Category Archives: Politics

The Late Fall of the Trump Administration

Politics

THE OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS. I WON THE ELECTION, GOT 71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES. BAD THINGS HAPPENED WHICH OUR OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE. NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WERE SENT TO PEOPLE WHO NEVER ASKED FOR THEM! A Tweet by Donald J. Trump@ realDonaldTrump45th President of the United States of America Washington, DC Vote.DonaldJTrump.com

I’ve been thinking so much of @IlhanMN. Trump made Minnesota explicitly about HER. Said he’d win because of her. Many Dems in DC believed him, & marginalized her. That burden wasn’t fair, but she took on the challenge anyway. She won. Credit and respect her. @RashidaTlaib too. A Tweet by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC US House candidate, NY-14US Representative, NY-14 (BX & Queens). In a modern, moral, & wealthy society, no American should be too poor to live. 100% People-Funded, no lobbyist $, She/her.Bronx + Queens, NYC ocasiocortez.com

Exhale. After the celebrations, I feel like we should all light sage at the same time, reset the country’s energy & set new intentions? Feeling some peace at last, drinking hot chai, listening to Nina on vinyl. A Tweet by Ayanna Pressley @AyannaPressley US House candidate, MA-7Your Congresswoman. Proudly representing the MA 7th. Here to break concrete ceilings & shake the table. Personal account. She/hers. #ChangeCantWait Dorchester, MA ayannapressley.com/volunteer Born February 3

Tump says he is willing to “consider” a peaceful transfer of power “under some conditions” according to @FoxNews. Here are our conditions: Get the fuck out of the White House! A peaceful transfer is not negotiable. No one cares what your conditions are. #Election2020 Cenk Uygur @cenkuygur Host of @TheYoungTurks the largest online news show in the world. Founder & CEO of @TYT. Watch #TYTLive weeknights at 6pm eastern http://tyt.com/live Los Angeles tyt.com/cenk

The election is over and this moment has seemed so long in coming, in this strange year that, now that Joesph Biden is the President-elect, I’m in a little bit of shock – sort of like a duck hit on the head with a rubber mallet – but it is a happy shock. A couple of weeks ago, I asked my presidential expert, Ed Cooney, what would happen if Biden were elected but Trump refused to go and Ed said, “He has no choice, he will not be president after January 20th, 2021”. What I should have expected but didn’t is that the world followed suit once Biden was declared the winner. Counter-intuitively, it isn’t up to Trump, it is up to almost everybody who isn’t Trump; the deep state, the media – including Fox – the Secret Service, the police, even ICE. Trump can say whatever he wants, he can rage against the system as much as he wants, but the world – well, the world except for Putin, I guess – has agreed that Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States.

Thoughts On a Worthless Wall

Americana, Politics

Stephen, Over the past week, 1,241,340 American patriots, like you, have signed petitions DEMANDING Democrats put America first and BUILD THE WALL…That’s why I am launching the most important membership program ever – the OFFICIAL BUILD THE WALL MEMBERSHIP.  email from Trump asking for money for his wall.

As I write this, our government is slowly shutting down because President Trump can’t get his border wall included in the budget. It reminded me of the hour, or so, Michele and I spent looking at a long-abandoned Wall. One of the most expensive walls ever built, in fact. All along the French side of what used to be the most protected border in the world, are the remains of a series of interrelated forts, the infamous Maginot Line.  On one of our trips across that border when we were in the Rhineland last summer, we ran into a small museum in one of those old forts.

I’d read of the Maginot Line every time I read a book on World War II but I was unprepared for how competent – and competent is not quite the right word, maybe beautifully conceived and professionally built – it was. Everything was thought of, from bathrooms to fresh air, from periscopes to overlapping fields of fire. And it was, in the end, worthless. In terms of both National Resources that could have been spent much better, and the National Attention which was distracted, it was hugely expensive, and, it was worthless.  

 

Wow, the coin has two left sides

Americana, Politics

Yesterday, on Facebook, almost every post that isn’t about cute animals is about Mattis and what a disaster his quitting is. Over at Twitter, everybody I follow thinks it is great, well, good.

A Facebook sample: Syria yesterday, Afghanistan today. No planning. No collaboration within admin. I think our fake president is an imminent threat to our safety. He is incapable of honoring his oath to protect the country.

A Twitter sample I’m confused as to why Mattis has been the recipient of so much love– he has been a willing participant in all of Trump’s insane racist bullshit and now he’s resigning because he wants to continue to carpet bomb civilians across the middle east forever.

