yurbud
yurbud's JournalTOON: Tom Tomorrow on Trump's cabinet lovefest
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/6/19/1672128/-Cartoon-The-honest-cabinet
Why acts like this shooter's are not just wrong but counter-productive & stupid
Assuming this guy had any kind of political motive, which is still up in the air.
Early on in the War on Terror, I wondered what the commies thought about terrorism, and stumbled across this quote by Trotsky. By citing it here, I imply to agreement with any other communist thought. It was just ironic that one of our enemies nailed this idea.
Before I read it, I was mystified by terrorism since if it was committed on the perpetrator's enemy's home turf, it would galvanize and unite the enemy's people who might otherwise have pockets sympathetic to their cause.
After reading this, these lone wolf acts seem stupid in terms of the effect on the perpetrator's side too:
"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1911/11/tia09.htm
When will someone in Congress start making noise about Trump's organized crime connections?
That part of it would be easier for the public to understand, especially the less educated, and still have the Russian connection.
The problem with playing the Russian government angle by itself is it could be spun as jumping the gun on diplomacy.
Obviously, asking for help to change the outcome of the election is worse than that, but low information voters don't tend to listen or read beyond the headline or tweet.
Being mobbed up is tougher to talk your way out of.
Gates Foundation failures show philanthropists shouldnt be setting America's public school agenda
This is an LA Times editorial.
Can the Democrats finally admit that letting billionaires dictate education policy ends up wasting taxpayer dollars and harms our kids?
Can't the Democratic Party pick at least a few areas like education for one, where donors don't pay set policy and the rest of suffer the consequences of their whims?
If they did so, they might win back the full enthusiastic support of teachers and parents of school age kids.
***
The Gates Foundation strongly supported the proposed Common Core curriculum standards, helping to bankroll not just their development, but the political effort to have them quickly adopted and implemented by states. Here, Desmond-Hellmann wrote in her May letter, the foundation also stumbled. The too-quick introduction of Common Core, and attempts in many states to hold schools and teachers immediately accountable for a very different form of teaching, led to a public backlash.
***
But the Gates Foundation has spent so much money more than $3 billion since 1999 that it took on an unhealthy amount of power in the setting of education policy. Former foundation staff members ended up in high positions in the U.S. Department of Education and, in the case of John Deasy, at the head of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The foundations teacher-evaluation push led to an overemphasis on counting student test scores as a major portion of teachers performance ratings even though Gates himself eventually warned against moving too hastily or carelessly in that direction. Now several of the states that quickly embraced that method of evaluating teachers are backing away from it.
Philanthropists are not generally education experts, and even if they hire scholars and experts, public officials shouldnt be allowing them to set the policy agenda for the nations public schools. The Gates experience teaches once again that educational silver bullets are in short supply and that some educational trends live only a little longer than mayflies.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gates-education-20160601-snap-story.html
Poll: Mass Media Has Duped Democrats Into Believing Russia Hacked Voting Machines
59% of Democrats believe Russia hacked vote totals in the US to give the election to Donald Trump though no credible evidence of that has been given.
Much like the 70% of Americans who believed Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 even though Bush and most of the media were careful to never say this directly.
When Democrats say "Russia hacked our election" and low info voters don't dig into it, it sure sounds like they mean Russia hacked the vote doesn't it?
Is Trump financially compromised by his financial ties to the Russian mob and maybe even Russian government? Very likely.
Did Russia hacked some or all of the Democratic emails? Maybe (I'm willing to believe once intel agencies show their evidence).
Did Trump ASK Russia to hack emails? Definitely.
Should that be enough to get him impeached? Definitely.
So why mislead people?
What is the end game here?
Russia gave up communism decades ago. Whatever their sins, we've got allies who have done and are even doing the same or worse.
Who is demanding escalating tensions with Russia to the brink of war and probably farther?
How the hell will average Americans benefit from that?
And if that doesn't bother you, how do Democrats expect to win elections based on brinksmanship with a nuclear armed power when Hillary lost to Obama in 2008 because he was perceived as the more anti-war candidate?
...These corporate media outlets fell all over themselves last week in a mad scramble to make sure that everyone in America felt dirty and ashamed if they took any interest in the Seth Rich case, but they have expended exactly zero energy correcting an outrageous, xenophobia-inducing fact-free conspiracy theory that they themselves helped promulgate, and which is far more widespread than interest in the Seth Rich case has ever been. This proves beyond a doubt that the false belief that Russia literally hacked Americas voting system has been intentionally inflicted upon the public by the mass media propaganda machine.
