Category: The News From Around The World

The Best Way To Remember Your Father Is By Voting

Originally broadcast June 16, 2014.

Yesterday was Father’s Day which CNN, the most trusted name in news, celebrated by running a tribute to the 41st president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush. I’m sure there was a lot of crying because the Bush family always seems to get choked up whenever they talk about Poppy, and Poppy always seems to start crying whenever he talks about himself. I’m not sure how 41 ended up with the nickname Poppy. I think it has something to do with America dipping its beak into the heroin trade back when Poppy was running the CIA.

No, I couldn’t watch CNN because I was too busy keeping my misty eyes on Iraq, a country that appears to be unraveling all because back in 2000 former Spymaster George Herbert Walker Bush insisted on keeping a secret from the American people, that secret being his son George is a vicious moron.

George Herbert Walker Bush gets a medal even though he neglected to inform the American voters that his eldest son is a vicious moron.

George Herbert Walker Bush gets a medal even though he neglected to inform the American voters that his eldest son is a vicious moron.

I never once saw my father cry. My father came from the kind of poverty where nobody was going to comfort you no matter how loud you wept. Not that there’s anything wrong with grown men crying. But my father didn’t cry because he knew nobody would help. It’s different for a Bush. They get help from everybody, even the Supreme Court when they lose an election. I think even my father would have cried after that decision.

My father served in the Pacific around the same time President George W. Bush’s father served over there. My father didn’t live long enough to see W lose the popular vote and then have the Supreme Court hand him our nuclear launch codes anyway. Looking at Iraq come undone I know my father would tell George Herbert Walker Bush, “My eldest son is an idiot too. It’s good to encourage idiots, but you don’t let them play with dangerous toys, like our U.S. military.” Then my dad would have spat in George Herbert Walker’s face and called his entire family a tribe of money-grubbing whores. Because that’s how much dad loved America. My father loved this country. He never had to say that. You just knew by his visceral contempt for Reagan, Bush Senior and all those other charlatans who rely on false patriotism to steal from Americans.

The millions of dead Iraqis are the Bush family’s fault. They lied us into war. Had Americans known the truth, we never would have agreed to that illegal invasion. Unlike the Bush family, at our core Americans are a good and decent people. Which is why Gore won in 2000. America is much bigger than the noisemakers and the guns we fire overseas or at each other. Americans may differ on the nuance, but we all agree it should be hard to get a gun, harder to declare war, nobody disagrees that Big Banks are evil, that Main Street is superior to Wall Street, that politics needs to be shorn of money, that everyone is entitled to affordable healthcare and that anyone who works an eight hour day shouldn’t be broke. We all agree on that. We’re a good people. But we’re drowned out by Big Money.

If everyone who is registered to vote voted, all our problems would be solved. Read the polls, we’re a good people. Americans support, for the most part, all the right things. We just need to vote in numbers that drown out Big Money. Vote. How hard can it be? It’s not like we’re being asked to serve in the Pacific. Imagine if we all voted. Three years from now CNN would have to air a Mothers Day tribute to President Elizabeth Warren. And who knows? Maybe we can finally elect a congress willing to put George W. Bush on trial for Iraq.

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Midterms 2018, Election Day- Episode 989

Washington Post Political Columnist Richard Cohen, Vanity Fair’s David Margolick, author of “The Promise and the Dream: The Untold Story of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy” (RosettaBooks, April 2018), Down With Tyranny’s Howie Klein and Professor Corey Brettschneider author of “The Oath And The Office: A Guide To The Constitution For Future Presidents.”

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We Just Lost Our Right To Sue The Banks

Mike Pence hands victory to wall street fraud

Late Tuesday night Americans lost the right to sue banks and credit card companies. My conversation with Public Citizen’s Amanda Werner spells out in detail, and in easy to understand language, what exactly this means for us.

Vice President Mike Pence cast the deciding vote in the Senate tonight overturning an Obama era rule that would have finally allowed Americans to sue as well as take part in class action suits against financial institutions. This is a major win for bankers and a significant defeat for Wall Street reform. The very same people who plunged the world into 2008’s Great Recession continue to remain immune from paying for the damages they wrought.

It was a big night for hypocrisy. Within hours, Senator Jeff Flake went from playing the maverick, unafraid of calling out Donald Trump’s lies, to just another financial industry lapdog too frightened to challenge Wall Street’s stranglehold on our legal system.

Flake, Washington’s newly minted GOP “voice of moderation,” surprised everyone Tuesday night by announcing he wouldn’t seek reelection because Donald Trump was an embarrassment to his party. Flake conveniently left out the real reason he’s not running, and that is a primary challenge from the right would have made it impossible for him to even get the GOP nomination.

That didn’t stop Beltway pundits from saluting Flake, with some, like Chris Cillizza,  suggesting Flake delivered “the most important speech of 2017” as he announced he was leaving the senate:

I am aware that a segment of my party believes that anything short of complete and unquestioning loyalty to a president who belongs to my party is unacceptable and suspect. Acting on conscience and principle is the manner in which we express our moral selves, and as such, loyalty to conscience and principle should supersede loyalty to any man or party.

But for Flake, complete and unquestioning loyalty to the financial lobbyists is perfectly acceptable. That’s why, after his emotional speech on morality and conscience Flake returned to the chamber and cast his lot with the moneychangers. Flake may be retiring from the Senate, but he’s still working for the banks. And we can be certain his fealty will be richly rewarded next year as a K-Street shill.

Senators Bob Corker and John McCain, those two other “brave” Republicans unafraid of Trump, also voted with the bankers. Because that’s what GOP mavericks do.

Meanwhile Massachussets Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren said late Tuesday night:

This bill is a giant wet kiss to Wall Street…Bank lobbyists are crawling all over this place, begging Congress to vote and make it easier for them to cheat consumers.

On Friday’s show I talked with Financial Crusader Amanda “Monopoly Man” Werner on why Americans deserve a right to sue these financial institutions. We also discuss why as of tonight’s vote there’s still nothing to stop your credit card companies and banks from ripping you off.

Listen to entire episode here: 

Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

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Bonobos Not Sex Monkeys As Previously Thought

According to the BBC, Bonobos are not having sex all the time. Joe DeVito was on the show last week, and we talked about an Anderson Cooper episode of 60 Minutes where he talks about Bonobos solving all their problems through copulation. Turns out Bonobos are more like humans than previously believed, and by “more like humans” we mean they too have sex hangups.

The reality is more nuanced. The frequency of copulation in bonobos is not as high as most people assume, she says. “In terms of reproduction they are not more sexually active than chimps.”

Source: BBC – Earth – Do bonobos really spend all their time having sex?

Listen:

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