Jharrin4's Blog

So, while many of us wonder not if, but when, President Strangelove will order a nuke strike of Syria or Iran or North Korea or Chicago (ya know, to solve all the gun violence therein) the GOP run senate invoked their nuclear option today.  Less lethal than a real nuke, it does do considerable damage to our already battered, tattered, and bruised democracy.

The nuclear option was invoked so that SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch can be confirmed by a simple majority vote in the senate rather than the historical, and never before tinkered with,  requirement of 60 yes votes by the 100 members of the “upper chamber” of congress. This is yet another blatantly nefarious strategy by the GOP, which has been essentially their modus operandi for a loooong time. Somehow, they keep getting away with even the most in-your-face frauds, farces and in some cases outright thievery.

Unless enough people living in states having one or both of their senate members of the GOP cry foul, and threaten their jobs if they allow this desperate ploy to become final, well, then the SCOTUS will be back to its 5-4 ultra right ways. It would take three republican senators to listen to their angry constituents to negate this nuking of the traditional advise and consent component of Supreme Court candidate’s worthiness to don a black robe until–should they choose–death do they part. Like Antonin Scalia’s death last year.

Then, President Obama, as was his constitutional right and duty, named Merritt Garland (considered a moderate) as his nominee to replace Scalia (a VERY right-wing jurist). But then, as was the senate’s constitutional duty to permit the “advise and consent” process, the hearings, and ultimately a vote (magic number needed to confirm being 60) to take place, the GOP controlled senate simply refused to fulfill that duty.

Okay, now…

…that means the republicans literally stole the potential confirmation of Garland, gambling that just maybe the November, 2016 election would put their guy in the White House. And, of course, that happened. And, through voter suppression (see Palast, Greg) and ever-more likely election interference by Russian hackers (investigations percolating as I write this) favoring Strangelove, it would appear that the election was stolen from Hillary Clinton (she of the 2.8 million vote surplus over our sexual-assaulter-in-chief). Those Russian hackers (it has been shown: go look it up, but not on Fox News or Breitbart, oaky?) actually targeted Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania with REALLY, REALLY FAKE NEWS denigrating Mrs.Clinton (including that she had ordered the murders of certain people ((!!!)),  Those three states eeked out an electoral college advantage for her opponent.

Well, believe what you want. I am certain we now live in a Kleptocracy.  And we may have to learn to live among the Kleptocrats for possibly years and years. Like I said, no matter the arrogance and disregard for fair play, let alone our constitution, the republicans seem never to be reuked, let alone officially charged for their crimes. Many are accountable for this. In some cases, to find the guilty, one need just look in the mirror.

We get the government we deserve.

But here’s hoping this nuke job by the GOP today can be stopped. I doubt it. Sadly, the GOP, since Dr.Stranglove became President, apparently can only get what it wants by stealing.

How about it, we the people? A citizen’s arrest?

Originally posted in October of 2014, I am compelled to add a new lead paragraph or two. All that follows it (except I now work at only one school, not two) still reflects my attitude toward the national Democratic Party.

Only–as if this were possible–my attitude is now even more infused with disgust. And the reason should be obvious. For those of us with the ability to know a fact from a steaming pile of bullshit (it should be so simple right?!) we now exist in the Orwellian nightmare of having Donald Trump been given the keys to White House. And in less than three months, it’s obvious how bad an outcome that was/is. Alternative facts. Fake news. Russian intrigue seemingly designed to undermine Mrs. Clinton (and actually invited by Donald during one the Trump/ Clinton debates). Our current President demonstrates a massive deficit in knowing–literally, I would say–anything about how our government works. Then the hideous cabinet.  And the looming show-down over Antonin Scalia’s ghost of radical right-wing judicial legislating future, Neil Gorsuch.

In this context, my previously saying (circa mid-term elections 2014) it’s TOO LATE to think anything better will be bestowed upon we the people, I must admit I underestimated the Democratic Party’s ability to outdo itself when it comes to ineptitude. I mean, the DNC couldn’t landslide Donald the Buffoon! The Clown. The gasbag, the human pile of steaming bullshit??!! The DNC couldn’t run a successful campaign against this cretin? Yeah, they sabotaged Sander’s campaign, but still! Really?!

And of course just the other day I received a piece of mail from the DNC, again asking for money to help finance a comeback against the quasi-crypto-neo-fascist, sexual assaulter-in-chief. The brazen audacity that the democrats need me and others to help clean up the mess they clearly enabled being slopped all over we the people.

So, in case you missed the original post, let me vent my even older spleen again…

*    *   *

I work at two community colleges. Both schools provide me with a faculty email address, and every day I check each, dutifully. There are always a handful of administrative notifications, and the occasional student wanting to notify me of an absence or clarification on course content, assignments, whatnot. Some need responding to, others just require a quick reading, an assessment, or a judgment.

Not surprisingly, email accounts aren’t all official business.  I don’t use Gmail or any other email system. Having two email addresses is enough. Would anyone want to retrieve “snail mail” from three, four or five properties? Absurd. Less is more.

However…

For the past few weeks, each of my accounts have been inundated with non-teaching-related matters. The messages are all breathlessly urgent in tone.  The sky is falling! is the essential theme in each email. Chicken Little has an iPad? What is it? No, more like Chicken Shit. It’s the pathetic, inept, incompetent, compromised, collusive and corrupted national Democratic Party. Not to be confused with the vile, venal, sociopathic, oligarchic, racist, homophobic, pseudo god fearing, blood-sucking, obstructionist, Republican Party.

