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Understanding Fascism: Authoritarians Like Trump Always Target Trans People For A Reason — To Consolidate Power

  By Mischa Haider The Guardian (10/22/18) Attacking transgender people – especially transgender women – has become a favorite strategy for authoritarians, and Trump is no exception. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is attempting to narrow gender identity to the one assigned at birth – thereby denying transgender people their place in society. This is a deliberate attempt to deploy tried and tested transphobic messaging to rile up his voter base ahead of the midterm elections. Trump wants to rally conservatives while engaging in attacking a marginalized group that it is still socially acceptable to…


The Worst Aspect Of The US Attempted Bombings? It Was Bound To Happen

  By Jill Abramson The Guardian  (10/25/18) This week, pipe bombs were sent to prominent Democrats including George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. CNN also received one in the mail. Sadly, none of this was really that shocking. The news had an air of inevitability, being the culmination of what has been a hideously violent time in our political culture. Poison is coursing through the US body politic. Violence permeates political dialogue and sometimes erupts at political events. The shocking thing is that some of the violence has been endorsed by the president himself. With FBI investigations just starting, it’s impossible…


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‘Mother Jones’ Podcast: Atonement — Conservative Luminary Max Boots Calls For A Clean Start: “We Need To Destroy The Republican Party”

Max Boot says the GOP is racist, the Iraq War was wrong, and Trumpism is a cancer. Mother Jones (Nov./Dec/ 2018) In his new book, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, Max Boot goes further than the handful of other prominent Republicans who have stood against Donald Trump and reconsiders the conservative movement writ large. He sat down to discuss his epiphany with Washington bureau chief David Corn for the Mother Jones Podcast. This is an edited and condensed transcript of that conversation. Link to 21-Minute Audio


Abby Martin On The Future of The ‘Empire Files’ & Growing Corporate Censorship Of Social Media

  [Editor’s Note: Be sure to catch Abby Martin’s comments toward the end of the interview on the recent wanton, despicable Israeli massacre of Palestinians. — Mark L. Taylor] acTVism Munich (10/20/18) In this exclusive interview with independent journalist, filmmaker, activist and founder of The Empire Files, Abby Martin, we talk about why her show was forced to shut down its operations and how people can assist in getting it started again. In addition we talk about U.S. interventions in Venezuela, both past and present, as well as how & why social media giants are increasingly censoring content on the…


Inside Nikki Haley’s Shocking Pro-War Speech To Secretive Far-Right ‘Armageddon End Times’ Group

The Real News (10/19/18)   Just days before she resigned as UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley delivered a private speech to the Council for National Policy, a secretive group of influential right-wing figures. Journalist Max Blumenthal obtained exclusive access and reveals shocking details — including Haley’s admission that she threatened the Chinese ambassador with a US invasion of North Korea.   Link to 21-Minute Video (Commoner Call photo by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org ) ***** Nikki Haley At Meeting Of The Far Right ‘Council For National Policy’ The CNP holds…


The Activists Pushing Back To Make Far Right Hate Groups Go Broke

  By Elizabeth King Splinter (10/19/18) It wasn’t so long ago that white nationalist “intellectual” Richard Spencer was the toast of the so-called “alt-right” and was even generously profiled by liberal and mainstream news outlets. His speaking engagements at various public universities attracted headlines for months throughout the 2017-2018 academic year as he faced massive blowback for organizing and attending the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. Now, Spencer barely appears in public and is reportedly broke. He’s not alone. Though fascists and their ilk fundraised aggressively to cover their legal costs in the wake of “Unite the Right,” many of them, especially the…


How Dem Fixer Roy Cohn, Big Money Liberals, The Mob & New York Times Codddling Helped Create, Launch & Cover For Donald J. Trump

