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Idolatrous Israel Continued to Worship Yahweh, Just as Evangelicals Continue to Worship Jesus

The God of Judaism and Christianity does not like company.

Yahweh (for Jews and Christians), the eternal Father of Jesus Christ, the Son

A painting on a large jar from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, presenting two masked figures, a male and a
female. Unlike most publications, the right figure is shown here with no tail or a penis, since it was not
indicated on the original drawing on the jar. The Hebrew inscription above addresses “Yahweh of
Shomron and his Asherah” (After Meshel, Z. 1978. Kuntillet ‘Ajrud: A religious Center from the
Judaean Monarchy on the Border of Sinai. Israel Museum Catalogue No. 75. Jerusalem, Fig 12, with
correction of the right figure).

of God (for Christians), is the one and only creator God throughout both the New Testament and the later writings of the Old.

It’s called monotheism.

Although the Old Testament prophets condemned ancient Israel for both idolatry (the worship of false gods) and apostasy (the abandonment of their religion), their condemnations were aimed at a people who never stopped worshiping Yahweh.

How could that be?

If Israel never stopped worshiping Yahweh, why did the prophets foretell judgment and captivity as divine punishment for abandoning Yahweh?

Israel’s error was their syncretism.

Syncretism is the mixing of different religious elements from a variety of cultural sources. So, I doubt very much if any Israelite ever stopped praying to Yahweh, the God of their fathers. But they added other items of devotion to their liturgies and turned Yahweh into a god of cultural appetites.

Images of Asherah, the Canaanite mother goddess

Read the books of 1 and 2 Kings for its many references to these idolatrous Canaanite additions to Israel’s Yahweh worship. For example, in Canaanite religion, Asherah was the mother goddess of creation who was typically married to a male deity such as Ba’al.

The holy of holies in the Arad temple of southern Judah. The two masseboth towards the back of the small room to the left represent Yahweh and Asherah, his “consort.”

Well, guess what. During their periods of rebellion, the Israelite’s — deciding that they must conform to the society around them — played match-maker and married off their Yahweh to the Canaanites’ Asherah. They even made room for her masseboth (the word for a “standing stone” commonly erected to symbolize a deity) inside the Jerusalem temple (2 Kings 23:6; one of the reasons it was finally destroyed by the  Babylonians)!

No, the Israelites never abandoned their prayers to Yahweh, but they finally bore the brunt of Yahweh’s condemnation because they couldn’t help but “punch up” their worship by adding a few cultural icons to the mix.

So, what does all this have to do with American evangelicalism, you ask?

As I argued in my book, I Pledge Allegiance, our favorite idols are worshiped  through the pervasive influences of nationalism, patriotism, militarism, American exceptionalism, politics, and consumerism. These are the evangelical idols of today.

No, we have not given up worshiping Jesus. Jesus Christ remains the deity on evangelical lips, but he is no longer Jesus of Nazareth.

We worship an image of the Son of God who is wrapped in an American flag, singing the national anthem as He returns on the clouds, swinging a sword to cut down our political enemies (because the opposition must be demonic, never a sincere person with an honest difference of opinion), all in order to protect our materialistic, consumerist way of life.

God bless America!

Today I came across this video of an “Evangelicals for Trump” rally held in a “Christian church.” Take a look (it’s a little over 19 minutes long; this congregation should immediately be stripped of its tax exempt status).

I will give you a preview: it is 19 minutes of idolatry, led by false prophets and pagan priests.

President Trump has replaced the goddess Asherah. He surrounds himself with false teachers who tell him what he wants to hear, just like the false prophets in the days of king Ahab, the apostate.

Red baseball caps, “God Bless America,” and fire-breathing Republican  prophets of Democratic doom have replaced the court prophets that jumped, flailed, and prophesied nationalistic lies for king Ahab and his wife, Jezebel.

Yet, the same fate awaits all false religion, even when the worshipers still call out in the name of Jesus.

The Dangers of Anti-Science Evangelicalism During the Trump Presidency

Rodney Kennedy is a professor at Palmer Theological Seminary. He recently posted an interesting article at Righting America: A forum for scholarly conversation about Christianity, culture, and politics in the US, analyzing evangelicalism’s antagonism to modern science.

