have two kinds of leadership – one from the top of the party’s power pyramid, the other from its base. With formal control, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer can brandish huge carrots and sticks to keep Democratic lawmakers in line. With grassroots support, a growing number of those lawmakers can – and should – strategically step out of line to fight for progressive…


Labor’s Challenge To The New Democrats In Congress

  By Leo Gerard OurFuture.org (11/21/18) In his victory speech on election night, U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb said he would always remember the union members who helped him defeat two Republican incumbents in one year. “Side by side with us at each step of the way were men and women of organized labor. . .  I will never forget that. I will never forget that. Thank you,” he told a cheering crowd overflowing a ballroom at the Hilton DoubleTree, 20 miles north of Pittsburgh. In his first contest last spring, in a district that went for President Donald Trump by nearly 20 points and…


Dictionary.com’s Word Of The Year Is … ‘Misinformation’

Dictionary.com (11/26/18) The rampant spread of misinformation poses new challenges for navigating life in 2018. As a dictionary, we believe understanding the concept is vital to identifying misinformation in the wild, and ultimately curbing its impact. But what does misinformation mean? Dictionary.com defines it as “false information that is spread, regardless of whether there is intent to mislead.” The recent explosion of misinformation and the growing vocabulary we use to understand it have come up again and again in the work of our lexicographers. Over the last couple of years, Dictionary.com has been defining words and updating terms related to the evolving…


Russia Monitor: Lot’s Of News, Non-Stop Stories All Boil Down To One This … Trump Is In Trouble

  By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (11/29/18) Dear Fellow Readers, We’ll open with a conclusion – Trump is in trouble. If you want the short version of ‘why’, jump to the end. For anyone seeking a simple linear narrative for Trump-Russia corruption the last 48 is not that. Three big stories landed followed by a plethora of refinements, interpretations and cautions. We’ll point out what happened, why it could be important and some reasons for caution. Diving into the deep end: Mueller Has Emails From Stone Pal Corsi About WikiLeaks Dem Email Dump. Jerome Corsi is a far-right conspiracy theorist best…


The Fate Of Julian Assange & The Free Press: No Matter What You Think Of Wikileaks, The Risk To All Journalists Is Real

“A really dangerous moment.” On Contact With Chris Hedges RT (11/26/18) Chris Hedges and Joe Lauria, journalist and editor-in-chief, Consortium News, discuss efforts to force #WikiLeaks publisher, #JulianAssange, out of the Ecuador Embassy in London and extradite him to the USA to stand trial. Link to 28-Minute Video Manafort Held Multiple Secret Talks With Assange In Ecuadorian Embassy, Sources Say — Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told. Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and…


Tragedy & The Promise: The History Behind American Asylum

  The Daily / The New York Times (11/27/18) As large groups of Central American migrants approach the U.S. border, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for them to apply for asylum. Is the president undermining the original concept of asylum, or is he restoring it? On today’s episode: Caitlin Dickerson, who covers immigration for The New York Times. Background reading: The temporary closing of a border crossing in Southern California became a confrontation between Central American migrants trying to enter the United States and the American and Mexican governments trying to hold them back. The discord stems, in part,…


Why? The FBI Is Massively Undercounting Hate Crimes

  Southern Poverty Law Center (11/16/18) Mulugeta Seraw was standing on a corner in Portland, Oregon, when they spotted him. It was 1988, and he was a college student from Ethiopia. His friends had dropped him off in front of his apartment, and he was standing next to their car, talking, when a group of racist skinheads affiliated with a neo-Nazi group descended. As one attacker smashed the car’s taillight and a window with a baseball bat, another punched Seraw. When his friends tried to intervene, the skinheads attacked them too, beating the black men with their fists, baseball bats…


Trump’s Gestapo: Thuggish ICE Agents Get Violent

A callous and cruel system. By Abbey Zimet Common Dreams (11/23/18) Thanksgiving weekend, but the barbarism of the Trump regime goes on apace. On Friday, plainclothes ICE officers in North Carolina ambushed and arrested Samuel Oliver-Bruno, a 47-year-old undocumented construction worker from Mexico in the U.S. for over 20 years who’s been living in the basement of a sanctuary church for 11 months while he petitions to stay here with his sick wife and teenage son. Oliver-Bruno left Durham’s CityWell United Methodist Church, part of the state’s growing faith-based sanctuary movement, for an alleged meeting with immigration officials, who told him he had to come in person to provide fingerprints for his…


Member Of White Supremacist Group Pleads Guilty To Assaults At 2017 Rally

  “Hell is truth seen too late.” — Thomas Hobbes, 1651. ***** By A.C. Thompson ProPublica (11/21/18) One of the eight members or associates of a violent California white supremacist group arrested on federal riot charges has pleaded guilty to assaulting protesters and others at a political rally in Huntington Beach, California, in 2017. Tyler Laube, 22, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in central California to a single count of conspiracy to violate the federal riots act over his role in a March 25, 2017, attack on protesters and others, including a journalist, at a Make America…