I do not get emails from the GOP. That is because I’ve never given a penny to any campaigning republican or its national party. I wouldn’t cast a vote for a republican unless it was for conviction while serving jury duty.  I have, in years past, given a ruble or two to democratic candidates, most recently Elizabeth Warren when she was running for the U.S. Senate. She won. Hooray! My modest contributions were rewarded. Elizabeth is quite an exceptional democrat. She has integrity, is very smart, is for we the people, and speaks her mind, passionately. Naturally republicans fear her as a vampire mortally fears sunlight.

Well, in our world of on-line transactions, your name, address and purpose for purchase guarantees a sharing of such information by the intricate systems within a system that harvest data, then pass it along to other entities that feel they might, too, make a buck off a particular consumer’s apparent likes, values, beliefs. Donate to Mrs.Warren? Hey, this dude must LOVE all that is the “party of the people” and must want to further contribute to the national party.

Wrong, and here’s why…

Back to my email accounts. They have for weeks been flooded with appeals for money, likely written by some staff flunkies, but peddled with pretend pitches directly by Barack himself, or Michelle (I need you! she states. Geeze Michelle, what are you getting at?) or Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and on and on. Joe, we need MONEY! Money, money, so that they may defeat those rat bastard robber barons Koch brothers and their ilk, overturn Citizen United, protect the environment, save the downtrodden, protect the little people from GOP whackadoodles. Really? My first  question, Barack, Michelle, Nancy, Harry, et al: how did things get so desperate? Answer: because of you democrats!

For the past 34 years, democrats have become enablers and corporate-oriented co-conspirators in political perversions that have systematically sent this country tilting more and more to the Right. Start with the Reagan “revolution,” the Newt Gingrich “Contract with (on!) America,” the two arbitrary military incursions into sovereign countries by Bush I and Bush II, the deregulation of Wall Street, banks, and its ensuing infestation of Gordon Gecko avatars; The Patriot Act and its tossing of habeas corpus and other constitutional rights; the passage of Orwellian, double-speak named environmental policies advanced by republicans that are blatant bait-and-switch initiatives that let corporations have their way with once-protected lands, waterways and the air we breathe. Too many democrats  went along with all of it, wussy, wimpy and way out-of-touch with what the Party once stood for. Remember that Bill Clinton gleefully signed off on NAFTA, a USA job-killing gambit that has ruined many a small business and left its employees standing on a curb watching their jobs go to third world shit holes where workers are paid a pittance. The democrats, in an especially egregious bit of spinelessness, and as noted in a previous posting, permitted the confirmation of a moral scumbag and immensely unqualified Clarence Thomas to infest the Supreme Court for as long as he can still maintain a heartbeat (though his rulings can be heartless and hypocritical). Thanks for that one, “party of the people”.

So, I instantly delete these cyberspace, offensive and insulting pleas to help the Democratic Party, now presumably trying to beat back a beast that they were instrumental in helping create. How outrageously galling! How shallow and transparently dysfunctional a Party. My money won’t ever go to any democrat again, even if Elizabeth Warren clones herself a dozen times over. Why? Sadly, in my heart (I do have one) I believe it is just simply TOO LATE. Like correcting climate change is seemingly past the point of no return, my reading of the body politic, the John and Jane Doe citizens, the 1.3 party system that gives us virtually no choice, and recent history (including “hope and change!” President Obama) concludes this country is in for a nightmare mid-term election that will see things gets even worse than the quasi-fascist, neo-con plutocracy that it has become. Fat, lazy and stupid. That’s the voting public, the sheep who need a Morpheus to slip them that red pill, to free them from a mind-numbing matrix that peddles reality in corporate, candy-coated pop culture distractions and political rhetoric that would have the ancient Greek seekers of truth gagging on their leg of lamb.

There’s a lot of chicken out there. Chicken shit. Chicken hawks. Chicken Littles. It’s turning the United States into a creepy, dark and dank pseudo land of “equal opportunity” offering up stale bread and  bland circuses, tripe, trivial entertainment, and 10 second sound bites in a rigged game of “pretend democracy”.  The system uses money as its fuel. Everything is for sale, and we are being constantly asked to pay for more and more junk, junk  for our minds, our homes, our consumer cravings, junk in Congress and the White House.

Caveat emptor. And don’t forget to vote!

So, hear yee, fallow Americans (ya know, those who didn’t bother to vote on November 8, 2016, for their own, or close/extended family members, or the country as a whole) are you guilt-tripping yet? And to those of you who did vote, but for the loose cannon who is fast on his way to having irrefutable evidence of the election being tampered with by foreign agents (among other red flags slowly but surely rising up like spring crocus on this April 1) are you suffering “buyer’s remorse”yet?

April 1. Also know as April Fools Day. Today, one might spring a lighthearted false narrative on a family member or close friend. If you’re clever enough and reel them in on your false alarm fishing line, the “gotcha!” moment should produce some chuckles after the unwarranted concern for you (or them/him/her) dissipates quickly, once the tag line of “April Fools!” is tossed out to signal your being both–kinda–sorry, but self-satisfied to have indulged in the spirit of the day.

