Will Bunch: The Dem Party are the extremists

He makes clear it's the Democratic Party who are the extremists, not the progressives. "The soul of today’s Democratic Party [...are] really extremists in defense of their wealthy donors on Wall Street, Silicon Valley and elsewhere."

 

It's why it's imperative that progressives in office fiercely take on the corruption in their own Party. If they don't then they are "driving away young voters and the nonwhite working class." The result: "An opposing party that no longer believes in democracy" will win the day and likely the entire next generation.

 

Ball on Hillary's typical excuses

In the first part of the video they show a clip of Hillary actually blaming voters for not understanding how much the Dem Party has done for them. If fact we voters are tired of the Party's broken promises of what they'd do for us. Hillary and the Party refuse to accept any responsibility for anything, always projecting the blame on others. And THAT is why the Party is losing some of us voters, because we can see that they've abandoned us for blood money. Krystal explains:

Reckoning with history

And Repugs want to eliminate that history from being taught under the Boogie Man of critical race theory. Too bad some on the left help them with that agenda.

 

Bernie's petition to end the filibuster

From his email:

The Republican Party today is not only an increasingly reactionary party focusing on tax breaks for billionaires, denying the reality of climate change, working overtime to keep the cost of prescription drugs high and denying people the health care they need during the middle of a global pandemic, but it has also become an anti-democracy party doing all it can to make it harder for American citizens to vote and participate in the political process.

In 2020, unprecedented voter turnout in the presidential election and a surprising election result in Georgia threw the most dangerous president in American history out of office and gave Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.

Was the Republican response to reassess how they could address the needs of working people and create a more popular set of ideas they could take to the voters? No, no it was not.

Was the Republican response to join Democrats in taking strong action to address the existential threat of climate change and make sure our planet will be habitable for future generations? No, no it was not.

Was the Republican response to start taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously so we can save lives and return to some sense of normalcy in the near future? No, no it was not.

Instead the cowardly Republican response in state legislatures throughout the country was to pass legislation denying voting rights to those who might vote against them — often poor people, people of color, young people and the disabled.

The cowardly Republican response in state legislatures throughout the country was to draw up extreme gerrymandered Congressional districts in ways they hope will give them control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The cowardly Republican response in state legislatures throughout the country was to redraw state legislative district maps so that they will retain their majorities long into the future.

Now, it should go without saying that in a functioning democracy the job of those we elect to office should be to make it easier for people to vote, not harder — regardless of whom they plan on voting for. That's what a vibrant democracy is all about.

In a functioning democracy, elections should be about candidates and parties making their best case to constituents and letting the voters decide.

In a functioning democracy, the operating principle must be one person, one vote and the need for all of us to come together to determine the future of our country.

In a functioning democracy we do NOT win elections because we effectively suppress the vote of those who support other candidates or oppose our policies.

In a functioning democracy we do not cast doubt about the legitimacy of an election simply because we lost.

But, tragically, all of that is exactly what is occurring.

It is no exaggeration to say that we are at a crisis moment in our democracy and we do not have long to act. If Congress does not take action — and SOON — Republicans in a number of states that have passed anti-democratic legislation will get away with undermining American democracy. There will simply not be enough time to undo the damage they have caused.

Unbelievably, because of Trump's almost total domination over the Republican Party, there is not one Republican in the U.S. Senate (including many who know better) prepared to stand up and defend our democratic way of life against this movement toward authoritarianism. That is the sad reality.

Yet, despite all of the evidence, there are still a few Democrats in the Senate who continue to wishfully think that somehow, some way, Republicans will eventually see the light and will come forward in a bipartisan way to do the right thing. These Democrats just love the concept of "bipartisanship," even if it means turning their backs on the future of American democracy.

Well, the sad reality is that these Democrats can wait, they can hope and they can pray but Mitch McConnell and his caucus are not coming forward to preserve voting rights in America. In fact, what is happening in Republican states throughout the country is just fine with them because it will make it easier for them to gain control over Congress.

No, the ONLY way we are going to save our democracy for this and future generations is if Democrats in the Senate have the courage to use their majority to make that happen. And that means voting to set aside the filibuster for voting rights legislation and pass a bill that ensures all citizens in this country have the ability to vote.

The good news is, that bill exists.

The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive voting rights bill that would also reform our corrupt campaign finance system and end the unfair redistricting processes that result in extreme gerrymandered districts.

Imagine a country in which every person is automatically registered to vote when they turn 18.

Imagine a country in which every person who moves to a new state is automatically registered to vote as soon as they have a new postal address.

Imagine a country that puts an end to the discriminatory practice of purging voters of color, young people, and low-income Americans from voting rolls.

Imagine a country where Election Day is a federal holiday so that we can increase voters’ ability to participate.

Imagine a country in which early voting is an option for all who need the flexibility, and absentee ballots are available upon request with no tests or conditions.

Imagine a country where billionaires are unable to buy our candidates and elections.

In short, imagine a country where voters pick their elected officials, not one where the elected officials pick their voters.

Can we have that kind of robust democracy? Yes.

Will it happen if we keep the filibuster in place and require 60 votes to pass voting rights legislation? No, no it will not.

And that is why — today — with time running out to save our democracy, I am asking you to make your voice heard:

Please sign my petition: tell the Senate to do away with the filibuster and the 60 vote rule and pass legislation that makes it easier for all of our people to vote, ends the influence of big money in politics, and restricts partisan gerrymandering.

ADD YOUR NAME

Too many people have fought and died for the right to vote in this country. We must not fail them. We MUST protect and expand voting rights in the United States.

Nothing less than the future of American democracy is on the line.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

 

Weird for Repugs who claim Jesus as their own

Weirder still that atheists like me do too, only the real Jesus in the Bible.

 

Hartmann: Greed a major contributor to Omicron

Hartmann: Africa "has been unsuccessfully begging the WTO for 14 months for a 'TRIPS Waiver' to allow them to manufacture Covid vaccine…which might have prevented this variant from evolving." The WTO rejects that request to protect the propriety rights of the vaccine manufacturers. Meanwhile, not enough vaccines in Africa has led to low vaccination rates and hence the evolution of the omicron variant. We'll never get rid of this pandemic without enough vaccines, which won't happen without the TRIPS waiver. Thom explores the history of greed in America that led to the sickness at the heart of this dire situation.

I'm proudly woke

It's typical for Repugnacons to spin this word negatively. And yet some Dimocraps join them in mostly parroting that criticism. Obviously some libs take wokeness to an unhealthy extreme. But to throw the baby out with the bathwater is most certainly the Repug agenda. And those libs who join their criticism in effect do much of the same. I'm proud to be woke according to this definition at dictionary.com and reject the Repug and Dim abuse of the term.

adjective, Slang.

1. having or marked by an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those related to civil and human rights

2. aware of the facts, true situation

 

 

WI Repugs go full fascist

And the weird part is that this media source can't even call it what it is. WTF is wrong with even liberal media like this when they can't use the F word? It's an in-depth article about how the Repugs there are committing a fascist takeover of elections yet they won't say it. Just say it! Refusing to do so by omission for some pretended journalistic neutrality is in effect complicity.

"Wisconsin Republicans are pushing to seize total control of elections in the state, even calling for criminal charges against state election commissioners while stoking conspiracy theories about former President Donald Trump's electoral defeat."

 

Cowards

What they really are behind the bluster.

 

Progressives need a mass propaganda network

This article explains why Democrats lose the propaganda war. Part of it is that they look down on propaganda as underhanded and below their dignity. But propaganda per se isn't negative and can be used positively to instill progressive values and motivate voters. The more beneficial term is 'framing,' using cognitive science and linguistics for that purpose. Still, too many liberals still think if we just present the facts and policies that help people then that should do it. But it doesn't and obviously is not enough.

So the article recommends investing in creating a liberal mass media instead of relying on corporate mass media. The latter is rarely if ever going to promote liberal values and policies because they are owned by corporations that don't give a shit about that. The Repugs have done so with Pox Views and dominating AM radio stations around the nation. And it works for them. Libs need to realize that a mass propaganda campaign is necessary to win elections and make such an investment immediately.

There is though a liberal media on YouTube, though it could hardly be called massive. And more often than not the establishment Dem Party denounces them at every step because they accurately report on the Party's corrupt influence by corporate money. So that's another part of the equation, that perhaps the Party won't invest in their own mass media campaign because corporate media works just fine to keep things as they are. So it's up to we the people to seek out the real progressive media and support it so that it might achieve massive proportions and have greater influence.

High maintenance

To save our planet, and ourselves, is going to require very high maintenance of the right kind.

