California Democrats Did NOT Just Legalize Child Prostitution - Snopes

It is still illegal for Californians to hire prostitutes (child or otherwise).

A report circulating on right wing websites, blogs, and Facebook pages that claims that California Democrats had legalized prostitution for minors was based on a faulty understanding of a new law.

A California law passed in 2016 provides that minors involved in sex trafficking and prostitution will be treated as victims instead of criminals.

It is still illegal for Californians to hire prostitutes (child or otherwise), and sex traffickers will still face consequences if they are caught prostituting children.

The law represents a shift away from prosecuting underaged victims for their involvement in prostitution, which can end up on their record for life.

The California law is in line with the stance of the Department of Justice, which has also noted that children involved in prostitution should be considered victims.

The full article is available here

It Still Nowhere Near Okay To Act Like Donald Trump - The Onion

Report: "Acting like Mr. Trump does for even a moment will result in a wide range of negative social—and in some cases, criminal—consequences for you personally."

In the weeks since Donald Trump’s stunning election to the nation’s highest office, reports have confirmed that, regardless of circumstance, it is not even remotely close to okay to act like Donald Trump.

“Just to be perfectly clear, speaking or behaving in a manner similar to President-elect Trump is just as unacceptable now as it has ever been,” the reports stated, adding that in zero percent of cases is it even borderline permissible to conduct oneself either personally or professionally in a fashion akin to Trump, and that has not changed in the past.

“In fact, acting like Mr. Trump does for even a moment will result in a wide range of negative social—and in some cases, criminal—consequences for you personally. Put simply, you should not be engaging with the world in any way comparable to Mr. Trump. This was true before he was elected, and it will be true long after he’s gone.”

The full article is available here

Trump Overstates His Foundation's Charitable Giving - NPR

Austerity On Trial: Flint Emergency Manager Faces Criminal Charges - Common Dreams

"All too often, there's been a fixation on finances and balance sheets," said Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette. "This fixation cost lives."

Putting austerity on trial, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette on Tuesday announced criminal charges against four high-level officials for their role in causing the Flint water crisis, including former city manager Darnell Earley, who made the budget-driven decision to switch the city's water supply to the dangerously corrosive Flint River.

"All too often, there's been a fixation on finances and balance sheets," said Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette. "This fixation cost lives."

Earley, as well as another former emergency manager Gerald Ambrose—both appointees of Republican Governor Rick Snyder—are being charged with false pretense and conspiracy to commit false pretense, which each carry a 20-year sentence, as well as misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty.

"There are some who would simply wish that the problems in Flint would go quietly away, and there are voices out there who hope the poisoning of the water would be swept under the rug," Schuette said during a Tuesday morning press conference. "These voices hope to simply blame nameless bureaucrats, call it a day and move on."

The full article is available here

How Tyranny Begins: Why Trump Rallies for Trump - Robert Reich

A president intent on developing a base of enthusiastic supporters who believe boldface lies poses a clear threat to American democracy.

Donald Trump has just finished the last of his nine post-election “thank you tour” rallies. Why did he do them? And why is he planning further rallies after he becomes president?

One clue is that Trump conducted them only in the states he won. And most attendees appeared to have voted for him – overwhelmingly white, and many wearing Trump hats and T-shirts. When warm-up speakers asked how many had previously attended a Trump rally, most hands went up.

A second clue is that rather than urge followers to bury the hatchet, Trump wound them up. “It’s a movement,” he said in Mobile, playfully telling the crowd that in the run-up to the election, “You people were vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall?’ ‘We want the wall!’ Screaming, ‘Prison!’ ‘Prison!’ ‘Lock her up!’ I mean, you were going crazy. You were nasty and mean and vicious.” He called his followers “wild beasts.”

A third clue: Rather than shift from campaigning to governing, Trump’s post-election rallies were almost identical to the rallies he held when he was a candidate – the same format, identical pledges (“We will build a great wall!”), and same condemnations of the “dishonest” media. They also elicited many of the same audience responses, such as “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

In short, the rallies and tweets give Trump an unprecedented platform for telling Big Lies without fear of contradiction – and therefore for advancing whatever agenda he wishes.

