Wednesday, February 26, 2020

$ound and Fury At the Democratic Debate

On the same day that the Centers for Disease Control warned that the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) will inevitably hit the US with an historic vengeance, both the inept CBS moderators and the "moderate" candidates on Tuesday night's stage nevertheless persisted in castigating Bernie Sanders's Medicare For All campaign platform.

Maybe once people start dying in the street by the thousands because they can't afford a doctor visit or a day off from work when symptoms hit or they've become exposed, maybe once our consolidated for-profit "health care systems" (hospitals) become unable to cope with a possible epidemic, maybe once children can no longer attend school, the neoliberal Ruling Class Racketeers will finally stop asking "But how you gonna pay for it!?!" 

Maybe once the lords and ladies of capitalism themselves become inconvenienced, they might belatedly realize that their selfishness comes with a high price. Guaranteed universal health care would not only help the sick, it would also trickle up to maintain the fortunes and health of the wealthy.

All the boutique hospitals and all the concierge healh care in the world will not shield the rich from being infected by the hoi polloi or even by the private medical personnel they pay so handsomely to attend exclusively to their needs and to their needs only.

Of course, I could be wrong. Lloyd Blankfein could go down gasping that he'll vote for Trump in the next life, and smarmy Pete Buttigieg will be doing his Obama impersonation and "turning the page" in that great McKinsey consulting corner office in the sky, and Chris Matthews' nightmares of Bernie Central Park executions will follow him right into the corporate media bardo green room.

But back to Tuesday night's South Carolina debate, of which I do have one nice thing to say. And that one nice thing is that CBS made it readily available for viewing on YouTube. Unlike in last week's NBC/Comcast spectacular, I didn't even have to download a special app so that they could send me ads to enhance my experience. I was able to cast the show right to my cable-free TV instead of peering at it on my cheap smartphone. The train-wreck became almost life-size. And sound-wise, it was even screechingly larger than life.

Michael Bloomberg, whose $60 billion fortune will immunize him from neither infectious disease nor from the epidemic viral video clips covering his entire predatory career, had the best revelatory line not only in the debate but possibly also in his whole predatory career. Scoffing at Joe Biden's boast that he'd helped turn the House of Representatives blue in 2018, Bloomberg drawled in that trademark nasal monotone of his:

"Let's go on the record, they talk about 40 Democrats - 21 of those were people that I spent $100 million to help elect. All of the Democrats that came in put Nancy Pelosi in charge and gave Congress the ability to control the president. I bough - I got them."

It might appear at first glance that Bloomberg spent his millions in bribes unwisely, given that not only have his handpicked political servants failed utterly to "control" Trump, they have given him most of what he wants, from his anti-immigrant militarized border, to his pro-corporate reworking of NAFTA, to his grotesque Space Force, and $700 billion for his expanded war machine, to even most of his right-wing judicial nominations. In other words, they gave Bloomberg everything he wanted.

If you think Bloomberg is in the race primarily to defeat Trump, think again. He's here to defeat Bernie the nominee. Failing that, he'll try to defeat Bernie the president.

In case you were confused when the audience erupted in cheers upon Bloomberg's Freudian slip acknowledging that he is one of the country's leading oligarchs in full control of the corrupt American duopoly,rest assured that the audience was largely comprised of his fellow oligarchs, as well as the various lackeys, consultants and others he had paid handsomely to be there for him. They, in turn, had paid the Democratic Party the hefty exclusive price of admission to the extravaganza. Tickets ranged from $1,750 to $3,200.

Since the manufactured outrage over Bernie's past praise of Cuba's literacy rate under Fidel Castro nearly caused the debate stage to spontaneously combust, there was sadly not enough time to discuss the climate catastrophe that is rapidly combusting the actual world. 

The inept CBS "journalists" who failed so miserably to moderate the immoderate flamed-out centrists sucking up all the oxygen on the stage also failed miserably to bring up the name of journalist Julian Assange, whose treatment as a joint US-UK political prisoner has more than a passing resemblance to the show trials common in 1930s Stalinist Russia. 

Only hours before the debate aired, news emerged that on the first day (Monday) of his extradition hearing at Woolwich Crown Court in London, the WikiLeaks founder had been handcuffed, stripped naked and had his case records confiscated in order to prevent him from appearing and taking part in his own trial.

Because Assange exposed US war crimes, and because the CIA had him under surveillance while he was living in exile at the Ecuador embassy, and because the CIA is also actively interfering in the current presidential election by linking both Trump and Sanders to "Russian interference," and because both the Democratic Party and the corporate media airing the debates have an intimate working relationship with this unaccountable fourth branch of government, it was probably deemed much safer to let the red-baiting of Bernie proceed as scheduled.

