The Real News (9/16/18) A look into how the military-industrial complex fuels endless war for corporate profits. CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin discusses her new report on the five largest US weapons manufacturers and their arms deals with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt. Link to 15-Minute Video
The Tip Of The Problem By Bernie Sanders The Guardian (9/13/18) There is a global struggle taking place of enormous consequence. Nothing less than the future of the planet – economically, socially and environmentally – is at stake. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the world’s top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 99%, we are seeing the rise of a new authoritarian axis. While these regimes may differ in some respects, they share key attributes: hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and a…
By Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone (9/14/18) Andrew Cuomo won the Democratic primary last night [9/13] in the New York gubernatorial race, a high-profile win over celebrity actress Cynthia Nixon that has some convinced all is right in the Democratic world again. Politico is already touting Cuomo as a presidential candidate, despite the fact that he just swore he would serve four years in Albany unless “God strikes me dead.” Cuomo won by a fair margin, by about 65 percent to 35 percent, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. He spent over $16 million in a period of six weeks this summer, or about 25 times what Nixon was spending. At…
By Sarah Betancourt The Guardian (9/15/18) At the height of Thursday night’s gas emergency that affected 8,000 people and in which one person was killed, Massachusetts state police posted to Twitter a map of responses to fires and explosions. It was an image of a computer monitor, showing locations of 39 incidents as confirmed “by MSP Watch Center”, and it included a vital message: “Reminder: all residents of Lawrence/Andover/N[orth] Andover who have Columbia Gas must evacuate, as should anyone else who smells gas.” But the image also showed something else: a bookmarks bar at the top of the browser window which listed…
“Masters And Management” By Kimberly Adams & Ariel Plotnick Marketplace (8/14/18) Historian Caitlin Rosenthal extensively researched the morally reprehensible business of slavery for her new book, “Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management.” In the book, she lays out the case that slaveholding “planters” employed accounting and management techniques that are still in use by businesses today. Below is an edited transcript of Rosenthal’s conversation with Marketplace senior reporter Kimberly Adams. How did you end up writing this book? After college, I went to work as a management consultant. And I got really interested in how businesses that employed tens of thousands of…
By Ariel Dorfman The Guardian (9/11/18) It can’t happen here. That’s an avowal I have been hearing from Americans ever since my family and I, fleeing a dictatorship in our native Chile, finally came to settle in the United States in 1980. What happened to you in Chile can’t happen here. Democracy in the US is too stable, the institutions too deeply rooted, the people too much in love with liberty. Weary of wandering, desperate for refuge, I wanted to believe that the American experiment would not abide tyranny. And yet I remained sceptical, stubbornly wary. I had pronounced similar words…
By Brett Wilkins Common Dreams (9/13/18) On February 12, 2010, US Army Rangers conducted a nighttime raid on a home in the village of Khataba, outside Gardez, Afghanistan. Dozens of men, women and children, including the district prosecutor and local police chief, had gathered at the house to celebrate the naming of a newborn baby just before the raid occurred. The Rangers stormed the home with guns blazing, killing the prosecutor, police chief, two pregnant women and a teenage girl. The US military lied about the Khataba raid, initially making the outrageous claim that the women and girl had been killed…
The Agenda With Steve Paikin (9/12/18) The Agenda welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, who over the past decade and a half has made his name as a columnist, activist and author. He’s been a vociferous public critic of presidents on both sides of the American political spectrum, and his latest book, ‘America, the Farewell Tour,’ is nothing short of a full-throated throttling of the political, social, and cultural state of his country. Link to 28-Minute Video
