Easy for him to say, given that so many have gone full-Godwin on Trump, and that he’s in prison for life./s
But seriously, may I give you an extreme example from the putative ‘left’? To say this blew me away when I read it this morning…would be an understatement. This is from Part 2 of 2; I haven’t been able to bear reading/watching Part 1.
‘Scholar Henry Giroux in conversation with Paul Jay says ‘lesser evilism’ is the wrong way to frame the elections – it’s about what’s better for the strategic interests of an independent people’s struggle’
After referencing Pt I’s discussion on Trump’s neo-fascism, lies by Clinton, lies by Trump (and his wife’s plagiarism, Jeebus, who cares save some partisan hacks?), the evils of finance capitalism:
JAY: But there is still a difference here, and I think it’s an important one. The constituency of the far right, of the Trump Republican Party, and as we talk about in the first segment it’s a constituency of the American public willing to accept a level of kind of overt fascism. A rhetoric that would support rounding up Black Lives Matter and putting them all in jail and charging them with conspiracy for terrorism.
That’s certainly the language we’re hearing already. And from Sheriff David Clarke that speaks and others that directly try to connect the language of Black Lives Matter with the assassination of cops. Even though there’s not a shred of evidence of any of that, quite the contrary. Black Lives Matter made it clear that they have nothing to do and don’t support anything like that. You know we know that it wasn’t that long ago that the amendment to the NDAA, the act that authorizes the financing of the military, where there’s an amendment where the army itself could round people up and put them in detention camps.
In fact, again here’s the enablers of this sort of thing. Barack Obama signs off on that to even include US citizens. But this you can see this regime–if it’s a Trump regime surrounded by a David Clarke and Rudy Giuliani. I mean, these are the guys that would use that legislation to round people up. What I’m getting at is there is more danger here, and this language of greater evil and lesser evil, I think it’s a mistake to even frame it that way. It’s not a moral question and evil’s a moral category.
This is a strategic tactical question for people that are organizing to defend whatever democracy is left, and to try to move society forward to something new. That if these guys are in power there is going to be far less room to move. Because these are the guys that will make dissent illegal. The Clinton type forces, Obama type forces, they depend on a black folk. They depend on a Hispanic vote, they depend on educated voters, they depend on urban workers who don’t fall for this kind of stuff. So as long as there’s still electoral politics for the foreseeable future, there is. We don’t know how long that last. I actually think strategically it is better to have a Clintonesque presidency–I mean a Clinton, not -esque, a Clinton presidency. But be truthful with everybody what this all means.
GIROUX: I completely agree with you. I think that Trump is a real immediate danger to the planet and to human existence. And I think any vote for him is far more dangerous than, let’s say, a vote for Clinton. There were two things you could have recognized here. At one level, you’ve got a system where power is now separated from politics. The social contract is basically all but dead. Certainly on the extreme right. Meaning that power is global and politics is local. The people who now control the states, who control the nation states are basically global international organizations.
We’re talking about the IMF, the World Trade Organization. I think that in Clinton at least strategically there was an attempt to sort of waive the idea that Clinton give lip service to against the reality of the politics that she produces. That’s an opening. I think that in short term and long term strategies. I think you’ve pointed to this. One level on the short term, I think we have to put somebody in power at the moment that is not going to destroy the planet and end up putting everybody in a concentration camp or in a prison.
I mean that’s a real danger. To think that what he can do to the Supreme Court and to claim that Clinton is just as bad as she is because she’s a warmonger, I think is nonsense. I mean as bad as she is, she’s not Trump. She’s not the extreme right. But is she acceptable as a [carry on] for what it might mean to expand the possibilities of democracy? Absolutely not. [snip]
GIROUX: Paul, you and I under Trump will be put in jail.
JAY: No doubt.
GIROUX: I think under Clinton we’ll be ignored. But it seems to me that there’s also another issue. There’s also the possibility that the Democratic Party basically will recognize in some ways that the demographics and the mobilizations that are taking place all over the country have to somehow be addressed. And that might make it a party that’s a little more–actually less parasitic than we’ve assumed that we’ve–and predatory that it might become. I don’t know.
Ah, hope springs eternal, doesn’t it, Henry? Yup, and that’s exactly why the People’s Revolution will march in Philly next week, hoping to…influence the Party Platform. Er…both of you must have forgotten that under Obama, the DHS considers all dissidents ‘terrorists’ already.
by anthony freda
But let’s return to the quote by Mumia. Princeton Theological Seminary Professor Mark Lewis Taylor used the quote to anchor his ‘The Time is Now: To Defeat Both Trump and Clintonian Neoliberalism’. In it, he takes note of the fact that both his white and economic privilege will cause some major cries of hypocrisy as he makes his case. It’s not that I agree with all of it, but in the main I do. But I digress; I’ll clip in a few parts and hope that you might read the rest, even as I believe his possible prescriptions for the future are a bit weak, although being a Seminary prof, he may have felt he’d had to soften his stand, advocating for a new electoral politics. Who can say?
“‘If Trump is the price we have to pay to defeat Clintonian neoliberalism – so be it.’ – Mumia Abu-Jamal
With these words the revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal offers a bold challenge to those who circulate the fear of a Donald Trump presidency to drum up a mandate for voting for Clinton.
Mumia’s words were shared with me just a month ago in a prison visit with him. On the eve of Trump’s show at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Mumia’s words are a timely challenge to Bernie Sanders’ endorsement this week of Hillary Clinton’s drive for the presidency. Sanders’ mantra is anchored in the fear of Trump: “I will do everything possible to help defeat Trump.”
But it is not just a Trump presidency that needs defeating. It is just as important to defeat the very “Clintonian neoliberalism” whose party Sanders now joins.
The Sanders campaign was important. This is not so much because of Sanders, but because he rode the power of wider and deeper movements of peoples’ alienation which, in the end, he could not accommodate. Predictably, Sanders has now abandoned those movements’ basic requirements for a “political revolution.” Still, we can credit the Sanders campaign for exposing the Democratic Party’s deep allegiance to U.S. corporatist and imperial agendas.
Amid our current political crisis of a rising political right and a consolidating corporatist state (what I discuss here as “Clintonian neoliberalism”), we need those movements now more than ever. As Abu-Jamal told Chris Hedges in another prison visit, “This is our hour of protest. We have to physically resist. We will reclaim our power when we say no, when we refuse to cooperate. We must, in everything we do, defy the architects of imperialism, neoliberalism and mass incarceration.”
(Some rather unwarranted homage to Cornell West…) then:
Trumpian authoritarianism and Clintonian neoliberalism are actually co-partners in a joint system of rule. Trump’s authoritarianism is often a hidden bitter fruit of Clintonian neoliberalism. Social movements for democracy must fight them both together.
I will explain. Consider first, though, that Trump may be a “price we have to pay.”
TRUMP AS PRICE TO PAY
The talk of needing to stop Trump is a legitimate fear. But the talk is spun in ways designed to provoke a stampede toward the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. In this way, the fear is often left unexamined and unchallenged.
I don’t know how Abu-Jamal would develop further his own claim that I have placed atop this essay. Note though that it features no naïve bravado that overlooks how menacing a Trump demagogue in the White House could be. He surely knows how vulnerable would be the front-line targeted groups of U.S. history under a Trump presidency. I am thinking primarily of black and brown peoples, Muslims, Mexicans and other immigrants that Trump’s rhetoric has already vilified.” [as per his statement’s to Hedges]
Taylor references statements by Palestinian American activist Linda Sacour on CNN saying that if you don’t vote Clinton, you’d better be ready to watch us go to the camps, and that the nation was founded on genocide, built on the backs of slaves, etc., then he offers more egregious examples of ‘founding violence and incarceration’, and understands the fearsome images of the camps and ‘lynching trees’ well, then poses four rejoinders.