This is how tyranny begins.  A president intent on developing a base of enthusiastic supporters who believe boldface lies poses a clear threat to American democracy.

The full article is available here 

Psychopathology In The 2016 Election - Rabbi Michael Lerner

The triumph of hyper-capitalist selfishness as common sense has created a huge psycho-spiritual crisis and a society filled with deeply scared and lonely people.

In present-day America we are witnessing the way the ethos of financialized, global capitalism - and its impact on daily life - shapes and nurtures a growing societal-based psychopathology.

The triumph of hyper-capitalist selfishness as common sense has created a huge psycho-spiritual crisis and a society filled with deeply scared and lonely people.

This pain operates on two levels. On a psychological level people are suffering because they have absorbed the capitalist message: “You live in a meritocracy, so you get what you deserve, and if you haven’t achieved the level of success you want, it’s your fault."

On the spiritual level, tens of millions of people are suffering because they desperately want meaningful and purposeful lives and instead are trapped in jobs that do not produce anything of lasting value, and feel that they are wasting their lives yet believe that there is no alternative and no way out.

Right-wing, ultra-nationalist, fundamentalist, and/or racist movements gain support as more people begin to lose faith in the efficacy of democratic governments and turn to authoritarian leaders in the hope that their own fears and pain can be alleviated.

When ultra-nationalist movements arise and promise to “Make America Great Again,” people believe that things will magically return to how they were before African Americans, women, and gays and lesbians made gains for equality, mistakenly directing their blame at them rather than at the ruling class for its massive onslaught of attacks on the rights of the working class.

When right-wing programs and policies fail to deliver a more fulfilling life for people at work and for people in family life, this failure will be blamed on the demeaned others of the society who are portrayed as taking from the white majority the economic security, community solidarity, and safety that supposedly existed at some earlier historical moment.

The full article is available here 

Comic Relief - Satiring Trump's Appointments

Perry's Who Should Run the Department of Energy, Ranked

Perry's who should run the Department of Energy, ranked:

1 - Matthew Perry
2 - Katy Perry
3 - Luke Perry
4 - Joe Perry
5 - Perry Farrell
6 - Steve Perry
7 - Perry Ellis
8 - Perry Como
9 - Tyler Perry
10 - William “The Refrigerator” Perry
11 - Gaylord Perry
12 - Perry Saturn
13 - Perry Jones III
14 - Being blown up by a nuclear weapon
15 - Rick Perry

Trump Postpones Business Conflicts Announcement = Maintaining The Swamp

If you elect a clown, you get a circus. 

Corporate Oil Megalith Executive To Be Trump's Secretary Of State

Trump has picked an oil company megalith executive with no governing experience and close ties to Russia to be his Secretary of State.

Trump's EPA Head and Taiwan Phone Call = Maintaining The Swamp

Trump Chooses Fake Wrestling Matriarch for Small Business Administration

Battling Trump's Hate Speech - Southern Poverty Law Center

Trump's Pants On Fire Claim That "Millions Voted Illegally" - Politifact

The full article is available here

Trump's Cabinet = Maintaining The Swamp

Weather Channel's Kait Parker Explains Climate Change to Breitbart

Targeting Corporate Democrats Part of Fighting Trump - Mark Engler in Common Dreams

The only hope for minimizing the damage of Trump's agenda will be to fight his hate-mongering and right-wing faux populism with a progressive vision.

At a time when Donald Trump has risen to the presidency by railing against the Washington establishment and upending the traditional rules of politics, the Democratic Party’s propensity for compromise and triangulation only plays into his hands.

The only hope for unseating Trump and minimizing the damage of his agenda will be to fight his hate-mongering and right-wing faux populism with a progressive vision. This vision must express a genuine criticism of Washington politics, but be devoted to eliminating the corrupting power of the wealthiest one percent, rather than scapegoating immigrants and people of color.

In the short run, this will require pressuring fickle and opportunist politicians to stubbornly oppose and filibuster White House extremism, even at the risk of being labeled obstructionist by critics.

If the incoming president was truly anti-establishment, seriously willing to take on Wall Street, end the rule of the rich over our democracy, and uphold Constitutional values of equal rights, religious tolerance and free speech, there might be grounds for such cooperation. Instead, Trump has given every indication that he will fill his administration with corporate lobbyists and advocates of hate.

