Rethuglicans

With Celebration Of Former MI Gov. And ‘Mass Poisoner’ Rick Snyder’s Endorsement, Biden Solidly Aligns Himself With Evil

Biden is perfectly comfortable with the moral universe of Rick Snyder, where the mass poisoning of children is perfectly acceptable. As a neoliberal democrat, that is his universe. By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (9/7/20) It has been clear that the Biden campaign has no use for wooing progressives, believing, as Bill Maher has dismissively said: “Where else are they gonna go?” As a result, the Democratic National Convention featured a tacky chorus line of anti-labor, anti-choice, born-again, has-been Republicans supporting Biden’s campaign while progressive heroes like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez got a scant 60 seconds for a pre-recorded…

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Hidden In Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, And Far-Right Militancy In Law Enforcement

  By Michael German Brennan Center For Justice (8/27/20) Racial disparities have long pervaded every step of the criminal justice process, from police stops, searches, arrests, shootings and other uses of force to charging decisions, wrongful convictions, and sentences. footnote1_9xgru6r1 As a result, many have concluded that a structural or institutional bias against people of color, shaped by long-standing racial, economic, and social inequities, infects the criminal justice system. footnote2_g4qgmwm2 These systemic inequities can also instill implicit biases — unconscious prejudices that favor in-groups and stigmatize out-groups — among individual law enforcement officials, influencing their day-to-day actions while interacting with the public. Police reforms,…


Life In A Socialist Hellscape

“Finns live longer and are less likely to die in childhood or in giving birth than Americans. Danes earn roughly the same after-tax income as Americans, while working 20 percent less. They pay in taxes an extra 19 cents for every dollar earned. But in return they get free health care, free education from pre-school through university, and the opportunity to prosper in a thriving free-market economy with dramatically lower levels of poverty, homelessness, crime, and inequality. The average worker is paid better, treated more respectfully, and rewarded with life insurance, pension plans, maternity leave, and six weeks of paid…


To See The Politics Clearly: Think & Talk Vertically, Not Horizontally

Thinking vertically not only has the potential to unite those who are currently divided but also empower those who are presently conquered.” “As old labels indicate, we’ve all been conditioned to think about politics horizontally, from right to left. This way of thinking needlessly divides us by magnifying our differences and glossing over our commonalities. Turn the political spectrum on its head, and think top to bottom instead of left to right, and a magical thing can happen. Picture a man and a woman. He’s white. She’s black, He’s a farmworker, she’s a childcare provider. Both are struggling to make…


The Apocalypse Is Here: Will We Ever Listen To The Warnings?

What is it going to take to get us to listen and to act? How much worse do things have to become?  By David Sirota TMI (8/25/20) This is a cautionary tale, written as I try to figure out how to construct the “safe room” that state officials now say I need to build for me and my family. And this cautionary tale is not just about one state or one election — it is about our democracy, our head-in-the-sand political establishment, and most important, about whether or not we have the ability to listen and to change as our…


Even Conservative Icon Tommy Thompson Is Getting Frustrated With State Republican Legislators

  Thompson Strikes Defiant Tone When Discussing Need For Legislature To Invest In State Universities. By Rich Kremer Wisconsin Public Radio (8/21/20) University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson is striking a defiant tone in his quest to rebuild trust between Republican state lawmakers and state universities. He says the UW System is being micromanaged and “kept down” by the Wisconsin state Legislature. Since beginning his interim-term as UW System President, Thompson has become increasingly vocal about what he sees as a bruised relationship between the UW System and the Republican controlled state Assembly and state Senate. During a UW…


Cornel West: Joe Biden Is A Neoliberal Disaster & Donald Trump A Neofascist Catastrophe!

