Evangelicals opposed to Trump step out of the shadows with new groups and ads

Yahoo – News

Evangelicals opposed to Trump step out of the shadows with new groups and ads

Evangelicals opposed to Trump speak out, including Billy Graham’s granddaughter.

 

President Trump “attempts to hijack our faith for votes,” the writer Jerusha Duford — Billy Graham’s granddaughter — said Thursday in a Zoom call sponsored by one of a growing number of evangelical groups that have formed to encourage Christians to vote for Joe Biden.

Trump’s “attempts to hijack our faith for votes, and evangelical leaders’ silence on his actions and behavior, has presented a picture of what our faith looks like that is so erroneous that it has done significant damage to the way people view Jesus,” said Duford on the call, which was sponsored by Not Our Faith PAC, a bipartisan group formed just this week with the explicit goal of trying to defeat Trump.

“I spent the better part of my life watching my grandfather look to be an example of Jesus, to how to conduct himself and how to treat people. Scripture talks about doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly, and these are tenets of our faith that I do not believe our president demonstrates in any way,” she said.

Her grandfather, the most famous evangelist of the 20th century, was friends with presidents of both parties and avoided direct involvement in electoral politics. Her uncle Franklin Graham is one of Trump’s most prominent backers on the Christian right.

A screengrab from the Not Our Faith PAC ad. (YouTube)
A screengrab from the Not Our Faith PAC ad. (YouTube)

 

White evangelicals backing Biden are still a small minority of a group that supported Trump overwhelmingly in 2016. Eighty-one percent overlooked his boasts about sexually assaulting women, his documented history of adultery, his association with the casino industry and his proclivity for golfing over church attendance on Sundays to vote for him. As recently as August he had actually improved his standing with evangelicals, to 83 percent, although more recent polling by the Pew Research Center showed it had slipped somewhat, to 78. Even a small falloff in evangelical support could have a major effect on Trump’s reelection prospects, which is what groups like Not Our Faith are hoping to achieve.

In a phone call to constituents that was leaked to the Washington Examiner on Thursday, a prominent Republican senator who is also a conservative evangelical Christian, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, succinctly outlined the case against Trump.

“He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors,” Sasse said, in remarks that a spokesman for the senator confirmed. “His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with white supremacists.”

Duford said that in her experience, many evangelicals who might have voted for Trump in 2016 “went to the polls crossing their fingers, maybe holding their breath.”

But, she said, “now that we’ve had four years of it … I think that’s going to change their perceptions.”

The most noticeable change from four years ago among some number of white evangelicals is their willingness to vote for a Democrat. In 2016 they might not have voted for Trump, but they were deeply uncomfortable voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Biden doesn’t inspire the same discomfort.

A screengrab from the Not Our Faith PAC ad. (YouTube)
Screengrab from the Not Our Faith PAC ad. (YouTube)

 

Not Our Faith was formed earlier this week by Michael Wear, a former faith adviser to President Barack Obama, and Autumn Vandehei, a former Republican congressional staffer for Tom DeLay, who was House majority leader from 2003 to 2005. (Vandehei is also married to Jim Vandehei, the co-founder of the political news website Axios.)

The PAC’s first digital ad is targeted to likely voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania. “Christians don’t need Trump to save them,” the ad says. “The truth is that Trump needs Christians to save his flailing campaign.”

Another organization, Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, was formed earlier this month by a group including senior officials at several influential conservative evangelical seminaries and from Christianity Today magazine.

“As pro-life evangelicals, we disagree with Vice President Biden and the Democratic platform on the issue of abortion. But we believe a biblically shaped commitment to the sanctity of human life compels us to a consistent ethic of life that affirms the sanctity of human life from beginning to end,” the group states on it’s website. “We believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump. Therefore, even as we continue to urge different policies on abortion, we urge evangelicals to elect Joe Biden as president.”

That announcement was mocked by the conservative satirical website the Babylon Bee, which ran an Onion-like item about a fictional group called “Pro-Life Evangelicals for Moloch” — a heathen deity in the Old Testament who is associated with demands for child sacrifice.

