Gravitar Gets a Byline at Truthout!!!

Your humble blogger got an official assignment to cover the Democratic Debates in Miami earlier this week for Truthout.org. Quite an experience for an aging rookie. Here's the article I wrote as posted at TO: https://truthout.org/articles/democratic-debates-were-depth-free-will-future-rounds-be-better/

Please share it around.

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Pre-Debate Shenanigans: Elizabeth Warren Town Hall in Miami

The Warren Town Hall event at FIU was not what I expected. It looked like what I expected: a circle of about a thousand chairs around a small stage with a small podium and a stool with a glass of water on it. After a couple of brief rah rah intros, the candidate came out to the raucous cheers of the SRO crowd and she began telling her story of growing up in Oklahoma; of her hardworking, lower middle class dad and her 3 much older brothers who all volunteered to serve in Vietnam. Then she described the life changes that overtook her family when she was still young as her father barely survived a massive heart attack which took years of recovery. During that time Warren was introduced to the concepts of mortgage and foreclosure, learning that her mother saved the first and avoided the other when she decided to go out and get a full-time job answering phones at Sears for minimum wage. Minimum wage was enough to support a 3 person family.

She went on to explain that she went to college with the dream of becoming a school teacher, chose to sidetrack briefly for marriage and motherhood, but soon finished college locally for $50 per semester paid for by a generous aunt who had come to live with the family. Warren then did live her dream when she taught special needs until deciding 3 years of law school, while still being a wife and mother, suited her as well. Practicing law only briefly, she returned to class as a law professor, covering every economic and financial field there was to teach.

She says she lived her dreams and rose to the top of her field.

But for too many, reaching for those dreams have become impossible because of the skyrocketing costs of higher education and the stranglehold the financial industry had placed on new graduates. From there Warren connected her experience with the experience of those today in similar situations and how corporate and financial interests have so changed the nature of business that there seems no room to grow, compete, or take entrepreneurial risk at any level. She went into brief but substantive detail on a variety of topics all of which added up to effectively reforming American economics and government in the deepest manner since the New Deal brought the US the social safety net, WWII brought an entire infrastructure rebuild of the country, and the post-War era brought financial health to a freely educated (then almost entirely white) populace. A healthy dose of Teddy Roosevelt-era trustbusting is sprinkled over it all.

She says the US is in need of fixing all those parts of our national life and it can and must be done.

It was entirely rational, to the point, easy to understand, and told in the manner of a really energetic square-cool teacher who wants to see her students do well.

I thought after that we would have an hour or so of questions from the audience. Instead there were only three questions from numbers drawn from a bag by Warren's young grandson. In the first, she was asked about her thoughts on the current horror of child refugee detainment. Her answer was as expected and in the course of it announced she’ll go down to the detention center (prison, concentration camp) where children are currently under lock and key in Homestead. It’ll be a neat trick to get down there, have a meaningful moment designed to bring press attention to a crime against humanity on our own soil, and get back to downtown Miami in time to prep for the night’s debate.

The second question was about blue collar jobs in small town America. Her plan (and she has them), is to develop new industries, related to green infrastructure, and mandate that all materials be fabricated in the US, with a preference to those places that traditionally have been places for manufacturing.

The third question was whether she would support action against Iran under current circumstances. Her one word answer, “no”.

Rather than go on, she announced she would take individual selfies with anyone who wanted to wait in line, which nearly everyone in the hall did. She made a brief statement to press (which I couldn't hear even though I was about a foot and a half away from her), then went about the selfies which, as I write several hours later, she still may be taking. I would have preferred to see her take more questions and maybe keep the personal story speech a bit shorter, but overall, I got the picture of what she’s up to as a candidate. She came from a tough but common midwestern upbringing, had some life challenges that are shared by millions, persisted (important word for this campaign thanks to Mitch McConnell), and ultimately wants to reboot the country in a way that will allow others to work toward the same results without big finance, big corps, or corrupt government getting in the way.

She came across as determined, not angry, self-deprecating, entirely likable, smart as you would expect a Harvard law professor to be, caring, and most of all, genuine. This business about “electability” and “likableness” is quite honestly, a bag of bullshit. She’s got the goods. Does she have the political chops after being in the Senate for only a little over 6 years? Entirely unknown. But considering the last 3 White House occupants had little actual experience in high elective office (GWB and Obama) and then none at all (trump), Warren surely meets that minimum criteria for the job as far as the American voter is concerned.

Post-Election Chaos: Just Another Day in Florida

Late Thursday afternoon, November 8, 2018 current Republican Governor of Florida, candidate for US Senate, and adult space alien baby, Rick Scott filed a lawsuit against Broward County Supervisor of Elections, Brenda Snipes, alleging that she is engaging in acts of fraud on behalf of the Democratic candidates in the election “completed” just two days prior. She is doing this by somehow skewing the numbers such that they continue to run in consistent proportions against Governor Scott and all other Republican candidates.

The fact that the numbers skew heavily against Republicans in a county that routinely runs 70/30 in favor of any random Democrat has them clutching their pearls and suffering from the vapors.

Thursday’s meeting of the county Canvassing Board convened for the single purpose of reviewing and showing the results of the provisional ballots. By Florida Statute, such ballots are cast by anyone who appears at a voting location, who is not then verifiable as registered in the database. They are then given the chance to vote, with that vote immediately sealed for later review in the event that it can be verified at the conclusion of the election.

The meeting was held in a largish room about 50’ x 75’ along the left wall was a series of windows, the other side of which contained the vote counting machines, looking like large office copiers with computer screens attached, being operated by about a dozen or so election employees keeping them running constantly while surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of office boxes, presumably containing counted ballots, as smaller plastic document trays were wheeled in, all containing reams of ballots which were fed into the machines. We were told that these were late-arriving absentee/mail-in ballots, or possibly untabulated early vote ballots as well. Everyone was surprised to see so much left to be counted though some veterans of the Broward ballot wars seemed more disgusted than surprised that such a spectacle was necessary.

The room was cordoned in half on one side with spectators, perhaps 20 representatives of the campaigns, mostly lawyers in suits, about the same number of media reps, not so nattily attired, a few elected officials, and a sprinkling of members of the general public. On the other side was the Canvassing Board, consisting of two county judges, supported by a couple county attorneys, some staff, and joined by Supervisor Snipes.

Early in the day a clarion call had gone out across the interwebs seeking volunteers to assist in calling and locating people who had submitted provisional ballots. These volunteers were needed so that those ballots could be “perfected” via affidavit to bolster the chances of them getting calculated. The sense from these messages was that if enough people chipped in, it would be enough to tilt the balance of the election.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. While no vote should be minimized or made light of, the notion that provisional ballots would be the key to turning the tables on a few typically close Florida statewide elections is utter nonsense. And the notion that hordes of volunteers could help save the day, similar nonsense.

As it happened, the total number of provisional ballots returned to the Supervisor’s office, in the second most populous county in the state, where 700,000 votes were already counted, came to 661.

Of those 661, 205 were immediately identified as erroneously categorized as provisional and instead should have been counted as regular ballots and tabulated as such. But what happened instead stands as a microcosm of everything wrong with Broward, and ultimately, all of Florida’s two decades of torturous elections.

At first, it was announced that those ballots, being as good as any other properly submitted voter ballot, was run through the machines and counted as was appropriate. That announcement resulted in an uproar from one of the representatives of the Rick Scott campaign, attorney William R. Scherer of Fort Lauderdale firm Conrad & Scherer, LLP. With grandiloquent gesticulations he insisted that Supervisor Snipes was breaking the law by counting the ballots before they were examined by the Canvassing Board. He wondered aloud how the Snipes could “unring the bell” now that the ballots had been counted? The short but hesitantly offered answer was that it couldn’t be unrung. The votes counted.

