58 Comments
Jul 18Liked by Dean Obeidallah

The hypocrisy is astounding. I have never been as fearful for our democracy as I am now. And as much as I try to understand the support of the normal republicans, I never will. 🥲

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Jul 18·edited Jul 18Author

Linda- It's surreal where we are as a nation!

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The hypocrisy is amazing. They keep pointing fingers to deflect when they are pointing 3 fingers back at themselves. It amazes me how stupid/ignorant so many people are that refuse to see the facts

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If Ignorance is Bliss, they are Euphoric!

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It’s like trying to understand why alcoholics drink or drug users use drugs. It’s a totally different mindset. So often the addict, as trumpers are, doesn’t even know why he uses drugs or alcohol. It fills a need on some level which leaves those of us on the outside of that “addiction” completely flummoxed. Right now we are all living in a completely dysfunctional family and feel completely helpless to do all that much about it except voting and hoping that will break the addiction.

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Does that apply to Niki Haley, et al?

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There are trumpers and then there are just dastardly politicians; Haley, Vance, Hawley-you recognize the type.

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I think they're just power hungry scum like the SS officers who slaughtered people because "if you can't beat'em join'em".

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Yes, all former republicans fit in the fascist category.

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Former?

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Perfectly said!!

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Hypocrisy? I’m sorry I do not see it. It is not hypocrisy comparing the behavior and actions of a political party to that of a crime organizations or living, caring human beings to zombies.

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too close for comfort!

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Jul 18Liked by Dean Obeidallah

After reading Dean's article, I just have to pause. it's like it's a kick in the stomach, it just takes your breath. Mike Johnson's statement that the Republican party is the party of Law & order, and that has always has and always will be leads me to believe that this self-proclaimed deeply religious nationalist is the biggest sinking fake next to Trump, and is the irredeemable rotten apple at the bottom of the GOP barrel. He reminds me of a ventriloquist's evil dummy.

It may have been Sinclair Lewis that said,"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag carrying a cross."

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Jul 18Liked by Dean Obeidallah

Republican corruption is so graven that it has risen to the level of Italian Fascism

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Couldn't have said it better myself; mango mussolini is on the ultimate power trip.

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I am living my rparents fears. Daughter of Holocaust victims, here. Who knew we, in this country, were surrounded by modern day fascists? The Repub Party should now be referred to as the Fascist Party.

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My father lost 38 members of his family to the holocaust, so I really feel for you, Marlene. I agree that we should rename the republican party.

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It is a fascist party. "American fascists are easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of the truth in fact". -- Henry a Wallace, vice president under Franklin Roosevelt

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Marlene, I’m with you. I have no problem with calling the political party not affiliated with the Democrats, The Fascist Party. Suits them perfectly and lets me call them out 👍

Thank you.

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Shoulda read (though never too late) IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE by trusty Sinclair Lewis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here

"Like a slave in orbit..."

Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters and PsalmSong Chasers

Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)

Media Discussion List and Looksee

A useful Rx with few if any addictive side-effects.....

Jayne Cortez and the firespitters - I've been searching

from the album Taking the blues back home (1996)

Obscure Singer-Songwriter LP's 1968-1973 | Acid Folk, Folk Rock, Psych | #vinylcommunity

Obscure Singer-Songwriter LP's 1968-1973 | Acid Folk, Folk Rock, Psych |...

(Play)

Les McCann & Eddie Harris Compared To What ?

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Thank you Dean, your focus gives me hope and reasonable talking points. We have to win this election because failure is not an option.

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The party of “law and order” has committed so many crimes that the FBI should have showed up to arrest a majority of the speakers for their criminal activities. It’s finally going to end tonight with the most lawless of them all, tfg. He should be cooling his heels in prison instead of accepting the nomination for president. They were laughing at those of us who actually believe in the Constitution and the freedoms that American citizenship guarantees. If we don’t buckle down and spread the message of Project 2025, we may end up being in camps rather than free.

