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Follow @Uncle-Ernie Visit me on Face Book Yes, America, Lying Donald Really Is That Stupid! By Ernest Stewart "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." ~~~ 19th amendment to the Bill of Rights "The truth is, as most of us know, that global warming is real and humans are major contributors, mainly because we wastefully burn fossil fuels." ~~~ David Suzuki "I believe that reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act poses such a grave threat to Americans, especially people of color, that I led a letter to the House Judiciary Committee opposing its reauthorization before robust, progressive reforms were made to prevent the continued misuse of its broad and intrusive reach." ~~~ Rashida Tlaib
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
You may recall that last Monday during a White House event commemorating the passage of a bill honoring the women's suffrage movement. The Women's Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act, which directs the Treasury Department to mint up to 400,000 $1 silver coins celebrating the 19th Amendment, which was passed by Congress June 4, 1919 and ratified August 18, 1920 But as Lying Donald opened his mouth in an attempt to lavish praise on himself for the bill, he said: "I'm curious, why wasn't it done a long time ago? I guess the answer to that is because now I'm president, we get things done." Yes, America, Lying Donald really is that stupid! Lying Donald's curiosity immediately calls into question whether he understands how centennials work? The 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920 and the coins will debut in January 2020. Pity is, the 19th amendment has been ignored in most red states, unless the ladies were white! In Other News I see where global warming will increase undernutrition through the effects of heat exposure on people, according to a new study published this week in PLOS Medicine by Yuming Guo of Monash University, Australia, and colleagues. It has been well documented that global warming will indirectly result in more undernourished people through threatening crop production in the long term. In the new study, researchers analyzed daily hospitalization data that covers nearly 80% of the population of Brazil, spanning the years 2000 through 2015. They studied the link between daily mean temperatures and hospitalization for undernutrition. For every 1 degree C increase in daily mean temperature during the hot season, there was a 2.5% increase in undernutrition hospitalization (OR=1.025, 95% CI 1.020-1.030, 0.001). People under age 19 years or over age 80 years with undernutrition were the most vulnerable to heat exposure. Overall, heat exposure was estimated to be responsible for 15.6% (95% CI 9.0-21.4) of undernutrition hospitalization during the study period. That fraction increased from 14.1% to 17.5% over the study period, during which time the mean temperature increased by 1.1 degree C.
"The possible pathways of this direct impact of heat might include reducing undernourished people's food intake, impairing their digestion and absorption function, and causing fluid and electrolyte disturbances," the authors say. "Global strategies addressing the syndemic of climate change and undernutrition should not only focus on food supply but also the prevention of heat exposure especially among the young and elderly people."
That's maybe all well and good, except that Democratic leaders had slipped something else into the bill: a three-month extension of the Patriot Act, the post-9/11 law that gave the federal government sweeping surveillance and search powers and circumvented traditional law-enforcement rules. Key provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire on December 15, including Section 215, the legal underpinning of the call detail records program exposed in the very first Edward Snowden leak. "It's surreal," Representative Justin Amash said. Amash, an independent who left the Republican Party over his opposition to President Trump, pointed to the hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle. Republicans have "decried FISA abuse" against the president and his aides, he said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, "and Democrats have highlighted Trump's abuse of his executive powers, yet they're teaming up to extend the administration's authority to warrantlessly gather data on Americans." Led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forced many members who oppose the Patriot Act to vote in favor of its extension. "Although I do have serious concerns with reauthorizing Section 215," Representative Bobby Rush of Illinois said, "we must focus on the bigger picture here." In late October, Rush signed a letter co-authored by Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Earl Blumenauer, which read, "We will not support any legislation that extends Section 215's sunset date if it fails to contain robust reforms that protect innocent people from unjust surveillance." On Monday night, Amash submitted an amendment to strip the Patriot Act language from the budget bill, but the amendment was blocked by chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA) on the Rules Committee.
Just 10 Democrats defied the leadership to vote against the resolution, including Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar (a.k.a. "the Squad"). Ergo this week's winner of the Vidkun Quidling Award is James P. McGovern (D-MA).
 05-30-1939 ~ 11-21-2019 Thanks for the film!  02-18-1930 ~ 11-21-2019 Thanks for the laughs!  06-12-1931 ~ 11-23-2019 Thanks for the adventure! ***** We get by with a little help from our friends! So please help us if you can-? Donations ***** So how do you like Trump so far? And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it? Until the next time, Peace! (c) 2019 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Facebook. and like us when you do. Follow me on Twitter. |
 Joe Biden's AstroTurf Campaign By Norman Solomon Last week, I attended Joe Biden's first rally in California since he launched his presidential campaign more than six months ago. It was revealing. The Biden for President campaign had been using social media and its email list in the Los Angeles area to urge attendance. Under sunny skies, near abundant free parking, the outdoor rally on the campus of LA's Trade-Technical College offered a chance to hear the man widely heralded as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. No more than 500 people showed up. Admittedly, as an active Bernie Sanders supporter, I didn't have high expectations. But what struck me about the rally went beyond the dismal turnout and the stale rhetoric from a corporate Democrat posing as a champion of working people. Biden's slow decline in polls is empirical, but what ails his campaign -- as reflected in that California kickoff rally -- is almost ineffable. Biden is a back-to-the-future product who often seems clueless about the present. In view of so many deep and widespread concerns, from income inequality to healthcare disparities to the climate emergency, his talking points are simply beside the point. The Biden base has two main components: the corporate media outlets that routinely protect him from critical scrutiny, and the rich people who routinely infuse his lackluster campaign with cash. When and where he isn't getting fuel from either component of that base, the campaign sputters. Contrasts with the large and passionate rallies for Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could hardly be greater. Not coincidentally, those two candidates are glad to rely on large numbers of small donations, while Biden relies on small numbers of large donations. Biden is so afraid of Democratic activists that -- for the second time this year -- he declined an invitation to join other candidates in speaking to a convention of the California Democratic Party. The latest convention heard from eight presidential candidates on Nov. 16, two days after Biden's kickoff rally, no more than an hour's drive away in Long Beach. While careful to stay away from engaged grassroots Democrats, Biden made a beeline for wealthy donors immediately after his sparsely attended rally. First, he hurried over to a reception in West Los Angeles (tickets up to $1,000 each). Later that evening, a local TV station noted, Biden's fundraising schedule took him to "the Pacific Palisades home of Rick Lynch, the owner of the entertainment marketing firm BLT Communications, and music video producer Lanette Phillips," with tickets "priced at $500 and $2,800, the maximum individual contribution during the primary campaign." The Los Angeles Times reported that Biden "previously made eight fundraising trips to California since entering the race in late April, visiting at least once a month. He has headlined 21 fundraisers in the state, raising money at the homes of Hollywood executives, Silicon Valley tech leaders and other affluent Democrats." Among some who roll their eyes about Biden, a kind of conventional wisdom now says that he is sure to fade from contention. But -- in the absence of comparable polling numbers from the numerous other corporate candidates in the race -- the Biden campaign is likely to be the best bet for deep-pocketed political investors seeking to prevent the nomination of Sanders or Warren. Biden's decision last month to greenlight super PACs on his behalf has underscored just how eager he is to bankroll his AstroTurf campaign against grassroots progressives no matter what. As he said during an interview in January 2018, "you shouldn't accept any money from a super PAC, because people can't possibly trust you." But ultimately, Biden doesn't need people's trust. He needs their acquiescence. (c) 2019 Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" and "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State." |