April Fools, however, has been surreally happening everyday since last November 8th, at least for the 64 million or so voters who emdorsed Mrs.Clinton. And at the same time, given the aforementioned red flags that are now in plain sight less than three months in the administration of our Tweeter-in-Chief, there’s a touch of Groundhog Day to boot. That is, from the day Mr.T was sworn in, there’s been a virtual repeat of his and his appointees modus operandi: say or do things that defy logic and reason, and when barely challenged or simply questioned on their obvious potentially destructive agenda, they simply double-down with an ironic touch of Orwellian double speak.

The terms “fake news” and “alternative facts” are now standard issue absurdist elements of White House lexicon. Orwell. 1984. Written in 1949. Sadly, perhaps here in the United States, his dystopian novel resonates as relevantly as ever before in the 68 years since its publication. It’s an anti-fascist polemic, 1984, and shortly after Mr.T’s rise to power, sales of the book shot up in a manner more accustomed to the next Fifty Shades of Gray sexed-up series. Cause and effect, certainly not remarkable coincidence in the sudden interest of the reading public’s curiosity of dystopian fiction from the mid-20th Century.

Anyway, to the fallow, and the foolish who did or did not bother to vote, as well as to the mass media that, in hindsight, was delivering “fake reporting” from the moment Mr.T announced he was going to use his reality TV stardom and real estate deal making wizardry as a logical stepping stone to the White House, I wish all of you a miserable April Fool’s/ersatz Groundhog Day.

While there’s nothing to laugh about for tens of millions of Americans, the good news is that all those red flags are demanding–at last!–some actual investigative journalism, social, gender and economic activism and even some congressional investigations. If my instincts are right, these blowbacks to our neo-fascist illegitimate GOP takeover of our government should inexorably lead to a Dead Administration Walking scenario.

So much blatant bufoonery and bilious billionaires creating havic and divisiveness in far less time than any other new administration ever, in the proverbial first 100 days.

The sooner the White House and Congress are rid of the infestation of these criminal con artists, corporatists-on-steroids, cold-blooded profit-over-people operatives who are virtual gangland killers, the sooner the only logical outcome should take place: a re-do of the election. There’s no precedent for it, I know. Never has happened before. But this situation is unprecedented. And it’s not just Trump who must go. This illegitimate fish stinks from the head-down. Pence plus all the appointees and advisors and conflict of interest arrangments must be expunged, erased and prosecuted where legal lines have been so casually crossed.

And then, when you have another chance to participate in our tattered democracy, fellow Americans, wake up, get up and think about your choices. We may never have a utopian Americana. But enough of the dystopia. I am tired of this dispiriting Groundhog Day and April Fools Day, day after day after day.

This blog entry is–rest assured–no joke!

According to Sierra magazine: In early December, the sea-ice cover at the North and South Poles is smaller than recent averages by an area the size of India.

Thousands of snow geese die after landing in the toxic waters of the Berkeley Pit mine, near Butte, Montana. Witnesses describe the scene as 700 acres of white birds.

2016 is the hottest year on record.

Utah’s Great Salt Lake is drying up. Its water level is now 11 feet below historic levels.

However, some voices in government and the media adamantly claim that climate change’s causes are still inconclusive. 

According to National Wildlife magazine: hammered by habitat loss, pesticides and vehicle collisions, Nighthawks have declined in numbers by 61% nationwide between 1966 and 2014. Nighthawks are hardly alone. the magazine reports that one-third of the North American continent’s 1,154 avian species are in trouble.

National Wildlife also reports that freshwater fish are in serious decline, caused by sediment runoff, water pollution, stream fragmentation, dredging and dams. Most notably, the pallid sturgeon, having been around since the age of dinosaurs are on the brink of extinction, with only a few hundred now remaining, all of them hemmed in by those dams that make it difficult to spawn and find food.

Bumble Bees, Butterflies are also in trouble, if one wants to believe National Wildlife.

Or, if one is to believe Nature Conservancy magazine, the “reticulated giraffe” a species found across Africa, has had its population plunge from about 36,000 in 1998 to 8,600 today. The magazine also reports that the hawksbill turtles are now listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as critically endangered. The primary reason being poaching.

That is, if one is inclined to believe the reports in these wildlife/nature/environmental magazines. After all, they could simply be alternative facts. Just a bunch of tree hugging hokum and hogwash.  Preservationists’ propaganda. Anti-business bullshit spewed by a rabble-rousing gaggle of asinine anarchists. C’mon! – else-wise, why would the Tweeter-in-Chief not show some concern and appoint a cabinet consisting of at least a few pragmatic practitioners of impartial, objective decision making, benefitting creatures feathered, furry, finned, fluttering, shelled, or buzzing about?

Fake news! Wake up! Here’s reality:

President Strangelove’s confirmed or pending cabinet nominees is compiled of billionaires beholden to everything from Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, four alone from Goldman Sachs, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Amway, Devon Energy and Pfizer.

Seeing is believing for some. For others, believing is seeing. That is, one is objective, verifiable reality; the other delusional and possibly dangerous.

Worried? Is Planet Earth doomed? If one wants to use critical thinking and verify what’s a fact and what’s a fiction, it hard not to come to the conclusion that Mother Nature and all her creatures are in great peril. There’s a virus that’s slowly killing the natural world, a virus that is sadly ever-spreading,  metastasized, controlling its host organism and condemning it to a horrible fate. It’s a virus that cannot directly infect nature’s wonders but nonetheless is nefariously snaring those giraffes, turtles, pallid sturgeons, bees, nighthawks and hawksbills too. What is this so unkind virus?

