Posts

Last judgment by da Modea, Cathedral Bologna, IT. Shows tortured bodies and giant beast in the center eating the damned and shitting them out

Now What?

/15 Comments/in /by

I’ve had lots of feelings about that miserable election: anger, hostility, fear, worry, and more. But life goes on. Now what?

Self-Care

I practiced bankruptcy law for 25 years, mostly representing middle-class people who got hammered by one of the four most common causes of financial distress — divorce, illness/injury, job loss, and financial crashes. Almost all of my clients were shocked and horrified that things had come to the place where they needed to consult a lawyer. I had one piece of advice: take care of yourself. You can’t help anyone else if you’re totally stressed out.

It’s good advice. I took it myself, in fact, I’m still taking it. I did a media cleanse: no billionaire media, quit reading newsletters and Substacks, got off Xitter, and limited my screen time. I watched movies, read novels, talked to my friends over dinner and drinks. I cleaned out closets and drawers, took a close look at expenditures, and talked to my stock broker.

I’ve read this site, and the comments. I moved to Bluesky (@edwalker.bsky.social) and used the starter packs to replace my curated list of follows on Xitter. I’m exercising and eating mindfully. It’s helping.

The Blame Game

I’ve been thinking about why the election turned out so badly. Of course there are many reasons for a huge loss, but these seem make me angriest.

1. Voters. Democracy only works if voters can discriminate among candidates. Donald Trump is a law-breaker, a sexually abusive creep, and a business and governmental failure. People who think this repulsive demented jerk is a plausible candidate and voted for him and people who refused to vote failed the basic test of democracy. There is no excuse for this. With the exception of Muslims who refused to support genocide, discussed below, those people failed as citizens.

2. Billionaire media. The billionaire-owned and controlled media (the “BM”) rehabilitated and enabled Trump. When Trump was impeached for inciting a riot to hold on to power after getting whipped n the 2020 election, the BM announced that the impeachment was futile. Then when the coward Mitch McConnell protected him the BM patted itself on the back and announced that Trump was the leading candidate for 2024. Then he was discovered to have stolen critical national security documents from the government and refused to return them. The BM treated this as spectacle, thrilled by his contempt of law, and continued to treat Trump as the leading Repub candidate.

Meanwhile, the BM’s political reporters decided that inflation was Biden’s fault because of all the government spending on COVID relief, infrastructure and bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. This was a lie. The primary cause of inflation was supply chain blockages brought on by corporate just-in-time practices. Prices rose as supply dropped, just as predicted by Econ 101 textbooks.

But when supply chain problems eased, prices didn’t come down as predicted by those textbooks. The largest US corporations have oligopolistic market power, and were able to keep prices rising. This was a replay of the mid-1970s when right-wing economists pretended inflation was caused by Keynesian spending instead of the ripple effects of OPEC price hikes. Sadly, BM political reporters lack the capacity to learn from the experience of being bamboozled.

By mid-2023 it was obvious that Biden’s policies were bringing our economy to a soft landing, and many economists (not the right-wing toads) began calling for the Fed to reduce interest rates. The Fed, led by a Republican, refused. That helped keep inflation from falling. BM political reporters blamed Biden for all it.

It doesn’t matter why. They failed. They are to blame.

3. The Democratic Party. Famous Will Rogers quote: “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

The election was a massive failure of Democratic “leadership,” the timid politicians, the know-it-all rich donors with their hands out, and the incompetent consultants. They all failed. They all should head to a monastery or convent and spend the rest of their days in shame and prayers for forgiveness on account al the people Trump will hurt physically and psychologically.

There is no Democratic Party. There are a bunch of politicians who claim the label, and their supporters and apparatchiks. They won’t help a single person now. For years lefties have begged them to do things that will help people directly — things like raising the minimum wage, protecting voting rights, strengthening labor laws, and reducing student debt, legislating abortion rights, and much more. Zippo.

We begged them to attack the policies and the politicians of the stupid party. We begged them to defend against the Ratfuckers’ ugly attacks on teachers, librarians, liberal clerics, college students, intellectuals, scientists, not-White people, asylum-seekers, LGBTQ+ people, and anyone with a brain capable of telling right from wrong. We begged them to communicate forcefully their successes. We begged them to use the power we gave them to help all of us flourish. They refused. They took our money and our time and then punched the dirty fucking hippies for funsies.

Time to clean House and Senate.

All right, big mouth, now whatcha gonna do?