 

World on alert over Omicron variant

And yet thousands attend sporting events without masks and eat indoors in public as if this is over. It ain't and its getting worse, with Delta spikes and now this. And it never will be until we get most everyone vaxxed and continue to take all the necessary precautions. Wake the f___ up people. From CNN:

"It is the most heavily mutated version of the virus we have seen to date. This variant carries some changes we've seen previously in other variants but never all together in one virus. It also has novel mutations."

NYT: Dems are losing base voters

Just like Sirota, Hartmann, Bernie and AOC have said, the Party is losing support from some of its most loyal base because of "falling short on campaign promises and leaving their base unsatisfied and unmotivated ahead of next year’s midterm elections." As the progressives have said all along, the Party has to decide with the winning strategy of progressive populism and fight like hell for we the people's agenda. If not, they lose. And so does democracy.

Berlin: Put voting rights legislation in Build Back Better

In this piece he admits the following:

"Though Democrats are well aware of Republican efforts at one-party domination, they don’t seem to have the will or the courage to do anything about it."

His solution, a good one, is to put federal voting rights legislation in Build Back Better. Of course it would receive a challenge from the Parliamentarian, so that would require Biden and Kamala to override their 'advice,' something they've been reluctant to do so far for no good reason. They certainly aren't going to push to end the filibuster, or even to carve out an exception to it. So I guess so much for that idea too if they don't muster "the will or courage" to save democracy, which appears to be the case.

 

Hartmann: The fascist civil war is imminent unless...

First he lays out the feeble Democratic response, which only feeds fascism.

"For some unfathomable reason, Democrats insist on calling their Republican colleagues their 'friends.'  They are not friends.  They are systematically destroying American democracy with the clear objective of replacing it with strongman authoritarianism, a new and American version of what Benito Mussolini called fascism."

Then he lays out all of the fascist tactics they've been gradually developing at an accelerating pace. But now it's coming to a head and it won't be long until they use the more obvious tactics of an overt takeover.

"They are building their power and their organizations right now; armed paramilitary groups are expanding across the country as the GOP has become so radicalized that they now proclaim Liz Cheney as their enemy. They are openly preparing for a second Civil War. [...] January 6th was a rehearsal; they're now planning 2022 and 2024. Coups build to an explosive tipping point, then suddenly appear as a fait accompli. Unless we stop them in-process, this may be our last chance."

Picketty: Billionaires should be taxed out of existence

The author of Capital in the 21st Century and his new book Capital and Ideology thinks that we need to overcome capitalism: 

"Reaganism has begun to justify any concentration of wealth, as if the billionaires were our saviors. Reaganism has shown its limits: Growth has been halved, inequalities have doubled. It is time to break out of this phase of sacredness of property. To overcome capitalism."

That process involves "a graduated wealth tax of 5% on those worth 2 million euros or more and up to 90% on those worth more than 2 billion euros."

"Entrepreneurs will have millions or tens of millions. But beyond that, those who have hundreds of millions or billions will have to share with shareholders, who could be employees. So no, there won’t be billionaires anymore. How can we justify that their existence is necessary for the common good? Contrary to what is often said, their enrichment was obtained thanks to these collective goods, which are the public knowledge, the infrastructures, the laboratories of research."

He praises Bernie, Warren and The Squad for moving in this direction. The Progressive Caucus could be included. Given that voters of all political persuasions favor corporations and the rich paying their fair share of taxes it's a winning message that the Dem Party in general needs to shout from the rooftops. Of course they also need to give up taking their bribes, for if they don't the Party is a lost cause and will leave the levers of power to the fascists. 

Avatar healing circle prayer

In light of reading The Dawn of Everything I'm gaining new respect for indigenous wisdom. This is the scene where Jake's human body dies and his consciousness is fully transferred into his Na'vi body. I see it not in literal or transhumanist terms but a metaphor for how we can die to being captured in the modern crapitalistic way of life and be reborn into our embodied connection to all life, enacting a more collaborative commons. In the process we re-enchant the world and our place within it via the sort of rituals we've mistakenly abandoned as retro-romantic.

Or as David Michael Levin put it in describing our transpersonal (eco-logical) body beyond the primordial, pre-personal and ego-locial bodies  (The Opening of Vision, pp. 47-8):

"This is our ancestral body, the ancient body of our collective unconscious, that dimension of our bodily being through which we experience our connectedness with all sentient beings, our participation in nature's organic processes, and the cessation of our total identification with the conventional time and space of our socialized ego. Religions use ceremonies and rituals to schematize and bring forth such a body."