 Wake Up AARP! A Message To Seniors: Medicare "Disadvantage" Is A Corporate Trap Medical Disadvantage would be a more accurate name for the quasi-private programs referred to as Medicare Advantage, as insurance companies push to corporatize all of Medicare, yet keep the name for the purposes of marketing, deception, and confusion. By Ralph Nader While the Democratic presidential candidates are debating full Medicare for All, giant insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare are advertising to the elderly in an attempt to lure them from Traditional Medicare (TM) to the so-called Medicare Advantage (MA)-a corporate plan that UnitedHealthcare promotes to turn a profit at the expense of enrollees. Almost one third of all elderly over 65 are enrolled in these numerous, complex MA policies the government pays so much for monthly. The health insurance industry wants more enrollees as they continue to press Congress for more advantages. Medical Disadvantage would be a more accurate name for the programs, as insurance companies push to corporatize all of Medicare, yet keep the name for the purposes of marketing, deception, and confusion. Elderly people enrolled in MA will experience its often merciless denials when they get sick. As hospital expert-attorney, physician, Dr. Fred Hyde put it: "It's not just what you pay, it's what you get." Start with the cross-subsidy of MA from TM. In 2009, the Congressional Budget Office estimated these overpayments would cost the federal government $157 billion over the coming decade. Obama's Affordable Care Act started to reduce these subsidies to the giant insurers, but they still amount to many billions of dollars per year. Add that with Medicare Disadvantage you are restricted to networks of vendors. That restricts your choice for competence and skills, and sometimes, requires you to travel longer distances for treatment. This could mean fewer enrollees will utilize their healthcare and more profits for the insurance companies. Under Medicare Disadvantage you are subject to all kinds of differing plans, maddening trapdoor fine print, and unclear meaning to the insurers arguing no "medical necessity" when you're denied care. The advertisements for Medicare Disadvantage stress that you can sometimes get perks-gym memberships, hearing aids, and eyeglasses, as enticements, but they avoid telling you they are not so ready to cover serious needs like skilled nursing care for critically ill patients. Under Medicare Disadvantage, there is no Medigap coverage as there is for TM. Co-pays and deductibles can be large. Under a recent Humana Medicare Advantage Plan in Florida, your co-pay for an ambulance is up to $300, up to $100 co-pay for lab services, and another $100 for outpatient x-rays. A few years ago, UnitedHealthcare corporations dismissed thousands of physicians from their MA networks, sometimes immediately, sometimes telling their patients before telling their physicians. Dr. Arthur Vogelman, a gastroenterologist, said he received a termination letter in 2013 from UnitedHealthcare. He appealed, documenting his successful treatment of many patients. The company denied his appeal, with no reason, as it had for thousands of network physicians. Dr. Vogelman called it "an outrage. I have patients in their 80s and 90s who have been with me 20 years, and I'm having to tell them that their insurer won't pay for them to see me anymore. The worst thing is I can't even tell them why." Except that the company wanted more profits. After a lengthy protest by national and state medical societies in 2013, UnitedHealthcare began to be less aggressively dismissive. Studies show the main reason MA enrollees return to TM is how badly the corporate insurers treated them when they became sick. Medicare itself is getting overly complex. But nothing like the ever changing corporate rules, offerings, and restrictions of Medicare Disadvantage. How strange it is that AARP, with its Medigap insurance business run by UnitedHealthcare, doesn't advise its members to go with the obviously superior Traditional Medicare. AARP reportedly receives a commission of 4.95% for new enrollees on top of the premiums the elderly pay for the Medigap policy from United Healthcare. This money-about seven hundred million dollars a year-is a significant portion of AARP's overall budget. AARP responded to my inquiries into their Medicare Advantage policy saying that it does not recommend one plan over another, leaving it to the uninformed or misinformed consumer. That's one of AARP's biggest cop-outs-they know the difference. There is no space here to cover all the bewildering ins and outs of what corporations have done to so-called managed Medicare and managed Medicaid. That task is for full-time reporters. The government does estimate a staggering $60 billion in billing fraud annually just on Medicare-manipulating codes, phantom billing, etc. You need the equivalent of a college-level course just to start figuring out all the supposed offerings and gaps. Suffice it to say that, in the words of Eleanor Laise, senior editor of Kiplinger's Retirement Report, "the evidence on health care access and quality decidedly favors original Medicare over Medicare Advantage, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation review of 40 studies published between 2000 and 2014." All this anxiety, dread, and fear, all these arbitrary denials of care-prompted by a pay-or-die commercial profit motive-all these restrictions of what doctors or hospitals you can go to, do not exist in Canada. All Canadians have a Medicare card from birth; they have free choice of health care vendors. There are few American-style horror stories there; patients have better outcomes, and almost never even see a bill. The whole universal system costs half per capita of that in the U.S., where over 80 million people are uninsured or underinsured-still! (See singlepayeraction.org, for civic action to rid Americans of this perverse chaos). (c) 2019 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest book is The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Other recent books include, The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood, Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win, and "Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us" (a novel). |
 The End of American Thanksgivings A Cause for Universal Rejoicing By Glen Ford "The Mayflower's cultural heirs are programmed to find glory In their own depravity and savagery in their most helpless victims." Nobody but Americans celebrates Thanksgiving. It is reserved by history and the intent of "the founders" as the supremely white American holiday, the most ghoulish event on the national calendar. No Halloween of the imagination can rival the exterminationist reality that was the genesis, and remains the legacy, of the American Thanksgiving. It is the most loathsome, humanity-insulting day of the year - a pure glorification of racist barbarity. We at BC are thankful that the day grows nearer when the almost four centuries-old abomination will be deprived of its reason for being: white supremacy. Then we may all eat and drink in peace and gratitude for the blessings of humanity's deliverance from the rule of evil men. Thanksgiving is much more than a lie - if it were that simple, an historical correction of the record of events in 1600s Massachusetts would suffice to purge the "flaw" in the national mythology. But Thanksgiving is not just a twisted fable, and the mythology it nurtures is itself inherently evil. The real-life events - subsequently revised - were perfectly understood at the time as the first, definitive triumphs of the genocidal European project in New England. The near-erasure of Native Americans in Massachusetts and, soon thereafter, from most of the remainder of the northern English colonial seaboard was the true mission of the Pilgrim enterprise - Act One of the American Dream. African Slavery commenced contemporaneously - an overlapping and ultimately inseparable Act Two. The last Act in the American drama must be the "root and branch" eradication of all vestiges of Act One and Two - America's seminal crimes and formative projects. Thanksgiving as presently celebrated - that is, as a national political event - is an affront to civilization. Celebrating the unspeakable White America embraced Thanksgiving because a majority of that population glories in the fruits, if not the unpleasant details, of genocide and slavery and feels, on the whole, good about their heritage: a cornucopia of privilege and national power. Children are taught to identify with the good fortune of the Pilgrims. It does not much matter that the Native American and African holocausts that flowed from the feast at Plymouth are hidden from the children's version of the story - kids learn soon enough that Indians were made scarce and Africans became enslaved. But they will also never forget the core message of the holiday: that the Pilgrims were good people, who could not have purposely set such evil in motion. Just as the first Thanksgivings marked the consolidation of the English toehold in what became the United States, the core ideological content of the holiday serves to validate all that has since occurred on these shores - a national consecration of the unspeakable, a