It is too bad the delicious irony of the up-coming fall elections is lost on the majority of Iowa's registered voters.
If polls are to believed Iowans, like Americans everywhere, are in an anti-incumbent, throw the rascals out mood. Yet if the Des Moines Register's Iowa poll is to be believed Iowans are ready and willing to return Republican Charles Grassley to the US Senate. Grassley is the consummate professional politician admitting in a viral Internet video that he has in fact suckled at the public's breast nearly all his adult life. Yet every six years the ultimate Washington insider since 1976 transforms himself into the Washington outsider while accepting the generous donations of pro-Republican lobbyists.
Of course Iowa Democratic Party chairman Michael Kieran, after a long and laborious search, has done boosted Grassley's chances by resurrecting the political career of the feckless Roxanne Conlin, she of 1980s Tax-Ann fame. To date neither Iowa's Green Party or Socialist Workers' Party or Tea Party activists of a libertarian bent have announced any candidates for US Senate. Iowa's voters are left with the usual choice between a Tweedle-Dee Democrat and a Tweedle-Dum Republican.
Paraphrasing Jimmy Carter's apt observation that America deserves government as good as its people from where I sit we are a very sorry lot indeed.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Response to op-ed "Barack Obama, I Want a Divorce"
Response to op-ed "Barack Obama, I Want a Divorce", by Clancy Sigal posted March 20, 2010 at Alternet.org.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, haw...We are truly fucked.
Dumbass leftists, progressives, liberals, Greens or what have you who stand in opposition to the corporatist evil personified in today's Republican Party, like the Judean rebels squabbling among themselves when Titus was at the gates of Jerusalem, are prepared to commit elective hari-kari in the fall and hand control of the federal legislative branch back to a cadre of anti-government used car salesmen.
Boy, that'll teach'em.
Look at the polls, dumbasses. In California the corrupt Republican eBay ex-CEO Meg Whitman has pulled even or ahead of Jerry Brown, née Governor Moonbeam, in the race for the governorship. Generic polls show Republicans in many competitive races leading or tied with incumbent Democrats http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2010/03/polls-show-gop-gaining-in-election-year.html.
And yet the ideologically pure left is ready, willing and able, in the name of ideological purity, to hand Congress to these Reagan-worshiping, corporate ass-kissers. I do not understand the left's suicidal tendencies.
I mean, sure I'm as fed up with Democratic sell outs as much as the next guy. But I fear the Republican used car salesmen even more. The used car salesmen of the GOP are a threat to our democracy. The Republican used car salesmen are a danger to the republic! And yet the small-d democrats of the ideologically pure left are ready to hand the keys to the US Capitol over to Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.
That's really fucking smart.
That'll solve everything! Look, leftist dumbasses, if you intend on running insurgent third-party candidates in why not do so in "safe" Republican US Congressional districts? Quite running spoiler candidates in close Congressional and Senate races. What the fuck does that prove? Your leftist shit don't stink?
I'll take the lesser of two evils any day. Sorry.
To me it only makes sense to kill, to destroy, to annihilate the great evil first then pick off the lesser evil at one's leisure. Evidently that logic doesn't register with America's ideologically pure left.
In spite of the polls now there is a real opportunity to irrevocably hurt the Republican Party in the fall elections. What Greens or Socialist Workers or whatever must do is support and vote for progressive Democrats in primary challenges in "safe" Democratic district and take on reactionary Republicans head-on in "safe" Republican US Congressional districts where the establishment Democratic Party usually offers only token resistance.
But the usually knee-jerk leftist reaction is: "Holy shit! Dennis Kucinich voted for the pro-corporate HCB! Let's get a real progressive in there." So the Greens or some other leftist outfit runs a spoiler candidate and when a used car salesman of a Republican ousts Kucinich we're all wondering how that could happen.
Unfortunately since the ideologically pure left refuses to pull its head out its ass the only thing I can do is hold my nose and vote Democratic.
Like I always say, paraphrasing Jimmy Carter, America deserves government as good as its people. And from my perspective we're one sorry lot.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, haw...We are truly fucked.
Dumbass leftists, progressives, liberals, Greens or what have you who stand in opposition to the corporatist evil personified in today's Republican Party, like the Judean rebels squabbling among themselves when Titus was at the gates of Jerusalem, are prepared to commit elective hari-kari in the fall and hand control of the federal legislative branch back to a cadre of anti-government used car salesmen.
Boy, that'll teach'em.
Look at the polls, dumbasses. In California the corrupt Republican eBay ex-CEO Meg Whitman has pulled even or ahead of Jerry Brown, née Governor Moonbeam, in the race for the governorship. Generic polls show Republicans in many competitive races leading or tied with incumbent Democrats http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2010/03/polls-show-gop-gaining-in-election-year.html.