Going Underground / RT (8/8/20) On this special episode of Going Underground, we speak to Prof. Cornel West. He discusses the 2020 election of Donald Trump vs Joe Biden, Joe Biden’s role in the rise of mass incarceration, US imperialism and foreign policy in the Middle East, the explosion at Beirut port in Lebanon, why Donald Trump’s opposition to Middle East intervention is farcical, the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic and the Trump Administration’s response, the loss of Bernie Sanders in the democratic primary, the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the challenging of…


At A Time Of Historic Crisis Both Political Parties Have Abandoned All But The Wealthy

By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (8/6/20) In the midst of a deadly pandemic all the false illusions, flaws and deadly foibles of the American medical industry have been stripped bare. Before the pandemic some 30 million limped along without health insurance and many millions more had over-priced, high-deductable plans that were essentially useless, leaving many families essentially uninsured. Now, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, we have millions losing their jobs, and with that … health insurance for their families. In one of the most callously cruel acts of political malpractice ever, neither party is addressing the…


“The Fight Isn’t Over,” Say Anti-War Groups As 139 House Democrats Betray The Nation & Join GOP To Reject 10% War Budget Cut At A Time Of Suffering

“Though our amendment didn’t pass, progressive power is stronger than ever. We will keep fighting for pro-peace, pro-people budgets until it becomes a reality. — Rep. Mark Pocan (D–WI). By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (7/21/20) Anti-war groups vowed to keep fighting to slash the bloated Pentagon budget after the House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected a proposal to cut U.S. military spending by 10% and invest the savings in housing, healthcare, and education in poor communities. The final vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) amendment sponsored by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) was 93-324, with 139…


From Sen. Joe McCarthy To Roy Cohn To Donald Trump

A Look At The Long Shadow Of Wisconsin’s Joe McCarthy. By Jeff Schechtman WhoWhatWhy (7/17/20) Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most dangerous demagogue of them all? Father Coughlin? Huey Long? Joe McCarthy? Donald Trump? In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, biographer Larry Tye (Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy) argues that, for those who are staggered by Trump’s transgressions, there’s serious competition that an older generation can cite: Joe McCarthy. The Wisconsin senator mastered the art of vicious personal attacks with no evidence, destroyed lives and careers, saw communists everywhere, stoked fear and racism — and even intimidated President…


Economist Richard Wolff: The Crash IS Coming! What To Watch For

“I fear we are really heading into a blind tsunami because of the blindness and the denial of the few at the top who are doing well.” By Julianna Forlano act.tv (7/15/20) Julianna welcomes back recurring guest, Marxian Economist Professor Richard D. Wolff, to the show to discuss how Economists are warning Americans that while the recent unemployment numbers were surprisingly positive, the long-term consequences of the pandemic could be severe joblessness for millions of Americans faced with permanent unemployment. And according to Professor Richard Wolff, there has been a widespread understanding among experts that a whole raft of jobs…


Robert Reich’s (Partial) List Of All The Ways America Is Exceptional In All The Wrong Ways

This pandemic has exposed what has long been true: On the global stage, America is the exception, but not in the way we would like to believe. [Editor’s Note: The one thing Reich does not mention in this list of American failure is that it is a bipartisan failure; both Republicans and Democrats are responsible. While it is easy to focus on the myriad, ever-cascading craplist of Trump failures, never forget that when it comes to issues of war and enriching the corporations there isn’t a frog’s hair of difference between the R’s and the D’s. They have both created…


Professor Richard Wolff: Neither Dems Or GOP Will Do Anything To Ease The Coming Economic Crash

It Will Be Like NOTHING In Our History. And What Could Be Done To Protect Families By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (6/29/20) Socialist economist Richard Wolff talks about what both Trump and Biden and the Republicans and Democrats don’t get — and won’t do — to ease the pain of pandemic economic dislocation of families. Other western nations have both taken care of workers and reduced Covid-19 infection rates. Meanwhile in the United States, callous and completely clueless bipartisan inaction leaves families suffering and the pandemic raging on. Neither Trump nor Biden will do what needs to be…


