The Thunderbolt 210930 -- Democrats vs Republicans
Dana Walker
The Thunderbolt
News — Commentary — Calendar of Activist Events — Dumb Jokes
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1) FYI Section:
1A) Parallax Perspectives for October: “Religious Freedom: What it Is – and What it Is Not”
1B) Information from Glen Anderson
1C) Reader Comment on “The Good Trump”
2) The Leadership & Legacy of A. Phillip Randolph
3) Bonus Tip of the Day
A detailed description of all events is located after the News and Commentary section
To go directly to an event description just type the index entry above into a search box
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Democrats vs Republicans
210930
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New Priorities
Hey, People!
The reason the Thunderbolt was late this week was because I finally found a school bus and I went to pick it up yesterday. This is relevant Thunderbolt news because I am going to be devoting a lot of time over the next while converting this bus into my retirement home and you’re likely to see a reduction in content during this period.
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Manna-Wana from Heaven?
As with nearly everything, drones can be good or bad, depending upon how you use them. Yes, drones can be used to mass murder children all over the planet — but on the other hand, school kids in Brunswick County Virginia got a special treat when a drone dropped a load of marijuana into their schoolyard!
https://news.yahoo.com/police-bag-drugs-intended-prison-114719181.html
Police assume the buds were meant for the nearby Lawrenceville Correctional Center.
Evidently smuggling contraband into jails and prisons with drones has become a Thing — though one very interesting fact I learned when I looked into this is that there is a new technology called ‘DroneDefender’, that can detect drones and then disrupt the control signal causing them to crash — though as of now such tech is available only to law enforcement.
Experts expect anti-drone technology to become much more ubiquitous in the near future, though.
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Why Now?
Speaking of: A drone strike that killed a bunch of children and other innocent civilians in Afghanistan recently hit the front page of all the media outlets.
At roughly the same time a film clip of Border Patrol agents weaponizing their horses and using their reins as whips as they were herding Haitian refugees like they were herding cattle also became a Thing.
(White people on horses herding and whipping black people? Where have we seen that one before?)
Actually, as I’ve been regularly reporting for many years now, American drones have been mass-murdering children and other innocent civilians all over the planet for decades. They have wiped out entire wedding parties, they have obliterated entire convoys of aid workers, they have leveled countless private homes as well as hospitals, media outlets, and they even droned a frigging school.
All of these previous attacks were more or less completely ignored by the mainstream media. Now they are making a big deal out of it. True, most of those other attacks were often in isolated hard-to-get-to places where investigators and journalists had to depend upon local people telling them what happened whereas this attack happened right in the middle of Kabul and journalists were able to immediately investigate the matter, and so when the DoD began their usual litany of lies — i.e. that they had killed ‘terrorists’ who had been preparing to bomb Kabul airport and that there had been secondary explosions indicating that the explosives in the car had detonated — and General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the same man who has been telling us how great everything in Afghanistan has been going for many years now, and the same man who ordered the clearing of protesters from so the Rump could stage a photo op with him holding an upside down Bible in front of a church — General Milley used the words ‘righteous strike’ to describe the drone attack in question, and he repeated the ‘secondary explosion’ lie.
The problem was that journalists very quickly determined that the dead consisted of aid workers and several children and that the ‘bombs’ consisted of bottles of drinking water and that there was no evidence of any kind of any ‘secondary explosions’ — meaning that yet once again the DoD and Mark Milley had been caught lying through their teeth.
That still doesn’t fully account for the fact that this particular strike is getting such heavy coverage, though, as several previous strikes had equally compelling evidence that the DoD was lying yet the media determinedly ignored any and all such evidence all through the Bush-Obama-Trump-and until now the Biden administrations.
So why is the media suddenly paying attention to this issue of mass-murder by remote control?
The same with the human cattle herders: The treatment the Border Patrol were handing out to those refugees was actually pretty mild compared to a lot of other things that refugees and migrants are routinely subjected to by ICE and by the Border Patrol — yet after mostly ignoring this evidence for decades, suddenly these video clips of the Border Patrol horse attack are making the rounds at all of the most elite disseminators of government propaganda? Why?
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I don’t know why the media is suddenly paying attention to these two issues after all these decades of sticking their fingers in their ears — possibly someone wants to give Biden a few black eyes — but I guess I’ll take it. These kinds of things need to end, and the first step to doing that is making people aware of the fact that they even exist in the first place.
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Hypocrite Contest: Gavin Newsome vs London Breed
Yes, Republicans have their hypocrites — Texas Senator Marco Rubio flying his family to a Mexican resort whilst his constituents were being blown away by a hurricane was a good one — but Democrats truly seem to have the hypocrisy thing down.
