Situation Room

TS

Altuve Walk-off

This Astro is a pure animal at the plate. The ALCS MVP.


TS

Preacher Chris on Morality

We live in an age of radical evil. The architects of this evil are despoiling the earth and driving the human species toward extinction. They are stripping us of our most basic civil liberties and freedoms. They are orchestrating the growing social inequity, concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a cabal of global oligarchs. They are destroying our democratic institutions, turning elected office into a system of legalized bribery, stacking our courts with judges who invert constitutional rights so that unlimited corporate money invested in political campaigns is disguised as the right to petition the government or a form of free speech. Their seizure of power has vomited up demagogues and con artists including Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, each the distortion of a failed democracy. They are turning America’s poor communities into internal militarized colonies where police carry out lethal campaigns of terror and use the blunt instrument of mass incarceration as a tool of social control. They are waging endless wars in the Middle East and diverting half of all discretionary spending to a bloated military. They are placing the rights of the corporation above the rights of the citizen.--CH

Happy Columbus Day!


TS

good god almighty

For the first time in half a century, the political left in the U.S. is ascendant. Bernie Sanders is holding his own in the primaries. A group of well-considered programs to save the environment and provide good jobs and health care for all is gaining political traction. And the need is dire. The climate is warming, the seas are polluted and fished out and industrial agriculture threatens to end life on the planet. So, it’s time to change the subject?--RU

My goodness gracious, read all of this one and every last one.  Then take out your checkbook and deliver a donation so that this online genius might go on for another year.

It's your duty.


TS 

Ratta-tat-tat

The impeachment of Donald J. Trump is coming. What to make of it? It’s hard not to enjoy watching the Malignant One (Trump) squirm and lash out like a wounded animal. There is no public humiliation too great for this sorry excuse for a human being, this racist, sexist, eco-cidal and fascist bastard who endangers the world with his presence in its most powerful office. Trump’s noxiously racist, sexist, Nativist, plutocratic, corrupt, and environmentally disastrous regime has done great damage to basic democratic and human norms, civilizational decency, social justice, and prospects for a decent future. All of that and more makes it impossible for any self-respecting leftist or progressive not to want to see him disgraced and removed. The Trump-Pence regime must be forced out of office as soon as humanly possible.--PS

The greatest lede ever!  Now that's cutting to the quick.


TS

A Double-Dose of Danny

Sorry, liberals, but Nancy Pelosi’s newly announced impeachment inquiry will not end Donald Trump’s presidency prematurely, no matter how badly Democratic voters may want it. Even if he’s found guilty in the House, a Republican-controlled Senate is sure to deny Pelosi the requisite 67 votes needed to remove him from office. Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing, either. After all, evicting Trump would elevate a bonafide Christian fascist to commander in chief in the person of Mike Pence.--DS

A litany of poor presidents.  Impeach everything.

There is a widespread belief that American history is best viewed in a linear context. The United States, the narrative goes, began as a flawed experiment in democracy—replete with slavery and bigotry at the start—but has gradually and consistently improved into a more perfect union, a millenarian nation on its way toward serving as an example for the world, a “city on a hill.” Minorities, according to this notion, may have once been oppressed but have gained equal rights and equal protection under the law; America might have conquered Indian and Mexican land but has long since set aside its imperial ways. As such, both at home and abroad, the U.S., though still imperfect, is a force for good in the world.--DS

Debunking the shining "city on a hill."


TS

Guilty as Charged

Impeachment is as much a political tool as a legal one. If Democrats feel they need the Ukraine story as a legal hook to start the process, that’s one thing — but I hope they won’t forget to make a political case against these much more egregious abuses along the way.

Otherwise they risk sending the message that the worst thing a president can do isn’t to attack the people or the planet, but a fellow elite.--PC

I'm with Peter Certo.   Had Congress a backbone, there is enough to bring the emolument clause of the 25th Amendment into play...


TS

Our Neighbors to the North

The corporate elite are deeply concerned about the rise of socialist politics, whether my election and reelection as a socialist City Councilmember in Seattle, Bernie’s self-described democratic socialist presidential campaign, or AOC’s election to U.S. Congress. Our victories in Seattle, including our historic $15 minimum wage law and landmark renters rights wins, and the growing national fight for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, are all completely unacceptable to the ruling class.--KS

Amazon versus the Socialists in Seattle.


