$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.

Banality and Bile At the Democratic Debate

Like Dante's fifth circle of hell, the fifth in an endless series of Democratic Party debates was an infernal three-hour mix of anger and sullen resentment. If you made it through all three hours,  you deserve more than a medal for valor. You rate an upgrade to Purgatory. That's because ABC-Disney didn't stop at torturing you with too many candidates and not enough substantive questions. The network actually chose to air a graphic ad showing Alexandria Ocasio Cortez melting down in flames - ostensibly to get Trump's base all fired up and ready to go.

The first part of the epic featured Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders furiously arguing health care at center stage, just above the River Styx. Once the TV moderators managed to get the requisite neoliberal talking points about "how you gonna pay for that?!?" out of the way, it was on to the supporting cast, who in a true democracy would have been left sullenly gurgling just beneath the surface.

But the theme of the evening had been decreed as "The Reanimation of the Moribund Centrists" in keeping with Dante's Fifth Circle actually being the middle portion of hell. Therefore, candidates polling in the low single digits got as much, if not more, speaking time than the lead actors. Except for Joe Biden, of course, uncomfortably sandwiched as he was as he was between Warren and Sanders. He talked up a word-salad tempest.

But in their homages to Droner and Deporter-in-Chief Barack Obama, their loyalty to the world's biggest military machine, their waffling on immigration, their jingoistic approval of American exceptionalism, their naming of Donald Trump as the source of all evil without criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's own shamefully complicit role in preventing passage another assault weapons ban, the 10 candidates admirably proved that they are, indeed, simply different sides of the same coin. As centrist Amy Klobuchar so brilliantly posited, a  Democratic Party divided against itself cannot stand. She didn't add that this is especially true when it's stuffed to the rafters with tons of foundation-busting filthy lucre. She also didn't add that the collapse of shoddy buildings is not only inevitable, it is desirable once the area has been safely evacuated.

But if we ourselves just couldn't stand listening to that litany of feel-good claptrap for three tortuous hours, and collapsed or tuned out from sheer disgust or just plain boredom, then we're probably too extremist for them to even bother with.

Not that the heavily coined candidates are all equally tarnished, of course. At least two of them are actually counterfeit. Kamala Harris, with her sordid "progressive" history of jailing poor mothers of truant kids, is one. Pete "Medicare For All Who Want It" Buttigieg is another. 

Joe Biden, though, is the real deal. Besides constantly hectoring suffering people to "get real, man!" while flouting his obvious senility, Biden also proved that he is as much a biliously burbling unabashed racist as ever:

Linsey Davis: Mr. Vice President, I want to talk to you about inequality in schools and race. In a conversation about how to deal with segregation in schools back in 1975, you told a reporter, “I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.” You said that some 40 years ago, but as you stand here tonight, what responsibility do you think that Americans need to take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?

Biden: Well, they have to deal with the … Look, there is institutional segregation in this country. And from the time I got involved, I started dealing with that. Redlining, banks, making sure that we are in a position where—

Look, we talk about education. I propose that what we take is those very poor schools, the Title 1 schools, triple the amount of money we spend from $15 to $45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise to the equal of … A raise of getting out of the $60,000 level.
No. 2, make sure that we bring in to the help with the stud—the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home, we need… We have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It’s crazy. The teachers are required—I’m married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them.
Make sure that every single child does, in fact, have three, four, and five-year-olds go to school. School! Not day care, school. We bring social workers into homes of parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not that they don’t want to help. They don’t know what— They don’t know what quite what to do. Play the radio. Make sure the television—excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night. The phone—make sure the kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school—er, a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.

Somewhere in the murky pit that passes for his brain, Biden thinks that black and brown parents, well-meaning though they may be, are too ignorant to take care of their own children without a lot of outside professional help. He also seems to think these poor parents should playing LPs on their vintage phonographs in order to boost their children's vocabulary. It is essential that every single child develops the skills to make three, four and five-year-olds go to school.  Because their poor incapable parents never did. They might even be as befuddled as Uncle Joe himself.

Of course, besides being an unrepentant racist, Biden is also still an unrepentant plagiarist. His prescription for vocabulary therapy (in lieu of living wages, food aid, housing aid, etc) for black and brown people was stolen from Chelsea Clinton and her campaign for books in the laundromats frequented by black and brown mothers. If there's one thing that earnest bigots without a racist bone in their bodies sincerely believe, it's that black and brown mothers would never talk to or read to their children on their own initiative.

Biden made his remarks at a historically black college in Houston. It's too bad that Julian Castro didn't slam him over them like he did when, earlier in the debate, he accused Biden of senilely forgetting what he'd just said five minutes ago about healthcare.

The other candidates were not much better. Even Bernie Sanders obligingly described Nicolas Maduro, the brown Venezuela president, as a "vicious tyrant" - in an apparent effort to defend himself from comparisons to Venezuela-style socialism. He also didn't redeem himself in the post-debate spin cycle when he called the unabashedly racist Biden a decent human being and "a friend of mine."

