Two Years

Frightened enough yet ?

So, we're just one week into the Trump presidency, and any remaining doubt is gone (Forget punching Nazis, next arsehole to suggest we should give him a chance, gets it): America has elected an utterly insane, emotionally unstable narcissistic child & Fascist as President.  USA! USA! USA!

I tweeted out recently a prediction that the Congressional GOP would never impeach Trump, which might seem a tad premature for just days into his presidency, what with all the rumours swirling about GOP concerns for his mental health, and others predicting impeachment, whether within a six-month timeframe, immediately after the midterms, or whenever.

I can't predict the future, obviously.  No-one can.  But nonetheless, I feel compelled to give my best guess as to how things play out from here, based upon my read of Trump, Dem. & GOP politicians, and the American public.  And while I hope I'm wrong, I very much believe that we are drifting into a Turkish or Russian style pseudo-democratic Authoritarian state, a 'strong man'-led defacto dictatorship.

Right now, we still have a nominal semi-democratic republic in the United States.  We still have, in theory, rule of law, and a written constitution with guaranteed rights & protections for ordinary citizens & residents. In theory, even as Trump and some around him (Can you say 'emoluments' ?) may be in violation of certain provisions thereof already.

But I don't think this transitional period will last long, and given Trump's rhetoric & executive actions, given that dressing-down of the media by Spicer and thinly veiled threats by Bannon, I don't think it's long before the crackdown on the media & on dissent generally kicks into high gear.  It's going to be an aggressive push to dismantle the norms. and the protections of American democracy, and I don't think either the media or general public are remotely ready for what is coming.

Personally, I think it all plays out over the next two years...before the midterms.  If change is to come, in whatever form, be that impeachment by the Republicans, a mass popular uprising, military coup, some sort or foreign intervention, or hell, while we're clutching at straws, act of G-d, I feel it comes in the next two years or not at all.  My prediction (and by all means call me out if I'm wrong), is that, if Trump survives to the midterms, the only way he leaves the White House, is in a wooden box.

And no, I still don't think the Republicans will impeach him.  My read of the greedy cowards & bullies in Congress is that a) they are almost to a man, in awe of the greater bully in Trump, and constitutionally disinclined to take him on, and b) that they see allowing a crazy person to sit in the White House as the price they have to pay for maintaining power, and a price they are more than willing to pay.

The GOP stood on the precipice of being wiped out prior to the last election.  Ideologically, politically the country is becoming more & more progressive over time, as also demographically the population becomes less & less white, and their most loyal voters (the Fox News demographic of largely older white males) die off.  This election was characterised by many, and I'd say accurately, as the last stand of the conservative white male, and having not only held on to power, but expanded it, with control of all three branches of the federal government, and a majority of governorships & statehouses, why the hell would the GOP ever risk giving it up again...possibly forever ?

In two years time, perhaps the Democrats run on opposition to Trump, on impeachment even. Perhaps there is a groundswell of popular support for this.  Meanwhile, where will the tattered remnants of the Voting Rights Act be, under Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions & a hard-right dominated Supreme Court ?  What will have happened to (the, if any) investigation into Crosscheck, and the irregularities of the last election, into the widespread attempts at voter-suppression ?  What will have happened to the already heavily gerrymandered districts, to the easily manipulable electronic voting-machines dotting the country ?  Don't be surprised if that groundswell of public support for the Democrats somehow translates into the Republicans massively outperforming expectations.  And don't expect any other elections, or other than sham affairs after that.

I say you have two years, America/Americans.  Two years in which anything could happen.  What you do, what you could do in that time, I don't know.  Maybe you find a way to fight back against creeping fascism, maybe you just learn to adapt...maybe you leave.  But I think your window to avoid an Erdoğan- or Putin-style autocracy is much smaller than you think.  I give it two years.

How I Would Vote

This blog...it still exists ?  Any road...

So, yeah, I don't have a vote in US elections. The whys & wherefores, the (in)justice in denying the vast majority of the global population a say in the governance of a country that acts as defacto ruler of the entire planet, never mind those within the US itself denied a vote, aside...

Who would I vote for in the US general election for President ?

I previously (aeons ago now) discussed having to choose between that theocratic loon Ted Cruz & fascist clown Donald Trump. And, despite some (I think, deserved) criticism of Bernie Sanders, anyone who's read what I've written here, or on Twitter, probably wouldn't be surprised to know that I was leaning towards Bernie Sanders. But...he didn't win.*

Gun to my head, Donald versus Hillary, was always going to be Hillary, Hillary the inevitable one, Hillary 'Her Time Has Come' Clinton, Hillary 'Guess it's time we elected a woman President, so why not her?' Clinton...Vomit !

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I'd like to see more third-party options & support in the US generally (bring on AV voting & abolition of the electoral college), but given a) The US's ridiculously archaic first-past-the-post system, and b) what an utter incompetent maniac Trump is/would be, I'd go along with most Bernie-leaning pundits (Sam Seders of the world, say), and agree that any responsible liberal-leaning voter in a so-called 'swing state' has to vote for Hillary, painful & unpleasant as it may/would be. 'Has to' as in, it's what I would do, what I would advise, what I would expect from anyone with any concern for the continuation of the republic whatsoever; You want to just burn the whole system down to the ground, and gamble on starting over, well I get that too, but...I kinda think yer nuts...

I've only recently decided what I would do, if I were voting in a non-swing state, which is a far more common scenario in a country so politically polarised, and with such corrupt partisan dominance of statehouses (which control electoral boundaries) as the United States.  And...

I'd write in Bernie Sanders.

Why ?

Firstly, obviously, he came far closer to addressing the economic, and to a lesser degree, environmental concerns, that are way at the top of my list for what should be the priorities of this election.