Domination Over Democracy: How Our Bloated Military Strengthens The Police State

The violent U.S. domination of people of color overseas is inextricably linked to the oppression of people of color at home. By Shireen Al-Adeimi & Sarah Lazare In These Times (6/17/20) Nationwide uprisings over the police killing of George Floyd have forced a long overdue discussion about the injustices of U.S. policing—an institution that has consistently harassed and terrorized and, in the words of organizer, writer and educator Mariame Kaba, remains a consistent “force of violence against Black people.” As demands to abolish the police are thrust into mainstream discourse, promising—if uncertain and mixed—political changes are being debated and implemented every day. We are seeing a rigorous…


How About That, Congressional Liars Had The Money For ‘Medicare For All’ All Along

Our political class only worries about deficits and so-called fiscal responsibility when spending might actually help ordinary people. By David Sirota TMI (6/16/20) In recent weeks, we’ve seen health care industry CEOs report paying themselves $2.4 billion as 27 million people were thrown off their health care coverage. We’ve also seen Americans being charged anywhere from $400,000 to $1.1 million for COVID treatment, and facing $2,000 bills for coronavirus tests. In response, polls show Americans remain deeply concerned about the current health care system, and support for Medicare for All has surged. And yet, despite data showing that a single-payer system would save big money, surveys still indicate some popular trepidation about the price tag…


Now, Who Exactly Is Doing The Looting & Who’s Being Looted Of What?

We live in an Orwellian era, in which working-class people pilfering convenience store goods is called “looting.” Rich people stealing hundreds of billions of dollars, on the other hand, is just well-functioning “public policy.” By David Sirota Jacobin (5/29/20) Headlines this morning are all about looting — specifically, looting in Minneapolis, after the police killing of an unarmed African-American man was caught on video. In the modern vernacular, that word “looting” is loaded — it comes with all sorts of race and class connotations. And we have to understand that terms like “looting” are an example of the way our media often imperceptibly trains…


Our System Of Government Failed The Test Of Trump

Trump is a swindler, but the Trumpocalypse of 2020 represents something a lot bigger and a lot worse than a swindle. By David Frum The Atlantic (5/2/20) Have you ever known anyone swindled by a scam? It’s remarkable how determined they remain to defend the swindler, and for how long—and how they try to shift the blame to those who tried to warn them of the swindle. The pain of being seen as a fool hurts more than the loss of money; it’s more important to protect the ego against indignity than to visit justice upon the perpetrator. We human…


How Democrats Are Working Closely With Their Republican Allies To Launch A Corporate Counter-Revolution Against Progressive Reform & The American People

Whatever resistance exists in the nation’s capital, it is so often performance art, rather than anything real. By David Sirota The Guardian (5/26/20) These are bleak days for America’s progressive movement. The Democratic primary process handed the party’s nomination to the candidate with the most conservative record. Corporate-friendly politicians like the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, are using the pandemic to brandish their images and install billionaires to run things. Progressive lawmakers in Congress are being steamrolled, even by their own party’s leadership. And a recession is battering the state and local budgets that fund progressive priorities like education and the social…


Who’s The Bigger American Idiot? The Dunce Or The Fool?

“What everyone from around the world who’s not American that I talk to really means is this. There are two kinds of American Idiot. The dunce, and the fool. The willful one, and the negligent one. There’s the Trumpist — who doesn’t know any better, who’s only known hate, ignorance, fear, and rage: the dunce. But there’s also the fool. The Democrat who votes against healthcare, retirement, education — and should know better. The sophisticated elite — who doesn’t see that America’s an imploding society in every possible way right about now. The New York Times columnist, the CNN anchor, none of…


Arizona GOP Chair Dr. Kelli Ward Calls For Anti-Stay-At-Home Protesters To Fraudulently Dress Like Health Care Workers