In response, attorney for the Nelson campaign, Todd Falzone of Fort Lauderdale firm Kelley/Uustal explained that the requirement that provisional ballots be examined by the Canvassing Board doesn’t apply to ballots wrongfully put into a provisional ballot envelope. If a poll worker makes a mistake in determining that someone must vote provisionally rather than through the regular voting process, the simple remedy is to run the ballot as correct at the earliest opportunity. There was no bell needing to be unrung. Instead, what counsel for Rick Scott was doing was nothing more than an effort to perform for the cameras while casting a cloud over a result that at the very moment the argument was taking place, was getting closer and closer as more late results came in. In fact, it was just about that time that word began filtering through the crowd that the threshold for the Senate race had been reached to trigger an automatic handcount of all tabulated votes. This Senate race had now become the closest in Florida history. And rather than allow the process to play out, the Governor was doing everything he could to grandstand and simply make up out of whole cloth, insinuations that somehow fake ballots were being allowed to slip through in enormous numbers, regardless of the reality that no such evidence exists to suggest much less prove such allegations.

But the argument appeared to have rattled Supervisor Snipes, who has had multiple problems with her election management throughout her tenure. Snipes herself was originally appointed to the office in 2005 by then governor Jeb Bush following the suspension and removal in disgrace of the previous county Supervisor of Elections, Miriam Oliphant. Whispers in the room also insinuated that part of the rancor held by Mr. Scherer against Dr. Snipes came about because he was instrumental in Snipes’ appointment but is now deeply disappointed in her effectiveness at her job.

After a brief break, the Board reconvened and Dr. Snipes announced that the 205 ballots had NOT been tabulated but had been merely “set aside for now”. Total confusion followed as it was argued again that if they weren’t provisional in character then tabulating is appropriate, while if they were provisional, their envelopes should not have been opened outside of the supervision of the Canvassing Board. To do so would thoroughly invalidate the ballots altogether.

And thus we get to the real problem in Broward County. Brenda Snipes is, by all appearances and by her actions going back over a decade, incompetent in her role as the caretaker of the voting rights of citizens of Broward County. In addition to this relatively small problem of 205 votes, we had, still running just to our left, the ongoing counting of votes which we didn’t know if they were early votes, Election Day votes, mail-in votes, or some combination. She has been completely incapable of providing the public any information on what exactly is going on. She is required by law to do so. She is required by law to have all these votes, except for provisionals and military/overseas votes, fully counted within 30 minutes of the closing of the polls. Yet here we were nearly 2 full days after the election ended and on the cusp of the closest elections this side of Bush v Gore.

But this points up an even larger problem in the state. The Republicans focus all of their negative energy at Broward because it’s the second largest county by population in the state but is far and away the most reliably Democratic county in the state, ringing up totals that are routinely in range of a 70/30 split. At this writing the split is 68/32 favoring the Dems in both races. Regardless of the focus on Broward, it is NOT the only county still counting votes. Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Duval (Jacksonville) are running ballots as well.

If all of the most populous counties are struggling to get their votes counted, this speaks to a more systemic problem. It suggests that someone may be asleep at the wheel at the Florida Secretary of State’s office. It is from there that resources and oversight come. And in the same sense that every county knows well in advance when an election is scheduled and should be prepared accordingly, the Secretary of State should be sure that the big counties have what they need in equipment and staffing to get the job done, and the oversight to assure it’s getting done. Clearly neither are taking place. So as the competency of Brenda Snipes can be called into question, the attention to all citizens’ voting rights should be called into question with Secretary of State Ken Detzner, a two term appointee of, yes, Governor Rick Scott.

The irony is that again, while all of this was taking place, Scott filed a lawsuit against Brenda Snipes that accuses her of fraud in all but name. The suit states that the failure on her part to produce records of votes tabulated and not yet tabulated is causing “irreparable public injury”. The complaint does not say what this injury is, nor does it make any mention of other counties and their similar efforts to produce information or explain why they too have yet to finalize their counts. And it also asks for no remedy beyond any “relief as the Court deems appropriate.”

In other words, really there’s no harm in counting the votes no matter how long it takes. But on the off chance they can get a judge to stop the process, thereby ending any chances that the results as announced could be overturned by actual numbers of votes, the Scott (and by extension DeSantis) campaign will be more than happy to accept it.

Ultimately we are witnessing a Republican attempt to avoid counting all the legitimate votes cast. Rather than acknowledging a concern that maybe they lost fair and square, they prefer to blame the Republican appointed Supervisor of a Democratic county while conveniently ignoring the fact that other Democratic counties are having the exact same problem in a state run almost entirely by gerrymandered-in-place Republicans.

Despite it all, despite the mismanagement and faux outrage, once again, a Florida election heads to a recount. But no worries, in Florida there is plenty of incompetence and corruption to go around for everyone.

Yes, I'm Still Here

Been getting published lately on Buzzflash by truthout.org.

Here's my latest piece, commentary after the first debate between Florida gubernatorial candidates Andrew Gillum (D) and Ron DeSantis (R). The end of the article lists links to earlier articles.

The Real Swamp Report 4: Gillum Dominates the First Debate

Please enjoy and comment freely.

Can You Smell The Republican Bullshit NOW???

Let's be clear now. The Republicans have spent the past 8 years attacking a healthcare system substantially comprised of an idea that they originally devised in the 90s and enacted in Massachusetts in the early aughts by the guy they ran for President in 2012. The instant that idea was adopted by a Democratic president, for the sole purpose of getting them to at least pretend to engage in the process, they abjectly refused, failing to contribute a single vote towards the crafting and passage of their own idea. Let me repeat that again: they refused to participate in the passage of THEIR OWN IDEA because a Democrat said "OK, let's go with your plan".

Since then they have railed against it in a manner unprecedented in generations, lying repeatedly about what it was or wasn't doing, who it was or wasn't covering, and refusing to acknowledge that anyone is actually benefiting from its existence. Instead, they claimed, they had better ideas to really improve the delivery of healthcare in the US and preserve the free market system -- which by the way has NEVER been an element of the insurance model of healthcare delivery. Any system that refuses to allow negotiations over drug prices and specifically allows collusion among insurers (and unless you can argue against the existence of the McCarran-Ferguson Act you'd best not take issue with that last one) is most assuredly NOT based on any version of market economics that's ever been posed by any academic, Austrian or otherwise.

But the GOP never had to reveal the secret of their healthcare plans because they were never in a position to actually have to pass it. Unfortunately, the mistake of Donald Trump's victory really screwed up their plans to scuttle everything a president Hillary Clinton would have tried to do to shore up the weaknesses of the actual Republican healthcare plan known colloquially as Obamacare. With the mistake of Trump's ascension to office, the Republicans found themselves in the unexpected position of being able to pass almost anything they wanted. All they needed to do was roll out that amazing new plan they've had in mothballs all this time. All Trump had to do was show us the great, best, beautiful plan he said HE had ready to go on day one when they would go ahead and follow through on their longstanding promise to "REPEAL AND REPLACE" Obamacare.

BUT, my friends, we now see that they were and remain, entirely full of shit. All they had this entire time was a really catchy marketing slogan that was easy to say, easy to remember, easy to use as a battering ram, but in reality, utterly empty of any content AT ALL. I mean, not just a work in progress, not something that needed a little tweaking in the moment, no. The marketing got so far ahead of the product that in the end, when it came time to show what they had, it turned out THEY HAD NOTHING! NADA! ZERO! ZILCH! ZIP!!

