Beyond Passive Resistance: Against Democratic Surrender in a Time of Fascitization, by Paul Street

Image by Lorie Shaull via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street, Dec. 16, 2021
December 27, 2021

Sixty percent of the U.S. populace backs Roe v. Wade and just 27 percent back its undoing even as the nation’s right-wing Supreme Court is strongly predisposed to reverse the decision by next summer. Where is the call for millions in the streets to defend women’s right to control their bodies over and against this anti-democratic outrage? Where is the uprising against a government structure and social order that permits this and numerous other forms of authoritarian insanity? It’s shocking to hear liberal talking heads say (basically) “oh well there goes Roe v. Wade for a generation, until we can get the votes and a better court back some day.” Are these shrugging accommodationists aware that the nation’s right-wing Minority Rule party is actively and effectively working (in the name of “stop the steal”) to permanently suppress and nullify votes and elections and policies that don’t go their patriarchal, white-nationalist way? How do they not understand that, as the leading feminist and communist Sunsara Taylor notes:

Slaves to the Constitution, by Paul Street

Image by Brad Dougherty via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street, May 21, 2021
May 28, 2021

Slavery lives on in U.S.-American life, crippling “our” supposed grand “democracy” in numerous ways. The massive wealth, income, and health gaps between Black and white Americans and the related persistent segregation and mass arrest and incarceration of Black Americans cannot be properly understood without reference to the two and a half centuries in which Black Americans were enslaved.

Chris Hedges: American Fascist Christian Right

Image by Chris Barker via Flickr

with Chris Hedges

Dandelion Salad

RT America on Nov 14, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to the Rev. Mel White about the Christian Right, “a homegrown fascist movement,” which has been organizing to take political power for decades, and during the Trump administration seized senior positions in the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. A move violating US Constitutional powers of separation of church and state.

Abby Martin: Will the Supreme Court Overturn the Election for Trump?

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Dandelion Salad

with Abby Martin

Empire Files on Nov 10, 2020

Constitutional rights lawyer talks to Abby Martin about the potential for the Supreme Court to overturn the election results in Trump’s favor, and analyzes the basis of voter fraud allegations.

Abby Martin: Abolish the Supreme Court!

Image by Brad Dougherty via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Abby Martin

Empire Files on Oct 30, 2020

What’s the solution to this far-right Supreme Court steamrolled over the feckless Democrats?

Abby Martin: It’s Just Mind-Boggling that the Democrats Continue to Support Trump’s Worst Foreign Policy Blunders and Policies

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Abby Martin

TeleSUR English on Oct 14, 2020

Unsubstantiated Trump’s questioning on mail-in voting system, the nomination of the conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and foreign policy of both candidates, are discussed by the journalist for Empire Files Abby Martin.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and America’s Priestly Class, by Kenn Orphan

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by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
September 22, 2020

“It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.” — Howard Zinn

Greg Palast: Corporate Interests Use Voter Purges To Disenfranchise Citizens + King Koch is Gone–David Koch Dead at 79

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with Greg Palast
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Greg Palast’s website
August 25, 2019

The Openly Plutocratic Domination of U.S. Politics by Paul Street

Image by Pamela Drew via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
November 14, 2018

So often, underlying structures and institutions of oppression escape serious scrutiny amid our country’s most high-profile political dramas. Take the recent conviction of Jason Van Dyke, the white Chicago police officer caught on tape four years ago firing 16 shots into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

Michael Parenti: The Supremely Political Court

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with Michael Parenti
Writer, Dandelion Salad
October 11, 2018

TUK Radio

Archival, updated 2018 to reflect Trump’s Supreme Court – In his extraordinary 26 minute history of the Supreme Court Dr. Michael Parenti warned us in 1995 that this partisan, aristocratic institution might one day empower an autocratic president. It seems that time has come and two Trump appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, can push the scales of justice in favor of their politics unless there is a groundswell to question and change the legal rules of that institution. Why is so much power being given to 9 unelected, non term-limited judges?