“…that we are already paying an enormous price under the system we have, and Clintonian neoliberalism has built that system stronger in the present day. That system was erected as much by Democrats as Republicans to serve the interest of the corporatist state that makes fodder of the poor. This is the context for the police murders of black, brown and often even white poor too. Our warehousing of human bodies (over 2 million in cages, over 7 million under some kind of correctional control – we call it, “mass incarceration”) is blight upon our nation, sheer torture and trauma for families of the sufferers. It is especially “a social catastrophe” for the black community,” as the National Criminal Justice Commission called it as early as 1996. The black community through the mortgage housing fraud crisis of 2006-2008 has suffered the largest setback in racial wealth equality in a quarter of a century. There are in the U.S. over 100 million in poverty, extreme poverty or “near poverty.” [snip]
“A second rejoinder I offer to those who fear mainly, and often only, Trump. I am reminded that we rarely act toward virtue – in political or personal life – when we act out of fear, even when there are real things to be feared. Princeton religion Professor Ed Glaude registered the point poignantly as he wrote about his problem with voting for Clinton. He admitted his own fear of Trump, but recalls this from his experience in African American communities of the South: “My daddy, a gruff man who has lived all of his life on the coast of Mississippi, taught me that fear should never be the primary motivation of my actions. It clouds your thinking, and all too often sends you running to either safe ground when something more daring is required, or smack into the danger itself.”
Then he brings in the voices who advise not stampeding to Clinton as safe, privileged, etc., and asks, even so: do we shut our mouths because of it?
“No; so here follows my third rejoinder. On the contrary, we need to renew our commitments to the political movements on the ground and at work in contesting both the right and the “lesser evil” of today’s corporate and imperial state. As one part of these movements, we need those in the centers of entitlement to come out against Clintonian neoliberalism. “The camps” under Trump about which Sarsour warns us have already long been built. They are the U.S. prisons, jails and detention centers of our era. Bill Clinton’s unprecedentedly large build up of law enforcement and prisons, with his 1994 crime bill, provided the material and ideological conditions for later round ups and confinement of Muslims and Arabs. We should not cower behind our fear, least of all should we spread counsel to our students and the wider public that the “lesser evil” Hillary Clinton is the best this nation can do.”
He links to white allies’ civil disobedience in Philly with their placards reading “you don’t have to be black to be outraged’, and calls on more people of privilege to essentially up the ante until it’s in the Oppressors and Profiteer class’s own interest to stop the prison-industrial complex. He hastens to add:
“We must know that any creative coalition, any fresh vanguard for revolutionary change, must come from the most vulnerable themselves, from the communities long targeted by racist and misogynous power in the history of U.S. capitalism’s structural violence. It is these communities’ movements that put material pressure on the more privileged and protected to resist the corporate state.”
What I admire is that he tries hard to make the case that the most vulnerable aren’t powerless (I’d include all working people, all Rabble class.) against a Trump although the Elites among the whites and blacks in relative positions of power issue those warnings loudly…far too loudly.
“Black Lives Matter, the Black Youth Project 100, Dream Defenders, our reinvigorated labor movements, Socialist Alternative Party, Workers World, the movements for Mumia Abu-Jamal and other political prisoners, the MOVE Organization – all of these are organizations by some of our most vulnerable and repressed peoples who have combined with some from elite sectors to fight repression. Their fight will continue.
I wager that the fight of these new growing movements will be greater than the bluster, despair and demagoguery of a Trump regime – even with his henchman at the ready. We can face them down. The repressed can return. They can rise up against the order represented not just by the Republicans but also by President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, two faces of Clintonian neoliberalism.”
Believe it or not, there’s a lot more, including a more precise definition and history of the term ‘neoliberalism’, both domestically and as coloniing, neo-colonizing, Imperial design. He gives an impressive narrative of Clintonian neoliberalism that could be kept for reference, seriously.
He brings in Aimé Césaire’s contention that the US’s heavy neoliberal authoritarianism globally has boomeranged back in the forms of Bush, Obama, et. al. the many ways and events that have been spawned by the Empire’s colonizing military’s incessant brutality.
This quote he rings from Césaire makes it as clear as a bell to me:
“the colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal”.
I’ll stop there, except to note that Mark Epstein’s ‘Language and Revolution: a Modestly Proposed (No Futures) Exchange’ is an hilarious parody of Bernie asking Noam Chomsky, another Elite who will vote Clinton to Stop Trump™ . Well (ahem), allow him correct me, please:
“The following is a remarkable exchange we recorded for the Unipolar Oligarchical Observer in our very popular “Principles of the Sell-Out: Sell it as Principled” section, popularly known as “Adapt (and Publish) or Perish.” Both protagonists are remarkable in their own right, and certainly need no further introduction: Snarly Blanders, the Dependent Senator from [Ver]mont, known for his groundbreaking slogans “political revolution” and “a lack of future to believe in” and Foam Stompsky, the indispensable nation’s indispensable intellectual, a professional blinguist, who will help educate our readers in today’s most important universal principle: language is always more important than reality.” (the rest is here, perhaps too long to read given: bloviation parody, but you’ll get the gist.
Mumia had rec’d this new video tune on his Twit account:
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
Wow! Your title drew me to this post with an initial inclination that too high a price to pay, but a thought provoking read. I am sorry that the disenchanted in the US did not find their champion in Bernie, and also that Bernie abandoned some of that which made him a refreshing candidate. (May the movement which was behind him continue!) Meanwhile you have Trump and here on the other side of the Atlantic we have Farage and Johnson…Strange times? Thanks Wendy.
aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, jane 24? i’m so glad you were intrigued enough to click in. i do hope you finished mark taylor’s essay, or will at your leisure. yep, the stakes are high, but again, if clinton becomes prez, her agenda will be somewhat the same, especially in terms of trade deals, the killing of brown and black people globally, and running a similar incarceration state.
only, as taylor hopes, there is a vastly expanded movement for the precariat 99-ish % in the greens, will i even vote green. that she was willing to give up the ticket to sanders, ish. i would have liked him, as he’s an FDR without the IWW strikers ‘making him do it’, but still…a militarist, although not a neocon like clinton.
johnson was a strange choice from theresa may…or maybe not? she is said to be against setting the #brexit in motion this year, although you may have voted against it. i mainly watch events in the UK thru david graeber’s twitter eyes, though.
anyhoo, thanks for stopping, and do come again. i love the avatar you drew. i hope you and yours are well.
Hello and thanks, Wendy! Long overdue response due to having only just found your response. (Technically challenged?) I’m still there…reading quietly.
your comments aren’t showing up on the site; dunno what’s up. they’re not in moderation, jane24. this is the only ther thing i can think to try.
woot! it worked, and welcome back jane24. long time, hope you are doing as well as can be. ah, theresa may. well, ‘herr cheeto’; surreal no? still, now the nation can figure out how to create the world it wants. dunno if ill place any bets, though. too many reactionaries afoot, too many political partisans.
jane24! An additional welcome from me – ah, whenever I come across members of the ‘old team’, what memories – thank you for posting!
And wendye, you do find fresh thoughts, so thank you also. I am perturbed that an eloquent essayist like Henry Giroux is stumbling all over himself to preserve the lesser evil:
“. . .there was an attempt to sort of waive the idea that Clinton give lip service to against the reality of the politics that she produces. . .”
Wha? Henry!! Look at yourself! Is somebody threatening your kids?