None other than humankind.  Not all 7.3 billion of us humans. But like I said, it’s spreading, inexorably and hard to know whom among the masses is sick. It’s not immediately detectable. It may not be seen or felt, especially by those who obviously have been infected, even some who know they are sick but are deluded into thinking that they are actually well,  or simply do. not. care.

We now live in a surreal version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Yeah, climate change, fear-mongering, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, profit-mongering. This isn’t the work of Mother Nature and all those incredible landscapes or countless species, competing by instinct for their place in the sun. No, this is US doing the damage. Speaking with a focus on the U.S., but actually spanning the globe, humans are an unstable species, with some prone to living as a friend of the earth, but many more inclined to violence upon one another, and certainly dispassionate about this one planet available for us to occupy. We are a virus. The antidote, too, is US.

Beware the virus! It infects the brain. Destroys critical thinking potential. Makes for terrible choices. It’s been around for a long, long loooong time. Nothing new. As one notable writer is famously quoted: history is a nightmare from which I need to awake.

That virus, though. Its main side-effect is to dehumanize the humane part of our wiring. Look around. Listen and watch. Don’t let it snatch your brain. We have met the enemy and it is US. Mother Nature has known this for a long time. In a way, she’s getting back at us with those alarming climate events. It’s quite a natural reaction since…

…hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…

Let it be known, one and all, that today March 9, 2017 is the day that the Alternative Facts Administration, led by a pathological liar with orange hair and one red hot Twitter account,  has finally advanced a hard, stone-cold, irrefutable, indestructible, immutable FACT!: that being their modus operandi is pure, stupid evil. The proof? Scott Pruitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, in front of cameras and microphones, denied that carbon dioxide (CO2) causes global warming/climate change. The FACT that Mr. Pruitt would assert such a notion is at once laughably absurd, but much worse, dangerous. Given the overwhelmingly rigorous, empirical, scientific evidence that leaves no uncertainty whatsoever that CO2 has, does and will continue to contribute to the failing health of Mother Earth, the fact that he actually made the assertion in the context of being the person charged with overseeing ENVIRONMENTAL issues, unavoidably labels him not only rather stupid, but evil stupid as well.

Strategic, cult of personality, diabolical evil figures clutter the historical landscape. From Hitler to Stalin, Pol Pot to Mao and let’s not forget the guy who somehow, in spite of being a mass murderer and master of plunder and pillage has a calendar day that celebrates his carnage with parades (!!), Christopher Columbus. Yes, evil is seemingly part of humankind DNA wiring, be it writ very discernibly large, intermittently medium, or quite small or none at all, or at least always striven to be kept in remission.

However, you know, shit happens.

Bullshit happens. Stupid evil happens. That’s today’s pronouncement by Pruitt, who now becomes the ipso facto freak-flag bearer of an administration whose member’s traffic in stupid venal, evil. They are an illegitimate administration, a criminal cabal of ideologues who are amoral, heartless,  profit-over-people gangsters, the consequences be-not damned-but apparently not even given a moment’s thought. Pruitt and the rest are not the least bit concerned with logic, with the cause/effects of their proclamations, their provocations, unless it’s the pretzel logic that fuels power and privilege: Climate change? Scientific proof? That just gets in the way. CO2? Is there even such a thing? Ha. Voodoo. Inconclusive! Scientists. What do they know? Them and their microscopes. Their telescopes. Test tubes. Clinical trials. Careful, rigorous calculations. Says who? Testing the hypothesis. Har har hardy har har! Truth-seekers? We’ll have none of that! An executive order to that effect is being crafted/drafted at this very moment…

The Environmental Protection Agency. Headed by a science-denier who, until today, could claim that accusation was an irroneous inference at worst based on his political, professional, personal past. He could have decided that, as the HEAD of the EPA, he should maybe, just maybe be shady and shifty in his use of words. But no. He–they–just can’t help themselves. So he flat-out flings the bullshit, which one would think he knows will hit the fact-check fan. No matter.

In front of cameras and microphones (created by science and technology) he preferred to officially pull the curtain back on the lot of them, each Cabinet member of which, like himself, in bitter, callous, malevolence, chosen to wreak havoc on their agencies.

Sure it seems stupid to those with rational hearts and minds. And it is. But far worse, it’s quite so evil, and now more than ever, in plain sight, writ very large.

111 days ago a bomb was put in place, timed to detonate 72 days later. Many, many days of hand wringing and desperate hope followed that somehow, someway, this potentially massively destructive device could be defused, rendered impotent. The bomb was a known threat, after all, clearly identified as such months and months before. There was an ongoing assumption by a large segment of the general public that this threat would be prevented from ever detonating since, obviously, it would be a literal act of insanity to not do so. But the months went by, the bomb kept looming larger, being observed day by day, but remarkably not being obstructed. It somehow kept gaining momentum as it advanced upon one and all, with some people becoming mesmerized by it, becoming psychologically drawn toward it, convinced it wasn’t really a threat to everyone, just those who dared get in its way. The bomb even began to be LIKED by many. Identified with by many. And when the day of reckoning came about for either the defusing or the putting-in-place of this wildly dangerous force, the bomb was embraced by its converted followers, while at the same time, those who tried to stop it lacked sufficient numbers to destroy it, once and for good. Those who tried to obstruct it, armed with iron-clad logic and reasoning, assumed they had enough back-up to overpower this threat. Unfortunately, too many others sat back, either deluded into thinking that of course the bomb will be taken care of–just wait and see–while others had convinced themselves that it was much ado about nothing, that whatever this “thing” that was being incessantly observed was, didn’t matter. Seeing may be believing, but if someone refuses to even look, they are free to not be bothered with concern of what they chose to ignore. The consequences be damned.