In August, John Kingston, a former corporate lawyer and executive who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts two years ago, formed a group called Christians Against Trumpism and Political Extremism, along with Joel Searby, a Republican political strategist who worked on Evan McMullin’s independent candidacy for president in 2016.

John Kingston in 2018. (Winslow Townson/AP)
John Kingston in 2018. (Winslow Townson/AP)

 

“Right now we are bound up as people of faith in this Trumpist sort of prison, sort of thinking, ‘Oh, if we only get that much more political power, if we only get that much more, if we’re willing to compromise this much, then we can actually get someplace,’” Kingston said in an interview. “That triumphalist approach is antithetical to the sacrificial Christianity, the way of the cross which Jesus teaches us.”

Kingston and Searby’s group has a sizable leadership committee that includes several well-known figures inside evangelical Christianity, such as the authors Lisa Sharon Harper, Nancy French and D.L. Mayfield; Jars of Clay lead singer Dan Haseltine; former Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C.; and Wheaton College professor of theology Vincent Bacote.

“Even if the president loses in November, I think we’re in a multi-year fight over what has now been unleashed,” Kingston said.

Amy Sullivan, an author and journalist who worked for Yahoo News from 2015 to 2017, has started an organization called This Is My Story, focused on giving Christian women a platform to express independence.

“Many conservative Christian leaders have told women for decades that their faithfulness was demonstrated through purity and character. But when they had a choice between protecting their power or standing up for the women in their pews, they threw women under the ‘Access Hollywood’ bus,” Sullivan told Yahoo News. “So now women are speaking for themselves.”

Sullivan, author of a 2008 book on Christianity and the Democratic Party called “The Party Faithful,” produced and released a video on Friday morning showing several evangelical women, including Jerusha Duford, repeating in their own voices what Trump was recorded saying in the “Access Hollywood” tape that emerged four years ago. In that video, Trump boasts in vulgar language about how as “a star” he can get away with kissing and groping women.

Jerusha Duford in an new ad "Speak For Yourself". (This is My Story/YouTube)
Jerusha Duford in a new ad, “Speak for Yourself.” (This is My Story/YouTube)

 

After the women in Sullivan’s video repeat Trump’s words, the text on screen says, “Even after hearing these words, Christian pastors and leaders told women it was our duty to support Trump. They made it clear what they really valued. It wasn’t us. It’s time we speak for ourselves.”

All of these groups are made up largely of Christians who come from a theologically, culturally and politically conservative milieu.

There are also a number of groups headed by Christian leaders who are more politically progressive, such Vote Common Good, the New Moral Majority PAC and Faith 2020.

Those groups are seeking to influence more conservative Christians too. New Moral Majority PAC is organizing Operation Family Meeting, asking Christians who grew up as pastors’ kids or missionary kids, or who were youth group leaders or worship leaders, to talk with immediate family members who might be supporting Trump.

“We want to believe that many of the values that we were raised with still matter. That honesty and kindness are still the hallmark of leadership and that we are called to look after the least among us. But the rise of Trump has caused painful divisions in our families and many of us have quietly distanced ourselves from the communities we came from out of hurt and embarrassment,” the group says.

“We need to engage with them over the hurt their allegiance to the President has caused us because we are the only ones they might listen to.”

President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John's Church across Lafayette Park from the White House on June 1, 2020, in Washington. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
President Trump holds a Bible outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House on June 1. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

 

Even secular groups like Republican Voters Against Trump have enlisted Christians to make faith-based appeals for Biden.

Elizabeth Neumann, who was an assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security until this past year, introduces herself in one video as “first and foremost a follower of Jesus Christ.”

“I’m a wife and a proud mom. I voted for Trump in 2016 primarily because of the pro-life issue,” Neumann says.

But Neumann says she concluded that Trump’s rhetoric has increased the threat of white supremacist terrorism. “We are less safe today because of his leadership. We will continue to be less safe as long as he is in control. And this year, I’ll be voting for Joe Biden,” she says.

What if this is the last election in U.S. history?

Chicago Suntimes

What if this is the last election in U.S. history?

People and entire organizations are working to discourage the American people from voting so the power elite can control the outcome and silence the working stiffs.