  [Editor’s Note: Someone in Arizona should file a complaint against this cynical fraud of a physician with the Arizona state medical licensing board. Check out the second story to learn of a true healer who was lost to the emotional toll the pandemic is taking on health care professionals. — Mark L. Taylor] By Veronica Stracqualursi CNN (4/29/20) Washington (CNN)The chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party is encouraging people planning to protest stay-at-home orders imposed amid the coronavirus pandemic to dress like health care workers. Recently, several health care workers around the country have worn their scrubs and medical gear to counterprotest against people…


Lockdown Protesters May Have Infected Your Family With Coronavirus

US lockdown protests may have spread virus widely, cellphone data suggests. By Jason Wilson The Guardian (5/18/20) Cellphone location data suggests that demonstrators at anti-lockdown protests – some of which have been connected with Covid-19 cases – are often traveling hundreds of miles to events, returning to all parts of their states, and even crossing into neighboring ones. The data, provided to the Guardian by the progressive campaign group the Committee to Protect Medicare, raises the prospect that the protests will play a role in spreading the coronavirus epidemic to areas which have, so far, experienced relatively few infections. The anonymized location…


Think Trump & Republicans Wouldn’t Cancel An Election? Look At What Georgia’s GOP Just Pulled Off

By Julia Conley Common Dreams (5/19/0) Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp will be permitted to hand-pick the state’s next Supreme Court Justice after that same high court ruled last week that a special election set for Tuesday could be canceled. Kemp and his Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, moved to cancel voting in the state earlier this year after state Supreme Court Justice Keith Blackwell announced he would step down after his six-year term expires at the end of 2020. Taking the matter of who should succeed Blackwell into his own hands will allow Kemp, a Republican, to appoint another right-wing judge to serve…


The Real Reason Trump Wants To Put Your Life On The Line For Reopening The Economy

By Robert Reich RobertReich. com (5/13/20) Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back. So what is Trump’s reelection strategy? Ignore the warnings of public health experts and reopen the economy at all costs. Here’s his lethal 4-part plan: Step 1: Remove income support, so people have no choice but to return to work.     Trump’s Labor Department has decided that furloughed employees “must accept” an employer’s offer to return to work and therefore forfeit unemployment benefits, regardless of the risk of returning to work before it’s safe. Forcing…


Are Trump & Anti-Lockdown Militias Itching For Actual Violence?

  The implications for the 2020 election are dire. By Mehdi Hasan Deconstructed / The Intercept (5/7/20) PROTESTS HAVE BROKEN out in and around several state capitols, with demonstrators, among them armed right-wing militia members, attempting to pressure their state governments to end the Covid-19 lockdowns. Could this end in violence, and what does it portend for the presidential election? Scholar of right-wing extremism Nicole Hemmer joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss the protests. Nicole Hemmer: Donald Trump is no stranger to the language of political violence. It’s something that he has encouraged throughout his presidential campaign and throughout his presidency. Link To


Combining Different Models, New Coronavirus Projection Shows At Least 110,000 Deaths By June 6

About 7,000 people are projected to die in the first week of June. By Nurith Aizenman & Sean McMinn NPR (5/13/20) More than 82,000 people in the U.S. have died of COVID-19 as of Tuesday. How many more lives will be lost? Scientists have built dozens of computational models to answer that question. But the profusion of forecasts poses a challenge: The models use such a wide range of methodologies, formats, and time frames, it’s hard to get even a ballpark sense of what the future has in store. Enter Nicholas Reich, a biostatistician at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Reich and his colleagues have…


‘Trump Death Clock’ Nails Accountability For Trump’s Fatal Covid-19 Failures

“This suffering cannot be forgotten.” By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams (5/6/0) Drawing inspiration from the billboard-sized National Debt Clock in New York City, American filmmaker and author Eugene Jarecki on Wednesday launched an online “Trump Death Clock” to measure the cost in human lives of President Donald Trump and his administration’s “reckless handling” of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As of press time [5/6], the clock’s count was 43,814. Below large red numbers representing the “estimated portion U.S. Covid-19 deaths due to POTUS inaction” is an explanation: “In January 2020, the Trump administration was advised that immediate action was required to stop the spread…


