The return of the regime changers. Missiles are flying again in Iraq.

“They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
― Joseph Heller, Catch 22

Pres. Biden and his newly-appointed Sec. of State Anthony Blinken seem bent on pushing the U.S. into a disastrous hot war with Iran. Biden has only been in office a couple of months and already missiles are flying again in Iraq and Syria. 

Yesterday a missile attack in western Iraq led to the death of a U.S. mercenary. 

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said the contractor “suffered a cardiac episode while sheltering” and died shortly afterward. He said there were no service members injured and all are accounted for. British and Danish troops also are among those stationed at the base. 

The rocket attack was the first since the U.S. struck Iran-aligned militia targets along the Iraq-Syria border last week, killing one militiaman and stoking fears of another cycle of tit-for-tat attacks as happened more than a year ago.  -- AP

Now the Pentagon is surely preparing for another retaliatory move.  

It appears to me that this escalation was intentionally meant to sabotage the resumption of U.S. nuclear weapons talks with Iran. Blinken seems to be another regime-changer in the mold of Hillary Clinton.

All this begs the question, why are U.S. troops and mercs still in Iraq after 17 years, over a million deaths, and $4 trillion in taxpayer money wasted. BTW that's triple the money needed for pandemic and economic recovery. 

We should also remember that amid the fallout of the U.S. drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iran's General Qassem Soleimani a year ago, the Iraqi parliament voted to oust all U.S. troops stationed in their country. Trump's claim on Iraqi oil aside, it now seems like with the current escalation, Iraqis along with all other countries in the Middle East, already ravaged by the global pandemic, face the prospect of being drawn into all-out war again. 

The current escalation dashes the hopes of those who believed that the Democrats' victory would lead to at least a temporary halt to our failed imperialist adventures in the region and to the possibility of bringing our troops home and out of harm's way.

They should have known better. 

Capitalism 2.0. Is the lion really lying down with the lamb?

What's going on here? Corporate America, Hollywood, and NFL owners all rebranding and advertising Black Lives Matter themes, doling out billions in philanthropic grants to left and progressive organizations, and even heaping faint praise on socialists. 

From watching the TV ads, one would think that the Fortune 500 corporations had all joined BLM, that the NFL had made things right with Colin Kaepernick, and that the Golden Globes weren't being awarded by a white-only board. 

In this vein, two recent articles in Crain's Chicago Business caught my attention this week. The first, "City Council's socialists see themselves as an antidote to the status quo", by reporter A.D. Quig, is surprisingly praiseful of a "socialist bloc" of aldermen, elected to the Council in the 2019 anti-machine wave that included the landslide election of Mayor Lori Lightfoot. 

Quig writes: 

Their legislative scoreboard isn't terribly impressive, and they've rankled some of their colleagues and the mayor along the way. But they've undoubtedly moved the needle: They changed city policy to fight gentrification in Woodlawn, along the 606 trail and in Pilsen. They've pushed officials to at least examine wresting control of Chicago's electrical grid from ComEd. And in the most recent city budget, they helped boost funding for non-police anti-violence programs and to have mental health workers respond to certain emergency calls instead of cops.

Corporate capitalists lauding socialist aldermen? Is the lion really lying down with the lamb or just preparing lamb stew? I would say, a little of both -- a divide and conquer game.

In the second, "Capitalism 2.0, it's not just about profits", Judith Crown claims there's a "new capitalism" that is all about socially conscious investors seeking "to improve sustainability and benefit the social good while still making money."

Putting lipstick on a pig? Of course. 

Corporate greed has never been more rapacious. The gap between the one-percent and the rest of us has never been wider, and it's been made more apparent by a pandemic and global recession that has reproduced and magnified social inequality and put thousands of working-class and poor families on long food lines while Wall St. booms. 

According to Oxfam, the world’s 10 richest billionaires — which include Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and LVMH luxury group’s CEO Bernard Arnault — have collectively seen their wealth grow by $540 billion over this period. 

Big philanthropy using a portion of its enormous concentration of wealth to improve its image while avoiding taxation is nothing new. It goes back to the days of Carnegie and Rockefeller. But there's more to it than that. 

(Dissent Magazine)

Warren Buffett's son Peter calls it "Philanthropic Colonialism", and he oughta know:

As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.

So why is this sop to City Council socialists, now coming from the voice of big business in Chicago?

Well, for one thing, it's definitely not a "sea change," but the same old, same old in response to popular revolts and grassroots reform. It's what we used to call "riot insurance" back in the '60s. It's new in that it includes and is shaped by new technologies and includes innovative and created corporate branding strategies combined with the use of, what I call power philanthropy. That is, huge foundations created by the like of Bill Gates as alternatives to government, public space, and decision-making.

That's not to say there aren't real divisions among the plutocrats, populists, and fascists or well-intentioned philanthropists who truly support social justice and environmental movements on the ground. 

But the system's short-term response to popular revolts is still tactical, a mixture of political repression along with some concessions and hard-won reforms for racial justice and expanding the social safety net. Then there's the long-term, strategic response -- an ideological barrage fomenting division, confusion, and false consciousness, the normalization of inequality the manufacturing of consent. 

