Back to the Future...

Sundance, "Old Mules"

In 1946, a small town of Athens, Tennessee, became a true battleground, as a siege was laid on the town jail by crowd mostly consisted of WWII veterans who decided to take justice into their own hands, as the local politics were plagued by corruption, police brutality and electoral fraud.

The political turmoil was present prior to the Second World War, when an influential political figure in from Memphis, Edward Hull “Boss” Crump, appointed Paul Cantrell as the candidate for Sheriff in 1936. Cantrell won the election in what became known as the “vote grab of 1936”.

Around that time a system of fees was introduced in the Sheriff’s office, which meant that a fee would be paid per arrest. The system proved to be very dysfunctional ― shady arrests were made, often without substantial evidence, which also included numerous fines for “drunkenness” and “fee grabbing” from tourists and travelers on a similar pretext. In a period between 1936 and 1946, it is estimated that more than 300,000 dollars amounted to these fees.

In the meantime, Cantrell ran for State Senate, leaving his trusty deputy, Pat Mansfield, in charge. The racquet worsened, and the local population was greatly displeased. After several investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice failed to make a dent in this lucrative violation of authority, the situation reached its boiling point.

During wartime, thousands of men from the McMinn County, which includes Athens, joined the fight against fascism overseas. The shortage of able men led to low criteria in employing law-enforcement officers, which often included ex-convicts with violent criminal records.

As the war ended in 1945, around 3,000 soldiers from McMinn returned home, only to find that the corruptive local government was stronger than ever. Apart from the sheriff’s office, the corrupt clique, controlled by E. H. Crump held the local media, schools, and pretty much all of the government institutions.

The GI’s decided to respond to this. During the 1946 local elections, they formed a non-partisan political option, stating their candidates. Knox Henry, a decorated veteran of the North African campaign, was elected by the GI party to run against Cantrell who was once again running for Sheriff, while his former deputy Mansfield was holding the chair.

Due to prior scams involved in local elections, the GI’s pointed out their slogan ― Your Vote Will Be Counted As Cast.

In addition, a precaution measure was made ― another veteran, Bill White, organized a militia which was to observe the voting process in case Cantrell and Mansfield tried to rig them again. The veteran militia adopted the name The Fighting Bunch, and pistols were handed out to around 60 men who joined in.

The elections scheduled for the 1st of August 1946 were followed by a number of incidents. On one of the polling places in Athens, an elderly African American farmer called Tom Gillespie was refused to cast his vote by Sheriff Mansfield’s patrolman, C.M. “Windy” Wise.

Wise used racists slurs, despite the presence of a protesting GI poll watcher, and denied Gillespie his right to vote. The deputy then hit Gillespie with a brass knuckle. The farmer dropped his ballot and tried to run away. In response, Wise pulled out his gun and shot him in the back.

This event sparked more quarrel. After a few stand-offs between Sheriff Mansfield’s deputies and the GI militia, a crowd was gathered in protest of the obvious violation of protocol and the clear intention of the administration to rig the election and keep the office despite the will of the people.

The drop that spilled the cup was the arrest and brutal beating of Bob Hairrell, who was one of the poll watchers. Hairrell protested when a girl was brought in by the deputies to cast her ballot, despite the fact that she had no poll tax receipt and who was not listed in the voter registration. The girl also seemed to be underage.

In response to Hairrell’s protest, he was arrested, and the voting process was halted on that polling place. The ballot box, together with the handcuffed GI was taken to the county jail in the town of Athens.

After hearing this, Bill White ordered his men to break into the National Guard Armory to steal weapons. After they looted the armory, White’s fighting bunch was prepared for combat. They had 60 Enfield rifles, two Thompson sub-machine guns and enough ammo to start a minor war in the McMinn County.

When the polls closed, all ballot boxes were transported to the same jail. Allegedly, White responded to the given situation by saying:

Boy, they doing something. I’m glad they done that. Now, all we got to do is whip on the jail.

Very soon, a siege was laid on the county jail. Paul Cantrell, Pat Mansfield, and around 50 or more deputies were caught red-handed while counting the votes without the presence of the second party. The GI’s occupied the second floor of a bank that was located right across the street from the jail. The high ground gave them a strategic advantage, as they were able to return fire with a barrage anytime someone took a shot from the jail.

Cantrell and his partners were pinned down. The GI’s knew that the situation had to be resolved quickly before the authorities send in reinforcements and start a potential bloodbath.

Some deputies who were outside the jail tried to lift the siege but without success. Soon the captives within the building were running through the back door, leaving their weapons behind. White ordered that the escapees pass, but a number of deputies together with Cantrell and Mansfield refused to surrender.

Then the militia threw Molotov cocktails on the building but failed to create any substantial damage. At one point, an ambulance car arrived. White and his men held their fire, as they expected that it was to evacuate the wounded from the jail. An immediate ceasefire was in effect. To everyone’s surprise, the ambulance served for Cantrell and Mansfield to slip through, while leaving their men behind.

White’s top priority now was to secure the ballot boxes. Rumors of reinforcements were circulating among the men and time was of the essence.

Several dynamite sticks were thrown on the jail, each of them causing damage to the building and its surroundings. Eventually, the doors were breached, and the rest of the deputies surrendered.

In front of the jail, an angry mob was gathered, and several Mansfield’s men were badly beaten, including Wise who shot Tom Gillespie earlier that day.

Riots ensued, causing material damage all over the town. Police cars, as well as deputies’ private vehicles were largely targeted by the mob.

In the aftermath of the riots, the votes were finally counted and the GI party candidate, Henry Knox, was elected Sheriff of the McMinn County.

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The New World Economy will be Built Upon the BRICS Model

On Our Dangerous Times

Democrats Have Killed Democracy

Ben Weingarten, "If Democrats Criminalize Opposition And Cripple The Court, Democracy Is Dead"

Democrats are seeking to land a one-two punch to cement their control of America today and for generations to come: Criminalize the political opposition and cripple the last authority to which the opposition might appeal in defense of its rights.

This is one way to understand two running lines of attack that may appear independent but are inextricably intertwined.

Criminalizing the Opposition

The first consists of the unprecedented, Soviet show trial-style “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” “cases” conjured up against Donald Trump and two dozen others in his orbit, chiefly including his lawyers. The zealous prosecutors have many motives for torturing laws to hang them around the neck of the former president and GOP front-runner in the middle of a campaign — a frivolous and vengeful prosecutorial effort pursued arguably in violation of laws, norms, and core principles of justice.

While turning the First and Sixth Amendments into dead letters, these cases also effectively criminalize the seeking of office of anyone who might hold unauthorized views, the Republican contesting of elections or questioning of election integrity, and such Republicans’ legal defense.

“You can go to jail if you disagree with us, and particularly if you threaten our power and privilege,” our betters are saying through their chilling lawfare jihad. The point is that if Americans cannot be trusted to choose leaders within a narrow set of regime-approved bounds, the regime will have to force them upon us by hook or by crook. Locking up the opposition has always been a potential endgame for the ruling class in its war on wrongthink.

Jan. 6, 2021, was the beginning of that endgame. It served as a pretext to accelerate the war, as predicted at the time. It was also used to justify treating rioters with the “wrong” views not as everyday Americans-turned-petty criminals in a political protest that got out of hand, but as domestic terrorists

The Justice Department went so far as to attempt to add terrorism enhancements to some Jan. 6 sentences. Myriad Capitol breach defendants were hit with the very Enron-driven “obstruction of an official proceeding” felony charge, never before applied to protesters, with which Special Counsel Jack Smith would ultimately charge Trump. Perhaps in a superseding indictment, Trump too, like other defendants, will be hit with a “seditious conspiracy” charge.

A political memester who had mockingly tweeted that Clinton voters could text their vote to a phone number was slapped with the Ku Klux Klan-driven “conspiracy against rights” charge that Trump would ultimately face too. Now it’s the former president’s turn in the dock. The regime is threatening his most fundamental rights, the most fundamental rights of those in his orbit, and by extension the most fundamental rights of us all.

Crippling the Court

The only thing that may stand in the way of Trump, or any other political dissenters threatened with contrived charges going forward, is the Supreme Court. This brings us to part two of the one-two punch: the Democrats’ sustained attack on the highest court in the land.