On Sept 3, workers prepare absentee ballots for mailing at the Wake County Board of Elections in Raleigh, N.C. Nearly 10,000 North Carolinians had their mail-in ballots accepted in the first week of voting, according state data. North Carolina was the first state in the country to send absentee ballots to voters who requested them.
 Gerry Broome/AP

 

What if this were the last time you ever had a chance to vote? If your children and grandchildren and future generations were to look back on November 2020 as the end of free elections in the United States, would you fail to pick up a ballot this year?

There are those who say it doesn’t matter who you vote for, both political parties are corrupt, their candidates are unworthy and the election process itself is a sham.

That’s a bunch of garbage!

For decades there have been people, entire organizations, working to discourage the American people from voting. It is a political strategy called suppressing the vote, so the power elite can control the outcome and silence the working stiffs.

Should you choose to stay home don’t tell me you didn’t take sides, because you absolutely did.

You chose the side that is trying to destroy our democracy. You chose the side that favors political repression. You chose the side that wants to silence those who would use their voice to defend the defenseless.

Centuries ago, people came here because kings and queens, czars and emperors decided how people would live and how they would die.

Most people were not paid for their work. If they killed a deer to feed their families, they were executed. When there was a war, they were rounded up, handed a spear or a pitchfork and told to go to die for their beloved monarch. This went on for centuries.

People eventually left such places to come to America. They risked their lives on tiny ships trying to reach a hostile country that offered nothing but hope. And once they were here, they created a new kind of government where people had the right to vote for their leaders.

Slaves came here in ships as well. They did not choose to make the voyage. They were placed in chains, sold like cattle and made to work for people who would become rich off their blood, sweat and tears. They were beaten, whipped and lynched for trying to run away.

They dreamed of a better life. Of freedom. One day they were granted that right and tried to exercise it at the election polls.

Black people were burned alive in churches just for holding meetings where they talked about voting. They were shot on the streets walking to the polls. They were lynched from trees because they dared to run for office.

Still, they tried to vote. Still they fought for the right to cast a ballot. And you dare wonder today why you should bother to vote.

There are women who took their small children and walked in the streets campaigning for the right to vote. They worked 18 hours a day in sweatshops, came home and were forced to turn over their money to husbands who beat them and spent their savings at local bars.

They had almost no rights. They couldn’t even own their own homes in some places. But they realized at the ballot box, if they had the vote, they might be able to change that for all women in the future.

They were verbally and physically abused and sent to prison. Some died trying to make the dream of universal suffrage a reality. All so you could vote.

Yet, today there are some women who don’t care to vote. It is their right, they say.

The fate of our country is at stake this November. There are those who may try to stop the election, or at the very least stop you from casting a ballot. You must take a stand and tell your friends and neighbors in other states to do the same.

We vote for all of those who have suffered and died for this right. We vote to preserve this legacy for future generations. We vote to protect the most powerful revolutionary tool in the history of the world: The election ballot.

‘Borat 2’ Trailer: Sacha Baron Cohen Returns to Annihilate Donald Trump’s America

Indie Wire

Zack Sharf         October 1, 2020

 

Ready or not, here comes Borat. Amazon has premiered the official trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy sequel, officially titled “Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm.” No, the rumored title of “Borat: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence to Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan” was not true. The film picks up with Cohen’s Kazakh journalist Borat following the blockbuster success of the 2006 movie as he returns to America with his daughter hoping to “gift her to someone close to the throne” (aka someone in the orbit of Donald Trump’s White House).

Cohen shot the “Borat” sequel in secret over the summer. Fans of the comedian started to wonder what he was up to after news broke in June that Cohen crashed a far-right rally in Olympia, Washington, and convinced the crowd to sing a racist song with him. Cohen appeared dressed in overalls and a fake beard and sang about injecting kids with the “Wuhan flu.” The event was for the Washington Three Percenters, a far-right militia group known for its gun advocacy.

Another Cohen prank leaked after New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani revealed in July that Cohen ambushed his interview at the Mark Hotel in New York City. During the middle of Giuliani’s interview, a man believed to be Cohen stormed in “wearing a crazy” outfit that included “a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top.” Giuliani called the prank “absurd.”

