Tabulating March 2 election results took time to include absentee ballots. Continue reading
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Bernie bashing
In a free, fair and open process, Bernie Sanders would be odds on favorite to become Dem standard bearer against Trump in November. According to polls, he’d likely defeat DJT and become the 46th US president. Continue reading
Trump vs. Sanders: A concise comparison for voters (and why Bernie wins hands down)
When there is a conflict between big business and the public good, on labor rights, consumer rights, small taxpayer respect, and environmental protections, Bernie has stood with the people.
It isn’t un-American for voters to do some homework before voting. Here’s a “concise guide” for the voter with limited time who might want more information. Continue reading
Why does Generation Z require so many workplace accommodations?
Recently the Wall Street Journal reported on how many young people are now seeking “accommodations” at work for their anxiety, PTSD, depression, and other mental conditions. Continue reading
All men are mortal
My deceased mother-in-law, not a pious person but one of utterly conventional morals, used to say when someone over 70 —she died of heart failure somewhere in the mid-70s after our divorce—was diagnosed with some serious illness, “well at least they can’t die young.” I say she was conventional because she certainly had all the usual ideas about what to do and say among polite people. Maybe having lived through the Second World War—on the losing side—and knowing enough people who did die young just gave her a certain sobriety in matters of life and death. I mention this because in our age of exhibitionism and euphemism it is very difficult to conduct a sober, let alone rational discussion about the circumstances by which individual human beings die. Continue reading
Will the coronavirus kill globalization?
The Spanish flu helped herald the collapse of the first wave of modern globalization. A century later, could the coronavirus do the same?
At a dinner party in mid-February, an architect told me that he was having a problem finishing his building projects. It was the carpets. Continue reading
A terrifying scenario: Coronavirus in ‘quarantined’ Gaza
What if the coronavirus reaches the besieged Gaza Strip? Continue reading
Coronavirus vs. the mass surveillance state: Which poses the greater threat?
Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expands its powers. Continue reading
A profound and historic question for Elizabeth Warren: Which side are you on?
How Warren answers that question might determine the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. In the process, she will profoundly etch into history the reality of her political character.
The night before Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren spoke to several thousand people in a quadrangle at East Los Angeles College. Much of her talk recounted the heroic actions of oppressed Latina workers who led the Justice for Janitors organization. Standing in the crowd, I was impressed with Warren’s eloquence as she praised solidarity and labor unions as essential for improving the lives of working people. Continue reading
Bernie vs. Biden
As the Democratic Party’s “moderate” (or shall we say “establishment”) wing coalesces around Joe Biden to stop Bernie, the primary contest is starting to look a lot like 2016, when the same wing rallied around Hillary Clinton. Continue reading
Electoral dirty tricks in play on Super Tuesday?
How is it possible for a Dem presidential aspirant ahead in most Super Tuesday states (according to polls), including California and Texas, to lose overall to a challenger? Continue reading
American führer: Delusionary, dictatorial Donald Trump is drunk on power
The word 'corruption' cannot fully embrace how this insulting megalomaniac is tearing apart our country, our democratic practices, and our moral norms. Who will put a stop to this president's corrupt rampage against the American people?
Delusionary, dictatorial Donald Trump is drunk on power. Trump’s monarchical and lawless actions are a clear and present subversion of our republic and its Constitution. As soon as the impeachment trial ended and Trump was acquitted by the Senate’s supine Republican courtiers (except for Senator Mitt Romney), vengeance flooded Trump’s fevered mind. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: U.S. continues its war on the rest of the world
The duopoly corporate parties enforce silence and ignorance on foreign policy to ensure that Americans have neither the knowledge nor the tools to resist their country’s policy of endless war. Continue reading
Mike Pence is the worst person to lead a coronavirus response
The former Indiana governor presided over the state’s worst ever HIV outbreak. His ignorance made it worse.
A year after Trump took office, Saturday Night Live did a sketch called “What Even Matters Anymore?” Continue reading
We’re all in this together: A case for not giving up on the American Dream
Listen, we don’t have to agree about everything. Continue reading
Trump crisis management by lies, bogus numbers, and superstition
Impeached President Donald Trump has completely bolloxed up America’s carefully thought-out contingency plans that deal with pandemics. In addition to lying about the number of Americans infected with and being treated for the COVID-19, or coronavirus, Trump’s attrition of professional staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) in Atlanta; the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland; and the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), a division in the Department of Health and Human Services, has ensured that the administration, unlike its predecessors, was ill-prepared to deal with a national and global health emergency. Trump’s federal hiring freeze has ensured that key vacancies resulting from retirements at the CDCP, NIH, PHS and other key entities have gone unfilled. Trump also disestablished pandemic response teams within the National Security Council, which was headed by Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, and the Department of Homeland Security. Continue reading
Bernie or Biden?
As the Democratic Party’s “moderate” (or shall we say “establishment”) wing coalesces around Joe Biden to stop Bernie, the primary contest is starting to look a lot like 2016, when the same wing rallied around Hillary Clinton. Continue reading
The lie of health care ‘choice’
In our corporate-run health system, consumer ‘choices’ are shaped entirely by profit-seeking monopolists.
