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Commoner Reader Writes: Common Sense Understanding Of Military Build-up

TheCommonerCall.org All the whining about military spending is not going to change things because we have the wrong system of money [When The Whole World Is A Nail: Trump’s Vision Of A Hyper-Militarized America].  David Graeber in his book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” tells us that when the authoritarian issues the currency and demands that back as taxes then it is really easy to get The People roped into war mongering by simply issuing the lion’s share of the currency for the military.  The People must then ‘do business’ with the military in order to get the currency needed…


Public Not Buying ‘Bucky Weasel’ Walker Muzzling Of DNR On Climate Change

  Bucky Weasel: Environmental Rodent Model By Steven Verburg The Wisconsin State Journal (3/4/17) Hundreds of phone calls and emails voicing shock, outrage and ridicule flooded state Department of Natural Resources offices in December after top managers deleted language from the DNR website that had described the urgency of addressing human activity that has accelerated climate change. Some DNR employees handling the public reaction expressed frustration as managers waited days before telling them how to respond, and then provided a script that treated the altered web pages as a routine update. Documents released to the Wisconsin State Journal under the state…


WNYC ‘On The Media’ – Trump Is A Huge Challenge To The Media

On The Media WNYC (3/3/17) The latest edition of WNYC’s public radio show “On the Media” provides an excellent overview and summary of the Donald Trump constitutional crisis. In less than an hour the OTM team produced a powerful roundup of the sad state of affairs and the decisions we are facing. The entire broadcast is worth the time, but you can also listen to each segment individually: Paper Trail – In the midst of the news about attorney general Jeff Sessions’ previously undisclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador, another set of revelations emerged. This week, the New York Times reported…


Run, Hide & Threaten Citizens: Fragile Republican Snowflakes Paul Ryan & Ron Johnson Bully Constituents

By Capper Crooks & Liars (3/1/17) Like many Republicans around the country, Wisconsin’s Republicans have been doing their best to avoid their constituents and not have to listen to their anger or how they are not representing them. But since this is Wisconsin, our snowflakes tend to be bigger and uglier, even though we are going through an unseasonable warm spell. Even Lyin’ Paul Ryan is no exception. Ryan’s office stopped taking phone calls from his constituents. (Don’t worry, he gave his personal phone number to all of his wealthy friends and benefactors – y’know, the people he truly represents….


Republican (Anti) Family Values: Trump Administration Weighs Separating Mothers From Children At Border

  By Nika Knight Common Dreams (3/4/17) As the Trump administration continues its mass deportations apace, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is considering ramping up anti-immigration policies even further with a new rule that would separate mothers from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s according to Reuters, which cites three unnamed government officials who had been briefed on the proposal intended “to deter mothers from migrating to the United States with their children.” Reuters reports: The policy shift would allow the government to keep parents in custody while they contest deportation or wait for asylum hearings. Children would…


When The Whole World Is A Nail: Trump’s Vision Of A Hyper-Militarized America

If all the men around President Trump are hammers, the temptation will be to treat everything as if it were a nail.   By William Hartung TomDispatch (2/2/17) At over $600 billion a year and counting, the Pentagon already receives significantly more than its fair share of federal funds.  If President Donald Trump has his way, though, that will prove a sum for pikers and misers.  He and his team are now promising that spending on defense and homeland security will increase dramatically in the years to come, even as domestic programs are slashed and entire civilian agencies shuttered. The…


Jon Stewart Lets You Know Sure Fire Way To Tell When Trump Is Lying To Your Face

TheCommonerCall.org The Commoner Call (3/2/17) Jon Stewart made a surprise appearance on Stephen Colbert’s Late Night show with a couple important messages for citizens and the journalists they depend upon for the information necessary to the functioning of a democratic government. On the first score Stewart did what so few are willing to do in the media: to call out Donald Trump – the Supposed-President – for the blatant liar that he is. What’s a quick tip-off that Trump is about to lie to your face, Stewart asks? Whenever he says “Believe me…”, Stewart notes. Think of all the times…


To Protect & Shove? Watch Big, Tough Cop Push 86 Year-Old Woman To Ground At Trump Protest