******

It was largely these insights about how power is constituted in the realm of ideas and knowledge, along side of repressive force, that pushed many of us progressive educators to develop the popular education practices, to contest accepted norms of legitimacy and foment critical thinking skills and habits of the mind in our classrooms and communities. All this in the face of a top-down corporate reform, heavily-funded by these same power philanthropists which was often successful in buying off leaders and fomenting divisions and splits at the base. 

Our strategy included the adult literacy and consciousness-raising methods of Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, methods of participatory action research (PAR), and many other approaches to social transformation, popular media, communication, and cultural action.

I'll leave it to the current generation of activists, organizers, and educators to develop their own counter-strategies, and they are doing just that. 

There's no better example I can think of than the current organizing drive among Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, which ties labor issues to Black Lives Matter and issues of racial equality. That's the recipe, it seems to me. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 

Tim Miller

 CPAC Was the Real Republican Party All Along. -- The Bulwark

Sarah Jones

Schools need to reopen, but the process is complicated by problems created by years of underfunding, not by teachers unions. -- New York Magazine

Tim Cadogan, GoFundMe C.E.O.

  “This is a war against a virus...If this were a war against another country at this scale, it would be no question what we would do, right? We would mobilize our society to defeat it.” -- New York Times

King James responds to Zlatan

"I’ll use my platform to continue to shed light on everything that’s going on around this country and around the world. There’s no way I would ever just stick to sports because I understand how powerful this platform and my voice are.” -- Sportsnet

Gross. Mike Pompeo at CPAC, brags about under Trump, they used “beautiful tomahawk missiles” to bomb Syria. MISSILES ARE NOT BEAUTIFUL! They are killing machines.

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) February 27, 2021

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

This, in the era of mass school shootings...

Trump Junior

Donald Trump Jr. Rips Teachers Unions In Front Of A Gun Wall.

"The teachers' unions are out of control & are destroying our kid’s futures." -- Huffington 

 U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

“White supremacy and neo-Nazi movements are more than domestic terror threats. They are becoming a transnational threat." -- Addressing U.N. Human Rights Council

Simon Tisdall on Iran nuclear agreement

Biden’s instinct to try to break this impasse and find a diplomatic way through – supported by the UK, Germany and France – is the right one. But words are not enough. As a sign of good faith, he should swiftly relax some sanctions and unfreeze Iran’s Covid-related $5bn IMF loan request. -- Guardian

 Yuh-Line Niou, a Democrat who represents New York City's Chinatown 

“They are all calling me asking me, 'How do I get this vaccine? What’s going on?' Then they will ask me, 'Hey, can you translate this site for me?'” -- USA Today 

 Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus 

“We can’t let one or two Democrats prevent the $15 minimum wage from being in the relief bill. It’s bad politics and bad policy.” -- The Hill

The Republican Party may be dead but Trumpism is still very much alive.

 "I want you to know that the movement we started is only just beginning. There's never been anything like it." -- Donald Trump

Following the failed impeachment vote, it's should now be clear to all that the Republican Party, or what has become the Trump Party, is bankrupt, if not dead. But in its place is an emergent white supremacist, neo-fascist movement here and in Europe. Trump is out of the White House but is still very much in as the movement's benefactor, figurehead leader, and international symbol of resistance to democracy.  

Roughly 70% of Republicans continue to support Trump strongly, polls suggest. A similar share says they would be less likely to vote for a Republican senator who voted to convict Trump. 

He and his one-time fascist sidekick, "Alt-Right" founder Steve Bannon set out to destroy the official Republican Party and reconstruct a global neo-fascist network soon after the election in 2016. It's obvious now that they have succeeded and Bannon has been rewarded with Trump's only pardon of any consequence for his efforts.

AP reports:

In nearly half of the more than 200 federal cases stemming from the attack on the Capitol, authorities have cited evidence that an insurrectionist appeared to be inspired by conspiracy theories or extremist ideologies, according to an Associated Press review of court records.

The FBI has linked at least 40 defendants to extremist groups or movements, including at least 16 members or associates of the neo-fascist Proud Boys and at least five connected to the anti-government Oath Keepers. FBI agents also explicitly tied at least 10 defendants to QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory that has grown beyond its fringe origins to penetrate mainstream Republican politics.

Parler posts containing the word “revolution” grew by five times as much as the overall rate of message traffic after the election, the analysis found.

And by "revolution", they don't mean a democratic or socialist one, but rather a fascist putsch reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s that embraces many of the old fascist symbols and language about white identity and the threat of "replacement" by immigrants. 

The neo-fascist, white-supremacist wave has gained strength against the backdrop of the pandemic and a worldwide recession and a Trump administration that has gutted social reforms and driven millions into poverty while widening the racial/class wealth gap. The U.S. now has the highest level of income inequality among its post-industrialized peers.

While many of those arrested in the Capitol riot owned businesses or worked white-collar jobs, a large sector of declassed white youth, many out-of-work, out of school and facing bleak futures, have become potential recruits for groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. 

An apocryphal AP story this morning describes the growing despair among French youth. 

Nearly a quarter of French young people can’t find work — two-and-a-half times the national unemployment rate and one of the highest in the European Union’s 27 nations. Many university students now rely on food aid and several organizations have rallied to meet the need.

