The open, unmoderated comments section of this blog has been provided as a service to readers.
While I slept, it devolved into a series of ad hominems and tit-for-tats among some contributors. There were warning signs of an escalation yesterday, but I hoped that things would settle down. They did not.
I have neither the time, nor the energy nor the inclination to be a comment cop. I'd rather be working on posts than monitoring comments, and researching the provenance of links, and answering private emails complaining about who said what to whom and to please ban this, that, or the other contributor.
Regular readers know I am fairly lenient about comments veering off topic after a post has been up for awhile. Although, as you know, one of my biggest pet peeves is working for hours on a piece only to have the first comment turn out to be completely irrelevant or an advertisement for another site. This hasn't been too much of a problem lately after I bitched about it a couple of times. And as I said, I'm not hawkish at all about staying strictly "on-topic," mostly because I rarely stay on topic in my own posts!
But I draw the line at personal attacks and flame-throwing.
Compared to the hundreds and thousands (when one of my pieces is linked from or cross-posted to a larger site) of daily visitors to this blog, the commenting community has remained quite small. And that's fine: the quality of the writing has been excellent. And while the tone is often feisty and biting and sarcastic (in keeping with the title of this blog), personal attacks have been practically nil - until yesterday and overnight.
Since nastiness in the comments takes away from the quality and may even drive readers away, I have decided to impose a cooling-off period, and will disable the commenting function for at least the next few days.
I apologize to the majority of commenters, who are respectful.
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Just a Spoonful of Bernie Helps the Hill Pill Go Down
Not.
The rage was everywhere you looked on both the Philly convention floor and out on the steaming streets on Monday. And justifiably so.
Therefore, may quisling Bernie Sanders's pathetic plea for his delegates and fans to behave and not make a mockery of him, personally, fall upon millions of deaf ears. If it's got to be a Bernieless burn, then so be it. A real revolution doesn't begin by falling down insensate and pledging to elect a deeply corrupt politician to (if she is truly as blessed as she constantly says she is) a White House reign that is not cut as short as those of her fellow lying war-mongers, Nixon and Johnson.
"This is a real world we live in," an abject Sanders told a crowd of booing supporters as he urged mindless public fealty to the Clintonian version of trickle-down capitalism. This re-endorsement was despite Wikileaks' release of the trove of emails proving that the Democratic Party is a corrupt institution, with access to money and power for its own ends its only goals. This was despite evidence that party flacks had conspired against Bernie Sanders, personally.
As the saying goes, shit always flows downhill. Bernie took his own generous personal portion and let it flow right down to his millions of fans.
His big speech on Monday night, effusively praising Clinton, left me wondering why he'd wasted all his personal energy in the first place, why he hadn't been loudly and vocally supporting Hillary Clinton all along. His original campaign rhetoric is now lost somewhere in the ozone
Of course, nobody should have been surprised. Least of all me, who warned from the outset not to put all our eggs into one Bernie Basket, lest the "sheepdogging" role ascribed to him by Black Agenda Report turned out to be all too true. I'd stopped feeling the Bern altogether during one of this spring's interminable town halls, when he blandly supported President Obama's drone assassination program and promised that it would continue under a Sanders presidency.
After that, god forgive me, the sound of his voice sounded like fingers across a blackboard. But yes, I still would have held my nose and voted for him.
From the start of his campaign, of course, the writing was right there on the blackboard. He'd vowed from the outset to endorse Clinton when and if she seized the nomination. I think what happened then is that the throngs of adoring fans and their millions of small donations went to his head. His true, initial purpose of herding more cattle into the party corral was temporarily lost in a cash deluge of historic proportions and the seductive glare of the stage lights. He played the part of lonely outlaw for so long that even he started believing in his fictional character, especially once he won New Hampshire by double digits.
Meanwhile, there are about a hundred more days to go to Election Day. The manipulators of public consent would like nothing better than for us to put our struggling lives on hold for the duration, to root for a greater or lesser evil. And then the whole thing will get started again on Inauguration Day 2017, if not before.
So let the revolution continue in the Bernie-Free Zone. At this point, he is only an impediment.
Let's give Jill Stein a look. A protest vote today can always lead to a meaningful vote in the future.
And next time an annoying Hill Pill tells you to grow up or shut up for wanting Medicare for All and a living wage law, congratulate them on their affordable pragmatism and then hit them up for a donation to a medical charity, a food bank, or StrikeDebt.
The rage was everywhere you looked on both the Philly convention floor and out on the steaming streets on Monday. And justifiably so.
Therefore, may quisling Bernie Sanders's pathetic plea for his delegates and fans to behave and not make a mockery of him, personally, fall upon millions of deaf ears. If it's got to be a Bernieless burn, then so be it. A real revolution doesn't begin by falling down insensate and pledging to elect a deeply corrupt politician to (if she is truly as blessed as she constantly says she is) a White House reign that is not cut as short as those of her fellow lying war-mongers, Nixon and Johnson.
"This is a real world we live in," an abject Sanders told a crowd of booing supporters as he urged mindless public fealty to the Clintonian version of trickle-down capitalism. This re-endorsement was despite Wikileaks' release of the trove of emails proving that the Democratic Party is a corrupt institution, with access to money and power for its own ends its only goals. This was despite evidence that party flacks had conspired against Bernie Sanders, personally.
As the saying goes, shit always flows downhill. Bernie took his own generous personal portion and let it flow right down to his millions of fans.
His big speech on Monday night, effusively praising Clinton, left me wondering why he'd wasted all his personal energy in the first place, why he hadn't been loudly and vocally supporting Hillary Clinton all along. His original campaign rhetoric is now lost somewhere in the ozone
Of course, nobody should have been surprised. Least of all me, who warned from the outset not to put all our eggs into one Bernie Basket, lest the "sheepdogging" role ascribed to him by Black Agenda Report turned out to be all too true. I'd stopped feeling the Bern altogether during one of this spring's interminable town halls, when he blandly supported President Obama's drone assassination program and promised that it would continue under a Sanders presidency.
After that, god forgive me, the sound of his voice sounded like fingers across a blackboard. But yes, I still would have held my nose and voted for him.
From the start of his campaign, of course, the writing was right there on the blackboard. He'd vowed from the outset to endorse Clinton when and if she seized the nomination. I think what happened then is that the throngs of adoring fans and their millions of small donations went to his head. His true, initial purpose of herding more cattle into the party corral was temporarily lost in a cash deluge of historic proportions and the seductive glare of the stage lights. He played the part of lonely outlaw for so long that even he started believing in his fictional character, especially once he won New Hampshire by double digits.
Meanwhile, there are about a hundred more days to go to Election Day. The manipulators of public consent would like nothing better than for us to put our struggling lives on hold for the duration, to root for a greater or lesser evil. And then the whole thing will get started again on Inauguration Day 2017, if not before.
So let the revolution continue in the Bernie-Free Zone. At this point, he is only an impediment.
Let's give Jill Stein a look. A protest vote today can always lead to a meaningful vote in the future.
And next time an annoying Hill Pill tells you to grow up or shut up for wanting Medicare for All and a living wage law, congratulate them on their affordable pragmatism and then hit them up for a donation to a medical charity, a food bank, or StrikeDebt.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Little Mary Sunshine vs. Donnie Darko
The poor corporate Democrats are not only stuck between a rock and a hard place, they're mired in the swamp, they're swirling in the maelstrom, they're choking on their own happy-talk effluvia.