But on that 72nd day, the bomb, as planned, detonated. Sensibly many people stayed away from the blast site, but gathered in the wake of its explosion the following day to protest the disturbing event. Seemingly, more people are now stepping up and demanding…

…what?

…That this bomb now be obstructed? Gotten rid of? Made to become a different, more benevolent bomb? That they will resist and reverse reality? Only if someone can build a time machine and go back, back before November 8th, 2016, and wake up the sheep and saps, those who bear great responsibility for the bomb’s current fallout, now a steady and unrelenting type of background radiation, a buzzing, humming, whirring white noise.

There will be many, many, many more daze of this white noise before it can possibly be stopped. Or maybe there will be an implosion and the air will duly clear away the toxic radiation, sooner than later. If not an implosion, then awaken the ballot-box sheep, slap some sense into the bomb’s converts, at least those that, all of 39 days out from the blast, haven’t realized that they really aren’t immune from its radiation either.

One way or another, it’s a little over 600 days until the November, 2018 mid-term elections. When November 6th of that year rolls around, you who protest current reality, make it very clear what you are not just demanding what happens, but assuring that it will. If not, then either get used to it or find your own personal white noise to block out the current, pervasive white noise that never, ever, should have been allowed to explode and fill the air in the first place.

Ear buds. Surgical masks. As always, to the ramparts…

The Democratic Party. a.k.a. the dupes; the corroborators; the corrupted colluders; the enablers; the accommodators and for damn sure the spineless patsies trying to pass themselves off as the party of the people. Am I being hyperbolic here? If anything, I’m holding back.

I’ve previously  pinpointed the Democrats long and steady descent into just another corporate, bought-and-paid-for arm of the K-Street lobbyists; rather than to speak to American electorate about principled politics and governing, they simply took their cue from the GOP’s modus operandi of dancing the quid pro quo tango with the uber rich, which includes the licking of the boots of their well-heeled benefactors.  For this facile, incompetent form of being an “opposition” party, The Democratic National Party is now at their absolute nadir in American politics, maybe winning a battle or two every blue moon, but forever losing the political wars to the GOP, the quintessential Snake Oil Party, forever successfully preying on the hayseeds born bereft of the slightest ability to use critical reasoning. How? How do they continually lose to the likes of Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes?, and when they do score a victory their President turns out to be a bait-and-switch, right-leaning type (can you say Bill Clinton?; Barack Obama?) and now –incredibly, shockingly, stupefyingly–they lose to a pathologically lying, delusional, narcissistic neo-fascist buffoon?!

 The Democrats: so far removed from the FDR era, even the sunny, Great Society side of LBJ. What have we, the people, who think that our government should work for the common good, not just good of those of the pampered  and privileged gotten for supporting the Democratic Party?  Let’s see: okay, a better-than-nothing but pretty lousy excuse for national healthcare; the exorbitant price of pharmaceuticals (some life or death in importance); perpetuation of war (with the Obama administration’s escalation of indiscriminate drone attacks and their shrug-of the-shoulders collateral damage inevitability) directly feeding the military industrial complex; the coddling of Wall Street criminals; the erosion of environmental protections and workplace safety gutted by deregulation (in spite of decades of Democratic majorities in congress); their permitting the grotesque confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court (in spite of a 57-43 Senate majority) that assured a 5-4 ultra conservative SCOTUS that sides with polluters and science -deniers; that gave us the  disastrous Citizens United approval, and is soon to regain that majority with the second coming of Antonin Scalia in the form of Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch, the GOP nominee stolen from President Obama in a violation of both the GOP’s and the President’s constitutional responsibilities to fill the Scalia vacancy expediently, starting almost a year ago. But not much fuss put up about it by Obama or the DNC.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, especially the countless crowds gathering in protest of our new pussy-grabber-in-chief and his ever more billionaire, white supremacist, anti-immigrant administration, the Democratic National Party, hearing the voices of the angry, the defiant, the I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore! has taken action. The DNC has heard you and responded with a new Chairperson. With the stench of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Brazile, masterminds of the pre-ordained Hillary Ascension and Bernie be damned disaster still lingering in the nostrils of those of my kind, that occurred on November 8th, 2016, the DNC has taken the bold move of…

…electing Tom Perez as its new Chair. Perez. TPP supporter. Perez. Hillary backer. Perez, another corporate hack. Perez had to go more than one ballot before beating back his main opponent, Keith Ellison. Ellison was supported by the more progressive voices in the national party, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and others of their ilk or others who may have had the moral courage to listen to those in the streets demanding real action. But by a 235-200 vote, it’s Perez. Oh, and Ellison just happens to practice the Islamic faith. No doubt, the hardliners, the Schultz, Wasserman apologists and lap dogs weren’t about to elect a MUSLIM as their leader. Hell no! And give the anti-Muslim mouth-breathers that kind of red meat? That cannot happen! Play it safe. If Ellison wins, we’ll be vilified. Can’t anger our opposition. Mollify them. We can work with them. So, twist those damn arms! Get those votes, even if you have to threaten their family pets or worse! The Democrats elect a Muslim as their Chair? No. Fucking. Way.