balm and benediction for the victors, a blessing of the fruits of murder and kidnapping, and an implicit obligation to continue the seamless historical project in the present day. The Thanksgiving story is an absolution of the Pilgrims, whose brutal quest for absolute power in the New World is made to seem both religiously motivated and eminently human. Most importantly, the Pilgrims are depicted as victims - of harsh weather and their own naive yet wholesome visions of a new beginning. In light of this carefully nurtured fable, whatever happened to the Indians, from Plymouth to California and beyond, in the aftermath of the 1621 dinner must be considered a mistake, the result of misunderstandings - at worst, a series of lamentable tragedies. The story provides the essential first frame of the American saga. It is unalloyed racist propaganda, a tale that endures because it served the purposes of a succession of the Pilgrims' political heirs, in much the same way that Nazi-enhanced mythology of a glorious Aryan/German past advanced another murderous, expansionist mission. Thanksgiving is quite dangerous - as were the Pilgrims. Rejoicing in a cemetery The English settlers, their ostensibly religious venture backed by a trading company, were glad to discover that they had landed in a virtual cemetery in 1620. Corn still sprouted in the abandoned fields of the Wampanoags, but only a remnant of the local population remained around the fabled Rock. In a letter to England, Massachusetts Bay colony founder John Winthrop wrote, "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection." Ever diligent to claim their own advantages as God's will, the Pilgrims thanked their deity for having "pursued" the Indians to mass death. However, it was not divine intervention that wiped out most of the natives around the village of Patuxet but, most likely, smallpox-embedded blankets planted during an English visit or slave raid. Six years before the Pilgrim landing, a ship sailed into Patuxet's harbor, captained by none other than the famous seaman and mercenary soldier John Smith, former leader of the first successful English colony in the New World, at Jamestown, Virginia. Epidemic and slavery followed in his wake, as Debra Glidden described in IMDiversity.com: "In 1614 the Plymouth Company of England, a joint stock company, hired Captain John Smith to explore land in its behalf. Along what is now the coast of Massachusetts in the territory of the Wampanoag, Smith visited the town of Patuxet according to "The Colonial Horizon," a 1969 book edited by William Goetzinan. Smith renamed the town Plymouth in honor of his employers, but the Wampanoag who inhabited the town continued to call it Patuxet.Historians have since speculated endlessly on why the woods in the region resembled a park to the disembarking Pilgrims in 1620. The reason should have been obvious: hundreds, if not thousands, of people had lived there just five years before. In less than three generations the settlers would turn all of New England into a charnel house for Native Americans, and fire the economic engines of slavery throughout English-speaking America. Plymouth Rock is the place where the nightmare truly began. The uninvited?
It is not at all clear what happened at the first - and only - "integrated" Thanksgiving feast. Only two written accounts of the three-day event exist, and one of them, by Governor William Bradford, was written 20 years after the fact. Was Chief Massasoit invited to bring 90 Indians with him to dine with 52 colonists, most of them women and children? This seems unlikely. A good harvest had provided the settlers with plenty of food, according to their accounts, so the whites didn't really need the Wampanoag's offering of five deer. What we do know is that there had been lots of tension between the two groups that fall. John Two-Hawks, who runs the Native Circle web site, gives a sketch of the facts:
Soon after the feast the brutish Miles Standish "got his bloody prize," Dr. Apidta writes:
What is certain is that the first feast was not called a "Thanksgiving" at the time; no further integrated dining occasions were scheduled; and the first, official all-Pilgrim "Thanksgiving" had to wait until 1637, when the whites of New England celebrated the massacre of the Wampanoag's southern neighbors, the Pequots. The real Thanksgiving Day Massacre The Pequots today own the Foxwood Casino and Hotel, in Ledyard, Connecticut, with gross gaming revenues of over $9 billion in 2000. This is truly a (very belated) miracle, since the real first Pilgrim Thanksgiving was intended as the Pequot's epitaph. Sixteen years after the problematical Plymouth feast, the English tried mightily to erase the Pequots from the face of the Earth, and thanked God for the blessing. Having subdued, intimidated or made mercenaries of most of the tribes of Massachusetts, the English turned their growing force southward, toward the rich Connecticut valley, the Pequot's sphere of influence. At the point where the Mystic River meets the sea, the combined force of English and allied Indians bypassed the Pequot fort to attack and set ablaze a town full of women, children and old people.
William Bradford, the former Governor of Plymouth and one of the chroniclers of the 1621 feast, was also on hand for the great massacre of 1637: Most historians believe about 700 Pequots were slaughtered at Mystic. Many prisoners were executed, and surviving women and children sold into slavery in the West Indies. Pequot prisoners that escaped execution were parceled out to Indian tribes allied with the English. The Pequot were thought to have been extinguished as a people. According to IndyMedia, "The Pequot tribe numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease had brought their numbers down to 1,500 by 1637. The Pequot 'War' killed all but a handful of remaining members of the tribe." But there were still too many Indians around to suit the whites of New England, who bided their time while their own numbers increased to critical, murderous mass. Guest's head on a pole By the 1670s the colonists, with 8,000 men under arms, felt strong enough to demand that the Pilgrims' former dinner guests the Wampanoags disarm and submit to the authority of the Crown. After a series of settler provocations in 1675, the Wampanoag struck back, under the leadership of Chief Metacomet, son of Massasoit, called King Philip by the English. Metacomet/Philip, whose wife and son were captured and sold into West Indian slavery, wiped out 13 settlements and killed 600 adult white men before the tide of battle turned. A 1996 issue of the Revolutionary Worker provides an excellent narrative. "In their victory, the settlers launched an all-out genocide against the remaining Native people. The Massachusetts government offered 20 shillings bounty for every Indian scalp, and 40 shillings for every prisoner who could be sold into slavery. Soldiers were allowed to enslave any Indian woman or child under 14 they could capture. The "Praying Indians" who had converted to Christianity and fought on the side of the European troops were accused of shooting into the treetops during battles with "hostiles." They were enslaved or killed. Other "peaceful" Indians of Dartmouth and Dover were invited to negotiate or seek refuge at trading posts - and were sold onto slave ships. "It is not known how many Indians were sold into slavery, but in this campaign, 500 enslaved Indians were shipped from Plymouth alone. Of the 12,000 Indians in the surrounding tribes, probably about half died from battle, massacre and starvation. "After King Philip's War, there were almost no Indians left free in the northern British colonies. A colonist wrote from Manhattan's New York colony: "There is now but few Indians upon the island and those few no ways hurtful. It is to be admired how strangely they have decreased by the hand of God, since the English first settled in these parts." In Massachusetts, the colonists declared a "day of public thanksgiving" in 1676, saying, "there now scarce remains a name or family of them [the Indians] but are either slain, captivated or fled." "Fifty-five years after the original Thanksgiving Day, the Puritans had destroyed the generous Wampanoag and all other neighboring tribes. The Wampanoag chief King Philip was beheaded. His head was stuck on a pole in Plymouth, where the skull still hung on display 24 years later." This is not thought to be a fit Thanksgiving tale for the children of today, but it's the real story, well-known to the settler children of New England at the time - the white kids who saw the Wampanoag head on the pole year after year and knew for certain that God loved them best of all, and that every atrocity they might ever commit against a heathen, non-white was blessed. There's a good term for the process thus set in motion: nation-building. Roots of the slave trade The British North American colonists' practice of enslaving Indians for labor or direct sale to the West Indies preceded the appearance of the first chained Africans at the dock in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The Jamestown colonists' human transaction with the Dutch vessel was an unscheduled occurrence. However, once the African slave trade became commercially established, the fates of Indians and Africans in the colonies became inextricably entwined. New England, born of up-close-and-personal, burn-them-in-the-fires-of-hell genocide, led the political and commercial development of the English colonies. The region also led the nascent nation's descent into a slavery-based society and economy.
