2024 Archives

Unbundling is the word that the multibillion-dollar industry that controls much of our news and politics, our understanding of the world and our interactions with each other, doesn’t want us to discuss. But it may well be one of the most vital words for all Americans to understand. And it’s at the core of effective challenges to monopoly, particularly with regard to tech. Unbundling could cut your TV, phone, and internet bills from an average of around $180 collectively to around $30 or $40 a month. It would diminish the control that giant ISP corporations like Comcast and AT&T have over our ability to access information. And it would create space for competition in the telecommunications sector generally and providers of internet access particularly.

Replacing Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh would take the balance of the Court back to where it was in 1973, before Nixon decided to drive Fortas out with bogus charges. There may be a way... When the Mifepristone case came before the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito bizarrely brought up their desire to see the Comstock Act again enforced. Even arguably worse, they're in part responsible for giving Trump months of delay in the case Jack Smith has brought against him for trying to overthrow our form of government.

The Republican nominee for governor of NC, Trump-endorsed Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, knows how to fix America's political and social problems: prevent women from voting… The Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina this year, Trump-endorsed Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, knows how to fix America's political and social problems: prevent women from voting. In a video from his presentation to — ironically — the Republican Women of Pitt County in March of 2020, when Robinson was successfully running for lieutenant governor, he came right out and said it: "I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn't vote," Robinson argued. "Do you know why? Because in those days, we had people who fought for real social change, and they were called Republicans. … That's the America we want to bring back. We want to bring back the America where Republicans and principles and true ideas of freedom rule." Of course, Robinson isn't onto something new for the GOP. What's new is that some of the party's most extreme voter suppression efforts — theoretically only targeting Blacks and Hispanics — will be working this fall to prevent women from voting as well.

Here the fascists are again, this time calling themselves MAGA. And they're using the classic fascist tactic of the Big Lie, just like Hitler and Mussolini did… Donald Trump has made good use of the propaganda technique known as the Big Lie, but he didn't invent or popularize it. While the strategy has been around as long as humanity's had psychopaths trying to seize power over others, the Big Lie was really brought into pop consciousness in the 1930s. I was going through my old audio library yesterday afternoon and found this short clip from President Franklin D. Roosevelt talking specifically about the Big Lie. FDR, of course, was the man who saved America from the Republican Great Depression (what they used to call it), created Social Security, the right to unionize, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and fought and won against the Nazis in World War II even as he was so disabled by polio that he hadn't walked in decades. As you'll hear, it was as if FDR could see Trump using the Big Lie today. Which makes perfect sense, because FDR fought with his own Nazis and fascists in America in the 1930s and 1940s. They even tried to assassinate or kidnap him, but were stopped by a brave Marine general, Smedley Butler.