Perhaps the most dangerous — at least, from a public health standpoint — expression of the tragic alliance between anti-science evangelicalism and right-wing politics is the decision at Fox News to (1) downplay the dangers of covid19 transmission by (2) demeaning the medical professionals who disagree with Trump and (3) promoting the early end of current stay-at-home orders.

Kennedy’s article is entitled “A Scopes Trial Redux: Evolution, Coronavirus, and the Evangelical War on Science.”

You can read an excerpt below:

“…From the Scopes Trial to the coronavirus pandemic, the pandemonium among evangelicals has always been about opposition to evolution. The symbolic epicenter of the anti-coronavirus movement is the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Inside the tech-savvy Disney theme park edifice is

Anti-Evolution League, at the Scopes Trial, Dayton Tennessee From Literary Digest, July 25, 1925. Image by Mike Licht – Flickr, via Wikimedia Commons

enthroned the king of anti- evolution – Ken Ham. Neither scientist nor theologian he routinely rips apart science and theology. He assures his adoring fans that he doesn’t interpret the Bible; he merely reads it and its message is at once plain and clear. Ham is perhaps the quintessential example of the evangelicals who routinely believe that the Bible gives up its treasures to nothing more complicated than “common sense.” 

“The Creation Museum is the Temple of Doom, as it defiles, denies, and attacks science. Ham’s obsession with painting evolution as the “beast out of the bowels of Darwin” provides the foundational ideology for the anti-coronavirus movement. Behind the mistrust of science and expertise, behind the denial of the pandemic’s scope, behind the spectacle of pastors holding mass services in states where people are fighting for their lives : behind all this is the anti-evolution movement.

“Ken Ham’s message has found ardent support among the millions of evangelical Christians who are easily persuaded that science and scientific expertise is an attack on the Bible, the American way of life, and on Christianity itself. So, it is that the ghosts of fundamentalism’s last stand at the Scopes Monkey Trial have returned in evangelicals like ancient witches and wizards gathering for the triumphant return of Voldemort. At the opening of the Creation Museum Ham expressed this residual resentment against Darrow and spoke of repairing the damage: The Scopes Trial “was the first time the Bible was ridiculed by the media in America. We are going to undo all of that here at the Creation Museum.” 

“The declaration of the continuing war could not be clearer. Every week, some business person or politician with evangelical ties adds to the creationist-inspired movement against science movement. Hobby Lobby, in direct violation of orders to be closed, reopened its stores, before announcing they would close again. The mayor of Cummings, GA rescinded his lock-down order and re-opened his city. The governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, has chosen prayer over following the recommendation of health officials. The governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, resisted issuing any order to shut down before relenting by telling the people of Alabama a shutdown was the only way to salvage football season. Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, has appealed to Christian convictions in his call to reopen schools and businesses. 

“But with the coronavirus pandemic, evangelicals may have overplayed their hand, and finally exposed the soft underbelly of their anti-science, anti-intelligence, anti-history bias. Evolution isn’t as scary as COVID-19. Evangelicals may have once again picked the wrong enemy, allowing Americans, who usually pay no attention to evangelicals, to see just how dangerous they can be. This seems like a foolish attack akin to Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. When General Lee told General Pickett to rally his division, Pickett allegedly told him, “Sir I have no division.” When this current battle over science plays itself out, one can only hope that the forces of anti-science evangelicals will have been shredded and sent back to the woods from whence they emerged. Perhaps we will look back and say that the Trump presidency was the “high watermark of the evangelical movement,” before its collapse. If that is the case, it will be a tragic end to a once proud movement.”

Read the entire piece here.

American Health or Global War? Guess Which One Our Government Chooses

Journalist Murtaza Hussain has a good article at The Intercept entitled, “Corona Virus is Exposing How Foreign Crusades Bled America’s Domestic Resources Dry.”

He details some of the ways our entrenched establishment leaders have

Murtaza Hussain

prioritized and heavily funded US military adventurism around the world, leaving the domestic cupboard bare in the face of national emergencies like the one we now face.

I have an excerpt below, or click on the title above to see the full article.

