No Doubt

A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the New York Times and Politico published major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins—but they foreshadow a massive escalation of anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.--NS

No doubt.  Fake leftists, pragmatists and women from 2016 are still out there, attacking Bernie and his supporters at every opportunity. A big bitch among the establishment Dems was Bernie's supposed insulting treatment of the super-delegates. Never mind they were card-carrying Clintonite/Wall Street capitalists.  I'm actually quite shocked that Clinton hasn't, to date, jumped into the fray.  I guess her desperation has finally run its course.

Hopefully.

Bernie or Liz has to win just to restore some sense of stability to the country.  Even Liz is shaky, but at least the women would have their day, finally. I'd be down with that.

Remember the ridiculous lineup of Republicans in '16?  That's what the Democrats look like today. Pete Butthead is the Jeb Bush of his Party. And Joe Biden is as dumb as Rick Perry, so there it is.


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Australia is Burning

Australia is on fire.


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Can We Talk?

Global finance capital has seized control of the economies of most nation-states. The citizens watch, helplessly, as money and goods are transferred with little regulation across borders. They watch as jobs in manufacturing and the professions are shipped to regions of the global south where most workers are paid a dollar or less an hour and receive no benefits. They watch as the taxes of the rich and corporations are slashed, often to zero. They watch as austerity programs dismantle or privatize utilities and basic social services, jacking up fees to consumers. They watch as chronic unemployment and underemployment devastate workers, especially the young. They watch as wages stagnate or decline, leaving working men and women with unsustainable debts. This economic tyranny lies at the root of the unrest in Hong Kong, India, Chile, France, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon as well as the rise of right-wing demagogues and false prophets such as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.--CH

Like Paul Street and many other left intellectuals, Chris Hedges is convinced that the only way to defeat the malignant cancer (power) of corporate neoliberalism, unleashed on the global populace since the end of World War II, and particularly since Reagan, is an actionable non-violent street mobilization of the masses.  Such movements have arose around the world already in recent months.

Where, wonder Street and Hedges, is the U.S. movement?  The faux "resistance" of mainline Democrats seeking to retake power from Donald Trump and Republicanism doesn't count. Voting itself, in the U.S. construct, cannot be depended on for anything more than a continuation of the ruses of false hope and change.

The age of trickery has to change via massive global protests--from the bottom up.


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Army/Navy Game Blues

The ultimate demonstration of U.S. militarism is made annually in the good old game of American football.  And of course, nothing is quite so emblematic of that as the Army v. Navy game.  It is the one game of the year that I, as a football connoisseur, find the most drab, boring, reprehensible, and disgusting spectacle ever invented for the edification of the common man.

There are many reasons why I despise this game, not the least of which it is that it is always ugly. It is ugly in its aesthetics, ugly in its style, and ugly in its blind worship of all things military.  (Well, of course it is, it is the Army/Navy game.)

Packed into the stadium at kickoff, the assembled future brass, and likely sprinkle of "sacrificed" officers--against the multitude of enlisted poor--cheered uproariously for the introduced U.S. near-dictator and fascist POTUS, Donald Trump. (If that doesn't convince you that this game is whacked out, nothing will.)

It causes one to ponder: perhaps former Army history professor Maj. (Ret.) Danny Sjursen should have built an outpost in his classroom and fought off  to the last soldier--Japanese-style--the invading generals who wanted him out now!

But, so much water under the bridges southeast of Normandy in 1944!

Speaking of the pro game (I didn't but you did under your breath). Here is a fantastic piece.  Read it.


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Pilger Visits Assange

I set out at dawn. Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh is in the flat hinterland of south east London, a ribbon of walls and wire with no horizon. At what is called the visitors centre, I surrendered my passport, wallet, credit cards, medical cards, money, phone, keys, comb, pen, paper.--JP

Degrading, disgusting, despicable; Assange as Her Majesty's political plaything.


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Sanders Spanks Obama

Centrists are terrified that if the Democratic nominee is far to the left of Biden and Obama, they will be forced to coalesce around a candidate who represents a threat to the establishment of which they are a part. The unflappable Sanders brushed aside Obama’s criticism in an interview with The New York Times, saying, “When I talk about raising the minimum wage to a living wage, I’m not tearing down the system. We’re fighting for justice.” On the health care front, he added, “When I talk about … ending the embarrassment of America being the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care for every man, woman and child, that’s not tearing down the system. That’s doing what we should have done 30 years ago.” His words resonate with the millions of Americans who are struggling every day, but they grate on the nerves of those who have thrived in our unequal society.--SK

Obama went to the mountain top, pulled his pants down, and pissed all over democracy.  True story.


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Street: Taking it to the Streets

If we are serious about getting rid of the demented fascist oligarch and his insurance policy, Pence, then we are going to have to join and expand an authentic opposition, a real popular resistance in the streets. The effective and meaningfully democratic way to remove Trump is not through elite procedures designed by 18th century slaveholders for whom democracy was the ultimate nightmare. It is through sustained mass civil disobedience—through rebellion by and for those whom the American ruling class fears and hates the most: the working-class majority.

The sooner Trump can be forced out, the better. Curiously enough, impeachment makes the need to form a grassroots movement to overthrow the Trump-Pence regime more urgent than ever. Now that he’s looking at impeachment and a Senate trial, there’s no telling what Trump and his heavily armed minions might do. He has enormous means of mass destruction and mass distraction at his neofascistic fingertips.

We need Trump and Pence out now, not some time next year. The way to make that happen is with a mass movement that will not only sweep him from power but challenge the richly bipartisan racist, sexist, imperial and eco-cidal class rule system that hatched the Trump regime in the first place.--PS

Every day, starting now, would have to look like the scene above.


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Tweet Watch

Who would have guessed that an orange septuagenarian, with the prop at his fingertips, could have turned his opinions into a daily laugh track?

He's a talented grifter no doubt. It's dress up time. Who do you want to be today?

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Big Bad Beavs

Oregon State is suddenly playing with poise and confidence. The Beavers host Washington tonight. Coach Jonathan Smith has the program headed in the right direction.

Washington has tortured OSU for years. Would be fun to see the improving Beavs knock Washington over.


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80

Happy 80th birthday to Charles Deemer, the longest and most solid RBP contributor. Like he has often said, it's a miracle.

The picture?  He loves Oregon women.


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Situation Room

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Altuve Walk-off

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


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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!


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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.


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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.


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