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An Important Message on Gaza/Hamas/Israel & What you may have missed on PDR last week.

A note on Israel/Hamas & Gaza. End-of-the-week summary of all topics covered on our Politics Done Right on KPFT 90.1 FM program (Also on Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Twitter, and Twitch.)

Oct 15, 2023

As a blogger, vlogger, activist, writer, author, engineer, software developer, website designer, media/radio host, father, son, husband, friend, cousin, uncle, and godfather, among many other titles, I thought that one could live long enough so that the shear evil of some could have less of a physical and emotional effect. Many other violent atrocities are occurring around the world that we choose to ignore, but we see them in foreign media and can empathize with them. Somehow, this one continues to affect me viscerally.

This latest Israel vs. Hamas/Palestine fiasco, sadly, for some time, put my mind in a place I did not want it to be. I hold no hate or animosity towards any group. After all, I preach that race is a meaningless, unscientific construct that we have allowed economic systems and power-hungry psychopaths to infect us with to create divisions that allow their existence and control. I apply the same to religion and the culture of division. It is much more pleasurable to embrace and enjoy cultures than to object to them as long as they are causing no damage to humanity and as long as all can choose the culture they want to adopt.

I preface to say the following. What is occurring in Gaza is a “manmade,” ill-advised escalation of evil and carnage that testosterone and false history cannot solve. The murder of humans is evil, whether done by a terrorist organization, a state, or an individual. We like to have gradations of murder and killings. The families behind dead bodies don’t. Suppose the families of the ten thousand (don’t believe the official numbers) Panamanians who died because Bush could not accept that Manuel Antonio Noriega seized being the CIA’s puppet responded with hate towards the U.S.?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not complicated at all. There is no will to solve it because it is a tool for unfettered capitalists to make money on weapons and to maintain an unnatural world order to prevent societal equity. Managing these conflicts instead of solving the underlying causes is more profitable than a harmonious world.

I will not discuss the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in detail on my daily 6:00 AM on-air “Politics Done Right” show on KPFT 90.1 FM because I sense an internal hesitation in going through the machinations necessary to break through the longstanding misinformation, mischaracterizations, and stereotypes. But it would be irresponsible for me not to cover it in all my other venues, including my 3:00 PM Central daily online program and podcast. YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, LinkedIn, and X have not censored me yet :). Let’s all be a part of making this a better world for absolutely everyone.

Monday October 9th, 2023

Meet the Press Kristen Welker allows Matt Gaetz to lie about Biden & Trump's economies and tax cuts: Meet The Press Kristen Welker asked Matt Gaetz to justify his tax cut/budget deficit hypocrisy but failed to challenge his response where he lied about Biden and Trump's economies. [More]
Swing Voter: "I'd vote for Biden even if he were dead. And I'm a Republican." But Biden, be warned!: The words from the swing voters in this focus group are a net positive for President Biden. But it also has a warning Democrats better heed. [More]
WOW! Fmr VP Mike Pence slammed Trump & MAGA as contributing to the instability in the Middle East: Former Vice President Mike Pence likely realizes that his timidity will not work to raise his poll numbers. He slammed Trump and other MAGA candidates on their foreign policy stance. [More]
Could the Left Actually Win Back 'Trump Country' in West Virginia?: I spoke with Troy Miller, executive producer of the Zero Hour, in his capacity as a member of the Executive Committee of the West Virginia Democratic Party. We discussed the party’s recent adoption of an updated version of FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights. Could it revive their political fortunes? Here’s a clue, from something I wrote several years ago and never published. It concerns McDowell County, WV, the state’s poorest county, which I researched as Bernie Sander’s speechwriter for a speech he gave there in 2016. [More]

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Tuesday October 10th, 2023

If You Don't Know Medicare Advantage Is a Scam, You're Not Paying Attention: We’re on the edge of the open enrollment period for Medicare, and the Advantage scammers will be carpet-bombing America with advertisements over the next few months. Don't be fooled about what it is—and who is profiting. [More]
Liz Cheney If Jim Jordan is elected as speaker, Republicans cede defense of The Constitution: Liz Cheney clarified that if Republicans were to elect Congressman Jim Jordan as Speaker of the House, they would have ceded any claim to be defenders of the Constitution. [More]
Progressive Voting Guide for the 2023 Houston City Council Elections: Indivisible President Daniel J. Cohen discusses his progressive voting guide for the Houston City Council and more. [More]