And yet the ideologically pure left is ready, willing and able, in the name of ideological purity, to hand Congress to these Reagan-worshiping, corporate ass-kissers. I do not understand the left's suicidal tendencies.
I mean, sure I'm as fed up with Democratic sell outs as much as the next guy. But I fear the Republican used car salesmen even more. The used car salesmen of the GOP are a threat to our democracy. The Republican used car salesmen are a danger to the republic! And yet the small-d democrats of the ideologically pure left are ready to hand the keys to the US Capitol over to Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.
That's really fucking smart.
That'll solve everything! Look, leftist dumbasses, if you intend on running insurgent third-party candidates in why not do so in "safe" Republican US Congressional districts? Quite running spoiler candidates in close Congressional and Senate races. What the fuck does that prove? Your leftist shit don't stink?
I'll take the lesser of two evils any day. Sorry.
To me it only makes sense to kill, to destroy, to annihilate the great evil first then pick off the lesser evil at one's leisure. Evidently that logic doesn't register with America's ideologically pure left.
In spite of the polls now there is a real opportunity to irrevocably hurt the Republican Party in the fall elections. What Greens or Socialist Workers or whatever must do is support and vote for progressive Democrats in primary challenges in "safe" Democratic district and take on reactionary Republicans head-on in "safe" Republican US Congressional districts where the establishment Democratic Party usually offers only token resistance.
But the usually knee-jerk leftist reaction is: "Holy shit! Dennis Kucinich voted for the pro-corporate HCB! Let's get a real progressive in there." So the Greens or some other leftist outfit runs a spoiler candidate and when a used car salesman of a Republican ousts Kucinich we're all wondering how that could happen.
Unfortunately since the ideologically pure left refuses to pull its head out its ass the only thing I can do is hold my nose and vote Democratic.
Like I always say, paraphrasing Jimmy Carter, America deserves government as good as its people. And from my perspective we're one sorry lot.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Trento’s Take: Fox News Can’t Upset Murdoch’s Saudi Prince
Last month I appeared on Fox News Network’s morning show, Fox and Friends, to talk about airline security. Normally such appearances end up as clips on the Fox News Web site. Granted, the Steve Doocy interview was hardly groundbreaking, but that is seldom a criterion for feeding the beast that is a major cable network news Web site. Curiously, I was quoted in a written piece on the site that got a fair amount of pick-up, but no video.
It was not until a few days later that I learned what may have been behind the absence of a video clip on the Web site. I had said to Doocy that Saudi Arabian money was still financing Al Qaeda. Doocy did not react to my comment. But ten days later I learned that Fox’s parent company, News Corporation, was, at the time of my interview, negotiating with a Saudi prince to vastly increase his stake in the company.
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It was not until a few days later that I learned what may have been behind the absence of a video clip on the Web site. I had said to Doocy that Saudi Arabian money was still financing Al Qaeda. Doocy did not react to my comment. But ten days later I learned that Fox’s parent company, News Corporation, was, at the time of my interview, negotiating with a Saudi prince to vastly increase his stake in the company.
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Saturday, February 13, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Monday, February 08, 2010
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Monday, February 01, 2010
Move Your Politicians
In the Nineteenth Century populism was characterized by first anger and then legislative action against banks, monopolies and the railroads. Among the leaders of the populist movement were Democrat William Jennings Bryan, socialist Eugene V. Debs and Republicans Robert La Follette and Theodore Roosevelt.
The true evil genius of today's banksters, monopolists and investors is that through organizations they bank roll, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, The Cato Institute and so on, and especially their control of the "mainstream media" featuring right wing mouthpieces like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh populism has been turned on its head. Through decades of propaganda, beginning as far back as the Nineteen Fifties, working class resentment at the inherent unfairness and inequality of the capitalist system has been refocused and reframed on the one institution which has the power to control the excesses of Wall Street, the federal government.
Moving accounts from one of the "too big to fail" maga banks into community banks and local credit unions will send a message to Wall Street, especially if the Wall Street investors see their profit margins decline. However this will be only a temporary palliative for the banksters will merely alter their method of doing business for a time to recapture business lost to CUs and small community banks, then it will be back to business as usual.
The reason governments exist at all is to control the economy. This government has shirked that responsibility for far too long.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The true evil genius of today's banksters, monopolists and investors is that through organizations they bank roll, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, The Cato Institute and so on, and especially their control of the "mainstream media" featuring right wing mouthpieces like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh populism has been turned on its head. Through decades of propaganda, beginning as far back as the Nineteen Fifties, working class resentment at the inherent unfairness and inequality of the capitalist system has been refocused and reframed on the one institution which has the power to control the excesses of Wall Street, the federal government.
Moving accounts from one of the "too big to fail" maga banks into community banks and local credit unions will send a message to Wall Street, especially if the Wall Street investors see their profit margins decline. However this will be only a temporary palliative for the banksters will merely alter their method of doing business for a time to recapture business lost to CUs and small community banks, then it will be back to business as usual.