  “In the bipartisan New York political culture that nurtured Cohn and Trump, the statute of limitations for nearly every crime or outrage lasts about 48 hours.”  By Frank Rich New York Magazine (4/30/18) mid the aftershocks of Donald Trump’s firing of James Comey last May, I went to see Angels in America at the same theater in London, the National, where I’d first seen it as a New York Times drama critic some 25 years earlier. The play didn’t transport me quite as far from the lamentable present as I’d hoped. The new production, now on Broadway, doesn’t radically depart in tone or quality (high) from…


Think Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren Are The Same? Um, Think Again

  By Bhaskar Sunkara The Guardian (10/23/18) For progressives subjected to daily outrage from the Trump administration, there’s something to look forward to. In 2020, they’ll be spoiled for choice – presumptive candidates in the Democratic field are tacking to the left and both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are acting like people running for president. While a 2020 campaign by Sanders wouldn’t be surprising given that he ran before, Warren has long denied that she has any interest in becoming president. That seems to have recently changed. Warren said last month that she would “take a hard look” at running in…


John Whitehead: Creating The Suspect Society: The Growing Abuse Of Our Technological Police State

The FBI and Justice Department have conspired to acquire near-limitless power and control over biometric information collected on law-abiding individuals, millions of whom have never been accused of a crime.  By John  Whitehead The Rutherford Institute (10/2/18) “If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.”—Philip K. Dick It’s a…


A Commoner Writes: Many Layers To Jamal Khashoggi Story

[Editor’s Note: Links have been added so readers can learn more about information referred to in this letter. — Mark L. Taylor] No one seems to want to point out that this guy [journalist Jamal Khashoggi] was a critic of the crown prince but a big fan of the old school house of Saud. Not a real reformer at all, just a representative of the people who resent being pushed from power. One thing though: this guy knew a lot about the Saudi government’s rather large role in supporting the 9/11 terrorist plot. As you may have heard, the 9/11…


The U.S. & Saud Family Have Been Getting Away With Murder For Years

  By Roqayah Chamseddine In These Times (10/16/18) March 2015 marked a decisive phase in what is now a more than three-year war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, in coordination with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, initiated a military operation against Yemen’s capital of Sana’a in an effort to dislodge any fragment of Houthi presence while also fomenting a tide of psychological warfare that would signal the ruthless course of action to come. Yemen’s infrastructure was so thoroughly upended by coalition attacks that within a year and a half of the initial salvo, the local population was struck by the…


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“Dark Money” Blows The Cover Off The Money Poisoning American Politics

This year, dark money spending on TV ads has increased 86% compared to the comparable point in the 2014 midterm elections. By David Moore Sludge (10/1/18) Shadowy election spending was hit with a spotlight as the “Dark Money” film held its nationwide premiere on PBS last night. In the documentary, sketching out the money flows between front groups earns the tension and narrative of a political thriller. Filmmaker Kimberly Reed follows journalist John S. Adams as he tracks dark money in Montana over three election cycles, from 2012 through 2016. “Dark Money” offers a detailed view of the dedicated work of…


Ex-Republican Strategist Steve Schmidt Goes After GOP For Their Vile Racism & Calls Out Dems For Being Too Wimpy Challenging The Hate

  By Cody Fenwick AlterNet (10/18/18) Fear continues to be the force President Donald Trump thinks will be key to maintaining his stranglehold on American political power. In the latest iteration of this tactic, he’s trying to whip up concern about a caravan of immigrants making its way from Honduras in an effort to seek asylum in the United States. In response to Trump’s baseless and dangerous fearmongering, former Republican Steve Schmidt, who used to serve on GOP presidential campaigns before Trump’s takeover of the party, laid out why the president’s reaction is so despicable. “This is the failure of…


Scott Walker Has A History Of Signing Plagiarized Corporate Friendly ALEC Bills

  By David Armiak PR Watch (10/19/18) Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who has advocated for and signed binding legislation lifted without attribution from the corporate lobby shop known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), is now blaming his opponent, Tony Evers, for copying paragraphs in the Department of Public Instruction’s 213-page budget proposal from other sources and failing to properly attribute them. The story was first reported by Politico, which made no attempt to examine Walker’s history of signing copy-cat legislation. In the 2011-2012 session, Walker signed into law 19 bills or budget provisions with ALEC content. The Center for Media and Democracy…