Democrats have grown ever more unhinged about the Supreme Court because it represents perhaps the last powerful American institution they do not wholly control. “Borking,” the “high-tech lynching” of Justice Clarence Thomas, and the caper against Justice Brett Kavanaugh normalized vicious political attacks on non-leftist justices aimed at destroying them or, at minimum, cowing them into submission once seated.

By extension, these assaults normalized vicious political attacks on the court itself. For if the justices themselves were deplorable and irredeemable, then so too was the court — a court now to be treated with the same contempt as any other political institution. In reality, what the leftist assailants objected to was that these justices might not rule in accord with the left’s wishes. The court, in short, was illegitimate if it was not leftist.

The assault on the court escalated with the Dobbs leak, which imperiled its ability to function. The intent was not only to exert maximum political pressure on the justices to alter their ruling in accord with pro-abortion activists, but to intimidate them into doing so under threat of bodily harm. The left-wing mob’s threatening conduct was abided by a law enforcement apparatus that refused to arrest those who illegally agitated outside the justices’ homes. Kavanaugh even faced an assassination attempt. The Dobbs leak reflected contempt for the rule of law, for the court as an institution, and for the American people whose rights the court exists to protect.

For months now, the left and its media mouthpieces have been waging another assault on the court, this time by leveling phony and hypocritical charges of ethics violations at the court’s most exceptional jurist, Justice Clarence Thomas, and to a lesser degree his peers. These attacks aim to further delegitimize the court and ramp up calls for members to recuse themselves, resign, or face future impeachment proceedings. They may even perhaps aim to soften the ground for nullification efforts.

Thomas will never waver in the face of the barrage of attacks on him. But what of his potentially more wobbly-kneed colleagues, bearing witness to the ever-growing hysteria over their opinions at times out of step with the ruling class?

Imagine for a moment that one or several cases land at the Supreme Court that could result in criminal convictions for Donald Trump. One would expect pressure on the non-liberal judges to rule against the former president, recuse, or face literally or figuratively deathly consequences — more intense than anything ever seen in our lifetime. The threats to pack the court, abolish it, or otherwise neuter its conservatives will grow exponentially. Surrender to the mob, practically every power center in the land will demand, or else.

Will the justices be “red-pilled” in the face of these efforts — ever more determined to hew to the Constitution in their jurisprudence? Or will they crumble under pressure?

Democrats no doubt see that the court is the last backstop for justice — the last respite for the opposition to protect their rights from leftists aimed at seizing complete control. Hence their withering assault on it.

The one-two punch aims to knock out Trump. But at a deeper level, it is about ensuring de facto one-party rule at the point of a gun. Only if a critical mass of Americans “know what time it is” will there be any hope of combating this onslaught.

RNC Goes Rogue

Here is a compilation of Donald Trump Mugshot memes:#TrumpMugShot #Trump2024 #Trump pic.twitter.com/m2x3j7fp4r

— ACE1918 (@AirACE1918) August 25, 2023

American Oligarchs

“The injustice of a government is proportional to the number of its laws.”

“In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.”

“The more corrupt the state, the more laws.”

“In all things, there is a law of cycles.”

“Our magistrates discharge their duties best at the beginning; and fall off toward the end.”

“Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws.”

- Tacitus.

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Clarice Feldman, "Quit Aiming for the Ankles"

It may seem like small potatoes at a time of political lawfare, gross government mismanagement leading to at least 1,000 dead in Maui, the prospect of continuing war in Ukraine, and high inflation, but the government’s use of its powers to beset us on a daily basis and make life more expensive, less efficient, and more dreary is evident every day. Two things that come to mind -- and there are, I concede, many more -- are urban bike lanes and administrative fiddling with everything from light bulbs to home appliances. In my neighborhood we have an online site, Next Door, which I avoid like the plague as it is a bulletin board for dimwitted Karens and organized leftists. The last time I went there, I questioned the merit of setting aside bike lanes on the few major thoroughfares in our city. Because of the siting of historic buildings in D.C., widening traffic lanes is quite impossible.

City leaders set aside a major lane for a streetcar which cost a fortune, travels but a few blocks and that no one uses. Adding bike lanes to all this makes traffic even more congested and slower moving, spewing more fumes into the air, and encourages drivers to seek alternate routes through the city which were not meant to carry a lot of traffic. The Bikeazis (my term for an organized group of pro biking people entitled because of their self-anointed moral objection to cars) struck. About the same time they were attacking my objection, the city created a bike lane in a near neighborhood without consulting the people who lived there. Residents banded together and succeeded in getting it dismantled. Not surprisingly they objected to the large stream of drivers diverting unto the narrow roads not meant to handle such traffic, creating more pollution, noise, and endangering kids and other pedestrians who use those streets.

So I was delighted to see the satire site Babylon Bee prick the Bikeazi bubble:

SEATTLE, WA — In a statement delivered to a line of 100 drivers who had been stuck behind him for the past 3 hours, local bicyclist Florian Skuzz said that he wants to be treated just like a car on the road, but also to just kinda be able to break the rules whenever he wants to.

"I'm an important bicyclist deserving your respect, and should be granted all the rights and privileges of a car at all times!" said Skuzz to the parade of honking automobiles behind him. "But also, I don't carry insurance for when I cause an accident and would like to disregard traffic lights and signs whenever I want. It is my divine right! NOW STARE AT MY SPANDEXED BUTT FOR THE NEXT 30 MILES AND LIKE IT!"

The man then continued riding directly in the middle of the road at 15 miles per hour even though the speed limit was 65.

Sources say Skuzz then ran three traffic lights and stopped once to adjust his GoPro for the next video on his YouTube channel in which he posts videos about being an insufferable bicyclist. "I am saving the planet with this bike!" he yelled to the cars behind him. "RESPECT ME!" Just as these groups create unnecessary costs and tribulations to most of us, the Biden administration’s war on everyday conveniences out of misplaced obeisance to the Sky Dragon (climate change) is infuriating, costly, and senseless, unless it is intended as a plan to make our lives more expensive and miserable.

On August 1, the Administration decreed it is illegal to sell the incandescent bulbs which most of us use (and have used for 140 years) and which are cheap. You can only sell LED bulbs or compact fluorescent light bulbs. Like Grant running through Richmond, the administrative state is running though our homes, mandating more expensive and less efficient household items.

“Light bulb efficiency standards became a symbol in some Republicans’ resistance to expansion of the regulatory state,” said Alex Flint, executive director for the conservative Alliance for Market Solutions. “But manufacturers’ recognition that there were better products and consumer tastes were changing made this much more complicated than some of the political debates.”

The fight zigged, then zagged: The Obama administration took action in its waning days to finalize the bulb efficiency requirements, only for former President Donald Trump -- who once proclaimed energy-efficient bulbs made him “look orange” -- to halt the move. But DOE pushed the rules to the finish line last year after President Joe Biden came into office with a climate agenda that includes a focus on energy efficiency measures.

DOE completed the action last April, but full enforcement of the rule is set to begin Aug. 1. The transition away from the inefficient bulbs has been underway for more than a year, as the department provided flexibility for manufacturers and retailers to comply with the new standard.

That fight may be settled, but the larger fight over energy efficiency standards is still looming. Republican lawmakers in recent months have continually derided the Biden administration’s efficiency actions on everything from more efficient stoves to laundry machines and dishwashers.

As" Republican lawmakers… continually derided the Biden administrations efficiency actions,” this week the administration added yet another sacrifice to the Sky Dragon -- ceiling fans. At an estimated cost to producers of these fans of $107 and $86 million to consumers, the Administration is requiring new fans meet higher efficiency standards. Once again, the defenders of this overreach pad the benefits to be obtained and minimize the cost to consumers. At the same time, the beneficiaries are large corporations, you know, the kind of companies from whom -- like unions -- the Democrats count on for political contributions.

The House panel presented the rules as burdensome to ceiling fan manufacturers, particularly smaller ones.

“This proposed rule would decrease the maximum estimated energy consumption permissible for large diameter and belt driven ceiling fans,” committee Republicans wrote. “This rule would require numerous small business fan manufacturers to redesign their products and may put between 10 and 30 percent of small business ceiling fan manufacturers out of business. It appears that the Department of Energy may not have properly considered small entities during this rulemaking process.”

An Energy Department spokesperson told The Hill this aspect has been mischaracterized, saying in an email that the one-time total conversion cost would be about $107 million for all manufacturers.