No, I don't dismiss ISIS or Islamic Extremism generally, Yes, I have concerns about the rise & regional hegemony of the PRC, Yes, I even have some concerns about Russia under Putin, though I will maintain that that threat is far overstated, and has far more to do with the Russophobic attitude of Western politicians who grew up as children of the Cold War than anything else. But, after decades of Reaganomics, of Thatcherite hyper-capitalistic insanity, I consider wealth- & income-inequality far greater concerns**, never mind the fact that in our pursuit of infinite economic expansion, on a planet of very finite resources, we are destroying the ability of the planet to sustain human life !

Secondly, Yes it would be a protest-vote. Unfollow me or block me on Twitter if you must Hill-bots, but the way the DNC planned for an inevitable coronation of HRC far in advance of the primaries, and their obvious bias & manipulations against Bernie Sanders disgust me.

I obviously would consider (in any election) a third-party vote, but in this specific case, I feel that writing in Bernie's name would be the only option (for me), because it is the only unambiguous way to protest, the only way that cannot possibly be misinterpreted.

A vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, could just mean that you like the Libertarians, agree with the Greens, take seriously either of those (IMO) completely unserious candidates. A vote for Donald Trump could mean that you are protesting against a corrupt establishment, or equally, that you are one of the fringier alt-right contingent who identity with white nationalism, favouring swastika-themed avatars and Neo-Nazi numerical code (88, asf.) in social media, alongside jokes about gassing Jews... And, staying home, could just mean that you couldn't get time off work, or, and I'm sure this will be mentioned over and over again, that you're a lazy millennial, who just couldn't be arsed...

Writing in Bernie's name on the other hand says:

• This is a vote you otherwise could have had
• I reject utterly the DNC's handling of the primaries
• I reject the establishment candidate you foisted upon the party (in a year of anti-establishment frustration/desperation) and upon the country (despite her huge national unpopularity)
• I reject Bernie's endorsement of same (Yes, a middle finger, a direct FU to Bernie himself)
• I want to send a message that, if you somehow lose to Donald Trump...(to Don-ald f'ing TRUMP...) it is 100% on you. You being the DNC. You being Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. You being that lifelong Goldwater girl, Hillary Rodham Clinton herself.

I won't get to make even that meagre protest, even that pathetic act of resistance against the elites that are strangling our middle classes, killing our poor, destroying our entire planet in the name of putting infinite growth and the profit of billionaires ahead of all other concerns, all other actual humans...All I can do is, for the record, speak my mind here, on Twitter, elsewhere on social media. It's almost certainly all for nowt, but I somehow feel an obligation to exercise my voice in place of that vote where it's otherwise denied.



* Voter-rolls purged, polling-places closed, debates scheduled on holidays, against major sporting-events, efforts to limit independents registering as Democrats, proclaiming Hillary's victory whilst the single largest state had yet to vote.....I'm not going to go here into all the ways one could argue against whether Hillary actually...or fairly won...

** Plutocracy and concentration of wealth, also being inherent corrupting factors in a democracy, inherent threats to the sustainability or integrity of Democracy itself.

Bernie, Bernie, Bernie

First off, to be quite clear, I don't like Hillary Clinton.  I don't trust Hillary Clinton, and never have.  I see Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton as well for that matter, as the very representation of the right-wing corporate takeover of the Democratic Party*.  I fear the very idea of Hillary Clinton as president, though not nearly so much so as the multitude of maniacs running for the Republican nomination.  I am not pro-Hillary or in any way inherently anti-Bernie.  And other, than that with his particular support amongst younger progressives, I may skew slightly older, I am generally exactly in line demographically with the majority of his supporters, and ideologically, if anything, perhaps a little to his left.  I like Bernie Sanders.  I support most of his economic proposals.  But....


So...Bernie Sanders.  I mentioned him a few times last year, including my praise of a speech he gave at Liberty University, in which I mentioned again his continuing failure to break out of his largely white support-base, a subject I had discussed in one of my earlier mentions of his candidacy also.  When I wrote the latter, I certainly never expected Sanders to still be running so strongly in the race by now, days away from the Iowa Caucus, let alone seemingly with a shot at winning the early primaries, if not the nomination for the Democratic Party for the presidency.

A lot of time has passed since then, there's been a lot of discussion amongst the pundit-classes about Sanders, there have been a few** debates and townhalls between the five, then three*** candidates on the Democratic side, and Bernie even found time to give a major speech on so-called 'Democratic Socialism' (in which he continued his apparent complete confusion between mainstream Social Democratic policy, and the attainment of a purely Socialist society, with public ownership of the means of production by democratic methods).  So much time, and perhaps the reason I haven't felt compelled to add anything here is that...my opinion of Sanders hasn't changed a jot.

I'm a little bit more optimistic with the polls coming out that some element of Sanders' Occupy Wall Street-style rhetoric and progressive economic policies could have a long-term impact on policy and direction for the Democratic party, but I still think Clinton will win the nomination, and I still can't see Sanders becoming president, even if he were to clinch the nomination, despite Clinton's monetary advantage, establishment-connections, and early lead in super-delegates.  And that's despite what is happening with the Republican nomination, currently being contested primarily between a far-right bomb-throwing theocratic ideologue, and an apparent out-and-out fascist.

I've watched Sanders give the same speech, the same talking points over and over and over again.  Wall Street, corruption, the one percent, only developed nation without universal healthcare, free college, the middle class, hard working Americans, economic inequality, fairness, too much money in politics, political revolution...  I've heard the breathless praise from his supporters, be they on Twitter or in independent media.  I've watched the fucking debates, I've seen the man's style, I've seen the large (mostly white) crowds he attracts, and I've heard over and over again how I should 'feel the Bern.'