TS

The Weight

My old friend rp sent this my way, so now I'm sharing with y'all.  It's amazing.


TS

Justice?

Dear Yoko Ono,

Years, years, and years ago, in 1980, a pathetically deranged man murdered the love of your life. You were walking home, into the Manhattan building where you lived, and suddenly this man, seeking the world’s adoration, gunned down your husband, John Lennon. Mark Chapman was given a 20-to-life sentence. After almost four decades, he remains in prison. You want to keep him there for the rest of his life.--SD

A good letter, written with tremendous heart.

Yet, I'm not sure how I would react if some sleaze bag cold bloodily killed my family.  I would like to think that I could see some light, a road to redemption, a change that 40-years might induce in a human being.

I'm against the death penalty, but when we talk about the U.S. justice system we are talking about something few of us really understand.  Prisons are brutal and inhumane, as this letter conveys with clarity.  Should an incarcerated killer--one who has turned docile in advanced years--suffer torture by the state when the intent is clearly vengeance and nothing more?


TS

The Professor

As we move past the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, it helps to be aware of the changes in U.S. political culture that have transformed this nation over the last two decades. I teach a history class at Lehigh University, “The War on Terrorism in Politics, Media, and Memory,” which is billed as examining the “meaning” of this war, via an exploration of “personal experiences and critical perspectives on the war,” as depicted in official rhetoric, the news media, and popular film.--AD

It's nice to see DiMaggio back on the pages of CP.  If I had money I'd enroll in his history/poli sci classes.  Seems like he's a hella prof.

Yep, that's what we need, more good teachers. Oh, and open tuition.


TS

On Manson and Didion

What is clear for Didion is that the gruesome violence of the Tate-LaBianca tragedy denoted the end point of the decade, the wages of a strange, unhinged time. Her recounting of the era centers upon the Manson slayings as the grim culmination of all that messy campus activism, dissolute rock musicians, black nationalism and strange new communes popping up like dandelions. In Didion’s telling, “no one was surprised” that five people had been slaughtered in Roman Polanski’s Benedict Canyon mansion—a curious note to strike about a crime that continues to shock to this day.--DO

A good read.


TS

Clarity

Capitalists seek to maximize profits and reduce the cost of labor. This sums up capitalism at its core. It is defined by these immutable objectives. It is not about democracy. It is not, as has been claimed, about wealth creation for the working class. It has nothing to do with freedom. Those capitalists, especially in corporations, who are not able to increase profits and decrease the cost of labor, through layoffs, cutting wages, destroying unions, offshoring, outsourcing or automating jobs, are replaced. Personal ethics are irrelevant. Capitalists are about acquisition and exploitation.--CH

Chris Hedges is back, refreshed, clear-headed after a long vacation, and ready to rumble on the pages of Truthdig.


TS

Either/Or

Criticizing the media has become a sensitive issue for many on the left in the age of Trump. With an authoritarian president in office who seeks to discredit the media at every turn and regularly calls the press the “enemy of the people,” being too critical of the journalism business in 2019 can feel a bit like kicking someone when they’re down. Journalists in and beyond the U.S. not only must deal with a hostile president who attacks reporters and publications that don’t offer a steady stream of fawning coverage, but they are also grappling with the fact that their industry is in rapid decline.--CL

This essay makes excellent points about two differing critiques of the U.S. media by the left and right in today's political discourse.

The right regularly labels mainstream news outlets as "liberal," or "socialist," which is absolute  bullshit.

Nudging closer to the truth, the left's critique of big media marks them as capitalist stooges and collaborators.

An interesting read. 


TS

Fifty Years Ago, They Said No

Fifty years ago this fall, a campus upsurge turned opposition to the Vietnam War into a genuine mass movement.

On October 15, 1969, several million students, along with community-based activists, participated in anti-war events under the banner of the “Vietnam Moratorium.”

A month later, 500,000 people came to a Washington, D.C. demonstration of then-unprecedented size, organized by the “New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.”--SE


A new book documenting the Vietnam era GI antiwar movement.


TS