Springtime For Donald and USA

(Optional soundtrack here)

Trump is getting sprung from impeachment charges, and the shadow-seeing groundhog is predicting an early spring. The only question is whether the second death of the Russiagate Narrative will be permanent. Or whether, like the Bill Murray "Groundhog Day" movie, it will keep repeating itself like a zombie with bad acid reflux disease.

What definitely does keep finding new life is the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Right before the eleventh anniversary of the Staten Island groundhog's brave attack on Mayor Mike Bloomberg's wagging index finger, the oligarch-heavy Democratic National Committee has graciously allowed him to buy his way into a spot on this month's debate stage. The DNC ditched its previous requirement of a minimum number of independent contributions from individual donors in deference to Bloomberg, who is spending hundreds of millions of his own money to not only buy the presidency but apparently to buy the entire Democratic party. Not to mention the world.

Now, this might quaintly be considered a scandal were it not for Trump already having set all sorts of consequence-free precedents for future presidents. But since Trump Impeachment Failure Grief rules the day for the Democrats, and Trump Impeachment Vindication Glory rules the day for the Republicans, the Bloomberg news is largely staying underground.

 And groundhogs keep getting tortured.

Unless you're completely off the grid, no amount of burrowing can protect you from seeing Mike Bloomberg, day in and day out, on your various screens. He's even starring in Super Bowl ads, vying with the beer and the chips and the luxury cars.

Not having cable, the only view I've had of Bloomberg this past week was a weird clip of him shaking a dog's nose (instead of, say, his paw) at a New Hampshire campaign stop. To put it mildly, this man does not play well with animals. As Jimmy Dore observes, he also unconscionably wears expensive cuff links while snout-grabbing.

The problem is that Bloomberg simply has no patience with lesser creatures of any species, including his own.

As the New York Times reported on his infamous 2011 run-in with "Staten Island Chuck,"

One can argue that Mr. Bloomburg sort of asked for it. As cameras rolled and the crowed took in an event, a local imitation of the Punxsutwawney Phil traition, Chuck at first refused to come out. Children chanted his name to no avail. Mr. Bloomberg seemed to realize that the reclusive rodent was spoiling the show.

He tried to lure Chuck out of his cottage with an ear of corn, but Chuck shrewdly grabbed the corn and dragged it inside to enjoy. The mayor tried again, twice, but then, seemingly out of patience, he grabbed Chuck by the belly with both hands before he could hide again and held him in the air for everyone to see.

Although the actual revenge of Chuckie was not caught on film,  Mayor Mike was later spotted sporting a bandage on his habitual scolding finger. To prevent future injuries to his august person, he had a cruel plunger installed in Chuck's cage to forcibly eject the critter on subsequent Groundhog Days.

Nevertheless Bloomberg was still bearing a Hillary Clinton-style grudge on Groundhog Day two whole years later: "I love the plunger. That was so much better than having to reach in and let the little sonofabitch bite you," Bloomberg remarked.

We have to fight our enemies over there so they don't bite us over here. The way Bloomberg ran the city like his private fiefdom and ordered that, statistically, every single brown and black man be stopped and frisked by police is a preview of what a totalitarian Bloomberg World Empire might look like if he adds the presidency to his list of accomplishments.

Compared to Trump, Bloomberg would be welcomed with open arms by both the establishment and "moderate" voters who watch a lot of TV. After all, Bloomberg had merely ordered food stamp applicants to be fingerprinted. Trump is actually kicking at least a million people off their food stamps.

The debate between our two major political parties is not whether to abolish cruelty. It's how much cruelty they're willing to impose.


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Here are a few of my recent New York Times comments.

The first one is in response to Maureen Dowd's column on the shock and grief of Democrats after the totally expected outcome of the Senate impeachment trial.

Dowd writes:

Democrats are warning Republicans that they will be judged harshly by history. But in the meantime, the triumphant Republicans get to make history. And a lot of the history that Republicans have made is frightening: the endless, futile wars, the obliviousness to climate change, the stamp on the judiciary.

The thing I found shocking about the sham impeachment, besides limiting the charge to Trump's sleazy bribery attempt related to the proxy war in Ukraine, is that witnesses were barred from testifying. It was like watching a whole series of bloviating district attorneys and Perry Masons deliver their opening statements only to have the jury abruptly retire to deliberate in its burrow and issue its verdict based upon zero physical evidence and human witnesses. I'd always thought we had a two-tiered justice system: one for the poor who go to jail because they can't afford a lawyer, and one for the rich with whole teams of lawyers defending them at trial and whole slews of celebrity character witnesses.

  Now there is a third, for presidents, where the verdict is preordained and the proceedings are  pre-coordinated by the defense with the presiding judge.

 In the case of Trump's impeachment, I think that both the corrupt defense and the hapless prosecution got exactly what they wanted.

My published Times comment:

It was an inverted Stalin show trial, the ultimate purge being of the rule of law rather than of the lawbreaker-in-chief. Trump's own purge of everything decent will continue unabated.

What damage will he do in the last year of his first term? He won't just stop at cutting food stamps and health care and polluting the air and water at home and dropping his bombs abroad. When hundreds of American troops in Iraq suffer "collateral damage," this malignant narcissist downplays their traumatic brain injuries as "headaches,"

Just as the show trial was getting underway, the Davos plutocrats rolled out the red carpet, basking in all the benefits accruing from his tax cuts and gutting of protective regulations in service to unfettered capitalism. As long as their own heads don't ache and as long as their own kids don't have to die for a dying empire, why would they care about the fate of the earth?