Except I don't.  Never liked the slogan, never felt it six months to a year back, when his candidacy seemed a harmless irrelevancy, and still not feeling it now.  I still see an angry old white guy shouting platitudes at the audience, an aged social warrior whose lifelong-rhetoric happens to now, in his mid-seventies, match the popular zeitgeist of the post-Great Recession era.  I don't see a great leader, I don't see a future president, I don't see any evidence of this political revolution he wants, no matter how much enthusiasm he may inspire amongst college-students.  I don't see, perhaps more importantly, any evolution, even having gone through the protests and conflicts with Black Lives Matter protesters, of Bernie Sanders from a walking OWS-parody into a serious general-election candidate for the presidency.

It's almost as if he still doesn't quite take it seriously, close as he's getting, as if like Carly Fiorina on the Republican side, he were really running for a VP slot, or like Ben Carson or Mike Huckabee, just wanting to sell a book.  Almost, but not quite.  I think he must genuinely believe there's going to a mass uprising of Americans any time now in support of this great progressive revolution he keeps going on about.  Any time now.  As if almost half the country's electorate weren't in thrall to the right-wing radicalism of Tea Party Republicans.  As if in denial about his continuing inability to make inroads in support amongst blacks, and other peoples of colour.  As if forgetting the fact that older voters tend to have famously high turnout, and younger college-age voters notoriously low turnout.

We had a presidential candidate running on a quite progressive series of promises (some of which he has managed to keep, some not) back in 2008, with the slogan of 'Hope and Change'.  An extraordinarily well-spoken and charismatic candidate, who united white progressives, members of the Democratic establishment, blacks and Hispanics, rich and poor, the LGBT community, the young & the older.  If Barack Obama hadn't been able to assemble the broad coalition of support he did, hadn't especially been able to achieve the historically high turnout amongst black voters, what are the chances he would have got near the presidency ?  Sanders isn't remotely the charismatic unifying figure Obama managed to be back in 2008, and a coalition of young college-age progressives and white progressives simply isn't going to cut it, whatever the pollsters may say.

The right in American politics is far more motivated, far angrier, historically more likely to turn out, and likely to represent a very solid potent political bloc, unless Donald Trump manages to somehow split the party.  The growing numbers who increasingly call themselves Independents (which would include myself as it happens) are harder to gauge, but I suspect that the majority of that growth is actually amongst Tea Partiers who eschew the label 'Republican', but would never ever ever vote for a Democrat.  As for the polling again, Donald Trump especially polls badly amongst self-identified Independents, but...people lie.  People lie about their politics all the times, especially to pollsters, and especially when it comes to matters such as race, which has become the most contentious element in the current Republican fearmongering rhetoric regarding various 'Others', such as Muslims, blacks, immigrants...

I want to believe that a President Donald Trump or Ted Cruz is a fantasy, but the longer I spend in the company of American politics, and the more I know of the American people, the less surprised, the less shocked I am when there is such amazing support for extreme right-wing demagogues.****  I really wouldn't rule out a maniac like Trump or Cruz getting elected, and, especially with a Republican Congress, and the likelihood to cement right-wing control of the Supreme Court for decades to come, the result of such a presidency would be utterly disastrous for the United States, and ultimately, the whole planet.  This upcoming election frankly scares the crap out of me, even as I want to believe that Sanders' policies, if not his actual candidacy have some chance in the future of the Democratic party.  Which I desperately do.

We're still for now in primary season, but Sanders needs to be defining himself more clearly on the likes of foreign policy.  As of this moment, after all this time, I haven't a clue what kind of president Sanders would be outside of economic justice, because it's...all...he...ever...fucking...talks about.  No matter what the question, what the context, always, always, always he pivots back to his comfort zone of talking about the 99% percent versus the 1%, as if incapable of talking about anything else.*****  I get it Bernie.  I agree.  You're talking to the converted here.  But Iran, Russia, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Saudia Arabia, Turkey, China ?  The migrants ?  ISIS ?  And I'm not going to get started on Black Lives Matter and racial justice.  'Not my wheelhouse' as they say.******  The latter, not even a matter for pivoting in the near future, as GE nears, but a pivot he needed to have made months ago, given Hillary's lead amongst black and minority ethnic voters.

If Sanders is serious, truly truly serious about running for President, I'd love to see him show it.  You need black voters, Bernie, you need older voters, you need to be addressing people's concerns about foreign policy, including terrorism, need to counter Hillary's claims of superior experience with something more than 'judgement' of voting against the War in Iraq.  And you need to understand, in the United States at least, with generations of right-wing corporatist brainwashing, that saying you are going to raise peoples' taxes, but blah...blah...blah...better off in the long term isn't enough, that accusations of being a 'socialist' isn't something you can shrug off, especially as you don't seem to understand (or perhaps care) what the term even fucking means...You need to explain again and again and again, even as you try to build a case for yourself as something more than a one-trick pony, something more than a one-issue candidate.  You signed up for this shit, you brought this on yourself, and your work is cut out for you now.  This if fucking serious, and the consequences, if as the Democratic candidate, you fuck up, utterly dire for the whole world.  I was familiar with 'Occupy' Bernie's rhetoric a year ago, but you need to evolve to face the full scope of the challenges ahead of you and truly 'bring it' if you're serious about this.  I want to be convinced.  By all means, make me feel the Bern...*******



* I'm inclined to think that as for Hillary herself, she never ceased to be a Goldwater Republican (which would admittedly put her still to the left of the GOP today, so far rightwards has it slid, as Goldwater himself predicted), and merely pretended a political conversion for the sake of her marriage and her husband's political career.

** Thanks Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.  Not trying to rig the electoral process in favour of your bud. and presumptive front-runner...at...all...

*** Who are we kidding, this is a two-person race, and long has been.  Not fair, and largely a result of media-bias, but what can one do ?  Now, if only we could combine Clinton's tenacity and political acumen, with Bernie's principles, and O'Malley's personality and good looks...Damn, that would be a fearsome candidate indeed...

**** Yes, I could and would say much the same of many European countries.

***** Oh, and climate change.  We should deffo. do something about that.  Millions & millions of green jobs sprouting magically out of the ground.  A Yuuuge economic opportunity...