I guess it was a blessing in disguise that the moderators kind of forgot that Bernie was even on the stage, because he'd appeared to be losing his voice. Croaking dissonant outrage combined with the cracked Biden-style long-playing record is not the kind of smooth, relaxing,"electable" sound that ABC-Disney obviously wanted to sedate its audience with.

Maybe if Biden and Bernie and Liz are the last candidates standing many months from now, they'll finally lose all the friendly pretense and the slick collegiality that reminds the rest of us that we're not in their club, and we never will be.

But How You Gonna Pay For That?

Grand Guignol Sold As Democratic Debate

The gilded, gaudy Phantom of the Opera stage was what immediately set the tone for the comic horror that was to be the second round of the Democratic debates. Then came the ominous sound of thumping military boots echoing throughout the auditorium as a prelude to the National Anthem. And then CNN cut to commercial.

Since I live-streamed the spectacle on a special CNN app which I was forced to download for the privilege of participating from afar in our money-soaked electoral democracy, I am sad to report that I missed the ads. But I did read that they included such regular CNN sponsors as the drug companies and the private health insurance lobbies who set the tone for the moderators' anti-Single Payer questions.

The combination of frenzied theatrical melodrama, jackbooted militarism, and rank corporatism gave the proceedings the distinct whiff of fascism. The only difference between the CNN debates and a Trump rally was that the CNN spectacle did not contain any obvious or overt racism or xenophobia.

You really had to listen very closely to detect it. Joe Biden, for example, bragged that he warmly welcomes any immigrant with a Ph.D who wants to enter our country to enjoy our freedoms. (translation: to help keep our corporate profits great) That statement kind of excludes the Central American compesinos seeking refuge from the US-engendered regime changes and climate catastrophes, and allowed him to elide the fact that he was President Obama's own special emissary to the region,  his mission being to stop the migrants before they even entered Mexico. Trump could not immediately enforce a similar agreement, thanks to his own lack of diplomatic skills.

Besides a jolly-sounding Cory Booker (D-NJ-Private Equity) the only people vociferously challenging Biden on Obama's record deportations and anti-immigrant policies, in fact, were a group of immigrant protesters in the audience.

It's amazing, really, that the protesters got inside the building, because Bernie Sanders supporters had just been physically barred from even entering a CNN-controlled section of the parking lot outside Detroit's Fox Theater.

As Status Coup's Jordan Chariton reported from the scene:

Multiple supporters for Bernie Sanders who were part of the “visibility zone” area—an area designated by CNN for supporters of candidates to stand with their signs and cheer on camera—told Status Coup that efforts were made by both CNN and local police to visually diminish their presence as compared to the supporters of other candidates like Warren. 

 "Four different police officers said we could not go that way, as it was reserved for the other candidates’ supporters,” Sanders supporter Victoria Bowman told Status Coup. “One even used a bullhorn to dissuade us, but we ignored them and carried on. A Bernie campaign person got us past the last battalion of officers intent on blocking us. That campaign person went back out into the streets to bring more Bernie people in, then she was not allowed back into the “cheering section." 

  There were very few Bernie supporters allowed into the lot that was full of Warren, Williamson, and Biden supporters. Their cheers nearly drowned out the voices of Bernie’s supporters. Bowman’s account was confirmed by other supporters who faced similar roadblocks from the police blocking them from entering the cheering section that other candidates’ supporters appeared free to come and go from as they pleased.

So we can add police repression to the theatricality, jingoism and corporate profit motive to make the privatized Democratic Debate franchise fit the classic definition of fascism.

One of the few full-throated rebukes to bipartisan complicity in the long-standing American institutional racist tradition also came from protesters in the audience, who shouted "Fire Pantaleo!" at candidate Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York. Daniel Pantaleo is the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death and who still, under de Blasio's liberal watch, remains on the several job years later despite an official ruling that Garner died of a police-inflicted homicide.

 Much to everyone's surprise, Kamala Harris did not reprise her Act One starring role as Biden foil in the second episode of Debate Thriller Theater. Her previous attack on him over his anti-busing record was apparently just a one-off. Biden's team had done its own homework on Harris's own authoritarian record as California's chief prosecutor, noting that she had failed to bring lawsuits against two heavily segregated school districts in her state.

But the most damage to Harris and her de facto Jim Crow agenda was inflicted by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii,who lambasted Kamala for abusing the rights of defendants in her jurisdiction. She perfectly clarified Joe Biden's somewhat garbled counter-attack on Harris's record. Here's how the whole exchange played out:

All Kamala Harris could do was say how proud she was of her hard work in "fixing the criminal justice system." When Tulsi Gabbard demanded that she apologize to all the poor people she has hurt, Harris simply offered her trademark nervous giggle.

Sadly, due to her own low poll numbers and individual donations (update: she has now met the donation threshhold) this was very likely Tulsi's last stand on the presidential debate stage. But she has certainly earned a permanent place on the national political stage as one of the country's last remaining anti-war politicians.

