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Showing posts from 2016

Mission Accomplished: Mike Pence Made An Unfit Presidential Nominee Look Better

Listening to the pundits this morning, the big question following last night’s highly entertaining first and only vice-presidential debate is, “Did Indiana Governor, Mike Pence, help Donald Trump’s candidacy by making him look better.”   What a bizarre question to ask.   The question should not be whether Pence helped the person at the top of the Republican ticket look better, checking perhaps, any concerns about Trump’s fitness to serve as President.   The point of a vice-presidential debate is to introduce the number two person on the ticket and hopefully give the American people confidence that person is capable of being the President if called upon.   Clearly, more was at stake last night than the usual (especially, given how easily Hillary Clinton demolished Trump at the first debate).   Trump supporters (and Clinton haters, but Trump detractors throughout the political and business “elite” establishment) had to have let out a collective sigh of relief following last night’s

The Police Are A Domestic Military Force That No Longer Simply Serves And Protects

Like many people, I was enraged and glued to the television for several days watching thousands of people across the country peacefully protest the lynchings of two black men by police officers – Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. I was shocked and disheartened to hear that a mentally disturbed shooter, filled with anger and hatred of white police officers, army reservist Micah Xavier Johnson, opened fire on police at a peaceful demonstration under the banner of Black Lives Matter in Dallas, Texas. My jaw dropped and I yelled out loud “what the fuck,” when I heard the chief of the Dallas police department describe at a press conference how negotiations with a pinned down Johnson in a garage where going no where and in order to put no other officers or civilians in harms way that they had decided to use a C-4 plastic explosive attached to a robot to kill the suspect in the Dallas ambush. The police chief, David Brown, somberly described it as their “r

Trump Is Unfit To Serve But He May Dog Whistle His Way Into The White House

Donald Trump is easily the most unfit person to be the presumptive nominee for president for a major political party in the United States since the two-party system emerged in the mid-1800s. I could stop there. But I won’t. Trump is a white supremacist and a xenophobic nativists. In a supposedly post-racial and culturally tolerant society, these two “character flaws” should eliminate you from serious consideration to become president. However, to many of his supporters who feel like they have been forced to keep silent about issues involving race and ethnicity due to political correctness (Trump, on the other hand, is a godsend because he “tells it like it is”), and Republican Party officeholders such as, Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, who crave control of the Congress and the White House to advance their reactionary agenda, being a racist and anti-immigrant are not disqualifiers. A few more things. Trump also fails to make sens

The 1843 Petition: Gaining Religious Freedom for Connecticut Jews (May 2...

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A panel really interesting panel discussion I participated on.

Facing The Crushing Weight Of Having To Share The Nation, Some Would Cling To The Past And Vote For Donald Trump

Political pundits on the left and the right have opined quite a bit over the last few months about why Donald Trump has so easily and effectively captured the hearts and minds – and votes – of so many Republican primary and caucus participants. Trump is well on his way to securing the delegates he will need to win the Republican nomination. The so-called Republican “establishment” is aghast at the thought of Donald Trump winning the party’s nomination, and even worse to some, the possibility that he may actually win the presidency and become the leader of their political party. Several “High Priests” of the right-wing punditry class, such as Washington Pos t columnist and Libertarian, George Will, have been vocal critics of Donald Trump for a number of years. Back in 2012, during an appearance on ABC news program, This Week , Will criticized then Republican Party presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, for hosting a fundraising event with Trump. “I do not understand the cost benefit

A Real Good Reason To Not Vote A Businessman Into The White House

Many Americans (okay, mostly white Americans who vote Republican) say we need a President who will run the country like a business - I think this is because most of them don't understand how the economy really works. I recently read an article, "Masters of the Universe but Slaves of the Market: Bankers and the Great Financial Meltdown" by Stephen Bell and Andrew Hindmoor, in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, and I think I'm finally beginning to wrap my mind around how starting in the 1980s, the privileging of the financial sector over the real economy almost collapsed global capitalism if it hadn't been for government intervention to save Capitalists from themselves. Capitalists unleashed is dangerous for America! One of the most popular explanations of the banking crises of 2007-08 (you would have heard this one a lot if you watched Fox News during the crisis), was due to imprudent mortgage lending to black and brown people

Restoring White America's Greatness Donald Trump's Way

Donald Trump is a megalomaniac and a demagogue, but he is also a highly skilled and very effective propagandist. Trump is also a racist and a xenophobe. Although not in words, but certainly in spirit, Donald Trump’s run for the Republican nomination for President of the United States reminds me of the days when much of white America openly approved of white supremacists, ultra-nationalists, xenophobes, and misogynists, having total control over the nation’s key political, economic and cultural institutions. There was a time when white supremacists such as Mississippi Senators, Theodore G. Bilbo and James Eastland, slithered across the floors of Congress for decades and did everything in their power to block any legislative efforts designed to secure for black people the same civil and political rights guaranteed to white Americans by the U.S. Constitution. Bilbo, Eastland and other leading public officials of that era who were cut from the same cloth – primarily, though not exc