Matt Taibbi | We're Only Beginning to See the Consequences of the Bush-Era Assault on Civil Liberties

10 September 19

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THE URGENCY TO AVOID DESPERATION: As a community supported organization we accept life without deep-pockets. The consequence is that when fundraising drives fail bad things happen. July is a month in which we must find a way to reach our fundraising goal. Doing so will be sufficient, not doing so will lead to serious problems. A few of you are responding, thank you. We need your help. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Matt Taibbi | We're Only Beginning to See the Consequences of the Bush-Era Assault on Civil Liberties

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
Taibbi writes: "Like a number of 'War on Terror' measures, the Terrorist Screening Database's unconstitutionality was obvious from the jump."
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A Trump supporter celebrates the end of the Mueller probe in March. (photo: Michael Nigro/Pacific Press via Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock)

'Enemy of the People': Trump's War on the Media Is a Page From Nixon's Playbook
David Smith, Guardian UK
Smith writes: "War reporting has never been more dangerous, as correspondents are increasingly treated not as neutral observers but legitimate targets. Now there are signs that Donald Trump and his Republican supporters are taking a similar attitude to political journalists, casting them as enemy combatants and fair game for character assassination."
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Protesters with American Friends Service Committee protest in Washington D.C. (photo: Carl Roose/AFSC)

How We Shut Down the Nation's Largest Child Detention Center
Kristin Kumpf, YES! Magazine
Kumpf writes: "We were determined to shut down the detention center before the school year started, rallying around the cry that children belong in schools, not prison camps."
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A Liberty student prays during convocation at the university in February 2013. (photo: Norm Shafer/AP)

'Someone's Gotta Tell the Freakin' Truth': Jerry Falwell's Aides Break Their Silence
Brandon Ambrosino, Politico
Ambrosino writes: "At Liberty University, all anyone can talk about is Jerry Falwell Jr. Just not in public."
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Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX). (photo: Getty Images)

Dan Crenshaw Is Worried That Universal Background Checks Might Keep Him From Arming His Friends
Josh Israel, ThinkProgress
Excerpt: "It is unclear why he doesn't think his friends could pass background checks."

EXCERPTS:

ep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), an NRA-backed gun-rights advocate, dismissed calls for universal background checks even after a mass shooting in his own state that might have been prevented by such a law. His reasoning: he wants to be able to arm his friends.

Dan Crenshaw

✔@DanCrenshawTX

Situations like this story are why we protect the 2nd Amendment.

Side note: With universal background checks, I wouldn’t be able to let my friends borrow my handgun when they travel alone like this. We would make felons out of people just for defending themselves. https://twitter.com/abc13miya/status/1168993652150026244 …

Miya Shay

✔@ABC13Miya

Five men tried to rob a young woman this morning. They didn’t expect her to grab her handgun and fire. Today, she is unharmed, and at least one suspect is shot. Exclusive #ABC13 interview at 4:30 & 6. https://abc13.com/woman-shoots-man-who-tried-to-steal-her-purse-police/5511638/ … #Hounews

32.8K

10:43 PM - Sep 3, 2019

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Rep. Dan Crenshaw

✔@RepDanCrenshaw

The truth about universal background checks and today’s vote.

28.5K

4:22 PM - Feb 27, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

13.4K people are talking about this

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Demonstrators gathered on Sunday morning to go to the capital's General Cemetery, as part of a peace march to mark the 46th anniversary of the coup d'état. (photo: Twitter/Igualitarista)

Chile: Human Rights March Ends With Police Repression
teleSUR
Excerpt: "A march for human rights that commemorates the victims of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) every September, ended Sunday with brutal police repression and riots in Chile's capital Santiago."
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'We have more than enough money to fight the climate crisis, at home and abroad. It's just going to all the wrong places.' (photo: Noaa/AFP/Getty Images)

ALSO SEE: NOAA Staff Warned in Sept 1 Directive Against Contradicting Trump

NOAA's Chief Scientist Will Investigate Why Agency Backed Trump Over Its Experts on Dorian, Email Shows
Kayla Epstein, Andrew Freedman, Jason Samenow and Kate Harrison Belz, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's acting chief scientist said in an email to colleagues Sunday that he is investigating whether the agency's response to President Trump's Hurricane Dorian tweets constituted a violation of NOAA policies and ethics."
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Jerry Falwell's SCAM

David Gerrold

August 29 

Here's the political problem that we face with the Republican party.