“The incremental cost to consumers is $86.6 million annually, while the operating cost savings are $281 million annually -- both at a 7 percent discount rate,” the spokesperson said. “The savings are more than triple the incremental costs.”

When I was a young lawyer, an older, smart, experienced litigation lawyer gave me this advice, “Don’t aim for the ankles, kick higher up.” That’s my advice to House Republicans. Start dismantling and defunding the out-of-control Administrative state.

A Prophet for President

Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, "Cornel West, A Prophet For President"

Our nation has plunged into such dire straits that one of her harshest critics has sought to lead her.

Cornel West— one of the most influential public intellectuals in United States’ history—perhaps, second only to W.E.B. DuBois—has entered the race to seek the highest office in the land. West graduated from Harvard University in three years and was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton University. For three decades, the New York Times bestselling author has been both a political gadfly and surrogate for a host of progressive presidential candidates. His analysis of politics, social issues and cultural phenomena represents a unique blend of Marxist thought and prophetic Christianity. He has written and edited some 40 books that range from the dense The Ethical Dimension of Marxist Thought to the erudite The American Evasion of Philosophy to the blockbuster Race Matters. As a philosopher, he has continued to have a lasting impact on the life of the mind, internationally. West will deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures 2024 at the University of Edinburgh. He will be the first African American to do so.

Although he has taught at his alma maters, Yale, and the University of Paris, West has had an impact on popular culture. He has guest co-starred in popular TV shows such as 30 Rock and The Boondocks featured his likeness. The Cornel West Theory—a progressive hip-hop group—shares his moniker. In addition to recording songs with the likes of Prince, Andre 3000 and Jill Scott, he appeared in the two genre-defining Matrix films as “Councilor West” based on his persona. Simply put, Cornel West is an iconoclast with very few peers, save for Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek, “the world’s most dangerous philosopher” who ran for president in his native Slovenia. It could be said that Cornel West is the American Jean-Paul Sartre, a highly influential philosopher who has transcended the narrow confines of the academy and shaped popular culture.

Nevertheless, Cornel West 2024 has received significant pushback. I should say from the outset that I count Dr. West as a friend and guide. For many, like me, West is a political bellwether—a prophet with an unwavering critique of the American Empire. His unexpected entry into electoral politics is an act of desperation—West’s own word. Fascist elements have seized power in every level of government and desire to return the United States to its pre-1960s status quo.

Our nation has plunged into such dire straits that one of her harshest critics has sought to lead her. Having walked down the street with him in several cities, West is beloved by a broad range of folk—from unhoused persons to foreign diplomats. I have broken bread with him in an inner-city community center in St. Louis and we have lectured together in Istanbul, Turkey. More importantly, he has shown up when we called him to place his body on the line with us in the streets of Ferguson and when we confronted Nazis in Charlottesville. Equally, when I struggled to feed my family, he stepped in to help me out. With this said, in a manner, I pray, worthy of these dangerous times, that I shall attempt to reflect, critically, upon these overarching characterizations of West’s presidential ambitions.

Oddly enough, critiques of West’s candidacy have not questioned his qualifications or platform, the latter of which includes “fighting to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education and living wages for all.” All these issues disproportionately affect Black folks in the United States. A focus on any or all of these would have invaluable impact on Black life. On social media and in private conversations, I have gleaned three overarching characterizations of West’s presidential run—ego, vanity, and selfishness.

Ego

“This is about his ego,” barked one very perturbed public theologian during an hour-long rant. “All Presidential candidates have huge egos. It is part of the job description,” was my impish retort. To be sure, the desire to become the president of the most powerful and lethal empire in human history requires a tremendous ego. Cornel West is not unique in that characterization.

Accordingly, another example of West’s egomania was his feud with younger Black public intellectuals, Michael Eric Dyson, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. In kind, West’s off-color remarks about President Barack Obama furthered his critics’ point. On May 11th, 2011, the leftist online journal Truthdig.com published a fire and brimstone interview in which West called the first Black president a “Black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a Black puppet of corporate plutocrats.” In Black Prophetic Fire (2014), West characterized the Obama presidency as less than favorable, to say the least.

The age of Obama was predicated on three pillars: Wall Street crimes in the financial catastrophe of 2008; imperial crimes in the form of the USA PATRIOT act and National Defense Authorization Act, which gave the president sweeping and arbitrary power that resembles a police or neofascist state; and social crimes principally manifested in a criminal justice system that is in itself criminal (where torturers, wiretappers and Wall Street violators of the law go free yet poor criminals, such as drug offenders, go to prison). In other words, the Obama presidency has been primarily a Wall Street presidency, drone presidency and mass-surveillance presidency unwilling to concretely target the new Jim Crow, massive unemployment and other forms of poor and Black social misery.

Conversely, I believe, West—degrading word choice—distracted from the substance of his claim. The Obama presidency did not usher in a post-racist world, proved that representation was not enough to protect Black life and exposed the limits of neoliberalism. Elected during the 2008 economic downturn, Obama bailed out the banks while 6.4 million more families fell into poverty the following year, totaling 43.6 million. During a White House meeting in 2008, Obama told the gathered banker CEOs that he was “the only one standing between you and the pitchforks.” His policies protected the bankers while presenting young men as a social problem. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Obama’s two terms saw between 384 and 807 civilians killed in a total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeting Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen compared to 57 strikes under his predecessor. In Obama’s last year in office, the United States dropped 26,172 bombs in seven countries.

The Black Lives Matter movement was birthed under a Black president, Black attorney general and a Missouri Democratic governor in a Democratic stronghold. The Democratic Party was inept in the face of police killings. The Age of Obama described by West proved to be accurate, though unkind. To reduce a cogent political critique to matters of ego makes us all ignorant and arrogant. For some, West’s “Black mascot” and “Black puppet” comments were crude—which may be true—but his analysis, however, was keen.

Vanity

“He can’t win,” the public theologian bemoaned. This is, indeed, factual. The current two-party electoral system continues to obstruct any progressives or third parties. Ballot access laws—complex, state-specific filing requirements and deadlines—make becoming a presidential candidate a herculean task. After gathering enough petition signatures in all 50 states, the Republican and Democratic Parties often present legal challenges to third-party petitions and ballot applications.

Secondly, the amount of money needed to be a competitive presidential candidate is unseemly. Opensecrets.org reported that Trump-Pence 2020 raised $1.96 billion. Not far behind was the Biden-Harris campaign, which raised a combined $1.6 billion. Nearly $14.6 billion was spent on federal elections in 2020. These staggering numbers select out poor people and benefit the wealthy. It seems to me that the rage should be directed at a lopsided electoral system, not at any third-party candidate.

Now, to be sure, the Democratic Party has been the historical party of Black people since the Kennedy Administration because of its support for civil rights. Yet, the Democratic Party continues to be derelict in duties to the most vulnerable population in general and its most loyal voters—African Americans. With each federal election, there is short-lived debate in beauty and barber shops. It goes something like this: “We should just withhold our vote,” or “We should vote Republican because the Democratic Party ain’t doing nothing for us, anyway.” To end that in the post-civil rights era, Black candidates inside (Shirley Chisolm, Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton) and outside (Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente, Ron Daniels and now Cornel West).

However, third-party or insider insurgent campaigns are never simply about winning. They raised issues and policies absent from the platforms of the two parties. Most Black left-of-center candidates have, explicitly, named the conditions of the Black poor and offered solutions. They have tended to oppose U.S. military adventures, particularly in the global south.

West’s campaign wants to raise issues and offer policies that improve the quality-of-life of everyday people and end U.S. imperialist intervention. These issues are not on the table in the Democratic Party platform. West has taken up the mantle of raising these kinds of concerns with the hope of shaping the political discourse. Winning then is secondary to witnessing.

Selfishness

“He is going to siphon off votes and hand it over to the (fascist) Republicans,” is the assertion made by many political observers. Democratic strategist James Carville called West “a menace, the threat to the continued constitutional order in the United States.” Former Senior Advisor to President Obama, David Axelrod, tweeted: “In 2016, the Green Party played an outsized role in tipping the election to Donald Trump. Now, with Cornel West as their likely nominee, they could easily do it again. Risky business”. The “spoiler” accusation has been thrown at third-party candidates for the last two decades. Ralph Nader and Jill Stein drew pointed ire for their “siphoning” votes from Democrats. This assessment is based on two assumptions: 1) votes belong exclusively to the major parties; and 2) more pointedly, most progressive voters who have voted for the Democrat.