COINTELPRO: Teaching High School Students About The FBI’s War On The Black Freedom Movement

  By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca The Zinn Education Project Student-selected and student-run current events discussions are a daily ingredient of my high school social studies classes. The first 20 minutes of every 90-minute class period, we read an excerpt from a recent newspaper article and discuss its significance. In the last few years, the discussions have been dominated by names that have piled up with sickening frequency: Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland. My students, mostly Asian American and white, live in Lake Oswego, one of the wealthiest cities in Oregon and a…


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‘A Moment To Remember’ — When The US Abandoned Any Pretense Of Democracy For The Love Of ‘Our S.O.B.s”

“In December 1954, the NSC [National security Council] met in the White House to stake out a strategy that could tame the powerful nationalist forces of change sweeping the globe. Across Asia and Africa, a half-dozen European empires that had guaranteed global order for more than a century were giving way to new nation, many — as Washington saw it — susceptible to “communist subversion.” In Latin America , there were stirrings of leftist opposition to the region’s growing urban poverty and rural landlessness. To make it “absolutely clear we will not tolerate Communism anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.”influential Secretary…


Russia Monitor — Trump’s Response To Torture, Murder & Dismemberment: Sad!

  “The president is now inventing nonexistent domestic riots.” — Daniel Dale, Toronto Star reporter tweet (10/20/18) By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (10/22/18) Dear Fellow Readers, Trump is a liar. His lies are now offered with no attachment to reality, they are getting bigger, more frequent and his GOP apologists either fully embrace or duck for cover. Other than our own sanity, there are few if any checks on Trump’s grandiosity. Classic fascism in which the leader portrays himself as the only solution to self-invented risks and fears, always from the dreaded ‘other’. Trump’s performance as president — we…


Historian Christopher Browning On The Trump Regime: We’re “close to the point of no return”

Scholar of the Nazi period explains why fake news may be a more powerful authoritarian tool than secret police. By Chauncey Devega Salon (10/18/18) History can teach us many lessons about Donald Trump and his rise to power. As shown by his deeds, words and policies, Trump is an authoritarian and a demagogue who has, so far, been restrained by America’s weakened democratic institutions and norms. Trump has repeatedly shown contempt for America’s cosmopolitan, pluralistic multiracial democracy. He and his supporters would smash that order and a create a new one based upon white racial authoritarianism (as well as naked plutocracy)…


Has The Dark Side Of American Conservatism Taken Over, Or Has Its Mask Simply Fallen Away?

By George Lakoff George Lakoff’s Facebook Page (10/14/18) Some lifelong Republicans are having sudden realizations about what conservatives really believe. Max Boot, who is leaving the Republican Party and wishes “ill fortune” on its candidates, writes: “It would be nice to think that Donald Trump is an anomaly who came out of nowhere to take over an otherwise sane and sober movement. But it just isn’t so. Upon closer examination, it’s obvious that the history of modern conservative is permeated with racism, extremism, conspiracy-mongering, isolationism and know-nothingism.” But conservative bigotry goes beyond racism. It extends to every aspect of social life….


‘The Trace’ — Tracking The Latest News On America’s Gun Epidemic

The Trace (10/18/18) Support for gun laws remains near a two-decade high despite a dip. And a sustained loss of advertising on a Fox News program shows the power of activist-led boycotts. Those stories and more, below. —Beatrix Lockwood, contributor Six in 10 Americans support stricter gun laws, a Gallup poll published Wednesday found. The share is down 6 percent since the month after the Parkland shooting but remains near a two-decade high. Among Democrats, support for tighter regulations is at 87 percent, compared to 31 percent of Republicans.  Did the NRA influence the government’s decision to put education funds toward guns? That’s the…