Back in the 80s, there was a grifter named Jerry Falwell. He wanted to fight integration and other progress that African-American citizens had made. But the research showed that overt racism was a public relations disaster.

Falwell discovered there were two issues which would work as red-meat for Republican voters. One was abortion, the other was gay rights. Throughout the 80s and 90s and well into this century, those two issues were used as red-meat initiatives and referendums to get the conservative and reactionary base to the polls — where they would also vote in various Republican candidates. This was a very successful tactic. Even in those few cases where their initiatives were voted down, they still forced the Democrats to spend a lot of money fighting.

But the real issue for Falwell (and his backers) was holding back People of Color. So was the "war on drugs." This was a calculated plan for maintaining white supremacy. This was the real agenda of the political movement he created, "The Moral Majority." (The Moral Majority was neither.)

With the legalization of same-sex marriage and the national movement to legalize marijuana, both of those issues are no longer viable ones for what remains of the Falwell machine.

But ... the real damage is much more permanent. Because what Falwell created was the appearance of a religious justification for voting Republican. He presented himself as a Reverend and The Moral Majority justified its opposition to abortion and gay rights as a religious one. This worked very well for Falwell — and even for that senile old pustule, Pat Robertson, who declared himself a candidate for president in 1988. (He also won the Nehemiah Scudder award for Best New Attempt at Demented Tyranny.)

The reason Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the other founding fathers insisted on separation of Church and State was simple. The thirteen colonies represented several different religious beliefs — none of whom fully trusted the others. The only way to unify the colonies into a nation was to guarantee that no religion could have any kind of official status. This is why the first amendment specifically says that Congress shall make no law sanctioning any religion.

This has annoyed fundamentalists for 240 years. They insist that this is a Christian nation. And therefore that Christians are entitled to special rights and privileges. (And gay people are not.)

But Falwell's disgusting legacy is that he very much succeeded in blurring that line between Church and State. As a result, the Republican party is no longer a political party. It's a religious cult.

And that is why bipartisanship has become impossible.

If God is on your side, if you are doing God's work, if you have a mandate from the Creator of the Universe, then you don't have to compromise on anything. Because you're right and the other side is wrong. That's it. End of discussion.

It's not just plain stupid obstinacy that keeps the Republican party functioning as efficiently as a burlap condom. Because the evangelical movement (masquerading as a mad tea party) has captured control of the south, they've restructured the party's ability to govern from inept and incompetent to malignant and dangerous.) The Party Formerly Known As Republican is now indelibly hardwired that their beliefs are reality—therefore, they do not have to listen to any disagreement, let alone negotiate with those nasty lesbian socialist agents of Satan.

In fact, to the Neo-Confederate Party, negotiation is weakness. You don't compromise with evil. Blah blah blah.

So it's not just political maneuvering that keeps our Congress gridlocked--it's a political philosophy that has been perverted by religious mania.

But let's not stop there. Let's follow the money. The bullionaires (intentional misspelling), like Adelson and the Koch bros, were in this from the beginning. They found the religion angle a very convenient mechanmism for furthering their own ends. By funding this movement, they created a political bloc which gave them additional tax breaks, rolled back regulations, and gave them unfettered access to the reins of government.

So once again, religion has been used as a tool of oppression—in this case, it has been used as the crowbar that cracks open our democracy to be looted by the robber barons.

The people who were most desperate for change, for progress, for hope, sold their votes to the national grifter and his entourage of enablers and con men.

A hundred years ago, the United States was being looted by the robber barons. (That's where the term "trickle-down" was first used.) The consequence of that was a decade of global depression that gave rise to fascism and war.

We're heading down that same path because of the greed and stupidity of this generation of robber barons.

The good news--there is still good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for--the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed gave us 20 years of serious reorganization of our government. The most dramatic and important result was the creation of Social Security.

Now, I have no idea why the robber barons are so stupid that they want to keep our economy unbalanced. It seems to me that the more money in the hands of workers and consumers, the more opportunities there are to create a healthy demand for goods and services. You can sell a lot more cars and TVs and cellphones to people who can afford them.

But ... it comes back to that evangelical belief that wealth is a measure of personal validity. Your rich because you deserve it. Other people are poor because they don't deserve to be rich. They're lazy moochers (who have to work three jobs to keep their children fed).