Ironically, an apologist for Virginian slavery made one of the best, early cases for the indictment of New England as the engine of the American slave trade. Unreconstructed secessionist Lewis Dabney's 1867 book "A Defense of Virginia" traced the slave trade's origins all the way back to Plymouth Rock:
"The first ship from America, which embarked in the African slave trade, was the Desire, Captain Pierce, of Salem; and this was among the first vessels ever built in the colony. The promptitude with which the "Puritan Fathers" embarked in this business may be comprehended, when it is stated that the Desire sailed upon her voyage in June, 1637. [Note: the year they massacred the Pequots.] The first feeble and dubious foothold was gained by the white man at Plymouth less than seventeen years before; and as is well known, many years were expended by the struggle of the handful of settlers for existence. So that it may be correctly said, that the commerce of New England was born of the slave trade; as its subsequent prosperity was largely founded upon it. The Desire, proceeding to the Bahamas, with a cargo of "dry fish and strong liquors, the only commodities for those parts," obtained the negroes from two British men-of-war, which had captured them from a Spanish slaver.
"Thus, the trade of which the good ship Desire, of Salem, was the harbinger, grew into grand proportions; and for nearly two centuries poured a flood of wealth into New England, as well as no inconsiderable number of slaves. Meanwhile, the other maritime colonies of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and Connecticut, followed the example of their elder sister emulously; and their commercial history is but a repetition of that of Massachusetts. The towns of Providence, Newport, and New Haven became famous slave trading ports. The magnificent harbor of the second, especially, was the favorite starting-place of the slave ships; and its commerce rivaled, or even exceeded, that of the present commercial metropolis, New York. All the four original States, of course, became slaveholding." At the moment of deepest national crisis following the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln invoked the national fable that is far more central to the white American personality than Lincoln's battlefield "Address." Lincoln seized upon the 1621 feast as the historic "Thanksgiving" - bypassing the official and authentic 1637 precedent - and assigned the dateless, murky event the fourth Thursday in November. Lincoln surveyed a broken nation, and attempted nation-rebuilding, based on the purest white myth. The same year that he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he renewed the national commitment to a white manifest destiny that began at Plymouth Rock. Lincoln sought to rekindle a shared national mission that former Confederates and Unionists and white immigrants from Europe could collectively embrace. It was and remains a barbaric and racist national unifier, by definition. Only the most fantastic lies can sanitize the history of the Plymouth Colony of Massachusetts. "Like a rock" The Thanksgiving holiday fable is at once a window on the way that many, if not most, white Americans view the world and their place in it, and a pollutant that leaches barbarism into the modern era. The fable attempts to glorify the indefensible, to enshrine an era and mission that represent the nation's lowest moral denominators. Thanksgiving as framed in the mythology is, consequently, a drag on that which is potentially civilizing in the national character, a crippling, atavistic deformity. Defenders of the holiday will claim that the politically-corrected children's version promotes brotherhood, but that is an impossibility - a bald excuse to prolong the worship of colonial "forefathers" and to erase the crimes they committed. Those bastards burned the Pequot women and children, and ushered in the multinational business of slavery. These are facts. The myth is an insidious diversion - and worse. Humanity cannot tolerate a 21st Century superpower, much of whose population perceives the world through the eyes of 17th Century land and flesh bandits. Yet that is the trick that fate has played on the globe. We described the roots of the planetary dilemma in our March 13 commentary, "Racism & War, Perfect Together." "The English arrived with criminal intent - and brought wives and children to form new societies predicated on successful plunder. To justify the murderous enterprise, Indians who had initially cooperated with the squatters were transmogrified into "savages" deserving displacement and death. The relentlessly refreshed lie of Indian savagery became a truth in the minds of white Americans, a fact to be acted upon by every succeeding generation of whites. The settlers became a singular people confronting the great "frontier" - a euphemism for centuries of genocidal campaigns against a darker, "savage" people marked for extinction.Only a century ago, American soldiers caused the deaths of possibly a million Filipinos whom they had been sent to "liberate" from Spanish rule. They didn't even know who they were killing, and so rationalized their behavior by substituting the usual American victims. Colonel Funston, of the Twentieth Kansas Volunteers, explained what got him motivated in the Philippines: "Our fighting blood was up and we all wanted to kill 'niggers.' This shooting human beings is a 'hot game,' and beats rabbit hunting all to pieces." Another wrote that "the boys go for the enemy as if they were chasing jack-rabbits .... I, for one, hope that Uncle Sam will apply the chastening rod, good, hard, and plenty, and lay it on until they come into the reservation and promise to be good 'Injuns.'"Col. Anderson personifies the unfitness of Americans to play a major role in the world, much less rule it. "We poured a lot of our heart and soul into trying to help the people," he bitched, as if Americans were God's gift to the planet. "But it can be frustrating when you hear stupid people still saying, 'You're occupiers. You want our oil. You're turning our country over to Israel.'" He cannot fathom that other people - non-whites - aspire to run their own affairs, and will kill and die to achieve that basic right. What does this have to do with the Mayflower? Everything. Although possibly against their wishes, the Pilgrims hosted the Wampanoag for three no doubt anxious days. The same men killed and enslaved Wampanoags immediately before and after the feast. They, their newly arrived English comrades and their children roasted hundreds of neighboring Indians alive just 16 years later, and two generations afterwards cleared nearly the whole of New England of its indigenous "savages," while enthusiastically enriching themselves through the invention of transoceanic, sophisticated means of enslaving millions. The Mayflower's cultural heirs are programmed to find glory in their own depravity and savagery in their most helpless victims, who can only redeem themselves by accepting the inherent goodness of white Americans. Thanksgiving encourages these cognitive cripples in their madness, just as it is designed to do. (c) 2019 Glen Ford is the Black Agenda Report executive editor. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com |
 When The World's On Fire, What Should We Do? By Jim Hightower For millions of people around the globe - especially young people - the pressing issue of our time is this: The world is on fire! On fire with climate change, creating a new and intensifying norm of deadly weather extremes that make a dystopian future a distinct possibility - constant wildfires, rising seas, desertification, global crop failures, widespread hunger, water shortages, etc. Luckily, we are a sentient species with the scientific ability to know that the chief cause of this global destruction is not angry gods, but us - specifically humankind's massive extraction and burning of oil, gas, coal, and other fossil fuels. So, there's a rising chorus of people shouting "FIRE!" And, sure enough, our national government is rushing to the scene to put it out. Unfortunately, our president and his crew of right-wing fire-breathers in Congress are not directing the government's hoses at the corporate extractors, but at us, the people, scientists, environmentalists, and other activists who've dared to point to the flames and call for global action to stop the conflagration. They seem to think the problem will go away if they can make the protesters go away. Worse, they're fanning the flames by turning the EPA into the PPA - the Polluters Protection Agency. They're slashing dozens of public restraints on the polluters, while also opening up our oceans and wilderness areas to their polluting greed and stalling the rational shift to a green energy future. The good news is that the people are revolting (in the very best sense of that term!) against our corrupt leaders' rush toward climate catastrophe. Our hope is not in "leaders," but ourselves - as it has been throughout American history. From the Boston Tea Party forward, creative and gutsy public protest has been democracy's best friend. (c) 2019 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition. Jim writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America's ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org. |
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Israel's attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit on advice from the police, indicted caretaker Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on fraud and bribery charges Thursday. On Friday, he refused to step down.