The pandemic has led to a surge in mental health complaints that authorities say are most acute in people without work, those in financial hardship, and young adults. 

The rise of neo-fascist movements and their apparent embrace offered by a majority of Republicans needs to be taken seriously. First and foremost this requires an immediate and massive injection of pandemic relief funds and vaccines, including more than a trillion dollars in funding to support safe school reopening, and setting the federal minimum wage at $15/hour. This must be done immediately, even without Republican support if necessary. 

Also, Trump and his co-conspirators, along with leaders of the neo-fascist and neo-confederate groups that attacked the Capitol on January 6th, need to face criminal and civil trials in state courts if necessary. This can be done without adding draconian new repressive laws or government agencies or infringe on the civil liberties of the rest of us. 

But this is just the beginning of a long struggle that will require some heavy discussions and difficult reassessments by left/progressive community and union groups about the direction of organizing efforts. 

Hopefully, more on this to come. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 

“If [a metal shredder] is not good enough for the North Side,” said Gina Ramirez, referring to the area where RMG previously operated General Iron, “then it’s not good enough for the South Side.” -- Guardian

Sen. Mitch McConnell

His is a profile in cowardice. But I felt a need to quote him here.

"Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty...There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day..."We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one. -- CNN

Then he voted "not guilty".

Dr. Anthony Fauci

"I think it can be done. I mean, obviously, it's not a perfect situation, but it's really important to get the children back to school in the safest way possible. Safe for the children, but also safe for the teachers and the other educators." -- ABC's "This Week"

 CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky

"We have work to do" when it comes to reopening schools safely.

"If there's more disease in the community, there will be more in school and that most disease in school does not come from in-school transmission but comes from outside, from into the community. So what we would advocate for is to have more kids in school as our community spread comes down." -- CNN

AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten tweets

For the first time in 10 months, we have a set of guidances that's based not on politics, but on public health. -- @rweingarten

 

The good ones are leaving us too soon.

Our living room was packed on a summer day in 2014 for our Bagels With Karen fundraiser.

As everyone has heard by now, former CTU Pres. Karen Lewis passed yesterday, leaving a tear in my eye but also great memories for me to hold on to. Some of my fondest include our (Susan and my) occasional breakfast meetings at Meli's on Wells Street just to touch base and have a few laughs. 

Another was from an event we held for Jonathan Kozol back in 2012. Kozol had the crowd on its feet, applauding as he talked about the inspiring effect the Chicago teachers' strike was having on teachers and supporters across the country. Kozol said he first heard news of the strike at a book tour event in Los Angeles. When a teacher in the audience announced that teachers in Chicago had walked out, “the roar of the crowd delayed the program for several minutes.”

But the loudest prolonged ovation that evening was reserved for Karen Lewis. It broke out spontaneously as she entered the sold-out Thorne Auditorium and Northwestern Univ. Law School. Karen spoke briefly, introduced Kozol, and then embraced the author in a show of unity. 

Jonathan and Karen at Maggiano's in 2012

After the event, a group of us went out with Jonathan and Karen to grab a bite at Maggiano's. I don't remember the dinner conversation at all. But what I do recall was the stream of random folks who instantly recognized Karen and wanted to shake her hand. One woman spotting Karen from across the large room raced over to our table to give her a bear hug. She turned out to be a suburban teacher who wanted nothing more than to tell her fellow teachers that she had met the great Karen Lewis. 

R.I.P. ED PEARL... Another sad moment came yesterday when I learned that an old friend from my L.A. days had died. Ed Pearl was the owner of the Ash Grove, the place where the music and the movement all came together for me back in the '60s. Regulars there included: Ry Cooder,  Lightnin’ Hopkins, The Byrds, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Howlin Wolf, Albert King, Freddie King, Big Mama Thornton, Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, Johnny Guitar Watson, Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, The Chambers Brothers, Maria Muldaur, and many others.

Ed was also a political activist who used his club and his resources to support civil rights and anti-war movement organizers as well as struggling artists and musicians. He will be missed. 

A question for all my old great friends and comrades out there. Where the hell are you all goin'? What's the rush?

Parkland

I was in Parkland two days after the massacre in 2018. I did some interviews with parents, educators, and students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, all shaken with anger and despair, feelings that in the following months would inspire the energy behind a movement for gun control. It was a movement led by the students themselves, that would sweep the nation and play a critical role in the political shift towards Democrats in the last election.

Like most of the country, I cheered on the dozens of students who boarded the buses to Tallahassee that day to offer their "reasonable" gun control proposals to the state legislature only to be ignored and insulted by state pols.

Now three years later, some of those feelings of grief and anger have returned as I watch video of gun-toting white-supremacist, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene berating anti-gun student leaders and mocking news of the massacre that killed 17 people at MSD and wounded 17 others and still no significant gun laws on the books. 

Rep. Greene is easy to hate unless you're one of the thousands of north Georgia Republicans who elected her. Or one of the MAGA cultists who make up a large chunk of the party's base and who cheer wildly as she promises to protect gun owners from the claws of encroaching "communists" (You know they're everywhere in Georgia). She even suggests that the horrifying school shootings were pre-staged events. 

But Greene isn't the real problem here. The real problem is that in the three years since the MSD massacre, and despite all the student protests, nothing has been done in the way of meaningful federal gun-control legislation and despite his campaign promise to ban assault weapons, nothing on Biden's current agenda indicates it's a priority for Democrats. 

