Not Quite Home Sweet Home

 ”At the end of the day, the best measure of the humanity of any society is the life and happiness of its children. We live in a rich society with poor children, and that should be intolerable.” Mike Davis, City of Quartz

We keep asking one another, “does it feel like home?” The answer for me is yes, our new digs strike a homey vibe with me, even though we are not fully situated and have at least a dozen boxes left to empty, artwork to hang, stuff to put away. Our familiarity and comfort level grows, routines develop, but we still carry the muscle memory of the little apartment we lived in for so long.  I set up my gym in the carport, heavy bag, double-end bag, suspension trainer, and can do all the modes of training I did up the block, with the benefit here of being able to leave the heavy bag up all the time. My wife still feels unsettled, in part because she’s been distracted by her mother’s physical condition after hip replacement surgery, and the prospect of rotator cuff surgery in July. Two surgeries in less than a year for an 80-year-old woman who wasn’t in the best of health to begin with. Like millions of Americans, we have elder care responsibilities. My sister-in-law says worry is the weight; she’s right, it’s the worry of what might happen next. 

My son takes after me in several respects (poor boy), and one of those ways is that he hates meetings, corporate-speak, and bullshit. When he worked at the LA Philharmonic there were too many meetings that meandered around and accomplished nothing, and now he’s experiencing similar nonsense at the San Francisco Opera. “This is definitely my last non-profit arts gig,” he tells me, exasperated by all the hours he considers wasted. He complains but on the other hand he’s lucky as hell and knows it, with a tolerable job in the city he wants to be in, health insurance, a measure of predictability, and less than $20K in student loan debt for the year and a half he was in college, first at Southern Oregon University and then Pacific Northwest College of Art. I don’t know if he’ll ever go back to school. But whether he does or not, my son is an artist in his soul, and nothing can change that. The kid is 24 and already has figured out that the world into which he was born is fucked. 

While I was cleaning out a bin I found a publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center titled, The Year in Hate and Extremism. It was from 2019, a year before the January 6 Trump-goaded insurrection. Skimming through the Executive Summary I came across this passage: “It is time to move beyond the illusion that hate violence and extremism is merely a criminal crisis in America. It is also a political crisis.” What most of us saw with our own eyes on January 6 was a manifestation of that political crisis -- the refusal by the loser to accept the results of an election. We watched the storming of the Capitol happen in real time. Then we watched the same scenes replayed over and over. For the first time in American history, the transfer of political power was marred by violence. The folks who breached the Capitol under the Trump flags were not peaceful, law-abiding tourists as some in the GOP would have us believe. They were not victims, they were perpetrators. Five people were killed. The Vice President was a target of the mob. Those are facts. The rewrite of history by the Trump wing of the GOP -- and that’s most of the party -- is well underway. Lie big, lie often, and never let the lie die. Tell me, someone, can a two-party system function when one of the parties is insane? Surely the answer is, not for long. It’s the old notion of a house divided against itself, as true now as it was in 1861. The American experiment in self-government is fraying, and the hard reality is that we might see, four years from now, a GOP-controlled Congress refuse to certify the results of an election if the outcome doesn’t favor its candidate. And then what happens? If you think this is farfetched, you had better think again. The GOP as currently incarnated cares about one thing, and one only: power. Kevin “Tiny Balls” McCarthy and Mitch “Cowardly Lion” McConnell flip-flop like bass in the bottom of a boat. Although it’s critically important for American democracy that the events of January 6 be fully investigated, such an inquiry is the last thing the GOP wants as it’s likely to expose complicit party members. Some sort of watered-down, toothless investigation may still happen, but if it’s not a bipartisan effort, it will have very little legitimacy. Corruption in Washington D.C. is a stubborn thing, like a bloodstain on a white shirt. 

Speaking of...I have to have some blood work done and a colonoscopy. The prep for the colonoscopy is worse than the procedure itself. My personal history of colonic polyps. 

It appears that the legal noose is dangling closer to Trump’s fat neck. The Attorney General of New York is looking at potential criminal liability, not only civil liability. Trump’s long-time money man, Allen Weisselberg, is being squeezed. When it comes down to saving Trump’s bacon or his own, what will Weisselberg do? Stay tuned. Trump trampled just about every norm we’ve come to expect an American president to adhere to, and I won’t be surprised if he’s our first criminally indicted former president. 

