Buzzflash

In America, the country that is supposed to be the world’s premier democratic republic, citizens do not have an absolute right to vote. Because we don’t have a right to vote, Red State governors can radically cut back on the number of polling places and voting machines so that working class people are forced to stand in line for five, six, in some cases 10 hours to vote.

In a stunning proof that he doesn’t care about anybody’s life except his own, a sick and infectious Donald Trump ordered two Secret Service agents to join him in “The Beast,“ the presidential limousine, which is “hermetically sealed against chemical attacks“ so it has absolutely no fresh air. The #ProudBoys and other white supremacist groups had gathered outside Walter Reed, and Trump had to go out and wave to his adoring cult members. Meanwhile, news reports tell us that people who work for this administration are in full-blown panic because Trump doesn’t give a damn about their lives, as Mark Meadows, the Chief of Staff, has failed to provide guidance or even instructions on what they should be doing and how they should protect themselves from the virus that seems to be spreading rapidly through the White House.

Republicans in Congress right now are fighting each other over how severely they should cut back on unemployment benefits to people out of work because of this administration's incompetence in handling the coronavirus. Some Republicans want to do away with the $600 a week altogether, others suggest it should be cut to $100 or $300 a week, and others want to make it some fraction of a person's previous income, which will produce a math challenge for the Treasury Department that could take months to untangle. Whatever they decide, the bottom line should be clear to all Americans: Republicans were more than happy to hand more than $3 trillion to billionaires, giant corporations and the very, very wealthy but don't give a flying flip about America's working people.

Jim Jones, who only killed 900+ people, was a piker, perhaps because he just wasn’t rich enough to be truly effective. Billionaire Donald Trump has beat him more than 130 times over, with far more to come. Canada, a country run by competent leaders and actual civil servants at the provincial and federal level, largely has the coronavirus under control and have largely closed their border to Americans. The Guardian is reporting how Mexican border towns are asking Americans not to come, for fear of further spread of the virus there.

Two weeks after America diagnosed its first case of COVID-19, Republicans in the United States Senate (with the single exception of Mitt Romney) refuse to vote to impeach Donald Trump. They decided he couldn’t do much more damage than he already has, and, as Senator Susan Collins suggested, he would back down from his most outrageous behavior because his hands had been slapped by the House of Representatives. Now, newly empowered and feeling invincible, he seems hellbent on a crusade to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Following the lead of Donald Trump, it’s increasingly appearing that the principal Republican electoral strategy this year is to try to frighten white people with threats of angry black people coming to get them. It’s as if Roger stone is still advising Trump, the way he advised Nixon back in the day.

Both aesthetically and practically, there are several things that make Josh Fox's documentary "Gasland" extraordinary and unique - and, frankly, the sort of view that will make you want to share it with everybody you know (particularly if they are politically active or an elected official!).

"Collapse" was published in 2005, and while for most books that would make it less current, events since then have significantly increased the impact and importance of Saul's treatise. The collapse of his title has sped up, and while it was largely invisible outside of economics circles in 2005, it's now even evident to Tea Partiers - although they lack a grasp of its causes and perpetrators.

When George W. Bush lied us into two wars, he opened the gates of Hell for millions of humans.Nobody has chronicled this better - more dispassionately and with less political subtext - than Nir Rosen in "Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World."

Some book reviews write themselves, because the book is so clear and articulate and easily read, and the information in it so straightforward that all the reviewer needs to do is lay it out.