In addition to far-right groups and Giuliani, Cohen is also expected to take aim at Mike Pence, Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein in “Borat 2.” Deadline reported in September that Cohen risked his life on multiple occasions to film the “Borat” sequel, including wearing a bulletproof vest on at least two full days of filming.

The original “Borat” was a box office winner in 2006, grossing over $260 million worldwide. Cohen won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, and the film went on to land an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 79th Academy Awards. The film is often referred to as one of the best comedy films of the 21st century.

“Borat 2” will be released October 23 on Amazon Prime. Watch the official trailer for the comedy sequel in the video below.

Randy Rainbow: I Won’t Vote Trump

Randy Rainbow

***NEW VIDEO***
Repeat after me: #IWontVoteTrump ✋🏻
This one’s a fundraiser on YouTube for

HeadCount

which uses music and culture to engage Americans with democracy. Donate if you can at the link below and visit Headcount.org to #RegisterToVote or verify your address! 🗳🇺🇸🧚🏻🎶

To Beat Trump, Mock Him

New York Times – Opinion

The lesson from pro-democracy fighters abroad: Humor deflates authoritarian rulers.

By Nicholas Kristof , Opinion Columnist               September 26, 2020

Credit…Andrew Aitchison/In Pictures, via Getty Images

 

Can critics of President Trump learn something from pro-democracy movements in other countries?

Most Americans don’t have much experience confronting authoritarian rulers, but people around the globe are veterans of such struggles. And the most important lesson arguably is “laughtivism”: the power of mockery.

Denouncing dictators has its place, but sly wit sometimes deflates them more effectively. Shaking one’s fist at a leader doesn’t win people over as much as making that leader a laughingstock.

“Every joke is a tiny revolution,” George Orwell wrote in 1945.

American progressives have learned by now that frontal attacks aren’t always effective against Trump. Impeaching Trump seemed to elevate him in the polls. A majority of Americans agree in a Quinnipiac poll that Trump is a racist, yet he still may win re-election. Journalists count Trump’s deceptions (more than 20,000 since he assumed the presidency) and chronicle accusations of sexual misconduct against him (26 so far), yet he seems coated with Teflon: Nothing sticks.

America has had “Baby Trump” balloons, “Saturday Night Live” skits and streams of Trump memes and jokes. But all in all, Trump opponents tend to score higher on volume than on wit. So, having covered pro-democracy campaigns in many other countries, I suggest that Americans aghast at Trump absorb a lesson from abroad: Authoritarians are pompous creatures with monstrous egos and so tend to be particularly vulnerable to humor. They look mighty but are often balloons in need of a sharp pin.

Even before it collapsed, the moral authority of the Soviet Union had been hollowed out by endless jokes. In one, a secret policeman asks another, “What do you think of the regime?” Nervously, the second policeman replies, “The same as you, comrade.” At that point the first one pulls out handcuffs and says, “In that case, it is my duty to arrest you.”

Are the stakes too serious to laugh? Does cracking jokes devalue a democracy struggle? I don’t think so. One of the most successful examples of laughtivism came two decades ago when university students took on the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. Milosevic committed genocide and isn’t an obvious target of humor — but the students’ wit helped topple him.

A typical stunt: They taped a picture of Milosevic on the side of a barrel and invited passers-by to take a swing at it with a baseball bat. The resulting photos of the police “arresting” the barrel and hauling it away were widely publicized and made Milosevic seem less mighty and more ridiculous. In 2000, Milosevic was ousted and handed over to an international tribunal to be tried for war crimes.

Here in the United States, we’ve also seen the power of wit. One of the most effective critics of “Boss Tweed” and Tammany Hall in the 19th century was Thomas Nast, the cartoonist. And Senator Joseph McCarthy’s nemesis, and the man who coined the term “McCarthyism,” was the cartoonist Herblock.

(Don’t tell my editors, but cartoonists, now an endangered species, are often more incisive social and political critics than columnists.)

In South Africa, the cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro skewered President Jacob Zuma so deftly and often that he was arguably one reason Zuma was forced to resign in 2018. Zuma sued Shapiro, whose response was a cartoon in which Zuma rages that he will sue for “damage to my reputation.” Shapiro coolly responds, “Would that be your reputation as a disgraced chauvinist demagogue who can’t control his sexual urges and who thinks a shower prevents AIDS?”

In Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Razak was toppled the same year in part because of the work of another cartoonist, Zulkiflee Anwar Haque, who persevered despite prosecutions and physical attacks.

That’s one gauge of the power of humor: Dictators fear mockery. The Committee to Protect Journalists says it has intervened this year alone to defend seven cartoonists around the world who were arrested, threatened with prosecution or threatened with death.

In Russia, the dissident Aleksei Navalny uses withering sarcasm in his efforts to bring democracy to Russia. Navalny, now recovering in Germany from what apparently was an attempt by Russian officials to murder him with Novichok nerve gas, responded to Russian suggestions that he had poisoned himself:

“I boiled Novichok in the kitchen, quietly took a sip of it in the plane and fell into a coma,” he wrote on Instagram. “Ending up in an Omsk morgue where the cause of death would be listed as ‘lived long enough’ was the ultimate goal of my cunning plan. But Putin outplayed me.”

Leaders like Trump who pose as religious are particularly easy to skewer, as Iranians have shown in their use of humor to highlight the hypocrisy of their own mullahs. Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi is still nicknamed “Crocodile” because of a cartoon many years ago by Nik Kowsar, who now lives in exile in America because hard-liners arrested him and threatened to murder him.

No, I won’t be drawing cartoons or trying stand-up. I know my limitations. But I’m frustrated by the lack of traction that earnest critiques of Trump get, and I think it’s useful to learn lessons about how people abroad challenged authoritarians and pointed out their hypocrisy with the simple precision of mockery.

I’m also frustrated that some forceful criticisms of Trump sometimes come across to undecided voters as strident or over the top. People like me are accused of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and our arguments are dismissed precisely because they are so fervent

Something similar happens in many countries. Citizens who aren’t political are often wary of pro-democracy leaders who are perceived as radical, as irreligious or as over-educated elitists. But those ordinary citizens appreciate a joke, so humor becomes a way to win them over.

“The grins of the people are the nightmares of the dictators,” wrote Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while in prison. He is best-known for his eloquent essays calling for democracy, but he argued that humor is also essential in undermining authoritarian rulers.

Liu generously added — and this may be relevant to a polarized country like the United States — that satirizing an authoritarian is good for the nation because it makes the eventual downfall and transition softer and less violent.

“A clown needs less revenge than a monster does,” he observed.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF’S NEWSLETTER: Get a behind-the-scenes look at Nick’s gritty journalism as he travels around the United States and the world.

Thank you, Justice Ginsburg.

Image may contain: 1 person, sitting and indoor

Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer at Facebook.
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.”
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from Columbia Law School in 1959, she was first in her class – and she couldn’t find a job. So she did what brilliant, ambitious women have done throughout history when the doors of power slammed in their faces: she found another way.
Thousands of state and federal laws treated women like second-class citizens. Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, I will change that, even if I have to do it one case at a time.
She argued and won FIVE landmark gender equality cases before the Supreme Court. So many women have been able to pursue our dreams and exercise our rights as equal citizens because of her.
As a Supreme Court justice, she went even further. LGBTQ equality. Voting rights. The rights and dignity of immigrants. Access to healthcare. Protecting the environment. She was principled, passionate – and she fought to the end.
I don’t know what my life would look like without Ruth Bader Ginsburg fighting for me and all women. More than anything else, tonight, I am grateful.
Thank you, Justice Ginsburg.
Democrat’s  War Room
Image may contain: 1 person, sitting, shoes and indoor
Bruce Lindner
When the announcement came that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away yesterday, my iPad went berserk. Over a hundred Facebook friends sent me private messages within the first few minutes. They ran the gamut from “We’re so screwed now,” to “It’s all over for America,” to “It was nice while it lasted.” I read the first few and decided that I needed a few hours of space, lest I lose a few friends. So I played some music. I still haven’t even read most of them, and probably won’t for a few days. I have little appetite for negativity.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg led a life of constantly swimming upstream. Everything from institutionalized sexism, misogyny, ignorance, bigotry, anti-Semitism, and for her final curtain, five bouts with various types of cancer. FIVE.
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Throughout it all, never did she throw up her hands and say; “That’s it, I’m so screwed.” or “My life was nice while it lasted.” To the contrary, she never, EVER complained. Instead, she fought. Because she knew the ultimate beneficiaries of her battles weren’t just herself. They were us.
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I realize these are depressing times, and I confess that I get depressed too. But I have ZERO tolerance for defeatism. Do *NOT* message me to tell me how bleak your world is. What makes you think I want to hear it?
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If RBG showed us anything, it’s that defeatism is for the meek. And the meek are the lambs that conservatives eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
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Don’t be meek. Be like RBG. Be STRONG. She was all of 5’1” tall, and maybe 110 pounds soaking wet. Yet never in her eighty-seven years did she say to herself or anybody else; “It’s pointless to fight on.”
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Now is the time for Democrats to assume the role of the wolf. No more lambs. And Goddamnit, don’t you DARE message me with your “woe is me” attitude.
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Be like Ruth. If for no one else’s sake, do it for our daughters.
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Image may contain: 12 people, text that says 'R.B.G.'

