caucus99percent

Yesterday I warned that the House Armed Services Committee was going to take up the issue of open service by transgender people in the military.

Republicans railed against the Pentagon’s transgender policy on Wednesday, but ultimately did not move to reverse the policy during a debate on the annual defense policy bill.

But there was plenty of bigotry expressed.

First, the good news.

Today is the day to call your senators!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/28/republicans-health...

As we struggle with the dissonance of our war policy in Syria, I think this 2016 article by Seymour Hersh is clarifying. He states that in 2013 the Joint Chiefs shared intelligence with Germany and Russia with the direct purpose of assisting Assad's government to destroy extremist opposition and ISIS. Hersh clarifies the CIA arming of jihadists, the DIA efforts to speak truth to power, the role of Russia, and he quotes Michael Flynn and Tulsi Gabbard.

This morning I had my invisible bee-keeper's hat on while looking in the Villagers' honeycomb at GOS. They adore their neoliberal heroines, Joy Ann Reid, Nanci Pelosi, and of course, former Queen Bee Clinton herself.

I don't like sounding the alarm about the incredibly dangerous situation we, as a species, have created for life in our planet. And I'm sure that Former UN climate chief Christiana Figuere doesn't like to be charged with the label of "alarmist" either. But we all need to be running around with our hair on fire:

First, off , let me state for the record that I am not an advocate of military service as a career choice. I did my time during the Vietnam Era with extreme grudge.

On the other hand the road to equal rights for transgender people may indeed lead through the right to equal serve our country.

And if that is the case, it is not looking good for us folk.

A call for firing Pelosi and Shumer might elicit chants of "shame! shame!" on the GOS, but those morons don't represent the majority of Democratic voters.

So you think about what does this mean? First, it means that the missile lobbing contests of North Korea and the US are really a side-show. The US cannot and will not invade or bomb North Korea for many reasons. One of the most potent reasons is the massive loss of life, even if restricted to conventional weapons. Seoul's megacity of 12,000,000 is within easy striking range of standard artillery as well as short range missiles. There is no effective defense of Seoul possible.

Here you go:

Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate majority leader leader, made the somewhat surprising announcement on Tuesday that his body would not vote on the Republican health care bill — or at least not until after the Fourth of July recess.

McConnell admitted that he lacked the votes within his own caucus to pass the bill this week as planned.

God bless Elizabeth Warren:

Surprisingly, CNN published this attack on the Democratic Party for running a lousy campaign and wasting money on Ossoff. Here's what Drew Westen, a longtime Obama and Dem consultant, and resident in GA-6 had to say:

Posted this to EB...it needs is's own essay.

"Sometimes it takes an image to wake up a nation from its secret shame."
Ben Okri reads from his extraordinary new poem about Grenfell Tower pic.twitter.com/bxjOkoXKVX

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) June 27, 2017

This is it in a nut shell.

DCCC Names Cheri Bustos Chairwoman of Heartland Engagement

In that role, the third-term congresswoman will be mentoring Democratic candidates and helping shape an economic message in rural areas — both of which she’s already been doing.

For years at 13.7, Barbara J. King has been writing about what she calls the spectrum of gender expression, and "the fact that gender identity isn't only — or even mostly — about biology and that it's most certainly not reducible to the sex one is assigned at birth." That's an especially important lesson in light of new research that identifies one of the sources of prejudice against transgender individuals: the (mostly mistaken) belief that men's and women's stereotypical characteristics do, in fact, come down to some immutable feature of one's biology.

Transgender people like myself have consistently tried to promote the idea that sex and gender are two distinct qualities that every human possesses. Meanwhile, our adversaries believe that sex (chromosomes or genital morphology at birth, or both) completely determine what our gender should be...and if we deny that, we are committing deception.

This goal is the destruction of Syria as a viable state and installation of leaders that are compliant to the western power structure. Anything short of this will result in the continuing and escalating destabilization of the country as we are currently witnessing.

Just how far will the US go this time in mounting a direct military attack against Syria? This brinkmanship being played against a nation backed by nuclear armed Russia is arguably the greatest threat to world peace since the worst days of the Cold War. It is obvious the neocons have taken over the Executive Office and are using the uniformed and weak minded Trump as a tool to directly affect foreign policies they have been working towards for the last several decades. Are there any voices of reason left within the government that can push back against these ill-advised actions?

Moon of Alabama has reported on yesterday's strange and unexpected warning from the President's office.

Seven months after the election people are still debating why Trump beat Hillary.
While there are plenty of factors involved, the primary reason why Hillary lost was an event that happened nine years ago - the failure of the global neoliberal economic system.

I confess to being blindsided by the wholesale exuberance with which the Republicans have embraced killing off wide swaths of the undeserving electorate, unencumbered by even ritualistic expressions of regret for the carnage they hope to legislate with their healthcare “reform”. I suppose It must be exhilarating for them to throw off the weight of the pretense of humanity they have shouldered while living and moving among us these last few decades.

Those are the words of Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the mayor-elect of Jackson, Mississippi, and my new hero.

"This is Chokwe Antar Lumumba celebrating his general election victory with supporters."

MAYOR-ELECT CHOKWE ANTAR LUMUMBA: Free the land!
SUPPORTERS: Free the land!
MAYOR-ELECT CHOKWE ANTAR LUMUMBA: Free the land!
SUPPORTERS: Free the land!
MAYOR-ELECT CHOKWE ANTAR LUMUMBA: By any means necessary. I need you to stand strong as we go forward. There are people who doubt your resolve, doubt that this city can be everything that it will be. And so, you can’t give up now. I say, when I become mayor, you become mayor. So that means y’all got some work to do.

Irrelevant.

The Establishment.

Owned by the Oligarchy.

An Imperialist party.

A Wall Street party.

A Neoliberal capitalist party.

The other side of the same fucking coin.

The Opposition.

Tomorrow the District of Columbia will become the first jurisdiction in the United States to issue driver's licenses with a non-binary gender option of X.

It wasn't a surprise that Turkey was upset with the Trump Administration's decision to arm the Syrian Kurdish rebels. What they may not have anticipated is just how upset Turkey is.

(Edited back to original Democratic Party. Intended slur was divisive)

Julian Assange spells out why the Democratic Party is doomed and a new party must be started. The party has been chasing Russia, Russia, Russia down a rabbit hole to the detriment of the real concerns of the Democrats since the loss of the election.

It is glaringly apparent that Hillary Clinton's legacy/image is much more important than the people she was representing. She and her entourage of party elites are determined to refuse to accept any responsibility whatsoever for her failure to become POTUS. They would rather destroy the Democratic Party than own up to the truth.

It's time to face facts. There are Russians under your bed, under my bed, under everyone's bed, and they want to steal your vote!
They are under the beds of Germany.

From the Guardian:

The Russian government is suspected of being behind a cyber-attack on parliament that breached dozens of email accounts belonging to MPs and peers.

On Thursday it was announced that AG Jeff Sessions has ordered a review of all recent murders of transgender people in the US.

It appears that Trump "shot from the hip" in his response to the so-called gas attack, overriding the advice of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. Possibly this is one of the reasons the US military has basically taken over the authority of the President as "Commander in Chief". Trump is much too volatile, pig headed and uninformed to be in charge of the world's largest and most powerful military. The Pentagon mostly likely were the ones who insisted that Russia be forewarned about Trump's temper tantrum.