Bernie fights Dem's SALT giveaway to the rich

Continuing this post, Bernie called the SALT giveaway in the House Bill both "bad policy" and "bad politics." He  is pushing to mitigate that giveaway with an amendment to the Senate Build Back Better (BBB) Bill. It would phase out the new tax breaks for those earning over $400,000 per year, mimicking a plan by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Granted it still gives the richest quintile most of the benefits but would specifically reduce the benefits to the top 1%. 

Of course the Democorps are lying about the Sanders/ITEP plan because they want that top donor money to keep rolling in. And we the people know they are lying because it is designed to help those donors and not us. Hence the Repugs are pushing ads to that effect. The Sanders amendment, while not perfect, at least undercuts their messaging because it limits the benefits to the top. 

The Senate amendment needs to go in BBB. And then House Dems need to pass it. That is if they want to win in '22 and '24. Since they are fighting it I have to wonder if getting the bribes is more important than winning for we the people. To be continued.

What contemplation?

Given the brainwashing that created the situation in the first place, and people's passive acceptance of it, anyone left won't have the capacity to contemplate anything on their way to the grave.

 

Has your revulsion against woke culture made you blind?

I'm talking to some liberals here. Sure, the regressive Repugs hate woke culture. But some liberals do also to the point of denying the very real racism of how white and black people are treated by police, judges and juries.

New COVID variant a "jump in evolution"

It is reported to be causing a lot of new cases in Africa. It has "an unusually high number of mutations" and is a "big jump in evolution." This variant is described as "the most worrying we've seen." It could be more infectious and reduce the effectiveness of vaccines. 

While Europe is restricting travel from Africa, nevertheless a case has been diagnosed in Israel and two cases in Hong Kong. Just like Delta it will make its way around the globe in no time. If you thought this pandemic was over and are acting like it then you and your loved ones are in for much more disease, hospitalization and death to come. 

Hartmann to Dems: It's progressive populism or fascism

I posted on this back when he first wrote it but it needs continual repetition. Thom notes that the working class is tired of the elites in both Parties and favor populism. The question is whether it will be of the progressive or fascist variety. Corporate Democrats are still not getting this message. Unfortunately the Repug Party has and has chosen fascism. Thom:

"Americans are sick and tired of politics as usual in this new world defined by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.  They want populist politicians who think about their needs, talk to them about solutions to the country's problems, and are unafraid of taking on the rich and powerful.

"The Democratic Party as a whole missed it, although progressives within the Party totally understood what's going on and have worked hard to have the Party meet this progressive populist moment. But they're being sabotaged by the neoliberal old guard who're still deeply embedded in their wealthy and corporate donors' Citizen's United cocoon.

"If these Citizen's United piglets in the Democratic Party continue to suckle on the teat of Big Money and block genuine progressive change, we'll be right back where we were in 2016, as last night's Virginia election proves. And Republicans know it."

Wolff: Crapitalism's false defenses

The improvements in wages, working conditions, length of the working day, a living wage, health, education, welfare etc. came not from capitalists, who opposed all that, but from the working class, unions, and socialists. 

Crapitalistic caricature of socialism is also false, a smokescreen to hide behind its own atrocious partnership with colonialism and yes, even Nazism. Wolff provides the details.

Crapitalism in a nutshell

This day I am thankful for reminders such as these. That we can have a better, more humane world. But not within our current crapitalistic system. If we truly want that better world then it has to go. Don't just buy that there is no alternative. There are and lots of people working on them, for example: From capitalism to the collaborative commons; The P2P Foundation; Commons Transition; Center for Partnership Studies; Evolution Institute; Democratic Socialists of America and many more.

 

Compare Rottenhouse with Kizer

Pretending their is equal justice in our legal system because of the verdict in the Rottenhouse case is itself a miscarriage of justice and proof of the power of propaganda, even among liberals. Racism is real and it affects judges and jurors. And it is manipulated by unscrupulous lawyers who could give a shit about justice. The difference in these two cases is obvious testament to those facts. Yet still we have some liberals so brainwashed by that manipulation that they in effect are complicit with that racism and injustice.

 

NM COVID report 11/22/21 for the last 4 weeks

There were 35,155 new cases during this period, an average of 1172 cases per day. Among the vaccinated there were 9672 cases, 27.5% of the total. The vaccinated also had 20.7% of the hospitalizations and 3% of the deaths. So yeah, if you're vaccinated your chances of dying are minimal. But you're still contagious if you get it and can give it to your loved ones. If you can live with that fact while not taking all precautions then something it terribly wrong with you.