I recently reported upon how California governor Gavin Newsome was spotted mask-less at a very expensive restaurant with a bunch of lobbyists at a time when restaurants in California were shut down.
Well, San Francisco mayor London Breed did him one better: She was also spotted at a restaurant without a mask. Ms. Breed explained that she was eating and drinking and that she wasn’t going to pull her mask up and down every time she took a bite or a drink.
Fair enough — but then photos emerged showing that Ms. Breed was also dancing without a mask.
Ms. Breed explained this by stating she was so moved by the musical performance that she just didn’t think of a mask — and then she tried to make out that it was ridiculous people were making such a big deal out of it.
So evidently being moved by musical performances is a legitimate reason to flout mask rules now? Ms. Breed appears to have forgotten to include that exception in her order.
https://newsbrig.com/san-francisco-mayor-london-breed-breaks-mask-mandate-at-club/422285/
This provides yet more evidence that a lot of these public health measures we are being subjected to seem to have been pulled out of someone’s ass.
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The Worst Ever Name for a Business?
So — while I’m good at political prognostication, I suck at predicting what voters are going to do. The reason I can usually tell who is going to win a presidential election is because presidents are actually chosen by a few rigged voting tabulators in a few key states, and therefore you just need to figure out who Wall Street has chosen and you can thereby predict the election’s outcome.
Before that, though, I never in a million years would have thought that people would elect Ronald Reagan (I grew up in California while he was governor, and he was a frigging disaster) and I never in a million years thought that voters would re-elect frigging George Bush — and while Bush actually won that election via those aforementioned tabulators rather than with votes (which he actually lost) he still had to get enough actual votes to make it close enough to credibly steal it.
Well it would seem as if I am just as bad at predicting what names would be good for a business. For instance, there is a term life insurance salesman who advertises on commercial radio in Seattle all the time, and his tag line is, “Big Ed, he’s just like you! He’s on meds too!”
Well — actually I’m not on meds, and I would question that as a qualification for someone I would want to do business with — but since he advertises all the time on commercial radio then I must assume that whatever his tactics, they seem to be working.
Here’s one that makes my head explode, though: I would think that the very last name that a vasectomy doctor would want to adopt would be “Doctor Snip”.
Well — Doctor Snip can also afford to advertise on Seattle commercial radio all the time — so what do I know?
Doctor Snip? Really? Ouch!
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WTF?
The propaganda against China has evidently become so ingrained that I just heard an NPR commentator say, quote: “China is engaged in imperialism in their own waters”.
WTF? ‘Imperialism in their own waters’? What the hell does that even mean?
I guess China should be more like the United States and engage in imperialism in everyone else’s waters, eh?
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Democrats vs. Republicans
The Democrats generally let a few more crumbs fall from the table of the 0.1% than the Republicans do, and the Democrats are much better on the social issues that Wall Street doesn’t care about than the Republicans are — and while that’s not nothing, even when it comes to the social issues that Wall Street doesn’t care about, I suspect most of the politicos on both sides of those debates don’t really care about them either, and their stances are based purely upon political calculation.
That said, the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans when it comes to Wall Street looting our commons and our treasury, the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans when it comes to the never-ending interventionist wars, the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans when it comes to the heinous war crimes that invariably accompany those endless interventionist wars, and the Democrats are actually worse than the Republicans when it comes to defending our civil liberties — and I consider that to be a bedrock issue because if you lose your civil liberties then you will soon be losing everything else as well.
Therefore, I would debate that the Democrats are actually even more dangerous than the Republicans are because everyone seems to believe that they are on our side.
At least with Republicans, what you see is very often what you actually get — as reprehensible as that may be.
Democrats, on the other hand, virtually always turn out to be the complete polar opposite of whatever you thought you saw.
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It’s time to get to work…
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The Olympia Action Alert
Week of September 30th thru October 5th, 2021
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1) FYI Section:
1A) Parallax Perspectives for October:
“Religious Freedom: What it Is – and What it Is Not”
Here’s information on the October edition of Parallax Perspectives:
The October 2021 interview on “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” TV series is especially informative and insightful. It clears up misunderstandings about many public controversies and affirms human rights and fairness for everybody.
People in Thurston County WA with cable TV can watch it 12 times throughout October 2021 on channel 22 (every Monday at 1:30 pm, every Wednesday at 5:00 pm, and every Thursday at 9:00 pm).
During this interview an expert clarifies what religious freedom IS and what it is NOT. We clear up confusion about the centuries-old American principle of “the separation of Church and State.” We set the record straight on how to protect all people’s religious freedom and human rights – and American democracy.
