San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics

Russian Hacking and the 2016 Presidential Election

by

Serious People are claiming that news accounts about Russian meddling in US elections are somehow equivalent to the Weapons of Mass Destruction stories peddled in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. Or a liberal version of the group-think on the Trumpian right about millions of illegal aliens voting for Hillary Clinton.

And then there are others on the right, like the Heritage Foundation, who would have us believe the special relationship between two oligarchs is somehow a good thing. They find much to admire about having a strongman in charge, as opposed to an imperfect democracy.

The reluctance of the FBI/Homeland Security report to disclose sources and methods along with the Obama’s administration’s reliance on the (often meaningless) tactic of diplomatic expulsions as the public side of their response to Russia are cited as reasons to doubt the official account.
  [Read more…]

Fighting the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” Decision

by

By Paul Keleher and John Lawrence

The balance is tipped towards the interests of the rich when vast amounts of money are required in the exercise of free speech. There is obviously a difference between someone spouting off on a street corner and some entity organizing and paying for advertising on TV which is the form most political speech takes. Unless any legitimate group is given a certain amount of free TV ad time and every group is limited to the same amount, the balance of political speech is tipped in favor of those with the most money whether it is individuals or corporations. Wolf-Pac is dedicated to the public financing of elections.

Justice Stevens, in arguing for the minority on the Supreme Court, said that the Court’s ruling “threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution. A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.” He argued that in a democracy money should not determine the outcome of an election.   [Read more…]

Trump’s Attack on the Press: 4 Techniques of a Tyrant

by

Robert Reich / RobertReich.org

Historically, tyrants have tried to control the press using 4 techniques that, worryingly, Donald Trump is already using.

1. Berate the media and turn the public against it. Trump refers to journalists as “dishonest,” “disgusting” and “scum.” When Trump lies – claiming, for example, “massive voter fraud” in the election, and that he “won in a landslide” – and the media call him on those lies, Trump claims the media is lying. Even televised satires he labels “unfunny, one-sided, and pathetic.”   [Read more…]

Anti Choice Women’s Clinics Seek to Defy State Law in San Diego County and El Cajon

by

Editor Note: This article was originally published on March 15, 2016. The effort to erode women’s reproductive rights and access to health services here in San Diego was one of the under-reported stories of 2016.

The County of San Diego and the City of El Cajon are considering a proposed settlement with anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers, amounting to a pledge not enforce the Reproductive FACT Act.

In response, local pro-choice activists are presenting El Cajon City Attorney Morgan Foley and San Diego County Counsel Thomas Montgomery with petitions signed by 25,000 Californians urging them to enforce the letter and the spirit of the law.

NARAL Pro-Choice California, UltraViolet and Courage Campaign have been gathering signatures since the anti-choice organizations offered to remove local authorities as named defendants in lawsuits if they agree not to apply the law.   [Read more…]

Let’s Not Forget Our Core Values, Congressman Hunter

by

By Shawn VanDiver

“There are some assholes in the world who just need to be shot.”

What a striking sound bite–especially when it is ascribed to President-elect Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense, the beloved and seemingly infallible General “Mad Dog” Mattis. Reality, however, cannot always be summed up through sound bites. And besides, General Mattis surely could not have meant that unarmed civilians or detainees in the custody of the U.S. Military deserve to be killed without trial or imminent threat. Therefore when Rep. Duncan Hunter, Jr.–whose father previously held the office for many years–used this quote from General Mattis, my lie detector went off.   [Read more…]

Why We Still Need Feminism

by

Until recently, American women didn’t even own their own bodies.

By Jill Richardson / Other Words

From his campaign rhetoric to his transition appointments, our next president has placed himself squarely in a conservative movement calling itself the “alt-right.” That movement, the Los Angeles Times reports, “generally embraces and promotes white nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny.”

As a privileged, white, and heterosexual woman, I’ve never considered my rights under attack to the same degree as the other groups in that list. But to this incoming bunch, feminism is a dirty word.   [Read more…]

Homo Obnoxious: Is Toxic Masculinity Really Taking Over the Country?

by

Maybe the real problem is a lack of positive paths to manhood

By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. We were said to be approaching the demise of a certain type of swaggering, predatory masculinity: let’s call him Homo Obnoxious.

As men like Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, Anthony Weiner, and Billy Bush scrambled unsuccessfully to find cover in the old-boy bastions of privilege, Homo Obnoxious appeared to be lumbering around like a dinosaur under the weight of his own cultural baggage. His habitat was shrinking: it seemed as if men who defined themselves by devaluing women, putting down men who didn’t think like them and treating sexual relations — and most everything else — as power-tripping performances might be ready for mounting in a Museum of Masculinity Past.   [Read more…]

Sanders Says Trump’s “Dangerous” Nuclear Arms Race Talk Must Be Challenged

by

‘Presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have understood that our goal must be to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, not expand them.’

By John Queally / Common Dreams

Sen. Bernie Sanders has made it known that Donald Trump should not go unchallenged by his congressional colleagues as troubling comments by the President-elect about nuclear weapons this week sparked alarm across the United States and the world.

Following an initial out-of-the-blue tweet Thursday saying the U.S. should “expand” its nuclear arsenal followed by “clarifying” remarks Friday to MSNBC in which Trump said, “Let it be an arms race,” Sanders responded: “It’s a miracle a nuclear weapon hasn’t been used in war since 1945. Congress can’t allow the Tweeter in Chief to start a nuclear arms race.”   [Read more…]

Ilyse Hogue on Our DNC Chair

by

Ilyse Hogue / Medium

There’s nothing quite so unglamorous as announcing you are not doing something. So I won’t bury the lede: I am not running for DNC Chair this year.

In speaking with leaders and party members over the last month, it’s become clear we have two mutually-reinforcing needs. First, the Democratic Party faces a historic challenge — to build an inclusive, durable, fifty-state electoral infrastructure to support not just one candidate or constituency in the next election cycle, but all democratic-minded people for years to come. This means growing and optimizing a big organization, tackling everything from digital infrastructure to branding to local best-practice sharing. This infrastructure is all critical to building power, and it can’t live anywhere but the party itself.
  [Read more…]

It’s Official : America Is in Distress – Place Your Flag Stamp Upside Down

by

With the Electoral College vote on December 19th confirming Donald Trump as the next president, it is now official that the United States of America is in distress.

We are calling on our readers and supporters to do something every day to signify this distress.

And one of these things can be as small as placing your American flag stamps upside down every time you mail something.

The upside down American flag is a time-honored tradition of demonstrating in a small way that the country is in trouble, in distress.   [Read more…]

Explaining the Cult of Trump

by

By David Dillard-Wright / AlterNet

When researchers show experimental subjects a photo or phrase that reminds them of terrorism, war or death, this triggering actually changes voting preferences and political opinions among the study participants, as confirmed in several experiments going back to the early 1970s. Specifically, research subjects preferred authoritarian figures over more knowledgeable or skilled politicians when they had previously been primed with visual or verbal cues (photos of bombings say, or World Trade Center or 9/11) related to violence or threat, whether the politicians were real-life political figures or invented ones. Solomon and his colleagues apply terror management theory in a forthcoming chapter in a book explaining the Trump election.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry