Rethuglicans

Know Who Hates You: A Short Video Guide To American White Supremacist Fascist Groups

  Think Progress (8/8/18) White supremacists in America are not a unified group, but a loose coalition of hate groups, each fringe and dangerous in their own way. In the year since the deadly violence on display at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., different white nationalist, anti-immigrant, and general hate groups have demonstrated in cities across the country. The Nationalist Socialist Movement, Vanguard America, and League of the South held a “White Lives Matter” rally in Shelbyville, Tenn. in October. In July and again in August, hate groups Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys clashed with anti-hate…


The Real Invasion Our Country Faces Is Not What Trump Incessantly Whines & Rails About

Reality doesn’t matter in the fact-free miasma inside Trump’s putrid pumpkin head – and fear, the most potent of weapons, does. By Abby Zimet Common Dreams (11/1/18) No, not these spent and sweet-faced kids asleep on a floor in God knows where, having trudged for days with their families and thousands of bedraggled others seeking safety and a better life. The invasion is the fascist clown spewing racist loathsome lies about them, most recently in that nauseating, neo-Nazi, George-Wallace-esque, “dog whistle of all dog whistles” nativist political commercial featuring immigrant cop killer Luis Bracomontes who, as the ad shrieks, “killed our people!…Democrats let him in our country!” –…


The New Reality: We Are No Longer In The United States

  While the run-up to the midterms has our all out attention the real story begins the morning after the election … no matter who wins. By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (10/29/18) Even in the light of almost two years of Trumpian excess, duplicity and mendacity, the past week of right wing violence was stunning. There was the gunning down of two African American innocents at a suburban Louisville, Kentucky grocery store by a white shooter who had earlier tried to get into a nearby predominantly African American church and told a white witness, “Don’t shoot me. I…


No Image

‘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


No Image

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;…


God, Media & Tribal Identity: Why Many Women Ignore Their Interests & Vote For The Frat Boy GOP

[Editor’s Note: This article provides valuable insight as to not just why many women, but many workers and members of the middle class vote Republican even though the party is a direct threat to their families, interests and needs. — Mark L. Taylor] By Valarie Tarico The Raw Story (9/24/18) Lists of crazy comments about women by Republican men have been an internet staple for years. If the party agenda were to alienate as many females as possible, they should be doing quite well. Worse yet, from an impact standpoint, the policy priorities of Republican electeds match their expressed attitudes. Equal…


Gee, Why Would A Woman Hesitate To Testify About Sex Abuse?

Tucker Carlson Criticizes Rape Victims Who Don’t Report: ‘You’re Part Of The Problem’ By David Barden HuffPost (9/26/18) Fox News host Tucker Carlson has slammed sexual assault survivors who don’t report their abusers, labeling them as “part of the problem” for not fulfilling their “obligation to tell us.” It’s the second time in as many weeks that Carlson has blamed victims of abuse for failing to protect “the other 320 million people who live here” while discussing the allegations leveled by research psychologist Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The professor at Palo Alto University in California, who goes…


Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9” Lays Bare The Dangerous Crossroads We Are At And What We Need To Understand From Steve Bannon

  Tyrant. Liar. Racist. And a hole in one.   By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (9/24/18) This past weekend I saw Michael Moore’s new documentary film Fahrenheit: 11/9. You will find a detailed review of the film below, so I won’t go into a lot of detail here other than to say it is an extraordinary film — in my opinion, his best — that lays out the path of how this nation has come to the dangerous crossroads with fascist totalitarianism we now confront. As Moore explains, it is not hyperbole to talk in such terms and his…


Taking Down Trump Is Not Enough. Corporate Owned Neoliberal Democrats Need To Be Booted As Well

  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…


Author Chris Hedges: Both political parties have betrayed working class

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…


America’s Team Republican

Really Bad Day For Trump: Both Former Campaign Boss Manafort & Former Lawyer Cohen Are Now Both Felons By Christina Wilkie CNBC (8/21/18) It’s difficult to imagine a worse day in the presidency of Donald Trump than Tuesday, when two gripping legal dramas, one involving his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and the other embroiling his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, collided in a surreal split screen crescendo. In New York, Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court to eight felony counts of tax fraud, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. Two hundred miles south, in Alexandria, Virginia, a jury found Manafort guilty of eight unrelated felonies: Five…