Netanyahu is charged in three cases. In Case 4000, Netanyahu is accused of giving the owner of the Walla! News website $280 million worth of regulatory benefits, in return form which Netanyahu received positive media coverage.
In Case 1000, Netanyahu allegedly accepted a couple hundred thousand dollars in bribes from an Australian businessmen in return for favorable treatment of his business and attempting to get him a US visa.
In Case 2000, Netanyahu is alleged to have offered a deal to Arnon Mozes, the publisher of Israel's biggest-circulation newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. Netanyahu supporter and shady casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson had begun a free pro-Netanyahu newspaper, Yisrael Ha-Yom, and it obviously was eating into the profits of the other newspapers in the country. (How this is not illegal as "dumping" baffles me.) Netanyahu allegedly told Mozes that he could persuade Adelson to reduce the publication run of Yisrael Ha-Yom, which would help his bottom line. In return, Mozes should report more favorably on Netanyahu.
Case 2000 shows how far right wing nationalist politics is intertwined with shady businesses like casino-owning and their ability, having bilked millions of poor and working people out of their money, to turn around and buy influential press organs to convince the latter to vote for the people who screwed them over. (Although Netanyahu is notorious in the West for having reneged on the Oslo Accords and having denied Palestinians their rights, within Israel he has also led an assault on the old socialist welfare state, throwing workers under the bus and diverting money to the billionaire class.) It is a perfect vicious circle.
Sheldon Adelson, who allegedly recouped his fortune at one point by bribing members of the Chinese Communist Party to let him operate in Macao, has the dubious distinction of having ruined both the United States and Israel by pushing, respectively, Netanyahu and Trump. Adelson sidelined New Jersey governor Chris Christie in the 2016 Republican primary for having referred to Gaza and the West Bank as "Occupied Territories," which they self-evidently are. In Adelson's warped world, there are and never have been any Palestinians and random Arabs have no business in his Israel.
Are there parallels between Netanyahu's situation and Trump's?
Both came to power in part through the backing of billionaires and their fake news organs such as Fox Cable News for Trump and Yisrael Ha-Yom for Netanyahu.
Both men are being investigated for corruption.
Both have responded by denigrating law enforcement. Netanyahu attacked the police, Trump the FBI and whistleblowers.
Both have denounced the evidence against them as "corrupt" and "tainted."
Both have decried the investigations into their criminal activities as "a coup."
Both have tried to normalize corruption. Netanyahu dismissed the hundreds of thousands of dollars he received as a few gifts among friends. Trump asks his audience if they don't want him to make money for his businesses.
And in the case of both men, if they are removed from office for corruption, they will be succeeded by political figures even farther to their right and more dangerous to the world.
(c) 2019 Juan R.I. Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively on modern Islamic movements in Egypt, the Persian Gulf and South Asia and has given numerous media interviews on the war on terrorism and the Iraq War. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years and continues to travel widely there. He speaks Arabic, Farsi and Urdu.
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Wisconsin's U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson is a robotic defender of Donald Trump. Unbothered by evidence that the president lied to him during a phone conversation about the Ukraine scandal that has sparked an impeachment inquiry, Johnson has championed the president so ardently that he sparks disbelief.
During an interview last month on NBC's "Meet the Press," host Chuck Todd interrupted the Wisconsinite to say, "Sen. Johnson, please! Can we please answer the question that I asked you, instead of trying to make Donald Trump feel better here that you're not criticizing him?"
Yet, Johnson has kept at it. Even after evidence emerged that he was part of an "irregular channel" of administration aides, appointees and allies who were involved in wrangling over the withholding of aid to Ukraine as part of a scheme to force the country's president to do Trump's domestic political bidding, Johnson kept making excuses. Even after The New York Times headlined an article about Johnson: "'He's in Deeper Water Than Most': G.O.P. Senator at Center of Impeachment Inquiry," he has remained obscenely loyal to Trump.
That was painfully obvious last week, a few hours before Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman delivered damning testimony about Trump's wrongdoing to the House Intelligence Committee, at the beginning of an extraordinary week of impeachment hearings. As the decorated military veteran - who has served as a top National Security Council staffer - was preparing to testify, he was the subject of a crude and dishonest attack by Johnson.
"A significant number of bureaucrats and staff members within the executive branch have never accepted President Trump as legitimate and resent his unorthodox style and his intrusion onto their 'turf,'" Johnson wrote in a letter to committee Republicans. "They react by leaking to the press and participating in the ongoing effort to sabotage his policies and, if possible, remove him from office. It is entirely possible that Vindman fits this profile."
Johnson - the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a fierce partisan who recently declared that he does not trust the FBI and the CIA - was not dealing in facts. He was seeking to prop up the desperate Republican effort to defend an embattled president.
The attack on Vindman revealed that Johnson's moral compass is broken. And U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Town of Vermont, called him out for it. "Sen. Ron Johnson's unsubstantiated attacks on Lt. Col. Vindman - a decorated, Purple Heart veteran - is what's wrong with Congressional Republicans," declared the congressman. "Attempting to discredit an American hero solely on behalf of an angry House GOP is unacceptable."
True enough. But there is another way to denounce Johnson - by recalling the words of attorney Joseph Welch when he confronted one of the senator's predecessors.
"Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator," Welch told Joseph McCarthy. "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
(c) 2019 John Nichols writes about politics for The Capitol Times. His book on protests and politics, Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street, is published by Nation Books. Follow John Nichols on Twitter @NicholsUprising.
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Have you ever wonder why the stock market makes the U.S. economy look so healthy while so many Americans are struggling just to make ends meet? Have you also wondered why there has been resistance to raising the minimum wage or why many skilled workers are listed among the unemployed? Consider this: the corporate giants appear to like it this way.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave the whole idea away when he testified before Congress in 1997. He told that roomful of financial shills that he believed imposing "greater worker insecurity" was a major route to economic success.
The following quote by Greenspan is taken right out of the Congressional record:  Yup, Greenspan, the man we once considered the most powerful and influential figure in the world of finance, revealed in one sentence his general contempt for the working class, and his plan for keeping them enslaved under the iron thumb of corporate power. It should come as no surprise that Greenspan was an acquaintance and admirer of American writer and economic philosopher Ayn Rand, whose books advocated the very direction the nation has been going as corporate power has been slowly eroding the thinking of elected state and national leadership. Noam Chomsky, author and professor of analytic philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pointed out the Greenspan testimony in a recent published commentary. In the article, Chomsky noted how American universities, that depend on corporate financial support, have all fallen into lock step with a corporate business model that insures a shortage of jobs for graduates. Thus there can be an understanding why we have so many college graduates working for minimum wage jobs in fast food joints while holding masters degrees in specialized fields where jobs do not exist. Adding to the horror is the bank sponsored student loan fiasco, which leaves graduates indebted to the banks, to the government, and to any employer they may happen to have. There was a time when a college degree meant an expansion of thought and personal enlightenment. Students read fine art and studied philosophy, sociology and psychology. Now they study bookkeeping, computer skills, engineering and other fields that they are led to believe might offer them good paying employment.  It is all a lie. Once they enter the work force, that college diploma in hand, they find themselves in a long line of other candidates just like them all competing for the few jobs that may be available. They made a big investment with borrowed money, often for naught. Chomsky's article transferred the Greenspan (Ayn Rand) philosophy to the university setting. He asked: "How to you ensure greater worker insecurity? Critically by not guaranteeing employment, by keeping people hanging on a limb that can be sawed off at any time, so that they'd better shut up, take tiny salaries, and do their work; and if they get the gift of being allowed to serve under miserable conditions for another year, they should welcome it and not ask for any more." (c) 2019 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. |
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As the executive director of Rights & Democracy (RAD) in Vermont and an organizer based in our state for more than two decades, I have had many opportunities to work closely with U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
I know what drives him, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right when she says, he is "the real deal."