In the longer term, it will involve creating an effective opposition in the Democratic Party to ensure that Trump’s next opponent will not be another establishment candidate, deeply compromised by ties to corporate America. Rather, this opponent must be someone who can genuinely speak to the disenfranchisement and frustration that many in this country feel.

The full article is available here

Breitbart Meme

Evangelicals Proud of Trump After Years of Judging People's Lifestyles - Kerry Eleveld

"White evangelicals, your moral credibility is zero. When you elevate someone like Trump, you’ve sacrificed your integrity. In totality. There’s just no recovering from that. And the next time you claim something is immoral, all we’ll have to say is: Trump."

The full article is available here

With Fact-Checking vs Without Fact-Checking - Viralgranskaren

How hate is ginned up and how those predisposed to fear the "other" spread it like a virus.

What The 2016 Election Revealed - Jeff Wiersma

We need a shared vision which rejects Religious Nationalism, Hate Speech Demagoguery, and Economic Darwinism - showing the way instead to expressions of social justice, compassion, empathy, and radical solidarity.  

The 2016 Election was not your run-of-the-mill Presidential Election.

As Andy Borowitz said, "Trump wasn’t created in a vacuum; he is the inevitable product of a coarsened culture that rewards bullying over kindness, humiliation over respect, hatred over love."

Meanwhile, his opponent was the 2nd member of Clinton Political Machine (preceded by Al Gore in 2000) to run a campaign that only compounded their likability problems and ultimately resulted in the election of an inferior Republican candidate.

Sociologically, this election has revealed the following:

• Technological changes combined with corporate global bottom-feeding, 36 years of voodoo economics, and hyper-capitalist financialization have left working people behind, who feel betrayed, unrecognized, and angry.

• Rhetoric about progressive social policy - policy that aims to help working people recover from the scorched-earth class war being waged against them by the 1% - falls on deaf ears when the Democratic candidate is the ultimate crony capitalist. 

•  The false lure of a conservative Supreme Court and single-issue voting still holds many Evangelicals hostage.  They have voted Republican for this one reason - all the while supporting wars, environmental destruction, the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor - and not gotten one bit closer to overturning Roe v Wade, which was made law by a Republican-nominated Supreme Court.  (And even if they did overturn it, abortion wouldn't go away without a culture that supports life).

• The entrenched attitudes of racial bigotry in American society have been shamelessly exposed.

• The decades-long pattern of manipulating racial fears, employed by the GOP beginning with their Southern strategy, now boiled over in an ugly political movement driven by resentment of those who are different. That their candidate was manifestly and dangerously unqualified didn't trump the affection that the President-elect's supporters lavished on him because he spewed hate speech at the same "other" that they've been told to hate.

• Fears and biases have clouded attention to facts. An entire self-reinforcing network of right wing media have captured an audience by playing to fears and biases, all while using the time-tested cult tactic of warning it's adherents that they are the only source of truth and that all other media sources are lying to them and biased.

• The white, largely male majority which controlled political power since America’s founding is losing its dominant power, provoking anxiety and political desperation among its adherents.

Within this setting, the need for public discernment and a resonant vision is paramount.

We need a shared vision which rejects the idolatry of Religious Nationalism, Demagoguery, and Economic Darwinism - showing the way instead to expressions of social justice, compassion, empathy, and radical solidarity.

Trump Is Maintaining The Swamp

Trump’s Conflicts of Interest Without Precedent - Drew Harwell in The Washington Post

Trump has so far resisted the long-standing presidential tradition of giving his holdings to an independent manager. 

Donald Trump’s victory will force the United States to confront a series of never-before-seen entanglements over the president’s private business, debts and rocky financial history.

No laws prohibit Trump from involving himself in his private company, the Trump Organization, while serving in the highest public office.

And Trump has so far resisted the long-standing presidential tradition of giving his holdings to an independent manager, stoking worries of conflicts of interests over his businesses’ many financial and foreign ties.

Trump’s business empire of hotels, golf courses and licensing deals in the U.S. and abroad, some of which have benefited from tax breaks or government subsidies, represents an ethical minefield for a commander in chief who would oversee the U.S. budget and foreign relations, some analysts say.