They proclaim themselves utterly dismayed by the dark, dismal, depressing acceptance speech of Donald Trump the other night. Sunshine Superman he definitely is not. And that he didn't make God a centerpiece of his diatribe is only more proof of how un-American he truly is. Failure of a politician to constantly mention a supernatural character is a direct slap in the face to our official national motto: In God We Trust.
Trump only mentioned God once in his speech, and that was in the final sentence. Even then, he committed the ultimate faux pas, uttering "God bless you" rather than "God bless America." Kate Smith must be rolling in her grave.
Superstition has been the glue holding the bipartisan military-industrial complex together since the dawn of the Empire, and Trump threatens to turn that neocon propaganda of exceptionalism right on its overstuffed puritanical head. He wears his xenophobia on his sleeve, willfully ignoring the code of etiquette which holds that politicians' foul cores must always be masked by pretty, soothing, humanitarian words.
In the annals of presidential politics, the Trump horror show is making Dick Cheney look about as anodyne as folksy misanthrope Mike Pence.
Rather than agree with Trump that most people are more down and out than ever, the Democratic Party is choosing instead to shoot the messenger. They're blasting away at Donnie, that nasty brutish short-fingered authoritarian messenger of gloom and doom. Because to acknowledge the terrible reality of Dystopian America would be to unconscionably betray the last seven and half years of the Obama presidency itself.
The premature and perpetual burnishing of Obama's legacy - and the party's retention of political power - seem more important to Democratic elders than addressing such inconvenient social ills as poverty and homelessness and drug addiction and suicide and premature death rates, and past, present and future corporate malfeasance and war crimes.
In the view of elite eyes peering out from behind their rose-colored glasses, killing the messenger certainly trumps (sorry!) killing the legacy of Barack Obama in particular, and the Neoliberal Project in general. The Democratic Party cannot possibly admit that the wealth gap has increased under Obama, that the poverty rate has increased under Obama, that the jobs created under Obama have mostly been of the low wage, service sector, temporary and precarious variety.
So instead of espousing a new New Deal and a government-sponsored jobs program for every citizen wanting employment, they're holding their ears and insisting that the kids are all right - even in lead-poisoned Flint, Michigan. They gave out free plastic filters to everybody, didn't they? So they won't even bother to sing The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow at their convention this week. As far as they're concerned, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and for that matter, in every other corner of its inclusive, diverse Big Tent of the Free.
Sure, they grudgingly allow,"there's still work to be done." Hillary Clinton has vowed to fight (against her own neoliberal policies?) from Day One, ensuring that every last shlub will get the chance to live up to his or her "God-given potential."
Just like Little Mary Sunshine, the Clinton party is a subversive parody of the Pollyanna genre, though unfortunately not in a feel-good, funny way.
You gotta believe... in incrementalism. Hope is so yesterday, and so Berniebro-ish. (just look at the DNC's leaked Sanders-trashing emails in case you still had any doubts. These flacks sound just as depraved as the "Sunny in Philly" cast. Is it too late for Bernie to still take the fight all the way to the convention?)
Donald Trump might be a fascistic strongman and a false idol, but the Sunshine Love Party of Hillary isn't exactly winning friends either, what with trying to convince us that everything is hunky-dory, and that the hunky-doryness will continue into the foreseeable future. The only influencers they seek to impress are their donors and the comfortable believers of the professional class. And that includes Republicans who are just as horrified at Trump's dark material as the establishment Dems.
The Clintonites aren't interested in wooing hippies and lefties and poor people, and they never have been. Why else select Wall Street and TPP-friendly Tim Kaine as Clinton's running mate, and then add insult to injury by colluding with the New York Times to cynically cast him as a "progressive?"
(Now, to be perfectly catty about the whole thing, I think that one reason she picked him is because he makes her look ten years younger.)
New York Times columnist and Democratic factotum Paul Krugman, long a Panglossian defender of the neoliberal Obama regime, wrote a hilarious blog-post the other day, assuring his readers that because New York City's tony Upper West Side (where he owns a fortified $1.7 million co-op) is safe and secure, fear-mongering Donnie Darko has no idea what he's talking about, claiming that America is not strong or great.
If you listen to Trump, shames Krugman, it probably means that you're paranoid and delusional and perhaps even just as racist and misogynistic as he is.
Krugman writes,
My published response:
This novel and others in the Highsmith oeuvre were long out of print, but are again popular thanks in large part to the film adaptation (Carol) of her early novel, "The Price of Salt."
One of them, a collection of short stories called "Little Tales of Misogyny" is especially apt in this Age of Trump. I recommend all her books, especially "The Talented Mr. Ripley," which was also made into a well-received film.
Tom Ripley was actually a more perfect psychopath than Donald Trump, who is also a clinical narcissist with a monstrous id competing with an equally monstrous ego. He is neither charming, nor literate, nor polite, nor classy.
To be a true member of the tribe of refined psychopathy, one must be the opposite of Trump, capable of oozing empathy in public and acting callously in private.
And that brings me back to (at least) one of the other major characters in this blog-post, who's managed to fool enough of the people enough of the time to earn public approval ratings above 50 percent.
But sometimes even the best of them slip up, including the law enforcement officials in the audience who laugh along appreciatively and ghoulishly:
If you prefer more unabashed ghoulishness:
As far as garden variety mendacity goes, Hillary still needs a lot - a whole, whole, whole lot - more practice in fooling at least some of the people some of the time:
But look over there! It's Trump, baring his bottom teeth.
They proclaim themselves utterly dismayed by the dark, dismal, depressing acceptance speech of Donald Trump the other night. Sunshine Superman he definitely is not. And that he didn't make God a centerpiece of his diatribe is only more proof of how un-American he truly is. Failure of a politician to constantly mention a supernatural character is a direct slap in the face to our official national motto: In God We Trust.
Trump only mentioned God once in his speech, and that was in the final sentence. Even then, he committed the ultimate faux pas, uttering "God bless you" rather than "God bless America." Kate Smith must be rolling in her grave.
Superstition has been the glue holding the bipartisan military-industrial complex together since the dawn of the Empire, and Trump threatens to turn that neocon propaganda of exceptionalism right on its overstuffed puritanical head. He wears his xenophobia on his sleeve, willfully ignoring the code of etiquette which holds that politicians' foul cores must always be masked by pretty, soothing, humanitarian words.
In the annals of presidential politics, the Trump horror show is making Dick Cheney look about as anodyne as folksy misanthrope Mike Pence.
Rather than agree with Trump that most people are more down and out than ever, the Democratic Party is choosing instead to shoot the messenger. They're blasting away at Donnie, that nasty brutish short-fingered authoritarian messenger of gloom and doom. Because to acknowledge the terrible reality of Dystopian America would be to unconscionably betray the last seven and half years of the Obama presidency itself.
The premature and perpetual burnishing of Obama's legacy - and the party's retention of political power - seem more important to Democratic elders than addressing such inconvenient social ills as poverty and homelessness and drug addiction and suicide and premature death rates, and past, present and future corporate malfeasance and war crimes.
In the view of elite eyes peering out from behind their rose-colored glasses, killing the messenger certainly trumps (sorry!) killing the legacy of Barack Obama in particular, and the Neoliberal Project in general. The Democratic Party cannot possibly admit that the wealth gap has increased under Obama, that the poverty rate has increased under Obama, that the jobs created under Obama have mostly been of the low wage, service sector, temporary and precarious variety.