Samuel L. Jackson Hits Donald Trump’s Supporters With A Damning Question

HuffPost – Politics

Samuel L. Jackson Hits Donald Trump’s Supporters With A Damning Question

Lee Moran                         

 

Samuel L. Jackson— never shy about slamming Donald Trump— asked a damning question about the president’s supporters on Friday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

The actor, who was standing in for comedian Jimmy Kimmel as guest host, listed just some of the scandals that Trump has caused in only the last week.

He then asked: “Who can still be voting for this guy after all the stuff that has gone down on his watch?”

“The fact of the matter is that Donald Trump is dangerous for our country,” Jackson later added, cutting to a spoof Trump campaign ad detailing the possible side effects of voting for the president.

Plastic Doesn’t Actually Get Recycled Like You Think It Does

Plastic Doesn’t Actually Get Recycled Like You Think It Does

Madison Vanderberg                      

Most of the plastic you put in the recycling bin is just going to a landfill

If you live anywhere in America, chances are you have between one and three trash bins outside your home or apartment and one of those is designated for recycling. However, if you’ve been dutifully washing, drying, and recycling all the plastic that comes in and out of your home, it might all be for naught. Over 350 million metric tons of plastic are produced annually across the world, but according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, only 14-18% of that is actually recycled. But why? Because it’s cheaper to make new plastic than it is to recycle it.

Related: Americans don’t know how to recycle

Essentially, we’ve been sold a lie about recycling thanks to marketing. It makes us feel good to know that recycling exists, but when it comes to plastic, it just goes to the landfill or is burned. Up until two years ago, the U.S. sent the majority of its plastic to Chinese landfills, but now they just land in domestic dumps. It would appear that this is a new problem since China cut off our plastic chain, but according to a new NRP expose, the plastics industry has known about this issue all along.

<a href="https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-material-specific-data" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:EPA.gov" class="link rapid-noclick-resp">EPA.gov</a>
EPA.gov

According to research from NPR and PBS, the plastic industry sold the public on the idea that the majority of plastic could be recycled, despite knowing it wouldn’t be economically feasible to do so and while making billions of dollars making new plastic. Basically, all used plastic can technically be recycled into new things, but sorting it out is more expensive than just making brand new plastic items from oil and gas. Also, plastic degrades each time it’s reused, so it can only actually be reused once or twice. New plastic is cheaper to produce and of better quality, so there’s literally no financial incentive to recycle old plastic, now add powerful lobbyists for the major oil companies into the mix and well.. that’s why we don’t recycle enough plastic.

Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

 

As for those ubiquitous recycle symbols on the side of plastic containers, industry officials told NPR that the recycle code seen on plastic items is to help recycling facilities sort plastic, but that information hasn’t been clarified to the consumer at all. Ask any person what the recycle symbol means, and most people would tell you that means the plastic is safe to go in the recycling bin. In fact, Earth911 says that if you want to know which plastics you can actually toss in your curbside bin, you have to call your local recycling service provider, as the types of plastics accepted differ by location. For example, those plastic clamshells that strawberries come in during the summer? That’s just one example of something you aren’t supposed to throw in the recycling bin. But since nobody knows which plastics should actually be going to their local recycling center, everyone throws all sorts of different plastic into their recycle bins and it all arrives at the plant and there is no feasible way to sort through it all that makes sense financially. So? Most of that plastic remains unsorted and ends up in a landfill.