As someone who once wrote off the whole political system as corrupt and broken beyond repair, my experience with Bernie has been transformative. The Senator has demonstrated time and again the importance of electing leaders who emerge from and work with people's movements. He has been a steadfast champion for working people, and electing Bernie as mayor of Burlington then U.S. Congressman then U.S. Senator has resulted in key policy victories that directly improve the lives of the people of Vermont and people across this country. Electing Sanders as president will undoubtedly generate even more transformational change.
Many share my positive feelings about Bernie. So it came as no surprise to me when Rights & Democracy members from New Hampshire and Vermont voted overwhelmingly to endorse his candidacy for president, with Bernie winning over 63% of the first-place votes in our ranked choice vote. Our members' second choice (who a majority said they would support if she were the nominee) was Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
While Elizabeth Warren is a strong, progressive voice in the Democratic primary, I believe Senator Bernie Sanders should be the candidate to support for president. For anyone struggling with who to choose, I offer three key reasons why:
1. Bernie is the best candidate to beat Trump and to begin transforming this country.
Bernie Sanders is uniquely positioned to defeat Trump in 2020 and build a broad multiracial working-class movement to advance a transformative people's agenda in this country.
Over my career I have been incredibly impressed by Bernie's ability to get broad support from working people, including many Republicans, Independents, and those who had checked out of the political process entirely. In the 2016 Democratic primary, Bernie won 22 states and over 13 million votes. He also smashed Obama's 2008 fundraising records. Consider the magnitude of this achievement, given the fact that he took no corporate campaign bribes from Wall Street, Big Pharma, fossil fuels, or weapons manufacturers and that he started the race with a 1% name recognition nationally.
The 2020 Sanders campaign is similarly a fundraising juggernaut. He has already received over 4 million individual donations (a record amount) and his email list is one of the largest in the country. His social media prowess is also far and away the strongest of all 2020 Democratic candidates and he has mobilizied a "grassroots army" of a million volunteers.
In Vermont and across the nation, he has also galvanized young people in record numbers to support his past campaigns and current run for president. Contrary to the corporate media's baseless narrative, Bernie also commands significant support-second only to Joe Biden-among black voters, particularly young black voters.
I believe Bernie has been able to build this diverse base of support because unlike the vast majority of politicians-beholden to a small number of corporate and wealthy donors. He has been consistently fighting for the interests of his constituents his entire life. Bernie is unabashedly authentic and even people who may disagree with his politics trust him and respect the fact his message has stayed the same for over four decades. His commitment to economic, social, and racial justice is unwavering and enduring-and voters across the country know it.
Finally, when we hear the corporate media pundits go on about how only a centrist has the best chance to beat Donald Trump, we must remember that they got it wrong in 2016, when they paid no attention to the depth of anti-establishment sentiment in this country. It is not hard to imagine many potential Democratic nominees being tagged as elitists, a la Hillary Clinton 2016. That is a label they will never be able to credibly lay on Bernie.
We must lay to rest the notion that Bernie Sanders can't win, as the truth is he very well may be the best hope. For more on this, check out the Salon Novemeber 24, 2019 article "Quit Saying Bernie Sanders Can't Win - He May Be The Most Elected Democract in 2020."
2. Bernie has always understood the need to build people's movements.
What has always stood out for me about Bernie Sanders is that consistently, throughout his 45-year political career, he has always stood up for the struggles of the working class and has never been afraid to take on large powerful corporate interests. And he has always believed in the power of organizing and understands that real change comes from the bottom up-not the top down-through mass mobilization.
I cannot even count the number of times in Vermont that I was involved in a community struggle-be it to organize a union, a local strike or fighting for health care as a human right-that Bernie would lend his active support and help us fight and win.
As mayor of Burlington in the 1980s, he took on the city's old political establishment. He built a strong coalition made up of community organizing groups, unions, tenant activists, women's groups, and environmentalists to challenge the old-guard obstructionists, and fundamentally transformed the city of Burlington.
In Burlington, Bernie showed that when you can make government work for average folks, they turn out to vote. In his re-election race in 1983, voter turnout in the city doubled.
But the most important lesson we can draw from Bernie's tenure as Mayor of Burlington, which applies to our situation now, is that the establishment never thought he could win. Through this grassroots engagement, Bernie was able to move major citywide policies because enough of the councilors either changed their positions, or the constituents changed their city councilors to ones that supported the policies they-and Bernie-did.
As Vermont's lone congressman from 1991 through 2006, and now as U.S. Senator, Bernie has held many hundreds of town-hall-style meetings and engaged average citizens-low-income and working-class folks-in discussions of the most important issues of the time. Bernie's town halls always include a broad cross section of Vermonters.
He organized bus trips of working-class Vermonters suffering from breast cancer to Canada to buy low-cost prescription drugs, highlighting the need for prescription drug pricing reform. He organized the largest rally against NAFTA on the State House lawn. He organized a meeting of 900 IBM workers to take on that company's effort to change their pension plans. The list goes on and on.
This is exactly what a Sanders Presidency would look like. In districts where Senators stand in the way of programs like Medicare For All and a Green New Deal that are supported by a vast majority of the population-he would be working with people's movements to hold massive rallies to push them through.
3. We don't need to just win this election, we need a political revolution
These first two points lead me to what I think is the core reason to support Bernie: his candidacy is more than a campaign, it is a call for building the political revolution we need in this moment in our country's history.
We all know there is now near consensus among scientists that the life support systems of our planet will be destroyed-possibly within the next decade-if we do not take bold action now to transform our economic and energy systems, including halting oil and gas drilling and production. If we want to save humanity, we will need to be able to not only overcome the enormous political and economic power of the fossil-fuel industry, but really the entire corporate establishment and elites that control both political parties, the military-industrial complex, the corporate media and the billionaire class. As writer Naomi Klein recently wrote given the context of the climate crisis and the power of oil and gas companies, "The world is on fire and our most credible hope of beating the arsonists is #Bernie2020 #NotMeUs."
The 2020 presidential election is going to be the struggle of our lives. Everything is on the line, and we have to beat Trump and then move bold policies through Congress. Along with grassroots outside groups, progressive leaders like Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib are gaining momentum. In turn, establishment forces are doing everything they can to stop us.
It is time we acknowledge the political realities before us, and align on the candidate who will not only win, but build the kind of multicultural, multiracial, and working class movement that will enable the next president to take on corporate power and deliver justice-economic, environmental, racial, and gender justice-for all people across the board.
