aha2 bak

aha3bak --> aha 4 12 23

capt 6/17 (prev lost?)

capt 1119 bak 120 [capt 820 txt bakbak]

CAPT 5/21 AND hd

note: not all here makes it into bakbak

see predictions

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bakbak code fail? field missing

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tax and spend libs gingrich memo ? --> mantra?

rand paul trms 621 coke quail sex habits basic science

ended 3 yrs ago, legislator he got it from died, added digits with cut and paste typo w/ footnote 140#

aha: great pix, aha ~ sci, sex // clinton boomer draft dodge potheads

strict fr vs nurture monther

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staple of culture war/myth of liberal media/

INSTEAD OF PROTECTING KIDS FROM NEURAL TOXINS, DO THIS

gay teletubbies

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but culture war eruption hysteria eg gay teletubbies WEDGE ISSUE

aha this kinda harkens back to cold war red scare blacklist commies tiring to brainwash, kids most vulnerable ; urban legend grounded in fear (of some new thing?)

hype fear anger emotion note pedophile was red pill entry drug for women into Qanon

dr suess, mr potatohead, smurfs commie; sesame str?

an 521

newsmax host loses it over Lucky Charms 'gay leprechaun' and Kellogg’s 'forcing kids to be confused about their gender'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

May 26, 2021

Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield had a homophobic Tuesday night freak out over kids' breakfast cereals.

After being strongly criticized two weeks ago for disgusting antisemitic remarks, Stinchfield is back to....

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aha: world is complex. chaotic (made more so by bannon trump disruptor) so ppl seek one simple cause --> soros jewish conspiracy, or ag 21 global elites Commie UN. magical thinking, end time race war boogaloo cleanse. reductionism; manicheam blk/wht

5/21 someone said democracy depend on empathy (trust, rebuild commons vs rather fill in public pool good than let those undeserving POC use it; rather cut social safety net that i poor rural not well educated ppl need to stay in middle class to make sure brn/blk ppl don't use it b/c lazy. not easy b/c I don't want to ID w/ those sinful lazy losers.

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aha note amplif; big lie stop steal are ghost dance, magical thinking that will restore the dear leader to rightful place and //quanin banish the evil-doers?

sparked by:

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/end-of-enlightenment/

common dr robt freeman

The Enlightenment was a time of intellectual ferment in the Western world following the Middle Ages. Its ideas gave birth to the modern world.

We know the Enlightenment from the names of its most brilliant expositors: Francis Bacon, John Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and others. We know its ideas as the foundation of our social world: the social contract, the rule of reason, the rule of law, consent of the governed, natural rights, constitutionalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and others.

The Republican agenda is a direct assault on all of that. It literally aims to return America to the pre-modern, pre-Enlightened darkness of the Middle Ages. If it succeeds, it will reverse more than three hundred years of human progress.

The most egregious of Republican assaults on the modern world is its rejection of Reason. Reason is the way we know what we know. It is not through revelations from God, or the pronouncements of priests or monarchs as had been the case before the Enlightenment.

Reason as a process for discovering Truth started in the Scientific Revolution around 1550. It was so powerful a way of knowing the physical world, the philosophers of the Enlightenment adopted it for knowing—and improving—the social world. It became the foundation of all subsequent Enlightenment thought, and all modern institutions.

The Republican broadside against Reason was on display in the first days of the Trump administration when Trump asserted that his inauguration crowd size was the largest in history. Presented with facts to the contrary, in photographic evidence, his assistant, Kellyanne Conway, proclaimed the existence of "alternative facts." It's been downhill since.

Republican discourse is a never-ending torrent of lies, idiocies, and absurdities—the very antithesis of Reason. The Muslim invasion. The caravan bringing murderers, rapists, drugs, and disease. Democrats eating babies. A satanic cult of pedophiles running the "Deep State." A pandemic that would "disappear, like a miracle." The greatest economy in the history of the world. Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head being canceled. Biden's hamburger ban. A rigged election. Massive voter fraud. Terrorists who were really just tourists handing out hugs and kisses. It never ends.

The Republican assault on Reason is an attack not just on truth itself, but on our very capacity to think at all. With their base, Republicans address not the neo-cortex—the thinking part of the brain—but the amygdala—the lizard-brain seat of fight-or-flight. The amygdala subordinates logic, facts, reason, and deliberation to deceit, conspiracy, hysteria, and fear.

It's easier to trigger hatred and fear than thinking and logic. That's why Republicans do it. That's why their base—and increasingly, their "leaders"—sound like zombies, like robots, like members of a cult when they're interviewed for the evening news. They are. They've been programmed to fear and hate and blame, and the reinforcement is unending, [feedback? amplif?] because, to work, it has to be. Otherwise, they become unprogrammed.

It doesn't matter that none of the endless effusion of lies ever turn out to be true or that they are routinely, repeatedly abandoned in favor of newer lies for the next news cycle. What matters is that the lies incite indignation, and that the dopamine high that follows gets its constant, programmed, ever-increasing reinforcement.

Trump's 35,000 documented lies are the embodiment of it all.It is a leprous, insidious disease, an inability to deal with reality, but literally the one by which Republicans define themselves. Glandular excretions are the Republican formula for generating voter turnout: inciting Pavlovian rage based on a torrential fantasmia of lurid lies. It works, but it is the living, suppurating antithesis of Reason.

Another Republican assault on the legacy of the Enlightenment is the attack on Democracy. It was John Locke who, in 1689, wrote that people who were able to think could not be bullied like ignorant people could. If government wanted thinking people's cooperation it could no longer rely on the medieval divine right of kings. It needed to obtain "the consent of the governed." This, of course, became a sacrament of the American political order.

The opening words of the Constitution are, "We the people of the United States…" That is not a paean to monarchy, or to dictatorship. It is a statement that the consent of the people—and only that consent—provides a government its legitimacy. But Republicans are working feverishly to overturn the consent of the governed, to destroy Democracy.

Their assault on the Capitol on January 6th was the most conspicuous effort to overthrow the legitimately elected government of the United States but it was not the first and will certainly not be the last.Republicans insist that their reason-denying mobs, their goons, their Brownshirts will tell the rest of us how we will be governed. No consent involved, only submission: ours. You can see this in their fevered efforts at voter suppression, explicitly preventing majority rule and the consent of the governed.

Republicans cannot win power on the strength of their ideas and policies. They lost the presidency, the Senate, and the House. Large majorities favor policies backed by Democrats. So, they need to destroy Democracy itself to gain power. To do that, they need to destroy Reason as the way we know what we know. That is the core, the essence, the modus operandi of the Republican enterprise.

Constitutionalism is a third Enlightenment ideal that Republicans are intent on destroying. A constitution defines how a country is to be governed. Before constitutions, it was autocracy that called the shots. Think of Louis XIV's notorious declaration: "I am the state." Decisions were made by caprice, by the rich and powerful, in their own interests, everyone else be damned. Constitutionalism embeds the Rule of Law—another Enlightenment ideal—into a society, making "equal treatment under the law" a modern treasure, however badly it may be realized.

Besides losing all of the branches of the federal government, Republicans failed over and over and over to persuade the judicial branch to sanction their usurpation of the Constitution. So, they resort to performative charades like the farcical ballot laundering farrago in Arizona to try to undo the Constitutionally-ordained process for the peaceful transfer of power. Now, they're taking it to other states. It will not end.

We could go on. Republicans want to destroy the social contract—another Enlightenment ideal—that says you get ahead on the basis of hard work. They insist, instead, that privilege should be based on race, with the best spots reserved for whites. This violates the Enlightenment ideal of equality for all.

Remember the opening words of the Declaration of Independence? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Pure Enlightenment. In the Republican world, however, like in Orwell's Animal Farm which was an allegory of the degradation of Soviet totalitarianism, all men are created equal, but some—whites—are more equal than others.

We should be clear. This is not about peripheral protests over policy preferences. It is a broadside against the foundation, the institutional undergirding of our civilization. It is an attempt to destroy the conceptual milieu that has survived for centuries and that, however flawed it may be, has delivered the greatest freedom, expansion of rights, material progress, and human opportunity the world has ever known.

The measure of our alarm should be that Republicans, with the help of a complicit media, have managed to normalize rampant public lying, the unrestrained desecration of Reason, are carrying out an open, unabashed attack on our democracy, are carrying out notorious, savage assaults on Constitutionalism, the Rule of Law, Equality, and more. Our nation is literally under attack by anti-Enlightenment zealots determined to tear it down and it's not at all clear that they will not succeed.

It is indicative that the Republican party's highest priest is a thrice-married pathological liar, an admitted sexual assaulter, a draft dodger, a six-time filer for bankruptcy, a man who inflicted hundreds of thousands of excess deaths on the country, was twice impeached, who lost two successive popular vote counts, and who then attempted to overthrow the government. Read that sentence again and think about its implication.

The Republican hero, the man they model themselves on, the one they want us to bow down to, is a failed business man, a failed reality TV star, a failed president, a career con man who is the most corrupt, certainly the most craven and creepy individual ever known to American politics. This is the best Republicans have to offer. That is who they are, and what they insist on inflicting on all the rest of us, our consent be damned.

The Enlightenment helped the world replace monarchy with republicanism, a world ruled by theology with a world of science, autocracy with the rule of law, aristocratic privilege with the equality of all men, and feudalism with capitalism. No matter how imperfectly it may have been realized, it was as noble a vision as human beings have ever devised. The two worlds are the difference between the "Dark Ages" that went before and the modern world. That is the Republicans' promise to America.

More regression. More destruction of beautiful ideals and noble institutions. More degradation of deserving people. More humiliation of undignified people, themselves being the examples. More carnage. More chaos. More slime spewed on everyone.

There's not a syllable of inspiring vision in anything they have to say, not a word of uplifting ideals in any of it. It is all pathetic self-victimization and a lust for vengeance against those who refuse to respect them. We must all be dragged into the sewer that spawned, that is, and that sustains Donald Trump. That is his and Republicans' retaliation against a people who once had the temerity to believe in majestic ideals, the audacity to strive for them, and who once imagined that they might even be worthy of them.

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aha doh gerry is cause and result of polarization, amplifies!?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/jim-jordan

ah poster boy on gerry

Among Democrats, liberals, progressives, centrists and Never Trump conservatives, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio is one of the most notorious Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. And because of gerrymandering — and because his district is so reliably Republican — the 57-year-old Jordan keeps getting reelected year after year. In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 24, Cleveland-based journalist Keith Osmun examines the effect that the 2020 U.S. Census may have on Jordan in 2022.

Jordan, a founding member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, presently represents Ohio's 4th Congressional District — where he was first elected in 2006 after having served in the Ohio State Senate and the Ohio House of Representatives.

Osmun explains, "Since the 1930s, Ohio's 4th Congressional District has been under Republican control…. It is arguably the safest Republican district in the country. The current occupant of its seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is everyone's favorite Trump sycophant: Jim Jordan."

Ohio has 16 congressional U.S. House districts; 12 of them are presently occupied by Republicans, while four are occupied by Democrats.

Democrat Janet Garrett, who ran against Jordan in 2014, 2016 and 2018, told Osmun, "I knew the odds. I ran because I felt that it was imperative that somebody put up a fight. If he ran unopposed, they would tout him around the district as so wonderful no one wants to reproach him."

Garrett said of Jordan, "He's never introduced any legislation other than a monument to someone. He doesn't introduce legislation; he's just a bomb thrower. He didn't go to Washington to legislate."

What Ohio's new congressional map will look like in 2022 remains to be seen.

Collin Marozzi, an ACLU attorney who has been fighting gerrymandering in Ohio, told Osmun, "Gerrymandering allows Jim Jordan to be the most Jim Jordan he can be: the most bombastic, bomb throwing, partisan person in Congress. He hasn't passed a single piece of legislation in ten years. He has no real incentive to compromise because he only has to worry about a primary challenge."

Following the 2020 U.S. Census, Ohio will be losing a seat in the U.S. House — and it will have 15 U.S. House districts instead of 16. Osmun observes, "One of the happy byproducts of Ohio losing a congressional seat as a result of the 2020 Census is that the districts will be redrawn under more bipartisan rules put in place in the years since the 2010 Census…. If the changes work as intended, the ride 'safe seats' provide legislators like Jim Jordan will be a bumpier one in the midterms."

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SPEC OPS fb RACISM

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aha fundamental/systemic: putnam bowl alone esp rural wht ppl marginalized by globalization, digital divide, outsourcing by corps, some hype fr=ear histporical trend to blame immigrant other coming to steL YOur jobs, daughters 9rapists) and culture/country, so fill in public swim pool and make it harder for THEM to vote [plus gerrymander so can minority rule anyway; inequality (tax dodge/brk subisde for rich/coprs b/c buy election w/ dark money so defund public school, health care, pvtize everything which makes it harder and more expensive to be poor, then demonize govt RR /koch libtard GOP TP so not ask them for help/justice/equity GI Bill VA homes mort) but build that wall

sparked by chomsky 521

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421

aha: Am Exceptionalism means not only do rules not apply, but nor does history; nat am gemocide and slavery are two orig sins, so must be minimized, slaves were happy, lucky to be brought to land of progress; indians crude barbarians (both childish?? incapable of achievement or even self-gov?)

CNN's Rick Santorum: "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture"

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a pvt (intel) corp, will not disclose proprietary methods; taking pvt $ no disclose; pvt sec is a corp that uses force or other powers usually held by gov't which is theoretivcally acctable; ninja claims immunity from cpurts b/c hired by legis?

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/never-heard-of-them-anonymous-arizona-gop-ballot-auditing-firm-unknown-its-home-state/

An Arizona judge is demanding more information about a Florida-based ballot firm's audits of the 2020 presidential election results as others raise concerns about the firm's reputation.

According to Politico, Cyber Ninjas consulting firm has caused a stir with its controversial audit of voting results in Maricopa County, and many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are asking: who are the Cyber Ninjas?

In Arizona and the firm's home state of Florida, no one seems to have a clue who they are.

When Christian Ziegler, vice-chair of the Republican Party in Florida was asked about the firm's founder, Doug Logan, she admitted she had no idea who he is. Like many other Florida Republican leaders and lawmakers, Ziegler said, "Doug Logan? Cyber Ninjas? No. I don't know these guys. Never heard of them."

On Monday, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) and other Democratic leaders also criticized the firm's audit as Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury in Phoenix demanded more information about it. On Monday, April 26, Hobbs appeared on "Cuomo Prime Time" where she expressed concern about the audit as she insisted it is yet another attempt by Republicans to "appease" the voters in their party.

"A group of Republicans are continuing to try to appease their base who refuse to accept that ... Trump lost Arizona and that he's not the president anymore," Hobbs told CNN's Chris Cuomo.

Hobbs also noted that her office has been focused on working "with a lawsuit that's been filed to try to address the security's concerns at a minimum, but at this point, this seems like such a farce that it would be a good idea to stop it."

Amid Republicans' push for election audits, organizers have reportedly been very selective when it comes to revealing details about who will be conducting the audits and if the selected teams will be bipartisan.

CNN also reports that organizers have "ignored requests from election integrity groups to allow nonpartisan election administration experts to observe the process," adding that "journalists who want to report on the endeavor are allowed to do so only if they agree to participate as election observers, and will be barred from taking notes or video."

Hobbs shared her reaction to the scarcity in the details.

"We have so many concerns about this exercise," Hobbs said Monday. "I kind of don't want to call it an audit. I think that's an insult to professional auditors everywhere because they're making this stuff up as they go along." She added, "I think there was a high level of expectation that whoever had their hands on the ballots and the equipment would adhere to some level of security measures and transparency, and that clearly has not happened."

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Florida firm hired to oversee Maricopa County, Arizona vote audit ... ›

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aha Koch and conservatives in general anti-gubmint rhet for decades (Coild War lefty commie totalitarian Big bro tekeover, will take away your freedom, which includes burgers, gas, guns, ID stuff: now any rumor/conspiracy beleived if it fits this narrative.

trms? notes that gop not about ideas or even policy, just own the libs eg matt gaetz angling for some fox pundit talk radio gig before scandal? cruz and hawley trump mini-me's, trump kid general in meme war

literally red meat for the base: gubmint gonna take your guns, burgers, gasoline...

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/how-larry-kudlow-set-off-a-right-wing-anti-biden-smear-campaign/

How Larry Kudlow set off a right-wing anti-Biden smear campaign

Jon Skolnik and Salon April 26, 2021

Fox News host and former economic Trump adviser Larry Kudlow set off something of a right-wing smear campaign over the weekend when he went on a tirade against President Joe Biden's nonexistent plan to force "plant-based beer" upon the American public, calling Biden an "ideological zealot" intent on scrapping America's most cherished tradition of meat-eating.

In a Fox News interview on Thursday, Kudlow erroneously attacked Biden for putting forth a climate plan that calls for the elimination of meat, eggs, and dairy from the American diet. "There's a study coming out of the University of Michigan which says that to meet the Biden Green New Deal targets, America has to…stop eating poultry and fish, seafood, eggs, dairy, and animal-based fats," he started. "Ok, got that? No burger on July 4. No steaks on the barbecue. I'm sure Middle America is just going to love that. Can you grill those Brussels sprouts?"

Kudlow, notably livid over the thought grilling vegetables –– let alone foreign ones –– continued to rail against Biden's new climate action plan.

"You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts and wave your American flag. Call it July 4th Green. Now, I'm making fun of this because I intend to make fun of it. This kind of thing is stupid. It comes from a bunch of ideological zealots who don't care one whit about America's well-being. Not one whit."

It should be noted that beer, generally made from water, grain, hops, and yeast, and barley malt, is already, in fact, plant-based. Furthermore, nothing in President Biden's plan so far calls for a prohibition on meat consumption. The original culprit of this misinformation, a Thursday Daily Mail article headlined "How Biden's climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH," speculated that Biden intends on "cutting red meat consumption by 90% and animal products by 50%."

The article, quickly feasted upon by Kudlow and amplified Fox Newswithout the slightest fact-check, was then picked up by Republicans in government, including Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who spread the lies to their voting bases.

"Joe Biden's climate plan includes cutting 90% of red meat from our diets by 2030. They want to limit us to about four pounds a year," tweeted Boebert. "Why doesn't Joe stay out of my kitchen?"

"Not gonna happen in Texas!" Gov. Abbott tweeted, with a screenshot of Kudlow's broadcast.

Greene, posting a picture of Biden eating a hamburger with others a table, echoed: "The Hamburglar. No burgers for thee, but just for me."

The misinformation also came into the good graces of Donald Trump Jr., who declared most proudly, "I'm pretty sure I ate 4 pounds of red meat yesterday. That's going to be a hard NO from me."

On Saturday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explained how Kudlow's remarks planted the seeds for a concerted misinformation campaign.

"If you read what Kudlow actually said,'' Krugman argued on Twitter, "he's cagey — doesn't say that Biden proposed this, only that some people say this is what would happen. But Fox viewers won't notice, which is the intention. This is what right-wing politics is down to.It's all false claims about evil liberals, which the base is expected to believe because it's primed to believe in liberal villainy. They're not even trying to engage on actual issues."

The White House has thus far released scant information about any formal plan to address emissions. According to the Washington Post, on Thursday, the President made vague remarks about investing in "American infrastructure and American innovation" in order to build "a critical infrastructure to produce and deploy clean technology."

The right's outrage was widely mocked online by the left, who were quick to point out that Biden's apparent political aversion to meat has no factual or historical basis at all. On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took a jab at his conservative colleagues . "Excited to be watching the Oscars with an ice cold plant-based beer," he tweeted, with a picture of himself holding a beer while watching the Oscars. "Thanks Joe Biden."

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/republican-frat-boy/

HE BROKE AMERICA? DEMOC?

common dr 421

...Oh, for a simpler, saner time – and I don't mean that white American idyll that never was, a rightwing fever dream in which all is falsely remembered as sunshine, jellybeans and petroleum products burnt without a care. Rather, as columnist Frida Ghitis notes, "It wasn't very long ago that the country had two reality-based, generally centrist parties. Democrats and Republicans, with different philosophies, debated the merits of their ideas, in search of a workable compromise.

But then, bit by bit, the GOP started veering in a different direction. By the time Trump became president, the maximalist, nativist, conspiracy-driven, scandal-manufacturing, hate-stoking wing was already ascendant, propelled by the engines of Fox News and other far-right provocateurs. Trump's victory was the coup that toppled the old GOP and turned it into the extremist MAGA machine.

:{:{}:

And now, what's left? A handful of old-fashioned, conservative Republicans in Congress and their supporters who apparently still believe in some semblance of democracy and the republic that gave their party its name. But they're overwhelmed by a crowd of fanatics and sycophants: men and women, in Frida Ghitis' words, busily "promoting the delegitimization of America's duly elected president, people who are endorsing or refusing to rectify dangerous lies."

You know who they are: Cruz, Hawley, Graham, Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, et al. They include, of course, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, "rewarded by recklessness," to use campaign strategist Rick Wilson's phrase, and as of this moment still standing, despite more and more evidence of his misogyny and possible abusive behavior, sexual and otherwise.

:{:{}:

Like so many among these ranks, Trump fanboy Gaetz is one of the smarmy, privileged, attenuated frat boys who refuse to believe that rules and norms apply to them – much like the man who was their president and would be forever more if the rest of us become indifferent and lower our guard. Gaetz cares about his job title only as far as it gets him booked on talk shows and the lecture circuit – so far, he has failed to sponsor a single piece of significant legislation.

In his new memoir, former Republican House Speaker John Boehner describes these types of Republican rabblerousers as "the chaos caucus," not caring about the country but only about their power base and appearances on Fox News and right wing talk radio: "They didn't really want legislative victories," Boehner writes. "They wanted wedge issues and conspiracies and crusades."

Not that Boehner is blameless. He and so many Republican colleagues let themselves be bullied, then acquiesced to our current dilemma, yielding to those pledged to lunacy and a lemming-like fealty to a president as bereft of thought and feeling as they are. You see the results: a shattered party not of ideas and programs, but only insults and bogus intrigues. No wonder the Biden infrastructure proposals infuriate them; they have nothing to offer in return.(Remember Trump's Infrastructure Week, always imminent but never occurring over the whole four years of his presidency?)

They fear any and all success during Biden's first term. Think back to 1993, when now anti-Trumpist conservative Bill Kristol advised Republicans to shun any healthcare plan from Bill and Hillary Clinton. In a memo—Kristol was then head of the Project for the Republican Future—he warned his colleagues, "It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government."...

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doh/belated: enough fails of right kind and magnitude (or inter-lock/ cascade) can lead to systemic failure/crisis? texas is failure to think sys b/c we know weather chaos coming, cold as well as warm; free mkt dereg bs is reductive sys theory; naomi k says texas // to covid fail, mkt see "excess" capacity as inefficiency so no resileince to bigger shocks sys tell us are coming; me vs we, short vs long term

who said small price to pay to keep gubmint out of our business?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/green-new-deal/

Author and environmentalist Naomi Klein argued in a New York Times column Sunday that Republicans rushed to attack the Green New Deal as disaster struck in Texas because the popular push for a sweeping transformation of the U.S. energy system poses a genuine threat to the deregulated, fossil-fuel dependent status quo that left the Lone Star State vulnerable to extreme weather driven by the climate crisis.

"Texans are living through the collapse of a 40-year experiment in free-market fundamentalism, one that has also stood in the way of effective climate action," Klein wrote. "Fortunately, there's a way out—and that's precisely what Republican politicians in the state most fear."

Klein characterized the ongoing power, water, and food crises in Texas as the consequence of "an energy-market free-for-all" stemming from "a fateful series of decisions [that] were made in the late-'90s, when the now-defunct, scandal-plagued energy company Enron led a successful push to radically deregulate Texas' electricity sector."

"As a result, decisions about the generation and distribution of power were stripped from regulators and, in effect, handed over to private energy companies," Klein wrote. "Unsurprisingly, these companies prioritized short-term profit over costly investments to maintain the grid and build in redundancies for extreme weather. Today, Texans are at the mercy of regulation-allergic politicians who failed to require that energy companies plan for shocks or weatherize their infrastructure (renewables and fossil fuel alike)."

In the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri, ordinary Texans are beginning to see the direct impact of the deregulatory push on their material wellbeing as electric companies hit them with bills topping $17,000—"a consequence," Klein argued, "of leaving pricing to the whims of the market."

Alluding to her previous work on "the shock doctrine"—a term she coined to describe how the right has exploited past disasters to force through unpopular privatization and austerity agendas—Klein noted that "large-scale shocks... become ideal moments to smuggle in unpopular free-market policies that tend to enrich elites at everyone else's expense."

"I often quote a guru of the free market revolution, the late economist Milton Friedman," Klein wrote. "In 1982, he wrote about what he saw as the mission of right-wing economists like him: 'Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."[gop sez BO cos chic guy]

The difference between past shocks such as the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 financial crisis and the current emergency in Texas, Klein argued, is that "Republican ideas are no longer lying around—they are lying in ruin."

Texas' Republican Gov. Greg Abbott attacked the Green New Deal—a proposal that has not even been implemented—in an appearance on Fox News last week because he knows its promise to "create millions of union jobs building out shock-resilient green energy infrastructure, transit, and affordable housing" is "extremely appealing" to Texans as they "suffer under the overlapping crises of unemployment, houselessness, racial injustice, crumbling public services, and extreme weather," Klein wrote.

"All that Texas' Republicans have to offer, in contrast," Klein added, "is continued oil and gas dependence—driving more climate disruption—alongside more privatizations and cuts to public services to pay for their state's mess, which we can expect them to push in the weeks and months ahead." [death spiral]

As The Houston Chroniclereported last week, Republican members of the Texas state legislature are already signaling that "one of the most immediate reforms they will push for is recalibrating the state's electricity grid to ensure more fossil fuels are in that mix and fewer renewables."

But Klein contended that "unlike when the Republican Party began deploying the shock doctrine, its free-market playbook is no longer novel."

"The horrors currently unfolding in Texas expose both the reality of the climate crisis and the extreme vulnerability of fossil fuel infrastructure in the face of that crisis," Klein wrote. "So of course the Green New Deal finds itself under fierce attack. Because for the first time in a long time, Republicans face the very thing that they claim to revere but never actually wanted: competition—in the battle of ideas." twt

in recent days, as Common Dreams has reported, progressive advocacy groups such as the youth-led Sunrise Movement and Greenpeace USA have made the case that—contrary to the GOP's bad-faith attacks—a Green New Deal is precisely what's needed to help Texas equitably recover from the present emergency and build the resilience necessary to withstand future climate-driven disasters.

"Many people across the country are realizing for the first time that fossil fuels are not only polluting, they are unstable. Millions of Texans are being let down by coal, oil, and gas right now," Greenpeace climate campaigner Ashley Thomson said last Thursday.

On Monday, activists with the Sunrise Movement of Texas are expected to rally at the state capitol in Austin to demand immediate relief for struggling Texans, the resignations of Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas.), and passage of a Green New Deal that would "make our state and country more resilient to future disasters, and create millions of good union jobs in the process of transforming these necessary structures."

"Texas is the perfect example of what happens when our politicians cater to fossil fuel executives instead of the young people who have been shouting from the rooftops for years, warning of an impending climate emergency like this," said Chante Davis, a 17-year-old Sunrise Movement leader and Houston resident.

"I've survived three once in a lifetime storms in my 17 years of life," added Davis, whose family moved to Texas in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. "We need change, and the Green New Deal is the obvious, urgent solution. As our communities come together to fill the void of our government, our leaders must invest in us to provide jobs that directly address the crises we face."

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aha bad combo: /death spiral: isolation, depression, algorithm, hype, covid, echo bubble, soc med, online video

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/qanon-cult/

kos

As mainstream media digs into the deeply concerning QAnon conspiracy theory—including coverage of the reality that we now have a QAnon congresswoman—we're also seeing more people who formerly identified with the movement come forward. In an interview with CNN, Melissa Rein Lively described how she fell into the conspiracy tunnel, and why she wants to help people experiencing the same thing now. "I really became all consumed in the QAnon conspiracy theories because of a mix of fear, anxiety, depression," she told host Alisyn Camerota on Monday. "You know, uncertainty. Inconsistency about information coming out about the pandemic." She talked about feeling terrified seeing people around her lose their businesses. So what did she do? She went online. And that's when, according to Lively, the algorithm took hold and brought her into an "echo chamber."

Lively says she began looking at a number of wellness, spirituality, and New Age pages, and within a "matter of weeks," the algorithm hooked her into a "terrifying echo chamber" that "completely changed the way that I think and that I process information." Lively notes that the Save the Children messaging, in particular, spoke to her. Lively went on to describe how her husband gave her an ultimatum between her family and the QAnon movement, including even calling the police out of concern for her well-being.

Lively says she ultimately broke the QAnon spell by seeking mental health treatment with a specific focus on PTSD and trauma. "I really believe that it's a cult," she said. "It operates like a cult in every single way. And people don't realize that they're being consumed by QAnon until it's too late."

If Lively sounds familiar to you, it might be because she went viral back in the fall yelling and throwing face masks on the ground in a Target. "I've been looking forward to this," her voice says in one video. "Target … I'm not playing any more of their games."

In a video later filmed at her garage, she is seen describing herself to police (summoned by her husband) as a "QAnon spokesperson" and claiming that she was on the phone with Donald Trump "all the time."

In an interview with The Washington Post, Lively described falling into QAnon as happening "gradually, and you don't realize you're getting more and more deep in it."

And if this language sounds familiar, it's likely because you heard about another former QAnon believer, Ashley Vanderbilt. As Daily Kos covered, Vanderbilt recently gave an interview to CNN talking about her fall into the QAnon rabbit hole. Vanderbilt, the mother to a four-year-old daughter, lifelong Republican, and employee of a construction company, told the network she fell deep down the conspiracy well when she became very "isolated." She also describes trusting Trump-supporting friends who sent her deeper down the conspiracy rabbit hole via conspiracy YouTube videos.

A big similarity to Lively's journey? Algorithms. Vanderbilt described using social media (TikTok, specifically) and "liking" pro-Trump and anti-Biden posts, and then, lo and behold, the algorithm did the rest.

You can watch the full CNN interview with Lively below, courtesy of YouTube.

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aha // hype fear alt reality; in am hist when stress/crisis blame THOSE PPL POC foreigners; 2 america echo bubble, 2 realities, polarization

AHA: polarization, inequality, racism all interlinked, 2 americas, 2 stories, 1619 vs 1776 , division accel amplify by soc media; working class white ppl see immigrants as threat b/c take jobs, and value of automatic psychic bonus erroding (and now stacy abrams et al are giving POC political power to match increasing # = white genocide. ramification for repair the commons

think piece SOLUTIONS REPAIR COMMONS

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/gop-history/

...A few minutes later, President and First Lady Biden arrived at the rotunda to pay their respects. MSNBC and CNN were there. On Fox, Laura Ingraham briefly acknowledged the Bidens' presence but spent most of her airtime not honoring the slain policeman but trashing Dr. Anthony Fauci and beginning a story about homicides in Chicago with the phrase, "The BLM-fueled crime wave…" Black Lives Matter, you see, is just one more manifestation of the imaginary socialist plot to take over America. No wonder their viewers think the world's aflame, a cynical awful place where progressives plotting evil lurk at every corner pizzeria.

By the way, Officer Sicknick, a 12-year veteran of the force, was a Trump voter in 2016, although *The Washington Post* reports, "Those who encountered Sicknick said his political views did not align neatly with one political party." He was against impeachment but supported gun control.

There hasn't been an official explanation yet as to exactly how Sicknick died but he was attacked and killed while resisting the crazed crowd brainwashed by Trump

...Meanwhile, the rest of us are supposed to buy into the GOP's big con because, you know, unity. Every time truths are spoken that Republicans don't like, they claim that it's for sure dividing the country further.

So brazen are the attempts at manipulation of truth whether present or past, that in the last months of his term, President Trump and his sycophantic crew appointed a Presidential Advisory 1776 Committee, charged with creating "a definitive chronicle of the American founding." The report partly was a response to The New York Times' award-winning 1619 Project, charting the history of slavery in the United States and our continuing record of racial discrimination....

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insurrection sine qua non

apogee culmination

aha-ish: HUB ie bad intersectionality it was gathering of tribes, via and b/c of soc med, vax, qanon, trumpistas, boogaloo...

alt rt keeps trying to make online manifest IRL [LARP] "back to our parents' basements" post-gamergate // magical thinking? recall GRU organized opposing groups online to clash IRL; mass hallucination fueled by echo bubble eg after insurr accidently tuned into AM radio JOK BS; role play save world in videogame to LARP boogaloo militia cos play, constant amplification of shit post--> put up or shut up, are you authentic brave patriot or fag squish?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/boogaloo-boys/

alex h

Following the violent January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol Building, national security experts are pointing to the Boogaloo Bois as one of the extremist groups that law enforcement will need to keep a close eye on in the months ahead. Dallas-based journalist Michael J. Mooney examines Boogaloo's goals in an article published by The Atlantic this week, stressing that although they didn't have a "huge presence" in that attack, they have been inspired by it.

"The riot at the Capitol last Wednesday featuredpartisans of the long-gone country of South Vietnam, Falun Gongadherents, end-times Christians, neo-Nazis, QAnon believers, a handful of Orthodox Jews, and Daniel Boone impersonators," Mooney writes. "The Boogaloos weren't a huge presence in that mob. But according to federal officials, the attack on the Capitol has galvanized them and could inspire Boogaloo violence in D.C. and around the country between now and Inauguration Day."

Most of the far-right insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol Building were devotees of President Donald Trump and were hoping to prevent Congress from certifying the Electoral College victory of President-elect Joe Biden. But according to Mooney, "The Boogaloos don't appear interested in fighting for Donald Trump — they tend to despise him, mostly because they think he panders to the police. But for the past year, Boogaloo Bois all over the United States have been cheering on the country's breakdown, waiting for the moment when their nihilistic memes would come to life and the country would devolve into bloody chaos."

Many liberal and progressive activists, contrary to what right-wing media often claim, have stressed that they are not anti-police — that they want to reform law enforcement, not abolish it. But at Mooney points out, the Boogaloo Bois have expressed a visceral hatred of law enforcement in general.

"Some are likely just joking when they 'shit-post' about shooting cops or 'yeeting alphabet boys' — killing government law-enforcement agents," Mooney explains. "But others seem serious. They've already shown up heavily armed — and in their signature Hawaiian shirts — at protests and at state capitols. They've allegedly killed law-enforcement officers, talked about throwing Molotov cocktails at cops during the racial-justice protests this summer, and plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. They say they want a total reset of society, even if they haven't thought very hard about what, exactly, should come next."

The Boogaloo Bois have made it clear that they want a civil war, and Mooney notes that he has "spent the past few months trying to figure" exactly why they want one. For his article, Mooney interviewed JJ MacNab, a fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University

According to MacNab, "They really want to create their own in-world so the rest of us won't get their jokes. It's tribal. These are tribal markings: the shirts they wear, the jargon they speak, even the types of guns they like."

But Mooney writes that even though Boogaloo's beliefs are nebulous and seem incoherent at times, that doesn't mean they aren't dangerous.

"Watching hordes of armed people storming the doors of Congress, facing off with any cop who offered resistance, killing a Capitol Police officer, and chasing another through the halls of a government building, I couldn't help thinking: These are the fantasies that Boogaloo Bois have been posting about for months," Mooney writes. "The riot may have captured their imagination."

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aha interesting that both left and right use ID pol (emotion anger hype hate of other) images to distract from systemic inequality, which of course then gets worse, which amplify fdbk death spiral to trump/ insurrection; ID pol still me vs we, just bigger me = tribe

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/trump-nixon/

an 121 salon

Americans were shocked to watch as American stormtroopers assaulted the U. S. capitol building, smashing windows, roaming through the building and the floors of both Senate and House, including sitting in the seat of the Senate's presiding officer, leaving incendiary devices nearby, etc.).

This was more than a whiff of fascism. This is what fascism looks like.

So, we have to ask: beyond the lying, insurrection-instigating, so-called President, how did we get here?

The story actually goes a long way back.

First, the more obvious Republican side of the story:

Although his administration did eventually oversee some environmental protections, President Richard Nixon gained the White House via a law and order campaign in 1968, appealing to the so-called "silent majority" who were frightened, if not alienated, by the images of antiwar protesters, inner-city "rioters," and counterculture "freaks" during the 1960s.

The mass media, of course, fed this dynamic by refusing to take seriously the actual claims of Black, antiwar, and feminist activists; instead, making sure the public saw the most inflammatory examples of their behaviors and appearances. That's a story I have documented elsewhere.

Nixon's election and his "Southern Strategy" set in stone the future of the Republican party, although it remained for Ronald Reagan to seal the deal. Reagan's rhetoric about basic "decency" and "family values," fed the grievances of those who felt left out of, or alienated by, the '60s. But crucially, Reagan's actual policies focused on eliminating ways the government addresses public needs, instead cutting taxes on the wealthy, rebuilding a huge military complex and aggressive foreign policy, and deregulating the economy.

However, the people drawn to so-called conservative rhetoric — whether religious traditionalists, rural folks or members of the white working class — were not the actual winners under Reagan. Instead, they lost more and more ground economically. They basically got symbolic gratification. Their attention was instead diverted to the Democrats, liberals and "Eastern elites" who "caused" their problems.

That's the path that leads directly to Trump and his True Believers.

What, then, of the Democratic Party?

That, too, is a long story. In the midst of the Reagan years, smarting from Nixon's humiliating victory in 1972 and Reagan's in 1984, Democratic centrists — names like Dick Gephardt, Sam Nunn, Bill Clinton [TONY COELHO]— took steps to move the party away from its more liberal wing and into the corporate-dependent center. In its more liberal moments the Democratic Party typically expressed hopeful rhetoric about defending the rights of minorities, women and LGBTQ people, defending the environment, etc. The reality consistently fell far short of the rhetoric.

So, in our two-party system, Republicans have been all about give-aways to the rich while manipulating the emotions of less well-off white Americans. Democrats have essentially ignored the latter populations, becoming increasingly dependent on corporate money while also manipulating the aspirations of marginalized communities.

Neither party speaks a word against a capitalist system that feeds inequality, threatens the planet's ability to sustain life, and generates a foreign policy marked by militarism and war. The "problem" is always the "other party."

In their more liberal moments, Democrats embrace what is often called "identity politics" — race, gender, and sexuality in particular. This rhetorical embrace is used by Republicans to feed the emotional attachment of their rank and file supporters. Democrats gain support when Republican rhetoric becomes outrageous. Clearly, the political center, with all its sanctimonious rhetoric, is reinforced when something like the Capitol assault occurs.

Yet the country remains stuck in this see-saw battle that goes nowhere. Beholden to corporate wealth, neither party dares to confront class inequality. Yet, unlike identity concerns about discrimination, hate speech, and oppression — all serious problems — class analysis reveals the systemic forces that lie behind these and keep both parties' rank-and-file in their place at the margins of American politics.

Ultimately, the only way out of this will occur when enough people becomeaware, not only of the seriousness of the hazards facing us, but of the need to come together in a well-mobilized mass movement addressing systemic concerns.We already see where we're heading if we don't do this.

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aha: trump the disruptor generates chaos, polarization, hype fear/anger (and inequality that drives it) and declares only he is the strong man/strict father alone who can establish law and order

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aha hier is defend position/natural order from encroachment/threat (emotion, reptile brain) from them other foreigner blk/brn ppl

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/psychopath/

new study published in the latest edition of "Personality and Individual Differences" highlights the relationship between psychopathic tendencies, pathological personality traits and prejudicial views. Research suggests people with "calloused, deceitful, and manipulative interpersonal styles" are more prone to align with the beliefs of right-wing authoritarianism, according to PsyPost.

Sandeep Roy, a doctoral candidate with a major-applied focus on clinical psychology at the University of North Texas, explained the correlation between the two.

"My interest in the relationship between pathological personality traits, such as those captured by psychopathy, and prejudicial tendencies originated from my experiences working with offenders in the Arizona correctional system prior to graduate school," said Roy.

He added, "I noticed offenders who were elevated in psychopathic propensities, as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003), frequently used racial epithets to denigrate me and other staff. When I began studying this personality disorder more in my graduate training, I noticed a paucity of literature relating psychopathy to prejudice."

Roy went on to explain what inspired his research as he noted his concern about the uptick in "hate-based violence" in recent years. The study focused on the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale-Short Form (SRP-SF) which broke psychopathy into four distinct categories: "a manipulative and deceptive interpersonal style, callousness and lack of empathy, impulsivity, and overt antisocial tendencies."

"Given the increase in hate-based violence in the last few years, I wanted to explore if certain personality traits traditionally studied in the realm of clinical psychology may be predictive of prejudice and provide empirical research on this understudied topic," he explained. "Psychopathy is particularly relevant to prejudice given that facets of the disorder, such as callousness or lack of empathy, are predictive of prejudicial tendencies."

The latest research findings are said to align with previous studies conducted in Austria which highlighted how some people with seemingly "dark" personality traits had an increased likelihood to support right-wing political views and beliefs.

Roy's research also noted a direct correlation between psychopathic tendencies judgmental views. During an interview with with the publication, Roy further explained his findings.

Roy said, "The findings of the study suggest that psychopathic traits, particularly the calloused and deceptive traits, are robustly associated with the tendency to prefer a society that keeps marginalized groups low in status and power and are also predictive of the propensity to use aggression towards violators of traditional social norms, both of which are salient predictors of a variety of prejudicial attitudes."

aha2 covid plague not scourge of god for gay sex but chicomm.

aha CNP is everywhere in trump/ crazytown slide into polarization in this case dobson; satan usage getting pretty common/casual, it's manichean light/dark trubalism, you're with us or THEM; they are so evil/irrational only settle/cure with war; they hate america and freedom; araageddon is the final orgasmic punishment /vanquishing of coastal elite who looked down on us and called us crazy (ghost dance) aha3: this is the dark side of magical thinking vs prosperity gospel.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-evangelicals-2649541067/

alexh

Christian Right is in mourning over President Donald Trump being voted out of office. Pat Robertson, the far-right evangelical who founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, has declared that the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20, 2021 must be prevented, saying, "We will not give up this great country. And Satan, you cannot have it." But the irony is that the incoming president is much more religious than Trump, who has demonstrated how little he knows about Christianity and the Bible.

Although Trump was raised Presbyterian, religion was never a high priority in his life. But when he ran for president in 2016, Trump realized that the Christian Right was a prominent voting bloc in the GOP and went out of his way to pander to the far-right White evangelicals he had no connection to in the past. The Trump of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s was more of a Blue Dog Democrat than a GOP culture warrior, and he spent a lot more time in casinos than in churches.

Journalist Ed Kilgore, in an article published by New York Magazine on December 17, notes Trump's history of butchering Biblical references during his speeches.

Kilgore explains, "Before Donald Trump became the very favorite politician of White conservative evangelicals, he was regularly a figure of sport for displaying exceptional ignorance in all matters religious. A particularly rich example of his clumsiness occurred when he was campaigning at evangelical stronghold Liberty University early in 2016 and tried to quote a Bible verse that was very familiar to the audience, since it's etched on several buildings there."

Kilgore adds that there were many other "religious gaffes Trump committed while stumping for votes" in 2016.

"On another occasion along the campaign trail," Kilgore recalls, "Trump was asked about his favorite line of scripture. He delivered a word salad for a while and finally tried to recall 'an eye for an eye,' not the sort of thing Christians of any variety consider normative for the faith of the Prince of Peace…... Just prior to the Iowa caucuses, Trump was in a Council Bluffs church when a plate came down the pews with communion bread on it. The billionaire misidentified it as a collection plate and put a couple of bills on it."

Kilgore also notes that in 2017, Trump met with two Presbyterian minsters and was surprised to learn that they didn't consider themselves evangelicals but rather, described themselves as "Mainline Protestants."

Of course, anyone with even a basic knowledge of Christianity realizes that Presbyterians aren't evangelicals any more than Episcopalians or Lutherans — two other examples of Mainline Protestants — are evangelicals. And there's no way that either Biden, a devout Catholic, or former President Barack Obama, a Mainline Protestant, would have made that mistake or confused a communion plate with a collection plate. Unlike Trump, Biden and Obama both have a long history of being churchgoing Christians and obviously have an extensive knowledge of the Bible.

[twt]

if Pat Robertson were to sit down with Biden or Obama, they could have an in-depth conversation about scripture. Yet Robertson, like much of the Christian Right, adores Trump while hating Biden and Obama — which underscores the deeply tribalist nature of the Christian Right.

The Christian Right has long been a hate movement, and it is as much about White nationalism and far-right identity politics as it is about Protestant fundamentalism. The late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., founder of Liberty University and co-founder of the Moral Majority, was a notorious segregationist during the 1950s and 1960s, when he vigorously defended Jim Crow laws in the pulpit and argued that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a not a true Christian because of his anti-segregation views. During the 1980s, Falwell defended the racist apartheid regime in South African and encouraged Christians to buy krugerrands to support it.

The late Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater, known for being an arch-conservative in his day, was vehemently critical of Falwell and the Christian Right during the 1980s — describing them as dangerous fanatics and warning that the GOP was making a huge mistake by allying itself with that movement. But many Republicans ignored Goldwater, much to the GOP's detriment.

To the Christian Right and far-right White evangelicals, the fact that Biden and Obama are more religious than Trump is irrelevant. Robertson, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family) and other evangelical Trump supporters are extreme tribalists, and they view Trump as part of their tribe — which is why Trump got a pass when, according to his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, he had extramarital affairs with a porn star (Stormy Daniels) and a Playboy model (Karen McDougal) and paid them hush money to keep quiet.

Trump repeatedly attacked Biden as anti-Christian during his 2020 presidential campaign. But in 2017, Trump didn't even know the difference between Presbyterians and evangelicals.

The Christian Right will miss Trump dearly when he leaves off on January 20, 2021. And no matter how much Biden goes to church or accurately quotes the Bible, it won't matter to the far-right evangelical extremists who value White identity politics above all else.

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aha omg: in post-truth, JOK video dr is SOP // Neg attack ad, strip of context, hype anger, pix bypass brain

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/gop-conspiracy-theories/

it's been happening for decades — but the transformation is now complete.

It started with the Whitewater investigation, went through all of the Benghazi investigations, and ramped up in recent years when Republicans turned around to falsely claim that the investigation into Donald Trump's ties with a Russian conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election was as a "hoax," ignoring the overwhelming evidence of rampant collusion. On Wednesday, the transformation of the GOP from a real political party to a conspiracy theory cult was finally fully completed.

Wednesday was the day Senate Republicans spent hours and a hefty chunk of taxpayer money to bolster the lie that Democrats "stole" the 2020 election, with their only evidence being the say-so of a narcissistic sociopath whose only spoken language is lying. No one, especially no Republican politician, sincerely believes that Trump was the "real" winner of the 2020 election, or that there's any evidence whatsoever of voter fraud or election irregularities of any real importance. As Sen. Gary Peters, D.-Mich., the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee declared during his opening remarks, "this hearing gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies" and " is a grave threat to the future of our democracy."

Of course, that is the point.

As the committee chair, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and his fellow Republicans understand, their party can no longer win fair elections or campaign on ideas, since the public rejects most policies the GOP stands for. So the party's only recourse is to dish out a steady stream of conspiracy theories meant to distract from the policy debate while leveraging their power to undermine democracy.

As the mainstream news coverage of the hearing dutifully noted, no evidence of voter fraud was presented during Wednesday's hearing and Democrats on the committee repeatedly emphasized that Trump's claims of "fraud" have been presented before the courts dozens of times and thrown out for lack of evidence. Indeed, anyone who actually watched the hearing or read responsible coverage of it would walk away with the impression that the Republicans were a bunch of raving madmen and the Democrats were the only people speaking any sense.

What the Republicans running the hearing understand, however, is that their audience, the Republican base, neither watched the hearing nor consumed the mainstream media coverage of it. Instead, the purpose of the hearing is to generate footage that can be edited, often misleadingly, into clips that are fed into right-wing media sources and circulated through social media.

Evidence is not needed, nor is proof, nor convincing arguments. All that's needed are clips of the Republican senators, looking officious in the trappings of a Senate hearing, railing about "stolen" elections and defending the honor of those who purport to believe that Joe Biden stole the election. And all those poignant and convincing rebuttals from Democrats? Those can be chopped and edited to make the Democrats look "crazy" and like they're unleashing "unhinged" attacks on the noble Republicans.

None of this is about keeping Trump in office.

Senate Republicans not only understand that he lost, but that his coup efforts are failing. Their crusade now is about exploiting his lies of a "rigged" election for their own political purposes. Feeding the GOP base's victim complex and riling them up with conspiracy theories keeps them too busy obsessively hating Democrats to notice that the Republicans have run the country into the ground. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri showcased the strategy perfectly, with a maudlin speech about how actual evidence of a rigged election wasn't the point, because "the constituents back at home" told him "theyfeltthey had been disenfranchised."

"These are normal, reasonable people. These are not crazy people," he said.

For someone actually watching the hearing, this is maddening. The folks Hawley is talking about are just rabid Republicans who back Trump's coup and are willing to stand by outrageous bad faith arguments to defend their belief that certain voters — namely Black voters in big cities — simply shouldn't have the same right vote.

But when Hawley's remarks about are inevitably cut into a video that removes all this context and fed into right-wing disinformation channels, all that audiences will see is Hawley defending his voters as "normal, reasonable people" who are "not crazy". It will read as him defending the honor of conservatives against those elitist, condescending liberals who are always calling them "crazy", instead of what actually happened, which was that Hawley said conservative "feelings" about the election matter more than the fact of who actually won.

Similarly, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky declared during the hearing that the election "in many ways, was stolen." He did not offer evidence, much less proof for this claim, which was a blatant lie. But it doesn't matter. He knows that his statement will be cut into a video and disseminated. He doesn't need evidence, so much as a quick clip with him looking authoritative as he offers this lie without rebuttal.

That's what GOP politics is all about these days. It's not about making a policy case to voters, since Republican politicians know that will never fly. Instead, it's about identity politics and stirring up hate, however ridiculous, against liberals. Hawley is hoping his constituents be so angry at the alleged liberals calling them "crazy" that they focus on getting their revenge by voting Republican, rather than asking hard questions about, say, why the Republican-run Senate has abandoned them to economic devastation during this pandemic.

This is all the Republican Party is these days: A propaganda engine churning out fake "scandals" meant to send their voters down conspiracy theory rabbit holes or stir irrational right-wing grievances. Anything, really, but ever talk about actual policy or governance, which Republican politicians know is territory they will always lose on.

That's why Republicans have fully committed to Trump's lies about the 2020 election. It's not that they care one whit about Trump — I suspect many of them are glad to see him go since he's a miserable person to be around — but because this conspiracy theory is so useful. Republicans can now focus their voters, ideally for four years, on nursing a grudge over losing an election they "should" have won, if only the votes of those meanie Democrats had been thrown in the trash.

After all, what's the alternative?

Republicans know they'd lose a reasonable debate about policy differences with Democrats. So this is what they've turned themselves into: A conspiracy theory cult that is always dashing from one mad lie to another, stirring up the base with nonsense and hoping the voters will never catch onto what a con the whole thing is.

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remember urban legend as anx of new cope mech

aha2: bannon (and tucker? def trump) is a pseudo-populist; i recently noted that conspiracy theory is a stew of recycled and remixed memes; trump stole bernie's accurate systemic analysis, but twist it to support gop grifters and corps; beck and rush do it too?

aha: projection: we are not trying to enslave you by making you indep contractor in gig economy whose life will be ruled by an app [tho you're your own boss/entre?! AI constantly tweaks to extract max work thus profit] and you have to keep working even if sick to feed your kids and mebbe keep their health care in a pandemic, it's THEM

bannon new newt futurist? // soc med bias?

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannons-deranged-election-conspiracy-theories-ranked

no lnx vid

Steve Bannon's deranged election conspiracy theories, ranked

Bannon is light on details, heavy on apocalyptic innuendo

WRITTEN BY MADELINE PELTZ

PUBLISHED 11/25/20 12:07 PM EST

I listen to Steve Bannon’s podcast for four hours a day, every day. While it's purported focus is the pandemic, at this point the show has devolved into a pro-beheading cesspool of election related conspiracy theories.

On the show, Bannon frequently brags about the size and diversity of his audience (the show is at the time of publication ranked 55th in Apple Podcast’s rankings). But though he considers himself a leader and a patriot, Bannon has failed his audience by deliberately squandering the opportunity to tell them the truth about urgent matters related to the election and the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, he services them lies and conspiracy theories about voter fraud and other vague, random Breitbart-style brain worms. In these sputtering sunset hours of the Trump legal defense, he’s live on YouTube for four hours every day repeating some combination of the following rabbit holes and falsehoods.