 

Sirota: Dems doing it again

Giving a tax break to the rich in Build Back Better, one of the Bill's most expensive items. Honestly, WTF is wrong with them that they cannot learn from past loses? Two-thirds of people polled think the Party is out of touch with we the people over just this sort of thing: Catering to the wealthy. It's how Twitler beat Hillary by making it a war against the elites. Repugs are already gearing up their spin machine with this SALT giveaway. And unfortunately it's true. Do the Dumbs even care if they lose by blatantly exposing their own corruption?

The Fantastic Four Quad Rants Part 2

Frame On! you crazy diamonds! For the second episode, Layman turns the spotlight onto conservatives and asks, "What the hell is wrong with these people?"

 

Corporate media and manufactured consent

Quit watching it and open your mind. There are several progressive media outlets in print and on YouTube free from that crapitalistic indoctrination. Change your media diet to stay healthy and informed. A few examples include Thom Hartmann, The Young Turks, Breaking Points, Bad Faith, Daily Kos, Democracy Now, Empire Files, Greg Palast, Katie Halper, Mother Jones, Occupy Democrats, Randi Rhodes, Stephanie Miller, Richard Wolff, Robert Reich, Rolling Stone, the Majority Report, The Nation, The Ring of Fire and many more. 

Interview with Zak Stein: Nuancing stage theory

Zak has always parsed the pros and cons so well. I used Zak as a source for my paper "Can you be at a level of development?" He also participated in the Metamodern Forum discussion on the topic.

"There's more to the life of the mind that just cognitive developmental stages" (6:47).

"Under some conditions stages are clearly the case. In other cases stages don't apply. [...] The [most classical] misapplication of stage theory is [that it is] not suitable [for] social cultural development" (9:37). In that same section another misapplication is normative judgments of people at different stages.

And getting back to the paper I referenced above: "There's no such thing as being at a stage" (14:19). He goes on to note that in different contexts we can display different skill levels of a particular task.

Another thing touched upon in that paper:

 

"It's precisely that dynamic developmental flow between all these different skill domains which are at different levels. [...] It's not about being at a cognitive level; it's about this ability to move fluidly up and down these skill sets and move across different skill domains so you get an ecosystem of skills as opposed to a central processor that gets you more capacity" (aka as a center of gravity) (18:19).

 

At 32:48 he goes into the fallacy of 'ontogeny capitulates phylogeny' applied to social cultural development, a topic we are exploring in the Graeber/Wengrow thread. At 34:03 he mentions their book specifically on the issue. "The problem here is to over essentialize and to use broad sweeps and to have those broad sweeps have normative connotations." 

 

Which is exactly what the English colonizers did to justify genocide and stealing their land. Well actually it was the 'Great Spirit's' land on which the natives were stewards. But such beliefs were concerned primitive so therefore the natives had no right to that land, as well as their very lives.

 

Starting around 37:20 they then get into the obsession of the ultimate meta justification: Increasing complexity is the answer to evolution and development. Zak brings up that if our current complexity is so great then why are we on the brink of environmental, and subsequently human, collapse?

 

It relates to Wilber early on noting that each stage can go off into dissociation instead of integration. As well as the health or pathology at every stage. As I've argued elsewhere I think western civilization took a wrong turn into crapitalism with its dysfunctional dualistic elevation of man over woman, mind over body, individual over society and so on. Which is based on the difference of real v. false reason as described by Lakoff.

This idea was touched on earlier in their discussion (26:25) with the example of a gifted person having a high mental capacity which could generalize to other domains with the same sort of skill level. But Zak pointed out that just having the transferable comprehension of certain underlying abstract principles across domains is still missing the embodied skill prerequisites for a full understanding and hence actual high skill performance in other domains. I.e. real v. false reason.

 

At 47:00 he discusses different cultural capacities. Europeans had a more effective technological capacity than US natives for 'kinetic warfare.' The problem though is when the Europeans generalized that capacity as defining civilization capacity altogether when the natives indeed had more advanced capacities in other domains. Zak called it a "self-insulating, hypertrophied pathology."

 

Starting at 53:35 he brings up the study he did at JFKU on how different levels interpret levels. Suffice it to say that it explains a number of the common misapplications and distortions of integral theory we see in the community.

"So this is basically Graber's argument about the indigenous peoples of the north american continent. They chose to live this way and they were optimizing for values very very different from the values the Europeans were optimizing for" (62:20). He goes on to say he's a big Graeber fan, read everything he's written and finds him meticulous if sometimes a bit sweeping.