It is written…

But of course, that’s EXACTLY, precisely,  what they needed to do at this precarious moment in time. What a defiant stance that would have been and what a direct rejection of the neo-fascists and hate mongering cabal that was given the levers of power to our government in VERY LARGE part because of the arrogance of the Shultz, Wasserman/Clinton’s implied claim to being the dynastic political family that is synonymous with being a true blue Democrat.

The DNC. Wusses. Wimps. Spineless.

Those 200 Ellison Voters, including Sanders and Warren ought to immediately proclaim they are now Independents. If there’s going to be a Bernie-inspired revolution, it certainly won’t come from the Democratic Party, now  terminally irrelevant. Virtually dead but for the official obituary and a few kind words that remind everyone there once was a Democratic Party whose passing is worth lamenting, the one way, way back in the rear-view mirror now.

For the more recent Democratic generation or two of this party of the people I say good riddance. And thanks for nothing.

To the ramparts…

Jess Sessions, whose back-story includes the now excoriating letter written about his racist actions as an Alabama official in the 80s, by Coretta Scott King, with Senator Liz Warren being told to shut up by the vile, venal lizard face Mitch McConnell, the GOPS’s Senate majority “leader,” when she attempted to enter that letter into the  record of his confirmation hearings. Good on Liz, one of the few scrappy, energized antagonists of the Republican Party. She and Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown and a handful of other congressional Democrats are to be cherished, for they alone seem to give a fuck about the nightmare of an illegitimate President Pussy-Grabber and his billionaire buddies. Sessions, so blatantly WRONG for U.S. Attorney General, nonetheless, gets confirmed 52-47.

Possibly even more outrageous is Betsy DeVos,  who squeaked by in confirmation by a 51-50 vote, when VP Pence, the viciously anti-LGBTQ, anti-pro-choice former Guv of ass-backwards Indiana cast the tie-breaking vote. DeVos, a never-worked-a-day-in -her life billionaire, who has no education degree, and along with her pampered spawn, born with Amway silver spoons in their mouths, never attended  a public school, and who is clearly a neo-con privatize, voucherize, charterize enemy of public education.

There are more billionaire Cabinet creeps to get hearings, but my point here is that there is apparently not a damn thing that Liz Warren or any of the minority party democrats can do to stop each and every monstrously anti-democratic, pro corporate, profits-over-people nominee from getting enough votes to derail a single one of them. As noted in my last blog, the 2016 election disaster can be laid at the doorstep of the National Democratic Party, when it stuck with an uninspiring Hillary Clinton rather than champion the real populist, Bernie Sanders, who would have beaten Trump according to virtually every poll measuring a Trump/Sanders contest. Worse still, Hillary bored or alienated or pissed off so many of the electorate that the “down ticket” races by fellow Democrats for the Senate and House of Representatives went down the drain with her. Thus the lock-step , solid GOP majority can nominate a goddamn Rhesus monkey for Prez Small Hand’s Cabinet and it’ll likely get confirmed. Hmmm. Wait. That monkey might be an improvement.

So, the apocalyptic nightmare is unfolding at warp speed now. And the wussy-assed DNCC made this dreadful development a fait-accompli. And there are, as I said, so few fighters like Warren or Sanders, so don’t anyone expect this descent into the political darkness of bigotry, hate-mongering, anti-science, anti-environment, anti-union, anti-healthcare for all to reverse course because the Democratic Party hasn’t the will or the ability to get in the way.

The message from the progressives such as (including most loudly) Sanders and Warren is it’s the people who must mobilize and fight back. Infiltrate the political system. Revolution from within the machine. Blah blah.

Thanks for the advice Bernie and Liz. But you also need to urge the opposition to this horrendous New World Disorder to form a 3rd party. Bernie, recall, was elected to the Senate as an independent socialist(!).  He should have run as a Green or Gold or an Enough Is Enough Party candidate. Anything but a Dermocrat and its corrupted, dillusional, Wasserman-Schultz, Donna Brazile hochos.

When Neil Gorsuch gets confirmed as a member of the Supreme Court (what’s to stop that from happening?) then the takeover will be complete, with a generation or two getting to soak up the cynical modus operandi of our government, once a government of checks and balances, of a predominately two-party system when once upon a time in a political galaxy far, far, away, there used to be a Democratic Party that knew how to be an opposition force, and had the sense and responsibility to bring at least an equally sharp knife to a knife fight. For the past four decades or so, the GOP keeps bringing more corrosive and penetrating knives into the fray, while the “opposition” evidently has adopted a “if you can’t beat em, join ’em” strategy. 

Well done. 

Okay, people! Get busy! Channel Melville and Moby Dick: the path to thy fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, upon which your soul is grooved to run.

The White Whale, in this case, is orange-ish. Big target, with a digustingly nasty blow-hole.

President Small Hands/Big Mouth has nominated Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia, the semi-recently deceased SCOTUS ultra-conservative. Gorsuch is clearly conservative, with potentially Scalia-like judicial mindedness. Perhaps he’s not a complete disciple of the, at times, radically pro-corporate, anti-working class Antonin. That’s what Senate hearings on any SCOTUS nominee are for: get some insights into how the potential black robe-wearing, sworn-in for his or her remaining life  jurist may vote on the myriad issues brought before the full nine member Supremes. You know, those decisions that, within the last few decades have affected gun legislation, same-sex marriage, the environment, immigration, healthcare (including women’s reproductive rights) and so much more.