With a faltering Biden barely standing erect and Harris's reputation so damaged, it seems that the last best hope of the corporate wing is Mayor Pete Buttigieg. I can't wait for Bernie and Liz to confront him on, among other things, his attendance at a plutocratic "Stop Bernie!" strategizing fund-raiser earlier this year.

If the Democratic centrists were "agonizing" about Bernie's momentum last spring, they must really be in the thrashing and gnashing final throes of neoliberal misery by now, in the wake of his strong debate performance. As far as Elizabeth Warren is concerned, we'll just have to wait and see whether the corporatists will be as successful in co-opting her as they seemed to think they were only the other day. When you've lost Paul Krugman....

The next pseudo-debate is scheduled for September, and miracle of miracles, it appears that it will be a blessed one-night stand, with fully half of the candidates not expected to meet the rigid party criteria for appearing.

The news personalities playing the emcees will again do their own hideous best to pit the actors against each other and ensure that a gloriously gruesome time is had by all, especially by the corporate sponsors who pay their seven-figure salaries and rake in the profits at the expense of the millions of trapped paying subscriber-voters glued to their screens at home. Because admit it. You just can't look away.

Debate & Switch, Part Two

Mere hours after their congressional colleagues joined with Republicans to allocate $4.6 billion to hire more sadistic border patrol agents and ICE staff to arrest and cage children in concentration camps, 10 more Democrats took to the debate stage Thursday night. Almost unanimously, they vowed that if elected, they will decriminalize border crossings and provide medical insurance to undocumented migrants. It was quite a nifty way to avoid discussing that day's shameful capitulation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had just caved to approving the so-called "humanitarian aid" package after Vice President Mike Pence promised he'd keep her in the loop on the refugee kids (whom she'd only that day described as her lion cubs in need of maternal protection) who die in ICE custody as soon as  possible after they take their last breaths.

Or, as the New York Times blandly described it, putting the best possible face on some truly gruesome bipartisan collusion:

Her retreat came after Vice President Mike Pence gave Ms. Pelosi private assurances that the administration would abide by some of the restrictions she had sought. They included a requirement to notify lawmakers within 24 hours after the death of a migrant child in government custody, and a 90-day time limit on children spending time in temporary intake facilities, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

The Democrats might have lost their Battle to send toothbrushes and soap to the traumatized imprisoned children at the border, but if they beat Trump next year they'll make damned sure that every non-criminal traumatized adult and child refugee gets a Medicaid card. Freedom might not be a basic human right any more, but health insurance will never die, especially if it's insurance that can't actually be used within the confines of cages or while hiding from a beefed-up border patrol. No place is safe, because the "border" is now defined not only as every state in America, but wherever American corporate interests and client regimes exist. In other words, the U.S.border comprises a major chunk of the planet. 

This makes it so easy for Democratic candidates, especially the senators who conveniently didn't have to vote for the latest border aid package, to cynically promise a health insurance card for every undocumented pocket. What migrant in their right mind would risk everything applying for an I.D. card, thereby making it easier for ICE agents to locate them?

This horrible truth was the main switcheroo part of Thursday night's Debate & Switch spectacle in Miami. Nobody on the NBC moderation team and none of the candidates took so much as a swipe at Nancy Pelosi and her right-wing Democratic colleagues, who are grotesquely described as "moderates" in corporate media narratives.

Luckily for Madam Speaker, the fresh hypocrisy was conveniently overshadowed by California Senator Kamala Harris's withering and well-rehearsed attack on front-runner Joe Biden's sordid racist history. Rank opportunist and jailer of black mothers of truant children though she herself may be, Harris was the perfect prosecutorial attack machine, given that she herself had been bused to school as a child in Berkeley.

As is his wont, Biden only made his bad situation worse, stammering querulously that localities like Berkeley - and not the federal government - had the right to set integration policy. This made him sound just like George Wallace and the Southern racist's guide to "state's rights" as a means of keeping the institutional racism and segregation alive. 

Although Harris prefaced her attack with the disclaimer that she doesn't think Biden himself is a racist, she couldn't have elicited his deep-seated racist mindset any better than she did. 

We'll see how this plays out in the polls, and whether Biden's lead will be affected. If it's not, then there are more silent old white Deplorables out there in the Homeland than those who profess to be in Trump's base. There also might be more conservative older black voters out there who prefer the racist they knew yesterday to the racist they know today.

If anything, Biden could actually benefit from the Trump Effect: compared to the current psychopathic Oval Office occupant, Creepy Uncle Joe doesn't look quite as bad as he otherwise might have. Trump has set the bar conveniently low for him and for all of them. Voters have been effectively desensitized to a relentless and daily regimen of Trumpian shock therapy.

And Thursday night's debate performances from the other contenders always could have been worse. Bernie, for example, could have chimed in and announced that the country is sick and tired of hearing about Joe Biden's damned racism. As it was, he was probably wise to play it safe and stick to his talking points. These talking points were certainly amplified, if not outright plagiarized, by Harris and the other opportunists on the stage.