And there’s old Michael Moore at commondreams whaffling away in sadness about the supposed ‘inevitable’ being ‘as bad as Brexit’ – Michael! You come from Michigan – these are not dolts, these rednecks! (And please, cut your hair; it’s worse than Trump’s.)
I don’t know if you saw, wendye, but there’s a counterpunch article with Carol watshername used to be a NM Green slinging punches at Jill Stein – some of them justified maybe, but Carol is now on Gary Johnson’s bandwagon. Well, good for her, she’s out there bringing him creds and he’s a likeable chap, didn’t bankrupt New Mexico when he was in office so there’s that.
I’ll bring the quote in a bit.
Yay, Jane24! The way we were. . .
Hi Juliania2 and thank you! Apologies for my long overdue response. (My excuse is I only just found yours.) I hope all is well with you, (aside from the World having gone mad!), and yes…good memories of the “old days”… :-)
This is nice! When it comes to eternity, a year is only a blink of an eye after all!
Joining you in mostly reading, less comment on the madness. Arabs ganging up on Qatar? Wot do I know about that? Oy. All I remember is the bombing of Al Jazeeera during the Iraq invasion, so is this that? Questions, too many questions. (I put in an extra ‘e’ there, but it seems appropriate. eeee e.)
I much prefer “pontificating” on our America’s future. As such, the hard core Left doesn’t make room for the inclusion of a “multi-cultural” America that will definitely become America’s brown Democracy during the next 25 years. Further, New York, Texas and California will the single largest determinant for ‘winning’ the Presidency via the Electoral College. To wit, these three states will contain over 50% of all electoral votes.
Thusly, when the hard core Left rants their lack of Common Sense, they inadvertently take themselves into the backroom of politics and where the windows and the doors cannot be opened, and subsequently, the ‘stink’ cannot waft out.
Jaango
i’m not sure who you mean by the hard-core left, jaango, nor why that math is the litmus test for you. if you’re speaking in any way of mr. taylor, toward the end he tried to drive home of whom he was speaking:
“The moral compass of this new instrument of power should take in the needs of all, especially the 99 percent. But the needle of our compass should continually point to the structural violence against the most vulnerable, those whom Cornel West has called “the unloved people” (West, The Radical King, 4) – those whom we followers of Jesus often call “the least of these”, i.e. the hungry, the thirsty, the imprisoned, those without homes and usually as a result of institutionalized class repression, white racism and hetero-patriarchy.
In short, this new instrument of people’s power should focus on building an alternative party among those groups and movements built from and for the “least of these” – especially for the black, brown and poor who have suffered and led resistance among all the peoples. This instrument of power must hold accountable and strike fear into the heart of Clintonian neoliberalism and the hearts of the Trumpian authoritarianism that is both companion and foil for Clintonian neoliberalism.”
i’ll skip the kelin references, as i’m not much of a fan any longer. ;-) not that i believe taylor is radical left, just shares a moral compass w/ those who take socialism (as in shared power for all) rather seriously.
meaning: i have no idea what your last paragraph means. unless your whole comment is by way of saying that you’re willing to wait until 2045 when the population demographics change?
on edit: i just got that you might agree w/ giroux and jay that clinton is indeed a good ‘place holder’ until some unnamed future date. for me, the time is now. for all of the young uns who will inherit this world soon? guess we’ll see if they collectively, especially those of color who are the most immiserated now given bill clinton, obama, who can say? perhaps they’ll go blithely into clinton’s tent out of fear and Dem-habit. yanno, the People’s Party? ;-)
i’ve forced myself to watch a bit of the RNC convention & i think there is a bit of an oversell about the enthusiasm for awfulness among the audience. Most people could care less about Christie’s mostly pointless (except the “destroyed Libya” part) “lock her up” anti-HRC cheerleading. I caught the tail-end of Ingraham’s speech and i knew that this “nazi salute” thing would become a thing. so stupid. a fair amount of grasping to make the Bubba’s & Lulabelle’s in the audience as troglodyte as possible. i bet the “affluent white voters to save America from the next new Hitler by coronating Hillary” brigade will be more enthusiastic. “We will save the minorities from Trump!” it’s laughable. so laughable i sometimes think Trump is there to ensure America makes “progress” w/its first woman prezzie.
I don’t know…hard to get worked up about these false dichotomies. Trump did send the NYT/east coast foreign policy establishment into a furor by averring that maybe we won’t just come running to Latvia’s aid if Russia invades. Note: neither HRC or DT deny that a Russian invasion is imminent, in like, 6 hours or so. but this is the closest to a comment about what NATO is up to on the R. border in this election, and still risible. are Trump’s people *worse* than HRC’s? i don’t know. they tend not to use words with more syllables than “syllable” and that really bothers the crowd that grieves for Prairie Home Companion. is Stavridis *better* than whatever dull careerist Trump will pick for SecDef? if Trump picked Bush jr. for SoS, would that be *worse* than Victoria Nuland? he’d definitely get lots less done, and that could only be a good thing. if the inside-beltway crowd is diverted to whinging about how gauche Trumpism is, how could that be bad?
but yeah, a plague on both their houses.as far as voting for POTUS goes, which i won’t bother to do, i’d say: vote the comedy factor.
comment of the day including “…not to use words with more syllables than “syllable” and that really bothers the crowd that grieves for Prairie Home Companion’. a thang at counterpunch waxing on about the dumpster using the word ‘bigly’ countless times (as well as other faux critiques) was hilarious.
now i know i mention this 99% clinton site as often as i mention the 99%bern cucus place, but get ahold of this thought experiment, i kid you not. oops, turns out i’d kept the fluornoy link live (demented woman)
“How can we Progressives help to make those untrusting and unhappy people learn that Progressive government is on their side?” (largely meaning ‘trumpeter low-information voters’. srsly. clinton = progressive, see? blow me down, kill me now.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/16/yes-hillary-clinton-is-a-neocon/
so…not much red meat for the media? thanks for watching; i can’t imagine.
well, flournoy is a big rumor, as well, but mebbe sec def? but the former nato dude: that fits. red herring? fuck clinton, anyway.
fun video: ‘plagiarism is the most sincere form of flattery.’
Corbett also gave me a laugh, stating, “After the voting machines elect Hilary…” megalulz.
bless you, jason, and all of you i’d love to answer. but in RL: multiple unresolved weirdnesses are afoot. and vonnegut: “and so it goes…”
i’ll be back as soon as i feel right about doing so.
“Wir Wollen Deutschland Wieder Groß Machen!!!”
Adolf Hitler, 1939
(Jason went full Godwin!!!!) Hilary will save us from Adolph Trump! Messiah vs. Anti-Christ: WWE RAW edition. we’ll reveal who is who at the end of the bout. The HRC crowd is just as dishonest as DT. the NYT in its mostly right-on, as not very far as it goes, op-ed today re Trump as Messiah quotes a number of 13 million for the disillusioned, impoverished PBR swillers stirred by Chump’s churning & screeching. only 13 million, NYT? there’s more children in Calif. starving than that. and isn’t Trump mostly right about HRC as SoS? “Trump’s campaign is based on fear!” and running to the HRC camp is not the exact same fear? btw, that J. Goldberg quote is great. the thinking man’s equally doughy, pasty Rush Limbaugh fears that Trump won’t prosecute WW3? too perfect.
yeah for media criticism! but what shall we do? what shall we ever do?
go Godwin, my son!!! (well, so did jay and giroux, wtf?) and in some quarters erdogan is the new hitler/saddam. i had to bing both pbr (da beer, not da bullfighting, yes?), and WWE raw, but that’s a perfect analogy. fake wrestling, fake debates, fake contest, esp. given that iirc, bill admitted that it was he who’d suggested he run (against hillary; even then he knew the fix was in.)
nyt quoted the bad hair man as claiming 13 million votes? well, maybe he’s not such a good mathistudent, but he sure did get bailed out by the G a number of times. but the clintons are good! they have a non-profit foundation!!!
yep, the goldberg stuff was superb, wasn’t it? ‘A tool for all seasons’.
i’m not sure exactly what they meant by that 13 million, except to be dismissive of any amount of people so disappointed by unkie s as to embrace the supercharged Babbitry of a bankrupt fake CGI fascist. more of their urinating on the rabble scrounging below their ivory tower. part of the strategy really is to make the Stepford Hilbots feel superior to the scary, snarling, Trumpglodytes.
excellent imagery of the ones i can grok. but what’s a fake GCI fascist? graphic-something-imagery?
as i said at the bottom of the thread, loads of new posts at CP are doing the trumpet scare run-for-hill: ‘do you want the nuclear suitcase in his hands???’ dunno, if the alleged left is so willing to attend the Clinton Stampede, i expect we get what we collectively must deserve.
