Category: Uncategorized
“1.5 percent of House Republicans voted to raise the federal minimum wage. If we’re being generous with rounding, 98 percent of House Republicans don’t believe in raising Americans’ pay.”
—Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.)Progressives in Congress were joined by workers, business owners, and labor rights advocates in celebrating the “historic” passage on Thursday of the Raise the Wage Act, aimed at guaranteeing all American workers a minimum wage of $15.
Two hundred thirty House Democrats were joined by only three Republicans—Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Will Hurd of Texas, and Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey—in supporting the Raise the Wage Act (RTWA), which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025 and end the use of sub-minimum wages for tipped workers.
WHEN FACED with criticism or hard questions about the state of the economy and the current economic downturn, the Morrison Government has developed a very simple narrative to base its responses around: ‘Everything is Awesome’.
Despite a number of economic indicators ringing alarm bells and warnings from the Reserve Bank that interest rate cuts alone were going to be insufficient to get the economy out of its current downturn, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg continue to insist that the “fundamentals are strong”.
Murdoch’s America
via A comprehensive list of former Fox employees who have joined the Trump administration
James Molan and Andrew Bolt spent an interview suggesting attacking Iran wasn’t a bad plan (ODT)
If you look at that kind of identity politics, the Squad constituencies are similar in size to Trump’s core of evangelicals and the upper middle class and the rich. But the parents of these women were blue collar or service workers, and that is the real point. That’s 85% of the country. That is what this is really about. If they unite workers across race, the Squad could deprive Trump of one of his constituencies. Only 14% of blue collar workers who voted for Obama switched and voted for Trump. He promised them health care and better jobs. He hasn’t delivered. The Squad is appealing to them.
via Top 4 Ways the Squad of young Congresswomen represent more Americans than Trump
The tears Trump causes Americans abroad.
Trump politicises the lives of less than 1% of people some Americans among them which he turns into a demand of 100% support to be able to group stereotype and justify is using them as domestic punching bags. When it’s that 1% of America that is now treating it as their own personal feifdom or colony and remaining silent. Real abuse consistently punches down. Punching up isn’t what Trump makes it out to be it’s “justified criticism” in a Real Democracy. Is America a Real Democracy or a dying one? Before or after Trump America needs sure as hell needs CPR. (ODT)
I leave the U.S. often, ironically, and I have been fortunate to live and study and work abroad in countries from Mexico and Argentina to Spain and the U.K.—experiences that have thrown the good and the bad the U.S. has to offer into high relief. On the days when I read the news, I can’t imagine how I can love the country I still, sometimes reluctantly, call home, but I try to remember what the great James Baldwin said in an interview with the Paris Review:
I think that it is a spiritual disaster to pretend that one doesn’t love one’s country. You may disapprove of it, you may be forced to leave it, you may live your whole life as a battle, yet I don’t think you can escape it. There isn’t any other place to go—you don’t pull up your roots and put them down someplace else. At least not in a single lifetime, or, if you do, you’ll be aware of precisely what it means, knowing that your real roots are always elsewhere. If you try to pretend you don’t see the immediate reality that formed you I think you’ll go blind.
I’m trying not to go blind, even though the tears that come more and more often these days make it harder than ever to see the nation for which my parents gave up so much to call their own.
via I Know What It’s Like to Be Told to ‘Go Back’ to My Own Country | The Smirking Chimp
Calling Trump’s Racist outbursts just “Political Strategy: In doing so, the press is assisting in Trump’s attempts to rebrand his open bigotry as strategy and giving cover to a Republican Party that allows it.
The fact however is Trump took on a line minutes after doing what he does every day and that’s watch FOX. Hardly a planned strategic political event. Just a kneejerk reaction of a real Klansman.
via Behind Trump’s racism, mainstream media can’t help but see a plausible political strategy
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. … It is not the light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
via History Holds the Antidote to Trump’s Fascist Politics – Truthdig
My thought for the day
Invariably when I read about how successful people are, the measure is always the value of their assets. Why is this so?
via Know your place; we were born to rule (part 1) – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Are we on the way to transitioning from a migrant settler nation to a guest worker society? But if there is a shortfall in forecast NOM, what would be the implications for the Prime Minister’s job creation pledge and for its ten-year tax plan?
via Net migration levels increase under Coalition Government
Given the President has been let off the hook ultimately with this “boys will be boys” excuse. It has direct revelance to Don’s early cultural upbringing at the military academy he attended. All records of his stay there have been secreted under legal threat from the public why?. (ODT)
Military sexual violence is elevated, regular and predictable within the ADF. The situation in the US seems even more dire. What unites both cases is that neither country seems ready to challenge the “boys will be boys” justification and acknowledge the very real damage it can inflict.
This guy also partied with Epstein privately and 28 other guests (ODT)
Republicans Are The New Confederacy, Part Infinity | Crooks and Liars
Trump is following Australian logic and attitudes to Asylum. But Australia has hidden the numbers that have already flown in. Australia’s visa queues are now clogged and the truth revealed on the politicisation of a small minority of people. The welcome sign has been torn down the lies told as well as all International agreements previously signed torn up. (ODT)
According to a new rule added to the Federal Register, asylum seekers who pass through another “safe” country en route to the United States will be ineligible for asylum at the US border. The rule is expected to come into effect on Tuesday.
Though there are some exceptions, the rule looks likely to end the procession of Central American migrants journeying through Mexico to the US to claim asylum. 2018 saw several thousands-strong ‘caravans’ of Central American migrants stream towards the US’ southern border, with US authorities processing nearly 100,000 asylum claims at the frontier, and arresting a total of 521,000 illegal immigrants.