 

They end the interview with Zak talking about the other two domains in his model beside development: Ensoulment and transcendence. Development is about gaining capacity and self-improvement. Ensoulment is losing capacity and getting beneath people in service. Transcendence is neither in stepping back to see the total non-dual whole.

 

FYI: A brief explanation of Lakoff's distinction between real v. false reason here.  

 

Who and what is insane?

Crapitalism is not inevitable. At best it is the downside of developing formal logic. At worst it is a pathological wrong turn in human development.

 

Krugman: Built Back Better is responsible investment in America

Of course Repugnacons are against it because it mostly helps we the people and isn't just a scheme to enrich the already rich. So Krugman sets the record straight that BBB's investments are full paid for and will provide not just for better physical infrastructure but better human and environmental infrastructure as well. Once again, truth v. lies.

"The Build Back Better legislation that passed the House last week isn’t a pure investment plan; in particular, it includes substantial health care spending that is more about helping Americans in the near term than about the future. But about two-thirds of the proposed spending is indeed investment in the sense that it should have big payoffs in the future. And if you combine Build Back Better with the already-enacted infrastructure bill, you see an agenda that is about three-fourths investment spending.

"So don’t believe politicians who are trying to portray Biden’s investment agenda as somehow irresponsible and radical. It’s highly responsible, and it’s an attempt to restore the all-American idea that government should help create a better future."

IDEA: US downgraded to backsliding democracy

This report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found the US backsliding because of the following:

"A historic turning point came in 2020-21 when former president Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election results in the United States. [...] The visible deterioration of democracy in the United States, as seen in the increasing tendency to contest credible election results, the efforts to suppress participation (in elections), and the runaway polarisation ... is one of the most concerning developments."

The polarization mentioned is between the truth and lying propaganda, between democracy and fascism. And from the above facts in the case, it's Twitler's takeover of the Repugnacon Party that is degrading democracy on its way to their goal of fascism.

AOC warns of overpromising and underdelivering

Recall Sirota said the same thing, as did Hartmann. AOC goes on to note, like the others, "what really dampens turnout is when Democrats make promises that they don’t keep." The House delivered on at least some of those promises by passing the Build Back Better Act. But if it gets even further diluted in the Senate then it "could fuel 'political nihilism' and reinforce 'the idea that nothing we do matters.'" As Sirota and Hartmann have noted before, this is exactly the formula that gave us Twitler. And can do so again if the Democratic Party doesn't keep the promises they make.

Spineless Dems in denial

Or as Bill Maher once said: "Democrats don't even being a knife to a gunfight; they bring a covered dish." They deny that the Repugnancon Party has turned fascist and retreat into spineless and ineffective rhetoric in response, as if Nazis will play by Robert's Rules of Order. Which is exactly the sort of response that allowed Nazism to flourish. Here we go again.

 

 

Hartmann: Repugnacon Party is hate, fear and death

It's all they have left after abandoning all of their previous values. In the wake of Rottenhouse the death threats are flying fast and free from Twitiots. Government Repugs are not only inciting the violence but passing laws legalizing killing protestors. Thom provides the history of how the Party got to this point; it's been part of their agenda all along.

"All the Republican Party has left, now that they’ve abandoned any pretense over the past 40 years of supporting working people or even rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, is hate, fear and death."

Two Pox Views contributors quit over Carlson

Both Johan Goldberg and Stephen Hayes quit the station after the airing of Carlson's conspiracy laden program about Jan. 6. They had worked at Pox since 2009 but it was last last of many straws. They said the show "is a collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering, riddled with factual inaccuracies, half-truths, deceptive imagery, and damning omissions."   

This pandemic has been hell for burglars

 

Liberal Redneck on the Rittenhouse trial

Incompetent prosecutors, biased judges and fascists making him a hero will only incite much more of the same kind of murder in our streets.  

And then there's Biden's take

Unfortunately he unconsciously accepts the corrupt system in which we all function and likely too just accept as the way things are. But we must not surrender to it, as the results are plain to see and remind us that if we are ever to receive a fair shake we'll have to not just reform the system but transform it. It's a long haul that begins with each one of us calling out the corruption at every turn and offering a viable alternative.

One such alternative is the collaborative commons that I promoted in this paper. The benefit is that it is already well underway and making progress. But you'll never hear about it in corporate media, whose sole function is to maintain status quo crapitalism with all of its underlying, erroneous assumptions about human nature and its cultural and economic expressions, aka Rottenhouse. We need to clean house and build a Commonhome.

