Thom Hartmann nails it

 in Why Don't They Want Us to Look Up? (a review of the political allegory Don't Look Up on Netflix)

 Excerpt: "'Small government' freaks don’t want you to look up at how trust in our government has fallen from over 80% in the 1960s to fewer than 30% today, or how that’s the direct result of Reagan’s 'government is not the solution to your problems, it is the problem' hustle that led to Trumpism and is today tearing America apart.

Republican governors don’t want their citizens to look up at how they continue to use racist tropes and dog-whistle appeals to frighten and thus hang onto a majority of the white vote.

Those governors and legislators don’t want you to look up at how they’re rewriting history and threatening teachers, passing laws that either outright ban teaching the actual history of race relations, slavery, and the Civil War, or, as in Florida, empower parents to sue teachers who mention a word about race."

Meanwhile: Biden’s Agenda Is on Its Death Bed Because the Interests of the Rich and Poor Are Irreconcilable — Branko Marcetic ...which, if true, means that the vast majority of the population (i.e. those poorer than the billionaires) will continue to receive a constant stream of news-like sludge that is essentially deceptive.

The problem with lies is not only that they're unethical, it's that they tend to deceive even the liars. So...a country of the deluded led by the deluded is what to expect. Why else would a transparent phony like Trump be hailed as a savior when he called out fake news?

Is crime on the rise?

...because of the librulz?


As an NBC report puts it, “The numbers tell one story, but recent messaging from the Los Angeles Police Department appears to be telling another.”

In short, “Robbery, burglary and theft are down in Los Angeles compared to 2019, according to the latest crime data from the police department.”

(Originally seen in the Davis Vanguard)

 

"If you can't beat them...

 ...arrange to have them beaten." -- George Carlin

Quotes about Religion / Politics

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. Galileo Galilei

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. Napoleon Bonaparte

Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Pope John Paul II

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion. Thomas Paine

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. Dalai Lama

The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated. Desmond Tutu

We must seek the loving-kindness of God in all the breadth and open-air of common life. George A. Smith

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs. Denis Diderot

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. Anais Nin

Religion is at its best when it is a long way from political power .... The founders of the Christian religion … Jesus and St. Paul -- were both clear about this. "Blessed are the meek." "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

St. Paul is perfectly clear that the highest Christian virtue is charity, not patriotism, not martial valor, not exalting your class, your group, your race above others, but charity ... When politics remembers that and acts accordingly, it does good.

But religion, at various points in human history … has acquired political power, and put its hands on the levers of social authority. It decides who shall live and who shall die. It decides how we shall dress, what we shall be allowed to read, whether we shall go to war, and so on.

In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organizations, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss. Aberjani

In Healing imagery, the goal becomes one of "getting along" better by being nicer and more tolerant toward one another, forgiving and forgetting, living in more authentic ways. … this goal ignores the fact that a lot of the trouble ... is embedded in structures of power and inequality that shape almost every aspect of life in this society, from economics to politics to religion to schools and the family. The idea that we’re going to get out of this by somehow getting to a place where we’re kinder and more sensitive to one another … sets us up to walk right past the trouble toward an alternative that doesn’t exist and can’t exist until we do something about what creates privilege and oppression in the first place. And that is something that needs to be changed, not healed.

I am willing to contribute for a grand tombstone for Political Correctness (PC). … It has stifled frank exchange of ideas and has made debates one-sided and pre-concluded. It has given strength to ideas which cannot defend themselves in an open debate. PC … is disastrous in public space as it makes that public space an oxymoron by making it restricted to only the "acceptable". Democracy is about competitive ideas and PC is undemocratic as it discounts the possibility of a level playing field. All growth of ideas is through cross fertilization and PC leads to degeneration of ideas by restricting the process to inbreeding. Only those who use weakness as leverage to gain advantage without effort or have a hidden agenda will root for PC. It is the tool of the lazy and the devious. R. N. Prasher

Genuine politics -- every politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole. Vaclav Havel

A politician is a fellow who will lay down “your life” for his country. Texas Guinan

Whenever you find yourself on the side if the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Mark Twain

I claim that the human mind or human society is not divided into water tight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon each other. Mohandas K. Gandhi

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. H. L. Mencken

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. Plato Mankind will never see an end of trouble until ... lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power ... become lovers of wisdom. Plato

Just Enforcing Immigration Law

 (c) by Mark Dempsey

The movement to cage, and deport immigrants is a handy--and bipartisan--one for demagogues of all stripes. Obama built the infrastructure to cage and separate families, and tripled the deportations of his predecessor. Trump amped up the rhetoric, but maintained similar, if more obviously repugnant policies in handling the undocumented.

To cheer this treatment on, many people say "Just enforce the law!" when it comes to the undocumented.

The trouble with the "Just enforce the law!" crowd is twofold. First, it treats law--a product of all-too-human deliberation--as though it arrived on stone tablets engraved by lightning. Second, it ignores all the context. 

What context? Between 1798 and 1994, the U.S. is responsible for 41 changes of government south of its borders. Our southern neighbors have been on the receiving end of a variety of political and military attacks that create a constant stream of refugees coming north. Isabel Allende, niece of the CIA-deposed Chilean president, lives in Marin County. 

You may also remember the "Iran/Contra" affair, when the Reagan administration sold classified arms to Iran's Ayatollahs who had just released our embassy hostages, then used the money to fund a proxy war against the elected government of Nicaragua. Reagan famously asked the Mexican president to endorse his contention that one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere (Nicaragua) was a threat to the U.S. His Mexican counterpart replied he'd be happy to go along with his good friend Ronald if there was any way he could do it without being laughed out of office.

In addition to military and political attacks, the U.S. has been actively attacking the economies of its southern neighbors. One might imagine that shipping a lot of subsidized Iowa corn down south would impair the income of Mexico's corn farmers. The NAFTA treaty even provided compensation for the big farmers.

Corn is only arguably the most important food crop in the world, and the little subsistence corn farmers in Mexico were growing those obscure varieties that kept the disease-resistance and diversity of the corn genome alive...but they weren't making any money for Monsanto, so screw 'em.

In the wake of NAFTA, Mexican real income declined 34% (Source: Ravi Batra Greenspan’s Fraud). One has to return to the halcyon days of the Great Depression to find a decline like that in U.S. incomes. And that sparked no great migration...oh wait! The Okies!

So persecuting these political, military and economic refugees is simply morally repugnant. The persecution and pressure on our southern neighbors to produce refugees is bipartisan, too. Reporters asked the CIA-deposed former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, if he could detect a difference between the Obama and Trump policies toward his country. His answer: "No."

The shameful treatment of these people in their native land (where most would like to return) and in the U.S. apparantlly makes good politics, though. Since they are voiceless, in effect, they are scapegoats for all that ails us. We should not be handing them over to ICE. We should be begging their forgiveness.