THEY LIED TO YOU!!!!!! BIGLY!!!

They do this all the time. I mean sure to an extent all politicians do a version of it. It's hard to talk detailed policy to a largely bovine electorate. But it's easy to complain about something you don't have to do and will take no part in when someone else decides to do it. It's a great way to generate fundraising and the support of misguidedly angry masses of, let's face it, yokels. It's a great way to win and keep mid-level elected jobs. Just don't win the White House. In the immortal words of Energy genius Rick Perry, "Oops".

The GOP has nothing. They never had anything. They've been completely full of shit for a really long time now. Not partly. Entirely. But it didn't matter when they didn't expect to ever have to DO anything. In that scenario, just keep your job and enjoy a nice living as a do-nothing good living politician. Leave the doing shit to the dedicated public servants now known as the DEEP STATE and then bitch about them too when just doing your job goes against the fake policies represented by the slogans.

The problem here, unfortunately, is that the alternative isn't really much of an improvement. Let's not forget that in order to do anything to attend to the disaster that is US healthcare delivery, the Democrats had to use a shitty Republican idea. The ideas that have a chance of really working: public option, multiple different versions of single-payer, among others -- were dropped almost immediately because moderates like Max Baucus (D-MT) were little more than toadies for the insurers as much as any Republican.

My point here, though, is that though the Democrats are venal, the Republicans are a whole order of magnitude beyond that. They spit from outrage to outrage claiming they have this or that solution but as we can now see on a daily basis, they have NO SOLUTIONS AT ALL. And when they try to come up with something, they're so intellectually bankrupt and bound by the shallowness of their own slogans -- not their principles, their SLOGANS -- they can't come up with anything better than the horror that was (is?) the Trump/Republican Deathcare plan that conservatively would throw upwards of 20 MILLION people out of the pool of insureds altogether.

The craziest consequence of what may be the end of this charade is that it turns out that despite it all, once again the system seems to have worked. The US system demands that compromise by all is necessary to get anything done. Absolutism is doomed to failure. Unwavering single-mindedness assures that nothing gets done. So what happened here?

Obamacare may not have had any GOP support but keep in mind that it was always the GOP plan in the first place. So whether they like it or not, their hands were and are involved in what we have now. It was a non-negotiated compromise. The effort to repeal and replace, became an absolutist nightmare. And it has failed as a result of lack of compromise.

SONOFABITCH!!!!!!!! Madison wins again.

But until the Republican party, and its millions of semi-mindless supporters realize this most basic of American principles, we are doomed to failure.

And in American government, that's how it's supposed to turn out.

The Problem of Trump

The problem of Trump isn't Trump. It's the people in charge of stopping Trump. It should not have come as a shock the the head of the Office of Government Ethics resigned this week suggesting that it is nearly pointless to continue in a job whose directives are entirely ignored by the Trump administration.

As a free and independent billionaire, a guy like Trump is very hard to stop if he doesn't want to be stopped. He has lived his life in a manner that is recognizable from people of his sort. He just happens to be the most extreme and visible example. What I mean is that he is not interested in following any rules, he doesn't care what they are, and for the most part, doesn't even know what they are. He does what he wants, the way he wants, when he wants to. He is nearly unaffected by any attempts to box, control, or reign him in. Additionally, he can afford a battalion of attorneys who are on-call 24/7 to beat back with interminable and expensive litigation, anyone who would be so bold as to try it. It costs Trump no more and no less to have these attorneys on-call for him. He only settles when it leads to bad publicity. See the Trump University settlement for an example.

In the private world, there really isn't any entity that can do much to slow down, much less stop any of Trump's abusively piggish behavior.

In the political world though, it's an entirely different story. It's not money that's at stake here, it's power and authority. The US government is designed precisely to contend with an imbecilic and gold-plated power turd like Trump. Checks and balances is a phrase that has real force under the Constitution. Its purpose is to assure that anyone who holds office in government has to work within the bounds of law, tradition, and propriety in order to accomplish anything and retain their position. Their responsibility is not first to themselves or even their constituents. It is to the Constitution. In order to serve and protect the Constitution, all must place a check upon those who refuse to serve and protect it. And the presumption is that all elected officials are jealous enough of their little piece of the power they wield within this system to assure that they aren't taken advantage of by other elected officials.

Here is where we have the problem. And it's a very specifically located problem. It's simply and entirely a problem of the Republican party. The GOP has control of the Legislative and Executive branches of government and are perilously close to having control over the heart of the judicial branch. But relative to the proper behavior in office of the Executive, the Legislative branch - Congress - is doing nothing. The Republican majority in Congress has boxed themselves in so tightly with their extreme right-wing, that they can't restrain or influence a dangerously incompetent administration because to do so MIGHT mean they would have to work in a bipartisan manner and make compromises with the opposition Democrats.

We have a billionaire in office who says and does and exhibits every wrong aspect of the American character, and does so in full view of the world, while clearly violating any number of laws and requirements of the Constitution at a minimum, through the use of family members to engage in policy without supervision or office, but more importantly, by receiving financial benefit from the office from foreign agents in flagrant violation of the spirit AND letter of the Emoluments Clause. Yet the Republicans in Congress, who are the only ones who can do anything, do nothing. The Constitution that they are obligated to protect and defend goes unprotected and undefended because elected Republicans fail to take any enforcement action.

Laws on the books are meaningless if no action to enforce them occurs when they are violated. They become literally worth less than the paper or parchment on which they are printed. We have seen too often in our history, and much too much in our recent history, the abject failure of those in positions of enforcement of the Constitution to actually do so when necessary. The result has been recognition among the wealthiest and most privileged sectors of our nation to behave in the most abusive and profligate manner that we've seen since the days when humans were bought and sold as property on the open market.

Donald Trump has lived his life daring anyone to stop him from doing what he felt like doing. He hasn't changed a bit since being placed into the highest elective office in the land. No one should have been surprised at that and no one should expect anything less - or more - of him. He's been an actor on the public stage his entire adult life; a known quantity. Those who have the ability to check his excess and abuse should have been ready to do so from day one. We're just about 6 months into this 14 karat gold-plated turd of a man and administration, yet still, nothing is being done to correct his behavior.

The only other chance to right the circumstance we find ourselves in is to finally recognize and admit that we are because WE THE PEOPLE both through acts of commission AND omission put all of those failed elected where they are. And ultimately, it's the only way to fix the problem of Trump. When all else fails, it falls to WE THE PEOPLE, under the Constitution to behave responsibly as citizens at every opportunity, to assure that the United States continues to do better than it has in all the time before.

Right now, it's appearing that many in the rest of the world are starting to move on from an era dominated by American influence and ideals. That will be a world that most Americans have no concept of and probably less ability to contend with personally.

The office of President of the United States is supposed to be bigger than the man who occupies it. It's time for those with the power to do so stop respecting the office so much that they let a small man disrespect it so egregiously. And it's up to WE THE PEOPLE to demand it for the sake of ourselves, our country, our children, and the world.

If we continue to fail in our obligations as citizens we should then admit that we are not worthy of those obligations.

Make Them Blow It Up

If the Republican Party and their leader Donald Trump wants to take over the country entirely, as it appears they've wanted to do for the better part of a decade of utter failure to participate in governing, let them have it. And let the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch be the point at which they do so. And let them, and by them I include all of us, suffer the consequences of ending the American Experiment.

