Tag: Democrats

Democrats: Impotent Legislators of the Impotent Left

In case you hadn’t noticed, American democracy is essentially already gone.

It has been hijacked. By 1/3 of the country determined to rule over the entire populace

……by a repressive, regressive, fascistic, gang of religious cultists and gun-wielding social misfits

……sponsored by the greediest level of society, the 5% who control this gang with lies, fake promises, and manufactured “socialist” villains for their own gain

……championed by the most unscrupulous, devious, power-mad public “servant” outside the world of fiction, a true-to-life Sheriff of Nottingham. Mitch McConnell is evil incarnate, the most unscrupulous politician I can remember.

The takeover has been empowered by

…..a Democratic party that hides its cowardice behind “respect for rule of law” and a “commitment to the high ground” that can best be described as “Please don’t hurt us.”

…..Gutless Democratic Presidents. Yes, this means Joe Biden

……and a 2/3 of the country too blase, ambivalent, and yes, scared, to deal with thugery in the only way that thugs understand, with equal toughness.

Our Democracy is virtually gone as of right now, because the thugs on the right are strong, and we high-minded, principled on the left are weak. We are all mouth, and little action. Our high mindedness is our security blanket.

Yours truly included.

We are a principled but weak, hapless bunch of villagers. We don’t need more principled but weak legislators.

We need the Magnificent Seven.

130 Days in- Are We Having Fun Yet?

130 days into the Biden Administration, and where are we? Biden announces a sweeping, environmentally strong, infrastructure plan….Mitch McConnell and Joe Manchin say nope, not going to do that…. Democrats say, uh, ok, uh, what will you let us do? Is it okay if we do , maybe, a little bit? While they are doing nothing, which has become a virtual trademark, the Biden administration says sure, go ahead, to Donald Trump’s environmentally disastrous and insane sale of the Alaska to big oil. Biden and the Democrats say we need a bipartisan investigation of the January 6 insurrection….Mitch McConnell says nope, not going to do that…. Democrats say, oh, gee, shucky darn, we’re sorry, Mitch, please don’t hurt us. Biden says he’ll tax the rich…Mitch McConnell says nope, not going to happen…. Biden says, well, gee, maybe, if we could, just a teensy bit, please, Mitch? Can we? Huh? I mean,…OW that hurts, Mitch. Please stop hitting me. Trump and his crazies, which are at this point THE Republican party, continue to push the BIG LIE, which is actually a collection of big lies. A handful of Republicans object to this with their mouth, while continue to follow along meekly with their vote…. The Democrats? Crickets. Democrats take what I guess is the much advertised ‘high road,’ and don’t bother to aggressively engage. They take Nixon’s “If I close my eyes they can’t see me,” approach. As a matter of fact, the Democrats continue to take the Nixon approach to governing, The Democrats are Bert Lahr’s lion, the circus clown with a rubber mallet. They continue to play Coyote to Mitch McConnell’s roadrunner. They are Danny Kaye’s Walter Mitty, only with less courage and no happy ending in sight. They are the Marx brothers without a funny script. All Mitch McConnell needs is a leather suit and a whip. 130 days in. Somebody tell me, please, how much things have changed?

Does that word mean what you think it means?

Facebook post 06122020

There is a word, a pretty important word, that I think needs clarification. Even Donald Trump uses it, as a slam against the left, because it’s an accusation that the left regularly uses against the right. The word is bigotry, and both sides are correct in accusing the other side. But it’s deceptive. You see, when you look up bigotry, the simple definition of it as provided by Merriam-Webster is “obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices.”

So when you’re accusing somebody of being a bigot, you need to delve a little deeper and specify what kind of bigotry you’re talking about. What are the opinions and prejudices that you are accusing them of? Let’s do that.

The bigotry of the right is devotion to authoritarianism, racism, sexism, hatred of homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, and in short in a kind of sexual they don’t personally approve of. The bigotry of the right is support of white supremacy, and intolerance of anyone who does not believe religiously as they do.

The bigotry of the left, conversely, is rejection of all of the above. Or to put it another way, the bigotry of the right is based upon hatred and intolerance because of who you are, while that of the left is based on how the right behaves, and its refusal to acknowledge the basic universal and constitutional principle that all men, and women, are created equal.

The bigotry of the left insists on separation of church and state, and this is in line with the founding fathers. The bigotry on the right, meanwhile, insists on combining church and state, and is adamant that that their personal religion be the church of choice.

The bigotry of the left calls for the love of all people, while the bigotry of the right calls for the love only of those of whom they approve.

The bigots on the left believe that every citizen working a full-time job is entitled to a living wage, one that allows them to plan for retirement, affordable health care, and affordable higher education. The bigots on the right believe the exact opposite, as proven not by their words and protestations, but by their actions.

You see how this works, then. The question we’re dealing with, is not bigotry per se, but the principles and beliefs upon which each side’s bigotry is founded.

I hope I have provided some clarity. As for myself, I happily admit to being bigoted. And I will take the bigotry of the left over that of the right every second of every minute of every day.

Time for Bernie and Liz to come together

I’m going to keep this one short and very much to the point.