Jeffrey St. Clair writes on the Counterpunch website, “The Palestinians are a stubborn impediment to the inexorable growth of the Israeli state. They are an obstacle that must be removed. But removal is not enough. Their cultural identity and history must be erased, all traces of their existence as a people wiped away.” 

For a brief time Israeli bombs and artillery shells will cease raining down on Gaza, but the apartheid regime and the gross imbalance of power between Jews and Palestinians will remain. There’s no victory lap to be taken by anyone. It’s a human tragedy, a miscarriage of justice, and a grotesque, ongoing violation of human rights. 

 

Target Practice

“More death and destruction will undoubtedly follow as Israeli forces prepare for a land invasion, children will die, the tragic numbers in Israel will be dwarfed by the magnitude of horrifying death in Gaza. Mothers and fathers will weep and young men will vow vengeance. We know this story.” Alice Rothchild, Counterpunch 

Gaza is being bombed, again. 2008. 2012. 2014. How many times can one 350 square mile sliver of land be pounded by advanced weaponry, and how much longer will the State of Israel be allowed to kill Palestinians with impunity? If my memory serves, the UN issued a report in 2014 that concluded that Gaza might be uninhabitable by 2020. As always, the United States pledges its support for Israel’s right to “defend itself.” No mention made of the right of the Palestinian people to simply live. Do the majority of the Israeli people support what their government is doing in their name? Aren’t the Jews doing to the Palestinians what was done to Jews in Russia, Poland, and Germany for generations? Ethnic cleansing. Wholesale theft of land, water, homes. 

The conflict is always depicted in the American media as one waged between equals, which is laughable. The US doesn’t gift the Palestinians millions of dollars worth of military hardware every year, nor does it promote the Palestinian cause in the United Nations at every opportunity as it does Israel. The leader of the Palestianian Authority isn’t invited to address a joint session of Congress as Bibi Netanyahu was a few years ago. 

Why do I care? What does it have to do with me and the price of bread or cheese? What has it to do with the work my wife and I need to do on our new digs? Maybe nothing, but as a citizen of the US, it pisses me off to no end that my government consistently and unquestioningly backs Israel. The journalist Chris Hedges wrote this week, “I know the crimes of the occupation—the food shortages caused by the Israeli blockade, the stifling overcrowding, the contaminated water, the lack of health services, the near constant electrical outages due to the Israeli targeting of power plants, the crippling poverty, the endemic unemployment, the fear and the despair. I have witnessed the carnage. “ Children are being killed. In the West Bank news reports say mobs of angry Jews roam the avenues looking for Arab targets. Do they want to murder them all? This conflict began years before I was born. I was 8-years-old during the 1967 war that saw Israel take control and occupy Palestinian land in violation of international law. When public health lockdowns went into effect across the US in 2020, many Americans reacted as if all their civil liberties had been permanently stripped away. Well, imagine living under siege and the threat of bombardment the way the people of Gaza do every day. Imagine being forcibly evicted from the house your family has lived in for half a century. Imagine watching Jewish settlers set fire to your olive trees. In this long conflict there have been casualties on both sides, though disproportionately on the Palestinian side. They seem to stand all alone, invisible to the world. A good number of countries are critical of Israel, but as long as Israel is backed by US economic and military power, nothing changes. The State of Israel has been emboldened to take more, and more, expanding ever further. 

What did Martin Luther King Jr. say about injustice? The exact quote slips my memory but the gist of it was that people should push back against injustice wherever they encounter it, because sooner or later injustice comes calling. Wherever one human life is devalued compared to another, deemed less important, less worthy of dignified treatment. Collective punishment of a civilian population is illegal under international law, but of course Israel isn’t deterred by that. By providing cover for Israel to do whatever it pleases my government is complicit in these crimes. 

Hammering at the Drawbridge

“It is not inevitable that what passes for progress in our age involves the concentration of power into a small number of hands and the issuance of stories about the powerful being fighters for the little guy.” Anand Giridharadas

The canny strategists and tacticians of the Democratic Party establishment, along with media yakkers like Chris Matthews, are losing their shit over Bernie Sanders. If you listen to James Carville, the ragin’ Cajun who last ran a successful presidential campaign in 1992 -- and traded that one experience to become, for some strange reason, a go-to political sage -- the rise of Sanders to clear front runner is akin to the end of Western Civilization.