The first fallacy is deeply undemocratic. Neither the Democratic nor Republican Party’s own democracy or our votes. Secondly, polling data of nonvoters and progressives yield a complicated analysis of the spoiler theory. In a roundup of the 2016 campaign season, electoral wunderkind Nate Silver noted that many Stein supporters would not have voted at all if they only had Clinton or Trump to choose from. “The breakdown might have been something like 35 percent Clinton, 10 percent Trump and 55 percent wouldn’t vote. That doesn’t wind up netting very many votes for HRC,” speculated Silver. The Pew Research Center’s study, “An examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters,” revealed that the majority of nonvoters are Democrats or Democratic-leaning.

Among members of the panel who were categorized as nonvoters, 37% expressed a preference for Hillary Clinton, 30% for Donald Trump and 9% for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein; 14% preferred another candidate or declined to express a preference. Party affiliation among nonvoters skewed even more Democratic than did candidate preferences. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents made up a 55% majority of nonvoters;

Moreover, recent polling does not fare well for Democrats. NBC News poll showed 70% of all Americans believe Biden should not run for a second term—including 51% of Democrats. A NewsNation/DDHQ poll found 49% percent of respondents would consider voting for a third-party candidate in 2024 if Trump and Biden were their parties’ nominees. So then contrary to the spoiler accusation, Democratic failure to capture the White House, will be their own fault because they ran a highly unfavorable candidate and could not convince most of their nonvoters to turn out.

Though both parties share in their bend toward privatization, militarism and ignoring the poor, there are distinctions between the two that have a real impact on people’s lives. I do not share the position that there is no difference between the Republicans and Democrats. Roe v. Wade would still be the law of the land if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election because she would have nominated pro-choice Supreme Court judges. As noted above, third-party candidates are not to blame for that reality. Democrats must make a compelling argument to the electorate that goes beyond fear tactics.

A path to the White House

Finally, electoral politics are filled with swift transitions. Poised the raise $70 billion by next year, the centrist No Labels Party is courting maverick Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), which has adverse effects on the Democratic and Republican establishment. Surprisingly, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (D) received 15% support among a sample of the Democratic Party’s primary in a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll. His bombastic personality and star power make him a prime candidate for an independent run after a Democratic primary that he is surely going to lose. Donald Trump’s legal troubles could shave off just enough confidence that he loses a tightly contested Republican primary, and he will not go quietly into the night. So then, if No Labels Party, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Donald Trump run independent candidacies, splintering the Democratic and Republican Parties, all bets are off. The popular vote and Electoral College could be divided in at least four ways. The basic challenge for West and the Green Party manifold: 1) gain ballot access; 2) create a comprehensive ground game; 3) raise enough money to be effective; and 4) build out a political discourse that will shape public conversations. In this scenario, there is a path to the White House for Cornel West.

DNC Media Allies Throw Cloak of Gyges over RFK Jr's. Presidential Campaign

David Smith, "RFK Jr draws quite a crowd – what does it mean for 2024?"

President Kennedy’s nephew has struck an anti-establishment nerve but his anti-vax views and far-right flirtation have prompted outrage

Wearing a Robert Kennedy Jr campaign T-shirt, Kevin O’Keeffe found there was standing room only as the candidate, introduced as “Bobby Kennedy”, walked on a sunbaked stage decked with hay bales to whoops and applause.

“He supports freedom of speech, and he’s questioned the efficacy of the vaccine, which is legitimate at this point,” said O’Keeffe, 52, who works for a telecommunications company in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “I like his views on foreign policy and keeping us out of the war. He cares about his fellow Americans in a way that a lot of the politicians nowadays I don’t think really do.”

He was far from alone in rooting for Kennedy at the Iowa state fair in Des Moines last weekend. The longshot challenger to Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2024 drew one of the biggest and most energetic crowds, outnumbering conventional politicians on the Republican side. The shouts of “We love you, Robert!” and “Thank you, Robert!”, and subsequent mobbing of Kennedy for handshakes and selfies, hinted at the stirrings of a movement.

In a nation that has seen plenty of political convulsions over the past decade, Kennedy, a 69-year-old environmental lawyer who has never before run for public office, is proof that Americans’ appetite for insurgents and outsiders, mavericks and populists, remains undimmed. Even when a campaign traffics in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and has been hit by antisemitism scandals.

Kennedy rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic because of his strident and widely condemned opposition to vaccines. He has styled himself as a hammer of the elites – quite a feat for a scion of one of America’s most storied political dynasties. He has scrambled old political allegiances, striking an anti-establishment nerve on the far left and far right over the Ukraine war and other issues.

Brandy Zadrozny, a senior reporter for NBC News, summed up his supporters as “anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, internet contrarians, billionaire tech bros, Camelot nostalgists and rightwing provocateurs who seem to be pumping Kennedy as a spoiler candidate”.

In his speech from the Des Moines Register newspaper’s political soapbox, Kennedy wore blue jeans and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He spoke of his father, former attorney general Robert Kennedy, and uncle, President John F Kennedy, as figures from a golden age when America was the envy of the world.

His campaign chairman, Dennis Kucinich, held up a map as Kennedy railed against proposed pipelines that would run through Iowa to transport liquefied carbon dioxide away from ethanol plants for burial underground. It was a retro, 20th-century presentation but more locally targeted than many candidates offered.

Such is the celebrity-style clamor for Kennedy that, for an interview with the Guardian, he slipped away from the crowds and sat in the back of a black limousine with security detail present. Kucinich, a former congressman and past presidential contender, offered to take an Uber back to the hotel but Kennedy insisted that he climb in too, then asked an aide for some fried bacon from the fair.

His uncle, Ted Kennedy, was once floored by the simple question, “Why do you want to be president?” This Kennedy does have an answer for that one: “I’m running for president because I feel like I’m losing my country and because I feel like the Democratic party is going in a bad direction. In particular, it has become the party of war – the Ukraine war was an unnecessary war.

“It has become the party of censorship. It’s become the party of a pugnacious neocon-driven foreign policy and a Wall Street-driven domestic policy. Those are all the opposite of the Democratic party that I grew up with, so I’m running to bring the party back to its traditional values.”

The political class was rattled in 2016 by the two-headed insurgency of not only Donald Trump on the right but Bernie Sanders on the left, channeling frustrations with the status quo in very different ways. Kennedy argues that Democrats, once the party of the poor and middle class, now own most of the nation’s wealth and dominate its richest counties.

“Americans feel ignored by both political parties,” he said. “Their wealth is being strip mined by large corporations, corporate interests, and you’re seeing a level of desperation that I’ve never seen in this country. They just don’t feel that anybody’s listening, and they felt like Bernie was maybe listening, and they felt like Donald Trump was maybe listening as well.”

Many are disturbed by Kennedy’s flirtations with the far right, including racists and antisemites. He has appeared on Infowars, a channel run by Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and granted interviews to pro-Trump extremists Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. A Super Pac supporting Kennedy’s presidential run owes half its money to a longtime Republican mega-donor and Trump backer, according to campaign finance reports.

Kennedy insists that he is happy to receive support from across the spectrum and focus on issues that united Americans rather than divide them. He said: “My message is a populist message. The Republicans are appealing to a populist base and I appeal to the same base. I appeal to working people, middle class people and the poor.”

So what did he make of Trump’s presidency? Kennedy seemed a little reluctant to reply and kept his answer short: “I don’t think it was the shining apex of American exceptionalism.”

Trump is facing 91 criminal charges across four cases, many related to an attempted coup after his 2020 election defeat. Democrats warn starkly that his return to the White House could spell the end of American democracy. But again Kennedy swerved: “There’s authoritarian impulses on both sides. On one side it’s the authoritarianism of rightwing demagoguery, and on the left it’s the authoritarianism of the elites, which is equally dangerous because it involves censorship.”

Equally dangerous? “I would say equally dangerous,” he reiterated. “What do you think is more dangerous? The attack on the Capitol building on January 6 or the revelations that the White House has been using the CIA and the FBI to censor its critics? What do you think is more dangerous for the republic? Both parties are doing things that are equally dangerous.”