As such, Media Matters has compiled a non-exhaustive list of his various deranged election conspiracy theories and has ranked them from “extraordinarily” to “completely.”

1. “The Great Reset” conspiracy theory

Derangement rating: Extraordinarily

Bannon has embraced a conspiracy theory about The Great Reset initiative led by the World Economic Forum, the organization focusing on public-private partnership that hosts the world leaders, billionaires, and business leaders at an annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland. Of all his falsehoods, this one is perhaps the most vague and unhinged.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) describes the Great Reset initiative as a collaborative effort among the organization’s sponsors “to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being” in rebuilding a post-COVID world. The language may be vague and slightly creepy, but the initiative has no governance or enforcement mechanism -- its scope doesn’t extend beyond discourse. The Great Reset is also the title of a book written by Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive director of the World Economic Forum.

In Bannon-land, the great reset is an opportunity for the elite cabal to “depopulate” the earth to 500 million, then genetically engineer humankind using “the convergence of artificial intelligence, advances in chip design and bioengineering.” He explains that the Democrats are attempting to “steal this election” because “if they can thwart the will of the people in this country,” they’ll be able to achieve the great reset by taking down populist movements in other countries as well.

Video file

CitationFrom the November 16, 2020, edition of War Room: Pandemic

STEVE BANNON (HOST): You’ve got [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau up there talking about the great reset. This is what the whole deal is. This is what they’re going to try to do. this is globalization on steroids. A system -- I think it’s actually a combination of state capitalism and authoritarian rule that lets your [UNINTELLIGIBLE] betters -- as they depopulate.

…

:{:{}:

These oligarchs, and I call them the AI aliens, right, because they’re all on the spectrum, right. They have no human compassion or empathy. They look at thedeplorables as just cogs in the machine. They look at lao bai xing as units of production and consumption, and they would like the earth not to have 6 billion people or 7 billion people. They’d like the earth to have 500 million people, which would be all them. And -- I said one time in Italy that the purpose of populism is to make sure that the guys that make the decisions on the world economic system today were not the same people -- that’s why we had to confront it now -- were not the same people making the decisions on the singularity, that convergence -- and that’s what the fourth industrial revolution really is is the convergence of artificial intelligence, advances in chip design and bioengineering. They never want to talk about the bioengineering piece, right. The singularity is on one side homo sapiens, on the other side is something that’s post-homo sapien.

…

That singularity is going to be within the lifetime of our children. Maybe in the next 20, 25, 30, years. They don’t want to talk about that. That’s not conspiracy theory. I don’t have my -- it’s just a Harvard Business School case, right, to be deconstructed. And it’s obvious the direction they’re taking this, the great reset. Listen, we’re winning. But victory begets victory so Jack, I love the speech but hey, if they steal this election, it’s not about Trump. It’s not about Donald Trump as a person. If they steal this election they have basically thwarted the will of the people in the greatest republic in mankind’s history. If they can thwart the will of the people in this country, that’s how they try to break Brazil. That’s how they try to break Italy. That’s how they try to break the lao bai xing, the diaspora of the Chinese.

On November 20, Bannon returned to the conspiracy theory, saying “the deplorables understand” that Democrats are “trying to steal” the election in order to implement the great reset, which will involve “the convergence of advanced chip design, robotics, artificial intelligence with biotechnology.”

Video file....[many more

---

aha this is a kind of extraction, pvtize profits, socialize costs; corps are tax dodgers thus leeches

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/bernie-sanders/

'The Walton family is the real welfare queen': GAO report details how taxpayers subsidize corporate giants' low wages

pinpointing a reality denounced as "morally obscene" by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a new government study shows how some of the nation's largest and most profitable corporations—including Walmart, McDonald's, Dollar General, and Amazon—feast upon taxpayer money by paying their employees such low wages that huge numbers of those workers throughout the year are forced to rely on public assistance programs such as Medicaid and food assistance just to keep themselves and their families afloat.

According to a statement from Sanders' office, the study he commissioned the Government Accountability Office to carry out—titled "Millions of Full-time Workers Rely on Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs"—found that an estimated 5.7 million Medicaid enrollees and 4.7 million SNAP(Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients who worked full-time for 50 or more weeks in 2018 earned wages so low that they qualified for these federal benefits. In addition, an estimated 12 million wage-earning adults enrolled in Medicaid and 9 million wage-earning adults living in households receiving SNAP benefits worked at some point in 2018.

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aha dr'd video especially potent b/c selective POV pick of content helps with alt fact post truth BS, PLUS seeing is believing, looks like raw unfakeable reality verite right there on the screen, PLUS images bypass rational brain; PLUS designed to go viral, and even if debunked [and we have ppl dying of covid who think it's bs, stop cursing tyhe nurses for wearing ppe only when intubated], plus it's made to support existing BS narrative (or combo, some cultivated for decades like myth of liberal press [death spiral?]; and even if debunked it still has emotional effect [ampl by algorithms] even after rational mind accepts it was not true/never happenened?!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/ivanka-trump

roger salon

As right-wing groups clashed with counter-protesters at pro-Trump demonstrations over the weekend, Ivanka Trump, the senior White House adviser and daughter of outgoing President Donald Trump, condemned the media on Twitter for "near total silence" over alleged assaults on conservatives. The tweet came as selectively edited video wrongly portraying Trump supporters as victims of violence circulated online in right-wing circles.NOTE THIS SETS UP RATIONALE FOR MORE RW VIOLENCE]

"The media's near total silence about the physical violence being perpetrated against conservatives is shameful & dangerous. Just image the outrage and indignation if this went the other way," Ivanka tweeted. "Violence is never the answer and instigators must be condemned and prosecuted." ATLAS, BANNON BOOGALOO...]

Donald Trump Jr. one-upped his sister's allegation an hour later by claiming, without evidence, that the media was "complicit." He also suggested that "they might as well" put Trump supporters on a non-existent Gulag list controlled by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. [THE NEW PELOSI?]

"The media's silence on the violence against Trump supporters is deafening. After four years of calling them Nazis, at this point they might as well just dox them all or add the[m] to AOC's lists for the Gulags," Don Jr. baselessly tweeted. "They are complicit in the violence. They are the worst of the worst."

Trump supporters and right-wing groups marched in several cities on Saturday in protest of the president's recent electoral loss to President-elect Joe Biden. The demonstrators echoed the president's evidence-free allegations of a stolen election.

Many of these groups were met by counter-protests, and violence broke out in some instances. The most serious of these incidents took place in Washington, where Proud Boys and other right-wing groups and militia members clashed with counter-protesters, according to multiple reports. Contrary to the Trump family's assertions, conservatives were filmed launching attacks. 2 STABBINGS ONE PROUD?]

It was not the first time Ivanka had misleadingly tweeted about political violence. In a tweet referencing "inner city communities," the first daughter cited the wrong number of people killed and wounded in the wrong location ("near a playground") over the course of a weekend in Chicago in August 2019.

In his first debate with Biden, President Trump told the Proud Boys to "stand back, and stand by." Unlike his offspring, the president outwardly applauded Saturday's violence in the streets.

"ANTIFA SCUM ran for the hills today when they tried attacking the people at the Trump Rally, because those people aggressively fought back," he tweeted.

The president also shared a selectively edited video posted by Andy Ngo, a right-wing sympathizer with a history of wrongly framing left-wing groups. The clip showed a man getting knocked out by a counter-protester after being attacked from behind.

"A close-up angle of BLM rioters knocking a man unconscious who was leaving the #MillionMAGAMarch in DC earlier today," Ngo wrote. "They also steal his phone when he's on the ground."

"Human Radical Left garbage did this," the president added, quoting Ngo's original tweet. "Being arrested now!"

But an extended clip appears to shows the man was with a group of Trump supporters who earlier attacked a counter-protester holding a bullhorn by pushing him down to the street and stepping on his head.

D.C. police on Sunday said they hadarrested nearly two dozen people, many of them on gun charges, according to The Washington Post. One person was stabbed,and four officers were injured....

---

aha/doh this is part of tearing down noms/instititions; the press is an inst w/ norms, and are experts b/c they validate facts;

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/right-wing-media-breitbart-fox-bannon-carlson-hannity-coulter-trump.php

date?

no lnx

What if the right-wing media wins?

Conservative critics of the press want more than just a louder voice. They want The New York Times and The Washington Post to go away.

It was a sweltering July afternoon in the swamp, and a small group of well-dressed, conservative college students from across the country—the next generation of Megyn Kellys, George Wills, and Tucker Carlsons—was filing into an auditorium at the Heritage Foundation’s Washington, DC, headquarters. They had come to study at the feet of Breitbart News Washington editor Matt Boyle, a zealous prophet of the new right-wing media. Boyle’s sermon was not about how to break into the mainstream media and steer the national news agenda toward conservative aims—it was about the end days of journalism itself. And he was not about to skimp on the fire and brimstone.

“Journalistic integrity is dead,” he declared. “There is no such thing anymore. So everything is about weaponization of information.” Standing behind a mahogany podium in a baggy dark suit, Boyle preached with the confidence of a true believer. In a stuttering staccato, he condemned the nation’s preeminent news outlets as “corrupted institutions,” “built on a lie,” and a criminal “syndicate that needs to be dismantled.” Boyle and his compatriots were laboring to usher in an imminent—and glorious—journalistic apocalypse. “We envision a day when CNN is no longer in business. We envision a day when The New York Times closes its doors. I think that day is possible.”

Squint at the Trump era, and it’s easy to see a conservative media in crisis. Over the past 18 months, we have witnessed the fall of Bill O’Reilly, the ouster (and death) of Roger Ailes, prominent conservative outlets from Fox News to Breitbart to The Wall Street Journal op-ed page erupt in upheaval and infighting, Milo Yiannopoulos lose his book deal, and Tomi Lahren lose her job at The Blaze (only to land at Fox). Look closer, though, and you’ll see that much of that drama was simply a function of the outlets’ increased political power (and the heightened scrutiny that’s followed)—a bit of routine turbulence accompanying the unprecedented ascent of the right-wing media.

[ICYMI: You might’ve seen the Times‘s Weinstein story. But did you miss the bombshell published days after?

While Donald Trump’s rise may have, as Politico’s Eliana Johnson recently wrote, “scrambled the pecking order” on the right—elevating Breitbartesque populists over the conservative intellectuals at the Journal and The Weekly Standard—the conservative media complex as a whole is bigger, stronger, and more influential today than it’s ever been. And with so many of its most powerful members now pursuing a scorched-earth assault on America’s journalistic institutions, it’s worth considering what they hope it will look like once they’re done burning down our villages, desecrating our temples, and howling at our lamentations.

Boyle said his goal was simple: “The full destruction and elimination of the entire mainstream media.” Breitbart played up his speech on its homepage that day, but the remarks barely registered in broader media circles. The site and its staff have become known for this kind of bluster, and most journalists have taught themselves to tune it out. Maybe we ought to be paying closer attention.

THERE IS A LONG TRADITION in Republican politics of seeking to discredit journalism. During the 1964 presidential campaign, Barry Goldwater’s press secretary distributed gold pins to reporters that read “Eastern Liberal Press.” Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, in 1969 railed against the “closed fraternity of privileged men” who ran the national news broadcasts. Nixon’s presidency was ultimately felled by reporters, but the critique lived on.

In the decades since, charges of liberal bias (some of them valid, others less so) have practically become an official plank of the GOP platform. The subject has inspired scores of books, countless talk-radio rants, and the creation of an entire cable news empire whose slogan—“Fair and Balanced”—was coined as a condemnation of its competitors.

Crucially, though, for most of that period conservatives maintained a civic-minded rationale for their project. They said they believed in the importance of nonpartisan journalism; in the necessity of a strong, independent press that provided the citizenry with an accurate account of the day’s events. Ultimately, they claimed, they were practicing tough love—offering their criticisms in the spirit of reform.Bernard Goldberg—a CBS News veteran whose tell-all book Bias entered the conservative canon as soon as it was published in 2001—captured this sentiment during a segment on The O’Reilly Factor.“We all know that you can’t live in a free country without a free press,” Goldberg told host O’Reilly. “But you know what else? You can’t live in a free country for long without a fair press. We need a strong mainstream media. That’s why you and I criticize it.”

Of course, some of this stated concern for the Fourth Estate and its lack of objectivity has been disingenuous. But there was value even in the playacting.By paying lip service to the ideal of “fair and balanced” news, conservatives helped sustain the post-WWII consensus that our modern democracy works best with a robust nonpartisan press functioning as the common denominator.

It was Donald Trump who dropped this pretense.Rather than conceal his true meaning with earnest pleas for a fairer press, he fired off tweets casting the media as “enemy of the American people.” Rather than feign reverence for the First Amendment, he promised to “open up our libel laws” to make suing journalists easier. At campaign rallies, he would keep reporters confined to metal press pens, and lead his crowds in a ritualistic booing. As someone who covered dozens of those events, I always thought I could tell when he was going through the motions with his press-bashing, and when he really meant it. During particularly bad news cycles, his voice would take on a growling quality, and he’d punctuate his standard stump-speech line with an extra exclamation: “Absolute scum. Remember that. Scum. Scum. Totally dishonest people.”

Trump’s histrionics were always strategic. He was able to successfully undermine months of critical coverage and dutiful fact-checking by casting reporters as villains. Each time his campaign was in trouble, the candidate escalated the culture war on the press. By the end of the election, we were not just biased or corrupt—we were dangerous, conspiratorial, part of a shadowy globalist cabal. Just days after Trump was sworn into office, chief White House strategist Steve Bannon told The New York Times, “You’re the opposition party. Not the Democratic Party?.?.?.?.?The media’s the opposition party.”

Bannon’s first move after being dismissed from his White House posting was to huddle with the billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer who has backed his right-wing populist media crusade. On the afternoon of his firing, he said in a statement to Joshua Green, author of Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency, “If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents—on Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate America.”

IT DOESN’T REQUIRE AN OVERLY ACTIVE IMAGINATION to picture the post-apocalyptic news landscape that so many conservatives seem to be working toward. Media fragmentation accelerates to warp speed. Agenda-driven publishers—be they professionally staffed websites or one-man YouTube channels—churn out narrowly tailored news for increasingly niche audiences. There’s still plenty of factual reporting to turn to when you want hurricane updates or celebrity news, and adversarial investigative journalism doesn’t quite go out of style. But it’s easier than ever for news consumers to ensconce themselves in hermetically sealed information bubbles and ignore revelations that challenge their worldviews. For most people, “news” ceases to function as a means of enlightenment, and becomes fodder for vitriolic political debates that play out endlessly on social media. (Like I said, it’s not hard to imagine.) Inevitably, the rich and powerful—those who can afford to buy and bankroll their own personal Pravdas—benefit most in this brave new world.

This is, of course, a worst-case scenario. But is it really so far-fetched? Already, many of the nation’s most important outlets—the publications and networks that comprise the core of American journalism—have seen their audience shrink and splinter; their credibility plummet among vast swathes of the public; and their financial futures turn bleak. If The New York Times and ABC News were to shut down or, more likely, dwindle into shells of their former selves, would they be replaced with new mega-outlets that share their resources, their reach, and their editorial values? It’s possible. But it seems just as likely that they wouldn’t be replaced at all.

“This whole idea of media objectivity is relatively new,” says Ben Shapiro, a former Breitbart editor at large who founded and runs the right-wing website Daily Wire. Like other conservatives I talked to, he envisions a return to the media conventions of centuries past, when news was delivered largely by the organs of parties and ideological movements. “At the founding, it was a bunch of partisan press going after each other.” If Shapiro had his way, the news would be a polemical free-for-all and media outlets would give up any pretense of non-partisanship. He dismissed the Pulitzer-winning fact-check site PolitiFact as a “leftist outlet,” and generally rejected the idea that any news organizations should be held up as “grand arbiters of truth and falsity.” The very notion, he says, is “anti-democratic.”

“Basically, I think we ought to get away from drawing strict boundaries around ‘journalism,’” Shapiro told me. He pointed to James O’Keefe, a conservative activist who is famous for producing secretly recorded (and often selectively edited) videos that purport to expose the sins of academia, the media, and the government. “Is he an activist?” Shapiro asks. “Yes. Does he commit journalism? Yes. Is he a journalist? Well, it depends on whether he’s committing acts of journalism in that moment.”

Ann Coulter, the vociferously pro-Trump pundit and author, echoed these sentiments in our email exchange. She told me that virtually all news coverage of the president by the “elite” media—a group she says includes not just The Washington Post and NBC, but also many old-line conservative publications—has been dishonest, frivolous, and pack-like. “Chuck Todd agreeing with Jeff Flake about what a barbarian Trump is isn’t news!” Coulter says. “I guess what I’d like, in my ideal world, is that we all start arguing about issues and ideas.”

I asked her if there was any room in that vision for news outlets that play a neutral, referee-like role—contributing to the debate only by adding facts and debunking falsehoods. Coulter seemed uninterested in the question. The publications that have tried to serve that function, she contends, have become “too screechy and inaccurate,” and have rightly lost the public’s trust. “No serious person would trust either the NYT or WaPo’s ‘FACT CHECK’!”

[ICYMI: Former gossip columnist says there’s one fact about his past relationship with Trump that’s tough to admit

The concept of an obstinately objective press has been under assault in America for some time now, of course, and not just from the right. Critics like NYU’s Jay Rosen argue persuasively that news outlets do a disservice to their audiences when they coat their journalism in a sheen of artificial neutrality. Better to aim for transparency, the argument goes—to be honest about where you’re coming from, and to then strive for fairness and open-minded engagement. But there is a considerable difference between the proponents of this theory and those who cynically celebrate the “weaponization of information” and the rise of “alternative facts.”

The so-called marketplace of ideas only works when reality serves as a regulating force. For constructive debates to take place in a society like ours—and for national consensus to emerge on any given question—it’s essential we start from a broadly agreed-upon set of basic facts. Who will provide them if the mainstream media collapses into a melee of warring partisan publications?

LATE ONE AFTERNOON IN JULY, I met withMatthew Continetti, editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon, in a pizzeria on the ground floor of the Watergate—the DC office complex that stands today as a concrete brutalist monument to the most iconic journalistic triumph of the 20th century. Continetti is not a bomb-thrower by nature. He is polite and cerebral and meticulous about his diction—often pausing for several seconds to consider his words before answering a question. On the day we met, he had just come from George Washington University, where he teaches a class on the history of the intellectual conservative movement.

Continetti grew up in the middle-class suburbs of northern Virginia with parents whom he describes as not “particularly political.” His conversion to conservatism came at Columbia University, while studying Plato’s Republic during an undergrad class on political philosophy. It was around this same time that he decided to pursue journalism, writing articles for the student newspaper as well as for a conservative national magazine called Campus. Aspiring journalists who lean to the right often face a choice as they prepare to enter the industry: try to carve out a career in the mainstream press, or follow the well-trod path into conservative media? Continetti opted for the latter—working as anintern at National Review while he was attending Columbia, and becoming a star writer at The Weekly Standard after graduating. (In 2012, hemarried Anne Kristol, the daughter of Bill Kristol, the magazine’s founder.)

The site Continetti edits today contains a fair amount of trolling—a running series of Kate Upton clickbait; winking headlines like “Greatest Living President Is Also Fantastic Painter”—but it has also earned a reputation for real-deal journalism. Its reporters run down leads, work their sources, call for comment, and issue corrections when necessary. If a partisan press really is the future, we could do worse than the Free Beacon.

I hoped Continetti might have a more optimistic outlook on the world after the mainstream media’s demise. But as we spoke, he was unremittingly bearish on the prospect that any 21st-century outlet could win the trust of a broad, diverse cross-section of news consumers. “One of the reasons there’s no common denominator in media is there’s really no common denominator in American life,” he told me. “As a general rule, we are a divided society. We have very real disagreements about values, about what’s important.”[ --> choice of "facts"]

I couldn’t help but interject: Shouldn’t facts be the common denominator? I asked, painfully aware that I was exhibiting the kind of journalistic sanctimony that the Free Beacon regularly ridicules.

Continetti exhaled, patiently, and shook his head. “I think the problem you describe is unsolvable,” he told me. “People are going to believe what they want. It’s not my job to tell them what to believe. It’s my job to edit a site that provides new information and adds value every day. Certainly, there are many people, like Howard Dean, who say it’s ‘fake news.’ But OK, I’m not going to control what Howard Dean thinks. He has every right.”A smirk appeared on Continetti’s face. “And I don’t believe a word he says, either.”

IN MANY WAYS, Donald Trump was the perfect candidate to channel the conservative media—the talk radio id personified and plopped onto a debate stage. As someone whose status as a perpetually aggrieved media critic long predated his conversion to conservatism, Trump quickly discovered that rank-and-file Republican voters were an enthusiastic audience for his gripes about the press.[recycled newt debate riposte?] And as Trump worked to reinvent himself as a Republican political celebrity, he naturally took his cues from the popular right-wing media. His first major foray into conservative politics was as the world’s most famous “birther,” championing a conspiracy theory that was gaining steam on talk radio and right-wing blogs. Later, as a candidate, he punctuated his stump speeches with stories he’d read on Breitbartand parroted the talking points he’d picked up watching Fox & Friends.

Trump did face real opposition in the primaries from the conservative intelligentsia. Kristol and New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat were early and outspoken critics, while National Review published an entire anti-Trump issue in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. But those with the loudest megaphones—people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity—saw Trump’s affection for them and their tribe, and rewarded it by providing the kind of boosterism that Mitt Romney would have sold one of his sons for.

And so, when Trump won in 2016, it wasn’t just a victory for him and his campaign. It was a coup for the conservative media, whose destructionist attitude toward the mainstream press can now be found at virtually every level—from the hosts of Fox News, to the ascendant internet personalities of the alt-right. “Nothing is grander, nothing is more glorious, nothing is more satisfying, nothing is sweeter, nothing is more validating, nothing is better for America than the death of the mainstream media’s political power,” John Nolte crowed in the Daily Wire the day after the election.

The Gateway Pundit flatly declared, “The mainstream media is your enemy.” And Infowars captured the sentiment by featuring an editorial cartoon depicting right-wing media figures as asteroids hurtling toward earth where news-network dinosaurs await their “extinction.”

In a decidedly dystopian spin on service journalism, some in the conservative media have begun providing their audiences with how-to guides for finishing off the journalistic establishment. Limbaugh told his listeners they should stop consuming news from the mainstream press altogether. “I’ll let you know what they’re up to,” he assured them. “And as a bonus, I’ll nuke it!” Hannity urged his viewers to start targeting individual journalists—and their bosses—on social media. And the alt-right bloggerRoosh Valizadeh has called for a coordinated campaign of bullying aimed at reporters. “Make them appear as ‘uncool’ salarymen in the eyes of the public,” he wrote. “Mock their appearance, their mannerisms, and their weaknesses.”

It would be easy to dismiss all this as performative, and ultimately harmless, trolling. But if the Trump era has taught us anything, it should be that these elements of the conservative media are not to be underestimated. In 2016, they conquered the Republican Party. Now they’re coming for the press.

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aha // domin theocracy and qanon? ghost dance

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/mcconnell-treason/

Despite being polarized, Americans really do agree on the fundamentals. Is the president above the law? No. Does every citizen have a right to vote? Yes. Should powers be separated? Yes. Are checks and balances good? Yes. Should people be free to worship as they wish? Yes. Are the people the ultimate sovereign? Yes. And so on.

Theory isn't the same as practice, obviously, but even so, there's only one correct answer to fundamental political questions. If there were other correct answers—if these questions hinged on differences of opinion—we would not be members of a political community whose outlines were established long ago. We would be part of another kind of political community, one none of us would recognize as familiar, legitimate or good. Our nation would be something else. It would not be America.

These fundamentals and the outlines of our political community that were derived from them constitute a contract among and between citizens and noncitizens. We agree to them, consciously or subliminally, because if we did not, we wouldn't participate in the union we all actually participate in. We'd be in something else that does not exist.

In the run-up to Election Day, CNN's Jake Tapper urged counting of every vote. He was not violating the norms of journalism. He was not taking a position. With respect to voting, there's no position to take. Counting every vote is what we do. If we do not count every vote, we are not America. Very few things in this country are either-or, right or wrong, but fundamental questions are. They are, because they must be. They must be, because we want them to be. We want them to be, because we are America.

The president and the Republican leaders are failing the test of fundamentals. Should they recognize as legitimate the outcome of a lawful democratic process? The only answer is yes. That's the only correct answer, because either the American people are sovereign or they are not. If they are not, we do not live in a representative democracy. Anything less than yes indicates unwillingness to participate in the union as it stands. Anything less than an immediate yes indicates a certain softness of dedication to the US Constitution and the republic. Yet Donald Trump, and now Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republican Party, are refusing to recognize Joe Biden's victory.

I'm told this is theater. I'm told this is about fundraising. Campaign debts must be paid, after all. I trust some of this is true. I also trust history, though. No president has ever denied the reality of his defeat. (Biden has now eclipsed Ronald Reagan's share of the popular vote, 50.8 percent to 50.7. It is the highest for a challenger since Franklin Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover in 1932. And the counting continues.) No president has ever refused to concede in the face of a mathematical certainty. To my knowledge, no political party has ever gotten behind an incumbent's effort to steal an election.

That effort will fail. (I say "will" but honestly I'm as full of dread as you are.) The president's legal scheme has so far floundered. Every one of his suits has been thrown out, because there's no evidence of voter fraud on the scale he's alleging. On the off-chance of one of these lawsuits getting to the US Supreme Court, I'm guessing the conservative justices there will buy themselves legitimacy by dismissing the case outright. Accusations can work in politics, less in court. As GOP Sen. John Cornyn said: "In the end, they're going to have to come up with some facts and evidence."

But even in failure, the president and the Republicans will have accomplished something. (It will benefit the GOP, of course, not the president; Trump will face legal scrutiny the minute he's out of office.)They will have succeeded in three things. One, establishing doubt in Biden's legitimacy. Two, establishing the groundwork for obstructing his agenda. More important, though, is three. They will have deepened an assumption already at work in the background of Republican discourse. Democrats don't count. Anything they do, whether criticizing Republicans or beating them by a landslide in national elections, deserves any reaction up to and including murder.

In a very real sense, the Republicans are constituting a nation inside this nation, a confederacy of the mind and spirit to be made real so "real Americans" chosen by God can dominate the whole in God's name. They are constituting a separate and unequal system inside the one everyone else recognizes as legitimate, in which a small minority is privileged over a majority bound by law but not protected by it. They are, ultimately, on the path toward suicide. When parasites kill their hosts, they kill themselves, too.

The most extreme view among pundits is that the Republicans won't recognize Joe Biden's legitimacy. That's not extreme enough. They are creating a beachhead inside the United States from which to continue covert civil warfare against the United States. The Republicans are committing treason literally, yet they're being afforded respect, as if accepting the outcome of a lawful democratic process were a matter of opinion. Wrong. There's only one correct answer to that fundamental question. Anything less than fully accepting the people's will is desiring an America that will never exist.

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covid increases isolation filter bubble, so if algo finds you 1st (tim snyder yale ~ nazi) , or no corrrective --> qanon?

watershed tip pt FAIL?!

aha see when i called it party of trump; now qanon // darwin herd immunity, death cult?

10/20/20 an rats from ship, ram thru dereg]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/half-of-trump-supporters-believe-qanons-unhinged-conspiracy-theories-poll/

alex h

As outlandish as QAnon's beliefs are, the conspiracy cult has been gaining ground in the Republican Party. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll finds that roughly 50% of President Donald Trump's supporters now embrace at least some of QAnon's claims.

QAnon believes that the United States' federal government has been infiltrated by an international cabal of pedophiles, Satanists and cannibals and that Trump was put in the White House to lead the fight against the cabal. According to the fictional belief set, an anonymous figure named Q is providing updates on Trump's battle. And one of QAnon's beliefs is that R&B superstar Beyoncé isn't really African-American but rather, is really an Italian woman named Ann Marie Latrassi who is passing herself off as Black as part of the conspiracy.

The Yahoo/YouGov poll, conducted October 16-18, asked participants, "Do you believe that top Democrats are involved in elite child sex trafficking rings?" — and 50% of Trump supporters said "yes" compared to only 5% of former Vice President Joe Biden's supporters.

The poll also asked, "Do you believe that President Trump is working to dismantle an elite child sex trafficking ring involving top Democrats?" — to which 52% of Trump supporters responded "yes," while only 4% of Biden supporters said "yes."

Yahoo News reporters Andrew Romano and Caitlin Dickson note that only 16% of Trump supporters who were familiar were QAnon were willing to dismiss the entire movement as conspiracy nonsense that has no basis in fact.

The inroads that QAnon has made in the GOP were evident when, in August, QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Republican congressional primary in Georgia. Because her district is overwhelmingly Republican, Greene will likely win the general election on November 3 and be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2021.

Well-known Republicans who have made donations to Green's campaign include Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. And after her primary win, Trump congratulated Greene on Twitter and exalted her as a "future Republican star."

Nina Jankowicz of the nonpartisan Wilson Center told Yahoo News that it's "really crazy" that "such a high number" of Trump supporters embrace QAnon's conspiracy theory.

Jankowicz explained, "It seems, increasingly, like we're dealing with two different sets of facts in this country, sometimes more. The fact is that QAnon is a movement, a conspiracy that has been cited by the FBI as potentially inciting terrorist and other violent extremist acts in this country. It shouldn't be something that we're this split (on) along partisan lines."

During a recent town hall event hosted by NBC News, moderator Savannah Guthrie grilled Trump about QAnon — and he maintained, "I know nothing about QAnon." But Trump added that from what he has heard, "They are very strongly against pedophilia, and I agree with that."

Jankowicz told Yahoo News, "The fact that we have so many political candidates who are public adherents of QAnon and a president who himself has refused to disavow the theory (amounts to) a tacit endorsement of a different set of facts. That's what's really worrisome about it."

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aha: both putin meddling and trump is trying to undermine confidence in system // tobacco FF corps denial to sow doubt?!

who broke America: RR, grover, gingrich koch libtards, beck limbaugh, jbs larouche, everyone who has been systematically attacking govt so now we have gubmint wackos xian ammon bundy but also wolverines saying tax = theft, traitors FEMA camps jade helm bill gates microchips in the vax.

an 1020 cdv

tim snyder yale:

...I think your word "fear," though, is very well taken. But I'd push that out in a different direction.

:{:{}:

Fear is also an important concept here. Trump is running for reelection based on fear – much more so than in 2016. In 2016, it was a mix. Trump and his campaign were talking about infrastructure. They were trying to go to the left of the Democrats on some issues. Whereas in 2020, it's now just pure fear. A fear that Black people are going to rape white women in the suburbs, and they are going to burn down the cities. The pandemic is either Black people's fault or it is a conspiracy, or it is not really happening. Fear is being consciously created and then manipulated. The Democrats are really running against a Reichstag Fire. The Democrats are not really running against a political party and Donald Trump's campaign.

...

What do we know about the connections between a humane society and authoritarianism?

There is a strong connection. In my new book "Our Malady" I explore this.

For example, on an individual level, when you can't talk, you do not have freedom of speech. When you can't move, you do not have freedom of assembly. When you do not think that you are going to have a future, then freedom is no longer a meaningful concept.

If you cannot afford health care, you're afraid. If you're ashamed to talk about health care, you're less free. If you're aware of that the access to health care is going to be competitive and somebody who's less sick than you might come ahead of you because they have better insurance and better connections or whatever it might be, then you are less free. Pandemic or not, it all creates a situation where there is not an unnecessary reservoir of anxiety and fear. And that totally unnecessary reservoir of anxiety and fear can be directed to other places.

The talent that Donald Trump has is to either generate that anxiety or to take the anxiety and fear that already exists in America and to direct it in the ways that he wants to. Authoritarianism works through taking abuse and trauma and pushing it in other directions.

Donald Trump understands that he cannot win a free and fair election.Trump knows that the pandemic and the economic downturn can give him the sources of energy that he just might be able to use to stay in power some other way than an election. Donald Trump is in "the worse, the better" territory now, because he understands abuse, pain, trauma, fear and related things. Evil understands evil. Trump understands that the more anxiety and fear is out there, the larger the chances he must somehow turn the election in his direction and then pick up the pieces.

Election Day is imminent. How do you respond to those critics who would say that, "You were talking about a Reichstag Fire! It didn't happen! You are an alarmist. Hysterical! None of that happened!" What would you tell such people?

Obviously, we are in a slow-motion Reichstag Fire right now. That is what is happening. Donald Trump is not as skilled as Hitler. He doesn't work as hard as Hitler. He doesn't have the same level of confidence as Hitler, but he's clearly looking for that Reichstag Fire emergency. Trump tried to make Black Lives Matter into that emergency. "Antifascists" and "thugs" and "law and order" and so on is part of that effort. Donald Trump keeps trying to make the Reichstag Fire work.

If Trump is not successful, then that is a credit to the people who are resisting. Donald Trump is not involved in a political campaign; it is emergency politics in the constant search of an emergency. Whether Trump and his allies can line up the emergency politics with the emergency, I do not know. But that is all that Trump and his allies have got on their side — and it all they are going to have through to Election Day.

---

who broke America: RR, gramms, gingrich

RR: fairness doctrine kill --> Rush, Fox anti-trust --> FANG 1 plus 2 --> Qanon

gubmint useless/wasteful if not evil --> aGENDA 21, 2 santas , militias boogaloo

student debt

libtard financialization, militarization, criminalization War on Drugs

death squads MS13

CU, cheney

graham OIRA tozzi DQA, DEREG PVT

xian

gang of 5 manafort, atwater

wise use

risk assess

vigurie direct mail

yaf/leadership inst?

---

RW has PR advantage b/c of four simpleinterlocking isms: xian, free mkt, anti-commie, pro-milita

trump pays lip service to xian (uses them, but pvtly despises as suckers, // to KIA/vets USSR putin bounty; pretends to be capitalist but repeated fails, subsidies avoids taxes (also for suckers); massive corp socialism in CARES? kush covid grifter?

VP buys god loves capitalism?

OMG INTERLOCK STORY DOVETAIL, property and wealth are sacred? thus kyle mom standing O

sparked by

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/mike-pence-is-a-reminder-that-destructive-leaders-are-symptoms-of-an-anti-democratic-status-quo/

norm s

If President Trump dies from the coronavirus that has killed more than 200,000 Americans largely due to his deliberate negligence, the man replacing him will be no less dangerous. While Mike Pence has eluded tough media scrutiny -- in part because he exhibits such a low-key style in contrast to Trump -- the pair has been a good fit for an administration that exemplifies the partnership of religious fundamentalism and corporate power.

The vice president, a former Indiana talk-show host who went on to become a six-term congressman and then governor, has described himself as "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order." But he remains at cross-purposes with the biblical admonition (Matthew 6:24) that "you cannot serve both God and money." Whether Pence has truly served God is a subjective matter, but his massive service to money—big money—is incontrovertible.

Pence ranks high as a Christian soldier marching in lockstep with Trump on all major policy issues, a process that routinely puts business interests ahead of human lives. Whatever his personal piety might be, the results of Pence's fidelity to right-wing agendas have further consolidated a de facto coalition of those seeking ever-lower taxes on wealth and corporations; denial of LGBTQ rights; a ban on abortion and severe restrictions on other reproductive rights; voter suppression and barriers to voting by people of color; obstruction of healthcare for low-income people; and on and on.

Pence embodies the political alliance of very conservative evangelical forces with anti-regulatory forces of corporatism. In the arenas of elections and governance, that coalition is the present-day Republican Party, dedicated to imposing the edicts of religious dogma, rolling back democratic reforms and serving the rich at the expense of everyone else.

"As vice president, Mike Pence is doing everything in his power to control people's bodies," the Planned Parenthood Action Fund declares. Meanwhile, those who are inclined toward racism or outright believers in white supremacy are bolstered. And Wall Street has never had a better friend in Washington.

Pence's most consequential role during 44 months as vice president has been as chair of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Since late February, he has functioned—in effect—as Trump's willing executioner, standing by and blowing smoke while Trump obfuscated and lied as the death toll kept mounting.

"The truth is that we've made great progress over the past four months," Pence proclaimed in a mid-June statement, "and it's a testament to the leadership of President Trump." Pence charged that "the media has taken to sounding the alarm bells over a 'second wave' of coronavirus infections"—but "such panic is overblown."

To underscore his full devotion to Lord Trump's downplaying of the virus, the vice president concluded with a blame-the-messenger flourish: "The truth is, whatever the media says, our whole-of-America approach has been a success. We've slowed the spread, we've cared for the most vulnerable, we've saved lives, and we've created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we may face in the future. That's a cause for celebration, not the media's fear mongering."

Pence's June 16 statement made its way into the Wall Street Journal as a prominent op-ed piece whistling past Covid graveyards. "It was so clearly wrong back then and has turned out to be so clearly wrong since that I hope there's some part of him that's embarrassed," Ashish Jha, the head of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said in late summer. "I had already been seeing data for a good week that things were really heading in the wrong direction." The Washington Post editorial board immediately responded with a denunciation under the headline "Mike Pence Is a Case Study in Irresponsibility."

No one with any discernment would associate Trump with religiosity because he held up a Bible at a photo op. But the other half of the ticket is a very different matter. Days after the November 2016 election, Jeremy Scahill wrote that Trump is "a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors."

Scahill quoted an author of books on far-right fundamentalism, Jeff Sharlet, who said that "when they speak of business, they're speaking not of something separate from God, but they're speaking of what, in Mike Pence's circles, would be called biblical capitalism, the idea that this economic system is God-ordained."

What does all this mean for progressives? The case of Mike Pence should be an ongoing urgent reminder that—as toxic and truly evil as Donald Trump is—the current president is a product and poisonous symptom of an inherently unjust and anti-democratic status quo.

Instead of focusing our rage on the persona of one destructive leader, we should remember that corporate domination provides an endless supply of destructive leaders.While they come and go, the system of corporate power remains—and we must replace that system with genuine democracy.

---

aha/yikes: the ppl's tools PROPS ~ corps hijacked by them; jiu jitsu? asset/buffer flips to liability/vulnerability?

note gun to head soda tax, juul fail on local prop b/c of bad PR at inopportune moment? prop 37 beat by last minute TV ads?

relentless ads on roku "free" tv:

an 1020 also lyft and doordash

Expert: Uber-funded ballot measure in California would create 'permanent underclass of workers'

Nicole Karlis

Those who took high school civics may recall that our democracies lives on fractions. A majority vote — one-half plus one — is what it takes to pass a bill in most legislative bodies.

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OMG anti-stay at home/mask protests could be prep for voter intim at polls or worse in chaos after?! true the vote xian UNIFYING

TRUMP BS ON INVALID ELECTION //BUILDS ON PUTIN DISINFO

nyt

no lnx

The Quiet Hand of Conservative Groups in the Anti-Lockdown Protests

Groups in a loose coalition have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies in state capitals and financed lawsuits, polling and research to combat the stay-at-home orders.

By Kenneth P. Vogel, Jim Rutenberg and Lisa Lerer

April 21, 2020

WASHINGTON — An informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the White House, has been quietly working to nurture protests and apply political and legal pressure to overturn state and local orders intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The groups have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies in state capitals, dispatched their lawyers to file lawsuits, and paid for polling and research to undercut the arguments behind restrictions that have closed businesses and limited the movement of most Americans.

Among those fighting the orders are FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots, which played pivotal roles in the beginning of Tea Party protests starting more than a decade ago. Also involved are a law firm led partly by former Trump White House officials,a network of state-based conservative policy groups, and an ad hoc coalition of conservative leaders known as Save Our Country that has advised the White House on strategies for a tiered reopening of the economy.

The effort picked up some influential support on Tuesday, when Attorney General William P. Barr expressed concerns about state-level restrictions potentially infringing on constitutional rights, and suggested that, if that occurred, the Justice Department might weigh in, including by supporting legal challenges by others. Separately, in Wisconsin, Republicans in the state legislature sued to block the Democratic governor’s order extending stay-at-home rules through May 26.

Those helping orchestrate the fight against restrictions predict the effort could energize the right in the same way the Tea Party movement did in 2009 and 2010,and potentially be helpful to President Trump as he campaigns for re-election. But the cause has yet to demonstrate that kind of traction.

Polls show a majority of Americans are more concerned about reopening the country too quickly than they are about the damage to the economy. And coronavirus protests have drawn smaller crowds ranging from a few dozen to several thousand at a rally in Michigan last week.

Conditions are hardly ideal for a protest movement related to the virus. In addition to the health risks, demonstrators potentially face legal exposure for violating the very measures they are protesting. Plus, some key Republican leaders have embraced the types of restrictions being targeted, while powerful grass-roots mobilizing groups, including those spearheaded by the billionaire activist Charles Koch, have so far not embraced the protests. [BUT FREEDOMS WORKS HAS?!]

Still, the fight has emerged as a galvanizing cause for a vocal element of Mr. Trump’s base and others on the political right. Organizers see it as unifying social conservatives, who view the orders as targeting religious groups; fiscal conservatives who chafe at the economic devastation wrought by the restrictions on businesses; andcivil libertarians who contend that the restrictions infringe on constitutional rights.

“Groups are united in purpose on this,” said Noah Wall, advocacy director for FreedomWorks, which in 2009 organized a Tea Party protest that drew tens of thousands of people or more to Washington. He described the current efforts as appealing to a “much broader” group. “This is about people who want to get back to work and leave their homes,” he said.....

===

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9/20 aha, fash-y, strong man acting alone: trump loves signing things foto op with fawning followers (he leaches gravitas, assent/ applause from them) maybe experts who look like they know what they're doing, but congress deadlocked/polarysys (in pocket of corps that want to continue extract $ HMO] and does not want to ACT, just make it look like he HAS many eg neglected but typical: gop beat up bad 2018 blue wave on pre-existing conds, to trump pretends to defend AT THE SAME TIME still trying to kill ACA that actually provides; also visial, reality TV apprentice-like

trump mocked for finally releasing ‘health care plan’ — which is really a ‘toothless’ executive order

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement September 25, 2020

For at least four years President Donald Trump has been promising the American people a health care plan. He famously sat for the “60 Minutes” cameras just days after the…

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aha: trump is just apotheosis: invis hand me vs we short vs long term: $ = winner, vs losers who deserve poverty, corruption/crony capitalism is natural inevitable outcome

---

// metaphor; immune sys digestive sys goes on overdrive?

aha: reduction = retaliation = transaction

terministic screen/tunnel vision limits to small number of visible things right here and now self-ish vs larger complex system/ long term; also zero sum

long term means more entities, more events thus more complexity (tho a story can simplify/screen/ change emphasis, make a pattern (even where none exists, eg qanon) thus meaning, which then acts as term screen filter to repell conflicting/anomalous/dissonance info ); but fills vacuum need, that previously would have been filled by experts/textbooks/teachers/leaders/pastors?

---

aha: reduction = retaliation = transaction

terministic screen/tunnel vision limits to small number of visible things right here and now vs larger complex system/ long term

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/americas-enemies-perceive-weakness-in-donald-trump-foreign-policy-expert-explains-how-the-president-squandered-us-:{exceptionalism/}:

no lnx audio

c de v

bot line chaotic makes him weak/played

president of the United States takes the following oath at his or her inauguration: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Donald Trump has repeatedly betrayed this promise, and should long since have been removed from office for doing so.

The Constitution deems that the president is commander in chief of the military. As revealed in famed journalist Bob Woodward’s new book “Rage”, Donald Trump believes that members of the U.S. military who have been wounded or killed in battle are “suckers” and “losers” for not being as selfish and cowardly as he is. Trump also believes that disabled veterans should not be seen in public because they somehow shame or embarrass the country.

Trump also has no respect for the United States military’s role as defender of the country’s democracy from threats both foreign and domestic. To that end, he attempted to order military commanders to attack Americans who were (and are) exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed civil rights by protesting against his regime in response to the police killing of George Floyd, as well as in support of social justice more generally.

Fortunately, military commanders put the institutional legitimacy of the armed forces ahead of the president’s whims by deflecting his orders. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also apologized for appearing alongside Trump on the streets of Washington.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that he is likely ignore the results of the 2020 election, and may seek to use the military to quell protests or other acts of resistance, perhaps by invoking the Insurrection Act.

Trump has also pardoned accused or convicted war criminals because he idolizes cruelty and lawlessness. Trump and his regime, in fact, views war criminals as useful tools in his authoritarian campaign against American democracy.

Many of the United States’ most senior retired military personnel, members of the intelligence community and diplomats, as well as other elites in the national defense community, have publicly condemned Donald Trump as an extreme threat to the country’s safety, security and democracy.

Overall, Donald Trump has made the United States less safe, less respected, less powerful, less influential, and less respected as a world power. In the Age of Trump and the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. has become a pariah nation, shamed before the world.

Is there any strategic logic to Trump’s decision-making about the United States and its role in the world? How do Trump’s ignorance, selfishness and authoritarian beliefs, combined with his conviction that his own personal interests are identical to the nation’s, imperil our safety and security? Does the Trump regime’s contempt for the truth and empirical reality endanger the long-term future of our nation?

In an effort to answer these questions, I recently spoke with Jim Sciutto, CNN’s chief national security correspondent and co-anchor of “CNN Newsroom.” Sciutto previously served as ABC News’ senior foreign correspondent and during his extensive career has reported from more than 50 countries, including Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. His new book is “The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World.”

At the end of this conversation Sciutto warns that the consensus among many of the country’s senior defense and intelligence professionals is that Donald Trump idolizes Vladimir Putin, and is somehow personally bound to him. If this is true, Trump’s fealty to a foreign leader has fatally compromised his ability to make decisions in the best interests of the United States and the American people.

You can also listen to my conversation with Jim Sciutto on my podcast “The Truth Report” or through the player embedded below.

How are you feeling, given all that is happening and has happened with Donald Trump and his administration?

I’m feeling stress for my country. That is not a political sentiment. I love my country. I’ve spent a lot of time outside of it for professional reasons. As a foreign correspondent, you end up loving America more because you live in places where they do not have our freedoms or institutions, many of which we take for granted. When I see those institutions being undermined here in the United States and people losing confidence in their own country, I am very concerned. I am still an optimist, but there is much to be concerned about here in the United States because of Donald Trump and all that has happened.

How does America look from abroad?

:{:{}:

There is not a lot of respect right now for the United States. I do not want to overstate that because, frankly, there are many countries in the world with much bigger problems than this country right now.

For example, the COVID outbreak. The U.S. has certainly been one of the worst in terms of responding to it. That is not a political statement. It is based on the data. Europe is doing much better for example than the United States with the pandemic and its deadly consequences and other problems.

The state of the country’s political discourse is also not good. Is the United States able to solve problems in the way it did not too long ago? Pew polling shows that the world’s opinion of the United States has greatly diminished. The world is viewed much worse than it was during another low point, which was during George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

How are career diplomats and other public servants reacting to the Trump regime and its assaults on norms and values? These are government professionals who have served in multiple administrations. How are they making sense of this tumult?

Here is what is different. There have always been disagreements about policy and how best to accomplish those goals. What is different now is that there is an assault on the truth. There is not an agreed-upon set of facts. At first, I thought that maybe having to confront a pandemic would do that. Another example would be Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. There was a bipartisan judgment that Russia interfered, and that the Russians did so to help Trump win.

It came out of committees, as well as the intelligence agencies. Trump attacked those findings and took them personally. That was a consensus not just of a bipartisan committee but the country’s intelligence community as well. Intelligence findings can be attacked more easily because it is still a matter of interpretation.

But in the middle of a pandemic, there are hard facts. People are dying. You can count the number of people dying. You can count and document the positive infection rates.

You can count the number of infections. One can easily disprove Donald Trump’s claims that cases are only rising because there is more testing, because the percentage of people testing positive is also going up. But not in this environment where even the facts are disputed. Conspiracy theories existed well before Donald Trump, but he has super-turbocharged them to the point where they are leaking more and more into mainstream conversation. Democracy cannot operate without an agreed-upon set of facts and the country is miles down that rabbit hole right now.

:{:{}:

Does Donald Trump have an ideology? Is his administration guided by some overriding principle that orients its approach to the world?

:{:{}:

He has an approach and a view of the world. It is an open question as to whether he has a strategy — and that is a question raised by people who worked for him. For my new book, I spoke only to people who worked for Trump and were appointed by him at the highest levels.

:{:{}:

When I asked those officials to describe Trump’s view of the world it was described as transactional: “What can you do for me? I scratch your back. You scratch mine.” Trump has done that equally with adversaries and allies. Trump has no worldview beyond that. There is no understanding of the ancillary benefit of friendships and alliances.

[Former national security adviser] H.R. McMaster told me how much trouble he had convincing Trump that there was more to alliances than just some sort of quid pro quo bottom line. These include shared history, shared values, a shared interest in the rule of law, sharing of intelligence to fight terrorism and other understandings. Trump does not see the world and alliances in that way. As such, Donald Trump will just as easily upend a friendship as he will antagonize a competitor. The United States is on a path of confrontation with China. But the United States also has highly antagonistic relationships now with our closest allies in Europe. With South Korea, the president is demanding they quintuple their contribution to the deployment of U.S. forces there and is threatening to take those forces away in the midst of the worsening standoff with North Korea.

Or even consider Canada, arguably one of our closest allies. Trump has used national security powers to impose economic sanctions on them including tariffs. In essence, Donald Trump has labeled Canada a national security threat.

Donald Trump does not read. He is proudly ignorant. He is a malignant narcissist. How is it even possible to have a coherent foreign policy with such a president?

Trump’s national security advisers knew and realized that he was not reading any of the briefing notes. So early on, McMaster’s team came up with the idea of boiling the briefings down to note cards with just three bullet points, thinking that would get through to Trump....

---

9/20 weaponize: ok i have used the term myself for rw taking something good/true/benign and pervert/evil it for political gain, going on offense in an unfair way

but now they are mirroring/co-opting our term, just like Fake News, an applying it to any (scientifc evidence, in this case wildfires, maybe the most in your face of AGW, eg Australia, amazon rainforest

this may be extension of thoughts and prayers now is not the time in our grief over mass shootings we cannot be rational in our decision (to increase gun control regulations)

how sleazy is the left that they would use the lives of children and grief of parents to score political points

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-breaks-out-all-tools-denier-playbook-downplay-climate-changes-role-western-wildfires

fox breaks out all the tools in the denier playbook to downplay climate change's role in western wildfires

09/17/20 12:15 PM EDT

Climate denial, conspiracy theories, and misleading information -- Fox recycles old arguments year after year in wildfire coverage

Special PROGRAMS

CLIMATE & ENERGY

WRITTEN BY TED MACDONALD

PUBLISHED 09/17/20 12:15 PM EDT

Ignoring the clear scientific links between the climate crisis and this year’s apocalyptic wildfires on the West Coast, coverage on Fox News and Fox Business has downplayed and denied the role of climate change in these devastating fires, deflecting from climate science while pushing President Donald Trump’s perennial claim that forest mismanagement is to blame. At least two Fox programs have even falsely suggested that an organized campaign of arson is responsible for igniting the fires in the Pacific Northwest -- a harmful conspiracy theory that has also quickly spread across social media platforms.

Fox shows are following a playbook that they have used with other major fire disasters linked to climate change, including last year’s catastrophic bushfires in Australia and previous catastrophic fires in California.

The goal of Fox’s coverage is always the same: deflect from the scientific reality of climate change and paint Democratic policies as the true culprits in worsening the wildfires.

Deny and downplay the climate crisis

Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson is leading the network on denying the indisputable connection between climate change and the catastrophic fires burning on the West Coast. On three recent episodes of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host and his guests spread dangerous disinformation about the fires.

On September 10, Carlson claimed that “there’s no evidence” climate change contributed to the western wildfires, instead arguing that state regulations and energy grid mismanagement were the real problems responsible for the blazes. Carlson took this a step further on September 11, when he called climate change “systemic racism in the sky” and stated with a straight face that “there is not a single scientist on Earth who knows whether or by how much these fires may have been, quote, ‘exacerbated’ by warmer temperatures caused by climate change.”

To top it off, Carlson invited Marc Morano-- perhaps the most notorious climate denier in the U.S. -- on the September 15 edition of his show to falsely claim that these fires are “not unprecedented” and that it’s really just “climate ambulance-chasing at its core” and “weaponizing weather events” to link them to climate change.