So instead of espousing a new New Deal and a government-sponsored jobs program for every citizen wanting employment, they're holding their ears and insisting that the kids are all right - even in lead-poisoned Flint, Michigan. They gave out free plastic filters to everybody, didn't they? So they won't even bother to sing The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow at their convention this week. As far as they're concerned, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and for that matter, in every other corner of its inclusive, diverse Big Tent of the Free.
Sure, they grudgingly allow,"there's still work to be done." Hillary Clinton has vowed to fight (against her own neoliberal policies?) from Day One, ensuring that every last shlub will get the chance to live up to his or her "God-given potential."
Just like Little Mary Sunshine, the Clinton party is a subversive parody of the Pollyanna genre, though unfortunately not in a feel-good, funny way.
 |
| You're Either With Her, Or You're Secretly With Donnie |
You gotta believe... in incrementalism. Hope is so yesterday, and so Berniebro-ish. (just look at the DNC's leaked Sanders-trashing emails in case you still had any doubts. These flacks sound just as depraved as the "Sunny in Philly" cast. Is it too late for Bernie to still take the fight all the way to the convention?)
Donald Trump might be a fascistic strongman and a false idol, but the Sunshine Love Party of Hillary isn't exactly winning friends either, what with trying to convince us that everything is hunky-dory, and that the hunky-doryness will continue into the foreseeable future. The only influencers they seek to impress are their donors and the comfortable believers of the professional class. And that includes Republicans who are just as horrified at Trump's dark material as the establishment Dems.
The Clintonites aren't interested in wooing hippies and lefties and poor people, and they never have been. Why else select Wall Street and TPP-friendly Tim Kaine as Clinton's running mate, and then add insult to injury by colluding with the New York Times to cynically cast him as a "progressive?"
(Now, to be perfectly catty about the whole thing, I think that one reason she picked him is because he makes her look ten years younger.)
 |
| Slim,Trim,Grim, and Brim-full of Vim With Tim |
New York Times columnist and Democratic factotum Paul Krugman, long a Panglossian defender of the neoliberal Obama regime, wrote a hilarious blog-post the other day, assuring his readers that because New York City's tony Upper West Side (where he owns a fortified $1.7 million co-op) is safe and secure, fear-mongering Donnie Darko has no idea what he's talking about, claiming that America is not strong or great.
If you listen to Trump, shames Krugman, it probably means that you're paranoid and delusional and perhaps even just as racist and misogynistic as he is.
Krugman writes,
Krugman is an intelligent guy, so it's painfully, transparently obvious that his piece is simply a desperate liberal counter-gambit as well as an ode to the wellness regimes of the wealthy.If you want to feel good about the state of America, you could do a lot worse than what I did this morning: take a run in Riverside Park. There are people of all ages, and, yes, all races exercising, strolling hand in hand, playing with their dogs, kicking soccer balls and throwing Frisbees. There are a few homeless people, but the overall atmosphere is friendly – New Yorkers tend to be rushed, but they’re not nasty – and, well, nice.
Yes, the Upper West Side is affluent. But still, I’ve seen New York over the decades, and it has never been as pleasant, as safe in feel, as it is now. And this is the big bad city!
The point is that lived experience confirms what the statistics say: crime hasn’t been lower, society hasn’t been safer, in generations. Which, of course, leads us to the Trump gambit from last night. Can he raise 1968-type fears in a country that looks, feels, and is nothing like it was back then?
My published response:
Well, if all is right in Krugman's privileged world, then it naturally follows that all should revel in his self-satisfaction.I didn't have room to add the text of a letter from the disaffected guy in the Highsmith novel to his particular Upper West Side target. But since it's apropos of Krugman's own clueless mind-set juxtaposed with seething working class resentments, I'll include it here, minus the annoying ALL CAPS beloved by the various and sundry angry people you meet on Yahoo comment boards, at Trump rallies, in Highsmith books, and in your own neighborhood:
This post creepily (and hilariously) reminded me of a Patricia ("Strangers on a Train") Highsmith novel called "A Dog's Ransom." An upper middle class guy goes for an innocent stroll in Riverside Park - and everything is, well, nice. It's so perfect, in fact, that there isn't one homeless person around to blot the landscape. There are even some frisbee-throwing black and brown people on hand to lull the open-minded passer-by into thinking that bad things can never happen to good and well-off people.
But Highsmith being her usual misanthropic self, we soon learn there's a dark side to that walk in the park. She's about to do a real satiric number on affluence, the class war, and consumerism.
Little does her open-minded professional dude know that there's an urban (white) psychopath lurking nearby, and that his whole privileged world is about to crumble.. In the process, he discovers there's a world beyond the Upper West Side.
It's dawned on me that Krugman is addressing the top 10 percent of the readership as well as his own professional cohort. Little does he seem to realize, or care, that the more he contributes to the class-blind liberal classism genre, the more that right-wing populists will gleefully and correctly pounce on the elitism of the media in general and the Clinton Dems in particular.
Brace yourselves for the Talented Mr. Trump.
Dear Sir or "Gentleman"
I suppose you are pretty pleased with yourself? People like you disgust me and not only me but a hell of a lot of other people in this world. You are smug, you are self-suficiant (sic) you think superior to everyone else. You think. A fancy apartment and a snob dog. You are a disgusting little machine, nothing else. Your days are numbered. What right have you got to be 'superior'?
Anon (as in see you anon - HA!)I don't want to be a spoiler, but I do want to reassure readers that the rich assholes in the novel do survive, despite being ripped a new one or two. Evil usually triumphs in the realistic dark world of Patricia Highsmith. But it never triumphs unscathed.
This novel and others in the Highsmith oeuvre were long out of print, but are again popular thanks in large part to the film adaptation (Carol) of her early novel, "The Price of Salt."
One of them, a collection of short stories called "Little Tales of Misogyny" is especially apt in this Age of Trump. I recommend all her books, especially "The Talented Mr. Ripley," which was also made into a well-received film.
Tom Ripley was actually a more perfect psychopath than Donald Trump, who is also a clinical narcissist with a monstrous id competing with an equally monstrous ego. He is neither charming, nor literate, nor polite, nor classy.
To be a true member of the tribe of refined psychopathy, one must be the opposite of Trump, capable of oozing empathy in public and acting callously in private.
And that brings me back to (at least) one of the other major characters in this blog-post, who's managed to fool enough of the people enough of the time to earn public approval ratings above 50 percent.
But sometimes even the best of them slip up, including the law enforcement officials in the audience who laugh along appreciatively and ghoulishly:
If you prefer more unabashed ghoulishness:
As far as garden variety mendacity goes, Hillary still needs a lot - a whole, whole, whole lot - more practice in fooling at least some of the people some of the time:
But look over there! It's Trump, baring his bottom teeth.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Kindergarten Fascists of the GOP
The mob of regressives is taking its schoolyard bullying routine to a whole new scary level.
Not for nothing has the newest chanted refrain at the Republican Party convention in Cleveland become "Lock her up! Lock her up!"
They're obviously thinking back fondly to the only school setting in which many of them excelled: Recess.
They envision over-achieving Hillary Clinton on the playground in her crisply ironed gingham pantsuit. Somebody (Newt? Toad? Donald?) suggests that she join in their game of London Bridge Is Falling Down. Wanting desperately to be tested, vetted and accepted on their skewed-right playing field, the Goldwater Girl in liberal clothing accepts the challenge.
Their human arch comes swinging down and traps her. Take the keys and lock her up, lock her up....but then the tune abruptly stops. The play-school reactionaries leave out the "My Fair Lady" ending because it reminds them too much of a Broadway musical, and they're a bunch of homophobes.