CGI-computer generated image, for the Trumpenpoletariat. playing w/the notion trump is there to scare most of the buffaloes over the hillary cliff.
ie, his candidacy is fake, not his quasi, semi, hemi, demi fascism.
t.proletariat. or is it poll-etariat?
crikey, i couldn’t even get the acronym in order, but ho; i was eroing in ot! (another sick family joke on ma). yes: akin to a buffalo wallow, a bit akin to the calgary clinton stampede. this may too folksy for your taste, but i keep thinking of the magpies on the roof. at times, they roam about in the gravel (hot-build-up roof), near the two small, square skylights, pick up gravel in their beaks, and toss the bits at the skylights. a terrible, but funny din, quite different than that of a half-dozen flickers pecking holes in the cedar siding resonating like banging on the box of a guitar), but: i hafta wonder if it isn’t their own reflections in the plexiglass they’re aiming their gravel at, unbeknownst to them, of course.
dunno if anyone had clicked into old sourpuss’s time with mumia, but one patch i’ll paste in:
““Black people will probably vote for Clinton,” he said with resignation, “but this symbolizes the emptiness of hope. They fear Trump. They should look closely at the pictures from Trump’s third wedding. Hillary Clinton is in the front pew of the church. Hillary, Bill, Trump and Melania are shown embracing at Trump’s estate afterwards during the reception. These people are part of the same elite circle. They represent the same financial interests. They work for the same empire. They have grown rich from the system. The words they shout back and forth during political campaigns are meaningless. Trump or Clinton will deliver the same political result. They will serve, like Obama, corporate and military power. And if they were not willing to serve these centers of power they would not be allowed to run. Their job is to manufacture hope during election campaigns that ultimately end in betrayal. This is why they spend billions on elections. They need to feed the illusion that our voices matter, that we are participants in their closed systems of power.
“The liberals and the Democrats are in many ways more dangerous than the right wing,” he said. “Repression and neoliberalism are more effectively instituted by Democrats such as Bill and Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. They sound reasonable. But because what they do is hidden it is more insidious and often more deadly.”
now where’s george carlin again? dayum, would he love this shit.
The article I referenced above is “Trump and Hillary: The More We See The Less We Like” by Russell Mokhiber. The ‘Carol’ I referenced is Carol Miller, who ran for the Green Party a few years back – and I remember I voted for you, Carol! So I’m wondering – there’s a lot of badmouthing of the Green Party in her remarks – I’ll just give a chunk from the middle:
*****
. . . Miller is concerned that this year, the national Green Party will cave to the Democrats.
[Cave? Like Bernie? Why would you expect them to cave?]
“Gary Johnson is going to do very well here in New Mexico,” Miller says. “The fact is that the Libertarian Party is serious, worked very hard to get on all 50 states. (The Greens won’t be on all 50 state ballots.) I agree with Johnson’s anti-war policies. The most unregulated entity in government is the Pentagon. Nobody is talking about that. There is no anti-war platform coming out of the Democrats. The Republicans are promoting more wars.”
[The Greens are working hard to be on all 50 as well – how do you know they won’t be, Carol? The Greens are anti-war, anti-Pentagon spending – gosh, if you really want to defeat those criminals, please, unify with the Greens, don’t stab them in the back! Gosh, Gary’s a likeable chap, climbed Mt. Everest and all that, ran in all kinds of ironmans and marathons whatever – he’s a bit anxious but – we’ll take him! He’s a bit of a businessman, poor man’s Trump maybe, but we’ll take him! Fresh air! Let’s get together! Okay?]
“The Green Party in New Mexico and nationally was so divisive,” Miller said. “It never established itself as a permanent party. It was like a yo yo. You could never imagine trying to convince people to vote Green Party.”
[Woah, Carol. I was convinced! Divisive? Guess I missed that.]
“Very few of the Greens were committed to grassroots community organizing — actually being out where people are,” Miller said. “It was too insular. It was like talking to yourself at every meeting.
[Fair point: how is it at libertarian meetings?]
“Other community organizations here host food banks, organize anti-war speakers, do other activities in the community that were real. The Greens mostly met and argued and turned off a lot of people who came to the Green Party.”
[Well, I’m not a meeting person – it was the platform and the personalities I gravitated towards, have to say.]
“I haven’t found people who want to do the hard work,” Miller says. “Much of the Green Party platform is rhetoric without a plan. [Now, that’s below the belt, Carol. And not true.] Gary Johnson took a stand on legalizing drugs in New Mexico and had cabinet officials quit his administration. The Republican Party rejected him. [True.] He didn’t bend to that kind of pressure. He insisted on holding public meetings. He acted on his idea. [Because he was governor!] I don’t know Jill Stein. . .”
[You don’t know her?? You were a Green and you don’t know her? That is hard to believe. Carol, you doth protest too much here. As wendye was with Henry Giroux (I as well) I confess to being confounded. Carol, my former representative-to-be, it isn’t the Greens you should be fighting. Join ranks! The greater enemy is out there. It’s not the Greens! And by crikey, it’s not the Libertarians!
Question: Why are you doing this?]
Wendye: I know you are as unhappy with the Greens as is Carol, so she may have some legitimate points, but doesn’t this seem self-defeating? Ah, maybe her kids are being threatened as well. I’m glad I voted for her as a Green in any case.
thank you for posting your rebuttals to miz carol, juliania. and yes, i remember gary johnson from long ago, and was impressed by some of his positions. that said, i have no iea who he is save what carol claims.
i’ve by and large given up on federal level electoral politics in my heart for a lot of reasons, but i will have to agree that stein, the greens, and the green shadow govt. have been nowhere for the past four years.
if there’s been a conservative revolution as ché pasa had said, it’s largely due their rigorous game in running candidates from school board up-ticket. school board has proven to be especially lucrative, given bill gates charter schools, but up-ticket as well. the sad truth is that even choosing ‘green’ for the party name has caused folks to believe it’s all about eco-issues, and that it’s largely older white people in the club.
well, save bruce dixon, lol. but yeah, she turned me off w/ her offer to turn the ticket over to the bern, after railing at his inadequacies. perhaps she and her advisors saw it as falling on her sword for the party? but i do not begrudge anyone’ voting for her. srsly.
but this is a case in point about right-wing (the idiotic aipac zionist man, jeffrey goldberg, in this case). i reckon you’ll snort with giggles:
and sweet dreams, all…i’m for zleeeep.