The full article is available here

It's Not That Hillary Lost - Jeff Wiersma

Those who deride the protests of people who are targeted by hate-mongers are privileged enough to do so because it doesn't personally effect them.

It isn't that Hillary lost. I didn't vote for her, nor have I ever voted for a Clinton.

It's that the candidate that the KKK, neo nazis and white supremacists endorsed won.

It's that the candidate whose demagoguery painted entire demographic groups as "other" and therefore necessarily to be feared, won. It's that the candidate who retweeted posts from White Supremacists won.

I'm not under any delusion that Trump can control who supports him, but it isn't like these people are fans of his because Trump lent them flour one time when they were baking or watered their plants while they were on vacation in July. They are fans because his rhetoric often echoes and amplifies their message.

Those who deride the protests of people who are targeted by hate-mongers are privileged enough to do so because it doesn't personally effect them.

Solidarity

Get Through Today - Ryan Stegink-Simes

An inspiring and uplifting reflection from my friend Ryan Stegnik-Simes:

"Make it your goal to get through today. Show up to work, be kind, allow yourself to grieve but don't give in to your anger and frustration. 

I want nothing more than to dig a hole, crawl in, and sob, and I imagine you might want to do the same thing, but your family, your kids, your parents, your friends, your neighbors and your nation need you today. 

Start thinking about solutions."

"Pro Life" Or Only "Pro Birth?" - Sister Joan Chittister

What You Need to Know About the Dakota Access Pipeline Protest - Bill Moyers

Native Americans from tribes all over the country are protesting the construction of a crude-oil pipeline slated to snake through sacred sites and under the water supply for the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

The Dakota Access Pipeline Project (DAPL) is a $3.78 billion conduit being built from the oil-rich Bakken fields in North Dakota, near the Canadian border. It which will be located a half-mile from the reservation through land taken from the tribe in 1958.

The Dakota Access pipeline was fast-tracked from the beginning, using the Nationwide Permit 12 process that treats the pipeline as a series of small construction sites and grants exemption from the environmental review required by the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe says they were not consulted and a survey of the area found several sites of “significant cultural and historic value” in the pipeline path, including burial grounds.

The tribe says that the pipeline is a significant danger to their water supply since it passes underneath the Missouri River — the main source of water for the reservation. An earlier proposal had the pipeline crossing the Missouri north of Bismarck, but authorities were concerned about the risk to the capital’s water supply in the advent of a pipeline spill.

On Aug. 10, construction began and a dozen demonstrators were arrested as they tried to stop it. The call for help went out, using social media and the #NoDAPL hashtag to spread information, and within a week hundreds of protesters arrived, swelling the ranks to more than 2,500.

The full article is available here

Democrats Did NOT Hire Protesters To "Be Violent" - Politifact

As problematic as Scott Foval’s statements were, he also says in the tape that he did not coach people to stage confrontations inside the events.  Nor did he say on tape that he told people to "be violent" and "start fist-fights," as Trump alleged. 

During the third and final presidential debate, Republican nominee Donald Trump accused his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton of paying people to incite violence at his rallies.

However, the videos Trump referenced (which focus on Scott Foval, who is identified as the national field director at Americans United for Change, a liberal organization) are edited in ways that the context of the conversation or the meaning of the statement isn’t always clear, nor do you know when they took place.

Additionally, Project Veritas’ undercover operatives are often goading their subjects with leading statements. It has the effect of making the viewer infer that the people said something that he or she didn’t literally say.

Tellingly, the Trump campaign provided no evidence of payment from Clinton or Obama—a charge that the video itself does not substantiate.

Trump’s claim that the Chicago “riot” reached a point that “people could’ve been killed” would seem to hold even less water. And when things did escalate during the March protest, Trump supporters played their part, as well.

It should be noted, too, that for as problematic as Foval’s statements were, he also says in the tape that he did not coach people to stage confrontations inside the events.

"They’re not starting confrontations in the rally because once they’re inside the rally, they’re under Secret Service’s control," Foval said.

Nor did he say on tape that he told people to "be violent" and "start fist-fights," as Trump alleged. Instead, Foval’s stated goal was to bait Trump supporters into violent acts simply by wearing certain t-shirts or saying anti-Trump remarks.