So to augment the cries of lock her up, lock her up, one particularly dim Trump toady named Al Baldasaro suggested ending the song by convicting Hillary of treason and executing her by firing squad. The Secret Service hall monitors were duly notified and are said to be investigating the subtle little threat.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi helped keep the primordial "Lock Her Up" chant going strong last night at the extended thought-free recess known as the Republican National Convention. You might remember Pam as the hall of justice monitor who promised not to squeal on thieving Donald Trump in exchange for some of his lunch money. And since she, too, studiously avoided the My Fair Lady ending, you also might remember the "sick irony" of her sympathizing with the LGBT victims of the Orlando massacre after fighting against gay rights for the past dozen years.
School misery was on full display in a few other of its endlessly creative forms on Wednesday.
Ivanka Trump was apparently so traumatized by her own school experience that she spent recess time huddled in a janitor's closet, making daily phone calls to Daddy. Thank goodness the bullying that he himself had perfected in military school didn't apply to his own daughter, because he always deigned to accept her calls. His kindness apparently did not extend to calling the school to demand why his kid was locking herself in a closet during recess in the first place.. or asking why the custodial closet was even equipped with a phone. It's very odd - Donald certainly wasn't forking over $35,000+ in private school tuition for his child to attend Dotheboys Hall.
Or was he?
And then there was the rare playground spectacle of Bully vs. Bully.
Ted Cruz got on the see-saw with Donald Trump. As soon as Donnie was high in the air, crowing in all his narcissistic glory, Ted jumped off his end and let Trump crash right to the ground. All Donnie could do was shake his fist helplessly as the still-traumatized Ivanka sent eye-daggers in Ted's general direction. The hall monitors hastily escorted Heidi Cruz from the playground for her own safety, as various toadies taunted "Goldman Sachs!" in her wake.
Later, a partially recovered Trump clumsily air-kissed his new toady (Mike Pence) right in the middle of his forehead. He perhaps hallucinated a little girl with a little curl lurking there and acting horrid, and then his misogyny got the better of him.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is effectively turning all the bullying to her own advantage. Since people are picking on her at the rate of about once every nanosecond, and since she and her team send out a GoFundMe email blast for every last insult, she is raking in the victimhood bucks at a truly astounding rate.
I got an email from Chelsea Clinton just this morning, going her former BFF Ivanka one better when it comes to parents and schools. Donald only talked to his daughter by phone in a janitor's closet, while Hillary was both a workaholic and a helicopter parent for the ages. Far from being a GOP caricature, Chelsea wrote,
And then there was the email a few hours later from Clinton's Deputy Communications Director, Christina Reynolds. It was temptingly slugged "Lucifer."
It seems that crackpot theocrat Ben Carson has accused Hillary of being the devil incarnate. To prove that I am exercised enough to disown exorcism as well as to renounce The Donald and all his works, I was asked to send a buck to Hillary. In return, I will receive a "free" sticker.
Because as Christina so aptly observed: "This is not a normal contest, and no one is playing by normal rules."
Not for nothing has the newest chanted refrain at the Republican Party convention in Cleveland become "Lock her up! Lock her up!"
They're obviously thinking back fondly to the only school setting in which many of them excelled: Recess.
They envision over-achieving Hillary Clinton on the playground in her crisply ironed gingham pantsuit. Somebody (Newt? Toad? Donald?) suggests that she join in their game of London Bridge Is Falling Down. Wanting desperately to be tested, vetted and accepted on their skewed-right playing field, the Goldwater Girl in liberal clothing accepts the challenge.
Their human arch comes swinging down and traps her. Take the keys and lock her up, lock her up....but then the tune abruptly stops. The play-school reactionaries leave out the "My Fair Lady" ending because it reminds them too much of a Broadway musical, and they're a bunch of homophobes.
So to augment the cries of lock her up, lock her up, one particularly dim Trump toady named Al Baldasaro suggested ending the song by convicting Hillary of treason and executing her by firing squad. The Secret Service hall monitors were duly notified and are said to be investigating the subtle little threat.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi helped keep the primordial "Lock Her Up" chant going strong last night at the extended thought-free recess known as the Republican National Convention. You might remember Pam as the hall of justice monitor who promised not to squeal on thieving Donald Trump in exchange for some of his lunch money. And since she, too, studiously avoided the My Fair Lady ending, you also might remember the "sick irony" of her sympathizing with the LGBT victims of the Orlando massacre after fighting against gay rights for the past dozen years.
School misery was on full display in a few other of its endlessly creative forms on Wednesday.
Ivanka Trump was apparently so traumatized by her own school experience that she spent recess time huddled in a janitor's closet, making daily phone calls to Daddy. Thank goodness the bullying that he himself had perfected in military school didn't apply to his own daughter, because he always deigned to accept her calls. His kindness apparently did not extend to calling the school to demand why his kid was locking herself in a closet during recess in the first place.. or asking why the custodial closet was even equipped with a phone. It's very odd - Donald certainly wasn't forking over $35,000+ in private school tuition for his child to attend Dotheboys Hall.
Or was he?
And then there was the rare playground spectacle of Bully vs. Bully.
Ted Cruz got on the see-saw with Donald Trump. As soon as Donnie was high in the air, crowing in all his narcissistic glory, Ted jumped off his end and let Trump crash right to the ground. All Donnie could do was shake his fist helplessly as the still-traumatized Ivanka sent eye-daggers in Ted's general direction. The hall monitors hastily escorted Heidi Cruz from the playground for her own safety, as various toadies taunted "Goldman Sachs!" in her wake.
Later, a partially recovered Trump clumsily air-kissed his new toady (Mike Pence) right in the middle of his forehead. He perhaps hallucinated a little girl with a little curl lurking there and acting horrid, and then his misogyny got the better of him.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is effectively turning all the bullying to her own advantage. Since people are picking on her at the rate of about once every nanosecond, and since she and her team send out a GoFundMe email blast for every last insult, she is raking in the victimhood bucks at a truly astounding rate.
I got an email from Chelsea Clinton just this morning, going her former BFF Ivanka one better when it comes to parents and schools. Donald only talked to his daughter by phone in a janitor's closet, while Hillary was both a workaholic and a helicopter parent for the ages. Far from being a GOP caricature, Chelsea wrote,
My mom is compassionate, kind, and hardworking -- when I was growing up, it seemed like she could do anything. She’d spend all day in court litigating on behalf of children and families, then come home and ask me over dinner what I learned in school, what my favorite part of my day was, and what I hoped would happen tomorrow. And then she would sit with me while I did my homework or practiced the piano or worked on my science project.Chelsea seemingly was never allowed to goof off, misbehave, play, or even be alone in her room to just think, either then or now. Thus did this very very good 36-year-old woman dutifully beg me to send a buck to her ever-present Mom as a sign of my gratitude.
And then there was the email a few hours later from Clinton's Deputy Communications Director, Christina Reynolds. It was temptingly slugged "Lucifer."
It seems that crackpot theocrat Ben Carson has accused Hillary of being the devil incarnate. To prove that I am exercised enough to disown exorcism as well as to renounce The Donald and all his works, I was asked to send a buck to Hillary. In return, I will receive a "free" sticker.
Because as Christina so aptly observed: "This is not a normal contest, and no one is playing by normal rules."
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| Back When BFFs Still Played by Normal Ruling Class Rules (Kiss, Kiss) |
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Kleveland Klux Konvention
Even before the official festivities got underway, Iowa Congressman Steve ("Mexican drug dealers with calves the size of cantaloupes are coming over the border to kill us and rape us!") King set the white supremacist tone of the four-day-long Hate-a-Thon.
