All posts by Steve Stern

The Fighting Oligarchy Tour

No category

A lot of people were ready for this years ago, but it kept getting swept under the rug. More people are listening now than ever before. Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist,

I heard that someone was flying a plane with a banner that said This is Trump country… It sure don’t look like it today. I don’t think this is Trump country. This is our country. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez just before her speech in Folsom, California.

I’m gonna be honest: I did not have Bernie Sanders introducing Clairo at Coachella on my 2025 bingo card. Lexi Williams in msn which – according to itself – is a A general-purpose Web portal from Microsoft that includes news, sports and entertainment as well as the Bing search engine.

Out in the West – and more in the red Republican West of Idaho and Bakersfield than the blue West of the Coast – something is happening that I have never seen in my lifetime: two politicians, neither of whom is currently running for office, are drawing huge crowds on a protest tour. The tour is called “Fighting Oligarchy” and, not surprisingly to me, given the name, one of the politicians is Senator Bernie Sanders. Still, I am somewhat surprised that Bernie is not alone; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also on the ticket.

Bernie – as he is known to his followers, if followers is the right word – is 83 and clearly will not run again, but AOC as she is known to her followers, is looking at a higher office and just as clearly as Bernie isn’t running, I’m sure AOC is running…for something and this is her introduction to the nation, especially the red parts of it. Running or not, Bernie and AOC are drawing huge crowds in red territory, such as Boise, Salt Lake City, and Bakersfield, but are receiving very little attention in the eastern mainstream media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

And this is the problem, the mainstream media is owned and controlled by people who brought us the oligarchy in the first place. Most of them are rich almost beyond comprehension, and they want to stay that way. The Ochs-Sulzberger family holds a controlling interest in The New York Times worth more than $8 billion, with a significant portion of the remaining shares owned by Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire worth about $88 billion. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong, who is worth approximately $5.5 billion.

We – I’m going to go with Democratic Socialists because that’s how Bernie and AOC most identify themselves – Democratic Socialists have a lot of common goals with the Ochs-Sulzberger family, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and even Jeff Bezos, starting with equal rights for everybody, or as the Trump administration has phrased equality, DEI. Still, they differ from them in policies that will cost them money or diminish their power and influence, such as raising the tax rate on the ultra-rich, implementing a minimum wage that people can live on, or expanding Medicare to include everybody. They are not reporting on the Fighting Oligarchy tour because they are The Oligarchy.

I’ve listened to AOC’s speeches at Folsom and Boseman, Montana, and came away energized. Here is a sample of AOC on the stump.

Greenland And Slanting The Truth

Politics

Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down, they are truly down. Joseph McCarthy, communist hunter and US senator, circa 1950

I do not think the mainstream press is equipped or capable of covering ideological white nationalists and eugenicists as such, or even capable of noting that this is what they are. it is related to the wide belief that racism is simply a matter of manners. ‪jamelle‬ ‪(at)jamellebouie.net‬ The real jbouie. Columnist for the New York Times Opinion section. Co-host of the Unclear and Present Danger podcast. b-boy-bouiebaisse on TikTok. National program director of the CHUM Group.

When I was a freshman in college, sometime around the end of 1957, we were shown a propaganda movie made by HUAC as part of our orientation package. HUAC stands for the House Un-American Activities Committee, and, according to the Harry S. Truman Library, it was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and rebel activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and organizations suspected of having Communist ties. Citizens suspected of having ties to the communist party would be tried in a court of law.

The power that HUAC had, and the fear that power generated, seems absurd now – or it did, six months ago, anyway – but 1957 was a different time. Sometime in the thirties, we – well, some of us anyway – became obsessed with fighting Godless Communism, which was a threat, or a perceived threat anyway, to our national religion, Capitalism. 1957, when I saw the HUAC movie which was required part of Freshman Orientation, was four years after Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, embarrassed himself and the country as the Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Government Operations Committee, whatever the hell that means, and I thought – as I remember it, we all thought – that the going-after commies hysteria had passed.

As an aside, I knew HUAC was a house committee, and I knew that McCarthy was a Senator, but somehow, over the last 68 years, I’ve connected them in my psyche. But they were not connected, and the December 1954 censure of McCarthy by the Senate did not slow down the craziness of HUAC. End aside.

All that I remember about HUAC’s movie was how ridiculously exaggerated it was, and while I haven’t thought about that movie in years – probably 65 years – I was reminded of it by another ridiculously exaggerated movie that I just saw on FOX. Apparently, it was commissioned by President Trump to promote his Greenland adventure.

I ended up at FOX because I got angry at the reporting of the Wisconsin Supreme Court fight in the New York Times and Washington Post. I’m not angry that we won, I’m very happy about that, it’s my side that won after all. I’m angry at the biased reporting. I want my reporting to be unbiased and neutral (fair and balanced, if you will). Otherwise, I can’t trust it and can’t rely on it.