The Elites Will Have Humanity For Us Only When They Are Forced To

  “There is a moment in Henry Kissinger’s memoirs — do not buy the book — when Nixon and Kissinger are looking out at tens of thousands of anti-war protesters who have surrounded the White House. Nixon had placed empty city buses in front of the White House to keep the protesters back. He worried out loud that the crowd would break through the barricades and get him and Kissinger. And that is exactly where we want people in power to be. This is why, although he was not a liberal, Nixon was our last liberal president. He was scared…



The Cowardly Right Wing Extremists Who Have No Idea What Patriotism Really Is

This is a man who punches down, not up, and who wants to have the power to decide whether his neighbors live or die. He is a bully and a coward. By Heather Cox Richardson Letters From An American (5/3/20) Jeff Kowalsky’s photograph of the “American Patriot Rally” at the Michigan statehouse on April 30 shows a large, bearded man, leaning forward, mouth open, screaming. Positioned between two police officers who are staring blankly ahead above their masks, he is focused on something they are preventing him from reaching: the legislature. His fury is palpable. The idea that such a…


Cashing In On Pandemic? Documents Show Lawmakers Made 1,500 Stock Transactions Worth $158 Million as Covid-19 Spread

“The stock trading was bipartisan—27 Democrats, 21 Republicans, and 1 independent were making trades as the devastation that Covid-19 would exact on the U.S. crystallized.” By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (5/30/20) A new analysis of financial disclosure documents found that Republican and Democratic members of Congress made nearly 1,500 stock transactions worth up to $158 million between February and April as the coronavirus spread across the U.S., heightening suspicions that elected officials in charge of the federal response to the pandemic have opportunistically cashed in on it. The Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a non-partisan watchdog group, uncovered at least 127 purchases or sales in securities by…


Think Twice Before Accepting An Invitation To Dinner From This Whack Job Republican Hero

“I’ll admit it. I will eat my neighbors. I won’t have to for a few years ’cause I got food and stuff ― but I’m literally looking at my neighbors now and going, ’I’m ready to hang ’em up and gut ’em and skin ’em. My daughters aren’t starving to death. I will eat my neighbors. … I will. “You think I like sizing up my neighbor?! I’m gonna haul him up by a chain and chop his ass up! I’ll do it! My children aren’t going hungry! I’ll eat your ass! And that’s what I want the globalists to know…


Brutal New Ad Thumps Trump For Making ‘America first’ — In COVID-19 Deaths

  By Brad Reed Raw Story (4/28/20) A brutal new advertisement from pro-Democrat super PAC Priorities USA takes President Donald Trump’s slogan of “America first” and throws it right back in his face. “Donald Trump said he would put America first, and now he has,” the ad begins. “The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases. More than 50,000 Americans dead, twice as many deaths as any other country. Over 26 million people have lost their jobs, and it’s only getting worse.” … Read The Rest And 30-Second Video (Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2020. Open source…


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‘I struck a nerve’: The Comedian Whose Rant Against Bipartisan Congressional Bailouts Of Corporations & Bilionaires Went Viral

  “That video isn’t an act, that’s coming from the heart and soul. It resonated with working people because we have no voice in this country.” By Poppy Noor The Guardian (4/24/20) Vic DiBitetto is a performer, so he’s used to drawing in big crowd – but he didn’t quite expect that a recent video he made would be viewed over 10m times. The near five-minute rant about the government’s response to the coronavirus shows DiBitetto, a New Yorker, enunciating so much that spit flies around him in the car. His face is red and he barely finishes a sentence…


The Brutal Bipartisan Betrayal — If You Are Not In The 1% Or A Major Corporation Do Not Expect Any Meaningful Help From Congress