As more people are starting to get privy to the plastic disaster, a brand new plastics plant in Texas claims they will recycle 100% of the plastic it makes by the year 2040. Though they don’t know exactly how they’ll achieve that, Jim Becker, the vice president of sustainability for Chevron Phillips’ $6 billion plastics plant told NPR that “recycling has to get more efficient, more economic. We’ve got to do a better job, collecting the waste, sorting it. That’s going to be a huge effort.”

Despite the fact that environmentally-minded companies claim to be committed to developing new sorting and recycling methods, it could likely just be more marketing mumbo jumbo as The World Economic Forum expects plastic production to triple by 2050.

So what can you do? Well, nows a good time to invest in a reusable water bottle and start consuming fewer single-use plastic products.

Michael Moore: President Obama’s convention speech a work of art.

Michael Moore
Image may contain: 1 person, suit
‪With grace & a generous dose stinging ridicule, served up on a gold platter, Obama laid waste to the Trump presidency w/ a “WTF IS this?” and a “who the eff are YOU?” He summed up the simple essence of Trump: Lazy, stupid, dangerous, cruel, incompetent, a true threat to democracy, devoid of imagination, sociopath, psychopath, a cipher, a baby-man. In so many words. Wow‬. C’mon. Tonight. You gotta love Obama.

USA Today

Barack Obama gives scathing DNC speech: ‘Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t’

John Fritze and Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAY              August 20, 2020
Pres. Obama criticizes Pres. Trump, calls on Americans to vote in DNC remarks

https://youtu.be/bps3m4eFTuE

 

Former President Barack Obama offered some of his most pointed criticism of President Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, arguing that his successor turned the presidency into “one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.”

“What we do these next 76 days will echo through generations to come,” Obama said in one of the most closely watched addresses on the convention’s third night.

“I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies,” Obama said. “I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously, that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.

“But he never did,” he said.

Read USA TODAY’s live coverage: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris speak on the third night of the DNC

Though Obama has criticized Trump’s policies before, his remarks Wednesday were far more pointed – and personal. Obama rarely mentions the president by name – even as Trump has slammed his administration on a near-daily basis – but did so twice in his 19-minute speech.

“He has shown no interest in putting in the work, no interest in finding common ground, no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends,” Obama said in the live address delivered from Philadelphia.

“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t,” Obama said. “And the consequences of that failure are severe.”

Trump wasted no time firing back. Responding to excerpts of Obama’s remarks earlier in the day, Trump described Obama as “so ineffective, so terrible” as he offered an extended criticism of the Iran agreement intended to slow Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapons program.

“The reason I’m here is because of President Obama and Joe Biden,” he said.

Obama accused Trump of using the military as “political props” during Black Lives Matter protests in Washington.

Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, “understand that in this democracy, the commander in chief doesn’t use the men and women of our military, who are willing to risk everything to protect our nation, as political props to deploy against peaceful protesters on our own soil,” Obama said.

“They understand that political opponents aren’t ‘un-American’ just because they disagree with you, that a free press isn’t the ‘enemy’ but the way we hold officials accountable,” he said.

In June, Trump told governors to quell protests or he would deploy the military. Then he strolled through a park near the White House that had been forcefully cleared of protesters minutes earlier and brandished a Bible in a photo op in front of a church that had been damaged by protesters. The incident drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans and became a turning point in the way Trump characterized the Black Lives Matter protesters.

Obama, who burst into national politics with a memorable convention speech in 2004, hopes to rally the coalition of Black and young voters who twice propelled him to the Oval Office – many of whom stayed at home during the 2016 election.

The former president spoke fondly of his relationship with Biden while they were in office together, and his remarks were preceded by a video of Obama surprising Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a display intended to underscore their friendship.

“Twelve years ago, when I began my search for vice president, I didn’t know I’d end up finding a brother,” he said.

“Joe is a man who learned early on to treat every person he meets with respect and dignity. … That empathy, that decency, the belief that everybody counts, that’s who Joe is,” Obama said.