The reason governments exist at all is to control the economy. This government has shirked that responsibility for far too long.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Friday, January 29, 2010
New Osama Bin Laden Tape: Blasts US For Climate Change
You know, the guy's right that the US and the rest of the industrial nations are responsible for global warming.
That being said, however, Osama's latests statement feeds right into the teabaggers' paranoid and xenophobic feed-back loop that global warming is a hoax dreamed up by Al Gore to fleece patriotic Americans out of their hard-earned money.
And this many be paranoid on my part but I'm beginning to think Osama, al Qaida, the Saudi royal family and the Republican Party are all part of a conspiracy to keep the world hooked on oil.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Consortiumnews.com
Consortiumnews.com
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Highlights:
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Highlights:
From Nixon’s debacle, the Republicans learned important lessons, including their need to build a media infrastructure of their own to protect future Republican presidents from “another Watergate.” Nixon’s former Treasury Secretary Bill Simon took the lead in pulling together wealthy conservatives to invest in right-wing media and think tanks. [For details, see Lost History.]
The Left extracted an opposite lesson from Watergate. Feeling a false confidence that the mainstream news media would continue performing a watchdog role, progressives mostly dismantled what had been a thriving “underground” media of newspapers, magazines and radio stations, which had grown up amid the youthful opposition to the Vietnam War. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Left’s Media Miscalculation.”]
In the 1980s, the American Left followed a different path, ignoring the importance of having a media infrastructure that could get out its message, instead favoring vague concepts like “organizing” and “going back to the roots.” The Left embraced the bumper-sticker slogan, “think globally, act locally,” and abandoned the front lines of Washington's information wars..
What money the Left did spend on national politics was devoted heavily to “campaign finance reform,” pushing for laws and regulations that supposedly would limit special-interest donations given to political parties and candidates. While well intentioned, the logical flaw of this approach was that it limited what could be spent by politicians on campaigns but ignored the Right’s unrestricted – and unmatched – investment in media.
After Bush prevailed, Nader and his followers refused to accept any blame for the outcome, claiming instead that it was Gore’s fault for not winning his home state of Tennessee, or having a lousy recount strategy, or any number of other excuses.
It had become a trademark of the Left’s purists to almost never take responsibility for anything, but rather to assume the role of critic. They would typically find fault with whatever compromise the pragmatists judged necessary while pretending that the American people were ready to rally to the banner of radical change if only the Democrats would blow the bugle.
The reality was that many middle- and working-class Americans were now identifying with the Right’s anti-government “populism” -- as promoted by the pervasive right-wing media -- not with the Left’s unheard explanations for why government intervention was needed to address social ills.
Ironically, Ralph Nader, whose candidacy helped make the Roberts and Alito appointments possible, stepped forward to denounce the ruling, saying it “shreds the fabric of our already weakened democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process.”
Nader’s solution was to propose a constitutional amendment that would “prevent corporate campaign contributions from commercializing our elections and drowning out the civic and political voices and values of citizens and voters.” However, Nader presented no practical way for such a constitutional amendment to be enacted.
Another irony of the expanding power of corporate money is that it will surely be disguised in “populist” garments meant to deceive simpleminded Americans who will think they are joining a movement to free the Republic from the threat of Big Government, when they will actually be handing the Republic over to corporate titans, including some fronting for foreign money.
And to top off this past week, Air America – after many stop-and-go moments – finally came crashing to earth, declaring bankruptcy and closing up shop.
Its demise was interpreted by some liberal pundits as a sign that progressives shouldn’t bother to invest in talk radio because progressives supposedly are too nuanced in their viewpoints, while talk radio is all about simplistic bombast.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Bank Shot: Independents And Dem Base Still Aligned In Anger
So the good people of Massachusetts have elected a white, suburban, coordinator class conservative who, remarkably enough, looks a little bit...no a lot...like Mitt Romney.Oh, but Scott Brown's not just another "professional" politician! He drives a pick up!
The reactionary right controls the media, with the exception of the Internet and they want to get their hands on it, so they control the message. Simple as that.
You can rant and rave about corporate Democrats and third parties all you want, it ain't gonna change a thing. The left, or whatever stands for the left in this country, has let the forces of reaction control the message. Writes Robert Perry:
"One of the Left’s favorite slogans became “think globally, act locally.” In practice, that meant favoring local activism (such as direct philanthropic spending on projects like feeding the poor or buying up endangered wetlands) over national media (i.e. building the kind of informational infrastructure that the Right had).
"So, it was not so much that the Left lost the “war of ideas” to the Right over the past three decades; it was more that the Left abandoned the battlefield.
