‘War on Christmas’: House Republicans introduce bill to protect holiday

It’s the most uncomfortable time of the year.

A group of conservatives in Congress do not want Christmas traditions and symbols to recede from public life. They have banded together in their fight to keep nativity scenes on display in town squares and the words “Merry Christmas” in our conversations this season.

Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives on Friday that would affirm the body’s “sense” that Christmas should be protected.

House Resolution 564, which invokes the First Amendment, posits that references to religion or God should not be prohibited in civic dialogue:

“Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives — (1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas; (2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and (3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.”

Conservatives should blame capitalism for the 'war on Christmas'

The “war on Christmas” has become an annual yuletide fiction as reliable as tales of the Grinch, the nutcracker or even of Santa Claus himself. Fox News and its ilk complain about this alleged attack on Christianity each year. Make no mistake, though. There definitely is a war on Christmas, but it is not homosexual leftists like myself who are waging it: it is capitalism.

As my brother James and I often discuss every holiday season, Christians stole an ancient winter pagan holiday and rebranded it as Jesus’s birthday. Similarly, hyper-consumerist, labor-destroying, income-inequality-creating and ecologically destructive capitalism has now stolen Christmas from the church.

It is the rightwing which has cast baby Jesus from American Christmas, like a would-be Syrian refugee orphan. Jesus ain’t the reason for the season because of liberals as such, but because of market forces in late-stage capitalism, which are gleefully celebrated by Republicans, no matter how alienating to souls.

Imperialism and Capitalism: Rethinking an Intimate Relationship

The literature on imperialism suffers from a fundamental confusion about the relationship between capitalism and imperialism. The aim of this paper is to remove this confusion. The paper is organised in three parts.

In Part I we state our own position of the capitalism-imperialism relation. In part II we discuss some major points at issue in the Marxist debate on imperialism. And in Part III we review the changing forms that imperialism has taken in Latin America in the course of the capitalist development process.

The main focus of the paper is on the form taken by imperialism in the current conjuncture of capitalist development, namely extractive capitalism. This conjuncture is characterised by the demise of neoliberalism as an economic model and a growing demand on the world market for energy, minerals and other “natural” resources—the political economy of natural resource development (large-scale investment in the acquisition of land and entailed resources, primary commodity exports). The fundamental dynamics of what we term “extractivist imperialism” are examined in the context of South America, which represents the most advanced but yet regressive form taken to date by capitalism in the new millennium. Our analysis of these dynamics is summarized in the form of twelve theses.

Donald Trump: Unstoppable Republican Aspirant? “Hillary is a “War Goddess”, Trump a “US Warlord”

The latest Monmouth University poll has him way out in front with 41% support – besting his closest rival, Senator Ted Cruz, at 14%, by nearly three-to-one margin.

Most other Republican candidates scored in the low single digits, including party favorite Jeb Bush at 3%. According to Monmouth director Patrick Murray, “(i)t has become abundantly clear that Trump is giving his supporters exactly what they want, even if what he says causes the GOP leadership and many Republican voters to cringe” – including his Islamophobic rants, wanting Muslim immigrants banned from entering America.

Hillary Clinton remains virtually uncontested so far for the Democrat party nomination – besting Bernie Sanders by a 59% – 26% margin, better than two to one.

Demagogic self-promotion, bombast, bravado and arrogance apparently work to Trump’s advantage. Why ordinary Americans would support a billionaire unconcerned about their welfare is hard to explain.

Hillary Clinton is a war goddess, Trump a US warlord. More on this below. He dismisses Ronald Reagan’s so-called 11th Commandment about “not speak(ing) ill of any fellow Republican.”

Wealth Inequality: The 1% versus The 99%. Realignment, Repression or Revolution

The richest 20 Americans now own as much wealth as the country’s poorest 152 million people combined.

That is just one of the findings of noted inequality scholar and author Chuck Collins’s most recent report, “Billionaire Bonanza, The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us.”

In a wide-ranging interview, which will be available in its entirety as a podcast tomorrow, Collins likened the current situation to the “Gilded Age,” the time just before the turn of the 20th century, when there was a similar accumulation of wealth at the top and political power was concentrated in the hands of a few rich men.

And Americans are slowly realizing that the extreme accumulation of wealth at the very top is hurting their own prospects. But grassroots efforts to redress economic inequality must contend with the political power that comes with great wealth.

Wages have now been stagnant for three decades and the median wealth of Americans has actually declined since 1990. At the same time, the rich have gotten richer. A lot richer.

This is an unstable situation. With pressure building for change but potent forces stacked against it, there are only three options, Collins told WhoWhatWhy: “Realignment, revolution or repression.”

Are we having funk?