But first let me also plug the newest film (16:30) from journalist Abby Martin at The Empire Files. It is called “US Empire Exploits COVID-19 For More War.” Click on the title to watch.

Abby graphically explains the president’s escalation of US military attacks around the world, few of which have received any coverage in the corporate media, while the public is distracted by the corona virus pandemic.

Here is the article excerpt:

“THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC now ravaging the United States should lead every American to a series of important questions: What are the real threats that I face? What has my government been prioritizing in terms of my — and the nation’s — security? And where has all my tax money been going?

“Considering these questions, it’s hard not to conclude that the American government’s national security priorities have been so askew of reality that they

left the country dramatically unprepared for an acute threat to millions of its people.

“. . . Over a period of two decades, the United States spent trillions of dollars waging wars and occupations across the region. These confrontations have won America an ever-growing list of enemies around the world. They are still making life miserable for millions in the Middle East. But their impact on the United States itself is now also being painfully revealed: a country that has spent trillions on foreign wars but is unable to defend its citizens from basic threats like disease and economic collapse.

“The last few weeks have revealed a spectacle of a federal government apparently incapable of doing what is required to stop the spread of a pandemic

An Italian nurse falls asleep during a night shift at a hospital in Cremona, Italy March 8, 2020. Francesca Mangiatordi/@france_exa/via REUTERS.- THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RC20JF99B9HL

on American soil. Not only has testing capacity lagged far behind much smaller and less wealthy countries like Taiwan and South Korea, but shortages of critical health infrastructure will likely mean the excess deaths of potentially hundreds of thousands of Americans in the foreseeable future. Governors of large states have been publicly begging the federal government for ventilators, masks, and other basic tools to deal with the outbreak. There is little sign that the capacity even exists at present to respond to these requests.

“Meanwhile, the avalanche of military spending that was released after the September 11 attacks continues to roll onwards. According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, the U.S. government has spent a staggering $6.4 trillion on its wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan since 2001. This gargantuan number

GLENDALE, ARIZONA – MARCH 13: General view of empty shelves at a Target store on March 13, 2020  (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

does not even account for interest payments on the borrowing needed to pay for the wars, which could run to as much as $8 trillion by midcentury, let alone the opportunity costs to American society of this massive spending on foreign adventurism. Then there are the attendant inflations of the Pentagon’s base budget; domestic “war on terror” spending at the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security; and of course the wild expansion of our intelligence apparatuses, all but unaccountable to the general public in both their acts and spending.

“That American counterterrorism wars have killed hundreds of thousands of people while failing to achieve any clear political or strategic benefit makes the squandering of this generational wealth even more bitter.”

Fundamentalist Pastors and Haredi Rabbis Both Put Their People in Danger

Israeli soldiers confront Haredis violating quarantine orders

The tightly woven communities of Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Jews in Israel are being devastated by the covid19 pandemic. Their neighborhoods are the nation’s “hot spots” for this contagion.

Check out any of these recent articles from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz — here, here, and here).

One reporter goes so far as to say that Israel’s Haredi community is facing its greatest threat since the Holocaust. They literally may be wiped out.

The explanation for this tragedy is simple: insular, anti-intellectual religion very similar to American Fundamentalism.

First, Haredi families do not allow their children to attend school with “unfaithful unbelievers,” which includes non-Haredi Jews. Their children are required to attend Haredi religious schools with strict curricula where they can only mingle with other Haredi children.

Second, the Haredi curriculum excludes the study of modern science so their communities are ignorant of even the most basic knowledge of modern medicine. In addition, they are forbidden from listening to the radio or watching TV. They live in an information bubble.

Third, they are convinced that faith and Torah will always keep them safe. A firm enough belief in God, the authority of Scripture, and their tradition is all they need to be protected from infection.

Of course, this means that they must continue to gather together in the synagogues for services.

The government finally is deploying soldiers to Haredi neighborhoods in order to enforce government quarantine orders. These soldiers are frequently attacked, physically, by the devout who accuse them of being Nazis and the enemies of religious freedom.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Soldiers in Tel Aviv challenging Haredi man. Haredi folks have been very slow to wear face masks

Now, thousands upon thousands of these fervent believers are now dying, not in spite of their faith, but because of their faith.