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Diablo Donald’s playbook—attack everyone on everything he is.

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Very well said!! Very true.

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It seems to me that trump was convicted of 34 felonies, rather than just 12. And I think that he has already embraced lawlessness - for his whole life and during his presidential administration. The idea that someone who has been charged with felonies for election fraud would be in charge of election integrity for the RNC makes my head spin. I cannot imagine losing all the ethics and boundaries I was raised with, let alone for political reasons. Yet that is exactly what a huge number of republicans have done. I would love to see all the republicans who are running for office, who have been at the convention be taken off the ballot in all states. I have naively thought they were supposed to be lawmakers rather than law breakers…

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Excellent piece, Dean,Try as I might, I can't sit through the whole conversation without yelling at my TV?! My neighbor's must think they live next to a Mad Lady!! You are so right when you laid out the obvious, this MAGA movement is happening. Like a runaway train, we the voters are the only ones to stop it. VOTE People!!! Biden/Harris 💯💙🇺🇸

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Oopsies, I can't sit through the whole convention.....🥴

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The other day I typed dotard and spellchecker changed it to Donald. It took three attempts to get it right just now. Sometimes spellcheck is right. 😄

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Teehee, glad I'm not the only one ☺️ Thanks 💙

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Vote Blue up & down the ballot! 💙💙💙

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Let’s all pledge TODAY to stop calling the former Republican Party the “GOP”. Stop this now as a show of unity. Stop it in print, stop it verbally, and stop it in conversation. Why do we give the MAGA Fascist movement this quaint honorary label? “GOP” means Grand Old Party. They are not grand and the Democratic Party is older. From now until November all pundits and opinion journalist need to come together on this small show of unity. The Republican Party is now the ReTrumplican party. I have ever seen “GOP” on any printed ballot. So let’s not confuse the under informed further. This election will be too close. If we all agree the Republican Party is dead, we should all agree the ‘GOP’ as a moniker is not to be used again.

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It’s no longer a party

It’s a criminal enterprise

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I call it the Repugnant Party.

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The questions remains will the narcissists that love seeing themselves in the MAGA party wake up in time? Aided by the shared delusion of their churches and corporate funded movements working to share in the spoils, it is unlikely. That is why they must be out voted and held to account.

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It’s difficult to de-program cult members from a cult.

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So we’ll out vote them!

Vote Blue up & down the ballot! 💙💙💙

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Nope, we’re on our own.

Vote Blue up & down the ballot! 💙💙💙

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Excellent overview of the facts as twisted and turned inside out and upside down by the Fascists. It really lights your hair on fire with their incredible lies, spin and hypocrisy. Also it's amazing how the MAGA crowd believes the fascist propaganda, and really scary that there are enough of them out there to win the next election if we Democrats don't pull ourselves together and either get behind Pres. Biden so he can win, or select someone else who can save our democracy. Wake up America!

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Could you, Albert M. name any Democratic Party elected representatives (or Republican Party elected legislators) who have over the past 8-10 years accomplished anything useful for the SECOND CLASS as Newsweek Opinion Editor Batya Ungar-Sargon calls her new book on the actual working class and blue collar communities hanging on by a hangman's noose's bare thread as wealth concentration parallel with Wage Stag-Nation and Hourly Wage Slave Food Stamp Nation has for the past half-century of quantified spread-sheets spread much faster than any of the stratified wealth has concentrated into regularly refreshed Bank Secrecy Laws.

I don't ask you this as a cheap shot or to play "gotcha" or make any broad statements on how much our Pay2Play political system's advocates, representatives, regulators, public prosecutors and legislators. Not even mentioning yet obvious mass media Mytho-Poetic makers of Hard Work and self-sacrifice along with RISK-taking myths that are part of most Finance curricula and Pay2Play broadcast and media platform Cyberian reportage.