Judge Gorsuch is an  eminently qualified judge and has the credentials and temperament to be a Justice of the Supreme Court. No argument there. But so does Merrick Garland. The argument that a qualified nominee doesn't even deserve the courtesy of a hearing, simply because the presidential primary season is upon us is about the shallowest and arbitrary standards that could be applied to such an important appointment. There is no official start to the primaries and as a practical matter the race for president never ends anymore. Donald Trump has already filed his papers for 2020. Does that mean the race is already officially on? If so, then by the McConnell rule, no hearings should be given to any SCOTUS nominee. The people should be left to decide in 2020.

Well, isn't THAT absurd? Welcome to American politics in 2017.

It's true that the Democrats started all this foolishness with Supreme Court nominees going back to 1987 when they rejected Judge Robert Bork on ideological grounds even though by any measure he was a thoroughly qualified nominee. And then the dems did it again on a cabinet appointment by defeating the nomination of  John Tower as Secretary of Defense because of allegations of drunkenness; an allegation which would have disqualified as much as 75% of all politicians at any given moment.

Since then these nomination fights have been escalated in a tit for tat manner for a payback that seems to have no end. It has escalated on both sides, finally culminating with the humiliation of Judge Merrick Garland following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The problem now is that there is no standard by which to determine when or even whether to consider important appointees and under what circumstances should that appointee be approved.

My opinion has always been that unless a nominee simply isn't qualified for the position (Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education for example, Harriet Miers for Supreme Court) or has egregious character flaws (white supremacist G. Harrold Carswell for SCOTUS by Nixon in 1970), they should be confirmed. Elections have consequences and the Senate has a duty to see that all positions that the President must fill are indeed filled in as expeditious a manner as possible.

But that is no longer the case. Although both sides have plenty of blame for getting us here, it's the GOP that took it to the limit with their shabby treatment of Judge Garland. Accordingly, the Democrats in the Senate must stage a final stand via filibuster thereby refusing to allow a final hearing on Judge Gorsuch.

Gorsuch may very well be the least offensive choice that Trump could have made from the list of judges he put out during the campaign. But it's not relevant. The seat in question was formerly occupied by Antonin Scalia, a Justice who's extreme and questionable jurisprudence has been white-washed because he was such a delightful guy to be around. Whomever Trump would nominate next - since he's a spiteful shit he'd surely follow up with the most odious choice he can find - would really only be replacing like with like. It's just a matter of the nominee's personal conviviality.

The only option the Republicans would have would be to invoke the so-called "nuclear option". Currently, 60 votes are required in the Senate to cut off debate on Supreme Court nominees. It used to be the case with all nominees until several years ago when the Republicans in the minority had so bottled up the process of filling the federal bench, that Harry Reid was left with little option but to change the rule for all except the Supreme Court. The Republicans effectively shut down the process for the Supreme Court while in the majority last year, and now the Democrats should force them to decide if they really want full responsibility for everything that happens in American government or if it's finally time for a return to the usual give and take which has been the hallmark of our politics for over two centuries.

It's a risky move of course, but no more risky than those taken by the GOP for the better part of a decade with great success. Should any Justice from Kennedy and left (Ginsburg and Breyer most significantly) die or retire before the Dems have a chance to retake the Senate in 2018 or the White House in 2020, the court will either dwindle in numbers (if the nuclear option is not invoked) or be heavily populated with the most outrageous possible nominees.

Of course, if McConnell DOES invoke the nuclear option, should the Dems retake the Senate and the White House by 2020, AND the Justices on the left hold on, a liberal era of jurisprudence will rise and fly for generations to come. I say take that chance because the alternative is darkness no matter what.

Lying About Danger From Refugees

"Extreme vetting" is utter horseshit. It's merely a method of executing a Muslim ban by degrees when none is warranted or useful. This is especially true as it applies to refugees from Syria seeking to escape from the kinds of people we are supposedly protecting ourselves from. The refugees want the same thing we do. Safety and freedom. The US used to be the shining light of such things. But the Trumpisti are determined to violate everything good about the United States as understood across the world for centuries.

To those who disagree, your fears are unfounded. Your "belief" has no basis in measurable reality. And this reality CAN and HAS been measured. Call it what you want, but the process of vetting which has been in place for over 30 years is pretty damn extreme. Much moreso than anything in Europe. Follow the explanation and links in this article which is from June 2016.

Educate yourself on what it is you're actually ranting about when it means that genuinely endangered people will be consigned to death because you wouldn't extend your hand as an American when they reached out to you for help.

Wrong: Donald Trump says there's 'no system to vet' refugees

As Darkness Descends, Get Ready For The Dawn

As you'd expect, I watched and commented on the inauguration today with my colleagues from Progressive Blend Radio for our new show Trumpled Underfoot. Trump's speech was a reworked version of his stump program made all the more dark by his false dystopian view of a United States suffering from the ravages of a "carnage" that few would see if they weren't hearing it from their fearful leader. In short, it was a grotesquerie that will eventually receive recognition as among the worst and most negative speeches ever given by anyone to ascend to the highest office in the land.

Here's my takeaway from the day.

My friend, the writer and activist, William Rivers Pitt of truthout.org, was once press secretary for Dennis Kucinich wen he ran for president in 2004. Pitt quoted Kucinich talking to a crowd while campaigning in Iowa, "You are the one you've been waiting for. You've been here all along." He continued to say for himself, "I pity the dawn, for it shall find me pissed. Onward."

I've always thought I was involved and doing what I could to help nudge things in the right direction. I'm now certain that I've been kidding myself all this time.

I am upping my game and contributing more time and action than simply what I do in front of this cybermachine.

I suspect this may be true for a lot of you who are reading this. And if nothing else comes out of what we're about to experience, the notion that we will ALL be upping our game together, no longer waiting for ourselves, to instead BE what we've been waiting for, that dawn better make way. Because we WILL win the day.

Congress, ALL of Congress Better Sack Up Fast

It's 2:25PM EST, January 12, 2017. 8 days before the official start of the Trump administration. I'm watching C-SPAN3 for what was supposed to be a hearing featuring Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis (ret). The purpose is a pre-hearing in the House in advance of Senate confirmation hearings for his nomination to be Secretary of Defense. The United States military must be managed by a civilian. Civilian management of the military is a bedrock principle of the US and is a substantial reason the US has never seriously worried of military takeovers. Often though, retired military officers have been appointed to the office and for most of the past century a law has been in place that required any former members of the military be retired for a number of years before being eligible for the position. Currently, the retirement period is 7 years. General Mattis has been retired for less than 7 years. Accordingly, Congress has decided to consider a narrowly written law which would carve out a niche for General Mattis to serve now.

Since this is an unprecedented situation, Congress decided they wanted to have a hearing with the General to discuss his civilian experience and how he distinguishes the difference between civilian life and military service. Most importantly House committee wanted to hear General Mattis discuss his understanding and appreciation for why the Constitution mandates civilian management of the military.

For his part, General Mattis, who has testified before Congress in numerous capacities throughout his years of public service, was prepared and looking ahead to testifying. It seems though at the last moment, the Trump transition team and probably Trump himself, had the General stand down and not appear for the hearing. At this writing, there is no explanation for the sudden change.

What we are witnessing is a power play by the Trump admin's to be executive branch. Trump is declaring clearly that he will not be questioned or vetted at all much less in passing by anyone even by right. He is engaging in imperial behavior before taking the oath.

The Congressional committee is in near unanimity in their anger over Trump's meddling. What needs to happen and fast, is that Congress, ALL of it, House and Senate, Republican and Democratic, needs to recognize the threat posed to their constitutional authority by Trump and his handlers. Now, regardless of individual merits, they should reject the bill to waive the 7 year requirement for General James Mattis unless and until he is allowed to testify as requested.

