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American Fascism, 1944 and Today

Henry Scott Wallace New York Times
My grandfather, Henry A. Wallace was asked to write about "The Danger of American Fascism." And in my view, he predicted President Trump.

Friday Nite Videos | May 12, 2017

Portside
Elizabeth Warren: Trump Fires the Investigators. John Lee Hooker - Serves Me Right to Suffer. John Oliver | Net Neutrality II. Mother's Day for Peace. Stephen Colbert Reacts to Trump Calling Him 'A No-Talent Guy'.

Tidbits - May 11, 2017 - Reader Comments: GOP Health Plan = Death Squads; Trump Tax Plan; Locked Up for Being Poor; Politics of Questioning Civil War and Slavery; Time to Save Net Neutrality; Building Bridges Across the Generation Gap: more...

Portside
Reader Comments: GOP Health Plan = Death Squads; Trump Tax Plan - More for the Rich; It Could Have Been Me (protests then and now); Locked Up for Being Poor; Politics of Questioning the Civil War (and the end of Slavery); Time to Save Net Neutrality; Announcements: Building Bridges Across the Generation Gap: Shared Struggles; Michelle Alexander and Susan Burton; Posters - Reclaim! Remain! Rebuild: Affordable Housing, Gentrification & Resistance; and more...

All in the Family Trump - The Empire Expands, Not the American One, But Trump’s

Nomi Prins Tom Dispatch
Voters got a package deal with Trump - the whole clan. First daughter Ivanka who, along with her husband, Jared Kushner, are key political advisers to the president. Both have offices in the White House. They have multiple security clearances, access to high-level leaders whenever they visit, and the perfect formula for the sort of brand-enhancement that now seems to come with such eminence. President Trump sees the Presidency like a business... a family business.

Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs

Jesse A. Myerson The Nation
Racism, fascism, and working-class Americans. If you’re looking for Trump’s implacable support, Texas trailer parks and Kentucky cabins are the wrong places to find it. Fascism develops over hands of poker in furnished basements, over the grill by the backyard pool, over beers on the commuter-rail ride back from the ball game—and in police stations and squad cars.

Walter O’Brien: The Man Who Never Returned

Peter Dreier and Jim Vrabel Jacobin
Most Americans know the song “MTA,” popularized by the Kingston Trio in 1959. It’s the one about a “man named Charlie” doomed to “ride forever ’neath the streets of Boston . . . the man who never returned.” What’s forgotten, however, is that the song was originally made for a left-wing political campaign. In 1949, the Boston People’s Artists wrote “MTA” for a left-wing candidate. The song became a hit — the man behind it disappeared.

Trump’s Constitutional Crisis

David Cole New York Review of Books
This is a constitutional crisis. The only way forward is to ensure an independent and credible investigation—whether by a special prosecutor or a select congressional committee or both—into the Russian meddling and the administration’s efforts to obstruct the inquiry into the Trump campaign’s ties to it. The notion that Trump and Sessions took action against Comey because of his unfairness to Clinton may be the most brazen effort at “fake news” or “alternative facts” yet

New South Korea leader Moon Jae-in willing to meet Kim in North

Justin McCurry The Guardian
As a former chief of staff under South Korea’s previous liberal president, Roh Moo-hyun, Moon is expected to consider goodwill measures towards the North, including the reopening of the jointly run Kaesong industrial park and the resumption of aid. Moon has also pledged to rein in the power of the chaebol – once-revered companies that are now seen as a symbol of the country’s domestic ills of corruption and inequality.

The Coup Against Comey: Three Takes

Moyers, Winship, Rosenberg, Apuzzo, Schiff Moyers & Company, NY Times, Washington Post
He’s attempting a coup. No joke. We need the truth. Now.