Not would-be-tyrant Donald J. Trump, mind you, Bernie Sanders, the avuncular Jew from Vermont. That’s the threat. Bernie Sanders, and what he represents to the rulers, the owners, the propertied and privileged. Potential loss of wealth, which means, by definition, status and privilege -- and power. Higher taxes on the obscenely wealthy and corporations, a turn away from grotesque income inequality, which could make the rich less rich, and the powerful less powerful. Some societal sharing of the spoils, some action on behalf of the earth itself, some regard for human life. Scary stuff. Better elect Joe Biden. Or Mike Bloomberg. Or AnybodyButBernie. 

Change. Always fought tooth and nail. You want something from the haves, you best be prepared for a battle; with the exception of a very few enlightened ones, they will fight you with equal fury to hold what they have. That’s the deal at its most elemental. It’s primal, emotional. It’s why Trump appeals to millions of Americans. What did playing by the established rules do for them? They feel overrun by change, by women and minorities and foreigners, by Barack Obama, the first black president. By liberal elites who think they’re stupid losers. 

Writing on the Counterpunch website John Eskow said: “Lets’ spare ourselves months of these subtle, rapier-like rhetorical thrusts and cut, as they say, to the chase: the Democratic Party, with James Carville serving as just one of their low-rent Paul Reveres, is screaming out a warning: it doesn’t matter if Bernie Sanders sweeps all, or most, of the remaining primaries, as he seems certain to do. It doesn’t matter what the plurality of Democrats actually wants: their hopes, their passions, their dreams mean nothing.

They’re simply not going to let him win.”

The image in my head is of a sailor holding the rigging of a clipper ship as the vessel takes on water, a hurricane force wind howls and shreds the sails, and jagged rock formations appear dead ahead. A collision is unavoidable, but the sailor is determined to hang on, no matter what. He tightens his grip as the fierce wind hurls water into his eyes and mouth and nose, gagging him. If he jumps overboard he might stand a chance, but his fear of the open sea is greater than his fear of the ship slamming into the rocks. 

If the all-out media assault against Sanders doesn’t work, how are the Big Cheeses of the Democratic Party going to prevent Sanders from claiming the nomination? What procedural machinations do they have in store to thwart Bernie? Will it resemble the 1944 convention when Henry Wallace was shunted aside by the men in the smoke-filled room and replaced by the more palatable Harry Truman? Will Sanders be labelled as the reincarnation of George McGovern? Democrats are haunted to this day by the ghosts and ghouls of 1972. Ever since McGovern, the Democrats have tacked right, and in doing so have become indistinguishable from what were once known as “moderate” Republicans. With the help of Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, many, many others, the list is very long, Democrats bought the whole neoliberal catalog: tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, privatization of essential public services, outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to low wage nations, wars of choice that never end, assaults on labor unions, lax antitrust enforcement, monetary policy that prioritized investors over wage earners, and lip-service to the climate emergency.  

Who does Putin want, Sanders or Trump? The corporate media can’t seem to make up its mind. 

At least once a week a mailer a week from the Bloomberg campaign appears in my mailbox. If Bloomberg’s data geniuses are sending mailers to people like me they obviously have money to waste. According to his propaganda, Mike will fix all our problems with his billionaire brilliance. Climate change? Mike will solve it. Health care? Mike’s on it. Gun violence? Mike will bring the NRA to heel. Foot fungus? Trust Mike to cure it. Ditto acid reflux and occasional constipation and flatulence and dry mouth and dandruff. 

Politics is about taking credit for stuff you didn’t do, and blaming others for stuff you did do. All politicians, local, state and federal, play this game to some extent, though some are more shameless than others. Joe Biden comes to mind. A fool so full of hubris that he cannot see that his time is long past. The average voter wants fantasy, like the notion that a billionaire like Bloomberg has the answers, or a total fraud like Donald J. Trump cares about working people. Got news for you -- money cannot buy integrity, honesty, or passion for justice. The quadrennial election circus is built to obscure, downplay, and paper over the serious problems hammering at the drawbridge of the American Empire. 