I know. A fringe of religious-right, anti-Semitic nutcases are saying that their suffering is God’s punishment for being Jews. (Oh dear Jesus, please deliver your church from such destructive, apostate imbeciles. Amen.)

The obvious American parallel to this part of the Israeli story is seen in the U.S. pastors and churches that continue to defy the medical advice coming from places like the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute for Health by continuing to hold weekly services.

Jerry Falwell, Jr. is good friends with Fox & Friends, is as president Trump

Or University presidents such as Jerry Falwell, Jr. at Liberty University, who parroted Fox New/president Trump talking points about the covid warnings being a “hoax” propagated by “Trump haters” and now insists on keeping the university open.

I cannot help but wonder how many of their followers are living inside their

own information bubbles, sealed off from the rest of the world by the disabling combination of Fox News with a heavy dose of Christian radio and TV.

Many of them subject to an irrational fear – propagated by their leaders –  that our government is just waiting for the chance to shut down Christian

Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne leads his congregation during a service Sunday, March 29, 2020 at The River at Tampa Bay Church. [Photo from Facebook]
churches.

I am sure that most of us are now familiar with the mug shot of Rodney Howard-Browne, the mega-church pastor arrested for endangering his Tamp Bay congregation by continuing to hold church services.

Please, if your pastor is anything like Howard-Browne or Jerry Falwell, I urge you to find another church (or synagogue).

 

 

How Big Pharma Helped to Write and Will Profit from the Corona Virus Bill

Investigative journalist Sharon Lerner has an important article at The Intercept explaining how U.S. pharmaceutical companies, enabled by the recent Corona Relief Bill approved by Congress, are planning to make a killing (pun intended) during the covid19 pandemic. It is entitled, “Big Pharma Prepares to Profit From the Coronavirus.”

Warning: prepare to be disturbed, very disturbed.

Here is an excerpt:

“’Pharmaceutical companies view Covid-19 as a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity,’ said Gerald Posner, author of ‘Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America.’ The world needs pharmaceutical products, of course. For the new coronavirus outbreak, in particular, we need treatments and vaccines and, in the U.S., tests. Dozens of companies are now vying to make them.

“’They’re all in that race,’ said Posner, who described the potential payoffs for winning the race as huge. The global crisis ‘will potentially be a blockbuster for the industry in terms of sales and profits,’ he said, adding that ‘the worse the pandemic gets, the higher their eventual profit.’

“The ability to make money off of pharmaceuticals is already uniquely large in the U.S., which lacks the basic price controls other countries have, giving drug companies more freedom over setting prices for their products than anywhere else in the world. During the current crisis, pharmaceutical makers may have even more leeway than usual because of language industry lobbyists inserted into an $8.3 billion coronavirus spending package, passed last week, to maximize their profits from the pandemic.

“Initially, some lawmakers had tried to ensure that the federal government would limit how much pharmaceutical companies could reap from vaccines and treatments for the new coronavirus that they developed with the use of public funding. In February, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and other House members wrote to Trump pleading that he ‘ensure that any vaccine or treatment developed with U.S. taxpayer dollars be accessible, available and affordable,’ a goal they said couldn’t be met ‘if pharmaceutical corporations are given authority to set prices and determine distribution, putting profit-making interests ahead of health priorities.’

“When the coronavirus funding was being negotiated, Schakowsky tried again, writing to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on March 2 that it would be ‘unacceptable if the rights to produce and market that vaccine were subsequently handed over to a pharmaceutical manufacturer through an exclusive license with no conditions on pricing or access, allowing the company to charge whatever it would like and essentially selling the vaccine back to the public who paid for its development.’

“But many Republicans opposed adding language to the bill that would restrict the industry’s ability to profit . . .

“The truth is that profiting off public investment is also business as usual for the pharmaceutical industry. Since the 1930s, the National Institutes of Health has put some $900 billion into research that drug companies then used to patent brand-name medications, according to Posner’s calculations. Every single drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2016 involved science funded with tax dollars through the NIH, according to the advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs. Taxpayers spent more than $100 billion on that research.”