But, not surprisingly, FOX way outdid the New York Times in terms of craziness. They didn’t bother with the Wisconsin Supreme Court fight, choosing instead to feature the afore mentioned movie (displayed on Trump’s X account to aswage the doubts that this is real).

(The end of this post has been changed as the video that was originally posted here was preventing the post from loading properly).

Happy Spring

No category

Wow, having my hand in a cast – even a u-shaped pseudo-cast? – was more constricting than I expected. And so was the cold weather. But yesterday, I went to my hand doctor, who said my bone was healing faster than expected and removed the cast. When I was young, I used to be a fast healer, but it has been a long time since anybody told me that. It feels liberating.

Next week, I’m going to the eye surgeon for the cataract – s? – removed from my left eye and replaced with a silicon lens. Life is already looking better; at the end of next week, it should be looking better and brighter.

Trump Is Destorying the Country We So Love…But First

No category

Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do…Go back to your command and try to think what we are going to do ourselves instead of what Lee is going to do. General U. S. Grant (on the second day of The Battle of the Wilderness [I think]).

We want to hear what the plans are — are we just going to be sitting on our behinds, talking a lot? Or are we actually going to be doing something? Leanna Terrell, a 75-year-old retired Navy intelligence officer 

You are meant to feel powerless. That is what a strongman wants: to make you feel as if nothing can stop the takeover of your country. Ben Rhodes is a contributing writer for the New York Times Opinion.

Fox News and the right wing would have you believe that these American values are something out of The Communist Manifesto. But let me tell you, Fox News, I don’t believe in healthcare, labor, and human rights because I’m a Marxist. I believe it because I was a waitress. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The But First part is my poor, broken hand. I am now wearing a half cast – which I guess is technically called a splint – that was given to me by the hand doctor at PAMF. BTW, PAMF’s real name is Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and it is part of Sutter Health, one of the three major groups that dominate medical care in our area (medicine and eldercare are very profitable). My hand and arm are wrapped in bandages and covered with what we used to call an Ace Bandage. Everything around my left hand, arm, and shoulder hurts, and it is hard for me to do almost anything more than watch TV or my computer monitor. I am not what I would call fine. (When I wrote this, it was true, but it no longer is; I feel much better.)

Still, much of why I’m not fine is because of President Trump. I knew he was going to be disruptive and would do a lot of damage; he has plans, such as eliminating DEI, that I think will hurt our country. What I didn’t expect was for Trump to be so mean to so many people. It didn’t occur to me that hurting random people was his goal. I thought it was only settling old, real or imagined, grievances. I didn’t expect The President of the United States to be such an asshole.

As an aside, what a miserable, petty, human being he must be, even though he won the presidency. And he did win the presidency, which raises a question in my mind: If Trump is so inept, and I think he is, how inept are the Democrats who lost to him? What are we doing wrong? End aside.

I’ve been going through the five stages of grief over the Presidential Election: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, now, acceptance that Trump won. He even won the popular vote this time. I think he won because his understanding of the United States – paradoxically, especially the discontent – is closer to reality than what the Democratic establishment sees as reality. Trump sees that the government clearly doesn’t work for most people. I watched parts of Trump’s rallies, and he doesn’t talk to the crowd; he talks with the crowd, he dances with it, and he listens to it. I don’t want to give the impression that he will actually do anything. He won’t; he probably can’t. But he didn’t get elected for what he is actually going to do; he was elected for what he said he would do.

I think the Democratic establishment is reality-blind. And why shouldn’t it be? Most of its money – and don’t forget that in Washington, money equals influence – comes from well-read, socially concerned people who want to do good without hurting themselves. Unfortunately, that makes it very hard to pass laws like a minimum wage that reflects the cost of living or free medical care. I am still a Democrat; being a Democrat is rooted in my ancestral humus and it’s not my choice. Still, I think that most of the current Democratic lawmakers are not capable of bringing the much-needed change.

To be continued…

Well, That Was Unexpected

No category

To keep a short story short, yesterday, I slipped on our stairs while taking out the garbage. Sequoia Hospital’s Emergency Department Patient Discharge papers say that I have minor hand and elbow injuries, including a broken metacarpal. I had the garbage bag strap wrapped around my hand, and it tried to remove the skin from the back of my hand. The stairs did a pretty good job of removing skin from my elbow.

When I got to the hospital, the hospital x-rayed my hand and elbow, cleaned up the blood – on my hand and elbow only, Michele got the blood out of my jeans and sweater – glued the skin flap back down, put a splint on me, patted me on the popo, and sent me home.

Tomorrow, I am going to the hand specialist, and I expect to have an interesting scar.

Michele provided the documentation and reminded me five times to warn you, dear reader, not to scroll down if gore makes you uncomfortable.