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Candidates say campaigns are about articulating programs, issues and priorities. But people vote for candidates based on how that person makes them feel. Consciously or unconsciously, elections are about giving voice to values.
Voters are moral proxies who want to know that a candidate or elected official truly cares about them — that they are authentic — more than they care about what they know.
President Donald Trump and his administration are expressing moral values that have no market value. The Golden Rule has both moral and market value. Trump wouldn’t want done to him what he’s doing to the majority of the American people.
Trump’s values express reverse gratification. The powerful are suppressing the weak; the rich are exploiting the poor; the elephant is crushing the gnat.
Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions disavows the Voting Rights Act. He has a history of politicizing it by frivolously charging blacks with voter fraud, and has withdrawn Justice Department support from a voting rights case involving racial discrimination. That’s an expression of this administration’s values.
Los Angeles, July 16, 2017 – The Los Angeles Workers Center and Hollywood Progressive co-present the revolutionary classic Storm Over Asia.
Unlike most Bolshevik silent movies that take place in the European parts of the Soviet Union, V.I. Pudovkin’s 1928 Storm Over Asia is set in Mongolia, where it was shot on location, along with filming in Siberia. The sprawling saga occurs during the Russian Civil War and depicts a forerunner of Third World liberation movements, as Asians fight Western imperialists. This far out Far East classic has the epic sweep of future big screen extravaganzas with casts of thousands, and is arguably a Soviet Spartacus or Braveheart.
Special to the FreePress
Editor's Note: Thanks to a secret satirical recording device implanted into Donald Trump's hair, an actual fake transcript has emerged from the fake president's recent meeting with his actual owner, Vladimir Putin. Reader discretion is advised:
TRUMP: Well, Putie, I think we can talk frankly now. There will be no recording of this part of our conversation.
PUTIN (chuckling): Right, Donald. I would never record anything between us without letting you know first. At the KGB we made it a strict policy to honor the privacy of all citizens, Russian, American, Chechnyan and, of course, Siberian, where so many of our great patriots are still so happy to do volunteer labor.
TRUMP: Well first I must thank you for putting me in the White House. I could never have stolen the 2016 election without you.
Every real problem this country — and this planet — face is replaced by a fantasy problem, which all the powers of government then pretend to address. Meet Donald Trump, master of the street con, trickster extraordinaire.
How many cabinet positions and high-level government posts have been filled by someone whose life work and raison d’etre make him or her the least qualified person imaginable for the job? Names burst from the news: Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, Jeff Sessions . . .
The federal government has secretly been working on a plan to transport highly radioactive liquid from Chalk River, Ontario, Canada, to the Savannah River Site in Aiken, SC — a distance of over 1,100 miles. A series of 250 truckloads are planned by the Department of Energy (DOE). Interstate 85 is one of the main routes.
Based on published data of the US Environmental Protection Agency, a few ounces of this liquid could destroy a whole city water supply.
Eric Blau and Mort Shuman’s 1968 Off-Broadway hit Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is now alive and kicking in L.A. at the Odyssey Theatre. The current show consists of four gifted singers/ dancers/actors -Miyuki Miyagi, Susan Kohler, Marc Francoeur and Michael Yapujian - performing on a bare set about two dozen numbers originally created by Belgian singer/songwriter par excellence, Jacques Brel. The quartet is backed by musicians playing bass, percussion, keyboard and guitar.
Brel composed the music and wrote the lyrics for his chansons, most of which he also performed live in cafes, cabarets, concert halls, on albums, films and TV, although other top talents also covered his oeuvre - Ray Charles, Judy Collins, John Denver, Nina Simone, David Bowie, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, Leonard Cohen and Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra. Chanson is a lyric driven type of French song that has its origins in the Middle Ages, although the 1929 Brussels-born Brel gave this musical genre his own unique twist.