Snared: When A Young Trump Went To Russia

  By Craig Unger The New Republica (8/15/18) On a frigid December day in 2017, Oleg Kalugin opens the door of his house in Rockville, Maryland, an upper-middle-class suburb of Washington, D.C., to meet me. Nothing in particular distinguishes his split-level suburban home from those of the other professionals in the neighborhood, but the man who lives there is very much out of the ordinary, a former KGB spymaster who is now an American citizen. Born in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Kalugin, at 83, now lives just half an hour’s drive from the White House, which for decades was dead…


Russpublican Tax Scam: With Workers’ Wages Falling, CEOs Enjoy ‘Eye-Popping’ Payouts From GOP Tax Scam

‘This Was the Plan All Along.” — First Congressional District candidate Randy “Ironstache” Bryce By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams (7/30/18) While workers’ wages have steadily declined since congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump pushed through massive tax cuts for corporations and wealthy Americans in December, a new Politico analysis finds that rather than using their savings to raise employee pay or create jobs, companies are generating “eye-popping payouts” for executives with a record-breaking stock buyback “bonanza.” When a public company buys back stock, the value of shares spikes, enabling corporate executives “who often receive most of their compensation in stock” to sell their shares at higher…



13 Quotes From George Orwell’s “1984” That Are Relevant To Today’s America

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” — George Orwell, “1984”.   By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (8/2/18) In his too-brief lifetime novelist George Orwell had seen two disastrous world wars, witnessed the rise of brutal fascist regimes in Germany and Italy and fought as a resistance fighter on the front lines in another, in Spain. He had witnessed the mechanization of industrial scale death from World War I with the advent of machine guns, tanks and gas warfare to the development of nuclear bombs….


Want Justice In America? — The Old ‘Be Nice’ Routine Won’t Get Us There

  By George Goehl OurFuture.org (7/9/18) We should be skeptical of the motivation and messengers behind calls for civility. We hear people say that what is happening to migrants in the United States right now is un-American. I wish that were true. Sadly, American history is full of periods where children of color were routinely taken from their parents. Resistance and organizing, on the other hand, are truly American. In fact, many of our nation’s best moments have been when we heeded the call to stand down hatred and racism. The Trump Administration has been off the rails since day one. But Donald…


Art Jones: The Illinois Republican Party’s Well-Earned Nazi Mascot

“They didn’t put up a third-party candidate? That’s great! That’s fantastic!” By Natasha Korecki Politico (6/29/18) CHICAGO — Illinois Republicans botched four opportunities to stop an avowed Nazi from representing their party in a Chicago-area congressional district. Now they’re paying the price. Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier who will appear on the November ballot as the GOP candidate against Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski, has become campaign fodder for Democrats as they seek to defeat Gov. Bruce Rauner. And some Republicans even fear the taint from Jones‘ extremist views poses a threat to the party up and down the ticket. “First,…


History Of Fascist Spain Government Child Abductions Will Become Model For Trump’s Kidnapping Program

  “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.” — Winston Churchill By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (6/28/18) As the brutal Trump child kidnapping program continues on with arrogance, cruelty and casual incompetence we are going to see many of the 2,300-plus children now incarcerated permanently stolen from their parents; they will never be reunited. There are already reports of parents deported back to Central America while their children remain in U.S. concentration camps. (And make no mistake, that is the proper term for these camps. And, no, it is not “separation”, it is kidnapping.) History provides insight on where this will go…


Trumpenstein Isn’t THE Problem, He’s The Creation Of The Republican Far Right

  By William Boardman Reader Supported News (6/24/18) The speed of America’s moral descent under Donald Trump is breathtaking. In a matter of months we’ve gone from a nation that stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to a nation that tears children from their parents and puts them in cages. – Paul Krugman, New York Times column, June 21, 2018 Economist Paul Krugman is a smart Princeton professor who won a Nobel Prize, and most of what he says in this column is heartfelt, decent, and humane. His argument is relatively simple: since there is no present immigration crisis,…


Rise Of The British Radical Racist Right Parallels What Is Happening In U.S.

By Owen Jones The Guardian (6/13/18) Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts were a menace. So were the Nazi sympathies of many British aristocrats in the 1930s. Today’s ascendant far right poses its own unique dangers, using familiar tropes that have been fuelled and legitimised by the political and media elite – and there is all too little appreciation of where Britain could be heading. Brexit, for the Tory right, was a national revolution: not simply a recalibration of Britain’s relationship with the EU but a blunt instrument to roll back progressive social norms. Those deemed to be critics or opponents were now enemies of the people, saboteurs, traitors,…


Trump’s Leverage: Study Links White American Intolerance With Support For Authoritarianism

  By Noah Berlatsky NBC News (5/27/18) Since the founding of the United States, politicians and pundits have warned that partisanship is a danger to democracy. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, worried that political parties, or factions, could “allow cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men” to rise to power and subvert democracy. More recently, many political observers are concerned that increasing political polarization on left and right makes compromise impossible, and leads to the destruction of democratic norms and institutions. A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather…


Charlie Sykes: How The Right Lost Its Mind & Fell Into Mindless Tribalism

  “What does it mean to be a conservative? I have no idea anymore.” Commonwealth Club (10/18/17) Once at the center of the American conservative movement, best-selling author and radio host Charles Sykes is a fierce opponent of Donald Trump and the right-wing media that has enabled his rise. Sykes will present an impassioned, regretful and deeply thoughtful account of how the American conservative movement came to lose its values, asking: How did a movement that was defined by its belief in limited government, individual liberty, free markets, traditional values and civility find itself embracing bigotry, political intransigence, demagoguery and…


Guns Make Republicans Feel Safe Which Means Our Children Must Die

The center-left’s sins on this front are rooted in cowardice; the right’s, in quasi-religious conviction. By Eric Levitz New York Magazine (2/15/18) On Thursday morning, the president delivered a speech about gun violence without ever uttering the word gun. By the time Donald Trump began his remarks, America had suffered 18 school shootings in 44 days, and more than 300 mass shootings since the start of his presidency. But this broader context also went unmentioned. Instead, Trump focused his address narrowly on Wednesday’s massacre at a high-school in Parkland, Florida, and the need for “healing” in its wake. The president spoke of God…


Want To Hear Real Truth On School Shootings? Forget The Traitorous Politicians & Listen To This Parkland Teen Tear Into Trump, Republicans & NRA

“We call BS!” By Andrea Germanos Common Dreams (2/17/18) Thousands gathered Saturday for a rally outside the federal courthouse, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.—about 25 miles away from the mass shooting Wednesday—where speakers including survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre gave powerful speeches for gun control. Among them was Stoneman Douglas student Emma Gonzalez, who slammed President Donald Trump, denounced the many politicians who receive donations from the powerful National Rifle Association of America (NRA), and called BS on those who “say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence.” She began by saying that the “school bard, faculty…


No Republican Love For Poor & Middle Class This Valentine’s Day

  By Josh Hoxie Other Words (2/7/18) Love is in the air. Or so the marketers want us to believe, as Valentine’s Day ads sweep the nation into a frenzy of buying flowers, greeting cards, and confections to communicate our affection. Washington is less forthcoming with the adoration, especially for working people. You’re probably tired of hearing about the tax plan passed by Congress late last year. If not, just wait for the media barrage coming your way from the Republican donor class, which is guaranteed to make the Super Bowl Tide ads look like child’s play. In case you…


A Despot In Disguise: One Man’s Successful Mission To Rip Up American Democracy By The Roots

Untold Story: This is where the Koch brothers and the plan to destroy American government began. (Editor’s Note: I am reading this book and cannot recommend it highly enough. It is far more readable than the topic might suggest and ESSENTIAL information to understand the true extent of the threat from the Trump republican party. – Mark L. Taylor) By George Monbiot The Guardian (7/19/17) It’s the missing chapter: a key to understanding the politics of the past half century. To read Nancy MacLean’s new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, is to…


