The Heat: Wealth Inequality Explodes in the United States
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Elections
Iniquity, the 0.000006%, and Who Pays $300k to Hear Hillary
The United States’ 20 wealthiest people (The 0.000006 Percent) now own more wealth than the bottom half of the U.S. population combined, a total of 152 million people in 57 million households. The Forbes 400 now own about as much wealth as the nation’s entire African-American population — plus more than a third of the Latino population — combined; more wealth combined than the bottom 61 percent of the U.S. population, an estimated 194 million people or 70 million households.
These
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Identity Berned
Every time I write about a book about Bernie Sanders, somebody sends me a better one. If this keeps up, by the time his campaign is over I should be reading the best book ever written and be completely out of touch with reality. The latest is The Bern Identity by Will Bunch.
These books don’t make me like Bernie Sanders any more or less, or for that matter take seriously any more or less the idea that a likable personality is particularly relevant. But they do inform me about Sanders and
Bern the Feel
If you have to obsess over a political candidate who’s ocassionally allowed on television, please do so with Ted Rall’s book on Bernie. This is not John Nichols’ interview of Bernie in which he forgets that foreign policy even exists. This is not Jonathan Tasini’s almost worshipful book in which he selectively includes the best and omits the worst of Bernie Sanders’ record.
And this is not even just an honest look at the facts about Bernie (which Rall sees as far more
How Did Hillary Win Over Michael Moore?
Here’s Michael Moore explaining that you cannot morally vote for Hillary because of her war-making:
Here’s Michael Moore in completely delusional mode fantasizing about a future President Hillary Clinton somehow turning on her Wall Street and warmongering chums:
What changed? Nothing about Hillary.
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Bernie Sanders Mentioned the Military Budget
If U.S. President were not a mythical position but a serious job, the job interview would include asking the candidates their basic plans of action. This would start with, “What will you encourage Congress to spend a couple of trillion dollars on each year?”
At the moment, about half of federal discretionary spending is spent on one thing, militarism. A basic budget proposal from each candidate would tell us whether they think military spending should go up or down. Some of the Republicans
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Talk Nation Radio: Diana Johnstone on Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-diana-johnstone-on-queen-of-chaos-the-misadventures-of-hillary-clinton
DianaJohnstone is a writer based in Paris, France. Her past books include Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions. Her new book, which we discuss, is Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.
Pacifica
Do Individual Politicians Matter?
It is entirely possible that President Al Gore would not have attacked Afghanistan or Iraq. President Henry Wallace might very well not have nuked Hiroshima or Nagasaki. President William Jennings Bryan almost certainly would not have attacked the Philippines.
Presidents are pushed into war and held back from war all the time, but they also do some pushing and pulling of their own. Within days of Germany’s surrender in World War II, Winston Churchill proposed recruiting German troops into
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U.S. Government Decides Voting Is Less Important Than a Military Draft
I know what you’re thinking. There is no draft. There hasn’t been a draft in decades. They’d let entire Central American nations immigrate, pay recruits six-figure salaries, and let robots fly the drones before they’d create a draft. Crackpot Congress members only bring up a draft as a supposed bank-shot maneuver for ending all the damn wars. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Your government has nonetheless decided that registering men for a possible draft (whether they like it or
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Bernie Drones and Bernie Volunteers
The “senior digital organizer” of Bernie Sanders for President volunteers Aidan King, has this to say:
“I was so excited about Obama. And I still think he’s done amazing things. But I wanted more follow-through,” says King, listing “drone strikes, kill lists, NSA spying on Americans, the expansion of Bush-administration policies, a failed drug war, failed foreign policy,” and the increasing influence of money in politics as his main concerns. “I put
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Talk Nation Radio: An Actually Great Candidate
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-an-actually-great-candidate
Mike Ferner is a candidate for mayor of Toledo, Ohio.
Mike Ferner grew up in rural Ohio, working on farms much of his youth. After 12 years of Catholic education and a head full of John Wayne movies, he enlisted in the Navy right out of high school in 1969.
During three years as a hospital corpsman he nursed hundreds of wounded soldiers returning from Viet Nam, an experience
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Three Cheers for Gridlock
That little smoke-filled room where our despair and paranoia incline us to imagine a small number of evil people run the world clearly forgot to keep an eye on the Republican Party.
A popular movement has struggled to stop such looming disasters as the NAFTA-on-steroids Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but the ouster of John Boehner as Speaker of the House puts stopping anything into play. While scholarly studies deem the U.S. government to be an oligarchy, based on whom it actually serves, petty
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Bernie Sanders Gets a Foreign Policy
After 25,000 people asked, Senator Bernie Sanders added a few words to his presidential campaign website about the 96% of humanity he’d been ignoring.
He did not, as his spoken comments heretofore might have suggested, make this statement entirely or at all about fraud and waste in the military. He did not even mention Saudi Arabia, much less declare that it should “take the lead” or “get its hands dirty” as he had been doing in interviews, even as Saudi Arabia bombs
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A Peace Activist Leads the Labour Party
I wonder if people in the United States understand what it means that the Labour Party in London now has a peace activist in charge of it. Jeremy Corbyn does not resemble any U.S. politicians. He doesn’t favor “only the smart wars” or prefer drone murders to massive invasions. Corbyn opposes wars, and he works to end militarism. He was over here in Washington recently trying to get a Brit freed from Guantanamo. He chairs the Stop the War Coalition, one of the biggest peace organizations
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Where are we going and why are we in Hillary's hand basket?
Hillary Clinton’s favorite “Hitler” these days is Putin, with Assad in close second. Her days of giggling triumphantly over the murder of Gadaffi may be behind her. And one of her favorite ways of demonizing Putin has been denouncing his opposition to gay rights. Yet Hillary, along with Rick Santorum, was a supporter of proposed legislation
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Could a Plant Win a Presidential Debate?
I don’t mean an infiltrator planted in a nefarious plot to throw an election. I mean a green, soil-rooted, leafy plant.
I’ve been reading Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola. It is at the very least a suggestive treatise.
Imagine that astronauts discover life on another planet, and that the life discovered there is very different from humans. It doesn’t use our sort of language or engage in our sort of
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Corporate Media Crap Coverage of Sanders Is Norm
There are now articles about the predictable fluff BS horserace personality lifestyle crap coverage by the corporate media of the Bernie Sanders for president campaign (and articles about the predictable non-coverage of the Jill Stein for president campaign).
I wish it would all go away, as I think having no election would be preferable to holding such a broken one, and I’d limit even an open, free, credible, functioning, publicly-funded, fairly reported election to something under 6 months
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Bernie Talks Militarism But Says Nothing New
Yes, I think the election season is a disastrously overlong distraction. If people’s interest in it can be used to get them to ask their heroes to lead on important matters — such as asking Bernie Sanders to rally the Senate for the Iran agreement or against the TPP — then that’s a nice silver lining. If people want to get drunk watching Republicans debate rather than some other poorly conceived tragicomedy on TV, what do I care?
But there’s usually little of moving
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