guillaumeb
guillaumeb's JournalPete Buttigieg: Religious left is 'stirring'
From the article:
Buttigieg spoke with Religion News Service to discuss sin, immigration, being a religious millennial and whether he can rally the support of a burgeoning religious left movement. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What do you see as the appropriate role of religion in American politics?
To read more:
https://religionnews.com/2019/08/29/pete-buttigieg-religious-left-is-stirring/
So Buttigieg spoke with Religion News Service. And about the religious left.
How Online Hate Speech Spreads Around the Globe
From the article:
The United States lags behind other countries in establishing effective policies against online abuse on social media, while nations like France are asking social media companies to commit to a hate-free internet. The answer to effective policymaking in this sphere, however, may lie in understanding the way hate messages connect with one another around the Globe, new research shows.
To read more:
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2019-08-28/researchers-suggest-new-ways-countries-can-fight-against-online-hate-speech
Muslims bailout fund raises nearly $150,000 to reunite migrant families
From the article:
The Muslims for Migrants campaign, launched Aug. 5 by the Islamic nonprofit CelebrateMercy, is donating all funds to the National Bail Fund Network to pay bond fees for immigrant parents who have been detained while they await a decision on their immigration status or potential deportation.
The initiative has so far released nine detained parents — seven fathers and two mothers — and reunited them with their families. A tenth parent will be released by Thursday (Aug. 29).
To read more:
https://religionnews.com/2019/08/28/muslims-bailout-fund-raises-nearly-150000-to-reunite-migrant-families/
The success of the GOP rests on a number of things.
First, of course, is racism, which has been a foundational characteristic of the GOP since 1968.
After that, we have cheating, mainly in the form of voter suppression, but including voting machine hacks and ballot box tampering.
After that, and related to the racism component, the GOP has crafted a narrative since 1968 that white people, especially rural white people, are under attack by the forces of liberalism.
Under this narrative, anything that does not only benefit white people is an attack on white people.
Jobs programs, poverty programs, and other State and Federal programs that are actually directed at helping poor people in general are seen by GOP voters as actually helping only minorities.
A subset of this belief is when white people will tell others that they get nothing from the Government.
Many times, these white people are Social Security and Medicare recipients, and they might also receive other Government benefits, but they have convinced themselves that they get nothing for their tax dollars.
And Trump supporting farmers see the welfare that they receive as anything but welfare, because in the GOP myth white people never get welfare.
So all of this supports the "white people as victims" narrative that the GOP loves to cultivate.
Last, but also foundational, since the 1960s the far right has been buying up the US media and establishing what they call research institutes to promote their myth and their political agenda. In spite of the fact that 90% of the US media is owned by 6 large corporations, GOP voters are convinced that media outlets are controlled by the liberals.
Rev. William Barber calls on Democrats to host debate on poverty, racism
From the article:
The Rev. William Barber II, a progressive activist and pastor, addressed the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee on Friday (Aug. 23), calling on party leaders to host a presidential debate focused on poverty and to do more to address the concerns of poor and low-income Americans.
The co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, named for the last major campaign of Martin Luther King Jr., Barber insisted that poverty touches all people and regions of the United States and overlaps with related concerns such as racism, voter suppression, healthcare, “ecological justice,” militarism and religious nationalism....
Asked about a potential poverty debate at a candidate forum hosted by the Poor People’s Campaign in June, however, all nine Democratic presidential hopefuls who attended — including former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris — said they would support it.
To read more:
https://religionnews.com/2019/08/23/rev-william-barber-calls-on-democrats-to-host-debate-on-poverty-racism/
For Trump voters, it is always 1984.
Trump promised a big, beautiful wall, and said Mexico would pay for it.
Trump promised that China would pay the tariffs.
Trump promised that the tax cuts were for the middle class, and that the rich would get very little.
Trump promised a booming economy, instead we have record levels of debt.
Ask the Trump voters about this, and expect a blank look. Trump rewrites reality for the Trump voters every day.
Remember, we have always been at war with Oceania.
The US health care system is profit oriented.
And that is an obvious observation.
Providing actual health care is secondary.
The pharmaceutical industry spends more on advertising than actual research. And such advertising is unethical, and designed to promote particular brands of drugs to the prospective customers, called patients.
Pharmaceutical companies will reformulate their product every few years to sustain their patents, and they raise the prices of their products to the captive customer base of US citizens. Plus there are no restrictions on how much US pharmaceutical companies can gouge their customers. That is why drugs in the US cost far more than in Canada.
Hospitals often buy expensive equipment, even if a nearby hospital has that equipment, so they can compete for customers, called patients, and buying expensive and unnecessary equipment forces the hospitals to raise prices.
Plus the health care industry contributes much money to the politicians.
Most other advanced countries have already understood this and responded appropriately to put health and people before profits.
But in the US, we have an endless debate about how to find a solution that already exists.
The right, and the US corporate media, like to talk about "bad bad antifa".
And the occasional acts of violence committed by a tiny number of Antifa protesters that are dwarfed by the massive amount of white supremacist violence.
My question:
Given that the word Antifa is an abbreviation for anti-fascist, is it better to be Antifa, or an actual fascist?
In my opinion, it is an easy choice.
Trump never takes responsibility for failure, but always takes credit for success.
Trump has always been quite consistent in blaming others for his many failures. No matter how badly his businesses are run, no matter what bad decisions he has personally made, he is never to blame.
But if he sees anything going well, he insists that he is responsible for that.
Take the economy. We know that the economy is bubble driven, and built on unsustainable debt. Much of what is called the booming economy is actually debt funded merges and acquisitions. This creates larger companies, but also larger debt. And the majority of the economy is driven by consumer spending, but again, consumer debt is at historically high levels.
But because the US conservative, corporate media has a narrative to construct and sustain, this debt bubble economy is called a healthy, booming economy. Much like the healthy, booming economy of 1929.
And up to this point, Trump has claimed ownership of the economy, acting as if his erratic tweet driven attempts at policy are responsible for the illusion of success.
But with increasing signs that the bubble is close to bursting, Trump is frantically looking for people and institutions to blame for his own insane misadministration.
My question:
Will the Us corporate media assign the blame to Trump when his tariffs and other erratic policies make the coming recession worse?
Or will the US corporate media accept Trump's narrative that everyone but Trump is responsible for the coming recession?
Speaking of the Koch family, and their "contributions" to this country....
there is this to remember:
Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch have been dominant financiers for conservative front groups and nonprofits for nearly three decades. Their money has flowed to organizations dedicated to lobbying for corporate and upper income tax cuts, as well as to groups responsible for mobilizing Tea Party rallies against President Obama. But the Koch family’s association with fringe right-wing groups began a generation earlier with Fred Koch, the patriarch of the clan.
Fred not only founded the company now known as Koch Industries, he also was a founding member of the John Birch Society. As a founding board member, Fred helped engineer a hysterical wave of attacks on labor, intellectuals, public education, liberal clergy members, and other pillars of society he viewed as a threat. Birchers decried everyone from former President Eisenhower to water utility administrators as pawns in a global communist conspiracy. In the last two years, as the Koch name has become synonymous with right-wing plutocracy in the United States, the Koch family has played down its relation to the Birchers.
To read more:
https://thinkprogress.org/john-birch-society-celebrates-koch-family-for-their-role-in-founding-the-hate-group-b8fd2ac8b379/
David Koch is merely following in a far right family tradition.
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