And in piling on Biden, Harris also obliquely threw the former Deporter-in-Chief, Barack Obama, under the bus. Even Biden indirectly criticized Obama's "Safe Communities" deportation dragnet, which caught up millions of undocumented but otherwise law-abiding people and foisted upon them one-way bus tickets back to hell before the Obama administration finally abandoned the program in the face of myriad court and municipal challenges.

Perhaps more shocking than Harris's attack was "moderate" Mike Bennet of Colorado lambasting Biden, and by extension Obama, for caving to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell during 2012 budget negotiations. This was when the Bush tax cuts for the rich were made permanent, while even more austerity (the "Sequester") was imposed on government programs benefiting  ordinary people. In a classic example of political bait and switch, Biden bragged that he got the GOP to raise taxes because a small proportion of the tax cuts did in fact expire... a feat for which regular people have been punished ever since. 

Thanks to Thursday's debate, there is a slight chance that it will dawn on more people that Trump became president for a very good reason. He instinctively knows that the masses of people are feeling pain and anger, and he acknowledges that pain and anger while co-opting it in service of the extremely wealthy. The corporate Democrats who brag about "getting things done" in the interests of bipartisanship are not your friends. They're also not particularly good at pretending to be your friends.

It was almost a miracle. Obama, more skilled than most in his party at  pretending to be your friend, came out of the debates with his carefully marketed reputation suffering some collateral damage. The bloom is coming off the plastic rose. And it's about time. 

The Dodgers Return to Brooklyn

I'll be honest. My brain started tuning out last night's Democratic debate after about three innings. The first strikeout came when Bernie was asked if he could name one example of Hillary Clinton changing her vote as a result of a corporate donation. He bungled it big-time. He popped a high fly out into right field, where it hovered in the air harmlessly before plunking smack dab into Hillary's placid, waiting mitt.

DANA BASH (CNN moderator) : Senator Sanders, you have consistently criticized Secretary Clinton for accepting money from Wall Street. Can you name one decision that she made as senator that shows that he favored banks because of the money she received? 

SANDERS: Sure. Sure. The obvious decision is when the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior of wall street brought this country into the worst economic downturn since the Great Recession -- the Great Depression of the '30s, when millions of people lost their jobs, and their homes, and their life savings, the obvious response to that is that you've got a bunch of fraudulent operators and that they have got to be broken up.

That was my view way back, and I introduced legislation to do that. Now, Secretary Clinton was busy giving speeches to Goldman Sachs for $225,000 a speech.

(APPLAUSE)

SANDERS: So the problem response -- the proper response in my view is we should break them up. And that's what my legislation does.

CLINTON: Well, you can tell, Dana, he cannot come up with any example, because there is no example.

 Why didn't he bring up the bankruptcy bill?

When Hillary was first lady, she sided with Elizabeth Warren and got Bill to veto some bank-friendly legislation which would have made it almost impossible for working families to declare personal bankruptcy, largely stemming from medical debt.

When Hillary became New York senator, she did an about-face and in 2001 voted for the bill - immediately after receiving hefty contributions from the same banks and credit card companies which demanded that struggling consumers be kept in onerous debt for the rest of their lives. As Warren wrote in The Two Income Trap:

 "The bill was the same, but Hillary Rodham Clinton was not. As First Lady, Mrs. Clinton had been persuaded that the bill was bad for families, and she was willing to fight for her beliefs. Her husband was a lame duck at the time he vetoed the bill; he could afford to forgo future campaign contributions. As New York's newest senator, however, it seems that Hillary Clinton  could not afford such a principled position. Campaigns cost money, and that money wasn't coming from families in financial trouble."

This was the smoking gun, the quid pro quo that Clinton has always denied exists. It does exist.

Not that political corruption and legalized bribery require a quid pro quo, by any means. Wealthy donors aren't paying for immediate favors. They are investing for the future -- a future of tax exemptions, corporate welfare, and a get out of jail free card with no expiration date.

Bernie was great at the sarcasm and the yelling, but not so great at digging up facts and answering questions directly. He often spoke over the moderators as Hillary just calmly stood there, grim smirk on her face, only occasionally needing to mar her calm demeanor with her trademark derisive cackle.

Both of them are artful dodgers of questions, because both of them are seasoned politicians. Both of them also looked like I feel: tired, cranky, and old. How can't they stand each other? Let us count the ways.

Hillary got knuckle-balled and beaned badly on those Wall Street speeches. She still offers no good explanation for not releasing them because even she, slick fielder that she is, can't come up with one good fake reason for not releasing them. For example, she could have said she lost them the same way she mysteriously misplaced those Rose Law Firm docs all those years ago.

Bernie twisted her into a soggy pretzel over whether she would or would not raise the cap on Social Security FICA contributions. He also did a good job exposing her bloodthirsty Neocon foreign policy (even Obama opposes her suggestion of a no-fly zone over Syria.)