When Scalia was still drawing breath, he was part of what had been, a clearly 5-4 conservative (and at times radically so) Court. Upon his death, suddenly there was a 4-4 split. President Obama, as was his Executive right to do so, named Merrick Garland as the nominee to replace Antonin. Garland wasn’t considered radical left or right. Many Republicans had (prior to his nomination) spoke kindly of him. This was early in 2016. President Obama had 10 months left in his second term. And, as I noted, he had every right, indeed a duty, to act sooner-than -later on filling that vacant Court seat.

Well, right and duty be damned!, declared Mitch McConnell. According to McConnell and his Republican-controlled Senate, Obama should “let the people of the United States decide” who the next nominee should be. His declaration was that no hearing would  be held on Garland, so that the November election would allow we the people to have a say in the matter. In so doing, McConnell was flat-out violating his own oath of office, and blatantly intending to stonewall the Obama nominee. Outrageous as this gambit was, the Democrats, once again, reacting with nothing more than some expressed umbrage, let McConnell’s pissing on the constitutionality of Obama’s right to have his nominee get a hearing stand firm. Obama’s “bully pulpit” went unused, as though he never knew it existed.

Of course the Democratic Party, that (as noted in my previous blog) for decades had become more compliant and accommodating to the Republican ideology (can you say Reagan Democrat?) didn’t make much of a fuss over this subversive maneuver by McConnell. The one-time, “party of the people” having become so weak, so spineless, was just being themselves (with maybe a handful of old-school, FDR types as the exception, members of the “Democratic wing”  of the Democratic Party, as it were).

Now, as we all know, McConnell’s pompous-assed ploy worked to perfection, since (as also previously noted) the Democrats managed to un-inspire tens of millions of voters to yawn about candidate Hillary who, in spite of actually winning the election by popular vote, likely hears the deafening echos of those yawning millions who unwittingly allowed the reality TV wack job to become our Wack Job-in-chief.

But back to the the just announced Supreme Court nominee, and his likelihood of again establishing a 5-4 right-to-far-right Court. No doubt, there’s not going be any stopping the Republican controlled Senate from confirming Gorsuch. The Republicans tend to be in lock-step. And yes, though they are a Party of fear-mongering, union-busting, profits over people, anti-science, anti-environmental protection, anti-regulation, an unctious branch of organized crime, they keep winning elections.   So, bad on those yawning non-voters. Bad on the media and it’s sucking-up to The Apprentice blow-hard. Bad on those who are racist, misogynists, Islamaphobes or xenophobes, one and all who voted for the most disgraceful candidate for President in the history of our country.

Most of all, however, bad, really, really BAD on the National Democratic Party, whose incompetent and collusive political ethos has culminated in all of the fear and loathing from the campaign trail to now infest The White House and Congress. Today, and essentially every day, since January 2oth, 2017 is Groundhog Day. But it’s not the Groundhog Day akin to classic movie of the same name, when a hapless Bill Murray had to live the same day over and over. At least his stuck-in-time character was placed in a largely upbeat, if not silly, observance of a Groundhog either seeing or not seeing his shadow, within a semi-mythical town peppered with fairly pleasant souls. No one meant Murray’s character any harm on any of the endless days of repetition he had to endure. His torment was from within himself, not from the externals of the day. Not so with the current repetition (at least for those of us who did not vote for Small Hands). Our Groundhog Day loop is entirely external in its torments. The particulars of the external sources have some venal variance, but their effects are inexorably burrowing into our psyches with the sameness of Murray’s daily, internal psychic struggle, regardless of the kindheartedness of those co-habiting his existential imprisonment.

Yeah, we’re stuck. But consider this when fretting over the the McConnell malfeasance: The Supreme Court would now be a 5-3 Left-leaning body if not for the confirmation of one Clarence Thomas, confirmed by the U.S. Senate in October 1991. Thomas was cynically nominated by George H.W.Bush to replace another African-American Justice, Thurgood Marshall. I say cynically because Marshall was a lifelong advocate for the common good, and a vital voice in fighting against the old Jim Crow era of U.S.history. Marshall is a towering figure who literally placed himself in harm’s way to right wrongs during his lifetime.

Clarence Thomas? No quite such a towering figure of noble actions, back during his hearings or in his years on the Court. For those not familiar, during his Senate hearings, Thomas was accused of being a serial sexual harasser of numerous women under his authority while he was Chairman of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Most notably was the testimony of Anita Hill, though she was not alone in her accusations. With his nomination seemingly destroyed, Thomas then played the race card, famously declaring the hearings “an electronic lynching”. Never mind that, even without the sexual misconduct he was accused of, Thomas had a paltry portfolio for a Supreme Court candidate. A vapid, in some ways grotesque, choice to replace the remarkable Thurgood Marshall. 