No, wendye, with respect I don’t buy that charge. Here today is a rebuttal posting at counterpunch from the lady herself:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/22/after-us-airstrikes-kill-73-in-syria-its-time-to-end-military-assaults-that-breed-terrorism/
That’s a direct rebuttal to Carol’s charge that Jill is all about rhetoric and no concrete proposals. Within the article is one big concrete proposal, to stop providing arms, to stop bombings that create so many innocent deaths – how more concrete should she get?
And if now people ‘don’t have time’ to read articles (I’ve posted others here that are ignored in this fashion, begging your pardon for saying so,) well that is not Jill’s fault. Scroll down, even if you don’t read what she is saying, and click onto ‘more articles’ – there they are, and thanks to counterpunch for linking to them. Jill has, the Green Party has, very direct proposals to fix government, and it should not be held against them that they are not yet in government. That’s our problem.
I felt that there was a lot of character assassination in Carol’s remarks. She must be bitter about some personal confrontations that don’t belong when one is discussing policy and leadership to offset what we are currently faced with – two monster candidates, in my opinion. Neither Jill nor Gary are that, and it is a shame to pit them one against the other.
I think you misread Jill’s offer to Bernie. She saw that many people applauded the good policies he was espousing – inviting him to join the Greens did not in any way mean that she expected him to do so. You sell her short when you imply that. What she did was to show the importance of policy over character, and I bet she knew full well he wouldn’t bite. That he didn’t is to his shame, not hers. One of her articles below the current one is precisely on this point. Worth a read!
I love you, wendye. Don’t take this to heart. It’s not personal; politics ought to be about policy not about personalities. But saying she would cave to the Democrats, Carol – come on now! They locked her up last time – you really think she would cave? This is one brave woman.
But again, suppose for a moment Carol is correct. It is still all about the policies, not the person.
Here is a quote from the article by Jill Stein I mentioned above that supports my last point:
“. . .Sanders, a life-long independent who has advocated for building an independent democratic socialist party similar to Canada’s New Democratic Party, has said that his decision to run as a Democrat was based on pragmatism, but there is nothing pragmatic about supporting a party that for decades has consistently sold out the progressive majority to the billionaire class. This false pragmatism is not the path to revolutionary change but rather an incrementalism that keeps us trapped, voting for lesser evil again and again.
Each time a progressive challenger like Sanders, Dennis Kucinich or Jesse Jackson has inspired hope for real change, the Democratic Party has sabotaged them while marching to the right, becoming more corporatist and militarist with each election cycle. . .”
before i answer, would you please specify which charge of mine you’re not buying? thanks.
on edit: i know it bugs you that i haven’t time to read all the links that you or others bring; it’s just the truth. and there are things that might not be as interesting to me as they are to any of you all. i dunno what you imagine i do with my time, but…a lot, including writing for, and answering comments here.and i don’t sleep much, either. ;-)
i at least like to think that if i ask for the cliffs notes version/s, other guests may want to read links folks bring in.
When one recognizes that a Conservative is a “corporatist” and a Neo-liberal Democrat is, at heart, a differing version of a “corporatist.”
As for me, Clinton is a “corporatist” as is Trump, and therefore, I am not bereft of a “corporatist” bone in my body politics. Consequently, who does less damage over the next 25 years, between the “corporatist” and the “progressive” has to be questioned and answered.
And if done properly, I will be reminded of Quentin Marsalis in his musical triumph for bringing forth the multi-cultural “offering” in which musicality effectively addresses our individualized Spirituality, and to include the Anglo-American Experience, the African American Experience, and the Native American or Mezo-American Experience, and taken together, personifies our America of today and which will reinforce our future for tomorrow.
thanks for the additions, jaango, but i admit i’m no closer to understanding. but do you mean wynton marsalis, by chance?
but yes, i’d head to new orleans for the multi-cultural fusion music. as to your first paragraph…i’d think ‘neoliberalism IS capitalism now, and both are colonizing/neo-colonizing, the latter immiserating all of the Rabble, not just PoC, and therein lies the hope of the moment, imo. it will be squandered, of course, the fear factor being what it is for so many.
now i just peeked into trnn again, and saw this interview titled:
‘Robert Scheer: Neofascist Trump or Corporate Hawk Clinton Are No Choice at All’,
i’ve read the transcript, and while Jay tried to dominate the conversation with his postulates and beliefs (almost like a push-poll taker does, although: all polls may be push-polls now), but scheer was not about to be pwned. good on him, and the subtitle was:
‘Truthdig editor in chief Bob Scheer tells Paul Jay that while Trump is a real fascist threat, people should consider voting for a third party rather than support Clinton’
he ably explains how it wasn’t Rs nor Trump who caused a demagogic phenomenon like T to emerge and gain popularity, but clinton, obama, and a willing bipartisan congress.
several new counterpunches are ‘any way we can stop trump’, but couched in intellectual terms and polls…
“he ably explains how it wasn’t Rs nor Trump who caused a demagogic phenomenon like T to emerge and gain popularity, but clinton, obama, and a willing bipartisan congress.” damn right. how can people not see this? oh, right, voting is about self-esteem massaging via slogans & tribal identity. “i thank thee oh lard i am not like other voters, i do yoga twice a day, give tithes of all i possess to NPR & NYT, and wash my hands in disdain of the Donald’s Duck Dynasty-watching Morlocks. God bless the blue states, amen.”
dang that made me crow w/ delight. back as i can; i need a rest, then i need to cook more meals for a friend w/ prostate cancer who just went thru the hideous surgical machine, and his wife who obviously can’t cope. yes, i remember it well…
no rest for the nit-witted, isn’t that the expression? remind me if anyone wants to learn how to make butternut squash zooop, yum.
“several new counterpunches are ‘any way we can stop trump’, but couched in intellectual terms and polls…” they must have had a prayer-session w/the hand-wringing, nose-holding national -election dem voting archbishop of lesser-evilism, noam chomsky. in the weekend CP, j. st. clair does ping the bullseye of the incestuous sheets of dollar bills, piles of ’em, that HRC & G Sax roll around in. only one i’ve read so far.
you friend is lucky to have such a smart, caring cookie.
i’ll try to read st. clair l later, but i’d be surprised to see it as first..yes, noan is a god for the left, or should i specify ‘intelligentsia left’?
it’s to out of control with assange doing the dnc boogie leaks he’d been promising as: are you ready for Hillary? thing,. i was more interested in his ‘google is not what its seems’ expose, myself.
juliania: i’ll save the links i’d collected that *may have* been about what charges i’d made that you did not buy. i would add that we are very different s to politico-social thought, and i guess, formative political eras. i’d long thought that where we intersected was…our moral compasses.
oh, jason: ‘friend’ may not be right, but that term may not really apply. mr..wd now works for them, both used to be clients of mine, but they do not, nor never did, consider us ‘friends’. at least for the miz, we are from another class. but the hippie credo says: ‘who cares?’ as does the bible, no? i’m so sorry, if i remember the quote, i’ll try to come back, as i think it’s key to my belief system.
goddam i’m tired w/ all that and ntrying to deal w/ the agencies and ignorant sibs over Papa Bear’s end of life care. fuck capitalism, and ‘legal’ profiteering over health care.
oh bother. again immersion in water (was jung right that water and the unconscious are exquisitely entwined?) it was ‘it’s better to give than to receive’. i’d have to add that ‘it’s best not to grow bitter over the ‘not receiving’ part, lest…well, reckon you know where that can lead.
sleep well; i’m knackered as all giddy-up . new ‘chicken pot pie in a zoop’ (as requested) is finished, will bake pie crust ‘cookies’ for them to dip in it tomorrow.