Read the entire article here.

 

The Washington Post Explains “What Went Wrong with Corona Virus Testing in the U.S.”

Below is an excerpt from today’s Washington Post article entitled, “11 to 100,000: What Went Wrong with Corona Virus Testing in the U.S.”

“We have it totally under control.”

— President Trump, in an interview, on Jan. 22

“We’re in great shape in our country. We have 11, and the 11 are getting better. ”

— Trump, in remarks, on Feb. 10

“You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country.”

— Trump, in a news conference, on Feb. 25

“It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”

— Trump, in remarks, on Feb. 27

“Anybody that needs a test, gets a test. They’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful.”

When the first U.S. case of the novel coronavirus was confirmed, President Trump assured the American people that the situation was “totally under control.” Cabinet officials, the vice president and the president repeated that refrain throughout February. By the end of that month, as global financial markets and the American public started to quiver, Trump held firm: “You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country.”

With the clarity of hindsight, it is obvious the situation was very much not under control. In reality, a lack of testing gave a false picture of how many people across the country were infected.

Through government documents, testimony, news reports and interviews, The Fact Checker video team has reconstructed events that left the government blind to the virus’s spread, and examined how those errors opened the door for 11 confirmed cases to balloon to more than 100,000 in less than six weeks.

The Facts

The novel coronavirus was first detected in early December in Wuhan, China. Chinese officials reported the pneumonia-like disease to the World Health Organization (WHO) at the end of December, but neglected to mention growing evidence that the virus could spread by human-to-human transmission through airborne droplets.

Still, China’s previous failures to be forthcoming about public health crises meant that public health officials elsewhere already were wary of its government’s official statements. As reports of the mysterious virus increased, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned Americans against traveling to China and activated an emergency management tool used to direct operations, deliver resources and share information.

Despite the alarm bells and increased intelligence briefings, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar struggled to get Trump’s attention for weeks. . . 

The Bottom Line

The president spent nearly two months issuing confusing and contradictory signals — leaving the bureaucratic machine of the U.S. government to chart the course for the coronavirus response.

The CDC designed its own test. The FDA picked a conservative testing strategy, allowing labs to use only the CDC test. When those tests failed, neither a new strategy nor a new test was available for more than two weeks. Azar failed to push the agencies to change direction, and the president didn’t intervene.

Even then, widespread testing was not immediately available. It’s not just the number of tests that are the problem — it’s getting the materials to do the tests and the personal protective medical equipment for providers to give those tests. That means we may never have a true count of how many Americans contracted the virus.

The missteps that went unmanaged were ignored by leaders at the highest level of government and allowed cases to go undetected, contributing to the spike in the virus’s spread.

Read the entire article here.

The Washington Post has also been keeping track of Pres. Trump’s many false and misleading claims about the corona virus and the (in)effectiveness of his response.

You can follow the litany of dangerous presidential misinformation here.

“A Total System Failure”

Matt Stoller is the Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project. He is the author of the Simon and Schuster book Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, which Business Insider called “one of the year’s best books on how to rethink capitalism and improve the economy.” He also worked for a member of the Financial Services Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 2008 financial crisis. (See his full C.V. at the American Economic Liberties Project).

Mr. Stoller was recently interviewed by Democracy Now where he critiqued the Congressional Pandemic Relief Bill. He describes not only the American pandemic response under Trump, but the formulation of this “relief” bill a “total system failure.”

Here are a few excerpts from that interview. You can watch or read the entire interview here.

“Well, I mean, it’s not really a $2 trillion bill. It’s more like a $6 trillion to $10 trillion bill. So, one of the reasons you can tell that the bill is packed with corporate goodies is that, you know, Congress is debating and trying to figure out, oh, you know, is it $2 trillion, a bunch of money for hospitals or money for cities, and meanwhile, a couple days ago, Larry Kudlow is on a press conference and says, “Actually, this is a $6 trillion bill.” And it’s like, how does a bill go from $2 trillion to $6 trillion without anyone really noticing? And the answer is, there’s a bunch of stuff in there — and, you know, there are people on Wall Street chattering about how it’s actually going to be $10 trillion, because, you know, what’s another four? And that’s how you know that the bill is just packed with stuff for Wall Street, for large monopolists.