If America is to stand a chance of survival, the pendulum has to begin swinging back, away from corporate dominance and the commodification of our lives. By himself, Bernie Sanders cannot move the pendulum. But if Sanders can grow a progressive movement that gains traction in the House and Senate, in state and local government -- a big If I realize -- we might have a shot. I’m not holding my breath, but I voted for Bernie Sanders. 

Things I’m Watching:

Richard Grenell, Trump’s “acting” Director of National Intelligence. Grenell’s a total political hack, unqualified in every respect except for his loyalty to Trump. His sole job will be to deep six any intelligence that ties foreign interference in the 2020 election to Trump.

How the Trump Gang responds to the coronavirus when it takes hold on our fruited plain. When it comes to a pandemic, incompetence is a bad thing. Late update: I just learned that our genuis president put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the response. I’d say we’re screwed. 

Whether or not Chief Justice John Roberts defends the integrity of the Supreme Court against Trump’s ignorant (but very calculated) attacks. It will not be a reassuring sign if Roberts hides behind his robes, meek and silent.  

What happens when the Supreme Court takes up the case of Trump’s tax returns. It’s obvious that Trump is desperate to keep his returns from public scrutiny. Those returns are a map. 

One Nation Under The NRA

“Imagine losing the Amazon and the Antarctic ice sheets. Well, it’s happening: ‘The estimated mass of particulate organic carbon held in sediments beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet is up to an order of magnitude greater than that associated with northern hemisphere permafrost.’” Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch

Maybe we’ve got it all wrong. Instead of trying to pass firearm laws, background checks, red flag warnings, all that sensible stuff, maybe we should simply pass a law mandating that every man, woman, and child in the United States own a firearm. Maybe the law should also require every American over the age of 16 to carry a loaded firearm at all times -- to school, the grocery store, the dentist, the church, synagogue and mosque, to the doctor, to weddings and funerals, to amusement parks and concerts, dance recitals and soccer games, to Dodger Stadium and Madison Square Garden. Think how happy this would make the NRA, and which of our national priorities is more vital than pleasing the NRA? Clean water? Breathable air? Safe food? Fuck all that. Forget a chicken in every pot and a car in every driveway. Let’s strive to put a firearm in the hands of every American! 

Fuck the piecemeal approach. Fuck doubling-down. Let’s triple down on the American penchant for violence and blood. It’s our birthright after all, the way we became who we are today. Let each and every American embrace his or her inner sociopath. Lock and load people. Don’t give your 7-year-old an iPad -- give her a 9mm Glock with a full magazine. “Run along now, go shoot something, or somebody. Just be home in time for lunch.”

I’m being facetious, but only just so. America is a fucking open-air insane asylum, ruled by a tyrannical minority of wealthy people and institutions, with a bloated imbecile at its head. Every time there’s a mass shooting, the wacky right pulls its tired, worn bullshit off the shelf:

“Guns don’t kill people, criminals kill people. Our focus must be on the criminals. (By the way, wink, wink, dog whistle, the criminals are all black or brown.)”

“Gun violence is the result of moral decline. If the Ten Commandments were posted in every public place, we wouldn’t see the level of carnage we’re seeing. Our moral decline must be stopped. Christian faith is the answer.” 

“The problem is that when we teach evolution in schools we disconnect our children from God. How can we then expect them to know right from wrong? If you tell a child he rose from the primordial slime rather than the blessed loins of the virgin Mary, that child will not value human life!”

“Mental illness is the problem.”

“Gun violence is caused by violent video games.”

The NRA and its cowardly enablers in Congress talk around and around, mentioning everything except guns. An overwhelming percentage of Americans want sensible, reasonable, restrictions on the purchase of firearms, particularly military-style assault weapons, but our political system is so corrupt and rotted that what the majority desires is brushed aside, ignored. 

Our dipshit president claims that Congress is working on many proposals to curb gun violence, great stuff, big ideas that will soon roll down Capitol Hill. These ideas are certain to be as fantastic, and invisible, as Trump’s health care plan, as certain as Mexico coughing up the money for Trump’s racist wall, as certain as our manufacturing base returning from China. If Congress failed to enact meaningful gun legislation after the October 2017 Las Vegas massacre, during which one gunman killed 58 people and wounded more than 400, if that slaughter couldn’t goad Congress into action, what will? How many deaths is too many?

