Source: Common Dreams
by Jeff Cohen & Norman Solomon
“Fifteen years ago, during President Obama’s first term, we co-founded RootsAction as an online progressive group challenging not only Republicans but also the corporatism and militarism of the Democratic Party. RootsAction supported Bernie Sanders for president in 2016 and 2020. Two years before the 2024 election disaster that returned Donald Trump to the White House, RootsAction launched the Don’t Run Joe campaign, with the warning that the renomination of Joe Biden by Democrats ‘would be a tragic mistake’. Despite polls showing as early as 2022 that strong majorities of Democrats wanted a 2024 nominee other than Biden, the ‘Don’t Run Joe’ message went unheeded until Biden’s debate debacle in June 2024. By then, it was too late for the open primary process needed to produce a ticket that could inspire activists—and defeat the fascistic faux-populism of Trump.” (09/15/26)
“Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney now believes he is more than just the Western foil to Donald Trump and his MAGA movement—he is the global one. Accordingly, he seems determined to demonstrate to the world how to stand up to Donald Trump, to force Trump to lose the midterms, and to hurt the U.S. economy to such a degree that Trump will never again bully other nations. So, at the eleventh hour, Carney stormed out of an apparently completed tariff deal with the United States that would have privileged Canada over almost all of America’s other trading partners. … Carney claimed that American proposals stripped away Canadian sovereignty and quashed Canadian culture, particularly French-Canadian culture. Yet he has not released the documents detailing the bilateral offers he rejected.” (09/15/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by Whitney Curry Wimbish & David Dayen
“The statement from former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon that AI ‘could kill us by the end of the decade’ has triggered the most hostile setting for sound public policy: mass panic. Events since Coxon’s viral comments have only deepened the frenzy. A senior employee at Anthropic, Evan Hubinger, backed Coxon up (‘We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!’) and estimated the chances that AI could cause human extinction at more than 10 percent. Late last week, Anthropic said it had halted ‘several efforts by scientists’ whose research could have developed biological weapons, The New York Times reported; on Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI’s artificial intelligence agents attacked the software service RubyGems two months before they attacked Hugging Face.” (09/15/26)
“Everybody says they want freedom, but most people really don’t, mainly because they don’t know what true freedom is. And if they did, they would—and do — reject it. ‘Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,’ Benjamin Franklin wrote, and most people don’t want to be virtuous. Which is why they prefer socialism. Homo sapiens, as a species, is a group of jungle savages who know very little about history, and especially do not understand historical perspective. In fact, when it comes to history, most humans are incredibly ignorant. Two hundred and fifty years — the life of the American Republic — when compared to the entire span of human history, is not a very long time. And we Americans look at our history very narrowly, and rarely see the whole panorama that history really is.” (09/14/26)
“As the October election in Brazil approaches and is likely to pit, once again, a Lula vs. Bolsonaro matchup—this time with President Bolsonaro’s son Flávio running in his place—timing has never been better to hold accountable those in the U.S. who collaborated in the subversive campaign, both stateside and abroad, that would lead to President Bolsonaro’s political persecution and ultimately, incarceration, following the presidential election of 2022 in Brazil. It is in this context that President Trump’s measures to pressure the Brazilian government must be understood: as the unmaking of an injustice perpetrated by the U.S. Left, with Biden-era taxpayer instruments at its disposal. Amongst the trove of revelations that the second Trump administration has managed to expose since coming to office, those connected to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding are some of the most shocking and insidious.” (09/14/26)
“Macklemore has been kicked off the rest of Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour after several venues said they would refuse to let the rapper perform after his anti-Israel rants on stage. ‘We have been notified by venues on the upcoming U.S. tour dates that they will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup, which would result in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans,’ Messina Touring Group, which is promoting the US leg of Sheeran’s Loop Tour, told Rolling Stone magazine. ‘After discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates,’ the company added. The lefty rapper was scheduled to play at eight of the 10 remaining shows, scheduled to resume on Saturday.” (09/14/26)
“Democrats in Washington have committed the party’s newest unforgivable offense: representing the American people. Democratic Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington broke with their party Sept. 1 to advance a procedural rule allowing the House to consider Golden’s Northeast Lobsterman Protection Act and a resolution condemning socialism. The rule passed 210–208, with five Republicans opposed, making their votes decisive. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other Democratic leaders accused them of blindsiding the caucus, called their decision ‘a significant breach of trust’ requiring ‘a serious response’ and asked the Committee on Caucus Rules to review the matter. Think about the political message Democrats sent: Helping Maine lobstermen fight burdensome regulations and allowing Congress to vote on a resolution condemning socialism are now acts of political blasphemy inside the Democratic Party. Democrats will insist their outrage is about House procedure and not lobstermen.” (09/14/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The other day I saw another great example of the way people in capitalist societies tend to reframe their dumb luck as the result of their own hard work and resourcefulness. At the end of the last season of the surivalist competition Alone Australia, the winner Trent Felton was asked if he felt he’d just gotten lucky catching dozens of fish while all the other contestants starved, and he insisted that his success was actually due to the fact that he had made the wise decision to work hard obtaining food. ‘My strategy when I went out there was food,’ said Felton. ‘I’ve been a big fan of the show for a long time, and I’ve never really seen anyone leave ‘cause their shelter’s not quite up to scratch or anything like that, so from day one priority for me was food.'” (09/12/26)
“Ronald Reagan famously said that he didn’t leave the Democrats, the Democrats left him — and now the party threatens to do the same to Sen. John Fetterman. The Pennsylvanian’s video appearance at the Republican midterm convention, praising GOP colleague Dave McCormick as a bipartisan ally as they ‘work with President Trump to fight and defend the steel way of life’, drove his critics around the bend. The left loathes Fetterman even though he votes with his caucus most of the time, and stands by policies central to the Democratic identity … at least until 15 minutes ago … simply because he refuses to go along with the lunacy he calls an ‘orgy of socialism’.” (09/14/26)
“Former CIA Director John Brennan has been subpoenaed to testify next month before a Florida grand jury as part of a Justice Department investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired against President Donald Trump, one of his lawyers said Monday. Ken Wainstein, an attorney for Brennan, disclosed in a court filing that prosecutors last Thursday presented him with a subpoena for Brennan to appear Oct. 15 before a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. He said he was told that the subpoena relates to a “far-reaching” criminal probe examining a loosely defined theory that the government officials who have investigated Trump over the last decade, including over Russia election interference in 2016 and his more recent retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, conspired to deprive Trump of his civil rights. The subpoena to Brennan is among a flurry that have been issued in recent weeks.” (09/14/26)