****** Fucking hate the expression, but seems to be the phrase du jour, at least in US culture.

******* All this said, who would I be supporting, if I were in the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primaries ?  Absolutely, it would be Bernie.  But I'm not the one that really needs convincing.  My support or lack thereof doesn't matter a whit.  As I said earlier, a coalition of young college-age progressives and white progressives simply isn't going to cut it.  A focus on economic inequality isn't going to do it either.  The brief half-hearted reaction to Black Lives Matter is the only time I've seen any willingness on behalf of Sanders' campaign to even try to expand beyond his core economic message.  It he wants to go all the way, it just isn't enough.




Update: Hoped to post this earlier, and almost seems inappropriate now (morning of 2-2-2016) when the result in Iowa is neck-and-neck with Hillary, but the video in question wasn't available when I checked previously.  There's much to praise about Sanders' perfomance in this interview for MSNBC, but Sanders' response to Hayes' question at 4'32 on foreign policy is a perfect example of what I was talking about.  Hayes provides Sanders an opportunity to answer the sceptics on his foreign policy credentials, and even hands him on a platter a specific topical subject: the current Saudi assault on Yemen.

Here, Sanders could have gone into detail on his opinion regarding, and proposals for dealing with that particular conflict, or any other that took his fancy.  Hell, all he really had to do was show an awareness of the situation, and he could have given us just about any generic politician-speak (oh, it's a terrible tragedy what's currently happening in Yemen...blah blah blah...complicated situation...blah blah blah diplomacy...blah blah talk with our enemies...blah blah maintaining relations with allies...blah blah).  Instead, he segues from telling us how serious an understanding of foreign policy is for any would-be president ('life and death stuff') to retreating yet again behind the defence of his 'judgement' compared to Hillary Clinton's on the vote to go to war in Iraq.

Chris Hayes is about as friendly an interviewer as could be imagined for Bernie here, and he handed Bernie a perfect opportunity to prove himself on foreign policy.  I'm sick of hearing about the Iraq War vote already.  What about Yemen ?  What about the South China Sea ?  What about Boko Haram, say ?  Pick one, not 'the many many crises that exist all over the world', dammit.

I want to believe in ya Bernie, but I've been burned before, and I'm no political naïf.  Your answer here wasn't Donald Trump-level bad, but it was similarly insubstantive.  At this stage of the campaign, your supporters, and your country deserve better.

AJ+: Young Swedes React To U.S. Democratic Presidential Debate

C'mon AJ+, surely you could have found a few fascists even in Sverige ?

Wonders...What reason might Al Jazeera's backers have to encourage a Sanders presidency ?...Feel the Bern !

Link Dump (Blue Pill/Red Pill Edition)

Snowden tells us how GCHQ (and no doubt the NSA et al, also) can hack our smartphones at will, tracking us, even if the phone is switched off, taking pictures of us, etc.  And they named the various tools for spying on us after...made-up Smurf characters.  Hey, 'Dreamy Smurf' sounds kinda cute.  'Paranoid Smurf' not so much.

'Free-market' capitalism' rocks !  Bloomberg: Amazon to Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices.

The 'futurologist' telling schools they should prepare children to have to work (at shitty part-time jobs in the 'sharing economy') till they are one-hundred-years-old.  In part, supposedly because of the automation and robots taking so many existing jobs.  Well, that makes sense...Not.  Or we could accept that our existing economic model, didn't make much sense in the past, makes no sense now, and is utterly batshit-insane with the future we currently face, and seek some kind of fucking alternative...

Alex Salmond's super-secret undercover identity busted after he's blocked from boarding a British Airways flight as 'James T. Kirk'.

Telegraph: How your GP is paid to stop you going to hospital.  Oh, did we mention that these are largely cancer-patients doctors are paid not to refer to hospital ?

Reason Magazine on the evils of recycling.  Need moar landfills !

BBC with the funnies: UK end-of-life care 'best in world'.  Never heard of the Liverpool Care Pathway, then, have we Beeb ?

Finally a male contraceptive, via a protein-blocker for sperm ?

Grauniad: 'Militant leftwing' councils to be blocked from boycotting products.  By which, they mean boycotts on dealing with British arms-manufacturers, and especially BDS against Israel.

Fox Sports: Eight of Iran’s women’s football team ‘are men’.  No, never !

Former Labour-govt. official admits that they 'made a mistake' fucked up royally in promoting diesel as a supposedly eco-friendly alternative to petrol.  Whoops, sorry all those who suffered and/or died as a result of the extra pollution.  Better late than never ?

Who knew ?  Telegraph: Antarctic scientists face breathalyser tests due to alcohol-fuelled fighting and 'indecent exposure'.  Guess the Antarctic might be slightly boring...

RT: UN human rights fail: Saudi Arabia to ‘investigate themselves’ over Yemen war crimes.

A breastmilk-fortifier for prematurely born babies.

Reason on the twelve-year-old suspended from school for...staring at a girl.

Taking speed-traps to a whole new level...BBC: Speed cameras hidden in tractors criticised.

Via Balko, Jerry Brown, Libertarian crusader against excessive legislation ?

Speaking of Libertarians, the candidate for the LP in Florida in trouble for admitting to sacrificing a goat, and drinking its blood.  Er, whatever dude.  Who cares ?  Now tell us how your policies won't further enrich the wealthy and fuck over the poor.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson's special debate-strategy: Imagine the other candidates as cute babies.  Man must have a hell of an imagination.  Then again, he is a highly-educated neurosurgeon who believes the Earth to be six-thousand years old...

Oh yeah, here's the same Ben Carson joking about his encounters with police in his youth 'back in the days before they would shoot you.'  Hee Hee.

And Ben Carson here & here advocating arming kindergarten-teachers.  That'll work out well no doubt.