1. There are a couple of things I can do locally, and I’m going to try to do them, hopefully in the company of people better equipped than I to accomplish them.

2. I’m going to continue with my current project of examining what it means to be an individual in current US society. But instead of treating it as a personal project, I’m going to try to make it more useful. More on that later.

3. I think the Democratic Party as currently constituted is purely transactional. It has no center, no reason for existing. There is nothing to bind us to the party. Instead, we are expected to support people who have claimed the label, regardless of whether or not they are furthering our goals.

As an example, Muslims who voted for Biden were asked to vote for the party’s chosen successor, Kamala Harris, despite her apparent support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its attacks on Lebanon and Hezbollah, its evident attempts to stir up war with Iran, and the close connection between the Israel’s odious warmonger Netanyahu and Trump.

Compare this to the 2012 election. We were asked to support Obama and his team despite their flat refusal to hold Wall Street accountable for causing the Great Crash. We were asked to support Obama’s choice to “foam the runway”, to allow the perps keep all the money they stole and use it to buy up all the houses that went into foreclosure. We were told to ignore the fate of millions of our fellow citizens who suffered loss of homes and savings. I didn’t vote for him. I couldn’t. How could I demand that Muslims support Harris in the face of genocide? How could anyone? Maybe other people felt similarly about other failures to deliver on promises.

The Democratic Party is not our friend, and it’s not going to help. We all have to figure out how to fix the mess that crowd of failures created. The shell of the party remains. I might be able to help with one obvious problem the lack of a governing theory.

4. I’m going to continue to attack the MAGAts on SCOTUS. I know how to read their bullshit opinions, and I know what plausible jurisprudence is, and I can and will show my contempt.

5, I think another serious problem is that we have no way to communicate with a large audience. By we, I mean thoughtful left-leaning writers and thinkers. We have no mass media presence, and we aren’t likely to develop one under a Trump administration.

At the Democratic Convention the Harris team centered a group of what it called “content creators,” people with podcasts. TikTok followers, Instagram accounts, and other ways of communicating. Those reach some of our target audience and could reach more.

Maybe that’s a way forward? Some kind of grouping of these content creators? Some sensible organization that stretches across all these forums? A coherence based on common goals and maybe even a theory? Maybe some way to make a little money?

Conclusion

We’re all going to have to find a way forward. Any thoughts?

_________
Front page photo: Detail of The Last Judgment by Giovanni da Modena, a fresco at the Cathedral of Bologna, Italy. Photo by Artemisia.

Democrats’ 2020 Primaries: Super Tuesday Results [UPDATE-4]

/146 Comments/in /by

This post is dedicated to the Democratic Party’s Super Tuesday results. Not much sense bothering with the Republican Party’s results since GOP canceled a number of primaries.

Post will be updated as results come in.

Results about 9:40 p.m. ET:

State

Percent Reported

Results

Delegates
Alabama 16% reporting Joe Biden won 52 delegates available
American Samoa TBD Michael Bloomberg won
Arkansas 13% reporting Joe Biden leads 31 delegates available
California Results expected around 11:00 PM EST
Colorado 25% reporting Bernie Sanders won 66 delegates available
Maine 32% reporting 24 delegates available
Massachusetts 29% reporting 91 delegates available
Minnesota 20% reporting Joe Biden leads 75 delegates available
North Carolina 55% reporting Joe Biden won 110 delegates available
Oklahoma 83% reporting Joe Biden won 37 delegates available
Tennessee 69% reporting Joe Biden won 64 delegates available
Texas 7% reporting Bernie Sanders leads 228 delegates available
Utah Results expected around 10:05 PM EST
Vermont 69% reporting Bernie Sanders won 16 delegates available
Virginia 100% reporting Joe Biden won 99 delegates available

Rather expensive hobby for Bloomberg, to have spent nearly half a billion to win only American Samoa. I still need to find the delegate count for the territory. At least Tulsi Gabbard didn’t win Samoa.

Of note: Donna Brazile’s appearance on Fox News today. I’ve enjoyed watching the video at this link several times.