 Bernie was supposed to release his 2014 tax returns today, because Jane apparently has finally found the time to log onto TurboTax. He still can't locate earlier returns, though. Like most of us shlubs, I suspect he probably lost his only tattered coffee-stained copies in the circular file.

With Clinton's spit balls and Bernie's unforced errors, the popcorn is beginning to taste a tad stale. But I'll root root root for the Brooklyn homeboy anyhow. If we don't win, what a shame. Then again, if Hillary is allowed to steal home because of a rigged electoral game, she can't very well call it a championship season either. Heads she wins, tails we all lose. The tickets to the Neoliberal Hall of Fame are way out of our price range.

The Everywoman Look (a Mary Poppins Original)

Thoughts?

Win One for Mrs. Gipper

There's nothing like the political-media complex invading your water-poisoned city to make your situation feel even more toxic than it already is.

Vanderbilt heir and CNN moderator Anderson Cooper immediately set the tone for last night's Democratic debate:

Before we begin tonight, we want to take a moment to remember former first lady Nancy Reagan. As probably know, she passed away this morning at the age of 94. Her grace and elegance in the White House, her deep love for President Reagan, and her strength and advocacy in the fight against Alzheimer’s and drug abuse will always be remembered. We would like to pause of a moment of silence in honor of Mrs. Reagan.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and an audience full of lead-poisoned Flint residents were then forced to bow their heads in remembrance of the Reagan Revolution against non-rich people. And thus did the ghosts of Ronnie and Nancy waft over the proceedings of an increasingly right-wing Democratic party. It was a sad spectacle of Clintonian bromides, pandering catch-phrases, and slick political deflections. As for Bernie Sanders, would it be cruel of me to posit that it was one missed opportunity after another? There's unfortunately a grain of truth in the corporate media's castigation of him as a "one-note" candidate who blames generic billionaires and generic Wall Street for all that ails us. What about the Clinton Foundation itself?

What establishment pundits won't say is that he should be calling out Hillary Clinton's wars and corruption, and explaining in more detail the entrenched Clintonian neoliberal ideology. He should be explaining how the Clintons have continued right where the Reagans left off. He should have called Hillary a scion of Reagan, if not a Goldwater Girl. He is a little too nice, despite the best efforts of the media to cast him as an arm-waving rudenick.

I'll give you just a couple of examples of lost opportunities from last night's debate. 

First, there was the standard boilerplate exchange over guns. Hillary actually faulted Bernie for the probable failure of a lawsuit being brought by Sandy Hook parents against gun marketers and manufacturers, pointing to his Senate vote against holding sellers accountable for subsequent crimes committed with the weaponry.

CLINTON: The gun manufacturers sell guns to make as much money as they can make.....

CLINTON: I was in the Senate. And they said, “give us absolute immunity.” No other industry in America has absolute immunity...

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: ...and they sell products all the time that cause harm...

(APPLAUSE)

SANDERS: So let’s say this. Let’s say this.

CLINTON: ... and they’re held responsible.

COOPER: Senator Sanders.

SANDERS: You know, I think it is a little bit — it is a little bit — look, what happened at Sandy Hook, what happened in Michigan, what has happened far too often all over this country is a terrible, terrible tragedy, and we have got to do everything we can, as I mentioned a moment ago, to end these mass killings.

But, as I understand what your question is — and, you’re not the only person whose heart was broken. I know, I was there in the Senate when we learned about this killing. It is almost unspeakable to talk about some lunatic walking into a — I mean; it is hard to even talk about it.

We all feel that way. But it, as I understand it, Anderson, and maybe I’m wrong, what you’re really talking about is people saying let’s end gun manufacturing in America. That’s the implications of that, and I don’t agree with that.

Wow. The USA is the largest arms manufacturer and weapons dealer on the entire planet. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, personally brokered the sales of billions of dollars in lethal weaponry to the Saudis, who have used them to kill innocent civilians in Yemen and elsewhere. She's sold products that have caused great harm all over the world.

 Sanders also didn't mention revelations published last month in the New York Times that Hillary Clinton not only wrecked Libya, she enabled illegal weapons sales to Syrian rebels by way of Libya. He never mentioned her role in the right- wing coup in Ukraine. He never mentioned how the recipients of her official largesse have funneled countless millions to her family's private charity/slush fund.

He could so very easily have called Hillary out for her chutzpah in criticizing the greed of the gun lobby. He could have pointed out that she and her husband have been longstanding recipients of all kinds of legal immunity. But he preferred not to. All he said was that he doesn't think that we should end gun manufacturing in America.

And now for something completely new and corrupt:

(APPLAUSE) COOPER: Senator Sanders, on the — on the campaign trail, Senator Sanders often refers to a fundraiser in January that was hosted by executives from a firm that has invested significantly in domestic fracking. Do you have any comment on that?

CLINTON: I don’t have any comment. I don’t know that. I don’t believe that there is any reason to be concerned about it. I admire what Senator Sanders has accomplished in his campaign. I have more than 850,000 donors, most of them give less than $100. I am very proud of that.