I don’t, I freed myself from the clutches of religion decades ago.
In my opinion the bulk of religious people don’t need it either. They may think differently, which is fair enough. But as far as I can see they happily pursue their religious beliefs week in and week out without nongs, or legislators, buttressing their right to do so.
So what is this legislation all about in my opinion?
It is about the negative right to discriminate against anybody who is ‘other’, backed up by an appalling piece of legislation, is what I think.
via Speech is never free … – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Australia’s defence department gave tens of thousands of dollars of work to a US firm blacklisted for corruption and bribery.
Defence last year contracted US firm Lock N Climb to provide it with $25,000 of specialist ladders used for aircraft maintenance. The work was awarded through a limited tender process, meaning other firms were restricted from competing for the contract.
Guardian Australia can reveal that the company was – and still is – blacklisted by the US and barred from working with American government agencies.
Most recent news on the U.S. economy has been upbeat and triumphant but the reality, as Alan Austin reports, is different.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S ceaseless bragging about the U.S. economy being “the best in the World and in our Country’s history” has gained traction.
Many “news” outlets spruik record jobs, record economic growth, record government revenue, record stock market levels and a record economy overall. Sounds like extraordinary boom times for the USA.
The reality is virtually the opposite. When Trump won office, America’s economy ranked 23rd in the world and 15th in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). That’s the club of 36 wealthy developed capitalist economies.
Today, the U.S. economy ranks outside the world’s top 40 and outside the OECD’s top 20. That is almost certainly its lowest ranking ever.
Guess Fox has their hand up for some retraining programs (ODT)
via Nation Not Sure How Many Ex-Trump Staffers It Can Safely Reabsorb
Trump claimed he was born in Germany 3 of these women were bor in the USA. Trump lied None of these women have. (ODT)
Simply their Colour as Trump claims he’s German they are knonto be Americans. He’s wrong on all counts and they are right (ODT)
via Trump under fire for racially-charged tweets against congresswomen – BBC News
![File: Chinese President Xi Jinping walks next to Venezuela''s President Nicolas Maduro during his welcoming ceremony in Beijing, China September 14, 2018 [File: Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/7/9/20eaa99b63a246788cbd3a07d1e2ac9b_18.jpg "China will determine the future of Venezuela")
China not Trump will determine Venezuela’s future that must gall him. (OTD)
via China will determine the future of Venezuela | China | Al Jazeera
US president Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said “The buck stops here”. Truman understood that elected representatives in executive office are responsible for the decisions governments make and accountable to the people they represent.
via The buck stops with you, Peter Dutton, and these secrets aren’t yours to keep
Riding on Obama’s shoulders Trump’s Record (ODT)
We’re 16 months away from the 2020 presidential election. It’s likely that the U.S. economy will weaken. Trump will be responsible. HIs approval rating will decline.
The whole point of messing with the Census was a political scheme to facilitate the Republican gerrymandering of the United States Congress, state legislatures, and local governments nationwide. This is a mission critical for a dying party that can survive only by cheating democracy. So it is that while Donald Trump’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the Census failed, the mission continues.
this administration still has the same poisonous political motivations that drove them to undercount communities of color for partisan gains, and we need to remain vigilant to protect our democracy.”
via Trump Wants to Use ‘Citizenship Data’ to Gerrymander Democracy | The Nation
Trump, Pence and Fox Corp’s FAKE NEWS (ODT)
Trump, Pence, and others blame the Democrats for the lack of funding to hold the immigrants more humanely, but this excuse makes no sense. Law enforcement is obligated to moderate its actions in line with the resources that lawmakers have allocated. Trump pretends that locking up every unauthorized border-crosser — even if they’re seeking aslyum, which is a legal form of immigration — is necessary to preserve the rule of law, but this is not so.
If state police decided that they needed to arrest, or even just stop, every driver going over the speed limit, chaos would ensue. Instead, they decide to go after the most egregious offenders when possible with the resources they have available.
But Trump has decided that, as a rule, any unauthorized border-crosser is dangerous and so they all must be locked up. This is absurd and plainly bigoted, and it’s not how any other reasonable form of law enforcement works. If you don’t have the resources to enforce the law humanely — particularly when the law in question concerns a non-violent offense like crossing the border between points of entry — then you should scale back on enforcement actions. Choosing to continue to lock people up, despite the abysmal conditions and with a presumption that an entire population of people is inherently dangerous, is exactly why the system of concentration camps Dawsey and others have documented is an affront to basic human rights.
Never say Never arbitrary politics. The untrustable Minister (ODT)
and
The LNP’s Ministry Of Propaganda trading as Newscorpse and a globular, yellow Trump doppelganger from Queensland are apparently two of the tools that a loving, omnipotent deity used to deliver his “miracle” of a return of Scotty The Favoured Morrison to the big, green, Prime Ministerial swivel chair.
What is becoming quite apparent with Brother Scott is that his claims to the miraculous are not him simply taking gliberties© with the language; he is not speaking metaphorically. He goes beyond the simple narcissism and hyperbole of a vacuous politician; he fully believes that his all-powerful, invisible pal in the sky favours him above all others to be Prime Minister.
ScoBro signed up for the full package – creationism, Beelzebub, the second coming and an imminent Armageddon plus, for an additional fee, his upgrade to Prosperity Jesus, the post-hippy, entrepeneurial saviour who bestows earthly rewards upon his shareholders. Morrison thinks he’s there via divine endorsement.
via Hey, Scotty, the cracks are showing! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