:{:{}:

The exact same line of “weaponizing weather” was used on an episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight last year to dismiss climate connections during the Amazon fires. During a segment discussing those fires in August 2019, climate-denying meteorologist Joe Bastardi claimed that “if humans are causing climate change, it's very, very slight,” and said that any attempts to pin the Amazon fires on climate change was “weaponization of the weather.”

Carlson’s climate-denying rants fly in the face of well-established scientific evidence that climate change is both prolonging the fire season and intensifying the size and scale of the fires. Climate scientists have also called these wildfires “unprecedented” and linked a climate-fueled drought to conditions worsening the fires.

Additionally, Carlson’s claim that “not a single scientist” can link the fires to climate change is also demonstrably false -- and taken laughably out of context. Climate scientist Daniel Swain addressed this point on Twitter, noting that his featured quote from Carlson’s show was “fundamentally misrepresenting climate scientists' public statements on wildfires and climate change”:

Carlson is no stranger to peddling dangerous climate misinformation. Just last year, he invited Moranoto hype a silly, debunked document that claims clouds are responsible for global warming. In March 2019, he stated without evidence that if climate change is affecting natural disasters, “it might be making them in some ways better too.” (Earlier that same month, the Fox host also baselessly accused undocumented immigrants of killing more people in the U.S. than climate change.)

In addition to outright denial, the network has regularly downplayed the connection between climate and the catastrophic fires. A Media Matters study from 2018 found that Fox ran only two segments on California’s wildfires in November of that year that mentioned climate; both of those segments downplayed the role of climate change.

In recent days, Fox shows have attempted to downplay climate’s role by politicizing the climate argument and purposely shifting blame for the fires to other issues. Neil Cavuto did just this on the September 10 edition of Fox Business’ Cavuto: Coast to Coast:

On the September 14 edition of Special Report with Bret Baier, correspondent John Roberts provided cover for Trump’s outright denial of climate change by calling it a “glaring difference of opinion” with California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Later on in the show, Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt attempted to pass off Trump’s clear climate denial as a problem for both sides of the political aisle, calling his response an example of “why people hate our system, because when bad things happen, the two parties want to pick and choose what’s to blame. … Instead, what they hear is politicians picking and choosing the things they like from the menu.”

This strategy of partisan obfuscation also has precedent on Fox: During California’s 2019 fire season, Fox & Friends responded to Newsom criticizing Trump’s assault on climate action by bringing a talk show host with no background in science, Mike Slater, to explain why “liberal policies are really to blame” for that year’s massive wildfires in California.

Jumping to blame “forest management” practices for the fires, while generally ignoring the role of climate change

On the September 14 edition of Your World with Neil Cavuto, Cal Fire Assistant Deputy Director Daniel Berlant dropped a rare example of climate truth on Fox:

DANIEL BERLANT (CAL FIRE): In California, there really is no debate that our fire seasons are getting longer. We are seeing larger fires and more explosive fires. In fact, on average right now, our fire season is on average 75 days longer than they were just four decades ago. And so, you know, we can debate all we want, but I can tell you here on the ground, we are seeing fires that are incredibly destructive and incredibly fast moving.

But right after this segment, guest host Sandra Smith interviewed Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) to downplay climate’s role in the fires and instead promote “sound scientific management” of forests and his Trillion Trees Act, which climate scientists say is absolutely not a way of solving climate change, as the best solutions to worsening wildfires.

Poor forest management has played a role in California wildfires along with climate change and the expansion of people moving into the wildlife-urban interface, which “has increased the likelihood that wildfires will threaten structures and people.” But from watching coverage of the fires in numerous Fox segments, one would probably come away with the idea that it’s been only California’s forest management policies driving the worsening fires.

The jump by Fox to assign blame to the state for poor forest management as a tactic to downplay climate change goes back to at least 2018, when Trump first blamed California’s forestry policies while touring the aftermath of the deadly Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise. At the time, Trump’s response was parroted by Fox News host Sean Hannity, who stated that he was “right” to blame California wildfires on poor forest management, and Fox’s Laura Ingraham, who on her radio show cherry-picked a BBC article to claim that “Trump was right” about wildfires and forest management.

Neither of these segments mentioned climate change. Even worse, Ingraham glossed over the major mentions of climate in the BBC article, which specifically stated that “many experts point out that climate change has made things worse” in relation to those fires.

This framing of the fires by zeroing-in entirely on forest management doesn’t hold up to what climate science is saying -- especially this year. Fire scientists have said that “climate change, not forest management, is a driving factor behind the state’s fires becoming worse and more deadly.” Wildfire expert Stefan Doerr has also stated, “The bottom line remains that the extreme meteorological conditions are the main drivers for these extreme fires,” and he specifically noted hotter, drier, and windier conditions with climate change “has now created a tinderbox of vegetation.” Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe also pointed out on Twitter that it’s a myth to suggest that “the only reason wildfires are burning more area is because of poor forest management.”

Fox’s attempts to cast blame solely on the state’s leadership for poor forest management also fall flat when you consider that the federal government owns the majority of land out west -- in California, 57% is owned by the federal government, while the state government only owns 3%.

The network’s discussion of forest management hit a high point during midday of September 14, when Trump visited California and once again blamed forest management for the wildfires, ignoring climate change. In one example on the September 14 edition of Outnumbered Overtime, Fox contributor Jason Chaffetz called Trump “absolutely right” and blamed the wildfires primarily on a lack of clearing brush, saying “Democrats have been the biggest impediment to doing so.” Later on The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld stated that forest management is “the problem in California. It's not climate change. It’s forest management.”

Other examples abound. On two separate occasions in the past week, Fox Business’ Varney & Co. hosted conservative talk radio host Larry Elder to talk up poor forest management. On the September 8 edition, he agreed with Trump’s comments and said, “You can’t do a whole lot about the weather but you can do something about the fuel that these fires feed upon that makes these fires so intense and so serious.” Again on the September 14 edition, he repeated that forest management is the biggest issue in fighting the fires and said that “Donald Trump does not believe in climate change alarmism.”

On Fox News, Environmental Progress president and climate contrarian Michael Shellenberger appeared on the September 10 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight to talk up the role of poor forest management at the expense of climate change, claiming that the media’s climate coverage of the fires “has been really irresponsible.” He largely dismissed climate change again on the September 14 edition of Fox News @ Night, when he falsely stated that saturated wood fuel “is driving the intensity of these fires. It's not climate change.”

Later that night on Hannity, host Sean Hannity again made forest management the focal point of blame for the fires, calling it “an important piece of the puzzle.”

Advancing the dangerous arson conspiracy theory

While the conspiracy theory that arson is behind the wildfires has not yet been as pervasive on Fox News as it was in January, when the network’s prime-time hosts pushed the debunked idea that arson was driving the Australian wildfires, it has already been pushed by at least two of Fox News’ shows covering the West Coast fires.

As Media Matters reported on September 14:

During the month of September, record wildfires made worse by climate change have raged across California, Oregon, and Washington. As the fires have spread and officials have tried to contain them, a conspiracy theory claiming that “antifa” has been behind the wildfires has spread across major social media platforms. In reality, as NBC News noted, incidents like “lightning, faulty or knocked-down power lines and accidents” have been reported as the cause of many of the fires. Authorities, including the FBI, have been forced to rebut the false “antifa“ claim as people have refused to evacuate and militia groups are getting active.

The use of focus on arson as a counter-narrative to climate change follows the exact same playbook used during Australia's deadly wildfires from late 2019 into early 2020, when Murdoch-owned media and other right wing outlets peddled false claims that arsonists were to blame for the historic blazes, and not climate change. However, this talking point was debunked; as one study found, only a handful of blazes out of 11,000 were deliberately set. Notably, the arson conspiracy theory now not only distracts from the climate crisis, but is also an attempt to vilify activists protesting police brutality. For right-wing media, this false narrative is the proverbial killing of two birds with one stone.

On the September 13 edition of Fox & Friends Weekend, co-host Jedediah Bila briefly discussed a story accusing a supposed left-wing activist of deliberately setting fires:

JEDEDIAH BILA (CO-HOST): Another man is accused of setting a fire near a Washington highway. A report says he is a regular attendee of defund police rallies in Seattle. That last detail unfolding [is] pretty amazing. It is really incredible to see.

…

WILL CAIN (CO-HOST): These arsonists, as of yet we do not know exactly their ties to any extremist organizations or what their motivations might be, but I think one thing is clear: We now know many of these fires in the West were set intentionally. What does that reveal, Pete? What it reveals is the brazen political monopolization of a tragedy by people like Gov. Gavin Newsom who quickly jumped out and blamed these fires on climate change. There’s no tragedy, there’s no moment too soon to jump and advance your political agenda and pin awful events on your political opponents.

While discussing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s recent climate speech on the September 14 edition of The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham brought up arson unprompted, asking, “Did Biden anywhere in that speech lay out his solution to prevent any wildfires in the future or the people who are actually intentionally setting them in California, including antifa?”

Her guest, Victor David Hanson, glossed over this comment and directed his ire at Biden for even considering to blame climate change for the fires.

The mentions by Fox hosts are particularly irresponsible and egregious given that several days earlier both The Intercept and The New York Times reported that these claims were unfounded and that local law enforcement were “pleading with the public to stop calling 911 to pass on unfounded rumors that antifascist political activists have intentionally set the blazes.” On social media, the arson rumors have been pushed by a number of far-right accounts and groups including QAnon, which the FBI identifies as a domestic terrorism threat. It is alarming that Fox is undermining law enforcement and continuing to align itself with dangerous factions in spreading such conspiracy theories.

Fox has, and continues to be, the main purveyor of climate denial in the United States. It’s no surprise that their minimization of climate change’s role in this year’s western wildfires is lazy, cheap, and similar to Murdoch-owned Australian media’s role in downplaying climate change from earlier this year; we can expect to see more of it in the future.

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AHA: schiff impeach oversight is MODERATION checks and balance = diversity

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/experts-who-warned-trumpism-could-destroy-us-democracy-in-2018-are-even-more-worried-now-we-werent-alarmist-enough/

alex h

When Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s book, “How Democracies Die,” was released in January 2018, critics of the Harvard University political science professors described them as alarmists. The book had a dire warning: the United States’ liberal democracy was in danger because of Trumpism. But two years later, Levitsky and Ziblatt have not backed down from that message — in fact, they are now saying that they should have been more worried in 2018.

Levitsky told HuffPost, “Joe Scarborough ridiculed it on TV, saying, ‘These guys are alarmists.’ It turns out we weren’t alarmist enough.”

Scarborough, the Never Trump conservative who hosts MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” is no fan of President Donald Trump — who he bashes consistently. But when “How Democracies Die” came out, Scarborough argued that the United States’ democracy was robust enough to withstand Trump’s train wreck of a presidency. Scarborough, in a March 15, 2018 op-ed for the Washington Post, argued that American democracy was much stronger than Trump’s chaotic administration.

Journalist Travis Waldron, in HuffPost, notes that Levitsky and Ziblatt aren’t the only “political scholars” or “political leaders” who are “warning that 2020 is a referendum not just on Trump, but on the nation’s democratic experiment as a whole.” But Levitsky fears that too many Americans aren’t as worried as they need to be.

"People are getting killed over politics,” Levitsky told HuffPost. “There’s questions about whether the election will be free. Law enforcement bodies are being manipulated to protect allies of the president and go after rivals of the president. Things are happening on various fronts, and we’re not putting it all together and realizing that our democracy is on the line.”

Liberal democracies don’t necessarily come to power because of an armed coup d’etat or golpe de estado: in some cases, authoritarians are voted into office and gradually undermine a country’s checks and balances. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an obvious example. And Waldron cites Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as an example of a far-right authoritarian who was elected in a liberal democracy, warning that democracy in the U.S. is also in danger.

“Republicans in Congress have done whatever they can to protect Trump,” Waldron explains. “They blocked his removal from office after House Democrats impeached him and have kept administration officials from facing consequences for shirking their oversight duties.Without those checks, Trump has proceeded to do whatever he wants: fire inspectors general, attack the judiciary, violate laws and profit off his own office.”

Levitsky told HuffPost, “U.S. democracy has proven weaker and more vulnerable than I thought.”

Amy Erica Smith, a political science professor at Iowa State University, warns that some countries pretend to be democratic and have elections but are actually authoritarian states — or as she calls them, “hybrid regimes.”

“The number one defining feature of a hybrid regime is that the incumbent is using ― and I’ll say ‘his’ because almost always ‘his’ ― all of the benefits that come from office to get himself reelected in an unfair way,” Smith told HuffPost.

Waldron points to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian President Viktor Orbán as examples of authoritarians who pretend to hold fair elections and argues that Trump is trying to do the same type of thing in the U.S. “through his efforts to undermine the U.S. Postal Service and discredit the election as fraudulent before it even takes place — an admittedly odd tactic for a leader already in power…. Trump’s attacks on democracy are in effect thefinal shattering of the idea of American exceptionalism.”

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story of am except (btw left/commie infidels who do not believe this story of Am exceptionalism hate america/freedom and want destroy/supplant it}:

aha rw pundits have an almost perfect record of being wrong, yet somehow paul Ehrlich gets to be poster boy punching bag for inaccurate prediction (did not help he lost long bet). Club of Rome? greens get tarred with that brush.

common ploy / complaint is that left is rooting for catastrophe (motive? if capitalist system crashes we get to build a better one? We hate America and thus want it to fail for pure spite?

related to alarmist Alar Scare chemophobia, manly stoic clear-eyes scientists and engineers are not scared b/c they see reality and are masters of the physical universe. eg nuclear power

Relates to to American Exceptionalism: we are not bound by rules/history, if we run out of X we'll just use Y (or as in peak oil, frack our way out).

we do not need data/experts do not know how world works systems/ rules /laws of nature do not apply to us; // rove reality-based journalism: the story/truth is what we say it is [// magical thinking?] trump 9/14/20 ca wildfire science does not know

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aha: fox is a corp, and like all psychopathic robots, its function is maximize profit which means max ratings which means max activation of trumpistas via red meat; this is in conflict w/ mission/function of jrnlism, straight news provides cover/fig leaf; successful red meat hypes fear and anger, and includes energizes the RW trump story/schemas of victimization.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/media-critic-fox-news-is-bigger-than-trump-if-he-fights-the-network-hell-lose

do executives at Fox News secretly hope that Donald Trump loses this November because that would be good for the network’s ratings? Before you dismiss that as crazy talk, given the record ratings Fox News has seen during Trump’s presidency, realize that Fox could see even higher ratings when it no longer has to defend Trump’s unpredictable words and deeds and can solely focus on what Brian Stelter calls its “secret sauce”: attacking Democrats and liberals.

Stelter, the host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” and author of the new book, “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth,” raised that very scenario during our “Salon Talks” conversation. As he explains it, Fox News has always been more comfortable attacking Democratic administrations, which traditionally has yielded a ratings boon for the network. “The network in a Biden presidency is almost a situation where tails you win and heads you win,” he said. Fox News might face other problems with Trump as a former president, however. Stelter describes Trump as the Frankenstein monster that Fox News helped create, and as in the tale of Frankenstein, he could end up turning against his creator and starting a competing right-wing network.

In our recent conversation, Stelter also addressed Trump’s nonstop attacks on the media, which Stelter says have taken a toll on the credibility of the Fourth Estate: “He has said ‘fake news’ and ‘hoax’ so many times that it has poisoned the public discourse. It’s like a slow-acting poison that kind of gradually moves to the veins of the American body. And we can’t fully know what the impacts are of that yet.”

Watch my “Salon Talks” interview with Brian Stelter below or read the following transcript of our conversation — lightly edited for length and clarity — to learn more about “Hoax,” his harsh words on the Fox News obsession with ratings and his blunt advice for how larger media outlets can rehabilitate their credibility in a post-Trump America.

Your book “Hoax” is like a feedback loop. Does Trump drive Fox News, does Fox News drive Trump, or does it move back and forth all the time?

It is hard to tell where Fox ends and Trump begins. But if I had to choose one side of this, I would say Fox drives Trump more than Trump drives Fox. Fox has more of an agenda setting role than the President does,which is an astonishing thing to say. But when you look at the power of “Fox & Friends,” when you look at the power of Sean Hannity and recently Tucker Carlson, who is achieving policy goals based on segments he produces on his show. I think it’s clear that Trump is usually in a reactive mode, reacting to what he sees and hears on Fox.

Just this morning Trump was tweeting again about what was going on on “Fox & Friends.” It really is his morning briefing. You mention in the book that Fox News does not have a traditional standards-and-practices department like other news organizations do. Even I have encountered this as a columnist for CNN Opinion. Just this past weekend, the standards department made me rework an op-ed. I was like, “But it’s an opinion piece!” They still had issues because they had our common best interests in mind. Could you share with people what standards and practices do traditionally? And by contrast what is going on at Fox News?

Fox is described as a news operation, a news network, but it’s also a political operation. And right now the propaganda is winning and the news is losing. I had staffers at the network say to me that it’s like working at a place that’s anti-journalism. So you’re trying to produce journalism at a place that’s anti-journalism. I’m wearing my CNN hoodie right now. It says “The World Needs Journalists.” The sense that the world needs journalists, that should be a pretty basic concept. It’s hard to disagree with that idea. However, at Fox, there is disagreement. So Sean Hannity says journalism is dead. You’ve got all these folks on Fox denigrating the media every single day and saying the world doesn’t need these journalists.

That creates a real hostile environment for the actual reporters who do still work at Fox. I point out in “Hoax” that many have left. And I have a lot of stories about people that have left for various reasons, including Shep Smith, but a lot of other names you might not know. For the journalists who remain there, it’s this really awkward, tough, sometimes hostile environment. I think the lack of standards and practices speaks to this problem. There is not a unit, a desk or a division that’s charged with vetting news before it gets onto the air. There are some informal processes, but there’s not that official checks and balances system that CNN has. And every other outlet has — forget about CNN — at the New York Times or Washington Post, there are reasons why there are editors and vetters and researchers. That structure just doesn’t exist at Fox.

You make the point that at Fox, ratings are everything. Everyone is profoundly afraid of losing the audience. Does that then mean that the people bringing in a lot of money, Hannity or Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham, can literally say anything they want on air, as long as it feeds the audience? Is there no one at Fox News who will say, hey, that’s beyond the pale of what’s acceptable?

There are some exceptions, but what you just said is broadly correct, broadly true and really problematic. There is not this kind of follow-through or accountability that I know happens at other networks and should happen everywhere. This is really most clear in primetime with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. When something really bad happens, when something really outrageous or racist happens on the air, there’s finger-pointing that goes on inside Fox. Some people will point the finger at the head of the network, Suzanne Scott. Others will point at a woman named Meade Cooper, who’s the executive vice president of primetime. Others will point at the executive producers for those specific shows, right? So they’ll shift the blame, no one agrees on who’s responsible or who’s at fault. And then there’s an attempt to move on and pretend that these embarrassing episodes didn’t happen.

That’s when they go on vacation, right. All of a sudden Tucker Carlson is on a pre-planned vacation?

Sometimes. Although I promise some of these vacations are actually scheduled, they’re just at bad times. Bill O’Reilly truly was always going to go to Italy when the scandal erupted about his secret settlements with women that accused him of harassment. So he decided to go on the vacation that he already scheduled, and then of course, he never came back. He was forced out when he was in Italy. But there are other times, yes, where Fox uses this vacation illusion where they’ll say someone’s going on vacation to let the noise subside around their program and try to preserve their advertisers.

One of the really interesting things in the book are the little details. You mention Bill O’Reilly going to Italy and meeting with the pope. It seemed like, at least the way you were shaping it, that perhaps the pope could save his job. Even that didn’t work out.

I think there’s so many stories about the last five years, these big stars at Fox, who thought they were kings of the world, who thought they were bigger than the network. And it turns out no, Fox is the star, not these individuals. No matter who’s on at 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., Fox’s ratings are going to remain really high. It speaks to the fact that Fox has a monopoly position in this area of the media.

You write about how Fox got sued because of what some people viewed as misinformation regarding COVID-19 by some of the hosts. When it comes to Fox News and the misinformation that it has shared about COVID, do you feel that the network has responsibility for misleading Americans?

I think there’s a lot of blame and a lot of responsibility to go around about the pandemic, but Fox had the biggest platform on cable and President Trump had the biggest platform in the country. He has the loudest megaphone and he knows how to use it. So the failures of Trump and his media allies to warn the country and prepare the country for what was coming were absolutely shameful. That’s why we called the book “Hoax.” We were originally going to call it “Wingman.” But when Trump came out and said, “These Democrats, they tried to impeach me, now they’re hyping coronavirus, they’re politicizing the virus. It’s their new hoax.” And Sean Hannity said something very similar a week and a half later. They were viewing this as politics, not as a medical emergency. That was the fundamental problem.

And they were always two or three weeks too late, meaning that when Trump finally took action involving flights from Europe, the virus had already gotten in and it was spreading silently across New York City and several other states. And of course, when he announced the European restrictions, there were these long lines of people all shoved together at airports. Fox, to its credit, had a reporter who called that out and criticized the government for it. There were these moments on Fox where there was great reporting, excellent medical advice, excellent segments with doctors. But I think those segments were drowned out by the downplaying of the disease, by the attempts to politicize this and downplay it.

I’ve never seen a president make life and death a partisan issue. And it’s not over. In North Carolina, he and his supporters were not wearing masks. Donald Trump Jr. has been out there attacking the media saying that it’s a lie, that people were wearing masks. Last week, Trump made fun of Joe Biden for wearing a mask. If you take a step back and look at this is, does it feel surreal that you have a president dealing with a life-and-death pandemic in this way, where it’s all about him? Everyone’s doing things to hurt him as opposed to wanting to simply save lives.

It’s embarrassing. And sometimes you need a little bit of perspective, you need to zoom out a little bit. You need to think back six months — it’s been about exactly six months since all our lives changed and these lockdowns began. Now we’re slowly coming out of it and looking around and seeing what the world is like. And the words from the president six months ago sound even worse now, right? We had a sense when he was contradicting his science experts and health experts that he was doing damage. We had a sense when he was downplaying the disease that it was dangerous. We know now, much more clearly, how dangerous and damaging it was.

This is true for his media allies as well. His pro-Trump propagandists. Trump was calling up Hannity at the end of March and saying, “How are my ratings? How do we rate? I called into your show, Sean, how did I rate?” A good friend would have said to him, “Donald, don’t ever ask about that again, we’re in the middle of a crisis. We’ve got hospitals overwhelmed by the surge, we’re trying to order body bags. Don’t ask about your ratings. Please don’t tweet about your ratings again. Please don’t do it, it’s bad for you.” But instead, his so-called friends feed his ego rather than trying to actually help him. I would argue that they actually hurt him when they claim to help him by telling him about his ratings.

The book could have been called “Ratings, Ratings, Ratings” because that’s what Fox News is moved by. It’s a profit machine. When your only touchstone as a news outlet is ratings, what compromises do you end up seeing on screen?

Let me be clear, I’m in television, I’m on CNN. I care about ratings. I care about my show doing well. I look at the ratings every day. But there’s much more of a fixation at Fox on winning because this network’s been No. 1 for 18 years. Everybody knows what’s at stake and what’s on the line, and there’s this intense desire to feed the audience what it wants and keep the audience at all costs. I had producers at Fox describe this as a really unhealthy relationship, where sometimes they fear the audience. Sometimes they don’t respect the audience, but they’re desperate to keep the audience’s attention. What that leads to is Trumpier and Trumpier segments. Segments that are unhinged from reality, that are based in conspiracy theory, that are feeding the audience’s wants and desires and not what they need. And again, this is the problem across television. It is much more severe at Fox.

As you mentioned, at CNN, MSNBC and all the big media outlets, ratings are important. They are connected to profits. But when your only goal is ratings, it’s going to cause massive compromises. Shep Smith and others behind the scenes at Fox News understood that they were putting their careers on the line given that ratings are everything.

Well, also, the ratings also tell you what the audience wants, what the audience expects. Shep Smith’s show at 3 p.m. was the lowest-rated show in daytime, the lowest-rated hour of the day on Fox. It meant that viewers were turning the channel actively when he came on. They did not want to hear him with his corrections to what was aired earlier in the day and his fact checks of the president’s lies.

In the ratings for notable Democratic events, like Joe Biden’s speech or the funeral of John Lewis, you see dramatic declines in Fox’s ratings. Viewers turn it off when the Democrats are speaking and they turn it back on when the rebuttal from the Republicans is starting. So you end up thinking that the audience has been radicalized. What else can you say?

They’ve been served a diet of red meat. Fox News should come with a warning: It serves so much red meat that it’s not healthy. I mean, look, Chris Wallace, Bret Baier, they’re more news journalists. On some level, though, they’re part of the Fox News machine. Is it fair to say they’re also complicit in what is going on?

Well, that’s certainly what some of their friends say, or their former friends. The Trump era has done damage to those kind of gentlemanly, old-fashioned, courteous relationships that you see between television anchors and rivals and all that. And certainly throughout my reporting, talking to dozens of people that were complicit that came up a lot, this sense that the news anchors there are like fig leaves of respectability. One person once said to Chris Wallace at a Columbia event, “Do you think you are there to truth-wash primetime?” That was an interesting term, “truth-wash.” Wallace is on one hour a week, Sean Hannity’s on one hour, five nights a week, in a much, much higher-rated program. You’ve got to look at Fox and say that the identity of Fox is Hannity and “Fox & Friends,” these bigger shows.

But I still think the journalists there do serve important purposes. I understand why they stay. They want to be there for big events. They want to provide a reality check, a fact check to the rest of the programming. But let’s say Bret Baier’s show, for example, is on at 6 p.m. “The Five” is much higher rated at 5 p.m., and then the ratings drop at 6. Not everybody wants to see a newscast, but even his newscast is tilted to the right toward Trump. His panels, for example, in the back half of the show, are tilted to the right. Sometimes the lefty will be a journalist and then he’ll have a pro-Trump person and another right-wing figure.

He tells people that he does this because he wants to have left, right and Trump. And I get it that sometimes “right” and “Trump” are not the same thing, but those panels are not balanced. Those panels are not representative of where the country is, right? If you want to have a panel that represented the country, that’s not how it would look. My point is, even on the newscasts, these programs are tilted in Trump’s favor.

Clearly, Trump has had an impact on Fox News. You’ve mentioned that Trump is their Frankenstein monster, but I want to get a sense from you on how the rest of the media is doing. Do you think the media is better at covering Trump this time, in terms of using the right language? For a long time, people didn’t want to call him a liar, you probably remember that. Now we’re beyond that. We’re two months out from 2020, using terms like “white supremacist” about Donald Trump, using the term “fascist” in an academic sense, not a hyperbolic sense. Are we at the point where the media can speak bluntly about it? ...[much more]

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aha/sum/analysis 9/5/20

anarchism is a real actual historical thing, but often mischaracterized; latest incarnation blends with Antifa, which basically says we cannot afford to give the streets/public space to brownshirts, alt rt/ militias, and we must be prepared to meet the force/violence they explicitly want and have come equipped for [note f/u portland guy killed, he said defend AA friends/allies, ~ // kyle self-defense]; we cannot depend on the police to stop their violence, because they are allies, and the police also use force/violence against AA POC peaceful protesters; Black Bloc says power never gives up power voluntarily; people and their rights do not matter, but OUR property must be protected at all costs (AA lives have no value/importance); BB says we will impose [a transaction?] cost, if you ignore the will of the ppl, it will COST you in terms of property damage [if you lock us in ghetto/poverty/ lower working service gig economy class, we will destroy your stuff/ability to do biz/make more $

ARSON metaphorical: anger /rage physical manifestation, // trump 2016 hand grenade the system is rigged against us, so let's blow it up/burn it down (if we cannot benefit, neither can you]; most good sized/ rowdy protests will have garbage set on fire, this inevitably portrayed by rw fox news as VIOLENCE; next level is smash windows, next level is loot; kyle R responded to militia facebook post to protect property (gas station/ car dealer/repiar?) he was initially reported to be a property/biz [small biz entre hero backbone meritocrisy] defending his property / stand your ground mcCloskey suburb heroes rnc for gun brandish; --> thugs on a plane foment riots as coup to get rid of trump [add to long list of failled attempts, impeach, fake covid ...]

all get conflated into enemy mob who hate america/western civ: anarchist = socialist = communist = violent left-wing extremist = thug = AA= paid protester = soros/jew

is this product of being baffled/ ~ to intersectionality?

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one upon a time, LBJ was able to harness the pressure of CRM, and maybe 60's ctr-culture, and perhaps the martyrdom of JFK, MLK and RFK to jam thru civil rights and voter rights acts, as well the the Great Society, oft wrongly seen as a failure; it did affirmative/ active programs that gave poor ppl money, education, job training...[RR cut housing 80? rick p WITH pod 920)

Later affirm action lost in ct? Bakke? UC? 187? RR attack mythical welfare queen, so direct assistance became taboo [BC did welfare reform, 3 strikes superpredators?]

But must at least be seen to do something for inner city POC, so we get opportunity/empowerment zone, tax breaks for real estate dev in crappy parts of town;

so not giving cash to poor ppl, but only a tax/break incentive to competent rich white guys, then the benefits will tricke down on poor ppl. // urban renewal? gentrification? sports stadiums?

NOW 920 Wheeler needs cover because the massive EPA rollback on regs clearly hurt POC, especially kids, so extends paul driessen Green blk death energy poverty BS or maybe more generally and slightly less cynically, cut red tape will allow economy to thrive, blk ppl will get some of that $, and can then afford to move away from toxins?

...“Communities that deal with the worst pollution in this country—and tend to be low-income and minority—face multiple environmental problems that need solving,” Wheeler said. He suggested President Donald Trump’s “opportunity zones” plan—recognized by expertsas a giveaway to the rich—as a remedy to environmental injustice....

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property concept node 7/20 triggered by secret police violence and surveillance in the name of protecting buildings from grafitti

but see pvt prop rights used by anti-greens for years, w/ legal fdns

in bill of rights, my property cannot be taken or searched

right calls burning trash in street or breaking a window violence.

corp person says a corp = person/human; "violence" equates stuff w/ ppl [slavery ppl = property]

material goods are how i demonstrate i am a winner (smart and hard work/virtue god's favor) vs those poor POC lazy sinful losers, so OK to use FORCE to protect (gets?!) stuff, and call destruction of stuff violence

now secret spy and police justified by protecting fed property (or even a rebel statue not owned by feds):

kyle in kenosha goes to defend PROPERTY

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/24/fbi-fusion-center-environmental-wind/

fEDERAL AND STATE law enforcement officers gathered in the Midwest in February 2019 to practice their responses to a fictional threat: wind farm sabotage. They divided into four teams and pretended to be the bad guys, environmental saboteurs targeting the large grids of turbines that turn the wind into electric power. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Omaha, Nebraska, field office and the Iowa Division of Intelligence and Fusion Center had organized the “red hat” exercise, meant to provide insight into the minds of environmental activist adversaries that didn’t exist.

:{:{}:

Each team developed an attack plan. One proposed ramming wind turbine infrastructure with a vehicle. Another sought to plant explosives on electrical transformers. And — although U.S. environmental saboteurs tend to not use guns — two of the teams suggested using firearms to attack electrical substations from a distance. The fact that cops themselves planned the attacks may have created a “bias toward the use of firearms,” the FBI later acknowledged in a pair of reports on the exercise obtained by The Intercept. However, the federal agents also concluded that “Environmental Extremists Likely Would Use Firearms To Circumvent Perceived Electrical Infrastructure Site Security Measures.”

The exercise was not conducted due to any imminent threat — a carefully noted fact included in the December 2019 and March 2020 reports. “Neither FBI Omaha nor the Iowa DOI/FC has intelligence suggesting environmental extremists intend to attack wind farms in Iowa,” both reports repeatedly state.

Why, then, spend public dollars on FBI role-playing?Because the energy industry wanted it. The exercise came “at the request of an USBUS private energy sector partner, following 14 environmental extremist attacks against transportation infrastructure in Iowa that services the energy sector, particularly oil pipelines,” said one of the documents about the exercise. Privately owned and operated companies and industry groups — none of which were named in the reports — were intimately involved in the exercise: An Iowa utility company and a wind energy lobbyist group provided information to help judge the fake attack plans and assess the fake “threat environment,” and an industry representative joined two of the teams, posing as an insider accomplice.

Though there was no indication an attack on wind power sites would occur, the report went on to say, if one hypothetically did, it could proliferate into many, with each set of attackers becoming more skilled in evading security and capture. “As attack methods become more sophisticated,” the report warned, “the chance for large-scale failure of the electrical grid becomes more likely.” Law enforcement ought to be on the lookout for activists undergoing gun training, activists in rural locations with large infrastructure, and activists casing wind power sites, the report advised. Neither the FBI, the Iowa Division of Intelligence and Fusion Center, nor the federal Department of Homeland Security, which helps coordinate regional fusion centers, responded to the Intercept’s questions about the documents...

---

aha 820 entrepreneur as CONCEPT/GOD TERM: sparked by rnc convention: entre is also a GOD term, ties into Yankee ingenuity/ am exceptionalism sil valley garage mystique: affirms meritocrisy [sic] that racism will fix itself when AA POC start small biz that expand (cain godfather pizza 999 RIP?] over looking the fact that redlining by gov't and banks deprived of capital for decades; but of course you have to get rid of burdensome regulation/red tape that stifle [when in fact corps/amazon will use data to steal your idea/product and crush you or buy you out. small biz and gig economy means own boss thus in control thus = freedom --> fix for INEQUALITY

but of course to be an entre you must have skills/a good education but socialist dems want to trap poor kids in failing public/gov't schools to serve big corrupt union bosses, so devos was FREEDOM TO CHOOSE/SHOP voucher/charter b/c free mkt will create better schools

aha: concept of control = freedom, loss of control = slavery

commies want to control your mind, your actions, your energy use (as a way of controlling your behavior)

control is also law and order, which the strict father must impose/ punish transgression because children / POC do not have discipline (or intelligence) to control their own actions/base impulses

order is enforcement of hierarchy; the job of the strict father is to instill discipline in sons who can handle it and marry off daughter, outsource/delegate the job of control/disc of women

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/rnc-review-speakers-described-an-alternate-reality-in-which-chaos-and-violence-of-the-trump-era-is-joe-bidens-fault/

no lnx twt

RNC review: Speakers described an alternate reality in which chaos and violence of the Trump era is Joe Biden’s fault

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon August 25, 2020 Commentary

The first night of the Republican National Convention featured a diverse lineup that defended President Donald Trump from charges of racism, even as other speakers sought to stoke racial fears and push conspiracy theories.

The convention, largely consisting of a mix of live and pre-taped speeches before an empty auditorium, appeared to take place in an alternate reality where Trump had successfully beaten back the coronavirus pandemic, and where the protests, violence and racial division seen during Trump’s presidency would only get worse Democratic nominee Joe Biden is elected. It was a wildly dishonest night, with the New York Times fact-checking team counting at least 30 false and misleading claims.

“This one half-night of Republican programming so far has been exponentially more dishonest than the entire four nights of the Democratic convention,” wrote CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale.

While Republicans insisted that their convention would be optimistic, and headliners like former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina delivered speeches on the promise of America that could have taken place under any other Republican president, the tone of the night was dark and the theme was racial fear-mongering.

The night kicked off with a speech by Charlie Kirk, founder of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA, who described Trump as a “bodyguard of Western civilization” — a common white nationalist dog whistle — who is defending America against a “vengeful mob that seeks to destroy our way of life, our neighborhoods, schools, churches and values.”

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio gave a speech riddled with falsehoods accusing Democrats of stoking “crime, violence, and mob rule.” Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of Trump’s most loyal followers in Congress, bizarrely warned that Democrats will “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door.”

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who threatened Black Lives Matter supporters with guns, delivered a gloomy, downbeat chat accusing “radical Democrats” of trying to destroy the suburbs.

“They are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning,” Patricia McCloskey said. “This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness and low-quality apartments into thriving suburban neighborhoods.

“These are the policies that are coming to a neighborhood near you,” she added. “So make no mistake: No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”

These divisive speeches were interspersed between people of color who insisted that neither Trump, the Republican Party nor the nation had a problem with racism.

:{:{}:

Former NFL player Herschel Walker — who once played for the New Jersey Generals, a long-gone USFL team owned by Trump — said it “hurt my soul” to hear people call Trump “racist,” noting their long friendship. Haley, speaking of her own experience as the daughter of Indian immigrants, said that “America is not a racist country” but a “work in progress.”

Scott, the night’s keynote speaker, [heh appt by nikki] delivered a powerful speech on the promise of America and his own experiences with racism. Scott urged viewers to “not look simply at what the candidates say” before listing a number of remarks made by Biden to suggest that he, and not Trump, would ignore minority communities. Scott repeatedly insisted that Biden wants to turn the U.S. into a “socialist utopia,” which would be news to Biden and the progressive primary challenges who repeatedly criticized him for being too conservative.

But while the headliners tried to ignore the division stoked by Trump since long before he launched his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle, stole the show with stunningly dark and loud diatribes that prompted viewers to question whether cocaine was involved.

Guilfoyle, who earns $180,000 per year from the Trump campaign, shouted an amped-up speech into the empty auditorium comparing Democrats to socialistsin Cuba and Venezuela. Guilfoyle, who was formerly married to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, claimed that Democrats (including her ex-husband, apparently) had turned California into a “land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets and blackouts in homes.”

“They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live,” she warned. “They want to enslave you to the weak, dependent liberal victim ideology to the point that you will not recognize this country or yourself.”

“Biden, Harris and the rest of the socialists will fundamentally change this nation,” she continued. “They want open borders, closed schools, dangerous amnesty, and will selfishly send your jobs back to China while they get rich. They will defund, dismantle and destroy America’s law enforcement. When you are in trouble and need police, don’t count on the Democrats.”

Donald Trump Jr. gave a speech touting his father’s response to the pandemic, albeit one that was entirely detached from reality.

He claimed that the president had “acted quickly,” even though Trump spent the crucial early weeks downplaying the threat, and that the administration had delivered supplies to “hospitals that needed them most,” even though the Health and Human Services Department’s inspector general found rampant shortages of vital supplies. Six months into the pandemic, such equipment remains in short supply.

:{:{}:

The night also featured segments in which Trump hyped hydroxychloroquine, a drug that has repeatedly been found ineffective in treating the coronavirus, and a video that touted Trump’s “rapid policy changes” in the face of the pandemic.

MSNBC broke away from the broadcast to fact-check the claims.

“To say that 170,000 souls lost in our country up to now is a success by any measure is fantasy,” Dr. Vin Gupta, a disease expert at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said during the segment. “It’s disrespectful to the families who lost loved ones, to frontline clinicians who put their lives at risk. It’s just fantasy. It’s propaganda.”

During another segment, Trump spoke with a group of Americans who had been freed from overseas prisons, including pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested by Turkey during President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s purge following an unsuccessful coup attempt.

“To me, President Erdogan was very good,” Trump told the pastor, who was detained for two years.

Though all of the major news networks break away during portions of the convention for analysis and ads, Fox News host Sean Hannity warned his viewers that “the media won’t cover large parts of the RNC that we’ll be showing.”

:{:{}:

Twitter users couldn’t help but notice that Fox News actually aired fewer segments from the convention than CNN and MSNBC. Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, tweeted his complaints at Fox News.

:{:{}:

“Can’t believe I have to watch the convention on @CNN,” he wrote. “Unbelievable.”

---

aha-ish: a la roy cohn: ctr-punch lie is knee jerk move, has limited # of smears eg fake news, deep state, hate america, // nicknames twitter algo? these degrade opposition, red meat trumpistas love, but deflect crits, plus activates various schemas that plug into overall narrative? cf xian have all -phobes. In Qanon there are apprently inconsistent strands but actually fit together if you are in the club/know and/or watch Fox news?

this was fallback on hydroxychlor, stall for time on vaccine?

trump called FDA deep state on announcement, relative vs absolute

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-and-his-fda-commissioner-grossly-misrepresented-data-on-blood-plasmas-benefits-in-treating-19-patients-scientists/

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[[ aha: anez bolivia evang // bolsonaro re-assert rightful place above uppity indigenous?

has doing god's will earned him "magical authority? see below

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-and-white-evangelical-christians-are-bonded-by-sadism/

john s eb

there’s still too much confusion over the president’s bond with white evangelical Protestants (WEPs). I suppose there will always be as long as outsiders presume that Donald Trump’s strongest supporters believe in loving thy neighbor as thyself. Once you see that WEPs do not apply the Golden Rule universally and unconditionally, things become clearer. Once this Christian concept is removed from the discussion, “paradoxes” melt into the air. What’s left is a natural alignment of political interests.

How do I know WEPs don’t truly believe in the Golden Rule? From life experience. I know what I’m talking about. All you have to do is listen carefully, however, and know what to listen for. Elizabeth Dias wrote a big piece in the Times last week trying to clear up the “contradiction” of WEPs standing by Trump “when he shut out Muslim refugees. When he separated children from their parents at the border. When he issued brash insults over social media. When he uttered falsehoods as if they were true. When he was impeached.” A source explains helpfully that there’s no contradiction at all.

“The years of the Obama presidency were confusing to her,” Dias wrote of her source. “She said she heard talk of giving freedoms to gay people and members of minority groups. But to her it felt like her freedoms were being taken away. And that she was turning into the minority.” The source: “I do not love Trump. I think Trump is good for America as a country. I think Trump is going to restore our freedoms, where we spent eight years, if not more, with our freedoms slowly being taken away under the guise of giving freedoms to all. Caucasian-Americans are becoming a minority. Rapidly.”

This makes no sense to outsiders. Freedom for “gay people and members of minority groups” is not taking anything away from anybody. This makes no sense, because outsiders do not generally accept a worldview in which power is ordered. First God, then man, then woman, then child. White over nonwhite. Heterosexual over LGBTQ. Christian over non-Christian. When you believe with your whole being that power is ordered according to God’s will, “giving freedoms to gay people and members of minority groups” is not political equality, as outsiders would often see it. It’s knocking you out of the order of power. It’s taking something away. Equality is literally theft

when political equality is theft, you cannot apply the Golden Rule universally and unconditionally. If you did, you’d be complicit in a crime. The Golden Rule demands white people share power with nonwhite people. It demands husbands share power with their wives. Neither can ever be done.A wife, according to the same source in Dias’ reporting, must “submit” to her husband in accordance with God’s law. If she does not, she’s trying “to rule over him.” Same for whites and nonwhites. If white people are not at the top of the order, they are being ruled over. This is why Dias’ source says that, “Caucasian-Americans are becoming a minority. Rapidly.” The more for “them,” the less for “us.” They believe Trump prevents that from happening.

They believe Trump is “restoring their freedom.” Utter nonsense. What they are really saying is that the president will prevent people lower down the order of power from achieving more freedom and equality, “violating” their “freedom.” He must do that by any means, even if he confiscates kids from their mothers, bans a world religion, orcommits treason. None of that matters as much as maintaining the supremacy of a religious identity built on sand.And make no mistake: this is a religious identity. These are very real anti-democratic Christians hostile to critical thinking, modernity, pluralism, and all forms of equality. “It’s almost like it is a reverse intolerance,” a WEP source told Dias. “If you have somebody that’s maybe on the liberal side, they say that we are intolerant of them. But it is inverse intolerant if we can’t live out our faith.”[ // reverse discrimination]

If WEPs believed in the Golden Rule, they’d never tolerate other people’s pain. They do tolerate it, however. Indeed, they like it. It feels good to see the president “restoring their freedom.” When WEPs say they want to “live out our faith,” what they mean is sadism is and should be a natural consequence of the natural order of things in which God’s people are chosen to rule in God’s name. “Evangelicals did not support Mr. Trump in spite of who he is,” Dias wrote. “They supported him because of who he is, and because of who they are.” That’s correct, but take that to its logical conclusion. His enemies are their enemies. His pleasures, their pleasures. Their bond is far from a contradiction. It’s an alignment of political interests in which sadism is the point.

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has doing god's will earned him "magical authority? ends justify the means? see above

mis-spoke? made up extreme exec priv or somesuch? invokes article II? or somesuch?that chosen onewas a goof/joke? tho rw in bolivia ~ evo m claims she is restoring xian thus doing god's will? reasserts hier over indig prez

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/former-dhs-staff-trump-claimed-magical-authorities-to-break-the-law/

no lnx

no lnx twt text

Former DHS staff: Trump claimed ‘magical authorities’ to break the law...]]

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aha: fundamentalism --> violence in the name of; immune to ctr-info, thus modulation thus compromise thus the enemy is evil/irrational and must be destroyed.

is qanon funda? amanda? sez just evang/ xian extreme stripped of limits on booze and sex?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/afghan-womens-rights-trailblazer-survives-gun/

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at what point do beck, limbaugh and mebbe tucker take responsibility for stocking anti-gubmint that leads to killing?

ref

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/12/i-became-unreasonable-bloody-message-scrawled-on-car-at-ben-lomond-ambush/

... Carrillo, 32, has been charged with 19 felonies including murder in Saturday’s ambush, according to a 14-page indictment filed in the Superior Court of Santa Cruz. He is also a suspect in the fatal shooting May 29 of a federal officer in Oakland, a law enforcement official confirmed to the Mercury News.

Before he was arrested in Ben Lomond, Carrillo scrawled the word “boog” and the phrases “I became unreasonable” and “stop the duopoly” in blood on the hood of a car, NBC News and other media have reported.

“Boog” is shorthand for the Boogaloo, a libertarian anti-government movement that claims to be preparing for a civil war in the United States.

“I became unreasonable” has become a meme in Boogaloo social media. It refers to a statement by Marvin Heemeyer, an icon in extremist anti-government groups because of the 2004 rampage in which he bulldozed 13 buildings in a Colorado mountain town over a zoning dispute. Heemeyer — aka “Killdozer” — fatally shot himself when the heavily armored bulldozer became stuck in the basement of a store he was destroying. A note he left behind included the line,“I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable.”

“Stop the duopoly,” referring to the dominance of the Republican and Democratic parties, is a slogan frequently pushed by third-party and libertarian candidates.

A former friend of Carrillo’s, Justin Ehrhardt,told the Mercury News that the suspect considered himself a libertarian and had been sharing Boogaloo memes on his Facebook account.

In the attack Saturday, Santa Cruz County sheriff’s Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller was killed and Deputy Alex Spencer was critically wounded, hit by shrapnel as the suspect fled, the indictment and media accounts said.

Other charges against Carrillo included detonating pipe bombs, laying in wait to attack officers and assaulting a firefighter and three other law enforcement officers, the indictment said.

Carrillo was an active-duty sergeant at Travis Air Force Base and a member of the 60th Security Force Squadron.

---

aha wa examiner // WT? not a real paper but key in escalator, cross-over from soc med to mainstream? fox?

what happ to pittsburg-X?

escalator, activ meas

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/how-trump-is-once-again-colluding-with-russia/

no lnx twt

how Trump is once again colluding with Russia

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 14, 2020

Almost two weeks ago, a story circulated that Portland protesters were burning Bibles and American flags. It spread via social media and was picked up by conservative outlets, such as the Washington Examiner. Of course, several Republican leaders joined the bandwagon.

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DOUBT CORROLLORY: DELAY IS A WIN SEE FALLBACKS:

1) it's not real

2) it's real but just natural variation (sunspots, medieval ice age...)

3) it's real and human caused, but too expensive to fix (wreck economy)

3a) Lomborg: more efficient to do Y (or do evil in the guise/name of green: frack, nuke)

3b: wheeler many decades out, 3rd world clean water (ignores that coal poisons am water/kids, coal ash, arsenic...)

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see lomborg shuffle (clintel covid fight covid not carbon) ALSO SHILLENBERGER

820 aha: this is variant last stage of fallback strategy: 1) not real 2) real but not anthro 3) agw but too expensive to fix (wreck gnp) 4: we can afford to fix it, but we must be smart/targeted w/ $ 4a we cvan't really afford to fix big global warming, but we can do smaller green humanitarian stuff [WHEELER CLEAN WATER IN 3RD WORLD] that will make some ppl's lives better and might let us move incrementally to fix climate [and BTW the worst effect/chaos in in far future if ever]

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evil crypto because to promotes denial IN THE NAME OF humanitarianism/ EJ when in fact poor POC in 3rd world will bhe hit 1st and worst, and have least ability to cope and made least contribution to the problem

===

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musing/aha/analysis: 820pawn owning libs

this is some sort of balancing? (to be charitable) jiu jitsu move: because the left keeps beating us up as racists and all kinds of phobes (which is true btw, xian have all?! including satanist pedophile // blood libel jews). We are the victims of their smears that we peddle hate wen in fact we are the real patriotic americans, so we just need to cuase friction/ transaction costs by triggering their immune system as much as possible; this exposes their weakness, the absurdity of their views.

BUT also means to win/humiliate /dominate so might be // to cherrypick wins on AN

don jr declares himself general in the meme wars, book title triggered (some scam on sales?)

origin in hacker culture:

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/pwned-meaning-definition-origins-video-games-internet-hackers

map 4 horse to 4 dovetail interlack did not reveal that much, since one is deep fdn of denial, the other horse is structural critique of political sis free mkt libtard fundamentalism; kinda did not map at all to phobias, but aha was that xian had ALL PHOBIAS and the worst ones, pizzagaetz/Qanon pedophile satansists // jew blood libel

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AVzrqYyNjVdpA2RCHJG6XZcGcH2S-brSMgnM4OWkNA4/edit

aha 820 covid accelerate and amplify inequality, PROOF? oligarchy (hedge and pvt equity) rent-seeking disaster capitalism housing // gt recession; presumably big spender dark $ in 2020 election, but who?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/elizabeth-warren-sounds-the-alarm-on-a-mounting-housing-crisis-and-the-profiteers-who-will-take-advantage/

During her 2020 presidential primary campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren had a lot to say about the United States’ housing crisis — and after suspending her campaign and endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden (now the presumptive Democratic nominee), the Massachusetts senator continued to address the subject. Warren, in an op-ed she wrote for the Washington Post with Carroll Fife (director of the Oakland office of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), stresses that the coronavirus pandemic has made a brutal housing crisis even worse. And private equity firms, according to Warren and Fife, are hoping to cash in on the misery by gobbling up “distressed real estate.”

“The nation is facing an acceleratinghousing crisis,” Warren and Fife warn. “Too many people had no stable housing before the pandemic hit, and COVID-19 has made the problem even worse. Renters who were already facing an affordable housing shortage — with many spending more than half of their income on rent — now have no federal rental assistance or federal protection from eviction. Homeowners have less than a month left of foreclosure protection. And more than 30 million people receiving unemployment insurance just saw their benefits cut by $600 a week, raising the threat of a wave of defaults that could trigger a double-dip recession.”

But while “families” see as a “looming catastrophe,” they add, “private equityfirms just see dollar signs.” And Warren and Fife cite a Wall Street Journal report that investors are hoping to buy “distressed real-estate assets at bargain prices.”

According to Warren and Fife, such “profiteering” is “straight out of private equity’s playbook during the 2008 financial crisis."

"Following the 2008 crash,” they explain, “corporations that grabbed up properties on the cheap, converted those homes into rentals and turned into the worst kind of slumlords — jacking up rents, neglecting maintenance requests and health and safety concerns, and eagerly assessing fines, fees and eviction notices. Other corporate-owned homes were left vacant in a hoarding of housing stock. We cannot stand by while this history repeats itself.”

Warren and Fife’s recommendations range from “strong federal legislation to guard against the coming wave of evictions and foreclosures, including emergency rental assistance” to preventing “predatory companies from further destabilizing neighborhoods and profiting off the displacement of families.”

“If we fail to prevent another private equity real estate grab,” Warren and Fife warn, “we risk allowing another massive upheaval in the housing market that could wreak more havoc on low-income Americans — especially black and brown families still recovering from losing their homes a decade ago. Against a decades-long backdrop of racist federal policies that have impeded black homeownership, lawmakers’ refusal to proactively address this problem would be an indefensible oversight that would again give Wall Street carte blanche to use a national crisis to enact a massive, generational transfer of wealth from vulnerable Americans to corporations."