A Commoner Writes: Response To An Angry Plumber

I enjoyed reading the letter about the plumber from Worcester, MA. That plumber seems as willfully ignorant as “Joe the Plumber” from 2008 lore.Yes it is easy to blame Clinton for NAFTA but let us not forget that practically every Gingrich Republican in Congress for that NAFTA nonsense back in 1993. The anti-Nafta congressmen were mostly Democrats like IL Rep Lane Evans who represented the Moline area for over 20 years. My dad, who voted for Trump in the Wisconsin primary says similar things as that plumber. He too was a skilled blue-collar guy before he retired. In fact he…


American Police State Update: Undercover Cops Are Creating Fake Facebook Accounts To Track Protesters

  By Jon Schuppe NBC News (10/5/18) In the summer of 2015, as Memphis exploded with protests over the police killing of a 19-year-old man, activists began hearing on Facebook from someone called Bob Smith. The name was generic, and so was his profile picture: a Guy Fawkes mask, the symbol of anti-government dissent. Smith acted as if he supported the protesters, and, slowly, they let him into their online community. Over the next three years, dozens of them accepted his friend requests, allowing him to observe private discussions over marches, rallies and demonstrations. In public postings and private messages he…


I’m Not Sure We’re Ready For The Chaos That Will Follow The Midterms

  By Charles Pierce Esquire (10/15/18) Over the weekend, there were a couple of ominous, if overlooked, statements from Republican officials touching on the upcoming midterm elections. In a radio interview, National Security Adviser John Bolton sang the new administration* tune of how what we really should be watching as regards outside interference in our elections is what China is doing. From the Washington Free Beacon: “On Chinese election meddling, Bolton said the problem is serious. “We are very worried about the question of Chinese interference not just in individual elections, but more broadly trying to influence the American political discussion with…


MAD Magazine’s School Shooting Cartoon Feature Is A Poignant & Horrifying Commentary On America’s Tradition Of School Shooting

(Cartoon by Marc Palm / Mad Magazine, 2018.) This is shocking. It’s also very smart. By Ryan Britt Fatherly (10/5/18) Satire about school shootings might seem overwhelming in the face of so much tragedy, but a new powerful and artistic statement is calling out the complicity many Americans have about gun violence. But this razor-sharp indictment isn’t coming from Sacha Baron Cohen or even Stephen Colbert.Instead, the most affecting commentary on gun control you’ll see this month was just been published in Mad Magazine. In the latest issue of Mad Magazine (which is out on newsstands and in Barnes and Noble bookstores right now), there’s a brilliantly sad…


‘How Fascism Works’ Review: An Essential Read For A Nation Under Trump

  By Tom McCarthy The Guardian (10/15/18) One of the insidious ironies of fascist politics, the philosopher Jason Stanley writes in his arresting new book, is that talk of fascism itself becomes more difficult because it is made to seem outlandish. The normalization of the fascist myth “makes us able to tolerate what was once intolerable by making it seem as if this is the way things have always been”, Stanley writes. “By contrast the word ‘fascist’ has acquired a feeling of the extreme, like crying wolf.” “My family background has saddled me with difficult emotional baggage, but it also, crucially, prepared…


Does Money Make You Mean?

    TED Talk (12/20/13) It’s amazing what a rigged game of Monopoly can reveal. In this entertaining but sobering talk, social psychologist Paul Piff shares his research into how people behave when they feel wealthy. (Hint: badly.) But while the problem of inequality is a complex and daunting challenge, there’s good news too. Link to 16-Minute Video


Share Our Nation’s Collective Wealth With All Citizens? Hell, Yeah! Let’s Start Now – Here’s How

  By Sam Pizzigati OurFuture.org (10/2/18) By In the United States, back during the Great Depression, three simple words animated a grassroots upsurge that would help make this nation the world’s first mass middle-class society: Share the wealth! And the nation did. By the end of the 1960s, the top one percent’s share of America’s national income had dropped by more than half. The bottom 90 percent share, meanwhile, had jumped from half the nation’s total income to over two-thirds. Redistribution — via the tax code — drove this dramatic egalitarian shift, as high incomes faced high tax rates throughout the middle decades of…