(c) 2019 James Haslam is the founding executive director of the Rights & Democracy Institute. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesHaslamVT
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 Seafood Progress Offers Remedy For Seasick Times By David Suzuki Oceans hold a lot of mystery, even for people who study them. But it's no mystery why they're in trouble. We've been using them to hide our waste - dumping oil, plastic, toxic chemicals, radioactive sludge, sewage and fishing gear into them for decades. Oceans also absorb much of the atmospheric heat from our indiscriminate fossil fuel burning. And we've been taking everything we can from them, including fish, seaweed, plankton, minerals and oil. We've exploited many fish stocks to levels so low they can no longer be harvested. Ocean acidification and warming water from climate disruption are wiping out corals, shellfish and reef fish at a shockingly rapid rate. We depend on oceans for so much, including half the oxygen that keeps us alive! They're also a primary source of protein for millions of people worldwide. If we want to continue to enjoy all that oceans provide, we need to do everything we can to protect them and the life they support. Some people argue we should no longer eat seafood. We've reached that point for some species and are nearing it for many others, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can ensure the seafood we eat is caught and produced in ways that don't compromise stocks, the environment or human rights. I still eat fish and have fished all my life. When I was young, my dad and I would catch salmon, sturgeon and halibut from the shores of English Bay and the Fraser River. Now there aren't enough fish left. I still enjoy being on the water - catching, cleaning, preparing and eating fish - but I'm aware many species are declining. I don't fish as often as I used to, and I make sure I catch from sustainable stocks and use the entire fish, but as populations plummet there are fewer sustainable options. Of course, not everyone is lucky enough to be able to catch their own fish, which means having sustainable options at the store is critical. As public and corporate awareness about the risks posed by overfishing and uncontrolled aquaculture expansion have grown, food retailers in Canada have developed sustainable seafood policies and commitments. Many started sourcing eco-labelled products so consumers could see which products were the best choices. Despite promising first steps, some sellers and suppliers have become complacent about seafood improvement plans. As a result, achieving sustainability throughout the seafood industry supply chain remains a work in progress. To help provide incentives to retailers and information to seafood lovers, SeaChoice (a collaboration between the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecology Action Centre and Living Oceans Society) has developed Seafood Progress, an online resource. It makes it easier for consumers in Canada to find out retailers' policies on sourcing sustainable seafood, whether they're adhering to those policies and how they're performing compared to their peers. In its recent second assessment, Seafood Progress found retailer performance improved. Some was due to increased transparency, including two new companies that signed on to provide previously unpublished information. Positive new initiatives also helped, including more regular disclosure of performance against commitments, publishing information about where products come from and how they're produced, and new actions to support improvements for seafood commodities that continue to have sustainability concerns. But retailers must do more to ensure their seafood products are environmentally sustainable and socially responsible. This means expanding the scope of their commitments to cover all seafood products they sell, in all their stores. It also requires continuing to work with suppliers and producers to improve practices across the board and make sure the sustainable seafood supply meets consumer demand. Unsustainable seafood is common in the Canadian marketplace. But it doesn't have to be. Canada's major retailers have a responsibility to meet their customers' expectations that seafood production doesn't take more fish than can be replenished, harm or kill marine animals unnecessarily, pollute watersheds and wetlands or exploit vulnerable people. Meaningful commitments to sustainable procurement by Canada's largest seafood businesses will go a long way toward achieving this. It's no mystery that if we want to continue to eat fish, we must do it responsibly. Seafood Progress has invited seafood retailers, suppliers and consumers to join in pushing to achieve this goal. (c) 2019 Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and co_founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. |
 Friday's World-Historical News Dump Is Proof The Impeachment Probe Must Continue There is no reason to wrap the House proceedings now that Devin Nunes and Mike Pompeo were just implicated. By Charles P. Pierce Stop the news, I want to get off. Chapter Two. This was the Friday news dump to end all news dumps, the news dump equivalent of that giant barge full of garbage from New York that couldn't find a home back in 1987. In rough order, it was reported: 1) That Lev Parnas, one of Rudy Giuliani's Volga Bagmen who now sits under federal indictment, has indicated that he can put Rep. Devin Nunes, the famous White House lawn ornament, in the middle of the effort to concoct the Ukrainian Fantasy about the ratfcking of the 2016 election. 2) That the inspector general of the Department of Justice will produce his report on December 9, and early reports are that, while it will be critical of sloppiness in the FBI, it will state that there was no bias against the president* in how the FBI investigation into the involvement of the Russian ratfckers was launched. Not that this will do anything to silence the screeching of the flying monkeys, but it pretty conclusively slams the door on the notion that the previous administration's concern for the Trump campaign and Russia was the manifestation of some sort of dark manipulation based on inherent bias. Mike Pompeo also finds himself in some hot water. 3) That The New York Times reports that the intelligence community has concluded that the entire Ukrainian Fantasy about the ratfcking of the 2016 election is an intercontinental okey-doke perpetrated by the Russian intelligence services. In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill's testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow's own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.4) That a massive release of State Department documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request ropes in practically everyone, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in the effort to smear former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich, in order to get her out of the way so that the shakedown might proceed. This, of course, involves Rudy Giuliani, because anything that's screwed up about this administration now involves Rudy Giuliani. You have to admit. That's one helluva Friday. Beyond the obvious conclusions-that the president* is guilty as hell, and he is using as his primary defense a disinformation project devised in Moscow, and, in the interest of advancing the latter, he tried to shakedown a vulnerable ally under literal siege by the military forces of the government that dreamed up the president*'s primary alibi-this sudden avalanche of information fairly screams out for the inquiry to play out as it will play out, and that short-circuiting its process is both bad detective work and bad politics. Just on Friday, we learned that Nunes and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were roped into this mess, too. It's nowhere near time for the garbage barge to make port. Sail on, brothers and sisters. Sail on. (c) 2019 Charles P. Pierce has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently 'Idiot America.' He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.
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 If Democrats Don't Go Bold With Social Reform Right Now, Then When? We can afford these things. With inequality reaching new extremes, and corporations and the wealthy rigging the tax code to their benefit, we can pay for them without raising taxes on middle- and low-income Americans. By Jesse Jackson "Too radical, impractical, too costly, impossible, can't pass the Senate." Those are the terms centrist Democrats use to describe the bold reform ideas put forth by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic presidential primaries. "Venezuela, socialist, communist tripe, crazy" are the jibes preferred by President Donald Trump and Republicans. All this begs the same question: What do they plan to do to meet the challenges we face? For most Americans, this isn't a rhetorical question. The economy, Trump boasts, is as good as it has ever been in terms of the top line unemployment figures, but it still doesn't work for most Americans. Wages have been inching up, but they aren't rising as fast as the cost of basics-housing, college, health care. Working families-whether middle or low income-are struggling simply to stay afloat. Depths of despair are soaring, particularly among the young. Illness is still the leading cause of bankruptcy. Half of all Americans have no retirement plan other than Social Security. The climate emergency is a clear and present danger, costing more lives, more displacement and billions in damage each year. If we are going to address these challenges, we need reforms that correspond with the size of the problem. An adhesive bandage won't stop a leg hemorrhage. A wall can't shut out the cataclysmic storms, droughts, floods and tides of the climate emergency. The Green New Deal-mocked by Trump and Republicans who continue to deny the existence of manmade climate change-is ambitious and costly-but only because it tries to meet the goals that scientists say are necessary if we are not to become an endangered species. Getting to a clean energy, zero carbon emissions economy requires massive investment, new innovation and dramatic changes in transportation, housing, energy and more. The transition will generate millions of new jobs, while displacing some from old jobs. The Green New Deal proposes a job guarantee to make certain that no one is left out in the transition. Critics say it costs too much-but it costs far less than the price we will pay if we don't act boldly and now. Or consider higher education. Student loan debt continues to rise, now over $1 trillion, exceeding even credit card debt. More students have to put off college or drop out for years in order to earn enough to get the education that all agree is vital to our country and to their future. More students graduate with debt that will burden their lives, making it harder to afford to have children, to save for a house, to put money away for retirement. Debt is crushing a generation that tries to do the right thing. It is particularly brutal on people of color who have less of a chance to have parents with the wealth to help pay for tuition. Tuition-free college-mocked as a costly giveaway-simply argues that publicly provided education or advanced training should be extended beyond kindergarten through 12th grade. At a time when college education or advanced training is deemed essential not simply for the individual but for the country, why wouldn't we make that available for all who qualify? How can our society thrive if we condemn the best of the next generation to a life burdened by debt? This is one of the richest countries in the world. We can afford these things. With inequality reaching new extremes, and corporations and the wealthy rigging the tax code to their benefit, we can pay for them without raising taxes on middle- and low-income Americans. The argument that these necessary reforms are not "practical" makes no sense. Centrists suggest that only modest, piecemeal, admittedly inadequate reforms have a chance to gain the support needed to pass. But pre-emptive compromise doesn't inspire fear or fervor. What's needed is a clarion call that lays out what is essential-and builds the public support necessary to tackle those standing in the way. Republicans opposed Social Security and Medicare as socialism, or communist notions. They passed because Roosevelt and Johnson built the majorities and claimed the mandate to get them passed. The argument that these reforms are too radical, too "left" also fails on its face. These basic reforms-the right to adequate health care, the right to an education, the addressing of the existential threat posed by the climate emergency-are not left or right. They represent the moral center. The values they express are not un-American; they are central to the American dream. It isn't radical to suggest that all have health care, or all have access to a good education. It is just common sense. And we are badly in need of a strong dose of that. (c) 2019 Jesse Jackson is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to form Rainbow/PUSH. |
 James gives the corporate salute
Dear Unterfuhrer McGovern, Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling, and last year's winner Volksjudge John (the enforcer) Roberts. Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your insistance of including the renewal of the "Patriots Act" in a government spending bill, Yemen, Syria, Iran and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Demoncratic Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account! Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Trump at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 12-31-2019. We salute you Herr McGovern, Sieg Heil!