As far as "history" not treating the GOP kindly is concerned - what history? At the rate that the assault on public health and education is going and the climate is heating up, the population will be too dumbed down, desperate, sick, strung out or dead to care that once upon a time, the Republicans showed their true garish colors.

To add insult to injury, the Don has been cordially invited by Nancy Pelosi to deliver the State of the Union to pompously preach "unity" to people suffering from their own various stages of chronic traumatic Trump injury.

Fingers crossed for a November purge at the ballot box.

(Make that a Bernie purge of the whole duopoly.)

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Of course, the Establishment fears this potential bottom-up purge of everything they hold so dear. Therefore, they're collecting their plungers and doing the opposite of the Staten Island Chuck ejection technique. They're trying their very hardest to force the Bernie surge back into the depths where they don't have to look at it any more.

Timothy Egan joins this cadre of Never-Bernie plumbers with a column wittily entitled Bernie Sanders Can't Win.

He casts Sanders supporters not as people wanting a better life for themselves and their fellow citizens but as an angry mob out to spill plutocratic blood. And anyway, America has never been a socialist country!

That’s the thing about class loathing: It feels good, a moral high with its own endorphins, but is ultimately self-defeating. A Bernie Sanders rally is a hit from the same pipe: Screw those greedy billionaire bastards!

 The next month presents the last chance for serious scrutiny of Sanders, who is leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire. After that, Republicans will rip the bark off him. When they’re done, you will not recognize the aging, mouth-frothing, business-destroying commie from Ben and Jerry’s dystopian dairy. Demagogy is what Republicans do best. And Sanders is ripe for caricature.

Egan then lists all these potential GOP smears, beginning with Bernie's long-ago trip to Russia and his wife Jane's failed Vermont college venture - not to smear Bernie himself, of course, but to smarmily warn you that a vote for Bernie is a vote for Trump.

My published response:

True, this has never been a socialist country, but it was the strong socialist movement that pushed the FDR administration to enact the New Deal. Remember, for example, the Wobblies?

No politician ever enacts programs for the public good out of the goodness of his or her heart. It takes pressure from below, which is why Bernie's campaign motto is "Not Me. Us." He has no illusions that he'll be able to snap his fingers and hypnotize Congress into passing Medicare For All. It will take relentless pressure from voters. It will take scaring some of the old Senate dinosaurs out of their complacency, and mounting primary challenge after primary challenge to them if they persist in working for the corporate lobbyists instead of the people who cast the votes.

 Bernie - and by extension, his supporters - are being attacked by both Republicans and centrist Democrats with varying degrees of venom, malice, innuendo and concern-trolling. Egan provides a litany of such past Bernie "scandals" as his Moscow honeymoon - before sanctimoniously scoffing at them. This is a typical centrist ploy: attack the candidate obliquely by repeating right-wing talking points. Then condescendingly pat us on the head and acknowledge that at least Bernie is changing the "conversation." Personally, I find cant like this more offensive than Trump foaming at the mouth against the socialist menace at his Nuremberg-style rallies.

  Neoliberalism is dead, and it's the centrists who can't win.

As to Egan's accusation that we're out for plutocratic blood, I will cop to immensely enjoying the story of the lowly groundhog drawing Bloombergian blood and the too-fleeting blow it struck to Bloomberg's monumental ego.

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Last but least, Paul Krugman has at least temporarily abandoned his own vicious anti-Bernie attacks to passive-aggressively claim that nothing will change even if Bernie does win the presidency. In fact, he says, since Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are well-nigh interchangeable, everybody should just relax and embrace "party unity" - because you're never going to get everything you want anyway. Despite presenting zero evidence to back up his claim, Krugman insists that Biden has actually moved left in the past few months.

Here's Krugman talking his propaganda strategy to MSNBC's Joy Reid:

 It seems to me that Krugman is attempting to effectuate a little voter suppression here. If all Democrats will govern alike, maybe some potential Iowa caucus-goers will just stay home after listening to that reassuring Krugmanesque smarminess.

My response to his column:

It sounds as though Mr. Krugman has resigned himself to Sanders being the nominee. Or perhaps it's the realization that every time a prominent pundit or PAC attacks Bernie and gaslights progressives, another torrent of small donor dollars floods his already ample campaign coffers.

  To say that Biden and Sanders would accomplish the same things is a stretch. For starters, Biden has never been just "swept along" by the last 40 years of neoliberal austerity. He was one of the architects of the Democratic Leadership Council, now known as the New Democrats, and also one of its original presidential recruits.

He might currently be playing a liberal on TV, but his shtick still is trying to find common ground between what's left of the New Deal and reactionary Republicanism. His first assigned task as VP was to "eliminate waste, fraud and abuse" in government programs. Right in the middle of the financial meltdown! 

From the DLC Manifesto: "We will seek out and eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse. We will provide the resources to prosecute those taking advantage of government benefits to which they are not entitled, whether wealthy tax evaders, illegal monopolies or participants in welfare fraud." 
The centrist trope broadcast by Biden is that the poor are just as culpable as the rich. But ask yourself how many wealthy criminals have gone to jail while the US prison population has exploded under Biden's championship of the Crime Bill.
The Democratic choice matters. Big time.