Bullshit !  PR Newswire: New Survey Uncovers, Men Who Tuck Are Happier, More Successful, And Generally More Optimistic.  Their shirts that is.  And oh yeah, the poll was paid for by Fruit of the Loom...

Al.com: Voter ID and driver's license office closures black-out Alabama's Black Belt.  So, the Republicans in Alabama instituted bullshit Voter-ID Laws, then just happened to close the DMV-offices in poorer, largely black (and thus Democratic-voting) counties.  Whadda coinky-dink !

Mirror: Jeremy Hunt wants poor Brits to work like the Chinese in new insult piled on tax credit cuts.  Well, Somalia is more like the ultimate goal.  Obscene wealth for the 1%, lowest common denominator for ev'ryone else.

War is Boring on how Russia may be using their activities in Syria to spy on the US' F-22.

Rhetorical question from the New Statesman: Why is the government giving £45m to Roman Abramovich while letting a British steelworks go to the wall?

Oh yeah, and the evil TPP deal was finally agreed (look it up).  The details may or may not be available to the public a few decades from now...when the damage is already done.  Happy hump-day !

Update: Oh lookee, Hillary-come-lately finally voiced her bold opposition to the trade-deal she previously praised & helped promote whilst in office, now that the deal has been inked by all the nations involved, and Obama has the 'Fast Track' power to ram it through Congress without the possibility of debate or amendment.

What courage from the would-be future leader of the free world, she who so vehemently opposed the war in Iraq that she voted for its authorisation, and she who hemmed and hawed for months on the Keystone XL pipeline-deal she previously supported whilst in the administration, till prolonged low oil-prices made it politically and economically unviable !  Bold bold Hillary !

'Don't need a weatherman' do ya ?

Bernie at Liberty U.

Got round to watching this speech by Bernie Sanders at Liberty University, and it's pretty impressive.  Both as a speech generally, and given the nature of Sanders' audience.  Not all* seem as enthusiastic as the few screamers when the camera pans out, and granted, this is the same school which forced their students to attend Ted Cruz, but this seems a pretty positive reception for what the media would paint as a far-left radical message, in anything but ideologically friendly territory.**

I especially like the willingness to 'go there' on actual New Testament-principles, and to call out, if only implicitly the utter hypocrisy of the political and religious elites.  Most establishment-politicians couldn't pull that off.  Trump could almost, but he's an evident self-serving egomaniac whose every other word is a lie.

And this is the speech almost of a general election-campaign, with the primaries months away, and the party in question being largely ignored by the media, outside of the faux-controversy over Hillary's e-mail-server.  Bernie may or may not actually think he could go all the way (as may not Trump, as may not have Corbyn), but he's evidently embracing the moment, and making the most of the spotlight, to get his economic message out.  I approve.

Now, he just needs to get some non-pasty white folk on side.  I don't see any movement on that front sadly.


* To say the least, skimming a second time over.  Quite Nixon/Kennedy in the dichotomy between audio & video.****

** I almost wonder if some of the current upheaval in Western politics is generational, and if the media tends to underestimate the millennials, given what just happened in the UK.  If I ignorantly attribute the attitudes of my generation and similar to millennials, and assume incorrectly that past experience justifies current cynicism.  Almost.***

*** Evidently no-one knows a damn thing with our current political swings, myself included.

**** And then after I finish writing all this, I hear that they intentionally positioned some of Bernie's supporters up front near the mics.  Well, fer...


Update: Full video here from C-SPAN, including the warm-up, if you give a crap about that, and the post-speech Q&A.

Tone Deaf: The Hillary Loyalty Pledge

Hillary Has Millennials sign loyalty pledge in order to attend #cleveland event http://t.co/NJshGnYt4p pic.twitter.com/XwqLONkz3g

— SalenaZito (@SalenaZitoTrib) September 7, 2015

Ugh.  The optics of this are just terrible, however much Hillary's campaign may assert that this was in fact a voluntary pledge.

Most likely, this was just an attempt at harvesting the attendees' details, to add to a database of potential supporters*, and someone thought it would be cute to reference the GOP's recent loyalty-pledge in the process.  That's not the way it will be reported however.  A stupid unforced error.

Via Mediaite.


* Not that that's an entirely benign activity itself.

Drum & Waldman on the Political Risks of the Iran Deal

Paul Waldman writes about the asymmetric political risks that Democrats and Republicans face over the Iran nuclear deal:

If the agreement proves to be a failure — let’s say that Iran manages to conduct a nuclear weapons program in secret, then announces to the world that they have a nuclear weapon — it will indeed be front-page news, and the Democrats who supported the deal might suffer grave political consequences. So in order to vote yes, they had to look seriously at the deal and its alternatives, and accept some long term political peril.

By contrast, there probably is less long term risk for Republicans in opposing the deal.

...If the deal works as intended, what will be the outcome be? Iran without nuclear weapons, of course, but that is a state of being rather than an event. There will be no blaring headlines saying, “Iran Still Has No Nukes — Dems Proven Right!”...

In a way, it's actually worse than this. Even if Iran doesn't get nukes there will be endless opportunities to raise alarms that it's going to happen any day now. Israeli leaders have been warning that Iran is three months away from a nuclear bomb for over two decades. There will always be new studies, new developments, and new conflicts that provide excuses for hysterical Fox News segments telling us we're all about to die at the hands of the ayatollahs.

...So have no worries. Iran could be nuclear free in 2050 and Bill Kristol's grandkids will still be warning everyone else's grandkids that the ayatollahs are this close to getting a bomb. It's kind of soothing, in a way, like a squeaky door that you'd miss if you ever oiled it.

Kevin Drum on the political risks of the nuclear deal with Iran.

He's right in the short-to-medium term of course, but if the West genuinely does manage to normalise relations with a peaceful non-nuclear Iran (still a very dubious prospect), my guess is that Bill Kristol's progeny will have found a new go-to bogeyman long before 2050, with the Iranian nuclear affair a curious historical footnote.  Here's hoping.