The full article is available here

General Atomics Funded Think Tank That Promoted Increased Drone Exports - CorpWatch

With spending dropping from a high of $187 billion in 2008 to a projected $58.7 billion for 2015, the company realized that it faced a sharp drop off in sales.

A report by the New York Times and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting shows that General Atomics helped fund the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a major think tank in Washington DC, when it recommended that the Obama administration loosen export rules to allow the company sell more drones.

General Atomics manufactures the Predator and Reaper drones, the two main aircraft used by the U.S. military for surveillance and targeted killing in wars around the world from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Iraq and Syria.

But with spending on such wars dropping from a high of $187 billion in 2008 to a projected $58.7 billion for 2015, the company realized that it faced a sharp drop off in sales.

"Think tanks are seen as independent, but their scholars often push donors’ agendas, amplifying a culture of corporate influence in Washington," wrote Eric Lipton and Brooke Williams in the New York Times in article about Brannen's work.

The full article is available here

The Rio You Won't See Watching Olympics On TV - Act TV

The Law Trump Violated With His "2nd Amendment People" Comment About Hillary

from http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/41/879

18 U.S.C. § 879 : US Code - Section 879:

Threats against former Presidents and certain other persons

Whoever knowingly and willfully threatens to kill, kidnap, or inflict bodily harm upon -
(1) a former President or a member of the immediate family of a former President;
(2) a member of the immediate family of the President, the President-elect, the Vice President, or the Vice President-elect;
(3) a major candidate for the office of President or Vice President, or a member of the immediate family of such candidate;
or
(4) a person protected by the Secret Service under section 3056(a)(6);

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

Did Trump Just Suggest Gun Nuts Should Shoot Hillary Clinton? - Common Dreams

Yes he did.  He most certainly did. And in doing so, he violated the law ...http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/41/879

Abusive people say horrible things and then say "just kidding." They aren't kidding.  He's just tossing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. There's not much room on the wall anymore.

The full article is available here

Film Review - Hillary's America: Conspiratorial Talking Points - AV Club

Polemicist Dinesh D'Souza's revisionist history appeals to the conspiratorial, persecuted conservative mindset. 

Conservative polemicist Dinesh D’Souza presents a series of conspiratorial talking points, a freewheeling parade through American history that is comically grotesque.

D’Souza is a master of historical elisions and ideological inversions, but his most impressive trick is his idea that the Republican and Democratic parties have not changed at all in 180-plus years.

This allows him to say that the Democratic Party has always been rotten, a band of thieves little changed from Andrew Jackson to the Clintons. His sustained attack on Hillary Clinton is a fever dream, which is entirely typical of D’Souza’s realm: malignant fantasy.

If you scratch the surface any deeper than “Yeah go team GOP!!!!!”—much less run his historical summaries by Wikipedia—D’Souza’s arguments implode like a bad soufflé. It’s of a piece with the kind of blind Manichaeism Fox News is so into.

Yet at the same time, he presents himself as a “scholar” who is giving you the true version of American political history. In this way, he’s pretty savvy about tapping the conspiratorial, persecuted conservative mindset. His revisionist history appeals to these people precisely because it flatters them and doesn’t demand fact-checking.

The film’s fundamental claim is that Hillary Clinton steals things. And because Clinton steals, the entire Democratic Party is all about stealing, and it has been from its inception.

D’Souza doesn’t even make a credible argument that Bill and Hillary are corrupt, even though in many ways it’s low-hanging fruit. Instead, like many a fringe weirdo who has come after the Clintons over the years, he overreaches and invents an absurd conspiracy.

The full article is available here

Human Rights Abuse and Violence - The Olympics You Don't See On Television

Rio Olympics linked to widespread human rights violations, report reveals.

Residents, including thousands of children, are victims of violence and evictions stemming from building projects for 2016 Games.

Hillary Clinton: ‘When I Was A Child, Most Special Interest Groups Wouldn’t Even Consider Donating Large Sums Of Money To A Woman’ - The Onion

“It’s hard to fathom now, but back when I was growing up in the 1950s, Wall Street banks, major law firms, and every other special interest out there wouldn’t let a woman through the door, let alone funnel inordinate sums of money into her campaign as a means to advance their agendas,” said Clinton, adding that she personally had to work twice as hard as her male colleagues for decades just to be deemed qualified as a viable political conduit for hundreds of millions of dollars controlled by wealthy corporations and narrowly focused institutions.