This Is “an Emergency” – The Psychiatrist Who Briefed Group Of Congress Members On Trump’s Mental State

By Eliza Barclay Vox (1/6/18) The longer Donald Trump is in office, the more he shocks and alarms us with his strange and extremely unpresidential behavior. From the incoherent, fallacious interview he gave the New York Times on December 28 to Tuesday’s tweet about his “nuclear button” to his Saturday morning assertion that he is a “very stable genius,” the remarks keep getting more menacing, bizarre, and portentous of disaster. As Vox’s Ezra Klein recently wrote, “The president of the United States is not well.” But how unwell is he, really? Could the behavior be caused by some illness eating away at his mental capacity, or is it…


“Fire & Fury” – The Book That Is Turning The Republican Party Into A Gunny Sack Full Of Wet Rats

  By Michael Wolff New York Magazine (1/3/17) On the afternoon of November 8, 2016, Kellyanne Conway settled into her glass office at Trump Tower. Right up until the last weeks of the race, the campaign headquarters had remained a listless place. All that seemed to distinguish it from a corporate back office were a few posters with right-wing slogans. Conway, the campaign’s manager, was in a remarkably buoyant mood, considering she was about to experience a resounding, if not cataclysmic, defeat. Donald Trump would lose the election — of this she was sure — but he would quite possibly hold the…


DUH! South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Shocked To Learn No Black Soldiers Served Under Confederacy

What kind of stupid is that? By Travis Gettys The Raw Story (1/1/18) The justification for building a monument to black Confederate soldiers is crumbling as historians point out there’s no evidence such combatants ever existed. State Rep. Bill Chumley (R-Woodruff) and state Rep. Mike Burns (R-Taylors) pre-filed a bill last month that would establish a commission to design an African-American Confederate veterans monument, reported The State. The bill would also require public schools to teach the contributions of black people toward the Confederate cause, and Chumley said his proposal had already accomplished his goal even as historians undermine its intent. “We are all…


New Year’s Reality Update For Trump Voters: You Bought It, Now You Got It

    By Robert Reich Robert Reich’s Blog (12/30/17) Almost one year in, it’s time for another update for Trump voters on his election promises: 1. He told you he’d cut your taxes, and that the super-rich like him would pay more. You bought it. But his new tax law does the opposite. By 2027, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the richest 1 percent will have got 83 percent of the tax cut and the richest 0.1 percent, 60 percent of it. But more than half of all Americans — 53 percent — will pay more in taxes. As Trump told…


A Bad Deal: Swapping Out Democracy For A State Of Perpetual American Fear

‘Scairdy Cat Nation By Ray Suarez NPR (12/17/17) Historian Elaine Tyler May says that ever since the Cold War, fear has crept into American life and created apathy toward democracy. During that time, the government and media gave Americans constant warning about nuclear war and communism — adults were encouraged to build shelters, children practiced hiding under their desks to prepare for a possible nuclear attack. “Basically, the message was the bomb could drop at any time,” she says. “Each person was responsible for their own safety. There’s really nothing the government or the leaders of the country can do…


Right-Wing Preacher Tells Followers Christians Must ‘Remove Every Leftist’ From Office Because ‘The Nazis Are On The March’

  (Editor’s Note: One would hope that democratic party honchos have an understanding of the true nature of the far right movement in this country and will enact the kind truly progressive policies into the party agenda that are called for to counter right wing hate and fear. So far the signs are not too positive. – Mark L. Taylor) By Kyle Mantyla Right Wing Watch (12/15/17) Right-wing preacher Lance Wallnau streamed a video on Periscope last night in which he called on conservative Christians to mobilize for the 2018 elections in order to “literally remove every leftist from a position of…