Well, like McConnell’s ploy, it worked. But not because the Republicans controlled the Senate. In fact at the time of the hearings, the democrats held a 57-43 advantage! But enough democrats caved in when the race card was played, or others who, being from states with a large African-American constituency, still gave Thomas their vote. The result was a 52-48 thumbs up for Thomas. Arguably unqualified from the start, and a sexual predator to boot, he is the Justice who, to this day, has allowed the Supreme Court to have that 5-4, very conservative advantage. If the democrats had stood their ground, and forced a more moderate replacement for Marshall, the Gorsuch nomination wouldn’t be nearly as troubling. For that matter, had the democrats had a spine in 1991, along with their large advantage in the Senate, there would not have been a 5-4 SCOTUS decision that placed George W. Bush in the White House, there to start a war in Iraq based on lies. There would not have been a Citizens United decision that declared money as free speech. And so much more…

The Democratic Party. We need to replace it. It no longer deserves anyone’s support as a viable alternative to the GOP. The democrats talk the talk, but continually fail to walk the walk. They are simply political dead weight, in my humble opinion.

 Go Green, I say.  As I have asserted, if only Bernie Sanders had run as a Green, he’d be in the Oval Office. 

But still, happy Groundhog Day! Did that critter see its shadow? Six more weeks of winter? Who gives a rat’s ass one way or another? For certain, we’re looking at at least 206 more weeks political winter. Maybe far morw than that…

On October 12, 2014 I posted a blog that took to task the Democratic party for its decades long descent into becoming “enablers” of the what has been an even much longer descent into corrupt and self-serving politics by the Republican Party. At that time, I predicted the 2014 mid-term election would be a disaster for the Democrats, and it was: the Republicans gained six new seats in the Senate, to give it control over that body of government,  and gained their largest majority in the House of Representatives since 1928. 

I don’t have a crystal ball. But I have eyeballs, ears and a functioning brain that made it crystal clear that the Democrats, the once-upon-a-time party of the people, had become virtually another wing of the corporate-controlled Republican national party. Invoking Bill Clinton’s signing off on the job-killing (for American manufacturing, in particular) NAFTA agenda, and his signature approving a Republican (Newt Gingrich inspired) bill that overhauled the welfare system, a program now deemed to have made “reform” of welfare mechanisms more of a monstrous obstacle course for those seeking statutory procedures promoting basic material and physical well-being as evidence of this “enabling” collusion with Republican  ideology.

Pundits and millions of the public at-large have voiced their disapproval of this now quasi-fascist takeover of the United States government. How did Dr.Strangelove win?! How did Hillary Clinton lose?!

Well,  about 90 million eligible voters sat out the election (the lazy and stupid). And, as has been clearly documented, Hillary garnered virtually 3 million more popular votes than her opponent. But that electoral college. The voter suppression laws (compliments  of those Republican-controlled state legislatures). Thus, the runner-up is declared the winner. The Democrats damn well know Strangelove didn’t legitimately win the election. Former President Obama (you know, the hope and change President  who talked that talk but became yet another capitulator: he had the Senate and House at the beginning of his first term in office. What, exactly, did he and the Democrats do with such an advantage?) damn well knows the election was a fraud. The Democrats, the party that even when it has the majority in congress and has a Democrat for President, somehow lets the minority party call the shots. The Democrats, who ran a horribly wrong-person, wrong-time candidate. The Democrats, who had to realize it was that other candidate, the Social Democrat, Senator Bernie Sanders, who was far more likely to defeat Dr.Strangelove, but instead sabotaged his candidacy every chance they got. The Democrats, far removed from being a party of the people, had to see what was likely to happen, then saw it happen, then instead of acting on evidence of the election being tampered with by the FBI Director and Russian Hackers, and an apparent alliance between Vladimir Putin and Dr.Strangelove, and the aforementioned blatant voter suppression by Republicans, simply stepped aside, and let this happen!

Sure, there have a been a few democrats who decried this turn of events, especially Rep John Lewis. However, as a whole, as I have asserted many times, the national Democratic Party apparently sold its soul long ago. How can the republicans, who can’t win elections without voter suppression or gerrymandering, (okay, both parties do it, but the democrats seem so incompetent at such tactics) who are virtually another version  of organized crime, championing legislation that caters to environmental polluters and Wall Street charlatans that have cost Americans their homes, pensions and even their lives in some cases, how can this venal Republican Party keep gaining more power? There has, seemingly forever, been more registered democrats than republicans. Yet, the democrats keep losing political ground, to the point now that but for the lame-brained, racist, hate-mongering white bread Strangelove supporters, a sense of fear and loathing, a visceral concern for our country and our environment has been evidenced in huge protests against this new administration. All 9 days worth of its nauseating existence and counting.

What can be done? Ironically I’m assuming that some of the protesters are among those who did not vote for anyone. Bad on them, but this shock to their systems has awakened a we the people vibe. The protests are against the new administration, but they are also, whether they know it or not, ipso facto, a protest against the Democratic Party as well, the one that seemingly induces political ennui among its potential supporters to the extent that every two years, they are beaten by candidates who are, at best, incompetent and at worst, massively corrupted by an ideology of profit over people.

I suppose those mailings begging for money for Democratic candidates in the 2018 election are in the mail, if not already received. What a joke. One positive outcome of this now waking nightmare is the Democrats can’t sink any further. Maybe they’ll finally again fight tooth and nail for we the people.

However, I’m not sure they remember how that is done. In the meantime, I hope the Green Party can clone Bernie or someone with genuine populist ideas. I am convinced if Sanders had run as a Green, he’d now be President. He obviously couldn’t run as a Democrat, a party that saw the barbarians gathering at the gate, and then simply gave them the keys to the palace.

To the ramparts!