It’s time for a dual ticket.
It is time, I believe, for two Democratic candidates to come together and campaign as a president/Vice-President combination. Those candidates are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Liz and Bernie would need to reach an agreement with Bernie at the top of the ticket, I think, with Elizabeth primed to succeed him. I base this strictly on Bernie’s age.
Yeah, I know campaigning as a pre-set ticket ‘just isn’t done,’ but it’s time to change that. A fully-formed ticket would remove the Bernie vs Liz dilemma going into into primaries.  I think that if they came together like this, a Sanders/Warren duo would set up a powerful vision of continuity for America. It would could unite the supporters of each, and the entire progressive movement. I don’t think Trump and his corrupt Republican party could stand against it.

Could it backfire?  Possible. But here’s the thing. We have reached the point, in terms of a crumbling environment and insane level of wealth distribution  that the only way we can save both the planet and our society is with aggressive, unified action. Any move toward centrism is doomed to be too little, to slow and too late.

 

Twiddling Politics While Time Runs Out

THIS ELECTION MUST BE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT OR NOTHING ELSE MATTERS
I watched Tuesday night’s debate in real time. Good stuff. Came away thinking Warren-Buttigieg.
I didn’t watch Wednesday night’s debate until last night. Absolutely disaster.
Came away thinking Biden is past his time. His checkered past doesn’t help. His stuttering a couple of times didn’t bother me. His mind was sending information to his mouth faster than his mouth could organize it and spit it out. It happens with a lot of people. Trust me on this. It’s sort of an area of expertise.
Harris didn’t help herself at all. Gabbard was impressive, as was Gillibrand. But as a group they primarily did a good job of showing Trump how to go after any one of them. Pool of little sharks in a frenzy, showing the megashark how to eat them. He might not even need the Russians.

Now I’m thinking Warren-Inslee. Or Sanders-Inslee. Jay Inslee was the ONLY candidate out of the twenty who passionately maintained that the environment MUST BE the no. 1 priority. Otherwise nothing else counts. He came back to it at every opportunity, and he is absolutely right. A Vice-President is seldom used well. Jay Inslee as VP could be the sledge-hammer Warren will need to beat climate-positive change into heads around the world.

Yang’s $1000 a month isn’t well-thought-out. As an entrepreneur, he ought to know that the first result of that will be corporations jumping at the opportunity to lower their pay scales “…because people already have this $1000 monthly coming in.” That, as Baretta would say, is ‘da name a ‘dat tune.
NEVER expect a corporation to do the right thing.

I loved DeBlasio preaching to tax the hell out of the wealthy. I imagine the wealthy are already figuring it would be worth a couple of billion dollars to buy away enough of his voters to make it academic.

Nobody else made a big impression on me, one way or the other. But you can take Jay Inslee’s passion about the climate change issue to Baretta’s bank. The clock is ticking on that one, and we only have, maybe, ten years before it is simply too late. I forget whether it was Yang or Castro said we’re already ten years too late and implied that therefore it’s all over. If we think that way, we might as well all light up our bbq’s, sit in our gas guzzlers with the motor running while we eat, and wait to die. That is pointless.
And that’s the reason we all probably WILL just do the above. Because America MUST take the lead on this, but our system is geared against that kind of unity on the part of our politicians and our populace. We had to almost lose WWII before we even got our asses in gear to fight it.

Americans will continue to play political games while hoping that Trump is right about there being no environmental crises. That is a malaise that stretches across both party lines, and it is virtually a death warrant for our children and their children, as well as most life on the planet. It is what it is. But those of us who see it, have to do our damndest to wake people up. For the sake of my children and grandchildren, your children and grandchildren; For the sake of every living thing on this planet that we’re killing, I will keep harping, keep sending out the message. 

Warren/Inslee for me. 

Joe Biden? I don’t think so

Dems and progressive Americans need to move on from Biden. With him, they are trying to beat Trump with a man who is, at best, a C+ centrist. He promises too much “business as usual,” minus only the worst of Trump. He is weak on environment. He will fail to take/support the serious steps needed to forestall an environmental Armageddon. He is either tolerant of white supremacists, or a coatroom supporter. He is either uninclined or afraid to ruffle the feathers of the wealthy oligarchs. The more we hear from him, the more we learn about him, the stronger grows my belief that while he is not a ‘bad’ guy, he is certainly no beacon of progress. Underlining perhaps all of the above, the more we see of Joe, the more we realize he is no intellectual, no great thinker. He is the kind of man who may be qualified to follow the lead established by such a person, but not qualified to be such a one.

Joe Biden is in no way fit to lead America down the path it must follow post-Trump. With Joe Biden as President, America will spend four or eight years failing to gather any momentum on environmental salvation (if that is even possible at this point), equal rights, the destruction of the middle class, or beating back the surge of racists and extreme religious cultists empowered by Trump. He was effective as Barack Obama’s Sancho. He is, himself, no Don Quixote.

Joe Biden offers America neither a Kennedy nor a Johnson, an FDR nor an Obama. He represents a centrist compromise that tends to teeter toward the right. His history is too shady with too many questionable comments and stances, and “…no longer that person” goes only so far. He is in no way the strong progressive leader our country needs at this point in history.