“And it’s done through a variety of opaque slush funds — the Federal Reserve, the FDIC guarantees a bank debt. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that, you know, some of us who worked in the financial crisis noticed, paid attention to, said, “Oh, that’s where they’re stealing all the money.” And so there’s a bunch of stuff in there that’s going to get to Boeing and airlines, that we know about, has been reported. There’s also a bunch of stuff that’s going to get to the hedge fund guys that are bunkering down in their underground wine caves or whatever. And meanwhile, the stuff that we need, for normal people — the ventilators, the unemployment — you know, that’s going to dribble out. Small business is going to dribble out.

“And so, what you’re going to see is the $4 trillion to $6 trillion to $8 trillion of basically no-cost or low-cost guaranteed credit is going to be used by Citibank, JPMorgan, and then any big monopolist or large company that can get access to it, to buy up their competitors and buy up small business, who are obviously now in a really distressed state because they don’t have any revenue. So that’s what’s going to happen.

“And all of this stuff that’s happening, the handover of power to Wall Street, is happening under the really cynical guise of helping people in a pandemic. A lot of this money is going to go to — some of the money is going to go to hospitals. Some of the money is going to go to help people in the pandemic. So there’s some good stuff here. That, of course, is going to dribble out on the rickety infrastructure of the Small Business Administration and unemployment insurance. Our government has been hollowed out, so this stuff isn’t going to get out quickly.

“If you have — basically, if you have an account at a large bank, if you’re a wealthy investor like Goldman Sachs, there’s a whole set of programs that you can get access to at the Federal Reserve — at least this was the case in 2008, and the Fed says they’re setting up similar structures — where you can borrow from the Fed, and you can gamble with it. And then, if you lose — right? — in your gambling, then the Fed will — you don’t have to pay the loan back to the Fed. So, that’s one of the — you know, and this is one of the programs they say, “Oh, we need to provide liquidity in the markets,” or various other really super boring things that sound like — you kind of go to sleep when you’re like, “Oh, all these alphabet soup programs and all this kind of jargon.” But that’s really what it is. It’s just, you know, “heads, I win; tails, you lose.” And that’s a lot of what these programs are.

“I mean, the Fed has already hired BlackRock, which is one of the world’s largest asset managers, to manage this multitrillion-dollar bailout, and they’ve said that BlackRock is going to be allowed to participate in the bailout. So they’re running the bailout, and they’re participating in the bailout. They’re already stealing, before the vote, the bill has even passed the House.”

“The Strong Do What They Can While the Weak Suffer What They Must.” (Thucydides)

David Dayen is executive editor at The American Prospect. Read his article

David Dayen

from yesterday explaining the hidden — and horrendous — details in the pending Congressional “relief” bill slithering its way through Congress.

This bill is a good example of the malicious ways in which corporate capitalists exploit moments of national crisis. Naomi Klein’s important book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, is now essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the economic times in which we live.

Dayen details some of the ways that Disaster Capitalists, corporate vultures haunting the halls of power, eager to pick over the bones of America’s corona victims, are exploiting the current pandemic to further enrich themselves, just as they did in 2018.

Human nature never changes. As in ancient Greece, the haves are doing what they can for themselves, while the have-nots are suffering as they always do.

Below is an excerpt from the article “Unsanitized: Bailouts, A Tradition Unlike Any Other.”

“This is a robbery in progress. And it’s not a bailout for the coronavirus. It’s a bailout for twelve years of corporate irresponsibility that made these companies so fragile that a few weeks of disruption would destroy them. The short-termism and lack of capital reserves funneled record profits into a bathtub of cash for investors. That’s who’s being made whole, financiers and the small slice of the public that owns more than a trivial amount of stocks. In fact they’ve already been made whole; yesterday Wall Street got the word that they’d be saved and stocks and bonds went wild. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is running these bailout programs for the Fed, and could explicitly profit if the Fed buys its funds, which it probably will.