Public domain photo. The idea of a genuine economy shorn of Wall Street contrivance touched a chord. By Jonathan Rowe Yes! Magazine (9/14/18) he mood at kitchen tables in California in the early 1930s was as bleak as it was elsewhere in the United States. Factories were closed. More than a quarter of the breadwinners in the state were out of work. There were no federal or state relief programs, nothing but some local charity—in Los Angeles County, a family of four got about 50 cents a day, and only 1 in 10 got even that. Not long before, America…
“Manafort has flipped! BOOM (the sound of broomsticks breaking the sound barrier crashing to earth – NO witches). The entire Trump family now in jeopardy. No pardon for Paul from Trump. No nice things to say about Mansfort by Rudy. Nightmares at the White House will be unending.” — Onetime Nixon White House attorney of Watergate fame John Dean tweet (9/14/18) By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (9/17/18) Dear Fellow Readers, On Friday Trump campaign chariman Paul Manafort pleaded guilty. This is in addition to his recent conviction on eight federal criminal charges. Manafort’s plea deal says he…
“The GOP’s reassurance that if only you don’t mention it in the newspapers, climate change won’t happen, may be goofy and endearing to some, but for most of the people in the world it ruins their chances of taking the climate crisis seriously and doing something practical about it.” — Juan Cole, “Dear Carolinas: You Can’t Outlaw Storm Surges and Climate Crisis; Physics Isn’t Interested in Your Laws.” Read the Rest and 3-Minute Video (Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
This morning’s cartoon gets it right [9/10]. The main issue is Republican support for Trump. After all, if the Republican president gets impeached, we get Pence, another Republican president. Arguably more dangerous, because more subtle and devious. At least the current Republican president is out in the open with many of his actions. And he is stealing a lot of potential Democratic lightning and thunder, with his attacks on manufacturing job losses and foreign trade deficits and debt. Please focus more on the mental and political state of Republicans, and name the names of feeble, flabby corporate Democrats like…
By David Sirota The Guardian (9/10/18) After a scorching summer of discontent, Donald Trump’s endless tweets and scandals have given Democrats their best chance to retake Congress since George W Bush’s second term. And yet, insurgent progressives are not limiting themselves to dethroning Republicans: they are taking aim at corporate-friendly Democrats within their own party, too. Amid an upsurge of populist energy that has alarmed the Democratic establishment, a new wave of left-leaning insurgents have been using Democratic primaries to wage a fierce war on the party’s corporate wing. And, as in past presidential primary battles, many Democratic consultants, politicians and pundits…
By Rebekah Entralgo Think Progress (8/21/18) Slowly but surely, Republicans that supported the trillion dollar Trump tax bill are revealing their true motivations: slashing Medicare and Social Security. During a Sunday interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH) urged entitlement reform as the deficit continues to balloon as a result of the GOP tax cuts. [Language Note: Social Security and Medicare are not ‘entitlements’. They hard earned benefits people have invested in through wage deductions. — Ed.] “I do think we need to deal with some of our spending,” Stivers said. “We’ve got try to figure out how…
By Jerry White World Socialist Website (9/12/18) The strike by over 5,000 Chicago hotel workers spread to 26 locations Tuesday, as hundreds of workers walked off the job at the Cambria Chicago Magnificent Mile hotel, just north of downtown. Thousands of housekeepers, bellhops, servers, cooks and other hospitality workers walked out across the city last Friday to demand increased wages, year-round health benefits and reduced workloads. Labor agreements covering 6,000 members of the UNITE HERE in Chicago expired on August 31, along with thousands of others at major hotels across the country. On Tuesday, hotel workers in Hawaii voted…
