caucus99percent

The distraction of electoral politics has been working very well for oligarchs for a long time. The short memories of the public makes each round of insult seem new. Pick any "issue" you like and you will be able to understand how this works. In fact the dissection of their control over us into isolated issues is one of the most effective parts of the ploy.

Good stuff from Caitlin Johnstone over at Medium:

Let's play a game. In this game you must spot what these four news articles from this week have in common. Ready?
Let's begin.

From Iraq:

It's dangerous for transgender women in the District these days.

Desiree Copeland was walking to visit family near the Waterfront/Navy Yards in Southwest DC on July 2 when a young man started following her. The dude then shot off a Roman candle at Desiree which struck her. She asked him to stop, but he he continued to shoot fireworks at her, causing burns to her neck and face.

Story 1

Those of you who have read my writings know that I do not write for effect. I write to put down thoughts that have become "ripe" and need to be exposed. I also write to expose my thoughts to others in order that I do not stray too far from reality.

I have been writing less and less since Trump was elected. That is partly because I have a mixed set of reactions and don't want to sound too incoherent. Politics in this country is theater and bad theater at best.

After 18 months or so of establishment Democrats slandering and undermining Sanders, the GOP political machine is now trying to knee-cap the most popular politician in America via his wife.

A civil war in the Democratic Party between the populist left and the neoliberal centrists finally, belatedly has broken out.

I am totally not a religious person. But I find comfort in the thought that when religious sects support transgender people it opens the Constitutional right of freedom of (or from) religion for use by our side. I'm so tired of seeing that used only to claim a dubious freedom to discriminate.

The Church of England has "turned a corner" after its ruling body voted overwhelming in favour of welcoming transgender people, the vicar who brought the motion said.

There were three areas of failure at the G20 in Hamburg.
The most obvious and easy to identify was Donald man-child Trump.
I'll let this Australian reporter sum it up better than I could.

The second obvious failure was with the public at large.

On the Fourth of July someone walking by the Morris Home (an alcohol and drug treatment center for transgender people in Southwest Philadelphia), hurled an M80 at a pair of residents sitting on the porch.

On the Fourth of July an employee of the nonprofit in Southwest Philadelphia was the target of fireworks hurled from a passing vehicle while waiting for a trolley.

A transgender couple out for a walk near the Morris Home on Thursday afternoon were shot by paint guns from a dark grey Infiniti M35 sedan with silver trim.

From one of dkmich's posts, I learned this morning that Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to figure out Her role in the 2018 midterms.

Glimmers of Light in a Sea of Darkness

There was some good news this week. We had a couple of court rulings favorable to the environment. People came out in mass to protest the G20. One protester said it was a meeting of the 20 biggest criminals on the planet. There was movement toward a cease-fire in Syria after T-rump and Putin met. Jeremy Corbyn continues to gather steam in the UK especially among young people. Some cities are standing up to corporations (like Richmond, CA). Also worker coops are receiving some recognition. Let's look for success where we can!

The narrative from liberal blogs and pundits is that poor, white-trash rednecks turned out in huge numbers to elect Donald Trump because they are stupid, or racist, or both racist and stupid.
The reality is that this narrative is not only wrong, but shows a distinct richsplaining class bias.

There is also the narrative that millennials are also responsible because they didn't get a pony, but that's for another day.

It's about 8 months after the electoral college handed Dipshit Dumpsterfire Trump the presidency (With the help of Hillary Clinton and the DNC) and the Democratic Party is still whining. Yet for all that whining, they can't seem to shake the very tactics, non-policies and toxic identity politics that led to their loss to begin with.

Finally can we bury that old chestnut?

Perhaps in the darkest days of World War II, when so much was lost, when hope stood all alone, when many Americans stood up ready to die, perhaps then, in that moment, it meant something real and tangible. Maybe in a few brief instances since was an ideal and a nation actually one and the same.

America first has always been the reality, every action calculated for our own benefit.

Petitions were due yesterday afternoon to qualify initiatives to be on the ballot for the November election.

The anti-transgender group, Just Want Privacy, had been gathering signatures for proposed initiative 1552. But they needed 260,000 valid signatures to reverse a 2015 state regulation guaranteeing access to restrooms and locker rooms according to the gender a person lives with rather the sex assigned at birth. They say they came up 20,000 signatures short.

Once again I acknowledge that I am not a lawyer. But news is news.

In Wisconsin the Kenosha Unified School District is having a tough time digesting their loss at the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in the case of high school senior Ash Whitaker.

Don't blame Meteor Man. That's what The American Prospect decided to call a series of articles about the demographic voters the Democratic party needs to turn out if they ever want to win another Presidential election.

Assuming, of course, the Democratic party manages to stop Republican gerrymandering, purging voter rolls and hacking black box voting and the human species survives the Trump Presidency.

Of late, some of us have focused upon word usage; e.g., https://caucus99percent.com/content/liberals-must-not-say-liberal-left-p... (me) and https://caucus99percent.com/content/language-progressive-movement (gjohnsit).

Republicans are good at opposing things, but they absolutely suck at everything else.
That is becoming painfully obvious with the Obamacare repeal.

The news media are often slow on adopting correct terminology for phenomena with which they have insufficient experience.

Case in point:

Male fish are turning into females thanks to chemicals from birth control pills and makeup being flushed down drains, according to a new study.

There is a level of being out-of-touch that is frustrating.
There is a level of being out-of-touch that is infuriating.
And then there is a level of being out-of-touch that is embarrassing.
The Democratic Party has now reached that new low.

The Corporatocracy have perceived a need, the Democratic Party needs to be more centrist and billionaire friendly, apparently they are jealous of Republican billionaires having all the fun in Washington DC these days. Hillary Clinton would be their ideal candidate and like Trump only super wealthy people would be allowed in the administration, poor folks are such losers.

A whole lot of us have been pondering this question. In one way or another, a substantial number of articles here have been devoted to trying to answer this question.

Thom Hartmann weighs in over at Alternet:

Have corporate/billionaire control of our republic reached such a point that it’s no longer reversible? Have we passed the tipping point where democracy dies?

Why did Hillary lose the 2016 election? Misogyny? Jill Stein? Russia?

Or was it that voters in crucial swing states got weary of sending their children off to pointless wars?
A new study says the latter.