That's because Dems fear losing their working-class base and red-state Republicans are threatening to block enforcement once a bill is passed. Same as it ever was.

This, even in the wake of gun-toting militias storming government buildings and threatening the lives of legislators. Not to mention the horrible rise in the number of shootings in cities like Chicago. 

Federal gun control, including the outlawing of military assault weapons, has been dropped to near the bottom of the Democrats' legislative agenda ever since Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told Attorney General Eric Holder to "shut the fuck up" about the issue a decade ago.

According to Daniel Klaidman’s book, Kill or Capture, Emanuel became enraged after hearing that Holder had given a speech vowing to keep Obama's campaign promise to ban assault weapons.

"The comments roused the powerful gun lobby and its water carriers on Capitol Hill. ‘Senators to Attorney General: Stay Away from Our Guns’ read a press release issued by Senator Max Baucus of Montana -- a Democrat, no less," Klaidman wrote. "Emanuel was furious. He slammed his desk and cursed the attorney general. Holder was only repeating a position Obama had expressed during the campaign, but that was before the White House needed the backing of pro-gun Democrats from red states for their domestic agenda."

"The comments roused the powerful gun lobby and its water carriers on Capitol Hill. ‘Senators to Attorney General: Stay Away from Our Guns’ read a press release issued by Senator Max Baucus of Montana -- a Democrat, no less," Klaidman wrote. "Emanuel was furious. He slammed his desk and cursed the attorney general. Holder was only repeating a position Obama had expressed during the campaign, but that was before the White House needed the backing of pro-gun Democrats from red states for their domestic agenda."

Focusing on Taylor Greene is too easy. She's low-hanging fruit. Now that Dems have taken the White House and there's a Democratic majority in both houses, there's no excuse not to move ahead on this and finally do justice for the murdered Parkland students and the more than 240,000 students who have experienced gun violence at their schools since Columbine in 1999.  

The NRA has gone bankrupt. Public opinion (95% of Democrats) increasingly supports a ban on assault weapons and red-states aren't all that red these days. 

We need Covid relief now. What's the hold up?

Fred Klonsky art.

Bernie Sanders says Senate Democrats have the votes to pass another COVID-19 relief package now. 

In an appearance on ABC's “This Week,” he was asked if he believes Democrats have enough votes as bipartisan support for a relief bill appears to dwindle. 

“Yes, I believe that we do because it's hard for me to imagine any Democrat, no matter what state he or she may come from, who doesn't understand the need to go forward right now in an aggressive way to protect the working families of this country,” Sanders said.

Robert Reich agrees:

 "The new president can achieve huge and vital reform and relief without the party of Trump – and they know it." 

So if Democrats can...why aren't they doing it? People need relief now! Schools need to open safely with lots of federal support now! We need vaccines in peoples' arms now! Republicans are stalling and trying to negotiate a relief package that's half the size of the current relief bill. The question is, why appease them if you don't have to?

I'm remembering back to the first half of President Obama's first term when the Democrats wasted their majorities in both houses of Congress by abandoning or deeply altering most of their promised reform initiatives in the name of "bipartisanship" and to keep from alienating a Republican Party that only wanted to sabotage his every move. Is this déjà vu all over again?

The new bipartisan way.... pic.twitter.com/67INAlhvMX

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) February 1, 2021

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 Dave Zirin on Henry Aaron

We have lost someone who, even though he played much of his career in Atlanta, was a fierce foe of Jim Crow—and then the New Jim Crow, with its savage inequities in the criminal justice system. As he once said, with his deep and sincere humility, “Am I a hero? I suppose I am, to some people. If I am, I hope it’s not only for my home runs.… I hope it’s also for my beliefs, my stands, my opinions. Still, I’m not at ease being a hero.” -- He Had a Hammer

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 

...in response to an assassination threat from a Trump supporter:

“On one hand you have to laugh, and on the other know that the reason they were this brazen is because they thought they were going to succeed.” -- @AOC

AFT Prez Randi Weingarten

With robust testing, we can open schools this spring before the vaccine is widely available.We have spent months studying this problem and finding solutions. We know how to minimize risks enough for everyone to trust being back in a classroom. -- USA Today 

Hunts Point striker Ismael Cancela

 “We worked through a pandemic. I’ve been working here for 28 years, and it’s hard work,” said Ismael Cancela, a warehouse worker and Local 202 member. He told me that the offer of a 32-cents-per-hour-raise was a “slap in the face.” -- The Intercept

Biden's Health and Human Services nominee Xavier Becerra 

...Tells CNN Sunday that the country was experiencing an uncontrolled spread of the virus. "The plane in a nosedive. And we've got to pull it up." -- The Hill

 Jake Laperruque

No, we do not need new terrorism laws. The Capitol riot wasn’t caused by a lack of legal authority. -- Slate

Dr. Anthony Fauci

“The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence and science is, and know that’s it — let the science speak — it is somewhat of a liberating feeling.”  -- Maddow

This virus does not see or care about nationality, borders, or religion — its devastating impact is everywhere. The Netanyahu administration has a moral and humanitarian obligation to ensure that both Israelis & Palestinians have access to vaccines.https://t.co/mcD5TXLTI3

— Marie Newman (@Marie4Congress) January 5, 2021

Indict them.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results. -- NYT

Impeachment aside, if this isn't enough for the Attorney General and state prosecutors to put Trump, Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark, and the rest of their co-conspirators behind bars for a decade or two, they should turn in their prosecutor badges and find another line of work. 