What rivals that support system for Cronyocracy and Wealth Concentration that can actually accomplish advancing the PUBLIC INTEREST rather than the PRIVATE INTERESTS our Pay2Play political system demands that our elected representative legislators be most attentive to?

https://robertreich.org/post/695958318007664640

I've been asking myself why the DNC or the RNC elites do nothing between Election Cycles much less during these cycles to publicize or call attention to the Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Jeff Merkley (Jr D-Ore) led Senate Banking Committee Hearings that from the Summer of 2015 through the elections of 2016 deepened the education of the few who sought it out without going into ever more crippling Student Debt?

This is NOT BORING OR DRY TV PROGRAMMING! This is the REAL WISH FULFILLMENT BEDROCK OF VIABLE POPULIST REFORM POLITICAL MOVEMENTS that were smothered in their cribs without any REALITY TV FORMATTING that used STATE OF THE ART TV broadcasting production values along with the finest broadcasting tools to reach only the most engaged and by design Old Money wealthy who have the luxury and energy after a day of herniating labor and headspace corporate hierarchical programming poisoning via detached from reality Corporate Incentives and Reward structures: search_query=Elizabeth+Warren+Senate+Banking+Committee+grills+Wells+Fargo+CEO+and+Board+Chairs

Precisely during the summer of 2015 through autumn 2016 when then National Candidate for Commander in Chief and now criminally convicted felon Donald Trump drew higher televised ratings than the Senate Banking Committee hearings. Hearings that got virtually no wrap-around press or online corporate media platform coverage on the myriad BUSINESS PROGRAMS that were celebrating the generational and BIG GOVERNMENT-fed wealth that Fred Trump, father of our anointed Heir to the Trump Real Estate fortune. The Trump family, now belt-tightening Conservatives grew from outer-boroughs contracting work to Empire State and Washington DC Democratic political machines seeking to prevent the normalization of homelessness we've been normalizing for decades now. Read the VILLAGE VOICE archives by their over-achieving Muck Raker Wayne Barrett. Barrett was a low-income migrant from the Deep South where real wide and deep levels of Democratic Party cronyocracy and political machines that ran the Jim Crow Dixie political and socio-economic victories of legal racism through much of the 20th Century.

That Washington DC insiders would build massive pipelines of funding for the Low Income Subsidized Housing as a safety valve to defuse Cold War propaganda campaigns against the housed Soviets while Americans were sleeping on streets and shooting Southeast Asian Golden Triangle heroin all through the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements of the late 1950's and all of the 1960's into the mid-70's when Richard Nixon finally ended the Vietnam (never officially declared) War. After raining Agent Orange and napalm deluges bombing agrarian feudal nation-states with no air forces or high tech weaponry back to ancient pre-industrial times.

The Dixie Democratic political party machines spread through mob contracting and Public\Private Partnerships favored by the Neo-Liberal E-CONomic policies of Ivy League and Prep School educated and socially connected Northeastern old school Liberal and multi-ethnic political dynasties, machine politics and Networks of Power (see under Media Critic Dennis Mazzocco's now paperback book by that name).

Meanwhile being grilled on televised summer for a passive citizenry such rare and documented fare as my former Executive Office untouchable bosses at Wells Fargo, the corporate officers, CEO and board chairs of an enterprise documented to have committed widespread fraud in their Finance lines of bid-net yet had no such corporate officer charged nor held nominally liable for such crimes be indicted on criminal charges.

This after the tax-payer bailouts of the whole collapsing House of High Finance Cards that from 2008 onward Banking regulators never bothered to enforce any regulations on, nor basic law enforcement of the national crossing-state-lines jurisdictions. What the Senators working on the Committee with well-prepared and armed with documentary evidence provided to support Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley's convened and nationally televised hearings did during those low-rated yet incendiary and almost fantasy wish-fulfillment Public Interest Summer Broadcast fare was give the nation a fiery and impassioned Ivy League Education with NO STUDENT DEBT on how easy it is to both publicly shame while informing the nation of how High Finance is done and who bears the risks yet benefits from none of the obscene and non-transparent accounting of profits and finance flowing behind the sacred Bank Secrecy Laws.