“This is a rubber-stamp on an unequal system that has brought terrible hardship to the majority of America. The people get a $1,200 means-tested payment and a little wage insurance for four months. Corporations get a transformative amount of play money to sustain their system and wipe out the competition…

“This bill is an outrageous betrayal, a testament to how power works and saves itself. And Congress is about to put itself on the hook for it. Schumer has the Senate under his thumb, and he praised this bill at 2am this morning, so that’s a done deal. Any House member could deny unanimous consent and stop this, but that would require getting to Washington, forcing everyone else back to Washington in the middle of a pandemic, and delay what is needed (if temporary) relief for everyday people. I doubt anyone will do it. Pelosi purposefully put this in place before turning to remote voting to make such an action toxic…”

Read the entire piece here.

Congress is Fueling the Flames of Our Next Revolution

This is a Robbery in Progress.

That’s the opening sentence to Kystal Ball’s (yes, that’s her real name) description of the “relief bill” crafted by Congress.

Ms. Ball is a co-anchor of “The Rising” on Hill TV. I heartily recommend watching.

Today she provided a very good, and very scathing, break-down of the big-money corruption that lies at the heart of the most recent Senate bail-out bill.

Her analysis goes to the point. Watch her below by clicking on Krystal’s nose:

American Democracy — R.I.P. 2020

American democracy died a long time ago, but just in case some folks hadn’t noticed, the political antics of 2020 have proven that fact, once and for all.

We began with the Republican-controlled Senate acquitting our guilty-as-sin-president on all counts of his multiple impeachment indictments.

The Senate’s dismissal of those charges was only the climax to the egregious failure of the  Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to bring any additional – and far more significant — impeachment charges over Trump’s numerous, prior violations of the Constitution. (See the article by Chris Hedges outlining at least 12 Constitutional breaches by Trump and others by presidents of both parties demonstrating that “the rule of law” is now an empty phrase in this country).

Now the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is reminding us that corruption is a bipartisan affair in Washington D. C. as the party mandarins brush off its 2016 playbook and rig another series of primaries; this time against Bernie Sanders, in favor of Joe Biden.

How is it happening?

Joe Biden

First, the Democratic party is openly promoting a loser candidate who pledges to protect the status quo.

Biden is clearly the Democratic establishment preference even though he will very predictably LOSE to Donald Trump in the general election, just as Hillary Clinton — the previous establishment darling — lost to Trump in 2016.

The party establishment obviously wants another neo-liberal centrist like Clinton who will protect the current state of affairs in D.C., despite abundant evidence that a majority of the American public want change.

For example:

Most Americans want Medicare-for-All (which numerous studies have shown to be cheaper than our current system. This includes one study financed by the infamous, libertarian Koch brothers!).

Most Americans want the government to fight climate change.

64% of Americans believe that our massive income inequality gap is a problem that needs to be rectified. (Ignore NPR’s deliberately misleading headline for this story.)

Most Americans are unhappy about the rise in both racism and anti-Semitism during the 3 years of Trump’s presidency.

Only one candidate has a lifetime track record of discussing all of these social problems while offering specific solutions that would get to the root of such serious challenges. That man is Bernie Sanders, not Joe Biden. (No, this is not a campaign advertisement. I’m simply pointing out a few realities here.)

Check out this compilation of 10 polls collected by Real Clear Politics –YES, count ‘em, TEN! – which ALL show that Bernie Sanders beats Donald Trump in the general election.

Second, the mainstream, corporate media does not want change any more than the Democratic party does. (They are all making too much money the way things are). So mainstream, corporate “news” coverage provides free advertisement and propaganda promoting Joe Biden.

The media continually pushes the narrative about Sanders’ unelectability, despite the many polls showing otherwise.

You will never hear about those polls showing Sanders’ popularity from our corporate news media. In fact, all you will hear from corporate/cable news is continuous applause for lie’n Biden (who promises not to upset the apple cart and to maintain the status quo), coupled with non-stop derision of Bernie Sanders. — For an important presentation of Biden’s many lies on the campaign trail, watch this. —

But the Democratic party does not care about the will of the people any more than does the Republican party.

Both parties have their noses buried far too deeply into the dark-money orifices created by big-money donors, lobbyists, CEOs, special interests, private insurance & pharmaceutical companies, the fossil fuel industries, and other major corporations.