Let Us Pray: The Days Of Rightwing Evangelicals Swaying Politics Are Numbered

  By Daniel José Camacho The Guardian (12/15/17) A large majority of white evangelicals voted for Roy Moore – 80%, according to exit polls – in Alabama, in the deep south, in a solidly red state. And they lost. The results of Alabama’s Senate race are an omen for the future of white evangelical politics. White evangelicals, as a whole, are still flexing some political muscle. But their future outlook is of an embattled political bloc with extremist views and diminishing power to decide elections. Moore was a fundamentalist Christian hero. He was removed from office twicewhile serving as Alabama’s chief justice: first for refusing to…


SLURS: Three Republican Lies About The Poor Being Used To Support Slashing US Safety Net

  By Michele Gillman The Conversation (12/13/17) Republicans continue to use long-debunked myths [lies] about the poor as they defend lower taxes for the rich and deep cuts to the social safety netto pay for them. In so doing, they are essentially expressing scorn for working class and low-income Americans. Sen. Chuck Grassley, for example, recently justified reducing the number of wealthy families exposed to the estate tax as a way to recognize “the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” Similarly, Sen. Orrin Hatch raised concerns about funding certain entitlement…


This May Explain The Congressional Republicans Cringe Inducing Obsequiousness To ‘Dear Leader’ Trump

By Dave Ferguson The Raw Story(12/22/17) Writer and expert on authoritarian regimes Sarah Kendzior appeared on MSNBC Thursday and blasted Republicans for their submissiveness to President Donald Trump. She and host Joy Reid discussed the bizarre turn-around of Sen. Lindsey Graham who went from calling Trump a “kook” to attacking the media for trying to “label the guy some kind of kook not fit to be president.” The uncomfortably effusive praise of Trump by Vice President Mike Pence and members of the cabinet, as well as an unctuous speech by long-serving Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) led Kendzior to speculate that Trump might even be blackmailing some…


Republican Hyena Tax Heist: Yes, America, There Is A Class War, And You Just Lost It

  (Editor’s Note: Time to get serious about organizing, folks, so we can grab back our stolen wealth from the rich! Remember: It is our childrens’ futures we are taking about. Grab it or lose it. Stand or crawl. – Mark L. Taylor) By Juan Cole Informed Consent (12/20/17) The Republican Party did not just overhaul the tax code and they did not cut “your” taxes. They engineered a coup against the middle and working classes and they threw enormous amounts of public money to private billionaires and multi-millionaires. Americans do not understand this sort of con game because mostly…


Bipartisan Stupidity & Blindness Have Destroyed Whatever Democracy The US Ever Had

Our Clueless Leader By Dave Lindorff Counter Punch (12/15/17) Okay, somebody has to say this, so it might as well be me. The American political system exists as it is because of two reasons: 1) The majority of Republican voters are either incredibly ignorant or are simply incredibly selfish, and 2)  The majority of Democratic voters are so blinded by their fear of Republicans that they will vote for the most puerile, manipulative, deceitful, greedy and/or feckless candidates, as long as they are Democrats, and will re-elect them even after having been betrayed by them time and time again. There, I’ve…


Make America Grope Again: Roy Moore Is Not Innocent Until Proven Guilty

The legal presumption of innocence is not the same as innocence itself. By Phillip Rotner The HuffPost (12/7/17) Alabama voters will decide on Tuesday whether to send an accused child predator, Roy Moore, to the United States Senate. The mere thought of it sounds unthinkable, but the polls indicate that it is not only possible, but even likely that Moore will be elected. Those who believe the allegations made against Moore by credible Alabama women, but plan to vote for him anyway, are beyond redemption. Nothing anybody says or does will deter them from supporting a member of their tribe….


Frank Rich: The Party Of Lincoln Is Now The Party Of Predators

  By Frank Rich New York Magazine (12/9/17) Though the Republican National Committee has restored funding for Alabama’s Roy Moore, Republican members of Congress — and even the committee’s own officials — are keeping their distance from party support. Is it better for the GOP if Moore wins or if he loses? Even The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which sold its soul to Donald Trump after the election, said this morning that “you have to believe in magic to think this is going to end well for Republicans.” Anticipating the resignation of Al Franken, the editorial pleaded with its party, from Trump down, to disown Moore — if…