Joe 'Crime Bill' Biden for President ?

So, as individuals close to cuddly Uncle Joe Biden continue to hint at a run for the Democratic nomination, suddenly everyone in the media's dredging up pesky facts from that ole' thing we used to call 'history.'  Here, from Slate:

A large part of running for president is intense scrutiny on personal history and political records. But once you’re in office, that scrutiny subsides. Once you’ve left, it almost disappears. Right now, Biden is beloved, an avuncular and light-hearted figure who contrasts the president’s stoic cool and adds a touch of heart to the seemingly mechanistic Obama White House. Forgotten (at least, outside academia and a few corners of political media) is Biden’s earlier persona: a leader in America’s drug war. For a generation, Biden was at the front of a national push for tough drug laws and police militarization.

If you consider her time in Bill Clinton’s White House, that’s true for Hillary, too. The difference is that she was first lady—an advocate for her husband’s policies, but not a lawmaker. That’s why she’s able to meet face to face with members of the Black Lives Matter movement and not look disingenuous when she says she has changed her mind on the subject. Biden’s Senate career, by contrast, was defined by his aggressive and vocal support for the drug war. Here are the highlights of that history:

In 1984, he worked with Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond and the Reagan administration to craft and pass the Comprehensive Control Act, which enhanced and expanded civil asset forfeiture, and entitled local police departments to a share of captured assets. Critics say this incentivizes abuse, citing countless cases of unfair and unaccountable seizures....

In 1986, Biden co-sponsored the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which created new mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including the infamous crack-versus-cocaine sentencing disparity. A crack cocaine user with only five grams would receive five years without parole, while a powder cocaine user had to possess 500 grams before seeing the same punishment. The predictable consequence was a federal drug regime that put its toughest penalties on low-level drug sellers and the most impoverished drug users.

Biden would also play an important role in crafting the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which strengthened mandatory minimums for drug possession, enhanced penalties for people who transport drugs, and established the Office of National Drug Control Policy, whose director was christened “drug czar” by Biden.

His broadest contribution to crime policy was the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, commonly called the 1994 Crime Bill. Written by Biden and signed by President Clinton, it increased funds for police and prisons, fueling a huge expansion of the federal prison population. As journalist Radley Balko details in The Rise of The Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, it also contributed to the rapid growth of militarized police forces that used new federal funds to purchase hundreds of thousands of pieces of military equipment, from flak jackets and automatic rifles to armored vehicles and grenade launchers.

The “crime bill” also brought a host of new federal death penalty crimes, which Biden celebrated in his defense of the bill. “Let me define the liberal wing of the Democratic Party,” he said to Sen. Orrin Hatch, “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties … the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 100,000 cops. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 125,000 new state prison cells.”

Senator Joe Biden speaks at the signing of the 1994 Biden Crime Bill.

Say it ain't so, Joe !  Not our lovely fuzzy liberal icon onto whom we can project all our progressive fantasies !

But never mind about all that.  It's not as if the real-life consequences of those policies are being highlighted more than ever as the prison-population continues to soar, largely filling up with the poor and ethnic minorities, and as every day seems to bring new stories of unarmed men, women, and children shot dead in the street by militarised cops who see themselves as occupying forces in American cities.

Let's return instead to our obsession with that presidential candidate who conducted government business over a private e-mail account on a privately-owned server.  And resume our outrage over the presidential candidate who avoided scrutiny of private e-mails used to conduct governmental business by deleting them.  Millions & millions of e-mails deleted !  Simply scandalous !

TWiB Prime: Interview with Activist Marissa Jenae Johnson

Most people will already have their opinion on what happened with the protesters in Seattle, and listening to this probably won't change their opinion (doesn't mine), but I still find it fascinating to hear one of the young women who took the mic. from Sanders express her point of view directly.

So, here's self-described agitator Marissa Jenae Johnson in her exclusive interview with Elon & Co. at TWiB talking about what happened and her strategy of 'unrespectability' in fighting the modern 'white supremacist system' in the US.

Slate/New Scientist on Obama's 'Bold' Climate Plan

Obama wants you to think his climate plan will be bold. It’s not

US president Barack Obama's much-heralded attempt to curb carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations is nowhere near enough

Later today, US President Barack Obama will unveil the final version of the centrepiece of his climate legacy: the Clean Power Plan.

It is designed to speed up the retirement of coal-fired power plants – the most carbon-intensive way of generating electricity – and could more than double the rate of their closures by 2040.

In a video preview, Obama called the Clean Power Plan “the biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken to combat climate change”. While that may be true, it’s not saying a whole heck of a lot.

As I wrote last year when the details were initially announced, many states are already well on their way to achieving the required reductions, thanks in part to a recent boom in cheap natural gas and the Obama administration’s choice of 2005 as the basis year for cuts, which was close to America’s all-time peak in carbon emissions. Obama’s plan is significant, but it’s not bold.

A previous version of the targets, announced last year, would have required states to begin implementing changes to their power-producing mix in 2020. The final version, to be announced today, gives states and utilities an extra two years. The targets will vary by state, depending on their current energy mix, and states will have flexible ways of achieving emissions reductions, including an option to join an interstate cap-and-trade scheme.

All this will be a heavy lift for some coal-intensive states, like Wyoming, but it’s being heralded as largely “business as usual” for some states, like Minnesota, that have already made significant efforts to shift their energy mix.

...

It has been calculated that the plan would shave just 6 per cent from US carbon emissions by 2030. Climate science and international equity demand the US cut emissions 80 per cent by then. We’re nowhere near that pace.

Still, this plan is not nothing. In its coverage, The New York Times includes this hopeful gem: “But experts say that if the rules are combined with similar action from the world’s other major economies, as well as additional action by the next American president, emissions could level off enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change.”

That’s a lot of hedging on which to base a climate legacy.