Clinton then assured the cheering crowd that while she might be the first female presidential nominee of a major political party beholden to well-heeled influence peddlers, she would certainly not be the last.

Trump's Quasi-Mystical Appeal - Elijah Siegler

Throughout history, illusionists appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings because of their ability to deceive and manipulate the masses.  They were able to gain followers by playing on people's superstitions.

What is Donald Trump? Is he a prosperity gospel preacher? A Platonic tyrant?

To delve into this question, religion-oriented analysis can be useful.  After all, politics isn't just about policy.  It's about identity, community, meaning, and belief.

Trump has powered his campaign by playing on the fears of sinister threats. He has backed anti-vaxxers and engaged in nativist fantasies  Trump's most popular policies are based on fears of contagion; defined as "the communication of disease by direct or indirect contact."

To many in Trump's base, drummed-up fears of people that are deemed to be "other" have been extremely powerful motivating factors, in part accounting for the maintenance of their support of Trump and approval of his policies. His rhetoric both creates and ratchets up anxiety and fear on a daily basis. In the human brain, these visceral emotions, when continually stoked, bypass reason and logic altogether.

James Frazer, a Scottish anthropologist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, analyzed anthropological and classical literature to speculate on the origin of magic and religion.  According to Frazer, throughout history illusionists appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings because of their ability to deceive and manipulate the masses.

In The Golden Bough, he wrote that the best of them "perceive how easy it is to dupe their weaker brother and to play on his superstition for their own advantage." They were often sincerely convinced that they "really possessed those wonderful powers which the credulity of his fellows ascribes to (them)."

The savviest illusionist-king, in other words, tells the people what they want to hear, and truly believes that he is the best, the greatest, fantastic, unbelievable.

Frazer argued that society should be wary of these political illusionists, because they subvert democracy. They shift "the balance of power from the many to the one."

The full article is available here

Interdependence Days - Bryan Berghoef at Shalem Institute

Independence has its place, to be sure. But perhaps what needs remembering and cultivating, what really ought to be celebrated each and every day—is our deep and sacred interdependence—with one another, with the Earth, and with all living things.

Independence. It is a wonderful thing to be free of that which holds you back, presses you down, or even oppresses you. We are heading into a weekend in the U.S. in which parades, flags, fireworks and barbecues will all signal a corporate celebration of being free, of independence. A wonderful thing.

Yet in the wake of the recent vote for independence in Britain, the famous Brexit, we realize that there are limits to how good independence can be. We remember that underneath it all, there is a very real and essential interdependence. Human beings were not made to exist in isolation.

Even collections of human beings are not really able to live in true independence. There is always an impact from the other, a necessary global interconnection, in which trade from one nation helps another, travel in and through a region impacts a local economy, or in which pollution or carbon usage affects the global whole.

Independence has its place, to be sure. But perhaps what needs remembering and cultivating, what really ought to be celebrated each and every day—is our deep and sacred interdependence—with one another, with the Earth, and with all living things.

The full article is available here

Dorothy Day - We Must Talk About Poverty

Some Perspective

The NRA Once Supported Gun Control - Steven Rosenfeld

In the 1920s and 1930s, the NRA’s leaders helped write and lobby for the first federal gun control laws - the very kinds of laws that the post-1977 NRA labels as the height of tyranny.

For nearly a century after, its founding in 1871, the National Rifle Association was among America’s foremost pro-gun control organizations.

It was not until 1977 when the NRA that Americans know today emerged, after libertarians who equated owning a gun with the epitome of freedom and fomented widespread distrust against government—if not armed insurrection—emerged after staging a hostile leadership coup.

It is hard to believe that the NRA was committed to gun-control laws for most of the 20th century—helping to write most of the federal laws restricting gun use until the 1980s.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the NRA’s leaders helped write and lobby for the first federal gun control laws - the very kinds of laws that the post-1977 NRA labels as the height of tyranny.

