Let me start by saying no one—for or against—is in favor of abortion. Subjecting a woman and her partner to outside scrutiny from what is the most anguished-filled decision of their lives, is no business of any of ours to decide for any woman. One of the few tenets left...
Socialism
From that moment in November of 1969, when former President Richard Nixon asked for a “silent majority” to support his ‘Vietnamization’ effort, utilizing the peace with honor strategy; America’s shotgun wedding to the GOP marriage of silent loyalty and moral obedience was consummated. Between the Nixon and Reagan administrations, Republicans...
Florida bans its schools from teaching critical race theory On Thursday, Florida’s State Board of Education unanimously voted in favor of an amendment banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools throughout the state. The theory, according to PolitiFact, is a collection of ideas about systemic bias and privilege...
Have you ever asked yourself, why are so many GOP political theories race and gender-based? The latest is that voter ballots in Arizona were smuggled in from China. The GOP has decided the best way to expose this absurd idea is to exploit a silly stereotype and check the ballots...
The raison d'être of the Republican Party for much of the past 100 years has been to slam the brakes on anything that would make the poor and middle class feel more secure and prosperous. Look at the list of popular government programs and initiatives they’ve decried as “socialism”: unemployment insurance, Social Security,...
A little over a year ago, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham postured that helping out hungry Americans would make them lazy. “Very few people would choose work over unemployment benefits that provided moderately more money,” said Graham. Not only was this an attack on those in need but their work ethic...
Peak cynicism has arrived. Tucker Carlson pimps a version of the nanny-state with more police confrontations because he thinks cops should stop children from wearing masks by enforcing child abuse laws. Apparently making a child wear a mask is like punching them in the face or the equivalent of exhibitionism....
“As in the Times Op-Ed from which the book originated, the title refers to the results of studies conducted in Germany from the mid-nineteen-eighties onward, which reported, among other intriguing findings, that eighty per cent of East German women always experienced orgasm during sex, compared to sixty-three per cent of...
Like Martin Luther objecting to Pope Leo X selling indulgences to raise money for a variety of excesses, the environmental costs of carbon markets far exceed the benefits. Austerity would have denied us Renaissance art which is less at risk in an age of non-fungible tokens. Today the consequences for the planet...
It always seemed absurd to me that hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens have no effective representation in Congress. And I’m not just talking about Alabamans. But to hear some conservatives tell it, that’s as it should be because, you know, D.C. doesn’t have a car dealership. And they already make their...
Twitter is dragging Jonathan Turley because of attributing a Rousseau quote to the Reign of Terror, but more likely because they mistook him for Jeffrey Toobin. That’s the nature of conservative culture war, making class warfare a struggle more transcendent and less applicable in times of right-wing insurrection. x Since philosopher Jean...
In 2008 when former President Obama was thrust into one of the biggest financial messes since the depression of 1929, his stated goal was to get us out of the ditch. With jobs being lost by some accounts at a rate of 800,000 per month and people wondering where and when...
No one wants to hear about GameStop(gate) even if it’s not really a scandal or a flaw in capitalism. Slavoj “we must end capitalism but won't” Žižek on GameStop is like imposing a libidinal economy on Sudetenland when you take it over. Was the appeasement good for you too? There’s a market...
The best explanation of short selling (as it applies to GameStop) that I've read pic.twitter.com/o9ZL5HqsKf — John M. Cunningham (@jmcunning) January 28, 2021 1/2Short selling means borrowing shares and immediately selling them. When the price goes down, they buy them back for cents and return them to the lender. This...
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice...
They are beyond tired, almost beyond human endurance, yet they still go to work. Please show that you care where you can: Don’t travel. Don’t congregate. Wear a mask. Keep your distance. Wash your hands. Get vaccinated as soon as you are able. These are small sacrifices to make, If...
The Jewish Action group Twitter account, shared an image of Senator Kelly Loeffler with a former leader of the KKK. Chester Doles, a fourth-generation Klansman, now leads the National Alliance and Hammerskins. He introduced the nation to the American Patriots USA in 2019. International Business Times writes: Kelly Loeffler claims she had...
Loeffler-Warnock debate for US Senate seat from Georgia. x Watch Sen. Loeffler's non-answer to the question: “Do you believe the [presidential] election was rigged?” pic.twitter.com/rAc7iwMvhj— The Recount (@therecount) December 7, 2020 Rev. Warnock: “You shouldn't use the people's seat to enrich yourself — you ought to use the people's seat...
It’s hard to argue that any citizens have been more targeted under the Trump administration than those living in Democratic-led states, which was by Donald Trump’s own vindictive design. Whether it was singling them out for punishment with tax legislation, stealing their medical supplies, holding out disaster relief, or even attacking their...