No death threshold is too high for the NRA. 

Our political leaders can’t even be bothered to come up with better talking points. They obviously think the people are stupid, and perhaps they are right. When morally bankrupt motherfuckers like Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Steve King, and Rick Scott get elected and re-elected, and a human cesspool like Donald J. Trump ascends to the highest office in the land, maybe we -- and I mean citizens, voters, people of good will and decency -- are reaping the whirlwind of decades of silence and passivity. American oligarchs don’t fear us, they don’t believe we can channel our outrage into mass acts of civil disobedience that will bring our sick and weary society to a grinding stop. 

All the potentates understand, and the only way to force them to act, is to confront them with the potential loss of their profit, position, advantage, and privilege. 

This is America

"For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake." Frederick Douglass

The 4th came and went and I didn’t feel much patriotism for my country. It has been a long time since I saw the glowing myth behind the gray reality. Too many doses of truth. My generation has made a muddle of things, capitulating to the forces of capitalism. We bought the fable of market rationalism, believed, even when it became clear that it was a total failure, sat by idly while the few raked in all but the loose chips. The Market replaced God, seeped into our schools, public spaces, civil discourse, and institutions. The Market knows best. The Market is fair and just. The Market plays no favorites. The Market is always right, the only way of looking at the world, the only solution to any problem.

Brand everything, including yourself, package and sell it.

The hole we’re in is deep, caving fast. Our president, a shameless moron who would rather be King, shovels dirt on our heads. The light from above fades. A collapse is coming, and must come, because the foundation is cracked and can’t bear the weight of the fraud and mendacity at the top. The elites, the credentialed experts, the blow-dried talking heads on cable news, the PR flacks, the market cheerleaders -- heartless and cruel, perpetuating each other up and down the line. “In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.” Colson Whitehead wrote the line about a different set of criminals, but the thought applies just as well. It’s not that we are headed for plutocracy and kleptocracy, we’ve already arrived, cruised the limo around the circular drive, past the gilded fountain and the liveried staff. Democracy is a sham, we all know it, the game rigged, the fix in. Except for a few decades here and there, it has always been so, and right from the beginning. Those Founding Fathers feared the people, distrusted them, thought them too ignorant and unruly for self-rule. No, we didn’t want a king, but neither a mob. Now under-populated red states lord over heavily populated blue states, South Dakota represented by the same number of senators as California and New York. Tyranny of the minority.

Uruguay and France. Brazil and Belgium. There might be fireworks, for sure there will be drama. I will be glued to my big screen. Eight teams left in Russia.

Here’s a statistic from Jeffrey St. Clair’s latest column for Counterpunch:

+ Countries where school shooters in 2018 were born …

Libya- 0

Syria- 0

Somalia- 0

Yemen- 0

Iran- 0

United States- 22

The median price of a home in SB was recently pegged at a million bucks. In San Francisco, a six-figure income can qualify you as low income. The Market, again, turning a basic human need into a commodity. How can real estate prices rise so steadily when incomes are flat? There was a home for sale around the corner from us for a few weeks; yesterday a big truck was parked in the driveway and the porch was cluttered with furniture, packing cartons. Another lucky winner of the SB-Real Estate-Lottery. We got our piece of Paradise!

Apparently, Scott Pruitt, the disgraced former head of the EPA, believes God’s hand is guiding Donald Trump as he rolls back every regulation he possibly can, flogs coal, and thumbs his nose at climate science. Don’t count on Pruitt ever paying a price for the trail of blatant corruption he blazed. Remember, this is America.

The Dogs of War are Off the Leash

“The timing is certainly suspicious. The Assad regime had nothing to gain and everything to lose from dropping chemical bombs on civilian targets. The Syrian government is winning the war. The rebel forces are in retreat. ISIS is a splintered force. Europe is desperate for a resolution to the Syrian war and an end to the tide of refugees.” Jeffrey St. Clair

I had been thinking about capitalism this week and had planned to write something about it when Tiny Hands Trump decided to launch cruise missiles against a country that hasn’t attacked the US directly, making Trump no different from many of his predecessors. American presidents love cruise missiles because they are big and flashy, launched from distance, look great on TV, and rarely endanger the lives of American servicepeople. What’s not to love?