In fact, when compared with the climate plans of his would-be successors on the left – Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley – Obama’s ranks last in terms of ambition.

Clinton, who has frequently aligned herself with the president on climate, announced a preview of her own climate plan last week. It’s fractionally more ambitious than Obama’s, but it essentially just kicks the can forward another few years.

...

Last week, former NASA climate scientist James Hansen, fresh off a dire new warning about global sea levels, had harsh words for the slow, incremental progress that’s formed essentially the entirety of American’s climate ambition to date. “We have two political parties, neither one of which is willing to face reality,” Hansen told the Guardian. “Conservatives pretend it’s all a hoax, and liberals propose solutions that are non-solutions.”

“It’s just plain silly,” said Hansen, speaking specifically of Clinton’s planned renewable energy push. “No, you cannot solve the problem without a fundamental change, and that means you have to make the price of fossil fuels honest.”

In the end, our climate won’t care about how we fix this problem. But it’s clear that time is running out. If Obama truly wants to go all-in on climate change, he should meet Republicans where they are – as painful as that might be – and negotiate a way to pass a carbon tax.

...

If Obama really wants to make a lasting impact on global warming, he can work across the US political divide or across the Pacific in Beijing, to work toward implementing a meaningful, economy-wide carbon tax as quickly as possible. Just because such a breakthrough feels impossible doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary. 

Nice change from the coverage in most outlets, including, sadly, the BBC, which seems to have framed the discussion of Obama's plan solely in terms of his Republican opponents' view (ie, 'Radical Enviro-Nazi Obama and his War On Coal; Let's debate the two sides...'), whilst ignoring those who would argue Obama's legacy-burnishing proposals are at the very least too little, and quite likely, too late.

<Rant below the fold:>

Feel the Bern ! Or Not

Somehow this video just sums up perfectly for me the Bernie Sanders campaign.  And is a complete 180 from the slickly produced and carefully scripted videos Hillary puts out.

Here we have the guy speaking, not in a packed stadium to thousands of supporters, but in someone's living room*, surrounded largely by overweight pasty white folk, as he dishes on the evil Koch brothers, whilst the guy to his right yawns and picks his teeth.  And in which he manages to both shush his supporters, and tell them 'you should know that'.

The old guy's got a good message, can't deny.  I predict he'll make an excellent mayor of Burlington, VT.

From a page on C&L entitled ironically enough, 'Bernie Electrifies Crowds In Louisiana With Climate Change Message'.


* Just imagine Hillary doing this.  No, no, just try.

Speaking of our Future Semi-Benevolent Dictator

Here's Hillary's super-duper Reality-driven plan for dealing with climate-change: More solar panels** and wind-turbines to power US homes.

That's it apparently.*  No mention of the need for more nuclear in the short term at least.  No mention of industry.  No mention of our destructive economic system that is inherently dependent on infinite growth in a world of finite resources.  No mention of globalisation & trade.  No mention of population-growth.  No mention of China, Russia, Canada, Brasil, Australia, etc., and that fact that nothing the US does will make a damn bit of difference without some sort of global agreement on action.

Just put a solar panel on your house, drive a Prius, and bye-bye climate-change.  And everybody gets a magical pony to boot.


This folksy aw-shucks shit made me want to vomit:

I'm just a grandmother with two eyes and a brain.

Uh, you're a Yale-educated lawyer, a millionaire, a former board-member of Walmart, the highly influential wife of a two-term president of the United States (who amongst other things did much to undermine existing efforts on climate change by outsourcing much of US industry to the far east and México), a former Senator of the United States, and a former Secretary of State.  This lil' ole' Gran'ma me shit is starting to grate.


* There is a line in the video that hints at a coming 'comprehensive agenda', but hey, I'm not the one who released this publicly as 'Hillary's plan to curb climate change'.  And if you seriously believe Hillary will take any bolder action than this, then I've got a bridge for sale.

** Just thought, hang on a minute, where are all these solar panels coming from, given that the PRC-subsidised manufacturers in China already put most US manufacturers out of business ?  On a heavily polluting container-ship over the Pacific Ocean ?

Wuerker: On Hillary's Delayed Coronation

I'd feel guilty re-publishing everything Ted/Bors/Tomorrow et al. came out with, and the stuff from the British papers is probably a tad parochial, so...

...here's Matt Wuerker !  I guess he must be on some sort of retainer at Politico ?  Actually, the guy's not bad at all, just not quite in the same league as some of his more risk-taking colleagues.  Which, in this shitty risk-adverse media-environment is understandable.

Tha' Candidate-Tracking Thingee

Well, with all but one of the candidates on this graphic now declared or declined (C'mon, Joe, c'mon, do it !), I suppose I should probably prune the non-candidates, but I will miss Santa Voldemort.  Why oh why isn't Voldemort running for ruler of the free world ?

And I suppose there's a rumour going 'round about some guy called Gilmore, but fuck, I already included Fiorina* against my better judgement -- How obscure do we have to get with these people ?


* Was the demon-sheep not an obvious reference ?

And Isn't Hillary Glad Now She Stayed Away ?

#BlackLivesMatter co-founder warns presidential candidates: ‘We will shut down every single debate’

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors criticized both Sen. Bernie Sanders and ex-Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley after Saturday’s protest at the Netroots Nation progressive conference.

“He couldn’t take 15 more minutes of the heat,” Cullors said of Sanders in an interview on This Week in Blackness, making reference to the senator ending his appearance as demonstrators at the event walked out en masse.

Journalist and activist Jose Antonio Vargas, who interviewed both Democratic candidates during the forum, later told The Raw Story that he was directed to wrap up his discussion with Sanders 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

Cullors told This Week host L. Joy Williams that she felt neither O’Malley nor Sanders were “humble enough” during their town hall appearance, and called on presidential candidates to be willing to openly discuss issues of race and gender.

