2020 Archives

Posted at Alternet.org on Jul. 1, 2020

The blowback over masks is just the latest faux conservative outrage

The bizarre “conservative” idea of “freedom” has struck again. Margaret Sullivan reported in the Washington Post on a new study that shows what we all intuited: people who get their news from Fox and right-wing hate radio—both promoting the idea that the economy is more important than your health—are less likely to understand the reality of COVID-19 and therefore more likely to get sick and cause themselves and others to die. The bizarre “conservative” idea of “freedom” has struck again. Margaret Sullivan reported in the Washington Post on a new study that shows what we all intuited: people who get their news from Fox and right-wing hate radio—both promoting the idea that the economy is more important than your health—are less likely to understand the reality of COVID-19 and therefore more likely to get sick and cause themselves and others to die.

Posted at Buzzflash on Jun. 25, 2020

Why Is Trump So Enthusiastic About Americans Dying?

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.

Posted at Common Dreams on Jun. 19, 2020

Treasonous Trump Rejects Bringing US Jobs Home to Get Himself Reelected

Donald Trump‘s trade guy, Peter Navarro, proposed that America should spend roughly $2 trillion to bring manufacturing back to the United States from China. Doing this would both strengthen American national and domestic security, and create an explosion in what could be very good-paying jobs for American workers. While this would seem to be absolutely consistent with the positions Donald Trump campaigned on, it turns out his administration is actually opposed to it. Which has everybody scratching their heads. Why would Trump tell Americans, over and over again for five years, that he wants to bring jobs home, and then reject a reasonable effort to do just that?

Posted at Common Dreams on Jun. 16, 2020

What Should the Punishment Be for the Crime of Weaponizing a Virus for Political Purposes?

Trump's rally in Tulsa this weekend and his moving the Republican convention to Florida both demonstrate that he is more than willing to take actions that will kill Americans in order to get his ego stroked and increase his chances of reelection. A new book by Trump's niece tells the story of how Donald Trump cut off payments for his nephew's medical treatment, who had cerebral palsy, as a negotiating weapon to extract more money from his father's estate. Meanwhile, scientists report that if more than 80% of Americans simply wore masks, the R transmission rate would go below one, and the virus would begin to fade out. These three separate data points are not really separate. They are all the same thing.

Posted at Common Dreams on Jun. 10, 2020

What Will It Take to Stop Republicans From Maintaining Structural Racism in Our Voting?

Yesterday we saw the Republican’s number one voter suppression strategy on display, as black areas in Georgia were absolutely deprived of enough voting machines and polling places to accommodate their citizens, producing lines as long as six hours to vote. While that is infuriating in and of itself, the real crime here is that the media continues to refuse to report on this for what it is: structural racism that produces naked voter suppression.

Posted at Buzzflash on Jun. 9, 2020

Fox And Tucker, Get Your Knees Off Their Necks

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.

Posted at Common Dreams on Jun. 8, 2020

How Exactly Should the US Reinvent Its Police Departments?

The Founders of the United States of America had it right: control the guys with guns. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, our nation’s Founders put our military in a box, which has prevented a military coup for over 240 years. We have to do the same today with our police.

Posted at Alternet.org on Jun. 2, 2020

How immunity for cops and Facebook kills Americans

When you tell people they won’t be held accountable for their actions, it almost always ends badly. That’s what’s happened with our police and our social media, two institutional pillars of personal and political society in America today. Removing those dual immunities could dramatically change—for the better—the lives of millions of Americans. For police, the doctrine of “qualified immunity” first took hold in 1967 in the Supreme Court case Pierson v. Ray, when it was used “to shield white police officers from a lawsuit they faced for enforcing segregation,” as the Princetonian editorial board wrote recently.

Posted at Thom Hartmann on Jun. 1, 2020

How Do We End the Looting?

Looting is the word of the day, on the lips of every newscaster, the president, and elected officials across the country. And, indeed, looting is a major problem in America. In 1981, when Ronald Reagan ended the New Deal era, crushed labor unions, and massively cut the top personal and corporate tax rates, he kicked off the most massive and widespread looting of America since the 1920s.

Posted at Thom Hartmann on May. 28, 2020

How Trump’s Promotion of Mask Stupidity Could Lose Him the Election

Every advanced democracy in the world has its coronavirus epidemic largely under control except the United States. And we’re on the verge of melting down again because a substantial minority of Americans simply don’t know the basic science of how an epidemic works and why wearing masks is part of breaking the epidemic chain. Hopefully, you can help your Trumpy friends understand, by sharing this short article with them.