By Michael Blake The Conversation (9/10/18) The New York Times recently published an anonymous op-ed from a “senior official” in the Trump administration. In the op-ed, the unnamed author describes President Donald Trump as “impetuous, adversarial, petty, and ineffective.” He or she depicts a White House in which the author – together with like-minded colleagues – work to undermine the president’s “half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless” decisions. A tweet from the president, in what appears to be in reference to the op-ed, asked: Treason? Some commentators, making clear that they had difference of opinion with President Trump’s policies, nonetheless, condemned the author for…
By Jodi S. Cohen, Melissa Sanchez & Duaa Eldeib ProPublica (9/10/18) They were as young as 10 months, as old as almost 18. About one-third of the children who ended up in Chicago came from Guatemala. Others had fled Brazil, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize, Romania and India. All had at least one parent locked up, often hundreds of miles away. Months after the plight of children separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration crackdown sparked outrage, prompting a reversal of the policy, those children’s identities and experiences in detention remain largely unknown. But ProPublica Illinois has obtained confidential records…
By Osita Nwanevu Slate (7/25/18) Last week, moderate Democrats gathered for Opportunity 2020, an invite-only convention in Columbus, Ohio, hosted by the prominent centrist think tank Third Way. “Unlike a traditional conference, expect a stimulating mix of thought provoking presentations and interactive small-group sessions focused on the urgent need for the next generation of Democrats to offer a new social contract for the Digital Age,” the event’s webpage read. NBC News’ account of the event suggests it wound up being little more than a group therapy session for Democrats fretting about the rise of an insurgent left energized by Bernie…
John “Bones” Bolton By Owen Bowcott, Oliver Holmes & Erin Durkin The Guardian (9/10/18) John Bolton, the hawkish US national security adviser, has threatened the international criminal court (ICC) with sanctions and made an excoriating attack on the institution in a speech in Washington. Bolton pushed for sanctions over an ICC investigation into alleged American war crimes in Afghanistan. He also announced on Monday the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington because of its calls for an ICC inquiry into Israel. “The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from…
“You’re a fucking liar.” — Former Trump lawyer John Dowd, “something he could not bring himself to say to the president”, from Bob Woodward’s ‘FEAR, Trump in the White House’. By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (9/13/18) Dear Fellow Readers, Are Trump’s lies catching up with him? While most Americans somberly reflected on September 11 Trump managed to draw negative attention including much attention to past statements and claims about 9/11 over the years. We’re reminded of Trump’s complete lack of empathy, in this instance he was interviewed that same day by Alan Marcus for WWOR: What Trump & Clinton Did On…
By Nick Turse The American Empire Project (9/5/18) 4,000,000,029,057. Remember that number. It’s going to come up again later. But let’s begin with another number entirely: 145,000 — as in, 145,000 uniformed soldiers striding down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. That’s the number of troops who marched down that very street in May 1865 after the United States defeated the Confederate States of America. Similar legions of rifle-toting troops did the same after World War I ended with the defeat of Germany and its allies in 1918. And Sherman tanks rolling through the urban canyons of midtown Manhattan? That followed the triumph over the Axis in 1945….
Do you need help registering to vote? The Vernon County Democrats can help you protect your right to vote in this important November election. Do you want to see if the Walker administration has purged you and deprived you of your vote? Stop by our table at the Vernon County Fair, in Viroqua through Sunday. We have trained voter registration assistants to help you through the process! Find us in the Vernon Healthcare Expo Center.