The post-1977 NRA’s fabricated but escalating view of the Second Amendment was ridiculed by former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger—a conservative appointed by President Richard Nixon - in a PBS Newshour interview in 1991, where he called it “one of the greatest pieces of fraud - I repeat the word ‘fraud’- on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Burger would not have imagined that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008—13 years after he died—led by libertarian activist Justice Antonin Scalia—would enshrine that “fraud” into the highest echelon of American law by decreeing that the Second Amendment included the right to own a gun for self-protection in one’s home.

The full article is available here

Supply Side Economics Hasn't Worked As Promised

Unfortunate Trending

Authoritarian Politics in the age of Social Illiteracy - Henry Giroux at Tikkun

"The emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations." - Chris Hedges

Our cultural illiteracy is our inability to act from a position of thoughtfulness, informed judgment, and critical agency. It is a social formation that extends from the mainstream broadcast media and Internet to a print culture, all of which embrace the spectacle of violence, legitimate opinions over facts, and revel in a celebrity and consumer culture of ignorance and theatrics.

Literacy is now regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data, and science is confused with pseudo-science. Thinking is now regarded as an act of stupidity, and ignorance a virtue.

Chris Hedges is right in stating that “the emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations that saturate the landscape with manipulated images and the idiom of mass culture.”

Words such as love, trust, freedom, responsibility, and choice have been deformed by a market logic that narrows their meaning to either a relationship to a commodity or a reductive notion of self-interest.

We don’t love each other, we love our new car. Freedom now means removing one’s self from any sense of social responsibility so one can retreat into privatized orbits of self-indulgence.

This has been a willful practice and goal used to actively depoliticize people and make them complicit with the forces that impose misery and suffering upon their lives.

The full article is available here

Album Review: Bob Mould - Patch The Sky - AV Club

Bob Mould is undeniably in the midst of a ferocious late-career tear. 

Bob Mould might have been having a self-deprecating chuckle at himself when he named his 2012 record Silver Age, but the alternative-rock torchbearer is undeniably in the midst of a ferocious late-career tear.

Having explored subtler, more experimental musical terrain through most of the 2000s, his recent run alongside drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy has been nothing short of pure guitar-rock TNT.

At 55, Mould has come full circle, returning to his love for massively melodic alt-punk, and his music continues to undercut his age by a sizable margin.

His third record in almost as many years employs the same muscular sonic approach of Silver Age and 2014’s Beauty And Ruin, but it also doubles down on the emotional angst. In true Bob Mould fashion, the record’s most kinetic moments come when sound and subject matter crash head-on. When he contemplates the end of the world on “The End Of Things,” Narducy and Wurster are there to give noisy support to his vision. The same goes for the riff-heavy “Daddy’s Favorite” and the sub-two-minute screamer “Hands Are Tied.”

More than 35 years into the game, Mould is still hard at work on the tense, dynamic soundscapes some would argue he perfected long ago. But it’s his refusal to rest on his laurels that still makes his songs worth the listen. It’s fair to wonder how many more runs through the alternative-rock mill one guy will get, but if Patch The Sky is any indication, Mould’s still a long way away from being on the clock.

The full article is available here

Not In Trump’s List Of Charitable Giving: Own Personal Cash - Washington Post

His giving appears narrowly tied to his business and, now, his political interests.  

Since the first day of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has said that he gave more than $102 million to charity in the past five years.

To back up that claim, Trump’s campaign compiled a list of his contributions — 4,844 of them, filling 93 pages.  But, in that massive list, one thing was missing.

Not a single one of those donations was actually a personal gift of Trump’s own money.

Many of the gifts on the list came from the charity that bears his name, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which didn’t receive a personal check from Trump from 2009 through 2014, according to the most recent public tax filings. Its work is largely funded by others, although Trump decides where the gifts go.

His giving appears narrowly tied to his business and, now, his political interests.  

His foundation, for example, frequently gave money to groups that paid to use Trump’s facilities, and it donated to conservatives who could help promote Trump’s rise in the Republican Party. 

The foundation’s second-biggest donation described on the campaign’s list went to the charity of a man who had settled a lawsuit with one of Trump’s golf courses after being denied a hole-in-one prize.