We are not going to change this nation until we change the narrative — it's a simple change, but a nearly impossible one. We have to give up the conversations of selfishness and replace them with conversations of connection, partnership, and most of all, empathy and caring for each other.

And ... we have to create a global conversation that if we cannot live in harmony with the ecology of this planet, this planet has a cure for that — human extinction.

On the home front, a large part of the problem is advertising. All those ads that keep telling you that you're not good enough unless you have this, own that, look like this, wear this, go there, and ultimately vote for this grifter who will take away your last best hope for affordable health care.

This is why the robber barons are so desperate to rip out the machineries of government — because if the government has tools to regulate corporate responsibility, well ... they won't be able to get away with as much. And this is why they love the evangelical movement. It keeps the government gridlocked.

Any questions?

How Science Got Trampled in the Rush to Drill in the Arctic

28 July 19

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PEOPLE ARE HELPING, BUT WE ARE STILL IN TROUBLE - We greatly appreciate the help we are currently getting, and yes we have made up a little ground. But we are still far behind where we should and need to be. Donating is quick, easy and painless. Right now would be a great time. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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How Science Got Trampled in the Rush to Drill in the Arctic 

Adam Federman and Nathaniel Wilder, Politico
Excerpt: "Under the Trump administration, oil and gas development was poised to dramatically expand into a remote corner of Alaska where it had been prohibited for nearly 40 years. Tucked into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a bill signed by President Donald Trump five months earlier, was a brief two-page section that had little to do with tax reform."
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Elijah Cummings delivers a press conference following Robert Mueller's testimony this week. (photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

Elijah Cummings Cites 'Moral Duty' to Voters After Trump 'Rat-Infested' Attack
Martin Pengelly, Guardian UK
Pengelly writes: "Donald Trump kicked off his weekend with a stinging attack on Elijah Cummings, the Democratic chair of the House oversight committee, that opponents including House speaker Nancy Pelosi said was another example of the president deploying racist invective for political ends."
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The Jerry Falwell Memorial at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. Falwell founded Liberty University in 1971. His son, Jerry Falwell Jr., is now the school's president. (photo: Marlena Sloss/AP)

How Jerry Falwell Jr. Silences Students and Professors Who Reject His Pro-Trump Politics
Will E. Young, The Washington Post
Young writes: "What my team and I experienced at the Champion was not an isolated overreaction to embarrassing revelations. It was one example of an infrastructure of thought-control that Falwell and his lieutenants have introduced into every aspect of Liberty University life."
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Go claim your money from Equifax. (photo: Sitthiphong Thadakun/EyeEm/Getty Images)

You Have a Moral Obligation to Claim Your $125 From Equifax
Josephine Wolff, Slate
Wolff writes: "Go claim your $125 from Equifax. Right now. Even if $125 isn't a sum of money that matters to you, even if you don't feel you were really directly affected by the breach. Even if the prospect of filling out a relatively brief online form fills you with more dread than the theft of all your personal data."
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The White House at night. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)

The Declaration of Independence Told Us What to Do About Tyrants Like Trump
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield, YES! Magazine
Warfield writes: "We don't have to wait for Congressional consensus on reparations to begin addressing the harm being done right now. What we can do is not let the hatred take us off of our square. We can not allow those in power to distract us with petty, ignorant comments." 

EXCERPT:

As American racists increasingly make themselves known, often claiming to be “patriots” upholding the Constitution, I’m drawn to the most fundamental lines in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

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A woman holds a sign during a rally to celebrate the resignation of Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello. (photo: Marco Bello/Reuters)

Puerto Rico: Governor's Resignation Sparks Power Struggle
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "The resignation of Puerto Rico's governor after mass protests has sparked a succession battle and the winner could be a Washington corporate lawyer not directly linked to his administration, which has been dogged by corruption scandals."
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Indigenous leaders gathered in Atalaia do Norte to discuss how best to defend their lands against the anticipated onslaught. (photo: Ana Palacios/CIDSE & REPAM)

'He Wants to Destroy Us': Bolsonaro Poses Gravest Threat in Decades, Amazon Tribes Say
Tom Phillips, Guardian UK
Phillips writes: "As a blood-orange sunset drifted towards the forest canopy, Raimundo Kanamari sat on the riverbank and pondered the future of his tribe under Brazil's far-right president."
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