The Congress must follow by rejecting each and every matter in which Trump interferes with their authority and make it clear that Congress is, as always, first among co-equal branches. It's unfortunate that this is where events are going already, and it's of grave concern that Congress has been so absent from engaging its responsibilities for so many years. My confidence that the people sitting in Congress now even KNOW what it means to do their jobs in a serious way is in severe question but if ever they were ready assert their primacy n American government, that time is NOW.

Almost Isn't Good Enough

Long form writing doesn't come easily for me because it's hard to untangle the interconnected thoughts into linear sentences. And I edit myself. And re-edit. Then try to add links. And a little joke here or there. And before you know it, it never gets done and never gets posted. I'm gonna give it a go at keeping it shorter and see how that goes.

We have reached the height of the long Republican Party plan to game the system so carefully set up by the founding fathers of the United States. They feared one thing and believed they had designed the system to avoid the one pitfall.

They fear what they called "factions" and we call political parties. The solution to the problem was to have a nation so large and diverse that no faction to set up and last long enough around enough ideas to keep it together and overrun the rights of the people.

But since the late 1950s, the conservative "movement" has managed to pull it together just large enough in widely dispersed area, and kept it together to confound the system. Successive 10 year cycles to do well in census years allowed constant control of redistricting to lock down state houses and congress for the foreseeable future.

How did they do this? By doing an end around the usual means of information sharing with voters, namely, the media. Back to the 1950s...

William F. Buckley began using TV and magazines to focus the conservative message. No attempt to be "fair and balanced".

Think tanks were formed to promote the ideas put forth in magazines and TV. Politicians were educated in the language of the movement.

Direct mail in the 1970s spearheaded by Richard Viguerie. Go right to the people so they don't have to listen to media elites like Walter Cronkite or Wolf Blitzer tell them what to think about national and world events.

Ally with evangelical religionists so that not only was the message "right", it was "righteous". And with that it became ok to call out people who don't behave right. Redefine what it means to be American just as the term began to include groups besides white Christian men.

Simplify it with incessant repetition for a couple of decades. God, guns, and gays. Masculine, physical strength mythologized by rugged individualists like the John Wayne characters that no one even pays attention to anymore. Vigilante justice taking up where the "system" has failed.

Repeat it over and over and over and over...

Welcome to the world. The Constitution is confounded and all the founders worst nightmares have come to be. Just like they thought it could but hoped it wouldn't.

The US was a good idea while it lasted. We very nearly pulled it off.

Why Is THIS The One That Broke the GOP Establishment Against Trump?

Donald Trump has called Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. He has called for a ban on all Muslims from entering the country and thrown suspicion upon all of them who are already here including those who are citizens. He attacked a family who lost a son at war for the US. He has a long history of racial discrimination going back to the 1970s and has nearly 0% support from blacks nationally. The litany of horrors that has done and has spilled from his maw goes on and on. Yet it is his 11 year old hot mic pre-interview gibberish with Billy Bush -- where Trump brags about how he attempted to bed a married woman, talks about her as merely a sex object, then continues on to do the same about a woman about to bring him to a soap opera set for a cameo, while explaining that as a "star" he can get away with doing anything to women, including just walking up and grabbing them "by the pussy"-- that finally has his own party in an uproar. This doesn't even touch on his "policies" of kowtowing to Russia, encouraging nuclear proliferation, instigating worldwide trade wars, and further rigging the tax code to favor the filthy rich over middle class Americans.

Since Trump has already defined himself as a caricature of a human circa 1955, why is this interview such a big deal?

People of conservative bent have a tendency to think of the world and politics purely in terms of their own familiarity; the words they want to hear, the people they already know, the ideas that came before them.

All of the other statements that have shaken Democrats, liberals, leftists, and the rest to their bones, make little to no impression on conservatives because to them, such statements are mostly hyperbolic abstractions that don't sound like anything other than code for standing tall and being the best, greatest, amazing, winning country that the US should be but isn't.

This time, this one hits close to home because Trump's base, the GOP base, the common thread between the party and the campaign, has the one thing being taken advantage of in his comments.

White women.

Trump is talking about "doing what he wants" because he's "a star" to white women he comes across. the GOP/Trump base is composed almost exclusively of white men and white women. Trump can indeed get away with talking badly or violently about some abstract "other" especially since most of them are some shade of brown who are far away or at a minimum unfamiliar in their look or daily affairs as he imagines them. But every good Republican is or has personal contact with good old American white women every day, and talking badly about them is not acceptable.

Finally.

I’m not with her. But I’m voting for her.

You can’t compare her to Bernie. Bernie is an anomaly. You can’t compare her to Trump. Trump is a waking nightmare of American culture. You can compare her to politicians of the post-WWII era. They were all men who campaigned hard and could cut each other within certain bounds of mutually accepted decency. And when the race was over and it was time to do the work of governing, they governed. They did politics. They worked to get things done by recognizing an issue which needed to be addressed, laying it all out on the table, and addressing it. If they were coming from a position of strength they did not seek always to get everything they wanted at all costs because they knew they had constituents who did not want everything the politician wanted. If they came from a position of weakness, they bargained for a piece of the action, prepared to use that as an advantage for the next election. Destruction was not the end being sought. They advocated strenuously for their positions and then gave in order to get so as to get things done. Live to fight another day. Why? Because we were all Americans, we had that in common no matter the differences in details on how we defined it. Total war against fellow citizens served no useful purpose. The idea of We The People had meaning measured in the population of the country, not just as some abstract calligraphy on an old parchment. Regardless of anything else, the people and the system put in place by the people to govern it was respected.

Hillary Clinton and her supporters respect that system. The republican candidate and his supporters do not. This election is no longer about which set of policies is worthy of favor, but whether the entire nature of the American system will continue as it is. With Hillary, it is fair to conclude from my assessment that she is then just more of the same. I agree with that. Considering our options, more of the same is preferable to blowing up everything, possibly literally. In Hillary we have a candidate who may very well be more aggressive internationally than someone of more progressive bent. She is presumed, rightly I think, to be a close friend of big money in business, finance, and government.

But she is also as socially liberal as any progressive candidate would be. In view of the likelihood that we will have 2 and potentially as many as 4 Supreme Court changes coming in the next 4 years, 2 of which may come from the right wing of the court, having Hillary making the nominations will assure for the next several decades that the liberal victories on social issues will remain in place. This is no small matter in view of the attacks on women’s rights, voting rights, racial issues, gay rights, and so much more that the right has engaged in relentlessly as long as any of these issues has existed in public discourse.

As a practical matter, Hillary’s policies represent about 80% of policies I support. Though she doesn’t take many as far as I would prefer, it’s much better than the backwards and deformed approach of her opponent.

I don’t buy in to the similarly decades long attack on every single aspect of her character and activities. They have been systematically whipped up by what she long ago defined “the right-wing hit machine” and have so seeped into the zeitgeist of US politics that it’s simply assumed that she is the most dishonest politician ever to hit the American scene. While she does have an aura of Nixonian non-transparency and slipperiness about her, nothing has ever stuck in any substantial way that suggests she’s any more than a standard issue high level political actor who will always, as is the nature of the game, toe right up to the edge of propriety without going over it. I may not like that kind of behavior, but again, in context of this election, I am willing to tolerate it. I do not believe that she is the consummate liar or criminal or murderer that she is accused of being. She is a centrist politician who is to the left socially and to the right in foreign affairs.

