Rethuglicans

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Rethuglicans, Your Brain On Politics September 14, 2017

George Lakoff: Why Hate Speech Is Not Free Speech

  By George Lakoff GeorgeLakoff.com (9/8/17) Freedom in a free society is supposed to be for all. Therefore, freedom rules out imposing on the freedom of others. You are free to walk down the street, but not to keep others from doing so. The imposition on the freedom of others can come in overt, immediate physical form — thugs coming to attack with weapons. Violence may be a kind of expression, but it certainly is not “free speech.” Like violence, hate speech can also be a physical imposition on the freedom of others. That is because language has a psychological…

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ALL ARTICLES, Rethuglicans August 24, 2017

Russ Feingold: Trump’s Disavowal Rings Hollow – How The Republican Party Quietly Does The Bidding Of White Supremacists

The lesson from Charlottesville is not how dangerous the neo-Nazis are. It is the unmasking of the Republican party leadership.  By Russ Feingold The Guardian (8/19/17) It takes approximately 30 seconds to send a tweet. A half hour to draft and release a statement. And the shelf life of both is only marginally longer. We should not commend Republican party elected officials who claim outrage on social media at Trump’s remarks, often without daring to mention his name. The phony claimed outrage becomes dangerous if it convinces anyone that there is a distinction between Trump’s abhorrent comments and the Republican…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, M. Taylor Columns, Rethuglicans August 21, 2017

White Supremacism Is The Republican Brand

  By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (8/21/17) It has been encouraging to see a few prominent republicans condemn Donald Trump’s “Many sides. Many sides” defense of white supremacists and Nazis in the wake of the Charlottesville attacks. Utah republican Sen. Orrin Hatch spoke out forcefully about the Nazi torch lit display on a tweeted message: “Their tiki torches may be fueled by citronella but their ideas are fueled by hate, and have no place in civil society. We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, M. Taylor Columns, Rethuglicans, War State America August 3, 2017

Mark Shields: When The Chickenhawks Flock They Are Clucking About Only Putting Your Kid At Risk

  “It is just a helluva a lot easier to talk tough when it isn’t your son, or your daughter who’s in harms way.”   By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (8/3/17) In doing some other research I stumbled across a few comments by PBS commentator Mark Shields during a conversation with David Brooks of the New York Times and moderator Jeff Greenfield during the midst of the 2016 campaign that are worth noting. Shields is one of the old lions of the media and his comments at the very tail end of the broadcast are well worth considering…

ALL ARTICLES, Rethuglicans, Screwing With Your Vote July 6, 2017

A Wisconsin Republican Looks Back With Regret At Voter ID & Redistricting Fights

  By Topher Sanders ProPublica (7/3/17) Dale Schultz, a Republican, served in the Wisconsin Legislature for more than 30 years, from 1983 to 2015. His Senate district is located in south Wisconsin, much of it rural farmland. Schultz was considered a moderate, and so much of what happened in state politics near the end of his tenure dismayed him: partisan fights over the rights of unions, a gubernatorial recall election, and claims of partisan Republican gerrymandering that will now be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. And then there was the prolonged entanglement over voting rights in the state — who…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Rethuglicans July 3, 2017

GOP Fascism Update: Portland Republicans Turn To Thugs

“The Nazis no longer felt any restraint; with their gangs, they regularly broke up the election meetings of other parties. They shot one or two political opponents every day. In a Berlin suburb they even burned down the house of a Social Democrat family. The new Prussian regional minister (a Nazi: a certain Captain Goring) promulgated an incredible decree It ordered the police to intervene in any brawl on the side of the Nazis, without investigating the rights and wrongs of the matter, furthermore to shoot at the other side without prior warning. A little later an “auxiliary police force”…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, History They Don't Want You To Know, Rethuglicans, Right Wing Religion June 29, 2017

Nordic Odin Religion Hijacked & Perverted By Violent American White Supremacists

By Will Carless Reveal / Center for Investigative Reporting (6/1/17) In February 2016, 15 months before he was accused of stabbing three people on a train in Portland, Oregon, and killing two, Jeremy Christian pledged to kill whoever was elected president of the United States: “I Hereby Solemnly swear to Die trying to Kill Hillary (Herself a filthy Murderess) Clinton and Donald Trump should they be elected to the post of President in my faire country on (sic) Vinland,” Christian wrote in a Facebook post. Then he pledged his threat to an ancient Nordic god, as well as Hindu and Egyptian…

ALL ARTICLES, Rethuglicans June 8, 2017

Spiritual Crisis: The Republican Party’s Empty Soul Sickness

  By Richard Eskow OurFuture.org (5/30/17) There’s a sickness on the land. You know the facts: millions of Americans lives in poverty. The number of Americans in the workforce remains low. Wages are stagnating and inequality is growing. “Deaths of despair” from alcoholism, opioid overdose, and suicide are on the rise. But it’s not just the inequality, or the poverty, or the despair, that wounds us. It’s the fact that so many Republican leaders and voters find ways to justify living with these injustices, and are now making them worse. There’s no polite way to say it: they suffer from a sickness of…

ALL ARTICLES, M. Taylor Columns, Rethuglicans, Trumpenstan May 15, 2017

WTH? How Does Trump Get Away With It & Why Can’t His Followers See What’s Going On?

