caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

Pastor John Pavlovitz is on a mission...to say "stuff that needs to be said."

An essay he wrote in late February is now making the rounds: Christian, Let My Transgender People Go! (When Bigotry Uses the Bathroom)

It's not that I haven't written the exact same things myself, but my motives are suspect since I am myself trans. Pastor John is not.

I'll pick out some of my favorite paragraphs, but reading the whole thing would be a benefit to you and probably society.

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features boogie woogie piano player Albert Ammons. Enjoy!

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Wednesday March 14, 1906
New York, New York - Socialists and Trade Unionists Rally to Defense of Moyer and Haywood

Two thousand Socialists and trade unionists, watched over by one thousand bluecoats, gathered in the city of New York last night to protest the arrests and attempted judicial murder of Charles Moyer and Bill Haywood, officers of the Western Federation of Miners. One of the speakers was Mother Jones who stated:

We stand in the dawn of the world's greatest war...It will be the war between the robbed and the robbers, and the robbers will go down. When they talk of hanging Moyer and Haywood, now why didn't they talk of hanging the men who shot down innocent working men in Virginia? Why don't they talk of hanging the commercial pirates who are murdering the little children in the mills of the South?.....

If they force us to shoot they will find that they never struck such a band of fighters as the American workingmen.

This is cross posted at DailyKos, (w00t, top of the wreck list at the moment!) and where I say "here" in the post, I'm referring to, um, there

John Lennon said that life is what happens to us while we're busy making other plans. We're having a primary where the coronation got interrupted by an insurgent. That was unexpected, but it quickly became clear that the insurgency could grow into a Democratic schism. One side is corporatist, neo-con, and neo-liberal. The other side is progressive, democratic socialist, and peaceful. "All we are saying is give peace a chance."

On the other side of the American divide, their ideological madness is splitting the GOP into a racist, corporatist, and global side and a racist, christian-dominionist side. The leader of the christianist side is, ironically, Drumpf, with the yet more dangerous Cruz at his heels. Cruz is a traditional racist, a lawyerly blower of dog whistles. Drumpf,on the other hand, is a Freudian carnival of ego gone amok. As the Democratic sides separated into a catholic and protestant side, Drumpf's drumbeat of racist incitement overwhelmed not only the GOP primary race, but the entire 2016 election. The bitter harvest of ancient hate and a decade of racist incitement against one of the most accomplished of all American presidents is in. Now. In real time. Spring may be in the air, but in the American psyche, it's fall and the bitter harvest is in. Drumpf's race-baiting is now the defining feature of the 2016 election. Life happens while we are busy making primary plans. So, what does all of this mean for Bernie?

There appears to be two lines of thought developing about how to deal with fascism that has become a part of Trump’s election strategy. One is that we don’t address it now as it may affect Sander’s electoral chances and the other is that we tackle it head on now. Spoiler alert - I am a firm believer of the second approach.

A lot of people lately have been commenting on how the anti-Trump protests could hurt Bernie Sanders' election chances. I thought I would share my views on this issue from the perspective of a campaign manager. Caveat: this is not my *moral* opinion on how things are or how they should be. This is my political opinion of the effect of anti-Trump protests on Sanders' electoral viability.

A few points about the situation:

"What is a LEADER?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

Republicans (or fill in the blank) are not the enemy.

We are...

It is the clearest indication yet of the approaching demise of ISIS in Iraq.