This is a view from abroad as I have been an expat since the middle of the second term of W.J. Clinton. I am not a Democrat, I am middle of the road European Left and Bernie still makes sense to me. The Republicans have been sprinting to the right...
Trumpist anti-certifying efforts for the remaining states seem a fools’ errand but Trump and Giuliani seem to be the best fools for it. Regardless, they are chasing some version of an apocalyptic conclusion. x And Bannon talking about it openly on his insane Alex Jones-level podcast. — S.V. Dáte (@svdate) November 18,...
Yeah, don’t expect it to make sense. Trump is a quart of strawberries shy of a full Queeg right about now. x In this tweet, the president argues that the election was the most secure election ever except for the fact that it was rigged. pic.twitter.com/SfqavDUEFA— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November...
Look, I get it—that half the Republican electorate is either unbalanced, selfish or so ill-informed that Trump looked like a reasonable pick; but why do some Democrats insist on sleeping with (sorry Joe) the enemy? Almost immediately this weekend, the winners fell for the media's attempt to sow dissension. Over...
I have not gotten much work done this week. I have at least for now suspended work on my dissertation, and it was only yesterday that I again began correcting student papers (although I have stayed current on email correspondence with students and parents). I have two more classes (out...
Rick Santorum on CNN [paraphrasing mine] “If the Democrats want to bring the country together they should let the Republican senatorial candidates in Georgia win, if not there will be trouble.” Yep, you got it, we just forget the whole 8 years of Obama where all they did was obstruct,...
This story supports a group reading of Karl Marx’s Capital Vol 1. This covers chapters 11-14. Set against the backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry, Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley caused a sensation when it was published in 1849 – under the pseudonym ‘Currer Bell’. Robert Moore is...
Larry Kudlow continues the underlying theme of Trumpian nihilism and its trickle-down contagion of pixie dust and pseudoscience. Trump continues to see his numbers decline as his campaign put him on a superspreader rally schedule, attempting to repeat his 2016 victory of 155,000 votes in swing states while trailing 3 million...
I try to keep out of American politics as I have been an expat for over half my life [passed that milestone last month] and just don't understand it anymore. I haven’t written anything anywhere for more than three years on any subject to do with the US. However, that...
Condescending or patronizing, how we forget until people get talked over. Tupac Shakur didn’t show up last night in Utah for the VP debate, but the truth got busted with a cap in its posterior. x Since the debate, Trump and his allies have called Kamala “unlikeable,” “this monster,” “an...
Trump still has it and is contagious. He did his contagion parade outside the hospital to wave to supporters because he was “bored” but wanted to expose his Secret Service detail to COVID-19. x Instead they’ll send him to the White House tomorrow where he has control of the most...
Fear is a core psychological and biological emotion that often overrules logic. That’s according to Arash Javanbakht, a neuroscientist who specializes in trauma. Fear is one of our most intimate feelings, which is why it can be so easily abused in tribal politics. The Republican Party learned this decades ago, and...
“(T)erminating labour and share markets, along with the type of commercial banking taken for granted today, is a prerequisite for a post-capitalist society with functioning markets, authentic democracy and personal liberty.” Left accelerationism seems tempting in a time when markets, democracy, and liberty are in peril. but Yanis Varoufakis is hinting...
Marine props, naturalized citizen props, and tonight it featured a guy charged with insider trading, who also claims that Trump, unlike Bill Clinton, is “the first Black president”. The GOP keeps thinking that if they refer to the pandemic in the past tense, that 180,000 deaths won’t matter as much. ...
Thematically there will be the same contradictory elements: freedom of religion only for specific religions, carnage is here because it’s been manufactured, the stock market is the economy, the other side is subversive even as we’re trying to pervert the rule of law and sabotage the election. And mainly, ignore...
“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge,” and Donald Trump’s creativity, however limited, remains confined to cowardly name-calling. “Slow Joe” and “Phony Kamala” are weak sauce. x Trump only took questions from friendly reporters during today's short press conference. He offered up a few more smears of Kamala...
If Donald Trump is allowed to use the White House Rose Garden to accept the nomination of the Republican Party, should not Jo Jorgensen, candidate for the Libertarian Party, have that same opportunity? The White House is public property not just Trump’s prop. Howie Hawkins of the Green Party and...
Trump claims a Joe Biden presidency would cause stock gains to ‘disintegrate and disappear‘. We’re already there, no thanks to an incompetent pandemic policy, or lack of one. #TrumpHasNoPlan Where’s that health plan he promised he’d sign by today. Ultimately Trump doesn’t care, and in some ways it expresses the kind of aesthetic...
This week I attended (remotely) the Rethinking Economics Festival and encountered challenging pluralist discourses like a platform economy (noting that most of such work is populated by women), decolonizing the Eurocentric position in disciplines, or “fully-automated luxury communism”. I thought I’d share some resource items and make a few observations....