My conscience would like to have a viable candidate to choose. But one does not exist. Gary Johnson has proven himself to be almost as ignorant on important matters as Trump. He’s just a decent guy, and though that stands for a lot in this election, it doesn’t qualify him for the White House. He’s had many years to define clear positions on every issue yet he has not done so. Too many of his actual policies are the opposite of anything any progressive should get close to. Jill Stein as well, has no business being seriously considered. I agree with much of the Green Party platform, but the Green Party barely exists as an entity outside of California. Stein herself holds a handful of oddball leftist dog whistle positions and is just not a seasoned politician at a time when one is needed to counterbalanace the intensity of the right-wing loony bin. When the Greens make a sustained effort at building a bottom up party foundation that can show its viability at all levels of government, I’ll take its presidential candidates more seriously. For both the Libertarians and the Greens, simply showing up every four years to run for president and complain of unfairness in an electoral system which has stood for over 200 years is not serious. It’s adolescent entitlement. It’s a hobby.

The argument about having a clean conscience by voting third-party or not at all is the leftist counterpart to the right-wing individualist argument that all taxation is theft and that all government is an infringement that helps no one. The continued existence of this country, at least as it is and still hopeful for what it could be, is more important by a long way than the purity of my conscience and the consequences of a Trump presidency. My conscience will do fine supporting Hillary to avoid the horror of Trump. Being wrong about Hillary is considerably more tolerable to me as opposed to making a third-party vote and ending up with Trump when I could have tried to stop him with the simple act of a vote for her. I have no desire to stand on the ash heap of civilization with the serenity that I kept my conscience clean. The nation and the planet are more important to me than that.

I agree with Bernie Sanders that the best way for now to achieve progressive reform is to take the long view. He has, Moses-like, taken us to the mountaintop and shown us the way. It’s up to us to get there without him (although of course, he’s still here). The Democratic Party is nearly split between centrist, older, Hillary supporters, and liberal much younger, progressives. Every demographic analysis suggests that the trend towards younger and progressive will increase rather than slow. There are only so many shenanigans any party apparatus can engage in before sheer numbers overwhelm them. This is how party policy has shifted since the beginning of large American political parties in the mid-1800s. And with patience and continued activism, we may see this shift by 2020, and permanently by 2024.

I am resolved to fight another day. A movement does not succeed in one major election cycle. As progressives we are bound by our ideals to preserve our system rather than destroy it. We wish to improve what is wrong and maintain what is right. We seek to avoid actual violence wherever we can while standing strong for our principles, our process, and our goals. We can only do it by staying in the arena, learning everything we can about every aspect of party building and nation preserving. We cannot do it by allowing a creature as vile as Donald Trump and his unhinged supporters to rule over us.

Hillary Clinton isn’t the best choice among people who would make a good president. But she is also not nearly the worst and I do not believe she is as bad as she is made to be by her opponents. I DO believe that she is now the only choice to avoid the disaster that is embodied by Donald Trump and his supporters, and as an American pragmatic voter, despite my misgivings and concerns, I WILL be voting for Hillary Clinton to be the next President of the United States.

Birthshit

The latest absurdity from the Trump campaign is that he has helped the country by finally concluding that Barack Hussein Obama was indeed born in the United States and is therefore a legitimate citizen qualified to be President of this once Great Nation. He accepts all thanks for this announcement and regrets he had to clean up this issue after it was shamefully initiated by the Hillary Clinton 2008 presidential campaign.

Wait what??

Yes, Trump says word about the veracity of Obama's US birth came to him through Mark Penn, Hillary's 2008 campaign manager, via a strategy memo Penn wrote in March, 2007 when the campaign was just getting started. The memo includes a section called "Lack of American Roots". At the time, Obama was promoting his upbringing in both Hawaii and Indonesia as an example of a young, modern, and more worldly potential president than any who had come before. Obama's pitch was geared towards the burgeoning youth vote as a move to mobilize that notoriously difficult to reach demographic. It was a strategy that made the difference for him both as a candidate for the Democratic nomination and eventually as successful candidate for President.

Penn argued that then Senator Clinton should, as a counterpoint, highlight her upbringing as a child of the midwest as an appeal to middle-aged, middle class voters.

Regardless of anything else involving the content or application of the memo to the campaign, not a word of it makes any reference, directly, indirectly, or by any sort of insinuation, that Obama was not born in the United States.

In other words, as usual, Trump is utterly full of shit and is flat lying about the initial source of his interest in the topic, what he did or didn't believe about it, and why he continued to keep it alive for years until last week.

Almost everything Trump does is in some way a dog whistle to the racist right-wing of republican party support. It remains shocking that the folks in the GOP support system who don't fall in that category remain so quiet and tacitly supportive of such a candidate or people among their ranks.

My recollection of the birther movement was that it was promoted by a certifiable public loon named Orly Taitz. I saw her all over the news on TV and print/online making one absurd claim after another all of which eventually disappeared from public discourse including, finally, herself.

The gist of the argument devolved from the notion that we had a black guy with an Arab sounding name - which included as his middle name the last name of our recent Iraqi nemesis, who had nothing to do with terrorist acts against Americans, not that that mattered to these crazy people - running for president. The worldliness of his perspectives on international relations had nothing to do with any of it. Black people with Arab names aren't true Americans and Hawaii is so far away that it must be that he was really foreign born, especially since his father really WAS Kenyan so there you have it.

Thinking that a legitimate connection between his upbringing and worldview indicates foreign birth is still baseless, but it is also much too nuanced an explanation for anything that comes from the crazed right of this country's politics, or from the thin soupy mind of Donald Trump. It should all have been treated like a joke.

The man lies. Then he lies about his lies. Then he has his surrogates invent more lies to cover for this matryoshka of a word game that he plays and gets away with because our corporate media abides low standards.

But Hillary didn't tell anyone about the obvious pneumonia she was suffering from for a few days, so nevermind what Trump says.

The DNC Did Not Make Bernie Lose

A major theme of this year's primary season has been that the system is rigged. Although the accusation has been leveled at both parties, it's the Democrats who have been most specifically accused of rigging the game against Bernie Sanders. With the release of stolen emails from the hacked computers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), those accusations rose to the pitchforks and torches level and led to the resignation and effective disappearing of Committee chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. But the question remains, did DNC tampering create a difference that changed the outcome of the contest?

I say no.

I'm not going to get into the guilt or or not of the DNC or any other people involved in vote counting at any of the various places around the country where shenanigans were called. For the purposes of this analysis, let's just assume that all the accusations are true. Had none of it happened, Bernie would still have lost.

Calling the Sanders campaign a longshot when it began was generous. Clinton had about an 80 point lead just about anywhere you looked. Nevertheless, Bernie DID have a base from which to begin. He's had a consistent political philosophy since he first engaged in activism in the early 60s and never wavered in his message. He's been on the right side of most of the major issues since first entering congress in 1991. For the better part of a decade he has made the rounds on liberal talk radio, featuring on a long-running segment called Brunch with Bernie on the Thom Hartmann Radio Program. He has most significantly been a favorite on college campuses across the country his entire tenure. His base was young, liberal college students, of which there are many.

In order to do well for a start, Bernie needed to assure his base turned out on election day. Typically, young voters are known to be fairly lazy even though registration windows are long and early voting through a variety of means is available in most states. The exception to the low youth turnout was Barack Obama in 2008. Bernie knew going in that he would need to have similar numbers to have a shot at Hillary's lead and name recognition.

Secondly, he needed to make serious inroads into Hillary's base among African-Americans. Those voters constitute nearly 30% of the Democratic primary vote, so it's a must for any serious contender to be well-represented.