Whenever corporate media pundits need a reliable racist to balance out a panel of smarmy identitarian liberals, they invite somebody like Steve King. (Rudy Giuliani is another ole reliable, but he was busy both on the stage and sitting next to Bob Dole last night.)
King was asked to guest-star on Chris Hayes's "All In" Konvention show with the almost iron-klad guarantee that he would pleasurably outrage the viewing audience and Quicken their pulses as a warm-up act to Duck Dynasty. Ratings duly skyrocketed as the clip of King spewing white supremacy has gone viral, stunning even fellow guest Charles Pierce, a normally voluble wag, into "jaw-dropping" silence.
So, not wanting to deprive the ratings-needy Chris Hayes of even one more click, I'll post the exchange, too.
Please note that after a faux-shocked Hayes wittily retorts that Hitler and Stalin were white guys too, he then effusively invites this mentally unstable pathocrat back on his show "any time". Anything to make center-right neoliberals seem reasonable and humane.
But just for now, Hayes has to cut the racism short, because "it's cable." Heh, heh, heh. And now a word from our sponsors (Big Oil, Big Pharma, the "defense" industry, and my own personal favorite, the ad showing a well-to-do retired couple and their leashed pet pig strolling along the seaside to a wealth management appointment at too big to fail JP Morgan Chase.)
Maybe, by the end of the day, the white supremacist dude will even overtake PlagiarGate in total views. But I doubt it. Because the awesome spectacle of Melania Trump copying Michelle Obama's own insipid and probably ghostwritten 2008 convention speech has captured the attention of Kardashian Nation.
My take: The speeches of political wives, unfortunately, are by their very nature interchangeable. These women all come from the same 'umble beginnings, they all worked hard and played by the same hardscrabble rules, they all had strict parents who instilled puritanical values in their children, they all think their hubbies are living saints who care about millions of people they don't know and don't want to know just as much as they care about their own flesh and blood.
The media eats it up. And, of course, the wives' fashion labels are always given at least equal time with their anodyne words. No matter which side of the Money Party they're on, when it comes to media coverage, "who" they are wearing is nearly as important as their teleprompted platitudes.
Before an unemployed blogger/Obama fan caught the plagiarism, Rachel Maddow and her compatriots were full of effusive praise for the adorable Mrs. Trump. Because it is imperative that the corporate media raking in the bucks from this 21st century Nuremberg rally treat it as a genuinely democratic, as well as sane, enterprise. This is despite their frequent wide angle camera shots of the white sea of delegates decked out in their patriotic fright costumes and "Bikers for Trump" regalia.
Luckily for Hillary Clinton, who sent out fund-raising email blasts at the rate of about one per hour during prime time, there is no 1992 Democratic Party convention speech from which to compare notes and play Gotcha. She was deemed too controversial and risky at the time, what with her nationally televised dissing of Tammy Wynette and her aversion to baking cookies.
When 1996 came around, however, Hillary was finally allowed a convention speaking slot. For one thing, she needed to promote her first ghost-written memoir, It Takes a Village. And at the convention, she duly proved that she can be every bit as hackneyed as Melania and Michelle when it comes to folksily pumping up one's spouse:
The award for best comedy performance by a politician in a fascist setting has been unanimously awarded to Mayor Nine Eleven himself, Rudy Giuliani. ("RooDEE, RooDEE, RooDEE"). Obviously vying with Jersey Boy Chris Christie for the top spot in a Trump Department of Justice, Giuliani promised that Trump would do for America what he did for New York City. Among Rudy's accomplishments were purging 640,000 people from the welfare rolls, instituting racist "broken windows" policing practices, throwing annoying SqueeGee guys off the city streets, and dumping his stunned second wife by way of a televised press conference.
Rudy also claimed that Trump has been a Secret Santa for decades, but that he was hereby breaking his own pledge of silence to Donald about the long unbroken spree of anonymous beneficence. Whereupon Rudy proceeded to immediately break his own promise by maintaining the radio silence after all. Not one folksy anecdote about even one Trumpian good deed was forthcoming.
But never mind all that. It's Republican awards week, after all.
The Kanye West award for best oratorium interruptus goes to Donald Trump, for interrupting a couple of konvention speeches from military heroes praising him in order to call in to Fox News to praise himself. He's so vain, he probably thought the show was about him. Oh, wait...
Best special effects: Donald appearing on the stage in blue-misted silhouette. It's a reminder that the opening scene of The Apprentice is probably what we can expect from a Trump presidency: a noxious haze of fear and theatrics.
For double the fun, though, the best improvisational dialogue award has to go to a frothing Rudy playing Adenoid Hynkel. Which means that Donald probably won't pick him to be attorney general after all. Donald hates being upstaged.
Giulani: Are we crazy?
Audience: Yeah!
Whenever corporate media pundits need a reliable racist to balance out a panel of smarmy identitarian liberals, they invite somebody like Steve King. (Rudy Giuliani is another ole reliable, but he was busy both on the stage and sitting next to Bob Dole last night.)
King was asked to guest-star on Chris Hayes's "All In" Konvention show with the almost iron-klad guarantee that he would pleasurably outrage the viewing audience and Quicken their pulses as a warm-up act to Duck Dynasty. Ratings duly skyrocketed as the clip of King spewing white supremacy has gone viral, stunning even fellow guest Charles Pierce, a normally voluble wag, into "jaw-dropping" silence.
So, not wanting to deprive the ratings-needy Chris Hayes of even one more click, I'll post the exchange, too.
Please note that after a faux-shocked Hayes wittily retorts that Hitler and Stalin were white guys too, he then effusively invites this mentally unstable pathocrat back on his show "any time". Anything to make center-right neoliberals seem reasonable and humane.
But just for now, Hayes has to cut the racism short, because "it's cable." Heh, heh, heh. And now a word from our sponsors (Big Oil, Big Pharma, the "defense" industry, and my own personal favorite, the ad showing a well-to-do retired couple and their leashed pet pig strolling along the seaside to a wealth management appointment at too big to fail JP Morgan Chase.)
Maybe, by the end of the day, the white supremacist dude will even overtake PlagiarGate in total views. But I doubt it. Because the awesome spectacle of Melania Trump copying Michelle Obama's own insipid and probably ghostwritten 2008 convention speech has captured the attention of Kardashian Nation.
My take: The speeches of political wives, unfortunately, are by their very nature interchangeable. These women all come from the same 'umble beginnings, they all worked hard and played by the same hardscrabble rules, they all had strict parents who instilled puritanical values in their children, they all think their hubbies are living saints who care about millions of people they don't know and don't want to know just as much as they care about their own flesh and blood.
The media eats it up. And, of course, the wives' fashion labels are always given at least equal time with their anodyne words. No matter which side of the Money Party they're on, when it comes to media coverage, "who" they are wearing is nearly as important as their teleprompted platitudes.
Before an unemployed blogger/Obama fan caught the plagiarism, Rachel Maddow and her compatriots were full of effusive praise for the adorable Mrs. Trump. Because it is imperative that the corporate media raking in the bucks from this 21st century Nuremberg rally treat it as a genuinely democratic, as well as sane, enterprise. This is despite their frequent wide angle camera shots of the white sea of delegates decked out in their patriotic fright costumes and "Bikers for Trump" regalia.