Obama said Biden’s advice helped propel many of his policies.

“For eight years, Joe was the last one in the room whenever I faced a big decision. He made me a better president – and he’s got the character and the experience to make us a better country,” Obama said.

Democrats hoped Obama would highlight Biden’s efforts on passing the 2009 health care law as well as overseeing the economic stimulus that helped the U.S. climb out of the Great Recession.

“Along with the experience needed to get things done, Joe and Kamala have concrete policies that will turn their vision of a better, fairer, stronger country into reality,” Obama said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Barack Obama says President Trump can’t do the job in fiery DNC speech

Brittany: How Can I Love God & Vote for Biden?

How Can I Love God & Vote for Biden?

By Brittany                 August 16th, 2020
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Right. I don’t know how to gracefully do this, so let’s just get into it.

I see so many memes about how you can’t possibly be a Christian and support Joe Biden. That you can’t be a Catholic and vote Democrat. That it’s Trump who is the leader who espouses the faith we should be voting for.

I read them and I think… what the actual hell? 

It is my faith that leads me to vote Democrat. It is growing up in the teachings of Jesuit Priests that have filled me with compassion for the displaced and fleeing, welcoming them to my country as my neighbor.

It’s my faith that taught me that every person, no matter the background or bank account, deserves food, shelter, and safety.

My faith has filled me with the belief that it’s not the tax breaks that will get me into heaven, but truly giving a shit about someone else, through every stage of their lives.

I remember  sitting in Mass as a child and listening to a homily about how we should approach every person we meet wearing a blindfold, offering love and compassion first, sight unseen. We are not entitled to their story. We are not owed justification or explanation of their choices.  We just love and accept them. And it empowered my soul.

Every human has value. Every human is equal. No person is illegal. Love is not a sin.

It feels weird talking about this. Christian blogging isn’t really my style, and if you asked me to draw a line representing my brand of religion, it’d admittedly be a giant scribble.

I’m not Mother Teresa but if you need me to define my level of religious zealous, I’d say I’m an “Are You There God It’s Me Margaret” Catholic. I was raised in Catholic school, I go to Mass when I can, but me and God talk daily.

But, my religion is not my faith. My soul has room for both science and my belief in God, and I do not struggle to house both.

Listen. Churches are filled with a whole mess of “isms.” The history of harm there is deep, and it’s not a stranger to cloaking itself in Jesus stickers to hide its bouts of hate.

I see it on a global scale, playing out in acts of war and oppression. But more importantly, I see it in my own life.

The people sitting in the first pew of my church, nodding their heads with the priest asking them to love one another- without reservation- who then going home and post violence and hate on their walls. I see them with their Pray to End Abortion signs in their yards, as they vote against policies that would feed and care for the very “lives” they scream to protect.

We are taught to give someone the shirt from our back, yet bemoan the burden of the undocumented.

We are taught to love thy neighbor, yet our rose garden is used to list and threaten our enemies.

We are taught to wash the feet of the poor, yet vote to cut those in need off at the knee.

And abortion. The cornerstone of every political and religious argument. How do I rectify that with my vote? A few ways.

First, I believe in the quote that I will now butcher: your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.  Meaning I use my personal faith to guide me, not legislate you.

Second, my strong belief in science and viability aside, the truth is, I too, pray to end abortion.

I pray that we are provided with the means and education to make safe decisions. I pray that men no longer rape or commit sexual violence against women. I pray that women never feel they have to make a decision about their bodies based on fear or financial means. I pray that a woman’s value is not tied to being a vessel.  And I pray that no matter what decisions they make with their doctors, that they are met with the respect and compassion we have been taught to give, blindfold on.

Abortion has been the dangling carrot coaxing the faithful into the voting booth while hunger, poverty, and oppression is sold to us as self-created issues we are not responsible for shouldering.

I see all this, and it’s easy to think, maybe I’m not made for religion. That I’m too pissed and weary to fight to keep both my faith and my convictions.

But then I remember that I can because I’m able. And just because my comfort in that pew is cyclical, my faith is not.

Empathy. Inclusion. Justice. Kindness.

You ask me how can I believe in God and vote Biden, and I say to you, how could I not?