NYT reports the water of Hugo, CO has Waylon Jennings level of the devil’s weed in it. (probably will soon have Waylon Jennings levels of IRS harrassment too!) wendy,did you have something to do w/this??? apparently, mystifyingly some residents are still drinking the water.
lol. i’d seen it at RT yesterday. field tests: not all agreed. bathroom usage of after ok, but don’t shower, brush yer teeth, or shave w/ it. er…what does that leave? silliest thing i’ve heard in a long time, and wot a waste of weed if someone did ‘tamper’ w/ the well. wot’s ‘waylon jennings levels’? does the times have the real scoop?
but of course there’s a hashtag for the big deal, and today the verdict on what’s in the water (or not) will be official:
waylong jennings’ levels=a lot. maybe it’s in the water from some Monsanto-style gmo plot to commercialize the euphoric properties of mj & Hugo is guinea pig????? maybe some illegal farming operation dumped its crop before getting busted? now jason is sad.
anyway, apparently paul “welt krieg”man at the NYT pulled a Jeffrey Goldberg on Trump yesterday, accusing him of being a Putin agent for not displaying the requisite enthusiasm for invading Russia over nothing. his article sounds like a big brother “2 minutes of hate” drill, Trump as Goldstein. the MSM is doing its job banging the Trump fear drums & shaking the scary Trump bushes & whoopin & hollerin to stampede the electoral herd over the Hilary cliff.
what shall we do? what shall we ever do?
just got a minute for now, but lol to “now jason is sad.” of course, mebbe the field tests were wrong, but iirc, fresh weed wouldn’t do diddley in the water. got it on waylon, thanx. as you’d mention the irs, i was thinking willie, and reckoned there might have been some weird twist re: waylon.
yeah, she’ll win, and the bernistas are elated; gonna rumble? even trump got in on the act, crap spelling and all. krugman another tool of the empire. cool song.
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/
doncha love the smell of amurikan democracy?
i meant willie! trying to sound like i know something…and using the buffalo metaphor twice. jason, get a new thing. yeah, i don’t think mj in the water would do anything on the psychopharma level, assuming it’s really there. not water soluble and has to reach its combustion temperature or some sciency thing, right?
yeah, i think so, but don’t sweat the cowboy songster confusion. and in any event was it a psyop? ;-)
Considering that the Democrats can get away with more rightist things than the Republicans can, perhaps the function of Trump is to prepare the ground for a further rightward march once Clinton wins the Presidency.
it’s a worthy thought, greyson smythe. and welcome to the café. what a fine avatar you drew!
it would have been cool to know what the conversation between bubba clinton and trump was like. now as to marching more right, we’d need to consider ‘march further right’ on which issues, domestic or foreign policy/misadventures. by my reckoning, she can’t go much further right on war (pardon me: i meant R2P sorts of over-throws of ‘tyrants’ and regime changes), ‘trade deals’ she’s now (cough) against, i’d need to thinkthrough a list, and i’m still jammed for time.
but i laughed when i saw a headline that the R platform is endorsing the return of glass-steagall, ha ha. mind you, i hadn’t seen anything about the cfma, but…
nice to have you, i’ll be back (she warned). ;-)
given that both duopoly parties are wholly owned by finance capital, i was musing about the 3 Gs social politics that use to add more ‘differences’: gods, guns, and gays. i thought of that again when i considered clinton and her new kaine sidekick on the killing police state underway. now the glowing reports i’ve read on kaine so far amount to: he’s so nice he’s boring, he’s been pro-choice in his policies, and he’s in favor of (some?) gun control. well, booyah to him oh, yeah, and he’s pro-tpp, etc. yanno: trade lifts all boats, according to libruls.
well, here’s what one trotskyite has to say about kaine, including his domestic agenda as gov of old virginny: ‘In signal to military, Hillary Clinton picks Senator Tim Kaine as running mate’, by Tom Hall
now glen ford blew my mind a bit speaking of the red queen’s speech to the naacp and more:
“Louisiana’s Democratic governor, John Bell Edwards, who owes his job to Black votes, recently signed into law a bill that would make assaults on police a “hate crime,” joining a host of states that accord cops the status of a “protected class” — as if their firepower and longstanding legal impunities were not enough.
Democratic presidential nominee-to-be Hillary Clinton led off her speech to the NAACP’s annual conference with an admonishment that:
“We need police officers to help us make progress. These murderers threaten all of that. Killing police officers is a terrible crime. That’s why our laws treat the murderers of police so seriously, because they represent the rule of law itself. If you take aim at that and at them, you take aim at all of us.”
“Something has irrevocably changed in the psyche of Black youth.”
Clinton repeated the nonsense that the Dallas police were “protecting” Black Lives Matter protesters when they were targeted by Micah Johnson — as if that has ever been the purpose of the police presence at demonstrations against themselves. Her priority is “Officer safety and wellness — everything they need to do their jobs right and rebuild trust with their communities” – as if there were ever a reason for Black America to trust cops.”
Then he takes aim at the black and brown industrial incarceration complex, offers some (ahem) hints as to what clinton could do if she gave a monkey’s ass about it, but: super-predators, her hubbie’s part in all of it, etc.
the police union bosses who met with O recently are demanding he reinstate free military equipment to cops because: ‘dallas’ and ooof; where was the other ptsd’d/trained in violence shooter’s killings?
so i dunno how far to compare trump’s border wall (never got done before, not for lack of trying), or deportations. how many did O deport? a hella lot, figures are hard to come by, plus the various categories, i forget ( i’d looked it up a whole three days ago.) ;-)
but now the queen of chaos is ‘america’s mother’, guess cuz she has a vagina and god-awful ugly suits, like at this a place i wrote for awhile, and was asked not to come back.
but see, libruls seem to think that if a dem makes war, it’s okay, but what really matters is…the PC qualities of a candidate/ruler. and trump is hitler, as is putin.
tim kaine: “i am personally opposed to the death penalty but will follow the voters of Virginny as guvnah.” so much for his convictions. Lear: “behold the image of authority: a dog’s obeyed in office.” nice doggy kaine. lots of experience too brown-nosing w/the military in NVA (pentagon, etc., etc., etc, etc.., etc., etc.,) and in VA Beach/Norfolk. and all the other stuff that wsws article says.
i believe i’d read that he’d allowed 11 executions as gov of old virginny. nice quote, let’s pat his li’l head. but hey, i just discovered that in oct. 2015 the Red Queen decided not to take any more bundled cash from the private prison industry! she decided to go in ‘a different direction’.
i always liked this fellow’s comments at empire burlesque, so i was glad to see this earlier:
so yay-uss, greyson smythe: she’ll bellow ‘i’m not trump’ like this con; will it be the Dream act 2.0?
to all: my laptop is going bonkers, our wifi as well, and microsoft is issuing dire warnings on out wifi IP. (fuck you, bill gates) if i’m not back for a bit, it’s likely something related.
dream of a better anti-capitalist word if you can. me, i dreamt of a huge bengal tiger in my house last night. scary biscuits, but it never attacked. dunno what or who he was. ;-)
bengal tigers a) still existing and b) not attacking are good omens!
he’s a gigantic “smile and smile and be a turd” kind of guy. soft-spoken, mild-mannered clark kent-tim daschle-harry reid-jeremy corbyn types who are supposed to be Superman underneath when it comes to saving us from the evil Lex Luthors. milquetoast to the rescue! speak softly & carry a big fat check from Raytheon.
no “bundled cash,” but individual donations are still kosher, right? “all of CCA’s prisoners mysteriously gave the maximum individual amount to the Killary-Haine campaign. the DNC pleads ovine innocence, while the RNC secretly envies the wily Clintons: ‘prisoners as donors? why didn’t we think of that?’
oddly enough, in the dreamtime, bengal buddy could enter the house at will. we’d kinda et it.her.him outside rather nervously (never did know who else was in the house). but the last time Bengal got back in, i saw her bounce like Tigger thru a glass window multiple times, the final bounce allowing him/her to come right thru the glass. but yes, no mawling must have been a good omen. thanks.
ah yes,kaine can smile his way thru the history,, as he is quite unknown. aha! small beer, but i saw on my next-up (perhaps) diary searching that he’d voted for the Dark Act (gmo labeling assaninity)..