The latest...The acting head of DOJ's civil division spoke with Trump about a plan to overturn the presidential election and then told Acting AG Rosen that he was going to be replaced in order for the plan to be implemented. But then came the problem. DOJ senior leaders threatened to quit en masse and let the cat out of the bag. 

According to the NYT:

Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.

If Trump's plotting to fire Rosen, on top of his phone call to Georgia election officials, on top of his provoking the MAGA riot at the Capitol aren't indictable, what the hell is?

The real question here is, do Democratic leaders have the nerve to go after the grifter WH crew and the Trump family on criminal charges rather than, or alongside another impeachment trial down the road?

All I know is, if D.T. was Black and had filched some laundry soap from Safeway, he'd be rotting in jail. 

Capitol riot suspect Eric Munchel, dubbed "zip tie guy," to be released from jail pending trial.

As a public defender, I represented a client charged with stealing detergent. Held in on $3000 bail he could not afford.

Two. Systems. Of. Justice. pic.twitter.com/OhQaa8EKWJ

— Eliza Orlins (@elizaorlins) January 23, 2021

Not with a bang but a whimper.[

Hollow Men

So this is the way Trump goes out. Not with a bang but a whimper, to borrow from T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men. And if there was ever a fitting description for D.T. and his White House crew, hollow men (and women) is it. 

His MAGA insurrection apparently has turned out to be a dud, having shot its wad on January 6th. His Republican Party is in tatters as rumors spread of a new fascist "Patriot Party" under his command. Democrats can only wish. 

His plan for lifetime immunity from criminal prosecution evaporated after his own lawyers told him that pardons for himself and his grifter family wouldn't hold up in state courts and would only further incriminate him. The only hope the grifter clan has for staying out of prison rests with his appointed Supreme Court trio or the benevolence of Biden and the Democrats. 

Ironically, the one pardon he issued of any consequence was for his fascist muse, Steve Bannon, who stands accused of bilking Trump's own supporters out of hundreds of millions of dollars, money that was supposed to go towards building his glorious border wall. As P.T. Barnum used to say: "There's a sucker born every minute."

This morning's planned farewell rally, originally envisioned as a counter-inauguration, turned into little more than fodder for SNL with invitees being asked to bring five guests with them. The irony, which may have been lost on the dum-dums in the tiny crowd, was the playing of Credence's Fortunate Son as D.T.'s chopper landed at Edwards. 

It ain't me, it ain't me

I ain't no millionaire's son
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one

Gotta go now. Gaga is singing the National Anthem at the Inauguration. She'll be followed by JLo doing This Land is Your Land. 

Wish you were here to see this, Woody. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Dr. King is arrested for "loitering" in Montgomery, Alabama, in September 1958.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated. -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “The Radical King”, Beacon Press

WHO's Mike Ryan on year 1 of Covid

We can blame climate change. We can blame policy decisions made 30 years ago regarding everything from urbanization to the way we exploit the forest," he said. "You can find people to blame in every level of what we're doing on this planet." -- Beacon Journal 

President-elect Joe Biden

 “We remain in a very dark winter,” Mr. Biden told Americans on Friday. “The honest truth is this: Things will get worse before they get better.” -- New York Times

 Bill Barr To Trump...

Your 'clownish' legal team is lying and your voter fraud claims are 'bullsh*t'. -- Crooks & Liars

Jesse Wegman

 The rioters incited by President Trump and Republicans to storm the seat of the federal government on Jan. 6 did not have Mr. Warnock’s name on their lips. They didn’t have to. In their eagerness to destroy American democracy rather than share it, they showed themselves to be the inheritors of a long tradition of rebellion against a new world order: a genuine, multiracial democracy. -- New York Times Op-Ed

 

The Keystone pipeline is & always has been a disaster. I'm delighted that Joe Biden will cancel the Keystone permit on his first day in office. With all of the major crises facing America, we must never lose sight of the most existential threat facing our planet: climate change. https://t.co/8lDZDOgsVy

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 18, 2021

Trump's last few days. 'Loot, pillage, and burn.'

National Guard Troops sleeping on the floor of the Capitol.

Trump isn't sticking around D.C. until the very end. He's hopping on the next Air Force 1 headed for Florida where he can watch in the safety of Mar-a-Lago as his confederate gangs threaten to lynch lawmakers and try and bring D.C. and 50 state capitols to a violent, chaotic halt. They won't succeed in restoring the defeated Trump regime to power. But they could leave many casualties and lots of property damage in their wake again. The state's repressive forces arrayed against them, will likely be a deterrent. If not, they will be overpowering. As many as 25 thousand troops are so far deployed. That's more than are currently deployed in the Middle East. 

By this afternoon, 43 troops had reportedly tested positive for coronavirus. 