Finally, he had to know the rules as well as or better than Hillary. The Democratic party primaries is a chaotic mess of quirky individual state and sometimes county rules regarding when and how to vote, when to count, and what determines final delegate totals.

All of these factors require a top-notch high energy staff and ground game to get the message out and get the voters in. When all was said and done, Bernie failed badly on all three counts and STILL nearly won the nomination.

Very simply, the kids didn't show up in nearly the numbers hoped for and nowhere close to what Obama pulled in '08. That failure became clear even in the euphoria of the near-win in the first contest in college student-rich Iowa. Had there been a turnout in the same range as '08, Bernie would have had huge win instead of merely shocking the nation by coming within a point of victory. This trend stayed true throughout the process. Turnout was good but it needed to be great.

Bernie failed miserably when it came to attracting African-American votes. The story of his early years in the civil rights movement was appreciated but there didn't seem to be much in the way of direct action since he'd been in Congress. For Bernie's part, his method was to work for economic justice as a means to assure the rise of blacks in American society. But today, the focus is more on institutional justice. It took Bernie a while to understand the significance of the Black Lives Matter movement and the toll taken by mass incarceration in the private prison industry and the drug war on young lives, primarily young black men.

The tell that Bernie had failed here was in the rousting he received in the fourth primary in South Carolina. This drubbing was followed quickly by much of the same throughout the South. He lost the black votes by as much as 70 points when he needed to come within 15 to be able to claim cutting down that advantage.

And finally, Nevada showed his people didn't fully grasp the complexities of the rules. A simpler version of the lack of rule mastery occurred in New York when millions of potential voters went unregistered in the closed primary because the campaign was not aware of the very early deadline, a rule in New York that went back to the late 1800s.

It's likely that all of this went down as it did because in the early stages Bernie had no realistic expectation to do as well as he did. As a result he kept his simple basic economic message and never beefed up and expanded into other issues. By the time he needed a broader outreach, it was already too late.

The "rigging" of the DNC would have made the difference of a few points and hence only a handful of delegates in the states where it happened. But this was nothing against the big losses Bernie suffered in many states because of failed minority outreach, lack of youth registration, or turnout. He needed to run a perfect campaign. He did not.

Bernie talks in terms of "a political revolution" which emanates from within the confines of the Democratic Party. He didn't necessarily envision it simply as himself winning the White House. He wanted to regain a place for liberals and progressives in their traditional party, where the Clinton movement had taken it firmly to the center. To accomplish that, Bernie wanted to win seats at the table and increase membership rolls for young liberal activists who were going to be around a long time and who are to come into their own demographically by the end of the decade.

Knowing the difficulty of new parties or even growing minor already-existing parties, Bernie has advocated that his supporters stay in the party even though the DNC appears to be as rotten as a worm-eaten old wooden boat. He argues for determination and focus for the long haul in order to wrest control from the centrists and spread the liberal message across the country, where it received such an unexpectedly positive reception. And he argues that none of it will be possible if the Republicans are allowed to retake the White House and control the future of the Supreme Court.

To Bernie's experienced mind, the only chance to reignite the progressive spirit which built and sustained the middle class and finally began the still unfinished work of the Civil Rights, Women's Rights, and Gay Rights movement, is for his supporters to lick their wounds and get back to work.

Gravitar Profundus to Attend Trump Event in Boca Raton, Florida Tonight

I have my ticket to enter the Trump event tonight in Boca Raton.
I don't plan to get myself in trouble. I'm not wearing any Bernie gear, no tie dyes, nothing that can be misconstrued to indicate I am anything more than the short, fat, bald, middle-aged guy that I am. My mouth will be kept in check. I'm there to listen and watch. If nothing else, my ticket prevents a true believer from checking in with their fearful leader.
This is what I hope will be a soon to pass eruption of what I never doubted existed in the worst parts of the American personality. I presume most of the people there for real support really don't go along with the hatefulness and violence that Trump espouses. But despite that, they assist it into being and by that association, they are just as guilty as those who join in the hate and violence.
For my part, I think it's important to engage personally when something like this is happening. If a KKK parade were gong down my street, I wouldn't cower in my closet until it went away. When you leave the floor to bad ideas and bad people, they will take it and never easily give it up.
I've had my suspicions about why Trump got involved in this process at first. But regardless what his original purpose might have been, he's become mostly a rallying point for all of the worst aspects of the American character. I and some of my friends will be there hoping to represent at least some of the better parts of that same character. At a minimum, I have to bear witness to this.
Pictures, possibly some video, and surely some posts to follow. I'm heading to the event around 4. The actual begins at 7. It's an outdoor venue and rain is in the forecast.
PEACE!!!

The Establishment

The latest favorite phrase of the political class and the media that promotes it is The Establishment.

As a notion, being an outsider is always a popular and nominally effective way for a would-be member of The Establishment to gain entry to it. Promising angry voters that they have a chance to support someone who can act against The Establishment, but only if they are made an important part of The Establishment, despite the twisted logic, gains much coverage. That notion is especially true at the end of a two term presidency when no one wants what they see as the "same old".

Usually we are presented with candidates among whom will be a selection of claimants to title of outsider. This time around we have the benefit of more than the usual number who have audacity to make such statements about themselves. Let’s look at a few of them:

Hillary Clinton: She's the same old. She makes absurd claims to outsider, non-establishment status because she’s a woman and Republicans hate her with the white hot passion of ten billion suns. Of course, she is the MOST establishment candidate this side of JEB! Bush only with a much deeper establishment record than he does. My neck practically breaks from the cringe-induced recoil when she gets up on this line of talk. It was most prominent earlier this week when she was criticizing Bernie Sanders because he stated quite correctly that she had received the endorsements of Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Council because they were establishment just like her. Those organizations do excellent and necessary work and deserve to be respected but let’s not deny that they are part of the LIBERAL establishment. Getting hated by the right does not make one non-establishment. The right is not the only game in town as the Clinton machine has been demonstrating for 25 years.

Marco Rubio: Claims outsider status I guess by virtue of his refusal to do his job as a Senator. While a member of the Florida state legislature though, he was indeed part of the Republican party hierarchy and was its golden boy as Jeb!’s protégé. But since he’s crushing Jeb!, now, he’s really more like the Kylo Ren of modern politics (though it would be deeply inappropriate to compare Jeb! to Han Solo – and by the way, is it now ok to dispense with the Star Wars spoiler alerts already?).

Ted Cruz: Might actually be able to claim outsider status because he's such an abhorrent man that everyone and I do mean EVERYONE in politics hates him, especially those of his own party. He's the only character in this contest who can make Trump look like a good idea.

Trump: Technically an outsider because he’s never run for office. But as a land developer as he’s often mentioned, he has greased the wheels of politics as needed on every side of the machine when business required it. Not only does this define the corruption at the heart of The Establishment, it makes him more of an inside operator, and thus Establishment, than any elected official could ever be. The one claim he can make, and a legitimate one, is that he is his own cash backer so he is truly beholden to nobody and therefore is free to deal with everybody. And that would be great if he wasn’t a crass, narrow-minded, racist, xenophobe, asshole who doesn’t give a damn about anyone without gold-plated toilets to flush away their waste. Trump is a businessman who has always overstepped his actual abilities, then got out from under his huge mistakes by taking advantage of the bankruptcy laws to avoid being wiped out. He is like a billionaire welfare cheat. Except when he does it, it costs millions to billions in losses to others while he walks away free to build and destroy again. As a self-proclaimed successful businessman, he looks good to undereducated voters who want to be brash and rich like him but didn’t have wealthy daddies and great bankruptcy lawyers to get him through the hard times when he could only fly first class instead of on his own 747. But the eternal fallacy is that a good businessman does not have the same skill set as a good politician. Politics is an infinitely harder job than being a businessman. Politicians are constricted in ways that a businessman is never held back, plus a lot of the work has to be done more or less out in the open instead of always behind closed doors and held in private. To be sure, a lot of deal making happens in the dark in politics, but in business, that’s in the design of the deal. The goals of business are easy – make the money. That is NOT the goal of politics. The amorphous “public good” is the goal. The act of politics is working around every different definition of that to benefit people whether they voted for you or not. Trump does not care about any of this. He’s a shameless self-promoter who has no problem walking away from his many failures. That is not the job of president of the United States.