Another Twitter sample: The hysterical reaction to the decision to withdraw troops from Syria is astonishing & shows just how attached to war some are. Lindsey Graham & others want us to continue our regime change war in Syria and to go to war with Iran. That’s why they’re so upset.

I’m with the Twitter group. We’ve been at these wars for 17 years. Does anybody really think we are going to change these countries in the next year? in the next five years? Yeah, we’re screwing the Kurds, but, realistically, whenever we leave we are going to end up screwing them. Maybe the Taliban will beat the Northern Alliance but can’t we console ourselves with the fact that we stirred up the Taliban, to fight the Northern Alliance, in the first place so they can’t be entirely evil. 

My preference is that Obama would have gotten us out in his, careful, thoughtful, way.  I know that Trump wants to get out in his usual, incompetent,  petulant, way and quite possibly he only wants to get out to get money for his stupid wall. I also want to acknowledge that this is no way to treat our friends and allies. Somebody on Facebook said that our allies will think they can’t trust us, well, as long as Trump is President, they can’t and the sooner they learn that, the better. Still, we can’t lay that entirely on Trump, after all, it was Henry Kissinger who said: “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests” and it my opinion staying in an endless war in Afghanistan or Syria is not in our interest. 

 

 

The Swamp Is Deeper Than We Were Led to Believe

Politics

Whoah – looks like our Congressional orientation had a lot more lobbyists than we thought. This is not okay. Lobbyists are not impartial – they are employed to influence legislation. 60+ incoming members were listening to panelists without knowing which were hired lobbyists. 

I imagined how difficult it must have been for Obama to keep his beliefs in face of the onslaught from the  Washington establishment who were saying, to quote the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, when he addressed the new members of Congress: “You guys are way over your head, you don’t know how the game is played.”. Obama was alone and there were experts everywhere, but Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are not alone, they have teamed up, they support each other Tweeting things like I am so incredibly proud of And I of you. Thank you for living out loud, for sparking a movement, inspiring a generation; leading the charge on a #GreenNewDeal as well as Tweeting about the depth of the swamp. It is exciting that the biggest agents for change seem to be four young women. They seem to be already starting to drain the swamp and they haven’t even taken office. Maybe the swamp will actually get drained after all.

Daily Reminder that anytime a conservative tries to lecture us about who “knows what they’re talking about” and who doesn’t, they are not operating honestly, and engaged in a project to protect their agenda and gaslight the nation. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 

Lost and Befuddled in Twitterland

Americana, Politics

I’ve been happily Tweeting and retweeting expecting the tweets to show up on Facebook and I just found out a little while ago, that Facebook changed its Operating System and part of that change stopped Twitter from automatically posting to Facebook. So now they are not being posted and I’m not sure that there is a manual override. I’m not as worried about my stuff as I am about a series of retweets from Rashida Tlaib  @RashidaTlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar @IlhanMN, all of which amount to a fascinating class on what Congress is really like. Here are a couple of samples without my retweet comments.

Each member of Congress gets around $1.2 million (give or take a bit) for their entire operating budget. That’s supposed to cover all salaries (DC and district), rents for district offices, travel home, tech devices, services, contracts, etc. Members decide how it’s all spent. 

Right now Freshman members of Congress are at a “Bipartisan” orientation w/ briefings on issues. Invited panelists offer insights to inform new Congressmembers‘ views as they prepare to legislate. # of Corporate CEOs we’ve listened to here: 4 # of Labor leaders: 0  

Gary Cohen, former CEO Goldman Sachs addressing new members of Congress today: “You guys are way over your head, you don’t know how the game is played.” No Gary, YOU don’t know what’s coming – a revolutionary Congress that puts people over profits.  @RashidaTlaib

One tweet thread that I’m having a hard time finding is a thread on how poorly the Congressional worker bees are paid. The result is that there are two kinds of people who are hired – and, yeah, I know, there are exceptions – people who are not very good and people who are good and are only taking the job to get experience that they can spin into a job as a Lobbyist. Another thing I was surprised to find out is that most interns don’t get paid, in the house only eight Republicans and four Democrats pay their interns – how much I don’t know – but it does raise the question of how much can we trust a pro-labor Congressperson who doesn’t pay a living wage. This means that only interns who can afford to do the job are people whose parents are rich enough to support them while they aren’t getting paid thus reinforcing the inbred ruling class. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after a post that said something along the lines of Time to walk the walk is going to pay her interns $15 per hour.