And I just want to make one point. You know, we have our differences. And we get into vigorous debate about issues, but compare the substance of this debate with what you saw on the Republican stage last week.

This is just one example of how both Sanders and the media allow Hillary Clinton to get away with murder. She contemptuously refuses to comment on her corruption, whether it be donations from polluters or her refusal to release transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street. After she smarmily deflects the question by petting Sanders and reminding us that Republicans are much, much worse, neither Sanders nor Anderson vigorously insist that she actually answer the questions and accusations. That she would prefer not to is honored and respected. When she snidely responded she'd release her speech transcripts if the Republicans do, for instance, Sanders should have accused her of embracing the alleged ethics and playground tactics of the GOP. "I'll show you mine if Donald shows me his" displays nothing but cynicism and contempt for the American voter.

To be fair to Bernie, he did call Hillary out for NAFTA and welfare reform. But he also should have told the viewing audience that Marian Wright Edelman, whom Hillary constantly name-drops as proof of her undying devotion to children, actually cut the Clintons off decades ago when they condemned millions of mothers and children to poverty. He appeals to nationalism when the problem is global. He seems willing to go only so far in his attacks. He is especially loath to attack President Obama, who actually cut funding for lead testing in every year of his tenure, and only partially restored CDC funding for lead amelioration in this year's budget. He didn't mention that Obama himself refused to visit Flint after a recent visit to nearby Detroit, where he chest-thumped about the auto bailouts and mouthed only one tiny sentence about the water crisis. Why doesn't Sanders demand that the president deploy the Army Corps of Engineers to make immediate repairs to the Flint infrastructure? Why wait until a Sanders presidency for an immediate federal response? Delivering water in toxic plastic bottles is no solution. It's only a photo op for pandering politicians and cable outlets.

Needless to say, the corporate press's ridiculous main complaint about Sanders today is that at one point in the debate, he'd rudely asked Clinton to stop rudely interrupting him. There are  reports that the Clintonoids, irked at Bernie's staying power, want to goad him into becoming another Rick Lazio. Lazio was the weak, last-minute GOP opponent replacing a cancer-stricken Rudy Giuliani in her first Senate run; his campaign finally imploded when he "invaded her space" by approaching her podium at one of the debates. She played the victim card then, too... and she won.

The media are also complaining about Bernie's rather muddled answer to a Don Lemon question about racism, in which he seemed to park all black people into ghettos. A Tweet frenzy duly erupted from the faux-outraged media/political class. They really, really can't stand it when he tries enhance their race trope with his own message of an all-encompassing economic inequality. And he acts unreasonably flustered whenever they bring it up.

And thus is the underlying class/plutocratic cause of the Flint water crisis largely ignored in favor of sniping over partisan and identity politics. Both Sanders and Clinton shockingly demurred when asked about bringing criminal charges against the culprits, who hail from both political parties. They want to wait and see how it all plays out. They want Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who ignored the poisoning for well over a year, to simply resign from office. They didn't mention that the mayor of Flint herself is a Democrat. Ditto for the emergency manager, appointed by Snyder, who orchestrated the catastrophe by piping in corrosive water from the filthy Flint River to save money in the name of austerity.

As I have previously pointed out, the catastrophe in Flint can be legally classified as genocide under the standards laid out by the United Nations. A state or a ruler does not have to actually kill people, or even have the intent of killing people, to be guilty of genocide. A pattern of depraved indifference and damage to human life also qualifies as genocide. Henry Giroux rightly calls the Flint crisis an example of domestic terrorism. Flint is just the latest, most blatant example of what happens when democracy dies, and corporations rule.

Let us now bow our heads, contemplate what Reagan wrought, and then get back up and fight. Getting sucked in to endless presidential racehorse elections is anathema to bottom-up democracy... even when you like and support one of the candidates.

Good News, Bad News

The good news: Bernie Sanders (with some pretty, pretty, pretty good help from Martin O'Malley) beat Hillary Clinton handily in Saturday night's debate.

The bad news: Nobody saw him beat Hillary Clinton on Saturday night. Okay, so eight million of the already converted watched him beat Hillary Clinton. Otherwise, they were busy doing normal things on a Saturday night, such as watching college football players pummel each other into permanent organic brain damage and premature death. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, autocratic head of the Undemocratic Party, has pummeled the citizenry and enabled Hillary Clinton by scheduling very few debates at very inconvenient times. Bernie should have pounced in the very first debate when he had the chance and the audience. He coulda been a contendah.

The good news: The New York Times broke away from its terror coverage just long enough to write a scathing editorial against Hillary's cynical manipulation of terror to justify her allegiance to Wall Street. To their discredit, however, the editorial board seemed more miffed at her "failure to fake" and feel your pain than they were enraged that Clintonian neoliberalism has caused a whole heap of suffering to a whole bunch of people.