The full article is available here

Some Perspective On Islamic Extremism - The Other 98%

Some History on Nominating Justices In Election Year

Similar SJC Appointment Situation in 1988

A Mob = Insecurity Shouting To Cover Fears - Parker Palmer

Congress Honors Selma Marchers, Won't Restore Voting Rights Act - Southern Poverty Law Center

Debunking Voter Fraud Myth - Southern Poverty Law Center

It’s the year 2016!! How can someone like Donald Trump be gaining the support of so many people?!? - Jeff Wiersma

This is the $1 million question lately, isn’t it?

We’ve progressed as a society beyond some dark chapters in our history; periods of virulent of xenophobia, nativism, segregation, and the hatred and violence of the KKK.

Yet, how is possible that in the year 2016, someone like Donald Trump, who has refused to disavow the support of White Supremacists and has no problem being associated with quotes by Fascist dictators, be winning presidential primaries?!?

This is in addition to his vile misogyny towards Fox News reporter Megan Kelly, his mocking of a man with disabilities, his racist characterization of Mexican immigrants and Latin American refugees, and all kinds of other manifestations of demagoguery and fear-mongering.

In her 2012 book Christianity After Religion, author Diana Butler Bass nicely summed up how eras of awakening and progress can swing culture in two different directions; in one direction, those who are trying to move into the future and in the other, a counter-awakening backlash of people who are very afraid and are trying to reinstate what they knew in the past.

“The world is currently in the throes an awakening; a larger cultural event where the whole of a society or group of people become changed, transformed, reoriented toward something new. 

For an awakening to happen, old institutions have to go away. I think you can look at the first decade of the 21st century and see that there has been a massive failure of religious, social and governmental institutions. 

When you have this kind of institutional collapse and large groups of people who are demanding a different kind of society and moving out, taking risks toward an unknown future—that’s actually going to terrify a large number of people who are happy with the way things have been. 

On one hand, you get movement toward the future, with people taking risks; you get people who are willing to engage new ideas. On the other hand, you get a counter-awakening movement; you get people who are very afraid and are trying to reinstate what they knew in the past. 

I think that both of these parts of the pattern of awakening are clearly visible in our culture. When I see people stepping outside of the accepted boundaries, and then I see the people, who are what I would call “the old lights,” I think, ‘Well, that’s a pretty typical pattern in the midst of cultural change.’ It helps me to say, ‘Okay, this is really where we are. We can expect this kind of counter-movement.’ 

There’s a reason for the phrase, ‘It’s darkest before the dawn.’ So often in American history the greatest movements toward social justice and greater democracy only happened in the wake of the very dark chapters in history that preceded them. 

In American history you get, at the very same time, the unfolding of the progressive movement and the strongest expression of the Ku Klux Klan at the beginning of the 20th century. What we know 100 years later is that the progressive movement actually won in that era. People turned around and said, ‘We don’t want to go there. That’s really bad.’ Sure enough, counter-movements ebbed away and [Progressivism] became the dominant story of American culture.

I’m hoping we’re in a moment of that kind, and I hope we get there quickly, because I don’t like it when people get hurt. That’s what happens with these backlash movements. They can express themselves in violence. And that kind of violence also does harm to the people who are in the mode of the fearful—it’s a devastating cultural moment."

Bernie's Ideas Are Actually Quite Normal - Benjamin L Corey at Patheos

I believe a solid portion of the population is waking up to the reality that the hyper-individualistic system we were born into is actually what’s dangerous and extreme.

I can’t help but comment on the phenomenon of Bernie Sanders in American culture.

Some people love him, and others appear outright frightened by his ideas.

I think what most interests me however, is the misconception that Bernie Sanders and his ideas are somehow radical or extreme. There’s nothing radical or extreme about these kinds of ideas in America today.

A wide range of Americans share Bernie Sanders’ concerns and his ideas, without finding them radical or extreme. In fact, I believe a solid portion of the population is waking up to the reality that the hyper-individualistic system we were born into is actually what’s dangerous and extreme.

And more than being dangerous and extreme, I believe the average person is beginning to view the current system as being fundamentally unfair.

When I listen to the ideas of Senator Sanders, I find less and less of his ideas to be radical. Instead, his ideas seem to represent the hopes and concerns of most of the people I know in real life.

The full article is available here