Lyndon Johnson had a saying about special interests trying to get his support to pass some blatantly self-serving legislation: “They can’t make chicken salad out of chicken (bleep)!” Continue reading
Unbranded disease awareness TV ads are a goldmine for Pharma
Two years ago, the FDA approved two drugs for Tardive Dyskinesia (TD), Ingrezza and Austedo, which explains the unbranded TV ads and web sites. Like other unbranded marketing, TD ads and websites omit mention of any drug names but urge people to see their doctors and describe all their symptoms, as unpaid Pharma salesmen. Web sites even offer a “discussion guide” to make sure the patient says the right things and sells the drug for Pharma. Continue reading
Who’s afraid of ‘socialism’?
Americans were taught to associate ‘socialism’ with dictatorship and ‘capitalism’ with democracy. Are those days over?
For decades, Republicans have painted anyone left of Barry Goldwater as a “socialist.” Why? Because for a generation raised on the Cold War, “socialist” just seemed like a damaging label. Continue reading
Cognitive dissonance propaganda and public health
U.S. right-wing radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, to whom Donald Trump recently awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor usually bestowed upon those who have markedly improved society in some way, recently suggested that the coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, was nothing more than the “common cold” that was “weaponized” by opponents of Trump to use it against him in this year’s election. Such pandering to those on the lunatic fringe who oppose modern science and medicine, including vaccinations, is not limited to the radio airwaves. Continue reading
Should we fear Frankenstein monsters from AI and genetic engineering?
Unless we make changes in the direction our medical scientists and computer engineers seem to be headed, mankind may be doomed to extinction either from robots using careless artificial intelligence, or genetic engineering of the human genome. This may be the end of us even before destroying ourselves with nuclear weapons or by polluting our environment. Continue reading
Fake news, false democracy & phony economics
The growing popularity of an American social democratic presidential candidate who calls himself a democratic socialist has revived every anti-humanity distortion of the past, emanating from the tiny minority ruling our country through its servant class of professionals in media and politics. Newer and more bloody mythologies about supposedly existing socialisms are expanding on the incredible death tolls supposedly inflicted by previous attempts at achieving the common good by confiscating the wealth of royalty and the rich in nations where free markets were supposedly destroyed by savages who felt that one thousand people and one thousand loaves of bread meant they should be distributed one to a person. That was instead of being owned by a capitalist and sold only to those who could amass the market forces to buy bread by creating private profit for the investor-rulers who owned the bakery. Continue reading
Breaking with Washington: Arabs and Muslims must take a stance for Palestine
A negotiated solution to the ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict,’ at least the way envisaged by successive US administrations, has failed. Now, Palestinians and their allies would have to explore a whole new path of liberation that does not go through Washington. Continue reading
Stop calling harmful bigotry ‘religious freedom’
Anyone intolerant enough to disown a child is far less fit to parent than a gay person whose only ‘sin’ is living authentically.
The Supreme Court is considering a case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, that once again pits LGBTQ rights against so-called religious liberty. In this case, one of the plaintiffs, Catholic Social Services, is arguing that it has the right to discriminate against same sex couples when placing children in foster care. Continue reading
Fear and the Democratic Party
It became clear during the 2016 presidential election process that Bernie Sanders was successful in getting the attention of tens of thousands of potential voters thus challenging the candidacy of the darling of the party, Hillary Clinton. The Democratic National Committee felt so threatened by Sander’s success that they conspired with the Clinton election staff to withhold support to and undermine Sander’s candidacy. Continue reading
The Democratic establishment is freaking out about Bernie. It should calm down.
The day after Bernie Sanders’s big win in Nevada, Joe Lockhart, Bill Clinton’s former press secretary, expressed the fear gripping the Democratic establishment: “I don’t believe the country is prepared to support a Democratic socialist, and I agree with the theory that Sanders would lose in a matchup against Trump.” Continue reading
A Trump sentence commutation attorneys general liked
The year was 2008. Hundreds of ICE officers swooped down on Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse located in Postville, Iowa, in the largest single-site raid to date in U.S. history. Half of the 800-person workforce was arrested. Continue reading
Compliance 101: Gun-toting cops endanger students and turn the schools into prisons
Just when you thought the government couldn’t get any more tone-deaf about civil liberties and the growing need to protect “we the people” against an overreaching, overbearing police state, the Trump administration ushers in even more strident zero tolerance policies that treat children like suspects and criminals, greater numbers of school cops, and all the trappings of a prison complex (unsurmountable fences, entrapment areas, no windows or trees, etc.). Continue reading
The embarrassing fall of Trump’s wall
A climbing group in Kentucky built a replica of Trump’s wall. One climber topped it in 13 seconds. Another did it while juggling.
Big, high walls can be troublesome. Ask Humpty Dumpty. Continue reading
Red-baiting a key weapon in the war on the Sanders agenda
The red-baiting of Sen. Bernie Sanders has been stepped up as we near the date of the important South Carolina primary election this coming weekend. “Liberal” pundits have accused him of everything from supporting “Marxist dictators” like Fidel Castro to singing the praises of chandeliers installed in the Moscow subways by the communist dictators of old. “You don’t ever talk about the wonderful chandeliers in the Moscow subways when you have Stalin killing 30 million of his own people,” Joe Scarborough declared on Morning Joe today. “With his praise of dictators, who does Bernie remind you of?” Joe’s wife, Mika Brzezinski, then asked. Continue reading
America’s two-headed one party system
Posted on March 9, 2020 by Caitlin Johnstone
There’s a scene from John Steinbeck’s The Pearl that’s been coming back to me over and over again ever since I started writing about US politics. I find it amazing that this scene hasn’t become a political meme yet, given Steinbeck’s fame and given its perfect illustration of the fake two-party system that we see in western so-called democracies. Continue reading →