‘ovine innocence’: superb! ‘it takes a village’.
now you know that mine eyes are getting worse by the day; but if i’m seeing this right, their bumper sticker says:
WE ARE NOT TRUMP! WE ARE PROGRESSIVE!
good luck w/the computer issues.
i was hesitant to shut down lat night, but wifi is up again, although i got another email today from ‘the microsoft team’ indicating that someone might be hacking into my email account. i was so skeptical that i didn’t take their advice as to what to check (‘login first’???) cuz i thought it might be another con to rash my laptop and install windows 10 w/o my express permission (the end of the ‘free’ is at hand – the end of the world)
my abject apologies for this, but i admit i’d started to ping this gawd-awful old song…no…not a song…but something else. and i don’t have a clue what caused it to be written.
two fun reads on this issue: satire parody from b at MoA: ‘Clinton Asserts Putin Influence On Trump – After Taking Russian Bribes’
commenter h, and i have to take him at his word w/o looking at chuck todd video:
“Sanders to Chuck Todd on the leaks –
Todd: “So just to sum up here, these leaks, these emails, it hasn’t given you any pause about your support for Hillary Clinton?”
Sanders: “No, no, no. We are going to do everything that we can to protect working families in this country. And again, Chuc, I know media is not necessarily focused on these things. But what a campaign is about is not Hillary Clinton, it’s not Donald Trump. It is the people of this country, blah blah blah…”
“[…] And I’m going to go around the country discussing them [issues] and making sure Hillary Clinton is elected president.”
So, there you have it. The guy who suspected his campaign was being intentionally marginalized by the party apparatus learns in fact he, his campaign and most importantly, his voters were indeed intentionally marginalized by the leadership of the Democratic Party. The chairman of the Party is Barack Obama. He appoints the Director who we all know is Wasserman Schultz. Thus, the entirety of the DNC leadership knowingly and with intent marginalized Sanders and his voters. Yet, Sanders remains loyal and naively believes his voters will stay with him if he sticks with the party and their chosen candidate that screwed him and them. UNFRIGGINBELIEVABLE!
His response reminds me of battered wife syndrome. He has absolutely bonded with his abusers. He is a sick man as in mentally impaired, maybe fatigued, and should seriously consider some rest.”
and: ‘Trump Policy Will Unravel Traditional Neocons; Economist Michael Hudson says Trump’s divergence from the conventional Republican platform is generating indignant punditry from neocons and neoliberals alike’
okay, i’ll grab the video for anyone who wants to watch instead of read…
my, my; there were some aggrieved commenters below the transcript.
either way, one of them gets showed the real Zaproooder film right?!? on November 5? oh wait, i bet HRC has already seen that one…several times.
100% of foreign policy experts agree, HRC!
for Team America.
oh, and quite unlike Comrade Trumpka, Hillary is not a paid Soviet agent. quite.
Vote Hillary! I’m with Hillary!
lol. and will one of them be told where jimmy hoffa is buried? or what’s really afoot in #area 51 (wonh, wonh)? this (ye) ‘comrade’ putin-trump derangement syndrome is getting too fun, seriously. ya just couldn’t make it up, could ya? a different KIND of quadrennial circus this year, anyhoo. and hudson’s ‘trump is out-flanking her from the left’ is spit-take worthy.
wasn’t Gen. & CIA Dir Petraeus charged based on evidence collected from secret readings of his personal email? who watches the CIA director? some blogger pointed out many moons ago that when you have a secretive, unknown (CIA? NSA? DIA?) and completely unaccountable gang spying on the ostensibly elected officials, namely, the Senate & House, democracy is a complete joke cuz the elected officials are all subject to blackmail. so the CSPAN version of Capitol Hill has about as much relation to how gov’t really works as the historical reenactments do at Colonial Williamsburgh. The CSPAN version is theater or H’wood for ugly people. if this is true, and it is, what does it say about the electoral charade? that doesn’t mean politics isn’t a bloodsport; HRC desperately wants to be “the face of the nation,” no small role, and would do anything to get it. unimaginable money, prestige, etc., involved, worth killing for in their minds, to be sure. and running the arduous campaign hurdles (all that tongue-bathing ain’t easy!) is a good test for a candidate for a job whose description is: Suckering the rubes.
for now, as my eyes are crossed from creating a new post, and i saw ‘he wants to be the face of the nation’, allow me to just comment via john mellencamp for now (and dayum, thanks for the reminder, srsly):
i had to back and check the petraeus ‘scandal’. according to this timeline, ‘socialite’ jill kelley told the fibbies that she was being harassed by email by…tada! paula broadwell. they grabbed broadwell’s computers, files and tra la la, which of course had the classified docs on them. now no mention is made of ‘secret’ or ‘top secret’ docs, nor if petraeus’s emails were even searched. no mention of that for gen john allen, either, although he was having an affair w/ kelley. both women lost their security clearances,, ha!
but sure, by now we’ve seen some of the extent at least, to which our version of democracy is con, not to mention the sort of democracy™ the us exports around the globe. i like the analogy to re-enactments of williamsburgh a lot. electoral politics as not only charade, but tragedy for some of the rubes, comedy for those who can see it. and oh: what about those black box voting machines? ;-)
Here in Arizona, the Green Party had to go before a judicial magistrate and make their argument that the Party was never “notified” as to when the Party had to submit their signature petitions. And finally, the Secretary of State and in charge of Arizona’s elections systemic, relented and told the Magistrate that the Department was in error. And yet, the Magistrate never questioned the Department as to why the State Legislature has attempted to deny both the Green and Libertarian Parties permission to participate in our general election cycle via denial of access to the ballot.
Now, if the Independent voters were to craft their own Independent Party, since they are now the “majority” of voters, politics would never be the same.
Jaango
zo…are the greens and libertarians (i’m assuming that gary johnson is their nominee) on the ballot then?
yeah, indies are a plurality, aren’t they? but then…it’s probably a pretty diverse group.
make of this coverage of ‘the people’s convention’ in philly what you will. hundreds? and turner: “i will stay in the dem party to reform it from the inside.” good luck, darlin’.
I guess what I really dislike is that all these smart people think we have to “pay a price” in the manner of either Trump or Clinton. And that’s how the discussion largely goes. Those are the kind of people on the left they told us about in the radical leftierthanthou classrooms, the ones who sell establishment goals and tactics to keep the people from seeking real solutions. This is such a tailor made opportunity to reject the system, it’s amazing to me that’s not the rallying cry instead of Jill Stein and Gary Johnson.
a whale of a lotta the ‘approved intelligentsia’ (chomsky, et.al.) get paid quite well to validate the system, don’t they? of gripe only so far. once you see who funds the mckibbens and kleins …it sorta shows why it’s so key to keep the ‘leftist’ overton window as small as it can be. some say the bern opened it, but yep, too bad so many believed in him.
yes to both of you, jason and big al. i regret to say that i’ve burned myself out in RL (grandchirren are coming!) (and…their parent, too, lol) and i spent too much time at another website admitting my total and abiding jocularity over this iteration of the quadrennial electoral circus as showing the complete joke that democracy™ is said to be, and that’s just in ‘the homeland©’!
yeah, i’m gettin’ a bit of a boot out of it, shame on me. voting lesser evil: maybe there is no lesser, this time; who can say? but the putin derangement syndrome at some sites is almost delightfully fun, because: propaganda and psyops acks!!!.
sleep well; i’ll try harder tomorrow…honest…er..i hope, lol.
ach; y’all need a lullabye, no?