---

aha-ish: Bannon promoted djt as disruptor, A STORY: the system is sick/rigged so he will blow it up and give us something better; he will fight your enemies (the chinese, the godless commies/boomers, drain the swamp, restore American pride/dominance [coal mfg]; relatd to throw the bums out they are all crooks? What do trumpistas think the swamp is? they atre fine with crony capitalism b/c bizmen MYTH [is a recurring/useful/ meme-able story?]are tough minded, numbers-based tough realists who will be efficient and stop wasting our tax money on losers/POC lazy welfare queens. so we should not be surprised when system crashes, because trump ppl know nothing, and are grifter rent-seekers. all they know about gov't is how to leech off it and dump their messes on it. short term / self-ish thinking: how do I/the books look good for next qtr (or for trump the next news cycle, which is 12 hours?!)

as someone else recently observed (burn dwn hse gingrich?) gop has built in political/rhet advantage b/c willing to crash the system to maintain power. (gives them leverage in negot? BUT lost votes in gov't shutdowns?]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-derangement-syndrome-those-of-us-who-warned-america-that-fascism-was-coming-were-called-hysterical-alarmists-we-were-right-all-along/

Do you remember “Trump Derangement Syndrome?”

It was a cute phrase that likely first appeared in 2015, deployed by prominent voices across the political spectrum to demean, mock, reject, dismiss and deflect the warnings that Donald Trump was a fascist, an authoritarian and a white supremacist, not to mention a vile and dangerous human being with apparent mental pathologies who posed a massive threat to American democracy.......

aha cascade interactions: AGW --> drought --> bark beetle = fuel --> fire --> move infected ppl into confined large shelter and pollutes air /aggravates lungs --> infections

820 ew

Apple Fire Forces 7,800 to Seek Shelter in Coronavirus-Ravaged California

WIL

aha: this (noam libtard sys fail) mixes with perennial run gov't like a biz MYTH put a rational old white guy with biz sense to use numbers to make decisions

failson is the notion that the prince will inherit the smarts and moxy of dad, and or (nature/nurture) will be trained from birth to exercise power aka make rational dicisions for the benefit of all (or keep those peasants/poc in their place); not exactly magical thinking in trumpian dale carnegie form that thinking/wishing makes it so? older more achetypal/mythical king arthur pulls sword to prove divine right? but only a signal to world, the virtue /strength/wisdom is in him inherently

cf moyers cox So won civil war; pluto olig: only rich white men deserve are qualified to govern, thus kush gets covid and ME peace:

a 720

Here’s why Jared Kushner’s plan for widespread COVID-19 testing ‘just went poof into thin air’

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common ploy / complaint is that left is rooting for catastrophe (motive? if capitalist system crashes we get to build a better one? We hate America and thus want it to fail for pure spite?

related to alarmist Alare Scare chemophobia, manly stoic clear-eyes scientists and engineers are not scared b/c they see reality and are masters of the physical universe. eg nuclear power

Relates to to American Exceptionalism: we are not bound by rules/history, if we run out of X we'll just use Y (or as in peak oil, frack our way out).

---

example

---

https://www.nationalreview.com/**2017/04/**judicial-watch-lawsuit-seeks-obama-white-house-records-controversial-global-warming/

former scientist at the NOAA has exposed a shoddy report on global warming. Judicial Watch is suing to learn more.

:{:{}:

following allegations of impropriety over the handling of a controversial climate change report, a government watchdog group now wants to know whether there was any collaboration between the report’s lead author and a key Obama adviser. On March 27, Judicial Watchfiled a lawsuit seeking “all records of communications between a pair of federal scientists who heavily influenced the Obama administration’s climate change policy and its backing of the Paris Agreement.”}:

The FOIA specifically requests correspondence between Tom Karl, the former head of the climate-data program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and John Holdren, the director of Obama’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Holdren is from that species of Baby Boomer global catastrophists who make changing predictions each decade about how we will all die. He also happens to be the science guy who had the president’s ear for eight years....

this is about metaphorical extension? long used in law? escaped AA slaves were contraband? john? green evangelical has rights (not to) and now presto so does hobby lobby . vs animal rights, const protection for nature?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/1151617/

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authorized domestic surveillance to identify threats against monuments and statues in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting vandalism against federal memorials, according to a department memo obtained by Lawfare.

The document, issued by the DHS Office of Intelligence & Analysis, described “Activities in Furtherance of Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, Statues and Combatting Recent Criminal Violence.”

The document says DHS personnel are “collecting and reporting on various activities in the context of elevated threats targeting monuments, memorials and statues.” It also provides legal guidance on the “expanded intelligence activities necessary to mitigate the significant threat to homeland security” posed by threats to statues.

Senior DHS official Ken Cuccinelli appeared to refer to intelligence gathering on protests during a Monday interview with CNN.

“We got intelligence about planned attacks on federal facilities,” he said in response to questions about the administration’s controversial deployment of federal authorities to Portland. “If we get the same kind of intelligence in other places about threats to other facilities or officers, we would respond the same way.”

But the memo “makes clear that the authorized intelligence activity covers significantly more than just planned attacks on federal personnel or facilities,” wrote Benjamin Wittes, a Lawfare editor, and Steve Vladeck, a national security law expert at the University of Texas School of Law. “It appears to also include planned vandalism of Confederate (and other historical) monuments and statues, whether federally owned or not.”...

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aha: trump whisperer, fox feedback loop? alt fact post truth there's an alternate reality made of images on Fox (videotape editied, which is a futher subset of story, which is a further subset of POV of that story, which is in turn a subset of other stories/ bigger context; recall also seattle autonomous zone with camo guy superimposed/photoshopped, when called on it call a "collage" tho only 2 pix?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/heres-why-the-white-house-is-sending-stormtroopers-into-portland/

In one of the most alarming developments of Trump’s presidency, dozens of federal agents in full camouflage seized protesters and threw them into unmarked cars, taking them to locations unknown without specifying a reason for arrest. It appears that at least some of the agents involved belonged to the US Customs and Border Protection (colloquially known as Border Patrol), an organization that obviously has no business whatsoever conducted counterinsurgency tactics against peaceful American protesters in Portland, Oregon. Neither the mayor of Portland nor the governor of Oregon wanted them there; in fact, they specifically requested that they leave. And now a U.S. Attorney for the State of Oregon is calling for an investigation into the arrests, even as the Acting head of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, is vowing to ramp up these actions both in Portland and reportedly elsewhere.

Needless to say, this is a chilling step toward police state authoritarian rule in the United States, one that was presaged by Attorney General Barr’s approval of an pre-curfew assault on protesters instigated in Lafayette Square to clear the way for a presidential campaign photo op. Few took it seriously when leftist organizers were warning that the border patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were being culturally and structurally converted into stormtroopers for the Trump regime, equally ready to be deployed against politically inconvenient American citizens as against undocumented immigrants seeking a better life. Those warnings should be heeded now.

We should not allow ourselves to become numb to this. It is helpful psychologically–even if tired and stale as a rhetorical device–to remind ourselves what the reactions would be if a Democrat were acting similarly. Imagine if President Obama had sent in in military-garbed federal stormtroopers to round up Tea Party protesters into unmarked cars, over the top of the objections of local governors and mayors. It’s unthinkable. It’s the sort of thing that drove bizarre right-wing conspiracy theories like Jade Helm, but that if any shred of them were true would instantly have embroiled the country in a civil war.

So why is Trump doing it?

many theories abound—none of them entirely convincing on their own, but all of them deeply disturbing. One explanation is that it’s a trial run for future police state actions, partly to push the window of the possible, partly to desensitize the public to further abuses, and partly to see precisely what they can get away with and what Americans will tolerate.

This is no doubt true to a certain extent, but the challenge is that it also carries enormous downside risk. If Trump doesn’t win re-election he has less than six months left in his presidency–hardly time enough for a deeply unpopular and divisive president to engineer a police state coup. And just as with the outrage in Lafayette Square, the mere action itself will likely make Trump even more unpopular with the few undecided voters who remain.

Another convergent explanation is that making a show of supposed toughness in conducting military counterinsurgency in Democratic-controlled cities that want no part of it will thrill Trump’s base. This is reasonable to assume, since Trump’s base takes no greater joy than in seeing authoritarian cruelty exercised against their political enemies. And it’s likely true, since Trump is obsessed with his base to the exclusion of all else beyond his own personal profit. But the problem is that almost everyone in the Trump campaign’s immediate orbit beyond the president himself knows that Trump must expand beyond his shrinking base to have any chance of winning re-election. The more Trump gives aging bigots dopamine hits, the more the rest of the country falls away from him. Camouflaged stormtroopers used against American citizens will almost certainly lose him more votes than he gains.

But there is a third explanation, simultaneously dumber and yet more convincing: the Fox News effect. Trump spends endless hours watching garbage cable television, specifically One America News (OAN) and Fox News. Judging from Trump’s tweets, his entire political universe revolves around Fox News–and, more recently, the even more bizarrely propagandistic OAN when even Fox News fails to adequately toe the line.

Ever since the beginning of the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, Fox News has been portraying liberal American cities as hellscapes of violence in which the police and the Trump Administration played the role of hero against rampaging hordes. Most Americans, of course, didn’t see it that way. But if you live entirely in the Fox News bubble, then this narrative is as self-evident a truth as the rising of the sun in the east. Most recently, Fox News has been describing Portland in particular, in the words of former Media Matters for America contributor Oliver Willis, as if it were Baghdad circa 2003. This is not the case, of course. Crime rates in Portland have been on a steady decline for decades, with the last month being no significant exception. In fact, the worst Acting HHS Secretary Wolf could point to was literally a few instances of graffiti. No kidding.

But if Fox News were the sum of your reality, you would believe that emergency action needed to be taken before the residents started to erect a Thunderdome and the services of Snake Plisskenwould be required. You would send in the troops despite the potential cost out of a belief that relieved Americans would be desperately grateful for your embrace of “law and order” (even if it were heavy on the “order” and light on the “law.”) You would do whatever it took to bring the situation to heel, and figure the public approval would follow from the new Pax Trumpiana. After all, Fox News declared it must be so.

This last scenario is admittedly ridiculous. But it’s also likely closest to the truth. While figures like Stephen Miller no doubt have a laser focus on instituting an authoritarian apartheid regime to save white supremacist Republican rule the demographic tsunami preparing to overwhelm them, they are not the president.Donald Trump is. Trump is a man of impulse, not of plans. His head is not set on the next 20 years of power, but on tomorrow’s cable news ratings. The constructed reality of Fox News is his reality. The rest of the authoritarian project follows from there.

And that more than anything else likely explains why the president is precipitating a constitutional crisis by sending stormtroopers into Portland.

aha: seedisinfo GRU if goal is to divide, make cynical thus apathetic (elections are not legit) then whattabout/mirror/crypto is useful because THEY ALL DO IT

also/bonus. yes trump if grifter/corrupt, but you can't hold that against him ( // sharp smart bizman, only chumps pay taxes]

aha: is Q an interdisc hub? // anti-mask? [vax, militia?] alt rt boogaloo?

aha: gop/rt busted so many times for dark $/corruption that it needs whatabout so soros = kochs and actblue = dark $/scam

plus they need to neutralize blm demand for justice, and it's a scam than racism not real

note chan origin then moves up escalator to dobbs

=---

6/20

https://www.mediamatters.org/fake-news/debunked-conspiracy-theory-about-black-lives-matter-actblue-and-democrats-can-be-traced

no lnx many pix

A false money laundering conspiracy theory regarding the Black Lives Matter movement's use of a payment processing company for donations has gained traction online among right-wing figures and can be traced back to far-right message boards.

The conspiracy theory alleges that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is some kind of a front to launder money to Democrats because the BLM website uses ActBlue to process its online fundraising payments. ActBlue is a payment processor used widely by progressive groups and organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party has an equivalent processing company called WinRed. As the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has noted, “many candidates use [ActBlue] to process donations but that money isn't pooled to be shared across candidates or groups,” and “a donation to BLM through ActBlue goes just to BLM, not any other group.” But the conspiracy theory still has earned well over a million shares and views on social media and has been amplified by a Fox Nation host.

A review by Media Matters found that before it gained traction, the conspiracy theory had been circulating for days on far-right message boards. The earliest mention our review found was at the beginning of June on Twitter, when an account that has pushed the slogan for the QAnon conspiracy theory repeatedly tweeted the claim on June 1 and June 2. The account claimed it had sent the conspiracy theory to the FBI and President Donald Trump, and it urged the Ohio Police Department to investigate the claim.

@OneVoiceUS

The conspiracy theory popped up days later on June 5 on TheDonald.win, a new forum for the subreddit “r/TheDonald,” which was known for violent rhetoric and was ultimately quarantined by Reddit. On TheDonald.win, a user wrote that “when you go to donate on the blacklivesmatter.com website,” you are redirected to ActBlue, which means entities “donating to Black Lives Matter are actually donating to ActBlue.” That means, the user wrote, that the donations may be “just going straight to fund the Democratic presidential campaign.”

The next day, another user on the forum wrote in a post that “BLM is a bait and switch fundraising scam” for the Democratic National Committee “by laundering money through Act Blue.” The user urged others to “tell everyone you know.” This post gained more traction on the forum than the first one, which it directly referenced in the comments. Similar language made its way to Facebook minutes later.

The Donald subreddit forum ActBlue1

Over the next few days, the conspiracy theory also began circulating on 4chan’s “/pol/” message board, a known hotspot for white nationalists, where users pointed to ActBlue to claim Black Lives Matter was “a fundraising apparatus” and a “slush fund” for Democrats. One 4chan user pushing the claim on June 8 used nearly the exact same language as the June 5 post from TheDonald.win.

4chan ActBlue claim

The conspiracy theory also continued to circulate on TheDonald.win on June 8 and reached the subreddit “r/conservative,” where a user called Black Lives Matter a “money laundering scheme” for Democrats via ActBlue. That post was later shared in a YouTube video.

The following day, on June 9, The Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog that has a history of publishing misinformation, posted that the BLM site “appears to be aninternational money laundering scheme used by the Democrats to raise money from an international audience,” claiming ActBlue appears to be “a funding arm of the DNC.” (The site’s owner Jim Hoft shared the post on Twitter, calling it an “exclusive.”) The post gave a “hat tip” to TheDonald.win for the claim. The post was picked up by multiple far-right figures, including by a QAnon-supporting former congressional candidate on Twitter, another QAnon Twitter account with a major following who keeps evading his Twitter ban, and by trollMilo Yiannopoulos on Telegram.

Gateway Pundit ActBlue claim

On June 10, right-wing pundit Candace Owens quote-tweeted an Instagram video pushing the conspiracy theory and accused Black Lives Matters of being a “shell company” for Democrats via ActBlue(Owens also posted the video on Instagram, where it received well over a million views). Minutes later, “Q,” the central entity of the QAnon conspiracy theory, posted a link to Owens’ tweet on 8kun’s “/qresearch/” message board. Owens’ post has been retweeted more than 64,000 times so far.

Candace Owens ActBlue claim

Following Owens’ post, the conspiracy theory began spreading to other conservative figures, such as Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch; a Florida Republican congressional candidate who has given credence toQAnon; Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier (who, like Owens, incorrectly called ActBlue a “Democrat super PAC”); Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk; and former editor-in-chief of Breitbart’s London bureau Raheem Kassam.

Additionally, two major conservative TikTok accounts, @therepublicanhypehouse and @conservativehypehouse, both posted videos pushing the conspiracy theory, getting more than 370,000 views combined (even though TikTok has an anti-misinformation policy).

The conspiracy theory also apparently reached Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren, who has a history of pushing claims from message boards. She tweeted, “When you donate to BLM you’re donating to the Dems.”

Tomi Lahren ActBlue claim

These tweets and videos combined have gotten hundreds of thousands of shares and views and have amplified the conspiracy theory far beyond fringe message boards.

aha: trump utter fail on covid. numbers scary and undeniable (tho they try to suppress by route to DHS, swat secret police];

BLM not really subsiding, and they need it a bogeyman so trump can do Nixonian Law and Order scam; cruel irony/paradox is trump/libtards unable or unwilling to govern, so crash/crisis then gives cover for I alone am strong man who can deal with these commie degenerates who hate aMerica. [tho so far just kick blame to states [tho kemp under the bus on covid mask lawsuit?]

yes i am a vulgar bigot, but look at the stock mkt! and corp tax cut, dereg] but he can't depend on corp dark money to buy election [esp if zuck cuts ads] thus he needs the economy to re-open, which means he needs schools open (for child care?) so willing to kill kids?! no rallies (basis of ego boost, proof of popularity/thus legit // inaug crowd BS, pix of trumpistas will be on TV and soc med]

one of 4 horses, related to all but esp militarization, esp on climate refugee; note sublethal used on nat aM dapl remote ppl of color now pepperball explodes to head of activist, press lost eye? state of exception/margin periphery comes to Portland

yikes primary 7/20 portland secret police

:{:{}:

combo of militarization and criminalization (of undoc immigrant, periphery, then sanctuary city, BLM ACTIVIST AND PRESS SUB-LETHAL WEAPONS)

why did portland get hit 1st by secret police vs seattle autonomous zone?

Washington enacted a measure in June 2019 in favor of sanctuary cities, similar to California and Oregon laws which are among the strongest statewide mandates in the nation.^[186]

Seattle^[187]

---

aha pseudo-populism trashes expertise (of science and gubmint), free mkt says all gov't inept, the only real expert is pvt biz/accounting consultant, which lead to more hollowing out: mck wants to keep all data propietary so can sell to mult gov't agy, HENCE EXTRACTION

death spiral, pro pub 720:

Given that McKinsey consultants operate as advisers, with government officials charged with making final decisions, it can be hard to identify the firm’s responsibility for any given decision. But the firm’s government work has been steadily rising in the wake of a multidecade hollowing out of government (a trend McKinsey has promoted and ridden). Today, that increasingly means that if you examine the government’s response to the pandemic, you’re likely to find McKinsey’s fingerprints.

===

aha: new 3x whammy?

covid drive price negative, chesapeake bankrupt (// desmog never made $?)

3 wins, also XL and atlantic gas

Judge rules that Dakota Access Pipeline must be shut down and emptied Matthew Rozsa / Salonan 720

---

aha doh, had not considered evang, but big cash cow, presumably perry gets a cut of what he raises: (and actually it's nice cover: when pol returns to pvt life he can say he is no longer bound by church-state sep.

PPP rww 720

Perry Joins Capitol Ministries Project to ‘Disciple’ Local Officials to Right-Wing ‘Biblical Worldview’

Former Texas Gov. and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is partnering with a religious-right effort to “disciple” 500,000 local officials into a conservative Christian “worldview” and shape public policies in 40,000 U.S. localities. Perry’s undertaking was announced in a June letter to supporters of Capitol Ministries from the organization’s president Ralph Drollinger, whose weekly Bible studies teach members of Trump’s Cabinet and the U.S. Congress that the Bible instructs public officials to support right-wing social, economic, environmental, and criminal justice policies.

“I am passionate about Capitol Ministries’ efforts to reach today’s 500,000 elected local government leaders with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and disciple them with the Word of God, so they may form a Christian worldview in their hearts,” Perry is quoted in the Drollinger letter. “I see this effort as critically important. America’s ideological future hangs in the balance.”

---

JB notes innovation happens when an idea breaks out of a group/discipline and gets applied in a different domain, not intended or predicted.

cascade effects, complexity/ chaos attempts to account for these

INTELLECTUAL BIG BANG

Bush introduced the concept of the memex during the 1930s, which he imagined as a form of memory augmentation involving a microfilm-based "device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory."^[2] He wanted the memex to emulate the way the brain links data by association rather than by indexes and traditional, hierarchical storage paradigms, and be easily accessed as "a future device for individual use ... a sort of mechanized private file and library" in the shape of a desk.^[2] The memex was also intended as a tool to study the brain itself.^[2]

After thinking about the potential of augmented memory for several years, Bush set out his thoughts at length in "As We May Think", predicting that "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{ associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified". A few months later, *Life* magazine published a condensed version of "As We May Think", accompanied by several illustrations showing the possible appearance of a memex machine and its companion devices.^[81]

Shortly after "As We May Think" was originally published, Douglas Engelbart read it, and with Bush's visions in mind, commenced work that would later lead to the invention of the mouse.^[82] Ted Nelson, who coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia", was also greatly influenced by Bush's essay.^[83][84]

"As We May Think" has turned out to be a visionary and influential essay. In their introduction to a paper discussing information literacy as a discipline, Bill Johnston and Sheila Webber wrote in 2005 that

Bush's paper might be regarded as describing a microcosm of the information society, with the boundaries tightly drawn by the interests and experiences of a major scientist of the time, rather than the more open knowledge spaces of the 21st century. Bush provides a core vision of the importance of information to industrial/scientific society, using the image of an "information explosion" arising from the unprecedented demands on scientific production and technological application of World War II. He outlines a version of information science as a key discipline within the practice of scientific and technical knowledge domains. His view encompasses the problems of information overload and the need to devise efficient mechanisms to control and channel information for use.^[85]

Bush was concerned that information overload might inhibit the research efforts of scientists.Looking to the future, he predicted a time when "there is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends.The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers."^[2]

---

aha: 620 part of GOP long game is to take out dem up and comers (trending in webodec is mostly gop?]

aha2: phobias can be weaponized for offensive purposes

eg (also clinton, gray davis) turnipseed jumper cables?

ivy meerpol the nation 6/20

EG: How do you think Cohn was affected by the homophobic and anti-Semitic environment of Washington, D.C.?

IM: Do you know the story of Lester Hunt? He was a senator from Wyoming. Around the time that Cohn was in Washington, Hunt was a very popular Democrat. The Republicans, including McCarthy, were always trying to figure out how to get him out of the way, because he was powerful, beloved, and very progressive. At one point, Hunt’s son was arrested for propositioning a male undercover police officer for sex, and this was discovered by McCarthy and some other senators. They confronted Hunt, saying they’d go public with this story if Hunt didn’t pull out of his race for reelection. Hunt tried to stay strong and fight back, but they threatened again, and rather than face that kind of humiliation and the humiliation of his son, Hunt committed suicide.

---

6/16 grade day very fertile:

[[ recall in 80's? merge of corp PR in-house shops and RNC?

---

aha: neglected b/c concept too narrow?! soc med allows end-run around mainstream filter fact-based press. Putin disruptor/authoritarian bannon dic discards/degrades experts who can tell us what facts are and what they mean. policy replaced by story/ convenient lie of the moment cf TRMS 6/15/20

in post- truth world, only PR matters [ "reality-based" jrnlism , rove?]

an 620 wa mon? // trms prod The Imposter bk (pence fired all policy and replaced w/ PR [thus wants to be prez?!]

i've already written twice about Donald Trump’s decision to kind of/mostly move the 2020 Republican National Convention from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida. In my last installment, I noted that it would be difficult to meet the president’s goal of having a full house for the television cameras, in part, because people cannot be in two places at the same time.

The Republican Party is contractually obligated to hold its national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, but Democratic Governor Roy Cooper would not guarantee that state health restrictions could be lifted for the Aug. 24-27 event. The solution, then, was to keep the convention in Charlotte in a strictly legal sense by holding all the regular business meetings there, but to find an alternative location for the speeches and pageantry…

… People can’t simultaneously be in Charlotte holding a meeting on the Republican platform and in Jacksonville listening to Mike Pence or Melania Trump give a speech. Trump might have to hire “extras” to fill the gaps.

I suppose I was a bit naïve. There was an obvious solution but I didn’t see it because I don’t have enough of a criminal mind.

Now, mind you, I didunderstand that the only reason the Republicans were keeping part of the convention in Charlotte was to provide a legal defense against reneging on their contracts. As the Charlotte Observer reports, there will be wrangling over the decision:

Ed Driggs, one of two Republicans on the Charlotte City Council, had once hoped for an exciting week-long convention that would show off his city and his party.

On Thursday, as news dribbled out about just how scaled-backed Charlotte’s piece of the convention will be, Driggs said, “I guess I’m disappointed it’s so little.”

Now that the Republican National Committee has officially voted to move most of the convention out of Charlotte, Driggs said, “the big question is: How do we (the city) deal with the contracts in place? Who is responsible for those? (The parties to the contracts) are still trying to work it out.”

The Charlotte host committee, for example, has “an interest in not being saddled with liabilities and expenses,” Driggs said.

On Wednesday the committee, charged with raising almost $70 million for the event, said the move to another city violates contracts with the city and other local groups.

“This decision is in clear violation of the agreements made with the City of Charlotte, the County of Mecklenburg, Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, and the Charlotte Host Committee,” the committee said in a statement Wednesday.

To maintain the fiction that these contracts are being honored, the proceedings in Jacksonville are being called a “celebration” rather than a “convention.” Whether this will be convincing in court is for lawyers, judges, and perhaps a jury to decide, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of people having to be in two places at the same time. The elegant solution was sitting right in front of my face and I couldn’t see it.

On Wednesday, the RNC’s executive panel voted to leave the 2016 party platform in place, with absolutely no edits. This will have the absurd result of leaving in place language about the president that clearly refers, in a critical manner, to Barack Obama. It will leave harsh language about deficit spending that applies with more force to the Trump administration than its predecessor. It will keep descriptions of the Middle East that no longer have any application, and in some cases it will pledge Trump to promises he has already kept. It also means that there will be no adjustments made to reflect an evolution of the party or national culture over the last four years.

The decision by the Wednesday means the GOP will maintain positions in the 4-year-old policy blueprint — including opposition to same-sex marriage and a nod to gay conversion therapy — and decline to stake out new positions on topics such as police reform, gender identity and third-trimester abortions.

Of course, both moderates and social conservatives are furious. They’ve both been gearing up to battle over the party platform, and now there will be no debate at all. Yet, by eliminating the most important piece of party business, the RNC no longer has to worry that people will be in Charlotte hashing out party principles when they should be in Jacksonville adoring the president.

The Republican National Convention is officially on the move to Jacksonville, Fla., after it will spend just a single day in Charlotte this August, the RNC committee announced Thursday night.

It will host what the Republicans are calling a “celebration” of President Donald Trump’s re-nomination…

…The convention was once expected to span four days in Charlotte — bringing in 50,000 people and pumping more than $150 million into the local economy.

Instead, around 336 delegates will conduct the convention’s official business Monday, Aug. 24. Then they’ll head to Jacksonville — and join more than 2,000 other delegates for three days of speeches and celebrations, a top GOP official said Thursday.

So, in order to manage the limitations of the time/space continuum, there will be no changes to the Republican platform in 2020, and anyone who cares about the platform will just have to suck it.

This is a final confirmation that the Republican Party has become a cult that stands for nothing and exists only to fluff Donald Trump’s ego. It was completely predictable but I failed to foresee it because I was still operating in the world where contracts are honored and political parties are made of up people who care about policy.]]

// Lib U ex jock uses homophobe as wedge issue to flank conserv senate; wedge issue --> fear/ anger hype?

6/20 aha big ramp up on militarization and criminalization eg

omg in wake of milley and sec at st john 180, this pow #3?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/trump-nominee-for-key-pentagon-position-accused-is-an-islamophobic-conspiracy-theorist-who-called-obama-a-terrorist-leader/

trump nominee for key Pentagon position accused is ‘an Islamophobic conspiracy theorist who called Obama a terrorist leader’

Written by Alex Henderson June 16, 2020

President Donald Trump has nominated retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Tata for a key position in the Pentagon, but Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to CNN, have vowed to oppose the nomination in light of Tata’s history of hateful anti-Islam rants.That includes Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the leading Democrat on the SASC.

In 2018, CNN reported, Tata described Islam as the “most oppressive violent religion I know of” and called former President Barack Obama as a “terrorist leader” for — as he saw it — being overly pro-Islam. Tata was vehemently critical of the Obama Administration’s deal with Iran and claimed that it came about because ofObama’s “Islamic roots.” Obama, Tata claimed, did more to “help Islamic countries than any president in history.”

Anthony J. Tata

@ajtata

If true, and it appears to be, #Obama and #Clinton are guilty of sedition and/or treason 18 U.S. Code 2384 #MAGA #trump2020 #ComeyMemos #Kanye2024 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384 … https://twitter.com/_vachellindsay_/status/988616258022076416 …

8:31 PM - Apr 23, 2018

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Anthony J. Tata's other Tweets

In addition to Reed, Senate Democrats who have told CNN they will oppose Tata’s nomination include Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Gary Peters of Michigan. Warren told CNN, “An Islamophobic conspiracy theorist who called President Obama a ‘terrorist leader’ should not be #3 at the Pentagon. Anthony Tata is by far Trump’s most unqualified and ill-suited senior defense nominee.”

In May 2018, Tata attacked former CIA Director John Brennan and tweeted, “Might be a good time to pick your poison: firing squad, public hanging, life sentence as prison b*tch, or just suck on your pistol. Your call. #Treason #Sedition #crossfirehurricane #Obamagate.”

andrew kaczynski??

@KFILE

Replying to @KFILE

The "Manchurian candidate" Obama conspiracy article shared and endorsed by Tata claimed that Obama let ISIS grow on purpose in Iraq and Libya, saying the "deviousness of the Obama sedition runs deep."https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/politics/tata-pentagon-nominee-kfile/index.html …

Democrats on key Senate committee oppose Pentagon pick as more inflammatory tweets emerge

Several Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Monday that they would oppose the nomination of retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata to oversee the Pentagon's policy shop.

cnn.com

andrew kaczynski??

@KFILE

Tata accused Obama administration remembers of treason several times, saying former CIA chief John Brennan should "pick your poison: firing squad, public hanging, life sentence as prison b*tch, or just suck on your pistol. Your call."https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/politics/tata-pentagon-nominee-kfile/index.html …

View image on TwitterView image on Twitter...

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620

aha: us vs them enemy: we are the reasonable rational people, within accepted norms, but THEY are dangerous, deranged, cannot be reasoned with so MUST be met with FORCE, strict father must punish mis-behavior; [fundamentalist they are evil? end time armageddon?]

RANGE:

alarmist is irrationally worried about an issue, worst case will get some policy enacted that will increase friction/cost/bureaucracy

activist, same as above but is ACTIVE in street or politics, so can increase cost/damage

extremist sorta tied with militant, but latter ominous suggestion of force? well doth do, but hard to picture Pelosi busting out AR 15?

easy slide over to terrorism (eco economic)

fascist one man alone can fix the (single?) threat/problem

takes immediate swift unilateral Executive order action

aha: do nothing congress was an actual thing, commented on (repeatedly?) by Maddow in comparison on recent GOP led senate (recall mtg right after BO where (openly vs leaked?) declared we will pass nothing even if we favor it); so lack of any gov't action that could help ppl is blamed on dems; plus a MAN of action will get it done whatever it takes, HARD vs soft dems/fems

@realDonaldTrump

Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier [FREUDIAN TYPO?] from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership, yet thesesame weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/fox-news-removes-unethical-digitally-altered-images-of-police-brutality-protests-in-seattle

ok he was there, but a week before?

no lnx pix twt

fox News removes ‘unethical’ digitally altered images of police brutality protests in Seattle

Royalty-free stock photo ID: 1288386304 Tallinn, Estonia - 01/18/2019: Fox News website homepage. Fox News channel logo visible through a magnifying glass.

Written by Roger Sollenberger / Salon June 16, 2020

Fox News over the weekend removed misleading images from stories about protests against police brutality in Seattle from its website after it was revealed they had been digitally altered in a manner which made the scene appear dangerous.

The Seattle Times published a report Friday calling out multiple images from Fox News coverage of the police-free “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) in the city.

One photo illustration appearing on the Fox News homepage showed a masked man with an assault rifle and tactical vest standing in front of a sign reading, “You are now entering Free Cap Hill.” The outlet did not originally disclose that the photo of the scene and the photo of the armed man had been spliced together using two different photos, which were taken more than a week apart.

The original photo, from Getty Images, shows the armed man in front of a car.

He was digitally placed in front of the entrance sign.

The same image of the man appeared in at least one other image on Fox News’ website, in front of a smashed retail storefront. According to The Times, it was also a combination of multiple images.

“It is definitely Photoshopped,” freelance photographer David Ryder, who took the original photo and published it through Getty images, told the outlet. “To use a photo out of context in a journalistic setting like that seems unethical.”

Conservatives, including President Donald Trump, have attempted to sculpt the CHAZ storyline into a political flashpoint. Protesters converted the area into a street festival after police, who teargassed demonstrators, left the precinct in an effort to de-escalate tensions.

Trump tweeted Thursday that “Radical Left Governor [J]ay Inslee and the Mayor of Seattle are being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before. Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stooped [sic] IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST!”

The mayor told the president, “Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker.”

Fox News on Friday used a photo of a man running through an urban inferno as a banner image for a group of stories about Seattle under the headline, “CRAZY TOWN || Seattle helpless as armed guards patrol anarchists’ autonomous zone, shake down businesses: cops.”

:{:{}:

The photo was unaltered, but it was an AP photo taken May 30 in St. Paul, Minn. Fox News later removed it.

The articles did not notify readers that the photos were altered, and it remains unclear who was responsible for the decision to do so. A Fox News spokesperson did not immediately respond to Salon’s request for comment.

In an emailed statement, a Fox News spokeswoman told The Times: “We have replaced our photo illustration with the clearly delineated images of a gunman and a shattered storefront, both of which were taken this week in Seattle’s autonomous zone.”

However, that statement itself was inaccurate. While the gunman was photographed that week — June 10 — the smashed storefront images were first published by Getty on May 30.

Fox News fully apologized Saturday in an editor’s note accompanying its CHAZ coverage, acknowledging that it “did not clearly delineate” the photo illustrations, which it labeled a “collage.” The site also apologized for falsely attributing the shot of the Minneapolis fire. “Fox News regrets these errors,” the note said.

Talent at the conservative network have attempted to use the Seattle protests as a political wedge issue. For example, primetime host Tucker Carlson accused the people in the zone of advocating segregation.

:{:{}:

The network also reported an anecdotal claim from Seattle Assistant Chief of Police Deanna Nollette.

:{:{}:

“We’ve heard, anecdotally, reports of citizens and businesses being asked to pay a fee to operate within this area,” Nollette said. “This is the crime of extortion.”

:{:{}:

Police Chief Carmen Best later corrected that statement.

:{:{}:

“We haven’t had any formal reports of this occurring,” she said, indicating the reports had come from rumors spread on social media.

Though the Seattle protests have at times been home to contentious scenes of unrest — including a cop filmed forcibly removing his partner’s knee from someone’s neck and a man filmed driving into a crowd of protesters and shooting a black man — the CHAZ street scene has been almost entirely peaceful, featuring musical and visual artists, free street food, concerts and movies.

Best said she did not think the officers should have abandoned the precinct, a move which she claims has led to longer 911 response times.

Trump called demonstrators “domestic terrorists” over the weekend and threatened federal action unless local officials “take back” the area. He also falsely claimed that antifa forces had taken over the city.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership, yet thesesame weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!

256K

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“City officials have not interacted with ‘armed antifa militants’ at this site,” a city spokesperson told CNN.

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@realDonaldTrump

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/fox-news-removes-unethical-digitally-altered-images-of-police-brutality-protests-in-seattle

ok he was there, but a week before?

no lnx pix twt

fox News removes ‘unethical’ digitally altered images of police brutality protests in Seattle

Royalty-free stock photo ID: 1288386304 Tallinn, Estonia - 01/18/2019: Fox News website homepage. Fox News channel logo visible through a magnifying glass.

Written by Roger Sollenberger / Salon June 16, 2020

The Seattle Times published a report Friday calling out multiple images from Fox News coverage of the police-free “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) in the city.

The original photo, from Getty Images, shows the armed man in front of a car.

He was digitally placed in front of the entrance sign.

The same image of the man appeared in at least one other image on Fox News’ website, in front of a smashed retail storefront. According to The Times, it was also a combination of multiple images.

The mayor told the president, “Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker.”

:{:{}:

The photo was unaltered, but it was an AP photo taken May 30 in St. Paul, Minn. Fox News later removed it.

However, that statement itself was inaccurate. While the gunman was photographed that week — June 10 — the smashed storefront images were first published by Getty on May 30.

:{:{}:

The network also reported an anecdotal claim from Seattle Assistant Chief of Police Deanna Nollette.

:{:{}:

“We’ve heard, anecdotally, reports of citizens and businesses being asked to pay a fee to operate within this area,” Nollette said. “This is the crime of extortion.”

:{:{}:

Police Chief Carmen Best later corrected that statement.

:{:{}:

“We haven’t had any formal reports of this occurring,” she said, indicating the reports had come from rumors spread on social media.

Best said she did not think the officers should have abandoned the precinct, a move which she claims has led to longer 911 response times.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

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“City officials have not interacted with ‘armed antifa militants’ at this site,” a city spokesperson told CNN.

---

aha 620: i have blamed soc med for dissemination of BS, but just realized how much relies of manipulation of words (god/devil term, POV, selection is deflection of reality, but even more pix and video).

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/propaganda-fox-news-photoshops-gunman-into-stories-about-seattles-autonomous-zone

no pix url

Propaganda’: Fox News photoshops gunman into stories about Seattle’s autonomous zone

Image via Screengrab.

Written by The New Civil Rights Movement June 14, 2020

Legal journalist Mark Joseph Stern noticed that Fox News added a man carrying a military-assault rifle into images of Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) on Friday. The CHAZ is a police-free area currently occupied by protesters police violence.

Fox News featured the images on their website without any mention that they had been altered. They placed the exact same gunman in two different photos. In one, the gunman’s left arm had been weirdly cut off in a straight line from the shoulder to the elbow.

Fox claimed that the image of a shattered window in the CHAZ was taken this week, but it seems it was actually taken on May 30.

Mark Joseph Stern

@mjs_DC

Fox News, a totally normal and respectable media outlet, digitally manipulated photos of Seattle’s “autonomous zone” by photoshopping in a gunman. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/fox-news-runs-digitally-altered-images-in-coverage-of-seattles-protests-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone/ …

View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter

“Given how vigorously Fox News personalities have argued that men toting assault weapons in public are not inherently threatening,” Stern wrote, “it’s curious the outlet digitally inserted a man toting a gun to make the autonomous zone seem more threatening and scary.”

Fox News eventually issued the following editor’s note:

A FoxNews.com home page photo collage which originally accompanied this story included multiple scenes from Seattle’s ‘Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone’ and of wreckage following recent riots. The collage did not clearly delineate between these images, and has since been replaced. In addition, a recent slideshow depicting scenes from Seattle mistakenly included a picture from St. Paul, Minnesota. Fox News regrets these errors.

Here are some reactions to the news of Fox’s photoshopping from Twitter:...

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aha 6/11/20 // merriam-webster def changed to reflect systemic not just personal/indiv conscious bigotry

libtard does not want to pay for birth control b/c not woman (and unlikely to get laid] so // reparation: white refuse to PAY for a sin they did not commit? ignore fact wealth came from subsidized mortgage blacks denied.

---

aha-ish:

hard to see interdisc links between climate and other issues; even of left led to lukewarm support of GND; cf below of heartland aha reverse engr: to deal w/ covid and climate crisis, we need strong goc't [and supra-nat'l. ?]

naomi drilled interview 6/20: kids see intersectionality vs older/boomer do you have to make this hard? about capitalism? care work is low carbon; started in climate at katrina NO dis cap'l ism research, got that floods were out future; red bait mccarthy stick used to beat up system thinking (commies want to overthrow our way of life/cap'l SYSTEM vs update the operating system; puncuated transition anishinabe woman cda?0 BP rebrand docs on drilled]

GND attacked on fox but not really defended on cnn and msnbc: rt story = loss; // Keystone XL beg for 2 min, then followed by FF greenwash ad that was LONGER?! Brazil 10 yrs ago Anjelica Navarro we need a Marshall Plan for climate;

---

aha: what is origin of paid protester rumor? right needs to explain why their ideas not popular, and must explain away corrollary evidence on pop of left ideas. variant of mohawk outside agitator?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/qanon-loving-senate-candidate-wants-martial-law-declared-in-oregon-to-combat-antifa/

no lnx vid

qAnon-loving Senate candidate wants martial law declared in Oregon to combat ‘antifa’

Written by David Neiwert / Daily KosJune 7, 2020

The Oregon GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, Jo Rae Perkins, decided to let her “Q light” shine on a Facebook livestream earlier this week—and it was a doozy.

Perkins, an unrepentant “QAnon” conspiracy cultist, told her audience that the state needs to be placed under martial law, with the National Guard being sent not just to Portland—where there have been violent protests over police brutality—but to rural places like Klamath Falls and Bend. Her reasoning:Busloads of nefarious antifa activists, financed by the evil George Soros, are fanning out to these towns to wreak destruction.

The only problem with Perkins’ scenario: They’re not. The only places “antifa” activists (as well as many others) have clashed with police—and the only protests in which damage has occurred—have been in Portland.

There have, however, been a string of far-right hoaxes that have found audiences with credulous residents and even law-enforcement officers in these rural areas—utterly spurious reports of buses loaded up with black-clad antifascists, coming to their towns to break windows and harass local businesses.In turn, large crowds of heavily armed men have turned out on the streets of those towns to fend off the invading antifa hordes.

Perkins happily promoted those hoaxes, as well as a panoply of associated conspiracy theories, including the notoriously false and anti-Semitic claim that financier George Soros is secretly funding “antifa.” She also offered a new twist, claiming that the antifa hordes are “the army that Obama put together a few years ago.”

At the zenith of the rant, she demanded that martial law be imposed via the National Guard: “This is insurrection. And the governors need to call in the National Guard,” she said. “We need martial law to squash this ASAP.”

She continued: “Let’s think about this. We’ve been under a soft martial law since March, the middle of March … You know that and I know that. And in some places, it is far beyond a soft martial law. It has gone into a hardcore martial law.”

The solution, she said, was to call in troops: “The National Guard needs to come in because there is not enough police officers to squash what is going on. We need the National Guard to do that.”

Perkins said she was “in pure shock” at reading reports that busfuls of antifa protesters were heading to these towns: “This is ridiculous. In Klamath Falls?” she said. “People are out to protect their businesses. Two or three buses full of antifa came down from Portland. Wow! Wow!”

She began praying aloud during the livestream: “But Lord, now we have this evil, this antifa, Father God. And we say no more. Lord God, I ask that you bring out your warring angels to protect the cities, to protect the innocent people, to protect the business owners, Lord God.”

Perkins repeatedly described “antifa” as “evil”: “These cannot be people,” she said. “All I can see, Lord, is just the demonic outcry, oh God, of people that just people that feel they can just … total disregard, total disregard for other people, for their property. All in the name of justice for George Floyd.”

In short order, this became an attack on George Soros:

Lord, these people have no sense of morality, of what is right and what is wrong, Lord God. Not the ones that are causing this mayhem. This antifa. Father God, shut down George Soros, Lord God. End his reign of terror, Lord God. We know that he is funding this. Lord, we say. ‘Strip that money, strip that money strip that money.’ If there is a way, Father God, that President Trump’s administration can block him from being able to spend any more money, Lord God, then allow that happen.

She later reiterated: “Then we have theantifa thugs. Many many people believe that they are being paid for by George Soros. And I have seen anything to dispel that rumor. I have never seen George Soros come out and say he has nothing to do with it.”

Perkins added that “the media are supporting antifa because they are all part of the same cabal,” which she went on to explain was “the Deep State.”

But it wasn’t just Soros to blame, according to Perkins. So was former President Barack Obama:

Clearly there’s crazy people out there. Clearly we need to get a grip. Clearly we need to be praying. Clearly we need some strong leadership in our states. That is clear. Oregon needs Governor Brown to call out the National Guard. The National Guard is here, they need to be deployed, they need to be activated. Ashland, Klamath Falls, Eugene, Salem, Portland. Where else are they gonna pop up? Bend? I will bet you guys that Bend is gonna happen next. It will be next, because Bend is a large town. Bend, and Pendleton. They are deploying all over the place.

This is the army—this is the army that Obama put together a few years ago. Wasn’t there an army that he put together a few years ago? I just read about it.

For the record: No buses bearing hordes of ravening antifascists appeared in Klamath Falls, or any other of the multiple locations where they were rumored to be about to descend—which in Oregon included such towns as Medford, Grants Pass, and Coquille. (In Curry County, the local sheriff shared the false rumor with his constituents on Facebook, then later deleted the post when it became apparent there was no there there.) There still are no reports, yet, of similar mythical buses headed for Bend or Pendleton, but given the ease with which they appear to spread on Facebook and among “QAnon” conspiracists, that likely is just a matter of time.

Perkins will face incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley in the November general election.

aha: someone said alt right is search for uncastrated father; jordan p gives rules; muslim kids in french ghettos get radicalized, so do cuck in parent's basements who can't be pick up artists and wohl of wall street. [matrrix 4 guy does sys analysis: darwin/ invis hand meritocrisy leaves losers to blame themselves, not structural forces.

aha: conservatives claim to be unfairly silenced by labels, sexist, racist, but i'm coming to see it as central to identity/reverse victimhood

white guys once had assured status/living in factories

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aha omg two ~ crisis: covid and BLM is this wicked problem?

we always worried a crisis would happen which trump is tempermentally, mentally [transactional, low Info voter] and ideologically unsuited to deal w/ [unclear if he buys his own gov't is bad BS, but base loves it , as do corp funders

blm --> anti trump protest, loot--> shoot, "ominous force"

cohen plus macho BS, see retaliation

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/trump-tells-mayors-and-governors-most-of-you-are-weak-during-teleconference-rant-about-unrest-you-have-to-dominate/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/listen-heres-the-leaked-audio-of-trumps-unhinged-call-with-governors-and-says-they-need-to-crack-down-on-protesters/

global protests erupt in solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters in US

Julia Conley / Common Dreams

People in a number of international cities violated bans on large gatherings over the weekend to show solidarity with protests against police brutality.

an 620

trump can’t bail himself out by stoking white people’s fear of rioting ‘thugs’

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aha: this has existed for a while as dirty tricks tactic (us vs them enemies; dirty germy foreigners; we are victims? amplifty and acclerate by trump and soc med echo escalator post truth; bktv 5/20 re-imagine capitalism says inequality acknowledged by all, even ceo; increases social instability and will --> left or rt populism and you won't like either, ceo's [lipton tea, aetna min wage]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-uses-his-weird-grip-on-republicans-to-stoke-a-nihilistic-culture-war/

no lnx pix

trump uses his weird grip on Republicans to stoke a nihilistic culture war

Donald J. Trump holding a rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, on May 8, 2019 // Office of the President of the United States/Donald J. Trump

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon May 29, 2020

I don’t think there’s ever been a U.S. president with more influence with his political base that Donald Trump. All presidents are defended by those who support them, of course. Even the most unpopular failures have diehard fans who stick with them to the bitter end.

But Trump is unusual in that he has only ever attempted to govern on behalf of the people who support him and has no feeling of responsibility toward any other citizens. He has taken the already polarized Republican Party and turned it into a cult of personality. His influence over the 40 to 45% of the population who seem to idolize him is immense.

Perhaps it’s because Trump was a celebrity with a TV show long before he entered politics that makes his fans love him so unconditionally. Whatever it is, Trump and his supporters have an unusually personal and almost intimate bond. It’s clear after three and a half tumultuous years that they will follow his lead no matter what.

The political implications of this are profound. This weird relationship between president and base now completely dominates the Republican Party, apparently making it impossible for any prominent national figure in the party to allow even the smallest daylight between himself or herself and Trump. (Frankly, very few even seem to be trying.)

:{:{}:

The red MAGA hat serves as an official symbol of Trump loyalty, and there is a certain part of his following that uses it as a tool of intimidation. Even more disturbing, there has been a spate of mass shootings and other acts of violence by people who have named Trump or his ideas as motivation.

In order to maintain his supporters’ devotion, Trump has stoked the culture wars at every turn, ruthlessly dividing the country in order to keep his fans engaged. They receive such hypocritical gestures of solidarity as his newfound “pro-life” zealotry with enthusiastic gratitude — but what they really love are his brutal assaults on those they consider their political and cultural enemies. In that, Trump and his base are one.

So it should come as no surprise that when Trump faced the first crisis of his presidency that was not of his own making — and failed to meet the challenge — he would reflexively fall back on culture-war tactics to reinforce his base. His response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been abysmal, with the death toll now over 100,000 and the economy in dire straits. After bungling the response so badly that it will be studied by historians for centuries as an example of poor leadership, Trump is returning to his original instinct, which was simply to deny that the whole thing mattered, or was even happening.

His supporters have eagerly followed his lead, defying public health guidelines and demanding that their governors “reopen” immediately (or in Trump’s own words of incitement, that they “liberate” their states.) Trump clearly believes that he can wish away the virus — or at least people’s concern about the virus — by pretending that the crisis is over and that we can go back to normal.

As we speak, he’s arguing with the state government of North Carolina about the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled for late August in Charlotte. Republican officials had reportedly been discussing how they could stage the event while observing CDC social distancing guidelines, and everything had been going smoothly. Trump, however, wants his big party, and wants it to be crammed with people screaming ecstatically at his every word. What he doesn’t want is anyone wearing masks.

In fact, wearing a mask, or rather not wearing one, is fast becoming as much of a symbol of Trump fealty as those red MAGA hats. Trump’s allies on Fox News have pushed it hard among the faithful (with the unexpected exception of Sean Hannity.)

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

Laura’s war against masks continues

Embedded video

As Salon’s Igor Derysh reports, studies show that people who watch Fox are far more inclined to defy public health guidelines. But really, it’s Trump himself who has turned masks into a culture-war symbol by ostentatiously refusing to wear one.

This makes little sense, of course, if he genuinely wants to reopen the country in a way that allows workers and consumers to feel safe going about their business. Masks and social distancing are common-sense ways to begin doing that, and normalizing that behavior will bring back the economy more quickly. But Trump has decided to pretend that the crisis is over, as I said earlier, and mask-wearing and social distancing don’t exactly send that message.

I also suspect that his resistance is largely due to vanity. The man truly believes that wearing one will make him look foolish (which can only be described as amazing) and he may also have concerns about the mask rubbing off his thick orange makeup.

All of this comes as he’s also implying it’s somehow weak, unmanly and un-American to wear one. In fact, he’s seized upon this as a new attack line against Joe Biden:

Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

New Trump ads on Facebook mock Biden for wearing a mask

View image on Twitter

Some Republicans are actually pushing back on this, notably state governors who will have to deal with the resurgence of cases if people follow Trump’s dangerous example. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged people to wear them. It’s hard to know why these dissenters are stepping up now, but maybe it’s because they see something really dark and ugly taking hold among the Trump faithful.

For instance, Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature who have been railing against public health measures turned out to have concealed the fact that one of their own members had contracted the virus. They quarantined themselves but never told their Democratic colleagues, allowing them to potentially expose their family members and loved ones without knowing it.

According to the Washington Post, there are businesses in various parts of the country now barring customers from wearing masks in their establishments. This was from an interview with Kevin Smith, proprietor of the Liberty Tree Tavern in Elgin, Texas:

“If we’re only allowed to be at 25 percent capacity, I want them to be the 25 percent of people that aren’t p—–, that aren’t sheep,” Smith told The Washington Post. “Being scared all the time isn’t good for your health. It suppresses your immune system.”

Trump posted this tweet yesterday, cutely pretending that he was just making an observation:

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

So many different viewpoints! https://twitter.com/leesmithdc/status/1265629746450358273 …

Lee Smith

@LeeSmithDC

Terrific ?@molmccann? piece in ?@FDRLST? — masks aren’t about public health but social control. Image of Biden in black mask endorses culture of silence, slavery, and social death. https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/mandatory-masks-arent-about-safety-theyre-about-social-control/ …

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The science is clear on this: Masks work. If everyone wore them when they were out in public it would make a significant difference in slowing the transmission of the virus. These people are pretending to be tough, but in reality they’re just following the example of the president and living in denial.

Imagine a world where, instead of behaving so foolishly, Trump modeled sensible behavior by wearing a mask and social distancing and encouraging businesses to open up responsibly? His followers would buy red MAGA masks by the truckload and turn social distancing into the mark of macho American individualism. But he can’t do that, of course, because stoking the culture war is literally his last hope of winning re-election.

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aha 520 this id trump superweapon so can't afford to have even innoc factcheck link attached thus goes to war/retaliantion

he claims/implied HIS freedom of sp isat stake? victim? our that of all of us? trumpistas?

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bunch // AN 520

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/donald-trump-just-issued-his-most-serious-threat-yet-to-free-speech

salon

'Totally asinine’: Legal experts pour cold water on Trump’s call to ‘strongly regulate’ social media companies

Alex HendersonMay 28, 2020

Although Twitter has been one of President Donald Trump’s favorite modes of communication, he is furious with the social media outlet this week for fact-checking two of his tweets: Twitter…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/kellyanne-conway-paints-target-on-back-of-twitter-executive-in-charge-of-fact-check-label/

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520

aha:

lip service from rt, entrepreneur hero and all, but amazon bookseller no sales tax; corps get most covid bill $, must be tight w/ bank to get;

along w/ educ said to be the great way to move up/ meritocracy , but up against walmart, outsource factory, walmart is front end for china imports

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aha

// death cult? ghost dance? party of trump, alt fact post-truth? soc med?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/a-grandiose-collective-paranoid-fantasy-its-time-to-speak-honestly-about-the-gops-evolution-into-a-conspiracy-cult/

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is heat redistribution boost for buffer?

