Meidas Touch: A coup in plain sight

It's all here. So what are you waiting for Attorney General Garland? Are you going to defend democracy or not? 

Meidas Touch: Putin's Party

They are traitors. 

CPC endorses Brown over Turner

The Lever reports that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is turning its back on one of the most progressive candidates to ever run for public office: Nina Turner. Instead they decided to endorse the neoliberal primary incumbent, Shontel Brown. This after the CPC endorsed Turner when the two first competed for the position:

"Brown racked up support from the fossil fuel-funded, pro-Israel DMFI PAC (support she requested), Ohio Republicans, and a contractor that she had awarded $17 million to as a city councilor, a potential tit-for-tat that resulted in an ethics probe. [...] DMFI PAC and the corporatist dark money group Third Way spent $2.4 million promoting Brown and opposing Turner."

But Brown immediately joined the CPC thereafter despite obviously not being a progressive. "She also joined the CPC’s adversary caucus, the New Democrat Coalition, which includes several CPC members." 

So Jayapal's excuse is that she's an incumbent member so she gets the endorsement pro forma. This is yet another example of the CPC catering to establishment process while surrendering progressive values and policies. We've seen it before when they surrendered on the $15 minimum wage and backed out on their pledge to not pass the infrastructure bill before Build Back Better, now dead, passed the Senate. Many of us progressives are doubting that the CPC is really committed to us, instead just paying lip service for our votes. And endorsing Brown adds further to that doubt.

"But if the strategy ends up with the caucus endorsing a candidate who ran a campaign backed by pharmaceutical lobbyists, the pro-Israel lobby, and Republicans — all constituencies whose interests are vehemently opposed to the CPC’s agenda — against a progressive like Turner, the inside game has gone awry." 

Psyop the Twitiots

A meme fit for the psyop war on these fascists.

 

Combat Tai Chi Chuan

Here are some excerpts from Peter Lim copied below. The point is responding appropriately to the situation. These fighting principles can also be applied to rhetoric, which is preferred to avoid a physical confrontation. But again, the appropriate level of fighting words depends on the level of your opponent's skill. Thus per the principles below there are times when attack is necessary. The wisdom is in in knowing from long practice when that is and how to use it appropriately.

On a personal note, after long Tai Chi training most of my physical and verbal confrontations in life have been resolved using defensive maneuvers that redirected and neutralized the attack. I have never had to use strongly harmful attacks physically, though on a few occasions with highly skilled fighters I did have to use strikes and throws that caused minor injury. 

Rhetorically I am now in a fight with fascists that requires stronger language and tactics in order to move a wider audience to understand the nature of the situation, as well as to motivate us to verbally fight and vote against them to decrease their power in government and business. Following Tai Chi morality and principles, the aim is to prevent a physical war. Lesser rhetorical tactics have proven ineffective. The case as it is now demands much stronger narrative tactics given the level of fascism, and their highly skilled and well-funded propaganda machine, that is threatening our very democracy and well being.

From Lim:

"Above all, Taijiquan exponents are encouraged to be moral people. A sense of righteousness, chivalry, kindness, compassion, nobility and being a benefit to society should always be the code of conduct for a Taijiquan practitioner."

"The aim of Taijiquan as a martial art is to stop violence conclusively without recourse to more violence, most of the time the violence is redirected against itself or rendered ineffectual. Hence Taijiquan exponents usually just overpower their opponents by turning their own violence against themselves, educating them rather than hurting them."

"Can Taijiquan be used as an attacking art? Yes, but violence should only be the last recourse, never the first. [...] There are situations where the skills and principles above require some augmentation to make them even more effective. This is usually where the opponent's skill level is high enough so that an effective counter is not possible using less injurious means. With such situations stronger discouragement is required and to cater for such eventualities."

Lincoln Project - Enabler in Chief

McCONhell is asked where he draws his moral red line. He doesn't have one. It's all about power and money for him, nothing else. And if that means a fascist takeover of his Party and our country, so what. 

Democratic socialism v. socialism

Good Facebook meme and commentary from Durga Adriane. Something to think about.

"The term 'democratic socialism' is what the progressive contingent of the Democrats have used to attempt to distinguish themselves from regular Democrats; viz Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, $15 minimum wage, support for labor unions, etc. Bernie Sanders refers to himself as a democratic socialist as does AOC and others. The reason this distinction matters is because 'democratic socialism' is fundamentally a means of attempting to paper over the predatory capitalist system by tweaking it around the edges. Make it more humane through nicer domestic policy, but do nothing to expropriate or redistribute the power from the oligarchic hegemony pulling the strings.

 

"The other problem with 'democratic socialists' is that they are perfectly fine with the US empire's endless grind for global domination. They do nothing to challenge our constant regime-change wars. They appropriate billions for Israel in every congressional session. In short, they're the Public Relations arm of the Democrats and don't do much other than to re-brand the Democrats for the younger generations by signaling policies that are basic to every other developed nation in the world and many less-developed ones.

 

"It's a two-part grift: Progressives (aka democratic socialists) pretending to be the opposition to the Democrats when in fact they are sheepherding left-leaning voters back into the party and quelling authentic revolutionary sentiment with notions of being 'reasonable and strategic.' And the second part of the grift is selling the lie that the Democrats are an opposition party to the Republicans.

 

"Just like clockwork, in every election by the time progressive voters' 'democratic socialist' progressive candidates have been summarily ousted in the primaries, those same people that claimed to be demanding basic humanity from their government loyally vote for the Democratic party and its operatives, citing myths of 'harm reduction' and 'lesser evilism' to justify it. They talk big about 'organizing at the grassroots' and then never do. Whatever meaningless 'protests' they have amount to little more than the giant pussy hat tantrum of 2016. They do nothing to disrupt the system or threaten the power structure. And when the few progressives they DO manage to get elected sell out to the party machine, voters stop at nothing to make excuses for them with versions of "at least it's better than the other guy. 

It's all basically a charade-- as is all 'activism' led from the liberal intelligentsia, the PMC, and the upper middle class.

 

"Conversely, socialism is anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-oligarchic. There are no leftist Democrats. Progressive Dems are what I described above. Leftism starts at socialism, basically. Socialists don't compromise with Democrats. Or vote for them. Socialism means worker control over the means of the production and its economic returns. Embracing a multi-polar economic order with room for more than one power. Ending the exploitation of the global south. And ending imperialism. Not. Negotiable."