Bernie Sanders: a unique combination of long-time insider by virtue of being in or almost in elective office for much of his adult life, and outsider by being the only real independent politician. He is unconnected to money obligations of big donors, and has a consistent record and core set of beliefs since long before his first public office. He has been part of the political machinery at almost every level of American politics and he currently seeks to be at the top of the executive level. Being unconnected, he can honestly claim he is not part of the Establishment because they won’t let him in since he is something The Establishment ceased to be long ago: a genuine Public Servant. Having him as president will be interesting on many fronts. Of course he will get zero support from the republicans. No one except a republican will ever get their support and any but the most outrageous radical will get a consistent majority even of THEIR support because of the tea party morons. The Democrats will fall in line because they’ll have to. But it might and probably would spark a revival of that party’s backbone for the first time since a Kennedy ran for office. Should that happen, the nature of congress would probably change fairly quickly with a number of the few remaining moderate Republicans falling in line as well. Perhaps some tea partiers in name only would revive their moderation and behave like a loyal opposition again. Regardless, no matter how you quantify it, Bernie is no establishment politician while he knows everyone, is respected by everyone, is considered honest by everyone, and has the public good at heart even if you don’t agree with his policies and methods. He’ll never be accused of being in it for himself and certainly not for any Establishment cronies. 

The way Bernie is doing it is the only way in a democracy to take down The Establishment. You have to be the ghost in the machine come to life.

Whither the US?

What is our purpose in the world? I mean the United States, not humanity. Humanity serves no purpose except itself. But is that all the US does as well? And even if that is all the US does, what is it that serves the US?

I wonder about this today because I just read how the US bombed a hospital today in Afghanistan run by Doctors Without Borders. The US has been engaged in wars in central and west Asia now for the better part of 25 years going back to the first Iraq war in 1991. And involvement arguably goes back further to the Iran-Iraq War, and of course the Cold War before that, and before and before...

Since World War II, American foreign policy had the bipolar world of the threat of the red menace to use as an explanation for almost every adventure and intrigue in which it engaged. But that threat has been gone as long as the direct warmaking in the middle east and subcontinent.

But the US won. What's been the point since then?

Neo-Conservative ideology developed by spitshined genius Paul Wolfowitz and other notorious Republicans created a reason for a monopolar world of US world-beating and freedom-spreading before any other nations or peoples could have the chance to challenge it. It was a simple notion: the US is really fucking rich and powerful and unchallengeable for the moment so use that power to spread the fuck out of freedom across the world because it's so awesome.

Of course, like most Americans, other people across the world don't care much to be told what to do, especially when it comes under threat of violence. And especially if they happen to have cultures--regardless what anyone else may think of them--which are thousands of years old versus the couple hundred that the US is.

Well, ok, but a bunch of folks from that area attacked the US on 9-11 and they should be rooted out. So the US went into Afghanistan to get a bunch of Saudis in an organization run by a Yemeni and Egyptian. The locals who protected them were mostly Pakistani and were originally trained by the US to beat up on the Russians 20 years prior. Although, everyone there knew how to beat the big boys already. And there is a very long track record of outsiders failing miserably when coming in to bring freedom or whatever to the goat-herders and poppy farmers of the region.

What could possibly go wrong?

Ok, then make up a bullshit excuse to do the same to our old buddies in Iraq again. Take the lid off a simmering millennium-plus old blood feud between religious sects. Great idea!

Spreading the shit out of freedom, instead, has resulted in the spreading the shit out of Islamic fanaticism in response. The US isn't really getting the benefit of the oil in the region; and doesn't really need it anymore either. The only winners are the same old war-mongers and materiel suppliers that always seem to do well when hospitals filled with volunteer healers and their maimed patients get blown to bits. OOps!

It seems the only reason to still be involved at this point is to save face. But I have a hard time understanding how face is saved by blowing up the faces of doctors, staff, and people whose faces are already half-blown off.

The US has proved long ago incapable of having any useful effect on the people of the region. Or any other region. At least through military action. The Cold War was not won by force. It was won by American blue jeans, The Beatles, and a Polish Pope.

The US wins not by force of arms, but by being a force for good and by having good friends in high places. By the use of hearts and minds. Not bullets and bombs. The US beat Hitler and Hirohito a long time ago now through a massive amount of might which has not been brought to bear since. But more importantly, the US sustained that military victory through sustained good works. In an ADHD culture, that's just not possible.

The answer is, we have no purpose in the world. We don't even serve our own interests anymore. We bombed it to smoldering ashes in a volunteer hospital.

What is a Liberal? Liberal Economics and Neo-Liberal Economics

Strangely enough, the economic approach favored by today's conservatives is called "neo-liberalism". It developed out of a fundamental misinterpretation of Adam Smith's original concepts of liberalism in economics.

By misinterpretation I mean that today's conservatives leave out a basic concept which is the centralizing force behind Smith's economics: moral control. He made the same academic error in the 18th century that Marx made in the following century; he assumed a basic morality in humans which would make the need for government intervention unnecessary in the face of excess and abuse. In Smith's case morality or virtue derived from the operation of God in earthly affairs while Marx derived it from the evolution of human nature.

The Liberal of the 21st century long-since threw off notions that government intervention in economics is by definition a bad thing. The modern Liberal knows that the when modern Conservatives use the phrase "invisible hand" what they really mean is only "the finger". Where Smith defined "rational self-interest" in terms which included a balance between the individual and the society in which the individual lives in a manner which today's adherents to Smith almost entirely ignore.

Experience in the real world teaches Liberals that the rationality of Smith and the moral evolution of Marx don't play enough of a role -- to the extent that they even exist -- to properly temper the drive to excess that human economic behavior so often unleashes.

Modern Conservatives cling to the mythical notion of inherent human kindness. Liberals hope for and encourage it wherever possible, but prefer to find a means to account for the failings of such a hope. In Democratic societies, where the people as a whole express their need for social control, the surest means of tempering the economic excesses of individuals falls to their government. The amount of control exerted varies from state to state and how well it functions is as variable as the personalities of every individual in the society, but the alternatives are found wanting. But that is a topic for another post (which hopefully will occur before another 3 years pass...)

Random Thought: Information Revolution Now

I tend to see Facebook, the Internets, and social media in general as the latest information revolution. Rather than the last information revolution -- radio and television, which is not interactive -- the current one is more like the one before, when the printing press spread literacy beyond the halls of government and church. It's interactive and wakes up minds. Sometimes an awakened mind is a dangerous thing since they are rather unwieldy and powerful things. The result at first, like then, is a whole lot of garbage passing itself off as knowledge as well as a whole lot of revolutionary upheaval from people coming together with common grievances which they didn't know were so common. And of course, there's the decrepit and crumbling old order doing everything within its mighty capacity to try to throttle the thing before they get the Mussolini Meathook treatment.