Then 65 year-old retired teacher who came to her aid was maced. (Editor’s Note: Wow, tough guys! The state is losing legitimacy fast. – Mark L. Taylor) By Shane Dixon Kavahaugh Vocativ (2/27/17) A police officer in Tucson, Arizona, shoved an 86-year-old woman onto the pavement during a tense confrontation with demonstrators opposed to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, video footage shows. The Tucson Police Department said that it is investigating the incident from earlier this month that also left a retired school teacher with a face full of pepper spray as she tried to help the elderly woman, who…


Angry white men’: The Sociologist Who Studied Trump’s Base Before Trump

Michael Kimmel, one of the world’s foremost experts on masculinity, examines its role in men’s adherence to – and departure from – far-right movements.   By J. Oliver Conroy The Guardian (2/27/17) During the Obama years, various commentators made wild predictions about the death of the white male as a politically relevant demographic. Then came Trump, propelled to power by a wave of angry white men. The sociologist Michael Kimmel is one of the world’s foremost experts on the phenomenon. As the director of Stony Brook University’s Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities, he’s a leader in the…


A Commoner Writes: Rural Independent Responds To Trump’s Speech To Congress

Solving the world’s problems requires us to be equal partners, not overlords.   In responding to the President’s remarks about unity, I agree that we work better when we work together. Our exceptional quality as Americans is to solve any problem, fight any enemy, and to provide generous help to those who need it. To be effective, we need to agree on a plan. Aye, but that’s the rub. The direction the President and the Congress wish to take us ignores the needs of the vast majority of Americans and creates more problems than it solves, spawns more enemies, and…


CARTOON KNOWLEDGE: What’s A ‘Snollygoster’? We Have Three Prime Examples In Wisconsin

By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (2/27/17) Commoner Call reader Richard Smith sent in a note the other day alerting me to probably the best word I have ever seen to describe a politician. It is one of those words that sounds exactly like what it means: snollygoster. It’s perfectly suited to a particular brand of politician citizens on both sides of the American political chasm have come to loathe. Truly, snollygoster is a tag with bipartisan applications. While all politicians have to occasionally stretch the truth or compromise on some campaign promise or utter some meaningless BS to…


A Deep Look At What Ails Us: Healing Our Collective Sickness

  (Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free to use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )   *****   We always know that a civilization is breaking down when it excludes recognition of and social response to its own degenerate trends.   (Editor’s Note: The political, economic and environmental collapse are about more than bad actors, political action groups and elections. There are deeper psychological and spiritual dimensions creating a feedback loop of sleepwalking into destruction and denial. Author Paul Levy provides a deeper assessment of what is really happening to our world, and each of…


Do These 10 Things, And Trump Will Be Toast

The Commoner Call.org   By Michael Moore MichaelMoore.com (2/17/17) Friends, I welcome you to “The Michael Moore Easy-to-Follow 10-Point Plan to Stop Trump.” First, let’s acknowledge what we all know to be true: Trump is in deep, deep trouble — in the pocket of Russians, surrounded by alt.right idiots, alone in his bathrobe in a mostly-empty White House — and caught inside a disgusting “shit-sandwich”, so said his supporter who turned down the NSA job. Only one month into his So-Called Presidency — and yet there is good news, as this is what the American landscape looks like: • Tens…


A Commoner Makes A Common Sense Observation

TheCommonerCall.org Leslie Stahl posed the question in a Sixty Minutes segment that aired in May of 1996: were the deaths of over half-million children under age five an acceptable price to pay for a dubious policy? Madeleine Albright, who was the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, replied:  “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” I am aware of the potential for terrible things to happen with Donald, but this type of thing was happening with the DNC and Third Way types. The resistance we see may not be enough, but…






Tell On Trump

One thing we know about Donald Trump is that there are a lot of things Donald Trump doesn’t want people to know about. If you’ve reached this page, you might have information about the conduct of Donald Trump or his administration that you’d like people to know about. Here’s how you can tell us. Who are we? The SPECIAL PROJECTS DESK OF GIZMODO MEDIA GROUP. We are an investigative team that reports stories about political, cultural, financial, and technological power for GIZMODO, FUSION, DEADSPIN, JEZEBEL, JALOPNIK, KOTAKU, and the other Gizmodo Media Group web sites. SecureDrop You may send us…


Mr. President: ‘Just who the hell do you think you are?’