Middle-class Americans associate Wall Street with the 2008 meltdown of the economy that cost so many their homes and savings. In the debate Mrs. Clinton repeatedly referred to her plan for reining in banks, but offered precious few specifics. This is what happens when Hillary Clinton the candidate gets complacent. The debate moderator, Mr. Dickerson, had even tipped her off before a commercial break that the next topic was Wall Street.

Her effort to tug on Americans’ heartstrings instead of explaining her Wall Street ties — on a day that the scars of 9/11 were exposed anew — was at best botched rhetoric. At worst it was the type of cynical move that Mrs. Clinton would have condemned in Republicans.

She should make a fast, thorough effort to explain herself by providing a detailed plan for how she would promote measures protecting middle-class Americans from another financial crisis.

In other words, the Empress-in-Waiting blew it and let down the One Percent big-time by failing to pander to the Left/middle class in public while delivering to the Right/wealthy in private. Besides altering the theme of the debate at the last minute to foreign policy (her over-hyped bailiwick) to give her a perceived advantage, the debate moderator even gave her a heads-up on the Wall Street questions. The Beltway bent over backwards for their designated winner, and this is how she treats them? Oh, the elite humanity!

The bad news: The media-political nexus has decreed that all talk of the economic terror constantly being unleashed against ordinary citizens by the capitalist extremists beholden to the Market God must be "off the table" for the duration of the "official" terror hysteria outbreak/official mourning period.

 Climate change? Fuggedaboudit. What are mass extinctions compared to the latest, greatest threat to exceptional American Value$ that ever threatened? 

Vox's Brad Plumer, to name just one media hack, hysterically rails against Bernie Sanders for even bringing up the actual climate during this designated time of International Grief and Fear. Plumer says it is so "off-base" to directly link drought to violence. After all, if you're that hot, hungry, tired and thirsty, civil war should be the last thing on your mind, Plumer punditocratically pontificates from the comfort of an actual building. Apparently, jihad and strife only break out during balmy boom times and bubbles-a-plenty.

  It has been deemed disrespectful to bring up foreclosures, stagnating wages, unemployment and political corruption at a time when the important people are so busily milking terror for all it's worth. And in terms of advertising revenue and lobbyist dollars for them, and enhanced profits for the war industry, Terror is worth a yuuuuuge bundle. You gotta Keep Fear Alive. "Terrorism, Not Taxes!"  is the new campaign theme, shrilled another Times article:

The assault on Paris has thrust national security to the heart of the presidential race, forcing candidates to scramble and possibly prompting voters to reconsider their flirtations with unconventional candidates and to take a more sober measure of who is prepared to serve as commander in chief.

They just cancelled out their own "Hillary So, So Disappointed Us!" op-ed. From making fun of his accent and his hair, now they're claiming that Bernie is a bad boyfriend for not wallowing in fear and jingoism on our flirtatious Saturday night date.

The good news: Hillary Clinton was beautifully blindsided by rude boy Bernie Sanders, who went off the pre-approved "all terror, all the time"  debate script, and reduced her to bragging that her billions in Wall Street speaking fees and donations have been offset by the fact that 60 percent of her "small donors" are women. She brought her shallow, cynical identity politics into glaring high relief, and it was not a pretty sight. Nor were her lame excuses for helping destabilize the entire Middle East.

The bad news: Hillary is still ahead in the polls. Money still rules politics. The whole system is probably corrupt beyond all redemption. Bill Clinton is now openly appearing with her at campaign rallies, to much applause. Make no mistake, this is an attempted third term, a Clinton restoration, another co-presidency, another chance to cut the social safety net.

The good news: Bill Clinton is probably too old and decrepit to resume chasing after White House interns and female staffers. The Clinton restoration probably does not apply to his entire anatomy. His quadruple bypass probably precludes the ingestion of Viagra.

The bad news: As loathsome as the Clintons are, they are easily beatable by the Republicans, who probably already have a scandalous October Surprise or twelve up their sleeves. Also, before we rejoice that Clinton the Horn Dog has lost his horniness, we must remember that it was only the Lewinsky affair and impeachment distractions that prevented his planned cuts to Social Security and Medicare during those bubble-icious deregulatory 90s boom-times. Therefore, impotence can have its upside when it serves the potentates. The septuagenarian specter of the Clinton Restoration is a huge aphrodisiac for the richest of the rich.

The good news: There is a whole year to go before Election Day.

And the Winner Is...

If you're a Hillary fan, Hillary won the debate. If you're a Bernie fan, Bernie won the debate. If you're a Lincoln Chafee fan, I can give you the name of a very good therapist.

 Even within the suffocating confines of the Democratic machine, last night's debate was practically Lincoln-Douglas compared to the recent Republican circuses. And I give high marks to moderator Anderson Cooper, who was somehow able to resist asking the candidates who they'd like to see on the $10 bill.

The mass media are, of course, making gleeful hay out of Clinton's attack on Bernie's gun control record. Er... make that gun "safety" record. The Democrats no longer talk about actually controlling guns, because that might hurt the feelings of responsible, liberal gun owners. The emphasis is now upon restricting gun sales to the happiest, most mentally healthy well-adjusted people out there, those who carefully keep their Sig Sauers locked up in designer cabinets rather than leaving their shotguns propped upon against the wall of a red state trailer for the kids to get hold of and shoot each other over puppies.