UPDATE-1 — 10:30 P.M. ET —

Results about 10:20 p.m. ET:

State

Percent Reported

Results

Delegates
Alabama 39% reporting Joe Biden won 52 delegates available
American Samoa Caucus held (not a primary). Michael Bloomberg won 4 delegates to Bloomberg

1 delegate to Gabbard,

1 delegate TBD
Arkansas 37% reporting Joe Biden won 31 delegates available
California Results expected around 11:00 PM EST
Colorado 36% reporting Bernie Sanders won 66 delegates available
Maine 50% reporting 24 delegates available
Massachusetts 46% reporting 91 delegates available
Minnesota 40% reporting Joe Biden won 75 delegates available
North Carolina 59% reporting Joe Biden won 110 delegates available
Oklahoma 93% reporting Joe Biden won 37 delegates available
Tennessee 82% reporting Joe Biden won 64 delegates available
Texas 17% reporting Bernie Sanders leads 228 delegates available
Utah 33% reporting
Vermont 88% reporting Bernie Sanders won 16 delegates available
Virginia 100% reporting Joe Biden won 99 delegates available

Wondering how much last night’s tornado affected turn out in Nashville, Tennessee.

Texas has considerable problems with voting which look like typical voter suppression techniques.

UPDATE-2 — 11:10 P.M. ET —

Results approx. 11:00 p.m. ET:

State

Percent Reported

Results

Delegates
Alabama 68% reporting Joe Biden won 52 delegates available
American Samoa Caucus held (not a primary). Michael Bloomberg won 4 delegates to Bloomberg

1 delegate to Gabbard,

1 delegate TBD
Arkansas 71% reporting Joe Biden won 31 delegates available
California Results expected around 11:00 PM EST
Colorado 46% reporting Bernie Sanders won 66 delegates available
Maine 58% reporting 24 delegates available
Massachusetts 65% reporting Joe Biden won 91 delegates available
Minnesota 68% reporting Joe Biden won 75 delegates available
North Carolina 84% reporting Joe Biden won 110 delegates available
Oklahoma 100% reporting Joe Biden won 37 delegates available
Tennessee 88% reporting Joe Biden won 64 delegates available
Texas 17% reporting Bernie Sanders leads 228 delegates available
Utah 49% reporting  Bernie Sanders won 29 delegates available
Vermont 94% reporting Bernie Sanders won 16 delegates available
Virginia 100% reporting Joe Biden won 99 delegates available

These conditions are absolutely unacceptable in a modern democracy — do open the image link. This is at Texas Southern University.

The Democratic Party candidates and presumptive nominee MUST make this an issue in the media and embarrass the fuck out of Texas’ GOP-led government, but do so in a way to encourage November voter turn out.

UPDATE-3 — 12:10 A.M. ET —

Results approx. 12:00 a.m.:

State

Percent Reported

Results

Delegates
Alabama 87% reporting Joe Biden won 52 delegates available
American Samoa Caucus held (not a primary). Michael Bloomberg won 4 delegates to Bloomberg

1 delegate to Gabbard,

1 delegate TBD
Arkansas 86% reporting Joe Biden won 31 delegates available
California 9% reporting Bernie Sanders won 415 delegates available
Colorado 58% reporting Bernie Sanders won 66 delegates available
Maine 66% reporting 24 delegates available
Massachusetts 80% reporting Joe Biden won 91 delegates available
Minnesota 90% reporting Joe Biden won 75 delegates available
North Carolina 99% reporting Joe Biden won 110 delegates available
Oklahoma 100% reporting Joe Biden won 37 delegates available
Tennessee 98% reporting Joe Biden won 64 delegates available
Texas 52% reporting Bernie Sanders leads 228 delegates available
Utah 67% reporting Bernie Sanders won 29 delegates available
Vermont 98% reporting Bernie Sanders won 16 delegates available
Virginia 100% reporting Joe Biden won 99 delegates available

Report in Los Angeles Times discusses introduction of a new voting system and resulting delays. Sorry I can’t tell you more, LAT site won’t open for me at the moment. Check in with LAT’s Matt Pearce instead:

LAT called the state for Sanders though vote tallies will be a looong time trickling in with some people still voting in Los Angeles area. Silicon Valley went for Sanders, wine country on the north side of the bay went to Bloomberg. Wondering if Livermore National Labs’ ecosystem went to Biden?

Adder: LAT didn’t do voters any favors. AP definitely didn’t do any favors, and we need to address the AP in particular since they are funded by newspapers and TV stations across the country. Who’s pushing AP to be first to detriment of democratic process?

UPDATE-4 — 12:45 A.M. ET —

Last update for me, I need to hit the hay. Maine’s at 72% and will likely be a while yet. California is now at 12% reporting.

My two cents: A substantive number of Super Tuesday’s Democratic voters went with the “safe” candidate, the one who they believe will restore a sense of normalcy and stability to the White House.