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aha yikes: ocean buffer turns into amplifier?! 5/20 typhoon displace inda? bangladesh in covid outbreak --> camps

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18052020/hurricane-tropical-storms-climate-change

New warnings of a global warming-driven increase in the most deadly and destructive tropical storms are especially scary in regions already hit hard, including the Southeastern U.S., where Hurricane Michael damaged 60,000 homes in 2018, and the Caribbean, where Hurricane Maria killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico and crippled the island's infrastructure.

There's more of the same ahead, recent federal research suggests. One study found that the chances of major tropical storms forming increased globally by 6 percent in each of the last four decades. A second shows the biggest increase in frequency in already storm-battered areas, including Florida, the Bahamas, eastern Africa, Japan, China and the Philippine Islands.

The results bolster "projections of increased (tropical cyclone) intensity under continued warming," the authors of the first study wrote. Those researchers focused on storms with winds greater than 115 mph (category 3 or above), because those cause the most damage.

The findings landed as residents are warily watching Tropical Storm Arthur spin toward the Carolina coast well ahead of the official start of the hurricane season, and with projections for above-average hurricane activity in the Atlantic this summer.

In the Bay of Bengal, Tropical Cyclone Amphan is projected to drive a deadly surge of flooding toward Bangladesh this week, with winds of more than 170 mph. Emergency responders are struggling to evacuate up to a million people, and provide them with emergency shelter during the global coronavirus pandemic, which requires evacuees maintain physical distancing to prevent the spread of the disease.

New tropical storm data from 2010 to 2017 showed that "the probability of a hurricane having wind speeds of at least 100 knots increased by approximately 15 percent between the early and latter halves of the 39-year record."

Overheated oceans caused by global warming are super-charging tropical storms, but year-to-year variations are also affected by short-term climate cycles like El Niño. The new study helps sort out the different influences, making it "95 percent certain" that oceans heated by global warming are brewing up bigger storms more often, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hurricane scientist Jim Kossin, who led the study.

"This shows us there is a global trend of more stronger hurricanes," Kossin said. "It's consistent with our expectations, based on physics." Warmer oceans supply more energy for storms and the warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.Several recent studies show how those combine to cause more damage worldwide, and pin down the role of global warming.

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note aha hurricanes and floods are bad for toxic spills: pipelines and tanks break, coal ash ponds overflow; lagoon animal waste

5/20 massive flood (agw?) dow? chem superfund

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21052020/michigan-dams-flooding-climate-change-storms-extreme-weather

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aha: omg vote by mail quashed in swing states! see vote by mail; despite under the cover of covid crisis?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/why-experts-are-worried-about-absentee-voting-across-the-country/

More than 30 statewide elections will be held in the 91 days from May 19 to August 18, previewing how unfamiliar or difficult absentee voting may be across America this fall.

The next big test is June 2, when eight states and the District of Columbia hold their presidential primaries. Despite President Trump’s claims that absentee voting cannot be trusted, red-run states (Indiana, Iowa, South Dakota) holding primaries that day have more experience with voting by mail and voters dropping off ballots at polling places than blue states and territories (Maryland, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and D.C.). Only one state in this group, purple Montana, has held an election where most people voted absentee.

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5/20

aha: qanon origin incubator? "fever swamp" then boosted by alex jones

escalator pipeline by 2 biggest FANGs

aha: youtube to facebook pipeline/escalator to everyone's news feed [2 biggest FANGs, synergy? amplifier?]

plandemic

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/heres-how-plandemic-went-viral/

https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/may/08/fact-checking-plandemic-documentary-full-false-con/

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/23/facebook-posts/no-democrats-arent-pushing-microchips-fight-corona/

For Erin Gallagher, the conspiratorial documentary “Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind Covid-19” came to her attention like it did for myself — a question from her mom about the veracity of the 26-minute video full of coronavirus misinformation.

After hearing about it from more friends and family, Gallagher decided to investigate how the video went viral so quickly.

Gallagher, an independent social media researcher who has been featured in NBC News and Wired, analyzed 37,000 posts containing the word “plandemic” and 24,000 posts with the name “Judy Mikovits,” the former National Cancer Institute scientist whose work has been discredited, yet is the key expert in “Plandemic.”

Using graphs showing the Facebook groups where “Plandemic” was posted, along with the type of link users were sharing, she found a pipeline of how this video went viral: from YouTube to Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members and names like “Chemtrails Global Skywatch,” “OFFICIAL Q / QANON” and “Drain the Swamp.” YouTube links were the most commonly-shared access points for “Plandemic,” regardless of how quickly YouTube removed them.

“Everyone uses multiple platforms to varying degrees now so nothing is ever limited to just one or two,” Gallagher told me this weekend. “But in this case, YouTube hosted the video, and I suspect many mirrors of it once it started getting pulled down, and these large, highly-active Facebook groups were key to spreading it like wildfire and pushing it into all of our families’ Facebook feeds.”

In the “plandemic” keyword data, which was collected between April 8, and May 8, YouTube links posted on Facebook had nearly 200,000 likes and more than 150,000 each of shares and comments.

I reached out to YouTube and Facebook for comment but haven’t heard back. I will send an updated note with tomorrow’s newsletter if either company responds.

“‘Plandemic’ creators encouraged viewers to download the video from the documentary’s website and post it across video platforms,” said Alex Kaplan, senior researcher at the left-leaning Media Matters for America. “And you could see the impact: dozens of reuploads of the video on YouTube — even after they tried to remove the original — and shares of it on other platforms.”

[video 6 min ]

This isn’t the first YouTube-to-Facebook conspiracy video Kaplan has studied. He found some of the most-viewed YouTube videos touting the debunked claim that Bill Gates is pushing a coronavirus vaccine to microchip the public receiving thousands of engagements on Facebook. And a video calling COVID-19 a “false flag” drew 6 million views on YouTube and more than 1 million engagements on Facebook before it was removed. Both videos went viral over the last two months.

“Be really careful about sharing content coming from places you haven’t heard of before just because it gives you some kind of emotion,” Kaplan said. “Take the time to do some research on the person(s) behind it or the claims made in it, and see if someone, like a fact-checker, has debunked it, before sharing.”

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aha: ~ stay@home is a hub (tho previously connected, but amplify/accelerate? jones?

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/05/05/facebook-go-platform-organizing-protests-against-social-distancing

no pix lnx

Facebook Is Go-To Platform For Organizing Protests Against Social Distancing

May 05, 2020

Hatewatch Staff

As COVID-19 continues to pose a lethal threat worldwide, fringe, right-wing activists are using Facebook to mobilize protests of stay-at-home orders in several states.

In a review of Facebook event pages, Hatewatch identified more than 50 rallies from April 13 through May 1. The event pages are being set up all across the nation regardless of which political party controls the state house.

Facebook has become the social media platform of choice for far-right organizers and activists who engage in protests against social distancing.

“Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook,” a spokesperson for Facebook told Hatewatch via email.

The majority of these rallies run afoul of recommendations from health experts. They allow extremists, however, to reinforce the spread of far-right conspiracy theories and disinformation about COVID-19.

In Lansing, Michigan, hundreds of protesters rallied Thursday as Republican House legislators voted to not extend Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s state of emergency. The American Patriot Rally event, organized by theMichigan United for Liberty group, called for the reopening of local businesses.

The rally first spread through Facebook before the platform decided to pull the event page. Late Thursday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the state capital building, ignoring social distancing recommendations. In some cases, demonstrators carried firearms and were seen peddling QAnon slogans and COVID-19 conspiracies.

Alex Jones

Alex Jones, radio host and creator of the website InfoWars, left, shakes hands with a demonstrator during a "You Can't Close America" rally outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin on April 18. (Photo by Alex Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Antigovernment figures such as Alex Jones are capitalizing on these gatherings to advance the message that federal institutions can’t be trusted. In the days leading up to an April 18 rally in Austin, Texas, hosted by Infowars, promotional content was circulated on Facebook. Once on the ground, Jones accused the Texas state government of enacting “martial law” and told attendees, “We don’t live in fear of some made up virus. We know the globalists and the media are the enemy.” In far-right circles, the term “globalist” is frequently used as an antisemitic slur.

PMAZ flier

A flyer for the Patriot’s Day Rally circulates on Patriot Movement AZ’s Facebook page.

Similarly, in Phoenix, Arizona, the hate group Patriot Movement AZ shared “Patriots' Day Rally” flyers and memes in the lead-up to the April 20 rally in Phoenix. Although the group frequently dabbles in anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, the content shared aligned with common antigovernment talking points. In one instance, a member of the group’s Facebook page who goes by Brent Backus shared an image stating: “Quarantine is when you resist the movement of sick people. Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people.”

Militia organizations also did their part to vilify government institutions. TheSouth Carolina Light Foot militia shared details on their page for the “Drive to Thrive SC” gridlock event. Similar to other extremist groups, the South Carolina Light Foot Militia also used its Facebook page to rile up its base ahead of the April 24 event.

“Maybe we can put all the sick people in boxcars and take them to someplace safe, oh wait…” read one of the memes in an attempt to equate the government’s response to COVID-19 to that of life under the rule of Nazi Germany.

badge star of davis yellow as "pass"]

The South Carolina Light Foot militia stoked fears recently as they claimed yellow badge-style patches are in the near future for vaccinated individuals.

Other militia leaders such as John Cody, state commanding officer of the South Carolina Light Foot Militia Special Response Team, jumped on the bandwagon using Facebook to advertise a national May Day Rally.

Cody, who uses the codename “Hawkeye,” was a key organizer for the Jan. 29 Militias March on Richmond rally. The march, which was organized mainly on Facebook, was scheduled to coincide with the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) gun event. VCDL was hoping to put on a show of force for gun owners who stood in opposition to state bills that were aiming to adopt new gun restrictions. Cody’s rally ultimately helped bring together a number of right-wing militias with established gun rights organizations.

Cody post

Militia leader John Cody recently circulated two different flyers on Facebook for his May Day rallies.

Along with Cody, Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, has been rallying her supporters to protest. Chase, who was involved in a number of controversial incidents earlier in the year and was subsequently ousted from her local GOP committee, has been sympathetic to far right causes. She made a personal appearance at the January VCDL gun rally where she joined several antigovernment militias in an attempt to protest new gun legislation.

Amanda Chase

Virginia state Senator Amanda Chase at work in the statehouse in Richmond. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Chase recently got on Facebook and shared details for several rallies against social distancing scheduled in Richmond, encouraging her supporters to attend, saying “Share with those who believe in Liberty, Freedom and pursuit of Prosperity, …not liberalism.”

Kayla Gogarty, a Media Matters senior researcher who has been tracking these rallies since they first appeared on Facebook, told Hatewatch: “We found that a lot of these Facebook groups and a lot of these events are including members of local militias and members of some local anti-vax groups. We’ve seen a lot of far-right figures attend some of the events like the Proud Boys. We’ve seen pro-gun activists and antigovernment extremists at these rallies and some local government officials as well.”

A Hatewatch analysis of Facebook posts earlier last month aligned with much of what Gogarty has seen in recent weeks, with the platform being a hotbed for COVID-19 misinformation.

Facebook touts response as rallies materialize

As first noted by the tech website The Verge, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is still heavily touting the billion-dollar company’s projects aimed at helping minimize the spread and impact of COVID-19. Facebook has donated $100 million to small businesses in a gesture made to help them through trying times. The social media company has alsoteamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to roll out a global symptoms survey to Facebook users in an effort to track COVID-19 growth. These initiatives come as Facebook is simultaneously failing to provide a clear solution for countering the spread of disinformation and anti-public health organizing on its own platform.

Owen Shroyer

Infowars host Owen Shroyer arrives at the Texas State Capitol building on April 18 in Austin. (Photo by Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

In an April 20 interview with ABC News, Zuckerberg emphasized that “the stuff that people are saying that is false around a health emergency like this, can be classified as harmful misinformation that has a risk of leading to imminent physical danger and we’ll just take that kind of content down.”

Complicating matters is the fact that not every state and country has instructed citizens to stay home. According to The New York Times, “42 states, three counties, 10 cities, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico” have adopted stay at home orders as of April 28th. This means that if protests occur in states where stay at home orders were never adopted, Facebook faces less pressure to take immediate action.

A general search on Facebook for rally terms such as “liberate” and “reopen” brings up a plethora of groups that oppose social distancing.

The decision to hold off on pulling down content that rails against social distancing undermines the work the company has done to help survey and map the spread of COVID-19. The networking site may have taken down a handful of conspiracy posts, but the antigovernment rhetoric contained in the rally posts has the potential to expose people to greater amounts of misinformation.

---

aha: abortion turned xian anti-gubmint; in 80's RR televangelists had TV programs/stations; Rove courted (organized) for Bush 43; now drollinger cabinet and GOTV network (AI/digital tracking?); scary overlap with militias?! patriot prayer

putin cozied up to? thus US xians gave him pass on collusion, plus if true delegitimezes trump, who delivers anti-abortion judge and SCOTUS w/ mcconnell

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/why-religious-freedom-stokes-coronavirus-protests-in-the-u-s/

Pamela E. Klassen, University of Toronto

Religiousfreedom,cherished as an American ideal, has been frequently invoked in the United States during protests against COVID-19 public health measures.

In Canada, forms of protests — including by churches — are more likely to focus on the systemic underfunding of long-term care and homeless shelters or the lack of sufficient medical and water infrastructure in Indigenous communities.

Why the difference?

Across the U.S., conservative Christians flouted state and municipal social distancing orders as late as March 31, sometimes by overtly breaking the law, claiming thatGod, not the state, will protect the people.

During the Christian Holy Week, evangelical and Pentecostal church leaders, often backed by Republican politicians, brought lawsuits against state and municipal governments, arguing that curtailing religious gatherings for the sake of limiting the spread of COVID-19 was a breach of religious freedom.

With lightning speed, federal and state lawyers weighed in on the balance between public health measures and religious liberty.

By contrast, the story in Canada is largely one of religious organizations of all varieties co-operating with public health measures. To date, there is no equivalent in Canada of these high-profile COVID-19 legal battles in which churches reject both public health directives and state legislation.

Suspicion of science, government

Religiously based suspicion of scientific and government authority is not unique to conservative Christians; Hasidic Jewish communities share these suspicions and constitute a significant number of those infected with COVID-19 in New York state.

Even in the case of Hasidic Jews, however, the border might make a difference: Hasidic communities in Québec have been praised for their diligence in adhering to social distancing, in contrast to those in New York, where some rabbis have mocked public health recommendations.

The contrasting responses to COVID-19 in Canada and the United States are rooted in very different national attitudes about individual and collective responsibility for public health.

In the United States, Democratic front-runner Joe Biden may come to embrace Bernie Sander’s plan for “Medicare for All,” but even the devastating reality of being the country hardest hit so far by COVID-19 has not seemed to turn the tide of public opinion on the need for universal medicare.

In Canada, by contrast, leaders across the political spectrum are throwing their support behind public health care, with even some conservative politicians calling for more funding, especially for long-term care. While Donald Trump tweeted a call to anti-public health protesters to “liberate” their states, in Ontario, Conservative Premier Doug Ford dismissed a scattering of such protesters in Toronto as selfish “yahoos.”

Invoking religious freedom in an attempt to opt out of health-care legislation is much more common in the U.S. than Canada. Both countries protect religious freedom, dating back to 1791 in the United States with the First Amendment of the constitution guaranteeing the “free exercise” of religion, while in Canada, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has protected the “freedom of conscience and religion” since 1982.

Religious freedom as a rallying cry

These parallel guarantees, however, stem from very different histories of using religious freedom as a rallying cry, including to resist public health care. I’ve discussed this in my research, especially in relation to women’s reproductive health.

In the wake of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, for example, Catholics and evangelical groups used a religious freedom argument to contest the new mandate that their health insurance plans provide access to contraception for women employees.

In Canada, the less frequent citing of religious freedom rights in the courts to curtail health-care access may be related to a wider acceptance of health care as a public good and a basic human right.

In both Canada and the U.S., the struggle for publicly funded health care in the mid-20th century depended on coalitions of politicians, medical professionals and religious leaders. In Canada, a Baptist minister-turned-politician, Tommy Douglas, galvanized the country with a vision that public health care for all was a human right and, for some, also a religious obligation.

Similarly, in the U.S., when Dr. Montague Cobb, leader of the National Medical Association, successfully argued for Medicare before Congress in 1965, he concluded his testimony with a Christian hymn.

The Canadian version of public health care, however, now serves a much wider range of the population than Medicare does in the U.S., and has become a cornerstone of Canada’s national identity, with minimal overt connections to religion.

But in the United States, public health care remains a source of profound national and religious division.The current Republican administration regularly uses religious freedom legislation, including conscientious objection rules for health-care providers, to chip away at Medicare, limiting access to health care for women, LGBTQ, poor and rural people.

A time of reckoning is coming when public health measures and public and private health-care delivery will be assessed for their effectiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic. The role of religious communities and the ideals of religious freedom in supporting or impeding public health must be included in this reckoning, especially in the United States.

Pamela E. Klassen, Professor of the Study of Religion, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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bizzaro-world mirroring? Plandemic conspiracy recycling stew, escalator (convergtent perfect storm? emergency/crisis? // heartland reverse engineer? if covid proves trump and libtard fail, it must be hoax/agenda 21 conspiracy?

conspiracy theory continued to spread following news in early April of Gates’ spending for a coronavirus cure. Another major white nationalist Telegram account shared a post saying Gates wants the population “extinguished,” and multiple accounts on Facebook and Instagram, including QAnon and anti-vaxx accounts, shared a meme urging people to take “no vaccine from some shady ass nerd that wants to depopulate the planet.” Ben Garrison, a far-right and pro-Trump cartoonist, drew a cartoon pushing the conspiracy theory that portrays Gates as a Nazi, which was also posted on the backup site of the pro-Trump subreddit “r/The_Donald.”

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aha omg: koch, mercer, kushner, trump all inherited money!

aha: see zinn on sacrifice, // austerity (= tough, discipline, rational, male)

free mkt FUNDAMENTALISM:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/its-time-to-reject-the-gods-of-commerce-america-is-a-society-not-an-economy/

david m

The “economy” does not exist. Human beings do. What nearly everyone understands, except Republican officials and economists on television, is that there is no singular, shared experience within one large-scale economic system. Leilani Jordan, a 27-year-old woman with a developmental disability, who worked as a grocery clerk at a satellite store of Giant Food — a chain throughout three states — died from the coronavirus infection she contracted when earning her final paycheck. That check was for $20.64. She worked without a facial mask, and lived in an entirely different universe than Nick Bertram, Giant’s CEO, who collects a salary in the high six figures.

The majority of Americans have less than $500 in savings. They simply do not experience the same “economy” as Rep. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, a Republican who described Americans dying as a result of “opening the economy” as the “lesser of two evils.” Hollingsworth is the 12th-richest member of Congress, with a net worth of $50.1 million, most of it coming from his father — the “silent partner” in Hollingsworth’s investment firm.

Americans as disparate as Trey Hollingsworth and Leilani Jordan, whose death the congressman would presumably regard as collateral damage, might not share an economy in any substantive sense, but they do share a society.

The ideological disease that cripples the United States is the belief that society does not exist beyond its commercial activity. President Calvin Coolidge famously remarked that “the business of America is business,” while Joel Millman, a formerreporter for the Wall Street Journal, once wrote, “America is not a nation … America is a market.”

Millman was making a neutral, analytical observation, but a similar thesis has guided America’s long succession of disastrous policy decisions that treat the “economy” — meaning profits for corporations and their owners or shareholders — as sacred. An entire set of religious assumptions follow, most significantly that people like Jordan are martyrs for the God of profit. Their deaths are acceptable losses in the name of God and country, which mutate together into the bloodless idol of commerce.

Human sacrifices at the altar of the idol have become almost commonplace. Millions of children of color in the inner cities develop asthma and suffer from other respiratory problems because they breathe heavily polluted air; 26,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance; public health experts have concluded that poverty — and the lack of robust social services — causes tens of thousands of deaths a year.

The fatalities caused by environmental injustice, denial of health care and outright deprivation never provoke widespread scrutiny because, unlike the daily stock market report or reports of marginal GDP growth rates, they are largely out of sight and out of mind.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the United States to confront its market-based theology. Americans now must consider whether their country is anything more than an engine of commerce, and whether human life has value separate from a financial calculus. For the first time in most of our lifetimes, the question of priorities is direct and implicates almost everyone....

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aha doh!

Turns out letting ‘efficient’ monopolies control our food supply was a terrible idea

Claire Kelloway / Washington Monthly

For many Americans, grocery shopping has become an intensely stressful experience. To maintain social distancing, people must queue before entering stores. Once inside, they must scramble to find increasingly scarce…

4/27/20

aha sys fail insanity: no brainer to stop subsidizing ?! banks kep loaning $ to frack tho NEVER MADE A PROFIT?! NOW GOV'T BAILOUT HAMM ETP KELCY; EXXON ABND CHEVRON LOOKING TO BANKRUPT SMALL INDEP [THAT DJT CLAIMS TO CARE ABOUT] BUY UP ASSETS CHEAP WHICH ARE FRYING THE PLANET; MEANWHILE COVIS DEMOS FAIL OF LIBTARD, WE HAVE WINDOW GND, WAY CHEAPER THEN CLEAN UP COVID MESS WHICH HIT US B/C WE TAKE OUT HABITAT AND EAT WILD ANIMALS

icn 420

super-Polluting Methane Emissions Twice Federal Estimates in Permian Basin, Study Finds

BY: PHIL MCKENNA

The methane is a byproduct of fracking for oil, often burned off at well heads or emitted into the atmosphere instead of being captured for use as fuel.

covid bail bill

cf antonia juhaz bakken bailout? oil -40$ bakken, 200b$ debt; in 2008 oil 150$, many poor cty could not afford, helped trigger Gt Recession?

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see reductionism:

useful cognitive short-cut: for anything i/ME do not like/want to do:

see free freedom, liberty etc god term ~ tyranny

aha: recall that magical invis hand converts all my selfish act into the common good = $ = prosperity= life = up good=god

ainsly earh F&F [something sensible ] =a plot to take away our freedom

gadsen presumably big in TP ~ stay at home covid protest eg gadsen flags

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WHO primary on covid trump scapegoat (BS conspir works b/c ground laid for it? just replay/remix of tropes eg ark pjt --> crooked hillary)

aha? anti-commie globalist automatically discount anything from supranat'l, this corona bs?

target softened up by previous attacks by berman, milloy, bate, monsanto...

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420

aha: djt schizo on china (or just trimming spasmotically given situation of minute (eg public opinion or fox trump whisperers); all RW docs need enemy, so china chetaed currency mmanip his recycled 70 BS (to explain away their econ rise vs us loss mfg vs truth we subsidized offshore, and global cap'l 1% race to the bottom; his big claim he is master negit and will force better deal on china, hence trade war'tariff (force, transactional]; covid disaster force villify, but that's hard wired xeno; note 40K ppl came after travel ban china, so now 420 he has further cut immigration tho US NY(C) epicenter

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aha hmmn, does djt hijack of law = evil perversion? also pseudo-populism by billionaire to line own pocket and corrupt cronies?

see roy cohn for full txt

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/sadism-crime-and-a-love-of-lies-what-3500-lawsuits-reveal-about-trumps-true-nature/

no lnx

Sadism, crime and a love of lies: What 3,500 lawsuits reveal about Trump’s true nature

Written by History News Network April 11, 2020

American presidents before Donald Trump had some record of public achievement in politics, government or the military before they were elected. Donald Trump lacked any of those credentials, but brought his astounding history of involvement in thousands of lawsuits to the nation’s highest office. This trove of cases from more than 45 years reflects Trump’s contempt for ethical standards and for the US Constitution and the rule of law, the foundation of American democracy.

As a perennial litigant, Trump weaponized the law to devastate perceived enemies, to consolidate power, to frustrate opposing parties, as former federal prosecutor and acclaimed author James D. Zirin illuminates in his compelling and disturbing history of Trump’s use and abuse of the law, Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits (All Points Books)....

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aha

note spats wishlist hit list collective, gubmint bad, vs buffer, public bank

yikes re vote by mail 2020

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/voting-rights-roundup-us-postal-service-could-run-out-of-funds-and-cause-crisis-for-vote-by-mail/

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COVID IS A STRESS TEST WE FAIL:

aha soc safe net is a buffer, adds resilience, includes unemployment insurance that keeps workers alive when they get fired (slowly in case of "creative destruction" mkt shifts, or more sudden recession / pandemic); so it enables capitalism, basically a subsidy to corps?!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/this-is-horrible-florida-republicans-furious-after-unemployment-system-they-mangled-puts-trumps-re-election-in-jeopardy/

no lnx

‘This is horrible’: Florida Republicans furious after unemployment system they mangled puts Trump’s re-election in jeopardy

smash and grab;

maybe redumbdent but

broadly observed that since trump has no guiding principle or ideology, he just knee-jerk reverses anything BO was for (this maybe a variant of McConnell we will make BO a one term prez even if he works for stuff we want.

parallel to smash and grab window of opportunity idea: we don't much like trump or agree with him, but his win plus control of 1 or 2 houses gives as a short time to push thru a decades old wishlist of stuff that we either wanted for ideological reasons (red meat for base evangelicals) or stuff that corps will pay us to do eg rollback regs.

spats: variant of above, the oldest most absurd thing you thot long dead comes back zombie-like like BULB bill:

Spats Syndrome

aha 1119 expansion: gop know trump will implode (or beaten or even term out?) so jamming thru decades old wishlist with Koch backing; jams thru rereg, esp environ, while McConn stalls all progressive bills, guns, protect elections...

ceo // seagull consultant, // gogo 80's M&O extract value short term then flee.

// apocalyptic end times? sounds wacky but Watts? dominionist cabinet?!

more realistically, could be matt effect death spiral: gop/tp/djt think gov't evil or at least inept and wasteful, so dereg, undermine good governance, campaign finance law, norms/inst, experts, plant swamp things to neiter caputre agencies, then fail, then claim as evidence that gov't bad. THEN USE FAIL/CRISIS TO JAM THRU SELF-ISH STEALTH AGENDA; minor variant of 2 santas.

320

cfpb designed to ctr predatory? captured?

NB aha: fire/banks have been hosing up foreclosures (recall that house appreciation only real source of wealth/battery/buffer since wages flat 30 yrs, AA pplpredatory/redlined) MNUCHIN, 500k homeless, often medical bills? CDS on debt again?

https://www.salon.com/2015/03/22/vulture_capitalists_are_picking_us_dry_why_consumer_debt_buyers_are_on_the_rise_partner/

no lnx

Vulture capitalists are picking us dry: Why consumer debt buyers are on the rise

The great recession laid waste to the U.S. economy. Now debt collectors are feasting on the carrion

JIM HIGHTOWER

MARCH 22,2015

aha: you need sci suppress, press suppress to hide harm of dereg; all offense are ANTI-TRANSPARENCY/ DEMOCRACY

"idiota" in gk someone too stupid to understand commonality/ relationship

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aha: authoritarian deadly in pandemic; aha 2 tyrant violate privacy and human/civil rights, so get our info but gives out only propaganda

experts accuse CDC of withholding ‘crucial’ information about the coronavirus from doctors

Igor Derysh / Salon

Absolutely outrageous’: White House bars press from filming or recording coronavirus briefing

Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

"We need transparency. Instead we are getting this."

aha: crisis --> desire for clear story, way forward, order, stability thus populism, fake populism, authoritarian Strong Man and fundamentalism

Fringe religious party gains power in crisis-stricken Peru

Matthew Peter Casey, Arizona State University

After a bribery scandal that took down four presidents and led Congress to dissolve, some Peruvians are putting their faith in an austere religion called the Israelites of the New Universal Pact.

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aha authoritarian; djt carrot and stick: tweet to get judges to back down, pork for mod gops eg collins, pardons for crimes (from chief law official no less!)

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extraction scam grift basis:

aha extraction, but special cat: dereg makes big public taxpayer $ vulnerable for extraction (via uber myth corps good/effic and gov't bad/bloated/collectivist)

//charter

aha2: pvt // deregulation; afr and latix ppl of color mos need education, but cn last afford, least prepard for it; fed loans (and maybe student/family savings) are a big target to extract from; online fior profit college biggest grift/profit attractor b/c can do in "spare" time. betsy devos dereg accredidation

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220 cascade interactions between economic and climate collapse?

aha: recessions are periodic, fed no suffic buffer? trump keeps money free to goose stock mkt so can boast 401k; blew up fed deficit, household debt and student debt high; authoritarian growing everywhere, what effect of worldwide recession again? Greece?

what if we get hit by huge agw costs at the same time as worldwide recession? how wd such costs affect economies?

aha 2: related: debt is the opposite of a buffer? many/most american do not have 400$ for emergency? but debt is an asset on someone's books? tho in recession/depression or even a stock downturn, wealth evaporates?! fed chair may be fired for no negative interest rates?

we know that inequality is destabilizing, more likely to generate fails that system must cope with?!

aha dark side inverse of transaction is retaliation

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/were-slipping-further-into-fascism-as-trump-indulges-all-his-worst-instincts-with-the-help-of-his-toadies/

no lnx

We’re slipping further into fascism as Trump indulges all his worst instincts — with the help of his toadies

President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks at the 2020 National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020, at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian

Written by Lucian K. Truscott IV / Salon February 15, 2020

There will come a time when we look back on this week as the moment in our history when we finally understood that we have a man as president who is acting like a fascist dictator. Just look at the headlines from one day’s New York Times alone: “Alarm in Capital as Axes Swing in Growing Post-Acquittal Purge,” “Justice Dept. Acts to Ease Sentence for a Trump Ally.” If either one of those headlines had run on the front page of a major American newspaper before now, not to mention both of them at once, we would have believed as a people, as a citizenry, that we were facing a national crisis. But this week? Wednesday was just another day in Donald Trump’s America.

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aha:? family fdn tax shelter, ~ estate tax, arts philanthropy also tax dodge but also rehabiliatation PR (// "job-creators"?)

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/bill-moyers-joseph-campbell-would-want-us-to-seek-an-america-that-transcends-this-putrid-moment-of-trumpism

no lnx

Bill Moyers: Joseph Campbell would want us to seek ‘an America that transcends this putrid moment’ of Trumpism

Written by Bill Moyers February 15, 2020

A Facebook member responded to our recent post Bill Moyers and Steve Harper on Lawyers, Liars and Trump on Trial with a question:

Though I doubt that Bill Moyers will answer this question in person, I’d like to know what he thinks Joseph Campbell would have to say about this “moment.”

Bill Moyers responds:

I don’t know what in particular Joseph Campbell would say about our situation today. But I can imagine him lamenting, as he did when we talked some thirty 30 years ago, our failure “to admit within ourselves the carnivorous, lecherous fever that is endemic to human nature.” Malevolent greed was on the loose then – it was the mid-1980s as Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko popularized the mantra that “Greed is good” — and the disease was infectious. So I am sure he would not be inclined to place all the blame for the vulgarity and decadence of today on a single individual, no matter how venal, but would say that one conspicuous culprit is the symptom, not the cause, of our discontent.

He would likely be sad now, as he was then, over the weaponizing of religion. He told me, “My notion of the real horror today is what you see in Beirut [then a battleground of religious conflict]. There you have the three great Western religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and because the three of them have different names for the same biblical god, they can’t get on together. They are stuck with their metaphor and don’t realize its reference. They haven’t allowed the closed circle that surrounds them to open. Instead, each insists, ‘We are the chosen group; we have the Truth.’“

Joe believed that we need “myths that will identify the individual not with the local group but with the planet.” Remember, the atmosphere was already warming, but the threat preoccupied mostly scientists. And Joe was looking ahead: “The only myth that is going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the planet…and everybody on it. And what it will have to deal with will be exactly what all myths have dealt with—the maturation of the individual, from dependency through adulthood, through maturity, and then to the exit; and then how to relate to this society and how to relate this society to the world of nature and the cosmos.”

AHA: MYTH IS METAPHOR PLUS STORY --> POV = BASIS FOR DECISIONS/ACTION

He described this “as the ground of what the future myth is to be: the eye of reason, not of my religious community; the eye of reason, not my linguistic community. But a philosophy for the planet.” I am sure he would be appalled at the failure of our political class to prepare for saving not an elite or privileged group – not this group, that group, or the other group, but the earth and all those living on it. “This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. That is the country we are going to be celebrating. And those are the people that we are one with.”...

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INFLECTION PT? POST IMPEACH TRIAL

when did he cave to trump cult?

omfg

omg 1st guaido sotu and now:

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/cpac-to-feature-authoritarian-brazilian-politician-eduardo-bolsonaro/

no lnx

Organizers of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference portray themselves as lovers of freedom, but among this year’s speakers will be Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of Brazil’s authoritarian President Jair Bolsonaro and the leader of a right-wing party in the Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies. In January, the Brazilian government filed criminal charges against American journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been a harsh critic of the Bolsonaro administration.

The American Conservative Union, the group that puts on CPAC, heralded the younger Bolsonaro. Tweeting last week about Eduardo Bolsonaro’s planned appearance, ACU chair Matt Schlapp wrote, “In 2019 ACU hosted several international CPAC events, one of which was #CPACbrazil, thanks to @BolsonaroSP. At #CPAC2020 he’ll share how our conservative movement inspires freedom-loving people across the globe & how the US & Brazil can work together to stop socialism.”

But Eduardo Bolsonaro seems keen to “stop socialism” with authoritarianism. Eduardo Bolsonaro, who is also the regional representative of former White House strategist Steve Bannon’s global right-wing group The Movement, warned recently that the government could resort to repression to deal with protests and leftists “via a new AI-5.” The Guardian’s Tom Phillips explained:

That was a reference to one of the most traumatic events in recent Brazilian history – December 1968’s Institutional Act Number Five (AI-5) – when Brazil’s military rulers moved to extinguish growing political unrest by indefinitely outlawing freedom of expression and assembly and closing congress.

“The AI-5 was an instrument intended to intimidate people … It allowed the dictatorship to repress all opposition and dissent,” the historians Lilia Schwarz and Heloisa M Starling wrote in their recent “biography” of Brazil.

Eduardo Bolsonaro’s comments reportedly shocked many Brazilians, but they aligned with previous statements made by his father, who also served in the legislature before being elected president in 2018 During his presidential campaign, the theme of which was “Brazil before everything, and God above all,” Jair Bolsonaro supported the torture carried out by the military dictatorship that ran the country from 1964 to 1985, and warned that under his regime, minorities would have to “bow to the majority … or disappear.”

Right Wing Watch noted last year, a week after Jair Bolsonaro’s inauguration, that he “didn’t waste much time issuing executive orders and taking other actions going after the people he had targeted in his campaign rhetoric: the LGBTQ community; indigenous people; descendants of former slaves; civil servants deemed not on board with Bolsonaro’s ideological agenda; nonprofit organizations; and the media.”

Just this week, Eduardo Bolsonaro launched a social media attack on filmmaker Petra Costa, whose documentary “The Edge of Democracy” has been nominated for an Academy Award, The Guardian reported. Eduardo Bolsonaro tweeted that Costa was a “scumbag” and a liar. He and other government officials are angry about the movie and an interview in which Costa criticized? government policies encouraging the plunder of the Amazon region, a spike in police killings, ?the administration’s anti-gay actions and increased government censorship?.

In August 2018, months before the election that made his father president, Eduardo Bolsonaro met with Bannon and announced that Bannon would be offering suggestions on online strategy and data analysis for his father’s presidential campaign. He declared that he and Bannon would “join forces” against “cultural Marxism.”

Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign was backed by U.S. religious-right leaders, including former Rep. Michele Bachmann, who met with Eduardo Bolsonaro and recorded a video message to Brazilian Christians urging them to vote “only for a candidate for the president of Brazil who will support moving the Brazilian embassy ?[in Israel] to Jerusalem.” Trump-supporting “prophet” Cindy Jacobs and her husband Mike Jacobs declared that Jair Bolsonaro is establishing God’s kingdom in Brazil—turning it from a “goat nation” into a “sheep nation.” ?(There’s a biblical passage that refers to Jesus’s second coming when all the nations will be gathered before him and he, like a shepherd, will separate the sheep from the goats.)...

The president said part of the appeal of the idea is the preferential access he thinks his son would get in Washington.

“Clearly, the treatment he would receive would be different from that of another ambassador,” the president said. “He’s a friend of Trump’s sons, speaks English, speaks Spanish, and has a lot of worldly experience.”

Eduardo Bolsonaro, 35, was elected last year from São Paulo, and serves in the lower House. He is the head of the foreign affairs committee there.

The son’s effusive support of the Trump administration has endeared him to the American president, who singled him out for praise when the father visited the White House in March. The younger Mr. Bolsonaro accompanied the Brazilian leader on that visit and was invited to attend an Oval Office meeting.

During a visit to Washington earlier this year, Eduardo Bolsonaro said undocumented Brazilians living in the United States are “an embarrassment.” During a visit to the White House he wore a baseball cap with the slogan Make America Great Again — Trump 2020.

In February, during a stop at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s golf club in Palm Beach, Fla., Eduardo Bolsonaro reminisced about his days working as a federal police officer along Brazil’s border with Bolivia as he hailed the White House’s bid to build a wall along the Mexican border.

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aha-let: trump says usa is broken and the system is rigged (ripped off bernie?) then offers hims self as the only strong man who can fix it (to those who feel economically and politically dis-em POWERED, this might seem like a good bet, esp if BS braINWASHED by govt is bad, free mkt will fix all bs? he then breaks system more, undermines norms/moderation, makes a mess tha makes ppl more desperate and disillusioned? death spiral?

https://theconversation.com/trump-the-transgressor-the-psychological-appeal-of-leaders-who-break-the-rules-130247

1/24 # 5 aha:

data/info just eclipsed value of oil?! extraction

micro-disaster cap'lism? scary use of AI dB? van jones free mkt evac plan katrina

Uber and Lyft price-gouge customers trying to flee Seattle shooting120 an Nicole Karlis / Salon

aha-let: omb [oira anyway] always a gop tool, so not surprising when mick/djt used in ukraine

Midnight revelation: The OMB has been withholding emails that explicitly show Trump’s motives on Ukraine

Mark Sumner / Daily KosFebruary 2, 2020

A midnight court filing on Friday night revealed that the White House is refusing to release at least two dozen emails directly related to Donald Trump’s withholding of military assistance from…

not my aha (tho [indig] langs //environment

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https://www.ecowatch.com/nature-destruction-violence-women-2644975232.html

no lnx

Where Humans Destroy Nature, Women Also Suffer More Violence

Common Dreams Jan 30 CLIMATE

The Diwalwal Gold Mine in Mindanao, Philippines on Feb. 1, 1988. Destruction of the environment by extractive industries is linked to significant threats to women's safety, a new study has found. Patrick AVENTURIER / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

By Julia Conley

Climate action leaders have warned for years that marginalized frontline communities in poor countries are already facing the most destructive impacts of the climate crisis, and a new study confirms those fears, detailing how women in those regions are at greater risk for violence and abuse as the environment is degraded.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released its study on Wednesday after conducting more than 80 case studies and speaking to more than 300 sources over the course of a two-year project.

:{:{}:

"This study adds to the urgency of halting environmental degradation alongside action to stop gender-based violence in all its forms, and demonstrates that the two issues often need to be addressed together," said Dr. Grethel Aguilar, IUCN's acting director-general.

The study is the largest and most comprehensive to ever examine the gender-specific effects of the climate crisis, IUCN says.

Of the more than 300 responses IUCN compiled from international organizations working in developing countries, six in 10 respondents said they had observed gender-based violence directed at female environmental defenders, climate refugees and migrants, and an increase in such violence in areas where the climate crisis and global heating has put a strain on resources.

Abuses the organizations uncovered include child marriage and forced marriage, forced prostitution, sexual violence and assault, and human trafficking.

"As environmental degradation and stress on ecosystems increases, that in turn creates scarcity and stress for people, and the evidence shows that, where environmental pressures increase, gender-based violence increases," said Cate Owren, lead author of the report.

The publication was praised by women's rights advocates on social media.

"The fight against the climate crisis will have far more of an impact if represented by those most affected," tweeted the British Women's Equality Party.

The study found that both human trafficking and forced child marriage are becoming increasingly common in places where chronic drought, flooding and heatwaves have caused crop yields to suffer and brought on a scarcity of resources.

"When families struggle to meet basic needs, marrying off young daughters is seen as a way to lighten financial burdens," the report reads. "There is growing concern around reports of an increase in child marriage associated with conflict and natural disasters and environmental shocks."

According to The Guardian, about 12 million more young girls are believed to have been married off after extreme weather events increased, while human trafficking increases by 20 to 30% after weather disasters.

"In most parts of the world, women are already disadvantaged and lack land rights and legal rights, so are vulnerable to exploitation," wrote Fiona Harvey in The Guardian. "When the additional stresses caused by the climate crises bite, they are the first to be targeted."

The destruction of the environment by extractive industries has significant effects on women's safety, as an influx of male miners, construction workers and security guards is linked to an increase in gender-based and sexual violence, often with Indigenous women as targets.

"Mining areas, many of which are in Indigenous territories, have seen heavy military presence, resulting in various human rights violations, such as torture, psychological disturbance, destruction and divestment of properties (livestock and crops), as well as violence against women, including rape," reads the study in a section about the Mindanao region of the Philippines.

Sexual violence is also used to suppress women who attempt to defend their homes and environments from extractive industries, and to intimidate others who may come forward in protest.

"Environmental crimes degrade ecosystems, and also often bring new, worsening patterns of violence against women, minorities, and marginalized communities," said Jenny Springer, director of IUCN's global program on governance and rights. "Many Indigenous women in particular face gender-based and other violence as their communities act to defend their territories, resources and rights from such illegal activities."

Since women in many parts of the world are responsible for gathering water and provisions for their families, they are often at an increasingly greater risk for gender-based violence as they have to travel farther from home, as resources shrink.

IUCN surveyed the Danish Refugee Council, which conducted a study at Doro Refugee Camp in South Sudan regarding dangers faced by residents there. Women in the study identified collecting firewood outside the camp as the biggest risk they regularly took.

"Food insecurity and the lack of firewood forces women and girls to go outside of the camps to collect firewood despite the risks of suffering violence by militias, private forest owners, rangers or other unknown perpetrators," the report reads. "Many ... survey respondents also raised these concerns as one of the major threats in refugee camps as related to emergency responses and protracted crises."

IUCN's study was released a day after CARE International published its report "Suffering in Silence," showing how the climate crisis has exacerbated conflicts and economic and political instability across Africa, making the continent home to nine of the 10 most-overlooked humanitarian crises in the world.

"Environmental degradation now affects our lives in ways that are becoming impossible to ignore, from food to jobs to security," said Aguilar. "This study shows that the damage humanity is inflicting on nature is also fueling violence against women around the world — a link that has so far been largely overlooked."

Reposted with permission from Common Dreams.

How the Women of Standing Rock Are Building Sovereign Economies ›

At COP25, Women's Rights and Climate Activists Advocate a ... ›

The March for Equity, the Environment, and Women Are One, Says ... ›

Dozens of Scientists Are Pushing the UN to Make Environmental ... ›

Climate Destruction as Gender Violence ›

1/20

aha_let: all these pols may not be bigots at heart, but anti-gay is culture war wedge issue, big w/ evangelicals, so mostly freebie nobrainer upside?

PLUS these hot-button issues are great to generate FEAR thus great for direct mail fundraising (also email) and mebbe GOTV

theory to check: scam pac online fundraise on FEAR?

gingrich rove and trump are masters of culture war thus polarization

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new node state of exception margin

1/24/20

aha-ish: 1st they came for...

at the border, on the margins authoritarian power, violence, violation of civil/human rights can be test, done w/o much scrutiny

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aha 1/24/20 new pension tag:

RWI is a [target-] rich ecosystem [JOK seeks targets proxy?]; ideological entre look for niche; revolving door part of this system, also incubator which might expose young ppl to ideas and opportunities/funding otherwise not; pension plan also signals to ideol entre new incubator recruits that it's a hood/smart bet because fail does not matter, we got your back / gig; [fe given mktpklace meritocrisy BS]

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trumpista base held together by evil fox trinity: hanty, ingraham and tucker

aha 1/24/20 promote primary, evil pending; trump only hope to stay in power, so pander to end times homo trans phobia, 1st anti-abortion march; 2x whammy b/c smash and grab anti BO voodoo tax cut to oligarch and corps

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1/24/20

aha rw driven by novels, turner, ayn, left behind, left has no real = monkey wrench gang?

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AHA OMG interaction matthew

aha omg agw increase inequality --> decrease ability poor to cope w/ climate chaos, increase migration, political instability, increase xenophobia/ militarism ....

robt r davos

Popular anger is boiling over against elites seen as irredeemably greedy, corrupt and indifferent to the plight of most people struggling to get by. The anger has fueled uprisings in Chile, Spain, Ecuador, Lebanon, Egypt and Bolivia; environmental protests in the UK, Germany, Austria, France and New Zealand; and xenophobic politics in the US, the UK, Brazil and Hungary.

https://yyy.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/22/wealth-gap-widening-for-more-than-70-per-cent-of-global-population-researchers-find

guk

Inequality and development

Wealth gap widening for more than 70% of global population, researchers find

Policymakers urged to act on climate and bridge digital divide as study shows soaring inequality is affecting millions

Sam Phan

Wed 22 Jan 2020 07.46 EST

Social and economic disparities have soared even in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, where inequality had been falling in recent decades, found the World Social Report.

If nothing is done to address the problem, the prosperity and development of millions of people could be damaged.

“If we don’t act now, the entrenched inequalities that are already there will worsen,” said Elliott Harris, chief economist and assistant secretary general for economic development in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

But he added: “What is changing now is that there is a greater awareness that this inequality is having consequences and [causing] social upheavals. It’s something we’ve known for some time, but it hasn’t gotten the recognition.”

The report said that while international inequality has declined in relative terms, the absolute gap between the average incomes of people living in high- and low-income countries has doubled since 1990.

Rising inequalities are benefiting the wealthiest. Top income tax rates have fallen in all countries, which have made tax systems less progressive. In wealthier countries, the top income-tax rates have dropped from 66% in 1981 to 43% in 2018.

The income gap has been exacerbated by the climate crisis. The report estimates that the gap between the richest and poorest 10% of the global population is 25% larger than it would be in a world without global warming.

The UN said better use of technology, tackling the climate crisis and improved management of migration and urbanisation could help reduce the inequalities, a target of the UN global goals.

Climate, inequality, hunger: which global problems would you fix first?

Almost 87% of people living in wealthy countries have internet access compared with 19% in the least developed countries, creating a digital divide that will increasingly marginalise low-skilled workers, said the report.

It added that the impact of the climate crisis threatened to reverse progress on reducing inequality, as the communities most affected by the impact of global heating will find it increasingly hard to escape poverty.

A transition towards greener economies could help combat inequality, said the researchers. Although millions of lower-skilled jobs in carbon-intensive industries will be lost, carefully designed adaptation strategies could create 24m new jobs, they predicted.

Meanwhile, better urban planning and city management could improve the lives of more than 1 billion people who currently live in slums, often with little access to decent sanitation, clean water or energy.

Better migration policies and lower transaction costs for family remittances would also allow millions of people to pursue better opportunities and improve their lives, added the report.

“It is difficult to address inequality, but it can be successfully reduced. We need to agree on the need and the policy, and then address it,” said Harris.

“This is not [our] destiny. If we act now through policy, we can deliver better outcomes.”

---

aha

but also related to RW Big picture long term SYSTEMIC strategy,eg gerry? -> capture of states --> eco-terror, abortion, voter suppress ...[see below ALEC model grabbed by barton wallbuilders

aka defeat defund the left

aha: unions are collective action in the workplace/economic world, but class action is collective use of courts (legal vs economic power). both are under attack, defund the left. kochs undermine democ eg voter fraud BS to deprive we the ppl of political power, trifecta game over.

aha note 4 of the reddest states are big in wind: But here's a fact you might not know. Just four states account for more than half of the wind electricity generation in the U.S. b2 as gov put in pro-wind policy? rest is accident of geography? any fed $?

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/project-blitz-is-producing-model-legislation-for-christian-nationalists

no lnx

Project Blitz is producing model legislation for Christian Nationalists

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly January 24, 2020

You may have heard about legislation passed recently in Tennessee and other states which allows adoption agencies to discriminate against gay couples or families with whom they have religious objections. The fact that bills like that are being considered and passed by red states is no coincidence. They are the product of an organized effort being led by Project Blitz.

The first thing to know about Project Blitz is that it was launched in 2015 by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, the National Legal Foundation, and Wallbuilders. The latter is an organization founded by David Barton, the Republican operative and discredited historian who rejects the separation of church and state, claiming that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

This project seems to have maintained a low profile until Fred Clarkson, who has been studying the Christian right for decades, came across their 116-page manual of model legislation in early 2018. As Clarkson explains, Project Blitz is to Christian nationalists what the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was to big business.

Many of the bills on [the Christian right] agenda are making news; some have passed key legislative committees or whole state legislative chambers, and some have already been signed into law. But what reporters, activists, and most legislators don’t realize is that many of these bills draw from an unusual package of 20 model bills included in a report assembled by a coalition of Christian Right groups for an initiative they call “Project Blitz.”

The bills are seemingly unrelated and range widely in content—from requiring public schools to display the national motto, “In God We Trust” (IGWT); to legalizing discrimination against LGBTQ people; to religious exemptions regarding women’s reproductive health. The model bills, the legislative strategy and the talking points reflect the theocratic vision that’s animated a meaningful portion of the Christian Right for some time. In the context of Project Blitz’s 116-page playbook, however, they also reveal a sophisticated level of coordination and strategizing that echoes the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which infamously networks probusiness state legislators, drafts sample legislation, and shares legislative ideas and strategies.

===

frag node 1/20 experiment

AHA: humans need meaning, coherent story(s) that make sense of the world; in the face of chaos, can fall back on /default to reductionism, it's the jews.

cambr anal micro-targeting

soc med filter bubbles

gab 4chan

twitter:

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an 120 c de v

...How does authoritarianism impact people’s sense of time and history?

Part of the experience is the anxiety of the minute. Twitterfacilitates this because it is not just how many people check the news, but also journalists drip out news stories in the form of small tweets. This is not just one presentation of a story and the facts. It is not like reading the front page of a newspaper and getting the whole narrative at once. Twitter is a filter for information and experience that is constantly changing. People lose perspective on what is important and what is not.

Our capacity for discernment goes down and our anxiety goes up. Everything is made to feel urgent. Yet the more time people spend on Twitter the less time they are doing anything about Donald Trump and the crisis.Twitter is just an example of this problem. But it is the prime example because it is an unhelpful mechanism psychologically, emotionally and politically because it’s like a mass venting session without much real world impact....

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aHA: 1% extractive, makes $ on $, debt, rent-seekers, the rest of us pay off debt/rent (now literally since 1% buys houses and apts, leverage like 2008 bust?!]; gen z will just amp/accel trends?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/here-are-4-reasons-why-millennials-dont-have-any-money-robert-reich/

no lnx vid

Here are 4 reasons why millennials don’t have any money: Robert Reich

Written by Robert Reich / Robert Reich's Blog January 12, 2020

The same forces that are driving massive inequality between the top 1 percent and the rest of us are creating a vast generational wealth gap between baby boomers — my generation — and millennials.

Millennials aren’t teenagers anymore. They’re working hard, starting families and trying to build wealth. But as a generation, they’re way behind.

They’re deeper in debt, only half as likely to own a home, and more likely to live in poverty than their parents.

If we want to address their problems, we need to understand those problems.

Number one: Stagnant wages. Median wages grew by an average of 0.3% per year between 2007 and 2017, including the Great Recession – just as millennials were beginning their careers. Before that, between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, wages grew at three times that rate.

Second: As wages have stagnated, the costs of essentials like housing and education have been going through the roof. Millennials own fewer homes, the most common way Americans have built wealth in the past. Education costs have soared. Adjusted for inflation, the average college education in 2018 cost nearly three times what it did in 1978.

Third: As a result of all of this, Debt.That expensive college education means that the average graduate carries a whopping $28,000 in student loan debt. As a generation, millennials are more than one trillion dollars in the red. In addition, the average young adult carries nearly $5,000 in credit card debt, and this number is growing.

