RedLighthouse

Passionate about disability rights advocacy. Free lance researcher.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

🚨NEW: How Medicare For All Transformed America’s Biggest Senate Race

@MalloryMcMorrow began parroting Hillary Clinton’s opposition to Medicare For All — and then she quickly plummeted in polls & was blasted out of the race.

A huge cautionary tale for corporate Dems 👇

[RedLighthouse @ctmccu]

We need an expanded and improved #MedicareForAll

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

ACA health insurance premiums went up 20% this year.

They’re set to go up another 14% next year.

Health insurance is not healthcare.
It’s a financial and bureaucratic barrier to accessing care, designed to exploit sick people for profit.

Demand Medicare for All.
https://t.co/vbJcLjUA5U

[Basel Musharbash @musharbash_b]

https://t.co/HrFHtKzCQQ

[Basel Musharbash @musharbash_b]

1. Neera Tanden worked for Bill Clinton and still celebrates Bill Clinton
2. Neera Tanden supported Andrew Cuomo for Mayor of New York
3. Neera Tanden supported Eric Swalwell for Governor of California
4. Neera Tanden hired Larry Summers at her think tank
5. Neera Tanden supported Anthony Weiner
6. . . . Should I keep going?

[RedLighthouse @ctmccu]

“Multiple stakeholder groups… from AIPAC to Neera Tanden to crypto lobbyists explicitly said this is their moment to win an internal factional dispute over policy. …[it’s] wrong. It is disrespectful to voters, to assault victims, the wrongly accused & to the political process.”

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

There are really two issues here, and they are distinct. One part of it is gray, the other is very black and white.

Let's start with the gray area. How does one handle allegations of heinous behavior against politicians running for office? Whether one believes the allegations against Platner clearly conditions one's approach, but I think it's reasonable to believe these allegations and reasonable not to believe allegations.

It would be problematic to have a standard for politicians that they must be proved guilty in a court of law for a claim to have an impact, since they are seeking power and you should have a higher standard.

That said, it is also pretty obvious that people associated with wealth and power (Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Andrew Cuomo, et al) get away with this shit, while Al Franken was clearly falsely accused by an operation organized by Roger Stone. So you can't believe everything. False allegations are real, and they tend to be orchestrated. What @ryangrim just reported adds some context here that makes the stories a tad harder to believe, but plenty will still see the allegations as credible.

So again, gray.

The second is black and white. Graham Platner won on a platform of populist economic and foreign policy, and 70% of Maine Democrats picked him. Those voters deserve to have their wishes honored.

I do not know exactly how to ensure that those wishes are honored, but I know how to make sure they are not. And that is, have a suspiciously timed set of misleading stories alleging wrongdoing, followed by bunch of crypto-funded Maine Dem insiders demanding in response that they get to cut out the Platner voters and volunteers from any role in choosing a successor. At the same time, argue that anyone who ever supported Platner should have their careers destroyed, or lose influence over policy goals that have zero to do with the alleged bad acts.

I think anyone who thinks these the assault allegations matter should have made it clear that the voters should have their wishes honored in whatever happens next. And that means they should have demanded that the nominee should have a populist economic and foreign policy platform, matching Platner's. They should also have made it clear that the responsibility for any bad personal actions belongs to Platner alone. If that were the path they were on, then it would be clear that the assault allegations are what matters. However, they did not do that. They made it clear that platform the voters picked would not be an important factor in what happens next.

Multiple stakeholder groups and leaders, from AIPAC to Neera Tanden to crypto lobbyists, explicitly said this is their moment to win an internal factional dispute over policy. And that is wrong. It is disrespectful to voters, to assault victims and the wrongly accused, and to the political process.

And that point is not a gray area, it is black and white. https://t.co/3DCmUn7fY6

[RedLighthouse @ctmccu]

“…the actual immoral behavior at issue here is the genocide in Gaza, the corruption of DOGE and Musk, and the neoliberal turn in American politics for 40 years that has destroyed our faith in society and each other.”

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Since lots of gossips are now gunning for me, I'm redoing this thread. It's clear something messed up happened in Platner's relationships, and he hasn't hidden that. But there's a big difference between 'normal people in bad relationships who hate each other' and 'crime.'

So let's be adults. This is a political attack.

Top Maine Democratic Party donors in recent years are Reid Hoffman, Haim Saban, and David Ellison. David Ellison! As in the Trump ally who fired Stephen Colbert and is taking over TikTok, CBS News, and CNN. These names should mean something. Saban may be the single most important AIPAC donor in the Democratic Party.

Another big donor to the Maine Democratic Party is the founder of Zynga, Marc Pincus, who said in 2024 that "an attack on Amazon is an attack on America." It goes beyond big tech and Wall Street. Crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried’s partner Nishad Singh at FTX gave $100k to the Maine Democratic Party in 2022.

The insiders running the party are the people funded through these streams of revenue, they are the ones dealing with the donors and currying favor with them. And while I will not speak out of school, the Maine Democratic establishment simply cannot be trusted and that is well-known.

Platner may be a fatally weakened candidate, that is for others to decide. It's a wave year in a blue state, but I get that Susan Collins is a strong incumbent. Winning this Senate seat matters, so I get why people might see value in ditching him. I generally think that polls and electoral guesses are mechanisms to get ordinary voters to focus on anything but policy. It's a disciplining mechanism, since no one can tell the future. But it's not crazy to see Platner as a poor candidate.

