The Electoral Wasteland

In barely a century’s time, the population of the United States has more than tripled, to 313 million. We are a clattering, opinionated cluster of nearly all the world’s races and religions, and many of its languages, under one flag.

You would not know any of this looking at who is voting in one of the strangest presidential primary campaigns in history. There is no other way to put this without resorting to demographic bluntness: the small fraction of Americans who are trying to pick the Republican [i.e., Reactionary] nominee are old, white, uniformly Christian [i.e., willfully ignorant literalists] and unrepresentative of the nation at large.

None of that is a surprise. But when you look at the numbers, it’s stunning how  little this Republican [i.e., Reactionary] primary electorate resembles the rest of the United States.  They are much closer to the population of 1890 than of 2012.

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Wallace Shawn reads Howard Zinn

Actor Wallace Shawn reads the speech of historian Howard Zinn given at Johns Hopkins University on Civil Disobedience, November 1970. Part of a reading from Voices of a People’s History of the United States (Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove) May 2, 2007 in New York, NY. 

You don’t own me

There’s a basic, historical misunderstanding at the root of modern Republican [i.e., Reactionary] philosophy. A little fact that seems to get overlooked. It’s not their insistence that the road to fascism begins with good health care. It’s not even the pretense that President Obama somehow masterminded an economic collapse, bank bailout, and massive deficit weeks, months or years before he came into office. No, the incident that the GOP [i.e., Global Oppression Party] has let slip is a little more basic.

The South lost[!] [emphasis mine]

See, Republicans [i.e., Reactionaries] seem to have mistaken “wage slavery” for . . . that other kind of slavery. They must have, because anyone who understood that workers are employees, and not property, would recognize that workers have rights. . . .

As an employer, you have the absolute right to religious freedom [NOT religious privilege]. Attend any church, temple, synagogue or reading room you like. Give as you feel obligated. Worship as you please. Place on yourself any restriction in diet, activity or anything else that you feel is in keeping with your beliefs . . . but only on yourself. You don’t get to impose these restrictions on your employees. 

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Book Review: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From The Front Lines, by Dr. Michael Mann, Ph.D

Book review By DarkSyde for Daily Kos

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From The Front Lines
By Dr. Michael Mann, Ph.D
Columbia University Press; Cost $10 to $30 (Available in paperback )

Imagine a place where you and your family are threatened, your employer pressured by the most powerful people on earth to fire you, your email hacked and posted by the usual suspects in accusatory snippets, and where a mysterious letter containing white powder mixed in with tons of traditional hate mail land in your inbox. A suspected communist sympathizer during the McCarthy era, or a Muslim in the wake of 9-11? Nope. All because you helped make one of the most important scientific discoveries in a generation. That’s life in the land of the free and the home of the brave for prominent climate scientists these days, which is why I’m personally thrilled to feature one today who not only didn’t shrink an inch, he is fighting back, hard. . . .

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