Wednesday October 11th, 2023

Sanders Report Exposes How Nonprofit Hospitals Exploit Tax Breaks, Fail Poor Patients: Nonprofit U.S. hospitals are legally required to provide affordable medical care for low-income patients, but many are failing to do so while taking advantage of major tax benefits and enriching executives, according to a report released Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders. “In 2020, nonprofit hospitals received $28 billion in tax breaks to provide affordable healthcare for low-income Americans,” noted Sanders (I-Vt.), a Medicare for All advocate who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. [More]
The Republican Revolution Devours Its Children: The conventional media narrative of House Republicans’ dumping Speaker Kevin McCarthy tells us that the act represented disarray and dysfunction within the House GOP, just as its ever-changing list of legislative demands before the threatened government shutdown was supposed to be a sign that Republicans didn’t even know what they wanted. Confusion, incompetence, and blundering ideological zeal offer a superficially convincing explanation. The truth is worse. It was not disarray and dysfunction in the GOP Conference but a logical succeeding chapter to January 6. When the destruction of constitutional government could not be accomplished by violence, the leading element of the Republican Party resolved to accomplish it by paralyzing government, a goal now achieved. The deposing of the speaker makes shutting down the government and giving a boost to ideological soul mate Vladimir Putin ( by withholding aid to Ukraine) more likely, an outcome that has always been the goal of the only faction of the GOP that matters. [More]
Neil Aquino from Houston Democracy Project is here. The Houston Democracy Project works daily to make democracy a top issue in 2023 Houston city politics & to inspire and strengthen pro-democracy coalitions. This week, we'll discuss Houston Democratic State Rep. Ann Johnson, who does everything by the book and still faces a criminal complaint from Ken Paxton. Nobody is safe in this environment. We'll also talk about a new Mayoral poll that makes one wonder why Rep. Jackson-Lee got in the race to begin with. [More]
A message from a former Medicare Advantage salesman. Why you must get the real thing!: I have been begging people to get standard Medicare. Medicare Part C, aka Medicare Advantage, is a fraud on the patient and the American taxpayer. I have explained this ad nauseam in several blogs. [More]

Thursday October 12th, 2023

Indivisible Houston President Cohen & other activists protest Dan Patrick keeping racist $3 Million. Recent revelations about Texas GOP Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s ties to a group with extremist leanings have set off a firestorm in a political climate already fraught with division. [More]
A message from a former Medicare Advantage salesman. Why you must get the real thing!: I have been begging people to get standard Medicare. Medicare Part C, aka Medicare Advantage, is a fraud on the patient and the American taxpayer. I have explained this ad nauseam in several blogs. [More]
Texas Senate unveils its priority school voucher bill: The Texas Senate unveiled Monday its main bill to establish an education savings account program, a priority for Gov. Greg Abbott this special session. Senate Bill 1, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, would allow families access $8,000 of taxpayer money to pay for private schools and other educational expenses such as uniforms, textbooks, tutoring or transportation among other things. “Educating the next generation of Texans is a fundamental responsibility, and it is my belief that empowering parents with school choice will encourage competition, innovation and ensure that every student in Texas has the opportunity to find an educational path for their unique needs,” Creighton said in a statement. [More]

Friday October 13th, 2023

Mary Lou Retton Crowdfunded Her Medical Debt, Like Many Thousands of Others: But unlike the Olympic gymnast, most people don’t raise enough money to cover their costs. When Mary Lou Retton, the decorated Olympic gymnast, accrued medical debt from a lengthy hospital stay, her family did what countless Americans have done before them: turned to crowdfunding to cover the bills. On Tuesday, Ms. Retton’s daughter started a fund-raising campaign on social media for her mother, who she said was hospitalized with a rare pneumonia. “We ask that if you could help in any way, that 1) you PRAY! and 2) if you could help us with finances for the hospital bill,” McKenna Kelley, Ms. Retton’s daughter, wrote in a post on Spotfund, a crowdfunding platform similar to GoFundMe. [More]
Steve Scalise, 'David Duke Without the Baggage,' Drops Out of House Speaker Race: "I will vote for Leader Jeffries and continue my work building bridges between marginalized communities to dismantle the systems of white supremacy enabling violence against our communities," said Rep. Summer Lee. Louisiana GOP Congressman Steve Scalise—infamously accused of once calling himself "David Duke without the baggage," referring to a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard—on Thursday night dropped his bid to become the next speaker of the U.S House of Representatives. "It's been quite a journey, and there's still a long way to go. I just shared with my colleagues that I'm withdrawing my name as a candidate for the speaker designee," Scalise told reporters, acknowledging divisions within his conference. [More]
Al Sharpton outed that some had access to the higher-ups in the network to shape the message: I am unsure if Al Sharpton had a tongue slip, but he pointed out that the CEO of the ADL got a private hearing on messaging with higher-ups at the network. Is this a danger for truthful news? [More]

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