They want to reprise the comfort of the Barack and Joe Show, even if Barack won’t be on stage for this spin-off, even if Joe is nowhere near as on top of his game as he was in 2008.

What’s telling is this bit about Minnesota:

I don’t think Klobuchar’s endorsement alone could overcome a deficit of campaign apparatus. Minnesota’s change to a primary from caucus since 2016 also doesn’t explain this.

Radical Socialism or Clear-Eyed Realism?

/177 Comments/in , , /by

[Check the byline — this is Rayne.]

A new commenter wrote that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ “rhetoric is pretty radical.” Ocasio’s the recent Democratic Party primary winner for House seat NY-14, unseating long-time incumbent Joe Crowley in the Bronx-Queens district.

But is Ocasio really radical? Is her Democratic Socialist platform all that far left? Looking at Ted Kennedy’s concession speech from 1980 and the points around which he’d wish to rally Democratic voters 38 years ago, probably not given the changes to our society and economy. Unlike 1980, before Ronald Reagan broke down PATCO — the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Union which went on strike in 1981 — we no longer have a thriving middle class based on employment with adequate job security and living wages. We have instead handfuls of billionaires who have amassed their record-breaking fortunes rapidly on the backs of half the country which can’t scrape together $400 cash for an emergency, whose real wages haven’t budged since the 1980s.

Two points that seem to be of particular concern to our new commenter in Ocasio-Cortez’ platform are the Universal Jobs Guarantee and Housing as a Human Right.

Is a Universal Jobs Guarantee more or less radical than Universal Basic Income? How are we going to deal with an economy in which tens of millions of jobs have been completely displaced by automation — like autonomous transportation, expected over time to replace millions of truck, hired cars, train drivers and ships’ pilots?

You might want to catch up, then. Save the “But capitalism!” and “But taxes!” rebuttal because

1) we live in a mixed economy already;
2) the socialist portions have been cut too far back and proven capitalism to be grossly inefficient in wealth distribution; and
3) leaders, particularly Democratic ones, already grasp the problem.

Housing as a Human Right is already embedded in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the U.S. voted in 1948. Yet in the U.S. there is no place a full-time minimum wage worker can afford basic housing (as if there are full-time minimum wage jobs since nearly all are structured as part-time to avoid unemployment tax). How can we expect to deal with this on a long-term basis when the Federal Reserve and other entities continue the decades-long suppression of wages?

Again, leaders (particularly Democratic/liberal ones) have already recognized this problem and encourage solutions. It may be far more radical to stick one’s head in the sand and ignore the mounting housing crisis.

Perhaps the real problem isn’t that a platform like the one Ocasio-Cortez has built her campaign upon is labeled Democratic Socialist.

Perhaps the real problem is the decades-long right-wing propaganda which denigrates reasonable, achievable political solutions to real problems average Americans face as radical and socialism as something we haven’t already accepted and relied upon within our existing social safety nets like Social Security and Medicare.

Perhaps the real problem is the same absolutist propaganda which has uniformly characterized any and all Democrats, even moderates, as “hippies”, “liberal bigots” and worse rather than see them as fellow Americans who believe in the Constitution and also believe the U.S. can do more for the common man through reasonable and distributive economic justice.

Is it really all that radical to want to form a more perfect union by establishing economic and social justice, insure domestic tranquility by ensuring every American has food and shelter, provide for the country’s common defense by promoting American’s general welfare?

 

Treat this as an open thread.

What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted Dems And Clickbait Complicit Media Who Got Us Here?

/56 Comments/in , , , , /by

Will Rogers very famously said:

“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”

That was made sometime in the 1930’s I think, but it is enduringly true.

So, where will the Democratic party go now that they have had their ass handed to them by Trump? Who will lead the Democratic party going forward?

The calls are already ringing out. Liz Warren! Bernie Sanders! Keith Ellison (Sanders has even issued an email ask as to Ellison)! But there is a serious money people and Clintonian push for Howard Dean. Which is truly mind numbing.

Howard Dean is moldy cheese that needs to be taken out with the next non-recycle trash dump. He did neither himself, nor the party, any favors in the 2016 election clownshow cycle. Seriously, in the 2016 election cycle, Sarah Palin may have been more reserved and credible than Howard Dean.

Dean’s 50 state op got Obama elected in 2008, but he is smelly garbage now. Screw this always retread manure. Dean needs to dry up and go away.

And the Democratic Party needs to extricate their head from their ass and move to the future.

