guillaumeb

guillaumeb's Journal

February 21, 2017

If Donald Trump had a theme song, I would pick:

Can you suggest another?

February 18, 2017

Teaching Tolerance awards fellowships for slavery education project

From the brief article:

In 2015, a McGraw-Hill Education geography textbook came under fire for describing enslaved Africans as “workers.” Months later, Scholastic Inc. was forced to pull a children’s book depicting slaves as happy and eager to please their owners. Many K-12 educators also are not aware of the dramatic changes in scholarship about slavery published in the last two decades.

https://www.splcenter.org/news/2017/02/13/teaching-tolerance-awards-fellowships-slavery-education-project

Part of the reason that so many Americans are so unaware of their own history is that textbooks are generally written to fit the Texas market for schoolbooks. And given how the GOP is constantly rewriting history, is it any wonder that many Americans, especially conservatives, are so profoundly ignorant of actual US history?

February 18, 2017

House Democratic Leadership May Lose 2018 Opportunity

From the ending of the article:

Democrats will win if they challenge big agri-corporations who threaten family farms in rural areas like South Dakota, challenge the pharmaceutical industry in areas with aging populations like New Hampshire, challenge big banks in areas with high foreclosures like Nevada, challenge Big Oil in places where clean energy is key to economic growth like New Mexico, and challenge the Big Telecom monopolies that refuse to improve horrible Internet and phone service in communities within every state. And they must go on offense with a vision of high-paying jobs, a strong social safety net, and an economy where workers get a bigger piece of the pie.

Democrats can win back the House in 2018 if the newly-engaged people who are flooding protests and town-hall meetings around the nation feel inspired enough by Democrats to march to the polls. But the people in the streets want to vote for heroes. And heroes fight villains.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/02/15/house-democratic-leadership-may-lose-2018-opportunity

A true 50 state strategy that should be embraced by the Democratic Party.

February 18, 2017

Jason Chaffetz Called Out by Salt Lake City Tribune For Refusing to Investigate Trump

From the article:

In an editorial, the paper called on Chaffetz to “investigate, not emulate, the president” because of false claims Chaffetz made about “ringers” in his town hall audience, all too eerily similar to Trump’s cries of voter fraud for the editors:
“Chaffetz should realize soon, if he hasn’t already, that the president hasn’t just plowed this ground, he has already salted the fields for anyone who may come after. This crew — dubbed the Prevarication Administration by Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan — has helped to cure the national media of any hesitation it may have had and to start calling out untruths told by high government officials.”

The GOP is increasingly being put on the spot by actual voters. Rather than attempting to discredit the questioners, the GOP must choose between being a real political party or being a lobbying group.

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/02/15/jason-chaffetz-called-salt-lake-city-tribune-refusing-investigate-trump.html

February 18, 2017

This is about choice--and more (Article about Planned Parenthood)

From the article:

In hundreds of cities across the country, supporters of women's right to abortion counterprotested against right-wingers who called for a day of action on February 11 to gather at clinics and demand that the federal government defund Planned Parenthood. Here, we republish a speech by Marie Coyle, who was among those protesting in Portland, Maine..............

We know Planned Parenthood provides necessary health services to millions of people every year, and that many rely on their sliding-scale fees. We know that reproductive health care is essential and that people have always needed, and will continue to need, abortions.
If these are the facts, how can Planned Parenthood still be under attack? Why are we still here fighting the same fight?

The answer is that as long as our world is build around profit and greed, instead of human need, we will continue to fight tooth and nail for access to all of our basic needs--including health care.

https://socialistworker.org/2017/02/15/this-is-about-choice-and-more

February 17, 2017

Paul Krugman Says Trump is a Horror but a Horror Made Possible by GOP Corruption

From the article:

In a series of tweets, Paul Krugman tackled Republican reluctance to hold Trump accountable for the Flynn scandal, explaining that while “Trump is terrible” his is a “horror made possible by GOP corruption and lack of conscience.”
Obviously, a Republican-controlled Congress sympathetic to Trump’s pro-Wall Street and corporate policies will be willing to overlook much to get what they want, even treason, for as Krugman says, “Treason in the defense of tax cuts is no vice” for Republicans

.