Self-Censored Questions by Career Questioners by Ralph Nader

Image by Federacion de Asociaciones Cannabicas (FAC) via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page, April 3, 2017
April 5, 2017

I’ve always been intrigued by the major questions not asked by reporters at press conferences, not asked by legislators at public hearings or even the questions citizens at town meetings don’t ask public officials. It’s not that they do not know about or could not easily become informed enough about a given issue and ask substantive questions. It’s just that so many taboos are packed into these questioners’ ideological mindset, career goals or concern with what other people over them might think. Maybe it is a culturally-rooted fear of challenging entrenched power brokers.

Swamping the Supremes Department: No Cloture for Judge Gorsuch by Rob Hager

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by Rob Hager
Writer, Dandelion Salad
March 18, 2017

Maine’s Angus King is a swing Independent Senator who caucuses with Democrats. As a former lawyer, like many of his colleagues, he cannot plead ignorance about the historic importance of his vote on the fateful Senate filibuster to deny Neil Gorsuch confirmation as Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee. Confirmation hearings for this far-right, “friendly fascist,” defender of torture, Federalist Society nominee are scheduled to begin March 20. A filibuster will follow. The key vote will come, likely in the first week of April, when Gorsuch supporters vote for cloture (i.e. termination) of the filibuster. The Republicans will need 60 votes for cloture in order to proceed to a vote on confirmation. They only have 52 votes, which is enough for confirmation but not enough to first end the filibuster.

Supreme Court Legalizes Influence Peddling: McDonnell v. United States by Rob Hager

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by Rob Hager
Writer, Dandelion Salad
July 3, 2016

The Supreme Court has mostly completed its decimation of any anti-corruption law that might have caused any more than the slightest inconvenience for the plutocracy’s political investments. Therefore the Court has now picked up its judicial supremacy ax to perform a similar demolition of laws that regulate the other side of the corruption equation. In a decision announced on June 27, timed as one of three final opinions of its 2015-16 term, the Court turned its attention to protecting the influence peddlers – who are installed by and otherwise benefit from the now freely flowing plutocratic investments – from prosecution for their delivery of the peddled policies.

Who Stole The 2000 Election? (Hint: Not Nader) by Eric Ruder

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Dandelion Salad

by Eric Ruder
socialistworker.org
June 2, 2016

The myth that Ralph Nader “spoiled” the 2000 election and put George W. Bush in the White House is being resurrected. Eric Ruder remembers how it really happened.

WITH POLLS showing a much closer race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump than was originally expected, Clinton supporters are resorting to frantic warnings that Bernie Sanders could cause a replay of the 2000 elections–when, according to the standard narrative of what went down, Ralph Nader’s Green Party campaign put Bush in the White House.

The SCOTUS Quandary by Rob Hager + Merrick Garland: Where Does Supreme Court Pick Stand on Guantánamo, Death Penalty, Abortion?

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by Rob Hager
Writer, Dandelion Salad
March 17, 2016

Obama Nominates a Conservative to Court: Sanders Still Missing Strategic Opportunity

Obama Writes Nomination Insurance for Plutocrats

Obama has decided that, to fill Scalia’s vacant seat for radicals on the Supreme Court the country needs another former partner of a Wall Street law firm, turned prosecutor, and then appellate judge. Another judge obscures the highly political work of the contemporary Supreme Court beneath a veneer of technocratic competence. Just the opposite is required at this time. We need a politician who will make a political case against decisions like the Court’s most important ruling of the past half century that “money is speech,” which was pure politics when decided but has become part of the ordinary technology of plutocracy that a judge like Merrick B. Garland administers with exquisite technical competence to the satisfaction of plutocrats. Chief Judge Garland is a continuation of business as usual. What is demanded by the times is a justice that will eradicate the politicized judicial doctrines that sustain the corrupt business as usual.