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Anand Giridharadas: A Tale Of Two Americas And The Mini-mart Where They Collided

TED Talks (3/24/18) Ten days after 9/11, a shocking attack at a Texas mini-mart shattered the lives of two men: the victim and the attacker. In this stunning talk, Anand Giridharadas, author of “The True American: Murder and Mercy In Texas,” tells the story of what happened next. It’s a parable about the two paths an American life can take, and a powerful call for reconciliation. Link to 19-Minute Video


Russia Monitor: The Time To Be On The Right Side

“The pseudo-sophisticated defenders of Trump’s assaults on judges, scientists, and civil servants try to give his crude attacks a patina of respectability. But nihilism isn’t skepticism and being a know-nothing isn’t being unconventional, no matter what his defenders pretend.” — Bill Kristol tweet (11/25/18) By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (11/26/18) Dear Fellow Readers, The sides are drawn. We need to understand the battle for what it is, and be on the right side. Who better to describe the battle lines than former Trump senior adviser and campaign chairman Steve Bannon. Bannon is spending most of his time in Europe,…


Ohio Republicans Declare Motherhood “Necessary” & Want To Make It Mandatory

Clinging to — and pushing — sexist stereotypes. By Amanda Marcotte Salon (11/24/18) While the name of Brett Kavanaugh has fallen out of the headline news cycle, the religious right has not forgotten that his recent addition to the Supreme Court now means they likely have five votes to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to ban abortion. While the endless churn of outrageous Trump stories occupies national headlines, anti-choice activists and politicians are swiftly moving to pass laws that they clearly hope will lead, perhaps within a year, to vacating the current legal protections for abortion rights. In…


Is War Between China & The US Inevitable?

“It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.”  — Thucydides, “History of the Peloponnesian War.” TED Talks (11/20/18) Taking lessons from a historical pattern called “Thucydides’s Trap,” political scientist Graham Allison shows why a rising China and a dominant United States could be headed towards a violent collision no one wants — and how we can summon the common sense and courage to avoid it. Link to 19-Minute Video


Handmaiden Of The Right: Hillary Clinton’s Chilling & Failed Pragmatism

You cannot outflank the right by adopting its promises, that way you only end up as its handmaiden. By Nesrine Malik Portside (11/23/18) Ever since Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016, her insistence on staying in the public eye has been viewed with a particular kind of intolerance. Some on the right have turned her into a symbol of everything they hate, to be demonised at their rallies. Others, on the left, abhor her refusal to cede space to a newer generation, hanging in the air like a bad smell, a constant memory of the moment it all went wrong….


Trump’s Chances In 2020 Are Better Than You Think

We underestimated him once. Let’s not do it again. By Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone (11/20/18) When I first heard Donald Trump on the campaign trail, I thought, “What a joke!” When I last heard Donald Trump on the campaign trail, I thought, “How long will it take for my children to learn Icelandic?” I underestimated Donald Trump once. I’ll never do it again. If Obama voters understood “change” as a genuine call to idealism, Trump voters understood it as a chair through a plate-glass window, the start of a riot. Don’t think Democrats regaining the House has any bearing on the 2020…


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You Just Know This Has DNC & Their Lobbyist Pals Grinding Their Molars: Richard Ojeda Announces Run For Presidency

  Oh, let Richard Ojeda bust open the debate for the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign! It would be great to see the off-the-shelf-mass-produced corporate dems get in a debate with Ojeda. Want to hear a real progressive call to arms and restoration of some basic rights, values, security and decency in the nation? You’ll find it here but you won’t find it among the threadbare rerun democrats talking themselves up for 2020. Ojeda could be just the kind of challenger to stir up the kind of vigorous debate the democrats need if they really want to get back on track…


A Commoner Writes — Calls To Remake International Banking

  I ran into a man who was working to promote a public banking monetary  system.  Apparently this is an international movement that is gaining.  I was reminded about the concept after reading your last newsletter.  Below is an article that explains the concept decently. To Deal With Climate Change We Need A New Financial System. Glory Adams


As Snoopy Insurers Offer Discounts For Fitness Trackers, Wearers Should Step With Caution

  By Stephanie O’Neil NPR 9111/18/18) When Kathy Klute-Nelson heads out on a neighborhood walk, she often takes her two dogs — Kona, a boxer, and Max, a small white dog of questionable pedigree who barrels out the front door with barks of enthusiasm. The 64-year-old resident of Costa Mesa, Calif., says she was never one to engage in regular exercise — especially after a long day of work. But about three years ago, her employer, the Auto Club of Southern California, made her and her colleagues an offer she couldn’t refuse: Wear a Fitbit, walk every day and get…