And since the"Intelligence Community" has, as Senate Minority Chuck Schumer acknowledged in an epic Freudian slip worthy of Bloomberg, "six ways from Sunday to get back at him (Trump)" if he doesn't kowtow to the CIA, Bernie himself is taking no unnecessary chances. He already has been "briefed." And he appears to have received the message loud and clear that he'd best go along to get along with the contrived and diversionary Russiagate Narrative by issuing the required obligatory denunciations of Vladimir Putin.

Bernie could well win the nomination and then beat Trump. But the Surveillance State, birthed some 70 years ago by the very plutocratic establishment  ("The Georgteown Set") whose ideological heirs he so vociferously campaigns against, will still be calling most of the shots.

12 comments:

  1. For those who missed it, here's a link to the video showing the nothingness that Pete interrupted Bernie with, followed by a link transcribing Pete's incoherent and empty words vs the coherence of Bernie. Unbelievable.

    Pete's brain is so young it hasn't fully formed yet, but his ego is definitely overdeveloped.

    https://twitter.com/BenjaminPDixon/status/1232621734676828161

    https://twitter.com/tuesdayshoegaze/status/1232556223339192320/photo/1

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  2. A bigger problem is that we do not yet have an answer for the virus, even if everyone had health care, even if everyone could take time off work.

    This is another aspect of the same problem. Big Pharm controls research, and its priorities have not dealt with this. It also controls production and supply, and it is no more ready there. There is little funding at all for more generalized public health research on what to do about this.

    This is a perfect example of when we need government to organize crash research and development and production. It is like inventing and producing radar in WW2. We need to reach out to all our resources and pull it together.

    It is also a perfect example of the larger concept of public health, which has been sidelined because it is public and health, instead of private profit squeezed from health needs.

    This is a moment that Bernie and Warren could seize on to demonstrate why they are right, with specifics and proposals. They have so far addressed it in only general terms, and I think that is an oversight missing and opportunity, and it ill serves them or our immediate medical needs.

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  3. Karen, once again, at her best.

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  4. @Mark Thomason

    Right On! Yes, Sanders and Warren should be using the Corona virus outbreak as a teachable moment.

    IIRC, Reagan's smaller government, social Darwinism, cuts to public health, and religious-fundamentalust attitudes towards gays very likely contributed to the evolution and spread of another disease, drug-resistant TB. Because, first of all, previously there was more attention paid to sending public health workers out into the community to track TB transmission and to verify that patients were taking their medications as directed. Second, the spread of HIV also contributed to the development of drug-resistant TB. So inaction under Reagan with regard to HIV treatment should also be recognized as another promoter of drug-resistant TB.

    The principles illustrated by that (cuts, neglect, denial) are, of course, in addition to the more general principle that people without good healthcare (either complete lack of it, or only junk policies, or high deductibles relative to their finances) are not likely to seek early diagnosis of any illness, and will therefore likely spread the Corona virus (and other infectious agents) quite widely before they fall acutely ill and then finally (perhaps) seek treatment.

    What happens if one does seek early diagnosis?:

    "A Miami man who flew to China worried he might have coronavirus. He may owe thousands."
    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article240476806.html

    "A cautionary tale: A Miami man doesn't have the coronavirus but may now owe thousands of dollars for being tested."
    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/miami-man-doesnt-have-coronavirus-but-could-now-owe-thousands-2020-2%3famp

    The silver lining to this pandemic is that if it gets bad enough, then a great many more people in the U.S. may just demand universal health care, and that it be of decent quality and affordable cost. Even the oligarchs may break with precedent and grudgingly decide to support it, simply on the basis of self-interest: they might or might not be able to (mostly) isolate themselves from the disease, but they probably won't be able to isolate themselves from financial losses if illness completely crashes the economy. Remember, a huge part of the U.S. economy is the service sector and consumer spending; guess what happens to that if many people stay home from fear of illness.

    But never fear, if big pharma doesn't devote enough resources to preventing and curing illness (and at an affordable cost to all), we can all die happy, the women with fewer wrinkles thanks to Botox, and the men with better erections thanks to Viagra.

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  5. 'Bloomberg's Game' - This is both a plausible and terrifying possibility. It's worth reading in full in Counterpunch but here's the conclusion:

    "I think this Bloomberg-Warren Punch & Judy show, culminating in the victory of the strong woman against the arrogant billionaire is the only way the Democratic Party can both steal the nomination from Bernie and hope to keep any of his supporters (and possibly even Bernie himself) in the fold—or, indeed, to preserve any credibility for the two-party plutocratic system.