MSNBC anchor Brian Williams actually referred to the Pentagon’s photographs of cruise missiles arcing across the night sky as “beautiful.” No mention of the poor souls on the receiving end, though one can assume all beauty ceases on impact. Williams isn’t unusual -- most of his elite media colleagues puff up with pride when the US goes to war. Shock and awe, you know?

There are a number of problems with Trump’s action, most notably that the US cannot know with any certainty that the Assad regime was behind the use of chemical weapons. As Jeffrey St. Clair noted for Counterpunch, the Assad regime had no compelling reason for launching a chemical attack now because government forces are winning the conflict. US crocodile tears about the gassing of infants and small children are cynical as well as hypocritical: how many innocent human beings has the US killed during the past 16 years of its insane War on Terror? While Uncle Sam may hang his head and sob, his hands are smeared with blood. When it comes to determining friend and foe in the Middle East the US is clueless. We can’t sell enough arms to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and of course our support for Israel never fails.

Trump ordered the strikes without approval from Congress, an investigation into who was responsible for the chemical attack, or with a resolution from the United Nations. Given the lapdog nature of Congress, Democrats as well as Republicans will applaud Trump, giving Tiny Hands a needed respite from all the turmoil he and his henchmen have created. Trump certainly needed a “win” of some kind to nudge his lagging poll numbers up from the doldrums, and launching missiles rarely fails to do the trick. After nearly two decades of continuous war, American citizens are numb and blind to the consequences of military actions taken in their name.

One must always ask who the beneficiaries are when an empire like the US decides to attack. Clearly, the attack on Syria benefits Tiny Hands, at least in the short term; Trump can bask in a rosy military glow for a few days, pass himself off as a decisive and “strong” leader, grab some decent press, and also take shots at the weakness of his predecessor; the markets are up today, so Trump can take credit for that as well; the arms makers and dealers always reap rewards; Israel will be pleased.

But then what? Will Syria cease to be a problem area, even if Assad falls? Will Russia just bow out of the region? We exterminated Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the colonel in Libya and those countries are hardly models of stability and prosperity. I can’t wait to read what Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn have to say about this latest twist.

Why is the US’s first inclination always to bomb? If we really wanted to help the long suffering Syrians, we would provide massive quantities of food, medicine, portable shelters, and other necessities of life, not more death and destruction. We can comfort our consciences by calling these strikes limited or surgical, but the likelihood is that innocent people are going to be killed or injured.

Moon Over Trumpland

“A society in terminal decline often retreats into magical thinking.” Chris Hedges

I’m still trying to sort out what the election of Donald Trump means, how it happened, and what might lie ahead for the “indispensable nation.” I’ve been reading articles, opinion pieces, analysis of the returns -- how Clinton did with this group or that group (seems she sucked when it came to white females and didn’t do all that well with Hispanics, either).

I still feel slightly off balance as if suffering from vertigo, and my thoughts pingpong from despair to resignation to resistance; my email in-box is full of messages asking for money or issuing dire warnings. I’m glad people are in the streets, protesting Trump’s election, because if Hillary had won the electoral college (that quirky anti-democratic feature of our democracy) but lost the popular vote, Trump supporters would be out in the streets, possibly armed.

And I’m also amused by the talking heads and so-called liberal commentators who are contorting themselves to explain Hillary’s loss: it was the Russians, Jill Stein, James Comey, racist whites, white men, and so on, everybody but the corrupt Democratic Party apparatus, which shoved Hillary down our throats, offering nothing more exciting than maintenance of the failed status quo.

I’m also recalling the aftermath of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, and how Republicans behaved. Today Trump calls for unity, and Obama and Hillary counsel us to give the president-elect a chance, but no such pass was given to our first black president. Remember those Tea Party rallies where Obama was burned in effigy, and Donald Trump himself crowing that Obama wasn’t born in the Unites States, and fanning that flame for years? And Mitch McConnell vowing to do everything in his power to make Obama a single term president?