Robert Reich: Containing The Trump Catastrophe

  By Robert Reich Robert Reich’s Website (10/8/18) Anyone still unsure of how (or even whether) they’ll vote in the midterms should consider this: All three branches of government are now under the control of one party, and that party is under the control of Donald J. Trump. With the addition of Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court is as firmly Republican as are the House and Senate. Kavanaugh was revealed as a fierce partisan – not only the legal advisor who helped Kenneth Starr prosecute Bill Clinton and almost certainly guided George W. Bush’s use of torture, but also a nominee…


Republican Senate Candidate Plays The Victim On His Repeated ACA Repeal Votes, Now That His Grandkid Is Sick

By Joan McCarter Daily Kos (10/15/18) When all else fails, Republicans resort to playing the victim because that’s the one thing that binds all conservatives—the deep conviction that they’re always being picked on. Watch it play out in this tearful video from Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) who’s upset that the man he’s challenging for Senate, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), is running an ad reminding voters that Barletta wants to take their health care away. Barletta has a grandson with cancer, which is a horrible thing to have to go through—something millions of families know from awful experience. Like Stacie Ritter of Manheim…


As ‘Gruesome’ New Details Of Khashoggi Murder Emerge, Obsequious Trump & Pompeo Obediently Bow & Grovel To Saudi Crown Prince

  By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (10/16/18) As “shocking and gruesome” new details surrounding Saudi Arabia’s alleged torture and assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi continued to trickle out on Tuesday—with anonymous Turkish officials telling the press that the prominent dissident was beaten, killed by lethal injection, and cut into pieces by the head autopsy doctor of the Saudi defense forces—U.S. President Donald Trump accepted wholesale Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s increasingly implausible claim that he had zero knowledge of what “took place” two weeks ago inside the kingdom’s Turkish consulate. “Just spoke with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia who totally denied any…


Trump’s Comments About Murdered Saudi Journalist Is Perfect Example Of Trump’s Tricks To Distract, Confuse, Lie & Get His Way

In just 20 seconds, Trump hit a trifecta of phrasing and logic he comes back to frequently. First, when an ally or someone he’s inclined to believe denies something, he defers to the denial. By Tamara Keith Morning Edition / NPR (10/16/18) Secretary of State Pompeo is in Riyadh to address the disappearance of a Saudi journalist. President Trump’s response to the disappearance illustrates how he responds to other difficult questions. Link to transcript and 3+-Minute Audio (Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )  


A Commoner Writes: Blue Collar Guy Explains Trump’s Appeal To Many Workers

I was visited by a plumber repairing my heat registers. A typical blue collar guy with a full Boston accent. Intelligent, lucid and angry as hell. He brought up Trump I did not. It began by his explaining the crap pipes he has had to work with since NAFTA. In some detail he told a set of stories about how the pipes and boilers from China have ruined his business. He talked about how just removing a bolt or nut from a pipe ends up in broken pipe, destroyed threads and how boilers now give out so quickly. He talked…


For Trump The Disappearance Of Saudi Journalist Is Just A Matter Of Money, Not National Morality

“The job of the media is ultimately to inform the public about the world as it truly is. It would be a shame for the death of a member of the media to be used in service of obfuscation of the truth. The truth is the American government cares about business. The American government does not care about the murder of a journalist if caring about the murder of a journalist would significantly impede business. This has always been the calculation, and any journalist who wrote otherwise should now take some time to taste the bitterness of reality. If Jamal…


Bernie Addresses The Current Crisis Of The Spreading International Authoritarian Axis