He added: “Once a government can silence its critics it has licence for every atrocity and so it’s shocking to me that people in the Democratic party now think it’s OK to silence people. I’ve never thought that’s right. I’ve always spoken to people who I don’t agree with. That’s an important part of being American.”

It is an exercise in false equivalence fueled by personal animus. Kennedy accuses the government of colluding with social media companies to deny his freedom of speech, making him the first person censored by the White House after Biden’s inauguration. In reality he was suspended from platforms such as Instagram and Twitter for spreading coronavirus vaccine misinformation.

Without the pandemic, it might be argued, there would be no Kennedy candidacy. He has long promoted bogus theories linking vaccines to autism, antidepressants to school shootings and chemicals present in water sources to transgender identity. But now his anti-scientific views have moved from the fringe to resonate with millions of people, especially consumers of rightwing media.

His anti-vaccine charity, Children’s Health Defense, prospered during the pandemic, with revenues more than doubling in 2020 to $6.8m, according to filings made with charity regulators. Kennedy has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of Covid, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. In 2021 he published a book, The Real Anthony Fauci, in which he accused America’s top infectious disease expert of assisting in “a historic coup d’etat against western democracy”.

In his Guardian interview, Kennedy is unrepentant, saying: “Show me where I got one thing wrong.” He tossed out far-fetched claims that might have been plucked from dark corners of the web: “The British study that just came out said 98% of the people who died were triple vaccinated”; “If you look at the data, countries that were least vaccinated had the least Covid deaths”. He did not take the vaccine himself and did catch the virus but “it didn’t stop me from skiing”.

Earlier this year the UN’s World Health Organization declared an end to Covid as a public health emergency, stating that immunity increased due to “highly effective vaccines” developed in record time. A modelling study by the Commonwealth Fund and Yale School of Public Health at the end of last year found that Covid vaccines kept more than 18.5 million people in the US out of the hospital and saved more than 3.2 million lives.

Kennedy’s own family have distanced themselves from him. Jack Schlossberg, President Kennedy’s grandson, said in an Instagram video: “He’s trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame. I’ve listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is, his candidacy is an embarrassment.”

But at the state fair there was a significant constituency thrilled to hear Kennedy keep saying the unsayable, renewing questions about what the rise of such candidates tells America about itself and its yearning. Gail Buffington, 62, wearing a white “Kennedy 2024” cap and “RFK Jr for president 2024” T-shirt, said: “I believe in freedom of speech, peace and civil liberties. Trump drew a large crowd too, and I was in that crowd, and I got nothing but thumbs up from everybody.”

Does CNN Have a "Blind Spot" for Joe Biden?

Since nasty Americans meddled in other countries internal affairs and conversations, perhaps in this post and in the spirit of tit-4-tat, Q will not be "shy" in speaking his mind about ours... or perhaps the rest of us should all follow Q's previous example and develop a quasi-permanent "blind spot" about talking politics.

Tucker Talks Ukraine

COVID Resurgent?

...or Government Officials need a new infusion of "patent cash"?

Only the Last Fools Still Suffer Gell-Mann Amnesia...

... and their foolishness becomes more and more obvious to others, daily.

They're Addicted to Left-Wing Gaslight.

Does ANYONE Trust the Democrat Spin of the MSM Anymore?

...or do we all, like Dervy, suffer from permanent/ pathological Gell-Mann AMNESIA?

from Wiki:

Gell-Mann amnesia effect

In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term "Gell-Mann amnesia effect", after physicist Murray Gell-Mann. He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles written on topics outside of their fields of expertise, yet acknowledging that articles written in the same publication within their fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding:

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is similar to Erwin Knoll's law of media accuracy, which states: "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge."

Do NOT Make ANY Political Donation UNLESS You See This 1st!

 

Team Trump Unveils New “Seal Of Approval” To Protect Loyal Donors From Scammers

Bedminster, NJ — President Donald J. Trump will grant the right to use his “Seal of Approval” to an exclusive group of candidates and committees that the President endorses or otherwise supports. The purpose of the Seal is to help President Trump’s donors distinguish between authorized uses of his name and likeness, and unauthorized uses including oftentimes outright scams. It is intended to protect the President’s donors and supporters from illegitimate organizations falsely claiming some affiliation with President Trump and his campaign. (like the Republican National Committee)

President Trump’s endorsement power is the most powerful force in American politics. His influence is election defining. When President Trump posts an endorsement on Truth Social, or a candidate onstage before tens of thousands of voters, America First patriots rally behind President Trump’s choice and deliver a decisive victory.

Unfortunately, some candidates, PACs and their fundraising vendors have drained millions of dollars from President Trump’s donors by falsely claiming that they support President Trump, that the President supports them, and that funds received in response to the solicitations will support, help, or defend President Trump. To fight this scam, President Trump’s endorsement will now include the right to use his name and likeness in fundraising solicitations and other campaign communications, as signified by this Seal. The Seal will be a powerful signal to President Trump’s loyal donors that the sender is on Team Trump, and is not a scammer.

Candidates and committees authorized to use the Seal shall be permitted, and indeed encouraged, to use the Seal in connection with their activities on social media, in paid advertising, and on merchandise.

This Seal is revocable, non-exclusive license, and the digital art file containing the Seal is non-transferable. Any entity that mimics or unlawfully uses the Seal without explicit approval from a representative of President Trump’s campaign may face legal action.

Before responding to a fundraising solicitation from a candidate or committee, President Trump’s donors should visit DonaldJTrump.com/SealOfApproval to review an up-to-date list of candidates and committees the President has endorsed or supports. Candidates and committees that wish to be a part of Official Team Trump and receive the right to use the Seal should visit DonaldJTrump.com/SealOfApproval to apply.

By granting a candidate or committee the right to use this seal, President Trump does not solicit contributions for or on behalf of such candidate or committee. Additionally, the seal does not indicate or imply that President Trump or Donald J. Trump for President 2024, Inc. has reviewed or approved any fundraising solicitation or other communication in connection with the seal appears. Indeed, it has not done so and will not do so.

Your Government at Work

Newt Sums it up...

A dark dark prediction from one of the wisest political minds in America. Listen to @NewtGingrich pic.twitter.com/71KDAr5Xia

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) August 16, 2023

Monica Showater, "A Stark Warning about the Trump Indictments from Newt Gingrich"

In an eighty-second statement, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has weighed in with a stark warning about the dangerous implications of the Georgia indictments targeting President Trump in an appearance on Fox News:

It's incredible.

Gingrich distills down what this Georgia nightmare for Trump is about and concludes that it's really our nightmare, perhaps even moreso than President Trump's, warning of bitterness that is bound to follow should this garbage indictment from Georgia become the new standard.

He begins with the grotesque double standards of justice as Trump is proscuted while Democrats who have engaged in far worse crimes have enjoyed impunity. He speaks to how Biden is kind of a parody of the pattern of lawlessness and impunity and corruption seen in recent years, having 'learned' from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama about how to enrich oneself in office and how to get away with lawbreaking with no prosecution.

He speaks of Trump's outsider status willing to take on the entire system as something that "could destroy their entire machine."

He speaks of the prosecution as a "desperate last-ditch effort by a corrupt machine to "destroy their most dangerous opponent."

He warns that they will do it by destroying the rule of law, the Constitution and creating a legacy of bitterness "which i think will last for a generation or more."

"This is going to be a horrendous period. And we just need to understand: The people who want to control America and want to dictate to America break any law, lie about any topic, and manipulate the system any way they can, and that includes a lot of the elite news media," he said.

What a breathtaking statement, saying what everyone is thinking with eloquence for the ages, and done off the cuff.

It's an amazing statement, comparable to the words of Patrick Henry. If this doesn't motivate voters to get out and vote for Trump to stop this coming nightmare, what will?

Will Trump's Arrest in Georgia Spark a General Strike?

 

A general strike is a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coalitions of political, social, and labour organizations and may also include rallies, marches, boycotts, civil disobedience, non-payment of taxes, and other forms of direct or indirect action. Additionally, general strikes might exclude care workers, such as teachers, doctors, and nurses.

Historically, the term general strike has referred primarily to solidarity action, which is a multi-sector strike that is organised by trade unions who strike together in order to force pressure on employers to begin negotiations or offer more favourable terms to the strikers; though not all strikers may have a material interest in the negotiations, they all have a material interest in maintaining and strengthening the collective efficacy of strikes as a bargaining tool.