In often lurid facts well marshalled and explained to the national viewing audience who had virtually no EXPERT NETWORK TV ROLODEX OF CORPORATE EXPERTS TO EXPLAIN the TARP bail-outs in process THE MASSIVE TRANSFER OF WEALTH FROM US TO THE TINY NUMBER OF THEM (often ending up in off-shore Wealth Management Portfolios based in the Treasure Islands, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Geneva, Bonn, Basil and Zurich).

All in the name of pre-ordained "necessary" bail outs that the very obscenely compensated Executives and Corporate Officers of this well-dressed and finely groomed "industry" required within the strictures of Limited Liability Corporate charters (LLC and Limited Partnerships) and that makes all heavy industry possible. Ever know a politician who built a dynasty on walking away from publicly funding the private interest tsunamis of Public Interest Wealth transferred in the name of creating jobs and saving a failing manufacturing base?

Here are the SEARCH WORDS that bring up some of the most HIGH DRAMA and IMPASSIONED PUBLIC INTEREST DEEP DIVE that our Duopoly's political party elites swept under the rugs ever since that huge transfer of funds from the U.S. Public Treasury to bail out CitiBancorp Group, Wells Fargo, Chase, B of A and nearly 700 banking and finance entities not only seeking Limited to NO LIABILITY but also being kept alive to do further bid-net in the wake of the Troubled Asset Relief Program dba TARP.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-bailout-was-11-years-ago-were-still-tracking-every-penny

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/troubled-asset-relief-program-tarp.asp

"The U.S. government bought preferred stock in eight banks: Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, State Street, and Wells Fargo. The banks were required to give the government a 5% dividend that would increase to 9% in 2013, encouraging banks to buy back the stock within five years." [footnote 7]

Many of these corporate entities of HI FI or High Finance protected by tax-payer net sprawled not only coast to coast but anywhere in the world where a corporation can set up shop via a P.O. Box. Such entities among the steel & glass facades of marble lined monuments to the U.S. founding mytho-poetics of heroes such as were bought up in pieces and bid-net lines by other non-competitive corporations that got to corner the market because of the lack of Anti-Trust Law Enforcement rather than any Good Government shepherding Sound Bid-Net practices.

TARP and the saving of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that allowed the biggest bailed-out Geriatric Corporate Con-Solid-ating Babies to buy out the rest of what remained of the so-called "optimal" corporate competition (see under the buy-outs of Lehman Brothers above along with re-financing of Goldman Sachs as well as Morgan Stanley as compared with an earlier time's failure and collapse of Wall Street colossus Drexel-Burnham-Lambert.

What is the Wherefore and Why (apologies to Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian songwriter of "Wherefore and Why") and our laws on the books against anti-competitive Corporate practices that Teddy Roosevelt built a political career on and successfully added the legislative bones to enforce. As though we were not a nation run by the Most Successful and politically effective Grifters and Ponzi schemers in quantified human his\herstory....)

Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers

Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)

Media Discussion List\Looksee

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Does your succinct analysis ever actually reach the Biden Harris campaign? You are handing them the script.

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Firstly, it's important to note that someone should not be labeled a convicted felon until after sentencing and the completion of the appeals process. Secondly, a conviction for conspiracy to defraud the state of taxes, especially without filed taxes or concrete evidence of Trump's intent, differs significantly from a bribery charge where there is proof that Melendez accepted bribes. Ultimately, people should reserve judgment until after a fair trial, especially when it involves politicians.

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Yawn. We know that. Now tell us how to get people to go out and vote for a candidate who doesn’t inspire them. Yawn again.

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Some people like Trump because he acts like a “gangster”. However, as you reference in your article, these are the same people who also evade the legal system. Hardly the party of “law and order”

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