Michael the Ordinary

Just someone trying to get through the day. Veteran. A believer in science. Progressive to the bone. BLM 🇺🇦🇺🇦
RESIST 🗽🇺🇸🍑🌊🌊🌊

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

This is a huge problem. Jeffries says one thing but takes money to do another.

[It's politics @uspolitics1111]

Jennifer Welch : “We have to usher out the era of prostitution politics and that includes Chuck Schumer and that includes Hakeem Jeffries” 🔥

[Heather Thomas @HeatherThomasAF]

This just hurts my heart.

[Sarah @sarah_in_ny]

hey @AyannaPressley you’re up next bestie… letsss goo

[Surfer Dude 🏄‍♂️ @dudeonthebay]

Tim O’Hare, the Texas judge that closed 92 polling stations in Tarrant County, Texas to help give republicans an advantage is out. Voters gave him the boot and replaced him with a black woman. Gotta love that sweet justice.

[hasanabi @hasanthehun]

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[MeTaFrame @Meta0308]

She’s going to Challenge Hakeem Jeffries and I for one support her unquestionably!

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

BREAKING: Sen. Chris Van Hollen says he will challenge Chuck Schumer for Senate Majority Leader.

I support this move. Do you?

[Jamie Bonkiewicz @JamieBonkiewicz]

Chris Van Hollen just announced he’s challenging Chuck Schumer for Senate majority leader, and I am fucking here for it.

[Meidas_Charise Lee @charise_lee]

WHO THE PEOPLE WANT THEIR LEADERS TO BE
@ChrisVanHollen @RepPressley

Call your representatives
202-224-3121 Capitol Switchboard
sign the petition!
https://t.co/wj8fdqTqGP

Make Ayanna Pressley the Speaker of the House - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/C5DVV97duk via @Change

[I’m NotDevinsMom Moron @NotDevinsMom]

Daily Fuck Hakeem Jeffries Tweet.

Fuck Chuck Schumer too.

Do not elect them as leaders!

[Dr. Abdul El-Sayed @AbdulElSayed]

Democrats will have a 56-seat majority in the US Senate. We need to use it. Pass Medicare for All.

[Ayanna Pressley @AyannaPressley]

People in this country are ready for Medicare for All, abortion justice, reparations, abolishing ICE, and so much more. And that's what I'll be fighting for in a Democratic majority Congress.

If you agree, endorse our agenda at https://t.co/FUmumvzn7E.

[DJ Black @DJBlack21x]

Hakeem Jeffries FINALLY Has A Challenger!

Ayanna Pressley throwing her hat in the ring for Speaker of the House to challenge Hakeem Jeffries!

Ayanna Pressley for Speaker!

U.S. Democratic Socialists
https://t.co/mHaWk8BeGo

[Maj. (Ret.) Richard Ojeda @Ojeda4America]

The 120th Congress will impeach Pete Hegseth. Tick tock asshole.

[Mark Slapinski @mark_slapinski]

BREAKING: Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia plans to hold PUBLIC HEARINGS on the Trump / Epstein case.

Justice is coming!

[Chris Hedges @ChrisLynnHedges]

Power does not rest in the Congress. It does not rest in the courts. It does not even rest in the imperial presidency. It rests in the hands of Wall Street financiers, Silicon Valley, private equity firms, the fossil fuel industry, the predatory health care and pharmaceutical giants, agribusinesses and, most of all, the war industry.

No mainstream politician, including Bernie Sanders, dares utter a word against our entrenched militarism. If you do, you end up like Ralph Nader, who was turned into a pariah by a compliant media and our corporate-indentured political parties. Nader spoke the truth. He paid for his honesty.

We are about to witness the largest increase in war spending in American history with a proposed $1.5 trillion budget. The average taxpayer already shells out over $4,000 a year to the war industry as consumer and environmental agencies are dismantled, health care and education are defunded and programs such as Medicaid and food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) are slashed.

The new Pentagon budget will hand $58.5 billion to artificial intelligence and military command-and-control centers and see the effective merging of the United States and Israeli military industrial complexes. Seventy-four percent of the increase in the proposed $1.5 trillion budget will go to private contractors, including those who are building massive data centers on military bases.

None of this is good for us or good for the planet. The Pentagon, powered by the fossil fuel industry, is the world’s largest institutional polluter, emitting an estimated 66 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2024.

Americans, meanwhile, struggle with rising prices — nearly 30 percent of people go into debt to buy groceries. An estimated 114,174. Americans die each year due to lack of health insurance or inadequate health care while a single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and reduce annual health expenditures by $1.04 trillion, or nearly 20 percent. Twenty-five percent of Americans are functionally unemployed. The minimum wage remains frozen, despite Democratic Party promises to raise it, at $ 7.25 an hour.

The elites use war not only for personal enrichment, but to stifle class conflict.

War, as W.E.B. Du Bois said, diverts the poor from their real interests. It funnels national frustrations into the “heroic” battle against a common enemy. The nationalist cant, with its endemic racism, seduces those who are alienated or on the margins of society into feeling they suddenly belong. It entices them to sacrifice themselves for a “noble” cause. They become the architects of their own enslavement. They march like sheep into war’s purgatory.

By the time they wake up, it is too late. They are cast aside, as so many of our veterans have painfully discovered, like human refuse.

But as a tactic to consolidate power and enrich the billionaire class, it is unbeatable.

Wars will only be curtailed, if not halted, when we nationalize the weapons industry and dramatically reduce the military budget. Until then, nothing, absolutely nothing, will change.

Indeed, things will only get worse.

No one in Congress — or any other branch of government — will do this for us.

The masters of war sitting in the boardrooms of Boeing, General Dynamics or Northrop Grumman are not praying for peace in the Middle East or coexistence with China and Russia. The generals — who build their careers by orchestrating wars and post military careers enriching themselves working for defense contractors — are not seeking a cessation of global conflicts. They are seeking hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars and government debt to fuel the self-defeating cycle of endless war.

The corporate vultures — especially the war makers — are, as I write, descending on Congress. They are meeting with Democratic Party leaders and holding out promises of millions in cash. They will corrupt, neutralize and compromise most. They will destroy the careers of the very few who refuse to do their bidding.

They hold the real power. They have no intention of surrendering it.

The manufacturing of weapons systems and the waging of war are the chief activities of the U.S. government. It is no longer one among other means of advancing the national interest. War and violence are how we speak to the rest of the world.

The “shadow world,” — as the author Andrew Feinstein calls it in his book on the global arms trade — is defined by staggering levels of corruption, deception and senseless death. It is lawless and unregulated. Its criminal activities, cannibalization of national budgets and secrecy are sanctified in the name of “national security.”

Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Airbus, Rheinmetall and ThyssenKrupp, along with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and Exxon, are the state.

We, including our political class, are the vassals.

Read my my full column, 'The Enemy at Home' on Substack at the link below:

[Ayanna Pressley @AyannaPressley]

Do you agree? We need to show that this agenda has strong support. Sign our petition at https://t.co/uD1q3pOb0z

[Michelle @Michell33650674]

LET'S DO THIS, AMERICA! SIGN EVERY PETITION! KEEP THOSE CALLS TO CONGRESS GOING! NO MORE SCHUMER AND JEFFRIES! WE WANT VAN HOLLEN AND PRESSLEY!