“We must take the opportunity to reconceptualize a global order based on human solidarity. Based on the understanding that it is not based upon me against you or, the United States against China. But that we as a world especially, with the threat of climate change, are in it together. That in many ways we are going to survive together or go down by the kinds of conditions the authoritarians are trying to create. … Authoritarians seek power by promoting division and hatred. We will promote unity, inclusion and love.” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivered remarks at the Johns Hopkins…


A Lesson For Dems? Deep Red West Virginia District Trump Won By 49 Points Is About To Flip To Outspoken Progressive Dem Richard Ojeda

  By Igor Derysh Salon (10/13/18) West Virginia’s 3rd congressional district is among the most conservative in the nation, but a new poll shows Democrats are making this year’s race very competitive. The district had been represented by Rep. Evan Jenkins, a former Democrat himself, who vacated the seat to stage an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican Senate nomination. (State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey won the Republican primary, and will face incumbent Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin next month.) Now, two polls show split results in the race to replace Jenkins, which pits Democratic state Sen. Richard Ojeda, a retired Army officer, against Republican Carol Miller,…


Ralph Nader Addresses Conservative Audience On Eisenhower’s Prophetic Warning Of The Danger Of The Corrupt Military, Congressional, Industrial Complex

“The military, congressional, industrial empire complex — if not stopped — will destroy the United States of America.” — Ralph Nader The American Conservative (7/6/18) On June 21, 2018, The American Conservative hosted its annual crony capitalism conference at which Ralph Nader delivered a speech on the military industrial congressional complex titled “Eisenhower’s Warning: Prophetic and Presently Understated.” Nader is an author, consumer advocate, and former presidential candidate. He is one of America’s most effective social critics, and has emerged as a leading voice against the growing convergence of government and corporate interests. He is the author of Unstoppable: The…


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Conservative Max Boot Comes Clean On ‘The Corrosion Of Conservatism’: Why He Left The GOP

  On Point / WBUR (10/11/18) Conservative luminary Max Boot explains why he left the Republican Party and is urging people to vote against the modern GOP. On the moment he decided to leave the Republican Party “That moment occurred the day after the last presidential election. I was somebody who was viscerally and instantly opposed to Donald Trump from the moment that he came down that escalator at Trump Tower attacking Mexicans as rapists and murderers. I couldn’t believe that you had a mainstream candidate who was talking like that, and I never imagined that he would win the…


American Gangbangers: Justifiable Anger Fuels Trump’s Hold On Power & Democrats Still Don’t Get It

“It feels like it is so tribal now. In years past you could go against people in your own party if they did something outrageous and now everything is just ‘my party, my color’ — it’s almost like the Crips and Bloods — same colors.” — Bill Maher, Real Time 33-Minute mark (10/12/18). By John Atcheson Common Dreams (10/12/18) Pundits, progressives and the press seem perplexed by Trumpism.  How can a narcissistic, fascist, incompetent conman—whose White House seems always on the verge of chaos; whose own appointees fear that he’ll do something so insane that they snatch papers off his desk;…


My Former Boss, John Kerry, Wants To Be President. Um, No Thanks.

Two-faced.   By John Kiriakou Reader Supported News (10/11/18) Former Secretary of State and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry told Politico this week that he is considering a run for president in 2020. Kerry didn’t come out and declare himself a candidate, but he did say that he wants to be “a part of the future of the Democratic Party and of the country.” I say, “No thanks.” Kerry is exactly the kind of failed neoliberal politician who pushed the Democratic Party to the right, tried to out-Republican the Republicans on foreign policy and, in the end, gave us Donald…


Russia Monitor: Bloody Footprints In The Sands Of Saudi Arabia

  “Frequently people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late.” — John Brennan, former Director CIA, May 2017 By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (10/15/18) Dear Fellow Readers, In March 2017 House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) led the first committee to hold a public hearing on Trump-Russia corruption. Nunes has suffered repeated catastrophic failures while trying to quash and deflect any consideration of Trump-Russia, this was to be one of his most infamous failures. Nunes called then FBI Director James Comey as one of the…