  By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (5/15/17) As we have repeatedly seen over the past year and-a-half, facts and logic, history and common sense have no room in Trumpland America. Trump can spout the most obvious lies and repeat them over and over with boisterous self confidence as many numbly nod in agreement repeating his empty “Make America Great Again” mantra. Even when confronted by the facts or the past failure of his lies he doesn’t break pace. How, one asks, is this possible? There is a psychology lesson that can provide part of the answer to this…

ALL ARTICLES, Health Care, Rethuglicans, Trumpenstan May 8, 2017

Of All The Things About Enabling Trumpcare Republicans, Never, Ever Forget This…

“Lawmakers are exempt. Despite all of their rhetoric about the supposed failings of Obamacare, House Republicans inserted a provision on Tuesday that “exempts members of Congress and their staff from their latest healthcare plan,” Vox reported, meaning they will be able to opt out of the new amendment that charges more for people with pre-existing conditions.” – From “‘God Have Mercy on Your Souls’: GOP Passes Cruel, Destructive Trumpcare Bill”, Common Dreams (5/4/17)  

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Rethuglicans April 17, 2017

Trumpster Brown Shirts Stirring: “You’ve been warned”

By calebfox The Daily Kos (4/14/17) So late this afternoon the phone rang at my office — the Hamilton County Democratic Party in Cincinnati OH.   The caller asks for me by name.  I’m the Executive Director so usually its me answering the phone. He quickly rattles his name off and says he represents the Citizens for Trump Foundation.  He tells me “we have been monitoring your social media accounts and you have been posting many things critical of Donald Trump.”     I say yea.  Do you have any idea who you just called? What I took from that call yesterday is…

ALL ARTICLES, FEATURE, Rethuglicans, Trumpenstan, Your Brain On Politics March 20, 2017

Gas Lighting America: How To Resist By Keeping Your Sanity In Trump’s Crazy Making America

“One of the most insidious things about gaslighting is the denial of reality. Being denied what you have seen. Being denied what you have experienced and know to be true. It can make you feel like you are crazy. But you are not crazy.”   By Ariel Leve The Guardian (3/16/17) Right now, many Americans listening to their president are experiencing what I experienced frequently a child. Nothing means anything, and reality is being canceled. There is confusion, there is chaos, everything is upside down and inside out. When facts and truth are being discredited, how is it possible to…

ALL ARTICLES, FEATURE, M. Taylor Columns, Resist!, Rethuglicans, Your Brain On Politics March 20, 2017

Here’s How Gas Lighting Works In Every Day America: Twisting The Meaning Of A Single Word

  By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (3/20/17) Every victim of a crazy, abusive relationship or childhood suffered at the hands of an abusive parent knows what it means to be the target of “gas lighting”, even if they have never heard the term. It is taken from “Gaslight”, a 1944 Oscar-winning mystery-thriller movie starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotten about a woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into questioning her reality and making her believe she is going insane. Gaslighting is when someone in some position of relationship or power lies with a boldness then denies…

ALL ARTICLES, Rethuglicans March 16, 2017

Finally, Some Justice! Texas Bill Would Fine Men $100 Each Time They Masturbate For “Act Against An Unborn Child”

By Isabelle Chapman CNN (3/13/17) A Texas lawmaker has proposed a bill that would fine a man $100 each time he masturbates. The bill also imposes a 24-hour waiting period if a guy wants a colonoscopy or a vasectomy, or if he’s in the market for some Viagra. Rep. Jessica Farrar, a Democrat, knows her bill isn’t going to get very far. But she proposed it last week to make a point and give male lawmakers a taste of their own medicine. Farrar has long been an advocate of women’s health in a state that has made it extremely difficult…

ALL ARTICLES, Rethuglicans, War State America March 13, 2017

Oblivious: George Bush Paints The Veterans Whose Lives He Needlessly Shattered

  By Abbey Zimet Common Dreams (3/7/17) In what feels like a surreal stab at redemption, George Bush is back and being feted for his newest, guileless, bloodstained and evidently entirely unironic painting project: A book and exhibit of his Forrest-Gumpish portraits of 98 men and women blown apart, broken down, rendered limbless and otherwise shattered by his immoral, inept wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The newly released Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors  consists of 66 single images  and a group mural of physically and/or mentally wounded veterans from all the Armed Forces. Each…