By Noor Al-Sibai The Raw Story (9/13/18) At a town hall event in Flint, Michigan, Fahrenheit 11/9 filmmaker Michael Moorepredicted that Donald Trump could “possibly” be the last president of the United States. “It’s possible,” Moore told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. When the host expressed incredulity, the documentarian said he “absolutely” believes the claim. “I think that we have someone in the White House who has no respect for the rule of law,” Moore said, “who dislikes democracy by an incredible degree.” Trump’s disdain for democracy “doesn’t really make him that different from any other billionaires or CEOs because their businesses are not…
By Lawrence Douglas & Alexander George The Guardian (8/23/18) You can just imagine the tweets, denials and equivocating that would follow a murder committed by Trump on Fifth Avenue, can’t you? Link to Tweets ***** Reality Check: A Few Flashbacks Of Republicans Dismissing Trump As ‘crazy’ And “kook”Before They Began Licking Him With Praise What happened to the Republican Party? As just one example we have Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who said of Donald Trump back in 2016: “I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office.” Then recently Graham said, “You know what concerns me about…
By Brandy X. Lee The Conversation (9/6/18) Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear,” describes a “nervous breakdown of Trump’s presidency.” Earlier this year, Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” offered a similar portrayal. Now, an op-ed in The New York Times by an anonymous “senior White House official” describes how deeply the troubles in this administration run and what effort is required to protect the nation. None of this is a surprise to those of us who, 18 months ago, put together our own public service book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” My focus…
On The Media (9/7/18) Between the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill and an anonymous op-ed from within the Trump White House, a wave of rule-bending and -breaking has crashed on Washington. This week, we explore how political decorum and popular dissent have evolved since the early days of our republic — and how the legal protections for those core freedoms could transform our future. 1. Brooke and Bob on how best to cover the anonymous op/ed written by a “senior official in the Trump administration.” 2. Geoffrey Stone, professor of law at University of Chicago, on our evolving…
Is Walker’s big deal turning into just another empty election year promise? By Dave Hansen, State Senator Dist 30 Green Bay Progressive (9/8/18) GREEN BAY, WI – Since Governor Walker’s initial announcement of the Foxconn deal he has been promising it will create 13,000 jobs. But anyone who remembers his promise back in 2010 to create 250,000 jobs during his first term in office knows to take such promises with a large grain of salt. The same day that Walker made his promise of 13,000 new jobs, Foxconn’s owner Terry Gau would only commit to creating 3,000 jobs and even President…
By Abby Zimet Common Dreams (9/6/18) In what was dubbed a telling “red-alarm moment” in his turbulent confirmation hearings Thursday, increasingly slimy Brett Kavanaugh dropped his fastidious “Roe v. Wade is important precedent” mask long enough to conflate birth control – a form of basic health care used by over 95% of women during their lifetimes – with “abortion-inducing drugs,” a dog whistle used by extremist ideologues and blasted by critics as “anti-woman, anti-science propaganda.” With Kavanaugh’s anti-choice views already clear, he had till then adopted a strategic caution, repeatedly assuring legislators he viewed Roe v. Wade as “important precedent” and “the settled law of the land.” “I understand the importance people attach to the Roe v. Wade decision,”…
By Julia Conley Common Dreams (9/6/18) Attempting to change two decades of precedent, the Trump administration announced its intention Thursday to lift court-ordered limits on how long migrant children can be detained—a proposal multiple critics promptly denounced as “Gitmo for children.” The administration said Thursday it intends to enter into the Federal Register new regulations that would allow it to hold families who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border indefinitely, for the duration of their immigration proceedings—a period that could last years. “Locking up children indefinitely is cruel and heartless, even for the Trump administration,” CREDO Action campaign manager Nicole Regalado…
A child’s drawing of the reality of life in Syria from the book “Home: Drawings By Syrian Children”. “In a strange way it is journalism at its best.” By Ben Quilty The Guardian (9/1/18) In 2016, with my friend Richard Flanagan, I stopped at a transit station halfway across Serbia. It was a clear day – blue sky from horizon to frozen horizon. Three dirty black buses rolled into the makeshift rest stop and 200 Syrian people climbed down off the big final bus step in need of food and a toilet break. Anywhere else in the world, a group of…
“Well, for one thing, everyone’s wrapped up in the guessing game. But the underlying problem remains: Republicans don’t want to know what’s wrong and don’t want to conduct oversight. There can be no better reason to throw them out of power than their unwillingness to perform basic duties — defending our constitutional system of elected government…” — Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post (9/7/18) By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (9/10/18) Dear Fellow Readers, We’ll begin where we left off with the last edition with commentary on the New York Times Op-Ed written by someone senior in the Trump…