Globalist Cannon Fodder

Fauci's COVID $Millions$

Sarah Arnold, "Records Reveal Fauci Made Over $300 Million From the Covid Pandemic While Americans Suffered"

While the entire United States was under authoritarian mandates, top so-called Covid-19 “experts” were making hundreds of millions of dollars on the pandemic that caused lifelong hurdles for many Americans.

According to records, the former NIH Director, Dr. Francis Collins, and former NIAID Director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, made huge profits from royalty checks during the Chinese virus-fueled pandemic. At the same time, thousands of people struggled to put food on the table.

OpenTheBooks, a transparency organization, recently released over 1,500 unredacted records revealing the leaders of the country’s National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases profited off the virus that killed thousands of people.

On top of that, Fauci funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology to research the Coronavirus.

The records show Collins and Fauci got 58 royalty payments for allowing companies to use their COVID-19 vaccines, which in return was developed with funding from U.S. taxpayers by private pharmaceutical firms.

So, in other words, the Covid pandemic was one big ploy for the government to get massively wealthy.

Through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 56,000 transactions were recorded, totaling over $325 million banked by the “experts.”

“The NIH continues to refuse to voluntarily divulge the names of scientists who receive royalties and from which companies over the period of time from 2010 to 2016, 27,000 royalty payments were paid to 1800 NIH employees,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said. “We know that. Not because you told us, but because we forced you to tell us through the Freedom of Information Act.”

Top Covid Experts Raked in 58 Royalty Payments During Pandemic While Americans Suffered

Dr. Francis Collins, former NIH Director, and Dr. Tony Fauci, former NIAID Director, cashed in big time during the Covid pandemic. The two most influential Covid experts raked in 58 royalty… pic.twitter.com/uzocss1b2W

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) August 12, 2023

Between 2010 and 2021, Fauci received 37 payments from three entities, including 15 from Santa Cruz Biotechnology— which ranks fifth in royalty payments. Fauci also received 14 from Ancell Corp. and eight from Chiron Corp., which was later bought by Novartis, allowing the company to obtain significant NIH funds.

According to OpenTheBooks, names, and license numbers for each payment is absent from the records— data that the NIH initially withheld but was later forced to release by a court. This information is essential to know if there were any potential conflicts of interest.

Records also show that Fauci, the highest-paid federal worker with a 2022 salary of $480,000, failed to donate his royalties to charity as promised.

Back in the US, back in the US, back in the US-SR!

Easiest Question of the Day...

Jim Daws, "Special counsel in Biden investigation is a sweet pick for Hunter"

In a move that should come as a surprise to no one, Merrick Garland has appointed, as special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, the one man who can most be counted on to continue covering up for the Biden family crimes. That man is David Weiss.

This is the self-same David Weiss who allowed the statute of limitations to lapse on Hunter Biden's most serious crimes, while offering him a plea deal so broad, so lenient, and for crimes so minor that the prosecutor Weiss sent to court had to admit to an astonished judge that there was no legal precedent for it. To her credit, the judge rejected that sweetheart plea deal out of hand.

That would be the David Weiss whose office IRS investigators-turned-whistleblowers testified prevented them from even interviewing Hunter or executing search warrants to collect evidence of his crimes — and the same David Weiss who blocked those IRS investigators from using the mountains of evidence contained on Hunter's infamous laptop from hell.

Yes, David Weiss, who, five years after the beginning of this sham investigation, has not indicted Hunter Biden for anything — while the statute of limitations on his serial and thoroughly documented felonies continue to slip away. Those crimes would have earned any Republican a pre-dawn arrest by a heavily armed SWAT team with news media in tow.

I say that it should surprise no one, because at this point, there is no act so blatant, so brazen, or so lawless that Joe Biden's DOJ, led by Merrick Garland, will not stoop to it. This is the same weaponized DOJ that is targeting Biden's main political opponent for re-election in 2024.

Besides having proven himself as nothing more than a protector of the Bidens, David Weiss isn't even legally eligible for this appointment — at least according to a plain reading of the special counsel statute, which states that "the Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government."

All this is to conclude that David Weiss has proven that his only intention is to immunize Hunter Biden with the lowest possible charges and shield any evidence from implicating Joe BIden.

All of this has been done to continue stonewalling and prevent House Republicans from subpoenaing Hunter and Jim to testify about that $20 million that flowed into the Biden family coffers. Ongoing investigation, don't you know.

We can't be surprised, but we should all be ashamed of what our Department of Justice, under Joe Biden, has become. Calling this banana republic justice is an insult to banana republics.

We also should not be surprised if and when the Democrat prosecutor in Atlanta, following the Biden DOJ's well established pattern, indicts Donald Trump next week for legally contesting the 2020 presidential election — something the Democrats themselves did in 2000, 2004, and 2016.

More Funding Requested for Endless Ukrainian Proxy War...

Samantha Aschieris, "U.S. Aid to Ukraine Amounts to $900 Per American Household"

Congressionally approved aid for Ukraine has cost each U.S. household hundreds of dollars, Heritage Foundation budget expert Richard Stern says.

“The formal aid packages alone amount to a staggering $113 billion—roughly $900 per American household and almost 12 times the spending cuts promised by House leadership in the annual spending bills,” Stern, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, said in an email to The Daily Signal, Heritage’s news outlet.

“As with all new federal spending,” Stern added, “this $113 billion spending spree was added to our national debt and will cost more than $300 in interest costs per household over the decade. Of course, we’ve given more aid than that, but haven’t paid the bill on it yet.”

Congress already has greenlighted over $113 billion in “aid and military assistance to support the Ukrainian government and allied nations” since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

“As the war in Ukraine becomes a prolonged conflict, Americans are rightly growing skeptical of sending more taxpayer dollars and equipment from our depleted armory,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts told The Daily Signal in a written statement.

“Washington has failed to address their concerns, explain our nation’s strategy in the war, or enact basic oversight for our aid,” Roberts said. “If Congress can’t fix those fundamental issues, they have no business sending more money into the fog of war.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. had about 127.9 million households during fiscal year 2022, which ended last September, making the estimated cost for the approved aid to Ukraine per American household about $884.

President Joe Biden’s administration is preparing to ask Congress for supplemental funding for Ukraine, CNN reported Monday.

After returning from their August recess, some members of Congress want to provide more funding for Ukraine in a bill providing hurricane relief to Americans.

“Estimates of what the administration will request vary wildly from $10 billion to $70 billion, which demonstrates that no one knows what to request because they don’t know what they will do with it,” Heritage Foundation national security expert Victoria Coates told The Daily Signal in an email.

“Until we get clarity on a strategy I would be very cautious about voting in support,” said Coates, vice president of Heritage’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy.

Ryan Walker, acting executive director of Heritage Action for America, the think tank’s grassroots arm, noted that Americans continue to struggle with rising consumer prices.

“Inflation remains high, families are struggling to make ends meet, and the credit rating for the United States was just downgraded,” Walker told The Daily Signal in a written statement. “Still, the Biden administration is demanding that American taxpayers spend billions more of their hard-earned money to blindly fund another international conflict without any clearly defined U.S. strategy, timeline, or oversight of aid.”

Walker added:

Before Congress can even consider the idea of additional aid, they must address the demands of the American people, which include public accounting of how previous funding has already been spent, a clearly articulated plan for American involvement and liability for their paychecks, impacts on the American military and its ability to confront adversaries, and assurances of further commitments from European partners.

Lastly, the American people do not want to see this aid jammed through with budget gimmicks. Instead, they want these minimum requirements met and any legislation to be considered on its own merits as standalone legislation and paid for without sending American families further into debt. Biden’s request falls flat on nearly all of these demands.

A majority of Republican and independent voters say they oppose additional U.S. aid for Ukraine, according to polling data released Saturday and first reported by The Daily Signal.

By a margin of 54% to 29%, Republicans say they don’t want Congress to provide funding and supply weapons to Ukraine. Among independents, opposition jumps to 56% and support is a mere 17%.

Scott Rasmussen conducted the national survey of 1,000 voters Aug. 2 and 3.

Overall, a plurality of American voters—43% to 38%—oppose more U.S. aid to Ukraine.

Voters are divided by party, with 59% percent of Democrats supporting congressional approval of more aid and 24% opposed, Rasmussen said.

