Senate passes, by 55-45, resolution aiming to restrain our President from making war on Iran. The House will pass it, possibly more quickly than the Senate did, and then our President will veto it, and 55 Senators ain't enough to override a veto, and yes I think a few of the eight Republicans who joined all 47 Democrats in voting in favor of the resolution did so because they know it'll ultimately die. Still, when the politicians do our will -- and our will is most certainly to avoid another quagmire in the Middle East, as well as reassert Congress's Constitutional war-making authority -- this is a good thing, and something we can build on. As an aside, Sen. Lee's statement favoring the resolution -- "(w)e don’t send a message of weakness when we stand up for the rule of law. That’s a message of strength" -- is well-spoken, and also the kind of thing we can build on.
Ho hum, our President says his budget doesn't cut Social Security, but his Treasury Secretary admitted that it does. Well, he said it would cut increases in future benefits, which in his mind isn't a cut, and I suppose inflation doesn't exist in his mind, either. Please don't let the trolls in your life squeal BUT TEH OBUMMURZ WANTEDZ TO DOEZ TEH SAMEZ!!!!, since we fought it when he proposed it, too. Trolls aren't simple-minded; they just want you to think they are, and make yourself simple-minded when you argue with them.
Right-wing gadfly in Tennessee state legislature introduces a bill that would declare CNN and the Washington Post "fake news," which proves, once again, that there's no bigger whiner in America than a right-winger. It's not enough to simply say "you call it 'fake news' because you can't win an argument against it on the merits" -- we should acknowledge that websites that pretend to be mainstream news websites and websites that call themselves "news and satire" websites are, in fact, fake news. But if an editorial at a newspaper hurts your fee-fees, it's not "fake news."
We are making too much of former Administration DHS Secretary/Chief of Staff John Kelly's assertion that folks who watch Fox News "because it's reinforcing what you believe" aren't "informed citizen(s)," because even though Fox News is an even more naked propaganda outfit than it used to be, the other cable news channels are also pretty terrible, and trying to stay informed by watching cable news is like trying to get all your protein from ice cream. Sure, you'll get some, but you'll also get fat and diabetic a lot faster than you would from, say, chicken or yogurt. Thieves in the Temple can be either one for you. Hell, we can be steak, too.
Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch says the red-baiting of Bernie Sanders is "already becoming laughable" -- particularly in the recent utterance of Chris Matthews, one of this millennium's worst cable news blowhards. But you need not even read through Mr. Lindorff's defense of socialism, really, or even consider the popularity of Medicare and Social Security -- all you need do is realize that you paid taxes for the road you drove to the store yesterday, and that you paid taxes for the schooling your kids get, and that you paid taxes for the clean air you breathe and the clean water you drink, to realize that you are a socialist.
Finally, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is spending a lot of money on ads trying to convince us that he really "gets" racism -- I heard one of them at least three times yesterday at work -- but in 2008 he actually said "the end of redlining" caused the 2008 financial crash. First, banksters like the ones Mr. Bloomberg enabled with his trading software, caused the crash. Second, redlining ain't about poverty, it's about race. Third, redlining ended? I guess he doesn't talk to many real estate agents.
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