Fourth: Millennials are finding it harder than previous generations to save for the future.Among Fortune 500 companies, only 81 sponsored a pension plan in 2017, that’s down from 288 twenty years ago. Employers are replacing pensions with essentially “do-it-yourself” savings plans.

All of this means that fewer millennials are entering the middle class than previous generations.Most have less than $1,000 in savings. Many young people today won’t be able to retire until 75, if at all.

If we don’t start trying to reduce this generational wealth gap — through policies like debt relief, accessible health insurance, paid family leave, affordable housing, and a more equitable tax code for renters — millions of young Americans will struggle to find financial security for the rest of their lives.

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AHA: TALK RADIO + POL-OP + TWITTER = DJT

trump trolls soc med TV etc for odd story, repkg retweet amplify, seeking retweets, constant instant feedback via crude stats

TWITTER is reductionistic, it's "killer app" attraction is 140 character, why?

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/don-jr-posts-photos-of-his-assault-rifle-bearing-ancient-symbol-of-war-with-islam-now-used-by-white-supremacists-experts/

coincidence happened during iran war debate?

aha trump boys manly men who kill endangered species, hunters, // coal rolling?!

aha 2: the opposite of virtue signalling? just "different" virtues?

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aha2: ineq --> polar --> uprising (and vice versa/ chicken-egg?]

https://theconversation.com/unrest-in-latin-america-makes-authoritarianism-look-more-appealing-to-some-127774

no lnx grafs

Months of sustained, sometimes violent anti-government protest in South America may have increased popular support for authoritarianism.

That’s the startling finding of a still-unpublished study I conducted using data from the AmericasBarometer, a survey undertaken every two years in Latin American countries.

Although the massive demonstrations that have shaken Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Paraguay since late 2018 have distinct origins and impacts – from transportation prices to election fraud – there are some commonalities.

All are an expression of deep frustration with the political status quo, and many demonstrators cite corruption, poverty and economic inequality as overlooked issues facing their nation.

Some South Americans, particularly young people and leftists, see these mass protest movements as positive. In Chile, 80% of people surveyed in October 2019 said they approved of demonstrators’ actions. In more conservative Colombia, 34% did.

But the protests have also been polarizing. For months, marches have disrupted people’s day-to-day activities and turned capital cities into conflict zones, creating some resentment – even fear that the social order is unraveling.

...

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jeez easy to forget how pervasive/wacko this islamophobia is: bannon buys clash of civs; needs a might enemy to justify his crusade/fear-mongering

HELPS EXPLAIN SUCCESS OF DOMINIONISM/THEOCRACY? CHICKEN-EGG?

aha: bottomless well of BS /justification for big war budget, war, fear, islamophobia...

note gulf war 2 b/c lie that saddam met w/ al-Q AND WMD; now vpence runs same play!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/mike-pence-shows-just-how-much-contempt-he-holds-for-the-american-public-with-tweet-containing-multiple-lies

no lnx

Mike Pence shows just how much contempt he holds for the American public with tweet containing multiple lies

Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos January 5, 2020

Donald Trump has lied over 14,000 times since taking office. Some of those lies are about the economy, some of them about his political opponents, and a surprising number involve Trump claiming credit for programs actually signed into law by Barack Obama. Trump’s been joined in his lies by members of his White House team, from Kellyanne Conway to Mick Mulvaney to Mike Pompeo, delivering a fat untruth with a sneer seems to be the primary qualification to join Team Trump.

But it’s a tweet posted by Mike Pence on Friday that may be the best illustration of the lies originating from this White House. Because it’s not just a lie, it’s multiple lies. Incredibly lazy lies. Lies so sloppy, with so little attention to history, reason, or anything else, that Pence should be forced to wear them eternally stapled to his massive white forehead.

In defense of assassinating Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, Pence went through a long list of Soleimani’s supposed crimes. Among them “Assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.”

The list of reasons why this tweet is ridiculous is far longer than the original tweet. First of all, on the most straightforward point, there were 19 hijackers on 9/11. Not 12. A spokesperson for Pence has since launched a defense for this in saying that Pence was talking about a “subset” of the hijackers who traveled to Afghanistan through Iran. That statement also clarifies how Soleimani “assisted” these hijackers. He “allowed them to land” in Iran. A quick check of the records shows that Soleimani also allowed 4 million other people to land in Iran in 2001 alone. He was apparently a very busy fellow.

As many, many people have pointed out since Pence’s tweet, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. They didn’t just touch down in Saudi Arabia to change planes on the way to Kabul, they lived there—which would seem to make a lot of Saudi officials more bomb-worthy than Soleimani if that were the real basis of Trump’s action. More importantly, not only were the large majority of the hijackers Saudi, all of them were Sunni. So was all of al-Qaeda. The whole organization is composed of Salafist jihadists, a subset of radical Sunnis who regard Shiite Muslims as heretics worthy of death.

Attempting to tie the Sunni forces of al-Qaeda to the Shiite government of Iran may just signal that Mike Pence is astoundingly ignorant.But it certainly shows the disdain the whole Trump White House holds for the intelligence of the American public. And it’s not the only way they’re demonstrating their contempt.

Here’s the schedule for the top Defense Department officials on Friday.

Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense: No public or media events.

David Norqust, Deputy Sec. of Defense: No public or media events.

Mark Miley, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff: No public or media events.

John Hyten, Vice chair Joint Chiefs of Staff: No public or media events.

In the wake of an event that takes the nation to the brink of war, the Defense Department had nothing to say. The generals left it guys like Pence to distribute lies.

Pence isn’t even pretending to have secret intelligence that supports the death of Soleimani. Completely missing from his list of reasons is any detail about the supposed “imminent threat” that the general represented to Americans.

The reason for that is clear enough: The intelligence that Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence and others have been claiming supported the assassination of a foreign official, was just as absurd as Pence’s tweet.

not my aha but maybe related to inequality = --> // polarization:

redmap did systemic long term damage TP--> freedom cocks, suicide squad, unaccountable old white guys --> voter suppression, anti-abortion ...

amplified and accelerated polarization

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-decade-republicans-hijacked-our-democracy-via-the-gerrymander/

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aha: fail b/c simplistic linear short term transaction model applied to a complex system

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-trumps-trade-war-hurt-the-very-individuals-it-was-supposed-to-help/

no lnx

How Trump’s trade war hurt the very individuals it was supposed to help

Written by Sarah Toce / Salon December 30, 2019

President Donald Trump’s trade war raised prices for consumers and hurt the manufacturing industry, according to a report from economists on the Federal Reserve Board.

“The first comprehensive estimates” of the trade war’s effect on American manufacturers show that the tariffs have hurt the industry more than they helped, wrote Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce, two senior economists at the Federal Reserve’s Industrial Output Section.

“We find that U.S. manufacturing industries more exposed to tariff increases experience relative reductions in employment as a positive effect from import protection is offset by larger negative effects from rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs,” the report said.

In short, the economists concluded that the tariffs gave a “small boost” to manufacturers, which was “offset by larger drags from the effects” of rising costs and retaliatory tariffs.

Mother Jones summarized the main findings in a handy chart:

The report looked at a wide range of effects on the impacted sectors. In some cases, the tariffs were simply contradictory. While import tariffs may have helped protect some manufacturers from foreign competitors, tariffs on imported materials have increased costs for those same companies. Retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and other countries in response to the U.S. tariffs further “put U.S. firms at a disadvantage in those markets,” Flaaen and Pierce wrote.

As a result, manufacturing employment fell, and consumer prices increased. The economists acknowledged that their analysis only examined short-term trends, while long-term trends could show different effects. Trump has argued that the tariffs provide leverage for ongoing trade negotiations, but extensive data thus far shows that his trade war has devastated manufacturers, farmers and other industries.

The economists cited extensive existing research showing that “the majority of U.S. tariff increases are absorbed by U.S. retailers” and are almost entirely passed on to consumers in price increases. Some studies have found that American companies which engaged in trade with China saw “lower stock returns and higher default risk.” The report also acknowledged the political implications of the trade war, citing a study which concluded that it could “explain a shift in voting away from Republican House candidates in the 2018 election.”

The report follows months of extensive reporting on the ongoing manufacturing recession. It confirms what thousands of manufacturing firms have been saying for months: Tariffs are having the opposite effect of what the president claimed.

“There’s been a lot of anecdotal evidence about how tariffs are behind the manufacturing slump. Now the Federal Reserve proves it, finding that the trade war is hurting the sector it was ostensibly supposed to help,” ProPublica reporter Lydia DePillis tweeted. “The [White House] would say that it takes a while for supply chains to adjust, and manufacturers will recover as they find alternative input sources. Also theoretically, mounting pressure will eventually force the Chinese to knuckle under in a way that will rebalance global trade. Given that we haven’t yet seen the text of the Phase One trade deal with China that’s supposed to be signed imminently, that promise remains … theoretical.”

But the economists did not only find that the trade war is failing to help manufacturers. Their research suggests that tariffs simply do not work in any economy that relies on global supply chains.

“Our results suggest that the traditional use of trade policy as a tool for the protection and promotion of domestic manufacturing is complicated by the presence of globally interconnnected supply chains,” Flaaen and Pierce wrote. “While the potential for both tit-for-tat retaliation on import protection and input-output effects on the domestic economy have long been recognized by trade economists, empirical evidence documenting these channels in the context of an advanced economy has been limited.”

Igor Derysh is a New York-based political writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and Baltimore Sun.

---

interesting bleed morph from crisis management to pvt intel that assess threat, then deal with it?!

crisis magmt and dis cap'l different in intent, or merely timing?

interesting pension plan case; in gov't only military revered; this guy capitalizes on a fail; greens are the enemy?!

The industry is gearing up for the fight of its life, which may explain why an expert in actual warfare gave the keynote at the plastics conference.

In 2000, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold guided his crew through a terrorist attack on the USS Cole, in which 17 sailors were killed and 39 injured. Now a crisis management consultant, Lippold told the audience at the Plastics Industry Association meeting a grueling story of mass casualties, near-death experiences, and a shrapnel-filled vessel taking on water. His tale, which ended with Lippold piloting his hobbled ship back into the open seas with the national anthem blaring, suggested that with enough fierce determination, the plastics executives too might be able to sail past the threats facing them.

---

game over 12/21

yikes OMFG note models not good at tip pt

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/top-scientists-warn-of-an-amazon-tipping-point/2019/12/20

dec. 20, 2019 at 12:14 p.m. PST

Deforestation and other fast-moving changes in the Amazon threaten to turn parts of the rainforest into savanna, devastate wildlife and release billions of tons carbon into the atmosphere, two renowned experts warned Friday.

“The precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we,” Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University and Carlos Nobre of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, both of whom have studied the world’s largest rainforest for decades, wrote in an editorial in the journal Science Advances.“Today, we stand exactly in a moment of destiny: The tipping point is here, it is now.”

Combined with recent news that the thawing Arctic permafrost may be beginning to fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and that Greenland’s ice sheet is melting at an accelerating pace, it’s the latest hint that important parts of the climate system may be moving toward irreversible changes at a pace that defies earlier predictions.

The speed of the transformation in some key systems, such as Greenland’s ice and the Arctic’s permafrost, has “indeed been underestimated by climate science,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, the head of Earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “And that’s partly because we cannot really capture them well in our models.”

In interviews, Lovejoy and Nobre said they decided to sound a dire alarm about the Amazon after witnessing the acceleration of troubling trends. The combination of rising temperatures, crippling wildfiresand ongoing land clearing for cattle ranching and crops has extended dry seasons, killed off water-sensitive vegetation and created conditions for more fire.

How we know that global warming is real]

The Amazon is 17 percent deforested, but for the large portion of it inside Brazil, the figure is closer to 20 percent. The fear is that soon there will be so little forest that the trees, which not only soak up enormous quantities of rainwater but also give off mist that aids agriculture and sustains innumerable species, won’t be able to recycle enough rainfall.At that point, much of the rainforest could decline into a drier savanna ecosystem. Rainfall patterns would change across much of South America. Several hundred billion tons of carbon dioxide could wind up in the atmosphere, worsening climate change. And such a feedback loop would be tough to reverse.

That point of no return, commonly referred to by scientists as a tipping point, “is much closer than we anticipated,” Nobre said in an interview.

The troubling news comes on top of other alarming developments regarding the Earth’s climate.

This month, nearly 100 scientists detailed how the Greenland ice sheet’slosses have accelerated in recent decades, growing from 33 billion tons lost per year in the 1990s to a current average of 254 billion tons annually.

“Greenland is losing ice faster than expected, partly because climate models aren’t good at predicting extreme melting events, but also because many of the ice sheet’s smaller glaciers have started to speed up, too,” said Andrew Shepherd, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds in Britain who led the latest study. “So the [worst]-case scenario now becomes business as usual."

Separately, a report this month from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration laid out evidence suggesting that the global Arctic already has become a net emitter of carbon dioxide because of the thawing permafrost. That would be a profound shift for a region that includes vast stretches of Alaska, Canada, Siberia and Greenland, and which haslong stored massive amounts of carbonin its frozen soil.

At the same time, a global die-off of coral reefs in 2016 and 2017, which included the loss of nearly half of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, shocked scientists.

“Compared to coral bleaching in 1998 and 2002, the 2016 event was much more extreme — hotter, far more extensive, and deadlier,” said Terry Hughes, an expert on the reef and the director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Australia. “The reef has changed forever."

While the speed of the changes involving the Amazon, permafrost and ice sheets has surprised experts, models that scientists created decades ago regarding the average global temperature have largely held true.

The world has experienced about 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming since the late 19th century, largely because of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

But much of the Arctic has already warmed by 2 degrees Celsius and some regions even more.

The Amazon also is warming at an accelerated rate. An analysis by The Washington Post of global temperature changes found that almost the entirety of Brazil has warmed by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, since the late 1800s.

Higher temperatures and deforestation are drying out parts of the Amazon and posing a fundamental threat to the rainforest.

In the southern Amazon dry season in particular, temperatures are already 3 degrees Celsius higher than in the 1980s, and the dry season is getting longer, exceeding four months in some regions, Nobre said.

Particularly worrying, he said, is a recent study showing how trees are faring in more than 100 locations across the Amazon.Led by Adriane Esquivel Muelbert of the University of Leeds, researchers found forest transition has begun — trees accustomed to dry conditions are more likely to grow now while trees that require more moisture are disproportionately dying in places where climate changes are the greatest.

Paulo Brando, a tropical ecologist and professor at the University of California at Irvine who has long studied the Amazon, said it is tricky to try to determine the tipping point.

"The definition of ‘tipping point’ can be quite broad,” Brando said, so it is difficult to say whether the Amazon has reached what scientists would call a point of irreversible change. But this much is clear, he added: “We’re not moving away from that tipping point. We’re probably driving very fast toward that direction.”

The impact of changes to the Amazon reach far beyond South America. The rainforest stores an immense amount of carbon in its enormous trees, and if they die, that carbon is released.

In a radically different part of the world, scientists last week described something eerily similar.

Ted Schuur, an expert on northern permafrost at Northern Arizona University, wrote in NOAA’s 2019 Arctic Report Card that recent studies suggest that the thawing of the permafrost — a repository for millennia of dead plant and animal remains — is likely to be contributing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as those once-frozen materials begin to decompos.

For the “science community at large,” Schuur said in an email, “this is a ‘surprising’ confirmation that the data show the Arctic currently acting as a carbon source.”

Schurr’s reasoning is based heavily on a groundbreaking study led by Susan Natali of the Woods Hole Research Center, research that is in many ways parallel to the new Amazon study. It pools the results from large numbers of scientists across the Arctic to show that in winter, permafrost soils are already emitting a lot of carbon. And those releases are probably enough to offset what happens in the growing season, when Arctic plant growth absorbs carbon.

The models that scientists have used to try to determine how the Arctic region is processing carbon were too conservative when it came to losses in winter in particular, Natali said. As a result, the potential for a transition of the Arctic from a “sink” that takes up carbon to a “source” that emits it may have been underestimated.

"The models, they project that to be happening quite a ways out in the future, but I would say it’s happening now,” Natali said.

Occasional extreme heat events in the Arctic can cause abrupt hillside collapses or “thaw slumps,” which rapidly expose very old and deep permafrost to the open air. Meanwhile, worsening Arctic fires can quickly remove insulating soil and vegetation layers from large stretches of permafrost, suddenly exposing it to the sun.

“It’s like you’re opening the top of a cooler,” Natali said.

In combination, the Amazon and Arctic news underscores that even as humans are largely failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth may increase such emissions yet further.

Still, it is possible to slow the transformation of the Amazon through reforestation, researchers said.

“A tipping point is a way to talk about a moment of system shift or system change,” Lovejoy said. “In this case, it’s not going to be instantaneous, and that’s good news. It allows you to do something about it.”

not my aha but important: re aca

But this is, in many ways, the conservative vision. The reason they care so much about stacking the courts with conservative judges and justices is so they can knock down laws that Republicans hate, even if they’re popular with voters. And it’s even better if, as may be happening now, they can time the most significant rulings to avoid an extreme electoral backlash for the GOP.

aha, lessen power of one small aspect of democracy in cap'lism

1219, CoC lobby

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/reuters-america-update-1-u-s-sec-proposes-rules-that-could-limit-shareholder-voices.html

Nov 5 (Reuters) - Wall Street’s top regulator on Tuesday proposed a pair of long-awaited rules that would set new limits on shareholders ability to call for corporate changes on thorny issues like climate change disclosures and executive compensation In one of the biggest wins for the corporate lobby under President Donald Trump, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission voted 3-2 along partisan lines to raise the re-submission thresholds for motions that shareholders file on company ballots and to put new requirements on firms guiding investors how to vote in corporate elections.

Both shareholder proposals and proxy advisory firms are cornerstones of corporate governance and how investors hold management accountable.

Both changes will be subject to public comment.

Democrats Rob Jackson and Allison Herren Lee voted against the rules, saying they tilted the playing field toward corporate management.

murder of indig env activists show way mirror/capture is evil

aha: authoritarians need to degrade/capture courts/rule of law:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/environmental-activists-have-higher-death-rates-than-some-soldiers/

Claudelice Silva dos Santos was shocked but not surprised when her brother and his wife were murdered. For years José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva had been on the receiving end of death threats and attacks for their work combatting illegal logging and deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest, where they lived. “We knew that there was a high risk that it could happen,” Santos says. “But we always believed that it never would happen, that the resistance, the visibility of our fight—all the things we did to prevent the killing—would work out.”

Santos’s relatives were among more than 1,500 people across 50 countries to be murdered in retaliation for protecting land, water, forests and other natural resources between 2002 and 2017. The annual death toll doubled over that 15-year period, and the killings tended to take place in countries with high levels of corruption and weak rule of law, according to study findings published Monday in Nature Sustainability. As the authors report, in that period, murders of environmental defenders outweighed the combined deaths of soldiers from the U.K. and Australia deployed to overseas war zones.

“These cases include everything from award-winning people who were successful in garnering international support to others who were very much operating at the local level,” says Mary Menton, a research fellow in environmental justice at the University of Sussex in England and a co-author of the new study. “Oftentimes it’s individuals killed, but there have also been cases of massacres.”...

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1219 uganda floods, drought, hunger, DN, guk child brides are flipside of soldier?aha like gig economy, convert kid to commodity, liability to asset?!

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-brings-pardoned-us-war-criminals-onstage-at-florida-republican-fundraiser/

aha-let hedges said poor wht go for trump b/c he is strong enough to defeat big force(s) they face; thus we need strong guys rogue cop who does not play by the rules

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ken starr impeach

his ticket back into pension plan?aha-let, everyone has their niche/function eg renta-X;eg kellyanne defends 1st lady melania on fake outrage on barron

aha: see 2 sep big pict analysis see gt recession as root [sys fail]; (also effect); inequality

1119 podcast: an -ism is a SYSTEM: it has ideas but also regulations and SOP's embedded in it or are the "logical" outcome of it; // lakoff on metaphor?

provocateur // to post-truth? don jr declares self general of the meme war:

{{ triggered by kathy griffin:

new cat 6/17 related to paranoid style aha: pension plan, pundits can't fail be drummed out because the test is not talent/ability to do analysis correctly but faith (and in djt case, loyalty)

see cyber-war troll eg black hat russian hackers IRAgy

but also alt rt troll

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aha: descendent of pundits and shock jocks, evil spawn/love child? both amplif matthew effect b/c must up the ante?

---

aha: conservatives claim to be unfairly silenced by labels, sexist, racist, but i'm coming to see it as central to identity/reverse victimhood

white guys once had assured status/living in factories

related?

see provocateur eg milo; coulter does standup?!

beck and rush used to retreat when busted as just entertainer/clown

alt rt trolls get to spew hate then say, just kidding, just pwning/ owning the libs, can't believe you fell for it? feminists and lesbians said to have no sense of humor?

ok to trigger the snowflakes, yet rt is under attack, free speech being crushed, identity politics, victim narrative (mirror)

---

C&C kathy griffin severed head to sharon angle? bull's eye over rival cands, "2nd amendment remedies"; tiller baby killer, pipe bombs mail; stella ilhan hanged as traitor...

something awful: faggot was a term appropriated by senior members of a board? prophylactic co-opt of term as self defense? I am so secure in my identity/status/rep here that i can use this insult term without harm? pre-emptive? bannon/mercer had a plan/project in mind that morphd into dang faggt tour?

// cuck squish ?

milo latest frontier in renta-toms? you can't call us homophobes anymore b/c we have token one as proxy for trump./alt rt; child molestation a bridge too far?

why wd milo release this? settling score trumps ideol solidarity [// don jr ucla factionalism, who is more hard core?]

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

Former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos published a leaked audio recording that he claims shows white nationalist leader Richard Spencer shouting racist slurs and threats after the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

Yiannopoulos, who reportedly worked with white supremacists to mainstream their rhetoric through Breitbart News before he lost his job there, published the audio in a blog post. The audio, which Yiannopoulos claimed was confirmed by a source close to Spencer, appears to capture the prominent white nationalist unleashing a flurry of slurs aimed at Jews and African Americans after the murder of Heather Heyer at the 2017 rally. The audio has not been verified by Salon.

... end }}:

12/19 in midst of impeach

see dirty tricks, 4 interlock dovetails provide rational: loss means doom

but with trump, they know they have window to implode, so turn blind eye to evil and grift to jam wishlist thru cf koch on recent gains;

overton window; shift rt: ann c refers to white genocide and child crisis actors in border baby jails

no dog whistles, trump mex racists on escalator? daily lie to distract from last lie/graft

i once was willing to give gop the benefit of doubt, but now slid into authoritarian proto-facism: reporters arrested at border and film taken put in dbase; stack courts with rw bloggers;

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aha: djt trying to shore up the core of the base, not just evang but dominionist?!

1119 bibi corruption charges

coup rhet

us djt declares settlements legal; bernie pro-palestine in campaign

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aha: big pix pattern, confluence of factors triggred by miller racism, authoritarian, and ROL fedsoc degredation; authoritarian req threat, ppl of color /immigrants and women/PC

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/stephen-miller-proves-the-trump-regime-is-a-white-supremacist-enterprise-will-americans-choose-to-save-our-multiracial-democracy/

no lnx

Stephen Miller proves the Trump regime is a white supremacist enterprise. Will Americans choose to save our multiracial democracy?

Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon November 25, 2019

Like the president he serves, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller is a white supremacist. Miller believes that white people should be the most powerful group in the United States and around the world. He has worked diligently and enthusiastically to advance that goal through public policy.

Miller is not a “white nationalist.” To use such language is to legitimate the ways white supremacists have tried since the 1970s to repackage themselves so as to appear more “mainstream” and “reasonable” in order to win over more white Americans.

As though more evidence is necessary after three years of Stephen Miller’s influence on Donald Trump’s regime and its unrepentant and enthusiastic cruelty against nonwhites, 900 emails recently obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center offer further proof of Miller’s white supremacist ideology.

In his communications with a former editor of the right-wing website Breitbart, Miller — then an aide to Sen. Jeff Sessions, who went on to become Trump’s first attorney general — advanced talking points from white supremacist websites that advocate eugenics against nonwhites and a general belief in the inferiority of black people and others.

Miller praised the notorious white supremacist novel “The Camp of the Saints” (also a favorite of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon) which depicts nonwhite immigrants and migrants in Europe as subhuman, murderous invaders.

In these emails Miller also channeled white supremacist talking points about nonwhite immigrants being “invaders” in “white countries” and the premise that white people are somehow being “replaced.”

Writing at the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie observes that “there’s no way to spin these emails into something innocuous”:

The evidence is overwhelming: Miller was immersed in white power ideology. He was fluent in the language of white nationalism, attuned to its ideas. He was an obvious sympathizer who brought that sympathy to the federal government, where he has a direct hand in making immigration policy and choosing personnel.

For three years, Miller has used his perch to inflict fear and anxiety on refugees, asylum-seekers and unauthorized immigrants. Maybe, if you were charitable to Miller and sympathetic to restricting immigration, you could frame this as a misguided but good faith attempt to pull back from a more liberal status quo. No longer. These emails show that Miller’s views flow from his commitment to racist exclusion and the protection of a white demographic majority.

As a practical matter, Miller views nonwhite people as his enemies. In other words, a senior adviser to the president of the United States is crafting public policy that both directly and indirectly hurts tens of millions of nonwhite Americans. This is a treacherous betrayal of America’s multiracial democracy and a direct threat to its future, and provides more evidence that Donald Trump and his regime are illegitimate.

In response to Miller’s emails, more than 100 Democratic members of Congress have called for him to resign. No senior Republican elected officials, to my knowledge, have done the same.

These “revelations” about Stephen Miller’s white supremacist emails are not secondary to the current impeachment inquiry, or somehow coincidental to a rogue regime’s assault on the rule of law and the Constitution.

Indeed, Miller’s emails are better understood as huge flashing road signs that illustrate how racism and the ideology of white supremacy made Trump’s presidency possible and continue to fuel the Republican Party’s fascist and authoritarian crusade against American democracy.

There are many examples. Social scientists and others have shown that white racism in combination with nativism and hostile sexism (and assisted Russian interference) that gave Donald Trump the White House in 2016.

Vladimir Putin’s spies and other agents launched a sophisticated psy-ops campaign, via social media and other means, to exacerbate racial tensions. The goal was to mobilize Trump’s voters and demobilizing those more likely to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Research shows that Trump’s racially intolerant white voters reject the very idea of democracy if it means that white people will no longer be the dominant and most powerful group in America. A large proportion of Trump’s voters are racial authoritarians....

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Rule of Law:

One can also view conservative legal activism as a key component in that process, as well as a profound influence on elite politics as a whole. At the time of Watergate, authoritarians were more evenly divided between the parties, but they’ve become much more concentrated in the GOP since then. As their experience of threat has risen, they’ve become more inclined to lawlessness — although it’s not tolerated on the part of others, of course!

In short, the lawlessness at the top of the GOP isn’t new — just vastly more blatant than it was during Watergate. But the infrastructure supporting, defending and excusing it is dramatically more powerful and robust, and the authoritarian mass base is much more consolidated within their voter base.

Aside from impeachment itself, three other developments this month underscores the GOP’s broader embrace of lawlessness, in contrast to its decades-long self-branding. First, there is Trump’s pardoning of three war criminals, burnishing his brand of support for official lawlessness and thuggish brutality. He may mistakenly believe this endears him to the military — which wants nothing to do with them — but it’s also meant to hype authoritarian support among his most rabid supporters.

Second, his Roy Cohn-style attorney general, William Barr, delivered a widely criticized authoritarian screed to the Federalist Society, portraying the impeachment inquiry as dangerous to the rule of law, rather than warranted by Trump’s self-professed crimes.Third, legal scholar Steven Calabresi, chair of the Federalist Society’s board of directors, wrote a pair of opinion articles accusing Democrats of violating Trump’s rights, one of which, according to Steven Mazie, the Economist’s Supreme Court correspondent, “reads like the first draft of an op-ed by a MAGA middle-schooler who was inspired by Jacob Wohl’s erstwhile Twitter account.”

The combination of Trump’s blatant endorsement of lawlessness and the double-whammy high-profile embarrassments of Calabresi and Barr reflects something much broader and profoundly troubling. The latter two offer striking indicators of just how seriously this is impacting establishment conservatism, in a way that can’t be fobbed off on Trump alone, while Trump’s pardons of war criminals — following earlier pardons, including that of ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio — not only enable brute lawlessness in uniform, but points towards outright valorization in the future, especially if performed in direct support of Trump himself.

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ukraine policy outsourced to pvt atty rudy to GET biden dirt = transaction

aha: expert // to norms (eg civ servent amb maie yovanovich masha) designed to support the COMMONs good

trump /bannon calls himself a disruptor (like the clint e rogue cop who does not play by rulebook and gets his own brand of justice);

some talk early on that we need to codify into law;

in part djt prolly broke them b/c he simply was to dumb or inexperienced to know they exist, or to understand they exist for a legit reason; another possibility is that they do not fit (we have never had a full on bizman prez before?)

aha: djt/bannon present as disruptor, but basically used elim or norms, experts and SOP for self-ish graft/power grab

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-rudy-giuliani-how-americas-mayor-became-trumps-grifter/

no lnx

The rise and fall of Rudy Giuliani: How ‘America’s mayor’ became Trump’s grifter

Written by The Washington Monthly November 18, 2019

Rudy Giuliani was a shoo-in for attorney general or secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in a nascent Trump administration. Not only was Giuliani “America’s Mayor” following his command of the situation on 9/11, he was a former federal prosecutor, presidential candidate, and an early validator—if late endorser—of Donald J. Trump.

Life looked pretty rosy for the ambitious pol, with a clear path to power and privilege, given his expertise.

He didn’t want the jobs proffered, however. He wanted something bigger.

Whether he was done with the law or just wanted something that approximated the power and prestige of the presidency, he postured and heavily lobbied to be Trump’s secretary of state. As the former mayor of America’s most important city, he was regularly in the company of foreign dignitaries and, of course, 9/11 gave him a global stage from which to show off his leadership skills.

But translating international experience and foreign hobnobbing into policy focused on America’s global role required diplomatic skill not often associated with New York moxie. It would have been a hard sell—even to a pliant Republican-dominated U.S. Senate. After all, John McCain—and even Lindsey Graham 1.0—were actively looking out for America’s national security interests back then.

Giuliani’s jones-ing to become America’s lead diplomat seemed to have more to do with a desire for his own publicly financed jet and private traveling press corps than any real interest or ability to negotiate long, hard hours toward solutions that required uncomfortable trade-offs. He wanted the position’s perks and platform more than the work—or the extraordinarily demanding work schedule that comes with the job.

Fast forward to 2019, and the Giuliani scorned by Jared Kushner has become the roiling Rudy who plays Donald Trump’s personal attorney on TV. Giuliani has never met a Sunday news show he doesn’t like. Trump has turned to this anti-matinee idol and put personal business and state policy in the hands of a freewheeling, out-of-control—and sometimes crazed—Giuliani. His uncanny ability to stay simultaneously both on message and off—yet claim to be reliably consistent and coherent—has allowed him to play rough in all positions of Trump’s political defense and remain untouched.

Until now.

Now he’s all lawyered up, as investigators in the U.S. House release State Department officials’ closed-door testimony implicating Giuliani in Trump’s move to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless it agreed to investigate Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Giuliani so desperately needed to play the globetrotting role of secretary of State that he got to become Trump’s “Shadow Secretary.” In that role, he used presidential proximity to guide America’s foreign activities, fire its diplomats, bully its allies, and bank on the nation’s sheer power to leverage lethal aid into forced foreign state-sponsored oppo research on 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.

Biden became the target of the externally run, illicitly operated Giuliani Shadow State Department, doing the Trump-Kushner-Pompeo trio’s dirty work while operating with Oval Office assurances that his free hand and opaque operation was guarded by attorney-client privilege. This questionable privilege was also supposed to protect Michael Cohen, Trump’s previous personal attorney. Cohen is now serving a prison sentence for doing Trump’s shadowy business.

A one-man, oversight-free, power-drenched Shadow State Department is a heady thing. Giuliani recognized that he no longer had to play by the same rules as a government agency. He could operate the way Betsy DeVos’s brother, Erik Prince, did with his paramilitary organization, Blackwater. Renamed Xe, Blackwater was a private entity conducting a contracted war, freed from the constraints of treaty obligations, multilateral engagement, long-standing bilateral relations, protocol, congressional oversight, budgetary limits, press access, or full transparency.

Giuliani was as free to disregard established foreign policy and practice as Prince’s locked-and-loaded organization was to end-run military rules of engagement.Bonus points: Giuliani also was able to profit as a free agent. Who was going to question his private authority when the imperial presidency, with its seemingly unchecked privilege, had his back and could dangle a potential blanket pardon?...

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1119

aha:

media consolidation and newspaper biz model collapse led to unintended diaspora to PR lobby? eg:

off bs bio

christopher Cooper is founder of The Potomac Square Group, which provides high-level media and crisis communications advice, lobbying support and open-source research to help clients define and disseminate their narratives. Current and past clients include international law firms, integrated oil companies, sovereign governments and Native American nations, overseas political parties, private equity companies and hedge funds. Client work focuses on interests in the US and Europe and countries that include Russia, Greece, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Argentina and China.

Chris spent more than 20 years as a journalist, namely at The Wall Street Journal, where he covered a variety of corporate, general news and political beats and reported from nearly every US state and more than 50 countries overseas.

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aha: arabs saudi corrupt murderous monarchy, extreme unequal, bad to women and immigrant labor, slaughter civilians in yemen, and burning down the world, chummy with trump and all bushes, bandar bush, poppy gulf 1 nahyirah, gulf 2 wmd bush shrub.

extract oil from ground, then extract $ from US

"resource curse" leads to consolodation of power and then corruption; in saudi monarchy already consolidated, tho sometime you gotta get rid of excess princes.

PLUS indoctrinate wahabi jihadis?!

no lnx wapo

Disgrace in the desert: The shameless return of business and government leaders to Saudi Arabia

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday. (Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters)

By Ali AlAhmed

October 31, 2019

Ali AlAhmed is founder and director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs.

This week, many of the world’s business and government leaders have convened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the 2019 Future Investment Initiative, the Saudi regime’s annual money fest to promote doing business with the kingdom. Instead of the romanticized moniker “Davos in the Desert,” it would be better to call it a “Disgrace in the Desert.”

Last year’s event was shunned by most leading financiers due to disgust over the shocking murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi-born critic and Post contributing columnist.

:{:{}:

So, what has changed this year to entice President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and top executives of BlackRock, Blackstone and Goldman Sachs to show up?

:{:{}:

Well, here’s what hasn’t changed: The CIA’s finding that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s effective ruler, was the one who ordered Khashoggi’s brutal execution in Istanbul. To date, none of those implicated has faced any serious punishment or accountability.

What has also not changed: Saudi Arabia remains not only a rogue state by most international standards — it also makes an unstable strategic partner for the United States and others, fundamentally incompatible with Western business practices. The entire kingdom is now controlled by a ruthless 30-something whose first instinct is to imprison, torture, expropriate and murder.

---

smash and grab:

spats: variant of above, the oldest most absurd thing you thot long dead comes back zombie-like like BULB bill:

Spats Syndrome

ceo // seagull consultant, // gogo 80's M&O extract value short term then flee.

// apocalyptic end times? sounds wacky but Watts? dominionist cabinet?!

---

aha: recall family foundations were formed in the 1st place as a tax shelter and their primary/initial purpose was to undermine the estate tax (eg mars); kochs weaponized/politicized $; at odds with self made man free mkt MERITOCRACY BS

kochs built a shadow GOP (then rented out trump admin, more progress in X years than y years;)

waltons #1 in charter schools, // devos:public schools the great equalizer, source of meritocrisy); betsy supports scam colleges and stops debt relief.

11/19 public schools are the commons; they are human infrastructure; JC CC allow MC or level up to 4 yr college MODERATIONvs 1119 riots in multiple countries b/c young ppl do not see a future/shot

mercers gave us trump and brexit (the end of the brit empire?!)

scaife gave us crooked hillary

---

wow, myths have big overlap with conspiracy? (cf an 11119 wa mo)

---

wedge very belated?

see polarization

aha: note that this are rarely central practical importance but loaded with emotion? low logos/relevance but high pathos, so good to hype up base, direct mail fundraising and clickbait. note also russian cointelpro disruption.

real polarization is 1% inequality, but useful diversion to divide a and conquer left-rt; cf beran something awful same root problem but opposite diagnosis and cures.

---

aha, dirty tricks / oppo research spreads from "legit" pol targets to press and activist, thus suppression OFFENSIVE

1119

https://theintercept.com/2019/11/12/elizabeth-warren-pregnancy-fired-america-rising/

in oct documents surfaced that appeared to contradict a key story told by Sen. Elizabeth Warren on the campaign trail. In her telling, Warren’s “dream job” as a public school teacher ended in 1971 when the school principal noticed she was “visibly pregnant,” a form of employment discrimination that was legal and common during that era. On October 7, a conservative website presented archived documents that appeared to challenge that narrative, including the minutes of a meeting in which the school board had voted to extend Warren’s tenure and another in which the board notes that Warren herself resigned from the job.

The story spread like wildfire, moving from conservative publications to major newspapers. Even Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to President Donald Trump, weighed in on the controversy to suggest that the Democratic candidate had lied about her life story. More records seeming to challenge Warren’s narrative emerged, including a 2007 interview in Berkeley, California, in which Warren appeared to say that she left teaching on her own accord to raise her child and seek additional education credentials, as well as a contemporaneous newspaper story about Warren leaving the school “to raise a family.”

Warren has stood by her story that she was “shown the door” because of her pregnancy. “When I was 22 and finishing my first year of teaching, I had an experience millions of women will recognize. By June I was visibly pregnant — and the principal told me the job I’d already been promised for the next year would go to someone else,” Warren said on Twitter last month.

But how did these documents surface in the first place? According to the results of an open records request, an opposition research group known as America Rising had requested documents from the Riverdale Board of Education in New Jersey just weeks before the news appeared. It asked for “Warren’s employment records,” as well copies of other records requested from the school board from the previous two years.

In response to the request, a school official provided America Rising with the school board minutes that became the basis for the story that erupted the following month, along with emails from a Wall Street Journal reporter, who had requested similar records in April.

America Rising — which is affiliated with a political action committee, a public relations firm, and a for-profit research company, as well as several news websites — has been backed over the years by Republican donors, including hedge-fund billionaires Paul Singer and Ken Griffin, private equity investor John Childs, and banker Andrew Beal.

America Rising did not respond to a request for comment. The organization did not claim direct responsibility for the Warren story, but touted the documents as soon as they appeared online via an allied conservative website called the Washington Free Beacon. Free Beacon is also funded by Singer.

America Rising is known for attempting to dig up dirt on politicians, journalists, and activists on behalf of donors’ interests. The group went after journalist Jane Mayer, shopping negative information about the New Yorker writer following the publication of her book “Dark Money.” In 2016, America Rising focused on environmentalist Bill McKibben, dispatching its team to obtain thousands of documents from McKibben’s past and to follow the Vermont-based writer, filming him at public events, as well as while grocery shopping and sitting in a church pew. This year, Definers Public Affairs, an affiliate of America Rising that shares the same staff, decided to rebrand following revelations that the company had been retained by Facebook to orchestrate a campaign to smear its critics.

The current America Rising research effort on Warren appears to be part of a broader dive into the Democratic field, which is being coordinated with America First Policies, the nonprofit arm of Trump’s Super PAC. The effort involves research on Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Cory Booker, and other Democratic candidates....

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aha: military has far and away best rep of any gov't agy tho ME wars not popular; trump sees himself as a tough guy and likes to surround himself, appear to ally w/ them eg rally on aircraft carrier; // nixon claimed/used support from hardhats, djt uses mil and cops as scenery; cf uber aha on Fem, lakoff strong father

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trump-used-money-raised-for-vets-as-campaign-slush-fund-that-should-end-his-political-career

teflon --> kevlar?

AHA: VOODOO 2017 TAX CUT AND CDS HOUSING --> RENT-SEEKING/ EXTRACTION BIGGEST UPWARD TRANSFER OF WEALTH IN HISTORY?

REBELLIONS ALL OVER WORLD, YOUNG PPL KNOW NO FUTURE/ DEMAND DEMOCRACY

1119

invert yield curve; homewreckers book 8 mil foreclosures; big % llc shell corps; // CDS; R wolff says banks can't deal with hit 1/2 of Gt Recession , get loans to cover loans; mnuchin etc wilbur recalled gov't baillout after S&L; mnu sez put 1.x billion but pain nothing for indybank and then got subsidies to foreclose?! // get car for free, put some bucks in then pocket total profit 11/8/19

new

steve mnu piad 0 for indy bank, and gov't guar lose no money, sold to buddy in same blg (bunch of pluto-crats ) soros, paulsen, wilbur

extensive interview: https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-23-2019/

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-october-21-2019/

aaron glantz homewreckers

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aha nan J 1st good poster child? he was pioneer in terms of PIC and EJ; SCALP he was the last victim of anti-commie rhet? anticipated GREEN NEW DEAL

shillenberger? renta-tom

kinda // to franken and eric s metoo did not fight?

===

---

aha: trump base is ghost Dance, they know their st'd of living (ntbcw vibrant resiluient local community) declining and they want to blame someone. Trump says he alone is the strong man who can save them, stand against the forces [structures?] that betrayed them; a bit like Rambo, the only explanation for am military defeat by peasant in PJ.s is bureaucrats sold us out ("do we get to win this time?"). Trump is a billionaire, so he's smart, tough negotiatior, successful, and he's willing to turn against the politician/bureaucrats he used to pay off to do his will (a deal) and clean up corruption/drain the swamp [build the wall/ lock her up, HC being one of the corrupt pols with her hippie boomer pot smoking womanizing husband], crooked hill based in Ark Pjt Bossie].

Coastal elites do not care about Xian flyover cty, pander to urban ppl of color [tucker sez ca burns b/c of gays]; all the jobs went to china, and trump promised to punish them and get factories back; bring back coal.

dems managed to create a coalition of ppl of color [= ID vics] (and unions), aka affirmative action cases who also took our jobs; SO white ppl are the real victims

fox News’ Tucker Carlson smears Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as an ‘unapologetic bigot’ toward white people

red states anti govt but get most fed $ //?

2 americas?

The states that do the most to discourage climate action and encourage dirty energy are the states whose residents are suffering the most from climate impacts,a Mother Jones and Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.

A CPI analysis found that nine of the 10 states that did the most to block the Clean Power Plan also emit the most carbon dioxide per person,while four of those nine were among the states that saw the most natural disasters over the past 10 years. The investigation focuses on Kentucky, where flash floods, that in some cases were worsened by improper mine cleanup, have devastated local communities.

As reported by Mother Jones:

The choices that state leaders make now will have life-changing consequences for generations, experts warn. Michael Hendryx, a public health professor at Indiana University Bloomington who studies environmental justice, said he wonders whether officials promoting inaction truly think global warming is not an emergency or are simply making a cynical bet that they won't be harmed.

"They'll be the people who have the money and power to defend themselves as climate change gets worse," he said. "If we don't do something really powerful and really meaningful soon, then the people who live in vulnerable areas … will suffer the most."

For a deeper dive:

Mother Jones

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irony: polluter corps who greedy dumb overinvest in capacity like coal get ballouts/subsidy, and judge will toss their pension obligation (and even let them loot the fund supposed to be used to recover the land after), but students who wisely invest in own future cannot declare b. judges may be sons of Rove like griffin? FTI wrecked economy and cooked planet then makes $ repping the villains.

aha: re bankruptcy pattern: privative profit socialize loss, corp welfare/socialism

coal (extraction, pollute commons for free/subsidized, kill workers but then use as prop/ cheerleader in war on coal;

opioid also a kind of grift/extraction, on the backs of rural working ppl who get hurt/worn out on job like coalminers (tho trad had union protection and law eg black lung b/c of historic injustice, but ~ by McConn/chao champions of coal)

not-for-profit college also extractive grift that blood funnel of vampire squid into fed vet ed money.

nuke power

---

aha: soc safety net is buffer [so is insurance] , commons, ~ inequality, mod

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/republicans-want-to-cut-social-security-behind-closed-doors/

no lnx

Republicans want to cut Social Security ‘behind closed doors’

Written by Nancy J. Altman / Independent Media Institute September 5, 2019

Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) just said out loud what Republican politicians usually only talk about in secret meetings with their billionaire donors: The GOP wants to cut our earned Social Security benefits—and they want to do it behind closed doors so that they don’t have to pay the political price.

At a recent town hall, Ernst stated that Congress needs to “sit down behind closed doors” to “address Social Security.” She vaguely asserted, “A lot of changes need to be made in this system going forward.” But, she complained, if these changes were proposed in public, she would be accused of pushing “granny over a cliff.” It is not hard to figure out what “changes” she has in mind.

There are many “changes” that should be made to strengthen Social Security and make it even better than it already is. But none of those have to be done secretly.

Congress should address our nation’s looming retirement income crisis by increasing Social Security’s modest benefits. Congress should combat rising income and wealth inequality, by requiring the wealthiest Americans to contribute to Social Security at the same rate as the rest of us.

Congress should enact caregiver credits for those who perform essential but unpaid labor caring for their children, aged parents, and other family members. Those crucial caregivers should receive credit toward future Social Security benefits so they don’t retire into poverty.

In addition, Congress should update the way that Social Security’s benefits are adjusted so that they reflect the high health care and prescription drug costs that beneficiaries experience. The annual cost of living adjustment is intended to keep benefits from eroding, to allow beneficiaries to tread water. But without updating the measure of inflation, those benefits are losing value each year.

Those are just some of the improvements that Congress should make. But those are not the “changes” Ernst has in mind, because none of those changes need to be done behind closed doors. Numerous pieces of legislation proposing those changes have been introduced in Congress—though none by Senator Ernst or her Republican colleagues.

Indeed, 210 House Democrats have co-sponsored the Social Security 2100 Act, which expands Social Security’s modest benefits, while ensuring that all benefits can be paid in full and on time through the year 2100 and beyond.Every Democratic presidential candidate opposes cutting Social Security benefits, and nearly all support expanding them. Meanwhile, neither Donald Trump nor a single Republican member of Congress is sponsoring or cosponsoring any legislation that increases benefits or even ensures that they can be paid in full and on time beyond 2035.

No action is the same as supporting cuts.As Representative John Larson (D-CT), chairman of the House’s Social Security Subcommittee and the author of the Social Security 2100 Act, has explained, “The hard truth of the matter is that Republicans want to cut Social Security, and doing nothing achieves their goal.”

...

---

aha, not mine

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/its-springtime-for-grifters-paul-krugman-explains-how-trump-is-bad-for-us-business-but-good-for-scams/

no lnx

‘It’s springtime for grifters’: Paul Krugman explains how Trump is bad for US business — but good for scams

Written by Cody Fenwick September 5, 2019

President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have claimed that he is essentially the savior of American business, but economist Paul Krugman argued Thursday in a New York Times column that he is, in fact, the exact opposite.

With his trade wars and aggressive deregulatory policy, Trump is creating substantial economic burdens and uncertainty that appear to be creating serious a drag in the economy.

Many have made similar arguments, but the point about the risks of deregulation — which, unlike tariffs and trade wars, we would have expected from any GOP president elected in 2016 — is often missed:

Imagine yourself as the head of a business that plans and expects to be around for a long time. Sure, you’d like to pay less in taxes and not have to comply with costly regulations. But you also want to invest in your company’s future. And to do that, you need some assurance that the rules of the game will be stable, so that whatever investments you make now aren’t suddenly made worthless by future shifts in policy.

Business leaders aren’t do-gooders, but they are realists. Most of them understand that climate change is happening, that it’s dangerous, and that we’ll eventually have to transition to a low-emissions economy. They want to spend now to secure their place in that future economy; they know that investments that worsen climate change are bound to be long-run losers. But they’ll hold off on investing in our energy future as long as conspiracy theorists who consider global warming a gigantic hoax — and/or vindictive politicians determined to erase Obama’s achievements — keep rewriting the rules.

Indeed, Krugman noted that, to the surprise of some, fossil fuel companies have opposed Trump’s efforts to roll back Obama-era environmental regulation.

We should be careful here, because “business uncertainty” is a buzzword that is often used to attack progressive policies. President Barack Obama was frequently criticized for supposedly creating uncertainty in his efforts to regulate carbon emissions and other harmful externalities (though in reality, the biggest economic problem during his tenure was a shortfall in demand driven by austerity). But some uncertainty may be worth it if it’s the cost of imposing regulations that are actually good for the country and the world. In this case of deregulation, however, Republicans argue that rolling back rules is good for business; if, in fact, the uncertainty created by the changes actually hurts business, their entire putative purpose is undermined.

Krugman added that uncertainty isn’t actually bad for all business. One type of business doesn’t mind Trump’s antics? Scams:

To be fair, however, some kinds of business do thrive under Trumpism — namely, businesses that aren’t in it for the long run, operations whose strategy is to take the money and run. These are good times for mining companies that rush in to extract whatever they can, leaving a poisoned landscape behind; for real estate speculators sponsoring dubious ventures that take advantage of newly created tax loopholes; for for-profit colleges that leave their students with worthless degrees and crippling debt.

In other words, under Trump it’s springtime for grifters.

Of course, we shouldn’t be too surprised to find ourselves in these conditions, Krugman argued, when we elected the founder ofTrump University.

aha, inequality a driver: see pseudo-pop // authoritarian, ~ inequality (recall occupy and TP opposite reaction to same crisis/ inequality)

---

ahalet: isolation anomie seems to underlie much of our problems; but not quite so simple as me v we; all the me's want or imagine being part of a we, in fact d roof and other shooter imagine they will catalyze action in their we subgroup turner files race war; many indiv are not part of a larger we that can have agency in the world (a union, church, neighborhood).

sparked by

deathcult

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trumps-frightened-legions-show-a-pathology-at-the-root-of-our-cultural-nervous-breakdown/

---

aha-let: gov't exerts leverage by what it buys, eg military transistors; what if USPO converted to electric cars? cf 1st run at new green deal (van jones? someone else at c8 readings made that arg. hawken?)

Proposed California Law Would Punish Companies for Failing to Limit Harm to the Planet’s Forests

The legislation could affect everything from what paper gets used in state offices to what gets served in California cafeterias.

by Abrahm Lustgarten

View Story

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aha: ok maybe not tip pt but certainly inflection points:

see doom tip pt, along with 2010 TP wave, ripple cascade effects bad.

dereg presumably started with RR mandate of L, hit list. Bush 41n not dereg wacko (tho John Graham OIRA DQA?)

Newt 1994 wave forced triangulation?

Koch TP libtards favors dereg

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-deregulation-led-to-the-opioid-epidemic

no lnx

The opioid abuse epidemic is one of the worst public-health crises in American history. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 1999 and 2017, almost 400,000 people died in the U.S. from an overdose of either prescription or illicit opioids. In 2017 alone, opioids, more than one-third involving prescriptions, killed more than 47,000 individuals. And today, on average 130 people die each day from opioid overdoses.

This article originally appeared on The American Prospect.

The root cause of most cases of opioid addiction, particularly prescription-initiated addiction, is pain, a devastating but sometimes overlooked symptom. As a recent American Industrial Hygiene Association paper argues, “the opioid crisis should be seen primarily as a pain crisis, much of which is related to work.” Addressing that crisis precipitated another: treatment regimes that relied heavily on opioids. Today there’s little awareness that almosttwo decades ago, conservative members of Congress, in a burst of anti-regulatory zeal, championed the fight to eliminate the very ergonomics standard that was designed to reduce the high incidence of a number of common workplace injuries.

The tale of that misguided effort begins with the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970, following decades of unregulated, preventable workplace deaths, injuries, and illnesses. Its goal was to “assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women” and included “authorizing enforcement of the standards developed under the Act.”

The act incorporated existing industry safety standards and adopted new ones to cover an array of workplace hazards, such as work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). These disorders included a wide range of conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome, back pain, and tendonitis that are related to repetitive stress, or sustained or sudden exertions resulting from lifting, pushing, and pulling; carrying many or irregularly shaped objects; maintaining awkward or unnatural positions; or handling vibrating machinery and tools.

By the 1980s, labor health and safety activists recognized that alarming rates of disabling WMSDs were occurring in a wide variety of workplaces, including auto manufacturers, garment factories, office environments, and meatpacking and poultry plants. New modes of assembly line production exacerbated these long-standing problems. The need to implement an ergonomics standard, one that would require employers to systematically address the hazards that give rise to musculoskeletal injuries suffered by their workers, became even more urgent.