The problem with state repressive forces is that they threaten the freedom and civil liberties of all of us, not just the fascists and white supremacist MAGA thugs. And that repressive, official militarized force, aided and abetted by a reactionary Supreme Court, is just what the MAGAs are trying to provoke. There's already a Republican-led move, likely to draw some Democratic support, to push through new anti-riot laws. As if there isn't a shitload of those already on the books. 

Within one day of last week’s attack on the Capitol, at least three states used the MAGA insurrection as an excuse to introduce legislation to criminalize protest, legislation that couldn't have passed in the days following the Black Lives Matter protests. There's even talk, now circulating within both parties, of dusting off old anti-sedition laws.  

In his last days in office, Trump and what's left of his party, are carrying out their loot, pillage, and burn strategy in order to make it impossible for Biden to implement pandemic relief or to undo the political and economic damage the Republicans caused during the past four years. 

Among the Trumpists' last-days priorities is the carrying out of court-sanctioned federal executions.  A Black man, Corey Johnson, 52, became the twelfth inmate put to death at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana since the Trump administration restarted federal executions following a 17-year hiatus. He was pronounced dead at 11:34 last night. His execution followed by days the killing of the only woman on federal death row: Lisa Montgomery.

Dustin Higgs will likely be put to death tonight. 

What a monstrous regime! It's not hard to imagine what the years ahead might look like had Trump been reelected. It may be too late, even with the impeachment process, to keep him and his cult followers at bay during these next 5 days and beyond.  

Dow is still a four-letter word to me

“Dow is committed to the principles of democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. Our values – integrity, respect for people, and protecting our planet – are the foundation on which we stand and our values guide our political contributions,” the company wrote.

Ruling Class Splits are important to note and utilize, when possible. But this one is unfathomable. The chemical giant Dow has announced it's suspending all PAC contributions “to any member of Congress who voted to object to the certification of the presidential election.” The suspension will last for one election cycle — two years for representatives and up to six years for senators.

Upon hearing this news, an old San Fernando Valley State College SDS comrade sent me some old clips to remind me of the battles we SDSers waged against Dow, the main manufacturer of napalm and other chemical weapons during the Vietnam War. 

 On May 7, 1966, Daily Breeze reporter Bob Rawitch [my former editor at the SFVC Daily Sundial] sat in on a regional meeting in Los Angeles of a relatively new left-wing group, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In the next day’s Breeze, he reported on the group’s tentative plans to picket the Dow plant in Torrance and to distribute 5,000 leaflets protesting the use of napalm in the Vietnam War.

The demonstration was scheduled for Saturday, May 28, during the Memorial Day weekend. Two pro-war groups announced plans to counter the SDS protest: the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), and the Victory in Viet Nam Association (VIVA), whose South Bay branch was headed by future congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

Dow plant manager vowed to conduct “business as usual” at the plant during the protest, and Torrance Police Chief Walter Koenig assured residents that the department was equipped to handle “any demonstration disturbance that might arise.”

NO BUSINESS AS USUAL soon became our mantra as we shut down universities across the country in protest of Dow Chemical and the genocidal war from which they were profiteering and still are. 

Fast forward 56 years and we find Dow, their brand threatened by association after last week's MAGA assault on the Capitol, announcing that they were cutting donations to the election deniers.  

Over the weekend, several other large companies — Marriott, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Commerce Bancshares — announced a suspension of donations to members of Congress who voted against election certification. Monday, the list expanded to Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Airbnb, Mastercard, and Verizonlp. Hallmark has even asked for its money back from two of the senators who opposed certification, Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall. 

But here's the thing. Only those who just fell off the pumpkin truck will buy this sudden corporate about-face. Temporarily cutting-off donations, with a wink and a nod to right-wing PACs, only makes people more aware that these companies have been buying politicians and underwriting Trump and his MAGAs to the tune of millions each year since 2016. And there's little doubt that they've gotten their money's worth. 

Wednesday was a MAGA dress rehearsal

It appears that Wednesday's assault on the U.S. Capitol was only a dress rehearsal for so-called Million Militia Marches leading up to Inauguration Day, with armed white-supremacist and fascist groups primed to attack government buildings and perceived enemy politicians in all 50 states. 

As with the online chatter ahead of that assault on the Capitol, new online calls to action are rife with insurrection talk and vows to bring guns to Washington in defiance of the city's strict weapons laws. Twitter cited some of these posts in its announcement Friday night stripping Trump of his account and preventing him from creating new ones in the future. Some event listings are openly discussing delivering "justice" for Ashli Babbitt, a rioter and Air Force veteran who was fatally shot by police inside the Capitol on Wednesday.

Unlike the first assault, which was an attempt to overturn the Democrats' electoral victory and keep Trump in power, the next actions, planned or unplanned, reflect a lack of faith in electoral politics on the part of the MAGAs. An online militia forum called for recruits in Kentucky because "diplomatic efforts have been exhausted."

Whereas the last riot had a semi-official air about it, having been inspired and called for by the POTUS himself, the next rounds will be organized mainly by loosely-affiliated Republican and other right-wing groups, Proud Boys, and neo-Confederates, who apparently have given up on any electoral or constitutional path to power. Most have already turned on Trump and Pence for having sold them out last week. 