Signed by, Heil Trump |
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Donald Trump and his enablers have been making claims of widespread voter fraud, alleging millions of people are voting illegally in order to rig our elections.
Baloney. Let's look at the facts and debunk their myths once and for all.
They claim millions of Americans are voting twice, using multiple registrations in different districts.
So how often does double voting really occur? An analysis of the 2012 presidential election found that out of 129 million votes cast, 0.02% - that's two one hundredths of one percent - were double votes - which were likely the result of measurement error. This is a far cry from Donald Trump's claims that millions of people were registered in two different states in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump and his enablers claim non-citizens are voting in droves. Trump himself said that thousands of undocumented immigrants voted in 2016.
Another lie. According to the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice, of 23.5 million votes cast in districts with high populations of non-citizens only 30 - I repeat, thirty - possible incidents of improper non-citizen voting were referred for further investigation.
They claim voter impersonation is rampant at the polls.
False. A 12-year study of election data found only 10 cases of voter impersonation out of 146 million registered voters. Ten.
So if voter fraud really isn't a problem, why do Trump, Republicans in Congress, and their allies at Fox News keep perpetuating this myth? For one simple reason: To enact restrictive voting laws intended to keep voters from the polls.
Policies established in the name of election security - including voter ID laws, needless registration deadlines, limited access to polling places, and purges of the voter rolls - make it harder for Americans to vote. It is the same tactic that has been used throughout our history to disenfranchise low-income Americans and people of color.
Luckily, many of these laws have been struck down in the courts. In 2016, a district judge in Wisconsin found "utterly no evidence" of widespread voter fraud justifying its voter ID law. In Texas, another judge found their voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act, making it harder for African-Americans and Latinos to vote.
But many of these laws are still on the books because in 2013 the Supreme Court gutted crucial aspects of the Voting Rights Act.
Congress needs to update the Act to prevent states from suppressing votes.
Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans in Congress are turning a blind eye to the real threats facing our democracy: election fraud, and foreign interference.
In 2018, a Republican operative stole votes from Democrats in a North Carolina congressional race with a quote, "coordinated, unlawful, and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme." After the ballots were counted, the Republican candidate appeared to have won by about 900 votes. But the fraud was so glaring that the state board of elections refused to certify the results and called for a special election.
The other real threat is foreign interference in our elections, as Russia did in 2016.
We now know for a fact that Trump is encouraging foreign leaders to interfere in our elections - asking the President of Ukraine to investigate his political opponents in exchange for military aid and publicly calling on Russia and China to also interfere.
In the Senate, Mitch McConnell continues to block common-sense legislation to protect our elections against future foreign interference, such as requiring all voting machines to have backup paper ballots and imposing automatic sanctions for nations that interfere in elections. To have safe and secure elections in 2020 and beyond, we need to pass this legislation.
The next time you hear Trump and his enablers claim widespread voter fraud, know the truth. Their lies are intended to make it harder for millions of Americans to vote, while they ignore the real threats to our democracy.
(c) 2019 Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. His latest book is "Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few." His web site is www.robertreich.org.
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 Bush's Presidential Library What, no "Mission Accomplished" photo on display? By Jane Stillwater "I absolutely must go see GWB's new presidential library while I'm here in Dallas," I told the friend I was staying with. "Why in the world would you want to do that?" she replied. I just shrugged. Is it going to make me feel any better knowing that the traitorous scoundrel who stole two (2) presidential elections, unleashed a whole new level of corruption on America, failed to stop the 9-11 madness and murdered a million Iraqis, is not rotting away in jail? "Perhaps I could just flip him the bird?" That probably won't happen either. Still and all, I was determined to go see just how bad that the Bush Junior presidential library actually was. But it was even far worse than even I had expected. I was totally shocked. First there was the 9-11 exhibit, making GWB appear to be the hero of 9-11 instead of the cause of it. If only George had read his NSA briefings instead of going out for a beer with the boys. But he did not. Next our George shamelessly took credit for being the hero of Hurricane Katrina, even strongly hinting that it was those uppity Blacks who caused that disaster. "It was them not me, honest!" Say what? Moving on to the exhibits praising George Jr's glorious triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Might he be referring to those so-called wars that Americans are still fighting almost twenty years later? That cost American taxpayers over seven trillion dollars? Those glorious triumphs? Gag me with a spoon. But wait, there's even more. Dubya was also the hero of the environment. And then he actually had the gall to take credit for saving our nation from financial ruin in 2008. Shameless. But I got my revenge -- well, sort of. I approached almost every employee in the museum and sweetly asked, "But where is the famous 'Mission Accomplished' photo?" Some of the employees actually had the good grace to blush. My advice to any of you wannabe tourists in Dallas? Don't never plan to go to the Bush Presidential Library unless you bring your own barf bag. All those lies could make you actually physically sick. PS: What also makes me sick at heart is that Leonard Peltier, a true American Native hero and leader, has been languishing away in various maximum-security prisons, lock-downs and solitary confinements for the last 50-odd years for a crime that he didn't commit -- while that lying bastard GWB is having a good old time living the good life in Dallas's ultra-rich Highland Park part of town. If there was any fear of the wrath of God in America at all or any Christians left in this god-forsaken land, their situations would be totally reversed. PPS: When I was an embedded reporter in Iraq and also blogging everywhere from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe while Number 43 was (illegally) in office, I never even imagined that America could ever manage to have a worse person in the White House than GWB.... (c) 2019 Jane Stillwater. Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world. And while you're at it, please buy my books!
~~~ Jeff Stahler ~~~  |
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Parting Shots-
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