Luckily for Hillary Clinton, who sent out fund-raising email blasts at the rate of about one per hour during prime time, there is no 1992 Democratic Party convention speech from which to compare notes and play Gotcha. She was deemed too controversial and risky at the time, what with her nationally televised dissing of Tammy Wynette and her aversion to baking cookies.
When 1996 came around, however, Hillary was finally allowed a convention speaking slot. For one thing, she needed to promote her first ghost-written memoir, It Takes a Village. And at the convention, she duly proved that she can be every bit as hackneyed as Melania and Michelle when it comes to folksily pumping up one's spouse:
I wish we could be sitting around a kitchen table, just us, talking about our hopes and fears about our children’s futures. For Bill and me, family has been the center of our lives. But we also know that our family like your family is part of a larger community that can help or hurt our best efforts to raise our child....
It takes a president who believes not only in the potential of his own child, but of all children, who believes not only in the strength of his own family, but of the American family who believes not only in the promise of each of us as individuals, but in our promise together as a nation.But I don't want to take any more time away from the Republicans. So about last night:
It takes a president who not only holds these beliefs, but acts on them. It takes Bill Clinton.
Sometimes late at night, when I see Chelsea doing her homework or watching TV or talking to a friend on the phone, I think to myself her life and the lives of millions of boys and girls will be better because of what all of us are doing together.
The award for best comedy performance by a politician in a fascist setting has been unanimously awarded to Mayor Nine Eleven himself, Rudy Giuliani. ("RooDEE, RooDEE, RooDEE"). Obviously vying with Jersey Boy Chris Christie for the top spot in a Trump Department of Justice, Giuliani promised that Trump would do for America what he did for New York City. Among Rudy's accomplishments were purging 640,000 people from the welfare rolls, instituting racist "broken windows" policing practices, throwing annoying SqueeGee guys off the city streets, and dumping his stunned second wife by way of a televised press conference.
Rudy also claimed that Trump has been a Secret Santa for decades, but that he was hereby breaking his own pledge of silence to Donald about the long unbroken spree of anonymous beneficence. Whereupon Rudy proceeded to immediately break his own promise by maintaining the radio silence after all. Not one folksy anecdote about even one Trumpian good deed was forthcoming.
But never mind all that. It's Republican awards week, after all.
The Kanye West award for best oratorium interruptus goes to Donald Trump, for interrupting a couple of konvention speeches from military heroes praising him in order to call in to Fox News to praise himself. He's so vain, he probably thought the show was about him. Oh, wait...
Best special effects: Donald appearing on the stage in blue-misted silhouette. It's a reminder that the opening scene of The Apprentice is probably what we can expect from a Trump presidency: a noxious haze of fear and theatrics.
For double the fun, though, the best improvisational dialogue award has to go to a frothing Rudy playing Adenoid Hynkel. Which means that Donald probably won't pick him to be attorney general after all. Donald hates being upstaged.
Giulani: Are we crazy?
Audience: Yeah!
Monday, July 18, 2016
Morning in Ameristan
As the urban blight in Cleveland is temporarily masked this week by a paranoid buildup of militarized police forces and high tech weaponry for purposes of protecting the wealthy against the rabble during a glittering week of corporate excess and political theater, the Philosopher King once more was forced to emerge from his cave to tell Americans to just get along.
It had been a bloody Sunday in Baton Rouge, scene of the second lethal attack on police officers in the United States in less than two weeks.
"My fellow Americans," intoned Commander in Chief Barack Obama, "Only we can prove, through words and through deeds, that we will not be divided. And we’re going to have to keep on doing it 'again and again and again.' That’s how this country gets united. That’s how we bring people of good will together. Only we can prove that we have the grace and the character and the common humanity to end this kind of senseless violence, to reduce fear and mistrust within the American family, to set an example for our children."
To set an example for the children, Maryland and Maine police arrested 80 citizens protesting state-sponsored violence over the weekend. Since July 7th, 24 more people have been killed by police officers.
Now, about those words and deeds and example-setting: Obama recently returned from a trip to Europe, where he'd effusively praised the lethal weaponry of the United States Navy, announced another permanent military presence in Eastern Europe, bragged about a trillion-dollar upgrade in the American nuclear arsenal, and redeployed nearly 600 more troops to Iraq. Just prior to his trip to boost American military might abroad, he'd announced that the 15-year-old war in Afghanistan, the longest in US history, will continue to be an open-ended one. As soon as he returned to the White House, he admitted that his drones have killed about 100 innocent civilians - out of the many hundreds or even thousands who have been killed in actual fact. Those kinds of killings have been deemed "legal" by his team of lawyers. They're in the "all in the American family" category, because few family members have so much as whispered about staging an intervention to stop them.
Obama made no mention of the fact that the Baton Rouge shooter was an honorably discharged member of the United States Marines Corps, and that one of his victims was also a former Marine. Nor did he mention that one of the Dallas shooter's victims was a fellow Iraq War vet and another a former Marine who'd then gone on to train unaccountable private security forces. He did not mention that both skilled police assassins received all their highly advanced firing and tactical ambush training from the Pentagon.
The wars have come home to roost. The two most recent attacks on police officers appear to have been motivated by self-destructive impulses as well as by racial hatred. They were as much suicides-by-cop as they were murders of cops.
Veterans, who take their own lives at the rate of almost one every single hour, are also given precedence on civil service recruiting lists. In 2012, while he was running for re-election and anxious to reinforce his toughness cred, Obama began awarding more than $100 million in grants to municipalities still reeling from the financial collapse. The federal government funded the police department salaries and benefits of returning vets who'd served in the post-9/11 military for at least 180 days. Precedence was given to cities and towns with "high crime rates."
Vice President Joe Biden even admitted, in the official White House press release, that the jobs of soldier and cop are essentially the same: "Since we got into office, the President and I have been committed to helping our returning heroes find jobs and transition back into civilian life. A lot of them want to keep serving now that they’re back, and these COPS Grants help give them that chance."
And then-Attorney Gen. Eric Holder, who also authored the secret legal opinion authorizing presidents to assassinate far-away people with Predator and Reaper drones, enthusiastically chimed in: “Today, we step up our support for recent veterans by offering them the chance to pursue meaningful careers in law enforcement. At a time of budget shortfalls, these grants will provide opportunities for much-needed, highly-trained professionals – with a proven commitment to service - to continue their careers in communities all across the country.”
In the wake of the spate of police shootings and in the interests of Democratic Party identity politics, departments seeking renewal of their federal COPS grants are this year being asked to provide proof of such "community policing initiatives" as the polite questioning of LGBT defendants in custody.
At the same time, despite some new limitations imposed last year (no more bayonets and hand grenades!) the administration is still providing these police departments with surplus military gear - including MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles), sound blasters, water cannons, and even weaponized robots of the type used to blow up the Dallas shooter. As the L.A. Times reported after Obama's cosmetic "reforms,"
"And that is why it is so important that everyone -- regardless of race or political party or profession, regardless of what organizations you are a part of -- everyone right now focus on words and actions that can unite this country rather than divide it further," Obama lectured on Sunday evening. "We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric. We don’t need careless accusations thrown around to score political points or to advance an agenda. We need to temper our words and open our hearts -- all of us.
"That’s who we are, and that’s who we always have the capacity to be," Obama ironically vowed. And that’s the best way for us to honor the sacrifice of the brave police officers who were taken from us this morning."
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, meanwhile, will hold his own Law and Order convention in Cleveland. Ignoring the reality that the Baton Rouge shooter was a Marine, he chose again to blame "radical Islam" for the latest carnage. "We are trying to fight ISIS, and now our own people are killing our police.Our country is divided and out of control. The world is watching," he blustered.