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/02/14/paul-krugman-trump-horror-possible-gop-corruption.html

And it is not just GOP Congress members, it is GOP voters who are willing to overlook the treason. The same GOP politicians and voters who were so obsessed with emails and Benghazi are willing to ignore actual treason as long as the rich can get a little bit richer.

February 16, 2017

In defense of Susan Sarandon, and by extension Jill Stein et. al. ?

Numerous posts have talked about so-called limousine liberals like Sarandon and Stein and their positions regarding Donald Trump being President. One can also read numerous posts at JPR asserting much the same thing.

But if we look at the position that Trump is somehow, on some level, preferable to Clinton, how can we approach that in a positive way? How can a positive be made out of an apparent huge negative?

First, I believe any argument must concede that the Trump Presidency, no matter how long it endures, will be a negative for the bottom 90% of Americans. GOP spin and framing aside, Trump is a tool of the 1% just as the GOP is a tool, and that tool will not be used to build, but to destroy.

But if there is any positive that has occurred so far, it is that many Americans are organizing, and protesting, and calling their respective Congress members to register their opposition to the GOP agenda. So this activity is a positive, but only if it represents a new normal for Americans. Far too many Americans only pay attention to politics after Labor Day in Presidential election years.

And if there was any negative to the Obama Presidency, it was that obviously some Democrats saw the election of Barack Obama as somehow solving things. As if the election of one person could be the savior, the solution. And some Democrats obviously felt that electing President Obama was enough because these deluded Democrats did not bother to vote in the crucial 2010 elections.

And the result of this Democratic non-vote, this complacency by Democrats, was that the GOP took control of the House of Representatives. And the result of the new GOP House Majority was that President Obama faced massive House obstruction from 2010
through 2016.

In 2012, again Democrats were motivated to vote, but 2014 saw a repeat of the 2010 complacency as the GOP took the Senate.

So if Trump's election can motivate Democratic voters to wake up and get active, Trump might just have done the Democrats a favor for 2018 and the crucial 2020 Presidential election that will also affect the 2020 Census redistricting. Democrats must realize that, arguments about demographics aside, people actually have to vote and pressure their Congress members all of the time.

And this does not apply to the hyper-aware and well informed DU community. The obsession with politics here is evident. But DU members must preach the gospel of political awareness and involvement to our friends and family and neighbors.

February 10, 2017

In the eyes of white nationalists, Trump will preserve white identity

From the article:

“President Trump is off to an amazing start, God bless him for it!” former Klansman David Duke wrote in one tweet on Jan. 25. “We simply want our own country and our own society. That's in no way exploitative. We want our own society, our own nation,” he wrote in another that day.

So KKK member David Duke only wants "our own nation". But the nation he wants committed genocide to cleanse the country of the First Peoples, and his nation was built by black slave labor. The country was built on exploitation.

The praise for the administration’s actions also demonstrates how Trump’s campaign rhetoric energized white nationalist thinkers who have waited decades for a moment of political legitimacy, and throws doubt on the president’s disavowal of the radical right.

While much of Trump's rhetoric is merely slogans to appease his deplorably deceived racists, Trump is a racist.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/02/07/eyes-white-nationalists-trump-will-preserve-white-identity

February 4, 2017

PTSD and President Trump

Two weeks into the Trump reign of error, I have noticed that many DUers are suffering from PTSD. Post Truth Distress Disorder.

Symptoms vary. PTSD may present as a compulsion to avoid all political reporting, but it can also manifest as compulsive watching and reading.

As someone who could have attended medical school and graduated with a degree, I recommend that DUers who show PTSD tendencies should immediately seek out humor sites as a partial antidote to Trump induced PTSD.

*****************************************************************
On a serious note, as a Union Representative for over 32 years, I had occasion to represent too many military veterans with actual PTSD. This post is in no way meant to mock those brave veterans so afflicted. It is meant to mock Trump, CONway, and other habitual liars who use lies to divide.

After watching the correspondents dinner when Trump was roasted, the pure hatred he exhibited when he was the subject of the type of mockery that he uses against others, it is obvious that he must be mocked and humiliated.

February 4, 2017

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with a Bowling Green Massacre Survivor

This really brings home the sheer.................something that we all associate with the events that could easily have happened on that horrible day.

Thanks Obama!!

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Member since: Mon Jan 26, 2015, 06:15 PM
Number of posts: 42,641

About guillaumeb

bilingual, bipedal homo sapien

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