There were several false starts for the controversial provisions, but OSHA began working in earnest on the standard in 1993. However, the resulting proposals soon ran into trouble on Capitol Hill. The Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994, and Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” heralded the new Republican majority’s deregulatory push. Bemoaning the costs that an ergonomics standard would entail for the private sector, industry lobbyists derided OSHA’s ergonomic proposal as the poster child for government overregulation. The agency estimated that the new rule would require $4.5 billion in annual compliance costs, but would generate $9.1 billion in benefits every year in the first ten years, and prevent hundreds of thousands of musculoskeletal disorders each year.

Gingrich’s acolytes fought the development of the standard tooth and nail, despite a 1997 General Accounting Office report that found that “billions of dollars are spent by private sector employers on workers’ compensation claims associated with WMSDs,” and that “employers can reduce these costs and injuries and thereby improve employee health and morale, as well as productivity and product quality” by implementing effective ergonomics programs in their workplaces.

After a decade of research and heated political debate,OSHA finally prevailed. On November 14, 2000, during the final weeks of the Clinton administration, the agency issued its ergonomics regulation. It applied to more than six million worksites covering 102 million workers and required all general-industry employers (excluding the agriculture, maritime, and construction sectors) to establish an ergonomics program if triggered by reports of a worker’s WMSD or persistent evidence of WMSDs in the workplace.

The standard went into effect days before George W. Bush was inaugurated. But a few months later, Congress used the Congressional Review Act of 1996 to obliterate the regulation, the first and only time the act had been used to rescind an agency regulation (until President Trump began to make frequent use of it). Usually, if a new administration dislikes a regulation and wants it revised or revoked, it needs to engage in rulemaking all over again and must justify the desired changes. The ergonomics standard escaped this process. In his first legislative act as president, Bush signed the rescission resolution on March 20, 2001, taking the standard off the books and prohibiting OSHA from ever issuing a substantially similar one. A regulation designed to protect workers from debilitating workplace injuries—that frequently required painkilling treatment regimes—had been completely destroyed.

The Bush administration paid lip service to the value of ergonomics programs. Administration officials noted that employers who ignored obvious problems with WMSDs might be cited under OSHA’s “general duty” to provide a workplace reasonably free from recognized hazards. But, as a June 2004 memo to OSHA’s regional administrators made clear, any new guidelines for the prevention of WMSDs “are not new standards or regulations and do not create any new OSHA duties for employers” (emphasis in original). Today, no federal ergonomics regulation exists. (Some states run their own OSHA programs, with federal financial and technical assistance and oversight. They are required to provide worker protections at least as vigorous as federal OSHA regulations require. Of these states, only California has specific ergonomics regulations currently on the books.)

But the hazardous workplace conditions that give rise to musculoskeletal injuries, and the chronic pain that so often accompanies those injuries, haven’t gone away. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, musculoskeletal injuries are the most prevalent occupational injury in the United States today, totaling, in 2017, 32 percent of serious nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses. The CDC, meanwhile, continues to claim that “together, employers, workers, and other parties with an understanding of ergonomics can design effective programs to prevent and minimize WMSDs.”

In 2017, there were344,970 cases of workplace musculoskeletal injuries involving days away from work.How many of those cases represent workers who are being treated or are self-medicating with opioids today? How many are addicted? And how many of their injuries could have been prevented with an effectively enforced standard designed to reduce the hazards that cause WMSDs, like the short-lived 2001 rule?

Today, the CDC points out that the best ways to prevent opioid overdose deaths include improving prescribing through revamped clinical-practice guidelines and treatment and preventing opioid use disorder. But there’s little discussion even now about preventing the workplace injuries that cause the pain that contribute to opioid use and abuse. Federally enforceable worker-informed ergonomics programs continue to be urgently needed in every workplace where these hazards exist. If only Congress and President Bush had understood that 18 years ago.

by george lakoff, he's got it

Here’s why Republicans are pushing the lie that Trump is a tough guy. Because it works. Historian Rick Perlstein, author of a series of books on the rise of Republican conservatism, was interviewed in The New Yorker last week and said something I think the Democratic Party has forgotten over the last decade or so. “Toughness is a core primary value,” Perlstein said, referring to red states that Democrats have failed to carry in recent elections. “All of us remember 2004, when George W. Bush won reelection explicitly on this rationale of saying we know people disagree with his issue positions, but we are going to position him as the guy who sticks with his gut no matter what.”

aha based on brazil fail tip pt:// ecosystem health and indig cult heath/ languages;indig and native Am ppl is EJ intensified; colonialism; they are the poorest, least educated but/and thus pay largest price in terms of toxic load; hit 1st and worst by AGW, but had the least to do with causing and the MOST to do with PROTECTING (defenders killed at high rates eg berta C]. killed at high rates b/c the CAN be: racism plus greed: those ppl do not know the true value of assets; they are block progress and prosperity. who will miss a murdered defender? if police on take and courts corrupt, no justice for them, and no incentive to stop killing them.[NB missing native women around man camps, a throwback to wild west gold rush? toxic masculinity, low density of women].

aha

i'm noticing that alt rt, authoritarian, RW are profoundly anti-femin; recall lakoff strict father vs nurturing (mom?)

also homophobe; fag used to be ultimate insult, bit in alt rt, it's cuck (cuckservative, from cuckhold, a man so clueless. spineless, weak that he can't prevent his (property) woman from being taken by force or taken away (attracted) by a more virile alpha male. a previous and milder version was a squish, some one soft, not definite, not hard-line, hard core, a limp dick or wrist, can't get it up to get her done. Proof of alpha male is aggression, and status (money demo'd /reflected by possessions) and power.

aha

cf lakoff strict FATHER, the fasciststrong man alone can save us from the chaos: the invasion of brown other foreigners, the theft of our mfg jobs by china and 3rd world...but chaos will increase b/c of global weirding, and perhaps other (converging?! in unexpected ways, cascade effects b/c our commons/resilience is being degraded?!) but b/c bannon's alt rt disruption model is catching on, and can piggyback/hujack the chaos?!

no lnx

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/democratic-2020-strategy-must-be-gloves-off-and-abandon-all-subtletytrump-will-kill-your-dog/

Democratic 2020 strategy must be gloves off and abandon all subtlety: ‘Trump will kill your dog!’

sounds like a joke, but it's sort of jiu jitsu, using trump strength (here literally) against him: the Dems will take care of you (health care, school student debt etc)

---

trump faLLOUT: fail doom tip pt

https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-deforestation-unrecoverable-tipping-point-2639358982.html

The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is being clear cut so rapidly — a rate of three football fields per minute — that it is approaching a "tipping point" from which it will not recover,according to the Guardian.lnx]

As trees are lost, researchers said there is a risk that large areas could transition from rainforest to savannah as they lose the ability to make their own rainfall from evaporation and from plants giving off watervapor, according to Newsweek.

A transition on that scale could have significant implications for global warming since the rainforest absorbs vast amounts of atmospheric carbon. Recent research has shown the potential for massive tree plantings to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere.

"It's very important to keep repeating these concerns. There are a number of tipping points which are not far away," said Philip Fearnside, a professor at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research, as the Guardian reported. "We can't see exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a problem."

The alarming rate of deforestation and its acceleration confirms suspicions that new president Jair Bolsonaro has allowed illegal land invasion, logging and burning. Bolsonaro has called his own government's satellite data lies.The president's comments followed preliminary satellite data that showed more than 400 square miles of the rainforest had been cleared in the first half of July — an increase of 68 percent from the entire month of July last year, according to the BBC.

Bolsonaro, the far right politician who has said he is fulfilling a mission from God, dismissed concerns expressed by European Union members and called it hypocritical since so many European forests have been wiped out.

"You have to understand that the Amazon is Brazil's, not yours," Bolsonaro said, as the Guardianreported. "If all this devastation you accuse us of doing was done in the past the Amazon would have stopped existing, it would be a big desert."

The DETER-B satellite system that the Brazilian government started to use in 2015 to track deforestation has shown that the record setting July deforestation is on pace to clear enough forest to fit New York City twice by the end of the month.

The DETER satellite data is considered preliminary. Detailed figures are released at the end of the year when data from other satellites and observatories is also collected, according to Newsweek.

"Unfortunately, it is absurd, but it should not catch anyone by surprise. President Jair Bolsonaro and minister Ricardo Salles are dismantling our socio-environmental policies," said Carlos Rittl, the executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, an NGO formed by a coalition of environmental groups, as the Guardian reported.

After years of conservation, Brazil's environmental track record has nose-dived in the first seven months of Bolsonaro's administration. He has given environmental oversight to the agriculture minister, who is the leader of a farming lobby. His foreign minister called climate science a part of a global Marxist plot. The government has invited businesses to register land counter-claims in areas that are protected nature reserves, indigenous territories and areas dedicated to sustainable production by native forest people, according to the Guardian.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Amazon deforestation accelerating towards unrecoverable 'tipping ... ›

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aha: dereg (damages protection of forest, thus buffer and resilience) and corruption is lack of info on effects so we can avert disaster --> AGW:

ref

https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/amazonian-rainforest-near-unrecoverable-tipping-point

guk no lnx

Amazon deforestation accelerating towards unrecoverable 'tipping point'

Data confirms fears that Jair Bolsonaro’s policy encourages illegal logging in Brazil

Jonathan Watts in Altamira

@jonathanwatts

Thu 25 Jul 2019 17.40 BST Last modified on Thu 25 Jul 2019 21.37 BST

Amazon rainforest turned into farmland. An area the size of Greater London has been lost this month. Photograph: Nacho Doce/Reuters

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has surged above three football fields a minute, according to the latest government data, pushing the world’s biggest rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover.

The sharp rise – following year-on-year increases in May and June – confirms fears that president Jair Bolsonaro has given a green light to illegal land invasion, logging and burning.

Clearance so far in July has hit 1,345 sq km, a third higher than the previous monthly record under the current monitoring system by the Deter B satellite system, which started in 2015.

With five days remaining, this is on course to be the first month for several years in which Brazil loses an area of forest bigger than Greater London.

The steady erosion of tree cover weakens the role of the rainforest in stabilising the global climate. Scientists warn that the forest is in growing danger of degrading into a savannah, after which its capacity to absorb carbon will be severely diminished, with consequences for the rest of the planet.

“It’s very important to keep repeating these concerns. There are a number of tipping points which are not far away,” said Philip Fearnside, a professor at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research. “We can’t see exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a problem.”

It may also complicate ratification of Brazil’s biggest ever trade deal with the European Union if EU legislators decide the South American nation is not keeping its side of the bargain, which includes a commitment to slow deforestation in line with the Paris climate agreement.

The official numbers from the National Institute for Space Research are a growing embarrassment to Bolsonaro, who has tried to fob them off as lies and criticised the head of the institute.Earlier this week, the president insisted the numbers should be screened by the ministry of science and technology and shown to him before being made public so that he did not get “caught with his pants down”.

This has raised fears that the data could be vetted in future rather than automatically updated online each day as is currently the case.

In his first seven months in power, Bolsonaro, who was elected with strong support from agribusiness and mining interests, has moved rapidly to erode government agencies responsible for forest protection.

He has weakened the environment agency and effectively put it under the supervision of the agricultural ministry, which is headed by the leader of the farming lobby. His foreign minister has dismissed climate science as part of a global Marxist plot. The president and other ministers have criticised the forest monitoring agency, Ibama, for imposing fines on illegal land grabbers and loggers. The government has also moved to weaken protections for nature reserves, indigenous territories and zones of sustainable production by forest peoples and invited businesspeople to register land counter-claims within those areas.

This has emboldened those who want to invade the forest, clear it and claim it for commercial purposes, mostly in the speculative expectation it will rise in value, but also partly for cattle pastures, soya fields and mines.

Earlier this month, it was reported that thousands of gold miners illegally invaded Yanomami indigenous territory near the border with Venezuela. Elsewhere, illegal loggers have mounted at least two attacks in response to Ibama enforcement operations,according to the Folha newspaper. On 4 July, they reportedly burned an Ibama truck in Espigão d’Oeste, Rondônia state and last week they were said to have burned bridges in Placas, Pará state.

Rather than defend his officials, the environment minister Ricardo Salles appeared to side with the loggers when he gave a speech to a group of them in Rondônia soon afterwards, in which he reportedly told them: “The timber industry deserves to be respected … What happens today in Brazil, unfortunately, is the result of years and years and years of a public policy of producing laws, rules, regulations that are not always related to the real world. What we are doing now is precisely bringing the legal part of the real world that happens in every country from north to south.”

During a recent G20 meeting, Bolsonaro told the German chancellor Angela Merkel that she had no right to criticise because Brazil’s conservation record was superior to that of Europe’s. This is a dubious claim, according to Climate Observatory, which cites World Bank data that shows Germany has given protected status to a bigger share of its land than Brazil.

Brazil is also going backwards fast. After an 80% reduction in the rate of deforestation between 2006 and 2012, successive governments have relaxed protections. Clearance has been creeping up. Last year, deforestation rose 13% to the highest level in a decade. This year is on course to be far worse and the trend is back towards the dark days of the early 2000s.

“Unfortunately, it is absurd, but it should not catch anyone by surprise. President Jair Bolsonaro and minister Ricardo Salles are dismantling our socio-environmental policies,” said Carlos Rittl, the executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, an NGO formed by a coalition of environmental groups.

He said Salles had eradicated the department responsible for policies to combat deforestation, that no leaders have been appointed in eight of the nine Ibama regional offices, and that operations to combat environmental crimes declined 70% between January and April 2019 compared with the same period last year.

The Deter satellite data is considered preliminary, but it is usually a guide to the longer-term trends. More detailed annual figures are usually released towards the end of the year, after the National Institute for Space Research has calculated data from the more powerful Prodes satellite system.

Trees are considered essential to climate stability. Earlier this month, a study indicated that planting a trillion trees could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities. But scientists say maintaining existing forests, particularly in the tropics, is far more important.

---

by civil society i mean primarily 1) organization for good governance, fair elections, protection of the commons, eg public citizen pirgs

but also 2) opposite of putman bowling alone?

in terms of latter, scam pacs are "corrosive" because when (elderly) find they have been defrauded by cash extraction scheme, it makes them less likely to want to participate in democracy/ the work of civil society. that's a kind of commons?

in a related matter, Putin active measures are designed to degrade out faith in institutions (and rw gop libtards work on degrading trust in gov't in particular) and in each other; polarization --> polarysis.

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3x whammyneglected, it's baaaack on climate class action lawsuits

convergence/synergy will take out coal

CPP limits pollutants (and makes them pay for cost of damage?)

Our Children's Trust: kids have constitutional right to a liveable future; but note FF corps claim Const 1st amendment right to lie; claims that lawsuits are state power to suppress their position. Team Blue possible RICO? cities liability lawsuits for damage/ cost to protect from climate chaos.

3.fracking: cheap gas makes coal not competitive, esp if has to pay cost see 1. (but methane)

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trump declares coal and nuke nat'l security; strict father/ dictator will keep us safe from enemy (also border wall emergency, safe from the brown hordes caused by AGW drought).

---

aha: transparency lowers corruption, info is a signal that allows us to react/ compensate to restore balance; use invisible hand mkt to make smarter decsions

https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/07/17/sec-climate-risks-disclosure/

Karen Savage

A bill that would require public companies to disclose the risks posed to their business by climate change passed a crucial committee vote in the House on Wednesday.

The House Financial Services Committee passed the Climate Risk Disclosure Act of 2019, which was introduced by Illinois Rep. Sean Casten in 2018. The bill would require the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to develop and implement guidelines for companies on disclosing climate risks. The SEC would be required to make the information available to the public on its website.

“Climate change is a risk to the stability of the global financial system,” Casten said. “This bill presents a market-based solution to understand the impact of a changing climate on companies and provide investors, lenders, and insurers with better information.”

The bill now moves on to a vote by the full House, and if it passes, on to the Senate. With the Senate still controlled by Republicans, it is unlikely to have enough support.[odd given fundamentalist mkt faith]

aha: matthew effect, dark money lobby corruption and financialization funnels money to the top; thus low and Middle class ppl go into debt; everything is more expensive relatively if you're poor /working class (eg no bank acct means cash check at walmart they take a cut or payday loan that takes a big one); worse are predatory capitalist who prey/extract (pay phones on street but esp in prison).

7/23/19

see Liz warren on howdebt (personal and banksters) creates systemic risk and instability.

related to inequality

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aha-ish

celebritiescan use their fame to influence their fans; they may be resigned to having to put up with paparazzi BS downside and use that to some positive good; danger of pop psych here, but mebbe even feel adulation is somewhat random and undeserved and thus for karmic reasons must be deployed for the good, un-SELF-ish. Artists also have a differnet point of view; art is having more sensitive antennae, also job is to communicate idea and emotions (ethos to motivate).

artists are seen as irrational flake who can't face reality (many capitalistic system) and so are easily dupes and tools of the enemy (blacklist mccarthy 50's)

---

AHA NB inequality and polarization linked cf amazon:

---

AHA! THE SOLUTION IS TO RESTORE THE COMMONS

AHA: REDUCTIONISM KILLS/ ENSLAVES/ EXTRACTS

VS SYSTEMS HEAL, CONNECT, FREE

I/THOU VS I/IT ME v WE

triggered by

wicked smart henry g

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/our-culture-of-ignorance-has-made-possible-the-rise-of-a-terrible-new-political-blend-neoliberal-fascism/

AHA-ette: not sure this fits here,troll but remember when beck or rush get slapped back for stepping over line, they fall back on i'm just and entertainer, a clown [rodeo?]; alt rt troll thugswarm is about pwn owning/ triggering the lib snowflake/ sjw; asymmetric warfare/ leverage, a tiny effort creates a large effect [police mobilize in whitefish mo, but not thier intent? but maybe welcomed not b/c pisses off their ally racist cops, but b/c it proves effect/they matteer/ have power.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/neo-nazi-troll-andrew-anglins-celebratory-mood-crushed-by-14-million-judgment-against-him/

david n kos

Over the weekend, Andrew Anglin was in a celebratory mood, thanks to Donald Trump’s racist tweets telling congresswomen of color to go back to their native countries.

Then, on Monday, the hammer fell on the notorious neo-Nazi troll and publisher of The Daily Stormer. A judge in **Montana, ruling in a lawsuit brought by a Jewish woman from Whitefish and the Southern Poverty Law Center, determined that Anglin owed the woman $14 million in damages for the “troll storm” he unleashed on her in early 2017.

aha:FAIL = application of the wrong/too simple metaphor as diagnosis --> cure

my classic eg urban renewal

another dangerous metaphor is run gov't like a biz,which presumably means rational, metrics, maybe an eye towards boosting economy=prosperity = well-being, Mitt R ran on this [truman dismissed as storekeeper [failed] but accidental prz ~ wallace]

bizmen trump and by assoc kushner as rational planner, but also good DEALMAKER [transactional metaphor [relationship, but severely reduction], maybe related // invisible hand magic mkt BS?

unintended consequences is a WELL INTENTIONED? fail b/c of overly simplistic model/analysis

this a a carrot w/o removing stick? ignores/ "externalizes" history, politics etc etc, reduction to transaction?

https://www.alternet.org/**2019/06**/palestinians-dismiss-economic-portion-of-kushner-plan-as-dead-on-arrival/

no lnx

Palestinians dismiss economic portion of Kushner plan as dead-on-arrival

aha: the invisible hand (not God, but His replacement?)in theory deprives the bad cobbler of income and forces him to make better shoes faster and cheaper or find something else more productive (read profitable). So we all benefit by getting good cheap shoes. Our individual self-sh acts get transmuted alchemically into the greater good. But depends on rational choice and adequate (honest, not ad ad/hype) information and education.

This is said to eliminate "waste" and promote efficiency, which become a god term to justify/rational-ize decisions that may be immoral (see Grapes of Wrath debate between farmers and banker men on who rightfully owns land, the ppl who work it or those with a piece of paper and numbers).

We get rid of anything deemed surplus (because of "opportunity cost": we could be doing something else with the money or space). Computers made supply lines "just-in-time" but in Japan the whole car industry stopped when a single part not avaialbe b/c of a typhoon in Singapore or somesuch.

Related to austerity, when you beat up on lazy undeserving poor safety net in the name of tough, hard-headed rational reallocation of resources (usually to the rich). eg it's more efficient to put an ankle monitor on a prisoner so you do not have to pay for room, board, guard and godforbid medical treatment. so pvt co charges fees that get ppl BACK in jail.

---

aha: right cries foul and says that they are victims/silenced by devil terms anti-fem, homophobe, racist etc, but look how this is baked in/constant:

wow, anti-fem at the start w ERA schalfly, IWF, TP constant tight up to gamergate/ red pill?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-southern-white-women-drove-the-gop-to-donald-trump/

no lnx

How southern white women drove the GOP to Donald Trump

written by Paul Rosenberg / Salon July 1, 2019

“The Long Southern Strategy,” a new book by political scientists Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields, first caught my eye because there’s a long history of denialism surrounding the “Southern strategy.” People sometimes claim that it’s a liberal myth or that it’s ancient history, or that wasn’t the real reason for the Southern realignment in American politics. That denialism has only intensified and grown more significant since the election of Donald Trump.

But Maxwell and Shields’ book turns out to be more than just well-timed, as its subtitle suggests: “How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics.” Rather than simply showing that the Southern strategy was a long-term phenomenon, the book shows that it was a continuously reshaped and evolving strategy, that it was multifaceted — involving gender and religion as crucially as race — and that in remaking the Republican Party and the South, it remade American politics as well. “The Long Southern Strategy” explains this reshaping process remaking better than anything else I’ve read, and does so via a compelling multi-disciplinary combination of history, cultural criticism and social science.

In “The Reactionary Mind” (Salon review here), political theorist Corey Robin argued that conservative politics “speak to and for people who have lost something. It may be a landed estate or the privileges of white skin, the unquestioned authority of a husband or the untrammeled rights of a factory owner.” Conservatives may have balked at Robin’s argument, but “The Long Southern Strategy” convincingly describes the specific combination of such losses on which Republicans have played, and the specific form of conservatism that resulted.

The building blocks aren’t old-fashioned racism, sexism and religious fundamentalism — all have been reshaped into new forms, making new arguments for halting progress and turning back the clock, which is also a part of the book’s story. For example, as co-author Angie Maxwell told me, “Modern sexism describes feelings of resentment and distrust towards feminists and working women. Rather than believing that a woman cannot do a particular job, folks who express Modern sexism resents a woman for wanting to do that job.”

“The Long Southern Strategy” also explains why Donald Trump is not such an anomaly after all, but rather the culmination of where the GOP has been headed for the past 50-plus years. “I gave a series of lectures the year before the election, called ‘The Inevitability of Donald Trump,'” Maxwell told me — but even she thought Trump would make it no further than the Republican nomination. She was concerned, however, about how close the election was going to be, because she had applied “modern sexism measures” to national polling in 2012, and found alarmingly high numbers. “I was worried we were not accounting for that effect,” she said. Perhaps not.

So I thought Maxwell would be a perfect interview subject as the 2020 campaign begins in earnest. It’s an invaluable guide for making sense of what’s about to unfold, as well as how we got here. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

First I want to ask about the need to understand the Southern strategy as something long-term and continuing or evolving, not just a one-time event.

In short, with the Southern strategy, the story we tell is that after the Civil Rights Act, first Barry Goldwater and then Richard Nixon really played to white racial angst, and the South flipped to red. But when you start looking at not just the electoral map, but voting trends, the South goes pretty heavily back to Jimmy Carter in 1976. And most Southern politicians don’t change their party IDs during that period of time. You see from archival work and other scholarship how worried the GOP was post-Watergate that the inroads they made in the South they were going to lose. And sure enough, they do.

Now, if they were so adamant on a backlash to civil rights, then why pick Carter? But there this notion that Carter’s one of them — he shares their Southern identity, they understand him, he’s a born-again Christian. So the South kind of goes back [to the Democrats]. Then the Reagan folks in 1980 dropped the Equal Rights Amendment from their platform. This to me is the bridge. In 1980, the Republicans are trying again to win those Southern voters back, because they’ve really based their electoral map on that. They took that fork in the road in the late ’60s, and it’s kind of hard, once you set your strategy, to say, “Oh, let’s just pick a new one.” So they dropped the ERA.

This was a radical thing to do because the Equal Rights Amendment — and second-wave feminism in general — was a completely bipartisan effort. There were legions of Republican women feminists. In fact, they were some of the leaders in the movement. At the 1977 National Women’s Convention, the only national women’s convention we’ve ever had, every living first lady of both parties was there.. All the major congresswomen from both parties were there. What happened then was Phyllis Schlafly’s effort — she had written the book [A Choice, Not An Echo] that kind of inspired Goldwater to run years before — she started an anti-feminism counter rally, also in Houston, and had massive attendance at that, and their slogan was “family values.”

The GOP took notice. Schlafly was hoping it would get her a cabinet position, which it didn’t. But then the Reagan administration polls 40,000 women, an effort headed up by Richard Wirthlin, with Elizabeth Dole, and they classified American women into 64 types. They called them Nancys, Bettys — they give them names —and they realized that there were a whole lot more antifeminists out there than they realized, people who really wanted these traditional gender roles. I call them “antifeminist” because that is what they were calling themselves, a lot of times. Particularly in the South, among white women. And so that move [dropping the ERA] helped Reagan to secure a lot of those Southern white women. And that’s when you actually see people start changing their voter ID....

see in the name of god/devil term

{formerly disambig/ place holder

see

nat'l security cncl NSC

trump as authoritarian fascist strong man who alone can keep us safe from our enemies, so he often goes to nat sec well.[in his 2020 sp launch orlanda sez dems want to destroy you/our way of life, press is enemy of ppl]

emergerncy border wall lets him grab $ congress not authorize, show his strength, protect us from caravan of rapists, murder, drugs (moochers, steal our jobs); he also deployed the military at border. kids in concenttration/pow camps; militia supplement ICE

rotate thru nat sec advisor flynn corrupt to wacko bolton war hawk (w abrams war criminal/fail and Pompeo dominionist?!)

recent studies show DoD not ready to deal with AGW (fleet of bombers lost to hurricane, bases will flood?), sad b/c for a while eg Bush 43, pentagon the only agency dealing w or at least speaking about threat of AGW, which is the biggest threat our species has faced, never mind military threat (tho AGW is a "threat-multiplier" [is that amplifying feedback/ cascade effect/ unintended consequences --> chaos)

Happer comes out of GMI goes back to warmonger 2 Freds

NB coal export (?) and trump tariffs under nat sec BS scam/ploy; gets away with it b/c god term in the name of, so trump gets to trot out paleo-conservative tariffs; claims coal is military necessity b/c windmills can be blown up (and the sound gives you cancer)

omg

bad: the White House chooses climate denial over national security

Reporting on federal climate denial and delay during the (George W.) Bush administration, a journalist muttered to herself from time to time,“You can’t argue with physics.”
Fast forward a dozen years and hooooo-mama: Was I naive or what?
Because last week, as first reported by the Washington Post, a physicist working for the White House tried to cut all the factual climate science out of a State Department intelligence expert’s formal testimony to Congress on how climate change could could be “possibly catastrophic” to U.S. national security.
When the State Dept. refused to change its staffer’s testimony, the White House still let him talk to Congress, but barred him from submitting the written statement for entry into the Congressional Record for the hearing.
“I have never heard of basic facts being deleted from or blocked from testimony,” conservative policy scholar Norman Ornstein told The New York Times.
Almost every page of the written testimony’s scientific section, according to The Times, was marked up with negative comments by physicist William Happer, a National Security Council appointee.
Happer for years led the Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank that has received substantial funding from a charitable giving arm of Exxon.
In a 2014 media appearance, Happer denied that he was a climate change denier, but also told CNBC’s Squawk Box that “the demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world and so were the Jews.”
According to a recent story on Climatewire, Happer in late May met with President Trump to brief him on a White House initiative to “highlight uncertainties in climate research and downplay the threat of global warming to national security.”}:

AHA DOH!

619 several fear and scam nodes to disambiguate (this started with sinclair tv weather guy refusing to run red alerts mandated, sponsor support.

but made me realize it's fox's biz model?! ISLAMOPHOBIA, XENOPHOBIA AFRO-PHOBIA, , HOMOPHOBIA, MISOGYNY (planned parenthood is selling baby body parts?!), COMMIE-PHOBIA mccarthy witch hunts, under the bed infiltrate state dept.

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AHA DOH 2

2 big SYS fails uncorrected led to djt: gt recess and gulf war 2, brexit

...curry salon

After the Iraq war, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed a commission to investigate how exactly his country stumbled into such a tragic fiasco.The Chilcot Report (for Lord John Chilcot, who led the commission) was an account of political bungling and deception as thorough and damning as the Pentagon Papers. Its 2016 release made former Prime Minister Tony Blair, chief accomplice to George W. Bush in that disastrous undertaking, into a social leper. Unlike Robert Mueller, Chilcot had an absolute right to interview any witness and compel production of any document he felt he needed; nearly all his interviews were done in public, and he delivered his report direct to the people of the United Kingdom.

The war was hatched in America by ideologues bent on exporting democracy via bribery and force of arms. In the eyes of many, it surpasses Vietnam as the worst foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history. In a speech to the nation summarizing the case for it, Bush leaned heavily on the only possible rationale for an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation:

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

For months, his vice president and national security adviser peddled “evidence” of nuclear and chemical weapons. Before his speech, Bush was told by experts at the Department of Energy that the evidence was false, but he kept the news to himself. To this day it remains unproven who was lying, and who was only lied to.

The Congressional Budget Office says the war cost the U.S. $2 trillion. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz puts it at $3 trillion. Nearly 4,500 U.S. military personnel died there, and tens of thousands more suffered disabling physical and psychic wounds. Iraqi casualties remain in dispute — as Gen. Tommy Franks informed reporters, “We don’t do body counts” — but estimates range from 180,000 to more than a million deaths. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees counted 3.7 million refugees. Americans think the war’s over. Last month, it took 166 Iraqi lives.

In 2009, as Gordon Brown was launching the Chilcot Inquiry, Barack Obama was being pressured to take a similar look back at how America was lured or lied into war. Obama took a different tack. Rather than appoint a commission with plenipotentiary powers, he did nothing. Aides said he thought retracing Bush’s path to war would make it hard to forge bipartisan alliances with Republicans.

Similar concerns colored his take on the other huge crisis he inherited, the 2008 Wall Street meltdown that leveled the global economy. No one knows its true cost, only that the number exceeds most human minds’ ability to conceptualize. A Government Accountability Office study put the U.S. cost at $22 trillion.

Social and political costs were even higher. Post-meltdown austerity measures, following ondecades of stagnant wages just as millions of Middle East refugees flooded Europe, rocking center-left coalitions that had ruled the West since World War II. Far-right political parties the old order was too polite to label fascist began to metastasize. Britain got Brexit. America got Trump.[NOTE CONFLUENCE OF 2 FAILS]

When the crisis broke, Obama was running for president. His closing stump speech was a litany of vows to curb corruption; above all, to punish Wall Street fraud. His administration never brought a case. Three years later, he went on “60 Minutes” to explain that the worst behavior wasn’t actually illegal. Given his dazzling intellect and access to wise counsel, one assumes he knew that what he said wasn’t true.

Privately, Obama revealed his thinking. He worried that prosecutions would hurt banks. He worried he’d lose personal support in the business community. (A major culprit, Goldman Sachs, was also his biggest donor.) And he worried he’d lose business backing vital to building bipartisan coalitions in Congress.

Lying was as much a cause of the Great Recession as it was of the Iraq war. Loan originators lied about applicants’ creditworthiness. Investment bankers lied about the toxicity of mortgage portfolios. Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s and Fitch all lied. So did Obama and most of Congress, which meant major reforms, excepting only Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, were designed to curb “irrational exuberance,” not the immorality at the root of what befell us.

Instead of going to prison, bankers got bailed out, while homeowners got betrayed. Like the meltdown itself, the government’s response helped incite a populist revolt. Obama and Clinton Democrats were deaf to it, but Trump’s final 2016 TV ad began “Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment.” In the last week, it replaced nearly every other ad he had up in the industrial Midwest.

These failures — to investigate the origins of the Iraq war and the Great Recession and punish the culprits — were not anomalies. After 9/11, no one had the stomach to hold George W. Bush to account for ignoring intelligence reports on his desk, so the bipartisanship crowd invented a structural failure and wasted years rearranging intelligence and homeland security bureaucracies, resulted in a new Cabinet-level post, the Director of National Intelligence, who lacks the authority to direct anyone to do anything.

It happened after the 2000 election: Media barons set out to fix the exit polls, Congress set out to rid the world of hanging chads via nifty paperless ballots and the Democratic Party set out to rid the world of Ralph Nader.Thus, a pioneering GOP foray into voter suppression went nearly unremarked. Despite butterfly ballots, staged riots, a chief election official doing double duty as a Bush campaign chair and a Supreme Court concocting phony equal protection claims to rob Al Gore of real due process, Bush was clothed in legitimacy, leaving millions of Americans to conclude that the system was indeed rigged.

I doubt we’d be saddled with Trump had we not come to resemble him: way too materialistic, more than a bit narcissistic, unfocused, unlettered, infantile, even amoral. Our responses to these crises suggest that we also share a high tolerance for lying, a limited capacity for self-examination and an unspoken belief that the rich and powerful are above the law. Which brings us to the latest in our recent line of failures to look either evil or ourselves in the eye, the Mueller Report....

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aha: VIOLENCE RHET

horo-show sez left is source of violence (note slippage of black bloc wackos burning some trash or breaking windows are violent) whereas actual acts of violence eg by trump whipping up hate to press that gets them shoved/hit?

more aha: rt conflates verbal violence and actual, eg sec of def nom said ok for son to use baseball bat on mom b/c she yelled/nagged him for 3 hrs, thus self-defense

// slippage of eco- --> econ terror; rt calls left "extremists" and angry thus irrational, they seem to be the ones to consistently and constantly "lose it" plus violence is the trad perogative of mean and power. plus if left tyranny is real threat to freedom and liberty, violence is justified/necessary

United States isn’t the only English-speaking country where politicians can be loose cannons: in the U.K., Conservative MP Mark Field has been suspended from his position as a Foreign Office minister following a physical attack on a female Greenpeace activist.

In a video that has been posted on the Guardian’s website, Field can be seeing grabbing the protester by the neck at a June 20 dinner at London’s Mansion House and physically removing her from the event — and she can be heard saying, “It’s a peaceful protest.” Greenpeace activists disrupted the dinner in order to draw attention to the climate change crisis.

NB 2 attacks both on women

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zombie resurrected pension

erik prince gone 8 years BO, UAE mbz

b/c legit gop right already committed to actual candidates, trump had to take leftovers and grifters; he has a transactional / "loyalty" relationship

Ayn Rand says no such thing as selfishness, grab all you can (triumph of the will)

so conflict of interest cronyism and even eventually disaster cap'l and max extraction

seems to be a theme: democracy is imperiled by: AI/big data, authoritarianism, consumerism/cynicism (giroux after _)

aha: trump admin rtwing will sacrifice legis to help women over ideological purity NRA guns domestic violence and here:

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-the-trump-pence-administrations-pro-life-agenda-is-killing-thousands-in-the-us-and-globally/

AHA: you do not need to get rid of a rule if you get rid of enforcement or even the evidence/info that a problem exists

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/dying-on-the-job-how-workers-get-hurt-when-businesses-keep-deadly-secrets/

omg

...

Unfortunately, at the same time, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reduced its workplace safety inspectors to the lowest level in its 48-year history, diminishing its capacity to investigate workplace deaths, illnesses and injuries.And it reversed a rule that would have provided more information about workplace dangers nationally. It decided to stop requiring large employers to electronically report injury and illness data. OSHA still requires employers to document this information, but they don’t have to tell anyone.

The Frank Leasure case illustrates how this decision endangers workers. The USW Health and Safety Department conducts what it calls learning events, also known as accident investigations, at USW job sites, shares information about the problems it finds and publishes online hazard alerts that recommend methods to prevent recurrence.

These hazard alerts don’t blame and shame. They don’t name the company where the incident occurred or the victim. They describe what happened and then recommend ways to prevent similar injuries and deaths. They’re intended to help local unions and employers identify and eliminate similar hazards in their workplaces.

...

question: are hack and hackademics crypto? trying to neutralize or destroy real scientists and academics?

---

aha MIC and PIC merge; note systemic solution // new green deal

“People often point to the London Metropolitan Police, who were formed in the 1820s by Sir Robert Peel,” Vitale said. “They are held up as this liberal ideal of a dispassionate, politically neutral police with the support of the citizenry. But this really misreads the history. Peel is sent to manage the British occupation of Ireland. He’s confronted with a dilemma. Historically, peasant uprisings, rural outrages were dealt with by either the local militia or the British military. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, in the need for soldiers in other parts of the British Empire, he is having more and more difficulty managing these disorders. In addition, when he does call out the militia, they often open fire on the crowd and kill lots of people, creating martyrs and inflaming further unrest. He said, ‘I need a force that can manage these outrages without inflaming passions further.’ He developed the Peace Preservation Force, which was the first attempt to create a hybrid military-civilian force that can try to win over the population by embedding itself in the local communities, taking on some crime control functions, but its primary purpose was always to manage the occupation. He then exports that model to London as the industrial working classes are flooding the city, dealing with poverty, cycles of boom and bust in the economy, and that becomes [its] primary mission.”

“The creation of the very first state police force in the United States was the Pennsylvania State Police in 1905,” Vitale said. “For the same reasons. It was modeled similarly on U.S. occupation forces in the Philippines. There was a back and forth with personnel and ideas. What happened was local police were unable to manage the coal strikes and iron strikes. … They needed a force that was more adherent to the interest of capital. … Interestingly, for these small-town police forces in a coal mining town there was sometimes sympathy. They wouldn’t open fire on the strikers. So, the state police force was created to be that strong arm for the law. Again, the direct connection between colonialism and the domestic management of workers. … It’s a two-way exchange. As we’re developing ideas throughout our own colonial undertakings, bringing those ideas home, and then refining them and shipping them back to our partners around the world who are often despotic regimes with close economic relationships to the United States. There’s a very sad history here of the U.S. exporting basically models of policing that morphs into death squads and horrible human rights abuses.”

The almost exclusive alliance on militarized police to deal with profound inequality and social problems is turning poor neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago into miniature failed states, ones where destitute young men and women join a gang for security and income and engage in battles with other gangs and the police. The “broken windows” policy shifts the burden for poverty onto the poor. It criminalizes minor infractions, arguing that disorder produces crime and upending decades of research about the causes of crime.

“As poverty deepens and housing prices rise, government support for affordable housing has evaporated, leaving in its wake a combination of homeless shelters and aggressive broken-windows-oriented policing,” Vitale writes. “As mental health facilities close, police become the first responders to calls for assistance with mental health crises. As youth are left without adequate schools, jobs, or recreational facilities, they form gangs for mutual protection or participate in the black markets of stolen goods, drugs, and sex to survive and are ruthlessly criminalized. Modern policing is largely a war on the poor that does little to make people safer or communities stronger, and even when it does, this is accomplished through the most coercive forms of state power that destroy the lives of millions.”

The accelerated assault on the poor and the growing omnipotence of the police signal our transformation into an authoritarian state in which the rich and the powerful are not subject to the rule of law.The Trump administration will promote none of the conditions that could ameliorate this crisis—affordable housing; well-paying jobs; safe and nurturing schools that do not charge tuition; better mental health facilities; efficient public transportation; the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure; demilitarized police forces in which most officers do not carry weapons; universal, government-funded health care; an end to the predatory loans and unethical practices of big banks; and reparations to African-Americans and an end to racial segregation. Trump and most of those he has appointed to positions of power disdain the poor as a dead weight on society. They blame stricken populations for their own misery. They seek to subjugate the poor, especially those of color, through police violence, ever harsher forms of punishment and an expansion of the prison system....

Scams fraud con grift

419

belated disambig? aha expand to grift, con man // to ideological entrepreneur

if there's no such thing a society, common good, if ok to do anything not expressly prohibited (and enforced) by law, if survial of fittest, do whatever it takes to be a winner, invisible hand of mkt will correct all... then do whatever you want. so pharma bro, -- of wall st

looks for holes in regs eg nutrit

gop generates fear/despair, then makes money on it

eg nutritional supplements, online for profit college, gold stock tips, prepper seeds/food

4/19 electric cars promoted to primary on subsidy fight (GM wants, 180?) and to target2, why dod wind and electric cars fraw some much fire? epitomize am freedom and individualism? plus we hate traffic and our jobs, but mobil cell phone cocoon our only refuge? plus poor/MC ppl cannot afford to live in cities where jobs are so are forced to commute from bedrrom comm?

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act suppress 2

aha/ omg amazing # tags 4/19 capt txt, arguably not complete list 22?

what does that mean?

aha 4/19 related end-runs around law: terms of service, eula

---

ahainsight717

---

forgot this category:

adding mega-trends, big picture

see OMG in Bizzaro

and/or this cat for ideas questions insights generated by the web technique

---

this began/neglected as entine meme eg chemophobia that fear of chemical is more dangerous than chemicals

see psychology of GOP

but now maybe include fear mongering eg left violent mob rule post kavanagh

https://www.alternet.org/heres-real-reason-conservatives-are-terrified-so-called-left-wing-mob

terrorism islamophobe fear monger, fear of sharia law

build a wall mexican rapists

fear of satanist (child molester pizzagate?)

fear of commie world govt blk helo Agenda 21

fear they will take our guns

war on xmas

see conspiracy theory

see self-help cat

see prosperity gospel

goes back to ben franklin, parodied in gatsby?

american reinvention // exceptionalism? rules/ past do not apply, structural forces do not matter, can be overcome with hard work/ will aha

we do not need social safety net if we have amway, power of pos thinking, we are a winner

2/19 all rw new support bulb

The Appliance Standards Awareness Project estimates that the Trump rollback will cost consumers an additional $12 billion per year in 2025.

The editorial noted that the Trump administration has signaled that it would attempt to roll back the 2020 standards further in coming months.

The editorial concluded, “There is no excuse for unnecessary energy waste and every reason for the federal government to coordinate a move toward better bulbs. The Trump administration should halt its know-nothing rollback.”

aha omg: addiction plus last bits of extraction

https://YYY.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/20/high-score-low-pay-gamification-lyft-uber-drivers-ride-hailing-gig-economy

...

language of choice, freedom, and autonomy saturate discussions of ride hailing. “On-demand companies are pointing the way to a more promising future, where people have more freedom to choose when and where they work,” Travis Kalanick, the founder and former CEO of Uber, wrote in October 2015. “Put simply,” he continued, “the future of work is about independence and flexibility.”

In a certain sense, Kalanick is right. Unlike employees in a spatially fixed worksite (the factory, the office, the distribution centre), rideshare drivers are technically free to choose when they work, where they work and for how long. They are liberated from the constraining rhythms of conventional employment or shift work. But that apparent freedom poses a unique challenge to the platforms’ need to provide reliable, “on demand” service to their riders – and so a driver’s freedom has to be aggressively, if subtly, managed. One of the main ways these companies have sought to do this is through the use of gamification.

....

According to Burawoy, production at Allied was deliberately organised by management to encourage workers to play the game. When work took the form of a game, Burawoy observed, something interesting happened: workers’ primary source of conflict was no longer with the boss. Instead, tensions were dispersed between workers (the scheduling man, the truckers, the inspectors), between operators and their machines, and between operators and their own physical limitations (their stamina, precision of movement, focus).

The battle to beat the quota also transformed a monotonous, soul-crushing job into an exciting outlet for workers to exercise their creativity, speed and skill. Workers attached notions of status and prestige to their output, and the game presented them with a series of choices throughout the day, affording them a sense of relative autonomy and control. It tapped into a worker’s desire for self-determination and self-expression. Then, it directed that desire towards the production of profit for their employer.

---

Every Sunday morning, I receive an algorithmically generated “challenge” from Lyft that goes something like this: “Complete 34 rides between the hours of 5am on Monday and 5am on Sunday to receive a $63 bonus.” I scroll down, concerned about the declining value of my bonuses, which once hovered around $100-$220 per week, but have now dropped to less than half that.

“Click here to accept this challenge.” I tap the screen to accept. Now, whenever I log into driver mode, a stat meter will appear showing my progress: only 21 more rides before I hit my first bonus. Lyft does not disclose how its weekly ride challenges are generated, but the value seems to vary according to anticipated demand and driver behaviour. The higher the anticipated demand, the higher the value of my bonus. The more I hit my bonus targets or ride quotas, the higher subsequent targets will be. Sometimes, if it has been a while since I have logged on, I will be offered an uncharacteristically lucrative bonus, north of $100, though it has been happening less and less of late.

Behavioural scientists and video game designers are well aware that tasks are likely to be completed faster and with greater enthusiasm if one can visualise them as part of a progression towards a larger, pre-established goal. The Lyft stat meter is always present, always showing you what your acceptance rating is, how many rides you have completed, how far you have to go to reach your goal.

In addition to enticing drivers to show up when and where demand hits, one of the main goals of this gamification is worker retention. According to Uber, 50% of drivers stop using the application within their first two months, and a recent report from the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California in Davis suggests that just 4% of ride-hail drivers make it past their first year.

Retention is a problem in large part because the economics of driving are so bad. Researchers have struggled to establish exactly how much money drivers make, but with the release of two recent reports, one from the Economic Policy Institute and one from MIT, a consensus on driver pay seems to be emerging: drivers make, on average, between $9.21 (£7.17) and $10.87 (£8.46) per hour. What these findings confirm is what many of us in the game already know: in most major US cities, drivers are pulling in wages that fall below local minimum-wage requirements. According to an internal slide deck obtained by the New York Times, Uber actually identifiesMcDonald’s as its biggest competition in attracting new drivers. When I began driving for Lyft, I made the same calculation most drivers make: it is better to make $9 per hour than to make nothing.

Before Lyft rolled out weekly ride challenges, there was the “Power Driver Bonus”, a weekly challenge that required drivers to complete a set number of regular rides. I sometimes worked more than 50 hours per week trying to secure my PDB, which often meant driving in unsafe conditions, at irregular hours and accepting nearly every ride request, including those that felt potentially dangerous (I am thinking specifically of an extremely drunk and visibly agitated late-night passenger).

...

11/18 see ggl tag connected to variety of power, mil , china etc etc

gingrich 24 tags, book man who broke politics

god/devil terms polarysis

---

aha note nexus to dereg, pvt of sci, cult corrupt (do we need node short hand got pvt commons and socialize costs? we have pvt tag

https://www.alternet.org/drugs/drug-companies-are-funding-investigational-studies-influence-their-results

Remember how appalled we felt as a society when we discovered that, for so long, we had been mistakenly taking Big Tobacco’s word that cigarettes are harmless? Rinse and repeat with lobbyists for Big Alcohol fear-mongering about legal weed. And again and again with a panoply of consumer-level commodities and goods.

Nowadays we have all these familiar worries, but about our drugs and medications instead. It’s become so bad that there's now reason to believe Big Pharma is also colluding to poison the well of scientific inquiry.

The truth is, there are many examples of private industry paying for positive press from the scientific community. When you look closer at our spending priorities as a nation, it’s not entirely difficult to see why. As public funding for the sciences has fallen away, many scientists have had to pivot toward more consistent—and ethically fraught—sources of funding and stability as surely as politicians who, for want of public election funding, get buoyed by billionaires at $100,000-per-plate fundraising dinners.

We’ll take a look at case studies in a moment, but for right now, think about how important it is for us to be able to trust, at a minimum level, the products we invite into our bodies and our homes.

It’s become common knowledge that the pharmaceutical industry is one of the most corrupt out there. This is a serious affront to justice that has gone on for far too long. The fight for consumer protections of all kinds can and must begin with health care, medicines, prescription drugs and medical devices. Here are the stakes.

The Erosion of Trust

In 2006, GlaxoSmithKline—the esoteric name for a ubiquitous diabetes treatment brand—took a victory lap after a lengthy report in the New England Journal of Medicine declared its Avandia medication to be the most effective of the three diabetes drugs tested.

Unfortunately for readers and patients, the extent of the report’s bias was not as attention-grabbing as the headline and ensuing celebratory press releases. In fact, with the help of the FDA and renowned heart specialist Steven Nissen, the Washington Post found that GlaxoSmithKline directly funded the research itself. All 11 of the paper's authors had received consultation fees, grants or another form of monetary compensation.

There may be no clearer example of conflicts of interest in the halls of science. Given the degree to which private money may have influenced the result of this scientific endeavor, we have little choice but to assume it did.

Even worse? The drug didn’t merely fail to help patients cope with their illnesses, it actually raised their risk of heart attack. Avandia effectively doesn’t exist anymore in the U.S., in part because GlaxoSmithKline was so busy trying to force two logical dots to connect that it didn’t even pick up on all the collateral damage.

This is outrageous. Consumers shouldn’t have to second-guess the medical professionals who are supposed to help us take care of ourselves.

The Fall of Accountable Science

Between 2011 and 2012, the New England Journal of Medicine published more than 70 “original studies” of newly FDA-approved and experimental drugs. Of these 70-plus reports:

Up until about the 1980s, the federal government was the primary financier of scientific research in the world of medicine. In the '60s and '70s, the federal government had a 70 percent share of scientific research. In 2013, that number finally dropped below the 50 percent mark.Sixty received direct pharmaceutical company funding.
Fifty were written or co-written by a current employee of a pharmaceutical company.
Thirty-seven had lead writers who had, at some point, received speaking fees or other compensation from the subject of the study.

As you may have guessed, there is at least token legal oversight available for clinical investigations of new drugs in the form of FDA regulation. In addition to protecting the personal information of trial participants (patients), the FDA also maintains that no drug may reach the investigation phase until its effects—and its lack of harm—have both been documented in a lab setting. As you can likely tell, these protections no longer appear adequate.

It has become an open secret that most of the drugs the FDA concerns itself with cannot be relied upon to greatly outperform placebos, or existing treatments, in a vast majority of cases. Moreover, the wholesale regulatory capture of the FDA has resulted in a situation where this vital public office serves as a glorified rubber patent stamp for protecting medicines as privately owned, profit-generating pieces of intellectual property.

The American People Are No Longer in Control of Their Scientific Destiny

A generation or so ago, the skill with which a nation pursued and made use of scientific knowledge was one of the chief metrics of its greatness.However, starting in the 1980s, the United States took a decided turn away from public sector expansion. Reagan-era policies aimed to privatize government services in the name of balancing local and state budgets.Since then, the world has watched as Americans have continued to vote accountable government and transparent scientific study nearly out of existence by proponents of “small government” and the shifting of fiscal, bureaucratic and legislative power from the public to the private sector.

When corporatists boast of the rate of innovation in the private sector, they generally fail to mention where the money came from that makes all that innovation possible—or what America used to do with it instead. In truth, privatization does not necessarily lead to less government, as its proponents would like to believe. In many cases of privatized innovation, the government still plays a significant role along the value chain of innovation.

The difference, though, is that instead of the government being involved for the sake of oversight and accountability, profit-seeking privatized enterprises can lobby for the expansion of public funding just the same as those in the public sector would. Those private companies can then skim off only the most successful ventures. It’s simply another example of how the government continues to turn a blind eye to unethical, profit-mongering business practices in the name of “trickle down economics,” which we know have not worked in the past.

However, the winds of change seem to be shifting. For all our present social and political turmoil, we’re more aware of the problem than ever before. But before we can fix it, we must remember science is, like any other endeavor, a human institution.

Like a passionate grade-school teacher who can’t do her best work due to a lack of school funding, scientists of all stripes are, after all, human beings with their own biases, internal monologues, ideas, agendas and needs. Science is one of the most vitally important institutions we have right now. Most Americans say it’s very nearly the only thing that matters in the face of global, anthropocentric climate change, but it’s currently perishing from neglect.

Here is the silver lining: Though junk science seems to have a stubborn place in the spotlight and in our shared vocabulary, scientists are actively trying to turn the tables. Inspired in part by the fallout from the 2016 election, American scientists are seeking political office at a brisk clip—and being vocal about it, too.

Additionally, it seems that we are finally collectively beginning to wake up to the enormous disservices that Big Pharma has done our society. Throwing our support behind scientist-politicians could be one aid to the problem, but we also need to address the bigger issues at hand with how our medical knowledge is funded and who we can trust to provide us with real answers to medical questions.