Hillary Clinton, who never met a war she didn't like, and who was caught on camera gleefully gloating over the gruesome murder of Libya's Qadaffi ("We came, we saw, he died"), also waxed indignant over the latest green-on-blue murders in the Homeland: "Today’s devastating assault on police officers in Baton Rouge is an assault on all of us," she exclaimed from the safety of her heavily guarded compound. "There is no justification for violence, for hate, for attacks on men and women who put their lives on the line every day in service of our families and communities."
At her own party confab in Philadelphia next week, Clinton will even set aside one special night to employ the mothers of several African-American police state casualties as political human shields. As Amy Chozick of the New York Times reported, she's been flying them in, courting them, collating them, and using them for joint campaign appearances since last spring:
Campaign 2016: Blame ISIS for homegrown American violence, drop more bombs, scapegoat and deport more refugees, hire more military vets with PTSD to be domestic cops, voice shallow support for endlessly deployed troops, ramp up the jingoism, support your local sheriff, and then make vague, simpering promises to "look into" talking about racism at the same time that they effect and defend de facto racist policies, both at home and abroad.
It had been a bloody Sunday in Baton Rouge, scene of the second lethal attack on police officers in the United States in less than two weeks.
"My fellow Americans," intoned Commander in Chief Barack Obama, "Only we can prove, through words and through deeds, that we will not be divided. And we’re going to have to keep on doing it 'again and again and again.' That’s how this country gets united. That’s how we bring people of good will together. Only we can prove that we have the grace and the character and the common humanity to end this kind of senseless violence, to reduce fear and mistrust within the American family, to set an example for our children."
To set an example for the children, Maryland and Maine police arrested 80 citizens protesting state-sponsored violence over the weekend. Since July 7th, 24 more people have been killed by police officers.
Now, about those words and deeds and example-setting: Obama recently returned from a trip to Europe, where he'd effusively praised the lethal weaponry of the United States Navy, announced another permanent military presence in Eastern Europe, bragged about a trillion-dollar upgrade in the American nuclear arsenal, and redeployed nearly 600 more troops to Iraq. Just prior to his trip to boost American military might abroad, he'd announced that the 15-year-old war in Afghanistan, the longest in US history, will continue to be an open-ended one. As soon as he returned to the White House, he admitted that his drones have killed about 100 innocent civilians - out of the many hundreds or even thousands who have been killed in actual fact. Those kinds of killings have been deemed "legal" by his team of lawyers. They're in the "all in the American family" category, because few family members have so much as whispered about staging an intervention to stop them.
Obama made no mention of the fact that the Baton Rouge shooter was an honorably discharged member of the United States Marines Corps, and that one of his victims was also a former Marine. Nor did he mention that one of the Dallas shooter's victims was a fellow Iraq War vet and another a former Marine who'd then gone on to train unaccountable private security forces. He did not mention that both skilled police assassins received all their highly advanced firing and tactical ambush training from the Pentagon.
The wars have come home to roost. The two most recent attacks on police officers appear to have been motivated by self-destructive impulses as well as by racial hatred. They were as much suicides-by-cop as they were murders of cops.
Veterans, who take their own lives at the rate of almost one every single hour, are also given precedence on civil service recruiting lists. In 2012, while he was running for re-election and anxious to reinforce his toughness cred, Obama began awarding more than $100 million in grants to municipalities still reeling from the financial collapse. The federal government funded the police department salaries and benefits of returning vets who'd served in the post-9/11 military for at least 180 days. Precedence was given to cities and towns with "high crime rates."
Vice President Joe Biden even admitted, in the official White House press release, that the jobs of soldier and cop are essentially the same: "Since we got into office, the President and I have been committed to helping our returning heroes find jobs and transition back into civilian life. A lot of them want to keep serving now that they’re back, and these COPS Grants help give them that chance."
And then-Attorney Gen. Eric Holder, who also authored the secret legal opinion authorizing presidents to assassinate far-away people with Predator and Reaper drones, enthusiastically chimed in: “Today, we step up our support for recent veterans by offering them the chance to pursue meaningful careers in law enforcement. At a time of budget shortfalls, these grants will provide opportunities for much-needed, highly-trained professionals – with a proven commitment to service - to continue their careers in communities all across the country.”
In the wake of the spate of police shootings and in the interests of Democratic Party identity politics, departments seeking renewal of their federal COPS grants are this year being asked to provide proof of such "community policing initiatives" as the polite questioning of LGBT defendants in custody.
At the same time, despite some new limitations imposed last year (no more bayonets and hand grenades!) the administration is still providing these police departments with surplus military gear - including MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles), sound blasters, water cannons, and even weaponized robots of the type used to blow up the Dallas shooter. As the L.A. Times reported after Obama's cosmetic "reforms,"
One analyst called the president’s order a half-measure that does little to change the perception that the police are a military organization working against the people they’ve sworn to protect.Meanwhile, sales of automatic military rifles to the general public have also increased, skyrocketing with every new mass shooting. The closed feedback loop of violence grows and festers exponentially. In Cleveland, site of the GOP convention, everybody who wants to open-carry their personal weapons will be allowed to do so despite the increased political "tensions." It's the law. It's the American way.
“The symbolic aspect is really important,” said Pete Kraska, chairman of the graduate program in justice studies at Eastern Kentucky University, who writes about and studies the militarization of police. “They wanted to change the ethos from a warrior mentality to a public servant mentality. But allowing the discards of war to still be transferred, albeit with some new restrictions, to our local police sends them the message that they’re engaged in this warlike endeavor where they need warlike machinery.”
 |
| Hot in Cleveland (New York Times) |
"And that is why it is so important that everyone -- regardless of race or political party or profession, regardless of what organizations you are a part of -- everyone right now focus on words and actions that can unite this country rather than divide it further," Obama lectured on Sunday evening. "We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric. We don’t need careless accusations thrown around to score political points or to advance an agenda. We need to temper our words and open our hearts -- all of us.
"That’s who we are, and that’s who we always have the capacity to be," Obama ironically vowed. And that’s the best way for us to honor the sacrifice of the brave police officers who were taken from us this morning."
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, meanwhile, will hold his own Law and Order convention in Cleveland. Ignoring the reality that the Baton Rouge shooter was a Marine, he chose again to blame "radical Islam" for the latest carnage. "We are trying to fight ISIS, and now our own people are killing our police.Our country is divided and out of control. The world is watching," he blustered.
Hillary Clinton, who never met a war she didn't like, and who was caught on camera gleefully gloating over the gruesome murder of Libya's Qadaffi ("We came, we saw, he died"), also waxed indignant over the latest green-on-blue murders in the Homeland: "Today’s devastating assault on police officers in Baton Rouge is an assault on all of us," she exclaimed from the safety of her heavily guarded compound. "There is no justification for violence, for hate, for attacks on men and women who put their lives on the line every day in service of our families and communities."
At her own party confab in Philadelphia next week, Clinton will even set aside one special night to employ the mothers of several African-American police state casualties as political human shields. As Amy Chozick of the New York Times reported, she's been flying them in, courting them, collating them, and using them for joint campaign appearances since last spring:
The Clinton campaign named this sisterhood forged in the shared loss of a child the “Mothers of the Movement,” and they have become an unlikely linchpin of Mrs. Clinton’s success in the Democratic primary. At campaign stops, Mrs. Clinton introduces them as “a group of mothers who belong to a club no one ever wants to join.” The mothers will arrive in New York this week to help Mrs. Clinton compete in the primary on Tuesday.”