As an infernal Optimist, the only Equality that exists today in America is “voting” despite the obvious opportunities for voter disenfranchisement. And when challenged, almost everyone would except “universal” voting as an alternative.
However, my “alternative” for Equality is “Mandatory Voting.” If implemented to include the sole exception for medical care, the “true” America would come forth, and thusly, the Right’s effort to continue to instill Fear and Hate, would be considerably diminished, and of course, I wouldn’t have to inadvertently have to waste of my valuable time seeing such entertainment venues as Dr. Phil on television and the assorted nonsense and trivia that passes as important and education.
And of course, the news media would shrink while doing their most at shirking their duty and responsibility to eliminate Citizens United since the Super Wealthy own all of today’s important news outlets. It’s the paycheck folks. And as such, the causation is thoroughly unrecognized and subsequently left unchallenged.
Jaango
well, voter disenfranchisement is quite alive, jaango, in many states. as for mandatory voting, i think it’s a hideous idea. if one is forced to vote, how informed will that vote be, and in any event, yes: you seem overly optimist about what or whom those hidden voters would actually be.
identity politics might just rule the day. pfffft. the right does its share of trying to instill fear and loathing, but ‘if’ there’s a ‘left’ in federal elected policy, i dunno where it is. they just dress up their cavalier oppression and immiseration of the rabble classes and even middle class with prettier words.
Corruption is much cheaper in today’s Democracy than the corruption ‘required’ in the form of Mandatory Voting. Thus, “moral” Corruption or the “financial” Corruption, is never addressed by the Self-Interested.
And no, I won’t make any reference to the Wall Street or the Great Recession that followed in 2008 and 2009.
Jaango
we may be talking past one another, jaango, given my lack of understanding of your praise of mandatory voting. i guess that i’d say for now that the first amendment guarantee of freedom of speech would also guarantee the freedom ‘not to speak’. (not that the constitution and bill of rights haven’t been declared ‘quaint’ by b-partisan powers that be.
instead of mandatory voting, how about mandatory paid time off for voting if you want it? (how about mandatory paid time off for all?)
i backpedal some on my comment that the electoral process is all stage-managed, incl. comrade trump’s candidacy, given how awful the DNC convention sounds. not that this garbage really matters. who will be more pro-GMO?
J. St. Clair is on fire w/ his daily recaps of the savage mule circus. he better slow down, he ain’t a young man no mo. all that bilious sarcasm can’t be good for the ol’ ticker or the CPU upstairs.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/27/the-humiliation-game-notes-on-the-democratic-convention/
just.kill.me.now. no wait: i’ll fashion my own noose. he mentioned ‘tearing up at #the (blm) Movement Mothers. did they speak, then? for clinton, for dems? yeah, i saw the hashtag at RT. at least there was this at trnn (no transcript):
http://www.workers.org/
thanks for st. clair’s capsule report; he watched it…so we wouldn’t have to. but how depressing the ‘guests’ (clones of the queen?) were. i was depressed earlier because: sibs-in-law emails, and mr. wd telling me that the woman he’s working for (a berniebot) cried at his wonderful speech. i’d like to think that she er…didn’t get it, but O; the power of a speech!
was albright actually/factually there in person, or in the 9/11 video?
dayum, i’m trying to get ready for our daughter’s family of five and at least one yapping dog, so i’ll not honk on, except to say i have some srsly fun news about the po-po protecting themselves. good doggie, li’l eric.
‘tase me when..(x, then y) is done’ was sheer delight, or would have been if the speakers weren’t so abysmally horrid.
i need to counter st. clair’s (bernie having been waging war on, yada, yada:
included ‘interventionist wars from Iraq to Syria’. well, i dunno about those, but he certainly is not against war: ‘saudi arabia must get their hands dirty’, amerikka must have the largest military in the world’, loving drones w/ exceptions, loving O’s terror tuesday (then) kill list’, yanno? and of course: R2P scenarios. aren’t they all?
but fancy lovin’ his speech when he said in effect: “i release my delegates to vote for clinton: ‘Go…and Sin No More. crikey, strether’s thread on the convention has way over 300 comments. the place practically endorsed bern. when i’d mentioned his US exceptioanalist miltaristic positions, i was trounced. “he’ll be too busy enacting laws favoring the 99%!!”
With the current miasma among Democrats for the “Russian” hack of the DNC’s internal email server, I find to be “morally” suspect since the “experts” have yet to prove that the Russians did the hack.
However, consider the hack accomplished by the NSA and the more aggressive NRO. To wit, the following:
“The NSA’s intelligence agents in Texas must have been asking themselves such questions when they authorized an unusual type of operation known as structural surveillance. For two weeks in the early summer of 2012, the NSA unit responsible for monitoring the Mexican government analyzed data that included the cell phone communications of Peña Nieto and “nine of his close associates,” as an internal presentation from June 2012 shows. Analysts used software to connect this data into a network, shown in a graphic that resembles a swarm of bees. The software then filtered out Peña Nieto’s most relevant contacts and entered them into a databank called “DishFire.” From then on, these individuals’ cell phones were singled out for surveillance.
“According to the internal documents, this led to the agency intercepting 85,489 text messages, some sent by Peña Nieto himself and some by his associates. This technology “might find a needle in a haystack,” the analysts noted, adding that it could do so “in a repeatable and efficient way.””
Obviously, I have yet to find a Progressive Voice, either on the national or local level, speaking to this level of morality and the significance of such behavior, and in particular as concern for this morality is applied onto to our highly regarded allies.
Jaango
the only sane comment i’ve heard in the country was from trump: ‘the charges against putin are the surest way to shift the subject from the emails.’
but you’re right, progressives and libruls are falling in line, as good little sheep are supposed to do. only pushback to ‘putin did it’ is from the radical left.
nieto: he’s another prince among machiavellians, too. (h/t jeffrey st. clair)
jeffrey st. clair’s Pt II of the dem convention is side-spilling, and yep, he got his hunter thompson mojo on as he announced at the top.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/28/night-of-the-hollow-men-notes-from-the-democratic-convention/
Dear Sir,
We defeated Clintonian neoliberalism, as your passionate article of July 19, 2016 rallied us to do. And the price is Shithole Trump.
I do not regret flushing Frau Hillary 2016; however, where do we go from here?
Sincerely,
m.c.kubiak@gmail.com
mornin’, mc kubiak. well, as it turns out, not only is trump a neoliberal, but a vicious neo-con war-monger himself. proving once again, ‘watch what a politician says he/she will do, but what they DO’. where we go from here is the question, isn’t it?
in the ordinary duopolistic scheme of things, the new boss will be much like the old boss…unless some epic insurrection comes a people wake the fuck up to ‘it’s the system’, etc. but one place we won’t go is to article 25-ing him, as per the first part of this 2-fer i’d posted the other day. zo…if the new celebrity in the WH is a dem in a couple years, how much will it matter? my own view is that herr hair was almost the next logical step in devolution from clinton>dubya>obomba…, but others rail against that notion. thanks for stopping by w/ the unanswerable Q. does the will of the citizenry matter? not much; the ruling class doesn’t have to care what we believe.
https://cafe-babylon.net/2018/01/12/two-analyses-on-the-questionable-uses-of-psychiatry-psychology/
Too much study makes you stupid.
-Mao Zedong
The author of this piece, like Mumia himself, has studied too damn much.
indeed, lol.