New blood. Dems CANNOT be the same old constantly revanchist assholes every time they lose bigly. And, boy did they lose bigly.

The Dem go to kleptomaniacs like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rahm Emanuel not only did not help the party expand but set it back in serious ways in places like MO, KS, AZ and the entire United States.

And, while we are at it, the high holy “Senator Professor Warren” ain’t immune either. She had a moment and a shot, and she cowardly whiffed. Maybe it is something she just truly did not want, and, if so, fine. But don’t tell me that someone that is little more than a year younger than Hillary, and who consciously forfeited both her, and Bernie’s, shot in 2016, will be the Democratic holy savior in 2020.

Don’t do that. This is the same ignorant reset idiocy that got Democrats here today. That time is done. If Democrats do one thing ever, it ought be to build the bridge for the young’s of the United States to clean up the shithole we left them. Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders can be a huge part in doing that. But only as bridge builders, not as the man or woman who will be the avatar in 2020. We need them terribly, but not themselves as the embodiment of the future. That kind of thinking is the idiocy of the past.

There is a future. Although CNN’s Jeff Zucker and Trump/Breitbartism’s Steve Bannon are brothers in clickbait cuck arms that birthed, literally, President Trump, and will not easily give up their money raking news cycles.

The “new normal” is that CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, New York Times, Washington Post, and an endless roll call of dying, wimpering subservient media jackasses, who rode Trump’s clickbait train to a place in hell, will find it’s new Stockholm Syndromed place and start lecturing us how it is all good and just a “function of normal democracy”. It is already occurring, just watch any Wolf Blitzer on CNN or Chris Matthews on MSNBC moment. They are getting climax happy legs on Trump and Giuliani fascism as we speak.

That is one vision, and the early reality, of what the “press” will do in the coming Trump Presidency. The competing vision, which is what I hope and ascribe to, is that the media extricates their heads from their asses and brings real scrutiny to try to mitigate the hell they helped gestate. Are there enough Brian Stelters and Jay Rosens to get us there?

The brokenhearted Dems have some serious soul searching to engage in. So do the currently unapologetic and furiously rationalizing media and “pundits” who so helped get us here.

“Balanced” is NOT fair. Honest is fair. Accurate is fair. Truth is fair. Putting on panels of bickering loud mouthed bought and paid for political assholes as “news coverage” is NOT fair. Nor is it “balanced” news. Jeff Zucker makes Roger Goodell look like a piker in terms of the pantheon of American assholes.

While the media, especially cable, has a circle jerk field day congratulating themselves over their “wall to wall coverage”, and “looking forward to the transition”, just remember how the Trumpism and fascism germinated. Not shockingly, it germinated the same way it always has. When the gatekeepers of a rational society become more about themselves and their money than their jobs representing society.

There is a lesson here, too, for the Dems in media interaction. You got played and hosed royally. Don’t be the brokenhearted, be the, for once, party that learns from its mistakes and failures, and does better.

Just once, do this. If you can.

UPDATE: Commenter GK James posted something below that I think crystallizes much of what I was trying to say far better than I did, even if from a slightly different perspective.

Sure, but doesn’t that effectively absolve the demos that does the choosing? Aren’t Democrats up against a larger problem, one that they’ve had to wrestle with since Reagan? How do you advocate a progressive worldview when the majority of an aging, increasingly atomized, entertainment-addicted population doesn’t want that? It’s easy enough to say, after the fact, that Clinton should have focused more on those disadvantaged by globalization, or that, had they only chosen Sanders, the Democrats would have won. But recall that, without moving to the center, Bill Clinton would never have made it. A lousy bargain in retrospect, but not a crazy one at the time.

Yes, the DNC needs new blood. But assuming someone is found who can articulate a crisp clear message of what Democrats stand for—and who’s telegenic, personable, and entertaining to boot—how would that change the stranglehold that Republicans have on state governments, state legislatures, and the US Congress? The clear majority likes the status quo, having no problem with gerrymandered districts, voter suppression, or bought-and-paid-for legislators who enjoy an incumbency rate of 90%+. And the infotainment complex is likely to help keep it that way by making sure that its customers are never overtaxed by complicated thoughts. There will still be people, adults, who read, think, and have constructive ideas about matters of public import, which they’ll express in complete sentences. But they’ll be increasingly outnumbered and marginalized in a Twittered world.

Can’t argue with that, and don’t know the answers to the questions. But the Democratic party, if it is to continue (and I think it must), has to start finding those answers quickly.