During the campaign, Obama and Clinton told us that Trump was dangerously unhinged -- now they ask us to give him a chance. So, basically, all the racist, obnoxious, abhorrent and outrageous statements Trump made on his path to the Oval Office are hereby wiped from the slate?

I guess words are not going to matter in Trumpland.

Something else just occurred to me: during the primaries when it looked more and more likely that Trump would win the GOP nomination, the press was full of stories about the disintegration of the GOP, how it was finished as a party. Let’s see. The GOP now controls the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, plus a majority of governorships. So much for decline. Seems to me that the Democrats are the party in decline, a logical result of decades of slavish adherence to neoliberal economic policies that have battered the poor and the middle class. And who were the main proponents of those neoliberal, corporate-friendly policies? Bill and Hillary Clinton, of course.

I think this thought from Jeffrey St. Clair of Counterpunch is on target: “I think Hillary lost because she was on the wrong side of the class war. From the beginning of their political careers, the Clintons have been on the side of the one-percent against the rest of us, regardless of gender or skin color. Her allegiance to Wall Street finally blew up in her face.”

Here’s a question that has been bouncing around inside my head. If Donald Trump succeeds in making America great again, what will America look like?”

Vote Mickey

“The votes that matter are the votes on the street. Either Trump or Clinton will provoke mass upheaval. The key contribution of the Sanders campaign has been to lay bare for idealistic youth the magnitude of the rot in the system itself…”  Gary Leupp

I wrote on this blog a few months ago that Bernie Sanders would cave and urge his supporters to get behind Hillary Clinton. As predicted, it has happened, and Sanders was as craven as I feared. So much for the “revolution.” I don’t feel terrific about being right: any rookie political handicapper could have predicted that Sanders’ quest to reform the Democratic Party from within was doomed.

As Gary Leupp noted in an article for Counterpunch, Sanders did succeed in one respect: his campaign demonstrated, particularly for younger Americans, how utterly corrupt the American political system has become. No matter how often the mainstream media tells us our voices and votes matter, millions now understand that they matter not at all. The corrupt system has puked up Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, two people despised by wide swaths of potential voters. This is a curse, not a choice.

I will give the Clintons credit for their unparalleled skill at fixing the game, using their government positions to enrich themselves, and the nimble way they skirt the law. Bill and Hillary dance in the gray and never get caught; that they are crooked is not in doubt, but catching them out is another story. How many scandals has this detestable duo dodged over the past three decades? It tells me they know exactly what they are doing, that everything they do is calculated, thought out in advance. The Clintons are masters of corruption.

When I’m not completely pissed off about this dismal state of affairs, or frightened about what it portends, I marvel at how completely the Clintons manage media perceptions. Again and again Hillary is described as capable and experienced and exceptionally qualified to hold the highest office in the land, but peel back the gilded cover and you find a record of mediocrity or outright failure. What did she accomplish as a senator? Squat. What harm did she cause as Secretary of State? Plenty. Honduras and Libya come to mind. Trump scares me because he’s a buffoon; but Clinton scares me many times more because she has the potential to plunge the country into another undeclared war, exacerbate an already staggering level of wealth inequality, and to render our government even more subservient to financial elites.

If partisan politics hampered the Obama government, imagine what the gridlock will be like when Hillary moves into the Oval Office. Even though she’s practically a Republican, the GOP leaders are unlikely to give her much leeway, meaning that the critical problems facing this country will not be addressed.

What did Sanders get for his capitulation? I’ve read in various places that Sanders forced Clinton to move in a more progressive direction, and that the party platform reflects this, but honestly, who cares about the platform? It’s not binding on Clinton, and after the convention will largely be forgotten. And anyway, who’s going to hold Clinton accountable? Remember, she was for the TPP corporate trade giveaway before she was against it, or was she against it before she was for it?

Writing on the Truthout website, William Rivers Pitt summed it up: “Hillary Clinton is a fully owned corporate entity with a faux-populist message drafted on the back of a cocktail napkin at a Goldman Sachs convention. Donald Trump is a punchline who speaks in befuddled half-sentences and who wouldn't know a policy position if it squatted on his face and farted up his nose. These are our alleged options now, a choice between Wall Street and reality TV.”

There is no way I will vote for Hillary Clinton come November. I’ll write in Mickey Mouse before I tick the bubble next to Hillary’s name.