USE THE LINK BELOW to WATCH THE VIDEO on your computer or phone – AND/OR READ THE THOROUGH SUMMARY that I typed up of what we said during the interview. The thorough summary also includes links to more information:
https://parallaxperspectives.org/religious-freedom-what-it-is-and-what-it-is-not
Questions? Contact Glen Anderson (producer and host) at (360) 491-9093 or glenan...@integra.net
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1B) Information from Glen Anderson
Here’s the latest from Glen Anderson:
I keep posting information about a wide variety of issues to my blog, www.parallaxperspectives.org
Currently, THE ITEMS LISTED BELOW are the 10 most recent:
· Prevent Congress from drafting women!
· Take several actions now to stop nuclear power
· Gun violence — including murder — is increasing now. Pass strong laws to reduce gun violence.
· “Religious Freedom: What it Is – and What it Is Not”
· The U.S.’s defeat in Afghanistan reveals the ongoing decline of U.S. empire.
· Let’s add humor to our organizing movements in order to make more progress
· A growing movement asserts that the environment (rivers, forests, wildlife, etc.) has legal rights!
· Nuclear power is horribly expensive and doomed to fail. See new info here.
· Vietnam — What most people don’t know — And similarities to Afghanistan
The lower right corner of my blog’s home page lists many issue categories, so you may choose to see posts on each of those issues. Visit www.parallaxperspectives.org so you can click any of the ones you want to read. Click a category to see several pages of posts under that category. (Many posts pertain to several categories.)
The green banner at the top of the home page:
· Allows you see ALL blog posts in chronological order
· Invites you to subscribe to future blog posts
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1C) Reader Comment on “The Good Trump”
I got this message from AR:
"The Good Trump" piece, full of tho't and wisdom. Our US politics is so confusing, misleading, disappointing.
But it could be nothing but that when high politics is comprised of plutocrats.
When folks say that Trump wasn't a politician suggesting that he was fresh and new and uniquely exposing the corruption, it blows my mind cuz he was more of the same. All about power and wealth. And why folks could trust him is beyond me.
But I like what you say about organizing with broad coalitions of people focused on specific goals. And staying focused and understanding that we can work w/ others on the specific goal even tho we disagree on other issues.
"The Good Trump" needs to focus on important issues like national and global peace, equal distribution of resources, basic rights of clean food/water/air but this won't happen in a plutocracy.
I'm still encouraged simply due to the fact that innately we know the work we need to do and we won't stop working just cuz there aren't visible results, in fact we can't live otherwise, we just continue to work.
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2) The Leadership & Legacy of A. Phillip Randolph
Thursday September 30th
11:30 am Online
I got this message from the Backbone Campaign:
· Tomorrow! The Leadership & Legacy of A. Philip Randolph featuring guest Gabriel Prawl, President of both the Seattle chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and ILWU Local 52. Info/ RSVP HERE
· Sign on Letter to Surface Transportation Board Chairman Martin Oberman HERE
· Join the team of volunteers advocating for rail that aligns with 21st Century Public Interests. Participate in our HIVE Call, Tuesday, Oct 12th. Sign up HERE
The Leadership & Legacy of A. Philip Randolph, a Conversation with Gabriel Prawl
Thursday, September 30,
11:30am PACIFIC / 2:30pm EASTERN
RSVP HERE
Solutionary Rail has the honor of interviewing Gabriel Prawl. Gabriel is both the President of the A Philip Randolph Institute-Seattle (APRI) and President of ILWU Local 52.
On September 30, we will learn about the leadership and legacy of A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) -- actor, socialist, union organizer, civil rights leader. Solutionary Rail advocates may be especially interested to know that Randolph was a lead organizer and first President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925, the first African-American led labor union to receive a charter from the American Federation of Labor.
This will be a rich conversation that takes us through the history of the first black trade union to affiliate with the AFL-CIO (in 1925, the AFL, the American Federation of Labor) to the 1963 March on Washington and the 2004 Million Worker March, to the present day labor movement in the context of freight transportation.
Gabriel will be joined by Clarence Thomas, retired from ILWU Local 10 of the Bay Area; the interview will be conducted by Mary Paterson and Bill Moyer, of the Solutionary Rail Team. You will not want to miss this informative and enlightening conversation!
Get more information & RSVP HERE
Thanks for being part of this ambitious and dynamic work. We cannot do this without you.
If you can make a tax-deductible donation to keep this growing, please donate HERE. Small monthly gifts keep it sustainable for us all.
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3) Bonus Tip of the Day:
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
Peace.
Dana
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LINKS:
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Online version of this week’s Thunderbolt newsletter:
https://dana98501.wordpress.com/2021/09/30/tb-210930-democrats-vs-republicans/
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https://dana98501.wordpress.com/
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