Rottenhouse

The dynamics of the Rittenhouse trial exemplify a broader pattern in our degenerating society I've come to call Rottenhouse.

SNL: Republican or not?

Context matters.

Common sense for us common workers

It don't take no fancy elite to understand basic economics, henna?

 

The problem

So why then would you create a worse problem by letting them get away with murder time and time again? Answer: For white supremacist fascists and their criminal enablers in government and media who incite them, it's their agenda, not a problem. In honor of their latest hero I'm now collectively calling them Rottenhouse.

 

Left of what?

This is the result of constant negotiation and compromise first with neoliberal conservatives and now with fascists. The liberal left ends up being old school, neoliberal conservatism, aka today's Democratic Party.

The Big Truth

Combats The Big Lie. Keep repeating The Big Truth more then they do the opposite.

They embrace the far more dangerous real threat

To eliminate the far more harmless imagined threat.

 

NM COVID report 11/15/21 for the last 4 weeks

We're still spiking with 30,990 new cases, over 1000 per day. Breakthrough cases among the vaccinated are 28.7%, hospitalizations 20.8% and deaths 8.4% of the total. Please behave responsibly even if you're vaccinated.

 

Jason Stanley: Why worry about fascism?

This short presentation provides factors involved in fascism taken as a whole. We can see all of these tactics being employed by the Repugnacon Party and its media enablers. And it is eroding democracy, its very goal. 

What's your choice?

"We can have great wealth in the hands of a few or we can have a democracy. But we can't have both." What's your choice? 

CBO said BBB will add to the debt

Recall this post where it was the Democrats who agreed to this CBO subterfuge in order to get Democorps to vote for BBB. So now here's Pelosi responding to a question about it explaining exactly what she agreed to in the first place. And they wonder why they are losing progressive voters.  

Repugnacon fascists are gearing up for war

And not just a war of words but the actual kind with intent to kill human beings. A significant part of it is governmental Repugnacons directly inciting it. The latest is Gosar Tweeting a video of killing AOC, for which he was censured in the House with only two Repug votes. So what does Gosar do in response. He re-Tweets that video right after the censure. And lest we forget the violence Twitler incited throughout his Presiduncy, culminating in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Such incitement is producing its desired result. In an email Robert Reich reports:

 "At a conservative rally in western Idaho last month, a young man stepped up to a microphone to ask when he could start killing Democrats. 'When do we get to use the guns?' he said as the audience applauded. 'How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?' The local state representative, a Republican, later called it a 'fair' question.

"Republicans who break party ranks and defy Trump have come to expect death threats—often fueled by their own colleagues who have denounced them as traitors. The 13 House Republicans who voted last week for President Biden's infrastructure bill are getting death threats—such as a caller who told Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to slit his wrists and 'rot in hell'—and party leaders are calling for them to be stripped of their committee assignments ... because they voted for a bill that invests in roads, bridges, and broadband in their communities."

"According to The New York Times, violent threats against lawmakers are on track to double this year. GOP Representative Fred Upton of Michigan has received multiple death threats in the days since he voted for President Biden's infrastructure bill. One caller left a voicemail saying, 'You're a f---ing piece-of-s--- traitor. I hope you die.' The man went on to say he hopes Upton's family and his entire staff die.^"

^{This is exactly what their Party has become and we can no longer live in denial.}

Cheney: Twitler broke Cruz

Or just maybe Cruz has no internal value system at all and just goes along with the tide? In the current case that's fascism.

 

Democracy Now interview with David Wengrow

Transcript here.  

Very good question

 Yeah, if the situation was so dangerous for Rottenhouse then how come?

AOC nails Repugnacon Party in one minute

This is what they've become: Inciting violence and making excuses for it. Note that only two Republicans voted for censure: Cheney and Kinzinger. The rest voted against it and approve of Gosar's behavior. Sick. 

Blade Runner - Black Lotus

Here's a short video about the new series. Being a Blade Runner fan I couldn't resist. This is my first foray into Japanese anime and I'm impressed by the detail and quality of the animation. I'm not yet hooked on the plot or characters but it grabbed my attention. 

Eisler on social development

Continuing this post, I'm also reminded of Eisler's distinction between dominator and actualization hierarchies. From this IPS Ning discussion.

As you may or not know, I do not reject hierarchy per se, just a certain kind. I went into this in detail in a few threads, like real/false reason and the fold. Dominator hierarchies are based in the same metaphysical premises as capitalism, both arising from what Lakoff calls false reason, or Gebser calls deficient rationality.

 

Eisler's partnership model expresses healthy hierarchy/heterarchy with real reason. Note that her partnership societies are gender equitable, as well as in/out, one/many balanced. Male-dominated societies are not gender equitable and arise from the unbalanced sort of metaphysical dominator hierarchies. What you call "mutually supportive networks" is that sort of partnership balance. As is the emerging new Commons beyond capitalism and private property.

 

To the extent kennilingus holds on to capitalism, even conscious capitalism, is the extent to which it participates in a dominator hierarchy. And quite a few in the broader integral movement have noticed this. I'd mentioned somewhere that I was reading Eisler's The Real Wealth of Nations. I've attached this document that summarizes the chapters. From chapter two:

 

Opposing Economic Societal Structures

 

The domination system allows only for dominating or being dominated. Hierarchies of domination result in scarce trust, high tension, and system cohesiveness based on fear and force. Leaders control and disempower. To succeed, a domination system suppresses caring and empathy.

 

In contrast, a partnership system supports mutually respectful and caring relations. Hierarchies of actualization allow for accountability, bi-directional respect, and input from all levels. Leaders facilitate, inspire, and empower. Economic policies and practices support needs: basic survival, community, creativity, meaning and caring – the realization of highest human potentials.

 

No society is pure partnership or domination system – it’s always a matter of degree. The top-down domination system is a holdover from earlier feudal and monarchic times.

 

And this post, specific to Graeber and Wengrow's challenge to equating social organization with technological hierarchies:

Footnote 10 of her [Eisler's] 2015 article clarifies what I said in this post using Wilber, contrary to the notion that it is merely the technological base that governs most of our individual consciousness and social organization:

"In contrast to the view that technological modes of production determine social organization, cultural transformation theory takes into account evidence that cultures with the same technological base can have different structures and beliefs depending on the degree they orient to either end of the partnership-domination continuum. For example, instead of the dehumanizing assembly lines of industrialization in times that oriented more to the domination side of the continuum, in the 1960s more partnership-oriented Sweden and Norway introduced what became known as industrial democracy where workers controlled their manufacturing work" (34).

 

PS: See the ongoing discussion on the topic in this Facebook thread.

Katie Porter destroys DeToy

Here she is discussing the Post Office's degrading performance since DeToy took over. The statistics are based on a recent PO audit which she presents to that auditor. DeToy must go. 

Misdirecting our anger

There are legitimate reasons to get rightfully angry. Like neoliberalism has corrupted our government with corporations and the rich bribing our representatives. Like the fascist takeover of the Repugnacon Party, who want to eliminate voting rights for those who don't want them. Or outright eliminate those voters by falsely claiming voter fraud when there is virtually none aka the Big Lie, thereby giving Repugnacon appointees the power to overturn election results. 

So the fascists then lie by misdirecting your legitimate anger toward them into other non-issues they made up. Don't fall for it: They are the real targets of our anger. Be angry with them for their crimes against humanity and the fact that they are trying to steer us away from their accountability in those crimes. They need to be prosecuted, tried, found guilty and imprisoned.

 

What if the indiginous are the more developed ones?

Continuing this post, in some ways this is akin to Lakoff's distinction between real and false reason. The latter also comes from the Enlightenment while the former appears to be inherent to the indigenous. And given our unconscious acceptance that the indigenous are labeled as less cognitively complex and lower on the developmental scale, which this book is proving to be an absurd conclusion, it does question the very basis and motivation of some developmental models.

As I've suggested long ago and I can't find exactly where yet, if we accept the distinction between real and false reason, and that false (formal) reason is the pivot point for so-called higher developments, it corrupts what those higher developments in fact really are. Or as Gidley so giddily noted,* all of that might just be so much deficient rational complexity. And perhaps the indigenous are much more integral-aperspectival? As Alanis Morissette sang: "Isn't it ironic, don't you think?"

* "For Gebser, integral-aperspectival consciousness is not experienced through expanded consciousness, more systematic conceptualizations, or greater quantities of perspectives. In his view, such approaches largely represent over-extended, rational characteristics. Rather, it involves an actual re-experiencing, re-embodying, and conscious re-integration of the living vitality of magic-interweaving, the imagination at the heart of mythic-feeling and the purposefulness of mental conceptual thinking, their presence raised to a higher resonance, in order for the integral transparency to shine through" (111).