    And the bonus: When Trump beats Warren, they can blame it on the people’s sexism rather than their rejection of the plutocracy. And, of course, mobilize #Resistance and #impeachment 2.0."

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/27/bloombergs-game/

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  6. Thanks, Annie. Jim Kavanagh's theory of Bloomberg/Warren collusion makes perfect scary sense. Warren mentioned the other day she is staying in the race regardless of her delegate count. I also wouldn't discount the theory that Mayor Mike is a stalking horse for Hillary, though it is hard to imagine that even the clueless Democratic establishment is so clueless as to push her on us again.

    I've just added Kavanah;s blog "The Polemicist" to my blogroll.

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  7. Jim Kavanagh's article included another line worth highlighting here: "Trump would run to the left of Bloomberg and eat him alive."

    The current Democratic fantasy is that Trump is the right, and Democrats are the left. They "fear" Trump becoming a dictator of the right wing sort, and not leaving office at all after he destroys democracy.

    Yet the Democrats' establishment is to the right of Trump. That is a big part of how he defeated Hillary. It is a big part of the threat that he can win again against the sort of candidate the Democratic establishment wants to run.

    We must disarm the right wing Democrats. They are not the "center." Their idea of "moderate" is entirely Republican, from the days before Trump. Trump took the Republican Party from its own establishment by running to its left, and he is still out there.

    Now, of course Trump lies. He has not actually done much in the way of anything "left." But that is where he is. Being an ineffectual liar is not the same as not being there at all.

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  8. I don't recall seeing this mentioned at Sardonicky, so I'll do so now. Yet another example of the multitude of ways that the deck is stacked against Bernie Sanders:

    "Is Gmail hiding Bernie’s emails to you? How inbox filtering may impact democracy.
    It’s known Facebook and Twitter customize news feeds – but a new report from The Markup reveals how Google’s email curation could have consequences in 2020."
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/26/gmail-hiding-bernie-sanders-emails-google-inbox-sorting-consequences-2020

    Swinging the Vote?
    Google’s black box algorithm controls which political emails land in your main inbox. For 2020 presidential candidates, the differences are stark.
    https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/02/26/wheres-my-email

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  9. This is why Tulsi should be Bernie's VP. She's got common sense and courage in spades - a lot more than Bernie sadly.

    From 'Tulsi Gabbard: Presidential Candidates Must Also Condemn Election Interference by US Intelligence Agencies':

    "This new McCarthyism must be renounced by every presidential candidate, otherwise we must conclude they lack the foresight and integrity required to lead our country. If candidates are too afraid to stand up against those who would suppress the voices of the American people with McCarthyist smears, they are not real leaders. They are just power-hungry, self-serving politicians whose goal is to play-act as president — rather than actually defend the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution."

    "The question facing any potential Democratic nominee is this: Am I going to allow myself to be manipulated and forced into a corner by overreaching intelligence agencies and the corporate media where, in order for me to win the presidency, I'm going to have to do what I know is not in the interests of the American people and world peace?"

    "Or will I stand up to the corrupt neocon and neoliberal establishment, condemn their lies and smears, and act with the integrity and foresight necessary to forge a rational policy that will serve all our interests?"

    https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/485051-tulsi-gabbard-presidential-candidates-must-also-condemn-election

    HELLO SOMEBODY! This is why the establishment's corporate media has tried to blackout Tulsi.

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  10. Forced travel over the next month with only a clumsy little internet toy in my hands will make it hard for me to join you except as a silent cheerleader. At very least I expect to keep up with the posts and comments at Sardonicky as they appear.

    The election(s), the new corona virus, the environment, the new stock market virus, the future of journalists heroic and traitorous, the feminist revolt, the empire's endless little wars and the effect of all that buzz on the average person is worrisome but oh so interesting.

    You folks are super lately in your work at describing what's actually going on and what might be shaping up. You won't hear me applauding for at least a month, but I'm still in the appreciative audience. I suspect there are lots of other silent readers like me waiting for more. Please keep up the commentary as you have lately.

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  11. Jay-O —

    Poetically improving on Rainer Maria Rilke, Jim Harrison wrote:

    "Beware O wanderer, the road is walking too.”

    Be safe, look both ways, and don’t fall down.
    We’ll look forward to your return.

    Meanwhile, we'll keep the faith and try to hold the fort.
    Here is ten minutes worth watching —

    Study: Methane Emissions from Fossil Fuels Vastly Underestimated

    https://therealnews.com/stories/methane-emissions-fossil-fuels-vastly-underestimated

    February 28, 2020
    A new Rochester University study raises new grave questions about fossil fuel production and climate change.
    The author of the first major study on methane and fracking, Cornell University's Bob Howarth, explains its implications.

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