By Leonard Pitts Miami Herald (2/14/17) Dear Mr. So-Called President: So let me explain to you how this works. You were elected as chief executive of the United States. I won’t belabor the fact that you won with a minority of the popular vote and a little help from your friends, FBI Director James Comey and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The bottom line is, you were elected. And this does entitle you to certain things. You get your own airplane. You get free public housing. You get greeted with snappy salutes. And a band plays when you walk into the…


Redacted: Your Right To Vote In America

Comedian and “Redacted” host Lee Camp begins this episode with a take-down of Trump Joseph Goebbels clone Stephen Miller but then goes on to give one of the best full spectrum assessments of the attack on voting rights across the country. The very concept of democracy has become a cynical myth through a bipartisan attack on the rights of all Americans to vote. Link to 10-Minute Video      


The Clock Is Ticking: At Best, We Have One Year To Save Our Nation & Ourselves

(Editor’s Note: If you do nothing else today, listen to the opening interview with Yale historian Timothy Snyder about the actual degree of risk we are at. When we tell ourselves that a totalitarian regime can never happen here we are, Snyder warns, ignoring history. We are not as exceptional to the reality of history as we like to think. Please, listen to this fascinating interview and then take action. – Mark L. Taylor) Once you concede on abuse of the first group you have lost everything.   Open Source WBUR (2/16/17) Should Donald Trump have spelled it out that…


Let’s Hold On The Cheers For Surveillance Leaks: Power Of The Deep State, Flynn Leaks And the End Of Democracy

  By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (2/20/17) It’s hard not to feel some measure of hope at all the news about the deep state surveillance and intelligence agencies leaking news nuggets about Trumpster ties to Russian oligarchs and Putin’s pals in the Kremlin. I mean, hell, it’s Trump. Right? During an interview last week with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, New York Sen. Chuck Shumer stated an ugly truth about Trump’s ranting and raving about the intel community, saying the so-called president was “being really dumb” for taking on the intelligence mafia: “Let me tell you, you take on…


The Forces Behind The Internet’s Growing Authoritarian Anti-Democracy Movement

By Rosie Gray The Atlantic (2/10/17) White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been in contact via intermediaries with Curtis Yarvin, Politico Magazine reported this week. Yarvin, a software engineer and blogger, writes under the name Mencius Moldbug. His anti-egalitarian arguments have formed the basis for a movement called “neoreaction.” The main thrust of Yarvin’s thinking is that democracy is a bust; rule by the people doesn’t work, and doesn’t lead to good governance. He has described it as an “ineffective and destructive” form of government, which he associates with “war, tyranny, destruction and poverty.” Yarvin’s ideas, along with those…



The Five Faces Of Authoritarian Dystopia

By Paul Buchheit Common Dreams (2/13/17) Based on reliable news sources, his biographer, and his own writings, the most powerful man of his era has been referred to as an “egomaniac” and “narcissist,” possessing a “big mouth” with an “impulsive style,” unable to differentiate between truth and falsehood, preferring emotion over facts, focused on national greatness and law & order, fearful of “foreignization,” prone to coarseness and put-downs in speeches, and fond of “mantralike phrases” filled with “accusations, vows of revenge and promises for the future.” The man described above is Adolf Hitler. All of the descriptions were attributed to the Nazi…


How Refugee Neighbors Changed A Man’s Mind About Muslims: ‘They Took The Hatred Out Of Me’

Learning neighborly kindness.   By Christopher Mathias Huffington Post (2/9/17) “I hated Muslims.” That’s what John Dutcher, a 61-year-old house cleaner in Omaha, Nebraska, recently admitted in interviews with both The Washington Post and KETV. He told the Post that he had been “one of those guys who would want to put a pig’s head on a mosque.” (Pork-based hate crimes targeting Muslims are common in the U.S., including in Omaha.) And he’d “sneer at” women wearing headscarfs of hijabs, he said to KETV ― even though he had never actually met a Muslim person before. Then six families of…


Author Of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: It was ‘farfetched’ when I wrote it — but Trump is making it real

    By Tom Boggioni The Raw Story (2/11/17) Margaret Atwood, whose dystopian 1985 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” describes a a totalitarian theocracy that has taken over the U.S. and subjugated women for the ruling class, claims the election of Donald Trump is making her book all too real now. In an interview at Cuba’s international book fair, the Canadian-born Atwood said sales of “The Handmaid’s Tale” have jumped with the election of Trump, while admitting interest has also grown due to a remake of the 1990 film as a miniseries to be shown on Hulu. According to Reuters, Atwood…