They are following the lead of wealthy donors like Former Goldman Sachs CEO and lifelong Democrat Lloyd Blankfein who has said that if Sanders were the Democratic nominee, he would vote for Trump.

Even the New York Times finally admitted to the biased coverage given to these two men by major new outlets (print, radio and TV), including themselves. Watch this clip from Kyle Kulinsky talking about the recent story. You can also read it online, but you need to be a subscriber.)

Have you noticed how the media Talking-Heads weep, wail and gnash their teeth whenever Sanders wins a primary, but turn around a rejoice in

MSNBC host Chris Matthews warns of executions in Central Park after Sanders wins

jubilation when Biden wins? It’s common behavior because they, too, are very rich people who network and socialize with people like Lloyd Blankfein.

Third, not only did the Democratic party establishment admit to rigging the 2016 primaries, they have argued in court that it is their Constitutional right to rig the presidential primaries in favor of their preferred candidate(s).

Yep, you can’t make this stuff up, folks.

In the face of at least one lawsuit brought after the 2016 primaries, DNC lawyers successfully argued that not only do they have the right to rig primaries, it is an exercise of their Constitutional right to freedom of speech.

But there is more. The court agreed!

So, let’s be clear. There is now a court precedent affirming that rigging presidential primaries is a Constitutional right for our political parties. In fact, rigging primaries is an exercise of the party’s right to “freedom of speech.”

Donna Brazile, a major player on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election campaign,

Donna Brazile, Political strategist

wrote a book in which she confessed to the many ways in which the Clinton campaign had controlled the DNC and directed its execution of the 2016 primary process. (Also look here, here, here, and there are many more reports available).

One of the reasons that the Democratic establishment hates Julian Assange (who is a journalistic hero being persecuted by the Western media-surveillance-military-industrial complex) and Wikileaks as much as the Republicans do is because Wikileaks published the countless DNC memos written by Democratic leaders admitting to the various ways they had rigged the primaries for Hillary Clinton.

There is no reason to think that the DNC’s prejudicial planning has changed in 2020. After all, why should they abandon their newly defined Constitutional right to cheat the voters?

Tom Perez

Journalist Kevin Gosztola has tracked down the identities and policy preferences of many recent super-delegates appointed by DNC chairman Tom Perez, ALL of whom are strongly pro-Biden and anti-Sanders. So, if the primaries happen (miraculously) to lead to a contested convention, Sanders still doesn’t stand a chance.

Fourth, the American electoral landscape has changed radically in the last several years, in very prejudicial ways. (And I cannot discover any evidence of the Democratic party working to reverse this horrible trend).

Concerning this year’s primaries, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has created an online map showing where 1,688 polling sites

have been closed in 13 (primarily southern) states since the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Most if not all of those vanished polling places were in districts with a majority of black and Hispanic voters.

Though Sanders has not been doing well with older voters in the black (or white) community, he has done extremely well with both Hispanic and young African-Americans. The same groups whose voting stations have been extensively eradicated.

For only one example, Texas has large African-American and Hispanic populations, and has closed  hundreds of polling sites in black and Hispanic neighborhoods making it much harder for these already disadvantaged communities to vote.

Southern states continue to close many polling stations in primarily black

Fewer voting stations means longer lines, too long for many who can’t miss work. Many people have waited in line for over 6 hours to vote.

neighborhoods.

There has also been a concerted effort to eliminate polling stations in college/university towns, seriously suppressing the student vote – another demographic that strongly supports Sanders.

The evidence is overwhelming.

The Democratic party has rigged both the primary and the convention system on behalf of Joe Biden because they are more interested in protecting their money and power than they are in listening to the people.

The United States is not a democracy. It hasn’t been for a long time.

We are an oligarchy (ruled by the powerful few).

We are also a plutocracy (ruled by the richest 1%).

Our ruling class — in both parties; it’s a bipartisan affair — merely directs periodic exercises in national, kabuki theater for a naïve, ill-informed, easily manipulated public.

They allow the illusion of influence.

They direct us as we play out our powerless part in the scripted, manipulated stage production called “American democracy.”