For example, the St. Croix County, WI Republican Party is telling its members to "prepare for war" and to remove "leftist tyrants" from office. Scrawled across the top of the party's homepage is the Latin phrase "Si vis pacem, para bellum," which is followed by its translation: "If you want peace, prepare for war."

But rather than influence the next elections, the next wave is designed to cause fear and chaos, including disruption of the pandemic recovery. This, the very definition of terrorism. 

The question remains...how prepared will police, FBI, Secret Service, and the military be for another round of riots? Once shooting begins, security efforts have already failed and the fascists have succeeded. They are quite willing to use their rank-and-file protesters as human shields and cannon fodder. Another question has to do with cops and even elected officials taking part or even leading the assaults as was the case Wednesday. 

Here in Chicago, aldermen and community activists are demanding the resignation of John Catanzara, the President of the Fraternal Order of Police after he came out in full-throated support of the Trumpists, making excuses for the riots even as rioters caused the deaths of capitol cops. 

*************

As long as we're talking impeachment, why not start here? Globally, there were more than a half-million new corona cases reported yesterday. One-third of them in the U.S. alone. US deaths: 375,373 (up 1,365 from yesterday). This with a president and political regime purposefully sabotaging Covid recovery and enabling massive profiteering off the pandemic. 

*************

The department with the oxymoronic name Homeland Security is in total shambles and that's probably a good thing. With the main threat to national security coming from the White House rather than from foreign terrorists, and the inability (unwillingness) of the regime to protect even itself against Trump-inspired, white-supremacist, domestic terrorism, another DHS director has called it quits. 

Chad Wolf, who was never formally appointed, lasted only 14 months before joining the mass exodus of rats from this sinking ship. How do you "resign" from a post to which you were never appointed? Beats me. Wolf was roundly condemned for his role as Trump's wingman in the war on immigrants. If one thing has become clear since Wednesday, it's that the main threat to homeland security is homegrown, not imported.

As the siege on the Capitol shows, White supremacists are not pro-cop. They are anti-Black. They defend cops who kill Black people and attack cops who get in their political way.

Story by @katemshepherd https://t.co/24rRiUXnPy

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) January 11, 2021

I’m still tripping that folks thought they could take off a few days of work, go do an insurrection, and then fly on home and resume normal life.

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) January 11, 2021

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 

Another man, wearing a red Trump hat, told the officers, “We backed you guys in the summer. When the whole country hated you, we had your back.” At this point, one officer guarding the door said to the others, “They’re ready to roll,” and gestured to them to come with him, the video shows. The officers stepped away from the door together and moved to an adjacent wall. -- Washington Post

Joe Biden 

"We need a Republican Party..." -- Intelligencer 

You fill in the rest. Ie. "like a fish needs a bicycle." 

 Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Wednesday was the day of broken glass right here in the United States. The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. They shattered the ideas we took for granted.” -- Video

Robert Reich

That the attempted coup failed shouldn’t blind us to its significance or the stain it has left on America. Nor to the importance of holding those responsible fully accountable. Trump’s culpability is beyond dispute. -- Guardian 

 Mike Davis

Predictably liberal pundits are now telling us that the far-right has committed suicide, that the age of Trump has ended, and that the Democrats are free to build their shining city on the hill. In fact, the riot was a deus ex machina that lifted the curse of Trump from the careers of conservative war hawks and rightwing young lions whose higher ambitions have been fettered by the presidential cult. -- Guardian

Chicago F.O.P. Prez

 “As your President, I showed a lapse in judgement [sic] yesterday during an interview. For that I am sorry. I brought negative attention to our Lodge, the FOP family, and law enforcement in general. -- Sun-Times

Fascist site folds. Abandoned by corporate backers

Double win in GA could provide resources needed for a safe national school-reopening campaign

What a great double victory in GA! I stayed up most of the night watching the results come in like any good political junkie would. Now I'm trying to unwind and crank out a blog post before grabbing some badly-needed shut-eye. 

Wins for John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, against tough odds, open up new possibilities for Biden to transcend his "bi-partisan" fantasy and advance a progressive agenda that begins to undo much of the damage from the Trump era. As of this writing, Warnock has been declared the winner while Ossoff's lead of 16,370 votes is now greater than that of Joe Biden's over Donald Trump in Georgia (11,779 votes). 

I'm imagining with glee how DT must be beating up on his white supremacist toadies Loeffler and Perdue, over losing to a Jewish liberal and the Black preacher from Dr. King's old Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Thanks and some dough should go out to all the organizers on the ground throughout the state, led of course by Stacey Abrams and her statewide political organization as well as many union brothers and sisters from around the country (including Chicago) and the multi-racial movement of the poor and civil rights groups who have been plowing the Georgian political fields for decades. 

That progressive agenda includes real federal pandemic relief (immediately including $2,000 checks), rent, and debt-relief for those working, unemployed and poor families in greatest need and aggressively leading the war against COVID. 

It must also include a massive program of relief for public school systems ravaged under Betsy DeVos and her predecessors, as well as support for a national reopening of schools on the scale of the Marshall Plan. This federal initiative needs to be put in place apart from or alongside current hit-or-miss efforts by local school boards, many of which have been marked by confusion and division at a time when trust, clarity, and unity in the community are necessary prereqs. 

