TYT Politics Reporter Jordan Chariton (@JordanChariton) reported from Senator Bernie Sanders Portland, Oregon headquarters on May 15th, 2016.
The artifice of corporate totalitarianism has been exposed. The citizens, disgusted by the lies and manipulation, have turned on the political establishment. But the game is not over. Corporate power has within its arsenal potent forms of control. It will use them. As the pretense of democracy is unmasked, the naked fist of state repression takes its place. America is about—unless we act quickly—to get ugly.
“Our political system is decaying,” said Ralph Nader when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It’s on the way to gangrene. It’s reaching a critical mass of citizen revolt.”
This moment in American history is what Antonio Gramsci called the “interregnum”—the period when a discredited regime is collapsing but a new one has yet to take its place. There is no guarantee that what comes next will be better. But this space, which will close soon, offers citizens the final chance to embrace a new vision and a new direction.
Jonathan Pie wonders whether the Donald actually qualifies as a “human, let alone an American,” based on his skin colour.
A Colorado family has sued a marijuana dispensary alleging that an “unreasonably dangerous” cannabis-infused candy was responsible for the murder of their loved one in a wrongful death suit that experts say may be the first of its kind since legal weed arrived in the US.
The religious cult associated with TV’s Duggar family, known as the “Quiverfull” movement, is having a retreat for people who want to set up arranged marriages for their teenage children. Quiverfull patriarch Vaughn Ohlman has a website promoting marriage for “Truly True Christian” children. Ben Mankiewicz (What The Flick?) and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.
A top draft pick for the NFL was punished for being caught smoking marijuana in a video that was posted on social media ten minutes before the draft. Laremy Tunsil used a weed gas mask / bong, and it may have cost him eight million dollars. Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola (ThinkTank), and Jimmy Dore, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.
We’re used to seeing big price tags on government spending, but how much could congressional chaplains really cost? Actually, a lot.
“According to Andrew Seidel of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who did the math to determine what taxpayers are being charged for prayers in Washington, the total annual bill comes to more than $800,000.
Both the U.S. House and Senate employ a chaplain whose singular duty is to administer prayer. The budget for the House Chaplain’s office is $345,000, while the Senate Chaplain’s office receives $436,886.
Seidel reports that both the House and Senate chaplains earn executive level salaries which are equal to those of high-ranking government officials, such as “general counsels of the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force; the chief financial officers of NASA and the EPA; the Chief Information Officers of almost every major federal department and agency; and the Army’s Director of Civil Defense.”
The two chaplains earn three-figure salaries for presiding over opening prayers in the house and senate, which only convene about 135 days out of the year.”
What is hell? Is it a literal place of torture and torment? Is it separation from a god? Is it annihilation? Is there anything real behind the threats? Which religion’s hell should we avoid? What is this concept doing to people?
This talk was delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Humanists of Tampa Florida in April, 2016.
Always Question Authority 