Government oversight and funding are important aspects of that, and improved transparency regarding where we’re getting our “science” is something people are finally starting to advocate for, and should continue to. With this two-part awakening in both the scientific and general community, we can only hope that we are, at last, reaching the end of the road for scientific illiteracy in the States.

IER inside the wire at DOE

staffers? FCC

fischer wrote BS study, see Spanish

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4/17

gambling

adelson big funder, trump seemed to make $ in casino (mafia?)

ney, abramoff, ralph reed, rip off indians

Manafort, Cohn, STONE

profit/ extraction on collapse of middle class [proto Uber airbnb]

tump inaugr slush fund

frc backed TP 2010 wave, 2 in penn anticipates blow wall fall trump?

many investigative reporters are targets, jack anderswon rmn enemy list kill LSD?

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this is age of trump

layers/scales:

1) CEC Conservative Entertainment Complex: fox news of course but also reality TV, wrestling, even moving pict inst "documentaries" eg duck dynasty guy; give the lie to Liberal Media (tho they just claim puny counter-wt).

2) Echo chamber; this refers to earlier and now seemingly quaint constellation of WSJ, Forbes, Fox maybe Drudge.

3) Escalator Effect: refers to low level no filter areas of vulnerability that allow BS to work its way up the food chain to mainstream legit media. Thus "punked"

see Breitbart, fake news, bots, conspiracy theory

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docu vids pivotal

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arbusto draper

EJ aha proxy for all ?! see constellation

---

aha clickbait CEC plus big data plus dark $? //Bb?

XANDRIA, Va. — Last week, with the midterm elections fast approaching, the conservative website Independent Journal Review was not focused on the control of the Senate or crucial statehouse races. Instead, it led its home page with a gruesome beheading on Long Island and a video of a belligerent drunk being arrested at a Dallas airport.

But sprinkled throughout the attention-grabbing fare was a steady stream of articles critical of President Obama and other Democrats. “Obama’s schedule from today shows how toxic he is to Democrats running for Senate,” read one headline. Another asked, “Did Hillary intentionally talk over a crowd singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her?” (The sub-headline: “If elected president, she would be the second oldest in history.”)

IJReview, a two-year-old site started by a pair of Republican operatives, has emerged as one of the most popular online destinations for conservatives. The site mixes entertaining, shareable topics like pets through a conservative-values lens (for example, a recent piece about a dog helping to heal a sick veteran) with articles about politics and policy.

“It’s like if you crossed RedState with BuzzFeed,” said Alex Castellanos, a Republican political consultant and an adviser to IJReview.

and SOCIAL MEDIA

promoted primary on trump

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post trump win ppl said TP koch support not true?!

rogue's gallary anti conservation LEED

AG NY capone tax?

https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/E212D5AA-EEF5-535C-9D0D-27920B094E45#-3112

regulatory capture may comeout of good preactice, eg 1906 the jungle teddy wants the meat indistry to pay for saftey inspection by gov't, but OTS bond rating agency, the co regulated becomes the boss/funder

sinclair lewis quote on blindness willful vs paycheck

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amplifying feedback: Tea Party, trump

social network "supernode"

luther 95 thesis were statement he wanted to have a debate, al l greeks, but picked up by one printer, then copies copied

standage writing on the wall; ppl would copy letter, coffeehouse, hyperlocal newspaper, reprinted letter; steam press, TV Radio (one way, centralized, impersonal) 1833 penny paper with ads

sil valley "accelerant" https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-december-28-2016/

aha; trump may be the culmination of disabling of moderation: free press, then clickbait

fake news propagated by twitter and facebook and google

trump twitter candidacy fed TV coverge; donny as proto troll

twitter bots

YAF hub deep trump

odd strain of nepotism?

Relatives of the administration were also given jobs, such as Ari Fleischer’s brother Michael, and Simone Ledeen, the daughter of Michael Ledeen. Cheney’s daughter Liz, also did a short stint. However, it should be noted that none of them lounged around for too long in what soon became a hellhole in Iraq.

is trump the culmination of loss of moderating forces?

promoted to 2ndary on twitter bots 2016 election trump

leverage social networks, un filtererd but also filter bubble blogosphere echo

key swing states alec-kochalypse, pence?

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cheddar mafia wi

gerrymander, voter ID Koch alecKochaplyse

ryan, sykes, preibus, okeefe, john doe, cfg

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13083/dark-money-is-contested-convention-paul-ryan

In the run-up to Wisconsin's April 5 primary, the state's GOP machine worked in lockstep to throw their support behind Ted Cruz in a last ditch effort to block Trump.

First, Scott Walker suggested that with an open GOP convention, "it's very likely [the nominee] would be someone who's not currently running."

Then right-wing radio hosts lead by WTMJ's Charlie Sykes savaged Trump on the air. In Sykes' view, it is Ryan who represents Wisconsin's "sort of inclusive, aspirational style of conservatism" that could win support.

Then Walker made a last minute, tepid endorsement of Cruz on Sykes' show, saying Cruz was "the best positioned by far" to beat Trump.

Then national Club for Growth spent a whopping $1 million on TV ads instructing the GOP faithful to skip John Kasich and support Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Trump.

Watching all this U.S. Rep. Scott Krug, a bemused Kasich supporter, explained: "I think this is a three-corner bank shot." Krug told the right-wing outlet Breitbart, "I don't think there's that much of a lovefest for Ted Cruz, but they're just using him to keep Trump below 1,237 delegates so they can broker the convention for Paul Ryan."

In the end, Trump won the majority of Wisconsin counties, 44 out of 72, but lost the key counties where the right-wing radio hosts had the best opportunity to pound home the Club for Growth message.

Beware "Wisconsin Nice"

If the anti-Trump wing of the GOP coalesces around Ryan, it won't be because the Ayn Rand fan represents a moderate, "inclusive" conservatism when it comes to policy. Ryan just puts a smiling face on the same extremist policies the Kochs and their allies have been pushing all along.

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aha: linkage from sea level rise to chemical spoll eg katrina

http://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-lawsuit-mystic-river-2024418598.html

ExxonMobil is facing a first-of-its-kind lawsuit for failing to account for the risks from climate change to its fuel storage terminal outside Boston. The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) claims that sea level rise and accompanying storm surges could damage the facility and lead to further pollution of the Mystic River.

....

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not my aha

The sociologists say one major reason why attempts to better communicate the realities of climate change to conservatives have failed is down to “motivated cognition” — described as the tendency for people to only accept information that reinforces their existing political beliefs and their views on the world.

Even when Republicans experience extreme weather events, there was little evidence that this was enough for those voters to change their views. Dunlap told DeSmog:

“I fear polarization will be difficult to overcome because Republican reluctance to accept the reality and seriousness of human-caused climate change is in a self-reinforcing loop.

There are top-down cues from Republican political elites and their supporters from conservative think tanks to conservative media — especially the Murdoch media— that influence voters, as well as bottom-up pressure from party activists such as Tea Party supporters who act as ‘enforcers’ of party principles, especially in primary elections to select Republican candidates.

The result is that global warming has joined God, guns, gays, and abortion as core elements of Republican identity, and this will be hard to change.”

http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/08/31/americans-now-more-politically-polarized-climate-change-ever-analysis-finds

mcW and dunlap

trump corey lewan was koch AFP connected by BOSSIE CU! axis of evil, together at last

disaster capitalism

see corps that profit on GW shock doctrine?

MIC and PIC together at last

MTC prisons in iraq? contractors

convergence:

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UN is moderation, IPCC conference, Paris Cop 15

cf agenda 21, JBS black helicopters, FEMA camps, blue hull navy, gun /arms sales agreement scuttled?see also C Streeet / evangelicals

, milita, TP, wise use, cfact, ncppr

---

big law lobby firms have belguim brussels HQ

co fdr doug goodyear (mcCain OMG whole staff was DCI, including matt rhoades)

TCC pioneer journo-lobbying

team blue subpoena

hyde TP prophet: grassroots/astro plus ideology shift ~ gov't

---

FCF nazi, ellis --> armpac delay

rove flipped texas, judiciary in texas (--> tort reform?) phil Gramm, rick perry, beat ann Richards, beat hightower, dubya, NCLB, Cornyn...

yaf 1 org, amazing # ppl orgs come from it

anwr foes stunning

systematic disabling of MODERATION

8/16

NB decentralized orgs like naacp and aclu open themselves up to a local bogus chapter/person going rogue out of a PO box, see congress of bl women florida cf rentatom silverglate FIRE.

7/16

social media create maw that must be fed, so good use of cheap student labor is all those interns; they get instant feedback, can network, can work their way up ring within org eg FIRE) or up escalator: ctt, legislative aide, staffer, spokesperson, oppo res, candidate

[caption with derigeur unflattering foto: A group of conservative leaders calls on Americans to urge their representatives in Washington to protect citizens from abuse by IRS officials such as Lois Lerner, above. ] cute Portrait of Leah Jessen, so a PR platform for baby ideological entre?

@_LeahKay_

Leah Jessen is a news reporter for The Daily Signal and graduate of The Heritage Foundation's Young Leaders Program. Send an email to Leah.

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6/16

CIR: Use DC? anti-SLAPP; they sems to care more about forcing their adversaries to pay their (inflated?) legal fees, so anti-SLAPP just reverts/perverts/ to SLAPP?!

evil co's bought by china bottom feed do not are about PR they drive Buicks

smithfield pork (McRib? ;)

SYNGENTA CHINA?

43billion $

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/03/senators-try-to-scuttle-syngentachemchina-merger-in-a-harbinger-for-u-s-posture-toward-chinese-investment.html

RR as tipping pt: ~ unions, deregulation (heritage mandate)

Merger mania (media consolidation)

unleashed Rush (--. fox --> trump?!)

gov't is the problem meme

bankrupted the country but teflon sainthood --> drinking game

a race between mod and deathmatch/ endgame

---

BOOKS:

see vanity

I have overlooked the moderating / gate-keeping of book and magazine publishers; but merger mania led to media consolidation, deadly to journalism, presiably also affect book co which become part of the media conglomerate. Moreover, presumably synergy in that the same content can be put on several platform and different media.

Presemably as solomon does anthology of columns get bundled into a book, and more than a few denial books (often from vanity press) are anthologies (maybe some log-rolling, and each guy uses netowrk to get blurbs?)

But a book still has cachet/cred that almost noting else does? Plus it gets reviwed (this endorsed, but also a summary is posted and reposted, so no one actually has to read the thing; books also give cred for spker bureau (ideally bd of dir gig, tho i have not seen one for co, just bogus NGO).

Amazon rankings five instant automagic and seeming irrefutable statistical evidence (tho ur TP bus tour to train activists to trash Amazon ratings of lefty books;

amazing that Geo Gilder wrote Amazon rev, praised Richard Vigilante co.

A book also validates book tour, interviews on TV and radio shows, presumably desperate for fodder;

plus a book author is better than mere bloviator/pundit?

Conservatve book clubs? virtual?

But now books can be self-published, and kindle/ereader is losing negative rep? Note amazon has button to vote for ereader version. But self-publ means no fact checker. so 180 on moderation

Steyn has a virtual publishing house? // Richard Vigilante under R Littlefield? Big books corps already had in-house imprints as Rush and Beck big sellers (and Al Franken, Moore?]

odd rollover:

not real

real but not human caised

human caused to too $$$ to fix

real, hu caused but then ACT opposite? 2 eg

is trump the ultimate frankenstein product of Cons Ent Complex, escalator/echo

fame based on reality show

trump has ju jistsued mpd eg PC

mussolini started out as populist/worker?

reagan democrats, nixon hardhats

reboot/spin on old I'll make govt run like/ be as effic as biz (romney)

huffington hubby bloomberg? forbes

disenfranchise

INCLUDES REDISTRICTING AND MACHINES

numerous gop controlled states pushing voter ID (see sep newer node) , anti-abortion and pro-gun legislation.

also includes voter fraud scam

see Redmap pgm gerrymander

~ mod: see voter disenfranchise, voting machine, camp finance reform,

TIPPING PT:

frack TPP pincer on coal; they bet big on China, 3 in bankruptcy (tho hillary had to walk back on primary, local and temp)

tort reform class action RICO

Divest picking up steam umass? rockefeller bros

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rwi denier must hate to be on back foot, so long Gore afraid to debate trope:

Both Marc Morano and Joe Bastardi are well-known climate change deniers (Mr. Morano said once that he prefers the term “extreme doubter”). In an opinion piece in the unusual Patriot Post online publication, Mr. Bastardi insisted that there is nothing unusual going on in our Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. In time for Earth Day, I issued a video challenge that was published on The Huffington Post. I offered and still offer to bet Mr. Bastardi $10,000 that this year 2016 will be among the top 10 warmest years on record. I offer him another $10,000 that the decade 2010-2020 will prove to be the warmest on record. Mr. Bastardi wrote a second piece in which he re-stated his belief that carbon dioxide has little effect on global temperatures. Incidentally, despite publishing a “midday digest” every day, no one at the Patriot Post has responded to my enquiries.

from staff:

"school of delay" K street?

conrad burns staffers rev dr telecom?

McConnell mafia

---

FTI consult

all have same sr title, nearly all ex staffers, one boehner

poster boy staffer?

steven law

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/head-of-crossroads-gps-once-a-mcconnell-aide-now-his-political-ally/2012/10/30/9f17ea2a-1329-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html

junkets

a neglected category: promoted to primary after RAGA

got attn in abramoff, scotland golf trip, sweat shop (forced abortions) on Marians Is nominally Made in USA

ALEC trips to New Orleans, Vegas etc) SPN

it's a major form of bribery for state officials

also ASPEN koch

---

raga naag?

The schedule of attorney general conferences for the coming year is laid out — after a pause for the elections — with events set for theFontainebleau resort in Miami Beach, the Four Seasons Hotel at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and the Grand Wailea resort on Maui, among many others. The invitations for corporate sponsorships are already being sent.

RAGA? big ~CPP, bondi endorse trump

but schIderman NY AG goes after exxon, SEC enforce disclosure of risk CSR leverage

INFLECTION POINT?

Peabody bankrupt,alt energy invest 2x FF?

scalia RIP

4/1/16

tipping pt: union ~RTW majority w/ W va 1/16

http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=lrfOd76gitakfEMCQJeawaDHvA8T5rim

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China is our banker; walmart if front/beard; buying up resources land (water?) in Africa, bought pork and now

http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/03/syngenta-merger

also H&K, coal blackwater

native am are the 1st, smallest and poorest demographic thus unfair/completely logical that they are on the front lines of coal, nuke, water, XL, death squads, koch, abramoff, allbaugh, strafor sea level rise, gambling, Buffet, roger stone, wise use, Ridenour, Ralph Reed, phil Anschutz

some native ppl eat from land eg salmon, so ecology necessity

Am. prosperity built on Indian land and AA labor; subtext to who built that fight? real history rebuke to our founding myths; continuing poverty/crime pointas to continuing/structural inequality

enron crash was dress rehearsal/ precursor to Gt recession, both caused by Gramm dereg:

pension plan: ; starr at Baylor rape; Graham, Dudley, Bolten, ebharrison, Boren Okla; funding cut in gt rec and sequester from feds, so states rause tuition, leads to Biz #1 major?

see hedge, dark $, inequality, offhsore

Matthew effect:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/economy/for-the-wealthiest-private-tax-system-saves-them-billions.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/millennials-have-gotten-royally-screwed-thats-why-theyre-voting-bernie-sanders

black lives and student debt overlap like suffrage and abolition? bernie invites muslim woman on stage

coal subsidy

tool:

http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/sites/default/files/docs/pdf/UncleSamsFavoriteCorporations.pdf

provision of the 2009 Recovery Act providing cash payments in lieu of tax credits. Iberdrola’s subsidy total is $2.2 billion. Other top grant/ allocated tax credit recipients include NextEra Energy (parent of Florida Power & Light), NRG Energy, Southern Company, Summit Power and SCS Energy, each with more than $1 billion. The results exclude the numerous corporate tax breaks that ca

http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/subsidy-tracker

post san bernadino mass shooting, NRA mirror of regulatory capture, a gun safety group taken over by trade front/lobby

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PIVOT PT:

BP Withdraws

In the immediate aftermath of the speech, BP announced that it would be withdrawing from the Global Climate Coalition.

It issued a short statement which included the following quote from Browne: “The time to consider the policy dimension of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point.”

Shell would follow shortly after, and the transatlantic coalition would slowly unravel. The environmentalists, by targeting shareholders and leveraging Blair's influence over his friend Browne, had delivered a knockout blow.

The sceptics in the oil industry had lost their extremely well-funded, effective and brutal weapon in the war against climate regulations. Energy companies could not rely on openly funded, and in some ways honest, special interest-lobbying front groups.

The executives at Exxon faced the prospect of having to come to terms with climate science and rebuild their multi-billion dollar company in its entirety, from the tip of the rotary oil drill, along the pipelines and refineries, to the nozzle of the petrol pump pushed into the back of the SUV.

Or they could instead go it alone in the public relations and lobbying war. Exxon and the remaining oil companies would have to find new allies.

...

http://desmog.uk/2015/03/21/what-happened-when-former-bp-boss-lord-browne-called-action-climate-change

By Brendan Montague • Saturday, March 21, 2015

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hmmn, maybe better in sys? death spiral?

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/01092015/fossil-fuel-industry-ensures-CEO-executive-pay-bonues-sink-climate

A report released Wednesday examining the pay practices of the 30 largest publicly held U.S. oil, gas, and coal companies concluded that pay incentives for the companies' chief executives encourages reckless behavior and is hastening a climate crisis.

In the analysis, all 13 oil exploration and production companies examined by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) tied executive bonuses to increasing the amount of proven carbon reserves each year.

"What we are essentially doing here is paying people massive amounts of money to continue to drill and burn and do things that are going to harm the planet and put a lot of costs on the rest of us," said lead author Sarah Anderson of IPS, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Fossil fuel companies current hold vast reserves of oil, gas, and coal which, if burned in their entirety would emit five times the amount of carbon than can be emitted to keep the planet from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius. The same companies also spend $600 billion a year to locate additional carbon reserves.

"These companies are already sitting on reserves that if fully burned would cause catastrophic effects, so why are we tying executive bonuses to expanding those reserves?" Anderson said.

Compensation packages for corporate executives are increasingly tied to short-term profit gains, a practice financial watchdogs criticize. For the oil and gas sector, however, the concern is amplified by the carbon dioxide emissions created from burning fossil fuels.

"When you're talking about companies with this great of an impact on our long-term health, we think it is even more necessary to take a long hard look at this and change the incentives," Anderson said.

The report cites the salary and stock bonuses of ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, who made a reported $33 million in 2014. Under Tillerson, Exxon has boosted share prices by buying back its own stock, which also inflates Tillerson's equity-based pay. According to the report, 51 percent of ExxonMobil earnings per share growth from 2003-13 was a result of buybacks. Tillerson owns an estimated $166 million worth of shares.

ConocoPhillips also gave its CEO, Ryan Lance, an 18 percent raise to $27 million in 2014, the report says, while the company laid off 1,500 employees that year.

One group looking to change incentives for oil and gas company executives is Ceres, a non-profit sustainability advocacy organization based in Boston. In 2013, the group launched the Carbon Asset Risk Initiative to work with fossil fuel companies to address the financial risks of climate change.

"It really comes down to compensating executives for creating value for the company rather than compensating for amassing huge reserves on their books that might never be exploited or brought to market," said Shanna Cleveland, a senior manager at Ceres.

For the past 150 years, the best way for these companies to make more money was to sell more barrels of oil, so increasing reserves made sense. We are now, however, entering a period of transition where continued expansion of reserves isn't necessarily in a company's best interest, Cleveland said.

"You need to think about whether you've got reserves on your books that are resilient to reduced prices for a barrel of oil, lower demand scenarios, and whether or not you can generate revenues from other types of energy sources," Cleveland said.

A 2014 study by European financial services company Kepler Cheuvreux compared potential investments by oil companies over a 20-year period. The study found that onshore wind would be competitive with oil over a 20-year period if oil sold for $25 a barrel. Offshore wind would be competitive with oil at at $50 a barrel and solar would compete at $75 a barrel. Oil is currently trading at $47 a barrel, down from $100 in July 2014.

The current report also found fault with share repurchases, a controversial practice of public companies buying back shares of their own stock. Critics say this artificially inflates a company's share price. In 2014, 23 of the top 30 fossil fuel companies spent a combined $38.5 billion repurchasing shares, a figure six times larger than the $6.6 billion all corporations spent that year on research into renewable energy, according to the report.

"The money that is disgorged through share repurchases would be much better spent doing research and development on green energy technologies," said Lynn Stout, a professor of corporate law at Cornell University. Forty years ago the average American public company reinvested 40 percent of its profits into its business. Today, due in part to share repurchases, reinvestment is typically less than 15 percent, Stout said.

kpfa 8/26 why press cover stock mkt vs economy

rich ish wht ppl the only ones who can afford to work in media; rich wht ppl own stocks, so stocks seems to = economy; this in part explains why middle and lower class ppl do not vote their interest. also fearful ppl (one paychecvk away from loss of MC) susceptible to propaganda

8/15

all eco-heroes are targets (the question is why)

AHA: texas is southern thus conservative/racist, but oil has produce millionaires who affect state and national elections, eg Bush 1 and esp 2; Rove engineered judicial takeover, leveraged evangelicals; delay pioneered gerrymander at state? dems fled. hunt bros/fred koch; jfk shot.

as goes texas book vs CA bellwether? 2 americas?

renta-tom

---

Many of the Bhopal-related emails, addressed from Stratfor to Dow and Union Carbide public relations directors, reveal concern that, in the lead-up to the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, the Bhopal issue might be expanded into an effective systemic critique of corporate rule, and speculate at length about why this hasn't yet happened—providing a fascinating window onto what at least some corporate types fear most from activists.

"[Bhopal activists] have made a slight nod toward expanded activity, but never followed through on it—the idea of 'other Bhopals' that were the fault of Dow or others," mused Joseph de Feo, who is listed in one online source as a "Briefer" for Stratfor.

"Maybe the Yes Men were the pinnacle. They made an argument in their way on their terms—that this is a corporate problem and a part of the a [sic] larger whole," wrote Kathleen Morson, Stratfor's Director of Policy Analysis.

"With less than a month to go [until the 25th anniversary], you'd think that the major players—especially Amnesty—would have branched out from Bhopal to make a broader set of issues. I don't see any evidence of it," wrote Bart Mongoven, Stratfor's Vice President, in November 2004. "If they can't manage to use the 25th anniversary to broaden the issue, they probably won't be able to."

Mongoven even speculates on coordination between various activist campaigns that had nothing to do with each other. "The Chevron campaign [in Ecuador] is remarkably similar [to the Dow campaign] in its unrealistic demand. Is it a follow up or an admission that the first thrust failed? Am I missing a node of activity or a major campaign that is to come? Has the Dow campaign been more successful than I think?" It's almost as if Mongoven assumes the two campaigns were directed from the same central activist headquarters.

Just as Wall Street has at times let slip their fear of the Occupy Wall Street movement, these leaks seem to show that corporate power is most afraid of whatever reveals "the larger whole" and "broader issues," i.e. whatever brings systemic criminal behavior to light. "Systemic critique could lead to policy changes that would challenge corporate power and profits in a really major way," noted Joseph Huff-Hannon, recently-promoted Director of Policy Analysis for the Yes Lab.

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charter pvtization but also heavy subsidy

http://www.prwatch.org/node/12830

kidswarm in countries we backed death squads? (special forces? // sch of americas?]

honduras dangerous for greens; indig prize fight dam (wow, bertha caceres 3/16 rip)

kinda like Mt Shasta?!

We don’t need much help to imagine what a world under these provisions of the TPP would look like. We need look no further than some of the current investor-state dispute cases in which powerful international corporations are demanding millions – sometimes billions – of dollars in claims, against countries both poor and wealthy, for the sin of protecting their citizens.

This is the very same system that the Bechtel Corporation used to attempt to drain $50 million from the Bolivian public treasury after the corporation had been thrown out during the Cochabamba Water War.

This is the same system that Canadian mining firm Pacific Rim, recently taken over by Oceana Gold, is using to try to extract over $300 million from the people of El Salvador for having rejected mining operations that threaten to contaminate their drinking water.

---

capt/lost 3/15

5 Powerful Shifts Transforming the Future of American Society into Something Unrecognizable and Frightening

Have you ever undertaken some task you felt less than qualified for, but knew that someone needed to do? Consider this piece my version of that, and let me put what I do understand about it in a nutshell: based on developments in our post-9/11 world, we could be watching the birth of a new American political system and way of governing for which, as yet, we have no name.

And here’s what I find strange: the evidence of this, however inchoate, is all around us and yet it’s as if we can’t bear to take it in or make sense of it or even say that it might be so.

Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging: political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth branch of government; and the demobilization of "we the people."

Whatever this may add up to, it seems to be based, at least in part, on the increasing concentration of wealth and power in a new plutocratic class and in that ever-expanding national security state. Certainly, something out of the ordinary is underway, and yet its birth pangs, while widely reported, are generally categorized as aspects of an exceedingly familiar American system somewhat in disarray.

1% Elections

Check out the news about the 2016 presidential election and you’ll quickly feel a sense of been-there, done-that. As a start, the two names most associated with it, Bush and Clinton, couldn’t be more familiar, highlighting as they do the curiously dynastic quality of recent presidential contests. (If a Bush or Clinton should win in 2016 and again in 2020, a member of one of those families will have controlled the presidency for 28 of the last 36 [4] years.)

Take, for instance, “Why 2016 Is Likely to Become a Close Race,” a recent piece [5] Nate Cohn wrote for my hometown paper. A noted election statistician, Cohn points out that, despite Hillary Clinton’s historically staggering lead in Democratic primary polls (and lack of serious challengers), she could lose the general election. He bases this on what we know about her polling popularity from the Monica Lewinsky moment of the 1990s to the present. Cohn assures readers that Hillary will not “be a Democratic Eisenhower, a popular, senior statesperson who cruises to an easy victory.” It’s the sort of comparison that offers a certain implicit reassurance about the near future. (No, Virginia, we haven’t left the world of politics in which former general and president Dwight D. Eisenhower can still be a touchstone.)

Cohn may be right when it comes to Hillary’s electability, but this is not Dwight D. Eisenhower’s or even Al Gore’s America. If you want a measure of that, consider this year’s primaries. I mean, of course, the 2015 ones. Once upon a time, the campaign season started with candidates flocking to Iowa and New Hampshire early in the election year to establish their bona fides among party voters. These days, however, those are already late primaries.

The early primaries, the ones that count, take place among a small group of millionaires and billionaires [6], a new caste flush with cash who will personally, or through complex networks of funders, pour multi-millions of dollars into the campaigns of candidates of their choice. So the early primaries -- this year mainly a Republican affair -- are taking place in resort spots like Las Vegas, Rancho Mirage, California, and Sea Island, Georgia, as has beenwidely reported [7]. These “contests” involve groveling politicians appearing at the beck and call of the rich and powerful, and so reflect our new 1% electoral system. (The main pro-Hillary super PAC, for instance, is aiming for a kitty of $500 million [8] heading into 2016, while the Koch brothers network has already promised to drop almost $1 billion [9] into the coming campaign season, doubling their efforts in the last presidential election year.)

Ever since the Supreme Court opened up the ultimate floodgates with its 2010 Citizens United [10] decision, each subsequent election has seen record-breaking amounts of money donated and spent. The 2012 presidential campaign was the first $2 billion election [11]; campaign 2016 is expected to hit [12]the $5 billion mark without breaking a sweat. By comparison, according to Burton Abrams and Russell Settle in their study, “The Effect of Broadcasting on Political Campaign Spending,” Republicans and Democrats spent just under $13 million combined in 1956 when Eisenhower won his second term.

In the meantime, it’s still true that the 2016 primaries will involve actual voters, as will the election that follows. The previous election season, the midterms of 2014, cost almost $4 billion [13], a record despite the number of small donors continuing to drop [14]. It also represented the lowest midterm voter [15]turnout since World War II. (See: demobilization of the public, below -- and add in the demobilization of the Democrats as a real party, the breaking of organized labor, the fragmenting of the Republican Party, and the return of voter suppression laws [16] visibly meant to limit the franchise.) It hardly matters just what the flood of new money does in such elections, when you can feel the weight of inequality [17] bearing down on the whole process in a way that is pushing us somewhere new.

The Privatization of the State (or the U.S. as a Prospective Third-World Nation)

In the recent coverage of the Hillary Clinton email flap, you can find endless references to the Clintons of yore [18] in wink-wink, you-know-how-they-are-style reporting; and yes, she did delete a lot of emails; and yes, it’s an election year coming and, as everyone points out, the Republicans are going to do their best to keep the email issue alive until hell freezes over, etc., etc. Again, the coverage, while eyeball gluing, is in a you’ve-seen-it-all-before, you’ll-see-it-all-again-mode.

However, you haven’t seen it all before. The most striking aspect of this little brouhaha lies in what’s most obvious but least highlighted. An American secretary of state chose to set up her own private, safeguarded email system for doing government work; that is, she chose to privatize her communications. If this were Cairo, it might not warrant a second thought. But it didn’t happen in some third-world state. It was the act of a key official of the planet’s reigning (or thrashing) superpower, which -- even if it wasn’t [19] the first time such a thing had ever occurred -- should be taken as a tiny symptom of something that couldn’t be larger or, in the long stretch of history, newer: the ongoing privatization of the American state, or at least the national security part of it.

Though the marriage of the state and the corporation has a pre-history, the full-scale arrival of the warrior corporation [20] only occurred after 9/11. Someday, that will undoubtedly be seen as a seminal moment in the formation of whatever may be coming in this country. Only 13 years later, there is no part of the war state that has not experienced major forms of privatization. The U.S. military could no longer go to war without its crony corporations doing KP [21] and guard duty, delivering the mail, building the bases, and being involved in just about all of its activities, including training [22] the militaries of foreign allies and even fighting. Such warrior corporations are now involved in every aspect of the national security state, including torture [23], drone strikes [24], and -- to the tune of hundreds of thousands [25] of contract employees like Edward Snowden -- intelligence gathering and spying. You name it and, in these years, it’s been at least partly privatized.

All you have to do is read reporter James Risen’s recent book, Pay Any Price [26], on how the global war on terror was fought in Washington, and you know that privatization has brought something else with it: corruption, scams, and the gaming of the system for profits of a sort that might normally be associated with a typical third-world kleptocracy. And all of this, a new world being born, was reflected in a tiny way in Hillary Clinton’s very personal decision about her emails.

Though it’s a subject I know so much less about, this kind of privatization (and the corruption that goes with it) is undoubtedly underway in the non-war-making, non-security-projecting part of the American state as well.

The De-legitimization of Congress and the Presidency

On a third front, American “confidence” in the three classic check-and-balance branches of government, as measured by polling outfits, continues to fall. In 2014, Americans expressing [27] a “great deal of confidence” in the Supreme Court hit a new low of 23%; in the presidency, it was 11%, and in Congress a bottom-scraping 5%. (The military, on the other hand, registers at 50%.) The figures for “hardly any confidence at all” are respectively 20%, 44%, and more than 50%. All are in or near record-breaking territory for the last four decades.

It seems fair to say that in recent years Congress has been engaged in a process of delegitimizing itself. Where that body once had the genuine power to declare war, for example, it is now “debating” in a desultory fashion [28] an “authorization” for a war against the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, and possibly elsewhere that has already been underway for eight months and whose course, it seems, will be essentially unaltered, whether Congress authorizes it or not.

What would President Harry Truman, who once famously ran a presidential campaign against a “do-nothing [29]” Congress, have to say about a body that truly can do just about nothing? Or rather, to give the Republican war hawks in that new Congress their due, not quite nothing. They are proving capable of acting effectively to delegitimize the presidency as well. House Majority Leader John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to undercut the president's Iranian nuclear negotiations and the letter [30] signed by 47 Republican senators and directed to the Iranian ayatollahs are striking examples of this. They are visibly meant to tear down an “imperial presidency” that Republicans gloried in not so long ago.

The radical nature of that letter, not as an act of state but of its de-legitimization, was noted even in Iran, where fundamentalist Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei proclaimed [31] it “a sign of a decline in political ethics and the destruction of the American establishment from within.” Here, however, the letter is either being covered as a singularly extreme one-off act (“treason! [32]”) or, as Jon Stewart did [33] on “The Daily Show,” as part of a repetitive [34] tit-for-tat between Democrats and Republicans over who controls foreign policy. It is, in fact, neither. It represents part of a growing pattern in which Congress becomes an ever less effective body, except in its willingness to take on [35] and potentially take out the presidency.

In the twenty-first century, all that “small government” Republicans and “big government” Democrats can agree on is offering essentially unconditional support to the military and the national security state. The Republican Party -- its various factions increasingly at each other’s throats almost as often as at those of the Democrats -- seems reasonably united solely on issues of war-making and security. As for the Democrats, an unpopular administration, facing constant attack by those who loath President Obama, has kept its footing in part by allying with and fusing with the national security state. A president who came into office rejecting torture and promoting sunshine and transparency [36] in government has, in the course of six-plus years, come to identify himself almost totally with the U.S. military, the CIA, the NSA, and the like. While it has launched an unprecedented campaign [37] against whistleblowers and leakers (as well as sunshine and transparency), the Obama White House has proved a powerful enabler of, but also remarkably dependent upon, that state-within-a-state, a strange fate for “the imperial presidency.”

The Rise of the National Security State as the Fourth Branch of Government

One “branch” of government is, however, visibly on the rise and rapidly gaining independence from just about any kind of oversight. Its ability to enact its wishes with almost no opposition in Washington is a striking feature of our moment. But while the symptoms of this process are regularly reported, the overall phenomenon -- the creation of a de facto fourth branch of government -- gets remarkably little attention. In the war on terror era, the national security state has come into its own. Its growth [38] has been phenomenal. Though it’s seldom pointed out, it should be considered remarkable that in this period we gained a second full-scale “defense department,” the Department of Homeland Security, and that it and the Pentagon have become even more entrenched, each surrounded by its own growing “complex” of private corporations, lobbyists, and allied politicians. The militarization of the country has, in these years, proceeded apace.

Meanwhile, the duplication to be found in the U.S. Intelligence Community with its 17 major agencies [39] and outfits is staggering. Its growing ability to surveil and spy on a global scale, including on its own citizens, puts the totalitarian states of the twentieth century to shame [40]. That the various parts of the national security state can act in just about any fashion without fear of accountability [41] in a court of law is by now too obvious to belabor. As wealth has traveled upwards in American society in ways not seen since the first Gilded Age, so taxpayer dollars have migrated into the national security state in an almost plutocratic fashion.

New reports regularly surface about the further activities of parts of that state. In recent weeks, for instance, we learned from Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley of the Intercept that the CIA has spent years trying to break the encryption [42] on Apple iPhones and iPads; it has, that is, been aggressively seeking to attack an all-American corporation (even if significant parts of its production process are actually in China). Meanwhile, Devlin Barrett of theWall Street Journal reported [43] that the CIA, an agency barred from domestic spying operations of any sort, has been helping the U.S. Marshals Service (part of the Justice Department) create an airborne digital dragnet on American cell phones. Planes flying out of five U.S. cities carry a form of technology that "mimics a cellphone tower." This technology, developed and tested in distant American war zones and now brought to "the homeland," is just part of the ongoing militarization of the country from its borders [44] to its police forces [45]. And there’s hardly been a week since Edward Snowden first released crucial NSA documents in June 2013 [46] when such “advances” haven’t been in the news.

News also regularly bubbles up about the further expansion, reorganization, and upgrading of parts of the intelligence world, the sorts of reports that have become the barely noticed background hum of our lives. Recently, for instance, Director John Brennan announced [47] a major reorganization of the CIA meant to break down [48] the classic separation between spies and analysts at the Agency, while creating a new Directorate of Digital Innovation responsible for, among other things, cyberwarfare and cyberespionage. At about the same time, according to [49] the New York Times, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, an obscure State Department agency, was given a new and expansive role in coordinating “all the existing attempts at countermessaging [against online propaganda by terror outfits like the Islamic State] by much larger federal departments, including the Pentagon, Homeland Security and intelligence agencies.”

This sort of thing is par for the course in an era in which the national security state has only grown stronger, endlessly elaborating, duplicating, and overlapping the various parts of its increasingly labyrinthine structure. And keep in mind that, in a structure that has fought hard [50] to keep what it's doingcloaked [51] in secrecy, there is so much more [52] that we don’t know. Still, we should know enough to realize that this ongoing process reflects something new in our American world (even if no one cares to notice).

The Demobilization of the American People

In The Age of Acquiescence [53], a new book about America’s two Gilded Ages, Steve Fraser asks why it was that, in the nineteenth century, another period of plutocratic excesses, concentration of wealth and inequality, buying of politicians, and attempts to demobilize the public, Americans took to the streets with such determination and in remarkable numbers over long periods of time to protest their treatment, and stayed there even when the brute power of the state was called out against them. In our own moment, Fraser wonders, why has the silence of the public in the face of similar developments been so striking?

After all, a grim new American system is arising before our eyes. Everything we once learned in the civics textbooks of our childhoods about how our government works now seems askew, while the growth of poverty, the flatlining of wages, the rise of the .01%, the collapse of labor, and the militarization of society are all evident.

The process of demobilizing the public certainly began with the military. It was initially a response to the disruptive and rebellious [54] draftees of the Vietnam-era. In 1973, at the stroke of a presidential pen, the citizen’s army was declared no more, the raising of new recruits was turned over to advertising agencies (a preview of the privatization of the state to come), and the public was sent home, never again to meddle in military affairs. Since 2001, that form of demobilization has been etched in stone and transformed [55] into a way of life in the name of the “safety” and “security” of the public.

Since then, “we the people” have made ourselves felt in only three disparate ways: from the left in the Occupy movement, which, with its slogans about the 1% and the 99%, put the issue of growing economic inequality on the map of American consciousness; from the right, in the Tea Party movement, a complex expression of discontent backed and at least partially funded [56] by right-wing operatives and billionaires, and aimed at the de-legitimization of the “nanny state”; and the recent round of post-Ferguson protests spurred at least in part by the militarization of the police in black and brown communities around the country.

The Birth of a New System

Otherwise, a moment of increasing extremity has also been a moment of -- to use Fraser’s word -- “acquiescence.” Someday, we’ll assumedly understand far better how this all came to be. In the meantime, let me be as clear as I can be about something that seems murky indeed: this period doesn’t represent a version, no matter how perverse or extreme, of politics as usual; nor is the 2016 campaign an election as usual; nor are we experiencing Washington as usual. Put together our 1% elections, the privatization of our government, the de-legitimization of Congress and the presidency, as well as the empowerment of the national security state and the U.S. military, and add in the demobilization of the American public (in the name of protecting us from terrorism), and you have something like a new ballgame.

While significant planning has been involved in all of this, there may be no ruling pattern or design. Much of it may be happening in a purely seat-of-the-pants fashion. In response, there has been no urge to officially declare that something new is afoot, let alone convene a new constitutional convention. Still, don’t for a second think that the American political system isn’t being rewritten on the run by interested parties in Congress, our present crop of billionaires, corporate interests, lobbyists, the Pentagon, and the officials of the national security state.

Out of the chaos of this prolonged moment and inside the shell of the old system, a new culture, a new kind of politics, a new kind of governance is being born right before our eyes. Call it what you want. But call it something. Stop pretending it’s not happening.

[Note: My special thanks go to my friend John Cobb, who talked me through this one. Doing it would have been inconceivable without him. Tom]

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s [57] as well as The End of Victory Culture [58], runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com [2]. He is the author of, most recently, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World [59] (Haymarket Books, 2014).

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/tom-engelhardt-0

[2] http://www.tomdispatch.com/

[3] http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=1e41682ade

[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-no-freshness-in-our-2016-presidential-contest/2015/01/16/f7c4c310-9d8c-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html

[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/upshot/hillary-clinton-is-more-vulnerable-in-2016-than-you-think.html

[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/us/koch-seminar-is-early-proving-ground-for-gop-hopefuls.html

[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/us/politics/gop-race-starts-in-lavish-haunts-of-rich-donors.html

[8] http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-fenn/2015/02/12/jeb-bush-and-hillary-clinton-2016-fundraising-is-out-of-control

[9] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/koch-retreat-donors-249-million-2016

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC#Opinions_of_the_Court

[11] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/06/2012-presidential-election-cost_n_2254138.html

[12] http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/230318-the-5-billion-campaign

[13] http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/01/politics/4-billion-expensive-election/

[14] http://ivn.us/2014/12/01/political-donors-spent-enough-money-last-election-to-rebuild-detroit-twice/

[15] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/11/10/voter-turnout-in-2014-was-the-lowest-since-wwii/

[16] https://www.aclu.org/maps/battle-protect-ballot-voter-suppression-measures-passed-2013

[17] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/richer-and-poorer

[18] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/opinion/frank-bruni-hillary-clinton-the-email-controversy-and-the-2016-presidential-race.html

[19] http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/03/11/two-names-the-press-omits-from-email-coverage-c/202847

[20] http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175507/tom_engelhardt_remotely_piloted_war

[21] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175036/pratap_chatterjee_inheriting_halliburton_s_army

[22] http://www.thenation.com/blog/197057/afghanistan-war-still-raging-time-its-being-waged-contractors

[23] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/12/outsourcing-torture_n_6317236.html

[24] http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/29/world/la-fg-drones-civilians-20111230

[25] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/nsa-leak-contractors_n_3418876.html?1370919691

[26] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0544341414/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20

[27] http://www.apnorc.org/projects/Pages/HTML%20Reports/confidence-in-institutions-trends-in-americans-attitudes-toward-government-media-and-business0310-2333.aspx

[28] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/us/congress-shows-a-lack-of-enthusiasm-for-giving-obama-war-powers-to-fight-isis.html

[29] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/12/01/do-nothing-congress-was-way-more-productive-than-the-current-one

[30] http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/03/09/text-of-gop-senators-letter-to-irans-leaders-on-nuclear-talks/

[31] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/world/middleeast/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-criticizes-republicans-letter-on-iran-nuclear-talks.html

[32] http://newsbusters.org/blogs/curtis-houck/2015/03/12/nbc-touts-petition-alleging-gop-senators-committed-treason-and

[33] http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/ial564/under-miner

[34] http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/11/opinions/stanley-congress-iran-letter/

[35] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/us/politics/struggling-in-congress-republicans-unite-on-foreign-policy.html

[36] http://www2.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/news/20090121/index.htm

[37] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175500/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_in_washington,_fear_the_silence,_not_the_noise/

[38] http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/

[39] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175901/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_entering_the_intelligence_labyrinth/

[40] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175713/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_you_are_our_secret/

[41] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175833/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_knowledge_is_crime/

[42] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/10/ispy-cia-campaign-steal-apples-secrets/

[43] http://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-gave-justice-department-secret-phone-scanning-technology-1426009924

[44] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175834/tomgram%3A_todd_miller,_the_creation_of_a_border_security_state/

[45] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175881/tomgram%3A_matthew_harwood,_one_nation_under_swat/

[46] http://www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-snowden-files

[47] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-plans-major-reorganization-and-a-focus-on-digital-espionage/2015/03/06/87e94a1e-c2aa-11e4-9ec2-b418f57a4a99_story.html

[48] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/06/spies-now-cia-director-announces-major-restructuring/

[49] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/world/middleeast/us-intensifies-effort-to-blunt-isis-message.html

[50] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175526/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_joining_the_whistleblowers%27_club/

[51] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-manning

[52] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/14/congress-wont-protect-us-from-the-surveillance-state-theyll-enhance-it

[53] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316185434/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20

[54] https://msuweb.montclair.edu/%7Efurrg/Vietnam/heinl.html

[55] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175904/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_inside_the_american_terrordome

[56] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tea_Party

[57] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608460711/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20

[58] http://www.amazon.com/dp/155849586X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20

[59] http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Government-Surveillance-Security-Single-Superpower/dp/1608463656/ref=la_B001JP2OJK_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416267939&sr=1-1

[60] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on 5 Powerful Shifts Transforming the Future of American Society into Something Unrecognizable and Frightening

[61] http://www.alternet.org/

[62] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

loss of classified ads killed newspaper (jrnlism) but boosted google and facebook

sam singer SF poster boy for jrnl degradation?

ALecKoch-alypse

These are privatization, financialization, militarization, and criminalization, which together are producing a steadily creeping authoritarianism—a new authoritarianism—to fit our times. Let’s call them the Four Plagues, or if we wish, “The Four Horsemen of Our Apocalypse,” from the Book of Revelations.

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union = mod

Robert Reich: Why Americans Are Screwed and Europeans Are Not

By Robert Reich [1] / Robert Reich's Blog

March 15, 2015

The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well.

What’s behind this? Two big facts.

First, American corporations exert far more political influence in the United States than their counterparts exert in their own countries.

In fact, most Americans have no influence at all. That’s the conclusion of Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, who analyzed [2] 1,799 policy issues — and found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Instead, American lawmakers respond to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and of big corporations – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.

The second fact is most big American corporations have no particular allegiance to America. They don’t want Americans to have better wages. Their only allegiance and responsibility is to their shareholders — which often requires lower wages to fuel larger profits and higher share prices.

When GM went public again in 2010, it boasted [3] of making 43 percent of its cars in place where labor is less than $15 an hour, while in North America it could now pay “lower-tiered” wages and benefits for new employees.

American corporations shift their profits around the world wherever they pay the lowest taxes. Some are even morphing into foreign corporations.

As an Apple executive told [4] the New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.”

I’m not blaming American corporations. They’re in business to make profits and maximize their share prices, not to serve America.

But because of these two basic facts – their dominance on American politics, and their interest in share prices instead of the wellbeing of Americans – it’s folly to count on them to create good American jobs or improve American competitiveness, or represent the interests of the United States in global commerce.

By contrast, big corporations headquartered in other rich nations are more responsible for the wellbeing of the people who live in those nations.

That’s because labor unions there are typically stronger than they are here — able to exert pressure both at the company level and nationally.

VW’s labor unions, for example, have a voice in governing the company, as they do in other big German corporations. Not long ago, VW even welcomed [5] the UAW to its auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (Tennessee’s own politicians nixed it.)

Governments in other rich nations often devise laws through tri-partite bargains involving big corporations and organized labor. This process further binds their corporations to their nations.

Meanwhile, American corporations distribute a smaller share of their earnings to their workers than do European or Canadian-based corporations.

And top U.S. corporate executives make far more money than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.

The typical American worker puts in more hours than Canadians and Europeans, and gets little or no paid vacation or paid family leave. In Europe, the norm [6] is five weeks paid vacation per year and more than three months paid family leave.

And because of the overwhelming clout of American firms on U.S. politics, Americans don’t get nearly as good a deal from their governments as do Canadians and Europeans.

Governments there impose higher taxes on the wealthy and redistribute more of the wealth to middle- and lower-income households. Most of their citizens receive essentially free healthcare and more generous unemployment benefits than do Americans.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that even though U.S. economy is doing better, most Americans are not.

The U.S. middle class is no longer the world’s richest. After considering taxes and transfer payments, middle-class incomes in Canada and much of Western Europe are higher [7] than in the U.S. The poor in Western Europe earn more than do poor Americans.

Finally, when at global negotiating tables – such as the secretive process devising the “Trans Pacific Partnership” trade deal — American corporations don’t represent the interests of Americans. They represent the interests of their executives and shareholders, who are not only wealthier than most Americans but also reside all over the world.

Which is why the pending Partnership protects the intellectual property of American corporations — but not American workers’ health, safety, or wages, and not the environment.

The Obama administration is casting the Partnership as a way to contain Chinese influence in the Pacific region. The agents of America’s interests in the area are assumed to be American corporations.

But that assumption is incorrect. American corporations aren’t set up to represent America’s interests in the Pacific region or anywhere else.

What’s the answer to this basic conundrum? Either we lessen the dominance of big American corporations over American politics, or we increase their allegiance and responsibility to America.

It has to be one or the other. Americans can’t thrive within a political system run largely by big American corporations — organized to boost their share prices but not boost America.

pwl memo

root of defund the left strat?

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As Trende observed, the Democratic political coalition “has become geographically narrow in the past decade, heavily concentrated among urban liberals and minorities who live in densely populated cities or are placed into minority-majority districts under interpretations of the Voting Rights Act that many minority groups pressed for in the 1980s and 1990s.” This concentration helps win some state-wide races and national electoral votes, but means that Democrats lose a lot of close races for the House. When Democrats do manage to win in the House, they often win by larger margins than Republicans do, which helps account for their national popular vote majority. Gerrymandering is part of the problem faced by the Democrats, but the other part is that, like the Republicans, they too are less inclined to appeal to those outside of their coalition. Democrats may not be as extreme as Republicans, but they are also less interested in compromise and consensus building than they used to be.

When we look at American politics we need to understand that our legislative branches represent places (districts and states) as well as people. The U.S. is a representative democracy yet by design is far from a pure democracy. Our constitution is designed to facilitate continuity and the translation of economic power to political power, but it is also designed to permit change when absolutely needed. In the past, dramatic change has taken place when the stability of the political system was threatened by the absence of change. These changes took place when the political center accepted them: the reforms of the progressive era, the economic policies of the New Deal, the changes brought about by LBJ’s Great Society. Typically, agents of change convince moderates to accept some part of their view. The exception that proved the rule was our Civil War.

In the past, the geographic orientation of our political system has led to moderate politics. In the U.S. system, an extreme party receiving 20 percent of the votes in every congressional district would send no one to Congress. Therefore, the political dynamic pushed candidates to the center where they build the largest coalitions generating pluralities or majorities. The growing presence of moderate independent voters continues that trend in general elections. But the growing importance of low-turnout primary elections has driven candidates further to the extremes. It is hard to believe that Eric Cantor was too moderate for the Republican base—but he was. The Tea Party has less than 20 percent of the national vote, but they have managed to skillfully work the seams of the political and media system to dominate the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. If the Occupy movement had been less politically pure they might have done the same thing on the left.

7/16/14

extreme ideology or just tactics lead to attacks on moderate/allies: anita roddick, social entre; thses prove that mkt an be tame/humane vs ecoterror (see Kill the msgr: in genocide, must prove that opp win will lead to apocalyse

shareholder revolts? DDT

look at issa targets: post office, jaczko, solyndra

Krugman Divulges Real Reason Conservatives Freak Out About California Success Story

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ctr for climate strategies is pro-biz gp (dow)

Left-Right alliance?

Nader new book unstoppable (vs billionaires will save us?) finds 25 points of overlap

CFR levy says up tax on oil! (also export more LNG? boost US green energy for comp advantage?)

Laffer debate carbon tax

local regulation under hvy attack, ironically b/c agenda 21 ppl think that local control will somehow flip to international control. conservative governors just sellout to corps who want to extract/pollute

the two biggest offending industries are the most subsidied: oil and agribiz, and both have populist potential

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right has morphed into a corporate protection racket: norquist extorts with pledge; abramoff got paid by playing 2 sides against each other;corp protection in broader sense of powell memo too

ironically the actors who played gangsters were leftists/union men, while the patriots were anti-union, often associated with the real mafia

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CAPT 315

ahainsight

lost/capt 3/28/2015

forgot this category:

adding mega-trends, big picture

see OMG in Bizzaro

5 Powerful Shifts Transforming the Future of American Society into Something Unrecognizable and Frightening

And here’s what I find strange: the evidence of this, however inchoate, is all around us and yet it’s as if we can’t bear to take it in or make sense of it or even say that it might be so.

1% Elections

The Privatization of the State (or the U.S. as a Prospective Third-World Nation)

The De-legitimization of Congress and the Presidency

The Rise of the National Security State as the Fourth Branch of Government

The Demobilization of the American People

The Birth of a New System

[Note: My special thanks go to my friend John Cobb, who talked me through this one. Doing it would have been inconceivable without him. Tom]

5 Powerful Shifts Transforming the Future of American Society into Something Unrecognizable and Frightening

And here’s what I find strange: the evidence of this, however inchoate, is all around us and yet it’s as if we can’t bear to take it in or make sense of it or even say that it might be so.

1% Elections

The Privatization of the State (or the U.S. as a Prospective Third-World Nation)

The De-legitimization of Congress and the Presidency

The Rise of the National Security State as the Fourth Branch of Government

The Demobilization of the American People

The Birth of a New System

[Note: My special thanks go to my friend John Cobb, who talked me through this one. Doing it would have been inconceivable without him.

[61]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/5-powerful-shifts-transforming-america-society-unrecognizable-and-frightening