Let's be clear, the goal of pushing Platner aside is to destroy the agenda on which he was elected, which is about taming oligarchy and reorienting us from endless war. That is why the Maine Democrats aren't saying 'let's respect Platner voters and transition to someone else,' they are taking a sanctimonious 'he gets NO say in ANYTHING.' Those are not the actions of people who want to win a Senate seat, those are the actions of nasty insiders claiming factional power for themselves.

If Platner steps down, he will be characterized as a deviant, and that's just how it'll be forever. True or not. And everyone will be tarred as supportive of immoral behavior. It doesn't matter if you are a liberal, centrist, young, old, whatever. People are saying the Bulwark, a centrist outlet started by ex-Republicans who were skeptical of Platner, are tarred by this. Punchbowl is reporting that Senate progressives will never have credibility going forward. The ploy here is obvious.

That is, even though the actual immoral behavior at issue here is the genocide in Gaza, the corruption of DOGE and Musk, and the neoliberal turn in American politics for 40 years that has destroyed our faith in society and each other.

Platner has been consistent about his platform, and there's no reason to assume that will change. 70% of Maine Democrats picked him as their candidate, and he has the right to represent their views. So he should stay in the race or, if he feels he cannot win, leave on terms that will ensure his platform, and not that of Maine Dem Party oligarch donors, is the one on the ballot in November. The Maine Dem establishment cannot be trusted.

And frankly, this kind of ugly scenario is how power works. They make ordinary people pick among ugly scenarios, and then they make it seem like the obvious path is the one that accords more power and wealth to oligarchs. And if you don't choose that one, you're a bad person who deserves approbation and scorn. That's why I had to delete the original thread and rewrite it, because endless numbers of reporter gossips - who don't report on government policy - are using this extremely obvious ratfucking to try and destroy people like me telling you the truth.

[BreakThrough News @BTnewsroom]

"To not have oil – that translates to babies dying in the NICU. That's elderly people not being able to use ventilators."

@abbymartin explains how the "sadistic and cruel" US fuel blockade on Cuba is killing children and other vulnerable people.

Watch BT and Martin's feature documentary "Cuba After Castro," featuring the first interview with President Miguel Díaz-Canel by an American journalist – now streaming on Youtube.

[Daily Mail @DailyMail]

Deadly bacteria found in major US city's water system traced to Mark Zuckerberg's $800m data center https://t.co/lywNpFmD7c

[Haydn, 🇵🇸 @bilbosfootcomb]

>he doesn’t know it’s a direct quote from a video of a settler actively stealing someone’s home in front of them and that the guy in the picture is the one saying the quote

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

🚨NEW: How elite Dems in D.C. and their big donors are trying to weaponize Graham Platner’s withdrawal to pull off a corporate coup and thwart the anti-oligarch policy demands of the largest primary vote in Maine’s history.

Find the story at LeverNews [dot] com — and pass it on

[Read Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) @JPHilllllll]

I think people are still underestimating the political effects this wave of anti-datacenter rage will have.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Don’t let Israel normalize this, killing people every single day is NOT normal.

[euronews @euronews]

European Parliament to ask for probe into FIFA boss Infantino https://t.co/Lwe9VphjKD

[Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D. @RecTheRegime]

Rahm Emanuel's father, Dr. Benjamin M. Emanuel (born Benjamin Auerbach in Jerusalem in 1927), was a member of the Irgun, a zionist paramilitary organization active in Mandatory Palestine during the 1940s. They were deemed terrorists. If Rahm Emanuel is the Democrats' standard bearer re: israel, then the Dems are no less lost than the Republicans.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

Democrats had the presidency and a near supermajority and decided to block single-payer and a public option.

I know that people like you rely on everyone forgetting their entire world every 15 minutes, but that happened.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

Days after Biden’s disastrous debate, Neera was still helping cover up Biden’s cognitive decline that ended up handing the election to Trump…and yet she’s lecturing people. As I said — she is the world historic unmatched GOAT of shamelessness. The Michael Jordan of the craft.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

I’m guessing some Maine primary voters were suspicious of any candidate the state & national Dem Party establishment anointed because some of them have been recently reminded of who that establishment had spent years touting as a great, honorable Maine leader in the Senate

[Ajamu Baraka @ajamubaraka]

Even the European federation is appalled by FIFA's blatant corruption as FIFA-gate unfolds.
https://t.co/8YA62YxUmV UEFA v FIFA

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

If you're willing to take this many bribes in the US, the oligarchy makes you president.

[Hannah Cox @HannahDCox]

This Mitch McConnell situation is CRAZY.

I've been waiting for confirmation on the situation but his camp is keeping details locked down. So here's what we know:

1. He's been hospitalized for some time.

2. His highly connected Chinese wife left the country for high level meetings with the CCP after his medical emergency happened.

3. No one knows if he's conscious, with some rumors beginning to circulate that he's brain dead and on life support.

4. There's already an election to replace him happening this Fall, but Kentucky law calls for a special election for senators unable to complete their terms vs. a governor appointee. So if he is incapacitated, someone else likely would be elected to finish out his term through January. Speculators are suggesting the party doesn't want to deal with that process and is thus keeping his condition quiet.

This is just the latest in a string of incidents where congressional leaders have disappeared and it's inexcusable. We need age limits immediately - having people this old and unhealthy in power is a national security threat.