In late 2003, half a year after US and coalition forces invaded Iraq, a poll by USA Today found that 70 percent of Americans still believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. They didnt believe this because the mass media was directly saying Saddam did 9/11; they would have lost the publics trust if theyd directly promulgated such an outrageous falsehood. The public subscribed to this false belief because corporate media reporters consistently mentioned the September 11 terrorist attacks in the same breath as they mentioned the falsified intelligence reports stating that the Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction and intended to facilitate their use on American soil. This misperception successfully manufactured public support for a regime change invasion that claimed the lives of a million innocent Iraqis.
In exactly the same way, reports and headlines marrying the words election and hacking have deliberately created this misperception among liberal Americans. Establishment politicians have been using their mass media-aided platforms to advance this false narrative as well, with corporate Democrats like Cory Booker openly claiming that Russia directly undermined the ability of Americans to express their opinions at the polls, as in this Facebook video which received over a million views...
In order to escalate tensions with a nuclear superpower for nothing but geopolitical power that benefits no one other than a few plutocrats, Americas power establishment needs to manufacture the consent of the governed. Without that consent, theyd be dealing with 320 million angry, heavily-armed Americans whove got a problem with the way their government is risking their lives by playing nuclear brinkmanship with NATO troop amassment long the Russian border and a needless military presence in Syria.
Without the mass media propaganda machine, it would never in a million years occur to any American that any of this is normal. It would never occur to normal Americans that they should worry about some icy potato patch on the other side of the planet unless the media was constantly telling them its attacking their democracy. It would never occur to normal Americans that their government should be involving itself in the affairs of other nations while they themselves face growing poverty and go without healthcare. The insane behaviors of the US oligarchs would never be consented to without the constant assurance of the oligarch-owned media conglomerates that this is all a perfectly normal and healthy way to go about life.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/poll-mass-media-has-duped-democrats-into-believing-russia-hacked-voting-machines-e0cd0e7e9d17
Whenever GOP brings up tax cut for the rich, ask what rich have to give up at current rate or...
how past generations of the wealthy managed to survive and even thrive when the rate was much higher.
Paging Rahm: House Dems revive 2006 playbook for 2018
Didn't Chuck Schumer say something about going after moderates in the suburbs before the 2016 election?
Also, wasn't 2006 the first election cycle with Howard Dean as party chair?
I do like the rubber stamp bit.
Do people here think Rahm is the direction Democrats need to go?
Leading the DCCC that year, Emanuel put an early focus on raising money, decrying the fact that Republicans consistently outraised House Democrats. Emanuel that cycle emphasized recruiting centrists who may have broken with Democratic Party orthodoxy on abortion in conservative districts where his party usually wasnt competitive.
And when it came time to hammer incumbent GOP members of Congress, Emanuel directed his committee to focus on Republicans ethical problems and their close ties to Bush. One tactic was to name Republicans the rubber stamp of the week, a move yoking them to their unpopular president. Thats now being emulated by Organizing for Action the political group spawned by Barack Obamas campaigns as it targets Republican lawmakers as rubber-stamp reps for their votes in line with Trumps positions.
Emanuel has been in touch regularly with Democratic leaders in Washington, holding frequent strategy phone calls with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/22/democrats-midterm-elections-238659
U.S. senators seek LIFETIME BAN on ex-Congress members lobbying
The only negative I see to this bill is we might have trouble finding ONE candidate in either party to run for each seat if it's enacted.
Maybe Trump would even sign because he wouldn't understand what it's about, "Why would someone want to take a job working as a lobbyist for companies they already own?"
Republican Senator Cory Gardner with Democratic Senators Michael Bennet and Al Franken in introducing the Senate legislation to stop the lucrative "revolving door" practice that has drawn the ire of watchdog groups for decades.
"By banning members of Congress from lobbying when they leave Capitol Hill, we can begin to restore confidence in our national politics," Gardner said in a statement.
***
The Center for Responsive Politics has noted that former members often score large-salaried lobbying jobs, sometimes of $1 million or more.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-lobbying-idUSKCN18E33Q
What do Republicans gain by keeping Trump in power rather than Pence?
They clearly aren't going to pick up any swing votes with him in office and will be get their clocks cleaned in 2018 midterms.
If they replaced him with Pence, he would rubberstamp most if not all of the same things Trump would, it would take most of the steam out of the calls for special prosecutors and other investigations, and Pence is boring enough that it could deflate a lot of protests.
Are they just afraid of his hardcore base of low information voters? Are there some big fish donors that insist on keeping him? Is it that he is so damn stupid, they can get him to do reckless things and not realize how he could end up paying for it himself?
What is their calculus that makes keeping Trump look like a good idea?
Profile Information
Member since: Sun Jul 11, 2004, 07:58 PMNumber of posts: 39,405