“No more skirting around the issues,” Cullor said. “We will shut down every single debate.”

Well, that's good to know, I guess.  The Democratic primaries should be fun.

All I have to say on that particular shit-show that took place at Netroots Nation (you'll find plenty of videos on YouTube if you want to watch it) is this:

We have two overlapping issues here, police-violence and racism, both of which are complicated, one of which would be extremely difficult for any president to address, even given eight years (as Obama could probably attest), and the other of which, endemic as it is across all human society, will never be fully eradicated, and can only be worn down over time by education and engagement.  There are no simple solutions to these issues, and certainly nothing concise enough for a hashtag on Twitter.

If you want any kind of meaningful answer from politicians on these issues, it's going to have to involve a long ongoing conversation, and a lot of patience.  Or, sure, you could just shout them off stage.  It might make you feel better.  What it sure as hell won't do is prevent the further loss of black lives at the hands of trigger-happy, militarised, and oft-as-not racist cops.

TMW: Sparky in Hell

Hmm.  Sparky's always been a sort of alter-ego for Tom/Dan, but don't think I've ever seen the character speak so directly for/as the cartoonist before.

Where are all the Conspiracy-Theorists When You Need Them ?

Photographer: Maring Photography/Getty Images/Contour by Getty Images

Newlyweds Donald Trump Sr. and Melania Trump with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton at their reception held at The Mar-a-Lago Club in January 22, 2005 in Palm Beach, Florida.

Not gonna dwell on this, but given all the other ridiculous shit that gets thrown around...

We have in the Republican primaries one individual currently that is sucking all the attention away from the other candidates, who will deny at least one 'serious' candidate a place in the first debates on Fox News, and who is an absolute dream-candidate for the Democrats, speaking as he does to the Republican base's more angry paranoid bigoted id, and attracting all kinds of negative attention to the GOP from the media.

And that candidate, who as he himself repeatedly brings up, is (according to him) fabulously wealthy, and can afford to run, even if it costs him multiple business-deals, in the name of 'making American Great Again.'

And said candidate just so happens to be a long-time friend of, past proponent of, and past contributor to, one Hillary Clinton, a corporatist shill for Wall Street, who happens to be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.  And who happens to benefit enormously from the Donald's presence in the race.

Crazier things, and all that...

A Brief Note on that Bernie Sanders Blip

Bernie Sanders is arguably a man of conscience.  And other than his rape-fantasies from the 'seventies, I've not seen much about the man to question his intentions, his good will.

The thing about Bernie is, attract massive crowds (of mostly older white folk it should be noted) as he  currently may, the vast majority of people in the US (Democratic Party-affiliated or otherwise), know nothing about his record.  Bernie right now is a purely symbolic representation of two things, both of which overlap:

a) Wishful-thinking for Elizabeth Warren as candidate for President

b) A half-hearted protest against the (not altogether inaccurately perceived): corporatism, cronyism, vested interests in established politics of Hillary Clinton.

Self-described Socialist Sanders may well have been speaking of issues that relate now in the twenty-first century for decades, but that's no guarantee that he can concoct a message that resonates across boundaries of race, class, gender, age.  He only has a place (as a protest against Hillary) in the primaries because Warren declined to run, and he hasn't really been tested politically in the past.  The more progressive elements of my makeup want to root for Bernie at least a little, but the fact is, he hasn't a chance.

Democrats are rallying around Sanders, in lieu of Warren, because they don't want to accept Hillary as a fait accompli, and because they hope (perhaps vainly) that his candidacy could draw her slightly to the left  (as if that would guarantee anything after the elections).

Meanwhile, something similar is going on with the Republican party with Donald Trump, the ultimate manifestation of right-wing Tea Party corporatist id, taking second place in leading polls, draining the oxygen from the campaign from more serious candidates who might lose their place in key debates due to Trump's presence, and his inevitable celebrity dominance in the attentions of the media.

The whole thing's a fucking circus.  Ultimately, Americans will be given the choice between a slightly less and slightly more-right-wing asshole Capitalistic Corporatist
scumbag to be President.  And those who choose to endorse the one or the other will see (as intended) their opposite fellows as radical anti-American extremists.  By design.


* Slightly less brief than I started out intending...

Really ?

AP Photo

I'm not a fan of the use of the rainbow as a political symbol, as may be inferred from this previous post.

As for the question of 'gay marriage' itself, my official stance would be a libertarian one; that government should get out of the business of defining what is or isn't marriage, provide civil unions (with the same benefits & protections) for all, and let individuals and religious groups define marriage as they see fit.  But generally, I'm glad that same-sex couples should find greater equality, greater acceptance, and (hopefully) greater happiness.  And if they find that in us extending the definition of marriage, more power to 'em.  History in the West is and has been clearly on the side of same-sex marriage, whatever I may think (and really, it's primarily if not solely the government redefining words that troubles me), and whatever the right-wing christianist bigots in the Republican party think.

Still, I do think this was ill-advised.  The Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage was already likely to be the rallying-point for the Republican Party's base in the next Presidential elections that so-called 'Obamacare' (and I still hear every time the intended slur in that name, how ever much the Dem's may have tried to co-opt it) was in the last.  And the Obama administration just handed the GOP a needless present by turning the executive mansion into a political symbol.  And why ?  To provide a feel-good moment, to briefly excite the Democratic Party's more progressive supporters ?  A tweet wasn't enough ?

Maybe it was in part an attempt at trolling the GOP, given all the rhetoric of the last seven years about Obama being some sort of foreign interloper in 'our house' and 'taking our house back'.  If so, consider the effort successful.  I hope, sincerely, that it was worth it. *


* Call it concern-trolling if you will.  Whatever I may think of Hillary, the last thing the US needs is continued or expanded dominance of Congress by the GOP, and/or another Republican in the White House, at a crucial time especially for appointments to the Supreme Court.  And you may have just given the Republican base their moment.