The poll also surveyed voters on Biden’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine war. Americans expressed dissatisfaction with the commander-in-chief with just 31% of voters rating his performance good or excellent. An overwhelming 61% gave Biden either fair or poor marks.

What Really Happened on J6?

Welcome to the United State (of Nations) & the Beginning of WWIII

 

Impending invasion?

Earth to Neo-Liberals. Are You SURE That You Want to 'Ef with These People?

Trump Sings the UniParty Blues...

Calling Doctor Hillary! We Need More (and Newer) Scapegoats!

 

Opinion by Hillary Rodham Clinton, "The Weaponization of Loneliness"

The question that preoccupied me and many others over much of the past eight years is how our democracy became so susceptible to a would-be strongman and demagogue. The question that keeps me up at night now—with increasing urgency as 2024 approaches—is whether we have done enough to rebuild our defenses or whether our democracy is still highly vulnerable to attack and subversion.

There’s reason for concern: the influence of dark money and corporate power, right-wing propaganda and misinformation, malign foreign interference in our elections, and the vociferous backlash against social progress. The “vast right-wing conspiracy” has been of compelling interest to me for many years. But I’ve long thought something important was missing from our national conversation about threats to our democracy. Now recent findings from a perhaps unexpected source—America’s top doctor—offer a new perspective on our problems and valuable insights into how we can begin healing our ailing nation.

In May, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published an advisory, warning that a growing “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” threatens Americans’ personal health and also the health of our democracy. Murthy reported that, even before COVID, about half of all American adults were experiencing substantial levels of loneliness. Over the past two decades, Americans have spent significantly more time alone, engaging less with family, friends, and people outside the home. By 2018, just 16 percent of Americans said they felt very attached to their local community.

An “epidemic of loneliness” may sound abstract at a time when our democracy faces concrete and imminent threats, but the surgeon general’s report helps explain how we became so vulnerable. In the past, surgeons general have at crucial moments sounded the alarm about major crises and drawn our attention to underappreciated threats, including smoking, HIV/AIDS, and obesity. This is one of those moments.

The rate of young adults who report suffering from loneliness went up every single year from 1976 to 2019. From 2003 to 2020, the average time that young people spent in person with friends declined by nearly 70 percent. Then the pandemic turbocharged our isolation.

According to the surgeon general, when people are disconnected from friends, family, and communities, their lifetime risk of heart disease, dementia, depression, and stroke skyrockets. Shockingly, prolonged loneliness is as bad, or worse, for our health as being obese or smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Researchers also say that loneliness can generate anger, resentment, and even paranoia. It diminishes civic engagement and social cohesion, and increases political polarization and animosity. Unless we address this crisis, Murthy warned, “we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country.”

In 1996, I published It Takes a Village. As first lady, I was worried that American life had become frantic and fragmented for many people, especially stressed-out parents. Social, economic, and technological trends seemed to be pulling us apart rather than lifting us up. We were spending more time in our cars and in front of the television and less time engaging in our communities. Even back then, before smartphones and social media, it was evident that Americans were becoming more isolated, lonely, and unmoored from traditional sources of meaning and support—and that our kids were suffering because of this. I also was concerned about the rise of right-wing politicians like Newt Gingrich and media personalities like Rush Limbaugh who were sowing division and alienation.

Nearly 30 years later, it’s clear that the problems I diagnosed in the 1990s ran deeper than I realized, and were more dire than I could have imagined. But the prescriptions in It Takes a Village—putting families first, investing in community infrastructure, protecting kids from out-of-control technology, and recommitting to the core American values of mutual responsibility and empathy—have only grown more urgent and necessary.

The surgeon general’s warning echoes the findings of other researchers who have studied these trends for decades. In his influential 2000 book, Bowling Alone, the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam showed that Americans’ social ties and support networks collapsed in the second half of the 20th century. Many of the activities and relationships that had defined and sustained previous generations, such as attending religious services and joining unions, clubs, and civic organizations—even participating in local bowling leagues—were disappearing. Putnam’s more recent work shows that these trends have only gotten worse in the early decades of the 21st century, and that they go hand in hand with intensifying political polarization, economic inequality, loss of trust in government, and a shift in the national attitude from “we’re all in this together” to “you’re on your own.”

Murthy cites the work of another Harvard researcher, Raj Chetty, who shows how the decline of social connections between people of different classes and backgrounds—the kinds of relationships that used to be formed in VFW halls, church basements, and PTA meetings—has significantly reduced economic mobility in America. The data show that diverse, robust social networks make the American dream possible. Without them, it fades.

All of this aligns with the findings of the Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton. They attribute soaring rates of what they call “deaths of despair”—including suicides and deaths from alcohol and drug overdoses—to a toxic mix of economic stagnation, declining social ties, rising alienation, and families and communities coming apart.

The surgeon general points, as well, to the crucial role of technology. He highlights data showing that Americans who use social media for more than two hours a day are twice as likely to experience loneliness and feelings of social isolation as people who used social media for less than 30 minutes a day. As we spend more time online, we spend less time interacting with one another in person or engaging with our local communities. The more we live in social-media echo chambers, the less we trust one another, and the more we struggle to find common ground with or feel empathy for people who have different perspectives and experiences.

Murthy followed his report on loneliness with a second advisory just 20 days later, warning that heavy social-media use among teenagers is driving a dangerous increase in depression and other mental-health challenges. From 2001 to 2021, the suicide rate among people in their early 20s surged by more than 60 percent. For 10-to-14-year-olds, it tripled. These are numbers that should shake us to our core.

My three grandchildren are too young to experience the worst of this. Still, I can’t help but think about where they and their friends and classmates will be soon, exposed hour after hour to whatever content some hidden algorithm decides to promote. I worry about American children’s self-esteem, their mental health, their sense of perspective and reality.

The way Americans—and young people in particular—interact with technology today, the way our phones and social-media networks inject bullying, abuse, misinformation, outrage, and anger directly into our brains, is not something any of us could have foreseen just a few short decades ago. When I wrote It Takes a Village, I was concerned about the effects on young people of violence on TV. Now, in the age of social media, those worries almost seem quaint.

What does all of this loneliness and disconnection mean for our democracy?

Murthy carefully connects the dots between increasing social isolation and declining civic engagement. “When we are less invested in one another, we are more susceptible to polarization and less able to pull together to face the challenges that we cannot solve alone,” he wrote in The New York Times.

[Hillary Rodham Clinton and Dan Schwerin: A state of emergency for democracy]

It’s not just the surgeon general who recognizes that social isolation saps the lifeblood of democracy. So do the ultra-right-wing billionaires, propagandists, and provocateurs who see authoritarianism as a source of power and profit.

There have always been angry young men alienated from mainstream society and susceptible to the appeal of demagogues and hate-mongers. But modern technology has taken the danger to another level. This was Steve Bannon’s key insight.

Long before Bannon ran Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, he was involved in the world of online gaming. He discovered an army of what he later described as “rootless white males,” disconnected from the real world but highly engaged online and often quick to resort to sexist and racist attacks. When Bannon took over the hard-right website Breitbart News, he was determined to turn these socially isolated gamers into the shock troops of the alt-right, pumping them full of conspiracy theories and hate speech. Bannon pursued the same project as a senior executive at Cambridge Analytica, the notorious data-mining and online-influence company largely owned by the right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer. According to a former Cambridge Analytica engineer turned whistleblower, Bannon targeted “incels,” or involuntarily celibate men, because they were easy to manipulate and prone to believing conspiracy theories. “You can activate that army,” Bannon told the Bloomberg journalist Joshua Green. “They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump.”

Like many others, I was too slow to see the impact this strategy could have. Now the surgeon general is telling us that social disconnection is not just a problem at the margins—not just the usual “angry young men”—but is in fact an epidemic sweeping the country.

I have seen firsthand how dangerous lies can fuel violence and undermine our democratic process. During the 2016 campaign, a shocking number of people became convinced that I am a murderer, a terrorist sympathizer, and the evil mastermind behind a child-sex-abuse ring. Alex Jones, the right-wing talk-show host, posted a video about “all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped.”