Having these women by her side has provided Mrs. Clinton with powerful and deeply sympathetic character witnesses as she makes her case to African-American voters.The perks of being in Hillary's Bereaved Moms Club don't quite extend to holding the men who killed their children criminally liable for their actions, however. Instead, "we must do more to have national guidelines about the use of force by police, especially deadly force,” Clinton told CNN. “We need to do more to look into implicit bias, and we need to do more to respect and protect our police. Look at what happened in Dallas. Those police officers were protecting a peaceful protest.”
Campaign 2016: Blame ISIS for homegrown American violence, drop more bombs, scapegoat and deport more refugees, hire more military vets with PTSD to be domestic cops, voice shallow support for endlessly deployed troops, ramp up the jingoism, support your local sheriff, and then make vague, simpering promises to "look into" talking about racism at the same time that they effect and defend de facto racist policies, both at home and abroad.
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Joyeux Quatorze Juillet
That's French for Happy Bastille Day.
July 14th marks the day in 1789 when angry crowds stormed the Bastille prison in Paris, sparking the French Revolution.
Wall Street obviously does not celebrate Bastille Day. However, if you're in the vicinity, the New York Times suggests that rather than storming The Tombs or Rikers Island, you ponder the statue of Joan of Arc in Riverside Park and then float by the Statue of Liberty, which was donated by the French people. As much as Donald Trump would love to replace it with a Wall, and as much as Barack Obama continues to deport Latin American migrants and refugees in record numbers, it remains a potent symbol of the time when we accepted -- actually, when our forebears were -- the tired, the poor, the huddled masses.
The contemporary masses are also urged to eat out during French Restaurant Week. The Times helpfully links you to some of the participating eateries -- where, for this one week only, you can score lunch at the amazing prix fixe of $17.89. Since this price represents approximately one half of the weekly food stamp allowance for the average struggling peasant or Walmart worker, don't forget to ask for a doggie bag on the way out. And as ever, the city's homeless are advised to use caution when dumpster-diving for any of the culinary leftovers.
But marchons, citoyens, because it turns out that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are now in a dead heat in the plutocratic presidential sweepstakes. More than two-thirds of respondents in a new Times/CBS News poll say that in the wake of her email scandal, Clinton is simply not to be trusted. Nonetheless, the mistrusters think that she is still very qualified to be president. In other words, we prefer our corrupt politicians to be competently careless rather than just carelessly careless.
Trump is mistrusted only very slightly less than Clinton. This is partly because loathing of him has been holding fairly steady, while the Hillary hatred might simply be a temporary crater in the killing fields of competence.
I rather suspect that we won't be hearing any Happy Bastille Day Tweets from either member of this Dynastic Duo.
***
I never thought I'd hear myself write this, but President Obama actually nailed it the other day with this statement about police violence:
“As a society, we choose to underinvest in decent schools. We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment. We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs. We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book. And then we tell the police, ‘You’re a social worker; you’re the parent; you’re the teacher; you’re the drug counselor.’ We tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs and do so without causing any political blowback or inconvenience; don’t make a mistake that might disturb our own peace of mind. And then we feign surprise when periodically the tensions boil over.”
If only he espoused policies to counteract those true words -- if only he fought for policies and took executive actions that would tamp down the awful reality -- what a halfway decent country and world this might be.
Times columnist Charles Blow also finally addresses the class war aspect of aggressive policing policies in today's op-ed:
July 14th marks the day in 1789 when angry crowds stormed the Bastille prison in Paris, sparking the French Revolution.
Wall Street obviously does not celebrate Bastille Day. However, if you're in the vicinity, the New York Times suggests that rather than storming The Tombs or Rikers Island, you ponder the statue of Joan of Arc in Riverside Park and then float by the Statue of Liberty, which was donated by the French people. As much as Donald Trump would love to replace it with a Wall, and as much as Barack Obama continues to deport Latin American migrants and refugees in record numbers, it remains a potent symbol of the time when we accepted -- actually, when our forebears were -- the tired, the poor, the huddled masses.
The contemporary masses are also urged to eat out during French Restaurant Week. The Times helpfully links you to some of the participating eateries -- where, for this one week only, you can score lunch at the amazing prix fixe of $17.89. Since this price represents approximately one half of the weekly food stamp allowance for the average struggling peasant or Walmart worker, don't forget to ask for a doggie bag on the way out. And as ever, the city's homeless are advised to use caution when dumpster-diving for any of the culinary leftovers.
But marchons, citoyens, because it turns out that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are now in a dead heat in the plutocratic presidential sweepstakes. More than two-thirds of respondents in a new Times/CBS News poll say that in the wake of her email scandal, Clinton is simply not to be trusted. Nonetheless, the mistrusters think that she is still very qualified to be president. In other words, we prefer our corrupt politicians to be competently careless rather than just carelessly careless.
Trump is mistrusted only very slightly less than Clinton. This is partly because loathing of him has been holding fairly steady, while the Hillary hatred might simply be a temporary crater in the killing fields of competence.
I rather suspect that we won't be hearing any Happy Bastille Day Tweets from either member of this Dynastic Duo.
***
I never thought I'd hear myself write this, but President Obama actually nailed it the other day with this statement about police violence:
“As a society, we choose to underinvest in decent schools. We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment. We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs. We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book. And then we tell the police, ‘You’re a social worker; you’re the parent; you’re the teacher; you’re the drug counselor.’ We tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs and do so without causing any political blowback or inconvenience; don’t make a mistake that might disturb our own peace of mind. And then we feign surprise when periodically the tensions boil over.”
If only he espoused policies to counteract those true words -- if only he fought for policies and took executive actions that would tamp down the awful reality -- what a halfway decent country and world this might be.
Times columnist Charles Blow also finally addresses the class war aspect of aggressive policing policies in today's op-ed:
We choose to be blind to the policy choices our politicians have made — and that many have benefited from, while others suffered — while simultaneously holding firmly to the belief that all of our own successes and comforts are simply the result of our and our families’ drive, ambition and resourcefulness. Other people lack physical comforts because they lack our character strength.My published comment:
It is from this bed of lies that our policing policies spring. When the president says, “We tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs,” who is the “we”?It’s not the blue-collar civil servants in law enforcement or the working-class and poor communities, which are aggressively patrolled. No. The “we” is the middle and moneyed classes.
The president's statement about the impossible roles we expect of police officers in this increasingly dystopian country of ours was one of the truest things he's ever said.
This is about classism as well as racism. Very much the product of capitalism, racism only got worse after the abolishment of slavery, since the subhuman wages paid to freed blacks also served to drive down the pay of whites. Dividing and conquering working people has always been the battle cry of plutocratic freedom.
The rich are still too big to jail, and there are now more black people in prison than there were slaves during the mid-19th century. Prisons for profit are just one of the many ways that the rich exploit the poor.
And cops are stuck in the buffer zone. They ARE the buffer zone.
Wall Street is looting their pension funds, too. Their pay stinks, too. Working in swing shifts, they're sleep-deprived. When they get subpoenaed to testify in court during the day, they still have to go to work at night. When they arrest somebody on illegal weapons charges, too many politically appointed or elected right-wing judges promptly let the culprit go on low or no bail.
Cops are human too. Every time one of them overreacts, they endanger their co-workers.
Besides protesting police violence, we should direct our wrath at the sadistic (mainly GOP) policy-makers who created the Gestapo security state in the first place. Confront them right where they work. And fire them on Election Day.
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