For whatever reason, Bernie did not go on the counterattack. He did not, for example, point out that Hillary Clinton sold $20 billion worth of lethal weapons to Saudi Arabia while she was Secretary of State, and that Saudi royals then turned around and donated nearly $1 million to the Clinton Foundation. He didn't point out that Saudi Arabia is using these weapons to kill thousands of Yemeni civilians as well as continuing to behead dissidents and stone women to death in their own country. 

As Bernie himself unfortunately admitted, he is no "pacifist." He would continue Obama's drone policy of rendering Muslims into bug-splat. And even though he was the sole Senator to vote against the Patriot Act, he still believes that patriot Ed Snowden should face criminal charges. He did not refute Hillary's specious claim that Snowden would have found justice by going through Congressional channels instead of giving evidence of government spying to the media.

So since Bernie can't or won't, let's talk more about Hillary Clinton's horrible record on guns and all manner of high tech weaponry. David Sirota should have been invited to help moderate the debate, because he conducted a thorough analysis of her record just last spring, when she was busily riding in her Scooby van and shmoozing the scripted neoliberal love to "everyday Americans":

The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire, an International Business Times investigation has found.

Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure -- derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) -- represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.

In other words, the Clintons are major arms dealers who, in a reality-based world, would be given an A+ rating by the NRA -- on top of their A+ ratings from Wall Street war profiteers and defense contractors.

But this is an insane world presented to us as fair and balanced and mentally healthy by corporate media hacks whose jobs depend upon the successful alteration of our reality. According to the New York Times, Hillary "turned up the heat" on Bernie so much that they might as well have reported that his hair caught fire and he had to flee the Vegas kitchen. According to the Huffington Post, she crushed him into bug-splat with the merest flick of her pinkie finger. (OK, so he later recovered sufficiently to feebly wave a surviving tentacle in her general direction.)  The Washington Post proclaimed that Hillary towered like an Amazon over the sniveling guys flanking her on the stage. She was "fluid, steady and calm" to Bernie Sanders' maniacal shouting into a microphone, sniffed Dana Milbank.

I haven't yet read all the reviews, but so far, a puff piece by former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni is the one that really takes the cake. From his current perch atop the op-ed page, he gushed in his typical one-sentence paragraphs: 

I never doubted that Hillary Clinton had many talents.

I just didn’t know that seamstress was among them.

There were moments in the first Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday night when she threaded the needle as delicately and perfectly as a politician could.

Wait. It gets worse:

 He seemed bowed, irascible. She seemed buoyant, effervescent. It was as poised a performance as she’s finessed in a long time, and while I’ve just about given up making predictions about this confounding election — I never thought Donald Trump would last so long, and I never saw Ben Carson coming — I think Clinton benefited more from Tuesday’s stage than Sanders did.

How is one bowed (crushed) and irascible (feisty) at the same time? I have just about given up on making any sense out of Frank Bruni. But wait. It gets even worser:

And she benefited from the visual contrast when she stood side by side on TV next to Sanders, with his slight hunch, his somewhat garbled style of speech, and a moment when he cupped his hand behind his ear, signaling that he hadn’t heard the question.

He evoked yesterday. Despite many decades in the political trenches, she didn’t. It was a nifty trick. Turns out she’s a bit of a sorceress as well.

Bernie apparently does not speak in the pristine Bruniesque one-sentence paragraphs that make up the ideal word salad. But speaking of sorceresses, who are, I suppose, good witches as opposed to hags (Hillary at least puts the bubble back into toil and trouble), here is my published response to Brunhilda:

 Come on now. Did anybody really expect the paper of record and a centrist columnist to declare Bernie Sanders the winner of this debate? The corporate media, Frank Bruni included, have been bending over backward to avoid even mentioning the guy's name. They seem not to have a clue about the mood in this country.

The resounding campaign theme way out here in the sticks is "It's the Corruption, Stupid!" Not about who is the most polished debater with the best hair and makeup, the most nuanced wonky talking points, the straightest posture, and the most discreet hearing aid.

Yes, Hillary Clinton performed very well at the Democratic debate. She has had 26 of them in which to hone her skills -- unlike in this season, when the Democratic leadership is so rattled at the prospect of ABH (Anybody But Hillary) that they drastically limited them to six (the rest coming on weekends and holiday seasons.) So I bet Debbie Wasserman Schultz is kicking herself, seeing as how Hillary had a relatively easy time of it last night.

 And I can only imagine how thrilled Hillary must be that Frank Bruni's idea of a rave review is to call her a talented seamstress. Can a description of a female politician get any more chauvinistically 19th century than that? Not only does Bruni need a Miracle Ear to cure his tone-deafness, a transfer to the Style Section might be in order as well.

And by the way -- the USA turning into Denmark on steroids sounds like an excellent plan to me.