By Martin Cizmar The Raw Story (9/7/18) Jack Bryan, the director behind a new documentary on Trump’s Russian connections, Active Measures, appeared on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night to discuss his movie. Bryan’s film starts with Putin’s playbook, and how he’s been able to undermine other democracies. It then goes into Trump’s history as a desperate and failing businessman. “It’s almost inevitable that they would figure in each other’s lives like this, the stooge and the puppet-master,” Maher said. “He’s the perfect mark, is he not?” Bryan explained that Russian intelligence looks for susceptible marks…
By Ed Weathers Memphis Flyer (9/6/18) Recently some younger Trump supporters I know — folks in their 20s and 30s — have expressed disdain toward fast-food workers who are asking for higher wages. They claim that such low-skilled jobs don’t deserve higher wages and that a higher minimum wage for them would just devalue the work of more skilled folks like themselves — first responders, welders, mechanics, construction workers, and the like. These young Trump folks also resent anyone on welfare and, of course, most immigrants. They see all these folks as somehow damaging their own economic prospects or undermining…
“The future of the country is up to you.” By John W, Whitehead The Rutherford Institute (8/30/18) WASHINGTON, DC — “What’s the greatest threat we face today? Our own government!” warned constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, in a chilling message delivered at the third annual Ron Paul Institute’s Peace and Prosperity Conference. Whitehead spoke on the far-reaching ramifications of domestic militarization and the transformation of America into a war zone. Whitehead’s speech can be viewed at www.rutherford.org. “Our founding fathers warned us not to have a standing army on American soil. We did not heed that…
Stomach contents of an albatross chick photographed in the Pacific in 2009. (photo: Chris Jordan/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service HQ) By Victoria Gill BBC News (6/24/18) Seabirds are starving to death on the remote Lord Howe Island, a crew filming for the BBC One documentary Drowning in Plastic has revealed. Their stomachs were so full of plastic there was no room for food. The documentary is part of a BBC initiative called Plastics Watch, tracking the impact of plastic on the environment. The marine biologists the team filmed are working on the island to save the birds. They captured…
Democrats’ Embrace Of Neoliberalism Dlievered The Nation Into Trump’s Paws A good chunk of Trump’s support could be peeled away if there were a genuine redistributive agenda on the table. An agenda to take on the billionaire class with more than rhetoric, and use the money for a green new deal. By Naomi Klein The Guardian (11/9/16) They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and…
Labor union leadership has also betrayed workers. The Hill (8/23/18) Former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges said Thursday that Republicans and Democrats have both betrayed working-class voters. Link to 5-Minute Video ***** Here’s A Longer Address By Hedges: “America: The Farewell Tour” “All of the warning signs that have brought down empires in history are flashing red within the American empire.” [Editor’s Note: The last half of this video includes some pretty forthright discussion about how to mount resistance to what is happening across the nation. What is needed is what has been done by the people … “We have…
By Ian Samuel The Guardian (8/23/18) On Tuesday [8/21], Michael Cohen – President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer – pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring with Trump to violate the campaign finance laws in the waning days of the 2016 election, with the aim of influencing the outcome. (This testimony is corroborated by, among other things, an audio recording of the two of them discussing the conspiracy.) After a night undoubtedly spent crafting the most blistering bon mot of which he was able, the president tweeted the next morning that “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly…
VICE News (8/31/18) In Los Angeles, celebrities are constantly pursued by camera-wielding photographers snapping photos and yelling questions. Things are a bit more tame in Washington, D.C. when it comes to the political celebrities who regularly walk the streets of the district. High level Cabinet officials and politicians are mostly left alone when they are out in public. While the corridors of the U.S. Capitol can be a media gauntlet, outside of predetermined media availabilities high-powered officials can usually go about their business without worrying too much. So VICE News decided to make things slightly more uncomfortable for the people…
By Derrick Broze Activist Post (9/3/18) As Americans prepare for the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, nearly 10,000 first responders and New York City residents have reported 9/11-related cancers. In early August the New York Post reported on newly released numbers of reported 9/11 related illnesses, including 9,795 total case of 9/11-related cancer. The numbers were released by the federally funded World Trade Center Health Program. According to the program there have been more than 400 documented cases of death from 9/11-related cancers. However, unfortunately, the plight of the men and women who rushed into “Ground Zero” on September 11,…