Consortium
The modern Republican Party is a party of used car salesmen with unlimited access to the media and an sleep-walking electorate with the attention span of a mosquito. How else can a cadre of slick, professional politicians recast themselves every couple of years as "Washington outsiders?"
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The reactionary right controls the media, with the exception of the Internet and they want to get their hands on it, so they control the message. Simple as that.
You can rant and rave about corporate Democrats and third parties all you want, it ain't gonna change a thing. The left, or whatever stands for the left in this country, has let the forces of reaction control the message. Writes Robert Perry:
"One of the Left’s favorite slogans became “think globally, act locally.” In practice, that meant favoring local activism (such as direct philanthropic spending on projects like feeding the poor or buying up endangered wetlands) over national media (i.e. building the kind of informational infrastructure that the Right had).
"So, it was not so much that the Left lost the “war of ideas” to the Right over the past three decades; it was more that the Left abandoned the battlefield.
Consortium
The modern Republican Party is a party of used car salesmen with unlimited access to the media and an sleep-walking electorate with the attention span of a mosquito. How else can a cadre of slick, professional politicians recast themselves every couple of years as "Washington outsiders?"
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Posted this at Alternet.org
While money is the primary influence on the conduct of both major parties I have come up with a shorthand definition to distinguish between them: Democrats are systems managers, Republican used car salesmen.
The Coakley-Brown match up in Massachusetts, even though both candidates are attorneys, illustrates this nicely.
Scott Brown is running, as nearly every Republican has since 1980, as a Washington, D.C. outsider and champion of smaller government, i.e. cut welfare for the poor and cut taxes for the rich. Never mind that as a lieutenant-colonel in the Massachusetts Nation Guard Brown's sucked off Uncle Sam's tit for thirty years, knowing, in this day and age of the All Volunteer Force our soldiers and Marines and National Guardsmen are sacrosanct heroes whose asses the rest of us must kiss with great regularity, I'll get some flack for even entertaining this thought.
And even though Brown maintains a law practice focusing on divorce and adoptions, for most of his adult life, when he wasn't collecting a US Treasury check for one-weekend a month and three weeks a year with the Guard, he has been since 1992 a professional politician. Yet he sells himself as some one untainted by big money politics. Absolute bullshit which the teabaggers are eating up with gusto as they have since 1980. Some people never get it.
Coakley, on the other hand, is a long time law-and-order Democrat, a prosecutor since 1982. She's the kind of competent systems manager, i.e. coordinator, the establishment Democratic Party elders love so much these days. Intelligent, bland and a good administrator, Coakley is the kind of politician who would be good at running a state or federal agency, as she does in her capacity as Massachusetts Attorney General.
So what this election boils down to is, colorless though competent jurist versus a huckster, a lawyer-huckster at that.
So when some one tells you there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two major political parties, you can say there is: Democrats are systems managers, Republicans used car salesmen. One party, the Democrats, is content to competently manage the status quo. The other, the Republicans, sees the status quo as a means to an end for self-aggrandizement and enrichment at their teabagger partisans' expense for the benefit of their major political campaign donors.
Alternet.org
The Coakley-Brown match up in Massachusetts, even though both candidates are attorneys, illustrates this nicely.
Scott Brown is running, as nearly every Republican has since 1980, as a Washington, D.C. outsider and champion of smaller government, i.e. cut welfare for the poor and cut taxes for the rich. Never mind that as a lieutenant-colonel in the Massachusetts Nation Guard Brown's sucked off Uncle Sam's tit for thirty years, knowing, in this day and age of the All Volunteer Force our soldiers and Marines and National Guardsmen are sacrosanct heroes whose asses the rest of us must kiss with great regularity, I'll get some flack for even entertaining this thought.
And even though Brown maintains a law practice focusing on divorce and adoptions, for most of his adult life, when he wasn't collecting a US Treasury check for one-weekend a month and three weeks a year with the Guard, he has been since 1992 a professional politician. Yet he sells himself as some one untainted by big money politics. Absolute bullshit which the teabaggers are eating up with gusto as they have since 1980. Some people never get it.
Coakley, on the other hand, is a long time law-and-order Democrat, a prosecutor since 1982. She's the kind of competent systems manager, i.e. coordinator, the establishment Democratic Party elders love so much these days. Intelligent, bland and a good administrator, Coakley is the kind of politician who would be good at running a state or federal agency, as she does in her capacity as Massachusetts Attorney General.
So what this election boils down to is, colorless though competent jurist versus a huckster, a lawyer-huckster at that.
So when some one tells you there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two major political parties, you can say there is: Democrats are systems managers, Republicans used car salesmen. One party, the Democrats, is content to competently manage the status quo. The other, the Republicans, sees the status quo as a means to an end for self-aggrandizement and enrichment at their teabagger partisans' expense for the benefit of their major political campaign donors.
Alternet.org
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