It May Only Take 3.5% Of The Population To Topple A Dictator – With Peaceful Civil Resistance

The United States has a rich history with effective uses of nonviolent resistance. Now’s the  time to become familiar with it.   By Erica Chenoweth The Guardian (2/1/17) Many people across the United States are despondent about the new president – and the threat to democracy his rise could represent. But they shouldn’t be. At no time in recorded history have people been more equipped to effectively resist injustice using civil resistance. Today, those seeking knowledge about the theory and practice of civil resistance can find a wealth of information at their fingertips. In virtually any language, one can find…


Mike McCabe – The Lesson For Democrats: Messaging Alone Won’t Win

By Mike McCabe Blue Jean Nation (2/8/17) In this post-truth, alternative-fact world, “messaging” is a popular buzzword in political circles. Those who win are convinced superior messaging is the secret of their success. Those who lose are convinced that faulty messaging was their downfall and all they need to do to win is get better at it. There are messaging gurus on both sides. They get a lot of attention and make a lot of money doling out advice. Messaging has become something of an obsession, especially on the Democratic side. To hear Democratic insiders tell it, bad messaging is why…


In Spite Of Walker, Solar Jobs Surge In State

Walker has received nearly $6 million from the Koch brothers, the nation’s leading advocates for fossil fuels.   By Dave Zweifel Cap Times (2/10/17) There are now more than 260,000 Americans working in the solar energy industry, according to end-of-2016 figures released this week by the Solar Foundation. That’s actually twice the number of Americans now employed by the coal industry and roughly the same number working in the national gas industry, the foundation said. That means that roughly one of 50 new jobs in 2016 was in the solar industry. But here’s what’s even more significant: The national median…


When The Government Had Real Reason To Fear A Bowling Green Massacre — From A Homegrown White Supremacist

 FBI agents came to believe Schmidt had been planning his own string of racially motivated attacks on African-American and Jewish community leaders.   By A.C. Thompson ProPublica (2/8/17) The year was 2012. The place was Bowling Green, Ohio. A federal raid had uncovered what the authorities feared were the makings of a massacre. There were 18 firearms, among them two AR–15 assault rifles, an AR–10 assault rifle and a Remington Model 700 sniper rifle. There was body armor, too, and the authorities counted some 40,000 rounds of ammunition. An extremist had been arrested, and prosecutors suspected that he had been…




Breaking Down The Wall Within Is The Key To Our Times

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it — always.” — Mahatma Gandhi   By Dennis Brault The Commoner Call (2/6/17) The Electoral College and Congress have spoken. The oath’s been given. Our Constitution is a harsh mistress and a very undemocratic one too boot. In fact, our system of government was designed to be rather anti-democratic right from the get go. James Madison wrote that the…


Fire Chief Recalls Fiery Oil Train Derailment: ‘I have never seen anything more terrifying’

(The Commoner Call photo by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free to use with link to www.the commonercall.org )   (Editor’s Note: Keep in mind the oil train in this story is the same kind of trains we have rolling through the heart of many cities – like La Crosse, WI – and thousands of small towns and villages across the nation. Really, it is time to move to non-fossil fuel energy energy. From wellhead to car gas tank, oil is a growing disaster. – Mark L. Taylor)     By Jeff Klasen Bay Today (2/4/17) It’s been…



CARTOON: Time To Steal From The Right’s Playbook. Call It The Herbal Tea Party

  (The Commoner Call & Lines of Resistance cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source anc freee to use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )   By Rory Carroll The Guardian (2/1/17) They came with chants and songs, banners and flyers and a chicken costume, and felt it was working – that this and other grassroots protests were steeling Democratic resistance to Donald Trump. “We need to stand and fight. We are the majority. Let’s take our country back,” Mimi Fleischman told the crowd outside Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Los Angeles office on Tuesday afternoon. It was the latest anti-Trump gathering…


My Dad Predicted Trump In 1984 – It’s Not Orwell, He Warned, It’s Brave New World

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.” –…


Arm Yourself: Shock Doctrine On VIDEO

From Vj Ultra Vimeo In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the…