This was not the first time that I was the subject of wild conspiracy theories or partisan rage that veered into mania. In the 1990s, supermarket tabloids used to splash headlines such as “Hillary Clinton Adopts Alien Baby” across their front pages. I was even burned in effigy by a crowd in Kentucky furious that I had proposed taxing cigarettes to help fund universal health care for all Americans. The president of the Kentucky Association of Tobacco Supporters chanted, “Burn, baby, burn” as he poured gasoline on a scarecrow in a dress labeled I’M HILLARY. By 2016, I fully expected to play a starring role in the fever dreams of extremists at the margins of American politics.

But something had changed. Social media gave conspiracy theories far wider reach than ever before. Fox News and other right-wing media outlets gave outlandish lies “credibility.” And before Trump, we’d never had a presidential candidate—and then an actual president—who used the biggest bully pulpit in the world to be an actual bully and traffic in this kind of trash. The results were tragic but predictable. In early December 2016, a 28-year-old man from North Carolina armed with a Colt AR-15 assault rifle shot up a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., because he had read online that it was the headquarters of my supposed child-sex ring. Thankfully, no one was harmed. But the pizzeria attack foreshadowed the violence to come: QAnon followers and militia members storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021; mass shooters leaving behind manifestos riddled with misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, and other conspiracy theories promoted in far-right echo chambers.

As we look ahead to 2024, the threat to our democracy is not just from more of this kind of violence—although I fear that is coming as well. Many Americans breathed a sigh of relief after last year’s midterms because prominent election deniers and conspiracy theorists were defeated, including Kari Lake in Arizona and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. But these statewide victories obscured more troubling developments at the local level.

Consider Peggy Judd, a middle-aged white woman from Cochise County, Arizona, who participated in the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally and reportedly promotes Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election and QAnon conspiracy theories. Judd is not just some Facebook gadfly. She is an elected member of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors. And in 2022, she refused to certify the results of the midterm elections until she was finally compelled to do so by a judge.

A recent study from the organization Informing Democracy identified more than 200 local officials across six battleground states who, like Judd, have taken antidemocratic actions. Many of them are in a position to administer or influence the 2024 elections. They’re county clerks and municipal election commissioners, state legislators and members of canvassing boards. They’re people you’ve probably never heard of who play vital roles in making our electoral system work.

A hallmark of American democracy is that elections have been largely run by local, usually nonpartisan volunteers and officials. Communities generally trusted these election administrators because they knew them—they saw them in the supermarket, at restaurants, at their kids’ schools. This patchwork system has always been vulnerable to localized corruption and racial discrimination, but most folks who raised their hands to help out did so with good intentions and good results.

Not anymore. As the trust and social ties that used to bind communities together have frayed, apathy, isolation, and polarization have undercut the old “we’re all in this together” ethos. Instead of nonpartisan volunteers and civic organizations like the League of Women Voters, we have MAGA election deniers and QAnon enthusiasts. There’s now a widespread shortage of poll workers because so many have faced harassment and abuse, just for doing their jobs and helping people vote.

In Fulton County, Georgia, the election worker Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who helped out in 2020 as a temp, faced racist death threats after Trump falsely accused them of orchestrating massive fraud. “I just felt bad for my mom,” Moss later told the January 6 congressional committee, “and I felt horrible for picking this job and being the one that always wants to help and always [be] there, never missing not one election.”

American democracy needs people like Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman to keep raising their hands and offering to help. This country was built by men and women who believed in service, community, and working together for the greater good—pioneers who stuck together in wagon trains, farmers who pitched in on barn raisings and quilting bees, immigrants who joined volunteer fire departments, enslaved people who risked their lives to serve on the Underground Railroad and help others escape to freedom. Murthy and Putnam might call these ties social capital. In the 1830s, the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville visited America and wrote about our “habits of the heart.” However we describe it, the sense that “we’re all in it together” made our democratic experiment possible—and it may be the only thing that can save us still.

Without a doubt, winning elections at every level is essential. We need to defeat the demagogues and election deniers so convincingly that there’s no room for dirty tricks. And it’s heartening that organizations like Run for Something are mobilizing candidates for school boards, county clerkships, and state legislatures across the country. We also need to strengthen voting rights and fight back against misinformation. But ultimately, winning the next election is never going to be enough. We must work together to restitch our unraveling social fabric, and to rebuild Americans’ trust in one another, our democracy, and our shared future.

Although there is an important debate to be had about how much economic conditions contribute to loneliness and alienation, the significant investments being made under President Joe Biden can lift both incomes and aspirations. The historic legislation enacted by Biden and the Democrats in Congress will modernize infrastructure, bring supply chains home, and boost manufacturing in key industries such as semiconductors and electric vehicles. These investments may help stem the outflow of workers and young people forced to leave their communities to seek opportunity far from home, leaving behind friends, families, and emotional and spiritual support systems. Too often, when Americans face boarded-up storefronts, empty pews, and crumbling schools, it’s despair, loneliness, and resentment that fill the void. Bringing opportunity back to these hard-hit places and enabling more Americans to stay and raise families where their roots are won’t reverse the toxic impacts of social media, disrupt the right-wing media machine, or end our political polarization, but it’s a step in the right direction. We can build on that by raising taxes on the wealthiest individuals and corporations to buttress our social safety net and invest in schools and communities.

In his advisory, Murthy offers other recommendations for rebuilding social connection and cohesion. They include pro-family policies such as paid leave, and investments in public transit and community infrastructure that help people connect with one another in real life, not just online. He has also called for stronger and more sophisticated oversight and regulation of tech companies. In particular, there is an urgent need for more protections for kids on social media. And Murthy rightly argues that we can all do more in our own lives to nurture relationships with friends, family members, and neighbors, and seek out opportunities to serve and support others.

I offered similar prescriptions in It Takes a Village, arguing that we need to work together to help families raise healthy, successful children. Some of the work I envisioned would happen at home, such as families turning off screens and spending more time together. Much of it would be in communities, with local businesses, schools, congregations, and unions doing more to bring us together and help parents who often feel alone and overburdened. I thought government could help support that community engagement. For example, I was a big supporter of a Clinton-administration program that gave poor families in public housing vouchers to move to safer, middle-income neighborhoods where their children could make friends and find mentors from different backgrounds. I was convinced that we had to come together as a national village and decide that helping all our kids live up to their God-given potential is more important than profits or partisanship.

These basic principles still ring true, and the evidence continues to show that this approach works. The children of those families that we helped move to better neighborhoods in the 1990s have grown up to attend college at higher rates, earn higher incomes, and have more stable families of their own than their peers who stayed behind. And the younger the kids were when they moved, the bigger boost they received.

In recent years, I’ve often thought back to It Takes a Village. The pandemic should have been a case study in how Americans come together in the face of a common challenge. And at the beginning, there was a sense of solidarity and shared sacrifice. People realized that if their neighbor got sick, it could harm them too, and that the virus was striking everyone. The entire village was at risk. We really were all in it together. Tragically, this spirit quickly faded. President Trump and other right-wing leaders politicized the pandemic and turned public health into a wedge issue—a staggeringly shortsighted and dangerous move with predictably deadly results. And when data first emerged showing that COVID-19 was disproportionately affecting Black and Latino communities, support for safety precautions and shared sacrifice dropped among white people and conservatives. Instead of a story of our common humanity, the pandemic became a story of our fractured society and poisoned politics.

I haven’t given up, though. I still believe in the wisdom and power of the American village. I’m inspired by the moms and dads showing up at school-board meetings and getting involved in local politics for the first time because they refuse to let extremists ban books from the neighborhood library. I love reading about teenagers turning to old-school flip phones so they’re no longer at the mercy of giant tech firms and hidden algorithms. I’m encouraged by the growing number of companies giving employees time off to vote and recognizing that they have responsibilities not just to shareholders but also to workers, customers, communities, and the planet. And I take heart from the workers bravely organizing corporate warehouses and coffee shops, or walking a picket line, breathing new life into the labor movement and insisting that even in our fractured age, we are still stronger together.

If you dig deep enough, through all the mud of politics and polarization, eventually you hit something hard and true: a foundation of values and aspirations that bind us together as Americans. That’s something to build on. If we can break out of our toxic “us versus them” dichotomies, if we can shrink our notion of “the other” and expand the “we” in “we the people,” perhaps we can discover that we have more in common than we think.

Though we are divided in so many ways, though we are lonelier and more isolated than ever, it remains true that none of us can raise a family, build a business, strengthen a community, or heal a nation alone. We have to do it together. It still takes a village.