The key to a safe, full-scale reopening is prioritizing teachers and school staff for vaccination. They should be classified nationally as essential workers with schools used centers for vaccine distribution and community health education.

I'll be talking more about reopening our schools tonight at 10 ET on the Rick Smith Show. Tune in at thericksmithshow.com. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Right Ruling for the wrong reason...A British judge has blocked the extradition to the U.S. of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, ruling that “Mr. Assange’s risk of committing suicide, if an extradition order were to be made, to be substantial.”

Trump to Raffensperger

“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have." Raffensperger’s Twitter response: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out.” -- AP

Sen. Dick Durbin (IL)

President Trump's call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) "merits nothing less than a criminal investigation." In his statement calling for an investigation, the No. 2 Senate Democrat labeled the conversation as "more than a pathetic rambling, delusional rant."

"His disgraceful effort to intimidate an elected official into deliberately changing and misrepresenting the legally confirmed vote totals in his state strikes at the heart of our democracy and merits nothing less than a criminal investigation." -- The Hil

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez backs Pelosi for Speaker

...a progressive leader, backed Pelosi and told reporters that Democratic unity was important “at a time when the Republican Party is attempting an electoral coup.” -- AP

Trump ~ Fauci

The number of "China Virus" cases and deaths in the U.S. are "far exaggerated," President Donald Trump said on Twitter. He cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's methodology. "When in doubt, call it Covid. Fake News!" Trump said.

Anthony Fauci, speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, said anyone who went into the "trenches" – intensive care units at hospitals across the nation – will quickly realize how severe the virus is. He called the statistics "real numbers, real people and real deaths."

Trump shot back on Twitter: "Something how Dr. Fauci is revered by the LameStream Media as such a great professional, having done, they say, such an incredible job, yet he works for me and the Trump Administration, and I am in no way given any credit for my work. Gee, could this just be more Fake News?" --  USA Today

When we look back on all this, the notion that Trump was impeached for the Ukraine call alone will seem utterly bizarre.

— Carlos Lozada (@CarlosLozadaWP) January 3, 2021

Big changes needed if we are to control the global pandemic and open schools here.

OK, Merle. We've made it through December. Now what?

As we head into the new year, I'm thinking like everyone else, good riddance to Trump and 2020. I've had the words to the old Merle Haggard song, If We Make It Through December, buzzing through my brain. But by yesterday afternoon, I've had reset my expectations to... if we make it through the '20s... 

NBC reports that Pence's so-called Operation Warp Speed is moving at such a crawl that adequately vaccinating Americans will take 10 years at the current pace. Unless things change quickly, that will wreak havoc on global pandemic recovery, including school openings here in the U.S. 

Sorry to sound so gloomy at the start of a new year. I'm really not. Unlike some of my lefty friends who think the history of progress ended with Bernie's primary loss, I am bouyed by Trump's defeat and will be even more so if Warnock and Ossoff pull off victories in Georgia next week.

However, I'm definitely a school-opening person and schools can't open safely without a mass inoculation program for all teachers and school staff and ultimately, kids and parents. All that's now looking more and more out of reach -- at least for a spring school opening. 

JUST IN: 143,924 people in Illinois — including Chicago — have gotten the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Gov. Pritzker’s office. That includes all residents and staff members who consented to the vaccine at state-run veterans’ homes, officials say.

That's good, but not nearly good enough. The reason for the under-inoculation? Sabotage by the Republicans and the Trump White House who have strangled the states and cities since the start of the pandemic. The latest puny pandemic recovery bill, passed with bipartisan support, was a slap in the face for working families, the unemployed, and local municipalities overwhelmed by COVID recovery efforts. 

Without massive federal support, it will be ten times more difficult to get the pandemic under control and for schools to open safely.

ONE FINAL POINT HERE --- Vaccine nationalism has become the main impediment to containing the pandemic. Trump's December 8th executive order specifying that the Americans get first access to any vaccine, formalized with fanfare what has already been de facto U.S. policy. And it's obviously been a failure, not only in terms of spreading the vaccine globally but here as well. 

The lesson is that given the global economy, no country is safe from the ravages of COVID while the rest of the world is in the clutches of this killer disease. 

Even in China, where the virus has been under control for months, a small mutation entering the country on a visitor or in a shipment of food, can throw the entire country into chaos and another lockdown. 

With the White House withholding foreign aid and shipments of vaccine to needy countries, they are increasingly turning to China for the vaccine. 

Fighting COVID requires a global effort and global scientific and medical collaboration. Cold War, anti-China containment policies currently in fashion in both parties just won't do. The incoming Biden administration has an opportunity to tone down the Trumpian rhetoric and reach new trade and anti-COVID agreements with China for the sake of world peace, health, and stability. 

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Fareed Zakaria argues that the United States needs to temper its reflexive hostility toward China, recognize China’s rise as a feature of the new global order, and craft a strategy of engagement plus deterrence. I'm not sure what he means by "deterrence" but this is a much better line than the one currently holding sway. 

The consequences of exaggerating the Soviet threat were vast: gross domestic abuses during the McCarthy era; a dangerous nuclear arms race; a long, futile, and unsuccessful war in Vietnam; and countless other military interventions in various so-called Third World countries. The consequences of not getting the Chinese challenge right today will be vaster still. 

He's right.