No meaningful care will come from congress or the White House. [Editor’s Note: The following is commentary I made in the April 24 broadcast of the ‘Month In Review’ on the community-supported radio station WDRT. In the face of a frightening public health emergency, both Republicans and Democrats have — for all practical purposes — abandoned the people. — Mark L. Taylor] By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (4/27/20) One positive thing the pandemic has done is it has stripped bare the inequity and corruption of  both political parties and made clear the job of the government is not…


The President Is Mentally Unwell — And Everyone Around Him Knows It

[Editor’s Note: This article has a link to a 1980 Tom Brokow MSNBC interview with Donald Trump in which Trump is extremely well-spoken. He has a wide range of well pronounced vocabulary, speaks in complete sequential sentences and can answer questions directly and succinctly. Compare what you see here to his current degraded mental state. — Mark L. Taylor] By Eric Levitz New York Intelligencer (1/4/18) Until recently, the debate over our president’s mental health has focused on questions of psychological pathology: Do Donald Trump’s flamboyant narcissism, hedonism, and self-delusions add up to a malignant personality — or a malignant personality disorder?…


PSST, Here’s The Plan: Save Capital & Let The People Die

  Whether Americans know it or not, their government is not working for them. By Hamilton Nolan In These Times (4/6/20) Fantasize for a moment that we could set aside politics and operate based upon common sense. What would the federal government do to best mitigate the devastation that this pandemic will visit upon human beings? It would, first of all, provide free healthcare to everyone. It would distribute medical resources nationally based on the greatest need. Then, to protect people from the necessary economic deep freeze we are all in due to social distancing, the government would pursue measures…


Trump Is No Aberration. He’s The Logical Product Of A Bipartisan Failed State

  “Donald Trump’s presidency is not an aberration of U.S. history in substance. His rise to power and the policies he has implemented are, in many ways, the logical product of the U.S. as a failed state, politically and functionally. Trump says the quiet parts about the system out loud, but his agenda is firmly rooted in the bloody history of this republic. And his rise was made possible by the failed two-party system and the corporate dominance of electoral politics in the U.S. Also, let’s not pretend that congressional Democrats have not enabled Trump by regularly voting for his obscene…


Circling The Drain: The Rich Wanted To Strangle A Tiny Government In A Bathtub To Avoid Taxes; Now It Turns Out We Need A Competent State

Right wing false economy: A “closed indefinitely” sign has literally been hung on the American economy. By Jim Hightower Other Words (4/15/20) Amazingly, America has become a nation of socialists, asking in dismay: “Where’s the government?” These are not born-again Bernie Sanders activists, but people of all political stripes (including previously apolitical multitudes) who are now clamoring for big government intervention in their lives. Nothing like a spreading coronavirus pandemic to bring home the need that all of us have — both as individuals and as a society — for an adequately funded, fully functioning, competent government capable of serving…


Why It Needs To Be Called: Trumpandemic

See The Timeline Of The Murderous Disinformation Trump Spread About The Coronavirus By Tom McCarthy The Guardian (4/14/20) “What a problem. Came out of nowhere.” That’s how Donald Trump described the coronavirus pandemic in early March, during a televised visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For weeks he had been giving Americans the same advice: “We have it totally under control”; “USA in great shape!”; and, of course, “Fake news”. But privately, Trump was being warned of a “full-blown Covid-19 pandemic” and “1-2 million” American deaths, according to internal emails, memorandums and other recently unearthed evidence documenting internal deliberations. It…


Wisconsin’s Sick GOP Death Cult

Wisconsin Republicans show they hate both democracy and Wisconsinites. By Emma Roller In These Times (4/7/20) On Monday, after a bill to delay Wisconsin’s primary languished in the state legislature, Democratic Governor Tony Evers signed an executive order to postpone the state’s primary until June, in light of the COVID-19 outbreak that has already sickened at least 2,440 Wisconsin residents and killed 83 people in the state. But mere hours later, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-2 that the election must go on as planned. (Dan Kelly, the conservative Supreme Court judge up for re-election on Tuesday, abstained from the ruling.) Worse, the court ruled…